Listen To Your Heart

by BlackIceWitch

15th story in Ramble On series. S7. A spur-of-the-moment decision, one night in Seattle, has repercussions Dean never dreamed of, changes he never wanted, culminating in a cat-and-mouse game in Hell. A hunter's life is never safe, he's known that all along. But it's the only life he knows, and it might just be the life he needs. No slash. Comments appreciated.

20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

---

10. 40 p.m. May 27, 2012. Whitefish, Montana

Ellie cut through the steak, forcing herself to chew and swallow every mouthful. It was delicious and it shouldn't have been a problem, but the tension between them had been growing from the moment she'd woken and it wasn't something that was going to be easily pushed aside.

For the first time in months, there was nothing to do but be here. Together. Alone. No one else to provide a distraction, no dangers to be gotten through first, no planning. No nothing but each other. He was nervous, she thought, glancing across the table. So was she, but she knew why and she had the feeling that maybe he didn't.

If things hadn't happened the way they had, she would've had the time to get through memory and reaction. He would've shown up, she'd known that from the moment he'd walked out of the big iron-clad front door. Shown up a day or two later, with some excuse about delivering books or needing information or something, but he would've followed her lead, given her the time she'd needed, been satisfied with talk until she could've offered more.

Crowley didn't give them that, and those events had magnified everything, brought them too close to an edge neither could quite acknowledge, but which was impossible to ignore.

"The, uh, salad's good," Dean said, proving it by eating the quartered tomato and piece of lettuce impaled on his fork.

She smiled at him. "You don't have to eat it if you don't want to."

He shook his head. "I eat this stuff, just, uh, usually it's –"

"On a burger," she finished. "Or in a taco."

Shrugging, he speared another few pieces, then a piece of the steak. "Tastes better with meat."

She nodded, prodding at a piece of steak. "Not judging."

"Anyway," he said, shrugging. "Whatever you did to this, it's better than the crap Sam eats."

"How d'you know?" she asked around a mouthful.

"Sometimes it's the only edible stuff in the fridge," he admitted matter-of-factly. Ellie laughed and shook her head.

"Sam convinced himself you couldn't possibly be the one eating his salads," she said.

"Just goes to show he little he really knows me." He looked unrepentant. "Hunger rules, there aren't that many exceptions."

"Sushi?"

"That's – uh – is that raw fish?" he asked, one brow rising. Ellie nodded.

"Yeah, done that."

"You're kidding."

"Nope," he told her. "Dad and I ran out of food - had a job in the mountains, just south of British Columbia. We caught and ate raw trout till we got out."

"Tofu?"

"Tried that once," he said. "Tofu burger. Ate it all too."

"I'm finding that hard to get my head around."

"I was hungry," he said, as if the explanation was self-evident. "Came with a lot of sauce."

She watched him finish his beer, get up and get another, dropping the empty in the trash on the way to the fridge.

Every emotion, every doubt and fear, every realisation of the last few months, had been mixed and stirred, melted together and then compressed and magnified in the most extreme of condensers. There was no way to undo that, to say, whoa, let's take a step back. There was no way back.

It'd been worse for him, she thought, pushing the few pieces of salad left around her plate. Trying to convince him about the blood key had been like slowly pushing a knife into him. She'd seen it in his eyes; confusion and despair and his desperation not to believe what she'd been saying, to come up with some other way, being forced into an acceptance that ran counter to everything he wanted to be, everything he believed about himself. Looking back at it, with as much objectivity as she could muster, she still believed it was the only way. What he'd told her about getting out and Crowley's appearance only confirmed that.

It didn't matter, she thought restlessly, stabbing a lone piece of tomato. They'd gone through too much to undo and pretending they hadn't would only make it harder.

Picking up the dishes, Dean took them to the sink, going back to the table via the fridge and pulling out another beer.

"You want anything?"

Ellie shook her head. "No, thanks." She smiled up at him when he got back to the table. "I'm officially in awe. You're a great cook. That was wonderful."

"In awe, eh?" he said, giving her a one-sided grin. "I got talents I haven't even looked at yet."

"I don't doubt that," she said, leaning back in the chair. "They'll have to wait, though. I'm more than ready to crash. Is the hot water on?"

"Turned it on when we got here, should be good." He nodded in the direction of the back room, and took a pull from the beer as he got to his feet.

"You ready?"

"What're you doing?" she asked when he walked around to her chair.

"What's it look like?" He stopped beside her, and leaned over.

"Dean, you don't have to –" she said as he got his arms under her back and legs and lifted. "I'm perfectly –"

"Hey, you throw down a challenge, you think I'm not gunna pick it up?"

"It wasn't a challenge," she squawked as he lifted her out of the chair.

"Sounded like a challenge to me," he said, shrugging her higher against his chest. "Stop squirming or I'm gonna drop you."

'I can't –" She tried to fold her arms across her chest and make herself smaller. "You're doing this the hard way, you know."

"That's how it is with you," he said, starting up the staircase. "Always the hard way."

"A bald-faced lie," she said. "I think you just like carrying women around."

"Sure. That's why I'm always doin' it." He stopped midway, drawing in a deep breath and looking down at her. "Helps me remember my masculine, uh, prowess when I'm reading about pregnant chicks."

Ellie laughed, turning her head and pushing at the partly-open bedroom door when he staggered close to it.

"You're kind of out of shape, aren't you?" she asked, and he let go of her legs, keeping an arm around her shoulders when she landed on her feet.

"Got us here, didn't I?" he asked, brows rising. "Be nice, or you can take off your own clothes."

"There's the romantic I know and love," she said, looking around the room as she unbuttoned her shirt. "Seems like a long time since we were here."

---

He nodded. "I was thinking that before. Feels like a couple of lifetimes ago."

"Was there anything we could've done differently?" Ellie asked, dropping her shirt onto the bed and looking around at him as she unbuttoned her jeans.

The obvious thing, he thought, dropping to one knee to take off his boots. "Just the one thing."

He heard her sigh. "Dean –"

Pulling the boot and sock off, he switched knees and started on the other one. "None of this would've happened, Ellie. That's not something you can twist around with words."

He tucked his chin closer to his chest, pretending to focus on the boot laces. He hadn't told her everything and it was eating at him, that omission. A monster and what that night had brought him.

Would it help? In any way at all? Would it do anything but make it worse?

He didn't think so. He would tell her, he told himself. But not now. Someday. Not when they were still trying to find each other again.

"Alright. No debate," she said.

Glancing up at her, he watched her slide her jeans down and step out of them. He straightened, toeing his boot off, peeling off the sock and undoing his jeans.

"You think this was all a – a coincidence, somehow?" she asked a moment later, nothing left but her tee shirt on, her fingers untangling the braid of her hair.

"You mean, like a run of bad luck?" He pulled both shirts over his head and let them drop to the floor.

"I guess."

"What're you thinking about?" he asked, walking past her to the bathroom and opening the cubicle door to turn on the taps. There was no such thing as coincidence, his father'd said. He believed it. Bad luck was what happened when you stopped paying attention to what you were doing.

She followed him in, shaking her head. "What happened in Seattle, getting pregnant, Bobby finding a way to communicate with you finally, seeing Missouri again, Crowley breaking through the one place I would've sworn was proof against almost everything …" She trailed off, staring at him through the mirror. "I don't know … it's thin … it just feels … meant, somehow?"

He felt a shiver snake down his spine, memory tugging at him. What'd the demon said to him? You don't have the faintest fucking idea what I'm talking about, do you?

That was just Crowley, he told himself. The demon mouthing off about nothing to make himself seem more important. That's all it was.

"Ellie," he said, turning around and moving closer to her, his hands sliding under the hem of her tee shirt and drawing it gently up. "It was – bad judgement, followed up with the usual serve of bad luck. That's all."

Except, there were pieces she didn't know about, he realised, and the shiver settled, a cold spot in his stomach. She'd been pregnant before Seattle. He'd been nearly all the way convinced he could leave Sam to do his own thing for a couple of weeks, go stay with her.

He eased the shirt over her head and down her arms, tossing it onto the vanity. What would've happened if it'd played out like that? Nothing would've been the same. None of it would've happened at all. Why the hell had he even gone to The Cobalt Room? It wasn't anything like his usual preference in a bar.

A lot of questions you don't have answers to, he thought. Probably never have answers for.

"Yeah, maybe," Ellie said, leaning against him for a moment before she stepped past and into the stream of hot water.

"You still think something's – changing things?" he asked, crowding in behind her. "Playing us?"

"I don't know." She leaned against the wall, arms held low and tight to her sides, forehead resting against the cool tiles. "I'd prefer not to think that."

He'd prefer not to think that as well, he decided.

"Was there anything else? In the past few months?" she asked, pushing off the wall and turning around, picking up the bar of soap. "Anything that seemed … forced? Or the timing weird?"

His heart gave a double-boom, high in his throat. Over the past few months, almost everything had felt forced and weird – forced by Bobby's death, by the levis, by Cas, by his own desires, warped and twisted by other things.

"Not really, nothing that, uh, stood out."

It wasn't a lie, he told himself, closing his eyes when she moved the soap over his chest, both hands slick and gliding in a froth of lather, the low-voltage charge that sparked between them heating his blood. Nothing had seemed right, but he hadn't had a sense of being pushed or manoeuvred into something.

Except by the angel's memories. But that'd been bad timing. He was sure – ninety-nine percent sure – it'd only been his own weakness, looking for a way out, something he'd done before.

"Isn't that my job?" he asked, opening his eyes and looking down at her, his skin twitching over muscle as she slid her hands down over his ribs and stomach.

She smiled, her eyes downcast. "You want me to stop?"

"Hell – uh – no."

---

1.43 a.m. May 28, 2012.

Ellie eased herself onto her side, wincing as her shoulders protested.

"Wassamatta?" The sleep-muffled question came out of the darkness behind her.

"Nothing," she said, shifting against the pillow. "Go back to sleep."

"Not nuthin'," he said. She felt him move closer, his skin radiating warmth against her back.

"I can't sleep," she admitted, and heard a soft snort.

"That'd be a first." The mattress dipped and his breath was on her shoulder. "Shoulders sore?"

"Yeah." It wasn't just them, but it was a good excuse.

"Gimme a sec," he said, and the mattress flexed again as he rolled away, the nightstand lamp coming on and lighting up the room. She screwed her eyes shut with the sudden brightness.

"Dean, you don't have to –"

"Got some more of that cream," he said, his voice indistinct. Ellie turned over, squinting against the lamplight, seeing only the broad expanse of his back, the rest of him hanging off the side of the bed, faint rustling and clinking noises as he rummaged in the duffel on the floor.

"Got it," he said, holding up a thick, glass jar. "Sorry, I forgot about it."

"What is it?"

"Same stuff Pamela gave me," he said, sitting up and shifting onto his knees. "I, uh, had some, in Manhattan, you remember?"

The storm and the room and the heat came back suddenly, with a delicate trickle of sense memory, his fingers on the bare skin of her shoulder.

"Didn't you say she'd made that up herself?"

"Yeah, Bobby told me about it," he said. "He packed up her place, found the, uh, recipes with a bunch of other stuff. Sit up."

She used her elbow and wrist to lever herself upright on the soft surface. Both shoulders were aching, the tears in muscle and tendon slow to heal.

The cream was cold as it touched her, then his fingers started working it in, gentle around the joint, and it warmed, a tingling heat that reached deeper every second. The low-grade tension that'd filled her muscles against the constant abrasive pain started to recede and she drew in a deep breath, closing her eyes, the steady rhythm of his hand lulling physically and mentally.

The silence in the room, barely disturbed by the sound of their breaths, the almost inaudible whisper of his hands working slowly over her skin, was full and expectant, and when she heard Dean's inhale, she knew what he was thinking, what he wanted to ask, before he said it.

The knowledge sent a faint shiver through her. He'd never asked her for the details of what she'd done in the two years they'd been apart. She'd never wanted to tell him. They were lousy at lying to each other, but they'd been lousy at telling each other the truth too. And that had to change.

She couldn't put her finger on the nagging sense of things happening around them, couldn't make it come clearer to herself, let alone marshal the arguments to convince anyone else, but the feeling was powerful in its persistence, and she thought their only armour against whatever it was that was moving in the background, coming for them, manipulating them or whatever the devil it was that was going on, was going to be in believing in each other. More strongly … more transparently, she thought … than they ever had before.

"Uh …" Dean's voice, not much above a low whisper, sounded loud in the room. "That spell, the one we found … you, uh, used that to get into Hell?"

"Yeah," she said. "It was with a collection I found when I was looking for a way to get you out."

His fingers stilled on her shoulder for a moment, and she heard the rasp of his breath.

"What were you looking for, when you used it?" he asked, a second later, another cool puddle of cream landing on her skin and his hands resuming their steady massage. "That was, uh, 2010, wasn't it?"

In his voice, there was a wealth of feeling, bottled up. She shook her head.

"The first time I used it was in 2008," she said. "I was getting desperate to find a way to get you out, return your soul to your body, and I thought – I thought I could find the answers in Hell."

He was silent, but she could feel his shock, emanating outward. His hands were warm, resting on her shoulder, but they weren't moving.

"I couldn't find anything, that first time," she admitted. "I didn't know what I was doing and I had to use the blood key to get out because the gate sealed before I could get back to it." She scratched unconsciously at the thin, white scar on her right arm.

"Why'd you even try?" he asked, his hands dropping from her shoulder.

She hadn't thought of it like that. In terms of things like why or what for. There'd been no part of her that could've left him down there and at least a part of the reason for him being there lay on her.

"I told you I could break the deal, and – and I wasn't careful enough," she said.

"Ellie, c'mon!" His disbelieving protest was almost startingly loud, echoing against the sloped ceiling. "You couldn't've done –"

"No." She shook her head, cutting him off firmly. "I knew Heaven was involved, Dean. There was an angel following me, in Richmond. Kath and Seb trapped it and it said I was being watched."

Harried by time, by her need to get the ritual done, know for sure he was saved, and she'd revisisted those few days over and over and over, trying to work out if she'd done all she could.

"I should've been more vigilant, on the way to Illinois." She still felt that. She could've tried harder. "I should've taken the time to make sure I couldn't be seen, to make sure nothing could go wrong."

"Don't." He moved around her, and turning her head, she saw his scowl. "You said it yourself. What they planned – no one could've changed it."

Uriel's smug certainty came back, the dark angel's face and the amusement that'd filled his voice. She dropped her gaze to her hands. "Maybe."

"No 'maybe' about it," he said forcefully, reaching out and catching her chin with his fingers, lifting her head. "That wasn't on you."

She looked into his eyes. Lit from the side by the lamplight, they were luminous with emotion. "No more than Sam's death was on you."

He let her go, his hand dropping to his side, eyes widening as he stared back.

Turning away, she said, "I knew they were dirty, Dean. Not how much, not 'til later. The Watcher I told you about, Penemue, he filled in a lot more."

"The one who told you about the Seal?"

"Yeah, and the factions in Heaven, and what they were trying to do."

"And what I did."

She nodded, swallowing at the pain threading his voice. He'd never told her how that'd felt, either, she thought. That she'd known.

"When did you go back in?" he asked a moment later, clearing his throat self-consciously. "And why?"

"I tried it again, in July 2008," she said, eyes half-closing, recalling how nervous she'd been about going back in. "I was … better prepared. Had more information and I was looking for the ingredients I needed for a ritual. They weren't hard to find."

His exhale gusted out loudly and she looked at him.

"It was … tricky," she acknowledged readily. "But it was also the only place for some of the things I needed, and I wasn't going to pass on them just because of the risk."

She thought of her conversation with Yure, back in May of that year. He'd been against her going into Hell as well. She'd asked him what he would've done if it'd been Kasha whose soul had been taken. He'd reluctantly given her the contact she'd needed.

"Why'd you go back, after that?"

"I didn't, not until just before the Cage closed," she said. "I didn't know as much about the gates, back then. I knew about the Sioux Falls gate, and the one in Pasadena, because they were in Jim's journals and Bobby told me about them as well. I didn't want to risk going in through either of them."

Sioux Falls because it was Azazel's gate and opened into the Fourth Level, too deep for what she'd wanted. From his father's account in Jim's journal, the Pasadena gate was a random, belonging to no one, but only there intermittently.

"The angels, the ones Michael had commanded to watch me, told me about the other gates, the ones that'd been opened with massacres. Ray did the searches, found me a few possible sites and I went in through one in Oregon."

"Looking for what?" Dean asked.

Ellie picked up the jar from the sheet and scooped some onto her fingertips, smoothing it over the point of her left shoulder, pondering how far back she needed to go to make it understandable.

"About four months after Raphael, Penemue asked me to talk to Michael," she said.

"Archangel, Michael?" Dean frowned at her, moving closer and taking over, his palm warm over her skin.

"Yeah," she said. "The Watchers were – it's complicated but they're not all like Penemue and Araquiel. They were having problems and Michael wouldn't answer them, but Penemue knew he'd talk to me."

The archangel had wanted to make a deal, she remembered. Dean's location in return for the help the Watchers needed.

"Why would he think that?"

"Because Michael thought I'd tell him where you were," she said. The pressure of his fingers increased, and she dropped her shoulder.

"Sorry." He lightened his touch, massaging over the sore area.

"He said you'd give in eventually, because Sam was going to consent to Lucifer. He told me there was only one way it would end, and that would be with Sam's death and Lucifer returned to the Cage." She tipped her head back, closing her eyes with the memory of the archangel's mocking voice. "He was arrogant, certain he'd win."

"What'd you tell him?"

"I told him I didn't know where you were," she said. "He lost his temper and he told me about the Horseman's rings. How they were the only key to the Cage."

"Yeah." Dean rubbed a hand over his jaw. "We used them, in Stull."

She nodded. "Bobby told me. From this side, they couldn't be used, because they'd let Lucifer back out," she said. "But from inside Hell, he said they could be used to get in."

He frowned. "I didn't hear anything about that."

"No," she said. "He told me I'd need the summoning for Death, and that was in Hell. He didn't know Death was ready to give you his ring. I was looking for the information on how to get through the lower levels."

"To get Sam out? Or me? If Michael lost?" He tilted his head, his eyes fixed on hers as she nodded. "Did you find it?"

She shook her head. "When I got out, there were a hundred demons waiting. That was when the Cage closed."

And she'd been miles from anywhere, with a bunch of dead demons, a dead angel, and a pissed angel who'd left her there under a spell hiding her from everything.

Dean's gaze dropped. Picking up the jar, he scooped more out, smoothing another cool load over her shoulder, using the heel of his hand to work it in. The silence between them stretched out slowly, too many memories crowding the bedroom, Ellie thought. Too many memories they'd spent too long trying to forget.

He lifted her arm, easing up to shoulder height and rotating it slowly. "That feel alright?"

"Yeah," she said. "A lot better. Thanks."

She watched him screw the lid of the jar back on, moving it to the nightstand.

"But you - uh - went back in. In 2010?" He wasn't looking at her, and she moved to the head of the bed, leaning back against the pillows there.

"Late November," she confirmed. "I'd been hearing some disturbing rumours going around then, not just from the hunters, but from other people I knew. I was in Havana, doing an exorcism. The demon said Hell had a new King."

"Crowley?"

"Yeah." She frowned. "The account wasn't all that coherent, but it claimed a crossroads demon had taken over, and that came as a surprise."

"Because of the, uh, archdemons?" he asked.

She nodded. "It didn't make sense. I did some research on him, found out a few things, but I couldn't figure how he could've taken care of the Fallen quickly enough when Lucifer was returned to Hell. I mean, Bobby'd said he was running and hiding, when he gave you the Colt."

"That's what he told us," Dean agreed.

"That didn't sound like he'd had a plan for taking over, and it didn't track that he could suddenly become King."

"But he did."

"Yeah." The question of how had bothered her for a long time.

"Anyway, around the end of November, a friend called me with some information," she told him. "I didn't think it was related, at the time. John said there were records of an old Gnostic text – rumoured to be a demonology – detailing the structure of Hell."

"I thought your, uh, partner knew all about Hell?"

"He knew a lot," Ellie agreed. "Not all. He'd been looking – we'd been looking – for the way Lucifer was using the power of the damned souls for years."

"What d'you mean?" Dean asked, and she heard the frown in his voice. "I thought Lucifer built Hell?"

"Hell was always there. Lucifer rebuilt it, as a mirror image of Heaven," she explained. "He designed it like that to insult his Father. But in Heaven, all the power of the souls, the power the angels draw on, that comes through the Spheres –"

"The what?"

"Spheres – they're called the Spheres, nine levels of increasing power that govern everything. The angels keep them in balance, one against the other, and the Spheres are what gives them their power – God's power – I don't know – the way the universe works."

"Guessing Cas really fucked that up."

"Probably not," she said. "They're supposedly so powerful not much can rock them. In any case, Hell doesn't have the same mechanism, Lucifer not being much inclined to share."

"There a punchline here?"

"Kind of," she said. "The reference to the Gnostic text suggested Lucifer built a throne instead, to channel all the power from the souls in Hell. No sharing … and no balance."

"You didn't find this, uh, book?"

"No."

"You went into Hell to find out if Crowley got the Ring-Ding crown from finding this throne?"

"And how it was not one of the Fallen took the throne before he could get it," she added, nodding. "He couldn't have beaten them. He had to've bound them in some way."

"The hell did it matter?" he asked. "You couldn't've changed anything."

No, she couldn't have changed a thing. It hadn't been a vital job, she thought. Not really. But she'd had nothing better to do and she hadn't cared.

"No. I couldn't've," she admitted. "I just wanted to know."

"Enough to risk your life?" he asked, his voice rising. "To die for?"

"It didn't seem like that big a risk," she said. In retrospect, her lack of thought had been appalling. At the time … at the time, not much had been getting through the pain.

"You're serious?" he asked, incredulity edging his tone. "Going into Hell? By yourself? Looking for something that controls everything in there?"

"You saw it, Dean," she pointed out. "In your body, the souls and the demons can't see you. I was pretty sure the archdemons had been neutralised –"

"You were pretty sure," he repeated, turning to stare blindly at the wall. "That supposed to make me feel better?"

"You were in Indiana, living with someone else."

He flinched at her tone and the words, and she looked away. He wanted the truth and not all of it was palatable. She watched him draw in a deep breath, his shoulders slumping.

"So, you didn't care?"

"No," she agreed. "I didn't care."

Against the lamp's light, she saw his throat working, the muscle at the point of his jaw twitch.

"And – uh - all that … stuff … you told me, how it was, uh, for the best that I'd been there, that I'd – uh – needed that year – that was all crap, Ellie?"

"No, it wasn't," she said, drawing her knees up and resting her chin on them. "I still believe you needed that time."

"But you didn't." His voice was toneless. "An' you let me think you were fine with that. Just went off and did your own thing, no fallout, right? No harm, no foul."

Letting her breath out, she said, "You didn't ask. I couldn't see the point of making you feel worse."

"Well, I'm asking now," he said, turning back to her.

"Why?" she asked. "It's over with. Done."

"It's–" he stopped suddenly, ducking his head, his face screwing up in frustration. "It's something that happened – something – uh – I didn't know about. It – look – I might not need to – uh – know about – everything, but not knowing the big things–?"

He shook his head, brows pinched. "It – Jesus, Ellie – you – you stopped caring 'bout what you were doing? An' that's not something I should know?"

His voice had risen and the pain in it was a goad, bringing to mind her resolutions about truth and lies.

"It wasn't like that, Dean – it was a reaction –"

"I told you everything about that time," he reminded her. "Everything, 'cause it fucked me over and I thought you needed to know why."

"Alright." She nodded, sighing in acceptance. She'd been fucked over alright, and maybe he did need to know her weaknesses. "You're right. But for the record, I don't think it's going to help either of us."

"Noted." He looked around the room restlessly for a moment and she wondered if he was thinking about a drink, something to help hear what he'd asked her to tell him.

"I got to Bobby's about the first week of August," she said, when he looked back at her impatiently. "He told me you'd waited for two weeks after Sam took Lucifer back to the Cage. Told me Cas couldn't see me and eventually, you couldn't wait any longer."

She closed her eyes, remembering the old man's sorrow-laced anger. "He was mad at me. For taking so long." She'd explained and Bobby'd understood, but it hadn't assuaged the old man's feelings. "He told me about your promise to Sam, where you were. Said you'd settled in there."

She glanced up as he moved slightly. "He said he'd been keeping an eye on you, that he'd worried about you being there."

His brows drew together briefly. "Why in hell didn't he stop by?"

"Sam was out by then," she said, recalling Bobby's frustration when he'd told her about it. "He'd told Bobby to tell everyone to leave you alone. He thought it was your chance, to get out for good, to have what you wanted."

What Sam'd said to her on the Third Level flashed through her mind and she pushed it aside. He'd been right about the past, she thought. The impacts kept coming and there was no way past but through them.

"I told him I wouldn't get in the way, but I needed to see you and I needed to see if you were settled and happy for myself," she continued, that long drive still vivid in recall. Hope and fear it'd been, the whole way.

"I got cold feet when I got to Indianapolis. Finally found a van kitted out for surveillance and I set up a long way from the house." Two miles, on the crown of the next ridge-top suburb over and she'd watched him distantly for as long as she'd been able. At that distance, he'd looked mostly okay.

"I was there for a week," she said. "You had a job with the construction crew downtown and I followed you there a couple of times."

She'd had to stop doing that, the temptation to intercept him on the way in or out, or when he was taking a break, too powerful. At the little house, it'd been different. She'd seen him with Lisa there, and with the boy, and nothing could've induced her to walk up to that house when they were around.

"Must've been the Friday night, I think, you went out for dinner," she said, hearing her voice flatten out with the memory.

It'd been a casual sort of place, a beer garden or outdoor café or something like that. For some reason, the greenery hanging from the ceiling remained detailed in her mind's eye, lush spills of fern and vines. When she'd realised where they were going, she'd been determined to get closer. With a short, blonde wig as a minimal disguise, she'd sat down at a table close enough to hear snatches of the conversation, her back to them. Dean's voice had been warm, their conversation speaking of a level of intimacy she recognised. Following them back to the house, she'd seen them, through the still-open curtains, making out on the couch after the boy'd gone to bed.

"I wasn't more than a couple of tables away," she told him. "Masochistic, but I couldn't help it. You sounded happy. You looked happy. I left the next day."

She risked a glance at him. His head was bowed, his gaze, she thought, on his hands, curled loosely on his thighs.

"I went to Paris and ended up in Rome."

That first couple of months had been raw and what she'd done mostly was stare at the walls, trying to bury what she'd seen, trying to forget what she'd wanted, what she'd had for a too-brief time and had lost, by her own action, or lack of it, it felt like.

"I got back to the States at the end of October. Marcus'd called me. He was hunting skinwalkers, told me they were gathering together, in big packs. We found one, but by the time we got out, most were dead and the rest had gone. Then Ray clued me into a possession in Cuba, and that's when I found out about Crowley and started trying to find out more."

She'd had the ritual incantation to get into Hell and had been debating the pros and cons of snooping around there when Katherine'd called to tell her about Dean's visit to the Hidden Door. Dean had moved by then, but it hadn't take much to find the new address. For whatever reason, he hadn't been hiding them from regular bureaucracy.

"I went back to see you at Thanksgiving," she told him. "Katherine told me you'd been there, looking for information on getting into the Cage. She told me she'd offered you a way to get in touch. She said you'd refused."

She hadn't been able to believe that. Had told herself he'd misunderstood or Katherine'd misrepresented the offer. All those rationalisations had been blown out of the water when she'd watched him, standing on the nice front porch of their new place, his arm around Lisa, waving goodbye to their holiday guests.

"I found your new place and watched for a couple of days," she said. "I told myself I was there because you needed to know the truth – about Sam being out, that you didn't need to keep searching for a way to get him free. It was one of the reasons I was there – another one was trying to convince myself there was some mistake, some not obvious but valid reason you didn't leave a message at the Hidden Door."

Dean's indrawn breath was harsh, but she didn't look up at it. "I realised you could sense the surveillance, and nothing I was seeing looked any different from the way it had in August. I was still debating telling you about Sam and the Cage when I ran into Gwen Campbell. She told me Sam'd left no one in any doubt as to what he'd do to them if they disturbed you and I – I told myself he was watching out for you, that he must've had a good reason for leaving you in the dark. So … I left."

"Ellie –"

She shook her head. "You wanted to hear this, so let me finish."

He didn't say anything else, and she drew in a breath. Over the next few months, she'd hunted with a deliberate recklessness, taking on jobs more for their difficulty than the importance of saving people. Possessions, hauntings, ghouls, vampires, a werewolf in Maine that'd come within seconds and inches of biting her, a revenant in Pittsburgh that'd left her with septicaemia and three months of antibiotics courses, demons, witches, driven by constant, unlooked-at emotions she didn't want to feel and couldn't escape.

"I used the spell six times, over '10 and '11. I went looking for things that were impossible to get here. Went in a couple of times just to work out the way through the levels. I went in looking for the throne or something that would tell me how Crowley'd gotten control of Hell and I nearly got caught in there a few times. Scared the hell out of me, what I was doing, but no, I didn't care."

She looked down at the tangle of sheet around her feet. For almost all of that two years, she'd been alone or hunting briefly with others and leaving. The not-caring was obvious to everyone who knew her and their concerns, voiced or not, had beaten at her, forcing her away most of the time. She hadn't wanted to talk about it or think about it or learn to live with it or heal. She'd just wanted to keep moving and as a strategy, it hadn't worked at all. Someone had been keeping an eye on her, she'd realised much later, because the risks she'd taken back then had been so high she should've died a hundred times over.

His face was drawn when she lifted her head and looked at him, his mouth a thin line, his jaw tight and knotted. It hadn't been his fault, what'd happened. Not bad luck, either, she'd thought then and still did. Only Dean could've gotten through to Sam when Lucifer'd had control. At best, she might've been considered a distraction, something Dean Winchester didn't need. Someone to be kept out of the way. The Righteous Man who'd started it had been the only one who could end it, and he had. Alone and broken in a cemetery, his brother gone, the devil gone and nothing left but a promise.

"I know you needed that time, Dean," she said, her voice softening. "Time with nothing from your past to get in the way, some peace and quiet, time to think about what you wanted –"

"What I wanted, I couldn't have," he interrupted, his voice deep. "What I wanted was nowhere to be found. There wasn't any 'peace' there."

He looked away, the light behind him shadowing his face, hiding his expression. "You said you thought we were being played. You still think that, don't you? By what? Who?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't even know if that feeling is real, Dean."

"No such thing as coincidence," he said.

"No, but then why not let me die with my parents? Why not in Alaska? Or while I was in Hell?" She shook her head. "If there's a purpose behind any of this, why is it sometimes working one way and sometimes another?"

He tipped his head back, dragging in a deep breath.

"I never got what I wanted." Letting it out again, his eyes opened and he looked around the bedroom. "Until now. Every day, I get a feeling – sometimes a strong one, sometimes just a-a hint – like it's going to be taken away. Not –" he added, his eyes meeting hers. "– because I don't deserve it or I didn't somehow pay enough for it … just … because."

---

Wiping his hands on the sheets around his knees, Dean wondered if she was right – if those feelings he got and tried to ignore – were right.

He'd tried his best to not look at the two years they'd spent apart from her perspective and he hadn't asked her about them. As she'd said, he'd been living with someone else and trying to put himself in that position, trying to imagine himself in her shoes wasn't something he could get near. He understood reckless disregard for life. There'd been more than a few times when he'd taken that path, almost courting death, because living had been hard and had seemed pointless, even futile.

His subconscious would have a new box of toys to play with, he thought, pushing down the images that'd flashed through his mind when she'd told him what she'd done. He'd just have to live with that. She'd been right about it not helping, he thought. Or maybe not. Knowing each other didn't just mean all the good things.

What he was less able to deal with was the idea no matter what they did, how careful they were or how much they felt for each other, something else could take all this away and leave him with nothing.

He turned his head, focussing on Ellie. Sitting hunched up against the bed head, she looked smaller, he thought. Alone. After everything they'd been through, he couldn't work out how easy it was to feel like that. Alone. He'd thought – he'd believed – if she let him back in, he'd never let her go, keep her close enough to touch, to breathe in her scent, to feel her in his arms, but he was sitting on one side of the bed, and she was sitting on the other, both of them bruised by their past.

Ducking his head, he said, "I thought this talking shit out was supposed to help?"

He heard her snort, glancing up to see her rueful smile.

"I guess it will. Not tonight, but maybe somewhere down the track," she said. "I seem to remember telling you to go back to sleep?"

He shook his head. "An' miss out on this much fun?"

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not," he said, moving closer to her. "I'm holding you personally responsible for any nightmares I have from here on, but –" He hesitated, looking for a way to say what he wanted to say without it coming out wrong. "It might hurt, y'know? It might not be what I wanted to hear – fuck, it's probably never going to be what I want to hear – but I can deal with the truth. I can't – I can't handle lying. Not any more. Between Sam and Cas, I – I just can't. So don't. Please? Not between us."

"That goes both ways, Dean."

"Yeah," he said, shuffling closer. "I know."

He held out an arm and she wriggled down the bed, fitting herself against him as he lay back and stretched out.

"How do the shoulders feel?" he asked.

"Good, not sore."

"Remind me about that stuff, okay?" he told her. "Morning and night, it's supposed to be."

"Okay."

He felt her breath, exhaled against his chest, and turned toward her. There was one other question he needed to ask. "Ellie?"

"Mmm?"

"Did you hate me? When I was with Lisa and Ben?" He didn't want to ask, didn't want to know the answer, but it thrummed through him and he thought he needed to know. Or that she needed to say it, out loud. One time. The things he'd told himself about her, when she'd gone, had been bad. They'd warped his sense of her and himself for too long.

"I tried to," she said, her hand curling up into a loose fist on his chest. "I really tried to."

She lifted her head, tilting it back to look at him. "I tried a lot of things. Even managed to talk myself into believing some of them had worked. Then I went to Bobby's yard and you came out from under the car, and I realised I'd wasted my time."

The bright sunlight, heating the yard, lighting up her hair, banished the darkness behind his closed eyelids. Just that one moment, one look at her, and everything he'd spent two years trying to convince himself about had fallen to pieces around him.

"Think that me-means something?" he asked, clearing his throat as his voice cracked.

"Yeah, I think it means you're going to have a hard time getting rid of me again," she said, sighing. "Not saying you couldn't if you really wanted to, but …"

She trailed off, and he opened his eyes. "But what?"

"I saw you, in Seattle, you know," she said, her voice a lot lower. "Saw you come out of that club and get into the taxi."

His heart walloped against his ribs. He'd known it, but she'd never said it.

"I never wanted to hate you as much as I did on the drive back to the house." She shifted restlessly and without thinking about it, his arms tightened around her, feeling her tense against him, then slowly relax. "Didn't work any better than any other time," she added softly.

"You could'nt've hated me as much as I did," he said against her neck, blinking in disorientation at the sudden and inexplicable sense of having said that – or heard it – somewhere before. He reached for the association but even the weird déjà vu-ish feeling vanished after a moment.

He shook his head. "You'd think I'd've wanted to give up then," he said, remembering the days and nights that'd followed her message. "But I figured I owed you. What it did to me wasn't any worse than what I'd done to you."

Her exhale was long and feathery over his chest and he looked down at her.

"That's it," she said, her voice low. "We're done with that now, aren't we?"

He hoped so. It would take a long time to get all the pieces lined up and in place, in his head, in his understanding, but she'd told him the missing parts, the ones he hadn't wanted to think about. There came a point when talking about it stopped helping and started making it worse. Until he'd met her, he'd always reached that point a lot earlier than anyone else. He wondered if that change had come from knowing her or if it had snuck in when she hadn't been around. It didn't matter, he decided abruptly. The last few days had built something between them. Fragile, maybe, and needing care, but still there. Eventually it'd become stronger.

"Yeah."

---

May 30, 2012. Douglas, Wyoming.

Dean leaned against the doorframe of the ward, watching Sam moving around with wide eyes. His brother's recovery seemed almost miraculous.

"Good, huh?" Sam glanced at him and grinned.

The drips, feeds, bags and tubes had gone, and Sam's colour was back to normal, his hair clean and too long, as usual, but looking more like himself than he had since they'd come out of Hell.

"Good? It's fucking awesome," he said, pushing off the frame and walking across the broad room. "Still bitching about baby-sitters?"

Sam ducked his head and Dean saw the flush of red tint his brother's ear tips. Trish'd been there when he'd arrived, explaining something or other to Sam, but she'd left a few minutes later to give them time alone.

"She get you doing press ups or what?"

"Just walking," Sam said. "Some, uh, isometric wall stuff."

He demonstrated, walking slowly to the wall and putting his arms out until he was braced against it, leaning in and holding the position as he looked over his shoulder. "No impact, she said."

Nodding, Dean said, "I remember Dad making us do that for hours, on the floor."

Sam pushed off the wall gently, his brow crinkling up. "Yeah! I forgot about that. Same thing."

"So, when can you leave?"

"Uh, any time, I guess," Sam said. "Trish, uh, has a couple more milestones. And she wants to see out the last course of the antibiotics. Maybe a day or two?"

"But you're good? No infection or – uh – complications?"

"No." Sam walked back to the window, bracing himself on the arms of the chair there and lowering himself into it. "All good."

His gaze flicked to the door and Dean turned around as Trish walked in.

"How long till he's, uh, fit again?"

"That depends on Sam," she said, smiling at his little brother. "If he's working steadily, not pushing too hard, not slacking off? Probably two to three weeks for the internal damage to be strong enough to take a more vigorous routine. The external muscles should all be a lot stronger by then too."

"That's fast," Dean remarked, turning back to his brother, one brow rising.

"It can be," Trish agreed. "Sam was lucky with his doctors. They did a very good job of repairing the damage and keeping everything scrupulously clean. That's usually where recovery slows down – secondary infections or poor surgical work that comes apart under normal strain."

"Sam was lucky from go to whoa," Dean said, his mouth twisting as he looked at his little brother. "Thanks for helping out here," he added, glancing back at Trish.

"It was a pleasure," she said. A faint pink flush tinted her cheeks and her gaze cut to the window. "It's always very satisfying to have someone who really wants to work hard at getting back to normal."

"How're things going in Whitefish?" Sam asked.

"Slowly," Dean told him. "Got most of Bobby and Rufus' stuff ready to move, but still no firm idea of where we're going."

He looked back at Trish. "You, uh, going to keep working on Sam once he's outta here?"

She shook her head. "No, I've got a three-month project starting at Cook County in a couple of days, and I'll be leaving here when Sam's ready to go."

From the way his brother's gaze slid to the side, Dean realised he already knew that. He didn't need to be psychic to see she'd had an impact on Sam.

"I, uh, guess you're in pretty high demand, with what you do?"

"Sometimes, yeah," she said. "I'm grateful for that, even when it's not entirely convenient."

"Like us," Dean said with a shrug. "Gotta go where the job is."

"Yeah, that's right."

There was a faint tension in the room, he thought, shooting a discreet look at his brother. Sam was studying the floor. Trish's gaze had moved back to the window behind him. He felt like a fifth wheel.

"Uh, well, is there anything … you need?" he asked his brother. "I was going to head back up but if there's –"

"No," Sam said, cutting him off. "I've got some work to do this afternoon. You go ahead. I'll call when I'm ready to go?"

"Sure," Dean said. "Again, uh, thanks, Trish."

"Anytime," she said, turning back to him and smiling. "I'll make sure Sam's prescriptions are filled when he leaves."

All taken care of, he thought, looking from her to his brother and back again.

"Good, great." He took a step backward. "Then, I'll, uh, see you in a couple."

"Yeah." Sam nodded, and Dean got the impression he was waiting impatiently for him to leave. "See you."

"Okay." He turned around, hands pushing into his coat pockets as he headed for the door. He glanced back when he reached it. Both Trish and Sam were in the same positions, neither looking at the other. Between them, though, he thought he could see something. Some kind of awareness or something.

He needed Ellie here, he realised. She picked up on those vibes a lot more quickly than he did.

Pushing his speculation aside, he turned into the corridor, walking fast toward the stairs. It was a good nine hours to the cabin and he wanted to get back as fast as he could.

---

June 5, 2012. Whitefish, Montana

Ellie lifted her arms, stretching them up and out to relieve the kinks in her shoulders and back as she got up from the table. More than two hours at the computer had her body complaining vociferously about the lack of movement. She turned at the sound of engines chugging up the road, walking over to the door and opening it. Through the trees, she could see a battered, red pickup moving slowly up the track, black exhaust belching behind it.

As it climbed into the clearing, Twist waved a hand at her from the side window. Behind him, three other vehicles added their noise and exhaust to the peaceful mountainside; Dean, in her pickup, Garth, in his small utility and Dwight, driving the five-ton flatbed, its tray loaded with boxes of every size.

"They're back?" Sam came out of the cabin and stopped on the porch beside her, watching as the trucks pulled up in front of the cabin and stopped. "Can we fit all that into the cabin?"

"I hope so," Ellie said. Every tray was loaded and the men driving got out and started to fill their arms with the boxes. "We'll fill the basement first, then just keep stacking along the walls."

Sam started down the steps and Ellie reached out for his arm, shaking her head at him. "There are no 'light' boxes of books, Sam."

"There're small ones," he countered, waving a hand toward Twist's truck. "I'll be careful."

She saw Dean's brows pull together as he caught sight of his brother, going to the tray and picking up one of the smaller cartons. He watched Sam for a moment then turned back to the tray, picking up a couple of boxes and settling them as he turned for the porch.

"You keep an eye on him?" he muttered at her as he walked past. She nodded.

Leaning against the porch post, she saw Sam glance over at her, clearly contemplating adding another box to the one he held. She shook her head at him and he shrugged, lifting the box carefully and carrying it to the cabin.

"I feel fine," he said, climbing the steps and heading into the cabin.

"Let's keep it that way," she called after him. "It's not like you're not going to be doing this again in a week or two!"

She got a grunted response from inside and she stepped back as Garth and Twist followed him up to the porch, both staggering under their loads, their faces gleaming with perspiration in the mid-morning sunshine.

"Follow Sam," she advised them, waving a hand at the door and briefly wondering if she shouldn't grab some as well. The swelling had gone completely from her shoulders, most of the bruising as well. She could still, occasionally, feel twinges from both sockets, but nothing that wouldn't disappear when she started training again.

The black look she knew she'd get from Dean if he saw decided her against it. His protective instincts were all out in force with two convalescents on his hands, and he was touchy enough about them without aggravating him further.

Sam'd been subdued when he'd arrived at the cabin, a little pale from the long drive. Three days of taking long walks through the woods, catching up on the information that'd been accumulating for the past three weeks and working on regaining his strength had shaken off his melancholy and an impatience to get back to work was building, day by day.

Not that she was any better, she considered. The hormonal fluctuations in her body had settled down and aside from the powerful internal push to find a good base, an alliance between her natural inclination to be organised and the nesting instincts that'd begun to kick in, she was itching to do more than look at real estate.

---

After the fourth trip down the basement stairs and back, carrying two or three boxes at a time, Dean straightened when he reached the top of the stairs, wiping his forehead with a sleeve. He saw Ellie directing Dwight and Garth up the stairs to the bedroom, both men hidden behind the boxes they carried.

Walking up behind her, his arms slipped beneath hers, hands sliding over the shallow curve of her belly, resting there protectively. He kissed the side of her neck and felt the tremor pass through her at the same time as it passed through him.

"You find the next place to lug all this crap to?"

"A few places." She leaned back against him. "Nothing that stands out. Basement full already?"

"Almost."

Twist walked into the cabin, a sheen of sweat over his face, arm muscles bulging with the weight of the cartons he was carrying. "Where do you want these?"

"Basement, please, Twist," Ellie said.

She looked at Dean's profile from the corner of her eye.

"Shouldn't you be helping with that?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I should," he said, making no attempt to move away, his breath warm against her neck.

She laughed. "How many more left?"

"Not a lot."

They'd packed up what'd been in her study, and Bobby'd advised a few cartons of books from the larger library. He sighed against her neck and straightened up, letting go of her slowly. "What about the rest of the stuff at the house?"

She shrugged. "It'll have to stay there until we can find something else. There's no room here and I don't want to drag it all to a storage unit and then drag it all back out in a month or two."

She turned to face him. "Any sign of Frank yet?"

He shook his head, then glanced around the living room. The far wall, and the raised alcove at the back were filled with boxes and cartons. "Can we fit everyone in here?"

"So long as they're not planning on crashing for the night," Ellie said. "We can move those two tables together. There's another one in the back bedroom. It should be big enough."

"I'll get it when the rest is in," he said, glancing up at the heavy bootsteps upstairs.

Dwight and Garth came down the stairs and Dean followed them outside to the flatbed, the vehicle's tray still holding a dozen or so boxes. Moving around to the side, he grabbed an edge of the nearest carton and hauled it closer.

Every box was filled with either books or computer equipment. Every one felt as if it had been filled with rocks. Dean shifted the boxes against his chest, and felt the sharp press of something in his coat pocket, against his breastbone, something small and hard. He frowned, and lifted the boxes a little higher, carrying them inside and up the stairs.

He lowered the boxes onto the pile that lined one wall of the attic bedroom, and opened his coat, putting his hand into the inside upper pocket, his fingers closing around a small square box. Pulling it out, he looked at it, memory returning immediately. How he'd managed to forget about it for the last three weeks, he couldn't figure. He opened it and looked down at the small object inside, his heart beating a little faster as he considered what it meant.

---

"So we redesigned the chipset to get past the speed limitation –"

"Doing what Intel should've done six months ago," Frank interrupted with a sour grin.

"– and ended up reverse engineering the entire microarchitecture –"

Dean tuned out the jargon that spilled in a fast, apparently endless, gabble from the man talking to Ellie. Ray Whitstone was a small man, lean and wiry and crackling with energy. With black-framed, oversized glasses and delicate, expressive hands, he looked like the cliché of every nerd he'd ever come across. Except for the scars that'd left him with hair on only one side of his head and had drawn three, puckered red lines across his face, from brow to jaw.

"Do you think you can change the bus architecture to boost the processing power we're getting? If we're linking three or four servers together?" Ellie asked, her gaze locked onto the programmer's face. "Not just overclocking, we don't have a stable environment for the cooling requirements. We need real hand-in-glove parallel processing."

Beyond his pay grade, Dean decided, stifling a yawn.

Frank'd had turned up an hour before, manoeuvring his truck and trailer around the turnaround and parking it to one side of the clearing in front of the cabin. Ellie's face had lit up when she'd seen Ray climb out of the passenger side of the vehicle and follow Frank up to the porch. She'd introduced him and the hacker'd looked uncomfortable when they'd thanked him for cleaning up their records. Since then, he'd been talking non-stop to Ellie, in what might've well been a different language.

"Come and see the beast," Frank said abruptly, swinging around and grabbing his elbow. "Where's Sam?"

---

Dean glanced at Sam's face, noticing the tension in the muscles around his mouth. His brother was doing his best not to burst out laughing. He looked back at the long trailer, taking up most of the gravelled turnaround in front of the cabin, tilting his head to one side. It was a 1966 Airstream Ambassador, the polished stainless steel exterior sparkling in the late afternoon sunshine, the curving roof bristling with antennae and dishes. He kind of liked it himself.

Frank opened the door and gestured for them to go inside. Sam's laughter disappeared as he looked around the cramped interior. The original layout had been stripped and every available space had been fitted with shelving. The shelves were packed with electronic equipment, monitoring equipment, computer drives, storage disks, spools of wire, drawers of components, tools, surveillance equipment and a number of things he couldn't even identify. At one end of the trailer a small, efficient kitchenette had been installed. Opposite the single counter with its hotplate, sink and tiny fridge, a narrow bunk bed took up the lower half of the wall, with pinboards covering the walls above. Frank looked around, his grin a little maniacal.

"You gotta see the office." He walked to the other end of the trailer, Dean and Sam trailing him single file, both men walking slightly crabwise to avoid knocking against the shelves. The semi-circular front end had been fitted with a u-shaped desk, and eight monitors followed the curve, with keyboards and wireless mice neatly arrayed in front of them.

"What d'you think?" Frank looked from Dean to Sam. "Those bastards can't keep me down."

Dean looked at the screens, at the slim CPUs stacked under them, and shook his head. "Looks like you're ready for bear, Frank."

"Leviathan," Frank corrected him absently. "And demons. And anything else we need information on. Upgraded everything. State of the art." He tapped a keyboard and images flickered on the screens. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to start again."

Sam and Dean looked at each other. "Sounds good, Frank." Dean nodded in agreement.

"Where are you going to base yourself, Frank?" Sam looked back down the length of the trailer.

Frank looked at him patiently. "No base. Not any more. This baby's mobile and we are going to be mobile." He glanced to the front, the narrow curving window showing the rear end of the Chevy 250 pickup that towed the Airstream. "I don't ever plan on staying in one place more than a night."

Sam licked his lips, raising a brow at his brother. "Alrighty then."

---

The cabin's main room was noisy, half a dozen conversations going on at once around the large, hastily put-together dining table.

Dean leaned back in his chair, watching the men who sat there, arguing, laughing, talking seriously about some creature or other. A hand slipped beneath his and he glanced at Ellie, sitting next to him. Lacing his fingers through hers, he bent his head to press her knuckles against his lips.

"Not quite the Brady Bunch, is it?" Her gaze moved affectionately around the table, returning to him as she smiled. He snorted at the images that conjured in his imagination.

"They're family though," she added softly.

He couldn't bring himself to disagree. Everyone there had put their lives on the line, for them. Frank was arguing with Dwight over some conspiracy theory or other; Garth and Trip were competing to see who knew the dirtiest joke, he could tell from the punch lines that drifted up the table; Marcus was explaining some sort of strategic play to Twist, using the condiments and crockery around them to provide visual aids. Sam and Ray were earnestly discussing technology, its limitations and the latest information on Roman's doings, his brother's voice rising occasionally as he argued some point or other.

He looked back at her, his fingers tightening around hers gently. "Doesn't feel like a boys' club to you?"

"Yeah, of course it does." She laughed, shrugging. "We'll find more hunters."

He nodded.

Yeah, they would. There were still a lot out there, keeping their heads down after the events of the past couple of years.

For the first time, he could think of all the people he'd loved and lost to this life, with sadness, but without pain. Or guilt. Or shame. It'd been years since Ellie'd told him their deaths hadn't been on him; that they'd made their choices and paid the price willingly. It'd taken him years to believe that, to get some kind of understanding of what was his and what wasn't. He wasn't sure of how and when that understanding had filtered through his defences, but he was grateful for the lightening of the load.

He wouldn't give up this life, even knowing the dangers, knowing the risks to her and to the child they would have, to himself. Everything in life contained risk, to one degree or the other. There was no way of safeguarding anyone against it, other than not living at all, living without purpose or meaning. Hunting things, saving people, trying to defeat the darkness … like or not, it was who he was and he couldn't pretend otherwise. Not any more. He'd do his utmost to minimise those risks, but what they did was important and he couldn't pass off that responsibility for the hollow promise of a safety that didn't exist.

---

Ellie yawned, ducking her head. She glanced around the cabin's living area appraisingly, rubbing a hand down the back of her neck. It was reasonably clean and tidy again, the furniture returned to its places, the wall of book cartons unobtrusive. Frank and Ray had left a couple of hours ago, Frank guiding the behemoth of a trailer down to Whitefish to find a motel for the night. Twist, Garth, Dwight, Trip and Marcus had all pulled out half an hour earlier, the steady stream of red taillights bright against the darkness, heading to the different jobs almost of them had lined up.

The brothers had been alternately excited and bemused by the gathering, she thought, revelling in being able to be themselves, no lies needed, no pretence of being other than who and what they were, and mildly uncomfortable at the same time, the pressure on both to be more sociable than they'd been for years. Dean had told her, an unconscious wistfulness in his voice, of the times they'd stayed with Jim Murphy, the nights of poker and hunter's tales, of cleaning ordnance and listening to his father discussing jobs with Jim, and with Caleb, the ordinariness of those nights, even given the talk that'd been far from ordinary. Those times had given him the stability and security he'd needed.

There was no reason not to make it more regular, she thought, getting up from the couch. No reason not to build the networks of support, information and experience between the hunters still operating in the country. She'd been looking for Soleil since 2009. Rudy was still alive, she knew, if proving elusive. Laney and Moses were around and it'd been a while since she'd caught up with them. Another thing to add to the ever-growing list of things to do once they had a comfortable base, protected and secure.

At the table, Dean and Sam were leaning over both laptops, their faces lit up by the screens. Looking for demon signs, she knew. Ray'd upgraded his software and brought it with him, loading it onto both laptops. The huge gatherings around Memphis and Rochester they'd seen earlier had gone.

Everyone called home, she'd thought. Whatever spell or ritual or curse Crowley'd found to bind the Fallen, she had a bad feeling it'd been broken with his death. She wasn't sure if it meant Castiel would be safer now. What he carried might not remain hidden for long.

"How's it looking?" she asked, walking to Dean and peering past him at the screens.

"Quiet," Sam said.

"Too quiet," Dean added, glancing around at her.

"You're impossible to please," she told him. "I'm going to bed."

"Not so fast," he said, wrapping an arm around her and bending his head to brush his mouth over hers. "I'll be up soon."

"I'll leave the light on," she said. "'Night, Sam."

"There's pretty much nothing here," Sam said, looking around at her belatedly. 'Night, Ellie."

She smiled at his persistence, and turned away, heading for the stairs. The next few days would be undemanding, she hoped. They really needed the downtime.

---

Dean watched her climb the stairs as Sam closed both laptops, getting up and stretching.

"I could sleep for a week," he said, tilting his head to either side to ease the tension in his neck. "You know, I'd really forgotten what it was like?"

Dean nodded. He recalled how he'd felt, in New Orleans, having dinner with Colette and Michel and Etienne. Just talking. Just being himself.

"We need to do that more often," he said. Sam grinned at him.

"Don't tell me you're gonna become sociable now?"

He shrugged. "That kind of social? No hardship."

"I guess," Sam agreed. "So, what's the plan?"

"Plan?"

His brother gave him an impatient look. "What're we doing now?"

"Lying low. Taking some time out. Recharging," Dean said.

"After that?"

"We'll see." Dean turned away, his shoulders hunching up a little as he wondered how the hell he could get the conversation around to what he wanted to talk about. "Uh, Sam –"

"Yeah?"

He turned back and saw Sam's brow furrow up suddenly, his gaze sharpen.

"What's wrong?"

The reaction startled a nervous laugh from him, and he shook his head. "Nothing's wrong. I – I – uh, need your input on something."

"Oh. Uh, sure," Sam said, leaning back against the table. "Shoot."

"Uh, it's – uh – personal."

His brother folded his arms over his chest, eyes narrowing speculatively. "As in, you're going to take twenty minutes to get it out kind of personal?"

Cutting his gaze to one side, Dean shrugged again. "Yeah. That kind of personal."

"Okay." Sam's forehead wrinkled up. "You want to, uh, start with something basic? Like, what brought this on?"

Mouth curling down, Dean shook his head. He reached into his coat, pulling out the small, square box. For a moment, he looked down at it, then he tossed it to his brother.

Sam caught it with a frown. "What's this?"

He opened the box, and Dean saw his eyes widen. "For Ellie?"

"Yeah, well, not for you," he growled, ducking his head. "If – uh – you think she'll like it?"

His brother lifted the box, looking at the contents carefully. "It's nice."

"Nice?"

Sam lifted his gaze, smiling slightly. "Well, you know, s'far as I can tell, it looks nice."

At the back of his mind, the memories of the couple of weeks before Dean'd turned up in Stanford rose. He'd been to four jewellers, looking for a ring that Jess wouldn't be able to refuse. She'd liked white gold, and the rings'd been so far out of his price range he'd hardly been able to believe his audacity in telling the jewellers to get them out for him to get a closer look. He'd figured once he'd graduated, he'd be making more than enough money to finish paying for one. He looked back down at the box in his hand, surprised the recall no longer hurt.

Nestled into the plain, black velvet lining of the box, the ring his brother had bought was gold, a slender band with a filigree setting at the top, a rose-cut emerald held within the delicate curls of metal. A antique ring, he realised, swallowing his surprise at Dean's choice.

Glancing back at his brother, he grinned. "Pretty sure Ellie's going to love it."

Dean let out a long, gusting exhale. "Okay. Good."

"Anything else?"

"Uh, no," he said, holding his hand out for the box.

"You sure?" Sam snapped the lid shut and passed it back. "I mean, you know how to propose, right? Down on one knee –"

"Man, you're fucking hilarious."

"You really doing this?" Sam asked, dropping the temptation to torment his older brother for a little longer. He knew how Dean felt. He still couldn't reconcile the idea of his brother doing something so … normal.

"Yeah." Dean looked at him suspiciously. "Why not?"

"It – uh – well …" He shook his head. "I just didn't expect it."

Tucking the box back into his coat pocket, Dean said, "Yeah, well, I didn't either. I mean, it kind of came out of left field. When I was thinking about … uh … all of it." He turned away, thrusting both hands into his pockets.

"You wanted to marry Jess," he added, a touch of defensiveness in his voice.

At the time, Sam'd wanted everything that was as far away from his upbringing – his life – as he could find. Had wanted to be a lawyer, make money, have friends, fall in love, get married, have kids, a beautiful house he never had to leave … somehow, back then, he'd thought if he could embed himself in ordinary deeply enough, nothing dark would ever find him again.

Sam nodded. "I know."

Dean wasn't looking for safety or forgetfulness, he thought. His older brother had faced up to the fact that wasn't a possibility years ago. All he wanted was Ellie. The realisation was tinged with a touch of wonder. Just someone who loved him, unconditionally. Someone he loved the same way.

At the conciliatory tone, Dean turned around, his gaze flicking to Sam before dropping back to the floor. "I – she's – uh – you know."

"You have more right than most to get what you want, Dean," Sam said, watching the mix of emotions play over his brother's too-expressive face. "I mean that."

"Mm-hmm," Dean hummed noncommittally. "Well … yeah, this is what I want."

"Good," Sam said, one dimple deepening in his cheek. "So, uh, big white wedding? Band? Tux?"

Dean's gaze snapped back up at him, his expression souring. "Bite me."

"Really? You're going the whole hog?" Sam grinned unrepentedly. "Who the hell are you? And what've you done with my brother?"

---

Climbing the stairs, Dean acknowledged the shivers that were playing tag up and down his spine. His little brother's jibes hadn't helped, he decided, swallowing hard at the involuntary image of a long aisle, packed on either side with smiling strangers.

Gettin' kind of ahead of yourself, champ. His father's voice banished the image and intensified his nervousness. At the top of the staircase, he wiped his hands on the sides of his jeans.

You don't have to do this tonight.

The thought hit him and he pulled in a deep breath. No. He didn't have to. He wanted to.

"Will you, uh, marry me?" he muttered under his breath, walking slowly to the closed bedroom door. "Hey, wanna get hitched?"

His face screwed up. There was a temptation there to make it lighter, he admitted. Not so … fucking … important. It warred with the knowledge he would only say this once, and he had to make her believe it. Believe in him again. It was something he couldn't brush off, couldn't lie about … not to her, and not to himself. It was important, goddammit, and he didn't want to make it any less.

Leaning against the door frame, he closed his eyes. There'd never been anyone else and there never would be, he thought. She was the only one who'd see him, laying his soul bare. And she'd seen his soul before … when it'd been in a far worse state than it was now. He wasn't sure why he was so fucking nervous about asking.

"Okay," he whispered, straightening. "Okay, let's get this show on the road."

He pushed the door open and stepped inside. She'd left the lamp on his side of the bed on, and the bathroom light, the door left slightly ajar. Between the two pools of dim illumination, her side of the bed was in semi-darkness. He could see her shape, a formless hump under the covers. A sense of anticlimax hit him, his shoulders slumping. All that goddamned anxiety'd been for nothing if she was sound asleep, he realised.

Closing the bedroom door, he walked soundlessly toward the bathroom, stopping at the doorway and pulling his boots off.

"Hey."

He started, twisting around. Ellie was blinking at him, propped on one elbow, her voice soft and husky with sleep.

"Hey," he said, pulling his socks off and leaving them on the floor. "Thought you were sleeping."

"Almost," she said. "You going to be long?"

"Nope." He pulled off his coat, tossing it onto the end of the bed. "Just a minute."

"'Kay." She lay back, rolling onto her side.

Not asleep. He left his shirts and jeans on the floor and moved into the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind him. Game back on. His stomach was fluttering again.

Brushing his teeth, he glanced at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. He looked nervous, he thought, spitting out the toothpaste and rinsing his mouth out. He rinsed the brush and filled his hands with the flow of water, dousing his face.

Thirty-three years old. Been to Hell, been to Heaven, fought demons and monsters and angels and he was still nervous.

He dried his hands and face and swung around, turning off the light. Walking around the bed, he grabbed his coat, pulling the small box from the pocket and dropping the garment to the floor. He put the box on the nightstand and pulled back the covers, sliding into the bed beside her.

"Uh, Ellie …"

Her hand crept over his stomach, curving around his ribs, the gentle touch send a frisson of excitement through his nerves. If he waited any longer, he wouldn't be able to string two words together.

"Mm-hmm?"

"I … uh … wanted to ask you something." Reaching out, he picked up the box and rolled toward her, balancing on one elbow.

"Hm? 'Kay," Ellie said, opening her eyes to look at him. "What?"

The light from the lamp behind him lit up her face, tinting her skin with gold. It picked up the flecks in her eyes, bright against the luminous jade of her irises, and caught her hair in a shifting blaze of coppery red.

He opened his mouth and nothing came out, his throat mysteriously closed up tight, the air trapped in his lungs and the stirring of heat in his groin was fighting against the surge of emotion that was wrapping his chest in bands of iron.

"I –"

The drowsiness vanished from Ellie's face, and she lifted herself higher against the pillows, her expression changing to concern.

"What? What's wrong?"

Why did everyone keep asking him that? The thought broke the stranglehold on his throat and he exhaled loudly, shaking his head.

"Nothing … uh … nothing's wrong – it's just –" he stopped, unable to explain, knowing he wouldn't have the words, not in a million years, there were no words that could possibly describe the way it'd felt, that moment, how unbelievably beautiful she was and what he wanted to ask, wondering why the hell she'd ever say yes.

His gaze dropped to the box in his hand. She loves you. It's Ellie and she loves you and – fuck it – nothing else matters, right? He raised his head, his eyes catching the mix of concern and wariness in hers.

"Will you …uh, would you … marry me?" His voice cracked high on the last word, and he swallowed as a rush of heat rose up his neck, warming his face. Focussing his concentration on the box, he prised it open, fingers fumbling for the ring. He got a grip on it finally and pulled it out, letting it roll back onto his palm.

It shone in the lamp light, the gold glowing and the emerald casting prisms of colour onto his skin. Ellie looked down at it for a long moment, before she raised her gaze back to him. He didn't know what he'd expected her reaction to be, but the careful look she gave him wasn't it.

"Are you sure?"

Ducking his head, he drew in a breath. He'd never considered himself any different to anyone else. It seemed like everyone else had.

"You think I'd lay down twenty grand for a ring if I wasn't sure?" he asked her, his mouth curling up to one side.

She looked down at the ring again, and he saw her throat work.

"Ellie, I'm sure," he said, ducking his head to try to catch sight of her face. "Please. It's – it's just us. Just you and me. C'mon … say something."

"Uh huh. Mmm-hmm …" She lifted her head, her eyes bright. "Yes."

The tension that'd hummed in him all day – longer, he thought, since the moment he'd first thought of it – disappeared without fanfare. It left an ache, like an adrenaline hangover, in his body as muscle and tendon relaxed and he leaned toward her, his lips brushing over hers, the charge between them muted for once.

Taking her hand, he slid the ring onto her finger, and a second, belated, wave of relief filled him when it fit. He hadn't thought of sizes at all, just the way it had looked, the way it would look on her. The stone was lighter-coloured than was usually desirable, a fact the jeweller had pointed out to him, but he'd wanted it as close to the colour of her eyes as he could find.

His fingers threaded through with hers and she moved hesitantly closer, her arm slipping slowly over his shoulder, curling behind his neck. His pulse accelerated, pounding insistently in the hollow of his throat and booming in his ears when he realised what she'd done; a prayer, locked up in his heart for too long, beat its way out and he bent his head, the kiss urgent, intensifying immediately.

Her hand slipped down his body, dragging a breathless groan from him, arousal rippling through muscle and nerve, following her touch.

It'd never been the same twice, between them. Every time had been different, had felt different, sensation always wrapped in emotion, pulling deeper responses, stronger reactions, sensory overload with every touch and taste, sound and smell and sight.

She trembled beneath him as he freed her hand and slid his thigh over hers, her breathing ragged against his mouth.

Please just this, the prayer begged of an entity he didn't trust, could hardly believe in, just this for as long as I got.

She was hot around his fingers, hot and slick and the spasms went directly from those nerve endings to his groin, jacking desire to a fierce inferno, a volcanic reaction that would burn him to ash if he didn't get inside it.

For the past few months, he'd lived and breathed and bled in a Hell of his own making, and fear still coursed through him, fear of screwing it up, somehow, doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, destroying what he loved. He was shaking, he realised distantly, caught between that fear and need, between wanting intensely and trying to hold it back, love the more powerful emotion, in case he had to stop, turn away, give her more time.

"Dean …"

He opened his eyes, and his breath caught in his throat at the plea in hers, and the fear was swept away as if it'd never existed.

It was something they made between them, a place where lying was impossible, where feeling was the only language and trust the only currency. It was a place he'd needed his whole life, had found in parts, in shards and fragments, with others, never the whole, never all of himself. A place where fear didn't exist. Where the world didn't exist. Where, when he looked into her eyes, what he saw was the man he wanted to be. A place where the future was real, close enough to touch.

She arched up under him, driving him in deep, her body rippling and convulsing around him, her cry breaking against his throat and he crossed the line helplessly, body and mind and soul lost in an outburst of incandescence that somehow seemed all too heavenly.

---

Hell. Eighth Level. The Frozen Wasteland

In the depths of Hell, across a burning lake and a wide, dark plain, beyond the barren mountains that divided the lowest levels of the Accursed Plane from the deepest circles, steam rose from the broken ground, tendrils curling up from bogs once frozen.

The ice plains stretched out from horizon to horizon, a wasteland where nothing moved.

Until now.

The group of figures, bound in ice, trembled and shook as the spell weakened, the circles of energy finally losing the last of their charge. The ice that encased them dripped and slipped down and melted, droplet by droplet.

Six of them stood there, wrapped in shrouds, in torn and tattered cloaks of black, ancient faces hidden in the stygian shadows of their hoods, skeletal fingers reaching out to each other.

They could feel him.

Beloved.

Torturer.

Loved and hated in inextricably wound fetters of pain.

He was in a different dimension and hidden within something abhorrent, but they could feel him, the harmonies and dissonance of his signature. The taste of him, too familiar to every one.

Wind shivered the shredded raiments of their cloaks as they stepped free, frequencies joined in malice and pain and hunger, their combined senses reaching out and up, through every level; lidless, eyeless vision piercing to the edges of their kingdom.

They were, for the first time in a millennia, in accord.

They wanted him back.

---

And there are voices that want to be heard
So much to mention but you can't find the words
The scent of magic, the beauty that's been
When love was wilder than the wind

Listen to your heart, when he's calling for you
Listen to your heart, there's nothing else you can do
I don't know where you're going and I don't know why
But listen to your heart before ... you tell him goodbye

---

AN: The Ramble On series continues with A Septet of Evil, which is currently under revision and will posted as soon as possible.