A/N: As always, thank you so much to the lovely reviewers, themightypanda, Nemu-Chan, and toridw317! I hope everyone likes this chapter.

Song: Empty Pages by Traffic

CHAPTER 13

Empty Pages

It's easy to see how this life turns you into an alcoholic, Claire thinks. She's more or less given up on her prescription crutches – these vices are hard to maintain around other people. But drinking? Well, it's practically in the job description.

That's why she finds herself here, in the bar next door to their motel. It's after 5:00 PM, but it's the type of bar that's eternally filled with prune-faced alcoholics, drinking alone, drinking because things just never seemed to work out. Their skin is like folded paper, and in each line some event that has scarred their soul is buried.

She's probably the youngest one there by twenty years, or at least she looks it. She wonders if someday all that has happened will mark her too, before realizing that it already has.

She didn't stray far from the others – just far enough to put some space between her and the source of her agitation. She needs to think.

Dean had a point – they aren't in a relationship. She'd always thought she was mature enough to separate emotions from sex, but maybe she isn't. Maybe that's the only reason this is happening. She doesn't really even know what she likes about him, anyway. He's crass and he's rude and sometimes he's a total asshole. Guys like him are a dime-a-dozen. Except for, you know, the whole saving the world thing.

She sighs deeply and gulps down the shot of whiskey swirling in her glass. She can't help but fear that this – he – has changed everything about her, even her taste in liquor.

. . .

A cloud of steam follows a towel-clad Sam out of the bathroom door. His long hair is dripping wet, and wiping the dirt off of his face has revealed a plethora of scratches and bruises.

Dean tosses him a familiar, army-green duffle without looking at him. "Everything should still be there," he informs him. "I didn't touch it."

"Thanks," he murmurs, staring broodingly at the bag. It does not surprise him that his brother has kept his belongings waiting for him, entirely intact. "But, um, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Take it from me," he starts, eyeing his brother in disappointment. "You're making a huge mistake."

Dean rubs his temples wearily. "What?"

"I heard a lot of that."

"Oh."

"You really think dropping her at Bobby's is the solution to this?"

"I'm trying my best here, Sammy. You got a better idea? We need to stash her somewhere safe, somewhere Crowley can't get to her. On the road with us is not safe."

"You think we're just gonna pick up where we left off, don't you?"

Dean narrows his eyes at him incredulously. "Yeah, obviously."

Sam coughs up a dark laugh, turning his sights to the ceiling. "I'm not ready to just jump right back into it, Dean. That place – Hell, Purgatory, whatever – it made me into someone… someone else. I'm not like you – I can't just bury this stuff. I need to deal with it."

"Yeah? Well, we'll deal with it together then. If anyone gets Hell, it's me."

"It's not the same. It's not the same as it was for you. He was inside me, Dean. He was part of me – maybe he still is, maybe he always will be. And then, in that place... there's killing, and then there's killing. I was around so many monsters, I think I might have become one of them."

"Sam…"

"No. It's not the same. I need to figure this out for myself, I need to figure out what's real."

"What about Cas?"

"You saw what he did to those demons – you really think we can stop him?"

"You don't even think we should try? It's Cas!"

"What's the point? What's our success rate? You think I wanna watch Cas tumble down the rabbit hole now too? Haven't we lost enough people?"

"We're not gonna watch him, we're gonna pull him out of it!"

"What if we can't? What if we can't stop any of it, what if we never really could? If it's gonna happen – if we can't do anything to stop it – I at least want to save myself the trouble of seeing it."

"So what, you think we should do nothing?" Dean does not even attempt to mask the pain in his voice.

"You can do whatever you want. All I know is I can't handle seeing that, not after everything."

He swallows heavily, wishing he'd had the foresight to replenish his flask. "Is this your way of telling me you telling me you wanna split up?"

"That's not what I'm saying, I just… I don't know. I need a break, a break from all the blood, the death, the killing… I'm just… I'm tired, Dean. I don't want to do it anymore. And you – you could have gotten out. Do you know what I would give for a chance like that?"

"Claire isn't that out."

"Maybe not. Maybe that was my fantasy, not yours. But you really don't see what you're doing, do you?"

Dean doesn't reply.

"She's tangled up in this anyway. You're not responsible for it. Do you get how rare that is?"

Still, the elder brother is silent.

"You're throwing all that away," he continues, gaining passion.

The muscle in Dean's jaw tenses, and he peers out the window. That fat black fly is dead on the windowsill, on its back with its legs shriveled up.

"Everyone always said you hated yourself," Sam goes on. "I never really believed them until now."

"You don't even know her," he finally croaks out.

"You're right, I don't – but I know you."

"Yeah, and you know that everything we touch turns to ash. We're supposed to save people, Sam, but all we do is hurt them. She won't be any different. There's part of her that – against it all – is still happy, that's not completely fucked up. I'll ruin that. You know I will – I always do."

He pauses, before replying, "All this bad shit that happens to us… It's not because of anything we do – I hope you realize that. It's just… our lot in life, it's fate or destiny or whatever. You think you ruin everything you touch, but it's not your fault – it's not anyone's fault."

"Yeah? Well it sure seems like it."

"I'll never understand why you feel the need to take all this on," he admits. "I thought about you all the time down there, Dean. I thought about what you were doing, and I prayed – I prayed – that you weren't driving yourself crazy looking for me, even though I knew you were. Do you really just want it to be me and you, us against the world, until one of us drops dead and the other loses it? Because that's sure as hell not what I want."

"It's not a question of what we want," he replies heatedly. His fists clench. It's muscle memory. "It's a question of what we've been given and what we have to do with it."

"Maybe you can accept that, but I can't. All I know is if I had what you had, I'd fight until my dying breath to keep it."

"She's not like Jess or something, Sammy. We've only known each other for a few weeks – it's not what you think it is."

"Dean. What girl are you ever gonna find that knows about us, that gets it?"

"She's our prophet – don't you think that's a little messed up?"

"No?" he blurts out. "I think that neither of us was ever going to end up with someone normal. I think it's too good to be true, because you never would've opened up to anyone and you didn't have to. I think that this happened by some freak 'twist of fate,' and I don't think you should ignore it."

There is a long, drawn-out silence that stretches on for far too long – it sticks in the room like a poisoned gas. If you listen closely, you can almost hear their thoughts pounding in their brains.

Suddenly, Sam chuckles sadly to himself and murmurs, "Do you remember how you had that obsession with Ginger from Gilligan's Island all through high school?"

Dean gapes at him, as though this is hardly the time to reminisce about childhood crushes. "What?"

"You always had a thing for redheads," he clarifies. "It's like she was made for you."

"You're getting way ahead of yourself, brother."

"Am I? I don't know what went on in those few weeks, but whatever it was obviously meant something to her. Don't you see the way she looks at you?"

"Don't remind me," he grinds out.

"You need to go find her before something happens. When someone looks at you like that, they're not just gonna let it go."

Dean locks eyes with his brother. Even after everything, they have always been – at their core – very different people. They're on the same page when it comes to hunts or quests, but when it comes to more… sentimental things, they often don't see eye-to-eye. And though they completely understand one another in the sense that they understand the other's thought process, they have difficulty understanding one another on an emotional level. Something inside them just works differently – their hearts tick to a different beat. This is apparent now in the way Sam is staring at him, his hazel eyes swimming with frustration. He just doesn't get it.

. . .

It's funny how drinking offers clarity. Everything is spinning, colors are different than they should be, faces cease to exist, but somehow your thoughts are clear.

It's not always like this, of course, but there's a perfect place, a place between sobriety and oblivion, where everything comes together like a camera lens coming into focus. Claire has reached this place.

She leaves the bar, stopping in at the nearest tattoo parlor. It almost makes her feel normal, spontaneously deciding to get tattoo after a few too many adult beverages. Almost.

Her phone vibrates in her pocket, has been vibrating since her third glass of whiskey, and she continues to ignore it. It could be someone from home. It could be her parents, she thinks, knowing it isn't. They haven't heard from her in nearly a month, after all, and they usually see her on a weekly basis. It almost makes her feel hurt, like they've forgotten about her, like she's the last child they've let fall into the sinkhole. Almost.

She's not too drunk to work her phone and, carefully declining the call (it's Dean, she sees), she shows the tattoo artist what she would like. Where does she want it? Between her shoulder blades.

She's only a couple of blocks from the motel. If Dean really wants to find her, he can.

And more than halfway into the process, he does.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demands. The bell above the door rings innocuously as he busts in, much cleaner than before.

She's lying belly-down in the chair, and a black-haired guy who's inked up from head to toe is going to town on her bare back. He's almost done, he says, clearly put-off by Dean's entry.

"What does it look like I'm doing," she drawls (or maybe slurs?).

"Are you drunk?"

"Nooo," she retorts sardonically.

"Jesus," he mutters to himself, mussing his ashen hair. "Do you –" He halts his sentence and starts again, less loudly, when the tattoo artist gives him a thorny look. "Do you have any idea what I thought had happened? Why didn't you answer my calls? I've been in every store and bar the past five blocks looking for you."

"Gee, I dunno."

"Is he bothering you?" Freddy – the tattoo artist – asks. He ignores Dean's commentary about Claire being drunk, as he's not supposed to work on anyone who's inebriated.

Dean gives him a hard glare, daring him to try to get rid of him.

"No, it's okay," she says, letting him sweat it out for a moment.

Soon enough he presses a bandage to her new tat and she pays him; all the while Dean is deadly quiet.

On their way out of the parlor, Dean hisses, "This is what you do? Get drunk and get yourself tatted up?"

"It's Vegas," she shrugs, her tone so nonchalant that Dean has a hard time believing it is still her. She's walking quickly, at least two paces in front of him.

He grabs her elbow. "Will you slow down for a sec?" It's not that he can't keep up. It's that she's trying to lose him.

"Why," she snaps.

"Because I wanna talk to you."

"Talk about what? I think you've just about said all there is to say."

"Claire, stop it."

She wrenches away from him. "No, you stop it."

He exhales loudly and says, "Fine. We won't talk. Let's just walk."

And so they do. No words are exchanged between them, but Claire feels him next to her but not touching her, feels his eyes on her, feels the tension between them.

It gets cold at night. She's not chilly, not really, but the air in her lungs is crisp and it sobers her up, makes her feel more alert. Dean leads them to a park, an oasis in the desert of lights and skyscrapers. There are a great deal of palm trees and it's obvious that this park is manmade, but it's still nature and for some reason it doesn't seem to matter. Everything was constructed by someone at some point, after all.

They sit on a stone bench, utterly alone. Things are both clear and unclear now.

"I think I should be honest with you," he starts, as though he hadn't been before.

"Okay."

"I care about you. And I think you care about me."

He takes her silence as a confirmation.

"So," he continues, "I want you to understand that the reason I'm suggesting this is because I think it's what's best for you. What I said before, about the whole relationship thing, that was a dick move. I shouldn't've said it. Whatever we are, there's definitely something here – maybe I don't want there to be, maybe you don't want there to be, but there is. It hasn't been long, but you know more about me than most everyone else and I feel like I know you pretty well, too. I wouldn't suggest this if I didn't think it was the best thing."

Claire takes a minute to collect her thoughts. "I know you're used to making most of the decisions, Dean," she begins, "This is my life, and I've only known you a month. This isn't a decision that I'm going to let you make for me. Maybe I do care about you, maybe you do care about me, but that doesn't give you the right to tell me what to do with my life. If you don't want to see me again, fine – that's one thing. You're allowed to make your own choices. But it's something totally different to order me what to do."

"If you don't come with me and you don't go with Bobby, what are you gonna do?"

Claire gestures to the thick square of gauze on her back, which is exposed to the brisk night by the neckline of her tank top. He can't see it, but it's the very same warding symbol that he and Sam have. "That's for me to decide. I'll learn to protect myself."

Dean's expression changes to one of cornered hopelessness. The cut on her neck catches his eye. "I don't think – "

"You don't get a say," she interrupts. "Think about this from my perspective. I will see you and Sam in my visions until I die, reminding me constantly that you tried to pass me off to someone else. Think of how cruel that is."

"I wish I could take you with me," he counters direly, "I wish I knew I could keep you safe. But I've lost so many people…" His gaze is secured on the ground as his voice breaks. "I've lost so many friends already – my mom, my dad… And the ones that stick around, they're not the same. Just look at Cas, and even Sammy. I'm not the same. You gotta understand – I can only take so much."

"I understand," she deadpans. "So when you and Sam leave tomorrow, we'll go our separate ways."

His face contorts into a look of unwillingness, but he says, "Alright. I can't force you to do anything you don't want to."

"That's right."

He looks up to see that she is watching him intently, and as her face moves closer to his, his body stills. Soon, she is close enough to count the number of freckles smattered across the bridge of his nose.

She presses her lips softly to his in a goodbye kiss. It is quiet around them and almost romantic, but there are no stars on account of the light pollution and car horns blare faintly in the distance.

Dean's hand comes to rest at the side of her face and he deepens the kiss. If this is the last time they do this, he's gonna make sure as hell it's good.

Somewhere within him, he loathes that he's become so attached so easily. It goes against everything he has ever thought about himself.

Growing up, he watched his dad run through chains of women, never sticking with one for more than a night. He watched him drown his sorrows in booze and hookers. This was never confirmed outright, but as he entered his teenage years, he learned to recognize the clues, and at some point they became inescapable. Long nights, separate rooms, the scent of cheap perfume clinging to that battered leather jacket – still clinging to it – all pointed in one very obvious yet non-vocalized direction. The memory of his mother faded with time, and soon enough John Winchester morphed into a man for whom love was just a pipe dream. He was the example Dean had followed, always followed, and the only one he'd ever had.

He saw what losing his mom did to him. He never wanted that for himself.

And then there's Bobby, lonely, broken Bobby who was forced to kill his own wife. And Sam and Jess. And they were all stronger than he is to begin with.

But he kisses her still – pours his whole heart into it – because he knows that this is just the end anyway.

A/N: I considered making this the end end for a hot second, but then I realized that I am not a sadist. So there's going to be one more chapter lol. Thanks so much for sticking around so far, and let me know what you think!