Chapter 13
Whitefish, Montana, 5.52 pm
"I gotta go."
Dean lurched to his feet, uncertain for a second if his legs were gonna perform as expected, relieved when they seemed to remember what they were supposed to do. He crossed the room in two strides, reaching for his coat and the bags, still lying beside the door where he'd dropped them.
When the initial brain-numbing shock had let him go - three steadying shots of Bobby's stash of rotgut whiskey later - he realised he was in the wrong fucking place. He should've been on the road, should've been heading back there. They needed to talk about this – hell, he thought, he needed to talk about it.
Sam's hand closed around his arm as he threw the door open. "Dean, wait a sec –"
"Not now."
"Will you just wait a minute?" Tightening his grip, his brother shook his head. "Don't you think she would've told you if she was ready to talk about it?"
"Sam, let go or lose your fucking hand."
"You really want to screw up this up?" Sam asked, letting him go and taking a step back. "After everything you've just been through?"
Dean froze at the door, his hand slipping from the doorknob as he looked back. "What? The hell would it screw anything up?"
His brother let out a noisy exhale, folding his arms over his chest. "She said she needed time, right? So you're going to give her, what? All of six hours? Then turn up again, this time demanding to know about her being pregnant?"
Put like that, it didn't sound like such a great idea, Dean admitted. "You think I should wait?"
"Yeah! I think maybe you should." His little brother ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
"This is Ellie we're talking about, Sam. It could be weeks, man." Dean ducked his head, his mind's eye filling with too many memories of 'back in a week' that'd turned into four. Or longer. "I can't wait that long."
"All right, all right." Sam held his hands up pacifically. "Just, uh, give it a night, okay? You can go back in the morning, if you still think it's a good idea. But give her tonight."
Dropping the bags on the floor, Dean let the coat slip down on top of them. One night ... didn't seem so bad. He thought he could wait for a night.
She hadn't said anything, he remembered abruptly. In fact, she'd lied about it, thought not in so many words. What if she hadn't been going to tell him …?
Goddammit, Bobby! Tell him? He needs to know!? He glared around the room. Fuckin' right he'd needed to know, he thought, his gaze lasering in on the silver flask.
"Dammit, Bobby," he said. The curtains shivered slightly. "Not your place, my fucking ass!"
"Uh, Dean?"
"He knew!" Dean waved a hand at the flask.
"Oh," Sam said, glancing around. "Guess he saw it."
"An' Missouri?" Dean asked the room at large. "She knew too, right?"
That's what they'd all been hiding from him. He sucked in a deep breath, refocussing on his brother, conscious he was a long way from being either calm or rational and even with the two-hour drive, it wasn't a good state of mind to be in if he wanted to hear the truth from Ellie. Letting the breath out, he nodded unwillingly.
"Yeah. Okay. One night. That's probably a good idea."
One hour later.
Sam tried not to grind his teeth as Dean paced up and down the living room, his brother's heavy boot-steps rocking the wooden table a little on each pass. Leaving his fingers resting lightly against the screen's edge to prevent the laptop wobbling every time Dean made another circuit, he wondered if the whole night was going to be like this.
"You could sit down. Get some rest," he suggested mildly, as Dean swung around at the far end of the room and turned back. His brother snorted and powered along the same track the other way.
"This is … huge, Sam." He stopped suddenly by the table, staring at the front door, his eyes bright but unfocussed. "It's fuckin' … huge."
"Yeah, you said that already."
Energy crackled off his older brother, like the static build-up before a storm, Sam thought. Or, more accurately, like a reactor whose cooling system had failed. You now have T-minus ten minutes to reach minimum safe distance, he intoned internally, repressing a smile.
"You're gonna burn yourself out before morning."
"Nah, m'fine," Dean replied automatically, his gaze coming back into focus and flicking restlessly around the room. "How – uh – long, you think?"
Sam blinked at him. Was this what'd been needed to get his brother talking about things he never would've said in a million years, he wondered?
"When was the last time you two – uh –?"
Closing his eyes, his brother tipped his head back, brows drawing together. "Uh … when she was here?" he said, opening one eye to look at Sam. "Uh, no. It was Kansas, after we got the vetalas."
"That was – what? – February?" Sam thought back. The last few months had gone by in extreme fast-forward, a jumble of events he really wanted to forget. "The time before?"
"Uh, that was here."
They'd been here a few days, after the elemental had been destroyed, Sam remembered, before Krissy had called.
"There're only a few days between them. I'd guess she's around thirteen or fourteen weeks now, into the second trimester." Looking at his brother's blank expression, he clarified, "A bit over three months along, roughly."
The sites he'd looked at had been full of information. "She'll probably start feeling better around now, too," he added. "The, uh, fatigue and mood swings are supposed to taper off in the second trimester."
Dean stared at him. "How do you know this stuff?"
"I looked it up while you were wearing out the floor," he said acerbically, flapping a hand at the screen. "Thought someone ought to know what to expect."
Dean ignored that, turning to the couch and throwing himself into one corner, his chin dropping to his chest.
"What'm I gonna say to her?" he muttered.
Sam swivelled around in the chair, resting his arm over the back and studying his brother. It was huge, he thought. A life-changer.
Uninvited, the memory stole in. That'd been a false alarm, but he could still remember the way it'd felt, the way he'd felt, swinging violently between a state of utter terror, and a feeling of complete certainty, while he and Jess had waited for the results of the tests.
"Serious advice, dude?"
Dean lifted his head and nodded slowly. Nothing could've made how much this meant to his brother plainer, Sam realised. Dean was listening and ready to take advice.
"Go and think about what this means to you – first," he said. "Just to you. Then you can think about what it means to both of you. Because unless you get how you feel about it clear in your head, you are going to screw it up, and I can't take any more of your depression."
Dean blinked, his expression souring. "Man, you're hilarious."
"All part of our friendly service," Sam said, turning back to the laptop.
On the couch, Dean winced as the muscles of his shoulders and back twitched. He was wound up so tight he couldn't think straight, but he had the uncomfortable feeling Sam was right. He hadn't given any mental room to anything other than getting back there and talking to her. And a major component of that was the going back part. The seeing her again part. The being with her part.
"Yeah, okay," he said, getting to his feet and looking at the stairs. He hadn't used the upstairs bedroom since she'd been here last, hadn't wanted to raise any more memories of what he'd lost, if he could help it. Maybe it would be a good place to get it clear.
"Okay. You're right."
A baby.
That's what it came down to, right? That's what they were talking about. Sitting on the side of the bed, Dean stared at the floor. Pregnancies didn't last forever, only nine months and then …
The thought, teetering at the edge of his mind, brought a whole new range of emotions, all of them inflammatory, contradictory and unsettling.
Not just being a father to someone else's kid – teenaged kid – where all the hard yards had already been done. And not the kind of kid, he thought with an internal grimace, that grew from birth to drinking age in three days.
An actual baby who would need years of love and care before they could even feed themselves. Years of parenting …
Uh huh.
The emotions steam-rolling over him with those thoughts came too fast to identify or categorise and they were scaring the crap out of him, he admitted readily, getting to his feet and starting to pace again. He'd been worried about being a father to Ben. Being a partner to Lisa. Why'd he think he'd do any better now?
I love her, that's why.
That answer, sure and certain amidst the thickets of conflicting thoughts and feelings, stopped his forward motion so suddenly he rocked up onto his toes, arms swinging out to regain balance. It cut straight through all the bullshit anxiety.
He'd do whatever it took, he knew, whatever was needed of him. He might get some things wrong, might make some mistakes … who didn't? He'd do his best, and he thought the two of them would get a lot right.
Walking across to the shelving under the low eaves, he stared at the titles of the books there, covered with dust again but readable. Tobin's Spirit Guide. The Vampyre, in Lore and Life. Demonologies of the Lower Levels. Creatures of the Night in Eastern Europe. Fun bed-time reading.
He rubbed a hand over his face, staring at the books blankly as the taciturn hunter's face filled his mind's eye.
Sometime in '09, he thought, dropping in after a case and ... he'd been leaning up against the kitchen counter, the hangover pounding behind his eyes, looking sourly at the man on the other side of the room who was pouring out coffee and looking like he'd slept like a baby.
"You know of any hunters who got out, just went back to normal?" he'd asked, finally too uncomfortable with the silence.
Rufus turned his head to look at him speculatively. "No."
"That's what I thought," Dean muttered, pulling a pair of sunglasses from his jacket and pushing them over his eyes.
"Known a few who've settled down though," Rufus said a moment later, as he thrust a cup of strong, black coffee into his hand, taking his own to the table. "Met someone they could tell the truth, or someone in the life, and managed to make it work. They kept hunting."
"How?"
"Might've been luck, to run into someone who understood. My wife was twenty-three when we met." He looked up at Dean, seeing his jaw drop, and he smiled, teeth very white against the dark skin.
"Her family farmed a little, in Nebraska," he said, sipping his coffee, dark eyes half-closed. "Werewolf got her dad, and she met Peg Coulson by chance, looking for something to make sense of what was going on in her town. Peg told me. I went down there, took it out. Beth made me tell her all about it."
"We got married a week later, after we'd put down protection around her place," he said, with a wry smile. "She was my partner, in every sense of the word, for twenty-two years."
Dean's hands curled tightly around the cup, the coffee forgotten as he stared at Rufus. "What happened?"
"A job went bad," Rufus said shortly, lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug. "There wasn't anything anyone could do about it. She was in the middle and she died."
"I'm sorry, man."
Rufus looked away for a moment. "Yeah, me too."
He looked down at his cup and sighed softly. "It's riskier than normal, I guess, but there are a lot out there who are making it work. And risk is a variable that keeps changing, especially these days."
He cleared his throat and looked at Dean. "What you can't do is to try and drop out as if this life had nothing to do with you," he said, and the warning had been implicit in his voice. "No relationship is gonna work without honesty. You try and be someone you're not and it'll fall apart, usually at the worst possible moment."
He should've remembered that advice. He'd had to learn it through experience. Pushing aside that tangle of memory, he remembered looking through one of Turner's family albums, after they'd buried him and Bobby'd gone through the Canaan house, collecting everything. A wife, a beautiful daughter and a son. The son was still alive, stationed somewhere on the East Coast, military, he thought. He didn't know what'd happened to the daughter, only that she wasn't alive and Bobby'd had something to do with that. In Omaha. He turned away from the shelves.
Rufus hadn't regretted having his family. But it'd nearly killed him to lose them.
He'd been right about trying be someone he wasn't, he thought dryly. It'd fallen apart but good. But the rest … they had the rest. There weren't any lies between them, nothing to hide, nothing to pretend. In a lotta ways, she was stronger than he was … but being with her gave him strength. More than he'd realised, maybe.
His feet started moving again, involuntarily. He crossed the room and turned at the far end.
A baby. With Ellie.
He couldn't shake his sense of disbelief, every time he thought it. They'd been careful, mostly, he thought. Had taken the usual precautions, most of the time. There'd been times, maybe more than a few, when need had overcome caution, he allowed. She hadn't seemed worried and he'd figured she'd had it covered. Of course, no contraceptive was guaranteed a hundred percent.
Don't say it.
The memory came back like a Howitzer shell, detonating in his brain. Two and two equals four, every fucking time and there were no prizes for second place.
Look, if that kid's yours –
I said, don't say it!
Fine. I won't. But, Dean ... dude, seriously, a one-night stand, you're just gonna ... roll the dice? You don't even–
Of course not ... Sam. What, d'you think I'm brain-dead? Accidents happen. If one even did, which I-I-I don't think ...
He'd gone through damn near a box of condoms in Seattle, he remembered unwillingly. Lydia'd been demanding and she'd probably had a few strategies to get around the rubbers. It didn't take much.
A child, the wrong kind, but still his. He tried to shake off the feelings that brought. Family had been everything to him, once. Blood and loyalty and love, inextricably entwined with his sense of self. He'd known, for a long time now, about the need to protect, as much of a part of him as the colour of his eyes.
They were both hunters. What would that mean? Would it be easier? Or harder? Or just different? She wasn't hunting now – he groaned out loud as he belatedly realised why she'd been so damned circumspect about taking time off, another thing he should've picked up on but hadn't – but would that change? How would it work? How could it work? He didn't want to turn into his dad, freaking out about keeping them safe, dragging them around the country and blisteringly paranoid about training.
He scratched along his jaw, the itch of four-day stubble reminding him he needed a shower, needed to shave … he was turning toward the bathroom before he recognised it as an excuse to do anything but think this through. Veering toward the bed, he dropped onto it, rolling onto his side and staring at the sloping timber-lined wall.
He was going way too fast. He didn't know anything, really, about what she wanted or how she was feeling – about him or – or anything else.
At the back of his mind, and in spite of his hope, in spite even of the way she'd held him, he couldn't help feeling it might not be real. It hadn't required enough of him; he hadn't paid for her change of heart, of mind, giving him back what he needed. Every moment of the last nine weeks was acid-etched into his memories, all that time he'd been riven by what he'd done, by the loss of her, but that – he knew he deserved that. It'd been his choice had put them there – and his pain hadn't made hers any less.
He twisted onto his back, scrubbing the heels of his hands over his face as if he could get clarity that way. He was going to go nuts thinking about this stuff on his own. He might not've paid enough, but she'd still changed. Maybe he'd find out why. Maybe not.
Even if he'd paid in full, it could still be taken. The thought brought a snaking shiver, running down his neck and back. He'd given up his life and condemned himself to Hell and it hadn't made one fucking bit of difference to whoever was in charge. He'd lost most of himself, and his family, even when he'd been brought back. If Ellie hadn't been around, if he hadn't been able to get all the poison and venom out of his head with her … the fuck knows how bent he'd be now.
When they'd been together, he'd felt hope, had felt strong enough to be able to handle whatever came their way. He wasn't sure if it was a side effect of loving someone, or if it came from her, somehow. He didn't think it mattered so much. If they were together, he thought they could figure out how to make anything work.
Levering himself upright, he stared at the wall. Everything would have to change.
His baby.
He had no doubts there. But …fuck ... a father. He was going to be a father.
The need to move agitated through his nervous system; he wanted to pace, or fight; shoot something, tear down the highway in a high-octane car … do anything other than sit here and stare at the walls and try to think.
C'mon, he lectured himself, conscious of the flutter of nerves, if you can't get it together enough to figure out how you're doing with this, the hell you think you're ever goin' to do it for real?
Tipping his head back, he drew in a deep breath, feeling it ease the bands of tension that'd settled around his chest.
Did he want to be a father?
The answer was … complicated. He did. And he didn't. He wanted to have his own family. Had wanted that, he thought, for some time now. But he didn't want to be like his father. Playing families with Lisa and Ben, he'd been well on his way to turning into his dad, constant fear making anger rise to the surface too quickly, worry pushing him deeper into a bottle even when the dreams had left him alone.
Lisa and Ben had been vulnerable, he reminded himself. He hadn't known he was being targeted by his grandfather and he hadn't known Cas was in bed with Crowley, giving the demon all the information he'd needed. They'd been more vulnerable than he and Ellie would be. They'd been easier to find, easier to get to … fuck, compared to the levels of protection Ellie used, he'd barely covered either place.
He shook his head and got to his feet. He couldn't sit still like this. He thought better when he was moving.
The last few years had changed just about everything he'd once believed about family. His family. He'd gone from seeing his father as perfect, someone he'd be forever looking up to, someone who could do no wrong … to seeing the real man, an ordinary man, as capable of making mistakes as the next, driven into making fucked-up decisions he'd regretted. The few times Ellie'd pushed him on the subject, he'd baulked at a discussion. It hadn't, he thought wryly, stopped him from thinking about it.
It'd taken him a while to see his father without the patina of need and emotion hiding the truth. Without the child he'd once been interpreting that truth for him. It hadn't been until he'd faced those kinds of decisions himself, trying to subdue his fear about the people under his protection, lashing out unthinkingly when that fear hit peak volume, that he'd seen his father objectively, for the first time. John Winchester had mainly been running scared when he'd left Lawrence, he knew now. With two small children in his care, knowing virtually nothing of what had killed their mother, what was out there, who he could trust, his father'd fallen back into a military mind-set, the them and us mind-set, and had set his priorities accordingly.
From an adult's perspective, he'd been screwed six ways from Sunday, Dean acknowledged sourly.
It hadn't been enough to run, either. His father'd never had the time to grieve for his wife. Had never had the time to find a safe base. Had never known about the Campbells and the way hunting had run in the family or been able to find the sort of allies that made a kind of normality possible. He'd learned the hard way, and fear had driven every step.
Stopping next to the bathroom door, the memory of his father's harsh rebuke about the car slid into his mind. Not, he realised, brows knitting up, because his father'd thought he wasn't taking care of her – no, that'd come out because they'd been hunting vampires – their first – and Sam'd been on his high horse about taking orders.
What he'd thought back then was a bad-tempered reaction to the loss of control, he'd come to recognise as plain fear. Fear of what a schism between them might add to the vampires' already considerable advantages.
He remembered his father's brutal insistence on the drills, the training; remembered being dropped at Jim's or Bobby's, or left by themselves in a motel room when his father had been following the demon's trail, or trying to gain allies, or increase his skills … and he knew his father hadn't wanted any of that for them.
Letting out a heavy exhale, he admitted to himself there'd been no way around that life, not for them. The yellow-eyed demon'd had a plan and that plan had centred on both the Winchester sons and there'd been no way to get out, step away, abandon the hunt for a normal life. Azazel'd kept tabs on Sam from babyhood, and it'd only been his father's erratic moving around, his trained and honed guerrilla mentality, that'd kept the demon from exerting more control than he had.
Sam'd thought their father had been driven by revenge, he thought with a humourless snort, turning slowly and resuming his walk down the length of the room. Revenge had been near the bottom of the list for John Winchester. Protecting his children had been at the top, very closely followed by trying to figure out a way to stop the nightmare from infecting other families. And when he'd discovered the truth, searching in desperation to undo what his wife had unwittingly done to their youngest son; and the consequences it would bring to the oldest.
He'd been told he had a good imagination, and he knew he was empathic to the feelings of others, never had any trouble putting himself in someone else's place, but he'd never had enough experience with love to be able to imagine what his father had gone through – or his brother, he thought – when it came to what the demons had done to both men. Even the djinn's poison, filled with visions of Lisa, bleeding and burning, hadn't eaten through him the way he thought it had for his father, or his brother. He hadn't loved her.
He couldn't even get near the idea of putting Ellie into that scenario, he knew. Even the idea of the idea sent a shiver down his spine and tightened his chest. That reaction alone told him more about the pain and obsession of his father and brother than anything else he'd been able to come up with over the years. What would he do if he were in that position?
Wrong question.
What wouldn't he do in that situation?
Killing that guy? Killing Meg? I didn't hesitate. I didn't even flinch. For you or Dad, the things I'm willing to do or kill … it's just, uh ... it scares me sometimes.
It'd always been there, that part of him. He wasn't sure if it was from his father or mother or something that was his alone, but it'd always been there.
What wouldn't he do in that situation?
Nothing.
His expectations of John had been too high, too unrealistic. They'd been the expectations of a child, wanting a commander, wanting someone else to take the load that'd been dumped onto him. There was no way of getting out for him. The yellow-eyed demon was dead, but everything it and Heaven had put into place had rolled on. Cas'd let loose the levis and was sitting in a mental ward being tortured by a frequency of celestial intent, and it was on every hunter in the country – in the world – to put those primordial monsters back in their cage or kill them.
He didn't want to be someone else. He had a job to do, a job that was as much a part of him as his facility with machines, as the feelings he'd spent his lifetime trying to pretend he didn't have. As much as it was a part of Ellie, too, he thought. She wouldn't give it up. She liked who she was.
Being a father in this life was going to mean drills and training, he recognised bleakly. It would mean danger and vulnerability; his family, the people he loved the most, would be hostages to any thing out there who knew about them.
He didn't want that. He didn't think he could deal with that.
The thought sent him wheeling back across the room in the other direction, a scowl darkening his face. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. As usual.
Fuck, he thought, jarringly halting himself mid-stride. You're acting like you got a choice in this? The woman you love is carrying your kid – the fuck makes you think you can walk away?
Okay, he thought, ducking his head and pulling in a deep breath. Start again.
Rufus had done it, for twenty-two years, keeping them safe. His grandparents and cousins had done it, Samuel and Deanna Campbell had raised Mary; Samuel's brothers had raised their kids – hell, he thought, recalling the snippets of conversations between his brother and cousins, to hear about that compound, there'd been dozens of them, fighting together, protecting each other.
Ellen and Bill had done it. Marcus. Even Colette and Michel. His brows knitted up as he thought of other hunters. Colin and Hannah. Rick Patterson and his wife, Delie – they had four kids, two in college already. Ellie knew more. Bobby'd known more. The little he'd seen of those families, over the years, they'd been happy. Hell, Travis' wife had been killed by a drunk driver. It happened. There weren't any guarantees in any life.
It was possible, he reconsidered. It wouldn't be easy but nothing in his life had ever been easy and this wasn't something he was scared of, taking responsibility, doing his best to keep those he loved safe.
He closed his eyes. He could think of arguments for and against all goddamned night long, but that wasn't the issue, was it?
Did he want to be with Ellie? Love her? Be loved by her? Did he want to be a father to her child? Their child?
Yeah. His eyes opened and his breath rushed out in a long exhale. He did.
The admission just about took out his knees again and he dropped onto the edge of the bed, ignoring the roiling sensation in his stomach.
Ellie's baby.
He hadn't been thinking about what she wanted. Given the herbal tea and the little white pills, he figured she wanted to have it, but she hadn't said anything to him …
Staring without focus at Rufus' bookshelves, he asked himself why she would've? Even the way they'd left it … they were a long way from … like light years away … from being where they needed to be to talk about it.
What if she doesn't want you to be a part of it? The thought slid like ice through his veins and arteries, freezing him from the inside out. She'd said their future … he clung to that memory like a life ring. Their future.
Getting up, he started walking again, back and forth across the width of the room. He was jumping way too far ahead and he knew it, but he couldn't stop himself.
What did their future hold? What did he want their future to be? What had she imagined for their future?
Is this why you didn't want a family, Ellie? he'd asked her in that little cave, her past spectral but there, around her. A past she'd tried to pretend didn't exist. She hadn't really had an answer for him and he hadn't wanted to push her on the subject, even when he'd thought it was what he wanted.
What changed your mind?
You did.
Had he changed her mind enough, he wondered? Neither of them had talked about it since. How the hell was he supposed to convince her – now – that he wanted to be there? Wanted to have a family and be with her for the rest of his life?
The answer, when it came out of the blue, straightforward and stone-cold logical, hit like a bullet. He stopped dead in the middle of the room, staring at nothing as he turned it over in his mind, astonished at its simplicity.
How the fuck had that not occurred to him before, he wondered? It was far left field – for him – but hell, most people would have thought of it straight away.
What would her reaction be?
His nerves were sparking and crackling like defective wiring; a messed-up combination of what he wanted, and all the unknown variables he didn't have answers for, colluding in a surge of reaction that accelerated his pacing across the room.
The fact was, he thought, swerving around the end of the bed without looking, his gaze fixed on the floorboards, he'd never considered it before – not even after spending almost a year with Lisa and, he admitted readily, knowing how she'd felt. His speed dropped when he suddenly realised it'd been what Sam had expected him to do … settle in, pick up a normal life and tie himself to it. Had Sam really not known him well enough to know that'd been impossible, he wondered? That he couldn't lie about something like that, just to make everyone happy?
Turning automatically at the bathroom door, he shoved his hands in his pockets, walking back to other side of the room, shoulders hunched. He had thought about it before. Before his father'd gone missing. Before it turned out their family was numero uno target for both Heaven and Hell. But, fuck, after Cassie, he'd buried the idea as deep as he could, resigning himself to being alone, trying to convince himself he didn't want anything else. The crappy fill-up station blinked into his mind's eye, Sam sitting in the car, hunched up over his phone as he'd filled the Impala.
You're kidding, you still keep in touch with your college buddies? He'd asked his brother.
Why not? Sam's brow had wrinkled up, clearly wondering what he'd done wrong now.
Well, what exactly do you tell 'em? You know, about where you've been, what you've been doin'?
I tell 'em I'm on a road trip with my big brother. I tell 'em I needed some time off after Jess. His brother had said, squirming, just a little.
Oh, so you lie to 'em.
No. I just don't tell 'em … everything. Sam'd definitely gotten the point then, a dull red flush colouring his neck.
Yeah, that's called lying. I mean, hey, man, I get it, tellin' the truth is far worse. He remembered how that'd come out. He'd known from experience.
So, what am I supposed to do, just cut everybody out of my life?
He'd shrugged and put the nozzle back on the pump and Sam's voice had risen behind him.
You're serious?
Look, it sucks, but in a job like this, you can't get close to people, period.
The fuck he'd believed it back then. Had worked his ass off to convince himself. If it wasn't possible, he couldn't want it. If he didn't want it, there was no way it could hurt.
You're kind of anti-social, you know that? Sam'd said, his expression screwing up.
He could still recall the conflicting emotions he'd felt at that moment. Relief Sam hadn't seen past what he'd chosen to show; and a sense of almost wistful regret his brother hadn't been able to see past it.
Yeah, whatever.
He'd never thought about it 'cause it was too far away from what life was – what his life was. Had been. Still was, mostly. But … maybe not any more.
Glancing at his watch, his brows rose as he saw the time. Two in the morning. He needed to sleep. His body was aching with the efforts of the last few days, even if his mind was hopping around like a frog on a griddle.
Turning around, he walked to the bed and sat down. He didn't think he was gonna make much of an impression – the right impression – on Ellie if he was yawning his head off and looking like five miles of bad road. He pulled his boots off, nose wrinkling at the wafting aroma of his suddenly-freed socks. Dragging those off as well, he threw them at the bathroom door, hoping they'd be out of range, and stretched out on the bed, lying on his back, hands tucked behind his head.
He'd have to stop on the way, he thought, mentally reviewing which towns lay along the road, how big they were. It didn't matter. He'd just check them out until he found what he wanted.
From his end, at least, the decisions were made. He knew what he wanted. He still felt the itch to get on the road now, but he knew it would be a mistake. He was too tired. He had things to do before he could go back. And he thought, just maybe, that his brother could be right about him fucking it up if he went without being prepared.
Closing his eyes, he was pretty sure he wouldn't get a lot of sleep. There were still too many thoughts, too many unanswered questions ricocheting around his head. He'd be okay if he just got a few hours rest.
May 19, 2012. Whitefish, Montana 8.30 a.m.
Sam was sitting at the table, his attention divided between the laptop and a pile of newspapers when Dean came down the stairs, dressed and carrying his boots.
"Thought you'd've been gone at dawn," his brother said with a grin.
"Uh, yeah. No. I need to pick up some stuff first."
Dean went to the coffee pot and poured out a fresh cup. He'd woken with a start, the sense of having something to do, something important to do popping his eyes open before he'd even remembered what the hell he was doing in the upstairs bedroom. Staggering into the bathroom, only marginally conscious, he'd showered and shaved and wasted twenty minutes finding the cleanest clothes he could, changing twice when he'd thought he looked like he was trying too hard.
"Anything on Roman?"
"Nada." Sam stood up, picking up his cup and walking to the kitchen to pour himself another coffee. "Except for demon signs. They're everywhere."
"What d'you mean, everywhere?" Dean frowned, following his brother back to the table.
"For the past week, I've had a bot keeping track of all the uploaded data on the usual stuff – weather, geological data, crime, crop data, stock data – like Dad's, right? Ray sent me a program that collects this stuff from the government sites; collates it into a useable form and feeds it into a database. Look at this." He turned the laptop around slightly, hitting a key.
On the screen, a map of the country appeared, the incoming data reformatted into visual markers for all non-natural phenomena. To one side, the legend showed a graph, spiking in correlation with the red circles concentrated and scattered over the map.
"What'm I looking at?" Dean asked, leaning closer to the screen.
"Every reported result that's out of the norm – thunderstorms, EM fluctuations, earth tremors, unexplained blight or swarms – they get imported to the tables and I can graph them," Sam said, gesturing to the screen. "The program grabs that data and creates a visual representation – based on density, or number of occurrences in a single location. That's what the red dots are."
Dean's eyes narrowed as his gaze moved from state to state, city to city. In some places, there were so many hits around the town or city, the entire area was red. Memphis, Tennessee, was one of those places.
Rochester, Indiana was another.
"You call Meg?"
Sam nodded. "It's quiet at the hospital, but the whole town has been under siege – thunderstorms, their water supply turned red, crops are blighted and what was wasn't was eaten by insect swarms … apparently the local minister thinks it's the Second Coming."
He brought up another window on the screen, a local news report from Rochester.
Dean skimmed over the text, written with a slightly hysterical air and confirming what Sam'd just told him, and looked at the photograph of the harassed-looking minister standing in front of his church. The photographer had caught a bolt of lightning in the background.
"Pretty biblical stuff," Dean remarked, straightening. "Bobby was right. Crowley must be running out of options."
"You wanna to get over there?"
Dean shook his head. "And draw Crowley's attention to the place even more? No. Not yet."
He finished his coffee and put the cup down. "I'd better get going." He looked over the table. "You got printouts of this stuff? Ellie'd better see it."
Sam handed him a file with a wry smile. "Pretty sure Ellie will've noticed this on her own, Dean, but it's all here."
"Yeah." He looked around the cabin, wondering how safe they were here. No one but Bobby and Ellie'd known about the cabin, or their connection to its previous owner. "Salt everything, Sam. Be careful."
Sam nodded. "Yeah. You too."
Thompson Falls, Montana 11.30 a.m.
Dean felt his heartbeat accelerate a little as he drove down the main street, turning left onto the bridge. He was almost there and he still had no coherent idea of what he was going to say. Digging into his chest, in the inside upper pocket of his coat, the small square box was a potent reminder he had to get this right.
He was nervous, he acknowledged; his palms kept slipping on the wheel, necessitating frequent changes of hand to wipe them off on his jeans. Had his father felt like this, on his way to see Mary Campbell?
He couldn't really get a clear mental image of John Winchester being nervous, but he guessed it was possible. He had fuzzy, golden-edged memories, none of them complete, all of them centred on the house in which he'd spent his first four years, his short childhood and his parents. They'd been together a long time before all hell had broken loose and their life'd been destroyed.
The road turned into a two-lane blacktop on the other side of the small town and river, winding up into the foothills of the high ranges that cupped the town between them. He resisted the impulse to put his foot down as he exited the town limits, keeping to the posted speed. Glancing at the stereo, he saw a tape already in it and pushed Play.
The sweet, soft guitar that curled from the speakers was as familiar as a lover, soothing his anxiety and doubts, and letting him draw in a deep breath.
So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trust in who we are
And nothing else matters
Hetfield's voice could be surprisingly gentle, and the words couldn't've hit more closely, Dean thought, his fingers relaxing involuntarily on the wheel.
The road twisted and turned, rising steadily. The forest edged close to the shoulder on both sides. Sunlight dappled the asphalt and the song's melody slid into him, as if the singer could see inside him … or he thought, feeling the music throb through him as intimately as a heartbeat, as if he was the song.
Never opened myself this way
Life is ours; we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
And nothing else matters
They could do that. Live their lives the way they wanted, no one to say they would have to do things one way or another. He blinked at the road, at the realisation, wondering why the hell he'd never seen that before.
Trust I seek and I find in you
He'd found trust in Ellie and he'd have to earn her trust again, but time would help with that. He didn't care how long it took, he'd give her all the time she needed to put the past behind them. Nothing else mattered.
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
Could they be like that? He couldn't think of a reason why not. Fuck, he thought with a hesitant grin, they already lived like that, in all the ways that counted.
And nothing else matters
Never cared for what they say
Never cared for games they play
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know
His mouth dropped open in shock as he heard the words as if for the first time, their meaning sinking into him, bone-deep. Too many memories came rushing back with them, crowding him. The nightmare of the djinn's poison, filled with the assumptions of people he barely knew (Don't get me wrong. I am thrilled you are ... hanging out here ... all of a sudden. But, uh ... shouldn't you be at work?); the corporate rules and demands of society in the angel's fucked up lesson (No, I haven't been to the gym in ages. Carrying a little bloat around myself. It's a sedentary lifestyle, my man, no two ways.); social rules and the underlying expectations that'd been getting tighter and tighter (Some dude living with your mom doesn't make him your dad, Ben. Why doesn't he marry her?), co-workers, neighbours, Lisa's sister and her husband, Steve ... games they played to be normal, to fit in. Games he'd been unable to understand or care about. Presumptions and expectations he couldn't get behind and couldn't lie about.
It was so fucking obvious, he couldn't understand how he'd never seen it before. Every single time it'd been the same. All that made-up crap. The constant pressure of rules made by other people - this is normal, that's not, be more like this, be more like that, be someone different, be someone else. Never able to show himself, be himself, always having to hide, to lie …
But not with her.
He reached out blindly, hitting the stop button the stereo, the silence that filled the car ringing in his ears.
The sunlight seemed too bright; the trees and road and even the hood of the Pacer looked too crisp, too edged, every detail in extreme focus. His heart was beating, slowly, steadily, and every trace of the nerve-driven energy whirlwind that'd dogged him since yesterday had vanished.
Time telescoped out gently, the road curving around and up and on endlessly, sunshine strobing through the canopies to either side, flickering through his vision. His body handled the vehicle without any thought and his mind was as sharp as a knife's edge.
Nothing stays the same. We're both different; we've both changed with the last couple of years.
He understood what she'd meant, and it felt like he'd always understood it, just hadn't wanted to look at it that hard. They'd been afraid – both of them – for a long time. Mostly scared of how much it'd meant, he thought. So scared of losing her, losing the one person he could trust in, believe in, and what he'd done had achieved exactly that. A test, he wondered? Of some kind? Or a progression? Something that had to happen or the rest would never be able to keep growing?
He shook his head, ill at ease with the way his thoughts were leap-frogging to conclusions he'd never imagined. Way over his pay grade, he thought, but the conviction didn't disappear. He'd been tied to the past, always looking back, never forward.
Until now.
Would he've made the decisions he had if their relationship hadn't been disrupted, he wondered? He'd never know, not now, not for sure. Sometime in the last four days, the man he'd been before Seattle had gone. Who he was now was different. Not better, necessarily, he considered. Not worse, but different. Closer, maybe, to the man she saw when she looked at him. Closer, perhaps, to the man he'd wanted to be, when he'd still been standing in the shadow cast by his father.
He blinked as the brightness and acuity bled out of the day, the details returning to normal, the road and the sunshine and the discomforting sense of being hyper-aware fading away in the space of a couple of heartbeats.
The fuck had that been? He threw a suspicious look at the car's stereo. He'd heard that song a million times and it'd never gotten into him so deep, or made him think so hard.
The private road turnoff appeared as he came around the bend, and he checked his mirrors, easing the car onto the gravel, slowing down as the Pacer bumped over the rutted surface. Even the memory of the preternatural brightness and clarity he'd just experienced was gone, and now he was here, his doubts were circling back. It would be too easy to push too hard at the wrong moment, he thought. He had to play it very cool.
He wiped his hands, one at a time, on his jeans again, the car climbing up the steep road, between dense stands of trees. He could see the clearing ahead, filled with sunshine, and the great rock face of the ravine wall, against which the house seemed to crouch.
Driving into the turnaround, he saw Ellie's pickup was still parked where he'd left it yesterday. He glanced at it as he pulled around the empty fountain to the front door, the sight bringing a flood of memories. For only four days, they'd gone through a helluva lot, he thought. He stopped by the steps and turned off the engine, Sam's file on the passenger seat catching his attention. He reached over and picked it up. It would make as good an excuse as any for his sudden reappearance, he thought, nothing major, no drama, just passing along some information.
Getting out of the car and pushing the door shut, Dean ducked his head as he came up the steps, eyes on the ground as he mentally tried out a couple of different openings – hey, Sam came up with this, thought you should know about it and I – his feet hit the stone porch, and he looked up and thought disappeared.
The front door stood open. Not all the way, just a couple of feet.
"Ellie?" He walked to the door, peering through the narrow gap into the gloomy interior. He hesitated on the threshold, the back of his neck prickling sharply, and he dropped his gaze.
Along and over the threshold, he could see swirls and whorls of a fine powder, dusted over the stone.
A fine, yellow powder.
He crouched and ran his finger along one, bringing it to his nose.
Sulphur.
In between that heartbeat and the next, as he rose from the crouch and straightened, the all-too familiar metamorphosis took over. His pulse slowed and he felt cold, as if his veins had filled with ice-water. Feeling disappeared; locked down, locked away. Taking a step through the doorway, his automatic was in his hand, though he didn't have a memory of pulling it out. Thought was restricted to observation, information, calculation.
The hall was bright. Looking up, Dean saw the vaulted roof had cracked through a number of the traps that'd been carved into it. Under his feet, the stone-flagged floor, carved with another trap, this one more familiar, had cracked as well; split across the centre.
He noted without reaction the shards and splinters and larger chunks from the roof, smashed and littering the stone floor. Noted the splashes of blood here and there, leading from the hall into the living room.
Following them, he pushed open the big double doors. Inside, the signs of a struggle were more obvious. Tables and chairs had been upturned; books dragged from the shelves, pages ripped out and thrown around, lying scattered across the overturned furniture and rucked-up rugs; curtains had been torn down from along two of the tall windows.
The room stank of sulphur and copper. He walked in carefully, pivoting in place to survey the damage. More blood patterned the long white couch, a heavy spray and dribbles trailing toward one end. Looking at it emotionlessly, he focussed his concentration on reconstructing what'd happened. Beyond the couch, the rug had been rumpled and dragged, a wide stain discolouring the end. There was no body.
The doorway that led to the reference library and her study was closed. He glanced along the shelving to either side. It was a hidden doorway, opened by a book placement lock in the shelves to the left. Sam'd figured it out, but he'd never seen it, didn't know which books operated it. The bookcases along the wall seemed seamless and none of the books had been moved. Had she had time to get in there?
It didn't look like it, he thought.
He turned around, walking out of the living room and crossing the hall, walking down the narrower corridor that led to the kitchen. There was little disturbance in the big, square room. Bottles and plates on the floor, but no blood. Demons had been looking for something, or just making a mess, he thought coldly.
I won't disappear, she'd said.
His breath caught in his throat at the memory, tearing at the barriers and defences he had in place and he swallowed hard, trying to push it all back. If he let it in, he'd be useless. And Ellie didn't need useless.
Swinging around, he walked fast down the corridor and out through the front door again, staring around the gravelled turnaround. In the clear morning light he could see the tyre tracks, leading in and out. Not the pickup or his Pacer. Something else.
He pulled his cell from his coat pocket, hitting the speed dial without looking.
"Sam? I need you here right now." He closed his eyes. "She's gone."
Thompson Falls, Montana. Nineteen hours earlier.
Ellie heard the front door close, pouring hot water into her cup and dropping a teabag into it.
She felt … peaceful, she thought. Still nervous, but peaceful, she corrected herself with a small smile. She wasn't sure if what she was doing was the right thing, but it felt right – more right than anything else she'd done since the first time she'd told him she loved him, in fact.
Picking up the cup and saucer, she carried them to the big, scrubbed pine table, sitting down and turning over what'd happened in the past few days as the tea steeped and filled the kitchen with its fragrant aroma.
Bobby's decision to stay earth-bound hadn't surprised her. His feelings for the brothers had never been hidden. It was a risky choice, to stay, especially for someone who knew all too well what happened to spirits who hadn't moved on, but she thought he understood the risks well enough to be able to handle it. For a while, anyway. If – and when – the time came when he'd considered his job to be completed, they would be able to help.
Pulling the teabag out, she left it in the saucer, and sipped at the hot tea. What had surprised her had been the vulnerability she'd felt. It'd been a first … to need someone to be there, to rely on them, and to feel so helpless when it seemed like they weren't going to stick around. Michael had called her 'the cat who walks by herself', mostly in irritation, she thought. Dean had brought out the need in her for something more. The cave and the fire and the companionship, she thought, the corners of her mouth tucking in with a wry smile. Kipling down to the letter.
It occurred to her that neither of them had really understood what they'd had or how deep it gone in them, until it was gone. Being with him had changed her more than anything else. She'd thought – had believed – that loving someone so much would be a compromise, taking away from who she was when it was just her. But she'd felt more alive, more herself, in some alchemical and inverted way, when she was with him than she did on her own.
Should she have told him about what was going with her, she wondered? The answer came instantly. No. It was too soon. They were too far from where they needed to be to talk about it, and it would have added pressure to their decisions.
Her hand dropped protectively to her belly, fingertips resting against the firm flat muscle. It would be another month or so before she started to show, she thought. She had time to figure out how to get through the emotions that lingered in her memories, time enough to give him a chance to work out what he wanted. There was no rush.
She finished the tea and stood up, stretching upwards to get the kinks from the long drive out of her back and neck. A long, hot shower would do wonders for the stiffness. She wondered how Sam was, what his reaction would be to Bobby's presence. They needed the help, she knew. All the help they could get. Their support network had been decimated.
Walking down to the hall, she picked up the backpack and was turning for the stairs when she heard the soft crunch of tyres on the gravel outside. Dropping the bag, her hand reached behind her, checking the SIG still tucked into the pancake holster in the small of her back.
She would get the security cameras up this week, she thought irritably, crossing the hall.
The doorbell rang, and she opened the door warily, keeping the toe of her boot under the edge.
On the flagged porch, Crowley smiled at her.
"You know, for a human, and one lit up like a carnival ride, you're surprisingly difficult to keep track of."
Ellie stared at him, her mind racing. The knife was in the study – goddammit – and the rounds in the SIG were just standard. She didn't think he could get into the house. The devil's trap on the ceiling above the front door was the Hebraic design, the most powerful design she knew of, and it was mirrored on the hall floor under her feet.
How had he found this place?
Forcing the question aside, she made a show of looking at her watch.
"I have an appointment with my manicurist in fifteen minutes; was there a reason for the visit or were you just passing through?"
Crowley gave her a smile, one that didn't get close to his eyes. "Oh, I'm here for a reason. I'm looking for a friend – a mutual friend, I believe – a fine, feathered friend, and I understand you know where he is."
"Then you've been misinformed, Crowley. Castiel is dead, he died months ago."
He couldn't know about the hospital and Meg, or he wouldn't be here. Her gaze shifted past him. Parked next to the fountain, a black BMW gleamed in the morning light. Since when did a demon need a car, she wondered?
"No. He didn't." The demon took a step toward her. "He was resurrected – again – and he's living … well … somewhere in this great nation."
Ellie tilted her head slightly, wondering where he'd gotten that information. Dean said he'd run into a demon when he'd found Cas, but had killed it. The woman Cas'd been living with?
"What's with the car?"
He turned to look over his shoulder.
"None of your business," he said, looking back at her blandly.
"You're worried about Roman summoning and trapping you?" she speculated, lifting a brow at him. Crowley's gaze cut sharply away and she thought it was enough of a confirmation.
"Where're the Hardy Boys?"
"I don't know," she said, with a shrug. "Last I heard they were in Seattle."
His eyes narrowed. "That was months ago."
"Ah, then your sources are more up to date than mine."
"Somehow, I don't think that's the case," the demon said. "Castiel is alive and you know exactly where Dean is, don't you?"
"Crowley, there are three people that God keeps a habitual eye on. Why would you want to get his attention by focussing on two of them?"
He took a step back, an unconscious reaction to the reminder about the biggest player, she thought.
"I don't think God is going to interfere again, Eleanor."
"You don't think? Well, there's solid risk assessment for you. Didn't Raphael fill you in? Or did that relationship end up on the rocks too?"
His brows drew together. "Where d'you get your information?"
Glancing up at the sky, she lifted her hand to shade her eyes. "Must be hot standing out there, Crowley, why don't you come in and we can discuss this in a civilised manner?"
She moved back, opening the door wide. Crowley took a step toward the threshold, and stopped, his gaze rising.
"Y'know, I'm rather enjoying the early season warmth," he said, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the sunlit clearing as he shifted back. "We can talk out here."
"Suit yourself." Ellie crossed her arms, leaning against the doorframe. "I don't think I can help you. To the best of my knowledge, the Winchesters are working, warded, and trying to avoid the attention of the leviathan. And I heard Castiel was destroyed when the levis took over his vessel."
"You heard?"
She shrugged.
"That's a shame, that is. I was hoping for more, but never mind. You, on the other hand, you've been a pain in my derrière for a long time, Ms Morgan," he said, eyes narrowing on her. "Nipping in and out of Hell whenever you feel like it. Handing out summoning spells. Screwing up my plans … it's a long list of offences."
She raised one brow at him, a faint thread of unease slipping down her neck. He was too confident, she thought. And he'd given up on the supposed reasons for his visit too quickly. "I'm sure I'll pay for them in the long run."
"You'll pay for them now." He lifted a hand, studying his fingernails. "Not to be melodramatic about it, but there are things the King of Hell can do that a little old crossroads demon just couldn't manage."
He snapped his fingers and four demons got out of the parked car, wearing the bodies of heavily-built men, all in suits. Ellie glanced at them and back at Crowley.
"How'd you find this place?"
Grinning at her, he said, "You're all lit up, m'dear. God left a hell of a fingerprint on you." He flapped a hand at the house. "Not in there, but out on the road? Not difficult to see at all."
She should've thought of it, she realised. The levis couldn't see it, but there were other things in the world.
"Where're the Winchesters?" he asked again.
"I told you. I don't know."
"Well, we'll have to see about that, won't we?" he said, lifting his foot and slamming it down on the stone portico.
Ellie threw herself back into the house as the ground under her feet shuddered. She stumbled backward, her gaze flashing upward as the vaulted roof of the great hall cracked across, breaking the multitudes of traps engraved there. She ducked her head beneath her arms as chunks of the stone ceiling rained down.
Crowley, with his goons following, was already coming through the door when she looked up, and she sprinted for the living room, knowing she wouldn't have the time to reach and set the bookcase lock before he caught up. She heard the demon shout something but couldn't make out the words as she slammed the double doors shut and shot the bolt. It wouldn't hold them long enough.
Behind her the stone walls echoed with the sound of rushing feet and the roar of demon smoke, the sunlight disappearing as darkness filled the house.