CHAPTER 4

Dean stood just inside the doorway and watched Lily hugging her boys. They were tolerant of her grip on them, but Dean could tell they were chomping at the bit. The doctor was still talking to Bobby and his brother. Finally, Lily smiled at them.

"Have a really great time. I'll see you the day after tomorrow." She gave them one final kiss on the forehead and let them go. They dashed out of the house toward a car parked at the curb.

The doctor shook Bobby's hand again and turned to follow the boys out the door. He stopped in the doorway, and once again, smiled at Lily. "I promise they will be fine. Other scout troops are going to be there so we'll be having a small get together with the rest of them. Call Dave if you need to."

Lily just smiled at him tightly and nodded as he turned to leave. She closed the door and just leaned against it for a moment.

She wiped her eyes before she turned around to meet the stares of the men still in her house.

"Lily…" Dean started, but she held up her hand.

"I'm fine, really. The lingering separation anxiety is more on my part than theirs and I agreed to this. The boys are ready and I couldn't hold them back any longer." She took a deep breath, which sounded slightly wheezy, tried again to smile, and said "This is my problem, not theirs. Children are waaay more resilient than adults. Anyway… can I help you with anything else? I suppose you have more questions."

"Oh, just a few." Sam smiled at her. "The first one is: What's extreme couponing?"

Lily laughed, tension melting from her shoulders, looking grateful for the opportunity to let out a genuine laugh. "Well, come into the kitchen. I've got to get the rest of those groceries organized. Thankfully, a crew from the food bank will be coming for them in a bit. I'm keeping some of that stuff for myself, though, and I need to find the right bags."

An hour later, the groceries were sorted, the crew from the church came and got the rest and Sam's curiosity was appeased. Lily then led the men into her living room. It was not as large as the kitchen, but it was homey and neat. She sat down and waited for the young men to start the conversation.

Dean was looking at the floor and she could tell he was mentally looking for an opening. Sam appeared to be waiting for Dean to take the lead. She turned to Bobby with whom she had not yet spoken directly, but he too, was looking at the floor.

She smiled as she watched them dither, and decided to take the conversation into her own hands.

"I must say, I expected the third degree from you guys. The chronicles show you as never being without some gambit or strategy. You all appear to be able to think on your feet." She turned to Bobby. "You're in the books nearly as often as the boys. I feel like I know you, too, but today you seem different. I mean, from what I've read."

To Sam and Dean's surprise, Bobby blushed. He cleared his throat and looked away, then looked at Lily directly. She could not interpret what she saw in his face, but it was intense. Both Sam and Dean were surprised by it and Dean, taking pity on Bobby, cleared his throat then and looked at Lily. "I like your boys. They seem pretty cool. But…are you seriously raising them as hunters?" he asked tightly. He couldn't help the tone in his voice, though he knew it was disapproving and probably out of line.

Lily swallowed tightly, averting her gaze for a brief moment. "Yeah, they are…pretty cool. But, no, I emphatically do not want them to be hunters," she said, her gaze heavy when she looked back to Dean. "We just found out the things that go bump in the night are real and I wanted them to be prepared to handle things. Maybe it's because of the event, but teaching them, or rather getting someone to teach us, gives them some control over their own lives. Makes them feel safe. All of the teachers I've hired for them have been given edited information so that they can understand why we need to learn these skills."

"You know, before the event, I was a plus sized woman," Lily told them, a smile flickering across her face. "PTSD is really hell on the appetite. So I used it to get myself to this point." She rubbed her face, "I figure there are two ways to go in that sort of situation. You can either be a victim for the rest of your life, or… you can take it back somehow. I knew that if I decided to be a victim I'd loose myself and my boys. I couldn't do that to them. So we all decided to take it back." Her expression was fierce.

"Anyway, the boys were never pudgy; they never had baby fat. They were always these long, lean bodies. But they weren't very athletic and I could just see them gaining weight as they grew up. They were gamers and couch potatoes. Both of them played organized sports, either through the school or the church. But they were never the star athlete. For them, PTSD caused them to focus on protection; protecting each other, but me especially."

"They refuse to play school or church organized sports now, but I really insisted that they continue the Boy Scouts. Once they agreed, they were happy about it. They really enjoy the camaraderie of their friends and the guidance of the men who lead them, plus all of the activities. Add to that, a lot of the skills they are learning go toward protection and survival."

"You know, the only skills they don't have yet are mechanics and working with power tools. Mark would have been the one to cover that area." At their blank looks, she said, "Their dad."

"What about the video games?" Sam asked quietly.

"They haven't touched a game consol since…then. Their dad was the gamer, not me. They don't sit around and watch TV much anymore, either." Lily read the next question on their faces, shifting in her seat on the chair. "Their dad and I were divorced. As these things go, it was pretty friendly. He had remarried, so they had a stepmother. I liked her because she treated my boys decently. Their dad's body was never recovered," she whispered.

"You said earlier that you caught a demon on the front porch?" Bobby was still looking at her with searching eyes. "Did you know the vessel?"

Lily nodded slowly with a mournful expression, staring at the floor. "It was my sister-in-law," she tried to breathe deeply, but coughed instead. "At first I was so happy to see her! She had tears in her eyes and I stepped out to hug her. She couldn't hug me back. The trap was too small for her to move much."

"When did you put a devil's trap down?" Sam asked.

"I didn't," Lily said, looking to him with wide eyes. "Chuck gave me the door mat as a gift when I moved in. I guess he had heard the boy's names, or maybe he found out about our past, I don't know. I didn't even know who he was! All I know is, he was standing at my door and had this nervous smile and was holding up a Welcome mat." Closing her eyes, and waving her hand a little, she continued, "In my mind's eye, when I think back on it, he never let me see the bottom of it. He held it up with the bottom of it next to his chest." She opened her eyes and looked at all three of them.

Sam wordlessly got up and moved to the front door. He opened the door and stooped down and lifted the mat. There, painted on the bottom, was a reversed devil's trap. If you looked at the image on the bottom, it was backward, but placing the trap down on the porch it would be correct. He looked at Dean and Bobby and smiled. "This didn't work when we tried it on Crowley."

Dean's eyebrows were raised and he looked again at Lily as Sam walked back and sat down. "What happened next?" Dean asked.

"I didn't understand why she wasn't hugging me, so I pulled back to look at her." Tears slid down Lily's face. "Her… her eyes were solid black and her face…fury like I've never seen before. She tried to throw a punch at me, but I reeled back, and I fell on my ass. I-I think I shouted. Both boys came running. I somehow knew it was the mat, so I screamed at them to go get Chuck. And she was…screaming at me. Asking me how I got the trap, how I knew about it. I knew if she got out of it…she would kill me." Lily wrapped her arms around herself and rocked a bit; reliving that terror.

Then, pulling herself together, Lily took a deep breath; again it sounded kind of wheezy. She coughed, "Chuck came running over with the boys and he had a paper in his hand, but he also yelled that he was the prophet Chuck," she said, looking back to the boys. "I-I had no idea what the hell that was about! Then he started reading the words on the paper. Latin! As he was reading the words, Sherry's head was snapping back and forth, and then she threw back her head, screaming and black smoke poured from her mouth. Then she collapsed. She was a school teacher…an earth mother…." Lily shook her head, "She didn't deserve that." She started coughing some more.

She held up a finger indicating she needed a minute, then got up and left the room. She didn't say anything, but she was coughing as she left to go upstairs. A few minutes later she came back down and went into the kitchen. She came back with a tray of glasses with water in them. All three men took a glass each and she took the last one.

"Sorry," she murmured. "After our panic passed, I called 911, I mean, there was a dead body on our front porch! The boys were really quiet; they sat in the living room and didn't say anything. The cops came and I tried to explain what happened, but I was drawing a blank. Finally, I told them she was my sister-in-law and she appeared to be another survivor of… of the event. I told them she arrived on my porch, she greeted me, and then she dropped dead. Chuck just told them he was a neighbor and had seen her collapse and had come over to help. The police tried to talk to the boys, but they didn't say anything."

Lily fidgeted with her hands slightly. "They, uh… didn't speak for almost three days. We started counseling the next week. We got the tattoos and started training then, too." She let out a small, morose laugh through her nose, "We should have been in counseling from the beginning. I don't know what I was thinking."