Chapter 4 Whatever It Takes

Four weeks later.

Sam snuck another look at the woman sitting beside him in the car. As usual, she looked incredible. He was aware that his hair was in the same lopsided mess it'd been when he'd gotten out of bed that morning and he was still repressing yawns from searching for answers most of the night.

"Did he say anything about the way he was dealing with his feelings?" she asked him, and he looked back at the road, huffing out an impatient breath at the question. Dean didn't deal and he'd ranted on that subject often enough for Lauren to know it.

"Not really," he said. "He said he hadn't told her anything."

Lauren nodded. "He's drinking more, isn't he?"

It was hard to quantify his brother's drinking, Sam thought morosely. He could function well even with enough whiskey in him to floor another man. Years of practice had given his brother a tolerance level that was close to supernatural.

"Yeah, I think so."

"When your father died," Lauren said slowly. "How long did it take him to get past that?"

"He's still not past that," Sam told her, his forehead crinkling up. "He sort of is, but every now and then something happens and it hits him all over again." Like a sledgehammer out of the blue, he realised, remembering Dean's reaction over Adam, his comments when they'd gone to Heaven…not for the first time, he wondered uneasily how much his brother could lock away before it all came crashing out. "He knew what happened. He hated that Dad had done that to save him."

The noisy hiss of the tyres over the wet road filled the car for a few minutes, then Lauren turned to look at him again. "What do you think? Do you think he really fell?"

"I don't know," Sam admitted. He didn't. He should've because Dean was his brother and he thought he knew him better than anyone else in the world, but he didn't. "I think he found someone he could trust."

Which, he considered, was the most important thing for his brother. If he trusted someone, he would give them all of himself, no holds barred. The deeper knowledge that between them, he'd broken Dean's trust in him stabbed a second later. He thought that he could rebuild that trust, but it was a work of years, not weeks or months and he knew his brother was still wary of letting him see what he kept locked away, even now. The long talk on the way to Vegas had rebuilt some things. It was a start.

He glanced back at Lauren. "He said there was no one else who knew about him."

She nodded. "She saw most of the last six years of your lives. She saw things that he kept hidden from everyone else. Things he couldn't explain to anyone else. I can see how that alone would have made a difference."

The signs for Sioux Falls appeared at the side of the road and Sam slowed a little, concentrating again on driving. Bobby had gotten a call from a hunter needing help with a pack of skinwalkers, somewhere south-west, Jody had told them on the last call. They'd have a few days to get started on the boxes of books the trunk of the car held.

Pulling into the sheriff's neatly paved driveway, he frowned as he realised Dean's car was gone.

Jody came out onto the porch a moment later, looking at them worriedly as they unpacked the boxes. "Did Dean call you?"

"About what?" Sam asked her uncertainly. He hadn't had a call from him in two days.

"Uh, well, something came up and he said he'd call you, wait for back up, but he's down in Canton, looking at a case I found," Jody said.

"A case?" Sam looked at Lauren. "What kind of a case?"

"It's easier to show you," Jody told him, taking a box and carrying it inside.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Lauren turned the screen around. "Here, Canton, Ohio – 1944, 1957, 1960, 1974. Three people, each time. All the bodies were found in a state of extreme desiccation. The timing's off – there's no pattern to these dates."

Sam leaned close to the screen. "Bring up the photos."

As each of the grainy prints appeared on the screen, Sam copied them to the drive and opened his photo-enhancing software, starting with the earliest. Lauren shifted her chair back as he pulled another up to the laptop.

"Jody, can you get access to the police and security feeds in Canton?" Sam asked the sheriff.

She nodded, turning for her keys and coat. "What am I looking for?"

Sam opened three photos on the screen. All three showed a man in a fedora, rakishly tipped to one side, and overcoat, watching the crime scenes or walking from them. "This guy, I think."

"Two victims in the last week, Sam," Lauren pointed out. "We need to go."

"I'll be an hour," Jody said from the doorway. "I'm coming too."

"We'll pick you up at the station," Sam said, and sent the cleaned-up photographs to the printer. He picked up his phone and tried Dean again.

"Still no answer?"

"And no GPS location, no ping, no nothing," Sam said, getting up from the chair. "Goddamn him and not waiting."

"Sam, he's not usually this reckless, is he?"

Sam thought back. He'd seen Dean storm into jobs without backup or forethought twice. When he'd realised the truth about their father. And when he'd known he was going to Hell.

"No, not usually."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Canton, Ohio, November 1944

Dean stared around at the police station interrogation room, worried about the situation he was in, but kind of tickled about it as well. It looked like a set on an old movie, the uniformed cops in old-fashioned button-to-the-neck serge or wool suits, the captain straight-laced and Army-ramrod-stiff, his tie knotted immaculately at the collar of his crisp white shirt, despite the lateness of the hour.

Forced into the chair at the table, the barrel-lock cuffs clanking around his wrists, he noticed that the long table that the captain faced him across was actually wood. Real wood. No Formica or scratches. No peeling edges or cigarette burns or ink stains.

"Okay, can I just –" he started to say, looking back at the cop.

"Don't." The man stared at him warningly. "Listen to me, you tell me you're from the Bureau one more time, I'm gonna air you out myself. Got it?"

On the table between them, the contents of Dean's pockets had been emptied out and the captain picked up the mobile phone, flinching backwards a bit as the screen lit up under the touch of his thumb.

"'No signal'," he murmured, squinting suspiciously at the device in his hand. "Are you some kind of Jerry spy?"

Dean looked from his phone to the cop's face. "Jerry who?"

"And a terrible one at that," the cop said with a disdainful sniff as he put the phone down and picked up the slim ID wallet. "This badge was issued sixty-eight years from now. Ace work, kraut-muncher."

"'44?" Dean asked disbelievingly. "I'm stuck in 1944?!"

The cop's eyes narrowed. "We're all stuck in 1944, ya bunny."

At the top of the short flight of stairs that led down into the room, the door opened. Dean looked around then back at the cop as the man got to his feet, dropping the billfold onto the table.

"Take a powder." The low, harsh voice sounded like every hard-boiled detective in every film noir movie he'd ever stayed up to watch. Bogie, Robinson, Mitchum, Tierney and Ford leapt into his mind as he watched the man, dressed in a pin-striped suit and a camel-hair overcoat, walk slowly past the retreating captain down the stairs.

"Look I don't even like friggin' sauerkraut, okay, so you can just skip the –" Dean shifted in his chair, his cuffs clinking against each other.

"What happened in the alley?" the man said coldly, leaning on the table, his face shadowed under the brim of the soft brown hat he wore. "And paint me a real picture."

Dean leaned on the table, trying to work out if the truth or a lie would get him out of here more quickly. The only trouble was there wasn't an easy lie that covered the items on the table, or the .45 Colt automatic the cops had somewhere in the station either. The gun had seen service through WWII but the bullets in the magazine were a different matter.

"I was chasing this dude. Uh, I'd just seen him mummify a guy," he said, shrugging. "Yeah. I jumped him in an alley – he lights up red. Poof, we're in 1944."

The man took off his hat, tossing it onto the table along with a thick file with a government seal on the front. In the pitiless glare of the caged light above the table, Dean realised he was older than he'd seemed. Thick, dark hair was combed smoothly back from a low forehead and dark brows shadowed dark eyes. "Tell me more about the red light."

"The red light?" Dean frowned at him. "Are you seriously asking –"

"You want out of this jail? You're gonna tell me everything you can about that man and that so-called light," the man said evenly, leaning back and staring at him expressionlessly.

"Okay," Dean said. "It was red. I saw it. And then me and the dude? We were here."

"Would you say that, uh... it was all around you or that more that it came from inside this fellow?"

The question was out of place, Dean thought, looking carefully at the man. Out of place for someone who didn't have personal experience of that sort of thing, anyway. He'd recognised the man's smooth economy of movement when he'd entered the room, an almost-indefinable awareness of surroundings that he associated with just one type of person.

"You believe me," Dean said flatly. "Who the hell are you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the man said, glancing at the ceiling.

"I know hunters when I meet them," Dean told him shortly. "Something about the belief level. Demons, ghosts, shifters. Hey, I've killed 'em all. And you're the same. Just sixty-eight years before me, huh?"

"A hunter?" the man said, tilting his head to one side in consideration. "Of demons and ghosts, no less."

"And things that fill up with red light and zap people through time, yeah," Dean said sourly.

The man leaned forward, holding out his hand. "And your name is...?"

"Dean," he said, taking the other man's hand and shaking it. "Winchester."

The man nodded as he released the grip. "I'm Ness. Eliot Ness."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Canton, Ohio, Now

Sam watched the software running its passes back and forth across the clearest image he had, slowly but surely matching pixels and producing a more and more detailed resolution. It was a time-consuming process, but it would be worth it if he could find just one detail that would nail this sucker and let them identify him. They had a name, Snider. They even had an address. But neither helped working out what he was.

Lauren walked up behind him, resting her hands lightly on his shoulders. "How's it going?"

"Painfully slow," he told her, tilting his head back to look into her face upside-down. "Where's Jody?"

"Catching up on lost sleep," she said. "We should try that too."

"Yeah," he agreed absently, looking back at the screen. The passes had reached the guy's hands and he leaned forward suddenly, staring at the ring on the man's right hand. "I've seen that before."

"It's the sign of Infinity," Lauren said, leaning over his shoulder. "Represents Time."

"Time," Sam muttered, turning to the pile of books next to him. Most of them were journals, Bobby's and Rufus'. He skimmed the pages of the first two and then stopped when he reached the third. "Rufus had a picture of that symbol in this journal," he told Lauren, flipping it open and skipping through the pages. "I can't remember what it had to do with –"

"There!" Lauren pointed at the symbol just as Sam registered it. "The sigil of the God of Time?"

"A god, well, that's fantastic," Sam groaned, reading through the hunter's notes. "Just what we need is another damned god!"

Leaning on his shoulder, Lauren read down the notes. "Chronos," she said. "It's a start, we know what we're looking for now."

"That guy saw his neighbour sucked dry in front of him, saw the flash of red light and Dean disappearing along with the light and the guy and everything," Sam said, his voice shaking a little. "If this is Chronos, where'd they go?"

"We'll worry about that in the morning," she said soothingly. "Let's work out how to summon him and how to kill him first, okay?"

"Sure! Why not!?" Sam sputtered through a snort of laughter. "Lauren –"

"Come on, a couple of hours of sleep, Sam."

He wanted to protest, wanted to start hitting the books and the search engines but his sight was beginning to blur and he knew he wasn't thinking straight. For all his great speeches about his brother living his own life, the thought of Dean being lost, somewhere…some when…without him, on his own, sent shivers up and down his spine.

As if she'd read his mind, Lauren leaned closer, holding him. "We'll find him, but we have to be right at the top of our game for this."

"Right."

"Come to bed." She stood up, holding out her hand. "Just for a little while."

He nodded wearily, getting to his feet. "Just for a little while," he agreed.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Canton, Ohio, November 1944

Rubbing his wrists as he followed Ness out of the police station and down the street, Dean looked around with a new appreciation of what he was seeing. When he'd come out of the alley, he'd only had a blurred impression of old cars, old…everything…then he'd been bundled into the car and driven away. Now, even by the yellow-toned street-lights, he could see that if this wasn't 1944, it was a damned good period movie set.

Men and women walked along the street, arm in arm, broad-shouldered suits and coats brushing against each other, the colours mostly drab and unexciting but it was a post-war world and manufacturing had been geared to the effort for years. Every man he saw looked smartly-dressed, he realised…good suits, hats, gloves, tailored coats and every woman was shapely and dazzling in their low heels, stockings and simple, stark make-up. So far as he knew it was just an ordinary weeknight, but no entire neighbourhood back home would be got up like this, even on a special occasion. A fleeting image crossed his mind and he winced a bit, not wanting to think how she'd look in these clothes, in this time. He had a sinking feeling she'd have loved it.

"Where are we going?" he asked Ness, lengthening his stride to walk next to him.

"Tailor," Ness said shortly. "You work with me, you have some respect. You look like some kind of brindlestiff."

Brindlestiff?

Dean let the word roll around in his mind, hunting for some association that might give him a clue. He looked down at the oil-stained, somewhat torn and still perfectly serviceable jeans, shirt and jacket he wore, and the association that came to him was that he'd just been insulted.

"What we gotta do is nail this guy before he gets vic number three and takes off again," he argued, slowing down stubbornly.

Ness turned around and looked at him. "We won't do that if you're standing out like a sore thumb. Nothing fancy, but you need to blend in here."

It made a certain amount of logical sense, Dean allowed to himself, speeding up as the Treasury agent swung around and strode away. From the looks of the people they passed, he wasn't exactly blending in right now.

The store was a narrow front in a soot-stained building two roads back from the main street and Ness knocked sharply on the door three times. After a minute, a tall, auburn-haired woman opened the door a crack, peering up at them.

"What's the rumpus, Eliot?"

"Ezra Moore, Dean Winchester," Ness said, putting his hand on the front of the door and pushing it open. "He's from the future."

"Paint me impressed, sugar," Ezra said, waving her hand in an invitation to enter. Her dress was in a soft fabric that was stiffened in the bodice and swirled from the hips, a rich shade of chocolate with no buttons or bows or frills, dressed up by the detailed work of the neck. A blue pin cushion encircled one wrist, a fine, gold ladies watch the other. "Not much of a sense of style in the future, is there? Or is that just you?"

Dean walked past her, looking around the crowded store. Bolts of cloth lined one wall, mirrors and dressing rooms took up the back and dozens of suits, dresses and coats hung in ordered rows across the other wall. Ezra closed the door behind them, turning to the store window and dropping a blackout curtain over it.

"Stand still and let me get your measurements," she instructed him as she walked back. She pulled out a soft measuring tape and moved around him. He felt the brief touch on his shoulders, around his arm, and her cool fingers lifting aside his collars as the tape slid around his neck. "I've got a couple of things that will do." She headed for the racks. "Won't take a minute to do the adjustments. Picked up a nice load of worsted the other day, hangs beautifully, a very subtle check in the weave and I think it'll bring out the colour of those pretty green peepers."

Dean looked at Ness in confusion. "What'd she say?"

"Relax," Eliot told him dryly. "She'll have you fixed up so's your own mother won't recognise you."

There was a rattle of coat-hangers and then she was back, pants, shirt, jacket and waistcoat over one arm which she thrust toward him. "Dressing room. Get dressed, come out, I'll fix the fit."

He turned and glanced around, seeing a green velvet curtain behind him. At Ezra's shooing gestures he backed toward it, then turned and entered the cubicle, pulling the curtain shut tight behind him.

On the other side of it, he heard the low murmur of their voices as he pulled off his clothes hurriedly and started to change.

"…like a raw rook to me, Eliot."

"He's one of us, I want you to get Valencia to check out the name…Winchester…" Ness' voice dropped too low for Dean to hear.

The pants fit exactly around the waist and he looked down in surprise. They were a little too short but there was a generous hem to work with. The shirt, crisply white and starched fit as well, the long pointed collars hanging exactly to either side of the buttons. Same number of layers, he thought bemusedly, doing up the waistcoat and smoothing the fabric down over his stomach, and comfortable, despite the closer fit.

"…she said that name's in the histories," Ezra said, her voice getting louder and Dean turned to look at the curtain, picking up the jacket.

"…know for sure in a few hours."

"…lucky if you do. I thought he had…"

Drawing the jacket on, Dean looked in the mirror. It looked sharp, he had to admit. Better than the thrown-together look of their fed suits.

"You must be done by now," Ezra said, as she pulled aside the curtain unceremoniously and ran her gaze down and up him from head to foot.

"Good," she added, stepping up to him and tugging on the jacket to settle it, her hands immodestly checking the fit of the pants and making him jump, just a little. "Just let down the hem and I'll take a tuck in here," she said, holding the side of the jacket and looking past him to his reflection. "And here."

Dean looked at her through the mirror's reflection, hastily rearranging his expression to neutrality as he caught the look of annoyance on his face.

Ezra smiled. "Lucky for you I'm as good a barber as I am a tailor," she told him, her gaze on his hair. "Come on, get it off and sit down."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

In the mirror, a half hour later, Dean had to privately agree with Ness' comment. His mother wouldn't recognise him. Hell, his brother wouldn't have recognised him.

His hair was trimmed and slicked down, a ruler-straight part down one side and combed smooth and flat to his head. The shave was the closest he'd ever had, he thought, running his fingertips over the skin of one cheek a little wonderingly, leaving not even a trace of a shadow. The suit fitted him perfectly, black leather oxfords polished and gleaming from under the cuffs of the pants, and Ezra smiled from behind him, handing him a soft, black felt fedora and helping him into a silk-lined overcoat. He put the hat and tipped it to one side, grinning at himself.

"So, spill already," Ezra said, standing back to look at him critically. "What bucket of syrup you idjits step into?"

Ness cleared his throat. "Time travel," he said, looking at her. "What're the ponies?"

She turned away and walked to the racks of ready-made clothing, pushing aside a section. Dean's head snapped around at the soft rumble and his eyes widened slightly as a door appeared between the clothing.

"You got your interdimensional beings, of course," Ezra said, disappearing through it, her voice raised. "Angels, the more powerful demons, anything that doesn't belong here…"

"Don't think that's it, this is strictly penny ante," Ness said, following her. "What else?"

"Well," she said, coming back out through the racks of clothes with several books in her arms. "There are the Time Keepers."

"Time Keepers?" Dean asked, looking from her to Ness and back.

Ezra nodded and dumped the armful on the long sewing table. "Probably a handful who have some control over time. Or used to, back in the day."

Opening a book, she started to go through it. Behind her, Dean and Eliot looked over her shoulders at the pages. As she got about halfway through, memory hit Dean clearly.

"There," he said, stabbing a finger at a picture. "That was on his ring."

"Well, that's good news," Ezra said, looking over her shoulder at him.

"It is?"

"That's the mark of Chronos," she explained. "The God of Time."

"And, uh, how's that good?"

Smiling, Ezra said, "Well, he's been around since the beginning, but he's lost a lot of power. Compared to some of the others, he's gotten kind of slack." She turned to Eliot. "Most likely? He's killing these folks for their juice, so that he can move through Time."

"Awesome," Dean said sourly. "How'm I gunna ride him back to my time?"

"Well, you could let him grab you," she said, looking at him. "If you don't mind him using you for gasoline?"

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

In the bright sunlight of early morning, the world in 1944 looked even more bizarre, Dean decided.

Sitting in Ness' awesomely comfortable tank of a Buick across the road from a diner, he sat up as a man walked in, taking a booth by the window and being served coffee.

"That's him," Dean said.

Ness adjusted his binoculars, looking at the man. "Kind of puny for a god."

"We taking him?"

"We're watching him," he said, lowering the glasses. Dean's attention narrowed as he saw the gold ring on Ness' left hand.

"You got a family?" he asked in surprise.

"Beautiful one," Ness confirmed. "You don't?"

"Uh, no." He looked through the windshield at the street. "How'd you find out about this? Get started?"

"Tracked a nest of vampires were turning folks in Cleveland," Ness told him, staring at the diner. "I didn't believe it, at first. Tried to talk my way out of it six ways from Sunday." He laughed harshly. "Then I tried all the old folklore methods."

Dean's nose wrinkled up in sympathy. "Not much help there."

"No," Ness agreed. "I met a man who said he came from a long line of vampire killers. He showed me the ropes and I - sometimes you just want to punch through the red tape with a silver bullet. You ever worked for the government?"

Dean shook his head and Ness nodded.

"Well, don't start," he advised. "Everything in triplicate and here's a crappy pension at the end. This," he added, waving a hand toward the diner. "This is clean. No paperwork, no trials, no technicalities. Just get the job done and go home."

"Don't you worry you're gonna bring something home that takes your family?" Dean asked, keeping his gaze fixed on the windshield.

"I don't leave anything with enough body parts…" Ness told him, a soft menace in his voice. "…to follow me home."

Silence filled the car. Dean thought of his mother, making a deal she didn't know how to handle, a deal that killed her. He thought of his father, making another deal and leaving right when he was needed the most. Maybe it was different in this time.

Eliot looked around, one dark brow lifted. "How'd you get started?"

"I used to do it 'cause that's what my family did," Dean said absently, looking down at the gun in his hand.

"Hmm?"

"But my family, my friends...they just seem to keep dying," Dean continued, pulling in a breath as he added or leaving silently. "To tell you the truth, I don't know why I'm doing much of anything anymore."

"Boo-hoo," Eliot said sharply and Dean looked around at him, startled. "Cry me a river, ya nancy," Ness continued, his lip curling up in a slight sneer. "Tell me, are all hunters as soft as you in the future?"

He pulled a hip flask from his coat pocket and unscrewed the lid, tipping it back and drinking a mouthful. "Lemme tell you something, kid, gratis. Everybody loses everybody. And then one day, boom. Your number's up, but at least you're making a difference."

Was he, Dean wondered doubtfully? Was he making that much a difference that it was worth losing his family, his friends…him and Sam, they'd been the key to Lucifer's cage and it'd been on them to put the devil back. But lately…if Cas and Crowley had really wanted to nuke it out over Purgatory, how was that their problem? Or chasing down tablets and black-ooze-filled bigmouths? How was that on them? Why hadn't they wished Cas luck and gone their own way?

It's called the Ring of Solomon. It marks the ability to give up your needs for the greater good, Melanie's said out of memory.

Was this all his fault? Because he wouldn't let go, he wouldn't give up to save as many people as he could? Why the hell did it feel like it was his burden to carry? Because of what you did in Hell, a small, dark voice whispered back to him. Can't find forgiveness without atonement, Dean. You already know you can't make up for what you've done.

"So enjoy it while it lasts, Winchester, 'cause hunting's the only clarity you're gonna find in this life. And that makes you luckier than most," Eliot said, breaking through his thoughts.

That was fucking hilarious, he thought sourly, rubbing his hand across his brow. Any more luck like that and it'd kill him. Clarity was not something he'd had in the life for years now. He didn't think he'd ever get it back…knowing what he was doing. Knowing what he wanted. The only thing he was currently sure of was that he'd never get what he wanted.

"You have to have something to fight for," Ness said to him. "You think I do this for all the John Q pencil-necks? No," he answered the question himself. "I do it because I have something to live for. A helluva something to live for."

He pulled out his wallet, flipping it open and easing out a worn and much-thumbed photograph from behind the Treasury identification card. Dean took it, tilting it to the light. It was a black and white portrait, showing a slender woman with an infectious smile, her arms encircling three children, a boy and two girls, ages ranging perhaps from nine or ten for the boy, down to pre-school age for the youngest girl. They looked happy, he thought. Healthy and beautiful and happy. He handed the picture back to the agent, his expression deliberately neutral.

"Every morning, when I open my eyes, I know what I'm doing, what I'm fighting for," Eliot said softly as he gently slid the photograph back behind the thick card. "You don't have that, you might as well be one of them."

Picking up the glasses again, he turned back to the diner without waiting for Dean to respond.

"Hello, nurse," he said, watching the slender blonde walk out of the diner and down the street. Dean turned to watch her, and looked back at the window of the diner. Snider had gone.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Canton, Ohio. Now.

Sam threw the match into the bowl and twisted away as the contents flamed to the ceiling, licking along the plaster. Abruptly, the light in the room turned to blood red, filling every space and there was a crash as two men materialised mid-air and fell to the floor.

"Dean!" Jody shouted, running to his prone figure as Sam dove across the floor for the branch that had been knocked from his brother's hand when he'd landed.

"No!" Chronos screamed at Dean, staggering to his feet as his attention zeroed in on the fallen man. "You! Destroyed everything!"

Jody thumbed back one of Dean's eyelids, shifting her hands beneath his shoulders as he blinked and shook his head.

"I didn't lie to her," he said groggily. "You didn't tell her the truth."

"She loved me!"

"She didn't know what you were!" Dean ground back, rolling onto his hip and supporting himself with one hand. "You didn't tell her anything – how the hell could she've loved you not knowing everything?!"

"You – I – I loved her," Chronos said, taking a step backward clumsily. "I wanted her to –"

"Hey, Chronos?!"

Sam stood behind the god and as Chronos turned, he thrust the branch into his chest, driving it deep. His eyes screwed up tight as pulses of white light filled the god's chest and twisted and writhed up his neck.

"Was that the best you got?" Sam asked him tightly as he released his hold and Chronos dropped to his knees.

"You want to know your future? I know your future. All the futures," Chronos croaked, looking from Sam to Dean. "It's being alone. Covered in black ooze. You can't fight it. You can't beat it. You deserve it."

His eyes rolled back as the light consumed his body from the entry point of the branch to the tips of his extremities.

"You alright?" Jody asked, sitting behind Dean.

Dean glanced at her and back to his brother. "Don't think so," he said tiredly.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"So, what was the story? He couldn't control Time, he was just thrown around from century to century until he met someone he wanted to stay in one place for?" Sam asked his brother, passing him a beer and taking the other chair on the porch.

Dean looked into the deepening dusk and nodded. "He thought he loved her, thought she loved him," he said. "Didn't take it too well when she found out he'd been killing people, and decided he was a monster."

For a long heavy moment, silence filled the space between them and Sam slowly realised where Dean had gone with that.

"It's not – Dean, this is not the same situation. You are not a monster. Terry knows everything you did, and she –"

"She doesn't – didn't – know everything, Sammy," Dean cut him off. "And she left anyway."

"That's not –"

"Gone is gone, Sam," Dean said, finishing his beer in a gulp. "Any hits on what Roman and the other bigmouths are doing?"

"No," Sam said stubbornly. "And you're going to listen to me – for once."

He perched on the edge of the chair, staring his brother down. "She did – does – love you. She told me. In Dearborn, before you two – before the trial and Jo and the explosion. She made me promise not to tell you."

Dean looked at him for a long moment then turned his head away to watch the streetlights come on along the sheriff's quiet road. He didn't know if the stillness he could feel inside of himself was going to smash him into a million pieces or hold him together. He wanted to believe Sam. He didn't know how to, didn't even know if there was a point to believing…now.

"Bobby called in something weird while we were waiting for you to show up," Sam offered tentatively.

"Weird like how?"

"Seattle, some guys found with their hands and feet chopped off," Sam said, finishing his beer. "Weird thing was that it seems from security footage that the attackers were women half their size and, uh, Bobby went through Frank to get the police and coroner's reports and there's a heap of physical evidence at the scenes, but it's coming back non-human."

"Huh." Dean got up, the empty bottle swinging from one hand. "Lauren tagging along again?"

"No," Sam said, shaking his head as he got up as well. "Bobby wants to check out Rufus' old cabin in Montana. Lauren's going with him."

"Alright, split shifts, take us about twenty hours."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~