Chapter 11

AN: Sorry about the long delay on this chapter. Real life intruded with a bang and I've spent much of the week dealing with things I'd much rather not have been dealing with! I hope you find the chapter worth the wait!

I didn't get any sleep at all that night.

On the show, the year Dean spent with Lisa and Ben was shown as a montage, under the credits. I thought it was a production thing, or maybe just a reaction to the fans, who didn't really want to see the domestic side of Dean Winchester, but I'd been disappointed that they didn't make an effort to film a couple of scenes at least, if only for flashback purposes later on, showing some more truthful moments of the couple's relationship.

It hadn't occurred to me until now that even in the montage, Dean – or rather, Jensen, back home – hadn't really smiled. Not once. I wondered if the writers who could see what was happening decided that filming Dean mostly depressed would be a bad idea.

The way he looked, when he'd been talking, kept rising against the blackness of my eyelids when I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd seen Dean devastated and broken and helplessly vulnerable in the show…when he'd realised his father had sacrificed his soul for him…when Sam had been killed…when Sam had chosen Ruby over him…notice the pattern here? Always in the show, that vulnerability came out because of his brother, or his father, not because of anything that happened to him or that he wanted for himself.

Rolling over, I noticed that there was light leeching in around the edges of the curtains and morning was going to beat me to the finish line before I could get any hope of sleep. I got up and pushed the curtains aside, leaning the side of my face against the cool glass of the window panes and looking over the junkyard to the flat fields behind Bobby's. They were now mostly covered in a grey mist, looking as impermanent and as unlikely as a set with a dry-ice fog machine.

Had the writers always seen more than they'd shown? Given what had happened in the last few weeks, it seemed obvious to me that they had, had edited and filtered what they saw to make it more entertaining television, to keep it more to what the fans said they wanted.

What else had they changed?

Had Dean really gone to Cicero when he'd been about to hand himself over to Michael? Had Sam really let the vampire attack Dean, when he'd been without a soul? How the heck could I be sure of any of the so-called facts I thought I'd known about them now?

A glance at the clock showed it was just shy of five in the morning. Heaving a very dramatic and quite self-pitying sigh at the hopeless improbability of getting any answers to my questions, I turned away from the window and got dressed, gathering up the folder and carrying it with me downstairs. I wasn't even sure why, you know, the things I'd been sure about before in my little 'bible', I was doubting more and more.

Dean was still asleep on the sofa, the blanket dragged over one shoulder, and I walked past the living room quietly, heading for the kitchen and nearly having a heart attack when I realised that someone was sitting hunched up at the small table in the dim room.

Sam lifted his head and I tried not to pat my chest like some ridiculous starlet in a bad drama production as I recognised the shaggy outline of his hair.

"You okay?" The words were out before I even realised I was going to ask, the expression on his face impossible to make out in the gloom, but he seemed to be emitting waves of some feeling that didn't look so good to me, even only half-seen.

He sat taller in the chair and nodded, running a hand through his hair. The so-familiar gesture was almost reassuring.

"You're up early," he said, clearing his throat a little bit. "Couldn't sleep?"

"D-day for Purgatory, who could?" I returned, a lot more flippantly than I felt.

"Right."

I dropped the folder on the table and went over to the coffee pot, checking that the reservoir was full and the filter and coffee grounds were new and turning it on. It was silent for a moment then began to burble to itself quietly.

"What about you?" I asked him as I walked over to the lightswitch and turned on the light.

"Uh, yeah, just couldn't sleep," he said evasively. He bowed his head as if he was hiding from the light.

"Sam?"

When he looked up reluctantly, I could see in his face that he knew what he looked like, his normally-tanned skin pale, and reddish-purple shadows under his eyes.

"Just dreams," he told me, with a light shrug.

I suppose I could've let it go then, I mean, everyone has bad dreams, right? But this was Sam Winchester, and I had the feeling that his dreams were about a hundred and forty billion light-years away from other people's bad dreams.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Uh, no, not really," he said, pushing the chair back and getting up. He walked over to the cupboard and pulled out a couple of cups, taking his time and keeping his back to me.

"It's not about…?"

For a second he just kind of stilled, like a robot that's had the power plug pulled. Then he huffed out a sharp exhale and shook his head.

"No, just the usual monster and angel crap."

I knew it was a lie the second the words came out of his mouth. Don't ask me how, or why. I just knew it in the same way I knew he wasn't going to admit to it.

Now, Sam, I'm gonna put up a barrier inside your mind. The dry and measured voice of Julian Richings came out of my memories of watching the earlier aired episodes and I looked down at the table top, remembering the scene clearly.

It might feel a little…itchy. Do me a favour, don't scratch the wall. Trust me. You're not going to like what happens.

Sam's wall, holding back the memories of Hell. Holding back the memories of Lucifer and the Cage, and of Michael in his half-brother.

"Sam, are you remembering anything?" I didn't want to ask him that, it was so terribly personal, but I couldn't sit there and pretend that everything was alright either.

"No," he said, much too quickly, his shoulders seeming to tighten further as he poured the coffee from the pot into the cups. "No, I don't remember anything."

I was going to press him harder. I opened my mouth only to hear another voice.

"Good, yer up," Bobby said as he came into the dining room and I saw Sam turn around, his coffee slopping over the cup rim and onto his hand, the skin reddening under it, but his expression relieved as he looked at Bobby.

"Where's your brother?"

"Sleeping it off in the living room," Sam said, putting my cup down in front of me and wiping the cup he held to hand it to Bobby. He turned away to get another from the cupboard. "Empty bottle beside him."

I didn't say anything about that, and Bobby sat down at the table, pulling out a sheet of parchment from his pocket. He glanced at me.

"Not in one of those moods where you're spilling everything today, are ya?"

I moved my cup to the other end of the table, just in case, and shook my head.

"Good," he said, smoothing the paper flat. "This is the ritual we gotta use to keep that damned door shut."

"Does it override whatever Cas and Crowley have for opening it?" Sam asked, bringing his cup to the table and sitting down on the opposite side.

"It undoes what they do, so if we're quick enough, we should be able to slam it shut before they get the souls out, no harm, no foul."

"If we're quick enough?" Sam asked, his eyebrows rising in doubt.

"Well, no one said it was goin' to be easy," Bobby growled. "Ellie gave me the ritual and she headed off to somewhere she said was going to be safe. They need the blood of a native of Purgatory to open the door, so if she can stay hidden and they don't find any other monster that might've slipped out, they won't be able to open it. She's gonna ring me in three hours to confirm that she got out okay."

"The lunar eclipse is tomorrow night," I added. "Cas was able to find you because when he pulled you out and healed Dean at Stull's, the wardings were erased from your ribs. You're all going to need not only the Enochian warding to hide from him on the way there, but also a way to prevent Crowley from seeing you."

"I found that," Sam said, blinking at me and looking to Bobby. "Sorry, I was going to tell you yesterday. In that book you got from Dad's lockup, there's a sigil there that is supposed to protect anyone from any hellspawn's x-ray vision."

Bobby frowned absently at him, obviously trying to remember which book or books he'd gotten from John Winchester's storage unit. "The demonology?" he asked after a moment's intense thought. "I thought that was just histories?"

"No, there's a section at the back with a whole bunch of crap about Hell," Sam said, picking up his cup and sipping the coffee.

Instantly, I knew he was lying again. He might have found a way to stop Crowley from seeing them, I thought, but it hadn't come from a book.

"Well, good," Bobby said, scratching his forehead under the peak of his cap. "We better get started." He threw a look over his shoulder at the door. "How long do you want to let him sleep?"

"A couple more hours," Sam said, draining his cup and getting up. "I'll get the bag packed. Oh," he added, turning back to the old man. "There's a thing about the demon sigil."

"Yeah?" Bobby looked up at him, his voice suddenly wary.

"Yeah, we have to cut them in," Sam told him, turning away and going to the sink.

"Perfect," Bobby muttered and looked at me. "If we have to do this, you know you're probably gonna have the steadiest hand."

"What!?" I squeaked at him.

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

Four hours later I was sitting at the window of the dining room, Sam's bare back in front of me, holding a scalpel in my left hand and a drawing of the sigil in my right.

"I really don't think I can do this, Bobby," I said, looking at the way the fine-edged blade was shaking in my grip.

"You couldn't be worse than the Butcher of Sioux Falls," Dean said sourly from the dining room table, wiping ineffectually at the blood trickles on his chest and smearing them into a red mess.

"Bite me," Bobby growled at him from the corner of his mouth, dabbing at his own bare, bloody chest with a wet washcloth.

Ellie had called, a half-hour late and had only given Bobby an address before hanging up. Bobby had cut the Enochian sigil into Dean's back, and the demon ward on his chest, Dean complaining loudly the entire time. Dean's hands had been shaking worse than mine was when he'd returned the favour on Bobby and neither were happy with each other, Bobby pointedly handing me the scalpel when Sam had pulled off his shirt to get his done.

"You'll be fine, just concentrate on not going too deep," Sam said to me over his shoulder, ignoring his brother and Bobby, his voice sounding almost encouraging.

This was what this life was like, I told myself, inhaling noisily as I leaned forward and lifted the drawing. There's been blood all over the show and it never bothered you before, I added mentally, looking at the smooth tan skin in front of me. Of course it'd been fake blood and the actors had wiped it off after the take and…

Just DO IT!

My stomach rolled over slowly as I made the first cut, as shallowly as I could, following the curving line of the first half of the circle. It was a very fine line, but Sam's blood welled up in it and began to seep out past the edges before I'd even finished. I could hear my teeth grinding together, the noise loud in the junction between my jaw and ear, but I couldn't stop it, an old childhood habit that reoccurred with monumental stress.

"What's that noise?" Dean asked, looking around the room.

The demon sigil was relatively easy, a circle, a five-pointed star in the centre, four more-or-less wiggly lines in the gaps in between the two that Bobby had said were the names of the archangels in Hebrew. When Sam turned around for the Enochian character, I gave a delicate shudder because that one was a whole bunch of lines with small circles intersecting them. The scalpel blade was fine and the tip was pointed but I couldn't get the memory out of my head of my cousin digging around in the sole of my foot with a knife blade, trying to extract a splinter I'd gotten from the old wharf one summer vacation by the sea. Digging around was the bit I'd remembered the clearest. It'd been excruciatingly painful and he hadn't even gotten the darned piece of wood out, just left a bloody hole in my foot.

"It's okay," Sam said, smiling slightly although his back must have been stinging and aching like crazy. "This is nothing compared to being branded and having the brand burned off," he added, with a fast look at Bobby.

That made my stomach practically leap into my throat and I swallowed and stared at the only flattish section of skin in front of me, lifting the blade and hesitating.

"Shouldn't I, um, sterilise the blade or something, between these?" I asked, hoping it didn't sound like I just trying to put off that first slice.

"It's the same blood as he's got in his back," Bobby told me tersely. "No one died of tetanus here yet."

"Not for lack of trying," Dean muttered as he eased his t-shirt back over his head.

"You done whining or is this gonna go on for awhile?"

"It's fine," Sam interrupted, dragging my attention back to him. "Just do it, putting it off only makes it harder."

I made the first downward line, feeling my face scrunch up as I saw how horribly un-straight it was. The next one was better and thankfully, the circle between them only took a tiny twist of the wrist to achieve and not so much as a exhale from Sam at the movement.

"You're doing fine, Terry, just take it at your own time," Sam murmured and I looked up as I heard something under the gentle words. His eyes were shut and I bit my lip, hoping he wasn't getting a memory that was in any way, shape or form related to what I was doing to him.

"At least your brother doesn't bellyache at the slightest little scratch," Bobby said, either trying to distract Sam and I, or trying to annoy Dean, I couldn't tell which.

"That would be because she's cutting about one-eighth deep and you drove the damned blade in half-an-inch," Dean shot back at him.

"Not bleeding out, are ya?"

"I would be if I didn't have so much friggin' anti-freeze in my system!"

"Done," I said, leaning right back from Sam, the blade held up and away.

He opened his eyes and looked down, automatically checking what he could see of the ward against the drawing held loosely in my lap.

"Thanks."

"Don't…thank me," I said, shuddering again. If I never had to do that again, it would be too soon.

Dean tossed him a clean, wet cloth and picked up the bottle of whiskey sitting on the table, getting up and walking over to me.

"Take a belt," he told me as he handed it to me. "It'll settle everything down."

I could smell the sharp, acrid whiskey odour from two feet away and privately doubted it would do any more than make me want to lose my breakfast, but I reached out for the bottle anyway, closing my eyes, and tipping it up as the rim hit my mouth. The taste was as foul as I'd imagined, but the fire that ripped down my throat certainly took my mind off blood and knives and any other thought past the sudden certainty that he'd given me a bottle of gasoline to drink and I'd actually drunk some.

Shoving the bottle back at him, I closed my eyes and struggled to get in a breath past the fumes that filled my throat, the taste that seared my tongue into insensibility and the heat that seemed to infuse my entire body. I suppose, to someone watching, it might've even looked funny, me coughing and sputtering and waving my hands around as I tried to get a decent breath into my chest which had obviously forgotten what that it was supposed to be making air go in and out.

It was fortunate that none of them laughed. Bobby gave me a slap on the back and I nodded to him as the effects began to dissipate. Dean'd been right, after a fashion. Nothing had settled but I wasn't thinking that I'd just cut a symbol into a living person's body like some hinky serial killer anymore either.

Dean poured a couple of inches into a glass and handed it to his brother. Picking up the scalpel, Sam swirled it around in the alcohol and looked at me. I looked back at him uncomprehendingly.

"Sorry, but you need to come, and Crowley and Cas can't see you either," Bobby said, face crunching up a bit. "You'll bring Ellie back here and the two of you can get into the panic room and stay there while we find Crowley."

"What?"

My inability to take in what he was saying was due to a couple of things. Firstly, no one had mentioned that I was supposed to be going along. Secondly, no one had mentioned that I was getting a set of front-and-back scars. No one had mentioned freaking anything about those things at all. So, of course my brain had shut down.

"It doesn't hurt that much," Sam said, waiting with the dripping scalpel held up in front of him.

I guess he was trying to be reassuring but wow, so not.

"Shirt off, Dorothy," Dean added with a very, very faint smirk and it was that expression that broke through all my no-they-couldn't-mean-it and I-must-be-misunderstanding and are-they-speaking-a-different-language thoughts.

I looked down and unbuttoned my shirt to just below my bra, pulling it down off my shoulders. Looking at Sam, I asked, "Is that enough room?"

He nodded and leaned forward, and the scalpel stung as he sliced through the thin skin over my breastbone. Perfect, I thought to myself, looking rigidly over his shoulder at the far wall. Won't a swimsuit look just fantastic with this little number in the middle of my chest? I could forget about evening gowns as well.

It hurt. Don't let anyone tell you it doesn't hurt to get cut by a scalpel because they're lying. It just takes a bit of time to start hurting because the blade's so fine that the nerves don't seem register the cut until the air hits the opening wound. I could feel the thin threads of liquid running down my skin and soaking into my bra, I could even smell the slightly metallic scent of my blood as it pooled between my breasts and dribbled down to my stomach, my shirt absorbing a lot of it where I was still clutching it in front of me. After a couple of moments, it was aching and stinging so much that I started grinding my teeth again, trying to find anything that would stop the pain from filling my eyes with tears.

"Done," Sam said, lifting the blade away and taking the damp washcloth from Bobby and handing it to me. "Turn around."

I held the cold cloth to my chest and swivelled around on my butt until I was facing away from him. There was a scrape of his chair as he moved closer and his fingers brushed against my back to pull the shirt down a little more. They were warm but the scalpel blade was ice-cold.

The back hurt a LOT more than the front. Both Dean and Bobby found something else to do as the first tear spilled out and rolled down my cheek. I know, I know, but it really did hurt, and since I was desperately clenching my teeth together to stop myself from saying anything – or screaming – it was the only release I could find.

I heard the clunk of the scalpel dropping back into the glass behind me, then felt a cool, moist cloth sponging my back and smarting along the cuts horrendously as Sam cleaned up the running blood there.

He pulled the shirt up over my shoulders and I looked down, pulling the edges together and re-buttoning it and trying to ignore the round stain of blood in the middle and the tears dripping from my face onto my hands.

"Alright, let's get this show on the road," Dean said, turning away and plunking the bottle back on the table.

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

"Where is she?" Bobby snapped, looking at the empty alley.

"This the address?" Dean asked, pulling his gun out, the snick of the hammer being cocked loud between the buildings.

The alley was a dog-leg between the main street and a semi-diagonal cross street, the buildings to either side three or four storeys high. Several dumpsters lined the walls on both sides but the traffic noises from the streets were muted here, and the sunshine seemed to heat up the narrow space, cooking the garbage in the overflowing trash cans and dumpsters, giving off a nauseating odour.

"This is where she said," Bobby said, more quietly. He pulled out his phone. "I'll try her again."

The ringing was immediate and close, and we looked around, picking up the location almost all together. It was coming from behind the two furthest dumpsters.

I slowed as I saw the woman's body sprawled in the tiny gap between the big metal bins, leaning back against a mound of plastic trash bags. She had dark blonde hair, streaked with lighter tones, her skin pale with an unhealthy flush to it, and her clothes torn and grubby. Against the pale coat she wore, the red stain spreading out from under her hand was very bright. She looked so like the actress who'd played Eleanor Visyak in the dragon episode, I couldn't get my mind to accept that here, she really was a creature from another dimension, and a badly injured woman that Bobby clearly cared about, at the same time.

"El?"

"Hey. I guess I could've used your help after all," she said, opening her eyes slowly and looking at him. A spasm hit the muscles in her face and her eyelids fluttered shut again, her hand pressing more tightly against her stomach.

"Just be still," Bobby soothed, staring down at the spreading red pool under her fingers worriedly. "Sam, get the medic –"

"No, Bobby," Eleanor said quietly, her eyes snapping open. "Get a container."

"What happened?" Sam asked, leaning closer to them.

She looked up past Bobby, her face white and tired. "They took me. I got away."

"Oh, Ellie. What have they done to you?" Bobby said, and his voice was so full of regret that I couldn't look at him.

"Everything," she told him with a slightly breathless laugh. "The demon I could've handled, but when the angel stepped in, I –" She stopped and let out her breath heavily. "I told him, Bobby. They have enough to crack Purgatory wide open."

Bobby bowed his head for a moment, then looked back at her. "Tell me. I need to know."

Her inhale hissed as she looked past him. "Get a container, Bobby," she repeated and he turned his head a bit, catching my eye and nodding. I swung around and hurried back to the cars. "They need virgin blood. That's a milk-run for them. And they need the blood of a Purgatory native, and well, they've got plenty of that now."

Behind me, I heard Dean ask, "Where are they?"

I couldn't hear the answer as I rummaged in the back seat of the Nova for a clean jar in Bobby's medical kit. There were two and I picked up the larger one, hurrying back to them and handing it to Bobby.

"I'm sorry, Bobby," Eleanor was saying to Bobby, her eyelids sagging.

"No, it's okay," he told her. "It's okay."

"I'm…sorry, really sorr–"

Her face went slack, all the animation gone from it, and Bobby blinked, looking down at her. "El?"

In the narrow alley, the beating sound of wings was loud and we all spun around, looking at Cas who stood a few feet away, between us and the cars.

"I'm sorry this had to happen," he said, to Dean, I think. Bobby got up, his hands empty and his face darkening. "Crowley got carried away."

"Yeah, I bet it was all Crowley you son of a bitch!" Bobby snarled at the angel. He lunged forward and Dean's hand shot out, restraining him.

Dean looked at Cas coldly. "You don't even see it, do you? How totally off the rails you are!"

"Enough! I don't care what you think," Castiel said, and I thought it was kind of human the way he lied about that. "I've tried to make you understand. You won't listen. So let me make this simple. Please, go home and let me stop Raphael. I won't ask again," he added, staring at the brothers.

"Well, good, 'cause I think you already know the answer," Dean snapped back.

The angel's face hardened and he turned his head to look at me. "And you. You have to go."

There was a definite emotion in his voice when he said it and I took a step backwards involuntarily, hitting the edge of the dumpster with my back. Dean and Sam and Bobby didn't even look at each other, just closed up together in front of me in unison, answering the angel's threat with a clear intention of their own.

"I wish it hadn't come to this," Cas said, shaking his head at them. "Well rest assured, when this is all over, I will save Sam, but only if you stand down."

"Save Sam from what?" Dean asked him suspiciously. Cas disappeared.

He reappeared right behind Sam, touching him before I could even open my mouth to warn either brother, and Sam collapsed onto the ground as the angel turned and took a step toward me.

"Castiel."

It might've been the only thing that could've stopped Cas then. Balthazar stood in the alley, his usual smirk gone, dark blood spattered over his normally immaculate clothing and a dull glint from the silver sword he held loosely in one hand.

It was exactly like the moment in the alternative timeline when everything froze into immobility. Dean and Bobby were standing to one side of Cas, Sam on the ground near their feet, Cas had paused in the movement of taking another step closer to me and my heart was high in my throat, pounding so hard it felt like my eyeballs were shaking from it.

"You too, Balthazar?" Cas grated at him, turning away from me and back to the other angel, a sword identical to the one Balthazar carried dropping from the sleeve of his trenchcoat into his hand.

"You've gone too far, Cassie," Balthazar said gently.

I couldn't even work out what happened next, the action so fast I couldn't track it. I couldn't move, could hardly breathe, then there was a flash of brilliant light and I screwed up my eyes, stumbling sideways away from it, and a man's cry was followed by a much bigger flash.

Cas disappeared and Balthazar lay on the ground near Sam, his sword next to him, the end of it bloody.

"Sam!" Dean dropped to his brother's side as Bobby stepped over Balthazar to help me up.

"Look," I said, looking at the dead angel. Balthazar's left hand had opened partially and Bobby dropped to his knees to prise the piece of paper from it.

"Get that jar filled," he said to me over his shoulder as he read it. "As much as you can."

You know, I didn't even think of how gross it was to be filling a mason jar with a dead woman's blood, just picked up the jar and knelt beside Eleanor, pulling her coat and shirt aside and pushing the mouth of the jar against her skin, the blood dripping into the glass slowly. Maybe it was the action, or the unreality of what had happened, or the fear gnawing at me that Castiel had really meant to send me home, but I didn't register that I was draining a woman of her blood as carefully as any vampire.

"Godammit, Sam! Wake up," Dean muttered to his brother, his arm under Sam's shoulders as he half-lifted him up, his thumb pushing up one of Sam's eyelids to look at his eye.

"Why did Cas leave?" I asked Bobby in a low voice.

"Balthazar wounded him," Bobby said shortly, picking up the short silver sword and putting the paper into his pocket. "And he came up with Crowley's location."

"Bobby!"

"Let's get him into the car," Bobby said decisively, going to Sam's feet as Dean nodded and moved around to lift his brother's shoulders.

I had to tilt Eleanor over to get the blood moving faster but the jar was nearly full.

"Terry," Bobby called out to me a moment later and I put the lid on the jar and got up, wondering if I should cover the body or just leave it. It didn't even occur to me that I'd left fingerprints all over her skin and clothing, until way later, you know, although thinking about it now, I don't suppose finding them there would've have told the police anything. I'd never been printed in my life at home, and I didn't exist in this world until a few weeks ago.

"You ride in the back with Sam," Bobby said tersely to me as Dean got into the driver's side.

I handed him the jar and hurried to the rear door of Dean's car, opening it and clambering in awkwardly as the Impala's engine started up.

Perching on the edge of the seat beside Sam, I picked up his hand and held it as Dean reversed out of the alley, seeing Bobby climb into the Nova and follow us out.

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

The sun was setting, filling one side of the car with a deep gold light as we sped north back to Sioux Falls. It'd taken four hours to drive down but we made it back in three, Bobby's headlights steady behind us the whole way.

"How is he?" Dean asked me.

"The same," I told him. I'd given him the same answer each time he'd asked and his mouth flattened out as he looked back at the road.

Sam's pulse was erratic. It speeded up and slowed down, not missing beats but behaving more like he was awake and involved in a high-speed chase than lying motionless on the back seat of his brother's car. Behind his shut eyelids, his eyes were moving, like he was dreaming and sometimes his breathing sped up or slowed down as well.

I'd run out of scripts and out of outlines and I didn't know what was going on. The producer had told us months ago that the season would end with the world not being saved by the Winchesters and a much greater threat coming out in the last episode, the beasts that had been locked away in Purgatory but aside from the name – Leviathan – that was all I had. There'd been nothing in that meeting about Sam's wall or the angel breaking it or anything I could use to help Sam or even guess how bad this could be.

After two hours of wracking my memories for anything helpful about Sam, I tried to think of what I knew about the other threat from the angel. Bobby had pulled out two books for me when Lisa had been at the house, an old version of the bible and a quasi-religious text on Christian myth that had basically said that the Leviathan were supposed to be God's first attempt at complex life-forms and had proved entirely too successful so He'd created a locked room for them and shoved them in. Not real helpful.

We pulled into the yard just after seven p.m. and Dean and Bobby carried Sam down to the iron panic room. He hadn't moved or changed at all in the drive, and Dean stood beside the iron cot, looking down at him.

"Sammy? Come on, snap out of it," he said, sitting on the edge of the thin mattress.

Bobby tugged at my arm and we turned away, leaving the brothers alone.

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

I followed Bobby down the steps to the basement slowly. Everything was ready and I knew Bobby wanted to go. He was worried about Dean, worried about Sam but more worried that Cas and Crowley were about to open a doorway to the end of the world.

Dean was pacing around the cot when Bobby stopped inside the doorway and looked at Sam.

"Anything?"

Dean shook his head in frustration. "I can't just sit here, Bobby. I've got to help him."

"Dean."

"You know," Dean ignored that, looking around distractedly. "Dreamscape his noggin. Something!"

"You know what Cas did," Bobby said reasonably, calmly. "The dam inside your brother's head is gone, and all Hell's spilling loose. We don't what's going on inside."

"I don't care," Dean grated, swinging around to look at him desperately. "We have got to do something!"

"And we will," Bobby promised, probably a bit rashly, but he was trying to get through to the man in front of him. "But right now we got sixteen hours 'til they pop Purgatory. I'm down one man. I can't afford to be down two."

I've never been as scared as I was right then when the idea occurred to me. I thought I'd been terrified in the back hall of the bar, when the monsters had come in but I realised now that had been barely a shiver compared to this. My throat was tight and my tongue was thick and dry and I thought if I didn't get the words out fast, I wouldn't be able to do it all in another few seconds.

"Do you still have any of the dream root that Bela got for you?" I asked Bobby.

He glanced at me. "Why?"

"I could do it."

"Do what?" Bobby said, turning and frowning at me. Dean just kept pacing.

"Take the dreamroot, go into Sam's head and try and help him," I said nervously. "At least try and keep him from imploding while you two save the world from the monsters."

At that, Dean stopped dead and stared at me. "And if he implodes anyway and takes you with him?" he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "He's not dreaming, he's remembering!"

I don't know what happened just then but suddenly the fear vanished and I felt angry, really angry. Maybe it was because I'm not a brave person normally and it'd taken all my admittedly meagre store of courage to even offer the idea and he'd shot it down as if it'd been totally stupid and my back and chest were hurting like the devil and I wanted to him to look at me, just once, with something other than scorn in those wary green eyes.

"I'm not crazy about the idea but I can't help Bobby stop Purgatory from opening and you can. Someone has to stay here with Sam and Cas might wait before coming for me, or he might not, but I'd be safer in there with Sam than I would be out here because I don't think Cas can send me back if I'm not – uh – not all in one piece!"

Dean looked like I'd slapped him, his mouth half-open and Bobby nodded slowly.

"You might be right about that," he said, keeping his gaze on my face.

"Or if he does show up he might kill her and that'll kill Sam if she's in there with him!" Dean yelled at him, obviously deciding that I wasn't worth arguing with. "This is a stupid friggin' idea and –"

"An' what?" Bobby said, looking at him. "We're on the clock, Dean, we gotta go now. Balthazar died to give us the information on Crowley's hideout and it's a five-hour drive from here."

"Fine!"

"Good!"

"Okay," I said, much more quietly than either of them. "Where's the dream root?"

"In the car," Dean said, heading for the door. As soon as he'd left, Bobby walked to Sam and pulled out his knife, cutting a few hairs from Sam's head.

"Dean's right, Terry, this could be a really, really bad idea," he said quietly as he dropped them into a glass and filled a jug with water from the sink.

I nodded straight away, my teeth beginning to chatter softly inside my mouth. "I know, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of choice, does there? What else can we do?"

I figured that because of Sam's feelings, he might listen to me, if I could find him inside of whatever was going on in his head. I thought Dean would've had a better chance of reaching through to his brother, but Bobby couldn't just handle Crowley and Cas by himself. And I had no more blueprints to work out a different way and there was no time to look for a different way anyway.

We both startled a bit when we heard the upstairs door bang shut, turning to the door at the sound of Dean thundering down the steps.

"Here," he said. He tossed the bag of gnarled brown roots at Bobby and stopped in front of me. It seemed like he'd made some kind of peace with the idea because his face was deadly serious.

"You gotta remember that in there, nothing is real but anything can kill you," he said in a low voice, and my teeth chattered together a bit more loudly as I wondered if he was trying to put me off. "You can't find your way through someone's dreams or thoughts like you do in the real world. Sometimes just thinking about what you to see or where you want to be takes you there. You have to remember that – that it's make-believe, right?"

"Like, um, in the Matrix?" I suggested, looking down at the glass Bobby held out to me, filled with an unappetising sludge of brown liquid that smelled like ditch-water.

"Without all the mumbo-jumbo and emo clothes, yeah, a bit like that," he said, relieved, I thought, that I'd gotten the gist of it. "So you can make the jump, no matter how impossible it looks, right?"

"Right."

He turned for the desk and picked up the paper Bobby had taken from Balthazar, pushing it into my hand. "If he wakes up, this is where we'll be."

I lifted the glass and swallowed against the gag reflex that the smell brought, closing my eyes and tipping the contents into my mouth and swallowing as fast as I could. I'm gonna bring this all back up again, I thought frantically as I felt one of Sam's hairs touch the back of my throat.

Opening my eyes, I realised I was alone.

Then I felt the heat.

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