We finish the ghost case when I have two and half weeks left. The bones are salted and burned, and then we're onto the next town. Sam and Dean were against moving on to another case, insisting we spend the remaining time looking for a way out of my crossroads deal, but I didn't want to spend my last weeks on earth frantically looking for something that didn't exist. I'd rather spend it with the closest thing I had to a family, pretending until the last moment that everything was fine.
Of course, Sam and Dean weren't just going to let it drop, even though I knew it was hopeless.
"Anything besides killing the hellhounds that could get you out of this?" Sam asks absently, flipping through the book of lore in his lap with a flashlight on it as we drive through the early evening towards the new case in upstate New York. It's just him and me in my Camaro. Dean's just ahead of us, driving the Impala.
"Besides an angel, you mean?" I ask. Dean been saved from hell by an angel, the angel that ultimately became his best friend. I know Cas would help me out, too, anything for the Winchesters. It's too bad he was torn apart by the thousands of souls inside him before he could.
Any other angels we know? There's Balthazar. I'd met him, but Cas had killed him shortly after I had. Rachel, Cas's friend and lieutenant, had met the same fate. And the other minor angels I'd run across? All dead, or left powerless, or just somewhere far away, too busy dealing with the destruction caused in heaven (by Cas, actually) to help out someone they didn't know.
Angels are usually kind, but they're not that kind, and I'm sure they'd say that since I'd gotten myself into this mess in the first place, they shouldn't help me out of it. And that's just the friendly angels. Quite a few of them have made enemies of the Winchesters.
Even the angel who'd taken Stephen—my boyfriend at the time—and used him as a vessel was gone, killed in the war between angels. I didn't find out until Cas had seen me standing next to Dean and Sam and sputtered it out breathlessly as his vessel fell apart around him.
The angel, Suriel, had been on Cas's side, back when Michael and Lucifer had first been locked away, but had died in one of the earlier skirmishes, back before Cas's goal had been to use the power of thousands of souls. Of course, I hadn't found that out until later.
It's probably a good thing he was gone early on. He was one of the lucky angels who didn't live to see his leader turn corrupt.
Not that I have any sympathy for the angel. He did steal my boyfriend, flip my life on its head, and set me down this wild path of the supernatural that led me here: sitting in a fifty-year-old car with one seriously fucked-up guy, following his seriously fucked-up brother in his fifty-year-old car, and waiting out the short time before my soul is on its way to hell.
I'd be more concerned about Stephen than the angel, if anything. He's up in heaven now, though, I'm sure. I'm glad he's finally at peace. An angel using your body as a vessel is one helluva wild ride.
I should be sad, but I'm really not. I've had years to get over his being taken out of my life so suddenly, and in that time I've been forced to build the emotional toughness that comes with the job.
I wonder if Suriel would help me now, if he was still around. Would Stephen, if he was still in there somewhere, appeal to him? Ask him to save me from eternal damnation? Or would he have moved on from me the same way I have from him?
"So our best chance at dodging the deal is killing the hellhounds," Sam says, snapping me out of my memories.
I take a deep breath, letting myself catch up with the present. "Yeah, but hellhounds aren't exactly the easiest thing to kill. They are invisible to us, in case you'd forgotten, and they're pretty fucking dangerous."
Sam clicks the end of his pen a few times in annoyance. "It's worth a shot."
I roll my eyes. It's always worth a shot for the Winchesters. No wonder they're in so much trouble all the time.
Half an hour later we pull into the parking lot of the motel in the town we're staying at, check in, and bring in our bags.
As usual, I'm in a separate hotel room, so Sam comes to knock on my door to ask where I want to go for dinner.
"I'd rather stay here. You guys bring me back a burger or something, okay?" I say as I fold up one of my t-shirts and set it on the bed with the others.
"You sure?" Sam asks.
"Yeah." After being stuck in a car with another person for who-knows-how-many hours straight, I need some alone time. A shower. Clean clothes. Maybe a nap.
Sam leaves and I glance out the window a few moments later to see the Impala pulling out of the parking lot.
Well, now's as good a time as any to get washed up. I root through my bag for my toiletries, my toothbrush and toothpaste and the few other things I bring with us everywhere to stay clean and hygienic.
My hand bumps against a box and I pull it out. Tampons.
Wait. When was my last period?
Fuck.
I count days in my head.
Two days late.
When could this have happened? I had my period last month as usual, and the only person I've been with since then is Sam. But the last time we hooked up was… about three weeks ago.
Fuck.
I crouch down next to my bag again and pull things out, trying to find what I'm looking for.
There it is, at the bottom: a couple of spare pregnancy tests from when I'd had a scare a couple months ago. I check the expiration date quickly, hands shaking. They won't expire for another year.
Good.
I slip into the bathroom and close the door behind me, locking it despite the fact that I'm alone.
The results of the test aren't what I want to see. Those two vertical lines are awfully small for something so big.
Fuck.
I pick up my phone and dial the familiar number for Sam's phone.
"Hello?" he says. I can hear Dean singing obnoxiously to music in the background.
"Hi, Sam," I say. It comes out more unsteady than I had intended it to.
"Is something wrong?" he asks. Dean hits a high note in the background and I can hear as Sam turns to his brother and tells him to shut up before talking into the phone again. "You sound nervous."
"What? No, nothing's wrong. I just called to…" I trail off uneasily. "Just get back soon, okay?"
"Yeah, sure," he says a little suspiciously. It's not hard to tell something's off.
I hang up before he can catch on any more to what I'm feeling.
I glance back down to the test in my hand and curse out loud again as the reality of the situation crashes down again.
"Fuck."
It's not that I'm not excited about the idea of having a kid, it's just that I don't want a kid now. I'm going to hell in less than three weeks and I won't even be two months pregnant by then.
Besides, even if I did make it out of this deal alive, is this really the life to raise a kid in? I know how Sam and Dean were raised, and they had some seriously fucked-up childhoods. No child deserves to be told that all their nightmares are real.
I unlock the bathroom door and step out so I can pace across the carpet floor of the motel room, stopping every few turns to pull aside the curtain and peek out for the Impala. It doesn't come for another twenty minutes and by that point I'm starting to get a little irked.
Sam and Dean walk towards the motel, a bag of food and some drinks in their hands, and I open my door and step out to greet them.
"Uh, Sam," I say urgently. "I need to talk to you for a minute."
Both brothers cast me a questioning glance, but Sam hands his bag of food to Dean and says in an almost parent-like voice, "Don't eat my food," as he follows me into my room.
I shut the door behind the two of us.
"What's wrong?" he asks, eyebrows knitting together in worry at my nervous manner.
"Um," I say, swallowing nervously. "I'm p-" I can barely say it. I swallow again and take a deep breath. "I'm pregnant," I rush out, before I can change my mind halfway through.
Sam stands there, unmoving. "You… what?" he says uneasily.
"I'm… pregnant," I say again, this time a little more steadily.
Sam runs a hand through his hair. "Who— when— how?"
"It's yours. I think from that time, three weeks ago. After, uh, I saved you from that vetala. I guess the contraception didn't work as well as we'd hoped, huh?" I say uncomfortably.
"What are we going to do?" Sam asks nervously, dropping onto the edge of the bed in shock. "An abortion?" he suggests. He, like I, doesn't like the idea of having kids, at least in this life. Maybe one day, in a world that doesn't need quite so much saving from the Winchesters, he might settle down and have a family, but not while he's busy fighting monsters.
"No," I say quickly. "Not an abortion." Mostly, it's because I want to keep the baby, but I don't tell him that. Despite everything, I can't help but want a child. "What if we make the best of a bad situation?" I say instead, regaining my composure. "I signed away my soul. But I never signed away the soul of the baby."
Sam looks at me quizzically. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, maybe I can get an extra eight or nine months. At least until this," I say, motioning towards my stomach, "Is over." I hate to talk about the baby like it's just a way to keep living for a little longer and nothing more, but at the time being, it is one of the only options available to us.
Sam runs a hand through his hair again. "But after? You'd leave me to raise a kid? I couldn't… You know how I was raised, I could never…" He seems lost for words.
"Shh, it's okay," I say, sitting down on the bed next to him, taking his hand in mine. "You'd be a better father than your dad ever was, I know it. And if you want, there's always Bobby. If nothing else, he could find someone to take care of the baby."
Sam takes a deep breath. "Okay."
"Sound like a plan?" I say. "Talk to a demon and try to get more time?"
"Yeah," Sam says, still shaken.
"Now I guess we have to tell Dean," I say, glancing at the wall that adjoins his and Sam's room with mine.
"Yeah," Sam says. "Now we have to tell Dean."