A/N: Thank you soooo much to ImpalaLove and toridw17 for reviewing! I'm thrilled that you like the story so far and I hope you will continue to enjoy it!

Song: Manic Depression by Jimi Hendrix

CHAPTER 7

Manic Depression

"Ya got it? Was it the Jersey Devil?" Bobby interrogates from over the phone the next morning.

"It was some sorta devil," Dean mumbles in response. "Now, what's the name of that psychic?"

"She's called Lydia Allen. Cas ain't answerin'?"

"No," he replies sharply. Even from across the motel room, Claire can hear a note of hurt ring in his voice. She acts like she doesn't notice as she clicks away on her computer.

"Well, you can try her. She puts on a show and there's a lot of fanfare and the like, but don't let that throw ya – she's the real thing."

"Okay. Thanks Bobby."

"O'course. Good luck, son."

Without further ado, Bobby hangs up. Dean holds the phone in his hand a beat longer than necessary, staring pensively at the screen. If he were truly Bobby's son, he wouldn't be in this mess right now.

"Want me to book the flight to Las Vegas?" Claire asks from behind her screen. She's perked up immediately at the mention of a psychic.

"Flight? Who said anything 'bout a flight?" he backtracks.

She crinkles her nose in confusion. "How else would we get there?"

"Driving, obviously."

"All the way to Vegas?!"

"Uh huh."

She quickly opens Google Maps and plugs in their route. "That's like a forty-hour drive!"

"Is it?" he dismisses, shoving his clothes into his bag.

"Why can't we just fly?"

"No flying," he barks warily. "Plus, I sure as hell ain't leaving the car here."

Claire studies his expression closely, before an idea pops into her brain. "Are you – you're not… Are you afraid of flying?"

He snorts out a laugh a little too quickly. "What? No, don't be stupid." He pretends like the idea is ludicrous, but it's undeniable – he's flustered.

Her face breaks into an uncharacteristically sly grin. "You are, aren't you?"

"No," he insists, averting his line of sight. "Absolutely not."

"Yeah, okay tough guy…"

"Pack your stuff up," he orders dryly, clearly unamused.

. . .

Dean discovers (perhaps too late) that, from the outside, they must look like a couple in an abusive relationship. People actually glared at him at breakfast this morning, as though they couldn't see that he was injured too, and they stared at Claire like they felt sorry for her. He never got anything even close to those looks with Sam.

Barring just that, he is more eager than ever to heal up. This whole gimp ankle thing is getting old real quick, and he and Claire are hobbling around like pirates on peg legs. He could almost find it funny, if it weren't him.

It's been around a week since they've been on the road together. It feels like longer, but he wagers spending virtually every moment of every day with someone will give that impression. There are no more awkward silences, really, just cessations of conversations. After the whole warming up period of their partnership, he soon found that Claire likes to talk more than Sammy ever had, but even she needs a break sometimes.

To be entirely honest, Dean doesn't mind the chatting. He thought he would, but he doesn't. He thinks maybe it's because it prevents him from stewing in his own misery.

She doesn't really say anything too deep, which he appreciates. Mostly they talk about music or their plan for the day. Their pasts never come up – never. It's a topic that's meticulously avoided, actually. He'd be lying if he said he isn't curious. Questions burn on his lips, questions about her brothers, about the pills, about why she moved back to that Podunk town in Illinois. He suspects these things are all related, tied together by one catastrophic event. Usually that's the way it goes. But as much as the curiosity haunts him, he can respect her desire not to discuss it. After all, she doesn't ask him about the horrors she knows he's endured, so he can at least return the favor.

"What's you favorite band of all time?" she asks him on their way through Pennsylvania.

"That's easy. Zepp, of course," he answers matter-of-factly.

"They're good, I'll give you that," she agrees. "It's hard to choose just one, but I think I'm between them and the Stones. The Stones are still going strong."

"That's not necessarily a good thing. You know what they say about quitting while you're ahead? No one wants to listen to a bunch of old dudes wailing out songs that were written twenty years ago."

"They obviously care more about their fans, though."

"So? It's about the music."

"I guess…"

After a moment, he says, "I wouldn't have pegged you as a classic rock junkie."

"I get that a lot. You acquire a taste for it when you're exposed to it enough, I s'pose. I like most music."

"Not me," he scoffs. "That top 40 shit they play on the radio all the time? Makes me wanna puke. It's just the same thing over and over again. I don't know how people's brains aren't melting from constantly listening to that garbage."

"You're such a snob."

He lets out a short chuckle. "Funny, that's not something I ever thought I'd be accused of."

"Well, you are. Some of it's not bad."

"If you say so…" he grumbles, clearly unconvinced. Sam used to say the same thing, but he never believed him, either.

When you're trapped in a car with someone for 15 hours a day, it's hard not to learn a lot about them, even if you don't want to. For instance, he knows Claire's favorite color is green and her favorite drink is a tequila sunrise (he rolled his eyes at this one). He knows she used to watch Friends religiously and is still obsessed with it and he knows she'll make fun of him for watching Dr. Sexy MD but is secretly just as addicted to it as he is. He knows her dad taught her to drive when she was thirteen and that she broke her leg in a sledding accident in the fifth grade. In sum, he knows a lot of random shit. But he still doesn't know either of her brothers' names.

Then there's the other thing…

As crass as it may be to say, Dean legitimately cannot remember ever having spent so much time with the same girl, and he is absolutely positive that he's never spent so much time with the same girl and not slept with her. He expected all the girly crap without any of the perks to get annoying, but no – she's certainly not the nagging, needy harpy he'd conditioned himself to believe most girls were. Perhaps this had been a defense mechanism to avoid getting too close, anyway. He has to admit, though, even if he's not testing the merchandise, there's no harm in having a bit of eye-candy around. She's certainly better to look at than Sam ever was.

But to be frank, it's getting to be distracting. He hasn't gotten laid in close to a month (which, for him, is like a year), and there's this leggy, ever-present redhead flouncing around. They're practically joined at the hip, and not at all in the way he wants. And unfortunately, he doesn't really think she'd be cool with him bringing chicks back to the motel room. He's been taking a lot of cold showers.

He hasn't tried anything with her because he's not sure if their relationship should enter that territory. In fact, he's actually positive that it shouldn't. Things are good as they are. After what they've been through, they can call themselves friends. They talk and work well together and sometimes there's a bit of harmless flirting, but to add sex to the mix would likely screw everything up. They're stuck together until he can find a way to get Sam back – which could be a long time – and he can't be sure that there wouldn't be any strings attached given where they're starting from. Better just to avoid it altogether, he thinks. Claire seems to be on the same page.

. . .

The motel du jour is in Ohio. Dean likes Ohio, always has. Something about it reminds him of home.

Nevertheless, he can't sleep, so he researches Purgatory on Claire's computer while nursing a glass of scotch. The blue glow from the screen begins to hurt his eyes as soon as the alcohol begins to invade his bloodstream.

Claire is sleeping fitfully. His ears pick up the rustling of sheets nearby, the sound of her tossing and turning. He thinks he hears her mumble a word – Chucky, was it? – into her pillow, but he can't be sure. When it's so quiet like this, he sometimes thinks his ears play tricks on him. He sometimes thinks he hears Sam's voice in the silence.

By this point, he's dying to know what happened to Claire's brothers. When he first met her, he couldn't have given less of a shit about it, but now he needs to know. In every story she tells, they're there in the background, silent-but-lurking presences, like ghosts that exist only in her memory.

He doesn't really talk about Sam, either. He talks about him in the sense that they're looking for him, but he doesn't talk about him from before, when he was younger, when they were younger, when they were together. He doesn't mention that 4th of July of '96, or that time in Alabama when Sam fell asleep with gum in his mouth they had to shave his whole head in the morning. But he thinks about these things constantly.

Dean is savvy enough to know that whatever happened to her brothers was nasty business and left an equally nasty scar, just like she knows that what happened with Sammy fucked him up real bad. She knows more about him than he knows about her, though, even if the details are sketchy. She knows about Detroit.

Sometimes, in their idle conversations, she touches on something more profound, digs just deep enough to scratch the surface.

Driving through Indiana the next day, she asks, "Did you always want to do this?"

"Whaddyou mean?"

"The hunting," she clarifies.

Dean sighs loudly, but humors her. "I always used to think so," he admits. "But now it's not something I want to do so much as something I have to."

She doesn't bother questioning this because she can see that it's true. More softly, she asks, "You never wanted to settle down, have a family?"

"Nah. I had a family…" he murmurs sadly. "You can't just replace that with a new one." He's not sure if this is a lie or not, but it's the easiest response – it's certainly not a lie to say he's too hung up on his past to ever have a functional life in the future. A wife, kids, the whole shebang – it might be nice, but it wouldn't dull the pain of losing everyone else. It would be a Band-Aid, not a cure. He is incurable.

Claire wants to push against this, but she doesn't. Dean can at first seem like a testosterone-fueled douchebag, but she's quickly finding that this is just a front, a shield he's built for himself. He's a good guy with a kind heart, and he seems like he would want a family of his own.

"What about you? Even before, you didn't seem like you were on the fast-track to becoming a soccer mom any time soon."

"I always thought I would, once I met the right person. Now I think that's probably out of the cards, though."

He shrugs. "You never know. Some nice boy back in Illinois might change your mind," he baits, only half-serious. "You're still really young."

"I think the whole prophet thing is probably a deal breaker."

"…Speaking of the whole prophet thing –"

"I know," she cuts him off. "I don't know why they've been so infrequent." But this isn't entirely honest. She does, or at least she has a theory.

"You haven't had one in days," he tells her, as if she isn't already fully aware of this.

"Yep. Maybe it's just because nothing's changed with him."

Dean's expression is vexed, like he doesn't believe her. But he either doesn't want to say anything else or doesn't know what else to say. He doubts it would be appropriate to encourage her to get wasted again, so he just focuses on the road.

. . .

All those times he called Hell "the Pit," he hadn't been referring to this.

The earth – the very fabric of reality – splits, crumbles, caves in on itself. It opens up into an abyss, a pit wholly and truly.

He knows Hell. He knows the heat, the flames, the red glow of fire casting shadows on cave walls, playing out scenes of torture like macabre pantomimes. He remembers the silhouettes, the figures carrying their own heads instead of vases. The music is an orchestra of screams and laughter.

This is not that. This is blackness, this is nothingness. Hell is a terrible, awful, excruciating, and above all alternate state of being – this is an end. This is death.

"It's okay, Dean. It's gonna be okay."

Their whole lives they have been telling each other it's going to be okay, knowing it was a lie.

Sam falls back into the void. He wants to chase him, to jump in after him, to have the world swallow him up, too. But his legs are rubber and he can feel fragments of bone floating in blood just underneath the skin of his face. It is a miracle he is still conscious.

He's sees Michael – no, Adam, their brother – tumble in after him and envies him. He should be the one running after him, the one dying with Sam. He always thought he would be, one way or another. If he can't pluck him out, he should go out with him. He's his big brother, after all, and if anyone's gonna follow him down the rabbit hole it oughtta be him.

It could have been him; it should have been him. He fucked it up, changed the script. He did this to himself.

After all, they are just pieces on a board, like Sammy said – no, that was Lucifer.

And in any case, he was wrong.

Dean and Claire jerk awake at the exact same moment. They look at one another, their eyes filled with a parallel mixture of terror and physical pain.

Maybe she's out of practice, but Claire thinks this is the worst one yet.

She breaks eye contact almost as soon as she is fully aware of what is happening and doubles over in agony. She's barely fast enough to make it to the bathroom before she heaves the contents of her stomach into the toilet.

Dean starts out of bed, unsure of whether he should follow her or give her privacy.

"Computer," she groans in command.

Happy to have a direct order, he quickly scoops up her laptop and brings it to her.

"It's like having a concussion," she tells him as she types out his nightmare, and he wonders when she's had a concussion before. He reads the words as they hit the page and feels weak.

She, on the other hand, looks weak. He rubs her back while she purges herself of the vision, and it's too late to stop once he realizes what he's doing. When she's done, she slides the computer away from her with a zealous hatred. It hits the baseboard on the other side of the room with a solid thud.

And then there they are, kneeling on the cold tile floor of a Kansas motel bathroom. She slumps against him out of sheer weariness and he keeps his arms around her because he doesn't know what else to do. They don't speak. There is nothing to say.

After a minute or so, she stands and begins to brush her teeth. He heads back to his bed, but it would be a farce to pretend he can sleep after what just happened. When the nightmares are about Sam – truly Sam, not Lucifer – is when it's the hardest. It was not Lucifer who fell into that pit. It was his brother.

When she's finished, she stands in the doorway to the bathroom and he can only see the outline of her body. The light filters in from behind, darkening the part of her that is facing him. He wracks his brains to think of something reassuring to tell her, but he comes up empty-handed.

She's silent as she strides forward and shoves her bed directly up against his.

"What're you –"

"It's okay," she interrupts, as if it explains everything.

As bad as that was for her, it was he who'd lived it.

He freezes as she crawls into their now-merged bed, on top of the covers. Both his mind and his body are paralyzed, rigid in shock and apprehension, but all his nerves are screaming at him to do something, anything. Still, he is completely unmoving as she scoots closer, until she is lying on her side next to him and their faces are only inches apart.

It is odd for them to see each other like this, so close. She can see every single detail in his face, and he in hers. He can see a short line of fresh, pink flesh above her right eyebrow that the scab left behind, the beginnings of the scar he predicted. He thinks offhandedly that she will still be beautiful, even with this mark.

She touches his bicep. She doesn't reach bare skin, but he can feel the heat of her hand seeping through his short sleeve. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'm sorry that happened."

Dean doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

She continues, "I understand more than you think. I used to have two brothers," she says, like she is beginning a fairytale. "They were a little like you and Sam, but not exactly. Their names were Ryan and Charlie."

Their eyes are locked intently. Blue and green. Tethered together. It could have been romantic, but it isn't. The context is all wrong.

"Ryan was the older one, only a couple of years younger than me. Everyone called him the golden child. He was sweet, athletic, pretty much perfect all around, especially if you asked my dad. Charlie was five years younger than him, so like seven years younger than me. Charlie was the black sheep – this sensitive, quiet bookworm. Even as a baby, he never really seemed happy. That's how it is with some people, you know? It's just… It's in their bones."

It's in their blood.

"But he loved Ryan – adored him. He was the only person who really seemed to get him, even though they were polar opposites. It could've been bad – Ryan was a jock and Charlie was this brooding little kid – but it wasn't. Ryan was such a happy-go-lucky guy that he made everyone around him smile."

She has this melancholy, nostalgic look on her face, and Dean feels a dagger slide into his heart. He registers something abruptly: there's no going back from this. What she says next will bond them together in a way that he's been trying to avoid this whole time.

"Anyway," she elaborates, "Once Ryan graduated high school, he decided to join the army. At that time I was in college and I told him he should go too, but our family didn't have a ton of money and he didn't want to go through the hassle of loans and all that, so he didn't listen. I was lucky because I was the oldest, you see. They had just enough money to put me through, plus I got some scholarships. But even if we could've afforded it, I still think he would've enlisted – he'd always wanted to, to be like my dad, to make him proud. So Ryan joined up, and a year later we got the call. He was killed in Iraq. IED. Everyone took it hard, but Charlie took it especially hard."

She pauses, tears flowing freely down her face at this point. He finally gathers the resolve to touch her, slinging one arm over her waist so that they are in a sort of halfhearted embrace.

"Charlie – Charlie was only a sophomore in high school when it happened. Fifteen. He was so young," she chokes out. "He couldn't – he didn't – maybe if I'd been there he wouldn't have…"

She seems like she might be about to stop, so he takes her hand in his other one tightly, urging her to continue.

"He… He killed himself a few months later. He took one of my dad's hunting rifles. He had been in this dark place forever, it seemed, and no one thought anything of it – that was just the way he was, the way he'd always been. Sure, he was worse, but it was the same for all of us."

She swallows heavily. "I studied psychology, though. They say it can be genetic – my mom's brother killed himself, too. It's in my family – it was in him, in all of us, maybe. It's this disease. I had just graduated and I had moved out, so I wasn't around. But maybe if I'd come back sooner, I could have… I didn't think, but…"

"Stop," Dean interrupts passionately. "Stop. That's not on you."

"I should have known," she insists. "He was my baby brother. Even when it happened, he was still just a kid. A late bloomer, you know? He was still cute, in like a half-grown sort of way. He had red hair like me and – and all these freckles. The other kids used to tease him, I think, call him names. But I always thought it made him look… innocent."

He remembers Sam at fifteen. It was the same – baby-faced and gangly limbed. This strikes him, this convergence of innocence and contamination. It's hard to come to terms with the notion that some tragedies might happen no matter what – they're fated. He still hasn't quite accepted it. The thought of a fifteen year old taking a gun to his own head makes his gut wrench. It is appalling, in the deepest sense of the word. It is wrong. It can't be right, even if it's written into the script.

"When he was little, sometimes he used to call me 'mom' by accident. I took care of him. I took care of him in ways even Ryan didn't. Ryan was the buddy, but I was the one he came to when he was sick or hurt or anything like that. I should have known…"

"Claire," he says firmly, "It's not on you."

"I loved him so much," she goes on. "I loved Ryan too, obviously, but Charlie was almost like my own kid. He didn't know what he was doing. His big brother died, and he just reacted. I know he loved me, but it wasn't enough – whatever he felt for Ryan was stronger."

"Claire…"

"You know how it is," she says through a tearful laugh. "Little siblings – you're supposed to protect them, but –"

"I know."

"I just wish I could go back and –"

"I know."

She wriggles herself closer, clinging to him and burying her face in his t-shirt. She weeps, and he holds her because there is nothing else he can do.

"That's why I went home," she states once she regains some semblance of control over her emotions. "It destroyed my parents, and I wanted to make sure the disease didn't get them too."

She tries to cover her face as though she is ashamed, but he catches her wrist. They are far past this now. He brushes the tears away with his thumb.

"I'm sorry," she sniffs, looking away. "This was years ago."

"Don't be." He more than anyone knows that time does not heal all wounds.

"I just wanted you to understand – I get it. And I want to help you find Sam, I do. I know what it's like to live without a part of yourself, and if there were a way I could get my brothers back, I would want all the help I could get."

"Yes, I understand. Thank you. I'm glad you told me, and I'm so, so sorry."

There it is again. I'm sorry. It's what you say when words fail you.

He rests his chin atop her velvety head and pulls her against him. Her hair smells like fruit and he wishes this didn't have to be so depressing. But still, it feels safe to have someone to be close to for once. On the surface he is comforting her, but in actuality it is not so clear cut. He understands her story in a way that perhaps even she does not. The desire to follow someone into death is not a feeling you can comprehend unless you yourself have felt it.

They drift into a shallow sleep like this, and when they wake the next morning they feel much better.

A/N: I'm sorry that was so dark! The next chapter will be lighter, I promise! I tried to mix up the Claire and Dean perspectives so that it wasn't too much of one of them. I hope you guys like Claire, I'm working hard not to make her too over the top - I want her to be a believable character. And I know I said this is a romance - and it is - but I think that for Dean, the physical part is easy. Kissing her or whatever would be easy. It's the stuff like this that would be a step for him, in my opinion.

Please let me know what you think!