Chapter 4

April 30, 2012. Somewhere between Indiana and Colorado.

"Sam can't control the hallucinations anymore." Dean stared at the road, the white lines, lit up by the headlights, rushing by in a blur of speed. "He hasn't slept in … I don't know … three or four days."

"What changed?"

"I don't know. He was using the pain in his hand; I guess it healed up."

He glanced sidelong at the woman sitting beside him. Despite the ongoing problems of his brother, the levis, a world going to hell and the Titanic-sized anxiety he was feeling about all of it … right now, right here, the wheel was light in his hands, the leather grip comfortable and familiar; no spiking pain from shoulders to neck, threatening to turn into a super-sized headache. A nervous flutter in his stomach was accompanied by a faint buzz, a tingle along his nerve endings that might've been excitement. He wasn't going to commit to that. It'd been too long since he'd felt it.

It shouldn't've been surprising, that cautious rill of anticipation. His passenger, her face barely visible in the soft glow of the dash, had always had that effect on him. Some weird-assed chemical or biological reaction, like a static charge in the air. He'd missed her, so fucking much in the last few weeks, but that wasn't surprising either. What was surprising was she was here.

The last time they'd been in the same room, she'd told him to hit the road. Permanently. The memory brought a prickle of alarm to the back of his neck and a flush of unease heated his face as he ignored it. He didn't want to question why she was here. The ache in his chest was gone. He could breathe again. The why or the how wasn't important.

Ellie shook her head, a small crease appearing between her brows, banishing his doubts with a jolt of familiarity.

"But the reintegration was going well – Sam said he felt like he'd paid his dues; he was able to move on. Why would the hallucinations return if that was the case?"

"Yeah, I got nothing." He glowered at the empty highway. He'd somehow managed to forget that conversation with his brother. A lot had happened since.

"None of this makes sense."

From the corner of his eye, he saw her turn back to him, almost smiling at the irritation in her voice. None of it made a fucking lick of sense to him either but he no longer felt alone.

"No."

He'd missed a lot of things about her. Maybe more than any of the others things, he'd missed talking to her. Like this. Not hiding anything. Not pretending to be someone he wasn't. Just the two of them, kicking the crap out of a problem. He had plenty of problems and an aching itch to kick them.

It made Seattle even less understandable. Growing up in this life, he'd liked himself, for the most part. Felt comfortable in his skin, had understood what he was doing and why. Then things had gone bad and from there, really bad. It'd taken a long time to start to feel like he wasn't the same as the hellspawn he hunted. To get out of bed with a sense of purpose again. He didn't want to be someone else. Too late to realise that now.

His breath whistled between his teeth as he sucked in a lungful, trying to force that knowledge away. He had the feeling she wasn't ready to talk about it, and he was willing to talk about anything else just to keep her here.

"He blames me, for putting his soul back," he said, recalling Sam's weary accusations in the hospital, exhaustion sapping the very life out of his brother. "Maybe he's right."

There was an impatient exhale from the passenger seat, and he could almost see the eye roll that would've accompanied it. "Again with this? Really? If this was caused by his soul being returned, he sure took a long time to start bleeding!"

Dean kept his eyes on the road as Ellie's voice hardened. "That's bullshit, Dean. This has nothing to do with putting his soul back. Hallucinations don't cause insomnia, at least, not in the sense you're talking about."

"Then what?" he asked, wondering if he should've kept his mouth shut. "I'm outta answers."

"If he's not sleeping, that on its own could trigger a psychotic break." She paused, brow furrowing. "I don't know much about this stuff, Dean, I'd need to do some digging, but did the insomnia come first, or the hallucinations?"

"The hallucinations. He says Lucifer won't let him sleep."

"Obviously he's tried sedatives?"

"He says they don't touch it. At the hospital, the docs said the same thing. Made him more tired, y'know. Groggy. Out of it. But they didn't put him down."

He could feel her concentration; practically hear the thoughts storming in her mind. The road ahead was unnaturally clear, the white lines disappearing into the distance. Turning his head, he could see her expression by the dim glow of the dash lights, the crease between her brows deepening. "What d'you think?"

"You're not going to like it," she warned him, lifting her gaze to meet his before he looked back to the highway.

He shrugged. So far, he was on a streak of not liking anything. What was one more thing to add to the very long list? "I don't like any of this."

He wasn't sure if he'd meant the faint accusation in his tone or not, chewing on the inside of his cheek when she didn't answer straight away. The car seemed oddly silent. He couldn't hear the deep throb of the engine, or feel it in his bones.

"I talked to Sam, a while ago," Ellie said. "Something about what he'd said about the hallucinations was bugging me, but I didn't have a chance to check out the research until – well, until later."

Later, Dean thought. Guilt fluxed through him and he made an effort to push it aside, dragging his attention back to what she was saying.

"I found some things. Precedents. Not many of them, but at least three," she was saying and he blinked, wondering if he'd missed something.

"Precedents for what?"

"It's a long shot, and I wouldn't've considered it if anything physical was able to affect Sam, but it's possible Lucifer piggy-backed his way out of the Cage in Sam's body," Ellie told him, her tone blunt.

"What?!"

"You said Sam went into the Cage in his flesh and blood? That Cas pulled Sam out without his soul, right?" She leaned back against the other door. "He was hunting for almost a year soulless? There's nothing to have stopped Lucifer from leaping on board at the last second, Dean. Especially if Sam's soul wasn't in his body at the time."

"But …" Dean hesitated, trying to pull out memories he'd shoved down deep. "No. Ellie, he had memories … of Hell, of being tortured by Lucifer. Cas pulled out his body not long after he went in." He shook his head as his thoughts spun faster. "Why would the devil've stayed in hiding with a vacant body and full control?"

"Maybe Lucifer didn't have full control?" she suggested, shrugging. "Maybe he was wiped out just trying to hitch the ride out? I don't know."

"For a year?" He really didn't want the devil to be topside again.

"Dean, I don't know," Ellie repeated. "These hallucinations could be Lucifer regaining his strength. What it doesn't explain is why pain would have sent him away if he was there in Sam's head and strong enough to change Sam's perceptions."

Dean swallowed, digesting the implications. "You're right. I really don't like it."

"If he did, and the effort kept him out of sight for that long, we really don't know if he's going to keep getting stronger until he can take control again." She rubbed her eyes. "Angels don't have souls. But when Sam's was returned, it would've been a power source."

She sat up straighter in the passenger seat. "The wall."

"What?"

"Death's wall," she said, leaning forward to look at him. "Lucifer could've been trapped behind it, just like the memories were?"

"An' when Cas broke it, he let out the devil?" Dean asked. "But Sam's soul wouldn't have been tortured, all that time –"

"Michael didn't get out. As archangels go, he's not renowned for temperance," Ellie pointed out. "If Lucifer was in Sam all along, he had plenty of time to manufacture horror for Sam. Maybe that's why he wanted Sam to believe he'd never left the Cage?"

"Slow down, okay? Just … gimme a sec," Dean said. He wasn't sure if he wanted to believe her theory or not. Those memories were real for his brother. He stared at the road. As real as the djinn's planted memories of a life that'd never happened were for him, he thought, his stomach tightening.

"Dean, Sam said the wall was only supposed to hold his memories of Hell," Ellie said. "But when Cas broke the wall, it wasn't just the memories he had to reintegrate – he said a part of him had been locked up with them."

He had a vague memory of Sam telling him about that. Killing himself to become one again. Had he said one part or two? He couldn't remember.

"If Lucifer needs the power of Sam's soul to regain his strength, keeping him off balance, confused and unable to fight back would be a priority, wouldn't it?"

"What the hell can we do about it?" His fingers tightened on the wheel in frustration. "Can we exorcise an angel?"

"No." She drew up her legs, folding her arms over her knees and leaning her forehead against them. The frown returned. "Maybe."

"What?"

"Can you get oleum sanctum?" she asked. "Holy oil, from Jerusalem?"

Raphael's face, lit up by the flames, leapt into his mind. Fucking holy oil. Shit. "I don't know. Cas – uh – Cas got it when we trapped Raphael. We had some left but we used it to trap Cas."

"Do I have enough time to get a flight and back?"

"How long?"

"I don't know. Maybe forty-eight hours?" She turned away from him, searching the floor. "Where the hell's my bag?"

"Uh, in the back?" Dean flicked a glance at the rearview. The bag wasn't on the seat. "I don't think Sam's got that long."

Twisting around and leaning over the seat, Ellie shook her head. "Must be in the trunk. I can call around, see if anyone knows of any in the US. It'd still be a long shot."

"Try. Please." He glanced at her again as she nodded, noticing suddenly that her hair was loose, falling over her shoulders and down her back, gleaming in the dim and reddish dash lights. She usually wore it plaited back during the day or when she was working. In all the years he'd known her, he'd only seen it loose a few times during the day, but it was always loose at night, when she slept.

An image rose, crystal-clear in his mind's eye, the spill of her hair over his arms, over the pillows beside him. His body thrummed with the sense memory, flushing with heat.

"I can't believe I didn't even think of it," he said, forcing the image aside.

"Not the first thing that occurs for hallucinations," Ellie said, resettling herself against the passenger door. She rubbed the inside of her wrist over a brow.

"How're you doing with Frank?"

Next problem to kick.

"Frank's been taken. We think. The levis are the most likely suspects," he said. "Something else we have to dig around about as soon as Sam's okay."

"Was he getting too close?"

"I guess so." He thought about the last couple of conversations he'd had with the paranoid programmer. "To what, I got no idea."

"What'd he say?"

"Said Roman is a busy bee," Dean told her, digging through memory to pull out the crap Frank'd been feeding them in the last few weeks. "Along with the digs he's funding, he bought a factory in Saudi Arabia; uh, a fishery in Jakarta. Opened another one of those toxic restaurants in Butte … was buying up real estate in Oregon … how that's all supposed to fit together is over my pay grade and anyone's guess."

He looked over at her, remembering the last job before Sam'd collapsed. "Oh, yeah, we met a couple of levis in Portland. They said we got it all wrong – they're trying to cure cancer. Apparently."

Ellie blinked, turning with one brow raised. "Cure cancer?"

He shrugged. "That's what they said. They're building research centres. Not interested in killing people any more."

"Uh huh. Did it mention the reason for the change of heart?" she asked. "Or the connection between the overseas investments? Or what Roman is digging for?"

"Nope."

"I've got six servers hunting for information full time," she said, gesturing vaguely behind her. "A lot of stuff has come up in relation to what Roman is doing generally, but connecting the dots has been impossible. Not enough data."

"That's what Frank said." Dean's mouth compressed. "Just before he disappeared."

"That's reassuring."

He turned, his chest tightening. She was alone now. "You're safe, right? In that house? They can't find you?"

"The house is okay." Ellie unfolded her legs, stretching them out awkwardly in the well. "I redid the protections after – anyway, I'm routing the information through about a hundred and sixteen countries, and several Defence and civil satellites. I don't think they can track it."

He looked back at the road, breathing deeply. "So long as you're safe."

"Safe as anyone, I guess. Safer than most." She shrugged. "I think I got some hits on the enzyme. Something else Roman's been buying up in Europe. Biotech labs."

"For?"

"Figuring out a way around whatever genetic or biological problem they're facing – whatever they're building in Wisconsin, research centre or Soylent Green factory, it hardly matters. They applied for licences for gene research as well." She kept her eyes on the road unrolling ahead of them. "Could be that problem is bigger than their problems with reproduction, but I might be wrong."

"Your track record is pretty impressive."

She smiled suddenly, turning to him. He could see it from the corner of his eye, and for an instant, the only thing he wanted to do was look at her, fix that smile into his memory, with the others. There were times it seemed like those memories were all he had to keep him sane. The pain hadn't diminished, but he'd been using it, using it to keep going, a goad to replace the anger he'd lost.

"Garbage in, garbage out, Dean. Without enough information, I'm just feeling around in the dark."

"Welcome to my world."

The car's headlights had narrowed their existence to the straight line of black and white, and the interior of the car. He realised suddenly he could hear the car again, feel the vibrations through the wheels and pedals. The rumble of the engine and the regular thrum of the tyres over the asphalt surrounded them in a cocoon of sound, not so loud that they couldn't hear over it, but insulating them from the outside world every bit as effectively as the night and the narrow field of light.

"How've you been?" she asked, taking him by surprise.

It wasn't a big question, but it was. She was asking it. Not a green light, he cautioned himself. It wasn't an open invitation, no matter how much it might've looked like one, or how much he wanted it to be one.

"Uh, you know," he hedged, too goddamned aware that he couldn't say what he really wanted to get out.

The usual fears were there. Being vulnerable. Giving someone else too much ammunition to use against him. It was muted here and now; damped down because he knew she wouldn't use it against him. No matter what was wrong between them, his trust in her was intact. He flexed his hands against the wheel, wondering where to start.

"There's, uh, Sam. He's … yeah. He tells me straight out what's going on, that's something, right? He's not hiding it anymore? But there's still nothing I can do about it." Pausing for a long moment, he debated the sense of bringing up the rest now. Fuck it. Every detail was important, she'd said more than once to him. These were the details. "And, uh, I can't tell him what's going on with … uh, you know, my crap. I can't tell him about … you know … it wouldn't help. There's nothing he can do about it, and he's got too much of his own mess."

He laughed shakily. "Pretty sure we're both going to end up in a mental ward, side by side, for life."

Beside him, she sat silently, watching the road. He wasn't sure if the silence meant anything or if she was just letting him talk without interruption.

"I've been trying, but I can't get past this stuff with Cas." He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "Can't get past what he did. Feels like I've lost the ability to trust anyone."

Except you, he wanted to add, but that wouldn't come out.

"Because he didn't tell you what he was doing?"

"Yeah. I guess," he said. It wasn't just that, he thought. Cas'd been around, had seen enough to know who he should've trusted. The idea that the angel'd released the devil when he'd pulled Sam out was making the whole issue worse.

"Because he didn't trust me to understand, to help him."

"But you didn't trust him. You didn't want to help him, at least not in the way that he thought he needed."

"Yeah. Well." He rubbed his hand along the rough stubble on his jaw. "He was going to open Purgatory."

"We covered this," Ellie said, putting her back against the passenger door to face him. "You were working through it."

"Yeah. Well." He kept his gaze on the road. "Doesn't go so good when you're not around. Must be a slow learner."

"It wasn't about opening Purgatory," she said. "Or even about what he did to Sam–"

"The hell it wasn't!"

"It wasn't only about what he did to Sam," she rephrased tactfully. "He didn't trust you."

"Yeah, well … after everything, you know," he said. "All the crap we'd been through, I thought – I figured he'd – I thought I'd earned a bit of fucking trust! All he had to do was–"

"Listen and do it your way," she cut him off, her tone light.

He glanced at her. "Was that too much to fucking ask?"

"Yes," Ellie said, shrugging. "He couldn't. No soul, Dean. No conscience. Seeing only that the ends justifies the means. How do you think Lucifer ended up falling?"

Dean snorted. "Not like it would've taken a lot of brains to figure it out, Ellie."

She smiled. "For you, the choices between right and wrong are clear. They're black and white. You've got questionable ethics and not a lawful bone in your body –"

"Hey!"

"– but morally, you always know," she continued, ignoring his protest. "And for a long time, you thought everyone else was the same. It hurt when it turned out they weren't."

It was one of the things she most admired in him, that marrow-deep morality that never let him turn away or give up or do something others might do. It'd been the foundation of her trust in him and when she'd found it wasn't infallible, it'd rocked everything she knew.

"You didn't want to help Cas and he didn't want to know what he doing was wrong," she added. "And it hurt just as much as Sam turning to Ruby instead of listening to you."

As she'd hoped, the reminder got his attention. She saw his hands flex around the wheel, his profile turn stony.

"An' how'm I supposed to forgive that?"

The fragility of that forgiveness was still there. He'd told himself it wasn't important, that it didn't matter, but in ways he was still discovering, it was. How the hell was he supposed to make another allowance for the angel?

"The same way, I guess," Ellie said. "One day at a time."

The hell of it was, she was right and he hadn't thought about it. He hadn't wanted to hear about what Cas was trying to do, saving the world, saving people, he'd only wanted him to do it the right way. Like Sam. What he'd wished he'd done, if there'd been any other way, when he'd gone deliberately to the crossroads and buried the tin.

"I've made my share of mistakes."

"Yeah." She nodded, her tone noncommittal, and he dragged in a breath when he realised how that'd come out.

"You have," she added, overriding his apology before he could make it. "You knew giving yourself to Michael wasn't the right choice. At the time, it just seemed like the only one."

The past, with its haunting figures, surrounded him again. He blinked at the road as some of the memories faded away before he could even really grasp them. Ellen and Jo. And Bobby. Adam's shadowy figure remained, just at the edge of consciousness. And Anna.

There were choices he'd made that'd seemed like the only way. People he'd failed because he'd chosen someone else instead of them. A lotta mistakes. Not all of them on him. But offering himself to Michael wasn't one of those. He'd given up, stopped fighting, had been thinking only of ways he could minimise the damage to the people he cared about.

"You betrayed your friends by making that choice, betrayed what they'd been fighting for."

Dean flinched at the words, knowing they were true. It'd been a decision born of desperation and in the end it'd cost him a brother.

"Did they hold it against you, Dean?" Ellie pressed.

"No." He could hear Bobby's words, lacerating him with their fury, but Bobby had understood, had forgiven him for his weakness. Cas had been equally angry at him, and it hadn't been until he killed Zachariah and pulled Sam out that he'd understood he couldn't make that choice. Not even to save half the planet.

"So I'm supposed to find a way to forgive Cas?" he asked. "What does it matter now? He's dead."

"Cas doesn't need your forgiveness, you need it. You need to be able to forgive him for his mistakes so that you can let go."

"He broke Sam's wall. He put him where he is now." Dean scowled. "For a diversion, Ellie, just to stop Bobby and me."

She nodded. "You said he apologised, before he died. Wasn't that enough?"

"I guess not."

It didn't seem enough but it was all he was going to get, he realised. She was right about that too. He'd wanted the angel to undo what he'd done. A wish right up there with wanting to undo a lot of the crap in his past.

Everything you've done, every choice you've made, they're a part of who you are, she'd said to him once. You can't unpick one choice and wish it away. I don't know anyone as strong as you are, if you could just see it.

The memory caught in his throat. Whatever it'd been she'd seen in him, he was sure she didn't see it now. He wasn't strong and he was further from being the man he'd wanted to be, the one he'd seen in her eyes, than he'd been since getting out of Hell.

Flicking a sideways glance to his right, he saw she'd turned away from him, her reflection sharp but muted against the blackness. She wasn't all steel and wire, no matter how much she liked to give that impression. He'd seen her cry, seen her weak with exhaustion, or with pain; he'd held her on the rare occasions she'd talked about her past, or been woken by an old nightmare.

Fumbling with the tape deck, he shoved the tape sitting there in and waited, adjusting the volume down as the first song started to play. He couldn't do this without something in the background.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "I – we always end up talkin' 'bout me.

"I'm fine."

"No." He shook his head. "You don't get to use my lines now."

From the corner of his eye, he caught the flash of her smile. "Okay. I'm not fine."

There's a crazy moon, a crazy sky, looking down on me
I've been losing track of time
It's been the hardest day, the longest night, I've ever spent alone
I can't get you off my mind

He wasn't going to let everything out, wasn't going to sit here and let her see the fucking yawning abyss inside of him, but he was miles past the point he could deal with her shining him on and pretending everything was just goddamned dandy. He'd've begged and pleaded with her, if he thought it'd make a difference … he knew it wouldn't.

The worst mistakes are the ones that happen fast, on an impulse or in reaction. Things you can't undo and can't make right and can't take back. His father's voice. They'd been in some small town, just talking about nothing while they'd cleaned the guns. He remembered being surprised at the change in subject.

The ones you'd wire-brush your soul to somehow wipe away, his father had said, his eyes fixed on the disassembled barrel in his hand. So, before you do anything, make sure you've thought it through, Dean.

At the time, he'd gotten the idea John Winchester had been thinking about his wife. There'd been a time … a time of shouting and unrest in the little house … before the demon. That memory had come back with the enforced walk through Heaven, but not completely. He couldn't remember any details.

In that little town, surrounded by dismembered ordnance, what he remembered most clearly was the regret on his father's face. Regret and shame and the way his father had looked away when his eyes had started to shine.

He knew exactly what he'd been talking about now. There was nothing he could do to fix this. Pushing back against the seat with a restless irritation, he knew he wasn't going to any reassurances, whatever she said.

"Just tell me, okay?" he said, fingers involuntarily tightening around the wheel.

She didn't answer. The insistent rhythm of the song pounded at him. He reached for the volume and turned it down.

"Please," he added after moments had passed, glancing at her as he heard her sigh.

"You already how I am, Dean. It won't make any difference to hear me spell it out."

No, probably not, he thought. Didn't mean he deserved a reprieve.

"I miss you, so much, Ellie." The words came out before he could stop them, in a weirdly deep and husky tone, and he couldn't look at her.

She didn't say anything to that either, and the song played on.

No sign, no words, no warning, we can never be the same, no
When you walked out that morning, you know you left nothing but the blame

He couldn't tell if the message he could hear in Roger's accusatory tone was aimed at him, or her.

"Ellie?" He risked a fast glance. "Look, I know you don't … feel the same way about me any more," he tried again, swallowing hard. There was an obstruction in his throat and it was aching. "I know you don't … love me now–"

"I've never stopped loving you, Dean." She turned and looked at him as she cut him off, her eyes too bright in the dim light from the dash. A harshly indrawn breath beside him twitched his fingers on the wheel, fighting the desire to pull off the road, stop the car.

"I can't take not knowing who you are – not knowing what you might do – because you don't know those things yourself," she added, her voice dropping, making him strain to hear her. "I can't trust you."

Time slowed to a crawl and then stopped as he absorbed the words.

Never stopped loving you.

That was good, wasn't it? That was hope.

Not knowing who you are – or what you might do.

Not so good. She knew him better than anyone alive, knew him in a way that sometimes seemed impossible; knew all his tells and dodges, all the good things and all the bad.

You act like a stranger, stranger - tell me it ain't true
Won't you please explain, why you're so strange

He stared ahead, the road empty and endless in the headlights. Where the fuck were they? He couldn't remember seeing a sign for miles.

It was a diverting thought but it couldn't hold him. He didn't care where they were. At least, not their location. He cared where they were. With each other. Not alone. Please fucking god, no more being so fucking alone.

"If I'm so goddamned clear on what's right and wrong, how'd I do this?" he asked, voice cracking with a frustration that slammed one hand against the wheel.

The sixty-four million dollar question. From her silence, he guessed she didn't know the answer to it either.

"I didn't – I wasn't – I wasn't trying to –"

"I know you didn't do it to hurt me, Dean. I know you didn't even think about that – which is kind of the problem–"

What?

He wondered how it could more of a problem to have done it without thinking than if he'd done it deliberately.

"– and I know you wish it hadn't happened," Ellie continued, rubbing her wrist against her brow. "What I don't know is how to have faith in you."

"That makes two of us," he said, half under his breath. "Can't we –?"

"No."

For a single syllable word, it had a lot of clout. He turned to look at her.

"I miss you too," she said, leaning back against the door, her arms crossing over her chest. "I believed in you. I –"

She shook her head, twisting around in the seat to stare out through the windscreen.

His vision doubled disorientingly, the highway sparkling brightly for a second. He heard the distant blare of a truck horn but the road was black and empty.

Then it was there, deafening, filling the car with a sustained roar, and he was blinded by the lights that appeared in front of him, close and getting larger, wrenching the wheel to the right as his eyes narrowed to slits.

What the hell?

He straightened the car, head turning to watch the semi passing by, on the other side of the road now. He looked in the mirror, seeing headlights behind him, taillights in front, the road not an empty two-lane blacktop anymore but the interstate, eight lanes of traffic flowing and far from empty.

He snapped around to stare at the passenger seat next to him. There was no one there.

Thompson Falls, Montana

Ellie sat up in her bed, struggling to hold onto the fragments of the dream, the air horn's blast still ringing in her ears, the brightness of the rig's headlights a vivid afterimage against the darkness of the room.

Her heart was pounding and she leaned back against the pillows, drawing in deep breaths as she tried to remember the long conversation in the dream.

Dream?

No, it'd been more than that. She wriggled back, catching the long fall of her hair and tugging it over her shoulder. The details were fading. As memories of dreams invariably did. There were some parts that were still vividly clear. The expressions on his face. The breaks in his voice. She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her cheek against her knees.

Castiel. He'd said he was still unable to forgive the angel.

Did that apply to their situation as well? Was she punishing them both because she couldn't forgive his betrayal of her trust? Do as I say, not as I do, she thought sourly.

The situations were not similar. She thought she might've been able to forgive him if he'd just known why. Not knowing … not knowing meant risking it again. She thought she might've been able to let it all go if he'd been looking for happiness, unable to find it with her. That wasn't the case either.

Screwing her eyes shut, she pushed harder at the memories. He'd started out saying something about Sam ... Sam's hallucinations, hallucinations that weren't really hallucinations. Her eyes flew open as she remembered.

The books lying on her desk in the study were about possessions without consent. Hitchhikers, in a sense.

Exorcising an angel ... When the oil burns, no angel can touch or pass through the flames, or he dies ... Penemue had told her that, years ago. And Dean had told her, when Castiel had trapped Raphael. Sam could pass out of the flames without harm. Lucifer could not.

She swung her legs off the bed and reached for her robe.

Patriot Motel and Cabins, Colby, Kansas

Dean pulled into the slot in front of Room 23, swiping the key the half-asleep desk clerk had handed over from the passenger seat as he pushed the driver's door open with his foot.

The air was cold and crisp, the sky above him black velvet pinpricked by millions of distant stars that not even the motel's glaring neon lights could dim. Getting out of the car, he sucked in a deep breath. His nervous system was still jittering from the close call with the rig – on the wrong side of the fucking road and what–? sleep-driving? – and he'd hit the exit as soon as he'd crossed back to the other side of the interstate, the brilliant blue neon of the motel's sign changing his mind about continuing on as soon as he saw them.

He walked around the car and unlocked the trunk, pulling out the two duffels and slamming the lid shut. He never fell asleep at the wheel. Had never even micro-slept or whatever the term was for closing your eyes just that second too long. He listened to his body and when his concentration started to go, he pulled off. Found whatever was around, slept as long as he could.

It didn't matter how many times he went over it. He'd been sleeping. He'd've been a smear on the road if the rig's horn hadn't blasted him back to a waking state with just enough time to swerve on to the dividing shoulder.

The key stuttered around the hole without finding it and he pulled his hand away, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. When he tried again, the key found the lock and slid in easily.

Inside, the room was clean and instantly forgettable. A queen bed took up half the back wall. Table and chairs huddled near the kitchenette benchtop. The bathroom door stood ajar on the other side. Flipping on the lights, he dumped the bags and walked to the bathroom. The overhead fluorescent flickered and strobed for a minute before finally deciding to produce a cold, steady light.

Under the glare, his face in the mirror looked like crap.

He turned on the taps and filled his hands, splashing the cold water over his face, eyes squeezed shut as he tried to pull back the images from a dream he still couldn't believe he'd had.

He'd dreamed of her a lot in the last few weeks. Painful dreams that'd reminded him of the dreams he'd had in Cicero. Dreams that left an ache in his chest and a dwindling stock of interest in what he was doing or where he was going.

None of them had been like this.

Wiping his face with the towel beside the sink, he stared at his reflection, seeing the four-day growth, hollows and shadows without registering them.

It'd been like nothing'd happened, he thought. No. Not like nothing had happened, like … something else. A place they could talk. The pain'd been there. Large as life and twice as ugly, but it hadn't been the only thing.

Turning away from the sink, he reached into the recess and twisted on the shower's taps, stripping fast as steam began to billow into the small room. He stepped under the rush of hot water and felt some of the night's chills dissipate, along with the residual humming tension.

The details were slipping away, he realised, turning around in the narrow cubicle to let the water gush over his shoulders and back. She'd said something about Lucifer, about the devil hitching a ride out in Sam's body. He stretched his arms out, bracing himself against the tiled walls and screwed his eyes shut.

Holy oil. Something about it, anyway. Using holy oil? Had that been the plan?

If the devil had hidden in Sam's body, been pulled out by Cas and was slowly regaining his strength, how the hell was he going to find holy oil? Cas'd made the trip to Jerusalem for the oil to trap Raphael. They'd used the last of it making the trap for Cas when he'd been lying about Crowley.

A shiver slid through him, and he turned to the shower rose, tipping his head back and closing his eyes, letting the water pummel him. He'd told her about Cas, not being able to forgive the sonofabitch for not fixing what he'd broken. Ellie'd picked out the underlying reasons for his inability to let go.

The angel had stood in the centre of the circle, the flames lighting his face.

"Listen," Cas'd said. "Raphael will kill us all. He'll turn the world into a graveyard. I had no choice."

As the water ran down his face, he remembered the flash of fury that'd filled him at that moment.

"No, you had a choice. You just made the wrong one."

"You don't understand," Cas'd said, turning away. "It's complicated."

"No, actually, it's not, and you know that," he'd told the angel. "Why else would you keep this whole thing a secret, huh, unless you knew that it was wrong?"

Reaching out blindly, Dean turned off the taps, leaning against the tiled wall. Secrets and lies. His life was fucking full of them. His ability to trust had been battered and bludgeoned and ripped into pieces.

"When crap like this comes around, we deal with it. Like we always have. What we don't do is we don't go out and make another deal with the devil!

Sam and Ruby. Cas and Crowley.

He stepped out of the recess, snatching the towel from the rail and drying himself.

His brother. His friend. He'd given them his trust unthinkingly and what they'd done had cut into him so deeply he didn't think he'd ever be free of the way it felt.

We always hurt the ones we love.

Snorting as he threw the towel onto the sink, he walked back into the room, yanking his bag onto the bed and digging through the contents. It was a dumb saying. It was only the people loved, who trusted, that could be hurt by the often crappy choices made, he thought.

Returning to the bathroom, he pulled out his razor and the small can of shaving cream and wiped a hand over the steamed up mirror.

And he'd done the same thing to the one person who'd trusted him completely.

He didn't even have the excuse of believing he was saving the world, he thought, leaning on the edge of the sink, his fingers cramping as he gripped the porcelain rim. She'd believed in him, trusted him … loved him … and he'd thrown all that away … for nothing.

I've never stopped loving you.

She'd said that, in the dream, hadn't she? Straightening, he picked up the can and squirted cream into his palm, smearing it over his cheeks and jaw automatically. He'd been asleep – asleep at the wheel, for fuck's sake! – but he'd never had a dream like that. Her hair had been loose, spilling over her shoulders, the bright copper muted and dark in the dim light and the image stung, a too-potent reminder.

I love you.

The memory of saying that, saying it and meaning it with every fibre of his being, hit him as he drew the razor down his cheek. He stared at the bead of red that welled in the middle of the foam unseeingly. It'd been the first time he'd said it to anyone, other than his family, and the terrifying exhilaration of saying those words out loud had been sublimated by the rock-solid certainty he'd felt.

The fuck he'd gotten from there to here? He blinked at the mirror, belatedly registering the blood and wiping at it, dunking the razor under the running cold water and finishing the shave fast and carelessly. Cupping his hands under the flow, he splashed the water over his face until the cut gave up bleeding.

Well, you do what you do and you pay for your sins, but there's no such thing as what might have been. That's a waste of time; drive you outta your mind.

The lyric fragment came back to him as he flicked off the bathroom light. He'd finally pinned down the reference, a country song by a guy called Tim McGraw. The song had been forgettable, but the lyric kept playing back to him.

Pulling on clean boxers, he grabbed a canister of salt from the open bag and ran lines under the windows and along the threshold of the door. Crowley'd called a truce but he'd trust the demon when Hell froze over and not before.

He'd never backed away from a mistake in his life. Had never tried to blame anyone or anything else for choices he'd made. Dragging back the thin covers of the motel bed, he realised he wanted to, for the first time, wanted desperately to be able to say it wasn't his fault and drown out the knowledge that he couldn't fix what he'd done, couldn't undo it or make it right.

She loved him and he loved her and that should've been all that counted, should've made it possible to find a way back, but it didn't.

Rolling onto his shoulder, he hit the lamp switch with unnecessary force, plunging the room into darkness.

Maybe he'd dreamed of talking to her to try and get clear, he thought. It'd felt real, real enough to give fresh life to the ache he'd been trying to ignore. Maybe it'd been his subconscious, trying to tell him this was the only way he was ever going to talk to her again, that it was time he let go of hope and face up to the facts.

The pain that rippled through him wasn't focussed. It was diffuse, penetrating every cell. His legs drew up involuntarily against a cold that spread from the inside.

Dying would've been easier.