Chapter 5

Next day. Thompson Falls, Montana

Sunlight splashed through the high windows and reflected from the white walls and pale golden timber. On the counter, the coffee pot gurgled, almost empty. Sitting at the scrubbed table, Ellie glanced at it, debating the advisability of another cup. She'd been calling around since before dawn, and it was getting close to noon.

Picking up the phone again, she ran her finger down the list of contacts in the dark leather address book on the table. There was a bottle in Toledo. Coralie had brought it back with her a year ago, for a ritual she'd never ended up performing. The psychic'd explained the oil's aid in her astral work but had seemed happy enough to let her have it. All she needed was a courier, someone who wouldn't ask and wouldn't tell.

Tapping the page, she dialled fast, tucking the phone against her ear. The phone rang on the other end for a long time, and she was about to hang up when she heard it picked up.

"Yeah." The male voice was whiskey-rough, thickened by a years-old injury to his throat.

"Twist?" She pressed the phone tightly to her ear, straining to hear through the crackling connection. "Twist, it's Ellie."

"Ellie?" Abruptly, the line seemed to clear, Twist's voice coming through clearly. "Heard you were out of the country for awhile."

"Yeah, well, had to come back to sort out a few things." She made a face at the outright lie and closed her eyes. "I need a favour."

"Sure."

"There's a package in Toledo. You got a pen?" she said, picking up hers and doodling around the address. "Coralie Fenton. 1384 Old Pine Road. I need you to pick it up, find Dean Winchester, and give it to him."

"Winchester?" She heard the surprise in the man's voice. "Hell, haven't seen the Winchesters for a while, Ellie. I heard they were dead."

She made a face at her pad. "Not dead. Just been busy with other stuff"

"Huh, yeah, who hasn't?"

"Dean's number is 1863-952-9295."

"What'm I delivering?"

"It's – uh – it's a bottle of holy oil," she said, forehead creasing as she realised he'd need some kind of cover story.

"What?"

"Holy oil," she repeated, closing her eyes. "It can be used to – uh – well, to identify and trap angels."

"What!?"

She sighed. "I think the Winchesters are having a problem with a fallen angel. This is to help them sort it out, okay?"

"Whatever you say," Twist responded, his voice filled with doubt. "But, uh, how'm I supposed to convince them I knew about it?"

He was right, she thought, her eyes screwing shut. "Uh, tell him you heard about it. Demon talk. Or, uh, from Marcus."

"'Kay." The doubt was still there and she realised that her so-called simple solution to not seeing them was going to end up hopelessly complicated. Didn't matter, she told herself. So long as he got it, it didn't matter.

"Get him to meet you somewhere for the handoff, but don't let him know where you got the package. Just –" She thought for a moment, pen tapping furiously against the page. "Uh, just tell him you knew where to find it."

There was a silence at the other end of the line, then a cough. "Uh … yeah … sure. Thought you were pretty tight with those boys, Ellie?"

"Not now," Ellie said, the pen's nib digging into the paper. "Had a bit of a falling out recently."

"Uh-huh." The silence at the other end of the line lengthened and Ellie made a face at the handset.

"No drama, Twist, I've just been away for a while and I'll be heading back out in a day or two, I don't have time to hand it off myself."

"Uh-huh." She could hear the older hunter's reluctance to believe in the simplest explanation, even at this distance. A vocal exhale came down the line and Twist cleared his throat. "This is a helluva favour, Ellie."

"I know. I owe you."

"Yeah, dinner and a movie," Twist said, his tone brightening.

"You got it."

She closed the phone with a huff of relief and stood up stiffly, walking to turn off the coffee pot and fill the kettle. The Winchesters had been regarded with suspicion for some time now, and she didn't want to add to anyone's reservations about them, or give anyone an excuse to create even more distorted attitudes, for that matter.

Leaning against the counter, she reached for a mug and the canister of tea. Sam could walk out. Lucifer, if the devil had hitched a ride in his body, would have to remain in the circle. Dean could figure out what he wanted to do with the angel once his brother was safe.

Dropping a spoonful of tea into her mug, she wondered if it would work.

May 4, 2012. Topeka, Kansas

Blinking groggily at the light streaming through the thin curtains of the room, Dean lifted a hand and covered his eyes, wondering if it was even worth getting up.

He'd slept till noon in Colby, a somewhat miraculous achievement. A lot of the detail of the dream had gone when the first cup of joe'd hit his system. Not a dream, he corrected himself with a trace of irritation, rolling over and tossing the covers aside. Whatever it'd been, it hadn't been just a dream.

Rubbing a hand over his face, he slumped on the side of the bed, wondering if there was anything to be gained from driving another few hundred miles east. Sam's condition hadn't changed. The doc'd confirmed that the previous day. He was spinning his wheels and wasting gas for nothing.

While the oil burns, no angel can pass from the circle.

He remembered that. Holy oil. A good idea, maybe even a great idea if he'd had the faintest idea of where to find it. Oleum sanctum was no problem, most of the churches he'd called had it. Vegetable oil, one priest'd told him, blessed and sanctified. The real stuff? That was in Jerusalem, in a temple with a long and involved Hebrew name he couldn't pronounce and was having difficulty in remembering. He'd gone through every number in his book, and all the numbers in his father's journal, looking for anyone who might be able to get it. Had even called Katherine at the Hidden Door, risking her acerbic tongue on the chance she'd know of a source. All he'd got for his trouble was a pile of used up pre-paids that'd had to be dumped on the road.

The cabin held all the resources they'd been able to scrounge, retrieve and collect. Bobby's journals, and Rufus', the few of Bill and Ellen's that'd survived the immolation of the roadhouse, were there. He'd been through most of the boxes once already, looking for answers. He had nothing else to do but go back and go through them again, microscopically. Maybe he'd missed something.

For a long second, he let himself think of Ellie's library, her contacts throughout the world. It was a pipedream, he decided, swallowing against a lump of feeling that was blocking his throat. She would've helped, for Sam's sake, but he couldn't ask. Maybe that's what the dream'd been about? Wanting help with no other way to find it.

Getting up stiffly, he walked to the bathroom. Shower, breakfast, then the long haul back up to the cabin. He thought briefly of the rattle in the little hatchback's engine, and decided he'd need to find another set of wheels before he got out of Kansas.

May 6, 2012. Whitefish, Montana

Have to do a supply run soon, Dean thought, tossing the last, now empty, can of stew into the trash can. Get some more staples, anyway.

The cabin's interior was as dust-covered and grimy as it'd been when they'd first arrived here. He glanced at the stairs and ignored the thump of his heart at the thought of the bedroom up there. He'd sleep on the couch.

Getting a beer from the fridge, he carried the can and bowl of heated-up stew to the round table and sat down, pulling the laptop closer. He ate automatically, barely tasting the food as he read through the possible hits on the screen, pushing the bowl aside and wiping his mouth with one hand when he'd finished.

Internet's ninety percent unregulated crap. Bobby's voice growled in his memories. Looking for answers on it was like looking for a needle in a million haystacks. No argument, he agreed silently.

Stacked around the walls and down in the basement, there were thirty or forty boxes of books, manuscripts, journals and notes to go through. This was just easier.

If less likely to produce results, he thought, a minute later. Closing the search engine, he reached for his beer and took a swallow. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he set the can down and pulled the cell out, glancing at the caller before he took it.

"Yeah?"

"Mackey." The voice on the end of the line was gruff and unfamiliar. "Calling you back. Hey, real sorry about Bobby."

"Yeah, me too." The reminder jolted through him.

"Look, what you called about – I might have something for you," Mackey said, his voice fading for a moment, then coming back. "There's this guy. He goes by 'Emmanuel'. He kind of roams. First started hearing about him a couple of months back. How he was healing the sick, curing the crazy."

"Uh-huh."

"Naturally, I think something in the milk ain't clean. Find this sucker, punch his clock. Right?"

"Right."

The hunter cleared his throat. "Heard the best way to get to him is through his wife, Daphne, out in Colorado?"

Dean listened to him take a breath, raspy across the airwaves.

"So, I go. Tell her I'm going blind. It's true. My right eye's burnt out. She says, 'Go home. He'll come.' So, I go. I set every trap, every test in the book."

Get to the goddamned punchline, Dean thought. "Sure. That's what I would've done."

"Emmanuel shows. He passes every one." He paused for effect, and Dean nodded impatiently. "There ain't nothing weird about this guy. Except ... he's the real deal."

"What do you mean?" Any fucking normal would've passed the tests.

"He touched me, and my eye was fixed. Look – I don't believe in much that don't suck your blood. But I wouldn't call you on a maybe," Mackey said.

"You got two working eyes now, that's what you're telling me?"

"That's what I'm tellin' you," the hunter confirmed. "Wasn't a spell, wasn't an illusion. Eyesight hasn't been this good since '78. He just touched the lid an' that was it."

"Gimme the address."

He reached over the table for the pad and pen, scribbling down the address as Mackey spelled it out.

There were those rare individuals who could heal with a touch. They turned up from time to time in odd places. Don't get your hopes up too high, he warned himself as he stared at the address.

"Thanks, man," he said to the man on the end of the line. "I owe you for this."

"Hey, not a problem," Mackey told him. "Take it easy."

"Yeah."

May 8, 2012. Thompson Falls, Montana

The silence in the long, bare room was broken by a sustained sigh. Opening her eyes and drawing in a deep breath, Ellie rose smoothly from the cross-legged position on the hard mat and walked unhurriedly to the barre.

Gripping the smooth wooden pole, she extended her leg, toe pointed, and started to stretch.

The hour-long progression of meditation, from asana, through pranayama, pratyahara, dharana to dhyana, left her mind and body clear of tension and she'd found the strict discipline of the ballet's movements tested and worked every major muscle group without the possibility of injury. Vivian's one insistence had been three years of dance at the local academy when she'd healed up from her injuries. Not, her aunt had claimed, because she had any interest in seeing her on stage, but to develop the long, strong muscles, grace and control ballet provided, and the self-discipline of working with exactitude. As with all of Vivian's projects, the instructor had been excellent, a virago from Russia with a platinum blonde helmet held immovable by copious quantities of hairspray and an accent so thick it was almost comical. Madam Lenoskova, however, had known her stuff, and the routine kept her fit even when she wasn't working.

Have to find time to get some sparring in, she thought, as she dropped slowly in a plié, back ramrod straight and feet turned out. Training was one thing, keeping reflexes and reactions sharp was something else altogether and only an opponent provided that kind of practice.

Turning around, she repeated the exercises, pushing harder and searching for any twinges or aches. There were none and she hadn't really expected any. The drill was well-embedded and almost comforting, despite the fact by the end of it, she'd be dripping with sweat.

On her desk downstairs, there was a thick pile of files waiting for her attention. Most of it concerned the activities of Roman Enterprises, but one file was gradually filling up with references found by John and Patrick on a number of stone tablets. She wasn't sure if she believed in their existence or not. The two exorcists were convinced by the accounts, all anecdotal, they'd found but there wasn't any real evidence, and nothing had been found about the stones for more than a thousand years. Like the Holy Grail, she snorted to herself. A great bedtime story but not likely to exist.

She picked up the towel at the end of the barre and dried off, leaving the room and heading for her bedroom.

There'd been no word from Twist on the delivery or how the Winchesters were doing, though Coralie had called two days ago, when Twist'd turned up and taken possession of the bottle of oil.

The thought snuck in as she shed her clothes in the bathroom and she reminded herself tartly that she hadn't expected to hear anything further. What Dean did with the oil was up to him. Turning on the taps, her hand held under the gush of water as she adjusted the temperature, she was willing to admit to the hope that it'd freed Sam, that he was alright, at least.

She stepped under the shower and reached for the soap, forcing the entire train of thought aside in an attempt to pretend that was the extent of her interest.

Keep your mind clear. Admit to your mistakes, don't ever lie to yourself that something didn't happen if it did. Keep the body clean as well. The body sheds cells all the time. Don't leave them around for anything to use against you.

Michael's advice wound laconically through her mind as she washed. At first, she'd been sceptical of his insistence on cleanliness in all things, putting it down to personal issues of some kind. Later, she'd realised it was just commonsense. The impact was psychological, as well as metaphysical and physical. Her most potent weapon against what she hunted was herself. It paid to keep that weapon honed and ready and clean.

She rinsed her hair, cutting off a hazy, half-formed and curiously tempting idea of contacting Penemue to find out if the Watchers knew anything more about the possibility of Lucifer escaping from his cage for the second time. It wasn't her business any more, she told herself firmly. She had other things to consider. She worked the conditioner through her hair with a savage precision.

Ray and Katherine had sent her everything they'd found. The levis had been working around the clock on the field in Wisconsin, and Roman had been jet-setting back and forth to Europe in search of elite geneticists. Ellie had no doubt they were copying the scientists and bringing them back to the US. She wondered if there was anything Patrick and John could do about protecting potential targets.

Her mind niggled on the question of Frank. His trailer had been towed to Jeb's place, by the Winchesters, she'd heard. Discreet enquiries by Ray had appeared to support the rumour. The cops weren't aware. Not that it meant much, she thought. If the levis had taken Frank, he could have been copied or eaten by now and there wouldn't be anything left to find. It was possible Dean was still looking for him–

With a sigh, she turned off the shower and got out, wrapping a thick towel around herself and letting her blatantly unsuccessful attempts at not thinking about them drop.

Don't ever lie to yourself that something didn't happen if it did.

The dream had been vivid and intense. It was bothering her she couldn't remember the beginning of it; how she'd come to be in the Impala, which Dean certainly wouldn't be driving. Had she somehow dropped into something he'd been dreaming, she wondered? Or had they both been dreaming together? That explanation, although poetic, seemed too fairytale to the more pragmatic part of her mind. She didn't think he was particularly inclined to those kind of yearnings, especially now.

She'd looked cursorily through the library's contents on the topic. There was a lot of speculative knowledge about the unconscious and its powers; on dreams, both of the prophetic kind and the psychological explanations. Nothing had fit.

Maybe it doesn't matter, she thought, drying her hair and padding back into the bedroom. It didn't change anything. Didn't resolve anything between them.

He loves you.

She stopped walking abruptly. Had she doubted it? She couldn't work that out. It wasn't a matter of love but of trust, in any case, she decided, continuing to the closet. What good was love without trust? Could it even be there without trust?

She couldn't remember now what she'd said to him about that in the moments before the dream had been fractured by the truck's horn and she'd woken. Something about trust. Hers was gone. He'd wanted something else … someone else … up in Seattle. That was the issue.

Pausing again, her shirt half-buttoned, she frowned.

Wanted someone else for an hour, she thought, not sure if that detail made a difference. For a night.

Backing away from the closet and sinking down onto the edge of the bed, she stared at the wall, fingernails tugging restlessly at a loose thread. What are you looking for when it's a one-night stand? Time out? Someone different? Relief from boredom?

He'd spent a year – more – with Lisa, and it hadn't felt this way, to her. Why not? She'd told him she loved him, they'd been together, when she'd left. Jealousy had been there, stabbing through her at the sight of them together. But he'd looked happy.

In the little town in Pennsylvania, the waitress' possessiveness hadn't bothered her, though Dean must've given the woman some encouragement to garner that reaction.

Why now?

Doesn't it hurt? Sam'd asked her in the cabin in Whitefish. It might, if I let it, she'd told him. Dean's anger had been understandable. She hadn't taken it personally.

C'mon, the voice in her head chided. Taking off for a drink was not the same thing as spending a night with another woman. Anger isn't the same as looking for someone else.

No, she thought, it wasn't. It didn't stop her certainty that both things had been driven by the same feelings. He'd sounded so tired, in the phone calls before they'd gotten to Seattle. Tired and hopeless. Not angry, but beaten down.

Maybe I don't know who I am anymore, he'd said.

Maybe that feeling hadn't gone away, she considered. She hadn't been around, and she'd known he could get lost when that happened.

Buttoning the rest of the shirt slowly, she shook her head. If he hadn't been able to hold onto what he'd had, what he'd said he'd wanted, without her, what did that mean? He was strong enough on his own. Strong enough to do what was right for anyone else.

She loved him and in spite of everything, that wasn't changing. It would, she thought, given enough time. Eventually it would wither up and die.

Green Oaks, North Dakota

Twist swore under his breath as the poltergeist pulled at his hair, swinging blindly behind him with the iron poker in an attempt to get the second-to-last bag into the western wall.

The job, which should've taken all of twelve hours and no more, had dragged on for three days because the damned girl it'd attached itself to was as pig-headed and mouthy as her father.

He shoved the bag in and stood fast, turning to put his back against the wall and ducking as a vase exploded where his head had been. One more to go and he'd be done, he thought, dodging a still-glowing table lamp that whistled toward him and side-stepping out of reach of the malevolently snaking cord.

"Wiener!" he bellowed as he made it into the hall. "Give her the needle!"

"Don't tell me what to do!" The thickly-accented bellow came back.

"Sonofabitch!" Twist dove for the floor of the north-facing parlour as a thirty-pound mirror smashed into fragments above him. He rolled onto his back, looked at the wall and punched through the plaster above the skirting board.

"You want this goddamned thing out or not?"

There was a grunt from the stairs and a high-pitched scream and the spirit starting throwing things up the staircase.

Taking advantage of the situation, the hunter pulled the last hex bag from his coat pocket and stuffed it into the freshly-made, fist-sized hole.

The noise stopped, with an abruptness that left his ears ringing.

Raising himself cautiously on one elbow, Twist looked around.

The whoompf of energy took him by surprise, shuddering through the timber frame of the building and shaking loose every bit of dust in the place. Upstairs, the girl gave a piercing shriek. The lights flickered and glowed with a surge of energy, he heard an explosion, muffled but concussive enough to make his eyeballs bulge in their sockets. Then there was nothing.

The lights came back on, and from the upstairs, Twist heard the girl sobbing, nothing delicate about it; big, whooping, braying sobs. Under them, he could just make out her father's voice, soft and droning.

"This house is – finally – clean," Twist muttered to himself, rolling to his knees. He glanced at his watch. He needed to find Winchester and hand off the damned oil. The number Ellie'd given him had been a disconnect, but he'd run into Annie before he'd taken the poltergeist job and she'd given him another one, telling him to give Dean and Sam her regards when he saw them. He hoped whatever it was Ellie'd been thinking the oil would do for Winchester, it wasn't going to be too late.

May 9, 2012. Illinois.

Dean stood by the gas pump, watching the numbers roll over as the tank filled.

Castiel. Back. And then good as gone again, the red lightning that'd crawled through the connection between Sam and the angel had swallowed Cas more thoroughly than it had his brother.

If it'd been Lucifer, why'd it switched vessels?

He shook his head. Who the fuck knew why angels did what they did? May the devil couldn't suck enough power out through Sam's soul. Maybe he thought he'd do better with a conduit to Heaven. Maybe it wasn't Lucifer at all, he thought, leaning against the car wearily. Maybe it was … some kind of backlog of memory and psychosis, poisoning his brother with guilt. Some kind of sentient backlog, a small voice asked querulously at the back of his mind?

Whatever. He couldn't raise the energy to argue with himself over it.

He started when his pocket started to vibrate. Digging out the cell and looking at the caller, he answered reluctantly, brows knitting up.

"Yeah?"

"Dean? It's Twist."

"Yeah? How you doing?" He frowned as the name rang a bell but he couldn't place it.

"Same old. Ah, yeah, I – uh – picked up something a few days ago, thought you could use it. "

"Something like what?" He still couldn't shake the wariness he felt, a hangover from being regarded as a pariah in the hunting community. It had been two years now since they'd run into a hunter with a yearning to kill them, but the caution remained.

"Uh, well, something for Sam," Twist hesitated. "You know, came across it and figured it might be something you could use to help Sam."

Dean stared at the phone. "Sam's fine, Twist. What's this about?"

"Where are you? This is too hard to explain over these things." Exasperation came through clearly over the airwaves.

"About fifty miles west of Springfield, Illinois." Dean sighed.

"Great. I'm in Bloomsfield. Meet you in Macon in an hour and a half?"

"Yeah. Sure." Dean leaned in through the car window, yanking at the map on the passenger seat as the line went dead and he shoved the cell back into his coat pocket.

He shook his head slightly. The name had finally connected with a face. Twist was one of the hunters he'd met briefly through Ellie, when they'd hunted a vampire nest up in Michigan. He barely remembered the dude.

He looked at the pump and pulled out his wallet, heading into the store to pay for the gas and grab something to eat.

Macon, Illinois

"Where'd you get this?" Dean looked down at the bottle, sitting on the passenger seat of the hunter's pickup, still in its nest of packing straw and brown paper wrapping. It was ceramic, a mottled golden glaze over the surface. He didn't have to open it to know what it held.

"Picked it up a few days ago, ah, friend of a friend has some, uh, connections in the, um, Middle East, you know. I – yeah, I heard from someone Sam was having some kind of trouble, with … ah, angelkind, the … um … fallen kind, that is … and I – uh – well, I – uh – thought it might be worth a shot," Twist mumbled to the pavement.

Dean's bullshit meter was redlining and he stayed silent until the other hunter looked up and grinned nervously.

"Uh, well, you know, never really believed that stuff about the 'pocalypse and you guys, but the fact we're still driving around hunting down things and getting our pay-per-view seems like you boys did alright," Twist added with a shrug. "Figured I owed some payback, somehow."

Blinking at the reaction, Dean realised that part of the man's story was true, at least. It rang with an awkward sincerity, an opposite to the usual hunter's reaction to what had happened; what he and Sam had done and sacrificed and bled to do. He nodded slowly.

Still didn't explain the holy oil or how Twist had known anything about Sam. He was damned sure Bobby hadn't been shooting his mouth off about his brother before he'd been killed. No one but the two of them, and Cas and Meg, had known about Sam. He reconsidered that. Ellie'd known. In a dream, he reminded himself.

"So, you figured a fallen angel could have hitch-hiked with Sam outta the Pit?" He tilted his head to one side, looking at the man consideringly. Twist Rickard was a good hunter, and a good man, but if he knew anything about fallen angels and the power of holy oil, then he'd misjudged the hell out of him.

"Ah, well … yeah. Sure." Twist looked away. "What else?"

"Ellie gave you this, didn't she?"

"No, geez, no." Twist wheezed self-consciously, his gaze darting away. "Uh, last time I heard from Ellie, she said she was going over to work in Europe for a spell. Haven't seen her in months."

"Bullshit, Twist." Dean straightened, facing the other man squarely. "When did she call you?"

The hunter sighed, shoulders slumping as he shook his head. There went his date, he thought sadly.

"Tuesday morning," he admitted.

Dean thought about it. He'd been driving back to Montana on Monday. The dream had been Monday night. If she'd rung Twist the next morning … what the hell did that mean? Had she known about the dream? Had some other hunter been keeping her up to date with what was going on with Sam? That wasn't even possible, no one else had known. He refocussed on the man standing in front of him.

"Well, thanks," he said. "A bit too late for it."

"Is it?" Twist looked stricken. "Hell, man, I'm sorry, I got caught up in this–"

"Not your fault," he cut him off. He'd gone another way. "Just … yeah. Bad luck."

"You should take it anyway," Twist said, waving a hand toward the bottle. "Ellie said it might come in handy."

He'd been looking for days for anyone with the damned oil, before he'd found Cas. Sam could've been freed from the angel without Cas having to take it on board. But it was done. And Castiel could no more cross the flames than Lucifer could. If it had been Lucifer, and the more he thought about it, the more likely that scenario seemed.

Hiding behind Death's wall, he thought. Freed when Cas'd broke it. Torturing Sam with visions. Subdued for a while with pain, then back again, a helluva lot worse.

"I let him in," Sam'd said, his eyes rolling in the hospital. "In Idaho."

He had no idea what his brother'd meant by that. Sam'd been too far out of it to get a coherent answer from him. But the timing seemed right for the escalation of the hallucinations and Sam'd gone downhill fast after they'd seen Ellie the last time.

It was so much the kind of solution she came up with, he thought, his chest tightening as he leaned down to pick up the bottle and its wrappings. Right to the heart of the fucking problem, elegant and easy, through and through. He turned away from the other hunter, dragging in a deep breath. If he'd been able to see her earlier, this whole mess might have been averted.

"Uh, you said Sam was okay?" Twist asked, his feet scuffing at the sidewalk.

Dean put the bottle onto the passenger seat of his car and turned back, shrugging. He wasn't fine. Not yet. But he was a helluva lot better than he'd been. Had slept round the clock the first couple of days. "Yeah, found something else. He's fine."

"Can I tell her that, if she asks?"

"She's still in the country?" he asked.

"Ah, dunno," Twist said. "Said she was heading back. That was a few days ago."

He didn't know if that was better or worse. "Yeah, you can tell her."

He got back into the crappy sedan he was driving, watching Twist heading north, and pulled out on to the highway, glancing at the curved clay bottle beside him on the seat. Dammit all to hell.

The question kept nagging at him. How had she known? How?

He turned left onto the interstate, a vague annoyance with the sedan's lack of go at the back of his mind as he merged with the flow of traffic. He needed something that was less ordinary and had more guts. The Impala's absence was like a badly-healed wound. He missed her more every time he ran into the shortcomings of the cars he was stealing.

It hadn't been like a regular dream, he thought absently when the traffic flow settled down. What he could remember of it now, one thing still stood out. It'd been in one long sequence, not the usual hopping around from place to place or person to person like most dreams. And it had been logical, he remembered. Rational. He'd really believed that he was talking to her, like they used to, letting the conversation roll along. Her hair'd been loose. The half-thought, half-memory returned whole. He had a distant recollection of noticing that in the dream as well. He couldn't remember a lot of it, but what he did remember was clear, not like the usual broken and confusingly surrealistic fragments of dreams.

Had they somehow had the same dream? A dream that wasn't really a dream, but more like … what? OOB? He'd been asleep, he knew it, waking up on the wrong side of the interstate with a rig bearing down on him and still in the car, the crappy tinfoil piece of shit he was driving. Had she slipped from her body to talk to him? Somehow … managed to … he didn't know what … sneak into his dream?

The thought rushed through his mind like a gale, full of energy and bluster, making his heart race and his fingers tighten around the wheel. Had she wanted to see him? Even if it'd been subconscious, not deliberate? She could've done it … she knew how ... she'd said she never stopped loving him, maybe she couldn't help it –

With a barely vocalised groan, he shook his head impatiently, not wanting to feel that burst of hope thickening in his throat. He couldn't do hope anymore. It hurt like hell. He glanced down at the radio and snapped it on, punching buttons through the stations.

Ten minutes later, having tried to listen to a dozen radio stations and finding them all equally irritating, he shut the radio off in frustration, hardly noticing as his thoughts circled back to the dream, prodding around the idea again.

It'd been something. Not a normal dream, he allowed unwillingly, rubbing a hand over his jaw, ignoring the prickle of stubble there.

Something.

For two days, he'd felt almost normal, in spite of what had happened with Cas, and the ever-increasing concern that Crowley's hands-off injunction was obviously lapsing.

He'd felt … okay … nearly okay … again. That'd been something.

Sam was waiting for him in Columbia. His brother's text'd said something about a public library haunting. Sam was just spinning his wheels, tripping out on guilt about Cas and still not caught up with all the sleep he'd missed. Looking for work to keep them from going nuts with all the crap they didn't know how to handle.

His hands closed harder around the sedan's vinyl-covered wheel. He wasn't doing any better, he recognised with a bleak snort. Wishing for things that were unlikely because he wanted them to be true so fucking much. Wanting to alter time, so he could do it all differently. Angry. Afraid. Alone.

May 11, 2012. Thompson Falls, Montana

Ellie finished twisting the fine gold wire into the double helix spiral and set it down carefully on the workbench. It was a trap, of sorts, for spirits and ghosts. She'd read about it when she was cataloguing the library and had been intrigued enough to want to try and make one.

She could see how it worked, the pure element drawing the spirit into the cage at the top. Hopefully, she wouldn't have the occasion to test it out, but it wouldn't hurt to add to the protection of the house, and the hall was huge enough that over the front door the trap would be quite inconspicuous.

She stretched her arms above her head, finally acknowledging the minor headache pounding at the base of her skull and its cause. The temptation to call someone – anyone – to find out if Sam was okay had been itching in her skin for days.

Patience, Grasshopper, she told herself with a disparaging smile, heading for the stairs. The smile vanished almost as soon as it'd appeared, wiped out by the fragment of memory that followed. Those memories, often small and insignificant, came and went, painful reminders that wouldn't let her rest or concentrate.

It'd taken days for her to realise the most obvious explanation for that dream. Days of reading about everything but the things she should've been looking at. She'd understood then that she was in a process of denial, of a kind. And it'd scared her to think she needed him so much she might go looking, unconsciously, for him in his dreams.

You tell him to get the hell out of your life, leave you alone, watching him hurt, and then you stalk him when you're both asleep?!

That fear-laced anger had filled her when she'd finally recognised what could've happened.

If you want him back, call him.

But she didn't, she thought, slowing as she neared the top of the stairs. She couldn't. It wasn't pride. She was almost certain of that. It wasn't even fear of the needling pain, pain that wouldn't go away, that dug a bit deeper at her with every thought, every memory, every dream.

Everyone made mistakes. In line with the situation and their characters, everyone had fucked up sometime, and she couldn't claim to have never made an error under tension and emotional overload. Human to err, and forgiveness was divine, she thought, following the hall on autopilot to her bedroom.

Why would he do something he'd never done with anyone else? Something she hadn't really thought him capable of, even when she'd feared it?

The question was the answer. Usually, she amended, rubbing at her eye as the headache gave a sharp throb. Sometimes.

The memories of the dream – the visitation, she thought, flushing with discomfort at the idea – kept coming back, popping into her thoughts without warning. He'd talked awkwardly about what'd been going on. In her mind's eye, she could see his profile, lit up by the soft dash lights, could see his reluctance to talk warring with a need to tell someone what'd been happening.

Sam.

She was almost positive the devil had ridden out of the Pit in Dean's brother's body. At first, the angel had been weak, she'd reasoned. Weak enough to be banished by the clamour of the body's nervous system when Sam'd used his healing wound to shut him out, but getting stronger, biding his time.

The soul was an immense power source, poorly understood but incontrovertibly a self-renewing energy sink. Like Yoda's explanation of the Force, she thought irrelevantly, it could tap into the ambient energies surrounding it, living or dead. Even an angel needs consent, though. Had Sam acknowledged the devil at some point? Addressed him? Given him the unspoken but vital consent to take over?

Something she didn't know and couldn't find out.

Cas was gone, and Dean couldn't forgive him. That'd been going on for a while. She wondered if he remembered any of the conversation they'd had about the angel, the need for him to find a point of forgiveness for his own sake. It was, she realised, another thing she would never know.

As she reached the bedroom door, she stopped, leaning against it, her throat tight and sore.

Grief still came and went in long tidal phases. She could go to bed feeling as if she'd moved on, had come to grips with the loss, and wake up weeping. She was beginning to wonder if that pain would ever entirely go, or if she was going to be feeling it for the rest of her life. It was a hole. An emptiness she didn't have any idea of how to fill, or even if it could be filled.

He'd asked her how to fix it and she hadn't had answer. She still didn't.

When she closed her eyes, she saw him again, leaning down to kiss the woman beside the cab, an arm held around her.

She knew he wished he could take it back. Knew he hadn't been trying to hurt her deliberately. She didn't know how to get rid of that image, or the others, conjured in her imagination. She didn't know how to step past them.

Life is fluid, mutable and ever-changing, she'd said to him once. Nothing stayed the same for very long, all those infinite possibilities and variables had a way of interfering with the most stable and entrenched lives. She'd always been adaptable, always been able to incorporate changes into anything she'd done. But, she admitted tiredly, that'd been easy when there'd been nothing she'd really been invested in. Nothing she'd given her heart and soul to. No matter how carefully she dissected the situation, she couldn't look at him and not see that moment, see him with someone else, imagine him with her. Every glimpse was a deeper cut.

Letting out a harsh exhale, Ellie shunted the unhelpful thoughts and straightened, walking to the bathroom. She had to let it go, concentrate on the here and now. Going over and over it wasn't going to help anyone, least of all herself.

May 13, 2012. Old US-40 E, Kansas

The highway stretched out, flat and featureless, delineated only by the white lines that bisected it. Dean stared through the windscreen, driving on autopilot, thoughts churning.

The job had been a hinky one anyway, but it'd gotten worse. Sam had pulled out the answers, one after the other, and sure, it made sense, sort of. But it didn't answer the feeling in his gut. It didn't give him the sense of resolution that real answers would've.

That sword, skidding across the concrete, hilt first to him. That hadn't been the shojo. Even the most stupid monsters don't hand you back your weapon after they've knocked it loose from you. The beer, the papers, the card, the EMF … Sam's ouija board. That was the hardest one. If Bobby were around, why hadn't he answered Sam?

Cas, trapped in his head, locked away in a mental institution with a demon watching over him. Bobby … maybe here … maybe still trying to help them … he could feel something, when he was alone and everything was quiet and still, he didn't know if it was real or wishful thinking … and a dream that couldn't've been a dream, his conviction about that growing, the longer he thought about it. She'd tried to get the oil to him. No one had known about Sam, how far it'd gone or how bad it gotten. She'd reached out and maybe it hadn't been deliberate, he thought, striving for a way to temper the emotions that rose repeatedly at the idea, maybe it'd been a subconscious thing when she'd done it, but it'd been real. She'd tried to help.

Abruptly, he realised why he hadn't told his brother about the dream. Or the oil. He couldn't deal with his little brother, coming up with reasonable arguments, trying to logic that away, make it rational. He knew what Sam's points would be. He didn't want them hear them.

He needed it. Needed hope. Needed help.

Needed her.

Sam shot a glance at his brother, noting the white-knuckled stranglehold Dean had on the wheel, the tension that'd been radiating from his big brother for the last four days.

It wasn't the case, he thought, his gaze dropping to stare sightlessly at the lit screen on his knees. Wasn't working with Garth or the way Dean'd latched onto the possibility of Bobby still being around either, though that'd come to a head in Garth's weird-looking motel room. It was something else, something his brother couldn't – or wouldn't – talk about.

The haunting in Columbia had been a cakewalk. An over-possessive librarian who'd died on the job and didn't want to leave. It'd taken a couple of days and they'd been heading back to the cabin when Garth'd called, asking for help in Junction City.

Sam rubbed his knuckles over one brow. He hadn't gotten that drunk for a long time and he could still feel the lingering ghosts of the following day's hangover. Dean'd hardly noticed the alcohol, though he could remember his brother's careful attention to the bottle he'd found in the brewery's office.

He thought the agitation had increased again after their awkward parting from the scrawny hunter. He wasn't sure what'd triggered it. It could've been about him, he thought, running a hand through his hair and pushing back from his face. The last couple of months hadn't been fun for either of them. He'd said some stuff that'd been forced out by exhaustion and fatigue. Things that would've been better left unsaid.

He'd just about collapsed when Cas had taken whatever it'd been out of him. For two days he'd slept, at first dreamlessly. Then … not so dreamlessly. The dreams hadn't been bad, exactly, no more visions of Hell and the archangels, at least, but they hadn't been peaceful either. He thought of what he'd told his brother, all that crap about paying his dues and feeling okay, and he turned to the window, mouth curled down in an involuntary grimace.

Cas'd taken his place in the loony bin of hallucinatory reality and that didn't feel right, no matter what Dean'd said about the angel's insistence. There'd been terror in Castiel's eyes. The sort of terror he knew all too well.

Shooting another fast glance at the rigid profile of his brother, he thought Dean'd been wound up even before Cas'd made his offer. His brother had been worried about him, worried about the levis, unable to mourn Cas and trying to avoid his feelings about losing Ellie. There were a lot of good reasons for Dean to have been stretched too tight. Leaning back in the too-narrow bucket seat, he rested his temple against the window.

They used to talk, he thought. Sometimes awkwardly, neither of them comfortable with showing weakness. Sometimes more openly.

You can't go, man, not now. We were just starting to be brothers again.

His throat closed unexpectedly with the memory of the moment. They'd been through the ringer and at the back of his mind, he'd never thought anything could happen to his big brother. Certainly not dying. They'd just started getting to know each other again, had started shedding the habits left over from childhood, had begun to know each other as adults when John'd made his deal. Things had gotten worse from there, Sam thought.

In the last couple of years, their ability to talk about anything beyond the job and injuries had mostly disappeared. He could blame himself; the betrayal of trust and Dean's withdrawal into not saying anything at all that might be used against him, but that wasn't all it was. By the time Dean'd been lifted from Hell, they were both too well-versed in not telling each other anything, if it could be avoided.

Maybe, he thought, the idea shafting into his gut like a blade, it was time he faced the knowledge they might never get back to knowing each other again. The old foundations were gone. New ones were hard to build.

Dean had lost what he needed, by every count Sam could imagine. They were working, riding together, most of the time, but he could see the loneliness surrounding his brother, lying over him like a shroud. Dean's ability to trust had been near destroyed.

He said he'd wanted to be someone else, Sam thought. Live a different life. It was understandable, but at the same time it really wasn't. His brother was the only person he'd ever known who'd never looked for an out.

That's not true, he realised suddenly, recollections of a thousand bars filling his mind. Dean, the talent scout. Dean, the US Marshall. Dean, the photographer. His brother had been using the pretence of different lives to find relief from the pressures of his life from the moment he'd acquired his first fake ID. When he was working, he accepted everything the job brought and dealt with it. Usually fast and bloody. But afterwards … afterwards, when the nightmares came and memories returned, he'd often tried to step away, be something else, someone else, if only for a night.

Bobby's death. Ellie's absence. The distant-but-still-felt levis, turning their lives to a scramble of hiding and lying and stealing, the hunt for them amping up everything. The near-miss in Canton. Jumping in and not counting the possible cost until it'd been too late. Cas' return.

Could he've been floundering that badly, Sam wondered? Enough to forget what he had? To do the one thing that would destroy it?

I mean, can you even get drunk anymore? He'd asked when they'd realised what they'd need to do to see the monster.

Self-destruction, the slow kind, was his brother's escape of choice. Not looking at the consequences until they were there was the way Dean dealt with an overload on his system. Sam knew that'd driven Dean's decision to make the deal. Had pushed him into handing himself to the archangel. Had forced him into finding Death and asking that entity to find his brother's soul and bring it back. Had he reverted back to the old habits because he hadn't been able to see anything else?

The pressure was worse now. Worse than it'd ever been. He didn't want to know what his brother might do, to escape that pressure this time.