How the Light Gets In

by Becks Rylynn

History repeats itself. This is a fact of life. It's the way of the world. Where you've been is where you'll be. Two hundred and eight days after fate rips Laurel Lance out of the world, leaving Dean Winchester in nearly the exact same position his father was in thirty three years ago, someone knocks on his door in the middle of the night. This is only the beginning of the story.

13. You Will Ache Like I Ache

AN: Additional warnings for this chapter: A character deals with postpartum anxiety/depression. Another character deals with the effects of severe sleep deprivation and insomnia. Mentions of a past suicide attempt and suicidal ideations.

This chapter also contains references to school shootings (notably the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that took place in Newtown, Connecticut) and the culture of fear that American children as young as preschool aged and their parents are forced to live with every day they go to school in modern day America.

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How the Light Gets In

Written by Becks Rylynn

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Part Thirteen

You Will Ache Like I Ache

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November, 2012

There is nothing in the world that can prepare you for the level of exhaustion that parenthood brings you.

Laurel has been sleep deprived before. She knows what it feels like to be exhausted. This is something else entirely. Her daughter is only three weeks old and she already feels barely functional and barely human. She understands now why sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture. If she had government secrets, she would squeal like a pig just to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

And forget about self-care. That has gone completely out the window. She hasn't showered in three days. She doesn't even think she's washed her face. She genuinely cannot remember if she's brushed her teeth recently. Probably? Maybe? Who fucking knows.

It is just so overwhelming to have to be on 24/7.

Her anxiety is through the roof too, which she will admit is likely contributing to the lack of self-care and the sleep deprivation. Despite the fact that she has diagnosed panic disorder, which is literally an anxiety disorder, she has never really considered herself to be an overly anxious person. Maybe she has an unrealistic view of what an anxious person looks like, but she has always been able to function just fine and it didn't used to be something that affected her daily life. She'd have panic attacks every now and then, yes, but she worked through them and then she was fine. She used to be a lively extrovert! She loved interacting with people! She had friends! She talked to other human beings! She just, like...did things. She left her apartment willingly. She went out for drinks and dinner with friends. When Dean would get in late, they would head out for a late night dinner on a whim just because they felt like it and because they could. They went out and interacted with the world on the weekends. On a few occasions, she even managed to drag him out to go dancing, even though she cannot dance to save her life.

Then she got pregnant.

Not only was she an emotional wreck while she was pregnant, grouchy and terrified and full of all these thoughts and feelings she could never manage to articulate properly, but she was so sick and sore and tired that if she wasn't working or, you know, vomiting, all she wanted to do was sleep. Being around other people, going out dancing, all those things were on the bottom of her list of priorities. It has only gotten worse since the baby was born. Just thinking about having to go out into the world and interact with people, even if it's only to go grocery shopping, fills her with insurmountable dread and disgust because she just doesn't have the energy to do any of that. She barely has the energy to interact with her husband.

She feels brittle. She's never felt this emotionally frail before. Nobody warns you about that part of motherhood. Maybe that's just a her thing.

Maybe it would be easier if... No. No, she loves her daughter. She truly does. They got the baby they were meant to have. It's just...

Mary is a clingy baby. Mary is a really, really, really clingy baby. Like velcro. The only time she is ever quiet is when she is being held. Not worn, because of course she hates that (unless it's Dean, who can manage to get away with it for fifteen-twenty minutes), but held. She hates to be put down. Putting her in her bassinet for five seconds is wildly offensive to her. She acts as if not being in someone's arms is an outrageous act of torture. She cries when she's not being held. She cries if she's just not being touched. She cries when they try to put her down to sleep. And labeling it as crying is sugarcoating it. It's screaming. She screams.

They have to let her fall asleep in their arms and then attempt to transfer her to her bassinet. Which, let's be real, only works about half the time. Then, if they manage to get her into her bassinet, the first thing she does upon waking is start screaming her lungs out because she is not being held. She has never had a full nap in her bassinet. Not once. Even when she's asleep, she's not quiet. Babies are not quiet sleepers. They make these grunting, cooing noises, and it's cute, sure. At first.

The only time Mary goes longer than a few minutes without fussing is after she's eaten when she's all milk drunk and loopy. Which comes with its own host of problems because fucking spoiler alert: Breastfeeding is hard.

This is exhausting. To put it lightly.

In addition, they live in an apartment. She has become extremely conscious of that fact. Every time her baby cries, she panics. Completely irrational, she knows, but she can't help but think Mary's cries are somehow going to make their neighbors hate them or get them in trouble with their landlord. Realistically, she knows that their next door neighbor, Mrs. Nassir, is not going to hate them because their baby acts like a baby. She's a lovely woman. She and her son helped Laurel out the other day on a particularly bad night when Dean was out on a diaper run. She's not going to try getting them evicted.

That doesn't seem to matter to her postpartum anxiety.

It's not just that either. She feels like everything is making her anxious. If it doesn't make her anxious, it makes her weepy. The night wakings make her anxious, cluster feeding makes her anxious, swaddling makes her anxious, SIDS makes her incredibly anxious. She knows this level of anxiety is not normal, but she has this feeling in the pit of her stomach. She can't explain it. She looks at her daughter and this thought pops into her head, this ridiculously powerful worry that something is wrong.

Mary failed her newborn hearing screening.

It's not uncommon, apparently, and everyone stressed to them that it didn't necessarily mean anything. She could have had fluid or vernix inside of her ear, it could have been a noisy room, it could have been any number of things, and they were told that most babies who don't pass the initial screening go on to have completely typical hearing. They have appointments coming up with both an audiologist and their new pediatrician to figure out what's up, and she knows that Dean is fully expecting everything to be fine, but Laurel...

Her gut is telling her that something is wrong with her daughter.

The problem is she's not entirely sure she can trust her gut. Her judgment has been so badly impaired by the anxiety and sleep deprivation that she has no idea if her gut feeling means anything other than she desperately needs to get some sleep.

Maybe she should talk to someone about that.

She has a feeling Dean knows something's up. It would be impossible for him not to. He's been watching her like a hawk ever since she gave birth, most likely because Alex drilled it into his head that Laurel is at risk for PPD issues. He would have watched her anyway. He knows her better than anyone. It's not like she hasn't given him plenty of reasons to worry. She can put on a brave face for everyone else, pretend she knows what she's doing, act like she perfectly okay, but he's always seen right through that. A few days ago, she had a panic attack, dissociated, and wandered into the parking garage. That was bad. Last week, he walked in on her and she was bawling because Mary was cluster feeding and she said she felt like a trapped, claustrophobic cow. His concern is warranted. It feels like every two minutes he's asking her how she's feeling, if she's okay, if she needs anything. She just doesn't know what she needs.

Meds, probably.

Turns out her brain chemistry is handling postpartum hormones and sleep deprivation even worse than it handled pregnancy. So that sucks. It's not unexpected, but it sucks. She should do something about that, but she's just so tired.

When she was pregnant, she was so worried about something happening to the baby and dealing with so much discomfort from the pregnancy that she wound up detached. Her biggest fear during the last few weeks of her pregnancy was that her detachment was going to carry over and she was going to have a hard time bonding with her baby. That didn't happen. She didn't expect it, but she did in fact wind up with that all-consuming rush of love as soon as she held Mary in her arms. It was like nothing else she has ever felt. The fierceness of that love caught her off guard. Three weeks in, she still loves her little girl more than she has ever loved anything or anyone in her entire life. Maybe that makes her lucky.

But this shit is hard. This is so hard. She doesn't feel detached. She doesn't feel sad or angry or disconnected. She feels stressed and scared and she doesn't know what to do with it all. Every moment of every day, she feels terrified. She doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't know how to be a mother. She feels like she doesn't deserve this beautiful baby girl. Like at any moment, CPS is going to come knocking at her door because they have realized what a colossal mistake it was to allow her to raise a baby.

It just doesn't seem reasonable to her that she should be permitted to raise another human being. I mean, how can anyone expect her to keep another human being alive? She can barely keep herself alive. She couldn't keep Sara alive.

She feels so unworthy of this.

Then there's Dean over there making this whole baby thing look like a breeze, which is frustrating because it's not. It's not a breeze. It's not easy. At least not for her. This is the hardest thing she has ever done in her entire life. Even just trying to decide whether to eat something or have a shower while Mary is - miracle of miracles - napping in her bassinet after a harrowing transfer from Laurel's arms is paralyzing to her.

No, really.

She's been standing at the kitchen counter, palms flat against the surface, staring blankly at the cupboard for ten minutes now. All she keeps thinking is that if she doesn't make a decision soon, Mary's going to wake up and then she'll have wasted all this precious time. Or maybe she should be napping? You're supposed to sleep when the baby sleeps, right? That's what people say. It's like that ''drowsy but awake'' crap. It's all bullshit. What does ''drowsy but awake'' even mean?

Laurel stares at the cupboard door for a few more minutes, unmoving, and then a hand enters her line of sight and snaps her out of it. She jumps, surprised by the sudden intrusion. Dean doesn't say anything to her as he opens the cupboard to get a mug, but he's eyeing her wearily, concern in his eyes. He quietly goes about pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot that has been sitting there for at least three or four hours.

She tries to ignore the fast beating of her heart and busies herself with getting a bowl of cereal. Food it is then. A shower can wait. ''Hey,'' she says, pulling open the fridge. ''What does drowsy but awake mean?''

''Fuck if I know.'' Dean looks into his cup of cold coffee suspiciously. ''But I know it sure as shit ain't ever gonna work for our kid. She'll flip out. She's like glue.'' He takes a gulp of his coffee and instant regret flashes on his face. Despite his obvious disgust, he doesn't bother to dump it out and make a fresh pot. He just keeps drinking it, looking increasingly disgusted with it - and himself - with every sip he takes. ''Fuck drowsy but awake,'' he declares, quite viciously.

She nods in agreement, but is far too tired to say anything aloud. She moves on autopilot, pouring the milk into her bowl of cheerios, fumbling around for a spoon and trying to decide if she wants a cup of the old sludge or if she should make herself some tea. She could really use a vodka martini, if she's being honest. Ice cold. With a lot of olives. That would hit the spot.

She sighs and flips the switch on the electric kettle. A bowl of cereal and some orange pekoe will have to do for now. She stifles her millionth yawn of the day, shoves a spoonful of cereal into her mouth, fully intending to cram as much into her mouth as possible as fast as she can do it, and immediately spits it back out. Incredulous and betrayed, she stares down at her cereal in the bowl, completely dumbfounded. Then it happens. Heat starts creeping up the back of her neck, crawling up her throat to her cheeks and then her ears. Her eyes sting, her vision blurs, and then she bursts into tears.

It's so stupid. It's such an insanely disproportionate and dramatic response to the current situation, but it's like it just explodes out of her.

''Laur.'' Dean is appropriately concerned, abandoning his cup of what used to be coffee and approaching her quickly but with an abundance of caution. ''What's wrong?'' He puts a hand on her back, right between her shoulder blades. ''What happened?''

''I put orange juice in my cereal,'' she sobs out. ''I - I don't know how I...'' She shakes her head, feeling ridiculously humiliated and out of control. ''I think I'm losing my mind.''

''Laur,'' he says again. He sounds like he is actively trying not to laugh. ''Come here.''

He wraps an arm around her and even though she is mildly irritated with him for being amused by her meltdown, she turns into him, letting him wrap her up in a hug. She never knew it could be so devastating to fuck up cereal. Then again, she also didn't know it was possible to fuck up cereal. She's an absolute disaster in the kitchen, but she's never ruined cereal. She subsisted almost solely on cereal, coffee, and Adderall when she was in law school and never once did she defile her poor frosted flakes this way. ''I'm really tired,'' she mumbles into his shoulder.

He sighs against her hair. ''Me too.''

''She's so clingy.''

''I know.''

''She's so, so clingy. What if this is failure to launch? What if she's, like, stunted or something and she's going to live with us forever and she's just - she'll be thirty-five and living in our basement?''

''...She's three weeks old.''

''But - ''

''We don't have a basement.''

''I'm just...'' She pulls away from him reluctantly. ''Do you think we're spoiling her by holding her too much?''

He looks confused. ''You can't spoil a three week old.''

''I - I know,'' she says. ''But I was talking to my aunt on the phone the other day and - ''

''You can't spoil a three week old,'' he repeats. ''That's just some dumb shit older people say to justify their own hands off parenting approach that they feel guilty about.''

She gets out a tiny laugh, turning away from him to grab a paper towel to wipe at her face with.

He doesn't offer her much else in terms of comfort. He looks too exhausted to do so. He does lean in to kiss her cheek, one hand absently patting her back kind of like he's trying to burp her, which mostly seems like muscle memory at this point, but he doesn't look like he knows what to say to make this better. Nothing he says is going to make this better anyway. ''You want me to make dinner?''

Well, okay, there's that.

''It's three o'clock,'' she says.

He shrugs, moving to open the doors of the pantry with a flourish. ''Old people eat dinner at four,'' he tells her, ''and we're old now.''

''We are 33 and 27.''

He peers around the pantry door. ''...Are you sure?''

She blows her nose in the paper towel to hide the amused smile on her face. ''We didn't go grocery shopping today,'' she reminds him. ''We were supposed to, but we didn't.''

That does not deter him in the slightest. ''I'm sure I can find something.'' He keeps rummaging around in the cupboard while she throws out her cereal abomination and gets a fresh pot of coffee brewing for him. She's just pulling down the tea bags for herself when he produces, from the back of the cupboard, an unopened box of pop tarts. ''Look, pop tarts,'' he declares triumphantly. ''Have a pop tart, babe. They're the wild berry ones. You love the wild berry ones.''

''Nobody loves the wild berry ones,'' she says mournfully, but accepts one of the foil packages from him anyway.

''Why did you buy these?'' He asks, unwrapping the package to sniff at the pastries inside.

''I was pregnant,'' she says, plopping down at the small kitchen table. ''It was one of the only things I could keep down in the beginning.''

''No, I know,'' he says. ''I remember. But you only ate the brown sugar cinnamon ones. Why do we have these?''

''Because I asked Tommy to pick some pop tarts up for me one night and these were the only ones he could find. Turns out I could not keep down the wild berry ones.'' She tears open the package, fishes out one of the pop tarts, and takes a bite of the sickeningly sweet, totally untoasted pastry. It is the most depressing meal she has had since before she met Dean. She chews slowly, put off by the cloying sweetness but unwilling to stop eating it. ''Yep, I definitely remember throwing these up,'' she says. ''Fun fact: they taste the same coming back up as they do going down.''

''You should be a part of their advertising department,'' Dean says. ''With a slogan like that, who could resist this sugared cardboard?'' He still eats his. He eats his with alarming speed. Just shoves the whole thing in his mouth, chews, swallows, and repeats with the second one. She's amazed he can taste it at all. It's vaguely upsetting to watch. ''I feel like...'' He frowns at the box in his hand. ''If the nineties had a taste, it would be this.''

''Tastes like glue,'' she says, but finishes off the first one and takes out the second anyway.

He sides eyes her. ''You eat a lot of glue?''

She shakes her head at him, taking a few bites of the second pop tart before she gives up and leans down to rest her head on the table, exhausted. Dean, still standing in front of the pantry, hugging the box of pop tarts to his chest like it's the last bit of food they will ever have, looks discouraged. ''Maybe we'll order out tonight. Get a pizza delivered.''

''Mushroom and...'' She pauses, whimpering into the table. ''Something? I don't remember what I like on my pizza.''

''Mushrooms and olives.''

''Oh yeah.'' Reluctantly, she raises her head to finish off the rest of the second pop tart.

''It's disgusting.''

''Don't talk to me about disgusting Mr. Extra Extra Sauce. Who eats pizza like that? That's so much tomato. Haven't you ever heard of heartburn?''

''Have another pop tart,'' he offers, tossing her another foil wrapped package. She catches it and just as she's about to tear it open -

The baby starts crying.

Story of her life now.

She sighs heavily, staring wistfully at the shitty pop tarts she won't get to eat now.

Dean starts to close the door to the pantry. ''I'll get her.''

''No, it's okay,'' she brushes him off, slipping a pack of pop tarts into the pocket of her hoodie. ''I've got her. You just focus on feeding us.'' She hurries past him and down the hall into the darkened master bedroom where the bassinet is. The nursery that she spent months decorating and setting up, painstakingly arranging and rearranging things, buying all sorts of crap from changing mats to art to put on the walls, has been largely unused. She thinks she's maybe changed a total of three diapers in the nursery over the past three weeks. Mary doesn't even nap in there. The crib is currently being used as storage for diapers and both the changing table and the rocking chair have been moved into the master bedroom. That nice soft yellow nursery with the bumblebee theme has been utterly useless.

Laurel pushes open the bedroom door and makes a beeline for the bassinet. With the way Mary is screaming, you'd think someone was torturing her. Maybe it's the swaddle? She's never been into the swaddle. There's not much she is into.

The current list of things Mary is not into is as follows: Mom, swaddling, diaper changes, light, music, the television, the sound of the shower running, the sound of the toilet flushing, basically all noise, pacifiers, most of her clothes, being put down, the world in general.

The current list of things she is into is significantly shorter and pretty much just consists of: Dad, Mom's boobs, belly rubs, and being held 24/7.

Laurel tries not to take that personally. Mary doesn't even know her own name yet. She is a barely sentient butternut squash smaller than the hot water bottle Laurel was using for afterbirth cramps.

''Hey there, little bird,'' she greets, reaching in to rub Mary's belly. ''You done sleeping?''

Mary's only response is to keep screaming.

''Come here, Mary Bea. Let's get your diaper changed.'' She would like to state, for the record, that she is awesome at diaper changes. That might be the one thing she's better at than Dean. She moves on autopilot through the process, chatting to Mary, making faces, anything to keep the baby calm. It doesn't work. When Laurel puts her down on the changing mat on the bed, Mary stops crying, gapes at her for about a second, looking offended to her very core, and then she starts bawling again. It's par for the course at this point.

Laurel is quick, that's why she's better at this. Dean's perfectly fine at diaper changes, but he takes too long and that just gives Mary more time to scream her tiny but powerful lungs out. Laurel doesn't waste time. She just gets the job done. They manage to make it through this diaper change with minimal trauma, but things get dicey when Laurel has to put her back in her bassinet to go wash her hands. Evidently that qualifies as abandonment in Mary's eyes.

''Okay,'' Laurel murmurs, rushing back to Mary as soon as she can. ''It's okay, I'm right here, Mary. I promise I didn't leave you.'' She scoops the baby girl up into her arms and fumbles around the room, searching for a clean pacifier. ''Let's try this again, huh? Just for kicks.'' She pops the pacifier into Mary's mouth and tries not to feel guilty about it because the internet has conflicting advice about whether or not pacifiers should be used before four weeks old. Or at all. Because of nipple confusion and what if the baby gets addicted and something about chemicals and all your baby's nonexistent teeth will fall out. Or something like that. All the health professionals in her life say it's fine, but those internet mommy forums can be harsh and they tend to err on the side of ''giving your baby a pacifier is exactly the same as giving your baby black tar heroin.''

Not that it matters, of course. Mary sucks on the pacifier for about ten blessedly quiet seconds, and then she spits it out and starts screaming again.

Laurel sighs. ''Okay, all right, we'll just...'' She glances behind her, spotting the rocking chair. ''We'll sit here for a minute.'' She sits down in the rocking chair, carefully shifts Mary into one arm, and starts rubbing her belly gently. Something about the light pressure seems to soothe her at least enough for her screams to die down into softer, whimpery cries. When Mary is calm enough, Laurel gently slips the pacifier back into her mouth and, this time, Mary takes it. She settles slowly, but she does settle.

Just in time for someone to knock on the door.

The pacifier pops out of Mary's mouth and she lets out a single banshee scream. Laurel bites down on her bottom lip so hard she draws blood. She tries the pacifier one more time and Mary accepts it, but Laurel swears the kid is glaring at her. She knows that's not logical, but that's what it looks like to her sleep deprived, hormonal brain. She doesn't bother to rush to answer the door. Either Dean can get it or whoever is on the other side can go away. At this point, she'd be fine with either option.

''Hey, babe!'' Dean's voice calls down the hall. ''You've got a visitor!''

Her immediate reaction is to groan and roll her eyes. And not just because Mary decided her father yelling down the hall is acceptable but a quiet knock is out of the question. ''Oh god,'' Laurel mumbles under her breath. Look, normally she loves people. On a better day, she'd be all for inviting someone over for dinner and some adult conversation about literally anything other than the state of her sore nipples and the color of her child's excrement, but now is not a good time. She is barely keeping her head above water. She thinks she's done an okay job at faking it lately - Thea dropped off some gifts and stayed for dinner recently and didn't notice anything was off, Tommy keeps telling her she's a ''natural'' at this - but she's not sure she could fake it right now if she wanted to. She looks down at Mary, slightly calmer but still fussy. Neither of them are in the shape to be around other people right now.

She still drags herself to her feet with Mary still snuggled safely in her arms and trudges toward the door. It's probably just her dad. He's been good about giving them their space, but she knows he can't get enough of his granddaughter. Last week, they had him over for dinner and he spent almost the entire time holding Mary in his arms. Which was actually great because it meant she and Dean had a chance to eat a hot meal. ...Okay, maybe she can handle a visit from her dad. Or Sam. He's not going to hold Mary for hours on end because Laurel gets the impression he's a bit intimidated by his niece, but he always brings food with him now.

She, only somewhat reluctantly, hauls her exhausted self out of the bedroom and down the hall on autopilot, preoccupied with keeping Mary calm. She's so distracted that she doesn't realize what she's walking into until she raises her eyes briefly and promptly has to do a double take. Her grandmother is standing in her living room. Grandma is always a sight for sore eyes and certainly always welcome, but she's not supposed to be in town right now. She's especially not supposed to be standing in Laurel's apartment surrounded by bags and boxes overflowing with groceries. She's supposed to be in Portland visiting Natasha for the weekend. She's not supposed to be back until - Oh, wait. Shit. Is today Tuesday?

''Grandma,'' she greets, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.

Her grandmother looks up from rifling around in one of the boxes and smiles. ''Laurel,'' she says. ''Hello, dear.'' She crosses over to Laurel, wrapping her up in a hug and Laurel comes this close to bursting into tears right there in her living room in her milk stained shirt and raggedy pajama pants, just from that familiar smell of her grandmother and the familiar safe feel of her arms enveloping her in a warm hug.

Close to tears is basically the story of her postpartum life so it's nothing new, but she's just so relieved to see her grandmother. Grandma always seems to know what to do. She wonders if this is how most people feel when they see their mom. She wouldn't know. Her mother hasn't even called since Mary was born.

''What are you doing here?'' Laurel asks, reluctantly pulling away from the hug when Mary makes a noise in between them. ''I thought you were in Portland.''

''I was,'' Grandma nods. ''I just got in. I'm so sorry for dropping in on you without calling first, Star, but I was under strict orders to get this food to you as soon as I possibly could.''

''There's a lot of it,'' Dean pipes up, strolling back into the apartment with a large cooler in his arms. ''How the hell did you manage to carry all this up here? Do you have superpowers that you neglected to tell us about?''

''Oh, I didn't carry all of this.'' She brushes it off. ''The nice young man from next door helped me. But I could have.'' She points a finger at Dean. ''I'm in wonderful shape, you know. I do water aerobics twice a week and I go for a walk every day. A long walk.''

''I know, Bea. 80 is the new 20.''

''Wait.'' Laurel absentmindedly bounces Mary in her arms gently. ''That's all food?''

''Yes, we spent the whole weekend cooking,'' Grandma says, as if that's no big deal. ''Your aunts send their love, by the way. Along with some coffee cake.''

''Aunt Valerie's coffee cake?'' Much to her horror, Laurel begins to tear up just thinking about it.

Grandma doesn't notice, surveying the food with her hands on her hips. ''A coffee cake, half a dozen fresh buns, and three loaves of banana bread. Valerie says the banana bread is a fantastic portable snack for new parents because you can eat it one handed. We also made you some freezer meals.'' She wanders over to the cooler, flipping it open to look inside. ''Two chicken pot pies, some chicken tortilla soup, vegetarian lasagna, and a few portions of pulled pork for sandwiches. Laurel, honey, we weren't sure if you eat pork so we made up some shredded chicken as well. Everything is dated and comes with instructions. And Natasha wanted to go to the Farmer's Market so we got you two bags of fresh produce as well. She was incredibly insistent about it.'' She frowns, looking contemplative. ''It's Portland. All the hippies. Everything has to be organic with her now.'' She rolls her eyes, shaking her head and turning back to Dean and Laurel.

They're both staring at her, too stunned and amazed to say anything else. Dean is cradling a loaf of banana bread and looking at Bea like he's fallen in love with her. He doesn't even like banana bread that much. Laurel lasts about a minute and then she stars crying. Again. It's like the fourth time today. Mary doesn't hesitate to follow suit, spitting out her pacifier and happily joining in on the sobfest.

For a moment, Dean looks torn. It's like he knows he should put the banana bread down and help, but he really doesn't want to. Or maybe he's just so groggy that he has forgotten how to put things down. Could be either or. He snaps out of it quick, thankfully, putting the loaf of bread down and rushing to swoop in, taking Mary from Laurel's arms. It doesn't seem to help this time. Dean is incredible at this whole parenting gig, but Mary just seems intent on crying right now.

''Ah, yes,'' Grandma looks back and forth between them. ''I see you two have everything under control here.''

''What do you mean?'' Dean doesn't look up from Mary. ''Everyone's fine. This is fine,'' he declares, speaking over the sound of Mary's increasingly frantic squalling. ''We're having fun, right, Laur?''

She hides her tear streaked face in her hands. ''So much fun,'' she hiccups.

''Oh, honey.'' Her grandmother inches closer to her, wrapping an arm around her and rubbing her back. ''You're okay. Come here.'' She pulls her sniffling granddaughter in for another hug. ''It'll be all right,'' she soothes. ''You're in the trenches now, but it gets better. I promise.''

''I- I'm sorry,'' Laurel manages to get out, pulling away to wipe at her eyes. ''I didn't mean to fall apart like that. I'm just - '' Her eyes well up with tears again and she accepts the crumpled tissue her grandmother pulls out of her pocket. ''This is so nice of you. You didn't have to do all this. This is so much food.''

Over by the couch, Dean is still pacing around, shushing Mary gently and trying to get her to take her pacifier back. Not a fight he's going to win anytime soon, by the looks of it.

''It's nothing, Laurel,'' Grandma says. ''Really. Besides, it was mostly Val's idea.''

''I'll have to call her and thank her.''

''That sounds like a wonderful idea,'' Grandma says. ''But not right now.'' She nudges Laurel, steering her over to the couch. ''Right now, all you need to do is sit down and take some deep breaths.'' She gently pushes Laurel down onto the couch. ''Now,'' she turns her attention to Dean. ''Dean, be a dear and get all this food put away.''

''Wait, what?'' He reluctantly passes the baby over to her when she holds her arms out, but pouts. ''Why don't I get to sit down and take some deep breaths?''

''Because you didn't push a child out of your vagina three weeks ago.''

He blinks a few times, but can't actually disagree with that reasoning. ''Fair.''

''When you get everything put away, bring out the coffee cake and we'll slice it up. I'll even let you have the biggest piece.''

''Why does he get to have the biggest piece?'' Laurel whines, and then immediately recognizes that as childish. ''I realize that's not important.''

Meanwhile, Mary is still crying.

Laurel can feel her anxiety worsening with every second. Her body is beginning to feel like a spring, coiled tight and ready to pop. She's not sure if it shows on her face or if they're just being nice to her, but Dean kisses her forehead before he starts hauling things into the kitchen without another word and Grandma purposefully moves to the other side of the room with Mary. Laurel tries not to read too much into it, relaxing back against the couch.

Grandma does not appear to be all that bothered by Mary's wailing. She hasn't even attempted the pacifier, focusing mostly on talking to the baby calmly, rocking her from side to side. ''You certainly have a lot to say,'' she chuckles, ''don't you?'' She looks over at Laurel with a faintly amused smile. ''She reminds me of your cousin,'' she says. ''Edie was always a noisy one. Always scream - '' She stops short in the middle of the word, smile faltering. ''Always making such a racket.''

Laurel does her best to mask her surprise with a smile. Nobody ever talks about Edie. She's such a closely guarded memory in this family. An open wound the same way Sara is. The Drake family doesn't talk about their wounds. They honor their losses, but they don't talk about them.

She watches her grandmother with her daughter, so at ease with the crying baby, calm and confident and understanding. Within a few minutes, Mary's wails soften and then quiet down altogether. Grandma has a lot of experience with childcare, way more than Laurel - who had never even held a baby until Mary was placed on her chest - and she knows this, but she can't help but feel mortified by how easily her grandmother manages to calm the infant.

Sometimes it feels like everyone but her can get her child settled down. As if there is something cold and unwelcoming about her. Something that Mary can sense. A lack of softness, an inability to nurture, a deep sense of fear. Just some kind of darkness that sets Mary on edge. Logically, she understands that is most likely not what's happening at all, but emotionally she is just so terrified of turning into her mother. She doesn't want to be unreachable. She doesn't want her daughter to grow up with a standoffish mother made of ice and or unending absence where she should be. She wants to be better than that. She wants to be warm and whole for her baby girl, but she's afraid she doesn't know how to be.

''How are you doing, Laurel?'' Her grandmother questions, with this look on her face like she can read minds. ''And answer me honestly, girl, because I know when you're lying.''

''I'm fine,'' Laurel says instantly, a reflex.

Grandma doesn't believe her one bit. ''Dinah Laurel.''

''I'm fine,'' Laurel insists. ''We're all fine. Honest. Dean and I are just...'' She looks in the direction of the kitchen, chewing on her lip. ''We're just really tired.''

Grandma still doesn't believe her, but she lets it go. ''That's normal. You two are doing a great job.''

One of them is anyway.

Laurel feels like maybe she should say something. Maybe she should tell her about the anxiety and the weeping. That pit in her stomach that won't go away, that nagging feeling that keeps telling her something is wrong. She should ask for help. But she doesn't. It's only been three weeks. This is just the baby blues. It's natural. It's normal. It's not as if she's unhappy because she's not. Not with Mary. She's just scared and so very out of her depth. And her baby is fine. She knows what her gut feeling is telling her, but her gut is wrong, impaired and influenced by the rush of postpartum hormones and lack of sleep. There is nothing wrong with Mary, and Laurel just needs to get some sleep. That's all.

She absentmindedly picks up the photo album on the coffee table, left over from when her father was here last. She flips through the pages of her childhood without really seeing anything, listening to the soothing sound of her grandmother humming.

''What have you got there?''

She looks up as her grandmother eases herself down onto the couch next to her. Miraculously, Mary doesn't seem to mind. She's happily accepted her pacifier and she's gazing up at her great grandmother, completely content and amazingly quiet. ''Just this old photo album from when Sara and I were kids,'' Laurel says, tearing her eyes away from Mary. ''My dad brought it over. He thinks Mary looks like Sara when she was a baby.''

''Of course he does,'' Grandma says, not unkindly, but...something. ''But just so you know, this little girl is all you.''

Laurel is quite certain that is meant to be a compliment, but her heart sinks at the thought. She looks at the tiny version of herself briefly before shifting her gaze to her mother in the picture, young and fresh faced, sitting on that ugly blue couch they used to have when they lived in that cramped apartment in the Glades. She's smiling and she looks tired the way most new mothers are, the way Laurel is right now, but there's a falseness to her happiness. Her eyes look too sharp, her smile too hollow. She looks shell-shocked. Terrified, even. She looks like she is holding a bomb someone forced her to carry.

Laurel turns the page. She looks at the picture of her father holding her, sitting on that same blue couch. He looks so happy and joyful, over the moon and tired but at ease. She feels like these pictures should make her feel nostalgic, but all she feels when she looks at them is nauseated. They're going to end up like that, aren't they? Her and Dean. They're going to be just like her parents. She is already too much like her mother. Even her father knows that.

He told her once, a few months ago when she was dragging him home from the bar. ''You're just like your mother, Dinah, do you know that? Just like her.''

He was probably right.

There is something deep and dark inside of her. Something cold and afraid. She tries to bury it, she tries to ignore it, but it is still there, always there, this slithering mass of darkness that lives inside of her. Frankly, she is still sometimes confused by Dean's continued loyalty to her when he is just so...the opposite of her. He might be damaged but at least he is still something warm and alive.

Sometimes she looks over at him, steady and comforting, always by her side even during his own moments of darkness, and she can't help but think, You have no idea what I'm going to do to you.

Laurel leans back against the couch. Her numb fingers grip the photo album and she lets Grandma flip to the next page without even noticing. She thinks about that picture of her mother, holding her. How empty she looked. She looks over at Mary, so tiny and breakable with nothing but an empty husk for a mother. Maybe this whole thing was a mistake. She licks her lips slowly but says nothing.

Yeah, she should really make an appointment with either Alex or her OB for an evaluation. She has always been prone to depression, always had her moods, but this pile of shit is…new. She wasn't like this before she got pregnant.

''I don't know,'' she says, trying to shake it off. She leans forward to grab one of the loose photographs from the other day's bout of nostalgia. ''I think she's got a lot of her dad in her.''

Grandma effortlessly shifts Mary into one arm to take the picture, chuckling as soon as she sees it. ''Oh, now that's a cute kid.''

''You think?'' Dean is smiling at them both as he strolls back into the living room, moving behind the couch to glance down at them. ''I've been told I was a funny looking kid.''

''You were adorable,'' Grandma says.

''You still are,'' Laurel adds with a wink.

''How old were you here?'' Grandma asks, handing the picture to him.

''Uh, four,'' he says.

''And that's your mother?''

''Yeah, that's...'' He pauses, looking down at the photograph of him and his mother, smiling for the camera, her arms wrapped around him from behind. ''This is her,'' he says. ''Mary Winchester the first.''

''She was very beautiful,'' Grandma says kindly.

He smiles slightly, softly, fond and nostalgic, but still eaten away by a deep sense of grief and longing. ''She was.''

''You look like her, you know.''

His smile dims at the innocent, well-meaning statement, eyes darkening almost unnoticeably. ''Yeah.'' He clears his throat and hands the picture back to Laurel. ''My dad used to say that.'' There is a second where he looks trapped, eyes darting wildly over to the baby with his mother's name. It only lasts a second before he is smoothing a smile onto his lips. ''I'm gonna get the last of the food into the fridge and then I'll bring out the coffee cake. Sound good? Either of you want coffee? Tea? Laur, you need anything?'' He waits for both of them to shake their heads before he turns and all but flees.

Grandma watches him go and then leans over to Laurel, lips pursed in concern. ''Should I not have said that?''

''No, you're fine,'' Laurel assures her. ''It's just the time of year. It was the anniversary of his mother's death on the 2nd and now her birthday's coming up.'' She grabs the empty frame from the coffee table, slipping the beloved photograph into place with care. ''It's a rough time of year. He gets touchy.''

''Hard time of year for a lot of us,'' Grandma says quietly. She looks down at Mary. ''But I suppose now there's this little one, hmm? She's brightened up this time of year considerably, hasn't she?''

''She's brightened up a lot,'' Laurel says, and then, right on cue, Mary starts to fuss. ''Oh.'' She pulls out the phone to check the time. ''Yeah, it's probably time for her to eat again. Here.'' She offers her grandmother the photo album. ''Wanna trade?'' Mary is transferred back to her mother's arms, just in time for her to reject her pacifier again. Which is pretty much the continuing story of Mary and her pacifier. Maybe they should give up on that for a bit.

''Do you need me to - ''

''No, don't get up,'' Laurel says quickly. ''It's okay.'' She leans back, making sure to turn her head away from Mary before she bellows out, ''Dean!''

It takes him about five seconds to come roaring back into the room. ''What, what, what's wrong? What happened?''

Grandma looks impressed by his fast response time.

Laurel just plasters on her most charming grin. ''Hi, honey,'' she greets. ''Can you pass me the Boppy please? Your child needs to be fed.''

He looks both relieved and possibly a little annoyed that he's been called in just to retrieve something for her that is less than three feet away from her. He gets it for her anyway.

Once she's managed to get Mary successfully latched - which is not the easiest thing in the world because turns out Mary's stubborn about everything - and he's stopped fussing over them, she looks up at him with a sheepish smile and offers him the pop tart from her pocket. ''Thank you.''

He makes a courageous attempt to keep up the cranky exterior, taking it from her with a bemused expression and a roll of his eyes, but she catches the grin that stretches all the way to his eyes before he turns away. Something catches his eye before he can turn away completely and he whirls back around. ''Whoa, what the hell is that?'' He backtracks and Laurel follows his gaze to the photo album in Grandma's hands, open to a picture of a very small wolf.

''That,'' Grandma says, smile pulling at her lips, ''is your wife. Halloween, 1990.''

''What's she dressed as? A Russian sideshow performer from Barnum and Bailey's?''

Both women turn to look at him strangely.

''What?'' He blinks, looking back and forth between them. ''PT Barnum? Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy? Come on,'' he prods. ''You don't know Fedor Jeftichew?''

''I'm not that old,'' Grandma says.

Laurel arches a brow. ''You know the real name of Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy just off the top of your head?''

''I got a lotta wacky shit rolling around up in here,'' he says, tapping his left temple. ''Did you know that in Hong Kong, a woman can legally kill her husband if he cheats on her, but only with her bare hands?''

''Good for her.'' Grandma nods her head approvingly. She flips the page in the photo album and holds it up for Dean to take. ''She was the wolf from Red Riding Hood,'' she says. ''It was for our annual Halloween party. Dinah planned all their costumes out. She and Quentin were the grandmother and the hunter, little Sara was going to be the wolf, and Laurel was supposed to be Little Red Riding Hood. But missy Laurel here...''

''I wanted to be the wolf,'' Laurel says.

''She insisted on being the wolf,'' Grandma corrects with a laugh. ''Threw a fit until her parents gave in.''

''Well, it looked like more fun.''

''Evidently it was,'' Grandma says. ''You had a blast that night. You went trick or treating and every time someone opened their door, you'd put your tiny claws up and growl. The neighbors got a real kick out of you.''

Laurel looks at Dean, grinning down at the pictures, looking completely enamored with little Laurel. ''Mom sure didn't.''

''She was just frazzled,'' Grandma dismisses. ''She had planned the whole thing and you changed your mind at the last minute so she had to find you a wolf costume. Then she couldn't find a Red Riding Hood costume small enough for your sister so she wound up with two wolves and no Red Riding Hood. Your mother's just stubborn, Laurel,'' she says, reaching out to pat her arm. ''So are you. That's why you two butt heads so often. You're a lot alike.'' She says it so nicely and it's clearly meant to be harmless, maybe even an attempt at a compliment, but it digs its way into Laurel's chest, burrowing into her anxious skin like an infection. It doesn't help with the nagging postpartum hormones or the constant hysteria in her throat.

Grandma doesn't notice.

Dean does.

His attention moves slowly from the pictures to his wife, concern passing through his eyes, smile dimming ever so slightly. He doesn't bring any attention to the comment, but she feels his hand on her neck, working at the knots of tension. ''Okay,'' he says brightly, leaning back over the couch to hand over the album. ''Now that's the cutest thing I've ever seen.''

The photo in question is of Laurel and Sara from that same Halloween, both of them curled up together and fast asleep on a pillow on the ground. Grandma starts laughing as soon as she sees it. It's hard not to join in. ''Being a wolf is exhausting,'' Laurel says with a small laugh. It's a quiet chuckle, but just the vibration of her laughter startles Mary enough for her to de-latch and whine softly. The opposite of surprising. ''I'm sorry, sweetie,'' Laurel whispers. ''I didn't mean to interrupt your meal.'' Despite her best efforts, she can't get Mary to latch onto either breast again.

She's about five seconds away from melting down when Grandma says, ''Just drape a blanket over her, dear. Cut out some of the stimulation. You were the same way as a baby.''

It works. It takes a few minutes, even after Dean drapes a cover over them, but eventually Mary decides she's too hungry to resist a feeding. The whole ordeal lasts maybe ten minutes, most likely not even, but by the end of it, by the time Mary is happily sucking away, Laurel's nerves are shot and she feels shaky. That's how jumpy she is lately. It's like she's starting to come apart at the seams. ''I think being out of the womb terrifies her,'' she says, although what she really means is, Her being out of the womb terrifies me. ''She seems borderline traumatized just by being out here with us.''

''Well,'' Grandma says, calm as ever. ''Here is a scary place sometimes.''

''So how do we make it better for her?''

''I think that's up to you to figure out,'' Grandma says softly, reaching out to pat her granddaughter's arm. It's not helpful advice. In fact, it really only serves to make Laurel feel even more helpless. She looks over at Dean, but he's apparently content with that entirely unhelpful non-advice.

''We can do that,'' he says. ''We can figure it out.''

She wishes she had his confidence. She tries not to stress about it. It's a ridiculous thing to get upset over, in retrospect. She might be losing her mind.

Grandma turns the page in the photo album and Dean, in what is most likely an effort to alleviate the tension, says, ''Who's the witch?''

Grandma looks up. ''What?''

He points to a picture on the page, the last of the photos from Halloween, 1990. ''The older girl.''

It does not alleviate any of the tension. He means well, and Laurel loves him for that, but... Out of everyone, he had to point out her?

''That's my granddaughter,'' Grandma says after a beat of heavy silence. ''Edith.''

It takes approximately three seconds for him to realize his mistake. ''Oh.''

Laurel glances at her grandmother out of the corner of her eye. Edie is rarely talked about in this family. They talk about Sara. They don't talk about how she died or what she was doing when she died, but they talk about who she was and who she could have been. It's different with Edie. Sara was a lot of things, but she was never a mystery. She was an open book. A bright, sunny girl with a brilliant smile who said whatever thought came into her head, did whatever she wanted, and made herself known to everyone she met. Edie wasn't like that. She is something shadowed, a memory shrouded by mystery and the unbearable weight of guilt.

There are a lot of reasons why Edie is treated like a secret and Sara is not, but Laurel knows that what it really comes down to is how they died. Sara died in a tragic and bizarre accident. It was a fluke. A public one at that. They couldn't not talk about it.

Edie killed herself.

There's a difference.

Nobody could have saved Sara. She was dead the second she stepped on that boat and there was nothing anyone could have done. With Edie... However small, however miniscule, there was a chance that someone could have helped her. Maybe it's delusion. Maybe it's just grief or guilt that's too heavy, but they've all carried that around for years. What if they could have saved her?

Laurel looks at the photograph of Edie, the little witch caught in a candid moment with Laurel and Grandpa. There is no sign of what's to come on Edie's young and joyful face. There is no sign of what's to come on Grandpa's face either.

Edie is treated like a secret within their family. Whispered about occasionally but never spoken of out loud. That's generally the way it goes in their family. They don't talk about the smell of smoke and they pretend there is no approaching fire.

Right up until last August.

At the end of his life, as his short but brutal battle with cancer was reaching it's inevitable conclusion, Grandpa wasn't very lucid. He had a few moments here and there in between restless sleep and morphine drips, but those were almost always reserved for Grandma. Until one morning. It was right near the end and Laurel had taken the morning off work to go down to the hospital with Natasha and Grandma. Much to their surprise, when they stepped into the hospital room, he was awake, sitting up, and surprisingly with it. He couldn't wait to tell them about what had happened the night before.

How Edie had come to see him.

He told them she came in the middle of the night, sat with him, told him she loved him, and read to him The Little Prince, the same book he had read his children and then his grandchildren. He told them she had held his hand for the longest time. She was so beautiful, he said. All grown up.

That was the moment Laurel knew he wasn't going to make it much longer. Sure enough, he died two days later. He went peacefully. He seemed ready. Grandma wasn't. She was never going to be, but he was tired and in a lot of pain and he wanted to be with Edie and Sara.

''Well.'' Grandma flips the photo album closed and looks to Dean and Laurel with a determinedly bright smile. ''I think it's time we had that coffee cake. Perhaps some tea as well.''

The second she even starts to get to her feet, Dean's standing up straight, reacting like she wants to shoot herself out of a cannon. ''I can get it, Bea. You lugged all that food here. You should - ''

''Oh,'' she brushes him off, getting to her feet. ''Hush. I'm 84. I'm not an invalid. I'm perfectly capable of slicing up a coffee cake and making a pot of tea.''

''At least let me help you,'' he tries.

''If you insist,'' she says. ''But when I make dinner, I want you out here, sitting on your ass, doing absolutely nothing.''

''Wait, Bea,'' he follows after her like a lost puppy dog. ''You don't have to make dinner...''

Laurel stares after them as they head in the direction of the kitchen. She waits until they're gone, voices muffled, before she risks moving the cover to check on Mary. She looks happy as a clam. Her eyes are wide open and she's suckling contentedly. She squints when Laurel moves the cover, but doesn't otherwise fuss. This might be the calmest she's been all day. ''Okay,'' Laurel whispers. ''Have as much boob time as you want, kiddo. We'll just chill here for a bit.''

She can feel one of those moments of complete awe and wonder and disbelief coming on. It's strange to think that just a few weeks ago, this baby was inside of her. It's even stranger to think that this baby, this tiny person is something she and Dean made. She wonders if this, motherhood and marriage, is something Edie would have wanted. Or Sara. She looks over at the photo album on the table, but doesn't open it.

She has found herself wondering about them a lot lately. Both of them. All of them actually. Her whole family. The way they were before. She misses that closeness, especially now that she has a baby. She wishes they were here. She wishes she could take Dean to family dinners and give Mary the same kind of childhood she had, full of family, full of life.

She wonders what Edie and Sara would be like now. What their lives would look like. Who they would be. Sara was pre-med when she died, but that's not what she wanted. Not really. Laurel pictures her in California. She was going to school in Los Angeles and that seemed to be where she felt the most at home. By the beach, in the sun, all freckles and windblown hair. Happy and light and so beautifully joyful. She's easy to picture, that wild little girl. She's always on her mind.

Edie is harder to imagine. Laurel hasn't been able to see her clearly for a long time. She liked to dance. That's the only thing Laurel remembers. But, then again, it wasn't really about the dance. Edie did not obsessively keep up with her dance because she wanted to be a ballerina. She did it for the girl. Her best friend, the one she lost. Even at eight years old, Laurel could see that. It's hard to picture where Edie would be now. She was so young when everything happened and then she got so lost and she never found her way back again. But if she had...

Edie would be Dean's age now. Maybe she would have her own family. Maybe she would be able to understand Laurel's current state. Maybe she would be able to help, to listen. Or maybe she would still be off traveling the world, untethered and free, but happy.

It's hard to say where they would be now. It's even harder to say where they are now. Before she met Dean, Laurel was an atheist. Isn't that kind of funny? An atheist falling in love with the one true vessel of an archangel. Now, knowing what she knows, what she's been told - well.

Part of her still thinks it's all bullshit, to be honest, but an even bigger part of her hopes it's all real. Loss didn't necessarily make her a believer, but it made her a dreamer. Nowadays, more than ever, she hopes Dean is right. She hopes there's a place she can go, after it's all over, and be with her sister. With her grandfather and Edie. It sounds ridiculous when she thinks about it, like a bedtime story, but she hopes - she wishes - the people she's lost are happy now. All of them.

She hopes they're happy, she hopes they're together, and she hopes they're at peace.

.

.

.

November, 2016

Here is the general rule of thumb, a piece of advice to keep in the back of your mind, a warning: where there's smoke, there's fire.

If she is being honest with herself, which she so rarely is, Laurel has been smelling smoke since that first meeting. It was the salt and pepper shakers. It was that old radio. The tea towels, the floral curtains, and that ancient coffee maker. The witch got every detail of Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen right. It was so spot on it was literally like a time warp. Even if she had combed through Laurel's every memory of that kitchen, she wouldn't have been able to create such a flawless replica. Not unless she had been there herself. Not unless she had her own memories of those magnets on the fridge and that coffee creamer shaped like a cow and the way the whole house smelled of bacon and coffee in the mornings.

There has always been a fire.

Right from the moment her eyes snapped open six feet underground. Something has always been burning.

She just ignored it. Pretended she couldn't feel the heat. Acted like she wasn't choking on the smoke. She's still a Drake underneath it all, just like her lying mother, and Drakes don't like to talk about the burning things.

It's like what happened when the hooded vigilante first showed up. She knows the ins and outs of Oliver Queen - always has, always will. He is far from a mystery to her and yet she still couldn't figure out he was the masked man until Slade Wilson burst into her house to give her the world's worst candygram. She spent the better part of two years adamantly refusing to see what was right in front of her for no reason other than she so badly did not want it to be him.

Dean knew from the start. Took him and Sam 48 hours of bare minimum surveillance to confirm it.

But she took two years.

Now here she is again.

Oliver was always the vigilante, Edie was always the witch, and Laurel has always been the moron who keeps her eyes closed so she doesn't have to see what's right in front of her.

History repeats itself.

It takes a second for the full scope of everything that has happened, everything that will happen, to sink in. It takes almost a full minute to start aching, shoulders heavy, chest uncomfortably tight. It was Edie. A member of her family. Edie did this to her. Edie had her killed. Edie brought her back broken. Her own blood. Someone she loved. Someone she still loves. It's such a cruel truth. What is she to do with it? How is she meant to live with the fact that someone she grieved has done such heinous things to her? Stolen her from her family and yanked her out of the afterlife to be a human puppet? What do you do when the monster under the bed turns out to be someone you loved very much? What do you do when you still love the monster?

Edie says nothing after the initial reveal. She just stands there, staring at Laurel with those eerie Ellard eyes. She looks...spooked, maybe. Uncomfortable with being out in the open like this. She doesn't look the least bit remorseful.

Laurel wipes at her eyes. Her murdered cousin is standing in front of her, scarred and bloodthirsty, but alive. It's hard to swallow the betrayal and the anger and the hurt. It's even harder to swallow the relief. ''Edie...''

''Don't get all weepy on me now, kid,'' Edie says. Her voice is not her voice. Not the one Laurel remembers from when they were kids. It's a raspy whisper, rough and harsh and jagged around the edges.

Laurel tries not to look at the scars marring her cousin's pale skin, but it's hard not to take a look at John Winchester's handiwork. The scars are over a decade old now. Almost sixteen years. They still look angry. She doesn't wince or flinch when she sees them, she's not that much of a coward, but it's hard not to feel that spike of unpleasant fear in her chest. She is well aware of John Winchester's brutality. His violence is legendary, almost mythic in a way. She's just never seen the remains up close before. She sees the consequences of his emotional violence every day when she looks at her husband. She watches him live with the shadows of his toxic childhood, torn between love and resentment, watches him struggle to let go, to stitch up the wounds, but she's never seen what John's hands have done. She has never thought much about who - or what - Dean could have been if his father had kept his claws in him.

Now she can't stop thinking about it.

The scars on Edie's throat, moving from ear to ear up her cheek, through her eye, all the way to her hairline, are not an accident. They're not left over from some drastic world saving measure. They are remnants of a violent violation. There are no hesitation marks. There is no regret. John Winchester did this, savagely and without remorse.

He created this.

And Dean and Sam knowingly helped him. Whether or not they knew better or had the ability to say no is up for debate, but they still had a hand in this. They got him the address. They told him where to go. They sent Edie's executioner to her house.

''You're the one who wanted to see my real face,'' Edie whispers when she catches sight of the horrified and slightly sick look on Laurel's face, mistaking it for disgust. ''Now you have.'' She turns away, hiding her scars, and moves past her to the front window again to peek through the blinds. When she turns back, her face is clear. Not a single scar in sight. ''Little trick of mine,'' she says, voice clear. ''Better than makeup. I've found people have a habit of not taking me seriously with all the...'' She gestures to her face. ''Too much pity. Witchcraft comes in handy. But, you know, it's funny. I can replicate vocal chords and erase the scars and smooth over the damage.'' She pauses, shaking her head. ''Can't replicate that scream, though.''

Right.

The scream.

She had almost forgotten.

''I...I've been thinking about you lately,'' Laurel blurts. ''I wondered...'' She trails off and takes a good long look at her cousin. She remembers Edie being taller. Edie is tall, about the same height as Laurel, taller in those heels she's wearing, and she is very beautiful - with or without the scars - but Laurel remembers her being...taller somehow. Statuesque. Larger than life. Guess that's what happens when you're a kid and you look up to someone. They can never live up to the height. ''I didn't want it to be you,'' she says softly. ''I wanted you to be at peace.''

Edie laughs at her. It's not an unkind laugh. Fond, even. ''There's your first mistake,'' she says. ''Ellard women don't get peace. It's not in us. You should have known that.''

''I'm sorry.''

''You're sorry?'' Edie arches a brow, curious. ''For what?''

Laurel struggles to answer. ''For everything,'' she gets out. ''What happened to you. What you went through. You didn't deserve any of it.''

Edie's expression never changes. ''No, I didn't,'' she agrees. ''But none of that was your fault.''

''Then why am I being punished for it?'' Laurel means to sound stronger when she asks that. Angrier. She just sounds tired. ''How is this fair?''

''Life's not fair, sweetie,'' Edie tells her, the corners of her red lips ticking up. ''If it was, it wouldn't be life.''

''We missed you,'' Laurel tries. ''I want you to know that. We missed you so much.'' She takes a step. ''Edie, your mother - ''

''Spare me the ''come home'' speech,'' Edie cuts in, her voice sharper. ''We both know there's no way home for me after this.''

That's probably true.

Laurel knows only part of what Edie has done over the past sixteen years, has only scratched the surface of the atrocities, but she knows the acts have been unforgivable. Even if you take her out of the equation, ignore everything Edie has done to her and her family specifically, she has still murdered people. She has kidnapped vulnerable people off the streets and turned them into soulless, brainwashed soldiers, completely devoid of free will. There should be no coming back from that.

But that's just the thing, isn't it? Laurel has always believed in the impossibilities of the human condition. Has always believed in redemption and forgiveness and second chances. She wouldn't be Laurel if she didn't. ''So stop,'' she begs. ''Whatever you're doing, whatever your plan is here, just stop. Call it off. Let it go. Come home.'' She takes another careful step forward and Edie watches her, quietly fascinated. ''There is still a way home. There's still a place for you.''

Edie, hands clasped in front of her, smiles slightly, tilting her head to the side with this nostalgic look of fondness on her face. ''You always were a sweet kid.'' She's the one who takes a few slow steps this time.

It's a test.

Laurel gives her nothing. She doesn't move or flinch or hold her breath. She is not afraid of Edie. That's the truth. She should be, but she's not. The person under the mask is usually a lot less frightening than the mask itself.

Edie does nothing but smile, and then she side steps her and heads back over to the desk, taking a seat. ''While I admire your gooey sentimentality, I don't share it. Never have.''

Laurel closes her eyes. She feels winded. She's not sure if that's from the drugs, her injuries, or just...this. Whatever the hell this is. ''How...'' She pauses and can't help but wonder, momentarily, if she even wants to know. ''How are you - ''

''Alive?'' Edie smiles again, wider this time. With teeth. ''Call it luck.''

Laurel crosses her arms, staring flatly.

''Everyone talks about John Winchester like he was some kind of Godfather of hunting,'' Edie says, waving a hand dismissively. ''You want to know the truth? He was just a man. A man with a sharp knife and a grudge against anything he deemed unworthy, but still just a man. Couldn't even kill me right.'' Her smile falters, changes into a bitter smirk. ''How's that for a legend?''

''You - You're saying he just screwed up the kill?''

''Well, I didn't do this to myself,'' Edie says. ''He lacked follow through,'' she says, flippant. ''Men often do.'' She leans back in her chair. ''When you think you've killed the monster, it's best to make sure the monster is really dead. That's where his mistake was.'' She looks at Laurel with her searching eyes. ''How much do you know about me? About what happened?''

Laurel stiffens up. She runs a hand over her face, trying to scrub away all traces of her shock and distress. ''I know that the curse was triggered by the accident and you had a hard time with it. You lived in Maine with Faye and then your parents moved you to - ''

''Aberdeen,'' Edie finishes with a nod. ''Yes.'' She grabs one of the abandoned water bottles and takes a leisurely drink of water. She looks, for all intents and purposes, completely comfortable. Like they're just two old friends catching up. ''They set me up with my own place and then they left. Sure, they checked in from time to time, but let's be honest: they were afraid of me.'' She says it all so nonchalantly, not a hint of bitterness in her voice. It sounds fake. ''I was left to my own devices. That's where I met Sandra.''

''Sandra,'' Laurel murmurs. ''You mean Lady Shiva? She had something to do with this?''

It's the only part where Edie hesitates. ''We were...friends.'' She licks her lips and slowly takes another sip of water. She caps the bottle and puts it on the desk before sitting back, primly crossing one leg over the other. It's incredibly graceful and commanding somehow. Or it would be if she could look Laurel in the eye.

''You're not anymore?''

''We've made different choices in life.''

''But she's here now.''

Edie looks up at Laurel. She's picking at her shiny red nail polish absently. There is something about Shiva - Sandra - that makes her nervous. ''She doesn't have a choice now. I need her. She's here.'' She flings a brief look at the front door. ''She was the one who found me,'' she admits. ''After. Almost walked in on it, actually. She came to the front door. John had to run before he could make sure the job was done. I was barely alive. She did what she could to heal me.''

''How?''

''She gave me water.''

''She gave you - '' Laurel breaks off in a scoff, turning her back on Edie to roll her eyes and rub at her temples, frustrated. ''Cut the bullshit, Edith. It's not absurd for me to wonder how you - '' She stops short, entire body freezing up, words dying in her throat. Wait. Water. She turns back to her cousin. ''The Lazarus Pit,'' she whispers. ''She gave you water from the Lazarus Pit.''

''She gave me all she had,'' Edie confirms. ''Just enough to keep me alive.''

''How did she get it?''

''I don't know. I never asked.''

''Was she a member of the League?''

''I don't know, and that's not the point.'' Edie rises to her feet, smoothing down her dress. It's a nice dress. Expensive looking. White. Very white. It's loose fitting, knee length, and looks out of place and way too cold for this time of year, but it makes her look innocent in a way. She doesn't look like a power hungry witch. She could be anyone. ''I spent a long time healing after the attack, but even with time and a boost from the Lazarus Pit, I never fully healed.'' She runs a hand over her face and, for a second, whatever magic she's got going on wavers, letting her scars show. ''As you can see.''

''You lost your scream.''

''I lost everything.''

''And now you're a witch.''

''We're all witches, Laurel,'' Edie says lightly. ''It's in our blood. All that untapped power and potential and we've just been sitting around for generations wasting it.''

Oh, fuck this.

How obnoxious.

''Let me get this straight,'' Laurel bites out. ''Our great great great great whatever was a witch and just because there's a tiny speck of leftover power in our blood, you think you're some kind of legend?'' She laughs, cruelly, lets it spill out, tinged with hurt. ''Please,'' she sneers, watching Edie's eyes darken. ''Give me a fucking break. The amount of power in our bloodline is miniscule. A big fat nothing. All this power, everything you have - It doesn't even belong to you,'' she spits. ''You stole it.'' When Edie blanches, her poise slipping for just a second, Laurel pounces. ''Yeah. I know about that. Tell me,'' she takes another step. ''What is yours, Edith? You had to steal your powers. You have to steal my inheritance. What do you have? What do you have that belongs to you?''

Edie's anger is momentary. She fumes for maybe a minute before her shoulders relax, she looks at Laurel, and she smiles. ''You, of course.'' There's a scraping noise and Laurel doesn't have time to react before a chair is rocketing toward her, hitting the backs of her knees, and some unseen force is shoving her into the chair. Edie looks entirely too serene. ''I assume you've been told about Hazel Aelard?''

''I know about the curse,'' Laurels says, after a beat.

''So you know about her daughter Alice?''

''Raised as a weapon. Hazel sent her to kill the coven that banished her.''

''What else?''

Laurel sighs. ''Edie - '' She tries to stand but the second she moves, a suffocating weight presses into her, keeping her in the chair. Fear spikes in her chest, but she tries not to let it show. She's thinking it's best to play along for now. She tries to think back to what Sara had told her about Alice. ''There were... There were thirteen members of the coven. Alice obliterated twelve of them. The one that got away eventually caught up to Alice and Hazel and killed Hazel, but Alice managed to escape.''

Edie perches on the desk, crossing her arms. ''No,'' she says. ''That's not right.''

''What?''

''There's more to the story,'' Edie says. ''There is always more than you know.'' She smiles, but it looks strange and out of place somehow. ''In order for Alice to kill the coven, she needed to know more about them. Where they lived. How they lived. Their routines. Their security. She was being sent to assassinate them. She needed info. She had to have a way in. Hazel sent her to observe. But Alice was a kid. Not a trained spy. Barely a trained witch. Nicholas, the only member of the coven to survive the massacre, was the son of the head of the coven. He was a guard. Caught Alice right away. But he didn't turn her in. And she didn't kill him. Didn't even tell Hazel about him. Why do you think that is? Why do you think he never touched her when he came for Hazel?''

Laurel licks her lips. Oh. There is always more than you know. ''He was in on it.''

''They were in love,'' Edie says, mockingly. ''Alice and Nicholas were both raised to be pawns. All they wanted was to be free. So they decided to free themselves. He helped her wipe out the coven and then – ''

''They killed Hazel.''

Edie smirks. It looks vicious on her red lips. ''Not quite,'' she says. ''Hazel was an extraordinarily powerful witch. She'd spent her entire life building her power. Alice and Nicholas couldn't kill her. They weren't strong enough. But they could trap her. They tore her soul out of her body and sealed her up in - ''

''The box,'' Laurel whispers. ''The box with Hazel's ashes. It's not ashes.''

''Not so much,'' Edie nods. ''They put her in the box, sealed it shut with a spell, and went on to live a happy life together. Free at last. For a few years anyway. I think he died of the plague shortly after their youngest was born? Something like that. She raised her sons to be Ellards in any case. There's little mention of Nicholas in any official capacity. Meanwhile, the box was passed down through generations to keep it safe and protected from outside forces. Eventually, over time, the story of Hazel and Alice became just that. A story. An urban legend. Just a bit of Ellard family folklore.'' She hops off the desk, slinking over to Laurel. ''But you and me,'' she grins, hungry. ''We know better, don't we?'' She leans into Laurel's space, placing her hands on the armrests, trapping her. ''Alice made sure only she could open that box. Hazel can't be freed with brute force or even witchcraft. The only way to open it is - ''

''The scream,'' Laurel cuts in. ''The scream opens the box. That's what you need me for.''

''Got it in one,'' Edie says. She winks and bops Laurel's nose with her finger like she's a fucking child. ''I have the box,'' she announces, drawing back. ''I've had it for months. It's easy to slip one past good ol' Bo. He's a real teddy bear, but there's not much going on upstairs. You're the one I've been waiting for.''

Laurel does not give her the reaction she is so obviously aiming for. She looks up with dull eyes and asks, deadpan, ''Is that all?''

Edie almost frowns.

''Come on,'' Laurel laughs humorlessly. ''I'm not an idiot. I know there's more to this than just opening that box.''

Edie looks at her silently for a minute and then she pulls over the other chair and takes a seat. ''I do need you to open the box with the scream,'' she begins. ''I do. That's the main reason I need you. If I could have done this without involving you, I would have. I don't want to need you, Laurel. I don't want to hurt you. But there is no way to do this without you. And while I have you - Well,'' she smiles tightly. ''You think I want you soulless so you can be compliant,'' she begins. ''You're wrong. I'll admit that factor is...attractive. After all, I'm guessing you, with all your stubborn self-righteousness, are not going to open it willingly.'''

Laurel says nothing. She doesn't want to give her the satisfaction. She has a feeling she knows where this is going. She wants to be wrong. She knows she's not.

''I'm not really in the market for a human weapon,'' Edie goes on. ''I have enough of those. I need you to be empty. Open space. It'll make it easier. See,'' she leans closer and her hand moves to Laurel's cheek, trailing her fingers down her cheek. Laurel tries not to shiver at the touch, but fails miserably, clenching her teeth together. Edie seems delighted by the small show of fear, triumphant somehow, like she knows she's winning. Gently, almost tenderly, she tucks a strand of hair behind Laurel's ear. ''Hazel needs a vessel,'' she reveals. ''I can't think of a better one.''

Yep. There it is.

Laurel forces down her mounting horror, jerking away from her cousin. She ignores the chills running down her spine. ''You're sick.''

Edie sits back, shrugging. ''So I've been told.''

''Why do you even need her? You clearly think you're hot shit. Why do you need Hazel?''

The question seems to rattle Edie. It's just for a second, but she flinches as if she's been slapped. Laurel can't tell if it's because her power has been questioned and insulted or because she too hates that she needs this ancient witch for something. ''She didn't cast the original spell,'' Edie says slowly. ''The curse on the firstborn daughters. But she was there. She knows how it was done. She's powerful enough to do it herself.''

Oh, for the love of -

''You want her to curse you? Edie, that's...'' Laurel trails off, shaking her head. ''Why do you want this thing so badly? It's a curse.''

''It's power.''

''It...'' Laurel stops, groaning and leaning forward to bury her head in her hands. Okay. She is getting a migraine just from listening to this crap. ''Look.'' She lifts her head, softening her voice slightly. ''I know I wasn't there and maybe there's something I'm missing, but it doesn't exactly sound like you were living your best life when you had your scream. Why would you want it back?''

''I want it because it's mine,'' Edie snaps. ''It belongs to me. It's my inheritance. It's part of me. You don't know. You can't. You think it's hard to live with it? You have no idea what it's like to have to live without it.'' She bites down on her lip. ''I've been walking around without my right hand for years.''

''Edie, you could live a real life. Do you get that?''

''I have lived a real life.''

''This - what you're doing... It's not a real life.'' She doesn't know what else she can say. ''I don't know where you've been, I don't know what you've been doing, but you know what?'' Laurel leans forward in her chair and hesitantly reaches out to grasp onto Edie's cold hands. ''It doesn't matter,'' she lies. ''It doesn't. Just come home.''

Edie looks startled when Laurel takes her hands. She very nearly softens at the touch. Like she's not used to gentle touches. It's the first glimpse of who she used to be. ''Laurel,'' she says her name quietly, no smirking, no sneering, no malice. ''I had you killed. It matters.''

''There are still people waiting for you,'' Laurel tries to insist. ''I need you to know that. Your mother has never stopped waiting for you to come home. Your brothers...''

Edie fixes her sharp eyes on Laurel. They're not as haughty and empty. There is something human left in her. Laurel thought that would help. It doesn't, really.

''Jackson's married now,'' she says. ''He and his husband just adopted a little girl. They named her after you. Seth works in mental health. He wants to start a suicide prevention nonprofit because that's how he thinks they lost you. He doesn't want anyone else to have to go through the same kind of pain he went through when you died. And he especially doesn't want anyone to have to go through the same kind of pain he thinks you went through.''

With each word about her brothers, Edie's mask cracks a little more, exposing the tattered humanity underneath.

''They loved you so much,'' Laurel goes on. ''They still do. They miss you every day and you're right here. You can go back to them,'' she entices. ''They'd take you in. Doesn't matter what you've done or where you've been or who you are now. They just want you back.'' Tentatively, she scoots to the edge of her chair and reaches out to cup Edie's cheek. She can still feel the scars. Even with whatever magic is concealing them, they're still right there. Out in the open. The leftovers of a brutal attack. Laurel can relate. It's awful to have such a glaring physical reminder of your own death. ''Listen to me,'' she pleads. ''Please. We can go right now. You and me. Jackson lives in Seattle. We can make it there before daybreak. Or we can go to Tacoma. Your parents still live in the house you grew up in. Your room is still - ''

The switch flips.

Edie latches onto Laurel's wrist, holding on tightly, and she shuts down, scowl twisting onto her lips, eyes hollowing out. She looks at Laurel for a second without saying a word, just cocks her head to the side and stares at her with rage slowly reaching a boiling point in her eyes. ''What,'' she hisses, ''makes you think I want anything to do with my parents?'' She drops Laurel's wrist and stands up, everything about her closing off. All that progress, that spark of life and humanity and hope that this could end well - gone.

Laurel slumps. She's not surprised - it was a long shot anyway - but she's disappointed. She knows deep down that there is no way out of this. She knows there is no happy ending here. No middle ground. That doesn't mean she doesn't want to fight for one.

''They locked me away,'' Edie snarls. ''They treated me like I was diseased. Made me feel like a monster.'' She's so angry and full of venom that she's practically shaking with it. ''I'm done with them.''

''They were scared,'' Laurel says weakly, though it's a pathetic excuse.

''I was scared!'' The lights flicker when Edie lets out her roar. ''I was a child and I was terrified and they shipped me off to the other side of the country!''

Laurel rises to her feet, but doesn't back away. ''I know,'' she soothes. ''I know what they did was - ''

''I lost everything in that accident and then suddenly I had this power I couldn't control and instead of being parents, they ripped me away from my family and sent me away to live with some crazy old woman I barely knew! Fuck their fear,'' she spits. ''What they did to me wasn't fear. It was laziness. It was cruel. I don't give a shit if they love me or if they miss me. I hope they choke on it.''

''I'm sorry, Edie,'' Laurel says. It sounds like a plea. ''I'm so sorry for what happened to you. It was wrong. It shouldn't have happened like that.''

''I wasn't bad, you know,'' Edie tells her. Her voice is small. ''I know I made mistakes. I know people got hurt. But I wasn't evil.'' She doesn't sound angry anymore. Just hurt. Raw and split open, choking out the words. It's a little hard to keep up with her rapid mood swings. ''I was a scared kid. I didn't deserve to die.''

Bravely, or perhaps stupidly, Laurel approaches her. ''You're right,'' she agrees. ''You're right. You didn't. Someone should have helped you.''

Edie turns on her, fire in her eyes. ''Your father-in-law saw differently.'' She narrows her eyes. ''So did your husband.''

Laurel tries not to squirm under the piercing gaze. ''This isn't about him.''

''Isn't it?'' Edie challenges. ''The Winchesters caused this, little sassafras,'' she drawls. ''Maybe your guy didn't slit my throat himself, but he's still culpable. And you, you ignorant child. You married him.''

''I had no idea about any of this,'' Laurel says. ''How was I supposed to know - ''

''And if you had,'' Edie cuts in, oddly calm. ''What would you have done? What would that have changed?''

Laurel doesn't know how to answer that question. Truthfully, it's hard to say. It's not worth dwelling on, it's not like they'll ever know, but she has thought about it ever since she learned the truth. If she had known from the start about her family's connection to the Winchesters, would she still be married to one of them? Would she have kissed him in Seattle? Made that first move just because she wanted to? Slept with him because she could? Would she have even gone to Seattle with him in the first place? Would he have shown up on her doorstep when he was injured? Would she have let him in? Invited him into her home and her life and asked him to stay? Could she have fallen in love with him if she had known?

No.

No, probably not. Not if she had known. But then she wouldn't have this. She wouldn't have Mary. She wouldn't have him. Maybe she would be all alone. Maybe she would have lived a perfectly fine life without him in it, but it would have been less. That, she knows for sure.

''He's... He's not...'' She stops, struggling to explain why she loves one of the monsters at the end of Edie's book. ''He's - ''

''What?'' Edie looks at her with thinly veiled rage, betrayal and contempt in her eyes. ''He's different now?''

''John Winchester is dead,'' Laurel gets out confidently. ''He's been dead for a long time. Dean and Sam don't take orders from him. They are their own men. They make their own choices. What happened back then, what happened to you - It will not happen again.''

Edie looks at her for a moment, purposefully blank, like a television that only plays static, and then she lets out this peculiar, slow laugh. It's hard to explain what it is about that laugh, but the sound of it sends shivers down Laurel's spine. It physically hurts to hear it. This is not who she lost. This is not the ballerina who left one day for a dance recital and never came home, blown apart by tragedy and trauma, lost to them forever before they even knew she was gone. This is not someone you save. This is someone you run from.

''You're an idiot,'' Edie tells her, blunt and forceful. ''Dead or alive, John Winchester will always be in charge and those boys will always fall back to who their daddy taught them to be.''

Laurel wants to object to that. She wants to tell Edie that John is nothing more than a ghost now and he can bitch and moan and rattle those chains as much as he wants, but it has been ten years and Dean and Sam have moved on.

Edie doesn't give her the chance. ''Do you know who Mary Webster is?''

The question is unexpected. To say the least. ''What does that have to do with - ''

''Answer the question.''

''No,'' Laurel says. ''I don't know who that is.''

Edie has switched back to calm, putting her scorn away, leaving her rage to simmer away under the surface for another time. ''She lived in colonial New England,'' she says. ''Hadley, Massachusetts to be exact. During the time of witch trials and mass hysteria. She was accused of witchcraft. They hanged her. No trial. The townspeople just did it. They beat her, spat on her, and then they hanged her. They did that back then,'' she says, with a casual shrug. ''Killed women just because they could.'' She looks at Laurel innocently, curiously. ''I wonder if your husband and his family can relate.''

Laurel tenses up. ''Don't.''

''Don't what? Don't tell you the truth?'' She looks unconcerned. ''Sorry, kiddo, but this is how it is. You need to know who you married.'' She turns away from Laurel and moves to pull the blinds back again to check for whatever she's waiting for. She makes an attempt at nonchalance, but Laurel can see how tense her shoulders are. The way she keeps opening and closing her fists. ''Mary Webster lived, you know.'' She turns back to Laurel. ''She survived her own hanging. Lived for another eleven years, in fact. They tried to hang her because they didn't like her, because they were scared of her, because they needed someone to blame, but she wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Half-hanged Mary - that stubborn old broad. She lived.'' She hums, amused. ''And if she wasn't a witch before... Well. You understand, don't you? I certainly do.'' She stops, giving Laurel another slow look. ''I get it,'' she says after a beat. ''You think I'm the bad guy. I don't blame you. I'd think that too. But maybe you need to take a closer look at the family you married into. Your guy and his family? They were my origin story. They made me.''

''Edie - ''

''Don't you dare tell me I'm wrong,'' Edie snaps. ''I'm not. You have no idea. You weren't there that night. I know exactly who these people are. Colonial townspeople, hunters, Winchesters, they're all the same. An angry mob is an angry mob. Violent, arrogant, and afraid of anything they don't understand.'' She reaches out to latch onto Laurel's arm. ''Look at me.'' She tugs her closer to her, tightening her grip on her wrist until it's bruising. ''Look at me, Dinah Laurel.'' Her whispery voice is gravelly and hoarse and when Laurel looks back at her, the scars are visible on her throat and her face. ''I am that witch,'' Edie rasps, mangled but grinning like a madwoman. ''I am the half hanged. The Winchesters were my judge, jury, and executioner, and, sweetie,'' she leans in closer to whisper in Laurel's ear, ''one day, he's going to be yours.''

Laurel jerks away from her cousin, ripping her arm out of Edie's grip and staggering back. ''You're wrong,'' she says, and she wants so badly to believe what she's saying, but the scars on Edie's face have planted this tiny seed of doubt in her head and she hates it.

''The second you step out of line,'' Edie goes on. ''The second you lose control, he's going to put a bullet in your head or slit your throat ear to ear just like John did to me.''

''Stop it.''

''You can snarl at me as much as you want, but it's the truth. And it's not just you. That's the worst part, isn't it? It's not just you.'' Edie shakes her head. ''Your little girl is a firstborn too, right?''

Laurel swallows down the bile that rises up in her throat and doesn't answer.

''What do you think,'' Edie says slowly, ''he's going to do to her when she gets her inheritance?''

The insinuation makes Laurel's skin crawl. Heat creeps up her neck, anger bubbling up in her throat like acid. ''I think you need to shut your mouth,'' she warns. ''You have no idea what you're talking about.''

''You're naive,'' Edie slings back, lazily. ''But, then again, you always were.'' She wanders back over to the desk to pick up the handcuffs.

Laurel tries not to tense. She should really be using her Canary Cry right now. She knows that. It's there in the back of her mind. Shiva disabled the sonic dampener for a reason. It's Laurel's only escape. She should have used it already. But...

She doesn't want to hurt Edie.

It's so ridiculous when she thinks about it. Look at everything Edie has done. Her cousin has done awful, terrible, unforgivable things to so many people, but Laurel can't just shut off her love for her. It doesn't work like that. Not for her. She doesn't want to have to hurt her. She wants another option.

''You're a witch, sweetheart,'' Edie says. ''He's a witch hunter. You're oil and water.'' She puts the handcuffs down. Turns back to Laurel. The scars are gone again and her voice is strong. ''Sooner or later, he's going to show you who he really is and when that day comes, you're going to have some choices to make. We all have to pick a side eventually.''

''It will never be yours,'' Laurel rebuffs. ''Not ever.''

Briefly, for just barely a split second, the smug smile on Edie's face drops. Before she has a chance to spew out her next cutting remark, the door bursts open and Ricky Moretti comes flying through. ''Edie,'' he blurts. Doesn't even look at Laurel. ''Something's wrong.''

Edie whirls around to face him. ''You don't fucking say,'' she snaps. ''Our associate was supposed to be here forty-five minutes ago and your dumbass brother drugged - ''

''It's Marlene,'' Moretti cuts her off. ''She's - Something happened. She was fine and then she just started vomiting.''

''Um.'' Edie's lip curls back in disgust. ''Ew? What does that have to do with - ''

''Edie,'' Moretti sounds serious - and anxious. ''Marly's vomiting blood. My brother says there are traces of - I don't know - herbs in it? Or flowers?''

''Herbs.'' Edie suddenly looks thunderous. ''What kind of herbs?''

''He said something about mistletoe?''

''Mistle - '' Edie lets out what Laurel can only describe as a full body long suffering sigh, rolling her eyes. ''Fuck me,'' the witch curses. She spins around to glare suspiciously at Laurel, who stares back blankly. Despite Edie's insistence to the contrary, Laurel is not a witch and she has no idea what the hell they're talking about. Edie narrows her eyes. She looks Laurel up and down, and then she turns her attention back to Moretti. ''Have you been in contact with - ''

''No. Hasn't called and he's not picking up when I call him.''

She sighs heavily, rubbing at her forehead. ''So we have no idea if Matteo and Hanna are still alive.''

That peaks Laurel's interest. ''You went after Mattie and Hanna?'' She swivels her gaze to Moretti, staring at him incredulously. ''You went after your own - ''

''Nobody,'' Moretti snaps out gruffly, sending her a withering glare, ''said you could speak.''

She arches an eyebrow, neither intimidated nor silenced by his posturing. ''Wow.'' He ignores her.

''I told you the bastard was shifty,'' he says to Edie. ''We never should've - ''

''Oh, shut up, Moretti,'' Edie barks, and he instantly stands down. You know, like a dog. ''All right,'' she says. ''Okay.'' The calm and steady take charge tone of her voice is something so familiar. It's the same tone of voice she used to wear when all the Drake cousins would play together. She was always the leader. Always the one in charge. It was never a question. She was the oldest. She knew best. She had all the answers. They looked to her.

Laurel averts her eyes. She scans the room one last time. There are two ways out of this office. The door at the front and the door at the back. She has no idea where the back door leads, if it's even a feasible way out, but Edie and Moretti are blocking the best exit.

''We have to assume they're alive,'' Edie's saying. ''This is defensive magic. They're trying to get through Marlene's cloaking spell. I don't know what they're using to attack her, but your brother needs to cleanse her system now. I'm almost impressed,'' she adds on slowly. ''They're willing to use brute force and poison their mother just to get to her.'' She looks over at Laurel again. ''I guess you inspire more loyalty than I expected, Canary.''

Moretti does not have the patience for more talking. He also does not have a light touch. ''We need to get her out of here.'' He stomps over to Laurel, his strong hand locking around her wrist. He pulls her to him roughly, with zero regard for her. He's a real dick. ''We don't have time to sit around here waiting,'' he says. ''If those kids break the spell, they'll figure out where we are and if they do that, he will come for her. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like dealing with a pissed off Dean goddamned Winchester. We need to get her - '' He halts his rant mid-sentence, very suddenly.

When Laurel looks up at him, he is about three shades paler. He's not looking at Edie. He's not even looking at Laurel. He's looking at the collar. He may be an ass, but at least he has the decency to understand the risks associated with kidnapping the Black Canary.

Guess it's now or never.

''Edie,'' Moretti says slowly, dropping Laurel's wrist and taking a step back, one hand moving to keep Edie behind him. ''Get out.''

''What?'' Edie, who had stopped listening to his tirade about three words in, lowers her phone from her ear to frown. ''What are you - ''

''Edie, just - ''

''Some free advice for you two geniuses,'' Laurel offers dryly, with a grim smile. ''If you're going to insist on using these sonic dampeners, you might want to check and make sure they're not malfunctioning.'' There is about a two second stretch of time where Moretti starts to turn toward Edie and Edie starts to say something, and then Laurel opens her mouth and screams.

The force of the blast upends the entire room, sending Edie and Moretti flying back, glass exploding, the contents of the room crashing backward. Laurel doesn't stick around to survey the damage once the scream is out. She stays long enough to catch her breath and then she spins on her heel and runs.

It's easy enough to make it out of the office and down the stairs but the shipyard is like a maze, full of shipping containers and heavy equipment. She can't say she's ever spent a lot of time down here. Sure, sometimes Black Canary patrolled down here but rarely did she go right into the heart of the shipyard and she always had someone in her ear, ready and waiting to lead her out. Here and now, she's alone. No voice in her ear, no back up, no plan, no way out.

Right now, her main concern is getting as far away from Edie as possible. If that means getting lost in the maze and hiding in one of these shipping containers then so be it. She takes off at a sprint, racing through the wet gravel. By some stroke of luck, it's not raining tonight. There are a few clouds but the moon is high in the sky, shining down. She keeps running, occasionally taking a turn. Somehow, she ends up exactly where she needs to be. Right by the entrance.

She could cry. She's never been so happy to see that entrance. She hesitates, just long enough to think of that little girl - Sin. She is likely long gone by now, whisked away by Shiva, but Laurel still can't help but hesitate. Wonder if she should turn back and look for her. Unfortunately, those few seconds are long enough for her to discover that Edie has taken care of the entrance. As Laurel approaches, slowing down to a quiet, slinking walk, she takes note of one of Edie's men stationed right by her only way out. With a shotgun. Damn it.

She sidles up to a nearby shipping container, concealing herself from view, back pressed against the cool metal. It's only one man. She can take down one guy. He's soulless so he's got that soulless strength and inability to notice pain going for him, and he has a gun, but... It's just one man. She has taken out more than one man with a gun before.

She leans her head back and closes her eyes, taking a few deep, centering breaths. Truth be told, she's feeling a bit peeved right now. She has been drugged against her will, kidnapped, beaten with a stick, she can feel a migraine coming on, it's chilly out here, and - oh, yeah, her cousin is a psychopathic witch who apparently wants to use her body to house some ancient evil witch. She could use a few minutes to get out her aggression. She takes one last deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth, and then the Black Canary opens her eyes. She pushes off the container and slips around to the back of it, climbing up the ladder.

On top of the metal container, she glances around, cold wind whipping through her hair. She doesn't see anyone but the one guard. Doesn't mean they're not there. She approaches the edge of the container and crouches down. Silently, she pulls the pen out of her shirt pocket and tosses it to the ground. It hits the ground with a quiet but noticeable clatter and gets the guard's attention. He jerks around, shotgun raised. He looks around, but not up, finally catching sight of the pen. He moves over to it slowly, weapon raised, frowning down at it, and just as he's about to look up -

Laurel takes her one chance.

She jumps off the shipping container without a second thought, landing on his shoulders, both hands on either side of his head. He drops the gun. The last time she tried to choke out one of Edie's soulless Dolls with her thighs, it didn't go swimmingly. She did get the job done, but it took an embarrassingly long time. This time, though, she finally catches a break. Her positioning is perfect, he's caught off guard, and she's feeling much stronger than before. She easily brings him down into a triangle choke, he sputters, and then goes limp.

In hindsight, wasting time grabbing his shotgun and trying to unload it is unnecessary. She's got her attention fixed on the gun when she hears the crunch of gravel under soft footfalls behind her. She tenses, but it's too late. Doll #2 ambushes her from behind, wrapping one big arm around her neck and squeezing. She drops the shotgun, grappling at the much burlier man's chokehold. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices a third one rushing toward them. He's reaching for his radio.

Shit.

Laurel grits her teeth. Using all of her strength, she slams her foot down on #2's foot and drives her elbow into his gut. He groans and loosens his grip just enough for her to take control. Even with him still wrapped around her, she manages, using him as leverage to lift her body up and execute a dropkick that sends #3 sprawling back.

As soon as he's on the ground, she turns her attention back to #2, flipping him over her shoulder. He lands hard on his back, but has a quick recovery, rolling onto his stomach and trying to get up. She grabs the forgotten pen from the ground as he struggles to push himself up to his knees. She leads with a throat jab, just to distract him, and manages to knee him under the chin, sending him back, but that's when she hears #3. She leaves Doll #2 clutching at his throat to deliver a spinning hook kick to #3. #2 tries to grab onto her ankle and she whirls around and lunges at him, plunging the pen into his shoulder. He roars in pain, but she doesn't miss a beat, scooping up the shotgun off the ground and slamming it into the side of his head. He sinks like a stone.

#3 is up, wobbly on his feet and bleeding from a laceration on his face, but up and going for his radio. She rushes at him before he can find his bearings, sending a knee to his chest. He staggers back. He tries to throw a weak right hook but she blocks it and sends an uppercut that sends him stumbling back, unsteady on his feet. She kicks the radio away, cocks the shotgun, and points it at his head. She's not going to shoot him, but it sure does stop him cold.

Good to know he at least has a tiny remaining bit of self-preservation. She sighs heavily, flips it around, and jams the butt of the gun into his head.

Then it's over.

She takes a few panting breaths and loses the gun, making sure the safety is on and emptying the chamber before she tosses it away. She gives herself less than five seconds to scan the area for any other threats. Then she decides it is high past time to get the hell out of there. She turns around to make a break for it, but winds up running right into someone.

Her immediate instinct is to fight, but the body is too close to her, too ready, and he catches her fist easily when she tries to throw a punch. She looks up at the face of this new attacker and instantly all the fight drains out of her, replaced by relief. ''Dean.'' She throws herself at him, launching herself into his arms. ''Oh my god.'' She closes her eyes. He is not hugging her back. ''How did you find me?'' She doesn't give him a chance to answer. ''It doesn't matter. It's Edie, Dean. My cousin. Edie's the witch.''

''I know.''

Her eyes snap open. Wait. She pulls away from him to get a good look at his face in the dim light and her stomach recoils, icy cold dread settling in her chest. Unless she's been gone longer than she thinks, Dean - at least the one she's married to - does not have a beard. And there's - there's something wrong with his eyes. Those are not her husband's eyes. They are, but they...aren't. They're so cold and harsh. He has never looked at her like that before. Not once.

''No.'' She takes a step back. ''No, you're not - you're - ''

''Hello, Dinah,'' he greets, a slow, cold smile creeping across his face. ''Or - No. I'm sorry,'' he chuckles and it's that same warm chuckle she knows - only it isn't. Not at all. ''You go by Laurel on this earth, don't you?'' His hand shoots out before she has a chance to do anything, clamping around her throat. His grip is like a vice, too tight, cutting off her breathing. ''I'll try to remember that,'' he offers pleasantly, driving her back against the nearest metal container.

She claws at his hand fruitlessly and tries to choke out a plea, but she can't. There is a moment, a sudden snap, where her brain zaps and she is right back in that prison again with Damien Darhk's magic suffocating her, cutting off her air supply, choking the life out of her as he approaches with that arrow.

I want you to give your father a message for me.

''For what it's worth,'' the Dean who is not her Dean murmurs. ''I'm impressed.'' He leans in close to her to whisper in her ear. ''You almost made it out, Canary.''

That's the last thing he says before he slams her back against the container in one swift, brutal move. The back of her head hits the metal hard, bright lights explode in her vision, and then everything goes dark.

.

.

.

July, 2016

On the surface, the Men of Letters bunker in Lebanon, Kansas is incredibly cool. It's a secret lair with seemingly magic Wi-Fi, infinite space, a bunch of priceless (and bizarre) weapons, and excellent water pressure. How is that not the coolest thing ever?

Under the surface, it's horror movie level bonkers.

Dean and Mary have only been in Lebanon for about six hours and he's about ready to crawl out of his skin. In another life, he might have loved this place, but he's domesticated now. Too used to living in a house with windows. Maybe it's just that they're here alone, but this place is majorly giving him the creeps.

There is no reason for it. It's not like this is his first time here. It's not even Mary's first time here. He hasn't spent a huge amount of time here before, but he's been here enough to help clean up and do some exploring and nothing ever pinged his creep factor radar until now. There is something about all this open space. All these rooms with their hidden secrets. The lack of windows. It's the safest place he knows, but he somehow feels the most vulnerable he's felt in a long time. There is an otherworldly feeling here. Everything is so still.

It's July in Kansas. It's sticky hot outside, suffocating and miserably bright. But the bunker is cool and comfortable, temperature mysteriously regulated. And there are noises. Creaks and groans with no discernable origin. He swears he heard the shuffle of feet earlier while he was in the kitchen unpacking the groceries. Maybe it's just that he and Mary are all alone here right now. He's not accustomed to that anymore. He got so used to being surrounded by people in Star City.

It's probably just his mind playing tricks on him.

Semi related fun fact: Dean has not slept more than an hour or two in the past three days and has had seven cups of coffee today.

Mary's happy though. She's been losing her goddamn marbles with excitement since they got here. She might just be happy to be on solid ground again. She doesn't travel well. Never has. Car rides tend to trigger her vertigo and make her carsick. She has never gone longer than forty minutes in a car without puking. The road trip to get here was a living nightmare. She has been bouncing off the walls since they got out of the car, skipping ahead of him, giggling nonstop, demanding to go everywhere and see everything.

When they made a trip to the small mom and pop grocery store in town, she refused to get in the cart, happily running around the store, picking things off the shelves she could reach and tossing them into the cart. They have a lot of Ritz crackers and frozen pie crusts now. She fell twice, knocked over a display of toilet paper, and skinned her knee in the parking lot, but even that was not enough to deter her from her good mood. They stopped at a gas station and she literally shrieked in delight and laughed for like five minutes straight when she saw a car air freshener shaped like a llama.

She's also decided that she loves the bunker. She thinks it's hilarious the way her voice echoes when she shouts. The last time she was here, she was a baby. Now she's old enough to skip around the kitchen while he unloads the groceries, clutching her stuffed shark and her new llama air freshener while she yells, ''hello, hello, hello'' over and over again.

They spent a good two hours wandering around the cavernous bunker earlier and she was so excited when he showed her the pool that Sam found a few months ago that she could barely stop talking about it long enough to eat her dinner. The only thing she didn't seem to like was, strangely, the hallways. She said they made her ''worry'' because they ''don't stop.'' She refused to turn the corners unless he went first and even then, she was hesitant, looking around like she thought something was going to jump out at her while she was taking one big step around the corner to get to him.

It sure did not help with his unease.

Maybe they're both losing their minds.

He still doesn't regret bringing her here. It's an odd place, with this unnerving feeling of somehow existing outside of time, and the nearby small town is tiny and nosy, but after the past few months, they both needed to get out of that city.

If he could, he would stay gone.

That dark and dreary city, full of violence, always cloudy and raining, took everything from them. Why would they stay there? That place is soaked with blood. They shouldn't be there. They could move here. Move into the bunker or get a place nearby. He's always thought about going back to Kansas. That's where he belongs anyway. It makes sense for him to go back where it all started. Maybe they could even go back to Lawrence. He could show Mary where her dad is from.

Or maybe they could go to South Dakota and get a place in Sioux Falls close to Jody and the girls. It's nice to be surrounded by family. Even California could be good for them. It was the place Sam chose when he had a choice. Laurel loved their vacation in Big Sur. It was a dream come true for her. He could take Mary there. Show her what he showed her mother.

But he can't do that. Mary's entire world is in Star City. He can't take her away from that. She's already lost her mom. He can't rip her away from her grandfather and Sara and Thea. He's considered moving at least to Seattle - it's close enough that she could keep her relationship with her family but would give them some distance from that city of blood - but the housing market is ridiculous there. He can barely afford to live in Star City, there is no way he would be able to afford Seattle, especially not without Laurel's income. Some of the surrounding areas - Olympia, Auburn, Redmond - are cheaper, even Tacoma is better, but honestly...

He doesn't think he can do this alone right now.

Dean has been the primary parent almost from the beginning. From the second Laurel's maternity leave ended and she went back to work, it has been just him and Mary. He's the one who stayed home with her, he's the one who cooks and cleans and does the laundry and the grocery shopping and keeps the house running. He takes point on potty training and daily routines and bath time and bedtime, he takes Mary to all her various appointments, he takes her to the park, he buys her clothes, handles the night wakings and the majority of the tantrums, kisses every scraped knee, gets her through Vertigo attacks, helps her with sign language and balance exercises. He's the one who teaches and comforts and disciplines and makes charts and plans healthy meals and shoulders all this weight.

Laurel was too busy for that. She did her part, she made most of the appointments and researched doctors and therapists and preschools, she did the birthday parties and spearheaded sign language, but mostly, she worked. She worked, worked, worked, and worked some more, and then when she got off work at the end of the day, she threw on some fishnets and leather and went out jumping from rooftops.

He handles the day to day parenting. It is a role he's surprisingly comfortable with and you know what? He's fucking good at it. He has rocked this whole parenting thing. It's always been something he knows he is more than capable of doing. Like it or not, he has been a parent since he was four years old. He had a dead mom and an emotionally dead dad growing up and someone had to be there for Sammy. Someone had to step into those roles. Someone had to at least try. Dean was the only option. Parenting is all he knows. And with Mary, he actually gets to choose to do this. He's older now, wiser, with knowledge he didn't have before, choices he was never given, and regardless of what he had to give up to be here, he has loved every exhausting minute of being her dad. But right now...

It's been hard since Laurel left. He feels...disoriented. It's like being in a fog. He feels lost and angry and so very, very tired. Not the normal kind of tired. He's underwater. That's what it's like. It's like he's underwater and there's no way out. Things that used to be easy have suddenly become the most difficult tasks to complete. He feels like he is doing nothing right and with everything going on, he doesn't have the energy to try harder.

The SCPD has closed their investigation surrounding the Black Canary. They've concluded that her husband is not the Green Arrow, no charges will be filed, and there will be no need to involve CPS, but they have branded Laurel a criminal and ruined her reputation that she worked her entire life to build. He knows that some of the cases she's closed have already been reopened and all of her work with CNRI as well as the work she did as an ADA is in question. Convictions could be overturned and everything she worked her ass off for could go up in smoke. Add that to the list of things he needs to deal with. If there's even anything he can do about it other than call Joanna.

He's helping Iris West write a piece about Laurel. Not the Black Canary, but Dinah Laurel Lance. It was his idea. He's not sure Laurel would agree with his choice, she was intense about privacy after all, but nobody ever talks about the woman behind the mask. Black Canary is a household name now. Laurel Lance is a footnote. No one knows who she was. No one will remember her. He will not sit here and let that happen. So he went to Iris. He trusts her to do right by Laurel and so far she has. She has sent him everything she's written every step of the way, they have spent hours talking, piecing things together, putting Laurel back together from all the shattered pieces left behind in the wake of her death and unmasking, and it's going about as well as it could go but it has been an intensely emotionally grueling process.

Also, yeah, guess he needs a job now. He was hoping, with Laurel's life insurance money and some careful budgeting, he could put off the job thing until Mary was in kindergarten, but nope. Insurance companies do not give money to criminals or their families.

He can't add a potential move to the list of things he's got going on. He's not even with it enough to be a good dad. He's not willing to leave the support they have in Star City. He needs them as much as Mary does.

He really fucking hates that city, though. He really, really hates it. He would just like that to be known. It's the worst.

Mary falls asleep easy tonight. He attempts to give her a shower because there are no bathtubs in the bunker, but she does not seem to appreciate the amazing water pressure the way he does so she's having none of it and it's a whole production. She barely stops yammering long enough for him to get her teeth brushed and tries to convince him to watch a movie and have popcorn before bed, but as soon as her head hits the pillow, she's out.

They've decided to settle in Room #11 of the bunker (one of the only rooms that's been fixed up over the past few years) and there's an old record player and some dusty vinyl records Mary's been begging to listen to since they got there. When she's in her pajamas, all curled up in bed with her blanket and her shark and her new BFF, the llama shaped air freshener, he agrees to put one of the records on. He turns his back on her for a few short moments while he pulls the old Nat King Cole album out of its sleeve and gets it playing and by the time he turns around, she is fast asleep.

Lucky her.

Must be nice to be able to sleep.

He'll admit it is baffling, however. Mary is a shit sleeper, always has been. He can count on one hand how many times she has fallen asleep that fast. He opts not to question it, counting his lucky stars as he slips into bed beside her. He's grateful, but...

In the quiet, with only Nat King Cole to keep him company, exhausted right down to the bone, his mind wanders. He thinks about how to make this escape a vacation Mary will enjoy and then he starts thinking about how he'd rather not have to go back and it all spirals from there. This is how the nights go for him now. The world goes quiet and he lies there in the dark, too tired to sleep, and then he starts thinking and doesn't stop until, eventually, he goes back to her. To Laurel.

It's always Laurel.

Every road seems to lead back to her. Tonight, it's thinking about having to go home. He doesn't want to go back to that city because she died there and he can't shake the feeling that if he stays, he will too. Tomorrow, it will be something else. He'll take Mary out for breakfast and see cinnamon buttermilk pancakes on the menu or he'll hear a song on the radio that reminds him of her or a woman will smile at him and he'll only see her. There's always something.

There are many ways to be haunted.

He didn't know that until she died. He wonders if this is what the world looked like for his father. Full of ghosts. Maybe that's why he was so angry all the time. He could burn all the bones in the world, slay all the monsters, kill his way across America, but he could never rid himself of his head full of ghosts. Dean understands that now. He didn't before.

He breathes in the cool, stale air and blinks a few times, rubbing at his eyes with his palms. He rolls over onto his side and looks at Mary, sleeping comfortably. Carefully, like he's handling a bomb, he slides the air freshener out of her grip and tosses it on the bedside table. She stirs briefly, clutching at her horse blanket and pulling it up to her face. She flops over onto her stomach and makes this tiny noise in the back of her throat. Dean scoots closer to her to rub her back gently and she's out like a light again within a few seconds.

The air freshener thing is weird, gotta admit, but it's no weirder than that time she carried around a banana for a day when she was two and called it her ''baby brother.''

Kids are mysterious creatures.

He retracts his hand slowly and rolls onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, listening to Nat King Cole sing, ''Since you went away, the days grow long, and soon I'll hear ol' winter's call. But I miss you most of all, my darling, when the autumn leaves start to fall.'' The sound of the mournful music does not help with the unbearable loneliness or the pressure building in his chest and throat. He closes his eyes and tries not to think.

The next thing he knows, he's jerking awake and the room is silent. The record player is playing only dead air, Mary is still fast asleep beside him, and everything is still and dark. He blinks a few times, groggy and completely unaware of what it was that tore him out of sleep. He rubs a hand over his face, half-asleep, and that is when he realizes that he and Mary are not alone anymore. It's a slower realization than it should be, senses dulled by how exhausted he is, but it comes as an unmistakable shiver down his spine. The hair on the back of his neck stands up and his muscles tense as a familiar knot forms in his stomach.

He squints in the darkness, lifting his head slightly to see the figure standing at the end of his bed. It's too dark to make out a face, but he can see her outline. He can pick out what clothes she is wearing. He bolts upright. ''Laurel.''

She says nothing. Doesn't even move. Just remains right where she is, nothing more than a silhouette in the darkness. He doesn't even think she's looking at him.

''Laurel,'' he pleads.

She turns as if to look at him, but he still can't see her face. He reacts instinctively, rocketing out of bed and flicking on the lamp. Warm light spills into the room, illuminating the darkness, and there is no one left standing where she stood. He doesn't know if he should feel relieved or disappointed.

Meanwhile, Mary is still fast asleep.

Hesitantly, feeling unusually afraid, he moves over to the foot of the bed. He places himself right where she was. There is no cold spot, no goosebumps or other physical sensations, no smell of rot or sulfur or her perfume. There is nothing to suggest that she was ever here. He swallows the lump in his throat. He tries to regulate his breathing and his racing heart. It was a dream. Just a dream. Maybe sleep paralysis. But definitely not... Not her.

Laurel is dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

And they are not about to pull a Dickens here. He refuses.

She is gone.

He treads around the bed to get to the record player. He pulls the needle away from the vinyl with shaking hands. Maybe he should salt the door. Or call Sam. Maybe this was a bad idea. He shouldn't have brought Mary here. They should have gone to California. He should have taken her to Big Sur, to see the place her mother was at peace, the place where he should have taken Laurel's ashes, the place where she should be resting.

He stands there for a minute, holding the Nat King Cole record in his hands, feeling stiff and frozen in his body. He snaps out of it enough to put the record away and move back to his side of the bed, sinking down, scrubbing at his face. He doesn't know how much longer he can do this. He feels like he's losing his mind.

At what point does grief cross over into psychosis? When are things supposed to start getting better? How much time does he have to give it? These are the questions he desperately needs answers for. It's July now. Laurel died in April. It has been almost exactly three months. How much longer will it be? He knows three months is nothing but a blip, but he cannot keep doing this. He feels like he's burning from the inside out. He is no stranger to loss and intense grief, but this is something else entirely. This grief has been like a full body event. Everything hurts. He feels like he is physically and mentally breaking apart. When does that stop? When will he be able to sleep again? He desperately needs to get some sleep.

Nothing is the way it should be right now.

He closes his eyes and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He's just put his head in his hands, scrubbing at his tired eyes, when he hears it. Footsteps just outside the door. He looks over at the bedroom door, heartbeat stuttering in his chest, watching in muted horror as a shadow passes by underneath the door. There is someone out there. This bunker is supposed to be impenetrable; the safest place in America, but there is someone out there. He can see them moving. He can hear the sound of their footfalls.

He slowly rises to his feet, but can't seem to move any further than that. He tries, but he can't make his body work. He feels like he is standing in quicksand. There is scratching on the door now, as if someone is dragging their nails down the surface. He can hear raspy, ragged, somehow inhuman sounding breathing. The doorknob slowly starts to turn and -

Mary screams.

Dean jerks free of whatever trance he was in, whirling around to look at her. She is still sleeping. He can hear her screaming, he swears he can, but she is right there in the bed, sleeping peacefully.

''Dean.''

He turns, amidst the sound of his daughter's apparent screams, and the grotesque rotting, smiling corpse, so far gone he cannot tell if it used to be his wife or his mother, outstretches a hand toward him in the dark -

- and then he wakes up.

He opens his eyes with a strangled gasp, struggling for breath as if he's surfacing from underwater.

Mary is still screaming.

Disoriented, still reeling from the nightmare, it takes him a second to snap back to life. He glances over at Mary and, just like that, in a single snap second, the adrenaline kicks in. Mary is sitting up in the bed, shivering, sobbing, and screaming for her mother. ''Mary.'' He's bolting upright in an instant, reaching for her. ''Mary, honey.'' He grasps her hands and she reacts like someone is burning her.

She lets out this piercing wail full of genuine terror, wrenched from somewhere deep inside, and jerks away from him, yelling, at the top of her lungs, ''Mommy, help me!'' The only reason she doesn't whack her head back into the headboard is because he grabs onto her, trying to keep her from flailing and hurting herself. It only makes things worse. She doesn't stop howling for her mother. He doesn't think she's capable of stopping even if she wanted to. ''Mommy,'' she sobs out. ''Mommy! Mommy, please!''

''Mary - ''

''Mommy!''

''Mary, Mary, I'm right here,'' he tries.

She is looking right at him when he says this, eyes open, seemingly awake, but she's not seeing him, too locked into her terror, desperately trying to writhe away from him. She shoves him away from her and throws herself backward off the bed. If this wasn't so horrifying, it might be comical. She just drops like a stone. Lands with a thud beside the bed. She doesn't even seem to notice, still screaming at the top of her lungs for a mother who will not come.

''Jesus.'' He tosses back the covers and leaps to his feet, hurrying around to the other side of the bed. ''Honeybee,'' he says, trying to talk over the sound of her screams. ''Baby girl, you gotta let me know what's going on here.'' He gets down on the ground with her and tries once more to touch her. She thrashes away from him when he tries to grasp her hands, but oddly enough seems okay when he cups her cheeks so he can get a look at her face. She's still sobbing for her mother, shivering violently and uncontrollably, and it's only when he gets a good look at her completely vacant eyes that he realizes he has seen this before.

Fuck.

This is not a nightmare. This is a night terror.

''Shit.'' His shoulders slump. ''Okay.'' He clears his throat and tries to soften his voice, to be as calm as he can possibly be. ''Mary, I'm right here.'' He lets go of her and can do nothing but allow her to go back to her writhing and screaming. ''Daddy's right here with you, pumpkin. You're going to be okay.''

Mary has only had one night terror in her life. Back in January, they had to take her in for an MRI because her ENT wanted to make sure her vertigo spells were not the symptom of some underlying condition. They had to sedate her for the procedure. Everything went okay, except that it took her a little longer to wake up than it should have. The doctor kept a close eye on her for an hour or two and then sent them home where everything was perfectly fine and normal until that night when she damn near woke up the entire neighborhood with her screaming. She screamed and thrashed and paced her bedroom, sobbing for about half an hour before she simply stopped, asked them for hugs, and then went back to sleep like nothing had happened. Scared the absolute shit out of Laurel.

That was nothing compared to Sammy. There was a solid six month stretch when he was five where he would wake up every single night screaming and drenched in sweat, talking gibberish and hyperventilating. Dad never knew what to do to help him so he did nothing at all. Eventually, he started ignoring the nightly episodes altogether. Dean never could. Not just because he and Sammy usually shared a bed in whatever crappy motel Dad hauled them to, but because what kind of person ignores a kid in distress?

Looking back on it, he'll bet money his father thought it had something to do with Sam's ''boy king destiny'' bullcrap and was just too scared to go anywhere near him.

There is nothing anyone can do about night terrors. You just have to let it play out. All he can do is sit on the floor with Mary while she cries and screams, periodically moaning and begging her mom to help her. She is not receptive to touch so it's not like he can hold her to comfort her. The only thing he can do is talk to her, calmly and gently reassuring her that he's there, he's with her, and everything will be okay.

It lasts ten minutes.

Then it stops.

She calms down, she stops screaming, and when he says her name, she looks at him and then just falls into his arms, curling into his arms like a baby. After a minute or two, she looks up at him, groggy, very confused as to why she's on the ground and then she calmly tells him - through the fingers she's sucking on - that she needs to go potty.

Zero recollection of what happened.

He tries not to make a big deal out of it. He takes her down the hall to the bathroom, changes her soaked pull up and gets her to pee again, but he can't help but ask her, as nonchalantly as possible, ''Have any dreams, honeybee?''

Mary, who has been nothing but her normal cheerful self - if not a little tired - looks up at him and laughs. ''I don't have dreams, silly.''

Like it never happened at all.

She conks out immediately after he gets her settled back in bed. She sleeps soundly and peacefully for the rest of the night.

Dean does not.

He puts away the old Nat King Cole vinyl and spends the rest of the night mindlessly scrolling through emails from people checking up on him and journalists begging for info on his late superhero wife. Shout out to the dude from some trashy supermarket tabloid who asks what she used to eat in a day to fit into her suit. Takes real dedication to be that big of a shit. He keeps one eye on Mary at all times. He nearly drifts off a few times, but sleep never sticks. It's not a big deal. He checked his phone earlier. He managed to get four hours before Mary's night terror pulled him out of his own nightmare. That's more than he's had in a long time. Besides, he's been functioning on very little sleep since he was four. He's fine.

He lies there all night, studiously not looking at the end of the bed, keeping watch over Mary, and then at around five thirty, he decides he needs coffee. He doesn't feel entirely comfortable leaving Mary alone just yet because he worries that if she wakes up and he's not there, she'll go looking for him and inevitably wind up lost in the maze that is this bunker. But he needs caffeine and hopefully, if he's lucky, she won't wake up for a few more hours at least.

Dean makes it to the kitchen. He finds his way there, he finds the coffee maker, and he even manages to get the ancient thing working. It's all easy enough. It's a little touch and go when it comes to finding the mugs, but he manages. He makes a great cup of coffee. Then he turns around.

''Hello, love,'' Laurel greets.

The mug of coffee slips from his suddenly numb fingers, shattering upon impact, coffee splattering onto the cold concrete.

His dead wife is standing in front of him.

In her fucking wedding dress.

She asks him, ''How do I look?'' She has a coy smile on her face. She looks exactly the same as she did on their wedding day. He should be asking himself what's going on. Salting the bunker. Checking for gas leaks. Something. All he can think about is how young she looks. She looks lighter. Less tired. Her last years were not easy and they left their mark in her permanently tired, always a little sad eyes. This version of her, this hallucination... She doesn't look tired at all. She looks radiant, overjoyed, and so excited about the new life they were starting together.

She was sick on their wedding day, bogged down by morning sickness, and in all honesty, despite the joy and happiness of the day, they didn't sort through their issues and deal with the rough patch they were in until a few weeks later. But she was so happy that day. So carefree and full of life, practically vibrating with excitement before the wedding, so serene and content and at peace after. They didn't have a proper wedding so they didn't have a reception and they didn't have a cake and there were no toasts, but she still made him dance with her. It was so important for her to find the perfect first dance song. She wanted them to have something like that. Something that belonged to just the two of them. She glowed. She's glowing now.

''Do you remember this?'' She asks, doing a twirl for him in her white gown. ''Our last uncomplicated moment.''

''You're not real,'' he gets out, barely a croak. This is a dream. He's dreaming. He's still dreaming. ''I'm - I'm hallucinating,'' he mumbles. ''That's all. This is a hallucination.'' Not like it would be the first time. He turns away from her and squeezes his eyes shut. Maybe it's this place. Maybe they shouldn't have left Washington. He's gotten too used to the fresh air.

There is something very wrong with this bunker.

It has to be. It's full of cursed objects and magic and he's been out of the game too long. He would be a perfect target. Something is messing with him. Something is twisting him up inside.

''It's not the bunker,'' her soft voice says, and when he opens his eyes, she's right there beside him, perched on top of the counter. ''You need to get more sleep.''

''I got sleep,'' he snaps. ''Four hours. Fuck off.''

She rolls her eyes and sighs and it's all so familiar, it's all so her, that it's excruciating. ''Four hours isn't enough to make up for how much sleep you've lost over the past few months. And it's been really bad these past couple of weeks, hasn't it? Don't lie to me. I know.''

''Shut up.''

''You're not well, Dean.''

''Obviously,'' he sneers. ''I'm hallucinating.''

''And the nightmares,'' she holds up a finger. ''Don't forget about those.''

''Oh, how could I?''

''Why has it gotten worse recently?'' She questions, crossing her arms, looking at him intently. ''Any idea?''

His fingers grip the counter. ''No.''

''No?'' She leans into his space and he swears he can smell her perfume. ''You sure it doesn't have anything to do with that profile Iris West is writing? The one about me? Come on, baby. You've spent hours going over my life and my death with her. You didn't think that'd shake some stuff loose?'' She moves as if to tap the side of his head with her index finger, but he never actually feels her touch. ''You know better than that.''

He looks over at her, stone faced, and offers nothing.

She hops off the counter, dress swishing around her. She looks beautiful in that dress, all that intricately embroidered lace and tulle and chiffon. She looked beautiful all the time. He looks away from her again. There was never a moment where she was not the most beautiful woman in the room to him. He should have told her that more often. That she was beautiful. That he loved her. Why didn't he?

Is that what he's trying to do with Iris West and her Blackbird piece? Would it even matter? If that's what he's doing, if that's what this is, one last ''I love you'' to make up for all the times he didn't say it, will she hear it? Will it bring her back?

Stupid questions, he knows.

There is no bringing her back. He has tried. He's still trying. But he killed Darhk, he tried to make a deal at the Crossroads, he tried to trade his life for hers with Death, he tried to find a witch, and he's trying to get Iris to write her back to life, and Laurel's still gone. Still in the box he let them put her in, six feet underground, cold and rotting. She's just the ghost at the end of the bed now, and he will have to learn to live in the space she left behind.

But… What if he can't?

''Do you get how dangerous sleep deprivation is?'' She sounds like she's in court. ''You're impaired, Dean.''

Stubbornly, he sets his jaw and glares at her. ''Go away.''

''Stop thinking about me then.'' A strangled, hysterical laugh leaves his lips. Stop thinking about her. As if it's that easy. If he could stop thinking about her, about that night, he would. ''What do you want from me?''

''It's not a good idea for you to be alone right now.''

''Yeah, you're right,'' he deadpans. ''This is so much better.''

''Not me, dummy,'' she shakes her head. ''You should call Sam. You're running on fumes and this isn't just about you. You have Mary to think about. She needs you to - ''

''I know what my child needs,'' he hisses. ''And you know what? I know what I need. I need you to go. I don't need some fucking figment of my imagination telling me how to parent.'' He turns his back on her, striding over to the counter to get something to clean up the spilled coffee. ''Especially not one that looks like my dead wife. How the hell would she know what Mary needs? She wasn't even there for most of her life.'' He stops short, clamping his mouth shut. He releases a shaky breath. No, that's not... He didn't mean that. He meant...

What did he mean?

He turns back around, but she's gone. He runs a hand through his hair. He should have tried harder to get some sleep. He cleans up the mess of broken glass and coffee on the floor and gets himself another cup of coffee with shaking hands. He's settled at the table, taking a few sips of his coffee, when he hears her voice again.

''I'm sorry.''

He looks up and his stomach twists violently, threatening to send his coffee right back up. She is not wearing her wedding dress anymore. She is sitting on the other side of the table in that hospital gown from that last night. She looks pale and sick and everything about her is dulled. Her hair looks flat and lifeless, there are deep dark circles under her puffy eyes and a light sheen of sweat on her face. She doesn't look like his pretty bird. He doesn't want to look at her, but he can't make himself look away. This is not the first time this has happened. This is not the first time his sleep deprived grief stricken mind has conjured up this illusion.

He knows it's not healthy to hallucinate your dead spouse, he knows it's not helping him to move on, but he misses her so much that he takes what he can get. He's not hungry, he's starving. He accepts whatever he can find.

''For what?''

''I know you're suffering,'' her voice is soft and choked. ''I'm sorry I did this to you.''

''You didn't.'' He bites down hard on his tongue until he tastes blood. ''She died.'' He looks down into his mug of steaming coffee. It's not strong enough. Whiskey would be strong enough. ''She was murdered. It's not like she chose to leave.''

''But what if she did?''

He looks up sharply.

She hasn't moved. She says it matter-of-factly. Cruelty is not the intention. ''That's the question, isn't it? That's what's got you all torn up inside. What if I wanted to die?''

His grip on the mug tightens. ''You need to stop talking right now.''

''Why? Strike a nerve?''

''She didn't - '' He cuts himself off, shaking his head tiredly. ''She was happy,'' he insists. ''Those last few months. Hell, that last year. Black Canary made her happier than I've seen her in a long time.'' Happier than he ever made her, that's for sure.

''Suicidal people often exhibit happiness, even calm and peace, in the days and weeks before they step off that ledge.''

He doesn't have a rebuttal to that.

''There are many ways to die, my love,'' she says. ''Maybe Black Canary was the method she chose. You ever think about that? I know you do.''

''Stop it,'' he growls. ''Stop it. That's not what it was. That's not what happened.''

''But how do you know that for sure?''

He stiffly rises to his feet. He doesn't need to hear this right now. It has been a long, shitty night. He should be getting breakfast ready. Mary will be hungry when she wakes up. She always is. She's a particular kid when it comes to food. She's not overly picky, but some days it takes her hours to eat lunch or dinner just because she eats so slowly. Sometimes she's fine, she'll sit there nicely and eat her food. Other times, not so much. She'll sit there, squirming in her seat, picking at her food because she's too busy chattering away or she wants to get back to what she was doing or because she's simply not that hungry. She eats on her own terms, no one else's. He and Laurel have never been willing to make food a fight, it's not worth the potential issues that could cause, so they just let her graze most days. She has to sit at the table with the rest of them at dinner time, no back and forth like at lunch, but she can eat at her own pace. They trust her to eat when she's hungry, which she always does. Breakfast is another story. It's the one meal a day she will eat no matter what.

He opens the fridge, surveying the groceries they bought. He knows he bought eggs. He must have. He rummages through the groceries, shoving the watermelon Mary insisted they buy to the side, moving the fresh tomatoes that he reflexively bought because Laurel always brought home fresh tomatoes from the Farmer's Market. She used to go to the Farmer's Market all the time in the summer. Every weekend. Like clockwork. She couldn't cook to save her life, but that doesn't mean she didn't eat healthy or know how to pick out the best fresh produce. Thank god for that because eating healthy was not something he grew up doing. He's not saying he's helpless, obviously he's adapted and he thinks he's doing a good job making sure his kid eats healthy in spite of his own childhood meals, but when he was a kid, meals usually consisted of SpaghettiO's, mac and cheese with hot dogs, Winchester Surprise, stale Lucky Charms, and peanut butter sandwiches. It's not a reflex for him to go for fresh produce over whatever is cheapest in the aisle of canned foods.

She was the one who taught Mary to eat tomatoes drizzled in balsamic vinegar and sprinkle salt on her watermelon and the best way to eat a mango. She and Mary used to pickle things together because it was one of the only things Laurel could do in the kitchen. His three year old likes salads. What kind of three year old likes salads? She eats kale and broccoli and blueberries and fucking pickled beets and loves apples and red bell peppers more than any junk food out there and none of that is because of him. That was all Laurel. She was responsible for at least 90% of Mary's healthy eating habits.

What if he fucks that up? What if he ruins all that hard work? He doesn't know how to pickle anything. He thinks kale is a ridiculous vegetable. What if he feeds Mary too much meat or drizzles the wrong balsamic on her tomatoes or gets her hooked on fast food because he's too sick with grief to make her a proper meal?

That what his dad did.

He used to pick blackberries with his mother. He remembers the blackberries. He remembers the sound of her laughter and the sunlight on the side of that country road outside of Lawrence and the way the berries tasted when she plucked one straight from the vine and popped it into his mouth. He hasn't eaten a fresh blackberry since he was four years old because he knows it won't taste as good as it did when he picked them with his mother. Now, when he thinks of his childhood, he mostly thinks of canned soup and gas station nachos. Never the blackberries.

He wants Mary to keep eating the tomatoes and the watermelon and the pickled beets, but what if he doesn't do any of it right? What if they never taste the same for her?

''I'm not saying anything you haven't thought about before,'' Laurel's voice says behind him and he startles. Realizes he's been standing in front of the open fridge for a few minutes thinking about blackberries and worrying about pickling things. He's losing it. ''You're thinking about it right now. You're thinking about her. If you weren't, I wouldn't be here.''

He closes his eyes. He's always thinking about her. He releases a long, slow breath. He is trying to think about breakfast. Just breakfast. Eggs, bacon, potatoes. He'll slice up a tomato and put it on the side. It's a simple breakfast. He could make it in his sleep. Mary loves this breakfast.

So did Laurel.

Still, somehow, it's always Laurel. She's like a boomerang.

It's strange how an absence can be a presence, isn't it? The empty space where she used to be looms over him like a dark shadow every minute of every day, worse when he's sleep deprived, so large and threatening and all consuming that even something as small as breakfast can swallow him whole. It's fucking ridiculous. Grief is a ridiculous thing.

This was a Sunday morning breakfast for her. She never ate it on the weekdays. Her breakfast was always the same on those days. Avocado toast with a poached egg on top and a generous sprinkling of pepper and flaky sea salt. He made that breakfast for her every weekday morning for almost the entire length of time they were together. Occasionally there were some deviations - a liberal drizzling of hot sauce there, some sliced fruit there, every few weeks he'd successfully sneak a few strips of bacon or some lox onto her plate - and there was a stretch of time when she was pregnant where avocado toast was replaced by whatever she could keep down, mostly pop tarts during her first trimester for some reason, but by and large, her morning routine was avocado toast.

He fucking hated that avocado toast, but here we are. There are avocadoes on the counter that he didn't even realize he bought until he was unloading the groceries. His hands feel empty and useless. He would give anything to be able to make her that stupid, disgusting avocado toast again.

Quietly, he shuts the fridge without grabbing the eggs and turns to look at her. She's closer now, but not too close, standing a safe distance away, staring at him intently. ''I know you're angry,'' she says.

He looks at her dulled eyes, her pale skin, and the boxy, frumpy hospital gown that somehow makes her look small and fragile. ''Not with you.''

She smiles. It doesn't reach her eyes. It doesn't look like her smile. He wonders if that means he is starting to forget her smile. ''Liar.'' She moves as if she wants to approach him, but doesn't. ''It's okay to admit it. Here's the thing people will never tell you about grief because they don't want it to be true: it's okay to be angry. It's part of the process.'' She says it so kindly, like she thinks she's doing him some big favor by telling him something he already knows. Yeah, no shit it's okay to be angry.

This just in: it's okay to be a human person and experience human emotions.

What a concept.

Dean rolls his eyes at the nothing standing in front of him and goes back to breakfast. He pulls out the eggs and the bacon and the tomatoes. He decides to get started on the potatoes first.

''All I'm saying is I know you think about it,'' she says, hopping up on the counter just as he is starting to scrub at the potatoes. ''And that's okay. I got pregnant and you became a civilian. You quit hunting. Gave up the violence and the bloodshed to become a stay at home dad because you didn't want to leave anymore. I did the opposite. All I ever did was leave. How can you not be angry?''

He clenches his jaw. He ignores her. He keeps scrubbing the potatoes.

''I had everything,'' she goes on, completely oblivious. ''I had you, I had Mary, I had a career. I had the house in the suburbs with the backyard and the garden and the apple tree. I had everything I ever wanted, and it still wasn't enough. I still chose to throw myself into danger knowing it could end this way. How reckless of me. How selfish.''

''You were trying to do the right thing.''

''I left you, Dean. I left her.''

He stops what he's doing, hands going still. ''You didn't mean to.''

''Didn't I?'' She says it so callously. ''Just because you stuck your fingers down my throat to get me to throw up the pills doesn't mean I stopped wanting to die. It just means I got better at hiding it. Doesn't that make you mad? I had a life. We could have grown old together. We were supposed to grow old together. But I just had to put on that mask.''

His mouth feels too dry. Calmly, avoiding looking at her, he starts peeling the potatoes. ''Saved a lot of people with that mask.''

''And that makes it better? That erases your pain?''

He pauses, but only briefly. ''I didn't say that.''

''Why won't you let yourself admit you're angry?''

''I am angry. Oliver - ''

''No,'' she cuts in, voice firm. ''This has nothing to do with him. Or my parents. Or my sister. This doesn't even have to do with Damien Darhk. They're not who you're mad at and you know it. It's me. It's been me since that night in April.'' She leans in close to whisper something in his ear. ''Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed?''

The paring knife he's using to peel the potatoes slips and slices through his finger, blood dripping down onto the potatoes. He curses and turns the tap back on to rinse his finger. The blood runs red, swirling around the drain. Those potatoes are ruined now. He'll have to throw them away.

Everybody leaves you, Dean.

You noticed?

His mother said that to him once. No. Not his mother. Just some cruel copy of her made by Zachariah. Mom never said that to him. Mom would never. Just like Laurel didn't say it to him. Just like Laurel would never. He looks over at the image of her, hollow and empty.

''Really?'' She asks. ''Nothing?'' There is no bitterness or cruelty in her eyes or the tone of her voice. Just emptiness. There is nothing there at all. ''Come on, Dean. I left you!''

He says nothing. He turns off the tap and grabs a paper towel to hold against his still bleeding finger, turning his back on her.

''I left you here to clean up my mess,'' she says. ''You're a single parent now because of me. Worse than that. You're a widower. Damaged goods. No one will ever want to touch you now. Too much baggage. You - ''

And something inside of him just snaps.

He whirls around to glower at her, chest burning, and then something happens. He opens his mouth and all that aching pain, all that anger, all that burning just comes pouring out. ''Now?'' He lets out a choked, sharp laugh. ''I'm a single parent now? Sweetie, I've been a single parent since the day that girl was born. You weren't a mother. You were the cool aunt who showed up sometimes for dinner or on the weekends, but you were not a parent.''

She flinches, wounded, and recoils. She's not real, none of this is real, he's unsure if he's even real at this point, but her movements, her sudden cowering is all so un-Laurel-like that it just serves to make him even angrier.

''You wanna know why you weren't a parent, Laur?'' He snarls it out mockingly, advancing on her. ''Because you weren't interested. You never were. I raised that girl. You had fuck all to do with it. You were a useless coward just like your mother.'' He spits it all out venomously, with the intent to hurt, to get her to hurt the way he hurts, to get her to leave him alone. ''You never needed us the way we needed you. Didn't want us the way you wanted booze or benzos or Black fucking Canary. We weren't enough.'' If his voice cracks and breaks a little, it's okay. No one's there to hear it. She certainly isn't. She never will be again. ''You wanted to die,'' he accuses. ''You made the choices that put you there that night. And I'm just the asshole who didn't realize what you were doing until it was too late.'' He stops, trying to catch his breath, but the air doesn't quite make it to his lungs.

He goes back to the potatoes. He pretends it's because he needs to get them out of the sink, but it's really just because he can't stand to look at her any longer. He plucks the contaminated potatoes out of the sink one by one and throws them, rather aggressively, into the trash. But then there are no more potatoes and he is just left with his hands.

He clutches at the sink. ''You were pregnant.'' It's the first time he has ever said that out loud. It's the first time he has even acknowledged that she was not the only loss that night. It hasn't mattered much to him. He's worked really hard to make it not matter. It was a lump of cells. A non-viable nothing doesn't matter. ...But it does. It all matters. Every piece of that night. It always will. How could it not? Their entire future went up in smoke. They would be having another baby. Looking for a bigger house for their family. Talking about moving. They could be happy.

Instead, they're here.

Laurel's rotting in the ground, Mary's having nightmares, and Dean's drowning because he's forgotten how to swim. ''Did you know?'' He doesn't look away from the sink. There are still bloody water droplets in the sink. He'll have to clean that before he can do anything with the remaining potatoes. ''Did you know you were pregnant?''

There is, predictably, no answer. The thing standing in his kitchen right now cannot tell him anything he doesn't already know. He turns back to her slowly. Even his own hallucination pities him. ''I thought you were better,'' he says softly. ''I thought you were getting help and everything was going to be okay. I thought everything was okay. But we were never going to be enough for you, were we? No, you wanted the sky.'' He smiles. It feels hollow and wrong. ''Mary and I - We just held you down. Held you back.'' He shakes his head. ''Is this what you wanted?''

She licks her lips. She begins to reach out for him. ''Dean - ''

''No, really,'' he insists, voice flat. ''Tell me. Please. Is this what you wanted?'' He spreads his arms wide, looking around the cold kitchen. ''Are you better off dead? I need to know. Are you are peace now? Because,'' he laughs shakily. ''We sure as hell aren't. We didn't sign up for this. We didn't ask for this. Even if you did. I hope you're happy now, wherever you are, but we're still here. Stuck in the blast crater you left behind.'' He sinks back into his seat at the table and stares at his mug of lukewarm coffee without taking a sip. His injured finger throbs, a dull, constant source of discomfort. It's nothing compared to the pain he feels everywhere else.

His hallucination is still standing there in that hospital gown, not saying a word.

His wedding ring has begun to feel like an unbearable weight lately. He wants to tell her that, but he doesn't know how. He doesn't know what it means. Is it grief weighing it down? Anger? Guilt? Is this just the price of love?

Was it worth it?

She sits down in the chair next to him. She's wearing her coat and those old Converse sneakers with her purse over her shoulder, ready to leave. She looks the way she looked the last time she walked out their front door. He hasn't been able to remember what he said to her before she left. He doesn't know why that's important. Their last words were shared in that hospital room. He told her he wouldn't leave her. He said, ''I'm not going anywhere until we can leave this place together.'' He hopes that brought her some comfort in those last minutes, those last seconds. But he can't remember the last thing he said to her before she left the house that night. It's been eating away at him. It was their last moment of normalcy, and he can't remember it.

He wants to tell her to take her coat off, put the purse down, and stay. He knows he can't. It wouldn't make a difference.

He looks at her, the way she was, the healthy glow, her slightly disheveled hair, the worn out Converse. He tries to take his time looking at her like this. Breathe her in. Study her so he can remember her this way, vibrant and alive, rather than how she looked in the hospital.

''You're half of who I am now, Laurel,'' he says. ''Did you not get that?'' He's practically pleading now, more desperate and despairing and lonely rather than angry. ''You're half of me and now you're just gone. Our daughter's having night terrors. She's screaming for you. And that's on you. Her pain is your fault. This is what you left her with. Your left our baby girl here to do this without you. I hate you for that. You were selfish. You took everything.'' He swallows hard. ''I'm angry,'' he says, but he just sounds tired. ''I'm so fucking angry I feel like I can't breathe. You did this to us. You wanted to die? Congrats, you got what you wanted. Now we have to live with the consequences.''

There.

It's all out. All that sickness, that grief, that burning anger. He should feel better now that he has purged himself of that toxic sludge. He should feel whole again. He doesn't. None of the pain is gone. No weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He just feels out of breath, vaguely nauseated, and guilty. Maybe it would help if he knew everything he just spewed was all bullshit, but he doesn't. He can't.

He will remain steadfast in his outward belief that she didn't want to die. If Mary ever asks, when Mary asks, he will tell her that her mother fought tooth and nail to stay. He will tell her that of course her mother didn't want to die. He will tell her that Black Canary was a persona she created because she wanted to help people. He will choose to believe that himself.

But the reality is, he will never know the truth. The single worst night of their marriage was that that February night in 2014, the night of her suicide attempt. She worked her ass off to heal, to get better, and he did everything he could to support her and to help her through that darkness and into the light, but... You can't take that back. You can't put the pills back in the bottle.

There is a Before and After now and despite all her hard work, despite the marked difference in her mental state, he never once stopped worrying that one day, she would try again. He never once stopped being terrified that one day, she would succeed. Now he'll never know if she did.

There is no making that better.

He can scream himself hoarse, vent away every particle of anger left in his body, sob out all the grief in his bones, but then he will still be left with his bones, with his body, with the empty side of the bed, and he will never truly know if the Black Canary saved her life or took it.

''I'm sorry,'' the thing that isn't Laurel says.

What else can she say?

He shakes his head at her. ''That's not enough.''

''No,'' she agrees. ''It isn't.''

Her chair scrapes back against the concrete floor and he looks down into his cup of coffee to avoid watching her stand up to leave. She is not there when he looks back up. All he is left with is a cold cup of mostly untouched coffee, a finger that is still sluggishly bleeding, and the much too loud silence of the underground.

It was Never My Love by The Association.

That was their first dance song. They had spent twenty minutes vetoing each other's choices (his first pick was Zeppelin's Thank You, hers was My Dearest Darling by Etta James) and so they compromised. Picked out something new. Something that wasn't his and wasn't hers, but could be theirs. It seemed like the right choice at the time. It had a very sixties in Laurel Canyon vibe, which was the era where their musical tastes seemed to overlap the most and the place she was named after. It seemed fitting. She cried when it started playing. She insisted on playing it every year on their anniversary and making him slow dance with her in the living room, like they did the night they got married. But now that all of that is gone, he can't help but think...

He should have just let her have the Etta James song. It seems like an absurd thing to be thinking about, but he should have given her the damn song. It's a good song sung by a legend. He should have given her what she wanted. He should have given her everything she wanted. He should have let her have it. And he would have. If that's what she really wanted, he would have given it to her.

He would have given her Etta James.

He would have given her the fresh tomatoes.

He would have given her California.

He would have given her the avocado toast.

He would have stayed with her in that hospital room until they could have left that place together.

Did she know that? Did she know he would have given her that? Did she know he would have given her anything?

He hopes she did.

Numbly, he drags his achingly tired body out of the kitchen and back to Room #11 to check on Mary. She is still asleep, sprawled out like a starfish on the bed, completely unaware that her grieving, broken father is rapidly becoming unglued.

He is not in a good place right now. That has been made extraordinarily clear by the consistent insomnia and, you know, all the hallucinations. Still, he is at least with it enough to recognize that the mirage of his wife was right about one thing. It is not a good idea for him to be alone right now. It's not safe for him or for Mary. Quietly, he grabs his phone, slips back out of the bedroom, and calls his brother.

Sam picks up halfway through the second ring.

.

.

.

November, 2016

Dean looks at the small pouch in his hand.

It looks harmless enough.

It's made of soft purple fabric and tied neatly with black ribbon. It smells heavily of lavender, with a faint twinge of something coppery and metallic. When he opens it up, cautiously untying the ribbon to peek inside, it looks decidedly less harmless. The purple pouch is full of blood soaked herbs, little twigs, a blood smeared coin, small bones that he is hoping are just chicken bones, and what looks like teeth. He sighs heavily, but fastens the bag back up.

He hates hex bags. Hates them. And he really hates that he is about to hide them all over his four year old's bedroom. He glances over at Cas, watching him struggle with a lighter, trying to get the bundle of herbs in his hand smoldering.

Cas never once looks back, never even gives a sign that he's paying any attention whatsoever to Dean, but he still says, as if he can sense the overwhelming paranoia in the room, ''None of this is going to hurt her, Dean. It's meant to protect her.''

''Doesn't mean I like the idea of filling my child's room with death traps.'' He still vividly remembers his own run in with a hex bag and it was nearly a decade ago. Hard to forget puking up your slowly liquefying internal organs on a filthy motel carpet. Even through his own wariness, he still approaches Cas and wordlessly takes the lighter from him and flicks it on without a problem, holding the flame to the bundle of herbs.

''Hanna assured me this was safe,'' Cas says patiently, waving away some of the smoke and blowing at the herbs. ''If this witch steps foot in here, no matter what form she's in, these hex bags will weaken and trap her.''

''Hmm.'' Dean slips the lighter back in Cas' shirt pocket and looks at the pile of nearly identical bags sprawled out on the bed Mary was sleeping in only moments ago. ''Wait.'' A frown etches its way onto his face. ''This is targeted, right? Made for this specific witch? Because I'd like to remind you that Mary, Laurel, and Sara all have witchcraft in their blood and if I'm right, they might actually be - ''

''Related to this witch,'' Cas finishes with a terse nod. ''I know. It's a targeted protection plan. It will only trap this one witch.'' He looks over at Dean, troubled. ''Edith Hart, if your theory is correct. If she comes for Mary, she's out of luck. Though, for the record,'' he tacks on. ''I don't believe she will. If she has any sense of self-preservation, she should realize that she has exhausted the idea of using Mary as an unwitting accomplice.''

Dean is, in all honesty, reasonably certain that Cas is right. Using Mary was a desperate ploy that's unlikely to be repeated. It was - no pun intended - a Hail Mary. This witch, whoever she is, whether she's Edie or someone else, is unhinged and frustrated, but he doesn't see her going after Mary again. Him, on the other hand...

Well.

If he's right and this witch is Laurel's long dead cousin, a victim of his family, he could be in trouble.

''All right.'' He scoops up a few of the hex bags. ''How am I doing this?''

''Hanna said a simplified Devil's Trap.''

''So a pentagram.''

''Yes, that sounds right.'' Cas holds up the smoldering (and stinking) bundle of herbs. ''The four corners of the room will also need to be cleansed and holy water and blessed oil need to be sprinkled on the bed.''

Dean scans the room quickly, easily plotting out a pentagram. It's an ingenious invention, if he's being honest. A Devil's Trap for witches. He could've used that back when he was hunting. Sam still could. He should tell Sam about it as soon as he gets back. Dad would have loved it. Probably would have stolen the idea and taken the credit for it. He still hates the hex bag aspect of it. He will stand by that. Parents don't let their kids run with scissors. They don't let them play with knives. Yet here is he about to fill Mary's bedroom with chicken bones and teeth of unknown origin. That's something far shaper than knives. He's grateful for the help, he is, but...

Mary's sleeping in their bedroom until this is all over. Their bedroom has already been cleansed and blessed and he will do whatever else needs to be done to make it a safe place, but he wants her with him at all times. He's not taking any chances anymore.

''Can I ask you a question?'' He grabs another hex bag. ''Do you trust Hanna?''

Cas pauses what he's doing, lowering the herbs briefly. He considers the question. ''If I didn't before,'' he says slowly. ''I do now. I don't know what kind of person she is or where her true allegiances lie, but I know this witch had her brother killed. She's out for blood now.''

''Does that make her an asset or a liability?''

''I guess we'll find out.'' Cas offers nothing else, no wise words or advice, just his quiet presence as he goes back to cleansing the four corners of the room.

Dean hesitantly goes back to placing the hex bags around the room. He should have known something was up with Mary. She's been cranky lately, overly fussy, acting out more than usual, and he and Laurel both brushed it off because of the cold she was dealing with, but he should have seen something was wrong. He's been with her almost every moment of every day of her life. He knows her better than anyone. It's not unusual for her to be ornery when she's sick, but this was different.

The other day she had a tantrum over nothing and got so riled up that she swatted at him. Completely melted down, guilty but refusing to apologize, running and hiding from him when he tried to talk to her. He gets that she's four and she's too little to understand what to do with all her big emotions, but she hasn't done anything like that since she was two. Even today's tantrum was off. He should have known it wasn't just because of her cold.

A few days ago, she wet her bed while she was wide awake and waiting for them to come in and read to her. Completely soaked through her pull up, her pajamas, her comforter, her sheets, right down to the mattress cover. They figured she'd had a coughing fit and an accident happened.

Mary refuted that and said she did it because she ''wanted Mommy to come help her.''

Laurel felt so bad about it, blaming herself for being too distracted and not spending enough time with her since she got back. Ultimately, they just shrugged it off. Chalked it up to strange but normal kid behavior. Kids go through a lot of annoying phases after all. Terrible twos, threenagers, fuck you fours. They're defiant, they act out, they want attention, they're good at making you feel guilty, like you're always doing something wrong. That's what they thought it was. But he should have known better.

He should have known better.

This is Mary's bedroom. This is her home. She is supposed to be able to be vulnerable here. This is where she sleeps. If he can't keep her safe here, where can he keep her safe?

Dean tucks a hex bag into the closet, on the top shelf, far out of her reach. ''You know, there's this game they play at Mary's preschool,'' he starts, breaking the silence. ''Rabbits in a hole. That's what they call it.''

Something about the tone of his voice must give Cas pause because he stops and turns, mouth turned down into a frown.

''The teacher tells them they're rabbits and there's a fox on the loose,'' Dean continues. ''They need to get in their rabbit holes so the fox won't find them.'' He looks around the room, trying to focus and imagine the points of a pentagram. He reaches back up and moves the hex bag in the closet slightly to the left. ''The kids run into the closet, the teacher shuts the door, turns off the lights, and the quietest kid gets some stickers or whatever.''

He can see Cas trying to come up with something to say, wondering what some convoluted game of hide and seek has to do with anything.

''Some of the kids love it,'' Dean says. ''Some don't. Mary hates it. I think it makes her nervous.'' He moves across the room, mapping out where to put the next bag. ''None of them realize what it really is. It's a safety drill.'' He reluctantly drops a hex bag behind Mary's dresser. ''In case of an active shooter situation.''

Cas stops cold at that. ''She's four.''

''What does that matter?'' Dean asks. ''She goes to school. If you're old enough to go to school, you're old enough to be gunned down. I think we've learned that.'' He leans back against the dresser. ''I remember hearing these two women talking about it at pick up one day. One was in favor of the drills, the other thought they were unnecessary. She was going on and on about how they were harming her child, planting unnecessary fear, and stealing innocence. She said school shootings were rare and only happened at public high schools in bad neighborhoods. Nobody would shoot up a bunch of little kids. The other woman looked her right in the eye and said, tell that to the twenty dead kindergarteners in Connecticut. Shut the other chick up real quick.''

Cas doesn't know what to say to that. ''Dean...''

''Five days a week, I send my daughter to school and it feels like I'm sending her into a warzone,'' Dean admits. It's a dramatic thing to say, out of place and seemingly overdramatic, but it's not an uncommon thought among parents nowadays. It's not something that's up for debate. Reality is what it is in this modern world.

We send our young kids to school and hope they come home alive at the end of the day. We send our teens to school and leave our phones on all day, hoping we don't get those last texts halfway through the day, those last desperate words, If I don't make it, I love you.

The moment this country decided it was okay to throw away the lives of twenty slaughtered babies who just wanted to make gingerbread houses with their parents, the moment it was decided that their deaths were an acceptable loss, was the moment this country doomed all children to an educational lifetime of fear and rabbits in a fucking hole.

He didn't think about that much before. He always figured it would be a little hypocritical for him - the guy with an illegal arsenal in the trunk of his car - to have an opinion on things like that. Things change when you're a parent.

Laurel always had an opinion on it. Of course she did. She always thinks of everything. He can still remember her sitting at the dining room table shortly after Mary's second birthday, glasses on, nervously twisting her wedding rings while she researched preschools, searching for one that was safe enough. None of them were. Not to her. The one she picked, the one he eventually got Mary a spot in just by pure luck and someone else cancelling their spot, was her first choice, but when they took a tour last year, she had come out frowning. Told him, ''Everything's so spread out. What if she needs to run?''

He brushed it off. It wasn't something on his radar at the time. The whole concept of school seemed light years away and out of focus to him. He didn't think about it. When it came to school, his mind had been more on how far away it was, the cost, and how it would accommodate his HOH child. Right up until he led a fearful, teary Mary into her classroom and the first thing he noticed was the distance between the tables where the kids sat and the emergency exits. If she ever, for any reason, had to flee, she'd trip and fall. She wouldn't be able to run that far that fast.

If the foxes ever come, they'll get his little rabbit.

''It's in my head every second she's gone,'' he says. ''She's at school, a place where she should feel safe and secure - and she's not. I think about it constantly. I think a lot of parents do. If something were to happen, it's out of my hands. I'm not there. I can't protect her. Someone could walk in there and take her away from me like that.'' He snaps his fingers. ''I wouldn't be able to do a damn thing. Because that's where we're at. We've got three and four year olds doing active shooter drills at preschool and Mary can't wear her silly light up shoes because what if the fox sees them. That's where we are.'' He chuckles bitterly, looking around the bedroom. ''But when she's at home...'' He trails off and has to swallow down something. ''I'm supposed to be able to protect her here. This is supposed to be the place, the one place, where I can keep her safe. And I didn't. I couldn't. I didn't even know there was a threat.''

''How could you have known?'' Cas questions, calm. ''There were perfectly reasonable explanations for her behavior. How could you have - ''

''Because I know her,'' Dean snaps, a little too harshly, unwilling to let go of his stubborn (and needless) guilt. ''I know her better than anyone. I should have spotted it.''

''Well, now you know,'' Cas tells him. ''You can't change the past, but now that we know this witch has been trying to manipulate her, we can take the necessary steps to protect her from now on.'' He steps over to the corner of the room by the bedroom door. He holds up the bundle of smoldering herbs and waves it at the ceiling, flicks droplets of holy water and blessed oil at the walls.

It...It looks a little ridiculous.

Then again, Dean's the one holding a tiny purple pouch full of animal bones and someone else's blood. He sighs and leaves the dresser behind, heading over to where Mary's Captain America shield is propped up against the desk in the corner. He picks it up. Tests the weight of the tiny plastic thing. She's never even seen any Marvel movies. Thea put on the first Avengers movie once a few months ago and Mary was bored about fifteen minutes in, complaining about the lack of puppies. Every time a new character would come on screen, she'd ask if they had a pet dog.

''Who's that?'' She'd asked, sitting on the floor, stuffed animal clutched to her chest, pointing at the screen while Thea sat behind her, brushing out her wet hair.

''That's Iron Man,'' Thea said.

''Does he have a dog?''

''No.''

''What about a bearded dragon?''

''Uh, I don't think so.''

''A horse?''

''Probably not.''

''Who's that?''

''That's Captain America.''

''Does he have a dog?''

''No, Mary. No dog.''

''Why not?''

''I don't know. He's probably too busy to keep up with a dog.''

''He should have a dog.''

None of the Avengers held her attention. Not even Thor or Black Widow. She wasn't interested in superhero movies. She lived in one. None of the big budget superheroes could hold a candle to her mother.

''Nothing bad is going to happen to Mary,'' Cas says.

Dean spins the shield. ''What about the bad things that have already happened to her?'' He is not just talking about this witch burrowing her way into his girl's head. He knows that and Cas knows that, but neither of them talk about it.

Cas takes the herbs and the holy water and the blessed oil over to the other side of the room, leaving behind a lingering trail of smoke that smells like a college dorm room or that Christmas craft fair that the moms at the playground keep trying to get him to go to. ''One way or another, this will end,'' Cas says. ''Right now, we need to focus on her safety. After, we'll focus on her healing. That said, she is stronger than you think.''

Of course she is. She's her mother's daughter. She's his daughter. She's got the Winchester stubbornness and the Lance bravery. She'll be the strongest one out of all of them. She just shouldn't have to be. She's four. Four year olds shouldn't have to be strong and brave. They should just be able to laugh and play and be free. Mary's biggest worries should be getting over her cough, what's going on in Paw Patrol, and what game to play on the playground at school. She shouldn't be worrying about her mother dying or whether some evil witch is going to infiltrate her dreams.

Dean puts the shield back where he found it, props it back up against the desk, and tucks the last hex bag behind it. The second he does, there is a flash of light and a wave of warm, somehow peaceful wind. It spreads, rolling across the entire room. It rustles the pages of the open book on the desk, knocks over the Black Canary action figure on the dresser, and rakes through his hair. It immediately extinguishes the bundle of herbs Cas is holding and as soon as the wave hits the lamp on the bedside table, the light blinks out, leaving them in the dark.

Dean raises his eyebrows, reluctantly impressed. He looks over at Cas, catching his friend's eye. ''Huh.''

Cas looks around the room, examining the invisible protective shield. ''Are you sure it's a good idea to keep Sam and Sara out of the loop on this?''

''It's not like they can do anything from in the air,'' Dean says. ''No reason to upset them. We just need to get her back before they get home.''

''And,'' Cas begins his next question hesitantly. ''If we get her back and she's...not herself? What then?''

That, Dean can't answer.

He'd be lying if he said it hasn't crossed his mind. If Laurel comes home soulless, what will they do? What will she be to them? Who will they be to her? They'd have to restrain her. Keep her away from Mary. Find a way to shield themselves from her cry. Other than that, he has no idea. He's hoping they won't have to figure that out.

As if on cue, the bedroom door opens and Thea's there, eyes a little wider, face a little less pale. ''We've got her,'' she declares, breathless and relieved. ''Hanna found Laurel's location.''

Dean doesn't need to be told twice. He tears out of the bedroom without a word, racing down the hallway and through the living room.

Hanna, still sitting at the dining room table, looks shaky and ashen faced, but grimly satisfied, sipping slowly at a glass of water.

Everyone else is crowded around the table, staring down at the map of the city spread out. ''I don't understand,'' Felicity's saying. ''What would she be doing there?''

''Where?'' Dean barrels right past the formalities, immediately focusing his attention on the drop of red on the map, burrowed deep in the city. ''Where is she?''

''The docks,'' Quentin says.

Dean takes a brief moment to look over at him, taking note of John wrapping a bandage around a laceration on Quentin's arm. He says nothing about it, entirely too distracted. ''The docks?''

''Why would he take her there?'' Cas questions, popping up beside Dean to take a look at the map.

''I don't know,'' Hanna says. Her voice is raspy and quiet.

''Maybe she's gonna make her walk the plank,'' Dinah suggests from the other end of the table where she's sitting, separated from the rest of the group, with her feet propped up on the table, an open bag off Flamin' Hot Cheetos in her lap, drinking her Earl Grey.

''Ignore her,'' Oliver says, glowering down at her.

She has zero reaction other than popping another Cheeto into her mouth.

''This is her?'' Dean blatantly ignores the peanut gallery, pointing to the droplet of blood. He waits for Hanna to nod before he sinks into the chair next to her and tugs the map over to him. He stares at it for a minute, the only tangible evidence they have that his wife is even still alive, and then he glances up at Quentin. ''Your blood?''

A shrug. ''She said she needed a blood connection.''

''It was either him or your daughter,'' Hanna confirms, before adding, rather hastily, ''He's fine. It's a flesh wound. Don't stress about it.''

''How did you get past your mother's cloaking spell?'' Cas asks, picking up the nearby mortar and pestle to scan the ingredients, lifting it up to smell.

Hanna squirms in her seat, just enough to catch Dean's attention. ''I weakened it enough to punch a hole in it.''

''How?''

The girl grimaces. ''I...may have poisoned her,'' she admits. ''Just a little.''

Dean snaps back to attention. ''You poisoned your mother?''

She looks slightly green around the gills at the admission, but the second he questions her, she straightens right up, looking miffed. ''I didn't have a choice,'' she says, indignant and defensive. ''I did what had to be done to find Laurel. And I did.'' She gestures to the map, the drop of blood that, upon closer inspection, almost appears to be pulsing, alive somehow. ''There's your girl,'' she says. ''I found her for you. You're welcome.''

''You're like a walking Lifetime movie,'' Dinah quips from the other end of the table, taking an obnoxiously loud slurp of her tea.

Dean gives her a flat look. ''Zip it, Joan Jett,'' he tosses back at her lazily. ''And just as a quick warning, if you get Cheeto dust on my curtains, I will feed you to my psychotic doppelganger.''

''Is...'' Thea looks at Hanna, brows furrowed in both concern and a healthy dose of fear. ''Is your mother...?''

''She's alive,'' Hanna says. ''But she'll be very sick. I put a hex on her. It's something my great great grandmother developed. It plants a toxic substance of your choice in the bloodstream and it grows and grows and poisons the victim from the inside out. I used mistletoe at first, but that's not strong enough to do enough damage so I added rue.'' She clears her throat, uncomfortable. ''My grandmother used it on my grandfather actually. She chose Oleander.'' She peers up at them with her big, unassuming eyes. ''It took root in him and he died within 24 hours. Never even knew what was happening to him. He had flowers growing out of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Awful way to die.'' She says it all easily, with a disconcertingly detached sort of frankness.

When he raises his eyes to look at her warily, he catches sight of Felicity over her shoulder frantically mouthing ''what the fuck, what the fuck'' to Oliver, who can only helplessly shrug in response.

Dean flicks his gaze to the other end of the table, where Cas looks mildly concerned but mostly impatient.

Dinah looks...unnervingly giddy, stuffing Cheetos into her mouth and listening to Hanna's tale of what can only be described as a curious and unusual murder with reverent glee.

Quentin is the one who breaks the deeply uncomfortable silence with an incredibly dry and flippant comment of, ''I guess I must have missed that episode of Bewitched.''

''What a fun hobby you have there, Hanna,'' Thea adds on.

''Oh, he was a terrible person,'' Hanna says, reaching for her glass of water. ''I never met him but Mom says he was a mean drunk. Used to beat Gran black and blue. He had it coming.'' She takes a sip of water and then folds her hands in her laps, looking strangely demure, but mostly very, very tired. ''Clearly self-defense.''

Dean eyes her carefully, but cannot bring himself to care that much.

''Anyway,'' the rejected CW pilot witch says, hurriedly moving past it when she finally snaps out of it and notices everyone is staring at her. ''My dad will need to reverse it immediately to save her life. It'll take both him and my mom out of the equation. Two less witches you'll have to deal with.''

''Any chance he'll try to sling something nasty back at you?'' Dean asks.

Hanna looks, briefly, curious. ''I suppose he could try.'' Her lips curl up into a ferocious but fleeting grin. ''But my father is a Borrower. Every bit of witchcraft he knows, he knows because we taught him. Mine is a birthright. He can try to bounce the hex back at me. He will fail.''

''And Laurel?''

''She's alive. I know that. It's a relatively strong signal.''

''I'm sorry,'' Felicity blurts out. ''Am I the only one still stuck on the whole flowers growing out of someone's face thing?''

''Hang on,'' John says, hands grasping onto the back of a chair, looking at Hanna. ''What do you mean it's a relatively strong signal?''

''I mean it's strong but not as strong as I'd like it to be,'' she says. ''We know she's been drugged so it's likely just from that, but it could mean she's injured.''

''How injured?''

''No idea. Good news is that if she's at the docks, I'm confident she still has her soul.''

Oliver looks at the map, then back at Hanna. ''How can you be sure?''

''I was kept at arm's length,'' Hanna says. ''I don't know all the particulars of this witch's organization, but I do know that the soul extractions happen at the witch's compound. They'd have to. It's the only place she'd be able to control the soul eater. That's just basic knowledge. It's a...risky thing she's doing. Trapping and feeding a soul eater. She's basically using it like some people use cats to catch mice. She needs an extremely controlled environment with the appropriate safeguards put in place. There's no way she'd risk letting the soul eater loose at the docks. Especially not after the disaster at the motel. It's too dangerous.''

''Then why the docks?''

''Like I said,'' Hanna licks her lips. ''No idea. She...'' She pauses, pressing her lips together.

''What?'' Cas narrows his eyes at her. ''Hanna.''

''I don't...'' She squirms again. ''She has expensive taste. I know she has a lot of, like, witchcraft memorabilia brought in from other countries. Some of it is really, really rare. Artifacts, talismans, cursed objects, several different grimoires. Stuff like that. She likes to collect things. I think she sells some of it too.''

''I'm sorry,'' Quentin cuts in. ''Are you saying she's a smuggler?''

''I guess? I'm not sure,'' says Hanna. ''I know she's not a natural witch. She wasn't born with the power she has. She had to steal it. Doesn't mean she doesn't like to act the part. She's obsessed with the craft. That's obvious just from being in her house. I was confined to one room and I've never seen so many priceless historical artifacts in one place.''

''Exactly how much,'' Dinah starts in a drawl, ''would you say this collection is worth?''

''Don't answer that,'' Dean orders. ''And you,'' he points a finger at Dinah, ''don't even think about it.''

She smirks at him over the rim of her mug, but doesn't push it.

He massages the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. He does not have enough caffeine in his body right now to be dealing with most of these people without his usual buffers of Laurel and Sam and he definitely doses not have enough patience to deal with story time about some greedy, bloodthirsty fake witch. Who may or may not be one of his in-laws. ''Any of her shit stolen?''

''Sure, yeah,'' Hanna nods. ''I mean, she has some seriously messed up stuff. Things you shouldn't have. Things no one should have. I can't imagine it's all ethically sourced or legitimately paid for.''

''Sooo...'' Thea slides into the chair across from Hanna. ''It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility - ''

''That she would be getting some sort of shipment tonight? No.''

''Seems risky though,'' John says. ''Kidnapping and smuggling in stolen goods in one night? That's...brazen.''

''Not even brazen,'' Oliver says. ''That's just - ''

''Arrogant,'' Quentin finishes.

Oliver nods. ''Incredibly so.''

''And stupid.'' Dinah crinkles up the empty bag of Cheetos and pushes her chair back, rising to her feet. ''Is she just smuggling for shits and giggles? Does she have a fence? How does she move the pieces? Does she have someone to verify the artifacts are even real? Does she just buy them on eBay? Is this some fucking Craigslist scam?'' She scoffs in offense. ''She sounds like an amateur. That's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for her. You don't just play Buy & Sell with priceless shit. That's irresponsible and disrespectful.''

There's a pause and then Quentin grumbles, ''Oh god, my daughter's a career criminal.''

Dinah, clearly caught off guard by the ''my daughter'' declaration, falters momentarily before recovering. ''Not your daughter,'' she says. ''And who here isn't a career criminal?''

''Uh.'' John raises his hand.

Felicity nods in confirmation. ''He's an honest man.''

''She could also just be meeting someone,'' Hanna says, butting back into the conversation before Dinah can break out a Power Point presentation about the art of the con.

Oliver shares a glance with John. ''Like who?''

''One of her Dolls maybe,'' she suggests. ''I know they come and go as they please. They're brainwashed to be loyal to her no matter what. No need to keep them under lock and key. She sends them out on assignments. Maybe she's picking one up. The docks aren't far from the Glades. Maybe she's just stuffed Laurel there while she snatches more vulnerable people off the streets. There are at least two other people who work for her who might have homes somewhere. The female bodyguard and the guy I've never seen who I'm now assuming is...'' She trails off awkwardly, swallowing hard. She doesn't look at Dean. She seems to be having a hard time looking at him at all tonight. Hard not to notice that.

He can understand that. He murdered her brother. Maybe it wasn't him, the neighbor she's known for years, but it was still someone with his face. It was still his hands that did the damage. ''Me.''

''Not you,'' Cas rebuffs instantly.

''Not you you anyway,'' Thea says. ''The other you. The bad one.''

''The one with the beard,'' Felicity says.

''Yeah, the one with the - '' Thea stops. ''Wait, he has a beard?''

Felicity nods. ''Maybe it's an evil thing?''

''It's not a - '' Dinah rolls her eyes. ''An evil thing? What does that even mean? It's a great beard actually,'' she says smoothly, which all seems extremely unimportant. ''Softer than it looks. You think it's going to be rough and scratchy but it's not. Doesn't even leave rug burn.''

Oliver looks scandalized.

''Okay.'' Felicity holds up both hands. ''What?''

''At least it didn't before,'' Dinah muses, unexpectedly thoughtful. ''I guess I don't know his personal hygiene anymore. He might not be taking care of himself.''

''Dinah,'' John pipes up, running a hand over his face. ''I'm begging you, stop talking.''

Dean feels like he should perhaps feel somewhat mortified by the bizarre conversation taking place in front of him considering it's about him - in some convoluted way - but he honestly could not care less. If Dinah wants to go into detail about how her version of Dean used to get her off before he went darkside, she can do that. Truthfully, he could use the distraction right about now. He needs a minute to think. He's been staring at the map, the bright red drop of blood that signifies his wife is, for now, alive, for at least five minutes now and he's got nothing.

He's too out of practice for this.

''I guess the beard could be a good identifying factor,'' Thea says. ''Makes it easy to distinguish between the two of them.''

''I think we should call him Beardy,'' Felicity says suddenly.

Okay, well.

Even Dean has to look up at that one.

''Sure,'' Dinah chirps. ''If you want him to rip your intestines out through your mouth and shove them up your asshole.'' There are groans of disgust all around, but she remains undeterred. ''What? That's what he'll do.''

''We're not calling him Beardy,'' Oliver says.

''Well,'' Felicity wrinkles her nose. ''Not after that.''

There is a split second where Dean almost smirks. He still doesn't interject. He's trying to map out the best escape route, but everything leads them to populated areas, which means a higher risk of civilian casualties.

''Does any of this matter?'' Quentin's voice is sharp and tense, full of thinly veiled fury and impatience. ''I don't give a rat's ass if my son-in-law's evil doppelganger's beard leaves rug burn - which,'' he turns to scowl at Dinah, ''by the way, thank you so much for bringing that up, it's really something I needed to hear. Is there a point to this side conversation? Or are we just wasting my daughter's time talking about nothing?''

''The point I was making,'' Hanna says haughtily, ''is that the witch could have an associate who lives around there. Maybe it's a meeting place. My uncle used to work there. He might still have access to the office of the shipping company he worked for. They could have taken her there to assess her injuries before they transport her.''

''It doesn't matter,'' Oliver says harshly. ''That's where she is. That's where Laurel is. We need to go in.''

''He's right,'' Thea echoes. ''The more time we waste - ''

''Then let's go,'' Felicity enthuses. ''Let's get her back. We know where she is. Why are we all just standing around?''

Dean keeps looking at the map. Keeps looking at that speck of blood. The witch at the heart of this is powerful and full of rage. She's not going to care about civilians who get caught in her crossfire. They'll just be the price of war to her. She's sure as fuck not going to stick around to clean up the mess. They need to get her away from the city. At the least they need to get her somewhere where there are less people.

''It's a big area,'' John's saying. ''We've got a lot of ground to cover. We'll need to - ''

''No,'' Dean finally speaks up. ''We're not doing that.''

Everyone turns to look at him.

Oliver, predictably, huffs. ''You don't even know what - ''

''Don't care. We're not going anywhere right now.''

Oliver looks disgruntled at the rejection.

Quentin looks panicked. ''I'm sorry, I must be hearing things,'' he says. ''Did you just say - ''

''I did.''

''Um, Dean,'' Thea tries. ''Maybe you should - ''

''This.'' Dean pokes at the bloody map. ''It moves with her?'' He looks at Hanna questioningly. ''If her position changes, it changes with her, right? Like a tracker.''

''Uh, yeah...''

''And you're sure they won't try to take her soul at the docks?''

''I - I can't see why they would. It goes against the usual protocol.''

''Good. Now.'' He grabs the other map, the one of Star City and all surrounding areas, stretching from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, even the coast of British Columbia, Canada. ''The witch's estate.'' He unfolds the map. ''I know you said you don't know where it is, but, Hanna, I need you to think. Do you remember anything from the drive there?''

''No, I... It was long?''

''Do you remember how long?''

She shakes her head, but takes the map from him to survey it.

He asks, cautiously, ''Do you remember how you left the city? Which way you went?''

''No, no, I don't...'' She looks down at the map. ''When my uncle first took us there, we didn't leave from the house,'' she says slowly. ''We left from my dad's clinic, which is...'' She eyes the map, pointing to a spot in the city. ''Here. Not far from the docks. And when we were leaving, we had to go over the Star Bridge.''

He tries not to get too excited. ''You're sure?''

''Yeah,'' she nods confidently. ''I remember the sound.''

''They have to get to the Star Bridge,'' he mutters to himself, stealing the map back. Okay. Okay, he can work with that. He scans the map, looking at the route they'd have to take, mapping out the turns, factoring in various times of day, their most likely speed, and then he lays the map down on the table. Got it. It's easier to nail down a plan than he thought it would be.

''Care to share your plan with the rest of us, Rambo?''

He looks up at the sound of Quentin's voice. ''We hit while they're in transit,'' he tells them. ''Give 'em a detour.''

''A detour?'' John looks curious. ''What does that mean?''

''We're going to box them in.''

''Box them in.'' John looks thoughtful, peering down at the map. ''Where?''

Dean points out a spot. ''Here.''

Everyone leans in to look at where he's pointing and instantly, he swears he can feel the room get a few degrees colder. John sighs heavily, rubbing at his chin, looking skeptical. Felicity's mouth opens and then closes, frantic gaze moving to Oliver.

''Dean,'' Thea is the one to speak up. ''That's - ''

''Yep,'' he nods. ''I know where it is.''

''You want to lock them in No Man's Land,'' Cas says.

Yep.

Sure does.

To get to the Star Bridge from the docks, you have to weave your way through the Glades. The most direct route is to go straight and then take a right and continue on through the oldest part of the Glades; a particularly run down and largely vacant area. It's an industrial area, mostly warehouses and a few ancient, empty, cockroach infested apartment buildings. The area was heavily damaged during the Undertaking and in the years since it's been left in a state of complete disrepair. Nothing but crumbling ruins deemed so unsafe and unstable by city officials that they just wrote it off. Permanently gated it off about five months after the quake. Yet another casualty of Malcolm Merlyn's domestic terrorism.

A lot of people were left homeless following the quake and the city's overwhelming callousness toward low income people of the Glades. Laurel had been so furious about the city officials' apathy and the lack of resources people were offered after they lost their homes. Especially considering one of those old apartment buildings was the same apartment her parents lived in when they were first married, the place she and Sara were both born, and especially when she found out that the city had no plans on ever fixing the area.

After it was first blocked off, it was a haven for the homeless. They would hop the fence or cut holes in it and seek shelter from the rain in the abandoned apartments, some of which still held belongings, furniture, clothing, even some food, all left behind when people fled their homes the night of the earthquake. Then, about a year after the Undertaking, some poor guy fell through the floor while he was asleep on a couch on the second floor of one of the apartment buildings. Few months after that, there was a fire that completely wiped out one of the warehouses and a firefighter suffered life altering injuries fighting the blaze.

Now, other than a few tweakers here and there, it's deserted. Star City's very own ghost town right in the middle of their bustling city. Even the vigilantes tend to avoid it as much as they can.

People who live in the Glades call it cursed land.

They've dubbed it No Man's Land.

No one goes in there.

If you want to get to Star Bridge from the docks, you go left and take the long way around. Dean wants this witch and her goons to take a right. He's not going to give them a choice.

Yes, he is well aware that it's a batshit crazy plan on paper but fuck it. He's a strategist. This is a good plan. ''It's the safest plan,'' he says, and everyone looks at him, and then at each other, like this is it. This is the moment he's lost his mind. Bit overdramatic, really.

''The safest - '' Oliver breaks off in an exasperated - and exaggerated - sigh. ''Dean, there's a reason that area is closed to the public. It's unstable. The buildings are damaged, even the ground - ''

''Anywhere else we do this, we risk the lives of civilians,'' Dean says, and Oliver shuts right up. ''This is a densely populated city. There are people everywhere and pretty soon, those people are going to start waking up and heading off to work. We need to get Laurel back, but we also need to keep this contained. This is witchcraft. It's magic. It spreads. No matter what happens or where it happens, this is going to be a fight. Between whatever this witch throws at us and Laurel's uncontrolled Cry, people will get caught in the crossfire. You can look at me like I'm insane all you want, but this is a real risk. It's our responsibility to eliminate that risk. At least minimize it as much as we can.'' He looks at Oliver, tilting his head to the side, eerily calm. ''You should know that. This is your city, isn't it?''

Oliver flinches. It's barely noticeable, but Dean notices.

''No Man's Land is two city blocks of nothingness,'' he says. ''If we corner them somewhere in there, even if we just get them into one of those warehouses, we reduce the risk of this witch hurting anyone else.''

No one says anything for a long moment.

John looks back at the map, quiet, thoughtful, strategizing the same way Dean had. Cas will back him on this, maybe even Thea. Everyone else...

''This is a fool's plan,'' Quentin says. ''You're putting yourself in unnecessary danger. If we do this at the docks - ''

''We're not doing this at the docks.''

''All right, and what happens when the roof of the warehouse you corner her in collapses and falls on your head? I may not like you, kid, but I don't want to see you dead.''

''Wow, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.''

''Uh, I - I don't want to get in the middle of...'' Felicity looks in between Dean and Quentin nervously. ''All this,'' she says awkwardly. ''But, Dean,'' she shakes her head. ''We don't even go into No Man's Land. I try to steer everyone clear of that place on patrols as much as I can. The last time Oliver chased some mugger in there, a rotting ceiling fan almost fell on him. It's dangerous. Hence the name. We could get seriously hurt.''

''Then don't go,'' Dean says. It's a plain and simple solution. ''We can't all go. A few people are going to have to stay behind. Just in case. You can stay with him,'' he offers, pointing to Quentin.

Quentin recoils at the suggestion like he's been burned. ''If you think I'm staying behind, you're out of your mind. My daughter - ''

''You have a heart condition,'' Dean reminds him. ''You bet your ass you're staying behind. You're not dying on my watch. One: I don't need your blood on my hands. And B: If you die trying to save Laurel and she lives, she'll blame herself. You know that. She'll carry it around and use it to give herself permission to stay down and out for the rest of her life. I'm not letting you fuck her over like that. You've done enough. You're staying here. I mean it. You are not leaving this house.''

Quentin glowers, going red with impotent rage. ''There is no way in hell I'm - ''

''Okay, all right.'' Cas slips in between them, hands up. ''That's quite enough, thank you.'' He looks at Dean, gaze cautious, but worried. ''Dean, perhaps you and I should discuss - ''

''There's nothing to discuss,'' Dean insists. ''I'm minimizing the casualties and part of that means the old guy with the bad ticker gets to sit on the sidelines with the cooler of Gatorade. Sorry.'' He looks over Cas' shoulder at his father-in-law. ''You think I'm being an asshole because you and I have issues, but I'm not. I will bring your daughter home, sir. I promise you that. If we do it my way, you might actually get to spend some time with her instead of dropping dead and getting in everyone's way while we're trying to do our jobs.''

Unexpectedly, despite the harshness of that statement, Quentin somehow looks less pissed at that, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. More so in exasperation rather than anger.

A relief because Dean is about to freaking lose it.

Other than a minor outburst earlier, which Laurel is going to kill him for when she finds out what he said to her father and who he said it in front of, he feels like he's done a pretty decent job of staying calm tonight.

Nobody here trusts him other than Thea and Cas.

That's just a fact.

To Quentin, he will always be that same deadbeat drifter who crashed into his daughter's life, got her knocked up to trap her, and contributes nothing but mediocre childcare. Which is rude, but, given how their relationship started, maybe not all that unfounded.

To Hanna, he will always be a hunter, a constant threat, an issue of personal safety, and now, the face of the man who killed her brother. Which is also somewhat valid, he supposes.

To Team Arrow, he is either a hapless stay at home dad who couldn't possibly know anything about anything or a dangerous psychopath with no in between. Which is only half fair so they can get fucked.

Then there's Dinah who... Honestly, who the fuck knows what she thinks of him.

Normally, he wouldn't give a crap. So a bunch of randoms (okay, and his father-in-law) don't like him. So what? What have they done for him lately?

But they know better now. They're in his house. They know he's running this. They told him to run this. Well, he's running this and yet they still insist on getting in his way and fighting him at every turn. He's trying his damndest to remain calm, largely because this is a small house and he doesn't want to wake Mary, but holy shit, he is about to snap.

Laurel has been drugged and taken by a witch who wants to take her soul. She has already been gone for hours. She might be injured and who knows how badly. She could be fucking bleeding out. She's not even wearing underwear. Not important, okay, but he's not going to let her die without underwear.

He is not fucking calm. He is fucking vibrating over here. He is trapped under the weight of anxiety and fear and anger and he doesn't know what to do or who the hell is going to come home if they even manage to get to her. He doesn't have the patience or the time to deal with a bunch of overgrown toddlers right now.

And he just knows one of these chucklefucks is gonna wake his kid up.

''Cas.'' He pulls him off to the side, away from prying eyes and ears. ''I need you to stay here.''

Cas stares at him as if he has just asked him to strip naked and dance on the table. He stares for a second, lips parted, blinking in shock, and then he squints his eyes and looks Dean up and down like he's trying to deduce if that was a serious request. Finally, he crosses his arms and just blurts out, ''Are you fucking kidding me.''

Dean falters. Mostly because he's not sure he's ever heard Cas swear like that. He's changed a lot over the past handful of years as he's grown used to being a human, but he's still Cas. He sighs, rubbing at his eyes, already exhausted and completely over this night. ''I need you to make sure he stays put.''

''Absolutely not.'' Cas shakes his head, adamant. ''I'm not babysitting a grown man because you think I'm too weak to back you up.''

''I don't think you're - ''

''You can't - '' Cas looks over at the others, eyeing them suspiciously before shuffling closer to Dean and lowering his voice. ''You can't keep shoving me to the side just because I'm no longer an angel.''

''That has nothing to do with this.''

''It does and you know it.''

''I don't care that you're not an angel,'' Dean grinds out impatiently, eyes flashing with frustration. ''Why the fuck would I care about that now, Cas? You haven't been angel for years. This isn't even about you. This is - Listen - '' He casts a sidelong glance at Quentin. ''I need you to keep an eye on him and if something goes wrong, I need you to get word to Sam, but most importantly, I need someone I can trust to stay with Mary. And that someone has never been her grandfather. You know that. The guy's a drunk - and a mean one. He loves her and he's a far better grandfather than father, but we've never trusted him alone with her. You are the only one capable of keeping her safe. That's why I need you to do this. I am not benching you. I'm giving you the most important job.''

Cas doesn't argue with that. He looks at Dean for an increasingly unnerving amount of time, eyes narrowed, searching as always. Then he relaxes. ''Respectfully,'' he starts, ''I call bullshit. I will stay,'' he adds on quickly, before Dean can object. ''For Mary. But this is the last time, Dean. This is the last time I'm staying behind.''

Dean musters up a terse nod. ''Understood.''

''Hey, if you guys all die,'' Dinah says, drawing everyone's attention back to her, ''and I'm the only one left standing, can I have Laurel's social security number?''

Dean exhales slowly and rolls his eyes, but, weirdly enough, Dinah's abrupt callousness almost serves to take the edge off. ''She's legally dead,'' he throws back at her. ''And what the hell makes you think you'd be the one left standing?''

''If there's one thing I'm good at,'' she says, ''it's surviving. Not an area your girl is particularly skilled in.''

''Dinah,'' John snaps, and facepalms for what must be at least the eleventh time that night.

Dean steps away from Cas and looks at the assembled team members in front of him.

All right.

Here's the thing: There are very few people here he would pick first. That doesn't mean they're not skilled. Every person here has their own specific skillset. They are good at what they do - when they're not letting histrionics and their messy personal lives get in the way of their mission - and the fact of the matter is that, right now, they all need each other.

Laurel sure as hell needs them right now.

It's time to shape up.

He moves to the head of the table, pulling the map back over to him to take one more look at Laurel's location. He places his palms flat on the table and looks at the route from the docks to No Man's Land. He can see it in his head. He knows where to put people. He knows what their roles need to be. He knows how this needs to go down. He just needs everyone else to listen.

''Okay,'' he says, voice low and serious, cutting off the chatter. ''Look, I know there's no love lost between us.'' He straightens up, looking from face to face. ''I know the majority of you don't trust me and I know you know the feeling is, for the most part, mutual. But this isn't about me and it isn't about any of you. This is about Laurel. I want her home. I am bringing her home. You can trust that.''

He pauses, allows a tense moment of silence to go by while Oliver and John share a glance, like they're both trying to decide if they should pull their team or stay and fight. They better hurry up and decide.

''You all know I have more experience with witches,'' he goes on. ''You all agreed to let me run this. This is me running this. Like it or not, you are in my world now. And this is the plan we've got. I'm not saying it's not dangerous, I'm not saying it's without risks, but I'm taking the risk. I have no motivational speech to rally the troops. I'm not that guy. I just want you all to know you're out of options. You can either choose to hope on the train or get off the tracks. Those are the choices. If you're out,'' he points to the front door, ''the door's right there. If you're in, you better get ready because the second Laurel's location changes, we're moving.''

No one talks for a long time. Actually, no one says anything at all. Thea, Cas, and Hanna don't need to say anything. He knows they're on board. Dinah will go where the violence goes, wherever her biggest chance at freedom and cash is. Quentin seems to finally understand that he has nothing more to offer here than self-righteous rage that he can't follow through on, resigned to staying with his granddaughter.

It's those three at the end Dean's wondering about.

He's never worked with them before. Never been interested. Laurel has. She worked with them for close to two years.

Look what happened to her.

He's curious, he'll admit, about what it was like for her. What her last year was like. Did she feel supported? Did she feel safe with them? Was she happy? What part of her did they see that he never got to? Will they have her back in ways they didn't before? Are these people good enough to be doing what they're doing? Can they make up for the night all their bad choices reached that inevitable boiling point and Laurel paid the price? Can they prove that they're an actual team of ''superheroes'' and not just a few random reckless and arrogant people chasing death?

They're not bad people, not even Oliver, their hearts are in the right place, they want to do something good, but they damn well have a lot to prove right now.

It's time for them to put up or shut up.

Oliver isn't the one who speaks up when the three of them have shared enough of their little looks. He stays quiet, silently rubbing at his wounded shoulder. It's John who takes the lead, looking Dean right in the eye and asking, ''What do you need us to do?''

Dean looks at each one of them closely, trying to unravel them just by looking at them; work out if they can really do this, if they can really work together. After a beat, all he can offer them is a dark smile. ''Suit up,'' he says, because he figures whatever, it's time to go all in with these comic book rejects. ''We're going to No Man's Land.''

.

.

.

end part thirteen

---

AN: Mary Webster was a real woman who really did live in Hadley, Massachusetts in Colonial times and she really did survive her own hanging. Most notably she is the subject of a Margaret Atwood poem titled, naturally, ''Half Hanged Mary.'' If you'd like to hear the full story, I recommend episode 12 (also titled ''Half Hanged'') of the podcast Lore. Or, also, Wikipedia.

The line ''Laurel is dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that'' is a reference to the famous first line of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

''Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed?'' comes from SPN episode 5x16: Dark Side of the Moon.

Room #11 is the room number of Dean's room in the Men of Letters bunker and it has been shown that one of the records he has in his room is Nat King Cole's ''Nat King Cole Sings for Two in Love'' which includes the song ''Autumn Leaves.''

Chapter title is from the song Doll Parts by Hole.