Okay, so...my next offering. I like this chapter...It's definitely a turning point...Maybe, sorta. LOL Enjoy.

As always, if you recognize it from the show...it ain't mine.

Bedtime Stories
Part Two

I was in the morgue for the second time that day. Only this time there had been someone there and I'd had to pay the guy for the information I'd needed: the address and the name of the lady who'd gone psycho. Or had been possessed. One or the other.

After I got what I wanted I called Dean and asked him to come pick me up.

"You still at the hospital?"

"Yeah, but I have a lead on where we should go next. It'll be dark soon, so we need to hurry."

"Yeah, okay. Meet us out front."

"Will do. See ya."

It took them maybe five minutes to get to the hospital, where I met them out front like I'd said I would. I handed Dean a piece of paper with the information I'd gotten.

"That's the place we need to go," I said. "An old woman lived there, but she's dead now."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Sam asked. "You think she killed the three brothers?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "But she did kill someone. Ken Watson. Julie Watson was brought in yesterday. She woke up today."

I went through everything I'd gotten from Julie while we drove to the address I'd gotten from the dude in the morgue. When I explained how Julie had seen the little girl vanish into thin air, they quickly got on board.

It took us a while to get to the old woman's house and Julie had been right. She had lived deep in the woods. It was almost dark now and it was getting colder. I could see my breath when I exhaled.

The house had a little one lane road that led to it, a road that looked like it was rarely used. And the house itself was blue and it was small.

"Yeah, it looks like a little old lady lived here," Dean said.

Inside, I noticed that it was old-fashioned. It was like the old cottages that had the kitchen and the one bedroom and that was pretty much it space-wise. There was an old wood stove near the corner and a place for a chimney.

I checked the bedroom while the guys checked the kitchen. The bedroom was less of a bedroom and more a sleeping space in the living room. We didn't really know what exactly we were looking for, so we checked for everything. There was no sulfur, but the EMF went nuts near the window where Julie had said the girl had been.

"So…there was a spirit who stood outside the crime scene and watched?" Dean asked.

"Look like," Sam said.

"What the hell do you make of that?"

"Actually, I do have a theory. Uh, sorta." Good ol' Sam. Brain always working.

"Hit me."

"Well, I'm thinking about fairy tales."

"Oh, that's…that's nice. Do you think about fairy tales often?"

I stopped doing what I was doing and watched the two guys. It was one of those times that Dean was worried about Sam's mental state because of the things that went through his head. And why was Sam thinking about fairy tales, anyway? What did they had to do with the ghost we were hunting?

"No, Dean, I'm talkin' about the murders. A guy and a girl hiking through the woods, an old lady tries to eat them" - carve them up - "that's Hansel and Gretel. And then we've got the three brothers arguing over how to build houses, attacked by the big bad wolf."

"The Three Little Pigs?" Dean asked.

"Yeah."

"Huh. I thought all those things ended with everybody living happily ever after."

"No. Not the originals," Sam said, going into lecture mode. "See the Grim Brothers' stuff was kind of like the folklore of its day, full of sex, violence, cannibalism. It got sanitized over the years, turned into Disney flicks and bedtime stories."

"So, you think the murders are, what, a re-enactment?"

"That actually makes sense if the ghost girl is controlling the situation," I said. "Julie said the girl was around eight. Fairy tale age."

"I'm willin' to bet you top dollar she was at the construction site, too," Sam said.

Dean's face took on the expression of a kicked puppy. "We've gotta do research now, don't we?"

"Come on, a little research never hurt anyone," I said.

"Yeah, yeah."

It was nighttime already so we couldn't really do much other than researching on the laptops. Dean hadn't really said much about me going to the hospital on my own, which was weird because just about two months ago he'd gotten after me for doing stuff on my own and thinking like I was the only one doing the job. Maybe it was because I had been acting more sane lately, not so woo-hoo crazy. Or maybe he was thinking the same thing I was; I'd have to get used to doing things on my own because he wasn't going to be here to do them with me.

We'd made friends with coffee that night and we'd been searching for half the night already.

"So?" Sam asked Dean, who had been using my computer to check local archives from the library. I'd introduced him to the virtual library, which he hadn't known existed and he'd been glad we wouldn't have to visit the library that morning.

"So, what?"

"What'd you find?"

"I've checked every record they had. I found the usual amount of violent childhood deaths for a town this size." Dean sighed and closed the laptop. "Ya wanna know how many were little girls with black hair and pale skin?"

"Zero?" I asked.

"Zero! Ya wanna know how many little girls with black hair and pale skin have gone missing? Right again! Zip, zilch, nada. Tell me you've got something good, because I've totally wasted the last six hours."

"Well, you ever hear of Lilian Bailey? She was a British medium from the 1930's."

I shrugged; I'd never heard of her.

"She got a thing for fairy tales?"

"No, trances," Sam said, and again he was in lecture mode. Sometimes, when Dean was in a good mood, he'd find something for Sam to explain to him or act like he didn't know what Sam was talking about just so Sam would explain, because Dean knew Sam loved explaining things. Then other times…when Dean wasn't in such a good mood…it pissed him off to have Sam explain things. "See, she'd go into these unconscious states where, get this, her thoughts and actions were completely controlled by spirits."

"Spirit possession?" I asked. I remembered dealing with that a while back when Jack had been alive. We'd both almost been burned alive because of it. I shuddered at the memory.

"Yeah," Sam answered.

"You think that's what this kid is doing? Sending Wolf Boy and Grandma into trances, making them go kill-crazy?"

"Seems like it," Sam said.

"That's bizarre, even for us," Dean stated.

So a ghost with black hair and white skin was compelling people to do stuff - bad stuff - and we had no leads. Great.

"Hair as black as ebony and skin as white as snow," I mumbled to myself. "Snow White."

"Did you just quote a fairy tale," Dean asked.

I sighed. "Sadly, yeah. The little girl's Snow White, if Julie's description is anything to go by."

"Okay, um, what about her? I kinda need back-story here."

"Wicked stepmother tries to kill Snow White with a poisoned apple," Sam said. "It doesn't actually kill her, though. It puts her into a deep sleep. So deep it's almost like she's dead."

"Like a coma?" I asked, the pieces coming together. "Dr. Garrison's daughter's in a coma. She was poisoned. He said she swallowed bleach, didn't know how she got hold of the bottle. If the story holds true then Callie, the daughter, was poisoned by her stepmother."

"Yep, step mom poisons the girl, puts her into a deep sleep," Sam said. "What the motive, you think?"

I shrugged. "How am I supposed to know?" I knew in the story it was because Snow White had been the fairest one of all.

"It could be like Misha Barton - Sixth Sense not The O.C."

"What?" Sam asked, because when it came to entertainment he was culturally retarded.

"Hey, you know fairy tales, I know movies. She played the pasty ghost, remember? The mom had that thing where you keep the kid sick so you get all the attention."

"Oh, yeah. Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy. Could be." Of course Sam would know the medical term for it.

"So, say all these years Callie's been suffering silently, because nobody knows the truth about what Mommy Dearest did."

"And after all this time her spirit just gets angrier and angrier, until it finally just starts lashing out."

Okay, now that we'd figured out who it was…maybe…I was more concerned with how we were going to stop her.

"Callie's been in the hospital for eight years," I said. "She's still there, Dr. Garrison's keeping her alive."

"Does make it a bit hard to burn the bones," Dean said.

"Ya think?"

"Okay, so…maybe she wants her dad to know," I suggested. "Maybe we need to get him to listen. Like…call her to him or something. You know, like we did with that priest dude that one time."

"Solid," Dean said. "We can get a few hours of sleep and hit the hospital in the morning."

We did as Dean suggested and got a few hours of sleep before getting up and going to the hospital. They had their FBI ID's just in case.

When we arrived I led them to Callie's room. The door was open and nobody was here so we went in. Callie was a teenager with pale skin and black hair. She looked about sixteen, which would've made her around eight when she'd swallowed bleach. So she fit the description and we found a fairy tale book in the drawer by the bed.

"Obviously her dad reads to her," I said.

Dean nodded. "About a rabid wolf or a cannibalistic old lady. It's enough to drive anyone nuts."

"Yeah. So…how do we explain what's going on to Dr. Garrison?" I asked. "Should we just come out and tell the truth. I mean, we kind of don't have the time to do this gently."

Neither of the guys answered because two EMT's passed the room pushing a stretcher. We hurried after them and heard them calling out the person's vital stats. All I understood was that whoever it was had been attacked by a mad dog or maybe a wolf.

The EMT said the person was a "72-year-old female who had sustained multiple lacerations and puncture wounds."

"Wait here," Dean said to me and then he and Sam took off to go see about the woman.

I was far enough away that I couldn't hear, but I could still see. The EMT had handed the woman off to a doctor and I assumed that they were trying to stabilize her.

Sam and Dean showed the EMT their badges and then a few words were spoken before he handed them a slip of paper from a clipboard he'd been holding. Then they made their way back to me.

"You find a way to stop Callie, a'right," Dean said to Sam. "Do the ritual like Aly said or something."

"What about you?"

"I'm gonna go stop the big bad wolf. Which is the weirdest thing I've ever said." He looked at me now. "Come with me."

We walked silently to the car and then once safe inside I asked what was going on.

"Little Red Riding Hood, that's what Sam said." He gave me the piece of paper the EMT had given him. It had an address on it. "Little girl is probably there; she's the granddaughter. She's…probably next."

"The big bad wolf?" I asked, remembering his earlier statement.

"Yup."

The address led to a house that was about ten minutes away, but with Dean driving it took us half the time. The house had a van in front of it and the house itself was decent sized, two stories.

The door was locked and since we really didn't have time to pick the lock Dean just kicked the door in. I felt something off, but I didn't see anything around that shouldn't be. The girl was here though - the granddaughter. Little Red, she actually had a red hooded jacket on.

Dean, who had his gun at the ready, began to go towards the girl, who was crouched in the corner.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

I was standing behind Dean and taking in the girl's appearance when I was grabbed from behind and tossed pretty much headfirst into the side of a table. I was surprised I didn't see little cartoon birdies circling around my head. I had actually scratched myself, though, because I felt as the blood flowed down into my right eye. That didn't feel too good; it stung like a bitch.

I heard the sound of struggling and then a scream - the girl. I got up, head spinning and watched as Dean was thrown across the room by some guy who had a Wile E. Coyote tattoo on his arm. This was the guy who had attacked the brothers.

He had tossed Dean into a China cabinet and it was completely smashed now. When Dean got back to his feet he seemed to get a handle on the situation, and I was pretty sure Dean could hold his own against this guy even though he was technically possessed, I went to the girl and helped her up.

I noticed she had dirt on her face and also claw marks, like maybe…the possessed guy had scratched his fingernails across her cheek.

"Hey, come on, I'm gonna get you out of here, okay?"

The little girl nodded and stood up shakily and I rushed her out the door. I heard something else smash and I hoped it hadn't been Dean's body doing the smashing.

I made it to the car with the girl and I finally felt my ghost weirdar go off. Callie was around somewhere. Inside, probably.

"Hey, what's your name?" I asked the girl. She seemed twelve-ish.

"Jenny."

"Jenny? Okay, well, Jenny, I'm Aly. And I'm gonna help you, but I gotta go help my friend first, okay? Just stay here with the car. Okay?"

She nodded hurriedly and I rushed back into the house I'd just come out of. When I saw that Dean was okay I felt relief, of course, but then I noticed that he was getting ready to stab the 'wolf' in the chest with scissors.

All of a sudden, though, the guy shouted, "Whoa! Whoa, stop, stop! Where am I?"

Dean's head bowed in relief - he hadn't wanted to kill the guy. Well, he never wanted to kill anyone, but he was willing when there was no other choice. This would have totally been self defense.

Dean lowered the scissors and I assumed Callie wasn't here anymore because I couldn't feel her.

"What's going on?" the guy asked, and, uh, I was totally letting Dean handle that conversation.

I reached the car again and immediately began tending to the little girl. She didn't appear to be hurt badly, but I was going to make sure before I decided she was healthy.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" I asked, gesturing to the claw marks on her face.

"I don't - I don't think so," she stuttered. "I don't understand."

"That man was, um, under the influence of something." I sighed. I needed the keys for the first aid kit that was in the trunk so I could begin to clean Jenny up. True, I could just heal her, but she had dirt - or something - all over her face, and I didn't know if anything had gotten in the wound or not.

"He won't hurt you anymore; my friend took care of it."

The little girl seemed to be doing better than most of the adults I'd seen go through stuff like this. There was no going into shock or refusing to believe what had happened. There was just easy acceptance. She'd gone through something bad, but she wasn't going to let it rule her. That was smart.

"Hey, is this your house of your grandma's house?"

"Grandma's. She was supposed to pick me up from school, but he was there instead. He had her car."

Poor girl. I could see that playing out in my head; her getting into the van and then instead of a sweet, loving grandmother she got the big bad wolf.

It wasn't long after that that Dean came out. The guy with the tattoo was nowhere to be seen. I noticed, as Dean grew closer, that he had a cut on his head. It wasn't bleeding too bad.

"Hey, you guys okay?" Dean took in the girl first, then me. "Um…you're bleeding."

Oh, right. I'd been thrown into a table headfirst. But I was okay. The blood was just leftover.

"I'm fine. It's gone." I meant the cut and I knew Dean got it.

I didn't have to ask for the first aid kit; Dean went straight for it. He fixed Jenny up first, cleaned her face as best as he could and then he wiped away the blood from me. I saw that he was favoring his chest and I wondered if he was hurt.

"What's wrong?" I asked, reaching up to touch the place where his heart rested; that's the spot he seemed to be hurting. Funny, because that was probably true in more ways than one.

"Nothing. I got a tattoo."

"A…tattoo?"

"Yeah. I'll explain later. It didn't really hurt until that fight."

"Oh. Okay." I didn't really understand the whole Dean-getting-a-tattoo thing. What the hell would he do that for?

"Sam got one, too."

"Really? Is that some kind of new group initiation thing? Because there's no way I'm inking my flesh."

Dean shook his head, smirking. "Nah. You don't need one."

"Hm. Okay then."

Dean said he'd explain later, so that was that, and I let it go. I focused on Jenny now. Her wounds were cleaned and they didn't look that bad now, but still…

"Can you keep a secret?" I asked her, though I was sure I was going to heal her either way. "I'm gonna show you something, but you can't ever tell anyone. Okay?" Not that anyone would believe her, anyway.

The little girl nodded and I went to her and leaned down to touch her face gently. She didn't flinch; I didn't know if it was because we'd saved her or because I was just a non-threatening person, but she seemed to trust me.

She did, however, gasp when she felt the pain from her wounds go away. Then she touched her cheek with wonder, but she didn't ask how I'd done it. Smart kid; she couldn't tell my secret if she didn't know how I'd done it in the first place.

"Thank you," she whispered.

I shrugged. "No problem."

Dean cleared his throat. "Okay, so, we should get you home. Where's home?"

With that, we all piled into the car and Jenny began directing us to her home. I healed Dean as he started driving.

As soon as we dropped Jenny off Dean began fiddling with the radio and then he said, "So, you healed her."

"I healed you, too," I said. "And if she had been an adult, I wouldn't have risked it."

"Good. That's all I needed to know."

"So…the tattoo."

"Right. Remember those anti-possession charms Bobby gave us? Well…we got the design tattooed on our chests."

"Oh. 'Kay." Made sense now. Also made sense that I wouldn't need one, because according to Jack, I couldn't be possessed by anything dark.

With that over, a comfortable silence fell over us and we made our way to the hospital. When we got there we split up; I wanted to see if Julie was still here and if she was, I wanted to see how she was doing.

I went to the room she'd been in the day before and saw that she was there, but she was dressed like she was getting ready to leave.

"Hey," I said softly. She'd been facing the bed and I didn't want to frighten her.

She turned to me and, remembering who I was, smiled softly. "Hey. Alyson, right?"

"Yeah. I…wanted to see how you are."

"I get to leave. Finally."

"Bet that makes you happy."

"Little bit." She sighed. "Some seconds are harder than others. You know?"

I nodded emphatically. "Yeah. I do." I stepped in the room and went to her. "It's like everything's okay - not good, but okay - and then something happens that reminds you and it's like instant heart failure. Like your heart literally stops beating for a second and you can't breathe. It's almost like -"

"You don't know how to anymore," she finished for me, tears glistening in her eyes. "You don't have the will to."

And yeah, that was it exactly.

"Does it get easier?" she asked, half-whispering.

Oh, God, I didn't know the answer to that question. It hadn't for me yet; I hadn't even come to terms with the fact that Dean was going to die, so of course it hadn't gotten easier. But…it couldn't hurt as bad forever, right? The pain had to lessen eventually.

"It has to," I said. "I, um…I can't stay, but I'm glad you're feeling well enough to be let out."

Julie surprised me by hugging me and it took a second for me to respond, but I eventually hugged her in return.

"Thank you. I mean, I know all you did was listen, but it helped a lot," she said before letting me go. "Just knowing someone understands…you have no idea how much that helps."

"It's no problem, really. I do what I can."

She smiled softly again. "God, you're a wonderful person. What are you doing on this planet?"

That brought a smile to my face. "Helping people, I guess."

"Yeah, well, don't ever stop."

I shook my head. "Wasn't planning on it," I promised. "I, uh, really gotta go now, but take care of yourself, Julie."

"You too."

It didn't take long to find Sam and Dean. They were talking to Dr. Garrison.

"And the girl's okay?" To which Dean nodded. "So…it's really over?"

"Yeah. All thanks to you," Sam said.

I wondered what Dr. Garrison had done. Had he pulled the plug on his daughter? God, that sucked.

"Callie was the most important thing in my life. But I should've let her go a long time ago."

He'd been holding on for eight years; he'd been holding on when there was nothing left to hold on to.

"See you around, Doc," Dean said.

The doctor huffed. "I sure hope not."

I smiled softly as he walked away. I agreed with him; hopefully we'd never have a reason to come back here.

I noticed Dean was watching the doctor oddly and I wondered what that was about. Didn't take long to find out.

"You know what he said - that's some good advice."

He was talking about something other than letting him go, right? Something the doctor had said before I'd gotten here?

"Is that what you want me to do, Dean? Just let you go?"

Dean didn't say anything and, after a moment of silence, he began walking away, leaving Sam and me alone. Dean's eyes had been closed off before he'd walked away and I felt my eyes fill up with tears.

I hated when Dean did things like that. Acted like he didn't matter and we shouldn't care as much as we did.

What did he want anyway? I didn't know what to do with him anymore. I knew what he needed but he wouldn't take it if I offered, and I couldn't force him to accept my help. And I was just…so fed up with everything.

I'd noticed since I'd been spending more and more time away from Dean that the only time I felt any peace at all was when I was away from him. It killed me to think that and I hated myself for it, but it was true.

I swallowed back a sob that burned my throat threatening to make its way past my lips, needing to be released. And this was the time I usually thought of something else, avoided the issue, think of anything but the important thing that was Dean.

But I couldn't avoid it now. Not this time. Because when I looked at Sam he had tears in his eyes.

"Dean was…" I didn't know what to say. He'd been being an ass. That was all, right?

It seemed that Sam didn't want to talk about it, because all he didn't was shake his head, and begin walking. I had no choice but to follow.

At the car I got in the backseat and tried to calm myself down. I did not want to cry. Not here, not now, and not in front of Dean.

When we reached the motel, Sam took off; he said he needed a few hours alone. So it was just me and Dean, and pretty soon it was just going to be Dean here and me in another room. I couldn't do what he wanted anymore…I just couldn't.

When I began packing my bags he asked what I was doing.

"I'm giving you what you want," I said. "I'm letting you go." Just saying that made my throat tighten. "I can't…do this anymore." I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. "I love you, I do, and I've tried to be what you need me to be, but I can't. I just can't. I can't be with you when you've been trying to push me away all along. It doesn't work that way. I don't work that way."

"So, what, you're leaving?" The way Dean said it I could tell he didn't want me to know that the idea of me leaving hurt him. But he'd expected it anyway.

"No, Dean, I have nowhere else to go. I mean, sure, I could stay with Bobby, but I wouldn't be happy there. Not really. But more than that…my home is where you and Sam are. Us not being together won't change that. Besides, I'm a hunter, I can't just stop hunting, ya know? So…" My shoulders slumped and my stomach sort of felt like it was turning itself inside out. "So I'm getting my own room from now on. It's like you said a couple months ago. We can be here for each other. Just not like that." Not that we were really together anyway.

When I left the room - with my stuff - I didn't look back. I couldn't because I knew that if I saw an ounce of pain reflected in his eyes it would force me to stay. And I couldn't, not anymore. I couldn't keep going back and forth, being with him one second and then not being with him the next.

I refused to continue to play that game with him. I refused to hang onto him when he'd obviously already let go.

So, Aly had put on her big girl panties and put an end to the circling around each other. And this one's it. There's no more going back and forth. Most of you probably won't be happy with that. SORRY, but it had to happen some time. Anyway...leave a comment, let me know what you like, what you don't like, all that stuff. Thanks.