The Profound Bond

by Serie11

Dean is an FBI agent from the SPN unit, who professionally hunt all over the USA. Everyone knows that angels exist, and Dean grudgingly acknowledges their existence. Until overnight, his world is turned upside down when a garrison of angels descend on the FBI headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. Extended summary, characters and warnings inside. Destiel

7. 2007

April 24, 2007

"How many times do I have to tell you! Just because I'm into computers, it does not make me some kind of crazed person who sits in front of them all day and ignores the world! I go on dates, eat at restaurants and live my life!"

Dean's laugh rings out across the office. "Just because you keep denying it doesn't mean that I'll think any different Charlie. And I have not seen you go out with anyone in over a year."

"You're being ridiculous. What about that blonde girl from the café?"

"She doesn't count! What, you make out with someone and get naked with them for ten minutes and that counts as a date?"

"It was fifteen at least," Charlie says, but she's blushing slightly. "And we drank coffee together."

"It was a bar café. She sat next to you while you drank, and you only realised she was there when I pointed her out."

"Why are you picking on me? I don't think I've seen Victor go out with anyone, ever."

"As you're the junior member of the team, it's your job to cop all the teasing in here."

"I have been working in this office for nearly five years now, and technically Ash is younger than me. Just because you were here a few months before me doesn't mean that you get to make fun of me for making out with someone and getting caught by some police officers."

Dean laughs again. "I think they were torn between wanting to watch and having to arrest you for public indecency."

"We still had our underwear on!"

"As much as I'm sure you both want this conversation to continue, this is an office in one of the largest headquarters for the Bureau in the country that we call home." Rufus walks into the office, and Charlie slowly sinks down into her chair.

Dean, however, is more likely to protest. "Hey, we're just having a harmless bit of fun."

"A harmless bit of fun that is disrupting my workplace. Winchester, you're getting paid for a reason, now tell me that you have a job."

Rufus is probably expecting him to bow out with no excuses, but Dean clicks on his internet tab and waits for the page to load. "Actually, I do."

Rufus sniffs and looks over his separate internet tabs. Disappearances, several people reported missing over the last week and a crime scene with ritualistic symbols and a body carved up nicely, with the entire scene covered in a layer of sulphur.

"Looks like a demon," Rufus acknowledges.

"Or a few of them. I think this looks like more than one demons work."

Rufus deliberates for a second before nodding. "You go with Victor and Annie. Be ready to leave in an hour."

Dean grins and nods. "Yes sir."

Annie rolls her eyes and starts packing up her things when Dean tells her that they're leaving for Helena, Montana. She grabs Victor on her way out, and they leave together, smiling over something that Dean probably doesn't want to know about. He just hopes they aren't planning anymore pranks; their last war got a bit out of control, and had ended with a fart bomb in Rufus' office. No matter how many times Dean had told him it had ended up there accidently, and no one was quite sure how it had even gotten there in the first place, Rufus had not been impressed, and had ordered a cease fire, which everyone had grudgingly obeyed.

Dean packs up all his things, and waves goodbye to Charlie. Who knew where Ash was. The youngest man on the team is one of the FBI's most valued agents, despite the fact that he's not quite 22. He's probably in some other unit, helping them save the world from the crisis that they have going at the moment. While Dean might work in one of the most underrated units, the SPN unit helped people, unlike some other units he could name.

Even though he didn't get as much respect, and that nearly the entire building have no idea what he does, Dean is content with his job. He thinks that it would just make things a lot harder if the general populace knew that all things hairy, blood thirsty and in the night are real.

It only takes three days to get up to Montana, and by the time they're there, three more people have been reported missing, and there's been another ritualistic murder. Annie and Victor get on the case immediately, interviewing witnesses while Dean checks out one of the murder sites.

He looks over the signs and symbols, recognising some of them as pretty heavy spell work. He calls up Victor, and listens as the other man recounts what they've found. One of the witnesses swears that she saw black smoke, and the other claims he still has the smell of rotting eggs stuck in his nose. Victor says that he's sure this is a demon case now.

"And you weren't sure before?" Dean says, smiling and leaning up against a wall. He had made sure that there hadn't been any blood there before he leant, as dry cleaning for suits this expensive is ridiculously priced.

"You should be sure before you jump to conclusions. It's one of your flaws Dean."

"Aw, come on, I don't have any flaws."

"How much time do you have, I can start listing them."

Dean laughs, and one of the police officers standing on the other side of the room looks at him funnily. Dean supposes that not many people laugh like that at scenes like this.

"Did the vic's family give you anything?"

"These people are all squeaky clean. I don't think any of them even pirate music."

"Damn. So no clues at all?"

"None. Are the symbols legitimate?"

"Oh yeah. There is some heavy duty stuff here Vic. I don't know what they're trying to do, but we should stop it before they blow up half of Montana. I'm just heading over to the other crime scene. If you are done there, do you want to meet me?"

There's a brief pause as Victor probably talks to Annie. "We'll go by tomorrow. It's nearly eleven Dean, and we want the police on our side, not annoyed at us because the Feds made them miss out on their sleep. Come back to the motel."

Dean looks around, ready to protest, but notes how the officers are either standing too still or are shifting and looking around, like they can't wait to get out of here.

"Fine. I'll see you in twenty."

Dean hangs up and expresses his gratitude to the officer who had unlocked the scene and let him on, telling her that his companions would be at the other scene at nine o'clock the next morning. She nods and Dean leaves, listening to her round up the junior officers, getting them ready to pack up the scene and then go home.

Dean pulls into the motel parking lot fifteen minutes later, and walks into the room he's sharing with Victor. Victor is there, studying the book in front of him.

"Found anything?" Dean asks.

Victor shakes his head and turns the page over. Dean boots up his laptop and while he waits for the computer to load, he gets the paper and starts looking over it.

"There's an Indian place on the main street that I saw. You wanna go there for dinner?"

"That sounds good. Go and ask Annie if she wants that."

Dean walks out of the room and knocks lightly on Annie's door. "Annie? It's Dean."

"Wait a moment," Annie calls from inside. Dean stands in the hallway for a lot longer than a moment, but Annie eventually she opens the door, hair still wet from having a shower.

"What's up?"

"Do you want Indian for dinner?"

"Grab me some rice and I'm game," Annie says. "Get me some lamb curry too."

Dean nods and raises an eyebrow when she closes the door.

He pops his head back into their room on the way out. "Annie says she's fine for it. What do you want?"

"Chicken curry, and get a naan, they're great."

"Okay."

Dean thinks it's a miracle that the place is still open, but the fact that it's Friday night might have something to do with it. He picks up what Annie and Victor ordered and gets a beef curry for himself.

The food makes the Impala smell delicious, and Dean has to ignore the temptation to simply pull over and start eating. It smells divine.

Annie approves the food when he knocks on her door, and she comes with him to Victor and Dean's room to eat it. Victor hmms happily as he eats, and Dean sighs contentedly around the food in his mouth. He had picked a good place.

After the food is gone they gather around to discuss what they had found that day. Dean had taken some photos of the crime scene, and Annie and Victor study them while Dean cleans up all the used boxes.

"You're right, these runes are dark spell work for sure." Victor frowns as he studies the pictures.

"Yeah, I thought a summoning ritual maybe? They're trying to get another demon out of Hell?"

"It'd have to be a damn powerful demon to warrant this type of summoning. One of the leaders, I'm guessing."

Victor is the best rune reader in the SPN unit, so they let him study the photos for another minute. Eventually he sits back.

"From what I can tell it is a summoning, and a damn powerful one too. They have to sacrifice three Heaven-ward bound souls and drag them down to Hell as fuel for the demon to get up here."

"And there have been two killings already."

"They have to be a week apart for this particular summoning, so we have five more days to stop the next one. It has to be in this town, since there's a powerful overlap of ley lines here, which makes the boundaries between worlds smaller and easier to cross. I think I know what all of them mean, except for this one," he points to a large rune near the middle of the floor. "But if I had to guess I'd say it was the name of the demon that they're trying to summon. I don't read demonic, but I know the first letter. It's an A."

Dean and Annie nod. "Does it have to be this week?"

"From what I can tell, yes. Something about the moon and sun being in balance."

"And how long until this comes around again?" Dean asks, looking at the picture.

Victor shrugs. "Probably in another ten years or so. Not too long to wait for them."

"But we can still put it off ten years if we stop this last ritual."

"Yes. If we can stop it, or even disrupt it, then they won't be able to complete it properly and they'd need to wait another week, but which time the sun and moon will be out of balance."

"Okay then," Annie says. "The mission here seems clear – stop this last ritual from happening. Now that we know what we're looking for, we can search for it more efficiently. Until then, I'm going to bed."

Victor and Dean say their good nights, and the red haired lady leaves.

"I'm going to bed as well," Dean tells Victor, who nods.

"I'll see if I can get you up in the morning, since you always want to sleep in."

"Hey, I just appreciate a good rest."

Victor rolls his eyes. Dean brushes his teeth and gets ready to go to sleep, and in twenty minutes he's dropped off to the sound of Victor turning pages.

April 28, 2007

"Dean."

Dean grunts and buries himself under the covers.

"Dean. Get up."

Dean doesn't move.

"Dean, don't make me pour water over your head. I've done it before, and I'm sure I'll do it again."

"Whaa?" Dean slurs as he sits up, wincing at the glaring sunshine that's pouring through the open window. Victor is sitting in the same spot where he had been last night, and that makes it seem like he hasn't moved in eight hours.

Victor raises an eyebrow at him. "It's eight o'clock, and you told those police officers you would be at the crime scene at nine. You gonna move, or is it just going to be Annie and I who are showing up?"

Dean scowls and stands, yawning and stretching at the same time.

Victor is already impeccable, but it takes half an hour for Dean to get ready, and he's pretty proud of that time.

All three agents drive to the last crime site and start looking for clues as soon as they're let onto the scene. Annie keeps sneezing because she's allergic to sulphur.

"I hate going on the demon raids," she mutters as Dean walks past her, and he can't blame her. If he was allergic to sulphur he'd be throwing a fit every time as well.

"So what do you think?" Dean asks, looking around to make sure that there aren't any police near them so they can talk freely.

Annie shrugs. Demons aren't her area of expertise. She's more into ghosts, spirits and poltergeists.

Victor purses his mouth. "I'm going to have to look at a map to see if geography factors into it somehow. Dean, you should go and talk to the witnesses." Annie sneezes again. "And take Annie with you."

For the next four days, they don't find anything. No sign of demon activity, no more disappearances, and nothing suspicious happens in the town. Dean would be happy, but he knows that something worse is coming, and he's beginning to feel a cold coil of dread in his gut, like a warning from the future.

Be careful. You may not like what you find around the corner if you go looking.

But Dean couldn't stop himself from looking anyway, even though he knows something is coming. He can feel it approaching, like a storm ready to rip his life apart, coming closer every second.

May 3, 2007

Dean is jittery. He thinks that he can feel shivers running up and down his spine and over his skin. Annie and Victor both look tired, since they hadn't gotten much sleep since they'd arrived.

As soon as the moon rose today, the final ceremony would begin. Victor had narrowed down the location to either one of two areas. Annie and Victor are sitting outside a warehouse, and Dean is sitting in the middle of a graveyard.

He doesn't know which location the demons will choose. The graveyard has all the spiritual energy in it, but doing the final ceremony in the warehouse would just make it so cliché… Dean knows the demons love that. Plus, if they'd misread the signs, then it could be happening at neither of the places they were guarding. Dean has his phone open, ready to call Annie if he sees something. Even if he doesn't say anything, they know to come if they get a call from him. He knows to go to them if he gets a call from them.

With twenty minutes until the moon rises, Dean is expecting the action to start anytime. He thinks that there's probably some prep involved before they can start, so when no one shows for another ten minutes he begins to get anxious.

His phone rings. Snatching it up, he starts the Impala.

"Are they over with you?"

"No, but we see activity at the old mine. You know the place." Annie's voice is strained, and Dean can hear the rumble of the car in the background. Victor was probably driving towards the mine.

"I'm closer than you two are."

"I know. Wait for us when you get there."

Dean snorts. Fat chance of that happening.

He can see the top of the moon by the time he pulls up to the mine. Swearing to himself, he grabs everything he'll need out of the trunk, including holy water, and a kilo bag of salt. Demons are always hard – with no way to kill them, he had to get them disorientated long enough to shout the exorcism at them.

He looks at the flashlight in his hand and regretfully pockets it. The demons don't need any warning that he is there.

He creeps through the tunnel leading down to the depths of the mine, listening for any sounds or movement that could be made by a demon. He tries to limit the sounds he's making as he moves down the corridor as it gets steeper and steeper, angling down into the earth.

He comes to a split in the path and halts for a moment, looking at his two choices. Just as he's about to choose the right path, there's a rise of chanting, and he feels a wash of magic from the left. It leaves a tacky feeling sticking to his skin, and he shudders before turning down the left path. Victor and Annie would have no problem choosing the correct path if that kept up.

He walks down the corridor, ignoring the smaller passages that branched off the main channel. The magic is coming from the main tunnel, and it's that, and the chanting that's becoming louder, that he follows.

The tunnel continues on for longer than Dean would expect it to. He's beginning to think that he wouldn't get there in time, and that the demon would be summoned because he couldn't get to the end of a tunnel in time.

The roof begins to rise as the smell of sulphur becomes more apparent. Dean slows and begins to tread more carefully. There's a corner up ahead, and he guesses from the loud chanting that it opens out into a cavern.

He peers around the side of the corner, just enough so that he can see what's happening.

There's a disembowelled woman lying in the centre of the cavern. Her blood is pooled around her, and Dean's sure that there is hardly any left in her body. There are two demons standing on the opposite side of the chamber, and they are the ones who are chanting, the words unnaturally loud.

There's a dark haired woman in the centre of the room that Dean doesn't recognise. She's chanting as well, a smaller chant meant to go unnoticed in the face of the louder one echoing throughout the mine. Dean immediately focuses on her as his target.

He slips out his knife and lets holy water cover it before dusting salt over it. It wouldn't kill, of course, but it would hurt, and Dean thinks that to stop this all he has to do is stop one demon from chanting.

"Dean." The whispered word sends him spinning around to see Annie and Victor standing there. Annie looks annoyed that he didn't wait for them while Victor looks concerned about the chanting that's going on in the room in front of them.

"Have you done anything yet?"

"Was about to, but then you two finally showed."

They ignore his jab. "Okay, I think that if we delay them, or stop them from chanting, it'll stop the ritual. We just have to be careful, because if we do stop them –"

"They're going to be pissed." Annie finishes Victor's sentence.

"Do you two have salt and holy water?" They look at him, and Dean regrets asking the question. "Just checking."

"As soon as we're sure it's over, we run for it, okay?"

"It's a long tunnel. Make sure everyone's out, and then just sprint up there. Whoever gets there first start the car so we can just get out of here. Got it?"

Annie and Victor nod, and Dean turns around to plan which demon he's going to stab first.

Later Dean will regret that conversation. He'll wonder what would have happened if he had just stormed over and stabbed one of the demons with his salt and holy water knife. If they had all been twenty seconds faster. If he had turned his flashlight on and raced down the tunnel.

But in the end ifs and maybes and what ifs are all speculation. He can think about what could have been and what would have been for the rest of his life, but that fact was that just as he was about to charge out there, the demons stopped chanting.

Dean pauses for a second, looking out over the cavern. Victor and Annie follow his lead, and don't move, watching the demons for their next move.

Their next move seems to be the black haired female demon rounding on them and calling out across the space that separates them. "I know you're there Dean. You can come out."

Dean purses his mouth but walks out. Annie and Victor stay hidden.

"And your two friends," the demon drawls. There's almost something familiar about it. Victor and Annie round the corner slowly. The other two demons don't move, but they track Dean's companions with their eyes.

"Who are you?" Dean asks.

The demon pouts. "Don't recognise me Dean-o? I'm sad, I thought I was such an unforgettable face." She pauses. "Oh, that's right, I'm just borrowing this one for a time. The other one was fine, until you poured all that holy water on me the last time we met. Got all in my crevasses, and that's not something you want to put up with."

"Meg," Dean spits out, suddenly certain. The demon smiles too widely, baring her teeth.

"Oh, you know me, how sweet. It's nearly as sweet as telling you that you're too late. We've finished our summoning, haven't we boys?" She tilts her head back to look at the other two demons, and Dean wants to ram his blade through her throat. "So you're too late to save all those people. Uh oh," she taunts, and Dean narrows his eyes.

"Well I don't see any big ass demon around here, so I'm gonna send you back to Hell."

Meg laughs suddenly. "I was right," she says gleefully. "You are the one. You are the one we're going to need. So much fire, ready to be stamped out, so we can use the embers as we will."

Annie and Victor are silent, letting Dean handle Meg, since they know that he has more experience with her than they do. They're covering his back, and Dean tries not to show how Meg's words are unsettling him.

"It doesn't matter what you do Dean," she continues. "We're going to win, and not even the feathery bitches upstairs can stop us."

Dean's about to reply when all three demons vanish.

Dean grits his teeth. "Son of a bitch." He looks around at the scene before he shakes his head. "Call the local police and tell them about this. Say we thought that we knew where the next one was going to happen and we came here, but were too late and found it this way. And make sure you tell him that there won' be any more murders." Dean looks at the woman on the ground for a second before turning his back on her.

Annie nods and takes out her phone, but scowls at it. "There's no reception down here," she explains. Victor nods and Dean sighs, before taking one last look at where Meg had been standing. It's empty, but he didn't expect anything else.

Annie makes the call while Dean calls Rufus to tell him the news. He doesn't want to, but someone has to do it, and as leader of the team he thinks it's his duty to report.

Rufus is silent for a few seconds after Dean finishes talking, relaying all that had happened over the last few days.

"Well, it seems like there was nothing you could do. As long as you clean everything up and make sure no one gets wind of what is actually happening, it's fine. We'll deal with the demon that Meg released when you get back."

Dean ends the phone call just as the other police are arriving. They're sceptical when Dean tells them that there won't be any more murders, but they all want to believe that the rest of their town is safe, and with the official looking FBI telling them that, it doesn't take much until they accept it. They look a lot less happy when Dean tells them about the dead woman at the end of the mine shaft.

Even though the summoning is over, and technically the danger is as well, the strange feeling that Dean has had for the last few days lingers. He ignores t as best he can. Just after job jitters, he tells himself, and tries to believe it.

They finally leave the town five days later, with all loose ends tied up, all evidence gathered, and all three agents ready to be home again.

Victor and Annie return the car that they had borrowed, and they all pile into the Impala, ready to leave. However, just as they get on the highway and Dean is ready to let loose and get there in two days instead of three, he sees stopped cars and red tail lights in the distance. He sighs to himself, slowing the Impala and approaching the traffic. Why on earth was there traffic anyway? There must be an accident, because nothing was happening around the beginning of May. It's ridiculously hot, and he just wants to kick his heels up in his apartment and have a cold beer. Is that too much to ask?

When he flips on the radio the presenters are talking about the accident that he's seeing for himself, a crash that involves nine cars and a truck. Apparently the traffic is horrendous, and Annie and Victor start complaining to each other in the backseat, debating if it was worth getting off the highway to find a smaller and less used road to travel on.

It doesn't look like they're going anywhere for a while, even if they decide to get off on a smaller road. Dean turns off the Impala's engine when he rolls to a stop behind a white ute, trying to peer around the cars in front to see if he could see the crash. He couldn't.

Dean opens his door and stretches slightly, looking down to see if there was any movement at all, but the only thing he could see was cars. He frowns. Usually people would be getting out of the cars, looking at the crash, but there aren't any. It's like they're just all sitting in their cars, waiting for something…

He feels the dark feeling rise up in him, foreboding suddenly crashing over him. Something wasn't right here.

Victor and Annie slide out of the car behind him, and Dean has just enough time to hear Annie shout a warning before black smoke fills his vision and he loses consciousness.

He can't tell how long he's been out.

He tries to blink, to breathe, to move, anything at all, but he can't.

Eventually he realises that there is another presence in his head, and that's when he starts to struggle, throwing himself around in his head, trying to escape.

The other presence laughs at his efforts.

There there Dean. Don't struggle, you'll only tire yourself out.

Dean heard the voice, but he fought anyway, kicking and screaming while it laughs and laughs and laughs.

June 11, 2007

Charlie's seen panic. She's seen anxiety, she's seen fear. But the emotion that is currently filling Sam's eyes is something that she can't begin to comprehend, let alone put into words.

It's a mix of animal terror and fright, overlaying a deep anger. She wouldn't want to be there when Sam found out where his brother is, because she didn't know what he would do, just that she is scared of it. Sam would do anything right now for his brother, including abandoning his job with no notice and his fiancé without a concrete explanation. One of the most worrying things is about it is that it's been there ever since Sam arrived in Phoenix.

Sam had immediately called every contact he had, and Bobby, Ellen and Bill were all on research duty. As far as Charlie knew, he hadn't slept since he had got to Phoenix, which had been five weeks ago.

She's watching him now. Sam has his back hunched, and he's reading through a tome that's in Latin with a focus that meant that he didn't miss anything, but it didn't take him too long to finish it either. Five weeks after Dean had gone missing, and no demons had been sighted since. Sam hadn't stopped looking for his brother in all that time, and Charlie doesn't think that he would stop until Dean had been found.

She heats up some leftover pasta she had bought from her house, and put it next to Sam's elbow. There's typing from the front desk as Garth completes extra work. Rufus had picked him from a line-up of hunters that had applied for Dean's job, and Rufus wanted him trained in six months, never mind that a full course for the SPN unit usually took a year and a half. Garth hadn't known Dean, and he didn't understand why everyone is devoting all their efforts to finding him. Garth was a good enough guy, if a bit dopey, but he doesn't understand the type of person Dean is, and how he inspires you just by existing… Charlie had been in a bad place when she had got here a few years ago, and Dean had helped her out of that. She intended to repay him for as long as she could, and helping to find him is just something that she thought counted towards that.

But she doesn't think he would want any of them digging their own graves to find him, especially his little brother. Dean had told them all how proud he is of Sam almost every week, and he glowed when the conversation turned to his brother.

Charlie is hoping that Dean is dead. It sounds horrible, but the demons wanted him personally, she's certain of that, and if they didn't want him dead, then they had something worse planned. She hates to think it, but she doesn't want him to go through whatever they would have planned for him if they had kept him alive.

She sits at her desk and rubs her forehead before turning her computer on. She has every search she can think of up, to try and track demons, sightings of demons, anything demon related, including strange weather patterns. All she had received was nothing. Nothing over five weeks. And it isn't just the USA that she's tracking. Anywhere that has information that she can get her hands on, she had set up programs for there as well. The only places where she doesn't have specific information from are several African and Middle Eastern countries, and she can still keep track of their weather with satellites that go overhead.

She thinks that it's amazing, how every demon everywhere had suddenly disappeared, probably going back to Hell for a bit, kicking up their shoes and taking a break.

She checks her searches, but the same answer as always comes back. No results.

Charlie looks at the time, winces when she sees it's after one, and then at Sam, who hasn't touched the food that she put next to him. It's too late for this, she thinks, and it isn't just about the time. She's pretty sure that it's too late for Dean as well.

Dean had learned a lot since he had started under Alastair's tutelage.

At first he had resisted. The sight of blood and his own hands making the blood, and the screams of the people who were giving the blood, still alive… He didn't want any part of it.

But then Alastair had started praising him. Praising him when he sat passively, not trying to fight against what was happening. Praising him when he had a thought about what to do next, fleeting and quickly shoved out of his mind but still there.

If he had a thought about what to do next, then Alastair would always do it.

Alastair told him that he held out longer than most. Three months of denial and fighting and struggling and kicking before he had just given up. It had been the longest three months of Dean's entire life. Alastair had brought in a new subject each day, and had shown Dean how he could take them apart with his hands and the tools that Alastair brought, how he could keep them alive with half their skin and organs gone.

Dean had been awake every second of it.

Alastair hadn't possessed him the entire time. Sometimes he would leave, just for an hour or two, and it would give Dean a chance to recoup, a chance to plan his strategy and what he would do when the powerful demon came back. He still isn't sure what Alastair wants from him, just that he is needed to find something in the future. What that something was, he couldn't say.

He had gleaned some knowledge from Alastair. The location of some of Lucifer's Crypts, the fact that there was a demon bomb that could kill demons, the existence of a demon 'tablet,' whatever that was, but he couldn't figure out what Alastair needed him for. The demon just said that it was important. Repeated it over and over and over in his head.

He also learned more about torture from plumbing the demon's mind, but he was determined to find something useful. He learned about other demons and their techniques, how they worked and how Alastair looked down on their work as inferior. He learned about a knife that could kill demons and where it was located, even though the demon didn't want him to know that.

Dean suffered for finding out that tidbit of information.

And sometimes Alastair would come in in another host. Dean didn't like those times, when Alastair inflicted more scars on his mind, digging up old memories and things that he had tried to forget but that the demon had found and taken advantage of, leaving him tired and bruised and bleeding and broken.

Alastair did other things as well. He made the faces of the people he tortured look like Sam or Charlie or Victor. Sometimes they were Ellen or Jo or Jess. Dean tried telling himself that is wasn't real, it wasn't real, it wasn't real, but Alastair would laugh and tell him that it is real and that this is happening.

Dean hated what Alastair did to people while he was inside him, making Dean watch, making him like it, making him torture people with his own hands.

Until he did like it. Until he asked questions and tried to please Alastair as much as he could and enjoyed the feeling of blood running over his hands, of ripping pieces of meat out of people and killing them slowly.

Alastair whispers in his mind, Yes, good. Now you need to remember Dean. If you don't come when I call, I'll do this to your brother. Alastair shows him a picture, and even in his new state of liking blood, Dean shudders away from the pulpy mess, wondering if that had ever been a person. He can tell that they're still alive, and the new part of him admires the artistry that went into the person.

So come when I call Dean. And with that Alastair leaves, and Dean falls, completely on his own for the first time in what felt like decades.

September 18, 2007

Charlie knows something is going to be different as soon as she wakes up.

She brushes her teeth, showers and gets ready for work. She somehow knows that today will be different. The bandage that covers her tattoo can come off today, and she takes a moment to study the star in a circle of flame that protects her from demons that sits on her upper back between her shoulder blades. Sam had found it and what it does a month ago, and everyone had promptly gotten it tattooed somewhere on their bodies. She hopes that it does work, and they protected them from possession.

The feeling niggles at the back of her mind for the next few hours, as she gets into work and checks her computers, expecting there to be nothing, like usual. Instead, two different odd weather patterns pop up, and five new disappearances that happened in the same town over the last two days start blinking their alarm. Charlie looks at the information, and knows that she was right. Something had changed.

Sam is at Dean's apartment, going through his books, trying to find a way to summon a demon so he could interrogate it. Charlie thinks that he won't need to do that anymore. Suddenly her four month certainty that Dean had to be dead had lifted. She has this feeling, like she would see him again today.

Charlie shows the information to Ash, who immediately starts typing away at his own computer.

She leaves and drives to Pamela and Missouri's house on the outskirts of town. She's about to knock when the door opens, and the short figure of Missouri fills the doorframe.

"Do you feel it?" She asks, and Missouri nods.

"Something is going to happen today. The spirit world is abuzz."

"There's been weird weather and disappearances all over the world again. I think the demons are back."

Missouri nods. "That would do it. Come and have some tea."

So Charlie sits with Missouri and waits for the inevitable phone call, drinking the herbal tea but unable to keep her eyes away from the phone sitting in front of her. Missouri talks to her, keeping her occupied until a few hours later, she nods at the phone.

"You should pick that up dearie."

The phone starts buzzing, and Charlie prepares herself for the worst.

"Charlie Bradbury."

"Charlie he's back! Dean's back! Some truck screeched up, dumped him on our front steps and took off. I'm running the footage to try and see what truck it was, but I'm pretty sure that they'll abandon those hosts if they're demons. But he's sleeping, or knocked out, and we can't get him to wake up." Ash's voice is excited and on edge, and Charlie has already grabbed her keys.

"I'll be right there, did you call an ambulance?"

"Yes, Garth did, and he's on his way to Mayo now."

Charlie breathes out softly. Mayo Clinic is arguably the best in the state. "Okay. I'll be there as soon as possible." She hangs up and looks at Missouri. The older woman smiles, but it looks forced, and Charlie can see the worry lines that have etched themselves onto the corners of her eyes.

"Pamela is on her way to the clinic." Missouri doesn't say how she knows, or even how Pamela knows, but Charlie is going to put that down to psychic stuff that she doesn't understand. "You should leave now, or you'll get stuck behind that car that's going to crash and cause a city wide traffic jam."

That's more than enough to spur Charlie on, and she hurries through the city, and takes a corner just in time to hear a crash behind her. When she looks up to her rear-view mirror, there's a four car crash, and already traffic is building up behind them. She huffs to herself, and speeds slightly to the hospital.

She gets a car park, and asks at the front desk for Dean. The lady there won't tell her where he is, and she spends ten minutes arguing with her, trying to get her to give up Dean's location. She's almost frustrated enough to whip out her badge and demand to be taken to his room when Rufus, Ash, Annie, Sam and Victor walk in.

Rufus talks to the lady at the front desk, and within a minute she's leading them up to the third floor. Charlie waits outside the room, annoyed that only two people can be in there at the same time, but eventually she gets to go in when Rufus comes out.

There are two doctors inside taking Dean's vitals, and Charlie has the feeling that if they weren't federal agents then they wouldn't even be on this floor, let alone in this room. They're talking to each other in the doctor jargon that you can only just not understand, speaking as if Charlie and Sam aren't in the room.

Dean looks deathly pale, and Charlie bites her lip. She can't see any external wounds, and the heart monitor beside the bed is recording even beeps, but it isn't the physical state she is really worried about. It's the mental.

They take Dean out for a full examination, and return him to the room an hour later. Charlie doesn't read the report or listen to what the doctors are telling Rufus and Sam. They're just listening with very still faces, and Charlie blocks that out to focus on Dean. He's still pale, and she doesn't want to know what they did to him.

They take turns sitting with him. Sam is always in there, except when he needs to go to the bathroom. He even gets Charlie to fetch some food for him when he gets hungry.

Pamela somehow wriggles her way into Dean's room. She asks Sam if he would mind her checking if Dean is still there, or if they have a body without a soul on their hands. Sam had thrown her out of the room, but she came back in the next day and Sam hadn't complained.

Victor and Rufus are also there while Pamela is. They all watch her place her hand on Dean's forehead and smile fleetingly at Sam. Then she closes her eyes and her brow furrows.

She sits like that for a few minutes, before her breathing picks up. Rufus stands and moves to her, ready to either yank her away or catch her if she falls.

Suddenly she throws her head back and screams, and it's not a quiet or half-hearted scream either. It's a full throttle scream of pain, and she falls away from Dean, fire burning from her eyes.

Charlie stays with Dean, who doesn't twitch at anything that's happening around him, while Victor and Sam take her to the emergency ward under the supervision of the three nurses who came at the scream.

Rufus comes back an hour later and tells her that Pamela is in emergency care, and that they were trying to save her life, but her eyes had been completely burned from her skull.

Charlie doesn't know what this means for Dean, but it must mean that something is inside him, so she stays hopeful. They've already tested him with holy water, salt, iron and silver. Sam's stay by Dean's bed gets longer, and Charlie watches as grief starts to devour him, and she observes the way that his eyes start to go dull and blank. A second later, she wonders if she looks any different.

September 24, 2007

Six days pass before Dean wakes up.

Charlie is in the room, and Sam has just left. There isn't any jerking or gasping, but when Charlie looks up at Dean his eyes are open slightly, and he's watching her warily.

"Dean?" Charlie asks quietly. Dean can't speak around the tube in his mouth, but he nods slightly. "You okay?"

Dean shakes his head and Charlie isn't exactly surprised. "You're going to be okay," she tells him. Dean doesn't move this time, but Charlie thinks he's looking at her sceptically.

When Sam comes back in Dean has fallen asleep again. She tells him that Dean woke up, and a wave of relief passes over his face.

"I haven't told anyone else yet. Thought it best that someone stay with him." They've set up an unofficial ring of protectors. Charlie, Victor, Annie, Ash or Rufus were always in the room with Dean. Garth hadn't met Dean before this, and it wasn't aimed as an insult to him, but he had a way of making situations go haywire and somehow being the only one surviving them. They didn't need that with an unconscious Dean in the room. They didn't count Sam because half the time he couldn't pay attention because he was sleep deprived, and the other half he was too worried to think about what threats could come for Dean.

Charlie personally thought that Dean was safe. After all, the demons had dumped him on their doorstep. It probably meant they were done with him.

She switches places with Ash reluctantly, but he tells her to go home and have some sleep.

Four days later, Dean has woken up in everyone's presence, so they gather at the office to share their stories of what had happened when he had looked at them for the first time.

Charlie told about how he had seemed calm, and the answer to her questions. Victor told them how Dean had woken up and Sam had been there, and they had shared a brotherly reunion that lasted until Sam asked where Dean had been and what had happened to him. Annie recounted how Dean had woken up and had started crying, but hadn't said anything. Ash told them how Dean had been twitching, and he thought that he had been dreaming, so he tried to wake him. He had received a broken nose as gratitude. It is wrapped now, and Ash looks slightly ridiculous with a bandage around his purple and red blotched nose. Rufus told them how Dean had woken, and how he had looked around the room rapidly and fearfully, before watching Sam and Rufus suspiciously and hadn't said anything.

Sam had told him about the anti-possession tattoos, and that had finally received a response. Dean had asked about them, and Sam had shown him his. Dean had nodded and asked for one in the same spot before falling asleep.

Sam had counted that as a win, and had been happy for the rest of the day.

Charlie had tried to get Dean to talk once more, but after Dean had told her that he wasn't going to talk, she had shrugged and said okay. The relief in Dean's eyes made her feel bad, and she started recounting all that had happened in the four months that he had been gone. He raised an eyebrow at Garth and her stories of him, and shook his head when she told him about Sam and how he had never stopped looking for him. She told him about her computer programs and how she had nearly been ready to smash her computers by the end because they were giving her no answers.

Dean had cracked a smile at that, and she had rejoiced internally, because she had been afraid that her Dean was gone forever.

Pamela is still in the hospital, and when Charlie tells Dean about her his eyes widen.

"Pamela did what?" He exclaims.

Charlie shrugs. "She wanted to know if you were still there, or if you were," she waves her hand around vaguely. "Gone."

"Don't they have machines for that sort of thing?"

"Yes, but Pamela wanted to check, and Sam wasn't being discouraging."

Dean shakes his head slowly. "And you say her eyes were burned out?"

Charlie nods. Dean bites his lips before looking away.

"When can I get out of here?"

"Doctor said by the end of next week, if you keep improving and he's sure you're okay. And," she continues when he opens his mouth. "There are five agents in this building who have your well-being at the top of their priority list. You're not getting out of here until then."

Dean agreed to stay in the hospital without trying to escape if he got to see Pamela. Charlie warned him that she might not be in any condition to have visitors, and he accepted that. But the doctor who is looking after her told Charlie that she could accompany Dean to visit the other patient, as long as they weren't loud.

Dean leans up against Charlie as they walk to the wing where Pamela is resting. It's extremely quiet, and Charlie finds herself trying to muffle her footsteps. Dean seems to not feel the atmosphere, and his footsteps echo loudly through the halls as they walk down them.

The reach Pamela's room, and Charlie pushes open the door. Pamela is lying in the bed in the middle of the room, with an IV tube in and a machine next to her beeping with every beat of her heat.

"Dean?" Pamela's voice is scratchy, and Charlie helps Dean to sit in the chair next to her.

"Hey Pam."

"I could feel you coming down the hall, but I didn't need extra senses to hear your boots. Could you stomp any louder?"

Dean chuckles lowly. "You shouldn't have done that Pam. Dumb thing."

Pamela tilts her head so it's facing Dean. "I had to check if you were still there."

"You should have turned back when I told you to."

Pamela lets out a breath. "Maybe, but you know that I'm not exactly one to take orders."

"Well you should have listened this one time."

Pamela reaches a hand up to run it through her hair and doesn't respond.

"So…" Dean trails off. "Did you see anything?"

Charlie blinks as she realises that they've been ignoring one of their primary sources of information. Pamela had looked inside Dean's head, and they're just treating her like she had been badly injured. They're in a supernatural situation, so they should consider supernatural resources.

Cursing herself internally, Charlie listens to their conversation, not contributing anything. She thinks that Dean's forgotten that she's standing there. He's been fractious, not that she can blame him, but she can also see how he is trying to piece himself together after his ordeal. Everyone trying to pry his secrets out of him is not helping. So she has decided that if he needs space, she can give him space. Try to help him get things back to normal. If there even is a normal after what he went through.

Charlie doesn't know any details, and she doesn't want any details, but she has a feeling that they're going to come out sooner or later, and it would probably be best for Dean if they came out sooner. She doesn't think it's healthy to have something like that bottled up inside you, but Dean isn't one tp talk about his feelings.

"I saw more than I wanted to, let's just leave it at that." Pamela pauses, and Charlie thinks that if she still had eyes she might be looking Dean over. "How you're even standing I have no idea."

"I'm tough, I can handle it."

Pamela doesn't reply, and that more than anything made Charlie shift as the other woman's doubt fills the room. She doesn't have to say anything, and she has Dean glowering at her.

"Get that look off your face," she rebukes him. "I'm serious Dean," she continues, quieter. "I saw some of what was going on there…" She trails off, and Charlie doesn't know what else she can say. It's Dean turn to make the silence in the room awkward.

"I understand," Pamela says. "Not as well as you do, but more than these others. I know what you went through, and I' not going to tell them anything, trust me. You don't need them to know before you're ready to know yourself, and for you to accept what happened to you. To talk about it before you are ready to would be very, very bad. I can feel that Charlie has already made the conviction to not talk to you or press you for anything you're not comfortable sharing. Keep her close, she's a good person."

"You don't need to tell me Charlie's a good person," Dean mutters. "I already know that."

"I'm just saying that you can trust her. You're trust and faith have just been broken to the largest extent that they could have been broken Dean. You don't know how to trust anymore. You're going to have to relearn that, along with other things that you once took for granted. You're friends are going to have to help you through that, and you'll know who are true to you by how they interact with you in the next stages of your life." Pamela rubs her head. "I know you're not into talking about your feelings, but that's going to have to be put to the side. You may not think so, you may think that you can get through this by yourself." Her voice gentles. "But you can't. You won't be able to get through this by yourself. You have friends and family for a reason. Use them, and they will be happy to be used, because they want to help. They want you to get better."

Dean takes all this in while watching Pamela silently. Charlie thinks that if she were anyone else he would have walked out the door ten minutes ago.

"I'll think about it," he eventually grates out. Charlie feels her heart ease slightly. Maybe he can get past this after all.

Dean goes to touch Pamela, and as they do she stiffens. Dean and Charlie wait it out. Charlie's never seen a psychic go through a vision, but she knows the signs, and all of them are there.

When she comes to, she shakes her head a little before taking a deep breath. Chuckling slightly, Pamela lets go of Dean's hand.

"Well I always knew you were special. Go on now, go and live your life. Because you're going to be needed…" Her voice trails off and she becomes silent. Charlie knows that they won't get anything else out of her today, even though her words are sending an ominous shiver own her spine. Dean looks uneasy as well, but neither of them talk about it as they make their way back to Dean's room.

Charlie hastily convenes the other people in her team so she can tell them about Pamela. They all look disgusted with themselves that they didn't think of asking her earlier.

"I don't think you're going to get anything out of her," Charlie says.

Rufus sighs and sets his jaw. "We have to try. Annie, Ash, go and talk to her, get her to tell you some more. Everyone else, let Dean choose his own time to talk about what happened. We don't want to push him away from us."

Everyone nods and Victor goes to take his place by Sam's side, where he watches his brother sleep. Charlie doesn't know what's happening with his fiancé, since he hasn't left Phoenix for four months. Doesn't he have his own law firm in DC? The lengths at which he would go for his brother showed her that the love Dean had for his little brother is returned just as fiercely as it's given.

She goes home, ready to get a good night's sleep. The day has taken it out of her, and she needs to rest.

She comes back to her shift of looking over Dean for the next day. He seems to get better, sitting at the window and looking out at the world while he talks quietly to whoever is in the room with him. But on other occasions he would just stare at you silently if you tried to talk to him, and Victor had had a rib broken and two fractured when he tried to wake Dean up from a nightmare and the other man had reacted before he was entirely awake. Charlie had determined not to touch Dean while he was sleeping, even if it looked like he was dreaming. Especially if he was dreaming, she corrected herself.

Dean wouldn't let the doctors examine him, and it had only been while he was in a coma that they could touch him. They had given the results to Rufus, who refused to share them with the rest of the team. Even Sam, who had heard the initial report, didn't get any more information than what he had.

"It's his examination, and he can choose who gets to read it," Rufus had gruffly told him. Charlie hadn't complained, and neither had anyone else. She didn't want to know what they had done to him, and she didn't think anyone else did either.

At the end of the two weeks Dean is told that he could leave that day if he let the doctors look over him, or he could wait another week until they knew he would be okay.

Dean glowered and snarled and grimaced but gave in. He came out an hour later, pronounced physically healthy and let out of the hospital.

Dean surprises everyone by halting them all in the lobby.

"Look, I need a break. You guys can function without me for a while, and I've already talked it over with Sam. He said I could come and crash with him for a while in DC. I'll be back, after I sort everything out."

Rufus opens his mouth, and everyone watches for the older man's reaction. He finally sighs and shrugs. "Fine. But I'm not paying you."

Dean nods, accepting it. "I didn't think you would."

"But there will be a spot for you if you want to come back." Rufus looks away as he says this, and Charlie thinks that the older man will miss him, in his own way.

Dean says goodbye to all the others before coming to her.

"I'll be back," he promises as he hugs her. Charlie holds him for a moment, not knowing what to think. She eventually bites her lip and says the obvious.

"Be careful. Get that tattoo. Look out for Sam, but also look out for yourself."

Dean nods. "I will Charlie. And you make sure to keep an eye on everyone here. Not sure how they'll function without me."

That brings a small smile to her face. "Oh, I'm sure we'll find some way to manage."

"I'm sure it won't be for long. Just until everything starts to make sense again."

"Okay." She hesitates. "I'll miss you."

Dean's mouth twitches. "I'll miss you too. See you later, alright?"

Charlie nods, and watches as he and Sam drive away.

It's going to be weird without them.

Rufus,

Dean's not getting any better. I know you want him back on the team, but I don't think that it's going to happen anytime soon. I've been trying to get him to see a therapist, and I think he might go for it. That's what I'm hoping at least. He needs to talk to someone, and if it's not me, or you, or anyone else he knows, maybe someone trained to deal with this will be better. I know we rescued a therapist from vamps a while back, and I still have his number. Hopefully he's going to be willing to return the favour.

As for his symptoms, there are lots. He hardly sleeps, and when he does, he dreams. They must be about horrible things, because he won't tell me about them, or even the general gist of them. If Jess or I try to wake him he attacks us. I'm sure he doesn't mean to, but it till happens. I've learned not to touch him in his sleep after he fractured my cheekbone.

Sometimes I hear him get up in the middle of the night, but when I go down to check on him he's vomiting and retching in the bathroom. If I try to help him then, he won't accept it, and just tells me to go away. It breaks my heart.

Have you convinced Pamela to tell you what she knows? If we could get even a general idea of what he went through, then I think we could deal with him better.

Sincerely, Sam

Rufus,

Talk to Pamela, please. Dean is hallucinating frequently, and I'm starting to fear that he'll attack Jess or I when he's awake. Jess doesn't know about the supernatural, and she won't believe my excuses for long. She's a smart lady.

I'm worried.

Sincerely, Sam

Rufus,

I know Pamela is being difficult, but I really need to know some information. This week's been hard, and it's got to do with more than Dean.

The therapist that I told you about agreed to work with Dean, but Dean's being difficult. I finally managed to convince him to go, and that's probably the best thing that's happened this week.

Kevin can't handle all the cases at work, and he told me that he understands that Dean needs help, but that I need to be in at work. I can't say no to him, because he's been so great these last six months, so I agreed to come back in on Monday. He sounded so relieved on the phone, and I felt so guilty for keeping under so much stress for so long. With more cases, I won't be able to help Dean as much.

I can't ask Jess to do it, because she has her job at the hospital. She says that this month is critical, because the head of nursing retired and they're looking for his replacement. She says that she thinks she has a chance at the job, but only if she's working more than she has to. I want to support her, but then who can support Dean? I can't hire anyone, because nobody would understand what he's going through. They wouldn't understand his resourcefulness either. This week, he figured out that I hadn't told Jess about the supernatural. It's a sign of how out of it he's been that he only just picked that up, after living here for two months. He threatened to tell her if I didn't. So I think Jess is happy to have a reason to be out of the house, to work through how she feels about our world. I'm lucky that she didn't break off our engagement after I all but disappeared for four months, and came back with my brother, with no solid explanation I could give her. She's been living off faith, and now I don't know if she'll want to stay with me, or if she wants to leave.

I don't think Dean's getting better. Last night I had to pin him to the ground for half an hour before he realised who I was. He kept screaming something about Alastair, and how he doesn't want to get taken again. He was talking about more than that, but I was preoccupied with keeping the kitchen knife he had away from my throat. I'm just glad that Jess wasn't there.

I'm sorry for dumping all this on you. You probably don't want to hear about what's happening in this house, and I could have just summed it up in one word; chaos. But you asked for updates on Dean, and I'm giving them to you.

Again, I don't think he's going to be coming back anytime soon, and I don't think you should force it. I don't think you can force it. And even if you tried, I would stop you. I know he's the best you have, but he's not fit to tie his own shoelaces, let alone face what he would see in Phoenix.

Sincerely, Sam

Rufus,

Things have been getting better since last month, no thanks to Pamela. After what she said to you, I hope I don't see her for a while more. I think I might have to restrain myself from killing her, even if Dean makes a full recovery. She had no right to say what she did.

Dean's been seeing his therapist regularly, and I think it's helping. He no longer wakes up screaming, and a whole day can pass now, and he can act like he did before all this happened. He has a darker air about him now, and he seems more wary of the world, even when he's completely lucid, but I can't blame him. I think anyone would be changed by what he went through, and I just thankful he's not catatonic.

Jess decided that I was worth finding out that the supernatural are real, although she gave me a slap over the head for keeping it a secret for so long. Dean laughed at that. It's the first time I've heard him laugh in over six months.

I think he might be on the road to recovery, but don't get your hopes up. There are still days when he's unable to function and I have to spoon feed him, if he lets me near him at all.

Sincerely, Sam

Rufus,

I don't know what Garth did to survive that, but you're right. Dean would have loved to be there. I didn't tell him about it though. Lately he's been moody, and when I ask about it he says it's nothing. But I know he's think of the team and how he wants to be back in Phoenix. Knowing him, he probably thinks something like he's not good enough to be on the team because he got jumped by demons. Which is utter bullshit, but you know how his mind works. I want to help, but I don't know how. Jess doesn't know how to help either, but she wants to. We both want to.

He's getting better. Slowly, slowly, but he's getting there. I think that he will be able to get back to work before May.

Sincerely, Sam

Rufus,

Dean finally told me what happened. It was worse than I thought. I could hardly sit through it. He told me I could tell you, Ellen and Bobby, but that he didn't want anyone else knowing.

He had had a screaming nightmare, not something that happens often anymore. I'd waited until he'd woken up and told me I could come in before I did. Then he sat on the floor, and told me what happened. He… Rufus it was horrible.

The demon who took him was named Alastair. He was the one who Dean had been yelling about, who I told you about before. Alastair is a high ranking demon, and is the chief inquisitor in Hell.

Alastair can make the host stay awake in their body and witness all that he does in their bodies while they're was possessed. I'm sure that Dean didn't tell me half of it, but the half that he did was enough for me.

I don't know how Charlie missed it, but Alastair always had a person to torture, day and night. Alastair had taught him how to torture, how to do what Alastair did every day to those people. He got other information about the demon as well, he told me that, but he didn't tell me what. I didn't push. He told me that he had learned things from the demon, and how Alastair had toyed with his mind, praising him for taking interest and twisting his thoughts and feelings until he was someone else. He told me how that was all he sees when he sleeps at night.

He cried into my shoulder as he said it. Rufus, I think he might be over the worst of it. He went to sleep straight after he had told me everything, and slept for the next three days. Jess was worried, but I told her to wait it out. He woke up and ate half a box of cereal, not pausing once to stare out the window for ten minutes like he usually does while eating breakfast.

I think he might insist on going back to Phoenix soon. If you all could look after him, I would appreciate it. I know Dean wants to be there, and he was extremely grateful when I told him that you held a space for him.

In any case, I think you'll see him soon.

Sincerely, Sam

March 2, 2008

Dean looks around his apartment. It's dusty, and he doesn't think anyone has been in here since he left it, nearly nine months ago. The washing up he had left in the sink is still there, and he wouldn't be surprised if he found some sort of infestation in here, because the place reeks.

He opens all the windows and looks over his view of downtown Phoenix for the first time in what seems like forever. He would have left his door open as well to get a breeze going through, but he was planning on checking all his weapons, and having anyone able to walk past and see that is probably not the greatest idea.

He checks all his hiding spots, and brings out all of the items hidden inside of them, placing them on the kitchen bench. He puts all the herbs and items that are out of date on one bench, so he can dispose of them properly later.

He isn't set to check in to the office until Monday, so he spends the time he needs cleaning up his apartment, even though it takes him the next three days. He vacuums and cleans and restores his apartment as best that he can, throwing all the linen out and buying new sheets from the department store down the road. The most time consuming task is cleaning all his weapons, and making sure that his guns weren't going to backfire the next time he shot them.

He makes a cursory check of the apartment on the fourth morning, but everything is clean and hidden away again. He opens his door and locks it, before walking down three doors. He knocks, and after a few minutes have passed and he's considering knocking again, Chuck opens the door.

He looks like he always does, stubble running riot over his cheeks and smelling faintly of alcohol. His clothes are crumpled and look several days old.

But even though his appearance might be messy, his smile is genuine. "Dean!" He exclaims happily. "I haven't seen you in ages. What's it been, almost a year?"

Dean nods, and follows the other man into his apartment. "I have all your mail, but I'm pretty sure there's more than one unpaid bill in there."

Dean winces slightly, but shrugs. He owns his apartment, and he can set up everything else again. The water was still on, but there isn't any internet or power.

Chuck chatters on to him while he makes coffee, and Dean watches the other man, happy to have something normal in his life right now that didn't involve the supernatural or have any reminders from the last year.

Chuck gives him his coffee, and then goes into another room. Dean sips at his hot drink, and watches as Chuck brings out an armload of letters. Then another. And another.

Chuck dumps the final pile of letters on the kitchen bench top. "That's all of it, I think."

Dean looks at the pile of letters and shakes his head. "Thanks, I guess."

"It's gonna be weird not collecting them anymore," Chuck says wistfully.

"I really appreciate it Chuck."

"Anytime."

Dean leaves the apartment without Chuck asking once where he had been. Perhaps the younger man was more subtle than he had thought.

He still had another day off, and he spent it walking around Phoenix. The city was big, and he wouldn't be able to trace every street in one day, but he tried. When he finds himself outside the psychic's house, he sighs quietly to himself, but presses the doorbell anyway. Why they even have a door bell he has no idea. Maybe to make them look normal.

The door opens and Missouri stands there. "So you've finally decided to come and say hello."

"I've been cleaning." And he hadn't wanted to confront Pamela so soon, if she was even here.

"I know. That could have waited."

Dean follows Missouri into the kitchen, and she gives him a glass of water and an already prepared hot melted cheese sandwich.

"Thanks," Dean says, because he had left his apartment without any cash on him, and it was verging on two o'clock now.

"You're welcome," Missouri says. She starts taking out ingredients and combining them, and it isn't long before Dean's finished and she's kneading some sort of dough.

She doesn't ask questions. She lets the silence lay until Dean starts talking to end it. He ends up telling her about living with Sam, and doesn't touch on the events before it that much, but they come up every so often. By the time she starts adding different nuts and raisins to the dough he's finished.

"Pamela told me most of it," Missouri says. "But you need to tell your workmates. They need to know why you've been gone for so long."

"It isn't any of their business," Dean replies stiffly.

"Yes it is honey. They need to know." The way that she says it makes Dean think that she knows something, and it annoys him. He isn't going to do what she says just because she's a psychic. He tells her so, and she casts a stern look at him.

"You can run all you want, but it's going to sneak up on you sometime. Trust me Dean, it's better this way."

He isn't going to tell them, and she knows it. She sighs and puts the dough in a bowl and covers it with plastic wrap.

After he's stayed for an hour simply talking with her, he gets up the courage to ask about Pamela.

"She got a call from a relative who has a spirit problem in their next door neighbour's house. She's sorting it out. Nothing dangerous," she adds, when Dean is about to protest. "Not yet. Simply some cupboards opening and shutting by themselves, some cold spots in the house, the usual. She can handle it. It's a simple thing to just help the spirit pass over to the other side."

Dean nods grudgingly. Even if Pamela no longer had her sight, she was still capable of dealing with one calm spirit.

Missouri drove him home, and Dean bid her goodbye outside his apartment building.

He wants to get enough sleep so that he's not tired tomorrow, but he doubts it will happen. He lets out a deep breath before cracking open the seal of a new bottle of whiskey.

April 3, 2008

A month after he had been back in Phoenix, the first demon case comes up.

Dean had been on two other hunts since he'd gotten back, one of them a cursed ring that made whoever was wearing homicidal, and a young shape shifter, nothing too hard or dangerous.

Annie and Victor had taken down a vamp nest, Garth and Ash had faced a werewolf pack, and even Rufus had faced off against some Japanese ghost. Dean still doesn't have a partner officially, and it's beginning to make him slightly disgruntled. He wants what he sees other partnerships have, the closeness of knowing you can trust the other person with your life and being able to talk about anything with them. He sees it every day in Annie and Victor, and in Garth and Ash.

The closest he has is Charlie, but he doesn't think she's ever been on a hunt in her life. Sighing, he continues paging through the newspaper he has in his hands.

He stops on an article on a missing person in Salt Lake City, Utah. As the main city in the state, there were numerous papers that the city has, and the one in front of him is one of the smaller ones.

He searches the missing man in the FBI's database, and his missing person's report comes up. Dean studies it, before searching for anyone else who had gone missing in Salt Lake in the last week.

The city was big, but not big enough for twelve people going missing in five days. When he searches the weather patterns surrounding the city in the last week there's been thunderstorms all week.

Demon signs all over the city. He sends the information to Charlie in an email, and watches as she gets it and frowns over the information inside.

He walks over to her desk and waits for her to read through everything. "What do you think?" He asks, when he sees her start to check for additional information.

"I think it's probably a demon case," she says after a minute.

"Good. Do you think anyone else will want to come with me as back up?"

Charlie looks up at him. "You're going?" She asks, sounding surprised.

"Yeah. I haven't done anything in a while, and the last hunt you sent me on was a homicidal ring."

"Do you think it's maybe a bit too soon for you to be going on demon hunts?" Charlie asks carefully.

Dean clenches his jaw. "I'm perfectly fine," he grits out. Charlie looks like she's reserving judgement, but nods eventually.

"If you think so," she says neutrally. "I'll ask if Garth and Ash are free to go along. You go and tell Rufus, and get everything sorted."

It takes longer than Dean remembers to get through all of the paperwork, but that might be because he asks if Charlie can come along. Rufus chews over it for an hour before asking Charlie if she wants to. The red haired girl agrees nervously, and Rufus arranges for the entire team to go on the hunt that Dean discovered, to make sure Charlie has enough protection on her first hunt.

Dean interviews the witness, and tries to ignore the blood at a crime scene that they examine. They find traces of sulphur and track the demons to an apartment building on the outskirts of the town.

Charlie's nervous, and the rest of the team are simply getting ready for the raid, used to the nerves before a confrontation. Ash has a fracture in his left wrist that's just healed, so he would be patrolling the perimeter with Charlie.

"Is everyone ready?" Dean asks. The team nods, and he smiles at Charlie. "Okay. Then take your positions, and be ready to move in five."

They're fairly certain that the demons are inside, and by entering in two different spots they can hopefully take them by surprise, and cut off any escape routes.

Dean rounds a corner inside and resists the urge to simply shoot the woman in front of him. Victor turns the corner behind him, and pauses before he runs into Dean.

"Is that Meg?" Victor whispers. Dean nods stiffly.

Meg is talking to the demons in front of her, and with a wave of her hand she dismisses them to do whatever task she needed them to do.

Dean sees Annie and Garth appear on the other side of the room. Dean hopes that Garth won't do anything that will endanger everyone else; from what he had observed of the younger man, he seemed to excel in creating dangerous situations and then getting knocked out so he didn't need to deal with fixing them.

"What do you want to do?" Victor asks quietly.

Dean opens his mouth to answer, but before he can say anything, Meg speaks up.

"I know you're there Dean. I can feel your soul, all lovely and corrupted."

Dean grits his teeth and takes a step further, so he's in the dim light that the one light bulb lends the room.

Meg smiles at him and looks him over, looking proud. "Alastair did a fine job," she grudgingly admits. "I know the rest of you are there as well."

Annie, Victor and Garth step out. Meg looks at them disapprovingly. "So you've decided to return to your former job instead of joining the dark side?" She drawls.

Victor shoots him a questioning look, but Dean shakes his head.

"I'm not sure Alastair kept you for long enough," she continues, seemingly unconcerned at the four gun that are pointed at her. "You've got enough fight left in you that he needed to keep you a little longer. He told me that you fought him, but that you eventually gave in."

Dean can see Annie's raised eyebrows from across the room.

Meg looks around at his companions. "Wait a second," she says, and then begins to grin broadly. "They don't know?"

Dean doesn't say anything. His heart is beating wildly, to no particular pattern that he can discern.

She whistles lowly through her teeth. "Well then, isn't it going to be a treat for them?"

"Shut up Meg. It's listening to you talk that got me in this mess in the first place," Dean growls, not taking his eyes off the demon in front of him.

Meg smiles, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder. "Alastair should have kept you for another month or two. He claims he was preserving your spirit, but I think he left a little too much spirit. You're not broken, not yet." She bites her lip and looks him up and down. "And maybe not useful to us," she muses to herself. "So you didn't tell them how Alastair kept you conscious while he possessed you?"

"Shut up Meg," Dean growls.

Meg shrugs. "It's your story to tell, I guess. I just think they should know if the person that they're entrusting their life to has really big issues. And also, I'm just going to tell you that we're done here. Nothing much else to do."

"What were you doing in the first place?" Dean demands.

Meg winks at him. "Wouldn't you like to know," she says, before disappearing into thin air.

They search the entire building, but all that they find are several unconscious bodies free of demon possession. They pick up Garth and Charlie, who didn't see any demons enter or leave the building before they call the local police. The police collect the people, not asking any questions when the team brandish their badges and use their brisk air of professionalism to disarm and intimidate them.

Dean can feel the storm of questions that the others have, and he appreciates it that they wait until they're alone in the hotel room and the debrief of the case is over before Annie asks him what Meg was going on about.

They're all curious, and Dean can see how they've all wanted to know what's going on ever since he was abducted last year. He feels bile rise in the back of his throat, but he swallows it down and looks away.

He tells them, in short, snappy sentences. There's silence when he's done, and he doesn't look at anyone's faces. He doesn't want to see whatever was there.

"I think I should avoid the demon cases from now on," Dean says lowly, not wanting to think about the renewal of nightmares that he is sure will happen now.

Charlie looks up at him, her eyes wide. She nods slowly, Ash and Garth echoing it in the background. Annie and Victor look sick.

Dean doesn't want to feel this way in front of them; wide and bleeding and open. The image of a knife forms in his mind, and he settles on it as his next goal. He would not be weak.

April 19, 2008

The blade feels light in his hand. It took him a week to track it down, but in the end his memories had been right, and he'd dug for a few hours before encountering a set of stone doors in the ground.

The crypt had opened up to him easily after he breaks the padlock on the outside, and he had stepped into the darkness, waving a flashlight around and being careful of where he stepped, in case the demons had left something nasty in wait. There hadn't been any traps, and Dean had found the main room easily.

The blade had been inside a small box, and Dean had taken the entire thing with him. The box is sitting open on his motel room table while he admires the knife. The handle looks and feels like it's made of very old wood. If there had been inscriptions or ornamenting on the handle they had been worn away by years and too many hands holding the blade.

The blade itself is engraved with several symbols that Dean can't identify. He doesn't know where the knife was made, or how, or why, but he does know one thing.

It can kill demons. And in the new world Dean finds himself in, he's going to need it.