Chapter 18

It took me a while to wake up, the bed was so comfy. Took me a while longer to realise that I was in the bed, in a t-shirt and panties, instead of lying on top of it, fully-clothed, the way I vaguely remembered going to sleep. And it took even longer to debate the pros and cons of raising that or just letting it go and pretending that I hadn't noticed. A scene from an old, favourite movie popped into my head and I could feel the slow build of heat rising up my chest as it played out.

"I woke up in my underwear," she said.

"I'll bet you looked nice," he answered, the slightest smirk lifting one side of his mouth.

"Did you get me that way?"

"I, uh, I took off your shoes. I took off your dress," he told her, waving a hand dismissively. "I put you on the bed and I kept my eyes closed the whole time."

"And that was it?"

"I might've peeked, I don't remember," Jack said dryly. "Look, I don't have all day to hang out here and discuss your sex life."

Heat raced up my neck and flooded into my face and I might've groaned very slightly, Dean's face replacing Jack Trainer's and all the possible levels of embarrassment and mortification – and yeah, other feelings as well – rolling relentlessly through my mind. It didn't take much else as I sat up, knuckling my eyes, to decide to pretend I hadn't noticed.

I was starving again, but I wandered slowly down to the bathroom, had a long and needlessly complicated shower and trailed back to my bedroom, hoping that if I took long enough, maybe the brothers would have found a new case and left by the time I went downstairs for breakfast.

It's one of those peculiarities of life that when something changes, and a possibility exists where none had before, fear is often the first emotion to make itself felt. Fear that you're wrong. Fear that you've misjudged or completely freakin' well misinterpreted the entire thing. Fear that all the roiling, bubbling sensations in your stomach mean that you're going to be disappointed, not that things are going to work out. I mean…oh heck, I don't know what I mean.

I took as long as possible to pull on clean underwear, jeans, shirts and run a brush through my hair. I sat on the bed and pulled on clean socks, adjusting the toes for maximum comfort. Finally, I had no choice but to drag on my boots and then no excuse to linger there while my stomach was growling and butterflying in alternative waves.

Going downstairs, I could hear voices in the dining room and I stopped on the bottom step, sucking in the deepest breath I could and trying to make my face smooth out into something expressionless and cool as I took the final steps across the hall and into the room.

I needn't have bothered. Sam glanced up, his mouth full, and gave me a little wave. Bobby turned from the stove, and reached out for extra bacon and eggs, the sharp hiss of the bacon fat hitting the hot pan almost drowning out Lauren's casual 'good morning'. Dean didn't even look up from his plate.

So, that's the way it is, I thought, all my excitement and fear and nervousness vanishing in the half-second it took me to look around the room. I felt myself deflate like a party balloon left up too long and walked past the table to the kitchen.

Bobby looked at a clean plate waiting on the counter and I picked it up and handed it to him, saliva filling my mouth as he loaded it with the fried food that I seemed to be craving. Grease, salt…dietary requirements after spending two foodless, sleepless days in Purgatory. Essential, I told myself, swallowing the excess saliva and almost snatching the plate when it was covered.

Carrying my breakfast back to the table, I took the seat at the end and started eating. It was, coincidentally, the seat furthest from everyone else, but I figured I'd use my clumsiness as an excuse if anyone raised it. I suddenly understood the impulse of people to wear sunglasses inside. Maybe some big ones, the sort that cover half your face? Not that hiding ever solved anything, but, I thought with a small wistful sigh, it would've been nice.

"Any word on Crowley?" Dean asked no one in particular, his eyes fixed on his plate.

"No Crowley, no Cas, no answers as to why Therese isn't human here," Bobby growled as he put his plate down and sat down. "No information on natives of Purgatory, or how we can find 'em…and nuthin' on how the hell we're gonna stop Crowley when the next lunar eclipse is due, in December, just in case you forgot."

"How will he find a Purgatory native?" Lauren looked up at him. "We can't."

"He's got the resources of Hell at his disposal," Bobby retorted, stabbing at his egg with unnecessary force to make his point.

"Maybe we're looking in the wrong places?" I suggested, looking at Sam. "Dr Visyak looked perfectly normal, human in every way, right?"

"Gotta point, Dorothy?" Dean asked through a mouthful of food.

Sam jumped in. "No, no, maybe she's right," he said, neatly diverting everyone's attention from me. Beside him, Lauren nodded.

"I'm another case," she said, looking at Dean. "It's easier to hide in the field of academia than nearly anywhere else. A long life gives a perspective that not many scientists get."

He snorted disbelievingly. "So, what? We grab the 'Ten celebrities who might be aliens' list from the internet and go hunt them down?"

"Or…" Sam said, drawing the word out as he frowned at him. "We go through the fields where a native of Purgatory might have some expertise and check out their backgrounds."

"Sounds like research," Dean muttered.

Sam snorted and looked back at me. "You're thinking of people like you, too?"

"I can't be the first person to jump into another world and get stuck here," I said, unable to help the slight edge to my voice.

Dean looked up. "You wanna go, Cas is dying to fly you home."

There was an edge to his voice as well, and both Bobby and Sam turned their heads back and forth as they looked from him to me and back to him.

"What's going on?" Bobby asked and I shook my head, grabbing a piece of toast and wiping up the remains of egg and ketchup on my plate.

"Nothing," Dean answered shortly, getting up and taking his plate to the sink, dropping it in with a crash and going out the back door, not quite slamming it but coming close.

I could feel Sam's gaze, could feel Bobby's too as I stared hard at my plate and scraped the last couple of crumbs off it. There wasn't any explanation I could give them, no airy little white lies, anyway. The very last thing I wanted to do was go after him, but at the same time, there was a little buzz of anger too. If he didn't want me here, then I for sure wanted to know about it.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked as I got up and walked fast to the sink.

"Nowhere," I said over my shoulder, putting my plate on top of Dean's and turning to look at Bobby. "I'll do these in a minute."

He nodded and glanced at Sam.

Going out the back door, I stopped on the small landing and looked around. There was a faint sound of banging coming from the big shed and I hurried down the steps before I could lose my nerve. The butterflies were back and I wondered if this was really a good idea. I probably should've turned around then but…well, you know…pride, emotion, stupidity and all that.

The banging got louder and I saw a pair of legs, sticking out from under the Impala. I waited till there was a break in the noise.

"Do I call Castiel and ask him to take me home?" I said loudly and I heard a slight thump from under the car.

The legs wriggled out, followed by the rest of him, a smear of oil under one eye. "Do what you want. What makes you think I care what you do?" he asked, wiping his hands on his jeans and levering himself upright, turning to look into the open engine bay, his back to me. I looked at the stretch of his shirt across wide shoulders for a moment and then gave up.

"The right question was 'is there anything about me you don't like?'," I said, hoping he'd remember the previous evening. There was a lot I didn't remember about it, but that was something I did.

It was, I think, lucky he not only remembered the little scene from the previous night but also managed to connect it to what I'd just said. A lot of people might not have and trying to then explain it would've really ruined the moment.

He turned around, leaning on the car's side and just looked at me. I looked at the ground, dirty concrete with deep oil stains and cracks in the cement.

"Do you want me to go?" I couldn't get any blunter than that.

"That's not my call," he said expressionlessly. "You don't want to be here, you should go."

It wasn't the answer I was expecting and it was not the answer I'd wanted. But – and you know I should've known he'd turn a straightforward question back on me if he wanted to hedge his bets – it felt like a slap and I felt my face flush with heat for the third time that morning. I nodded fast, hoping that might cover the eruption of colour that was positively burning in my cheeks. "Right."

Maybe you think I let the conversation go too easily. Maybe I did. At that moment, the only thing I felt was an incredulity that I'd let myself get trapped into not only admitting what I felt, but also…somehow…making a decision about leaving when it was the furthest thing from my mind – and all that was on top of a bone-deep embarrassment that I'd gotten it all so wrong. I swung away, and headed for the shed door, my head down.

No footsteps behind me, no call out. Just silence and instead of turning for the house, I went the other way, down the long alley of stacked, junked cars and headed down to the makeshift shooting range at the back of the property. I crossed over the iron tracks, buried around the house, without looking at them or even thinking about them.

Slowing down as I got close to the high wire fence, I looked around, wondering what the heck to do next. There was a hole in the fence and beyond it, the fields gave way to marsh, thin woods surrounding them on two sides. I wasn't really thinking, I mainly wanted to get away and try and figure out what had just happened, and I climbed through the hole without another second's hesitation, walking for the woodland.

More than anything else, I guess I was just feeling pretty stupid. I'd made something that wasn't there into something I'd cared about, and let's face it, we all know how that feels. I mean, who was I anyway? Not a hunter, not anyone who could actually help the Winchesters in their business or even, it seemed obvious now, on a personal level. I didn't have any special skills or knowledge to offer, now that my knowledge of what was going to happen had gone…and, I thought flatly, even that had been of pretty dubious use.

Looking back over my shoulder at the receding house and yard, I remembered the feeling of home I'd gotten, coming in the previous evening. That was a pipe-dream, I told myself. Bobby had better things to do than teach me how to research and it wasn't my home. It belonged to the three of them. Besides, Lauren was going to be a better researcher than I could ever hope to manage.

If you think this all sounds like I was feeling pretty darned sorry for myself, well, you'd be right. I reached the edge of the trees and found a narrow deer trail, wandering deeper into the woods without paying much attention to where I was going.

Six years of more or less obsessing about the show and the characters and I'd just gotten carried away when I'd gotten here, I told myself firmly. It wasn't anything more than that. An accident. Or a mistake, depending on how you looked at it. One that at least could be rectified if Cas returned. I didn't belong here.

That thought stopped me dead and drained every bit of energy I had. I sat down on a log, just off the trail and made myself face it. It was true. I didn't belong here. The powers of the Fate, of the angel, they hadn't affected me and the portal hadn't even recognised me as human. If you're looking for signs, well, they don't come more solid than that, do they?

I don't remember the moment that I'd fallen in love. Maybe it hadn't been a moment, but a series of them, an accumulation of things that had added up that way. It probably wasn't all that important. And, I reminded myself again, without reciprocation, it wasn't love either. Just another crush. Just a longing for something that was as unattainable here as it'd been in my world. Well, not as unattainable, since in my world, Dean Winchester was, after all, a fictional, imaginary character, but it might as well have been. You can't make someone love you, no matter how much you think you care about them.

I ummed and aahed for a while, wondering if I had the guts to pray to the angel. In the show, Cas came when he felt like it, although for Dean, he usually made the effort. I didn't know if he'd come just because I was asking. I also didn't know if I was sure I wanted to go. I was sure I didn't want to be here if no one wanted me here.

I didn't have a watch, or even the phone on me, and I looked around, seeing that the shadows had changed their positions and realising slowly that I must've been out here for a while. I could talk to Sam about it, I thought, getting to my feet, and letting memory retrace my steps through the trees back to the yard. At least I thought he'd be honest, whatever his opinion.

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

I climbed back through the fence and walked along the alley of cars, still trying to work out what I was going to do when a shout ahead of me brought my attention back to where I was.

"The hell you been!?" Dean yelled, walking fast toward me down the lane, his expression thunderous. I slowed down and he sped up, stopping in front of me with a suddenness that made me take a half-step backward. He saw it, and scowled, looking away.

"Goddammit! We thought –" he grated, waving one hand at the house. "Bobby wants to see you."

I looked down and sidled past him, noting the lump in the ground where the track was buried, and abruptly getting what the rage was about. It was dumb, I know, but I hadn't been thinking of Crowley or anything else, just needing some time on my own, away from it all. I guessed that they'd looked everywhere they could think of but hadn't thought I'd be stupid enough to leave the protection surrounding the house. Another black mark.

"I'm sorry," I said, risking a sideways look at the man slamming his boots into the ground apace with me. "I –"

He shook his head and peeled off at the shed, leaving me to walk the rest of way by myself. This time, I didn't try to ascribe a reason for his anger. He was pissed because he'd had to waste time looking, I decided.

Sam was on the porch when I came up the steps and he looked worried. "You alright?"

I nodded. Nothing had happened, it was the could've-beens that were bothering them. They might bother me too, a bit later, when I thought about it.

"Sorry, I went for a walk."

"Bobby got a call from Eleanor's lawyer," he said, bringing me up to date as we went into the house.

Bobby's face was drawn as well when I came into the dining room and he walked straight to me, hugging me tightly. I hugged him back, murmuring a heartfelt sorry against his cheek.

"Don't do that again," he said gruffly, stepping back, his hands gripping my shoulders as he looked down at me. "Give me a friggin' heart-attack."

Behind him, Lauren was standing by the table, dressed to go, I thought, and smiling slightly.

"What about Eleanor's lawyer?" I asked him, and he shook his head.

"Estate's been finalised and she left me her library," he said, glancing back at me as he turned away to pick up the ancient, leather Gladstone sitting on the table. He didn't have to add what an incredible research bonus a library like that would be, and I nodded.

"I'm heading to 'Frisco, and Lauren's going back to the university to mend her bridges with her colleagues," he added. "Shouldn't be mor'n a week."

I looked at Lauren. "Are you staying there?"

"No," she said, and I didn't miss the look she shot Sam. "Just going to arrange for a leave of absence and get the rest of the materials I've been gathering, Bobby can pick me up on the way back."

"I could come along," I suggested to Bobby, not sure why I was offering, other than the image that lurked behind my eyeballs, Dean's face, pissed as. "I could help?"

He looked at Sam briefly then back to me. "No, you're all lit up like a Christmas tree at the moment, Therese, no way of warding you permanently against Crowley till your back heals up. You'd be a liability for this trip, sorry." He shouldered the bag and looked back at Sam. "Tell your brother to get over it and make sure the three of you stay safe."

I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but Sam nodded, walking with them down the hall and out onto the porch.

I stood in the dining room, the realisation dawning slowly on me that my moment of complete uselessness had finally arrived. Not only could I not help, but I was actually a little beacon to the King of Hell.

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

Two days later.

Un·com·fort·a·ble. adj. 1. Experiencing physical discomfort. 2. Ill at ease; uneasy. 3. Causing anxiety; disquieting.

All of the above.

Dean came in on dark. Sam and I were making dinner, and I'd managed to steer the conversation to practically every other subject in the known universe over the course of cooking, but the minute his brother walked into the house, slamming the front door, he turned and looked at me speculatively.

"What's going on?"

I gave him a hollow, humourless laugh and the truth. "Absolutely nothing."

"He overreacts when he's scared, Terry," he told me, holding his hand out for a plate. I passed it to him and shook my head.

"He wasn't scared," I said, remembering the way he'd looked. "He was pissed that I wasted time – his and yours and Bobby's and Lauren's."

"Nope." Sam ladled out gravy to cover the slices of roasted chicken and gave me back the plate. "He thought you'd been grabbed. He called Cas, you know."

I didn't know what to say to that. I carried the plate to the table in a bit of a daze, setting it in front of Dean without looking at him and turning back to the kitchen.

"Why couldn't he find me?" I asked Sam in a low voice as I took another plate and a bowl of mashed potato from him.

"He didn't show." Sam took the rest, balanced along his arms like a professional waiter. "It didn't help the situation."

Didn't show, I thought as I dawdled back to the dining table after Sam and set the bowls and plate down. What did that mean?

"How's the car?" Sam asked, obviously determined not to eat in silence.

"Good," Dean said, his eyes lifting to his brother and returning to his plate. "Ready to roll."

"Good, 'cause I found something – in Michigan," Sam said casually, cutting up his chicken.

"What kind of something?"

"Our kind of something." Sam ate a mouthful and looked at him calmly.

I looked from Sam to Dean from under my brows, trying to work out the undercurrent between them. The last couple of days had been uncomfortable. Dean had been working non-stop on the car, coming in for meals sometimes, sometimes not. Sam and I had divided up Bobby's books and the laptop and the phone and had been calling every college and university across the country, looking for academics, experts, specialists in esoteric-natured studies who might fit the profile of an ultra-terrestrial being masquerading as a person. As you can imagine, it was like trying to find out if aliens were real. And about as successful.

I didn't look at Dean. He didn't look at me. We both usually managed to find good reasons to leave the room if the other appeared and had so far not spoken a single word to each other – not even 'pass the butter' – since Bobby had left. Sam watched both of us like a hawk and had kept his opinions to himself, at least until today.

"We're supposed to be laying low and waiting for Bobby," Dean said through a mouthful of mashed potato.

"Yeah, well, you're ready to start climbing the walls," Sam argued. "And we could all use a few days of doing something constructive instead of getting nowhere."

Keeping his gaze on Sam's face, Dean said, "We can't leave Dorothy here."

Sam's nose wrinkled up a little bit. "No, she'll have to come along."

"Well, that's impossible, so think of something else."

"Not impossible," Sam told him, looking at me. "I can't put another sigil over the other one, but we could do another one further down."

"Sure," Dean snorted. "Carve her up."

"I don't mind," I said, more to annoy him than because I really wanted to be covered with scars, I admit. I looked back at my plate and swallowed a bit uneasily at the memory of the pain.

Dean muttered something under his breath that I didn't catch but Sam appeared to. I saw him frown.

"There's no other choice anyway, Dean," he said to his brother. "She's a sitting duck without that protection."

"Whatever." Dean pushed his plate aside. "What's the job?"

"Some guy got mashed in Dearborn, looked like a hit and run."

"So?"

"He was in his tenth-floor apartment at the time," Sam told him dryly.

Dean's eyes narrowed slightly. "Alright, you got my attention."

"Reported at midday, guy didn't show for work," Sam said, getting up and getting the laptop from the kitchen table. "According to the report filed, none of the neighbours heard anything, but the reporter got a cop off-the-record to show him the autopsy photos and he had a nice clean indentation from a Ford grille across his chest and legs."

He put the computer down and turned it around. "Slammed him between the grille and the wall."

I got up as well, picking up the cleaned plates and walking around the table to glance over their shoulders at the image on screen. "That wasn't printed."

Sam glanced at me. "No, I called the reporter and he emailed it. He's never going to be able to print that."

Dean hunched forward and stared at it. "Witchcraft?"

"Could be," Sam agreed, relaxing a little. "Or spectral."

Carrying the plates back to the kitchen I wondered which was more likely.

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

"Keep still!" Dean ordered and I froze.

I was hunched over the arm of the sofa, my shirt pulled up and my lower back aching fiercely and dripping from the ice he'd used to try and mitigate the pain. Sam had been going to do it, then he managed to slam his hand in the front door and he was watching from the desk, hand bandaged up, forehead furrowed.

I tucked my face into my forearm and waited, taking in deep breaths because Sam had told me that it relaxes the muscles. I was hoping he was right.

The ice helped. For a few minutes, anyway. Apparently there are more nerves in your lower back than in the upper back. Something I didn't know. I didn't feel the first few cuts, but it was ridiculous to imagine that Dean could keep icing the skin at the same time he was cutting and the cold started to wear off, taking the numbness with it.

I went beyond deep breathing into hyperventilation pretty quickly. It wasn't that Dean wasn't as gentle, or that Sam had been better at it. Looking back, I guess it was probably a combination of being stressed and anxious for a while, feeling over-emotional and very vulnerable to a situation I didn't seem to have much control over, and the fact that there are indeed more nerves in the lower back. I tried to think about happy places I'd known and failed miserably. I tried to distract myself by remembering lyrics to songs I'd loved as a teenager and that worked about as well. I tried everything I could think of to not feel what was going on, but none of it helped and then I tried to minimise the involuntary shudders that each cut brought, tensing up more and more and, needless to say, probably making it all that much more painful.

Dean went faster, the circles finished, I thought, but the symbols still be done. I felt him mop up the blood as it trickled down my back, felt my skin twitch away from the blade, and heard him curse as a bad twitch caught the tip of the blade and jerked it. I don't know how I stopped from screaming at that one, it felt like being jabbed with a red-hot wire – not that I've ever been jabbed by a red-hot wire, you understand, but in my imagination that's what it felt like – and he pulled back, his breath making a funny whistling sound as it came out.

"Dean –" Sam said, his voice low and worried. There was an answering non-specific grunt from behind me and I felt the scalpel touch my skin and I'm ashamed to tell you I started to cry at that point and I couldn't stop.

Maybe someone stronger wouldn't have minded. Maybe it was just a physical reaction that no one could be expected to control. I don't know. I remember that every cut had felt worse, and I mean, really worse, unbearably worse. It wasn't just a matter of letting the tears out either, I was sobbing, unable to take a breath, probably moving all over the place, making it harder…I had a set of half-moon cuts in my forearm that I didn't notice until later, driving my fingernails so hard into my skin to try and stop from moving at all.

"FUCK!"

The cutting stopped, the scalpel clanging in the metal dish Sam had filled with alcohol and I felt the sofa spring up as Dean got up, heard his footsteps going out of the room and the front door slamming so hard it shook the house, all of it underneath the noise I was making.

Sam moved from the chair to the sofa and I cried harder when he sluiced my back with something cold and wet, patting it dry and putting a dressing over the top.

"It's all done, Terry," he told me, his voice very soothing. For some reason that made it hurt more and I had to bite back a howl. Yep, felt like a five-year old getting a needle for the first time, and with about as much control over myself as one.

Someone, I guess Sam since he was the only other person in the room, stroked my hair, and like said five-year old, it gradually calmed things down. The pain didn't go away but it became more bearable and my outburst became hiccups. A fistful of Kleenex brushed my cheek and I took them, blowing my nose and wiping my cheeks, glad of them because I'd covered the arm of Bobby's sofa and my sleeve in copious quantities of snot with all the bawling.

"Lemme see that," Sam said, pulling me upright and taking my arm. He wiped the blood from the nail cuts and cleaned it up, putting a thin dressing over it. "Sssh. It's over now."

I wanted to tell him that I liked his bedside manner but I couldn't get any words out. A couple of pills were pressed into my hand and I looked at them, taking the glass of water he handed me and tipping them into my mouth, washing them down.

"See if you can get some sleep," he said, retrieving the glass as my hand started to shake again. "We'll get going in a few hours."

There still seemed to be an awful lot of tears dammed up in my throat and I nodded, easing myself back down on the sofa, lying on my side. The sofa cushion rose again slightly as he got up. I kept my eyes shut, hoping that would keep the tears in check until I heard him leave the room at least. When the door shut, I let the rest of them out.

I guess the physical pain had only been a trigger, really, or a metaphor or whatever you wanted to call it. The real pain was still inside and I still didn't look at it, even though I got rid of a lot of the unacknowledged grief with that one embarrassing outburst.

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

The drive from Sioux Falls to Dearborn took about ten hours and Dean drove the whole way, through the night and into the morning, Sam sitting in the passenger seat and me trying to find a place that didn't touch my back in the rear seat.

He stopped twice, for gas and coffee, and each time Sam passed me another couple of pills so the journey for me was a bit fuzzy, dozing in a twilight state of mind as the miles passed. I heard them talking, from time to time, Dean's voice deep and harsh, Sam's conciliatory. I couldn't hear what they were talking about but I guessed it was probably the job.

On the last gas stop, both Dean and Sam left the car, and I must have fallen asleep. The twin screak-and-clunks of the doors opening and closing woke me, and it was disorienting to see that it was light outside and they were both in suits. I couldn't think where I was for a moment.

"Police station?" Sam asked Dean.

"Yeah, I'll drop you, take the morgue."

I managed to sit up, Dean's gaze meeting mine in the rear view mirror for a second before he looked away.

"Where are we?" I asked, looking at the tangle of streets as Dean pulled out of the gas station.

"Dearborn," Sam said. He passed the laptop over the back of the seat, dropping it beside me. "How're you doing?"

I wasn't quite sure how to answer that. Fuzzy, I considered then rejected as being too vague. Tired was another possibility but it didn't really cover it.

"Okay," I decided on in the end, leaning forward and resting my arms along the back of his seat. It was hard work remembering not to lean back despite the instant agony that brought.

Before my open-back surgery, Sam had gone over the job with me, at least his speculations and the newspaper reports he'd found. The victim, a Matthew Hammond, forty-three, had been in his apartment, discovered two days later by the land-lady when his work had called her. That was about all the information Sam had found before we'd left.

Dean wound his way through the streets and found the police station, Sam getting out and going in as we pulled away again. The morgue was attached to the local hospital, three blocks away and I braced myself as the car stopped in an empty parking space. The consensus was that since I was once again warded, and the car was warded, it would be safe enough for me to stay in it. Going into a hospital with my current hobbling gait might draw attention, Sam had told Dean when he'd argued about it.

"Don't leave the car," he said, catching my gaze in the mirror again, his focus moving instantly. "In fact, don't do anything."

I felt like I should apologise to him, but I didn't know what for. Having to put up with me making a tough job much harder, I thought. I had the feeling he didn't want to think about it again. So, instead, I nodded obediently and watched him get out of the car, lock it up and walk fast across the parking lot to the hospital entrance. It seemed weird to be sitting in front of a hospital, my back sore, but knowing that not only was there nothing that a doctor could do for it that Sam hadn't already done, but that it would attract the worst kind of attention if I dared to show anyone anyway.

I looked down at the laptop and decided to see if I could find out anything more about the victim while I waited. It was probably a bit of a geeky response to the situation, I guess, but the fear that I didn't belong here, the knowledge that I wasn't of any help to anyone here, was nagging at me and to be honest, I was looking for any way I could do something useful.

To my surprise, there was quite a bit to be found on Matthew Hammond and when I started reading through the first couple of articles, I reached around for my bag, pulling out my note binder and started making notes.

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

The Rainier Hotel had seen better days, I thought, following Sam into the room. The plaster had been patched and painted over, a pale green that for some reason reminded me of hospital cafeterias. To the left, a thick arch divided the kitchenette from the main room, and on the other side of the second double bed, an open door showed a slice of an old-fashioned bathroom sink. A long four-seater sofa took up the wall next to the kitchen and I figured that was where I'd be sleeping. There was a stiffly brocaded armchair near the small kitchen table that I thought would probably suit me better. I could hang over the arm like a cat.

"EMF reading off the scale, some kind of red dirt in dribbles around the place, Dean found an AA token and we've got the guy's credit card bills with a monthly charge coming up at a place called Jane's," Sam said to me over his shoulder as he dumped his satchel on a chair at the small table.

"Well, I can tell you that Matthew Hammond was a member of AA since he got out of jail," I said, looking longingly at the bathroom and back to Sam as his mouth opened. "DUI and manslaughter, June 3rd, 1997, he ran over his neighbour's little girl and killed her on their driveway. Served four years of an eight year sentence and was paroled 2001."

Dean looked up from the phone book he was holding. "Jane's looks like a florist, downtown."

"Flowers for the grave?" Sam's brow creased up. "Why wait ten years before popping the guy?"

Shrugging, Dean tossed the book back on the nightstand and grabbed his takeout container of coffee. "Maybe the cemetery was disturbed? Maybe he fell off the wagon? Does it matter? We got a ghost kill and a grave."

"Do we know where she's buried?" Sam asked him.

"Northview Cemetery, 600 Kensington Street, plot 171," I said, reading from my notes. I looked up at the silence to see both of them staring at me. "What? Northview's online and I didn't have anything else to do while I was waiting."

"Alright," Dean said, finishing his coffee and pulling off his tie. "Got a grave to take care of tonight, I drove all night, you two just…do whatever you're gonna do quietly."

He flopped back onto the bed and less than a minute later was snoring softly.

"This seem off to you?" Sam asked me, frowning at the laptop again.

"He got nailed for drunk driving and he clearly felt remorse for what he did," I said slowly, sitting on the opposite of the small table from him. "Fourteen years of paying for flowers every month isn't the action of someone who didn't care. If something was going to happen, I would've thought it would've before now, but Bobby said that time is practically non-existent for ghosts?"

"Yeah, I guess." Sam shut the laptop and looked over his brother. "You should see if you can sleep too, Terry."

I shook my head. I was tired, but sleeping wouldn't help it. "I can't," I told him. "Not here, not –" My gaze slipped across to the man sleeping on the bed. "– not now."

Sam looked at me, worry making his forehead wrinkle. "Terry –"

"How 'bout we go get a decent breakfast?" I cut him off as quickly as I could. It was almost one o'clock but that was really a pretty minor point.

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded, getting up and grabbing his coat. Dean remained asleep on the bed and I closed the door of the room quietly behind me and heard the lock click.

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

Sam pushed and poked and prodded as we found a diner down on Michigan and ordered our food. He asked me obliquely and forthrightly and tried to get me to tell what I was feeling about his brother in a round-about way. It was a bit exhausting but I did manage to keep fudging him off, either changing the subject or deliberately misunderstanding the questions or just not answering at all. The service was incredibly slow and the afternoon was disappearing, but the conversation didn't falter. About half-way through eating our meals, he decided to try and different approach.

"What do you think of Lauren?" he asked, crunching on his salad.

"In what way?"

He looked away, and I caught a half-hidden smile behind his fork. "Oh…"

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he was falling for another non-human, and I swallowed the words hastily. In reality, this reality, Lauren had gone through Purgatory's portal with no trouble and from the little I knew of them, at least the mythology back in my world, the nephilim had always had souls, as well as at least some of the powers of their angel fathers.

"I think she's incredibly beautiful, very intelligent and a nice woman," I told him, picking up the remains of my burger and taking a bite.

"So, um, it wouldn't…uh…bother you, at all, if…um…" he said to his salad and I rolled my eyes. It could've been a family thing, I guessed, the inability to articulate a personal question.

"Sam," I said, leaning forward and making him lift his eyes to mine. "I'd be very happy for you if you found someone to care about and who cared about you the same way. You deserve it."

He blinked, looking away again. "Uh…"

"Those memories, of us," I said, swallowing my food and washing it down with the coffee. "I don't know why you ended up keeping them, but maybe it was just to have memories of a relationship that didn't end up…you know…horrible?"

"Maybe," he said, examining his food again. "It's a mess in there."

There was something in the way he said it, something furtive and unhappy that made my attention zero in on him. He knew I'd seen what had happened to him in Hell. "Sam, everything in your life, everything you've seen and done and experienced, that's all culminated in making you who you are, right this minute."

I don't think he was expecting that, because he looked up again, forehead furrowing up in readiness for an argument.

"Who you are now, is a good person, someone who cares about others and is always willing to risk his life for them," I continued hurriedly. "Do you know how rare that is?"

I felt like some kind of Oprah fraud, but it wasn't like I wasn't telling the truth. And it sure blew his questions about his brother out of the way.

"I made those choices, Terry," he said, giving up on the salad and pushing it to one side. "Of my own free will, I chose to do what I did."

"And you're the only one who can forgive yourself for that," I told him, lowering my voice as a waitress went by. I reached out and took his hand. "Sam, I know this sounds preachy and all that bullcrap, but in my – okay, limited – experience the only way you can get ever get out from under something like this is figuring out why you did it, understanding those reasons and allowing yourself those mistakes. Nobody's perfect. You have to find a way to not let it become everything you are. 'Cause you're not," I added, squeezing his hand. "Whatever choices you made that's not all you are, it's not all you can be."

"Sounds easy," he said, looking down at my hand.

"I know, and I know it's not, but pretending not to have those regrets, pretending that you're either all bad and you deserve nothing, or that it didn't happen and forcing you into lying to the people you care about, that's not gonna work. You can trust me on that."

He looked at the table and eased his hand from mine, waving it vaguely at the empty plates. "We done here?"

"Yeah, we're done," I said, finishing my coffee and putting the cup with the plate.

We walked back to the car in a silence that might've been pensive. I wasn't sure he'd believed what I'd said. Wasn't sure it was the whole answer for him either.

It was about nine blocks up and down the streets back to the hotel and we stopped to get Dean a burger and a six pack along the way. When we got out, Sam took the food in one hand and dropped his arm over my shoulders as we climbed the stairs from the lobby to the room.

"Would you forgive yourself for what I've done?" he asked me as he put the key into the lock and turned it, his voice low and his head close to mine as the door swung open.

I looked up at him and smiled. "Yeah, I would. It wasn't deliberate and you never even saw it coming, Sam. Nobody knew how –"

"Where the hell you been?!" Dean demanded, getting up from the table and looking at us with a deepening scowl.

Sam's arm slid from my shoulders and I took a step away from him without even thinking about it.

"Went to get some food," Sam said, pulling the key from the lock as I took the burger in its bag over to the table. "Brought some back for you."

Dean looked at the bag, his gaze skating over me and settling on his brother and I decided it was a good time to visit the bathroom. I could still hear them as I closed the door, leaning up against the inside of it.

"You take the car and leave your fucking phone?"

"What's the big deal? You were asleep."

"For four fucking hours!" Dean yelled. "How's it take that long to get food?! I thought we were on a job here –"

I moved away from the door, turning the taps on full. I didn't want to hear anything else.

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