Disclaimer: The supernatural universe; brothers, angel, and impala included, are not mine. Charlie's mine! As are a few others you might not recognize, but for the most part, I thank Erik Kripke and the Supernatural people for their wonderful creation.

"Well, Illinois, it's been fun." Dylan grinned, allowing the majority of her arm to hang out the window. "Actually," she crinkled her nose. "No it hasn't." She scrunched in her seat and attempted to put her right leg out the window and Dean removed one hand from the steering wheel to smack her leg.

"No!" He chastised. Dylan made a face.

"Whatever." She turned back to the window. "See ya, Illinois. Good Riddance."

"So…" Sam leaned forward to grin at Dylan. "You're saying that even after all the crazy missions you've completed while in the army, THIS case was the worst?"

"C'mon Sarge," Dean joked, don't tell me a couple of kids got you down!"

Dylan shot a glare Dean's way. "First of all," Dylan rolled her eyes. "I'm a Captain, not a SARGE," Dylan sniffed, "I've never been so disrespected in my life."

Dean grinned.

"And two," Dylan continued, "Kids alone are bad enough. These were demon-possessed children."

"dressed as clowns." Sam put in, and Dylan nodded emphatically.

"Exactly yo. The most horrifying combined trio in existence. And Three?" Dylan caught Dean's eye and very blatantly threw her leg out the window. Dean growled. Dylan grinned. And Sam shot upright.

"Whoa, Dean, stop for a second." Sam burst out, and Dean slammed on the brakes. "What?" He whipped his head around wildly.

"Did we miss one?!" Dylan shouted, unbuckling her seat belt as if preparing to run away.

Sam smirked slightly. "No…no. It's just, Dean? That diner look familiar?"

Dean looked out his window with a squint…then his face cleared. "Yeah, we kept the owner from being squashed by a grand piano!" Dean snickered, then he sobered. "What of it?"

"Well, Dyl wants us to focus on our success stories…" Sam paused, and Dean nodded.

"And that there Diner is one of them. So? What…you wanna burn it down?"

Sam made a face. "No, Dean." He made a face. "Just..no. I want to stop in and say hi."

"Uhhhhhhhh" Dylan's eyes narrowed in confusion.

"You know her worst memories all revolve around us, right?" Dean mentioned. "I doubt she'll be happy to see us."

Sam made puppy eyes. Dean held strong for about five minutes before he caved and turned into a parking spot with a grunt.

"Noooooo!" Dylan whined. "I wanna be done here!"

"After this." Sam promised. Dylan huffed, and reluctantly got out of the car.

"If you say so." She grumbled.

"Hi!" Sam grinned down at a harried waitress. "We'd like to speak with the owner?" The waitress held up a finger and hurried to the back.

Sam sent Dylan a smirk. "See? We'll just say hi, then goodbye, and we'll be out of Illinois before you know it."

Dylan crossed her arms. "Not unless Janet; had a beard the last time you were here." She raised a brow.

Sam frowned, then looked in surprise at the Asian man dressed impeccably in a suit. "Hello." The man nodded. "I'm Kim Wong. I own this business."

Dean's expression blackened. "What happened to Janet?"

Kim Wong grimaced, and he crossed his arms soberly. "She passed away…a few days shy of a year ago." He notified them.

Sam's mouth opened in shock. "How?"

"A most shocking death." Wong nodded slowly.

Dylan narrowed her eyes. "Let me guess. Grand Piano? Fell on her?"

"From the fourth floor of her apartment building." Wong agreed.

Sam and Dean shared a look.

"A freak accident, really." Wong added mournfully. Then he straightened. "Well. Is there anything else I can do for you?" He asked brightly.

Sam and Dean shook their heads, and the owner stepped away. Dylan groaned loudly.

"Don't say it." She demanded.

"Sorry, kid." Dean winced.

"We'll figure this out and be gone in no time." Sam promised.

Dylan just made a face and pulled out her phone. "Yeah, yeah, whatever."

"Dean, we have a problem."

"Besides Dylan hogging the covers?"

"Seriously, Dean, this is MY bed. If you wanna complain, you can, Oh, I don't know, get out?" Dylan kicked Dean hard in the thigh, and he grunted. "Now Shut up, maybe Sam did all the work for us already so we can leave."

Dean sat up, rubbing his thigh. He looked to his brother with a shrug. "Did you figure it all out?"

"Ah, unfortunately no." Sam turned to his laptop. "In fact; I kind of made everything worse."

Dylan groaned loudly.

The trio had checked into the closest motel, and Sam had started up his laptop while Dylan had fallen asleep nearly immediately and Dean had "gone out" for a while. When Dean had come back later he'd crashed next to Dylan on the bed and passed out. Sam had worked diligently, fingers clicking and eyebrows furrowing as the hours sped by.

"I hit a lot of dead ends before I finally found something." Sam admitted. "Forensics didn't uncover anything resembling a hex bag, but there was this." Sam pushed a picture of a playing card towards Dean.

"3 of hearts?" Dean frowned. "Is that significant?"

Sam shrugged. "Not sure yet…but it was found stuck between a few keys of the piano."

"And it's unique." Dylan rolled onto her stomach and propped her head into her hands. "Which means it could be part of an M.O." She nodded. "You break into the FBI database and put it into the search?"

Sam nodded.

"And you got a hit?" Dean asked.

Sam huffed out a laugh. "I got fourteen, actually."

"Whaaaaaattt?" Dylan sat upright.

"Any of the victims familiar?" Dean asked.

"All of them." Sam admitted. "And it gets worse. All of the victims are ones that we've saved, and they all died in the exact way that we saved them from."

"Like Janet." Dean moved to stand by Sam.

"Exactly like Janet." Sam confirmed.

"So." Dean crossed his arms. "What the hell is this?"

Dylan sighed heavily and hopped up. "This…is a case, bro." She hopped up, cracked her neck, and then nodded. "Dean, you checked out the building while you were out. Did they have anything?"

Dean shook his head. "The diner across the street had video surveillance on that whole block, but caught on fire a few days after. The cassette that carried the day of Janet's murder was burned beyond repair." He handed her a ziplock bag that held the charred video.

Dylan narrowed her eyes and took the bag. "Nothing's ever beyond repair. I know a guy." She reached for her jacket. "I'll take this to him; and we should hopefully have a face within a day."

Sam smiled. "That'll be awesome, Dyl."

Dean turned to Sam with a grin. He wiggled his eyebrows. "A day to kill? Whatever shall we do?!"

Dylan rolled her eyes. "No, Dean." She chastised. "You have homework."

Dean wilted. "What?!"

"Go through the files. I want a timeline; when you interacted with each victim, when they died, and any and everything that shows up in more than one death noted and looked into. Sam; take a nap." Dylan winked. "Seriously, you're running on fumes. Then help Dean. Don't forget to eat, and coffee does not count as a meal. See you in 24 hours." Dylan waved, and then slammed the door shut behind her.

Dean turned to Sam. "Since when did she become the boss?"

Sam shook his head. "I have no idea." He grinned as he moved to the bed. "But I don't object."

Dean watched Sam fall asleep nearly the moment his head hit the pillow, and sighed. Dean would never say it out loud, but as much as Dylan got on his nerves, she was a valuable part of their team…she had instincts, and good ones. If Dylan was worried….then so was he.

"Alright!" The hotel room door slammed opened and a pink-cheeked Dylan burst into the room, grinning brightly. "What'd y'all get done?" Her eyes widened as she took in the colorful US map the boys had drawn on the wall. "Pretty. What does it mean?"

"The first murder took place on April 19th, and each concurrent death occurs approximately every 45 days." Sam began.

"Last TOD was…?" Dylan sat down in a chair, eyeing the map closely. Dean walked out of the bathroom, pulling a gray shirt on over his head.

"43 days ago." He smirked. "Just our luck though, right?"

Dylan tilted her head. "It actually might work to our advantage. What do we have on our victim pool?" She asked.

Sam rubbed his nose. "We noticed a couple of things when comparing victims, actually. The guy is going east to west, and every survivor that this guy's ganked is someone we've interacted with after the year 2005. He's missed a ton of easy targets that we've helped before 05',"

"Which means 2005 is important in some way, but we're not sure WHAT way." Dean added.

"Well…what happened in 2005?" Dylan asked reasonably.

Dean smirked. "Let's see…. I died, was dragged out of hell, we met Cas, had to deal with Gabe, Sam was being recruited by dear old Lucy, the apocalypse was starting," Dylan held up a finger, and Dean paused.

"You met Cas?" Dylan asked, brows furrowed. Dean and Sam nodded.

"You think that's important?" Sam asked.

Dylan shrugged. "It might be." She pulled a disk out of her pocket and turned to Sam's laptop. "Let's see if this helps."

"You fixed it?" Sam asked, moving over.

"Yeah. My guy's a genius. He says it should show us what we need." Dylan slid the disk into the drive and pressed play.

"Give us something." Dean muttered.

The video gave them more than that.

A few moments before the grand piano was lifted into the air, a man in an expensive suit and a stylish hat that covered his face leaned down and inspected the ropes, rubbing a hand down them gingerly before loping away with a whistle.

The grand piano was then lifted into the air, Janet walked under it, and a moment later the ropes failed and the piano crashed down on top of poor Janet. As people screamed and the delivery men rushed forward, the camera view caught the man from before moving out from the nearby alley and striding away in the chaos. Right before he left the camera's view though, he stopped, turned, lifted his hat, and smirked straight at the camera. Then the screen went black.

Dean turned slowly to stare at Sam.

"We actually haven't seen him in a while." Sam looked pained.

"The last time was when Cas was still lying to our faces about…" Dean's voice melted away, and Sam and Dean's eyes widened in realization.

"Purgatory." Dylan nodded slowly. "Cas." She looked at the boys.

"Crowley." They added at the same time.

"This…" Dylan turned to the laptop. "This is a revenge story!"

Sam stood and began to pace. "But while this answers one question, it brings up 20 more."

"If this is about Cas ditching the purgatory plan and losing him all those souls,"

"Which he wasn't going to get anyway," Dylan snorted under her breath, and Sam shot her look. At her innocent shrug, he narrowed his eyes but continued, "then why is he coming after us?"

Dylan's eyes brightened. "Why don't we ask him?"

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Dean snapped.

Dylan smiled slowly. "It's day 43, right? I assume Sam has a list of possible next victims." She turned to Sam, who pulled out a piece of paper.

"I do…but there are three vic's in the same town; about three hours from here. There's no way of knowing which one he's going for." Sam reasoned.

"So we split up." Dean nodded.

Dylan grimaced. "I don't like the idea of going solo, though. I say we call in back-up."

Dean and Sam shared a look.

"What kind of back-up?" Sam asked suspiciously.

Dylan smiled slowly.

WHAT KIND OF BACK-UP?! The best kind, that's what!

CROWLEY! Obviously he was going to show up at some point...the story's named after him! WHOO.

Review/Follow/Favorites are always appreciated!

I love you all...

~CLC~