Warnings: Swearing, language, slight physical violence, reference to past domestic abuse, implied drunkness, loss of memory due to drunkness, bad and heavy hangover, mention of past suicidal thoughts, mention of John Winchester and threatening behavior.

Chapter 21: The girl who left

"But you chose me!" Kurt complained. He had just signed the hospital discharge papers, a bandage still on his nose and an arm in a splint until his dislocated shoulder recover. Madison gave him a cold look, eyeing him with her full height even if she was a head shorter than him.

"I didn't choose anyone." She replied. "I disagree with Sam's reaction, but don't think this excuses your own attitude!"

"It's all behind us now Maddy!"

"Don't call me Maddy."

They had reached the automatic doors of the main entrance when he took her by the waist.

"Come on, we're not gonna argue about that, how about a dinner?"

With a sudden movement she freed herself, furious. "What don't you understand in "I didn't choose you"?"

He had grabbed her by the hand, a serious look on his face. "And what do you think you can do alone?"

For a brief moment, Madison was frightened. He had said exactly the same words once or twice before and the memories that followed still woke her with a jump during the night. She expected to tremble, to look down, swallowing the lump she had in the throat. But none of this happened. Of course, she was scared, but the avoidance reflex she expected to have never came. She saw Sam and his unrestrained rage when he was beating him up. She felt disconnected from reality as her emotions did not fit with the picture and she smiled weakly.

"That's absolutely none of your business."

Kurt opened his mouth, pressing her wrist, but before he could say anything, he found himself with his arm painfully twisted in his back, doubled up in a position that was hurting his damaged shoulder and Madison bent over him, pulling his arm with all the force developed by dint of lifting crates. People were watching. Kurt knew he could free himself in one motion and give her tit for tat, but not in front of all those people, some of whom already cast anxious glances toward the security members who were advancing toward them.

"I said that was none of your business. And that I don't want to see you again. Now if you really want me to break you something, may as well do it right away while there's someone to take care of you." She said in a voice not as confident as she would have wanted. She was still pleased to have come to the end of her sentence without babbling.

"Miss... Miss please let him go."

The voice of the security member pulled her out of her daze and she slowly loosened her grip on Kurt's wrist before pulling away from him hurriedly. He turned, furious, teeth gritted.

"I'm gonna file a complaint against him, bitch, and also against you for assault and battery! I'll massacre you both!"

The security member beside Madison frowned.

"Sir, I ask you not to make inappropriate comments within the walls of this establishment, this is..."

Madison cut him off with a wave of the hand, her dark eyes fixed on Kurt, knowing full well that she was watched, that they were even filmed.

"So I'll see you in court." She replied dryly. There were a hundred things she would have wanted to say, spit all her fear and anxiety in the face of her former lover and yell, scream again and again while hitting him through breaking her nails. She didn't, she swallowed her anger.

She turned and left the first, full knowledge that Kurt wouldn't follow her.

In her pocket, her phone buzzed, making her jump in the parking lot. It was the first time since the incident between Sam and Kurt that someone phoned her.

"Dorothy?"

"Madison... I… I'm sorry, am I disturbing you?"

The girl closed her eyes and sighed, she began to tremble and the lump in her throat began to form.

"No." She said. "Not at all, I think you come at the right time actually. You wanted to talk about something?"

"I left her."

"Charlie?"

The silence on the line was eloquent. Madison sighed. "I left Sam."

Another pause on the line.

"If you want to talk, I know a quiet place in Venice."

Dorothy laughed a little. "A quiet place there? You sure?"

Madison smiled. "You game?"

She could almost hear the other nod at the other end. The knot in her throat untied a bit.

##

Sam walked the girl to the door, thinking it'd been a long time since he had last done that. Entrenched on the huge bed of the hotel room, Charlie was moaning incoherent words in a furry voice. Sam joined her grumbling her to shut up.

"Where are we? An' whaddappened?" She mumbled.

"I have no fucking clue and honestly I couldn't care less." He grunted. He collapsed as gently as possible in the empty spot next to her. His head was already spinning and he opened one eye to ensure the location of the bathroom because nausea threatened to overwhelm him at any time and Charlie seemed hardly better. Maybe an hour passed before they dare to speak or move, and Charlie crawled to the sink, convinced that she was going to throw up but her stomach refused to bring back up anything, perhaps because it was empty. She was paler than usual, almost green and fuzzy, the water she passed on her face didn't improve her situation. A migraine was pounding her brain insistently and she still didn't know where she was. A painful glance through the window didn't inform her. She was still half dressed which was probably a good thing. Sam had gotten up too, disheveled, he lacked at least two piercings and he had a brand new one to an ear that was still inflamed.

"We're in Vegas, Baby." He said with a semblance of a smile, pointing to a magnetic card left on the coffee table in the small suite. "And clearly I'm the one who chose the hotel."

Charlie squinted to distinguish the name and nodded slowly. "And apparently I was already smashed when arriving."

"How can you tell?"

Charlie had spotted her bag not far from there and had painfully bent over, looking for an aspirin. "Because the only way I wake up with you in a hotel called the Mirage is that I am close to ethylic coma. Or dead."

"You talk way too much for a ghost." Sam mumbled. He rubbed his eyes, moaning in pain. It was as if his head was only a mix of pins and broken bottles notching his withered brain. The first sips of water did no good to them and they ended up sitting next to one another on the sofa in the living room, lulled by the hiss of the tablets in the bottom of their glasses.

"I guess we'll be two to do the walk of shame this morning." Sam said in a hoarse voice that he didn't bother to clear. Charlie gave a disapproving growl by stirring her medicine of the tip of a spoon.

"No way. 'm not ashamed of what I've done."

"You have no idea what you've done." He pointed out, recovering his own glass. "Damn I had two girls in my bed and my headache's too strong to try to remember anything." He whined.

"Doesn't matter. I'm a queen and queens always hold their head high."

Sam snorted, between contempt and fun, then grimaced when tasting medication.

"I don't really feel like I have the makings of a prince right at this very moment."

Charlie smiled, taking her own glass. The slightest light hurt her eyes and as soon as she would have the courage a shower would be welcome. Maybe even two. She raised her glass full of bubbles to Sam.

"Looks like you'll have to be my king for today."

He raised his glass in turn to collide with that of the young woman. "I'll try." They emptied in one gulp the beverage and rested their glasses at the same time on the coffee table.

From the depths of Charlie's bag began a roll drum that she immediately regretted having chosen as a ring tone. Reaching the phone without throwing up was quite a feat in itself and Dean's ranting forced her to move the device apart from her ear.

"WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?"

"Vegas." She replied hoarsely.

"What the hell are you doing in Vegas?"

Charlie threw a questioning look at Sam, his eyes red and his hair tangled, the shirt he had thrown to the ground and never picked up, the glass he was holding in his hands as if it were a treasure.

"Drowning our sorrows I guess." She said softly. Dean didn't comment.

"Get your asses over here with the first plane." He ordered in a tone that allowed no contradiction before hanging up.

Charlie looked at the silent phone and then her friend. Sam shrugged. "Screw him. Him and his small world of domestic bliss, screw them." He grouched. Charlie nodded slowly.

"Maybe I should have told him we'd been kidnapped by aliens?"

"No. We have the right to feel bad sometimes, right? We did nothing wrong."

"I think we had to record today."

"Yeah, for what we've done lately..."

She had nothing to resond to that.

They succeeded each other to the shower and put again their clothes that smelled like smoke and traces of alcohol which certainly had dried overnight after being spilled. The mind a little clearer, Charlie began to feel hungry but the fear of vomit made her muzzle her stomach and just drink an umpteenth glass of water. On the bedside table, Sam's cell phone chirped happily to the rhythm of the scornful texts of Kevin.

There was a crumpled sheet by the phone that Charlie smoothed mechanically while waiting for her friend to exit the bathroom. There was a phone number on it, but no name. And a few lines scribbled with an unsteady hand. She had to squint to read them.

An unpleasant fog obscured her brain but it vaguely seemed to her that she wouldn't have gotten anything from these three lines if she had been in her normal state. If she hadn't still in mind the few words that Dorothy had scribbled hastily when leaving. Correction, when leaving her.

She remembered having knocked on the door of Winchester, finding only Sam and to have dissolved into tears, repeating in a loop "she left me, she left me" as if saying it again and again could change anything.

"Me too." He had replied.

Say the words didn't make the thing more credible or less cruel. It was even almost liberating and they had stayed a while in the living room without knowing what to do with their sorrows.

The rest was a flood of alcohol and bad ideas because neither Sam nor her knew how to handle pain rationally.

But there were a few words on the crumpled page and they inspired her. They went hand in hand with the feeling she had to be a broken teapot, with the ashtray in her mouth and the cloaca in her chest. She searched the nightstand, looking for a pen, and began to write quickly and without thinking. She was still covering the paper with words when Sam came back into the room.

"Find us a studio." She said without looking up from her paper.

"Now?"

"We're in Vegas Sam, we can find everything at any time!"

He leaned on the bedside table to watch what she was writing frantically and retrieved his phone, looking for a place to record. Charlie's frenzy was almost communicative. It took them two hours but they eventually settled in the studio that smelled of sweat and stale with rental bass and drums. Charlie had the tune in mind and she hummed it while seeking the chords on the poorly tuned instrument.

It was an unpleasant fog throughout, and saying that the piece they produced was worth it was probably a lie. But they had done something, which, in their state was already a victory.

The song was now properly written on a new paper and they were hungry. Night had fallen without their realizing it and their migraines had returned. They had turned off their phones which displayed an impressive number of missed calls when they got out of the studio. They looked at each other and realized at the same time that something had just happened.

There are pivotal moments that mark the passage between the before and the after. And they had just entered the after of their respective heartache. They walked a long time without saying anything until finding a restaurant whose smell did not raise their heart and settled there. The fat of the french fries filled in their stomach and they didn't order alcohol. Charlie had with her the CD of the mock up they had taken an entire afternoon to record. The sound was flawed and lacked arrangements but the idea was there, tangible and on track to exist for itself.

"I had forgotten why we do that." She said between bites. Her nails polished of chipped red were tapping rhythmically on the plastic caddy.

"Music?"

She nodded. "We were on tour for a year... it had become normal, mechanical and it shouldn't have. We should have… We should have remembered why we got here. That we had all come to the music through harsh paths and that it kept us self-righteous."

Sam said nothing but nodded slowly. "Maybe it's a good thing that we feel so bad, both of us." He said. "We can take all that and make something good of it. Something to cling, for us or those who listen to us."

"Isn't that what everyone do?"

"Yes. But it works, and everyone does it for a good reason, right?"

"Yeah."

They finished dinner and by mutual agreement took a taxi to the airport.

"Dean? Don't yell, we're coming back. And we got something for you."

"Just because you love the girl,

And she loves you too,

Doesn't mean you should be together,

Doesn't mean you can make plans for two."

##

Unlike Dean, Castiel found Sam and Charlie running away rather distracting. He was not amused by the distress of his friends, he hardly imagined in what state they were to do that. But it was still fun from an external point of view. And he needed to laugh these days.

"This is serious Cas! Kurt lodged a complaint against Sam, if the cops find out he left the state he's good for jail! And we we're good to be fired from Crowley Records with a kick in the ass!" Dean ranted, pacing up and down in the living room. Castiel almost regretted that this was the weekend and he didn't have the excuse of work to escape the foul temper of his companion.

"Precisely. Let them let off some steam, you'll have all the time to tear a strip off them after." He declared. He had no patience to wait for Dean to calm down and joined him at the center of the room, preventing him from continuing to pace the carpet.

He plugged his MP3 player on the docking station and held the singer with one hand while he was looking for the right playlist. It seemed that there was no more music around them since the end of the tour and it vaguely felt like not normal. They stood face to face in the living room when the first guitar notes filled the room before the low voice of Leonard Cohen supplants them.

Castiel took Dean into his arms carefully and tried to make him waltz despite his obvious reluctance.

"Dean!"

"I don't want to be distracted Cas!"

"Well I do! I've been deprived of sex for weeks because of this." Said the accountant by designating a bruise sticking out of his sleeve. "You owe me at least one dance!"

Dean frowned, amused. "It's only been five days!"

"See, you kept count!" Triumphed the young man. His absolute bad faith got the best of Dean who held him against himself as tight as he dared, laughing.

They danced, taking care not to bump the furniture, but actually the music didn't lend itself to anything other than a extremely slow dance. They were kissing when the song ended and didn't stop until the second set out.

"You really decided to put me in bed?" Dean asked softly when a new song filled the apartment. Castiel nodded, pushing him towards the bedroom.

They were almost appropriately dressed again and Cas was taking a painkiller when Sam and Charlie got out of the taxi that brought them from the airport. They had tired and happy faces and sallow complexion of people who need a night of rest.

Charlie almost threw herself on Dean with a delighted smile that he didn't expect to see her after Dorothy had left her. "We got the thing, we got it!" She babbled. He cast a quick glance to his brother while getting her into the apartment like a bulky shopping bag.

"What is she talkin' about?"

"We have a song." Sam answered with a weak smile. He had dull and tired eyes, but given the circumstances, Dean found him surprisingly fine. He remembered the last time Sam had lost the person he loved. He remembered it as the period when giving him drugs for him to sleep was the only way to keep him out of trouble. He still had some pills, minus one that Castiel had swallowed after his aggression.

"If you think it's gonna calm me down... Were the fuck were you?"

"Kidnapped by extraterrestrials, forget it Dean, listen!" Charlie walked to the CD player and placed the recording made earlier in the day, turning to her friend with fingers crossed.

Castiel and Sam were sitting on the sofa where the drummer began to bob head. Castiel was maybe listening even more attentively than Dean, and he was looking at him. He realized he was smiling when he saw the face of his lover change. The song wasn't happy, the opposite would have been surprising, but even with the sole accompaniment of drums and bass, despite the voice not always in tune of Sam it had something captivating. Something raw and true that brought Castiel back to his hospital bed, years ago, on the night when listening in loop the band's first album had made him reconsider his decision to kill himself. He bit his lip as he realized he had just thought it literally.

The music stopped and Castiel thought to himself that the hiss of an old record player would have been a welcome background noise to the silence that followed. Dean's face had changed, as well as his posture. He didn't seem angry as before, and also more relaxed. It was the face he had when he knew exactly what to do and where he was going, when he felt safe.

"Did you eat?" He asked.

The three others stared at him, confused.

"Hem... in the plane." Charlie answered.

"So everyone in their room, and you two, I want you ready to record at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Charlie you sleep in the guest room." Dean said in one go.

Three new surprised looks replied to him.

"That song's good, but we're not gonna record it in the middle of the night. Tomorrow morning we put it in the bag, and then..."

He didn't finish his sentence, but his eyes were shining, his hands waving in search of something to do, and he was smiling as he hadn't done since the ultimatum of Crowley.

"I think you found what we need."

None of the other three understood what he meant, but his enthusiasm was enough for them. Charlie and Sam slipped away before Dean remembers to reprimand them, and Castiel pulled him back to the bed. He felt him tossing and turning for a long time before finally falling asleep. But that wasn't a problem.

"We decided to wait untill tomorrow

If both of us show, we'll know,

If none of us show, we'll know

I'm the only one who showed,

So, I know."

##

The next day, Sam had red eyes when he burst into the recording studio. He went straight to the white board on the back wall and grabbed a marker. He wrote his sentence in big furious letters under Dean's.

"That's what I want for the new album." Said he firmly, capping his marker again.

"Everything." Kevin read. "What does that mean?"

"That I want everything. I want the crowd to be exhausted at the end of the show, I want Dean to have sang himself so hoarse that he'll need a day of rest after each concert, I want to lose arms on each song. I want your fingers to bleed on guitars. I want it to be epic, and huge. I want this to be as hard and amazing as life itself!"

He looked more tired and determined than exalted. But there was something in his manner of speaking, to stand that even Dean couldn't remember having ever seen him, as if he had just walked on hot coals and discovered he didn't feel pain. He threw him his drumsticks across the room.

"I agree with that." He said. He turned to his friends who nodded slowly.

From here, something seemed to click in them, as if a mental barrier between them and the inspiration had broken during Sam and Charlie's getaway to Vegas.

Each recording session started with a jam. They had established this ritual during the recording of their previous album, somewhat by chance. It was a ritual that placed them in a condition to record, as a warm up for their creativity. That morning, Kevin yawned while unpacking his cello. He tuned up by listening to the song of Sam and Charlie. It was to be rearranged, rewritten and redone in the morning but Dean had the gleam in his eyes, saying that none of them would come out of the studio before it to be "in the bag". This time, it was Sam who, without realizing it imposed them the warm-up music by nervously drumming the rhythm of "Dani California" until everyone tunes up. Charlie followed him and Kevin took a few measures more to join them. Dean sighed, rolled his eyes but ended up sitting between them and humming the song, a little more in rhythm with each measure. It was like stretching a sick muscle, and it was good. They were smiling, finishing the song and only Kevin realized that from the open door, Castiel was filming them with his camera.

Then he lost the thread of what was happening during a morning he wouldn't have remembered if Castiel hadn't recorded all of it. He only remembered to have realized that he was tired, uptight and tense suddenly after the last record. It'd be necessary to mix and go back the song over to smooth all the instruments one after the other but that would be Bobby's work, later in the afternoon. Dean was hungry. Later he would only remember that, he was hungry and had dragged his friends in a greasy spoon not far from the recording studio. He wouldn't remember what he had eaten, only their reaction when he had explained his plan for the album.

"You've known about it for long?" Sam grouched over what seemed to be his thirtieth cup of coffee. The question was addressed to Castiel who shrugged.

"For a week." He answered. "He told me about it after his talk with..." He paused and cast a guilty look to Charlie. "After deciding to keep the car."

"No offense, Cas" Kevin intervened. "but you're neither a photographer nor a graphic designer, do you really think you can realize the aesthetic and visual side of the album?"

"No." The young man answered quietly. "But I have no way to know until I've tried, and he thinks that since we share an organ, we also share his incredible talent."

Sam, Charlie and Kevin sighed, rolling their eyes together.

"I never said 'incredible'!" Dean defended himself.

"No, I added that. Do not argue my artistic bias!"

Only Kevin chuckled. Sam and Charlie were head bent over their plates, apparently each waiting for the signal of the other to try and touch it. Under the table, Dean stretched a little kick to both.

"You gonna be okay you two?"

No one really put words on the subject. A tacit agreement prevented them all to mention the sudden and inexplicable departure of Dorothy and the rejection of Madison. None of them had had news of them since before Sam and Charlie's little getaway.

The two friends looked at each other without any other feeling than a deep tiredness. Castiel wondered if it was that kind of shadow he had in his eyes when he passed in front of a hospital? And Kevin made a mental note to ask Channing if he had once seemed as sad that these two.

"Yeah." Sam answered slowly, nodding.

"We're gonna be all right." Charlie completed before seizing her fork and planting it furiously in a piece of meat.

"Maybe we were always a bad idea,

Never meant to write a love story,

But I miss you already."

##

The letters accumulated in Crowley's folder.

If he was particularly lucid about his flaws, the producer also knew he could boast of being patient and sagacious. It was in fact what had led him to his current position. He also knew that the key to success was generally do the right thing at the right time.

This time was approaching, or maybe it was already passed.

Bobby put down the last letter, his face clouded, and it wasn't because of the sun before which he sat in Crowley's office.

"The boys don't know?"

Crowley shook his head. "Not to my knowledge, if they received some, they didn't tell me."

"To me neither. Which means Sam didn't receive any. He wouldn't have been able to hide that."

"What about Dean?" Crowley asked, hands clasped under his chin. He was slightly turning on himself in his big leather chair, an almost hypnotizing movement that started to annoy Bobby.

The manager took the last letter again and smoothed the folds mechanically. He didn't need to read it, every hateful word was printed in his mind for a while now.

"If he had received a letter with that kind of content, we'd know. When was it send?"

"Three days ago." Crowley answered.

"After the accident then."

"After the accountant's agression."

"They don't know. None of them know." Bobby concluded.

Crowley nodded. He saw himself as a wise man, and the decades he had already spent in business and in show business had toughened him, had taught him how to react to threatening letters. He didn't know, however, how to react when the letters arrived after the events. Nor when they took a turn such as the one Bobby was now folding up before slipping it neatly in the folder. He hated that. Crowley hated not knowing. He hated even more being afraid and it was exactly what he was feeling.

It wasn't a frank terror, more a worry that concerned him only from afar. But the threats of John Winchester were becoming more frequent, more and more specific and targeted. Eventually, he would have to bring Dean and Sam up to date. Eventually, if their father didn't see reason, they would all be affected. The band was in a too delicate situation for afford that. Crowley had resolved for months to take care of this case only to the extent that it would have repercussions on his company which was currently not the case.

But wasn't just worried for his money anymore, but also for the kids. John Winchester seemed to be slowly losing his mind. A little faster since his accident. The letters were increasing.

"I hesitate to call the police." He said thoughtfully.

Bobby ran a hand over his face. "That would mean briefing them now. And if the press takes hold of it, they ain't gonna lay them off. Sam will already have to answer for assault and battery in a few days and none of them is strong enough to support this weight on top of the rest. They barely started recording."

"Then dependent on you to supervise them, but we'll have to inform them sooner or later, this concerns them more than us."

Bobby nodded. Between them the letter held out its shadow on the dark office. Sooner or later, for Bobby meant: as late as possible. The group had an album to record and was already stuck with enough enough without adding threats John.

"He wouldn't lash out at his own sons. He hopes to see them change. He won't lay into them."

"I'm not worried about them." Crowley replied calmly. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh. "I think the brunette..."

"Dorothy." Bobby cut him off.

"Dorothy, I think she did us a favour by vanishing into thin air."

Bobby nodded.