Chapter 11

Casper, Wyoming

Climbing the stairs, Dean shook his head over Ellie's reaction. She knew him a lot better than he knew her, always been that way, but he'd thought he knew her well enough to not be surprised by what she did or said. Apparently not.

He'd never seen her accept help so easily … so helplessly, he thought with a frown … it contradicted everything he thought he knew about her. Why hadn't she said something if she'd been that worried about the drive? Or driving alone? Or being alone? Was it something else? The something else everyone but him seemed to know about and no one would tell him?

He scowled as he pushed his key into the room's lock, twisting it and shoving the door open. How bad could it be, he asked himself, frustration in the lack of an answer seeing him swing the door shut hard, uncaring of the people in the neighbouring rooms. He edged the disrupted salt line back into place roughly with the edge of his boot. She didn't look sick … she'd looked like she was eating okay.

Pulling in a breath, he crossed the room and picked up his beer from the table, finishing it in two gulping swallows, ignoring the flat, tepid taste as it washed through his mouth and down his throat. He pitched the empty bottle into the trash can and shoved his hands in his pockets.

She was tired all the time, he thought, turning around and walking across the room. She'd been more emotional in the last three days than he'd seen her in the previous three years. But both of those things could've been from the situation – he'd been more fucking emotional in the last three months than he thought he'd been in the previous thirty years.

He slowed as he approached the opposite wall, turning around again.

The situation he'd caused, he thought. And had magnified, even if he hadn't meant to. Go ahead, he told himself, beat yourself up with a stick. Won't get you any closer to figuring any of this crap out.

She was taking some kind of pill, he remembered abruptly. Had stopped drinking coffee, something that struck him as being somehow weirder than anything else.

Could've been trying to counteract the effects of the tiredness. She'd thrown up, back when he and Sam'd found out where she was. But again … as uncomfortable as it made him, he could rationalise that reaction as shock at seeing him, at being found. It didn't necessarily have anything to do with anything else.

Fuck, he was going around in circles. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked around. Literally.

A thank you usually meant someone was grateful, or at least appreciative of an effort made, he considered, pulling off his coat. It didn't mean she needed him. Maybe she did, right now, but he couldn't look at it that way.

It'd been a bigger effort to try to see what was best for her, what would hurt her the least, than it was going back on the decision and insisting on spending another day together. He hadn't thought she'd want that. Hadn't thought she'd trusted him that much. But clearly, he didn't have all the information.

Dropping into a chair at the table, he reached out and grabbed the bottle, cracking the lid without thinking about it and tipping it up, the silken liquid fire going down so easily, he barely noticed it.

He should have a shower, he thought, remaining slumped at the table. Get some rest. It would be a long haul up through the mountains the next day, the roads unforgiving of driver errors.

He didn't move. Under the room's overhead light, he tilted the blue-tinted bottle to one side, looking at the amber liquid.

It came down to trust. Always.

It was one of those things that seemed indestructible, until it was broken. One of those things hardly ever thought about until it was gone. One of those things he'd lost, bit by bit through the years, the betrayals slicing and dicing until his faith in his family had been nothing but a few torn and tattered shreds, clinging together out of habit and desperation. His father hadn't trusted him with the things he'd found, the people he'd known, the knowledge he'd gained. Sammy had looked at him and found him wanting, choosing someone else – something else. Cas hadn't wanted to trust him, knowing he'd tell the angel it was the wrong way.

The pain of those betrayals continued to ache. He looked at the bottle in his hand and brought the neck to his mouth, swallowing automatically, but numb to the warmth it delivered.

But Ellie … he'd trusted her with every secret he'd had. Even the worst ones. The ones he couldn't look at straight on. Had opened himself in a way he'd never done before, never even considered with anyone else. Not once had she ever betrayed that trust. Not once since he'd met her had she ever thrown anything back at him, made him regret telling her anything.

Hell, he realised, raising the bottle and gulping down another mouthful, she'd never even looked at him doubtfully.

He could feel the foundation of that trust, like mountain rock, under his soul. She'd never used what she'd known about him as a weapon to hurt.

It was breaking him, every time he thought about it. It should've gone both ways.

He stared at the bottle in his hand. The whiskey couldn't touch the chill that filled his chest, a layer of ice enclosing his vital organs.

And now, he recognised bleakly, no matter what happened, it never would. They might be able to be friends again, some day. But she would never trust him again, not in the same way he could trust her. Without fear. Without doubt.

Rubbing a hand over his face, he put the bottle down, reaching for the lid and screwing it back on. He pushed it to one side and thought about the things that'd come out in the last three days. Spectres of the past, doubts about the present, the things he'd buried – tried to bury – and never face, things that'd stared him in the eye as the long roads had rolled under the pickup's wheels.

The capacity is there, but that's not who you are. It's not all you are. And you know that about yourself now. You know about that capacity. No one can use those things against you if you know about them.

She'd been talking about what he'd done in Hell. Another thing, or maybe the same thing, he thought, wrestling with the idea. Not all you are, but a part of you. A part that came out when it had to.

Getting to his feet, he wondered why it'd come out in Seattle. He hadn't wanted to be Dean Winchester in those hazy, whiskey-infused moments or for the hours afterwards, even when he'd felt the wrongness of what he'd been doing. Even when that wrongness had walked into his hotel room with a knife.

You've had a lot of people leaving you. The reasons don't matter after awhile, good or bad. And I know it's in your mind, when we lose contact, or I can't get back fast enough.

He walked, back and forth across the room, head down, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

He'd always worried about her leaving. He'd thought she'd died, on the way to Cahokia, run off the road by demons. Had thought she'd died, up in Alaska, seven months and no word. But it'd been after Raphael that'd been the kicker.

In the thirty-odd hours between her turning up – alive – and the archangel appearing in her room, she'd given him everything he'd ever wanted; the things he'd buried so goddamned deep he'd never even acknowledged them. It'd been terrifying and unbelievably liberating – at the same time – and he'd been struggling to believe it was real, conscious then of his fear of having it all taken away, just because.

Then she'd made the decision, trying to protect them, him and Sam. The reason hadn't mattered. She'd gone, what he'd wanted had gone, taken away, just like he'd figured it would be. She hadn't been around for some of the worst moments of his life and he knew that still scared him, at some level, that she might do it again. Some time. Without warning.

But that hadn't happened this time, he thought, stopping mid-stride, next to the room's small table, swiping a hand over his jaw with the memory. They'd been in contact, pretty regularly, as much as they could. He'd already decided he'd stop for a while, stay with her in her new place, get his head together in her company, see the man he wanted to be reflected in her eyes … the fuck'd happened to him in between that conversation and waking up in a monster's bed?

Images cascaded into his mind's eye, things he knew he'd never done, but which, like the memories he'd been given by the djinn, felt real to him. Tennis and golf, and sailing on the bay, the yacht heeled over and creaming through the blue water with a twenty-knot breeze behind it; skiing fast, the long downhill runs at Banff and Aspen; après-ski and immaculately dressed women and laughing out loud at the jokes of some dude he knew was called Trent but'd never met in his life. Boardrooms and business class flights and sitting in a hairdresser getting something called tints done to his hair. Memories an angel'd shoved into his brain to make him realise hunting was in his blood.

Memories the fucking dick hadn't removed after the game was over.

Memories that'd snuck in and stayed in that up-market club in Seattle, a club he'd gone to for a few drinks, for a taste of whiskey amnesia, to keep him upright and moving, and exactly the sort of place his angel-altered memories had recognised and felt strangely comfortable with. Investment banker, he'd told Lydia, and it'd rolled off his tongue like he said it every damned day.

Pulling out a chair, he sat down, folding his arms on the tabletop and dropping his head onto them as he tried to remember all the details of that night, the way he'd felt and the way one life had segued into another, without tripping his alarms or any kind of warning.

Not one part of him had baulked at Zachariah's make-believe world, until he'd faced the ghost. He could still recall the crunch of the salads he'd eaten at that office; the no-taste lite beers he'd drunk to watch his weight; the gutless and silent drive to the office in the hybrid; the way he'd broken down that Japanese expansion deal into manageable chunks and measured them against the company's criteria.

He'd bought the cover because he'd wanted to, he'd thought at first. Wanted to be someone different, wanted to be that kind of guy, for once. A normal, upwardly mobile, successful guy with money in the bank and using his brains instead of his hands to make a living. He'd put aside his life, all his memories and dreams and the good and the bad, to disappear and the second he'd done it, everything had gone and he'd been back in the angel's world, almost without effort. And it'd clung to him, the morning after, through the day. Despite the buzzing prickle of alarm he'd felt when Ellie'd called and he realised he couldn't remember the details of the night before. Despite the way his brother had looked at him, first thing the next morning and then later, when they'd realised exactly what he'd slept with and what the immediate consequences would be.

There were a million excuses but they weren't the answer.

Would he do it again?

No, he thought, leaning back, relief at his instant response shaking through him. He tipped his head back, ran his fingers through his hair as he pulled in a deep breath. He wasn't that guy. He never would be. And even in the short time he'd lived it, with all those memories of events and people, it hadn't been him. Someone who looked like him. That was all.

He was a hunter. It wasn't all he was, he thought, but it was what he needed, for himself. It was the way he wanted to see himself, the man he'd wanted to be. The consequences of what he'd done had been … bad … in nearly every way he could think of, but they weren't the real reason he knew he couldn't do something like that again.

Seattle had been the fourth time he'd run from his life. Each time, he'd bought into fantasies that were a long way from perfect – and were a long way from who he was, the part he knew the best.

He'd seen who he would've been, in that make-believe-Lawrence, seen it through the eyes of the people he'd loved and longed for; and he'd felt it in the angel's world, in that life centred around himself, no other purpose for his soul but making money, climbing the ladder, still talking a good game but still afraid.

Always looking back, never forward. Wanting to be free of a responsibility he couldn't've shed without losing most of himself. Letting go of the things that he'd once liked about himself – bold action and pitting himself against the dark to save lives.

He frowned at the thought. Why hadn't that djinn or ol' Zach ever made him a good guy? A cop or a fireman or a paramedic or something?

The answer came to him immediately, on a white-hot flush of naked shame. It wasn't what he'd wished for.

He hadn't wanted to be a good guy, just an ordinary guy, just the same as everyone else, no responsibility burning in his blood, no over-developed sense of justice and the skills to go with it … just an average man, living an average life with no need or inclination to think of anyone else.

And all those times – each of those lives – he'd felt empty inside. As empty as he'd been in the little house in Cicero, living a life with no purpose, nothing of himself in it.

No one loved you for you, a small, quiet voice said in his mind. Because you didn't love you for you. You didn't want to be you.

Once he had, he argued weakly. Once he'd loved what he did, what they did, he and his brother and his father. Loss and grief and doubt'd torn that from him, made him wonder if the fight was worth it.

Destiny? Don't give me that 'holy' crap. Destiny – God's plan – it's all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It's just a way for your bosses to keep me and keep you in line! You know what's real? People, families – that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn?

He blinked as the memory returned in full force, seeing again the room without doors, the angel's face, conflicted by his orders, trying to argue it would be for the best, that Paradise would give him peace and the rest he'd thought he longed for.

You can take your peace – and shove it up your lily-white ass, 'cause I'll take the pain and the guilt – I'll even take Sam as is – it's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise. This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it!

That'd been a long time after he'd lost his father and his friends. After he'd been to Hell. After he'd lost faith in his brother. The fire'd still burned hot in him then. How long had he been kidding himself, he wondered? When she was there, he saw that man again, could feel him again. Wanted to be him again.

He pressed the knuckles of both hands against his eyes, rolling them over the bone of his brow. He loved her. Wasn't it just as simple as that?

Loved her with everything he was, with every cell, every beat of his heart, every fibre of mind and body and soul. Those feelings were so inextricably woven through him, he had the uneasy idea the connection would reach out to her no matter where they were. Or would hold him near her, tethered and disembodied and unable to move on if he died before her.

The thought hit him like a hammer, wrapped up in an ache and yearning he'd spent his life trying to pretend himself incapable of feeling. A fleeting memory of a ghost, trapped in that same way, flitted through his mind and was gone.

Ducking his head, he forced a derisive smile, imagining his brother sitting there watching him. He'd never thought he'd let anyone close enough to spout – fuck, even think about – feelings like that. The smile vanished. The knowledge remained. The feeling remained. He couldn't walk away and tell himself it meant nothing, that he'd get over it, that he'd forget. Not this time. Not ever again.

She had loved him, he knew. She'd loved him with a fierce and gentle intensity that'd astounded him, had ripped through his walls as if they'd been nothing but paper. She'd healed him, in more ways than he could count, had maybe even saved him. She might even still love him, but he didn't think she'd let him close, not again.

He'd been careless. Not thinking and indulging himself and he'd broken what they'd had between them into a million pieces. The fragments were all still there, and maybe he could find them all and put them slowly back together, if he had enough time, if she gave him enough time, but it would never be the same as it had been.

Love would forgive anything. Trust was much harder.

Ellie turned away from the door, walking slowly back to the bed.

He'd changed his mind. The reason didn't matter, not really. Her thoughts – of driving home, wrestling with everything that'd happened, dealing with the emotions that were contradicting each other and turning everything she'd believed inside out and upside down – had told her enough.

Nothing to stop you from walking up to Room Thirty and telling him you can't stop loving him, she thought, coming to a halt, her gaze fixed sightlessly on the rumpled bed. If it's just pride …

But it wasn't just pride. And it wasn't just fear.

Nothing was the way she'd thought it would be, those abstract imaginings before the reality had taken hold of her … and both the imaginings and the reality had been based on what she'd seen. What she'd known. Powerful and complete, there hadn't been room in her parent's lives for any others, not even her, but that hadn't changed the way they'd been to each other. Together, even in death. It never would have occurred to either one of them to seek anyone else.

Complete? Or insular?

It wasn't a question she'd ever asked herself and she blinked, focus returning and the motel room reminding her of where she was. She stared irritably at the bed. She'd been nearly asleep when he'd knocked, but sleep had fled and she didn't think it was coming back. A glance at the kitchenette showed the usual fixings for coffee and tea. It was possible – unlikely but possible – a herbal tea would help her get some rest. Going to her pack, she pulled out the little plastic container and extracted a bag. Katherine had given her a few dozen, the last time she'd been in Richmond.

I talked to Vivian, when we decided you should keep learning.

That revelation had come when she'd gone to the Hidden Door, reeling with the memories that'd returned when she'd seen the cabin again. She hadn't meant to tell Katherine everything, but sitting in front of the fire, the shock dissipating and the memories coming back in jagged bits and pieces, she had. Later, she'd thought the need had been partly to get it all clear in her own mind, build some kind of framework to her life; and partly to hear what the older woman thought about why she'd pretended to not know what it'd been like, all those years. Really been like. Katherine had told her about the conversation she'd had with her aunt instead.

Your aunt seemed … a little impatient with her brother, Katherine had told her. With his relationship with your mother.

Viv had never said anything to her about her parent's relationship. From the diaries she'd found after her guardian had died, she'd gotten the impression Vivian had disapproved of her mother, been dismayed by the way she'd been raised and the priorities shown by her parents.

Filling the kettle, she turned it on and picked up a cup, dropping the tea bag into it, and staring down at the countertop. Katherine had been disapproving as well, her tone clear.

She said, quite forthrightly, as I recall, that neither of them knew the meaning of love.

Ellie closed her eyes, remembering her reaction to that. At some level, she'd agreed with her aunt, an intellectual level maybe, a standpoint at a remove from it all. But emotionally, she'd still been seeing her parents as – as almost cursed with love, she thought.

They were in love, she'd told Katherine. So much so that they couldn't bear being without each other. They were always together.

Does that sound like love to you, Ellie? Katherine had asked, one brow rising.

At the time, she hadn't thought about it much. It didn't sound like her kind of love, what she felt, but she hadn't had the time to analyse that further, or, she realised, the inclination. There'd been too much else going on and she'd shelved the conversation for later consideration. The long drives, back and forth across the country, had given her the time to put a lot of the missing memories into perspective, and get through some of what had driven her to create the vague and non-detailed shell of a life she'd believed in – and told others about – over the years. It just hadn't seemed that important to think about her parent's relationship – or how it might've affected her views.

Maybe, she thought, folding her arms over her chest and leaning back against the kitchenette's counter, she should've. It'd been a couple of weeks, no more than that, before she'd gone to Seattle.

They hadn't been perfectly happy, her parents, she reflected, the memories there, hazy and truncated, but now mostly recallable. There had been fights. Not many that she could remember in detail, but she recalled occasional periods of tension in the big house in Missoula; sometimes filled with accusing silences and awkward looks, her mother's eyes swollen and red, her father brooding and angry.

Her desire for tea vanished abruptly and she turned and switched off the kettle as it began to boil. As she'd told Dean, in that little cave in Oregon, it wasn't so much that she didn't remember her childhood, it was more like she'd drawn a curtain over those memories, pretended they'd belonged to someone else. She still wasn't really sure why. It might not have been the best childhood, but it wasn't something she was ashamed of, or had – so far she'd been able to tell – blamed herself for.

Picking up a glass from the sink drainer, Ellie turned on the tap, staring at it absently as the water filled it. The stairs had been cold, the tail end of fall and the big house had been cold …

A fragment of a distant recollection caught at her.

… "How could you?" her father's voice had stopped her from going down and she'd sat, arms wrapped around herself …

The rush from the tap overflowed the glass and washed over her hand unnoticed, images forming in her mind's eye, holding her rigid.

She'd been … sitting on the curving staircase above the front hall. She hadn't meant to listen … had been waiting for them to stop what they were doing to ask if she could go to the park … but she'd heard anyway.

"Colin, he's just a colleague," her mother had been saying. "Nothing happened, nothing could or would happen–"

"He was more than that," her father had snapped back, an aching whine in his voice drilling into her and making her move away from the banisters. "The way he looked at you – the familiar way he–he touched you – Caroline, don't lie about this!"

"No." She'd heard the contrition in her mother's voice, and as it replayed in her mind, she heard, with an adult's perspective, the way that contrition was a lie. "You were preoccupied with the grant procedures – I only wanted to feel as if I mattered, to someone–"

"I've never loved anyone or anything in this world more than I love you," he'd cut her off again, staring down at her with a fixed intensity. "Why isn't that enough?"

"Because sometimes I can't feel it!" Her mother'd said, her voice rising sharply. "You are my life, the only person I want to touch, to hold, to touch me, and you've been so distant – I waited, Colin, for days, for weeks, for you to remember what was important but you were too busy, too distracted. When Roger looked at me, at least he saw me!"

Her father had turned away, striding across the parquetry, his leather shoes tapping echoes in the big room.

In some uninvolved part, away from the child who watched, Ellie wondered if her father had realised what her mother had just admitted to him. Katherine had been right.

"You know it's only because of the Falconer woman," her father'd ground out, swinging around and crossing the hall to her mother. He'd gripped her arms, staring down at her. "The department's in an uproar–"

"I don't care about the department or about her!" Her mother had been trembling, tears spilling from her wide-open eyes. "I love you. I need you to be here, with me. Seeing me. Loving me. You know without you I'm only half-alive."

"I know," her father had said, releasing his grip and wrapping his arms tightly around her, pulling her close. "I do. I'm here. I love you. Only you, there's nothing else for me."

"How can you say that when you've hardly been here–" her mother's voice had been muffled against him, cracking. "We're losing each other here."

"No, never."

"We are. You know it. We need to leave," her mother'd said. "Spokane has a better university, they've made an offer –"

"Yes." Her father had buried his face in her hair. "Alright, baby, yes. We'll go. Start fresh."

"There's a good boarding school there. We could be alone, just the two of us again."

"But Ellie – she's happier at home –"

"No, she'll be happier with children her own age," her mother'd said firmly, her hands slipping down his chest. "And we'll be happier, the way we were."

"God, Caroline – please," her father's voice had changed, deepened.

Looking down between the elegantly shaped banisters, she'd seen her mother smile against his shoulder. "Do you love me, Colin?"

He'd groaned under her touch. "More than life."

Blinking rapidly, belatedly registering the water gushing over her hand, Ellie reached out and turned off the tap. As the memory fractured, she wondered how she could've forgotten that. Could it have been a trigger? The reason to start the pretence in the first place?

She'd told Dean she'd had no warning of the decision to send her to boarding school in Spokane, but she must have, she thought. She couldn't recall her child-self's feelings about it.

She'd been nine, she reminded herself. Ten when the elemental sent by the witch had killed them both and changed everything. Maybe she hadn't understood what she'd seen.

Or maybe she'd understood exactly and some part of her had begun to rebel then.

Glancing down at the overfull glass in her hand, she drew in a breath, shaken again by the way she'd ignored those memories, even when they'd been forming her perspective on life.

By thirteen, her memories of her childhood were already shadowy, and she thought she'd seen her parents as if they were dramatic romantic characters in a book, rather than real people. Had she begun the process of re-designing her childhood before then? It was possible. She'd remembered them for their love for each other and whether or not what'd underlaid those memories had been within conscious recall, she could remember the vehement antipathy she'd felt at the thought of being in love. She'd never wanted to feel that deeply, be that defenceless with another, her entire existence bound up in needing them.

That had to have come from her, she thought, from those memories suppressed but still there. The crease between her brows deepened as she tried to remember if she'd ever questioned those feelings or probed at them to discover why.

So far as she could remember, she never had. She'd made a promise to herself to never love at all, if that was what love was … devotion beyond reason and with no room in her life or heart for anyone else. No room to grow. Or change.

Wasn't that what you did, anyway? Tried to keep him at arm's length, even when you were skin-to-skin? Tried not to need him so much? Somehow never around when he needed you? Those were your made-up rules.

She tipped up the glass, gulping the contents down, closing her eyes against a wave of nausea as the cold water hit her stomach.

Then there was no trial, no appeal, just sentencing? How sorry does someone have to be to be forgiven?

He could do it to her again, she told herself, one hand clamped tight on the sink's edge behind her. If he didn't know what was driving him, he could lose himself again and it would break her again, and how many times could she go through that? She was too vulnerable to whatever he did.

Being in love is being vulnerable. Not just to what he does or says or feels. To Fate. To the whims of luck and chance. He's still alive. But tomorrow he might die. Or you might. Comes with the territory.

She stared at the empty glass in her hand, turning and dropping it into the sink. It bonged against the stainless steel bowl but didn't break and that irritated her further, driving her from the kitchen counter to stalk purposelessly across the room. It was only when she reached the other wall and stopped, she recognised the ridiculous futility of pacing about like a caged animal. Walking back to the edge of the bed, she sat down, pushing her hands back through her hair, trying to find some order in the chaotic whirlwind of contradictory thought, emotion and memory.

At seventeen, she'd kept the very idea of love at a distance, she knew, and that'd been when she'd met Michael. Like most teenagers, she'd been in a hurry to grow up and Michael's attention had been flattering. Unlike most teenagers, she'd already taken on the responsibilities of an adult, albeit without truly realising the consequences. They'd worked well together, student and teacher, and she'd never felt the slightest inclination to fall in love with him. The relationship had been companionship and trust; the challenge and excitement of learning about his world, of doing, of being; the heady discovery of arousing, satisfying sex, her heart not involved. It'd been safe for her, being with him, she recognised now. No chance of losing herself, of wanting more than she felt comfortable with, or wanting more from him.

There had been times when she'd thought he'd wanted more from her, but he'd never pushed. And her view of herself had crystallised then, she realised, the crease deepening to a cleft between her brows. She'd considered herself someone who didn't need others. Someone fiercely independent. She'd driven herself hard to learn everything Michael could teach her, to hone her skills and expand her knowledge. She smiled, disparagingly, at the idea. She hadn't recognised what she'd been doing back then, seeking out the people who'd formed her surrogate families; Kasha and Yure, Katherine and Seb and their daughter Fionnula, Patrick and even John … people who were strong and safe to lean on, people who didn't ask more of her than she could easily give. Like her views on love, she hadn't questioned why, had just thought it was good to have those people in her life, temporary homes to go back to when the world got too big or the job was taking too much.

Her stomach growled and Ellie got to her feet, feeling the pangs of hunger with surprise and shaking her head at herself. It didn't matter what was going on, her body would demand what it needed. Picking up her pack, she dumped it onto the table. There were a few granola bars lurking in it, and she though there might be a sealed pack of dried fruit in there somewhere as well.

She remembered Ellen's surprise when they'd met, that she was working alone. After Michael's death, she hadn't wanted another partner. Good ones were too hard to find and she knew she'd gotten harder – a lot of people had said colder – with others. She'd done a few jobs with certain hunters, from time to time, had shed the tensions of those jobs with them and said goodbye without a backward glance, feeling curiously uninvolved on each occasion.

Her fingertips found the smooth plastic wrapping of one of the bars, and she pulled it out, tearing the wrapper off and taking a ravenous bite of the gooey confection, nuts and fruit and grain held together with a sticky mixture of honey and chocolate. The desire for the tart herbal tea returned and she turned on the kettle, chewing slowly, her thoughts still circling the past.

Over that time, no one had stirred her emotions; no one'd had an impact on her at all. Until she'd met the dark green gaze of a man in Ellen's bar, boyishly candid in his interest, and something had snapped, unleashing an unsettling memory and a flood of emotions that'd made no sense. Even then, she'd been able to tell herself it wasn't real, not what it seemed to be. It hadn't matched up with what she knew, had seen.

The kettle boiled and Ellie licked the honey and chocolate from her fingers, tossing the plastic wrapper into the trash can. She poured the hot water over the tea bag and left it to steep, going back to the leather backpack to rummage for another nut block.

In those first years of getting to know him and his brother, she'd tried to ignore the effect he had on her – that strange electric reaction to his touch, the way sometimes, a lot of the time, she'd felt what he'd been feeling, had known him as if they'd met in a previous life, somehow. Even before he'd made the deal, it'd been there.

A lot of hunters had taken the trouble to let her know he was a drifter, not interested in anyone but family, coming and going without getting close to others. Jo Harvelle had been one of them. She remembered the girl's roundabout questioning and the not-so-subtle comments about Dean. At the time – for quite some time – she'd really believed what she'd wanted was something he wasn't capable of giving, and she'd done her best not to want it.

Finding another snack bar, she took a bite and crossed back to the kitchen counter, pulling out the tea bag, the liquid in the white cup a deep, golden-amber colour, the scent of the blend filling the air. She left the bag on the drainer and sipped the tea, the tart flavour complementing and bleeding out the sweetness of the bar.

In spite of that; in spite of all her defences and all the well-meaning advice – and her own instincts, warning her – what she'd felt had kept growing. Because it hadn't been what she'd seen of her parent's obsession with each other, she wondered? Those feelings, they'd been … giving, she thought. Wanting him to find a way to get through all the things that'd happened, were happening, were yet to happen.

But, one day, that'd changed too.

After Alaska, when Bobby'd told her where to find them, she'd taken the risk, had let him see what she'd been hiding. Some of it. The most important part, she'd thought. What she'd felt when he'd touched her had been a wildfire, a tempest completely out of her control, impossible to keep hidden or suppress.

Had it been easier to make the decision to leave, because of that, she wondered, a flux of doubt chilling her? Easier to walk away under the pretence of protecting him and Sam because staying might have forced her to admit how much she felt? How much she'd realised she'd needed him? Her breath snagged in her chest, refusing to exit.

No. It'd been the right call, she told herself. The only call.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to recall those details, to search out any possibility of self-deception. She remembered … the depth of disappointment when Castiel had told her he couldn't keep her out of angel view … her uncertainty that Dean would understand the decision … the longing to ignore those things and find him anyway … not a shred of relief. Not a grain of fear, not then.

In Bobby's workshop, two years later, yeah. Pain had made her afraid and she knew it. What she'd felt had been stronger, but there'd been a part of her that had been quaking at the risk. In New Orleans, when he'd told he'd wanted to die, yes, then as well. Catching up with him and Sam after their Vegas job, that'd been another moment; feeling his confusion, not knowing the reason for it. Hearing the undercurrents of despair and utter weariness in his voice when he'd called from the road … all those times, those moments, had reminded her of how fragile love could be, how easy it was to feel alone when they weren't together …

… had she changed then? Had he? Every action created a reaction, but had it been her actions or his?

Sitting at the table, she sipped the tea as it cooled, asking herself why she hadn't dropped what she'd been doing and just flown out? Wasn't that the right reaction to loving someone? Being there when they were needing? Holding fast when they were getting lost?

It's what my mother would've done. The answer came instantly. Or my father.

Her eyes screwed shut. Had she really resisted because her parents still had such a big effect on her? Had she been that scared to show him how much she loved him? How much she needed him?

I know it's in your mind, when we lose contact, or I can't get back fast enough.

Opening her eyes, she picked up the tea, drinking a mouthful against the sudden tightness in her chest, swallowing hard. Her head was aching, a painful throb in her temples and behind her eyes.

She had known that. Known he found it too easy to believe she wasn't coming back, too easy to believe there was something fundamentally wrong with him and people left, and they never came back. For Dean, it would always be easy to believe that. He didn't think he deserved to have what he wanted. The doubt that'd been torturing her, her doubt about knowing who he was, seemed to rupture and fragment, breaking away. He hadn't changed. Not in that way, at least.

In their world, things were too often black and white. Good or bad. Live or die. Had she condemned him like that? All her high-minded arguments for the fluidity of life, for the shifts in perspective no one could escape, changing as experience and knowledge accumulated – was that all they were to her? Intellectual arguments she'd ignored when something had hit hard enough? Had hurt enough to send her scuttling back into the shell of that thirteen-year-old girl who remembered too much and not enough and questioned nothing?

It had been him. She'd thought that was the hardest thing to accept, but it wasn't.

Not all of him, she knew, but a part of him. The part that still didn't believe in salvation, maybe. The part that perhaps still didn't believe he could be loved. Maybe that part would do something to break her heart again, if she tried to trust. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd choose to do it differently next time.

She closed her eyes, conscious of the way her breathing had quickened, her heart had started to beat a little faster.

There were no guarantees. Life was change – every minute, every second, it changed – and people changed too. She'd known he could hurt her, from the moment she'd first acknowledged her feelings for him. It was the flip side of caring so much, of loving. There wasn't any doubt in her mind, even now, he'd die willingly before he hurt her deliberately and she'd known what had happened to him, over the last few months; had known what he'd been going against, and through. She'd made no allowance for human frailty. For his frailties. All the scars and still-open wounds. She knew his weaknesses and his flaws.

What he'd done had come from them, not out of carelessness of her, not out of malice. The admission forced a deep sigh out of her, releasing a deeply-buried tension of which she'd barely been aware. Why had it been so hard to see?

Turning her head, she focussed on the digital clock beside the bed. One in the morning. Her body was aching with the need for sleep. Her head was pounding, filled with emotions bottled up, truth gagged and bound.

She could stay like this, she thought. Trapped by her past and unrealistic expectations, in pain and with no end in sight.

Or, she considered, pushing the empty cup aside, she could make a deliberate choice to let go of her need for safety and guarantees, and … just live instead, accepting the risks, not fearing them. The thought brought another sour smile. She'd thought she'd been doing just that, all these years. Living and facing up to the way things were. It was still hard to accept she hadn't.

Maybe Katherine had been right. Another fire, another trial of strength to test them. Maybe they'd both needed this, to escape the bonds – the habits and mistaken perspectives and fears – of the past. Maybe, she thought, it could be a better way to be together. To be more honest, with each other. Maybe it was a fool's idea, to feel that stirring of hope, she added sardonically.

In her mind's eye, the scene played out again; the blue reflections of the club on the rain-washed street and the taxi by the curb and the way the woman had touched him, her smile full of promise.

Somewhere, inside, she curled up at the memory. Getting past it was not going to be easy.

Make up your mind, she lectured herself impatiently. You either stop here and give up, or you deal with this. Otherwise all this has been for nothing.

She'd gotten past the jealousy of seeing him with Lisa, those memories edged with her desolation of not getting back in time. That time had been, she'd thought since, necessary for him. He'd needed to feel what an ordinary life was. It seemed more and more likely that what'd happened in Seattle had, in some measure, been necessary as well. Maybe for both of them.

Do you trust me?

Mostly. They'd both answered that way, when the question had come up. Mostly wasn't enough.

Rubbing her eyes with her fingertips, she let out an irritable exhale. She needed to clear her head. It was too easy to go round in circles like this, playing devil's advocate to something she wanted, even if she wasn't quite ready to admit to how much.

Getting to her feet, she walked to the bathroom. If there was a chance, she thought, pulling off her clothing and leaving it on the vanity, it would have to be a decision made with an open heart, demanding nothing. Either she accepted him as he was, including the risks, or she left. For good.

Twisting on the taps in the cubicle, she held her hand under the water, waiting for it to heat up. There was a thundery, fluttery feeling in her stomach, drying her mouth and forcing her to swallow against it. Stepping under the warming flow, she realised she was beginning to wonder if she was strong enough for either of those choices. Another unsettling self-realisation in the making. She'd always thought of herself as strong enough to handle anything.

Tipping shampoo into her palm, she lathered it absently through her hair, the steady circles of her fingers over her scalp mindlessly repetitive and soothing, the headache easing back. There was no loving someone a little bit, she thought, tipping her head back and letting the spray beat over her face. Being in love meant loving every part – the good, the bad and the mediocre – or nothing, but there was no middle ground. Easy to say, she thought, her expression screwing up. A lot harder to do. Her feelings hadn't changed, despite her best efforts.

That told her something as well. Love didn't exist in a vacuum, it had to be reciprocated to remain, to grow. It was only when it wasn't that it withered and died.

The suds of soap and shampoo swirled down the drain, and Ellie reached for the taps. Loving him would never be easy, she recognised, shutting them off. It would never be simple or undemanding. His life had been complicated and was getting more so. Hers was no better. And what was coming, what they'd made between them, that wasn't going to lighten the load. But Bobby had been right about everything, she allowed with a soft exhale. She was still in love and Dean would need to know.

She stepped out, drying herself quickly. The heat and gentle pressure had relieved some of her tension. She glanced in the mirror, drying her hair and untangling it with a wide-toothed comb. Making a decision, or almost making a decision, she corrected herself disparagingly, had loosened more. Hanging the towel on the rail, she walked back into the room, picking up her pack and rummaging through it for another clean shirt.

She'd changed, over the past couple of years. Pulling the tee over her head and running her fingers through the damp strands of her hair, she knew she wasn't the same person. Everything that had happened since then had changed her. And had changed him. Maybe promises, even the unspoken ones, needed to be broken sometimes so new ones could be made.

Pulling the covers back over the bed, she slid in, certain sleep would be elusive, but deciding rest was better than nothing.

May 18, 2012

The muted beeps of her cell's alarm woke Ellie at five-thirty, dirty grey light and a distantly-heard television program greeting her senses when she sat up. Looking around the dim room, she realised she felt different. Light. Buoyant. No ache of stress or tension perceptible anywhere in her body.

She pushed back the covers and got up. Hungry, she decided, after a minute's internal probing. That's all she was. Very hungry.

Pulling out a clean pair of jeans, underwear and a fresh tee shirt from her pack, she dressed slowly. Yesterday's button-through shirt was still serviceable. She was conscious of a faint buzz along her nervous system and the thundery, shivery feeling still there, coming and going in discrete waves.

Without conscious deliberation or even awareness of doing it, she acknowledged she'd already made her decision.

Dean sat on the edge of his bed, lacing up his boots. He'd say something today, he thought, tugging on the dirt-stiffened laces. It was a long drive. There'd be some kind of opportunity to get out what'd been chasing around in his head the last twenty-four hours. And he'd ask, he added to himself, getting to his feet and zipping up his duffel. Ask her what the hell was going on, what the tiredness was about, why a psychic and a ghost would be worried about her.

A glance around the room showed it clean. Aside from the salt lines. He'd considered the refundable deposits a lost cause for a while now. His gear bag and duffel sat next to the door. The bottle of Blue was still on the table, and he looked at it for a long moment, unsurprised at the lack of feeling at the sight. He rarely needed help when there was a game plan in mind.

Turning away, he picked up both bags and opened the door, pocketing the key as he pulled it shut behind him.

He walked down the stairs and put the bags into the pickup's tray, then crossed the lot to the office, dropping the room key in the mail slot in the door. A glance at his watch showed the time as five-fifty. Slowing as he walked back to Ellie's room, he wondered if he should give her an extra hour. On the other side of the road, a diner was already open, doing breakfast specials.

Knocking lightly on the door, he was vaguely aware he didn't want to wake her if she was still sleeping. He wasn't sure if that was to let her get more rest, or a desire to put off having to talk for a little bit longer.

The door opened straight away and he stepped back awkwardly. She was dressed already, hair in its usual long braid, pack sitting by the door and her purse and key in her hand.

"I … hey, uh, just wanted to see if you were awake."

"Dying for breakfast, actually," Ellie said, tucking her purse into the pocket of her jacket. "Have you dropped off your key?"

"Uh … yeah." He turned to watch her as she picked up the leather backpack. She looked rested this morning, her skin and hair glowing with health, and … different, he realised. The sadness that'd been in her eyes, been constantly there, was gone.

"There's a diner, already open. Across the street."

"I'll drop the key off and meet you there, if you like?" She opened the door and walked out, buttoning her jacket and extracting the truck keys from a zippered pocket on the pack.

"Here," she said, passing them to him.

"Yeah," he said, taking them automatically. "Right. Sure."

She pulled the door shut and walked away, crossing the asphalt lot and he turned to the pickup.

She'd done it again, he realised, watching her walk to the office. He'd thought this morning would be awkward. Would need explanations, apologies, the whole fucking nine yards. He hadn't thought she'd be up and full of energy, hungry and accommodating. Had something happened? Something else, he wondered, unlocking the pickup and sliding into the driver's seat.

The glow plugs clicked and the engine rumbled into life as he turned the key. In the rearview mirror, he saw Ellie cutting across the parking lot and crossing the street. Reversing slowly out of the slot, he turned and shifted to first, idling down the drive and making a u-turn to claim a parking place on the opposite curb, right out front of the place.

He turned the engine off, sitting there for a moment. It'd been hard enough to try to second-guess what she'd been going through when most of her reactions had been predictable. He had no clue now if what he wanted to tell her was going to get him an ass-kicking, or if she'd hear him out.

The last few days had brought home to him what he'd lost, in the kind of excruciating detail he'd just as soon have skipped. Everything he ever wanted. Everything he desperately needed. He wasn't convinced she'd understand the why of it, no matter how carefully he explained it.

Doesn't make a difference if she understands or not, he thought. He pushed the door open and got out. She'd asked him why. He needed her to know what'd happened to him. Had to let her know he understood it, anyway, he amended.

He crossed the sidewalk and opened the diner's door, the bell jangling discordantly as he walked in. Glancing around, he had to swallow hard when he saw her, a composite flush of tangled-up feelings – relief, admiration, gratification, contentment, others less definable but just as strong – jamming up in his throat. The table she'd chosen was the same one he would've; in the corner, facing both windows and door, and near the kitchen entry.

No one else would understand that. Hell, there weren't many regular people he could think of who'd even get it. Lisa hadn't, he remembered. She'd picked the window seats every time. It was possible – even probable, he allowed – there were other people who did it as well, people with the sort of jobs that kept them wary all the time, but not civilians. Not … normal … people.

He dropped into the chair next opposite her, automatically using the reflection in the picture glass behind her to survey the few other early diners.

"What's good?"

Ellie smiled, waving a hand at the large, chalked menu over the counter. "Pretty much everything," she said. "Sorry, I already ordered. I'm starving."

"S'okay," he murmured, turning as he caught sight of the waitress coming toward them through the frame glass.

"What'll be, hon?" The waitress was in her late forties and despite the early hour, already looked tired and harassed, her graying hennaed hair escaping from the tight beehive wound on top of her head.

"Breakfast special, thanks," Dean told her. "Extra bacon, extra hash and coffee, black."

"Gotcha."

She swung away, writing as she walked back to the kitchen.

"You, uh, look rested," he ventured to Ellie, his gaze sweeping fast over the table and noting the tea bag already brewing in a cup beside her. There was no sign of the little white bottle this time.

"Do I?" she asked. "I don't think I got my full ten hours, but hopefully I'll be able to stay awake for a little while longer."

"Uh, yeah, Ellie –"

"Coffee, black." The waitress appeared, placing a cup next to his elbow and pouring out from the glass jug she held. "Specials'll be just another couple of minutes."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it," she said as she hurried to the next table.

Ellie drew her tea bag out and set it on the saucer. "Dean, this trip, you know, it – well, it's brought up a lot of things –"

"Yeah, tell me about it," he muttered, swallowing a mouthful of coffee. He glanced up, seeing the corners of her mouth tuck in and shook his head. "Uh … well … you know … sorry."

"No, don't apologise. It's – I know, it's been –" she said, her gaze dropping to her tea. His attention sharpened on her. She looked uncomfortable. Was he finally going to hear what'd been going on with her?

"– hard. I've been – I've done a lot of thinking –"

"Here we go, hon."

Dean startled as the waitress put a plate in front of him, along with a knife and fork bundled in a serviette. He didn't even get a chance to glare at her before she turned away to set a second plate and bundle in front of Ellie, leaving a small jug of maple syrup and a bottle of ketchup on the table.

Letting out the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding, he stared fixedly at the mound of bacon, pancakes, scrambled eggs and hash browns in front of him. Thinking about what?

"Enjoy."

He reached for the cutlery and unwrapped it. A quick look across the table and he realised whatever had been on Ellie's mind had been derailed by the appearance of the food. She was focussed on her plate, wielding her knife and fork like it was her last meal on earth. How the hell was he supposed to enjoy … now?

"Uh, so … you were saying?" he asked, pushing a mass of egg on top of a hash and looking at the result with a rapidly-diminishing appetite.

"I was–?" Ellie looked up from the forkful of food she'd been about to inhale. Glancing back down at the food, she gave him an apologetic shrug. "Yeah. It's okay, we can talk later."

Later? Watching her scoop up another mouthful, he nodded unwillingly.

"Yeah. Uh … sure. Later."

There was no point wasting good food, he told himself sourly. Cutting off the loaded hash, he opened his mouth. It was good, he registered vaguely, watching Ellie eat as he chewed his mouthful.

There was no tension in her. At least, none he could sense, he amended. Hunger, he could see in spades, but whatever she'd been about to say – had wanted to tell him – it wasn't worrying her. The hell'd happened last night? He stabbed the fork tines through the pancakes, reaching for the maple syrup and pouring a liberal amount over them.

Ellie ate steadily, absently aware of his glances at her as he ploughed mechanically through his breakfast. It was, she considered as she opened her mouth for another heaping of bacon and egg, not fair to him to have cut short what she'd been about to say. She'd have felt worse about that if she hadn't been so ravenous, and the food hadn't tasted so good.

The first of the hunger pangs had been subdued and as she added syrup to her bacon, she thought about how to open the conversation they needed to have. He could see the change, but he didn't understand it, and she wasn't sure she could explain it to him, not yet. Not for a while, maybe. What they'd had in the past could still be a foundation for what they might have in the future. She was, she admitted to herself, nervous about it. Another laughable irony to add to the long list, deliberately spending her life taking every kind of physical risk, and getting flustered and unsure of the emotional ones.

She prodded her fork through the bacon, adding egg and hash to the mix. She would have to be careful of what she told him. She still had reactions, involuntary for the most part, which made them all the more volatile. They had to be dealt with before anything else. Her imagination was still taking a perverse delight in throwing up images and scenarios that were hurtful. She didn't know how long it might take her to get through that part; understand them, lay them to rest and dissolve their power. Rushing it would be a mistake, sabotaging whatever trust she might regain.

But ... she looked at him from under her lashes, hope seeping into her as she took in everything that was so familiar about him, her heart thumping against her ribs when she realised her perceptions had changed again, that familiarity stirring her the way it used to ... there might just a way back. Or forward. But some way.