Notes: This chapter is exeptionnaly rated M for mild-smut.

Warnings: swearing, language, mention of past anxiety issues, insults, hate messages, kind of virtual bullying, mild-smut, semi-public sex, mention of past robbery, mention of past psychological trauma

Chapter 15: The Witch

The Tulsa concert had been good without being spectacular. Kevin had allowed himself a walkabout at the exit and Dean had joined him, signing autographs on concert tickets, arms, legs, flags, t-shirts while smiling, holding the fans in his arms and making faces for photos. It was the kind of interaction that he loved as much as they made him uncomfortable. It was his job to be the center of attention and it didn't bother him. What bothered him however was to not being able to get out of it once he was out of the scene. For the fans, he remained the leader of Free Will above all and it was a skin which he couldn't get rid of by removing his jacket behind the scenes. It was nice to be adored, he couldn't deny it. But also oppressive. So many people that a single misstep could disappoint. So many expectations that could turn into resentment from one day to the next...

He smiled at the cameras, envying the ease with which Sam did that. Sam loved being watched, touched, admired, and it seemed that the more he behaved exactly as he wanted, the more it worked. Dean didn't have this ability to go with the flow. He knew perfectly how to play his part, knew exactly how to deal with the public, and that was probably what made and would continue to make the group's success. It wasn't always comfortable for all that.

They occupied the fans a long time, long enough for Dorothy and Charlie to slip out in the general indifference to go by taxi to see the grandmother of the driver a hundred kilometers from Tulsa. Charlie couldn't remember the name of the small town where Dorothy had grown up, but she had imagined it a lot by dint of hearing her companion talk about it. She had changed in a hurry after the show and her shirt stuck to her back by a rest sweat but it was better than her usual stage costumes to make the acquaintance of Dorothy's grandmother. She had tied her hair and slipped into a clean pants without holes and at her size, three items she was very surprised to gather in one clothe. She fell asleep on Dorothy's shoulder during the ride. The other didn't wake her up. Here and there a streetlight lit up the road and she was grateful to the driver to not try to make conversation. She had left the city by this road many years ago and had almost never returned.

Her reflection in the window was watching her thoughtfully. The features more marked, less smooth and less young than those she had seen reflected in the toilets of a rest area throughout the path that had taken her away from Oklahoma. Her grandmother had called it her own Path of Tears and afterwards, Dorothy couldn't really say that the words weren't well found. The car radio was softly broadcasting a song of Free Will, the coincidence made her smile.

"Let me tell you the story of a witch

Trading her soul for power

But she realised only after

There's no way to reverse the switch"

She had returned only once, at the death of her grandfather two years earlier and had left again almost immediately. Back then things didn't seem to have changed so much and she found herself smiling at her reflection by putting her arm around the shoulders of Charlie who curled up against her in a more comfortable position.

There was light in the kitchen when the taxi stopped in front of the house. Dorothy paid and got their bag out of the trunk while Charlie woke up and pulled herself out of the car. An old woman wrapped in a colorful shawl opened the door, her plump figure stood out against the light on the driveway and suddenly, Dorothy felt herself become a little girl again. She ran almost to her grandmother that she lifted off the ground, holding her in her arms for a kiss. The old woman let out a little laugh and hugged her in her turn.

"I missed you Ulisi!"

"Had to come back earlier girl." Said the old woman, parting from her granddaughter who was a head taller.

The taxi was drawing away and Charlie was advancing slowly down the aisle, carrying the big bag Dorothy and her shared for the night. She had her head down as if she was afraid that looking someone in the eye would ruin Dorothy's reunion with her grandmother. Dorothy looked at the old woman with a slight apprehension. She had never specified that Charlie was a girl. She was ready to defend herself by saying that it had completely gone out of her head, which was a lie. She had thought about it every day since the invitation of her grandmother. Suddenly a hairy, noisy thing went past her, sending her back against the frame of the entrance door to throw itself in the legs of the bassist with something between a low growl and a bark. Charlie dropped the bag and knelt on the gravel driveway to pet the dog.

"Hey you!" She said while the animal sat, tail beating the floor and was rubbing its head against her hand more than she was actually petting it. She identified the animal as a pure breed hybrid with very soft caramel hair and big floppy ears she dutifully scratched attracting a happy groan from the dog. "What's your name?"

"Peanut." The old woman answered with a huge smile.

"Peanut?" Charlie took the dog's head with both hands. "What kind of foolish things did you do to deserve that, poor big boy?"

Dorothy burst into a laugh while the dog was barking solemnly. "Give a paw Peanut!" The dog complied, much to delight of Charlie, and Dorothy approached to retrieve the bag and receive in exchange a great lick. "I'm the one who named him, and you're asked to not laugh!"

Charlie pretended to zip up her mouth and stood up, dusting herself before stretching her hand to Dorothy's grandmother.

"My name is Charlie." She said, smiling.

Several hours later, Charlie was still feeling a chill thinking back to what had happened. She believed in magic. You don't grow up reading the Lord of the Rings without believing in it at least a little bit. But she didn't really believe that such things happened, that the simple touch of a wrinkled hand could be enough to give the impression that someone was reading your soul. She had cast a panicked look to Dorothy when the old woman had taken her hand, looking at her thoughtfully. Gradually her face had litten up and she had uttered a word that the bassist didn't know before brushing her hair with a hand. Then she had smiled at Dorothy and had invited them to enter, Peanut on her heels.

At present they were both sitting on the single bed in what had been the room of the driver very long ago. Probably nothing had changed since her departure. The dusty shelves above the desk still loaded with adventure books, the cardboard in a corner of the room carefully labeled "Old Courses", the crimson and orange carpets that covered almost the entire wooden floor seemed to date back to a dream not really so distant. The patchwork quilt still had the same smell when Dorothy sat on the bed.

"Did you grow up here?" Charlie asked, sitting down beside her, beholding the walls yellowed by time and the window with white curtains open on the night. The other nodded.

"My parents lived two blocks from here. I had two bedrooms and when they quarreled I slept here."

Charlie looked at the wall above the bed where she could still discern traces of pins that had hung posters or pictures. "They must have quarreled often." She said. Dorothy nodded.

"What was the word of your grandmother earlier?"

"The Cherokee word for fox. She was checking your Totem. I never knew how she did it but she's never wrong."

Charlie smiled. "That's because of the hair."

Dorothy shook her head, crumpling the bedspread. "And intelligence, cunning, sense of family, speed and beauty. The fox is a good totem."

Charlie smiled again. "I'm flattered. What's your totem?"

"The peregrine falcon."

"That's a good thing?" Charlie asked. Dorothy shook her head.

"Not really. It's a partially migratory bird. According to the beliefs of my grandmother that makes me someone unreliable because I'll fly away at the approach of winter."

"Isn't it a sign of wisdom to protect yourself of winter?" Charlie asked, taking her hand.

"Not in her tribe. At each generation, the traditions of the Cherokee peter out a little more and I don't do anything to keep them alive. It was a big bone of contention between her and me."

"You don't want to carry this knowledge on?"

Dorothy shook her head again, her eyes fixed on the window that showed a black sky studded with stars. "My mother attaches great importance to it, my father is half Irish. I grew up hearing about wind spirits and leprechauns. One day you have to decide who you are, choose a side when you have two cultures."

"You chose the Irish side?"

"No. I chose to leave. I hit the road when I turned eighteen and I've never stopped driving since. My mother and my grandmother lived it as an inevitability. In the winter I did exactly what they had predicted, I fled. But I called it "going in search of myself"... I was eighteen and I was stupid."

Charlie had nothing to respond to that. She let her eyes drift to the neatly tidy nightstand. A lamp, a few old books for teenagers and a small round box with a flower design on the top that she took just to do something with her hands.

"What is this?" She asked, hearing some things move inside. She opened the box, finding a dozen small clear pink pills.

"Something against anxiety."

Charlie gave her a puzzled look, Dorothy was the most calm and composed person she knew. "I didn't just leave when I turned eighteen. Something happened."

"I'm listening." Charlie said while putting down the box. Dorothy shook her head.

"Not tonight. I don't want to talk about it after dark." She said, looking down at her pants and the hand that Charlie was holding in hers. She felt a kiss on her neck and smiled. She loved the way the bassist never asked more questions than what Dorothy wanted to answer, and the determination with which she was kissing her. Charlie kissed like she played at video games and it meant restart the game as long as she wouldn't win, it meant clench her hands on something and growl through clenched teeth. Dorothy lay her on the bed without stopping to kiss her, maneuvering to place herself above her, a knee on either side of the hips of her companion. Each knew the rhythm of the other, and the caresses they loved. Dorothy's nails that grazed Charlie's belly, like sparks all along her skin. Charlie's legs that wrapped around her waist as if to prevent the driver from moving.

While pulling on the stud of Charlie's trousers, Dorothy suddenly thought that she appreciated the habit of the bassist to wear shorts barely bigger than her underwear, because the miles of denim were a pain to remove and she ended up pulling so hard on the tissue that she made her partner slid from the bed. The bassist stifled a laugh, bent double on the carpet while Dorothy was getting rid of her own pants and was throwing the clothes at the other end of the room. There was nothing prettier in the world than Charlie's legs, pale, muscled and full of bruises because she never passed a day without trying something stupid that left marks. She climbed on the bed, pushing Dorothy toward the wall while undoing her shirt.

"You're sure we can?" She asked in the ear of the young woman, as if whispering would change anything to the noise they had already made.

"These walls have seen worse." Dorothy answered. And anyway, there was no way they were stopping now.

Over time, they had become very good at this game. And beyond the game there was something else that was only perceptible when they opened their eyes at the same time. Almost never. But sometimes, during a little moment before their eyelids flutter again, Charlie could see in the dark eyes of Dorothy something other than desire. And it made her want to kiss her harder, longer, until the breath lacks and even a few more seconds more. To press their bodies so hard that their skins weren't slipping one over the other, despite the sweat, despite the nails that dug into her thighs or shoulders and the teeth biting her lips.

"Not a sound." Dorothy whispered huskily in her ear. It was ridiculous is absolutely impossible and Charlie opened her mouth to point it out, but no sound came out. She looked at her partner. It was there, at the bottom of her eyes, the sparkle which she didn't name and which was enough to do things inside her.

The walls might had survived worse before, but next time they would do that, she promised herself that it would be somewhere where they wouldn't have to fear to be heard. Dorothy still had in mind the song heard earlier in the taxi.

"Let me tell you about hell

Let me tell you about the hounds,

Howling, barking to tell

Now she can't escape her own spell

Her soul is lost and cannot be found."

##

Sam found Madison in the last place he looked for her after the concert at Tulsa. She had taken refuge in the roadies' tourbus, which, unlike the group's was equipped with an upper deck with rows of seats high enough to completely hide her. He sat down next to her and she curled up against the glass without giving him a look.

"Something's wrong?"

"Charlie put the video of yesterday on Twitter."

Sam took a few seconds to understand what she was talking about.

"So what?"

Madison turned a little in her seat, knees jammed against the backrest in front of her, her phone in hand.

"I quote: Who's that slut, what is she doing there?". With her thumb, she was slowly going back up the comments thread while reading aloud. "Hands off, bitch, they're ours." Sam stifled a giggle which earned him an annoyed glance. "I hope this bitch will..." Madison paused to swallow the lump she had in the throat. "..catch cancer and die."

Sam put his hand on the phone to cover the screen.

"You're beating yourself up for nothing." He said, withdrawing the device to turn it off before returning it to her. "That's just a band of kids jealous because they don't have what you have."

"It's terrifying anyway. Even more to the idea that it may actually be kids who write this. Do they have no awareness of the harm it can do?" Her hands were shaking and there were sobs in her voice. Sam shook his head.

"None whatsoever. Most people don't see us as human beings Mads. Celebrities are made to be fantasized on, not having a life or emotions. Not in the public mind anyway. For them it's like you gave emotions to a painting or a cartoon character."

"But I'm not a celebrity." She said, looking down at the phone off in her hands. "How do you stand that?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't take account of it. These people don't know me, their opinion doesn't matter. The only thing that interests me is when I'm told what I do counts for someone. When a kid starts the drums or to write and he tells me it's thanks to me... it's the only thing that matters to me." He raised a little his sleeve and turned on the seat to show her his arm where were spread out a multitude of small blue and purple flowers between the sunflowers on his shoulder and the Magnolia on his forearm. "One for each person who told me I was important."

She ran her hand on the tattoos, just gently enoug for the caress to make him shiver. She wanted to kiss him, right there, on the flowers that represented a little of the love people had for him and which, turned against her resulted in anonymous hate messages. She did and the next moment he had attracted her against him, almost rolled into a ball in his arms, laughing and trying to stay in contact with the tattoo on his arm. But this only lasted a moment, and she soon scowled.

"As if that wasn't hard enough to accept to be with you, I must also deal with that."

"If you were expecting everything to be sunshine and unicorns then you got the wrong guy." He said coldly.

"I didn't say that!" She mumbled, extricating herself from his arms to settle more comfortably astride on his knees, her back pressed against the back of the seat behind her. "But I didn't expect to have to endure your fans in addition to you."

He smiled, hands on the thighs of the young woman. "I should have warned you that I'm not an easy boy."

"Oh? I had understood the opposite." She said, leaning towards him to kiss him. "I remind you that you sleep with your fans."

"There's only one here. You should consider yourself fortunate."

"I'm not one of your fans."

"Liar."

She laughed and began to remove his jacket as he passed his hands under her t-shirt to remove it. They were still smiling while kissing, each undoing the button of the other's jeans and passing their hands underneath with sighs of pleasure.

"There're people down there." She said, slipping against him, one hand in Sam's hair, the other on his length, her lips on his neck where the pulse beat faster and harder under her tongue.

"Then you'll have to be very silent." He replied, slowly sliding his fingers in her. She stifled a chuckle in his shoulder and then a moan when he began to move, breath shorter as she made her hand coming and going on his member. He felt Madison's lips quit his neck, down along his collarbone to the piercing on his chest that she began to nip and this time he was the one who let out a loud sigh. He could feel her smile against his chest even he only saw her hair and replied by pressing harder his hand on her crotch. He wanted to smile, laugh and moan all at once, of pleasure, of happiness and of a feeling he wouldn't have been able to express in words but had everything to do with the hum of blood in his ears, the sound of their breathing, the rustle of their skins against the velvet seat, the beating of his heart he felt pulsing through his body. He was biting his lips to not make noise and Madison was stifling her moans against his skin, only their hands were moving, as their chests covered in sweat that slid one over the other until the pleasure prevails and leaves them breathless and happy in the arms of each other at the edge of a burst of laughter a bit incongruous.

Madison eventually forced herself to move, wiped her hands on her jeans, whose color had probably been invented to conceal the suspicious stains. She could have contorted herself to get her shirt rolled in a ball on the ground under Sam's boots, but it was probably already ruined. She just put herself in her seat against the glass covered with mist, letting Sam readjust himself with a groan.

"I've never been so impatient to get back to a room with a bed." He said, siting himself against her to kiss her, pinning her against the cold glass. She didn't notice, wrapped her bare arms around his shoulders and gave in to the kiss, slowly, languidly as if the moment of heat they had allowed themself to had to be accompanied by a piece of tenderness.

Even in the hideous light of the bus, even disheveled, sweaty, cheeks reddened by the pleasure, he found her beautiful. Even if she had red eyes from crying earlier and dark circles to the middle of her cheeks. He kissed her again because he didn't intend to tell her. Not now anyway. It would have seemed silly and dwelled. They settled more comfortably, Sam's jacket as a pillow for Madison. She still had her legs wrapped around his hips and he lay almost on her, his head on her chest, listening her heart returning to a normal rhythm as she ran her hand through his hair absent-mindedly.

They were beginning to fall asleep when they heard the heavy tread of Bobby climbing the stairs and his grumpy voice calling Madison. They stood up fast, not fast enough to get totally dressed before he sees them.

"Really?" He growled, shrugging his eyebrows at Sam who was pulling his shirt on with an indifferent shrug. The manager sighed and leaves them alone with a gesture that clearly said what he thought of their behavior. Sam and Madison looked at each other half a second, both disheveled to have put their clothes on in a hurry and laughed.

##

"She feels her bones ignite,

As she goes down on the pit,

The devil will do as he sees fit

No sun will ever soothe her sight."

It was a lovely day which had started with a shower together. Charlie had opened the door of the kitchen to Peanut who was yelping softly as not to disturb its owner but hurled itself outside soon as it could. Dorothy watched her companion follow the dog outside, barefoot and still wearing the flannel trousers decorated with small Wonder Woman logos in which she had slept. There were people (Sam at the top) who had probably tried to make her change her clothing habits, they had all obviously failed which made Dorothy smile while the smell of coffee filled the kitchen. Her grandmother came in slowly, wrapped in a blue bathrobe and pressed it against her.

"It's good to have you here." The old woman said, sitting.

"I'm leaving in the afternoon. We must take the road to LA tonight."

Outside Peanut had begun to bark when Charlie threw a stick he dutifully brought back each time for a caress more.

"She's ravishing." The old woman said, chin in hand, looking at the bassist running after the dog through the window. She took the cup of coffee Dorothy was holding out to her and waited for her grand-daughter to sit to ask her: "Do you like girls? Is that's why you left us?"

Dorothy shook her head. "No, Ulisi. No to both questions. I don't like girls. I like this girl, this isn't a gender issue it's... a company issue."

The elder nodded. "There are people whose life we can share." She said thoughtfully. "I guess the gender shouldn't matter." She was looking at Charlie racing with the old dog in the garden.

"And that's not why I left you, you know that Ulisi."

"Why then? You left saying that you wanted to know who you were... Do you know now?"

Dorothy looked back at Charlie and the dog and smiled. "I probably always knew, but I think she's making me realize it. And she isn't even aware of that."

Her grandmother smiled. "She's a good company then."

And the subject was closed.

Later, she found Charlie, dressed this time, standing in front of the window of her teenage bedroom in front of which hung such a collection of dream catchers that they formed a curtain of cobwebs and feathers almost blocking the view on the outside.

"It's pretty." She said, touching one of the items with her finger.

"I made one every Sunday for something like a year." Dorothy responded while starting to collect their belongings in their common bag.

"Why?"

The woman stopped, pants in hand, wondering if this was the right time? If she wanted to talk about this? In that instant, she understood perfectly why Sam talked so little about his past. The past, most of the time, it was better to leave it in its place.

Charlie didn't even need to know. It was an insignificant event of which Dorothy began to talk about in spite of herself. Insignificant to everyone except to her. And yet, at this precise moment of their relationship it was something she wanted to share with the bassist. She sat on the bed and Charlie leaned against the desk to listen.

"The Dream Catchers… they're supposed to catch nightmares and dissolve them in the day. At the time, make some calmed me. Because sometimes life doesn't let you get any respite, it harass you every day and every day you have to find the strength to get up. And at the time, it was difficult for me."

"What happened?" Charlie asked softly, coming to sit beside her on the bed.

Dorothy had a habit of speaking in a plain, concise way, and not to beat about the bush and Charlie slipped her hand into hers as if to encourage her to say whatever came into her head.

"Everyone has a place of refuge to escape the world. When things get too hard, you can survive anything as long as you have that place to yourself. It can be anything. I know that for Castiel it is to listen to Dean singing, Sam is beating on his drums. I still haven't found what's yours, Red, but for me, it was this room. I didn't fit very well back at the time. I'm even not sure to fit even now, but teenager, it was as if this room was the only place where nothing bad could happen to me. Neither my parents' quarrels nor the disapproval of my grandparents. I sat at that desk for hours, I did my homework, I daydreamed about when I wouldn't be the ugly duckling anymore..."

Charlie chuckled. "It's hard to picture you in the shoes of the ugly duckling."

Dorothy smiled and pressed her fingers. "But I was. And here, it was the only place where I felt safe."

"What happened?"

"Someone robbed us. I was just starting high school and it was even more difficult than usual. I came home one night and found the room devastated, everything was torn or broken." She closed her eyes for a second to dispel the vision of the disaster and shook her head. "It was nothing. No one was injured, my grandparents weren't even there, a few things were missing but nothing serious. And yet it was as if I didn't have anymore that refuge I needed. As if I had been deprived of my secret place. I know it's stupid, but I was young..."

"Not stupide." Charlie interrupted her. "I think I understand. If you don't feel safe in your own refuge, then... What do you have left? It must be a bit as if you had been personally attacked."

"That's pretty much it. I scared myself, thinking that it could start all over again at any time, I didn't feel safe anywhere anymore. I thought it would subside with time, but I got my degree and it still hadn't passed. The next day I packed my bags and I left... three years to feel bad here, I could just as well feel bad anywhere else. Things had gotten worse in the family. My grandmother wanted me to learn the rituals of her ancestors, the Cherokee language, but I never really identified myself within. I had almost become a stranger to them, so I left to find out exactly who I was. I became exactly what they had predicted. Winter came and the peregrine falcon fled. I accumulated jobs, driving trucks across America, I traveled around, then I signed the contract for the tour of Free Will and you know the rest."

Charlie said nothing for a moment and then: "Did you find a new refuge?"

Dorothy smiled, turning to her. "Not yet but... I think that over time... you could become my refuge. If you want to."

Charlie smiled in her turn.

"It's been a year you know."

Dorothy nodded. "C'était une bonne année."

Charlie leaned down to kiss her softly. Her hands stroked the hair of the conductor, clench them when they deepened the kiss.

"I would be more than honored to be your secret refuge."

Dorothy smiled before kissing her again, saying to herself that there was probably some truth in the saying 'home is where the heart is'. She was making a home in the earth of a fox, and as strange as it seemed to her who was a migratory bird, it was still a very good thing.

"Let me tell you about a girl,

Hell broke her, made her a demon inside,

But when the pain left her

She remembered what it's like to be human."