Chapter 22

It's incredible how fast some people can eat, when you really have the occasion to see it. I was still going, and frustratingly for the other three at the table, so was Bobby, when their cutlery clanged on the china and Dean looked expectantly at the older hunter.

"Well?"

Bobby didn't even look up. "I ain't finished."

Lauren and Sam obviously had the same thought at the same time because they both jumped up, picking up their dishes and taking them to the kitchen. Dean leaned across the table and grabbed the book, flipping it open and staring at it for a moment before he looked up at Bobby.

"The hell's this?"

"Japanese," Bobby said serenely, grinning at him around a mouthful of food. "Knock yerself out."

Leaning back in his chair, Dean slammed the book shut and divided his glowering looks between Bobby and I.

I started to shovel my food in faster, not wanting to give Bobby an excuse if by some chance he finished before me, and was rewarded with a sour look from him.

"Don't gulp your food, Therese, ain't good for the digestion."

Slowing down and keeping my eyes firmly on my plate, I heard Sam's dramatic exhale from one side and Dean's muttered imprecation from the other.

There are no words to describe how awkward those last couple of moments were, but I did manage to finish just ahead of Bobby, and got up, collecting my plate and Dean's and scurrying into the kitchen. I had a weird little ache at the back of my neck, and I tried to relieve it for a moment or two, rolling my shoulders as I leaned against the sink. There was a huffing 'finally!' from behind me as Bobby's knife and fork hit the plate.

"Alright," Bobby said, wiping his mouth and looking around the table. "'Ccording to this, there are three tablets."

"Three?"

Bobby nodded. "One for Hell, one for Purgatory and one for Heaven."

Lauren turned to look at him, her mouth falling open. "Heaven?"

"Seems like," he said, opening the book and reading from it. "God spoke, and the archangel, Metatron, took it all down and hid the tablets on Earth for safe-keeping."

"An' what'd God say?" Dean asked, his tone sardonic.

"From this, it looks like they're instruction manuals," Bobby said, scratching his forehead under the cap. "Nothing specific here but each tablet had all the gen on the planes, who lived there, what they did, that sort of thing."

"So Crowley could be looking for a way to get ahead of the angels?" Sam asked, leaning on the table.

"That'd be my first guess," Bobby confirmed.

"Where are they?" Dean got straight to the point.

"That's the problem. No one knows."

"Great."

"It gets better," Bobby said, closing the book and looking at him.

"Thrill me."

"No one can read them but a prophet of the Word, even if they can be found."

"Awesome," Dean said, shaking his head. "Chuck's been MIA for two years."

Sam pushed back his chair, and Dean looked at him. Nodding without the needing either question or answer, Sam turned to the fridge and got out four beers, carrying them absently back to the table.

"So, this is a dead end," he said slowly, knocking the top off his. "Even for Crowley."

"Maybe not for Crowley," Bobby hedged. "But for us? Yeah."

"Anything in there about Purgatory?" Dean asked, tipping his bottle up and gulping a mouthful. "Like where the natives might be found?"

"No, but it does say that the…uh…'entities of the other planes are visible in different electromagnetic wavelengths'," Bobby read, looking up at them.

"Which would be fine and dandy if we could just get them to stand in front of spectrophotometer," Sam remarked sarcastically.

"Uh, there are military lenses, and even camera lenses for capturing different light frequencies, the invisible ones anyway," I said, giving up on getting rid of the ache and rejoining them at the table. "We used a few on the show, back in the early days."

"We could make something portable," Lauren agreed, looking from me to Sam. "A bit of a Verne stretch, but it's possible."

Sam's eyes lit up as he stopped being negative and started to consider the possibilities. He looked at Dean. "Where'd Caleb keep all that military stuff he stockpiled for Dad?"

Dean frowned at him. "Cleveland, I think."

"He'd have some infrared equipment, wouldn't he?"

Bobby looked at him. "We got mil IR scopes here, they're using thermal imaging, but nearly everything emits IR so I don't know how we'd key the difference."

"We're just gonna blast things that show up in whatever it is you come up with?" Dean asked, looking from Bobby to Sam to Lauren. "How do we know which is which?"

I pulled the book closer. I'd taken four years of Japanese in high school, back when I'd thought that I was going to start an anime film company and rock the socks off the Japanese industry by combining Western outlaw stories with the drawings. Back before I'd realised what a cut-throat industry it was and that my brilliant idea had already been in practise for about five years, that is. The nice thing about Japanese writing is that every kanji it has its own meaning.

"This says that the – creatures – of…um…I think this refers to Purgatory, it's using Limbo…can be seen within the three-hundred and fifty to three-hundred and seventy-five nanometer band of UV light," I read slowly, and a bit awkwardly.

I looked up at the silence that followed that. Dean was glaring at me.

"You can read that?!" he sputtered, ignoring Bobby's bark of laughter from the other side of the table. Sam was gaping open-mouthed.

"Well, not all that fluently –" I back-pedalled madly.

"An' you made us wait for Bobby?!"

"I didn't want to be rude –"

"Agh!"

"Dude, chill," Sam said, shaking his head as he headed out of the room. "That's just the start of the ultra-violet range, isn't it?"

"I think so –"

"Yes," Lauren said on the heels of my answer, getting up and following Sam.

I looked at Dean. "It's Bobby's house," I said, by way of explanation for my apparently treasonous slip.

He huffed a bit more, more at Bobby's grin than an ongoing feeling of betrayal, I hoped, and got up, stalking out through the back door.

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

Two hours later, after I'd cleaned the aftermath of our dinner in a haphazard fashion and had a shower, he found me curled up on the bed, looking through another one of Dr Visyak's books. Sam and Lauren had taken over the search mission for building some kind of device that would let them see the Purgatory natives through whatever human disguises they were wearing, and Bobby was down in the basement, hunting through the junk he said were things that would come in handy, sometime. The Purgatorian's library covered a wide range of topics, but on poking around a bit more thoroughly after the shower, I'd found a big section on Lovecraft, including a first edition of the rare and elusive Necronomicon and despite the floridity and density of the writing style, I was drawn into it, finding all sorts of little tid-bits of information lurking and hiding in between the spells, some of which were utterly fanciful…and some of which were not.

"Hey."

I looked up as he closed the door behind him. "Hey."

"Anything in that?" he asked, walking over to the bed and sitting down, one hand lifting the book to look at the cover.

"Surprisingly, yeah," I said, shifting the massive book up on my knees. "He held a lot of séances."

"To talk to ghosts?" Dean sounded surprised.

"And other…things," I said. I'd tagged the pages where they'd been sections of interest and flipped one open, passing the book to him. Watching him, the lamplight showing up the freckles against his skin, outlining the scars over his face and hands, I had a moment's disorientation, unsure of where I was or what I was doing here.

I might've swayed or something, but he looked over immediately, brows drawing together. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I muttered, shutting my eyes. "Just dizzy for a second."

"All work and no play…" he hinted, closing the book and putting it on the nightstand.

I opened my eyes, feeling my mouth twitch at the corners helplessly at his expression, one raised brow and a suggestive half-smile creasing up his eyes as he looked down at me. My only half-repressed smile disappeared a second later when he got closer, picking up my hand and pressing the inside of my wrist against his lips, all the playfulness in his face disappearing.

I thought it would be, you know, more ho-hum the second time. God knows why. I thought I'd be cooler, not stuck halfway between a panic attack and rolling around like a cat on heat. No idea why I thought that either. To be fair, Dean's expressions, whenever I could focus long enough to see them, were as intoxicated-looking as mine felt, his pulse seemed to be galloping along about neck and neck with mine, it couldn't just have been my breath that was making the weird, raspy, whistling noises in the room…but well, you know, I just didn't expect it to be…so…

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

I woke abruptly, sitting up in the dark room and looking around. Dean was sitting on the edge of the bed, arms braced to either side. His head turned a little as he felt me move, I guess, and he coughed softly, lifting one hand from the mattress.

"Sorry…I…uh, wake you?"

"Was it a nightmare?"

"N-uh-no," he said, his voice croaking. He bowed his head and cleared his throat, turning a little bit further. "I couldn't sleep."

I could see a bare sliver of his face from that angle, not his expression. I could see a gleam though, on the flat plane of one cheek, lit up by the dim light coming through the sheer curtain at window.

"Dean…" I rolled onto my knees, behind him, and touched his shoulder lightly.

He got up, not so fast that it looked like he was running, even though that's what it was. Walking out of the light from the window into the shadows beyond, I watched him stop near the door, and sat back on my heels.

"I'm..." he trailed off and looked around the room, his gaze snagged by something on the floor. Grabbing his jeans, he pulled them on, waving a hand toward the door vaguely. "I'm – I can't sleep," he muttered in a low voice, turning away.

There wasn't anything I could say, nothing I thought of, anyway. Nightmare or just memories, I couldn't tell. The door clicked softly behind him and I sat there, debating with myself over the pros and cons of following him.

He might've just wanted some personal space, some time to himself, I considered. Or it could be some moment or monster from the past had driven him out, downstairs, I thought, to where the whiskey would dull some of it down.

In the show, if I'd seen him do that in this exact scenario, I'd have been sub-vocally mumbling at the actress to not follow him, let him get whatever was bothering him out by himself and come back when he was ready. Here, I couldn't do that.

Where my fingertips had explored his skin, there were scars, thick, twisting ones, over his abdomen and chest and back. The deep claw marks of a hellhound. They weren't there in the show. But they were here. As unambiguous and terrifying as everything else. Scars that like, usually they'd be on a dead body, because if you were torn up like that for real, you'd be dead of shock, blood loss, organ damage…you name it. They had been, of course, on a dead body, I mean. And then Cas had brought him back. Without healing him, either inside or out.

I knew what'd happened, only from what he'd told his brother on a television show in another world, not from seeing it, not from hearing from him. As good as it was, my imagination wasn't up to covering what had happened to him when he'd been down there.

It'll always be a wall there, if you don't follow him, I thought to myself. Something that neither of us has the courage to face.

I knew I couldn't push him to talk. Knew I couldn't do anything other than be there and hope he needed me, in some way. I glanced down at the rumpled sheets pooled around me. Some way other than just this, I amended, leaning forward and sliding off the bed. I turned on the light and found my t-shirt, pulled it over my head and turned off the light again, heading for the door.

He was in the living room, sitting hunched up on the sofa, the bottle and glass in front of him. His eyes widened as I came in.

"Go back to sleep, Terry," he said, his face closing up. He looked back at the table in front of him.

I didn't want to sound pushy, or overly familiar, or anything that might force him further away, so I didn't say anything, just went and sat beside him. After a moment, some of the tension seemed to seep out of his tense posture.

"What do you want?" he asked, very softly.

"I want you to not be alone," I said, surprising myself a bit with the way those words came out. I mean, it was true. I didn't want him to sit down here on his own and drink and go over and over those memories in the dark. But I hadn't thought of it like that on the way down the stairs.

He let out his breath. It was hard to tell if the exhale was impatient or relieved or what. I leaned my cheek against his bare shoulder.

"You can't keep trying to run and hide from your memories, Dean," I said, listening to his breathing. "They won't let you."

He didn't respond but the muscle under my cheek hardened a fraction.

"What did you do that was so wrong?" I asked.

There was a snorting sound. "You know what I did, I broke the first Seal."

"You didn't know that," I told him. "You didn't know that was going to happen."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter, because you're blaming yourself for something no one else is –"

"I broke, Terry," he interrupted harshly, and the pretence of it not mattering was gone. "I couldn't keep going, I wasn't strong enough, not as strong as Dad," he continued hopelessly, then he turned his head, the movement shifting me slightly. "You saw it."

"The only thing I saw was you telling Sam what had happened," I told him. "And what you did, after."

He looked away, his hands rubbing restlessly down the legs of his jeans. "Cut them up, tore them apart."

Seconds ticked past as I tried to think of something to say to that. All the usual platitudes that you might offer someone drowning in their own guilt weren't going to work and I could feel his tension, increasing incrementally as I failed to respond. In my old world, in between re-watching the episodes and doing my job, I'd occasionally read fan-fiction stories, looking mostly for other people who felt the same I did about the characters, who saw them as I did, looking for the ones that had been written with human nature in mind, by writers who could tell me what was going on with my favourite characters. One of them returned to me now, a favourite, the character's distinctive voice coming back strongly as I remembered the scene that had been almost identical to the one I was currently living.

"They weren't innocents, Dean," I said softly.

The muscle I was resting against flexed sharply.

"That makes it okay, then?" he asked sharply. I lifted my head as he turned to look at me.

"Changes the way you're remembering it," I said, hoping I wasn't pushing him further away. "You said that when you – you said the pain you felt fell away."

He frowned, and I had the feeling that this might've been an instance where the writers had paraphrased what they'd seen – or got it completely wrong.

"What?"

"In the show, that's what you told Sam, that it felt good because instead of being on the receiving end, your pain fell away when you were doing it yourself."

"No."

I waited and he reached out for the bottle.

"No," he said again, pouring a couple of shots into his glass. "I didn't tell Sam that."

He swallowed the drink and put the glass down, hands wiping down his legs again.

"When I got out, at first, I didn't remember," he said slowly. "It came back in nightmares, at first. Then, I started to remember when I was awake."

His voice was low, and uneven, and his hands had finally stopped their agitated wiping, curled up in tight fists on his thighs. I tried to be silent and invisible, to make it easier for him to say what it was he needed to say.

"I don't know how Sam found out that I remembered what'd happened down there," he continued after a minute. "He told me it would help, to talk about it." He huffed out some air, as if the thought was ridiculous. "Talking about it doesn't help."

"Not talking about it is killing you."

He didn't look at me or move at all, just stared at the glass in front of him.

"I don't know why I told him, after – after Anna left," he stumbled through the words, shaking his head. "It didn't help me or him. He thought it'd broken me, and he – he was right."

"No, he wasn't," I told him, my voice dropping a bit because my throat was tight.

"Yeah," he said, shrugging. "He was."

I moved closer, forgetting that I was afraid of pushing him away, forgetting that he didn't like to be exposed in his pain or complimented on his strengths or even have anyone notice him that much. I grabbed his shoulder, my fingers digging in a bit to get his attention.

"No," I said through clenched teeth. "You came out of something that would've destroyed most people with everything you went in with intact, Dean." It wasn't exactly the same as the argument in the story now, because something had clicked for me, something I hadn't really thought about before. "You came out still loving your family, still wanting to save people, still wanting and believing in everything you wanted and believed in before, only stronger."

He stared at me, his eyes widening a fraction, probably at my delivery. I was on a roll now though and I couldn't stop.

"You fought for Sam, you fought Heaven for him and to stop the devil from rising so don't think you can sit there and tell you're freakin' well broken because that's not the truth!" I said to him. "You might've been bent and I'm pretty darned sure you feel like you don't deserve anything in this life, anything of your own, anything that you want, but it's not because of what happened in Hell."

"You don't know –"

"You decided you didn't deserve anything for you long before the hellhounds turned up, Dean," I cut him off. "You decided that you were expendable when you looked at Sam's body and couldn't see a way to live without him, without the whole purpose of your life."

From the way his mouth dropped open, I thought I'd scored a hit there. "It was your job, right?" I pressed him. "To take care of your brother, to protect him and keep him safe."

He closed his mouth, his lips thinning out a bit as he bit back whatever had been about to come out.

"You never gave any thought to what you wanted, just decided that it all had to get chucked if it meant you weren't going to be around for Sam." From the expression on his face it was the jackpot, even if he wasn't going to admit it.

"So you accepted the guilt for what you did in Hell," I said, a lot more softly. "You embraced it and submerged yourself in it because it justified not even allowing yourself to think about any of things that were hurting you, pretending to yourself that you didn't need to think about them, that you couldn't have them, because you'd damned yourself…just like you did with Osiris."

He got up and walked out of the room without a word. I heard him stop in the hall, then the sound of his boots on the hardwood floor and the door closing with a final snick of the lock behind him.

A minute or so later, the car rumbled into life and drove away.

Idiot, you're thinking, right? Right.

When I look back, I think, yeah, I probably could've been more tactful, more gentle about what I'd said. I've never been able to find any honest regret for saying it though.

I ignored the pain, ignored the knowledge that it was all self-inflicted, ignored the way that colour and life disappeared from the world in the same moment as the door had closed with that soft sound. I got up and walked back upstairs, along the hall to my room and I shut the door and crawled into bed and curled up as tightly as I could, ignoring the smell of him, of us, on the sheets, ignoring the wetness I was making on the pillow, ignoring absolutely everything until finally, I fell asleep and didn't have to feel anymore.

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

The first thing I noticed in my struggle back toward a conscious state was that even with my eyes closed, there seemed to be a lot of light. The second thing was an even warmth down my back and legs. Then I felt the movement of air against my neck.

I froze in place, not even daring to breathe as I realised that he'd come back.

"You gonna take a breath, or do I have to give you mouth-to-mouth?" Dean said, his hand sliding up from its position on my stomach to sit between my breasts, fingertips pressing lightly against my breastbone.

I let out the breath I'd been holding and sucked in another one with a very unlady-like whooping noise, rolling back against him and forcing him into moving away slightly to give me the room to turn over.

Looking at him, my mouth opened before I realised I had no idea what to say. He took away the need to say anything for the moment.

When I came up for air the second time, he resettled himself comfortably against the pillows and looked at me through half-closed eyes.

"I didn't think…" I said, trailing off as he lifted one eyebrow at me.

"You don't want me here?"

"I didn't think you wanted to be here," I said uncomfortably.

"Guess you got that wrong."

Behind the casual tone and the half-lidded look, there was something else that told me in no uncertain terms that it wasn't the time or the place to push any further. I don't know if that was a side-effect of getting to know him better, or something he was projecting, but I decided that for once, my mouth was going on a leash and I would be content to wait. The stray thought that I might be waiting a very long time to get an answer was pushed away speedily as he leaned close again, and to be honest, no other thoughts had a hope of remaining when he pulled me against him.

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

The coffee was bubbling and brewing in the pot when we came downstairs, and Sam and Lauren were both hunched over their respective computers, on each side of the small kitchen table. I walked slowly to the counter, getting down two mugs and filling them automatically as Dean stopped behind Sam.

"What do you got?"

"Weirdness," Sam said, running a hand through his hair as he looked up at his brother. "In Indiana."

"Details?" Dean asked, taking the mug of black coffee from me as he hooked the chair out with his foot and sat down.

"Check it out," Sam said, pushing the laptop around.

"Wendy Goodson, 36, resident of Prosperity, Indiana, was burned alive while having her hair done at her local hair dresser. Her charred remains indicate electrocution, yet investigators state there were no malfunctions to be found in the dryer or the electrical system of the salon," Dean read aloud. He looked back at his brother. "Definite weirdness."

"Gets better," Sam said, hitting a key on the laptop. "This happened yesterday."

"Residents of Prosperity Indiana are shocked at the death of another one of their residents. Carl Dunlop, 42, died in a hot tub from complete organ failure –" he stopped reading, looking at his brother. "Complete organ failure?"

"Guy was boiled alive in the hot tub," Sam clarified, his nose wrinkling up.

"Awesome," Dean commented and looked back at the screen. "For unknown reasons, Carl was unable to get out of the seemingly normally functioning hot tub and was found by his wife. The state of the body indicated severe temperature rises but no mechanical justification could be found or replicated to explain the death. Police concluded that there were no indications of foul play." He pushed the laptop back to Sam and finished his coffee. "One might be a bizarro-world accident. Two, not a chance."

"My thought too."

"About eleven hours," Dean said, getting up and taking his mug back to the sink.

Sam looked at me, his forehead creasing up. "You okay with this?"

Dean glanced around at him. "What?"

From the corner of my eye, I saw Lauren's head snap up, trying to catch Sam's attention even as I started to make a face at him.

"You know," Sam carried on, oblivious to both of us. "Taking away the man she lo–ow!"

"What?" Dean asked again, frowning at his brother who was rubbing his shin and looking at Lauren grievously. "She what?"

"How long are you going to be?" I cut in, and Lauren, bless her nephilim heart, elbowed her empty cup off the table, the crash as it hit the floor and smashed another nice diversion.

"Damn!" She looked unrepentedly down at the broken pieces.

"'Cause I need to let Bobby know what's going on," I continued hastily, and Dean's gaze swivelled from Sam to Lauren to me, the frown disappearing.

"Uh, I dunno," he said, looking back at Sam who was engaged in a staring contest with Lauren. "Maybe a few days, if we can't get a lead straight away." He looked at me. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," I said, picking up the larger pieces of the cup from the floor, and sneezing violently. That bit wasn't a part of the distraction routine.

"Can I talk to you?" he said, following me back to the sink and watching me deposit the remnants of the cup in the trash can. "Outside."

We went out the back door, Sam's plaintive 'what!?' following us.

Dean looked around the quiet yard. "Stay in the house, okay? Like last time."

I nodded at him. I hadn't been planning on doing anything other than read for the next week anyway.

"Bobby'll be back soon," I said, mainly for something to say. "We'll be fine."

He licked his lips as he looked at me, wanting to say something, I thought, but not wanting to at the same time. Instead, he stepped close and bent his head, the kiss a bit demanding but not lingering.

"Tell Sam to hurry up, we can be there before dark if he gets his ass into gear," he said, taking a step back and pivoting at the top of the steps.

I didn't look back as I walked back through the door, and my attention was diverted as soon as I got in by the sight of Sam with his arms wrapped around Lauren, locked together at the lips.

"Dean wants you to hurry up," I said as I passed them on the way to the living room.

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

It wasn't until the following morning that the reason behind the stiff joints and the sore neck and headaches, the sneezing and later on, the raw, scratchy throat, manifested into a recognisable illness.

By then, of course, it was probably already too late.

I woke up, feeling icy-cold and shivering under the quilt. Not unfamiliar symptoms and I realised that I must've caught something from our supply run into Sioux Falls. Two days fit the incubation period for most things. I wondered blearily if Dean was feeling sick as well, and hoped not. It wouldn't make a case much fun if he was runny-nosed and head-achey.

Getting up, I was a bit surprised by the weakness I felt, but it passed off and I didn't think that much more about it then. I had a shower, got dressed, remembered that I needed to figure out how to get a job, went downstairs to grab a cup of coffee and said good morning to Lauren and Bobby.

That was the last of what I remembered of that morning. Apparently, I'd just picked up a cup, turned around and fallen flat on the floor, out cold.

The next thing I remember, if a bit hazily, was being in Bobby's truck, squashed between Bobby and Lauren, the light too bright and the noise of the truck just about deafening me.

"What the hell is this?" Bobby shouted over the roar of the engine, and I wanted to tell him not to yell because he was pulverising my ear-drums but my tongue felt thick and too big for my mouth and after a second or two, I suddenly realised I was panting like a dog.

"Hurry, she's burning up!" Lauren yelled back at him from the other side and that was it for another unknown length of time.

There was a banging noise and a lot of lights, flickering fast and seeming to shoot over my head, and I closed my eyes, my teeth chattering like crazy as my ear canals and stomach told me I was moving fast, but lying down at the same time. I couldn't make any sense of that.

A moment later, I stopped moving and opened my eyes cautiously, hands moving around my sides and then a stomach-dropping swoop to one side. I turned my head fast and threw up, on someone, I think, although I didn't know who.

"Sorry," I muttered, my stomach heaving again as I smelled the vomit. The next lot came up but there wasn't much there and I dry-heaved a couple of times, wishing I could stop moving because every slight movement was making my head pound and throb and I had the distinct sensation that my eyeballs were pushing themselves out of my eye sockets. I closed them tightly again.

"What's wrong with her?" Bobby's voice growled at someone.

"Sir, are you family?"

There was a slight hesitation then Bobby said, "No."

"Then you'll have to leave," a sharp female voice snapped. "Waiting room. We'll find you when she's stabilised."

It's just the flu, I wanted to say, but I couldn't talk, couldn't even think about talking. Just give me something for the fever and I'll be fine.

"Sir, is she allergic to anything?" another voice asked stridently and I tried to shake my head, but obviously no one was looking at me.

"Don't know," Bobby said gruffly, and I could hear the unhappiness in his voice, that particular unhappiness of someone realising how little they knew about someone else.

"BP's dropping, she's crashing."

"Code!"

"Get out of the way!"

"Jesus, where's the fucking cart?"

"Now! Move it!"

"What the hell is this?"

Fingers were scrabbling on my shirt and I couldn't bat them away, couldn't tell them about what they were seeing on my chest, couldn't do anything.

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

It was dark and I was boiling alive. Like the guy in the hot tub, I thought dazedly, the thought suddenly worrisome. Was I in a hot tub?

A beeping from something nearby nearly made me jump out of my skin, it was so loud.

"Temperature's going up again," an anonymous female said somewhere close by. "Fast."

"T'n, 'ff," I said, out loud, I thought, but the lack of response made me wonder if it had been.

"I know, the acetaminophen isn't bringing it down." Another female voice, further away.

"Get Dr Bradshaw in here, now," the first female said, her voice a whiplash over the beeping, aggravating the headache that was getting worse and worse with every stupid, sharp beep behind me.

"What's going on?" A male voice this time. I tried to open my eyes but they seemed to be glued shut.

"Temperature's rising again and her BP's dropping," the first female voice said tightly.

"Has she regained consciousness?" the male voice snapped the question.

"On and off," the second female voice answered, blessedly quieter than the other two. "She's drifting."

"Ma'am, can you hear me?" the male voice boomed suddenly next to my ear. I would've startled but I couldn't seem to move at all. "Dammit, what's the name on the chart?"

"No name," the first female voice said tartly. "Dropped off. There was an old guy with her but he took off."

"Seeing how she was cut up, that doesn't surprise me," the male voice said sourly. "Ma'am, can you move your hand?"

I couldn't. Couldn't move anything. Couldn't open my eyes. Couldn't explain the scars weren't torture-related, weren't the fault of the old man, were necessary to keep me safe. Couldn't even remember the name of that old man, although his face was clear in my mind's eye, the cap shadowing half of it, a grizzled red and grey beard framing his jaw…

"Cultures came back and it's – well, it's just influenza. B virus." Another voice, this one further away. A light tenor, I thought irrelevantly.

"Can't be, the acetaminophen would've taken the temperature down," the male voice argued. "What about the bloodwork?"

"Normal count, but no antibodies," the first female voice sounded irritated.

"Wha–?"

A whole bunch of beeping, clanging and humming noises came from behind me and that was it.

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

My throat hurt, something was pressing against it, from the inside and a blast of air suddenly inflated my lungs, without my say so, the air rushing back out again.

"What's it say?"

I tried to open my eyes, tried to speak past the clunky stuff in my mouth, tried to lift my hand, when I heard that familiar and reassuring gravelly, gruff voice. Insanely, I felt my eyes fill, the tears squeezing out from under my lashes. I could feel them roll slowly down my cheeks. I could cry but not move. How unfair was that?

"It's just 'flu B virus," Lauren's voice came from somewhere down near my feet, I thought. "She's been given acetaminophen to bring down the fever, but it hasn't touched it."

"Christ, I should've thought of this," Bobby said abruptly. "Not from here, Lauren, no immunity to what we got here."

"But these viruses, they're not differently structured –"

"Different enough," Bobby said. "She's got no antibodies for these viruses, only for whatever's back home, and this is having an effect like a super-flu on her."

"What's your blood type, Bobby?"

"A positive."

"Good, so's hers." There was a noise of something dropping then footsteps.

"What're ya doin'?"

"Getting some of your blood," she said, distantly now, over a rustling noise.

"Why's she on a respirator?" Bobby asked.

"Chart says she has viral pneumonia, probably a complication arising from immunity to the influenza virus. She stopped breathing."

"Why the hell didn't they give her anti-virals?"

"Not effective against the B virus."

Viral pneumonia. It sounded ominous but Lauren seemed confident. I still couldn't move. It didn't feel like I was being restrained in any way, just that I was too weak to do anything.

"Bobby, you have to tell Dean," Lauren said as I felt a sharp prick on the inside of my elbow.

"While he's eight hundred miles away?"

There was a moment's silence and I felt myself drifting away from them. I barely heard Lauren's response.

"She could die here."

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

The lights were still too bright, but my eyes were open. Turning my head, I saw that I was in a room, a couple of machines set up nearby. No tube down my throat which still felt like I'd swallowed a couple of broken bottles.

In the chair by the window, Sam was asleep, head rolled onto his shoulder, hair falling over his face. I looked at him for quite a long time, wondering what he was doing here.

"Hey."

The deep voice was on the other side of the bed and I looked around, seeing Dean standing there, his expression a peculiar mixture of relief, concern and annoyance.

"Don't try to talk," he said, forestalling me as I opened my mouth. "You've been out for a few days," he added, picking up a cup from the nightstand squeezed in between the machines and holding the straw in it against my bottom lip. "Mouth's probably dry and the doc said the respirator tube came out yesterday so it'll hurt a bit."

I sucked the water out through the straw, feeling oddly as if I was sixteen again, drinking a soda. I know, weird association.

"Sam's your brother," Dean continued, his voice dropping. "You were involved with a cult who cut you up." His gaze cut down to my chest for a second. "You understand?"

I nodded. The water felt like heaven, icy cold, taking away the awful taste in my mouth and reducing my tongue's size back down to a regular instead of extra-large. I tried to grasp onto what he was saying. Out for a few days? Since when? Had Bobby called him and they'd come back early?

"Doc'll be here to see you soon," Dean said, putting the cup back as I relinquished the straw reluctantly. "Then we're outta here, okay?"

"Yeah." The word came out in a croak, but it was better than nothing.

"Ah, Miss Macintyre."

The short, slender man in a crisp, white coat appeared from behind Dean, his teeth very white against dark golden skin as he beamed a high-wattage smile at me. Dean moved aside and the doctor slid his stethoscope into his ears, rubbing half-heartedly at the business end before he plunked it against my chest.

"Breathe in," he instructed me cheerfully. "Good, good. Breathe out."

I did as I was told, catching sight of Sam waking from the corner of my eye.

"Sam." I filled the single, raspy word with as much familial love as I could manage and Sam got up and walked to the bedside, his gaze shooting to his brother as he took my hand in both of his.

"Had us worried," he said, and the words seemed loaded somehow. "She alright, Dr Harani?"

"Much improved," Dr Harani said, bobbing his head as he unplugged his stethoscope. "A couple more days' observation, and you can go home."

"That's great," Sam said, squeezing my hand slightly.

"Quite a mystery here, you were," the doctor said to me, still beaming. "We were wondering what on earth could be –"

"Don't want to keep you from your rounds, doc," Dean cut in, his smile completely insincere as he looked at the door.

"I'll come back later," Harani promised, apparently not at all put out by Dean's pointed dismissal.

Dean walked him to the door without seeming to be walking him out, and closed it behind him.

"What meds she need?"

"Not much," Sam said, scanning down the chart with a practised eye. "Bobby's got it or can get it."

"Good, let's go."

The bone-deep fatigue had gone, but I still felt pretty darned wobbly when I pushed the covers back and wriggled on my ass to the edge of the bed. Dean stood close.

"Don't worry, I'll catch you."

I looked up at him. "Never doubted it."

As it turned out, he had to. My legs thought the idea of standing up was hilarious.

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

"So basically, she's like ET – she could die from the common cold here?" Dean's voice, raised and disbelieving, came from the hall as Lauren and I wobbled and stumbled to the living room – well, I wobbled and stumbled, she stayed upright and tried to keep me that way too.

"Something like that," Bobby admitted reluctantly. "Now we know it, a'course, it'll be different, we can get on top of anything 'fore it gets that bad."

"Very reassuring," Dean growled at him. He walked into the living room with the scowl still on his face.

"I'll leave you two alone," Lauren said, taking a look at the scowl and retreating.

I watched her go and looked back up at Dean. "I didn't leave the house."

He exhaled loudly and sat down, suddenly looking tired as he shook his head. "We didn't even think of it," he said quietly.

"It'll be alright now," I told him, as much to convince myself as him. I didn't think living in a plastic bubble was going to fit in with the need to be inconspicuous. And the whole hands-against-the-glass had always struck me as being way too melodramatic. "It'll be fine. I'll be fine."

He rubbed his hand over his jawline and looked down at the floor, not even bothering to argue with that. "I've been thinking, about –"

We both jumped when there was a soft rustle of beating wings and a strong smell of feathers. Cas stood between the sofa and the doorway.

"Dean, Crowley's on his way."

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

AN: My thanks to Heavenli24 for corrections on the erroneous scientific data in this chapter!