Chapter 2

The office was quiet and dark and I was going as fast as I could, just knowing I was gonna be too late. I hit 'Print' on the screen and pushed my chair back, running to the printer and grabbing the pages as they came out, stapling them together and dumping the sets onto the printer's bland grey cover.

Are you seriously contemplating chasing after them, I asked myself for the millionth time? Even if they find a way back, which according to the scripts that were churning out into the tray, through my hands and onto the pile, was not a sure thing yet, what the heck do you think you'll do in their world?

I didn't know. All I knew, for sure, right at that moment, was that Fate or destiny or something had put an opportunity in front of me that I couldn't look away from. I mean, you spend your life in total normality…nearly total normality, I amended to myself…and something like this happens, something you've been telling yourself for years that you wanted…magic…and how cowardly would I be to look the other way? If there was anything here to cling on to, it would be different, I argued with myself. There wasn't.

Gathering the armful of warm, printed pages, I ran back to the desk, and opened the huge leather folder that I used to lug all the crap about the series around in. It'd been my father's and the embossed initials on the lower corner were still vaguely visible. Inside, it was packed full of typed and hand-written pages, notes scribbled on scraps of paper, a complete copy of the concordance of the series. I had everything from every writers meeting and coffee-machine conversation in there. I slapped the scripts in the middle, closed the folder and tucked it under my arm, grabbed my bag and raced out through the door.

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

I heard the shots as soon as I came out the door. Not blanks, I thought instantly, knowing the flatter sound of those. The boom of a shotgun, the louder concussion of a handgun. For a split-second, I thought the sound editors were playing around with the speaker systems, literally unable to credit that there was real gun-fire on the lot, then I realised how stupid that was and started to run.

Our stage was two blocks away, and I saw a guy in a black suit walking casually up the road toward it as I reached the corner. For some insane reason, the show's creator and, up 'til recently, producer, was walking toward him, blood covering his chest, his expression blank but his hand still raised in what could only have been a friendly wave. The man in the black suit lifted the handgun, some monster thing that sounded like a cannon and the bullet hit Eric in the chest, knocking him backward onto the ground.

Black Suit turned and started toward the open door of the stage and I pulled out my phone and dialled 9-1-1.

"Emergency, what service do you require?" The pert voice on the other end of the line chirped at me.

"Police, ambulance. There's a shooting at the studio, Building M, Grandview Road."

"Ma'am, could we take your –"

I ended the call and pushed the phone back into my bag. There were three entrances to the stage. Four sets were in there, the Singer house kitchen and living room, a motel room interior, built for this episode, the open green screen set with the car sitting in front of it, and a room holding all the weapons of Heaven, also built for this episode. It wasn't the biggest stage on the lot but it was still pretty damned big.

Black Suit had to be looking for the Winchesters, I thought, flinching at another rattle of gun-fire from inside the studio. I turned from the corner and ran along the wall to the personnel door that was halfway along the building. Which set would they be on? I couldn't remember which scenes they were shooting first.

The door opened easily and I stumbled through it, blinking madly at the change from bright light to the near darkness at this end of the stage.

"HEY!"

I heard Sam's shout, past the green screen and somewhere in the middle and took off, barely able to see where I was going in the gloom, narrowly avoiding the cranes, dolly tracks, tables and chairs that seemed to fill the open spaces around the half-rooms, a demented obstacle course that was making me feel as if I was in one of those nightmares where no matter how fast you run, the thing behind is always gaining.

A deep grunt and the crash of someone falling snapped me back to reality and I realised they were on the motel room set, half-turning and pelting toward it. I didn't know what I was gonna do when I got there, it just seemed like getting there was the main goal. I didn't even see the cable snaking across the floor as I came around to the open set – one minute I was running fine on two feet, the next I was flying.

"Dean! Got it!" I heard Sam yell at his brother, landing on my hands and knees in a long, painful skid across the cheap, synthetic carpet on the set's floor.

"Raphael! Run!"

I looked up as both brothers turned away from a glowing red light behind them, staggered to my feet and took a step then I was flung through the broken window behind them, feeling a piece of stage glass brush along my leg in one fraction of a second, then cut deeply through my jeans in the next.

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

I'd love to be able to tell you all about what happened next, but I can't. From the lump on the side of my head when I woke up, I gave the old melon a whopping great thump on something hard and unyielding when I landed and managed to put myself out for the count.

I woke up on a sofa in the Singer house living room set. Or at least, that's where I thought I woke up. Turns out that wasn't right either.

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

Rain. Thunder. Pounding in my head. Hammering somewhere very close by.

Must be on the set, I thought blurrily, forcing my eyes to open a little. Hammering. Definitely hammering.

From the narrow field between my squinted-up eyelids, I could see the familiar gold-flocked dark red wallpaper on the walls of the set, piles of books and notes, the dark-stained wood doorway. There was something off about it, but I couldn't work out what it was.

"I'm sorry about all this," a deep, rough voice that was slightly familiar said somewhere nearby. "I'll explain when I can."

There was a soft sound of wings, flapping in the room.

"Friggin' angels," another deep voice said, and that one I knew. I opened one eye a little wider, in time to see Sam Winchester walk over to the doorway and thump it.

"Solid," he said. "It's real. It's nice."

"Yeah," the deep voice belonging to his brother said from the other side of the room. "Yeah, real, mouldy, termite-eaten home sweet home. Chock full of crap that wants to skin you."

He walked over to his brother. "Oh, and uh, we're broke again."

Sam's voice held a smile. "Yeah … but, hey, at least we're talking."

I opened the other eye to see Dean give him a sour look and turned my head, wishing I hadn't when my stomach rolled over and a huge throbbing pain started behind one eye. I screwed both eyes shut quickly.

"She's awake." I heard Dean say, then the unmistakable sound of two pairs of boots thumping across the floor.

"Not really," I whispered, pressing my palm against the side of my head. "What happened?"

There was a silence and I reluctantly opened an eye again. They were both beside the sofa, looking at each other.

"Uh, well …" Sam said, turning away. "Um …"

"Let's just say … you're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy," Dean cut in, his gaze shifting. "Gotta headache?"

"Yes."

"Big lump on the side of your head too," he informed me, not very sympathetically.

I suddenly got what seemed off about the room. It smelled. Really smelled, the dampness in the air bringing it out. It smelled of old books and old carpet and old upholstery, of dust and a sharp tang of some kind of acid and more vaguely of cheap bourbon.

The set didn't smell of anything. At all.

I sat up and looked around, clenching my teeth shut against the nauseating roll of my stomach that accompanied the pain thudding in my head. It had four walls. Well…three and a half, to accommodate the wide archway leading to the kitchen. Rain was drumming against the thick plastic sheet that had been nailed over a broken window. There was a background stench of wet ash from the blackened fireplace.

"Are w-w-we –?" I stuttered, looking through the open door to a hallway with a set of stairs leading up. From the sofa that doorway had only ever looked into the back-stage. "Is this –? A-a-a-am I –?"

Sam walked back into the living room from the kitchen, holding a glass of water and a small bottle. He handed both to me, nodding. "Yeah, we are. This is Bobby's place, the real Bobby Singer. And you're here. Not back there."

I looked down at the glass in my hand. I knew it was there for a reason. I knew I was supposed to do something with it. But I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what that was.

"Shock," Dean said to Sam, moving to the sofa and taking the bottle of pills, opening it, shaking two into his palm. "Take these, drink that. You'll feel better."

"What?"

He handed me the pills and I swallowed them obediently, chasing them down with a mouthful of water.

"Go to sleep," Sam advised me, taking the glass back and straightening up. He looked at his brother. "Ideas on what we're going to do about this?"

"Fresh out," Dean said, turning away with a shrug. "We'll stay here, till Bobby gets back. Figure it out then."

"What about Raphael and Cas and the weapons?"

"Figure that out too," Dean said. "She's got my bed, I'm taking Bobby's."

His voice was getting further away and my eyelids were closing as the painkillers started to slowly numb me from the inside out. I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. What either of them were talking about. Weirdest dream ever, I thought dazedly, slumping back against the cushions that were piled at one end of the sofa. Dean and Sam and rain.

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

I was warm and comfortable, my head aching a bit but my stomach quiet. Some dream, I thought, keeping my eyes closed and listening to the sound of birdsong somewhere outside.

You must be thinking that I'm some kind of major wimp, and sure, yeah, I'll buy that, but give me a chance. I didn't really know what was going on in the motel set back where I came from, and unless you're a deep, deep sci-fi – or SYFY – fan, travelling through dimensions doesn't hit the top of the list of rational explanations for most of us. The last thing that I really remembered was Sam shouting out in the room, my foot getting caught on something and going flying.

I didn't get my head around what'd really happened until I opened my eyes and saw the grimy, smoke-stained ceiling above me, a massive crack running through it, and through a red-painted circle filled with strange symbols and drawings.

Seen that before, I thought vaguely. I had but it took another minute before I remembered where I'd seen it. It wasn't a regular part of the set. It was included for the episode when Meg possessed Sam in Season Two. It wasn't left there.

I sat up, tossing aside the blanket that was covering me and looking around. My head gave a few lazy throbs but the pills must have been extra-strength because it was distant, not immediate.

My leg hurt like hell when I stood up and I looked down to see my jeans were now full length on one leg and sliced to shorts-length on the other and there was a bulky looking white bandage wrapped around my leg just above the knee. It hurt. A dim memory of being cut came back and I limped my way across the room and into the kitchen.

I'd always thought they'd exaggerated the character's bachelor habits as a kind of ongoing joke on Bob Singer. Nope. From one side of the kitchen to the other, there were dirty dishes, pots, pans, cups and mugs half-drunk and left, interesting wall murals of fast-growing moulds and fungi … I repressed a small shudder and looked carefully at the coffee-pot. It was hot, almost-full and wafting a very tempting aroma into the kitchen and I was pretty sure it was mostly clean.

The growl of a car and the crunching sound of gravel came from outside and I turned around, going to the window. A familiar-looking black car pulled into the yard, followed by an old Chevy Nova painted in a variety of primer colours.

I clutched my cup, wondering what I could say.

The front door banged open.

"I've been getting blasts from hunters all week, all kinds of crap," a whiskey-roughened voice said in the hallway.

The oil-stained cap was the first thing that I noticed, then the scraggly reddish-grey beard. He looked so much like Jim that I nearly said that name.

"You're up, at last," Bobby Singer said to me as he walked into the living room and dumped a couple of books and a folded-up map onto his desk. "How's the head?"

"Good, um, Mr Singer," I said, swallowing the desire to call him by the name I knew.

He shook his head impatiently. "Bobby'll do."

"You two," he called out, turning to look at the doorway. "Get your asses in here and look at this."

Sam came in, his expression tense. "Bobby we got other problems –"

"And the most pressing one is up," Dean added as he followed his brother into the room.

"How you doing?" Sam asked, looking critically at the bandage on my leg.

"Fine," I said automatically. "Good, I mean, considering."

Dean snorted and walked over to the desk. "What about the hunters?"

"Here," Bobby said, spreading the map over the desk. "Nest of vamps. Werewolf dance party. Shifters, six of them. Two hunters died taking them out. Ghouls, ghouls. Ghoul-wraith smorgasbord."

Sam turned back to his brother and the older hunter, looking at the map.

"Is it just me, or is that a straight kick-line down I-80?" Dean asked, studying the route.

"Exactly."

"Looks to me like it's a Sherman march monster mash," Dean commented, glancing at his brother.

"Yeah, but where are they marching to?"

Bobby picked up a pen and drew something on the map.

"What is it?" Sam's forehead wrinkled up as he pivoted around to read the name outlined in red pen.

"Guy bashes in his family's heads," Bobby said sourly, looking at Dean.

The conversation would've been weird at any time, but what was weirder was that it sounded familiar. Not something I'd heard, but something else, something I'd read, maybe.

"What do we do with Dorothy here?" Dean asked, turning to look at me. The joke was getting old real fast and I kept my expression neutral with a lot of effort.

Bobby looked over the desk. "Not having any luck with getting hold of Cas, so we can't send you back."

The thought of being sent back provoked a wave of feeling. Some of it was relief, a sly little worm that I wasn't going to be a part of a ghoul-wraith smorgasbord. But a lot was alarm. I'd just gotten here. There had to be something I could do.

"You alright to hang out here for a while?" Sam asked me quietly. "We've gotta get going on this," he added, turning and jerking his thumb at the map on the desk. "And we can't take passengers."

"I'll be fine," I said, lifting my chin slightly as I saw Dean's disbelieving smirk from the corner of my eye. "I could help out, if you have something that needs doing?"

"What can you do?" he asked, the doubt in his voice blatant but just short of mocking.

"I can answer those phones," I said, looking at him and waving a hand at the bank of phones along the kitchen wall. They'd only appeared in episode four of the current season, but I'd been there for Jensen's directorial debut and I'd seen the routine. "Just give me a list."

Bobby grinned suddenly, pushing his cap back. "That would be a help, I can ride along, handle the fibbie side of things if the phones are covered."

With an exaggerated sigh, Dean shrugged and turned away. "Fine, you do that," he said shortly, and looked at Bobby. "We'll get going, meet you down there."

Bobby nodded, watching them leave. "Don't get started till I'm there," he called out as an afterthought. The door slammed behind them and he looked back at me.

"Didn't see any signs of concussion, and that leg wound is a clean cut, shouldn't give you any trouble," he said, getting up from behind the desk. "Sorry we can't get you home straight away, but the way things are going, there's just no way to do it."

"That's okay," I said, nodding to him.

"How's it you know about all this again?" he asked me curiously, glancing over his shoulder as the black car growled its way out of the yard. "The boys didn't say much."

I opened my mouth to tell him, then hesitated for a second, wondering if they'd been vague deliberately. If they hadn't wanted Bobby to know what had happened, they should have said something, I thought, a bit defiantly, remembering Dean's attitude. "They said that an angel pushed them through into my world," I started, feeling relieved when he nodded. "And I didn't realise that they were being dragged back here when I found them on the motel set."

"Motel set?" Bobby's brows rose an inch or two.

"It was a TV show," I said, realising what they hadn't mentioned, and guessing at the reason why. "Called Supernatural. About two brothers who hunted monsters and brought on the Apocalypse by releasing Lucifer from his cage."

His mouth dropped open. "In your world, their lives were a TV show?!"

I nodded. "I worked on it for six years," I told him. "I'm not sure how accurate it all was."

He looked at me. "You know about their Dad?"

"John Winchester," I said. "Mary was killed by a demon called Azazel who was feeding Sam demon blood –"

"Holy SHIT!" Bobby said, taking a step back. "And Dean? You know what happened to Dean?"

"Going to Hell?" I asked, a bit uncertainly. A lot of things had happened to Dean.

He nodded. "Shit, don't tell 'em you know all that," he said, rubbing his hand over his jaw distractedly. "Dean'll never talk to you again."

"But –"

"Look, I gotta go, but can ya stay here? Till we get back?" he asked me, his tone close to a plea. "This is – maybe we can figure out a way to use this, somehow."

"I can stay," I said, feeling a tiny morsel of hope rising at his words. If I could be useful … that would be different, that would be better.

"Thanks," he said, turning for the door and then looking back over his shoulder. "We might be gone about a week, driving time included. That okay? There's money for groceries and anything you need in a box under my bed. Just cash."

"Okay," I said, wondering how much cash I had in my purse. "I've got some money."

He stopped in the doorway and shook his head. "We'll try and get you back, but you gotta know now, there's no guarantee we'll be able to."

That made me swallow uncomfortably. I didn't even think about it being a one-way trip. "I'll keep it in mind."

"The list of contacts for those phones is under 'em," he said, looking over at the row. "Just tell 'em you'll take a message and call me. My number's on the wall too."

"Okay."

"Don't open the door to anyone."

"I won't."

"If you hear something, salt every door and window and grab the shotgun upstairs and sit tight."

"I will."

"Okay then," he said, turning away and walking down the hall. I heard the front door slam and sagged back against the small kitchen table behind me, staring down into my cup of rapidly-cooling coffee. Grab the shotgun? What the heck did I think I was doing?

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

I sat around for a couple of days, answering the phones when they rang and passing on the details to Bobby if they were urgent or just taking messages if they weren't. Someone had put a couple of big, knobbly stitches in the cut on my leg and although it wasn't pretty, it was healing up. My first scar, I thought, looking at it every morning. The headaches passed after the second decent night's sleep and by mid-afternoon on the second day in the house, I was ready to climb the walls for something constructive to do.

Looking around, it didn't take all that long to figure out what.

The kitchen was the first point of attack. I took the man at his word, grabbing the money from under his bed and going to the store a few blocks down the road, coming back with every kind of cleaner they had on their shelves.

I didn't want to mess up whatever kind of filing system Bobby was using to find information in the ramshackle mess of the living room, but I thought I could put the books away and dust and vacuum and wash the curtains, clean out the fireplace, patch the ceiling and do my best to get the blood-stains out of the carpet. Wandering through the house I found that there was another living room behind a closed door, probably the original, on the other side of the hallway, and the room currently being used for that purpose was probably the dining room. As soon as the thought hit I had a vivid flash of the house, clean and neat and with a dining table in the middle of the room, and realised that was from Season Five, episode fifteen. It was filmed before fourteen, I remembered belatedly. There had to be a dining table somewhere around.

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

It was nine in the evening, five days later when I heard the cars pull into the yard. Bobby had rung from Vermont, explaining the delay.

"What's that smell?" Dean said, his tone suspicious, as he came into the hall.

Sam sniffed exaggeratedly. "Fabric softener and roast beef."

"What the hell?" They stopped together in the doorway to the dining room, staring around them.

"What the hell did you do here?" Dean asked me accusingly.

The room – well, okay, the house – looked different, I had to admit it. It was clean, for one thing. And tidy. And Bobby's study and living room were back in the original living room. I didn't mean to make so many changes, but I just kind of got on a roll and kept going.

Bobby pushed past them and stopped, looking around as well. "Looks nice," he said neutrally. "That dinner?"

Dean threw him a disbelieving look, deepening into a scowl as Bobby walked into the kitchen at my nod and washed his hands in the sink.

"Come on, you two, wash up, we'll eat and then we'll figure out what we're going to do about Eve."

I got out of the way as Dean stormed past, Sam following more slowly, a slight smile playing on his mouth as he looked around and flashed me an approving look.

The look was reassuring but the familiarity of the name caught at me. "Who's Eve?" I asked Sam.

"Mother of All," Sam said, looking over his shoulder as he washed his hands. "The monster we over to Ohio to –"

"Don't need chapter and verse," Dean cut him off repressively, wiping his hands on the towel on the rail and tossing it over his shoulder at his brother.

"Mother of All," I repeated, mostly to myself. That was definitely familiar and I suddenly realised why. "Oh … god."

I dropped the dish-cloth I'd been holding and raced upstairs, a million thoughts attacking me at the same time. What an idiot, I ranted at myself as I hit the door to my room, at the end of the hall, past the other bedrooms and slammed my palm against the light-switch. No wonder they think you're an idiot, I continued, crossing the room in two strides to grab the leather folder, and swinging around to head back down the stairs. You are an idiot, how could you have forgotten? HOW!?

"What –" Dean started to say as I ran back into the dining room and slapped the leather folder down on the dining table.

"I knew it, what you said, about the guy bashing his family's head in – it was so familiar, but I couldn't place it, couldn't get why," I babbled helplessly at Bobby, pulling the buckles free on the leather straps that held the folder together and opening it up. "It was the next episode and we only had the first draft but I knew it seemed like I should know what was going on, and then when you said 'Eve', my god, that was like –"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean cut in impatiently, looking at the folder.

I picked up the typed outlines I'd done two weeks ago, in Vancouver, in another world, handing one to each of them.

"Eve, the Mother of All, that episode was the introduction to her," I explained, waving a hand at the pages they were holding. "Your grandfather was there, wasn't he?"

Dean looked up then, his eyes almost black with an emotion I couldn't identify and didn't want to know. I got the gist when Bobby's gaze snapped to him and then to me.

"What's this?"

"The outlines," I said, a bit more slowly, looking at him. "The show – the outlines were sent out weeks in advance, for the location scouts, the set designers, the make-up and costume people. The writers, I have –" I looked down at the folder, pulling out the scripts that I had drafts for. "I have the next six episodes, drafts only, there's still going to be some changes, because sometimes we couldn't get the right location or the right actor, but –"

"This is a blueprint of what's going happen – here?" Sam asked me tersely. I nodded.

"I'm so sorry, I just – there was so much to take in, and I just forgot!"

Dean's mouth tightened and he swung away, striding out of the room and into the hall. A moment later the front door swung open and slammed shut.

"I'm sorry," I said again to Bobby. "I –"

He shook his head, his face tightening a little. "It's okay."

Looking at Sam's bowed head, I could see it wasn't. Not by a long way. But the younger Winchester lifted his head and looked at me.

"It wasn't your fault," he said, his voice firm. "We knew what you did on the show, we forgot as well." He looked past me to the empty hall. "Dean'll be as angry about that as about you forgetting, Terry."

It didn't help, not really. It was my job and I'd known what the folder held. They hadn't.

"Sam, go get your brother," Bobby said, turning to the kitchen. "I'm starving, we'll eat and go through this."

Sam nodded and headed out to the yard, and I looked at Bobby.

"I can't –"

He pulled open the oven door and took out the pan. "Don't let him chase you off," he warned me, looking over his shoulder. "He'll get over it."

I shook my head and turned away, remembering the details of the outline, of the first draft of the script. They could've saved Gwen, could've saved Rufus, even Samuel if they'd had an inkling of what had been there.

"Terry," Bobby said loudly from the kitchen. I stopped and looked back at him. "It is Terry, right?"

I nodded. "Therese Alcott."

"Therese, that's nice, I like that better," Bobby said, waving a hand at the clean dresser full of clean plates. "I need a hand here."

For a second, I wanted to run up to the room I'd cleaned for myself, run and hide and never come back down. I didn't want to see that accusing stare again. Didn't want hear the glass-edged comments or see them in his face, even if he didn't say a word.

"You start running now, you'll never stop," Bobby said quietly, retrieving the pan of roasted vegetables from the oven and setting them beside the pan. "Stand up to it, face it down. It'll get better."

In the real world, that kind of decision had never really come up. I mean, I'd stood down bosses and co-workers occasionally, held my ground when I'd thought I was right. But I wasn't right this time. I'd let them down and people had died because of that. Stay and face it, I thought, quivering inside. Or admit that you're a coward and have no business being here at all.

I nodded to him and went to get out the dishes, passing him a couple of platters at the same time as he started to carve.

"Good girl." I heard him say as I took the plates and set the table.

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

Hope you liked the second chapter. More than a hint of what's yet to come.