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.

16. I May Only Be Trying to Love You

AN: Okay. Here we go.

Additional warnings for this chapter: Oh boy. This chapter. Okay. There are two scenes that, while brief, involve vomiting. One at the beginning, one toward the end. This is also the most horror movie-ish chapter yet so I'm just going to put a blanket warning here for general horror imagery, from blood and gore to freaky nightmares and I think there's even a jump scare or two.

I should also mention that this chapter involves a time jump to January of 2017. Not necessarily something to warn for, but I just wanted to mention that. No, you didn't miss anything. I did jump from November to January. I just...really wanted to get them through Christmas.

There is also one, uh, fairly big warning for this chapter but it is majorly spoilery so I will be putting it at the end and leaving the choice to look at it or not up to you.

And, finally...

...I'm very sorry.

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How the Light Gets In

Written by Becks Rylynn

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Part Sixteen

I May Only Be Trying to Love You

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January, 2017

There is a baby crying somewhere in Iron Heights, and all the prisoners have gone home.

The sound of the inexplicable cries seems to be coming from every direction, echoing through the corridors, bouncing off the walls.

It's strange, Laurel thinks, for a baby to be here.

This is no place for a child. It's cold here, and dark. Nothing survives. She would know. She's standing here in a puddle of her own blood, soaked through with red. There is no pain, but the blood keeps dripping from the wound in her right side, staining the blue camisole nightgown she's wearing, droplets splattering against the concrete.

This is no place for the living.

She doesn't know how she got here. She doesn't know how that baby got here either. She doesn't remember if it is supposed to be her baby or if the poor thing is just as lost as she is.

Outside, there is a storm raging on, pouring down rain, wind howling noisily, thunder crashing down in deafening booms that she can feel in her weary bones. With each crack of thunder, the already dim lights flicker.

Somewhere, the baby is still crying.

She touches a hand to the sticky, wet blood, the wound that never heals. The blood feels real. It looks real on her hands. She feels nothing. No pain. She steps back, out of the puddle of blood and her bare feet make bloody footprints on the ground. Blood is still leaking out of her wound, dripping down her skin, her legs, onto the floor.

The baby cries.

Outside, the sky weeps.

The ghostly wails seem to surround her, propelling her forward, further, deeper into the belly of the beast. She creeps down the hallways of the desolate prison, the concrete cold under her feet, her bloodstained nightgown plastered to her skin, the lights flickering.

She's been here before. In this lonely place. She has the open wound and the spilled blood to prove it. She can't remember how she got here tonight. Maybe she never left. That would make sense. Nobody gets out alive. Not really. The baby's cries grow louder as she makes her way down the hall, leaving a trail of bloody wet footprints behind her.

What a terrible place to die.

There is no one else here tonight. Just her and the thunder and the baby she can't see, can't seem to get to, can never seem to find. She cannot remember how she got here. She looks in every cell as she treks along the cold path, but there is nothing to be found. No bodies, no souls, no babies to be held.

But that's her baby.

That is her baby crying somewhere in this hopeless place. She can feel it. She can't leave her baby here. She did that once before and now they're all lost. A crack of thunder crashes down, a violent boom, rattling the cages, the ground under her feet, and the lights go out in one blink. The baby is still crying. The baby's cries are getting louder.

Bloody and left alone in pitch-black nothingness, her wide, wild eyes dart around, desperately searching for her crying baby in the dark. The screams grow louder, more frantic, more despairing, coming at her from all directions, louder and louder until it feels like it's in her head.

And then it stops.

Abruptly. All at once. Just like that. It cuts off.

She whirls around just as the lights flick back on and -

''Ms. Lance,'' Damien Darhk greets her pleasantly, happy to see her. He's smiling, standing there with her baby in his arms, cradling the child as if it is his own. He's smiling. ''I thought you might end up back here with me,'' he tells her. He is still smiling. He is still holding her baby. His smile looks too big for his face. ''Are you looking for what you've lost?''

Then she wakes up.

She wakes up with a strangled gasp, bolting upright in bed, hands clawing at her throat. She's in her bedroom. She's home. It's dark. It's cold. The dead of winter. Everything is still, hushed, save for the sound of the storm outside.

Dean is sleeping beside her, peaceful. Everything is all right. She's safe. Except her skin is still crawling. Her nerves are still shot. Something still feels wrong. Something has felt wrong since they came home from Malibu. Lightning strikes outside, a flash that slices through even the closed curtains.

Laurel tries to catch her breath.

She looks over at Dean. Studies his sleeping face. At least one of them is getting a good night's sleep. She thinks about reaching out, waking him up, but she doesn't. She can't justify waking him up when she knows he already struggles with sleep. She looks away from him and crawls out of the warmth of her bed. She approaches the window. She pulls back the curtains to glimpse at the rain.

Her stomach drops.

It's raining upside down.

The realization is swift and harsh. It's raining upside down. She never woke up. She made it out of Iron Heights, without her baby, but away from Damien Darhk, but she never woke up. As if on cue, quietly, from somewhere outside the bedroom, music begins to play.

Ave Maria.

She lets the curtains fall back in place, turning slowly to look at the bedroom door. She feels off balance. Disoriented. She moves hesitantly, heart hammering against her ribcage as she tiptoes over to the bedroom door. Unsteadily, she grasps the doorknob, but cannot seem to force herself to open it.

Terror, unusually strong, has wormed its way into her bloodstream. She feels like she's drowning in it.

Dizzy with fear, she turns the doorknob and opens the door. She doesn't look back at Dean. He's not there anyway.

Meanwhile, Ave Maria drones on.

Laurel steps out into the shadowy hallway. There is no one there. She's all alone in the dark. She always ends up alone in the dark. She looks down the hall toward the sliding glass door. There's nothing. She looks the other way, in the direction of the living room. Absolutely nothing. She cannot figure out where the music is coming from. She looks behind her, back into the bedroom.

This is not real. None of this is real. This is a dream. It is raining upside down. This has to be a dream.

Still, even knowing that, all she wants to do is crawl back into bed with her husband. It's the only warm place. It's the only place in the world where she feels safe.

But she doesn't go back.

She shuts the bedroom door and steps further into the darkness. She looks in the direction of the living room again where the hollow blue light of the television is lighting up the darkened room. She thinks of Sara, alone on the new pull out couch and takes a few steps.

That's as far as she gets.

''Psst,'' a small voice whispers. ''Canary.''

Laurel turns around, eyes widening at the sight of the familiar little girl. The girl who has been on her mind for months, camped out in the back of her head, a driving force begging her to hurry up and fight back. ''Sin,'' she whispers. She wants to rush over to her and take her into her arms, but she doesn't.

This is a dream. This is a trick.

''Canary,'' Sin says again. She is holding a box in her small hands, old, small, with intricate carvings on the side. ''I have a message for you,'' the girl whispers. ''I'm supposed to tell you something.''

Laurel balls her fists. Forces herself to remain still. ''What are you supposed to tell me?''

Sin does not answer, shuddering in and out of existence like an image on an old television.

''Sin,'' Laurel pleads. ''What are you supposed to tell me?''

''Canary,'' Sin says again, begging. ''Pretty bird.''

Laurel tries to take a step, just one, but is barely able to move an inch before someone else winks into existence directly in front of her and the music drops out and the image of Sin fades.

Bloody pink ballerina outfit dripping with rainwater, red hair soaked in blood, close enough for her to smell the rot, Siobhan Sweeney flickers in and out. Her gaze is eerily steady, locking Laurel in place. Her dead eyes are searing, knowing. She opens her maggot infested mouth, as if to scream, but all she does is rasp out a soft, ''Welcome home.''

Laurel's eyes snap open with a gasp, her body jerking out of sleep and back into reality.

The first thing she becomes aware of is that she cannot seem to catch her breath. The second is that she's so hot. She feels like she has woken up to a heatwave. It is a suffocating, stifling, sticky heat and she has no idea where it's coming from.

''Laurel,'' someone says from beside her.

She rolls over onto her back, one shaky hand reaching up to wipe away the sweat on her brow. ''I'm fine.''

''Are you sure?''

She nods, but focuses on working on her breathing instead of talking. She squints against the light in the room, staring up at the ceiling, a few inexplicable tears squeezing out. The light hurts her eyes and it feels like it's burning her skin, even though it's only light from the lamp on the bedside table. She tries to focus back on her breathing, but as she rolls back into real life, she's realizing that something does not feel right.

Her body feels like it's on the fritz. Like everything is going haywire inside of her, drenched in sweat, skin crawling, stomach churning. There is a pounding in her head and she feels weak. She feels somehow separated from herself. Stubbornly, she tries to ignore it. Set it aside. If she stops thinking about it, maybe it will go away. Maybe the internal alarm bells going off inside of her don't mean anything.

''Just - Just a nightmare,'' she puffs out.

She turns her head to look at Dean and, for a second, everything is fine. She can see that his light is still on, he is still wide awake with a book in his hands, and the alarm clock on his bedside table reads, in those blaring red numbers that hurt her eyes tonight, 11:05. It's still early. She can read the title of the book. The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror by Joyce Carol Oates. She even has a moment of normalcy to think to herself, rather fondly, upon seeing him reading yet another horror novel as if their life is not scary enough, Why do you do this to yourself? Can't you just stick to Ray Bradbury?

Then he blurs.

Her world tilts and whirls and whooshes like a carnival ride gone wrong, sending her teetering off onto some far away ledge. She looks away from him, squeezing her eyes shut. She cannot begin to explain how she's feeling, so she keeps her mouth shut and tries to shake it off. She feels sick and woozy, but not necessarily in pain. Weak, but not tired. The only way she can think to describe it is to say that she feels like she is flickering. The same way her nightmare version of Sin did. The same way Siobhan Sweeney did. In and out, in and out. As if she is, for some reason, only half here and the other half of her is...somewhere else.

She tries to lie still on her back at first, eyes closed.

Next to her, she can hear the shuffle of Dean putting his book away, clicking off the light, and the rustle of the sheets as he lies down next to her. Even with her eyes closed, she can feel him looking at her. She tries to take comfort in that, but it makes her feel strangely uneasy tonight. Like he shouldn't be looking at her.

He reaches over and takes her hand, drawing it close so he can press a kiss to her palm.

She relaxes. She tries to relax. She tries to be here, with him, but she just keeps...drifting. She keeps going away. She doesn't know where she's going.

Dean runs his fingers up and down her arm and she tries to lean into it. ''Laur,'' his voice is very quiet. ''Where are you right now?''

''Nowhere.'' It's a struggle just to answer the question. She looks at the ceiling. ''I'm right here.'' It's a lie.

''You sure you're good?''

She nods, but there is a lump in her throat, a sob trying to claw its way out that is preventing her from speaking. She has to swallow, and then has to swallow again just to croak out, voice tight, ''It was just a nightmare.''

He allows that excuse to hang in the air for a moment and then, ''You seem really out of it.''

''I'm fine,'' she says faintly. She inhales through her nose and exhales through her mouth. Ignores the way her body is inexplicably beginning to shiver, despite how hot she feels. For a moment, there is silence. He moves from rubbing her arm to stroking her hair and she closes her eyes again and just when her body is starting to relax, just before she melts into sleep -

There is a sound in her head that makes her heart drop. An echoed, far away sound of an earth shattering crash followed by the most agonized scream she has ever heard. It is muffled and fleeting, but it sounds so real.

Her eyes fly open, chest constricting, breathing speeding up, and then she just dissolves into tears.

Dean's hand stills in her hair. ''Laurel.'' He sounds alarmed. ''Hey, babe, what's going on? Talk to me.''

''I can't,'' she forces the words out. ''I can't.'' She pushes him away from her and rolls onto her side with her back to him, instinctively curling up into a ball. There is no reason for this weeping. There is no reason for this crushingly sad raw grief that has just taken over her. It feels like someone has ripped her heart out and she doesn't know why. She just keeps hearing that scream, that agony, and it hurts. It physically hurts her. Like a gnawing in her stomach. A kind of shredding.

Dean, understandably worried, tries again. He puts a warm hand on her back and murmurs tenderly, ''Sweetheart.''

All she feels is anger. More than that. When he puts his hand on her back, an overwhelming wave of pure hatred crashes down on top of her where it doesn't belong and she just wants him to get his fucking killing hands, just like his father's, off of her.

It's gone as soon as it appears and she scrambles out of bed and away from him, dismayed at her own thoughts. The bedroom, now shadowy and dark, feels unfamiliar to her and when she looks at her husband, he does not look like her husband. He looks the same as he always does. He loves her very much, even in the dark, even when she's like this, and he looks extremely concerned for her right now, but she doesn't know him.

There is something wrong. There is something wrong with her.

She backs away from the bed, terrified of her own mind, whatever escalating insanity this is, and the feeling of unease that has settled into her bones.

''Laurel.'' Dean is on his feet now, hurrying around the bed to get to her. ''What's - '' He stops when she backs away, pressing herself up against the wall. ''What's going on right now?''

She shakes her head. ''N-Nothing.'' That is not what she meant to say. She meant to say, Please help me. She meant to say, Something's wrong. There is something inside of her that won't let her speak.

She thinks she might be losing her mind. Just like all the others. She closes her eyes, trying to clear her head, and all she can think of is Dinah Ellard walking into the water and Faye losing herself in the woods where no one could hear her scream and Aunt Valerie slashing at her own wrists with garden shears and Edie turned inside out, warped into something else, something horrible. Maybe it really was inevitable.

''It was just a nightmare,'' her voice says.

The shadows in the bedroom seem to shift in front of her eyes. It feels like the room is swirling around her. Dean's shape in the darkness looks unsteady, blurry, unreal. She has to close her eyes against the nausea.

''I'm not buying it,'' he says. ''You don't look - Babe, you're soaked in sweat. Are you sick?''

''I'm just - '' She opens her eyes and looks at the window, listening to the wind howl, the raindrops splatter against the glass. ''I'm - I can't... I - I don't want to...''

''What?''

''Talk.''

He seems to back off a bit at that. Goes quiet for a second before he says, reluctantly, ''All right.''

She wants to go back to sleep and wake up and just have this, whatever this is, be over. She wants to wake up. She doesn't know what's happening to her, but she feels like her body is no longer her body. She does not know if this is a panic attack, or if she is dying, dead, or still dreaming. She just knows that she is afraid. It's the only thing she recognizes. Her body feels wrong, damp with sweat, breathing shaky and shallow and too fast. She can't even control the words coming out of her mouth. She looks away from Dean, suddenly unsure if he is even Dean or if she is even her.

She tries to accomplish a simple, grounding task, staggering over to the laundry hamper on her numb legs. She peels off her sweat soaked nightgown that is not full of blood the way it was in her dream and tosses it in the hamper, turning to rummage around in the top dresser drawer for something to wear. She can feel the goosebumps rising up on her bare skin in the chill of the winter night, but she barely even notices the cold. She still feels like she is boiling in her skin.

Clumsily, fingers feeling stiff and hard to control, she plucks something clean and dry from the drawer. She thinks it might be one of her old nursing nightgowns. She manages to get it over her head, but struggles with her unwilling, twitchy limbs.

Dean asks from behind her, ''Do you need help?''

And there it is again.

That sudden, startling feeling of hostility and resentment. Of rage. She gets the shirt on and turns to look at him and - and...

She just wants to hurt him. She wants to wrap her hands around his neck and squeeze.

He scrutinizes her in the dark. ''Honey.'' He takes a step over to her and her entire body tenses up, holding her breath, fists clenching, terrified of what she could do. ''You look really fucking weird right now. Are you sure you're okay?'

She snaps out of it enough to know she needs to get away from him. ''I'm - I'm not feeling great,'' she mumbles, blinking to clear her vision. ''I'm going to the...'' She tries to gesture, tries to make her mouth say the words she wants to say ''To the bathroom. You go back to sleep.''

She doesn't wait for a response, spinning on her heel to get out of there as fast as she can. She stumbles down the hall on jelly legs that feel like they belong to someone else and all but falls into the bathroom. She doesn't turn the light on, but gropes around, clinging to the wall until she remembers where the sink is. She falls against it, clutching at the porcelain to hold herself up.

This has to be a nightmare. She has to be dreaming. She wanted to hurt him. He didn't do anything wrong and she had wanted so badly to hurt him, make him bleed. She wanted to kill him. What if she had? What if she couldn't stop herself? What if she hurts Mary?

A ragged sob tumbles out of her mouth, but she tries to stifle the rest, clenching her teeth together. She squeezes her eyes shut. ''This isn't real. This isn't real. It's just a dream.''

It is the most likely explanation. It does happen frequently. Putting distance between her and everything that has happened hasn't done anything to soften the nightmares. Even Malibu didn't take them away entirely. That's all this is. Just another nightmare.

A really, really vivid one.

She opens her eyes and looks down at her hands, still gripping the sink. She doesn't want to hurt the man she loves. She doesn't want to make him bleed or choke the life out of him or make him pay. She doesn't. Except -

Well, maybe he deserves it.

Maybe she should. After all the violent and bloody things his hands have done, maybe he should have to deal with some retribution. Payback. He deserves it. The whole family deserves it. They deserve to suffer the way she has suffered.

Wait.

Laurel grips the sink tighter, knuckles white, stomach flipping. ''No, no, no, no, no.'' She stares down into the sink. The way she has suffered? They haven't done anything to her. They're her family. How could she want to -

This is not her rage.

Her heart stutters in her chest, like a warning signal, and slowly, very slowly, she looks up at her reflection.

It is not her reflection.

The woman in the mirror, blurring in and out of focus, looks just as startled as Laurel.

''Edie,'' Laurel whispers.

It has been two months since she last saw that face, those scars, and so much has happened that she's almost convinced herself that Edie was one of those bad dreams as well. That she never came home. That none of it happened.

Here she is now, back to her old tricks, picking away at her cousin, rattling her brain in her skull.

''Edie,'' she whispers again. ''What are you doing?''

The ghostly image in the mirror, too close and too far away at the same time, too alive and too dead, lifts her eyes. As soon as she meets Edie's cold and frightened eyes, the bottom drops out. The air in the room thins around her. The world slips sideways and sends her reeling and her body is wracked by the physical sensation of falling, plummeting.

She chokes on a strangled gasp, her head swims, her stomach jolts, and she barely has enough time to collapse in front of the toilet and pull the seat up before she's vomiting up her dinner. She halfheartedly tries to pull her hair out of her face, but it's hard to focus on anything other than the twisting of her stomach, the spasms of wrenching retches, the sweat trickling down her forehead as her body fights to get something out.

''Stop,'' she pants out when there is a break in her retches. ''Stop. Please. I-I'm here. I'm listening. You don't have to do this.''

But then her stomach twists again and another ugly round of shuddering gags cuts off her pleas. It's an uncontrollable and exhausting kind of sickness, like there's something turning her inside out, and when there's another break and she's left panting, she seriously worries she might pass out.

''Jesus,'' she moans. ''Why do you have to be such a bitch all the time?''

And then it stops.

Just like that.

The dizziness, the nausea, the intense heat, the noise in her head, the disturbing intrusive thoughts. All gone. As if a switch has been flipped. She still feels weak and shaky, most likely just from the stress of whatever that was, but otherwise... She feels fine?

Everything is silent in her head. Everything is still. She can catch her breath. The heat is receding. She groans lightly, wiping the sweat from her brow. She gives herself a minute to make sure she is really fine and then she flushes the toilet and drags herself to her feet.

She shuffles back over to the sink, splashing her face with cold water to rinse off some of the sweat and rinsing her mouth to get the bitter taste out. She avoids looking in the mirror for as long as possible, standing there, eyes cast downward. She doesn't want to look up. When she does, raising her head fearfully -

It's just her.

She looks rough, but she's all alone in there. She turns away from the mirror to dry her face on the towel hanging on the back of the bathroom door and all is silent in the household.

Until...

It begins faintly, like a whisper in the back of her head, a sound coming from another room, and then it grows louder. As if it is coming closer and closer to her, becoming more persistent.

Ave Maria.

Her fingers tighten around the towel. Her heartbeat feels erratic in her chest and there is this wave of debilitating fear washing over her, powerful but somehow disconnected from her. As if it belongs to someone else.

Behind her, the shower curtain rustles.

She lets go of the towel and turns around. She wants to turn and run away, but her feet don't seem to get the memo. She takes slow steps over to the bathtub. The sound of the music, the eerie disembodied echo of Ave Maria grows louder and louder until it feels like every note is shaking her skull, physically piercing her eardrums.

Ignoring every urge to run, she reaches up, reluctantly grasps onto the shower curtain, and pulls it back. The music abruptly falls silent.

There is no one in the bathtub.

She frowns, backing away from the tub. Something still feels wrong here. It is very cold in the bathroom. Her body, still slick with sweat, feels freezing cold and she can see her breath hanging in the air. She goes back to the iced over mirror and there's Edie. She flashes in and out, the image of her hazy and shadowed. She is looking down at her hands.

''Edie,'' Laurel says. ''What's going on?''

Edie jerks her head up, eyes blown wide. She says something, but no sound comes out of her mouth.

''Are - '' Laurel has to raise her voice above the rising sound of the music. ''Are you doing this?''

She thinks the look on Edie's face is answer enough.

No.

She's not.

Somehow, it would have been more comforting if she were the one behind this.

Laurel looks at the mirror for a second, unease growing in the silent dark, and then the quiet is violently interrupted and everything goes to hell. Like a jump scare straight out of a low budget scary movie, the image of Edie flashes, replaced by the gory, grotesque sight of Siobhan Sweeney, there is a scream that she swears doesn't come from her, and the sound of shattering glass.

She instinctively puts her hands up to shield her face from the implosion of glass and then, all at once, there is a nauseating tugging feeling in her chest, this vicious tearing feeling, a separation, and then everything goes white and still and completely and utterly silent.

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The thing is it's been calm for two months now.

When Marlene Moretti told them back in November that Edie would need time to recover, they initially thought that would mean a few days. Maybe a week or two. Then a week passed, and then another, and another. The holidays came and went, Christmas, New Year's, birthdays, and there was still no sign of her.

There was no sign of her perky blonde alter ego either; the bright eyed and wealthy young widow Katherine Lovejoy, the much loved and well respected philanthropist who blended into the world of white Pacific Northwest socialites so well that no one ever realized that she never belonged there in the first place.

Mrs. Lovejoy fell off the grid shortly after Thanksgiving. Her social media - which was mundane, but updated frequently likely in an admittedly clever move meant to legitimize the Katherine Lovejoy persona - went dark save for some saccharine post she made about unplugging for the holidays. She failed to show up to any of the many fundraisers and galas and insufferable holiday parties she had been invited to, sent money and gifts instead and told all of her friends that she couldn't bear to stay in that big empty house all alone so she would be spending the holiday season vacationing in St. Barts. Not that there was any actual sign that Katherine Lovejoy had traveled anywhere over the holiday season.

Because there was no Katherine Lovejoy.

As far as they could tell, Edie had gone deep underground to nurse her wounds and her undoubtedly bruised ego. That's not to say they had allowed her sudden disappearance to make them complacent. They looked for her. They followed whatever lead they could find. Got Jody and a few others to put out a hunter's BOLO. Hanna put out an emergency alert on the witch circuit. Both Felicity and Charlie have several different alerts out for Katherine Lovejoy. They even attempted to draw Katherine out by having Mayor Queen invite her to a charity drive, but she declined the invite.

They have spent the past two months trying to make their house an impenetrable fortress. At least when it comes to witches. Laurel has gone back to her training. They've done their best to be appropriately prepared and ready for whatever she throws at them next. But...

It's been two months.

Two months without so much as a whiff of her and like it or not, regardless of whether or not some witch with some convoluted revenge fantasy is readying an attack, life still goes on. The world keeps turning. You can't just hit pause indefinitely. People have stuff to do - and, fuck, there's been a lot of stuff going on over the past couple months.

There's some new leathered up asshole running around, for starters. Calls himself Prometheus like a pretentious douchebag. Shoots people full of arrows. Got a massive hate boner for Green Arrow. It's not Dean's problem and normally wouldn't even be on his radar because it is, uh, absurd, except that this person is now the lead - and in fact only - suspect they have in the No Man's Land bombing. The guy has zero motive and something about him doesn't feel quite right, but he is literally the only name on the suspect list for now. Therefore, he is a new thorn. He does keep Oliver busy, though. Which is a plus.

Their finances have been totally shot to shit in the past two months. It's not unexpected given that he was fired in December, but it's an added stressor, another weight added to the load on their backs.

The firing itself was not a surprise. He was not a good employee. When Laurel came home, he got even worse. He called in sick all the time, ducked out early, sometimes he just straight up flaked and didn't show up. A couple of the guys tried to cover for him because they felt bad for the poor fucked up widower and because his late wife was the Black Canary, the hero of the Glades, but it was inevitable that Eddie was going to have to kick him out on his ass sooner rather than later. He did the work and he did it well when he was there, but it was blatantly obvious even from day one that he didn't want to be there.

Eddie, the owner - a real good man, showed him far more respect and kindness than Dean ever earned - was nice enough to wait until after Christmas to fire him and the severance was more than deserved, but their family is now officially without an income and that is quickly going to become a problem.

For right now, with their meager savings and a loan from Thea, they should be able to scrape by for about two months. Maybe three if they majorly scrimp. After that, they're screwed.

Laurel, in between fretting about legal resurrection and searching for low level minimum wage jobs online, keeps telling him that they need to consider taking Thea up on the harebrained offer she made them in December, but that's never going to happen. They need jobs. They don't need Merlyn money. He loves Thea, but he wants nothing to do with anything Malcolm Merlyn has ever touched. Not after what he did to Tommy.

He understands why Laurel has been dragging her feet on getting the gears turning to legally and publicly resurrect herself, but it needs to happen and they both need to get jobs or else they're going to lose the house.

And, on top of it all, Mary was in the hospital back in December.

It was the cough. That stupid fucking cough. What they thought was just the lingering after effects of a simple cold turned into bronchitis, which turned into pneumonia, which landed her in the hospital for five days. It was not a good time.

Mary handled it better than her parents did.

The first 24 hours, yeah, they were bad. That first night in the ER was miserable and terrifying. She was so sick and tiny and scared and her intense fear of hospitals just made her more obstinate and ornery. That first night, when he had to bundle her up in the middle of the night and take her to the hospital because he knew - he knew - something was wrong was the worst. She spent a large portion of that night screaming and crying and throwing horrific fits whenever a doctor or nurse came close to her like she was trapped in her own personal horror flick. From the moment they pulled into the parking lot and she realized, even as sick was she was, where they were, she acted like she was being sent to her death. She sobbed and coughed so hard she couldn't breathe, clinging to him, fevered and petrified, weakly begging him to go home, promising she would ''be good.''

But then she...got over it?

Kind of miraculously actually. Mostly because of Nurse Fatima. Turns out pediatric nurses are saints and they love to dote on their kids. He's not going to go so far as to say Mary enjoyed her hospital stay, she was still pretty sick, but she fucking loved Nurse Fatima and her unicorn scrubs and the silly little song she sang whenever she had to fix Mary's IV. She still talks about her new BFF weeks later.

Plus, during those last couple of days, when she was feeling better and mostly being kept as a precautionary measure, she definitely liked being pampered. She got anything she asked for. She had a lot of ice pops and animal crackers.

When she got home, one of the first things she did was inform her mom that she needed a call button for her room.

Even now, over a month later, her favorite game to play with her stuffed animals is Hospital. She seems to be an excellent nurse. Hasn't lost a patient yet. Great to see her expand her career options. It's a little weird that she now loves hospitals and keeps asking to go there for lunch to see Nurse Fatima, but it's a relief to know that she, at least, was not too traumatized by the whole ordeal.

The same sure as fuck cannot be said for her poor parents.

Those five days were easily some of the hardest days they have ever been through and neither one of them handled it well. Because of the whole Public Death thing, Laurel had to stay away from the hospital for the most part. She made a point to sneak in at least once a day during the shift change, but could never stay long, and she Face Timed incessantly, but, as usual, most of the load fell to Dean.

He was the one who spent nearly every moment of those five days with their little girl. He slept there, he ate there, and he would have showered there if Sam had not physically manhandled him out of the room and forced him to go home. He did everything. It all fell on him.

He sat there and watched his baby girl struggle to breathe while Laurel sat at home and watched Wheel of Fortune. It's not like the bulk of parenting falling on him will ever be something new, but for some reason - maybe it was sleep deprivation, maybe it was the stress of the situation, maybe it was that hour where he legitimately thought he was having a heart attack and Nurse Fatima had to kindly put her hand on his shoulder and say, ''You're dehydrated, Dean, I have never once seen you drink water'' - that was when four years of exhaustion and perhaps some subtle resentment decided to boil over.

He and Laurel did not talk much for those five days. They communicated the basics, spoke mostly about Mary, but that was about it. He didn't want to hear her voice, to be honest, and he avoided her the best he could the few times he went back to the house. He didn't want to see her or how upset she was. He didn't want to listen to her millions of questions, her lists of things to bring up with the doctors, her demands that he update her more frequently on Mary's condition, and he certainly didn't want to hear her apologies. He simply did not have the energy or the patience to comfort her, talk her down from a panic attack, or absolve her of guilt.

So he didn't.

And when Mary was well enough to go home and they were all together again, one needy four year old and two out of sync parents...

Yeah. Well.

What happened next was not one of their greatest hits.

After about three days of looming tension, they had a fight. More like an explosion. It wasn't the worst fight they have ever had, but it was up there. It was long. Lasted two days. They fought bitterly. Said awful things to each other. She left. Packed a bag and went to stay with her father for the night after Mary went to sleep. Which just made him even angrier because - Why does she keep doing that?

Why is that, when given the choice, she will always choose to leave him behind? They have a daughter. She chose to be a mother. Why does she keep leaving them? Last July, he yelled at a hallucination of his dead wife. Said, We were never going to be enough for you, were we? Maybe that thought never really went away.

So the fight dragged on. And on. And on. And then, on the fourth day, Thea locked them out of the house and told them she was not letting them back in until they fixed their shit. In addition, it was pizza night, so...

They fixed their shit.

It sounds simplistic, but it's not.

People will tell you, when you're in a relationship, especially a marriage, to never go to bed angry. That's bullshit. Marriage is work, hard work, occasionally grueling, occasionally ugly, and sometimes you are going to go to bed angry. That's life. Doesn't mean you give up. Doesn't mean you stop the work. It's the only way you get to the other side of the anger.

He would like to think they've made it to the other side now. Thanks, in large part, to Thea's meddling. They hashed things out, they apologized, and they said they would start fresh, but it wasn't until they were out of this godforsaken city that they were able to do that.

Probably why neither of them put up much of a fight when Thea gave them her Christmas present, skipping over to them with a set of keys on Christmas morning before Mary had even finished tearing into her stocking and offered them her Malibu beach house. Actually, that's not even true. It wasn't an offer so much as an order. She had informed them, matter-of-factly, that they would be going to her Barbie beach house and declining her overly generous gift was simply not an option because that would be rude and she ''would be very offended.'' It's an insane gift to just give someone and normally he wouldn't have accepted it, but they needed that time.

They needed to spend some time with Mary and they needed to spend some time with each other. There was a crack in them left behind by Edie, by Darhk, by those missing seven months, even by Mary's hospitalization, and they needed to patch it up. They needed to get away from here. Away from Edie, away from their traitorous neighbors and their insipid doppelgangers, away from gray skies and the rainy winter, and even away from their beloved little house in the suburbs, which has begun to feel too small in the past few months.

And you know what?

It was amazing.

Maybe they were running away, maybe they were shirking their responsibilities and taking advantage of Thea's generosity, but that time in Malibu felt like coming back to life. No pun intended.

Laurel physically and emotionally looked better in the sunlight, less sad, less sickly, healthier, with color on her cheeks and a bit more meat on her bones. Mary was beyond thrilled to be with Mom and Dad, just the three of them and the sand and surf. Even Dean felt more at peace than he had in ages, relishing the sight of his girls in the sun.

Twenty-two days. They spent twenty-two days in Malibu. Way longer than the ten days Thea insisted on. Kept pushing back their return date, so reluctant to return to real life, afraid of what was going to happen when they got back. They came home just in time for Thea's birthday on the 21st and his birthday last Tuesday.

He would like to think that they're better since Malibu. Rested and recharged. Ready for whatever comes next. That they have healed whatever was broken between them. He knows he feels better. He knows he has had to let go of things. That he's down to do the work. On the better days, he is almost certain Laurel is as well. But...

Sometimes he's not sure what she sees when she looks at him. If she still sees him, or if she can only see Edie now. Sometimes, usually at night, when he can't sleep, he can hear that woman's mocking voice in his head.

You can pull the people you love from the fire, but you're still burning right along with mommy, aren't you?

Edie has become a shadow in their life, a darkness that passes through them, an ache in the middle of the night. He wonders, worries, about the seeds she could have planted in Laurel's head. Things were good in Malibu, but they are not in Malibu anymore.

He'd be lying if he said he hadn't noticed how strange Laurel has been acting since they got back. It was easy to write off at first. She was probably still adjusting to being back in Star City. It was disorienting to go from carefree sunny Southern California back to rain and real life responsibilities. In Malibu, they did what they wanted. They were spontaneous. Went out for ice cream on a whim, took sunset drives along the Pacific Coast Highway, had picnics on the beach, despite the colder weather, and it was just the three of them, no work, no school, just them. Here it's routines and bedtimes, a house full of people, getting Mary back to school, the dark cloud that is legal resurrection, the looming threat of evil witches and possible soullessness and fractured family drama.

In Malibu, they didn't have a care in the world. In Star City, it's a tiresome slog through a shadowed suburban life, never knowing what's around any corner, being spooked by your own reflection.

He can understand why she has been off. Plus, she's been rigorous in her training. Brutal, if he's being honest. Even while they were in Malibu, she kept making him spar with her. It's great that she has something to focus on and that she's getting back into the swing of things, getting her strength back, but she's probably tired and sore. She's just been different since they got home. Dazed, maybe. Just...distracted. Out of it.

It could just be the nightmares. Her nightmares never fully went away while they were holed up in California, but they ebbed and flowed. There was more room to breathe. She even had a few nights here and there that were completely nightmare free. One morning, she woke up feeling truly rested for the first time in months and she almost burst into tears out of sheer relief.

Since they've been back home, however, the nightmares have returned full force. Every night. Like clockwork. They get her so wound up, so turned around that she can't tell up from down, fact from fiction, nightmare from reality. She had her first panic attack in nearly a month the day after they returned. Had another one yesterday afternoon. But this...

This is new.

She has never reacted to a nightmare like this before. He doesn't even know what this is. For a second there, when he looked at her, it was like looking at a stranger. She didn't look like herself, unrecognizable and unreachable in the shadows.

It was probably just a trick of a light.

Still, he doesn't follow her when she says she's going to the bathroom. Normally, he feels like he would, but something is rooting him to the ground, pulling him back. He should at least give her a minute or two before he checks in on her. He wastes a few minutes checking the protection barriers in the room, the hex bags Hanna keeps charged up, the crystals she keeps shoving at them, all the various other witchy things she's cluttered his house up with over the past couple months, and the salt he decided to line the windows and doors with tonight.

Confident everything is as it should be, he goes to check on Mary. It's an instinct, even before all this. He needs to make sure she's breathing, make sure she's safe, that she's got her blanket and Sharkie, and that there are no witches trying to sneak into her head.

He steps out of the darkened bedroom and into the warmly lit hallway. He looks down the hall in the direction of the living room where Sara is, but doesn't bother to check on her. He can hear the low sound of Liza Minnelli singing Maybe This Time on the television and she's probably eating all the leftover chicken pot pie so he's sure she's fine. Thea's not even home yet, busy, yet again, burning the midnight oil down at city hall. Swear to god if Oliver has not at least fed the poor kid...

He turns in the opposite direction, leaving Sara to her Cabaret, resolving to text Thea once he's gotten Laurel back to bed. He slips into his Mary's bedroom as silently as possible, wincing when the door creaks slightly. Her room is warm and dark save for the night light and the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. Everything is in its place, including his baby girl fast asleep in the bed, burrowed in her fluffy comforter, arm curled around a stuffed monkey she has so lovingly named Linus.

The only thing slightly amiss is that the curtains have been pulled open and he can hear the wind howling outside, the rain clattering against the window. Even then, he knows Mary was the one who opened it earlier to watch the storm.

He pulls the curtains closed, stops to pick up Mary's fallen shark on the ground, tucking it under the covers with her, and then his eyes fall on the terrarium that now takes up space on Mary's desk.

The other new thing in their life.

They got Mary a bearded dragon for Christmas. It was a questionable decision considering their finances but it had become unavoidable at that point. It was the least they could do after everything she's been through in her little life. It was the pneumonia that cinched it.

At least now they know for sure that she has at least one friend.

He treks over to the habitat, bending down to get a good look at the thing. Most nights, she's sleeping by now but tonight she's poking out of her sleeping space, staring right back at him with her beady eyes, looking defiant. Her name is Betty. He's pretty sure she hates his guts.

In all fairness, he did call her ''the ugliest broad I've ever laid eyes on'' so... Suppose there is that. It wasn't the kindest thing he's ever said. Now every time he tries to hold her, she pees on him. He thinks that's a bit over the top. But whatever. She may have chosen him to be her arch nemesis, but she's proven to be far more loving and snuggly - at least with Mary anyway - than any of them ever could have anticipated. Mary adores her. Even Laurel, who does most of the actual upkeep, has taken a real shine to the creature. That's good enough for him.

Also he figures with her in the picture, he might be able to get away with putting off the dog thing for a few more years.

...Awful ugly though.

There's just no getting around that. Truly a face only Mary could love.

He stands straight, eyeing her distrustfully while she does the same. ''Okay,'' he whispers, going for placating. ''I'll leave. You keep an eye on our girl now, Betty.'' He swears her gaze, which is surprisingly intense, follows him as he tiptoes out of the bedroom. He has a feeling that if she could talk, she would be muttering and stay gone, motherfucker under her breath.

Dean closes the door behind him, leaving Mary and Betty to their slumber.

Across the hall, the bathroom door is still closed. He considers knocking on the door. He doesn't. He wanders into the living room, where Sara has yet again pushed most of the furniture off to the side, almost into the Christmas tree - which is still up and still lit up every night even at the end of January - and rolled up the rug, replacing it with a yoga mat. She seems to be attempting to both watch Cabaret and do midnight yoga at the same time. It doesn't look like it's going well.

He watches her struggle for a minute, back to him, and then says, ''How are you this bad at yoga?''

She has no reaction to the sound of his voice, which tells him she had already deduced he was there. ''I'm not doing yoga. I'm doing Pilates.''

''How are you this bad at Pilates?''

''If you must know, I'm out of practice. I'm not usually a yoga person. I'm not typically zen without weed.'' She gives up on whatever pretzel pose she was trying to do, straightening herself up and turning to him. ''I thought you went to bed. Was the TV too loud?''

''No, you're fine,'' he says, somewhat distractedly, glancing over his shoulder toward the still closed bathroom door.

Sara asks, ''Is something wrong?''

He's not sure how to answer that. He'd like an answer to that question himself.

The front door opens before he can say anything and Thea falls inside, soggy and out of breath, with her jacket pulled up over her head. ''Holy shit,'' she gets out, dropping her bags. ''It's crazy out there,'' she says. ''Today was the wrong day to forget my backup flats.'' She kicks off her muddy looking heels and shakes rain out of her hair. ''That wind is something else.''

''Yeah, it's pretty nasty tonight,'' Sara says, picking up her glass of soda, taking a sip, attempting to appear casual while she eyes Dean suspiciously. ''I didn't realize it was supposed to storm.''

''Sudden cold front,'' Thea says. ''I think it came in from Canada. I wonder if the power's - ''

A scream pierces the inexplicably heavy air, cutting Thea off, followed closely by the sound of shattering glass.

Dean, already tensed up and ready for something, jolts into action. He's not even surprised by the sound of Laurel's scream. He feels like he's been waiting for that. His body has been coiled tight and ready for a fight since he looked over at her and saw... What was it that he saw? What was that in her eyes? That unrecognizable daze?

He turns and races down the hall with both Sara and Thea on his heels. The bathroom door is unlocked and the first thing he notices when he throws it open is the harsh burst of unnaturally freezing cold air that hits him in the face.

Sara recoils at it. ''What the fuck?''

Dean doesn't even stop to think about it. Somewhere deep down, he knows. He pushes the thought away and all but dives into the bathroom to get to Laurel.

She's on the floor, huddled against the wall with her knees drawn up to her chest, and she looks... She just doesn't look right.

''Laurel,'' he says, but she doesn't look up. He avoids the broken glass the best he can, crouching down in front of her, trying to get her to look at him. ''Baby.'' He grabs her face in his hands, momentarily thrown by how warm her skin is. ''Look at me,'' he pleads.

She doesn't.

''Did she smash the mirror?'' Thea's voice asks.

''She couldn't have,'' Sara says. ''Her hands would be full of blood. Why would she - ''

''Well, how - ''

''She didn't break the mirror,'' Dean says. He moves his hands from her face and takes her hands in his. There are a few minor cuts on her palms, but there's not nearly enough injuries to suggest she broke the mirror. He looks at her again, even though she still won't meet his eyes. She looks pale, almost gray, shaking uncontrollably, breathing heavily, drenched in sweat despite how cold the bathroom is, but there is... something unnervingly wrong about the look on her face.

All right. Damage control.

''Thea,'' he says evenly, cutting both women off mid conversation. ''Go next door and get Hanna.''

Thea doesn't even try to argue. He can sense her hesitation, but all she says is a short, ''Got it'' and then she turns and marches out.

''Dean,'' Sara says. ''What's going on?''

''I don't know.'' He looks around the bathroom but isn't sure what he's looking for. There is no sign of anyone else. No signs of a struggle, no strange sulphur smell, no unexplained sounds, but there is the cold. He presses the back of his hand to her forehead. She, however, is not cold. She's burning up. A fever. He can work with that. ''She's running a fever,'' he says. ''We'll start there.'' He loops one of her limp arms around his neck and lifts her into his arms. She has no reaction to that. ''I need a lukewarm cloth, some ice, and Advil,'' he tells Sara. It's a pointless task, he knows damn well that this isn't medical, but she looks relieved that he's given her something to do, that she has a point to go from.

He gets Laurel back into bed, gingerly placing her back on her side of the bed, but she still won't look at him. She looks weak and sickly, but when he turns his back on her for five seconds to rummage around for the thermometer that is somewhere in one of their bedside drawers from when Mary was sick and spent most of her time in their bed, she manages to spring back up to her feet. He turns back around and she is standing at her vanity in front of the mirror. Her breathing is still labored and her entire body is still shuddering and she's bent forward, palms flat against the cold wood like she's in pain, bracing herself against the onslaught of...something.

He abandons the thermometer idea and moves back to her side. He can't help but notice that the cold air seems to have followed her here. She is burning up with fever. The air around her is not. The persistent, nagging thought in the back of his head grows louder, harder to ignore.

''Laurel.'' He brings a hand to her lower back. ''Sweetheart, you're sick. You shouldn't be on your feet.'' He moves his hand up her back, but she tenses and shies away from his touch, letting out this pained guttural sounding moan. She looks like she's struggling. Fighting against something.

He doesn't touch her again, but watches her, torn between curious and horrified. She's panting like she's running a marathon and her fingers keep clawing at the wood of the vanity, her whole body trembling. He, meanwhile, feels like someone has taken a hold of his heart and squeezed the life out of it. He looks at her reflection in the mirror, and sighs. ''You're not you,'' he murmurs, ''are you?''

She lifts her head, empty eyes meeting his in the mirror.

He is not surprised to see nothing familiar. There is a second where the husband overwhelms the hunter and all he's thinking is, No, no, no, please not her. But then Sara comes running back into the room and the decades of training and experience kick in. ''Sara,'' he says, stepping in between her and Laurel. ''Get out.''

''What?'' She looks at him incredulously. ''No, fuck you.''

He doesn't ask twice. Just takes his life into his hands and manhandles her out of the bedroom, nearly picking her up and hauling her out of the room like she's his unruly toddler.

She is not pleased. ''Dean! What the fuck are you - Do you want to get punched in the face?'' She whirls around to glare at him. ''Laurel's sick, I can't just - ''

He closes the bedroom door behind him. ''That's not Laurel.''

''That - '' She visibly had not been expecting that. ''What? What do you mean that's not Laurel?''

He doesn't answer, starting down the hall instead. The only additional information he gives her is a sharp, forceful, ''If that door opens, you get Mary and get her out of this house.'' He tears through the house, sprinting through the dining room, into the kitchen, and out into the garage. He yanks open the trunk, fumbling through the arsenal, the random charms and weapons, ceremonial daggers and Palo Santo stakes until he grabs an old nearly empty duffel bag from the back. He struggles with the zipper and finally gets it open, grabbing his old trusty EMF meter. He rushes back into the house, ignoring Sara's frantic questions, and goes straight for the bathroom, hovering outside it, avoiding the broken glass. As soon as he turns the EMF meter on, the thing goes crazy.

''What...'' Sara doesn't sound so frustrated anymore. ''What does that mean?''

He closes his eyes, jaw clenching, defeated. He wants to believe it's a false reading, but this old thing, made from his own hands, has never led him astray before. He just doesn't understand how this could have happened. They have hex bags in every room, Devil's Traps and other various protection charms and symbols and crystals, and Laurel's finally come around the lining the windows and doors with salt. The house has been blessed and purified several times by a handful of different people, from psychics to voodoo practitioners to witch doctors to a literal angel. They cleanse the house every day. Sam even brought Missouri Mosely in while Dean and Laurel were in Malibu to poke around the house and leave her own protective mark on the place. How could something get through all that?

...The only way it could have gotten in was if they let it in. Or if it was here the whole time.

''Okay, okay, I'm here.'' He turns, watching Hanna step in through the sliding glass door, shaking rain off her pajamas, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood with her fluffy unicorn slippers. ''This better be important,'' she says. ''Dinah and I are watching Fatal Attraction, Glenn Close is getting real messed up, and there's no way she's going to keep the movie paused for that long.'' She puts her hands on her hips and surveys the scene in front of her, instantly raising her eyebrows at the expressions on their faces. ''Whoa, what's up?''

''Laurel's possessed,'' Dean blurts out. ''I don't know how, we've done everything you've told us to do, we've had this house blessed and cleansed and purified and all that shit by fucking seven different - ''

''All right,'' Hanna holds a hand up. ''Calm down. What makes you think she's possessed?''

Dean looks at her for a second, and then pointedly holds up the EMF meter, which is still going crazy.

''That's a pretty good indicator that something's rotten,'' Hanna nods. ''But it doesn't necessarily mean she's possessed. I mean, how reliable is that? Is that homemade?''

''I know my wife.''

''Hold on,'' Sara says. ''What kind of possession are we talking about here?''

''I second that question,'' Thea adds. ''If this is about to go full Exorcist, I have to warn you that I'm not - I'm kind of vomit sensitive. I'm a sympathy puker. If projectile split pea soup vomit is going to be a thing, I - ''

''That's not generally how it works in real life,'' Hanna says. ''I mean, it can happen. Maybe not projectile, but there's this thing called allotriophagy - ''

''It has to be a ghost,'' Dean says. ''She's protected against demonic possession.''

''You're sure the tattoo hasn't been compromised?''

''I'm sure.''

''Are you telling me that, somehow, even though we've spent months locking this house down to protect her, something has still managed to sneak through?'' Sara demands incredulously. ''How the - She was supposed to be safe!''

''Maybe it didn't need to get through,'' Hanna says calmly. ''Maybe it was here the whole time and everything we've done has just enclosed it.''

''Or we let it in,'' Dean suggests.

Hanna nods. ''Also very possible.''

''How?'' Sara throws an anxious look at the bedroom door. ''How is that possible?''

''It could be that Laurel has something attached to her,'' Hanna says. ''When she came back, she crossed back over from the other side. Something could have come back with her. It's not impossible. More than likely, it's Edie. We know she and Laurel are connected. She easily could have sent something through that connection to latch onto Laurel like a leech, although I don't know...why she would? Truthfully, there are a number of things that can get through all we've done. Most of them are harmless.'' She pats Dean's arm in a strained attempt at comfort as she shuffles over to the bedroom door. ''It could be nothing. Some kind of fae, a wood nymph - there's a lot of those in Washington and Oregon. Really anything that saw someone vulnerable and hitched a ride. She is kind of a neon sign right now to supernatural creatures. I'm sure it's nothing.'' Her fingers brush the doorknob and she pauses, humming thoughtfully. ''Awfully cold,'' she says, a little more hesitant.

The bedroom door creaks open absurdly slowly, and Hanna cautiously creeps into the room while Dean stands in the doorway with Thea and Sara peeking over his shoulder.

Laurel, or whatever is left of her, is sitting on the bed, still flushed and sweaty and trembling, staring down at her hands. She looks up when Hanna enters, although her gaze is blank and empty.

Hanna halts in her tracks. ''...Ah.''

''I told you,'' Dean says. He steps over the threshold, moving to stand next to her, ready to yank her back if he needs to.

''You were wrong,'' she tell him simply, peering up at him. ''She's not possessed.''

''Hanna, I know her. That's not - ''

''No, I know,'' she says. ''And you're - well, you're kind of right.'' She pauses, throwing a look at Laurel. ''Don't mind us. Just pretend we're not here. Go about your business.''

''What? No. That - '' He looks around her to glower at the thing that is not his wife. ''Do not go about your business. Get out of my house.''

''Ignore him,'' Hanna chirps. ''He's a hunter. They're brutes. You know how it is.'' She flicks her hair and turns back to Dean with a glare, pushing at his chest. ''You need to chill out. She's not in danger. It's not harming her.''

''It's not - Hanna, look at her,'' Sara insists. ''She's sick.''

''The spell,'' Thea says, eyes widening. ''The one between her and Ollie. The one that's keeping her alive. If it's been compromised - ''

''Oh, no,'' Hanna brushes that idea off with a dismissive wave of her hand. ''That's fine. I can see its light in her eyes. It's safe. Your brother's safe. And so is she.''

''This is not safe,'' Dean says. ''There's something fucking possessing her - ''

''For the last time, she is not possessed. She's not in the driver's seat at the moment, but she's there.'' Hanna looks over at Laurel. ''There's a spirit. I don't know who it is, but it's surrounding her completely. It's not inside of her. It's around her. Like a cocoon.''

Dean scrunches his face up. He squints at the body in the bed, trying to see whatever it is that Hanna's seeing, but whatever's there is beyond his reach. ''Why?''

''I - I don't know,'' Hanna admits. ''But I know it's not malevolent. I think...'' She frowns, eyes narrowing as she looks intently at the thing that Dean is still not convinced is Laurel. She snatches the EMF from Dean's hand and fearlessly strides right up to the body, turning on the device and running it down the length of Laurel's body, listening to it crackle and light up. She ''hmms'' again but says nothing before she flicks it off and puts it on the dresser. Somewhat hesitant, but still lionhearted as ever, she takes a seat on the edge of the bed, right next to Laurel and her apparent guest. She leans in, gently tucking a strand of hair behind Laurel's ear, trying to get a good look at her. She keeps her hand on Laurel's cheek for a second before turning back to lock eyes with Dean. ''You know about death omens, right?''

He goes cold. He thinks he might have preferred the option of possession. ''Death omens don't present this way.''

''Not typically,'' she agrees. ''But... I don't know. The supernatural world is fluid. Things work differently for different people. The living have a tendency to underestimate the dead. I don't know who this spirit is. It's faded. Like it's been stuck here on earth for a long time. But it's very insistent. It has a message. Death omens have messages, right? I think...'' She rises back to her feet. ''I think it might just be trying to get the message across but Laurel is...'' She pauses. ''Unresponsive at the moment.''

''Okay,'' Dean says, trying his best to stay calm, lifting a hand slightly to stop Sara when she looks like she's about to unleash a slew of frustrated and impatient expletives. ''Do you know why she's unresponsive?''

Hanna inches closer to him, but keeps her eyes on the shell on the bed. She puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head to the right, then to the left, studying the body. She's quiet for a minute and then two minutes. At one point, she steps closer and sniffs at Laurel.

Dean is getting so tired of witches all up in his business. His patience for all this wacky shit is waning at this point. Now they're sniffing at his wife.

''Just so we're clear,'' Hanna whips around, messy blond hair flipping around with her. ''Aside from the residual magic in her blood from the Ellard family line, Laurel's not a witch, right?'' She eyes the three of them like they've been holding out on her. ''She doesn't practice? Never even dabbled? No sleepover Ouija board session? Playground love spell?''

''Not as far as I know,'' he says. ''We do what you tell us to do. Nothing more.''

''Right.'' Hanna nods her head. She looks thoughtful, chewing on the inside of her cheek. ''So it's definitely weird that she's trying to astral project right now, huh?''

''She's - '' All right, he will admit that is nowhere near the ballpark he thought they were in. ''What?''

''Astral projection,'' Hanna says with a nod, as if that explains everything.

''Like...'' Sara blinks a few times. ''Shannen Doherty?''

Out of Sara's line of sight, Thea closes her eyes and shakes her head.

Hanna just looks lost. ''I'm sorry?''

''On Charmed,'' Sara attempts to elaborate.

''My mom didn't let us watch Charmed,'' Hanna says. ''She said it was inaccurate and offensive. I don't know how astral projection was portrayed there - ''

''Glowily,'' says Sara.

''But in real life it's sort of like a trance,'' Hanna explains. ''Almost like a form of meditation. My grandmother thought it was kitschy. However, it's growing in popularity with younger covens. The idea is that your consciousness leaves your physical body for the astral plane - a place parallel to here but outside of time and space. It's a literal out of body experience. Your body is alive, right where you left it, but you're not in it. Some folks have been known to use it as a form of communication. There's a coven in Savannah, Georgia run by two young sisters and they use it as their primary form of communication.'' Without a word to them about what she's doing, she pads back over to the bed, sits down next to Laurel, and takes her hand. ''I've heard it's unnerving.''

She puts her other hand over Laurel's, completely enclosing her hand between hers. There is a faint glow, a light between her fingers, a rippling wave of something that squirms its way up Laurel's arm, up her neck, runs through her hair. Nothing happens.

''For them, it would be like second nature,'' Hanna goes on, not even bothering to address whatever it was she just did. ''Easy as breathing. They can do it awake, asleep, even if they were on opposite sides of the world, and you would never be able to tell. For a novice, someone like Laurel, it's taxing.''

''Taxing,'' Dean repeats flatly. ''How taxing?''

''Well, look at her,'' Hanna says. ''I just tried to help her out and give her a boost and it did nothing.'' She removes her hands and opts to rub Laurel's back. ''She's hard at work. Her body is trying to astral project, but she can't. It's like running a marathon.''

''I don't understand,'' Thea shakes her head. ''Does she know what's happening?''

''I doubt it,'' Hanna says. ''I think she's being hacked. In a way. I would assume by Edie.''

Dean looks at Laurel, who still doesn't look like Laurel. He can't tell from her blank expression and vacant eyes how she's feeling, but she looks like crap. She didn't look this ill during the long, grueling hours of childbirth. She didn't even look this bad on her actual deathbed. Fucking Edie.

''How?'' Sara asks. ''How is Edie - ''

''Their connection,'' Dean says, before Hanna has a chance. ''Their blood connection. Edie created a channel. We knew that. We knew she was in her head. We knew they were communicating. We didn't think about how.''

''Forced astral projection,'' Hanna nods. ''That makes sense. It would explain a lot. It could even explain why the original damaged spell degraded so fast, why Laurel's so tired all the time despite the energy boost Oliver's giving her, even some of the nightmares and hallucinations she's been having. Edie was pulling her into the astral plane for chats. She was literally tugging at her mind. She still is.''

''So,'' Thea folds her arms. ''Something went wrong tonight?''

''Yeah. I don't know if it's whoever this is,'' Hanna waves at the air surrounding Laurel. ''Or something else, but it's like something - ''

''Woke Laurel up,'' Dean finishes. ''Right in the middle.''

''Exactly. How was she when she woke up?''

''She just said it was a nightmare,'' he says. ''But she was...out of it. I thought she was sick. I should've pushed it.''

''Dean, you couldn't have known,'' Thea says. ''She has nightmares all the time. There was no reason to jump to something like forced astral projection.''

Bullshit. Of course there was. He knew Edie was in her head. He knew something was wrong when Laurel woke up. She was disoriented and hysterical. She looked at him like she didn't even know him.

''If Laurel's trapped in her own head,'' Sara says, ''how do we get her out?''

Hanna doesn't seem overly concerned about that. ''I'm not sure.'' She studies Laurel like a piece of homework, eyeing her up and down to the point where even Dean feels invaded by her sharp gaze. ''I don't want to use hardcore defensive magic,'' she finally says. ''I don't want to risk hurting her. That means no action spells, no potions or potent hex bags, nothing too abrasive like Palo Santo or mistletoe. I don't even want to use sage or thyme. It's best to go full kid gloves with this one.'' There is another second of silence, yet another contemplative hum, and then she rises to her feet, presumably with a plan. ''That lavender and chamomile tea that Laurel likes,'' she says. ''Make a cup, cool it down, and try to get her to sip at it. Lavender and chamomile are both used for protection and to ward off negative energy. There's not enough in the tea to actively harm Edie, but every bit counts. I can make some rosemary and salt satchels. Maybe grab you guys a few more crystals.''

''You have to stop giving us crystals,'' Dean remarks. ''This place is starting to look like an Instagram influencer's condo.''

''I will not,'' Hanna responds, haughty. ''I realize the hipsters have co-opted crystals for the aesthetic, whatever that means to them, but there are legitimate reasons witches use crystals. Not only for grounding and centering, but protection and healing.''

Dean rolls his eyes, but doesn't argue with her, instead turning to Thea and Sara. ''Can you go make the tea?''

Thea is the one who gets it, understanding flashing through her eyes. ''Got it,'' she says with a decisive nod, cutting off Sara's protests and pulling her out of the room.

Hanna makes no move to leave, looking back at Dean, waiting for him to say what's on his mind. The only problem is that he has no idea what's on his mind. He has no business being surprised by these fucked up shenanigans anymore. He's lived in this world since he was four years old. He knows what it's made of. The unexplainable. Gruesome violation. That used to be where he got his bread and butter. But this is Laurel. It's in his home now.

He should have seen this coming months ago. He should have known. ''Is she in pain?''

Hanna doesn't seem surprised by the question. ''I don't think so,'' she says gently. ''Not pain exactly. Maybe some discomfort. Mild nausea. Dizziness. Astral projection takes a lot out of you, but it's not a wound. It's just exhausting.'' She looks over at Laurel. ''It's upsetting to see,'' she acknowledges. ''But she'll be fine.'' She smiles, but it's thin. ''Might have a wicked hangover in the morning, but she'll bounce back. She's strong. Healthy enough.'' She pauses and then allows, ''Super bad for your skin, though.''

He has to do a double take at that one. ''What?''

''Astral projection,'' she says. ''It dries you out. You should make sure she hydrates tomorrow. Lots of water. Oh, and make sure she moisturizes. Have you ever heard of Manuka honey? I have this great recipe for DIY face masks that are great for - ''

''Hanna.''

''Just putting it out there,'' she says. But that's where she stops. She looks at him, his worried eyes, his tense shoulders, and she softens. ''Dean, I can promise you this isn't an attack,'' she offers him. ''Think of it more as...technical difficulties. She and Edie are just having some trouble connecting. It might even be a good sign. If Edie is being pushed out, it might mean she's still powered down. That's never happened before. Actually.'' She stops, looking contemplative, sneaking a glance at Laurel. ''If the connection between Edie and Laurel is somehow fraying or getting weaker, I might be able to find a way to push her out of her head completely.''

''Would that give her more time?''

''I'm not sure,'' she admits. ''I think the only thing that will save her life is the Resurrection Seal. But if I can block Edie completely, it would stop her from contacting Laurel. Stop the hallucinations. Possibly ease some of the nightmares.'' She looks back to Dean. ''Has she still been having hallucinations?''

''None while we were in California,'' he says. ''When we were there, it was - It was better. She was happier. She seemed healthy. As soon as we got back, it was like a switch flipped. The night we got back, she spaced out at dinner. She said she was just tired, but...''

''Hmm.'' Hanna takes that in. ''That implies distance matters. Which doesn't make sense. It's witchcraft, not radio frequency. Unless...'' She stops and he can see her mind going a mile a minute, culminating in a gasp and her eyes widening. ''She's feeding off of Laurel to keep the connection powered up.''

''How does that - ''

''Laurel is an Ellard. She has magic in her blood,'' Hanna explains. ''We know Edie has her own as well, but we also know she's been stealing it from other witches. If she's also been taking it from Laurel...''

''She's - '' Dean looks back and forth between Hanna and the body on the bed. ''She's draining my wife?''

''It makes sense,'' Hanna exclaims. ''She weakens her with forced astral projection and hallucinations, lowers her body's natural defenses, and siphons out the power. If I can block the connection and stop her from doing that - ''

''It'll make her weaker and Laurel stronger,'' he finishes.

Hanna grins. ''Exactly.''

''And this spirit,'' he says, still dubious about the whole thing. ''You're sure it isn't hurting her?''

''As sure as I can be,'' Hanna answers. ''It doesn't feel like harm. But if it is a death omen...'' She steps back over to Laurel, waving her hand through the air, wiggling her fingers as if there is invisible sand flowing through them. ''She'll snap out of it,'' she says. ''More than likely sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we'll do what we can for her but it's more about keeping her comfortable until Edie gives up. The best thing you can do for her is keep her cool and hydrated. Maybe get her to lie down.'' She puts a hand on his arm sympathetically, the expression on her face too old for her eighteen years. ''I'm going to run next door and grab a few things. You should stay with her.'' She gives him one last smile and then heads out, leaving him alone with his wife's empty body.

He looks at the lonely shell, still sitting on the edge of the bed, dull, clammy, and voiceless. It's a bizarre feeling - to be standing in the room with your best friend and not be able to recognize her. He feels uncomfortable here, like he's standing here with a stranger. He tries to tell himself it's just the ghostliness of the situation. There is some unknown spirit latched onto his girl and he's a hunter. Of course he's prickly. He's predisposed to distrust - and vanquish - spirits. He doesn't typically let them do their thing. His body's instinct is to fight.

But he knows that's not the biggest problem he is having. She looked at him like she didn't know who he was. He can't get over that. She looked at him like she hated him. It was dark and it wasn't her, he knows it wasn't her, but there was so much venom in her eyes. Now there's nothing at all. Just these endless, dead eyes. Just like in April.

His two biggest fears: that the woman he loves will die, again, and leave him here all alone, or that she will stay and grow to hate him as much as her cousin does.

And there's nothing he can do to help her.

That's really tripping him up. There is nothing he can do to fix this. To take this away. He just has to sit here and watch her struggle. He's never been good at that. Even though sometimes it feels like that's all he is ever doing with her.

''Okay.'' He grabs the chair from the vanity and pulls it over to the bed, sitting across from her. ''We can do this. It's you and me. We can do this.'' He looks at her. He tries to get her to meet his eyes. A pale nothingness looks back at him. He can't help but grimace. ''Laurel,'' he says. ''Baby.'' No response. He shouldn't have expected one. ''Pretty bird.'' He places a hand on her bare knee. ''Here we are again, huh?'' Slowly, as if sticking his hand into a cage with a wild animal, he cradles her face in his hand and smiles at her, even though he knows she can't see it. ''You know, all the shit I've been through and no one has ever managed to make me feel as helpless as you do on the regular.''

It's not meant to be as insulting as it sounds. Love, after all, is the root of all helplessness. We feel helpless when there are things that cannot be done or undone for the people we love. When we can't save them. Loving her won't snap her out of this, just like it couldn't save her in April, or the way it couldn't get her to put the wine down. For seven months, he could not love her back to life. For six years, he could not love her out of her depression. He has never been good at accepting the basic limitations of human love. He has the scars, psychological and otherwise, to prove it.

He pulls his hand back and looks around for the forgotten cold cloth, swiping it off the vanity. Keep her comfortable. He can work with that. ''One day,'' he tells her, dabbing at her sweaty forehead, her flushed cheeks, ''this whole thing will just be some ridiculously convoluted story we tell the kids to prove we weren't always old and boring.''

Still no response from her.

He brushes it off. Keeps busy trying to make her as comfortable as possible. He scrapes her hair back into a ponytail and drapes the cool cloth around the back of her neck. He runs a melting ice cube over her fevered skin. He attempts to hold one to her lips, but she's not giving him any help here and he's not about to choke her trying to hydrate her. He has no way of knowing if anything he's doing matters. That's generally how helplessness progresses, isn't it?

When she has a panic attack, he can rub her temples. He can hold her hand, help her into bed, get her a cold cloth and some water, draw her a bath, talk her through it, and encourage her to get some rest. He can sit with her while she fights her own brain just to be able to breathe. He can assure her that ''it won't be like this forever.'' But, ultimately, despite all that, she has to find the way back by herself.

When she was in labor, working to bring their daughter into the world, there was a point as the contractions were starting to pick up, where she started to get stressed out by the pain and how scared she was feeling and she asked him to put on some music so she had something to focus on. He put on all her weepy indie music - Iron & Wine, Laura Marling, Ray Lamontagne, Corinne Bailey Rae, all that crap that puts him to sleep - and even managed to slip in some Otis Redding. It seemed to soothe her and she was grateful, just like she was grateful that he was there, that he could rub her back and squeeze her hips and be her rock. But, really, in the end, it was her body and her body alone that did it.

When she was first working on her sobriety, when it was something fresh and fragile and precious, he could drive her to her AA meetings, even go with her and sit with her for the first few, and he could dump the vodka that she bought on her first slip, but staying sober was something that was, realistically, up to her.

That's been how it goes since the beginning. She goes through these things, she fights and claws and struggles, and he can offer her support from the sidelines, he can hold her hand, but they're all hurdles she has to jump over herself. He can't lift her over them. He can't do it for her. It's frustrating. It never stops being frustrating. What he offers her, all that sideline support, it never feels like enough. He can stick his fingers down her throat to get her to throw up the pills, but it is always, always going to be her choice whether to stay or go. No matter what he does, there will always be a space, a void, a separation.

Edie seems to like to do things that really highlight that.

Dean tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear and frets over whether or not he should redo her ponytail, which is the most pointless thing he could think about right now. He checks the bright red numbers on the alarm clock. He touches her knee again. Splays his hand out on her bare skin, rubbing circles with his thumb. ''Laur,'' he whispers. ''Come on, babe, you gotta kick her outta there.'' He runs his hand up to her shoulder and then pauses. There's something...different. He sits there for a second as something familiar settles into his bones and then he stands up. He moves his hands around her, feeling for the cold spot from before. There's nothing. But the hair on the back of his neck is starting to stand up and he can feel that familiar feeling - energy, a kind of electricity, a crackling hum - hanging in the air.

He was raised on that feeling.

He exhales, watching his breath swirl in the air in icy gray wisps. He looks down at Laurel. Watches her finger twitch. He sighs heavily, and turns around.

There is a girl standing in front of him, standing way too close to him, and she's doing that fucking annoying ghostly twitching thing, blinking in and out in front of his eyes. If she's hoping to scare him, she's haunting the wrong person. The girl is young, too young to die, and she's full of blood, hair matted with it, red soaking into her pink leotard. A ballerina. Something about that feels familiar in some way. He has never seen this girl before, but he knows who she is instantly.

Siobhan.

Edie's dead puppy love.

She stands there for a second, staring at him, wide, scared eyes locked onto him, and then she speaks, voice hoarse, teeth coated in blood, ''You have to let us out.''

He stares back at her, unblinking, watching the blood drip down her face from her undoubtedly fatal head wound.

She says it again. ''You have to let us out.''

He looks at Laurel, fragile and small looking on the bed, awake and upright, but unseeing. A bead of sweat runs down her temple. Then he looks back to Siobhan, the dead girl in his bedroom. Fifteen, he thinks, is a baby. Too young to die, too young to love as deeply as Edie and Siobhan did, and too young to be so lost, trapped, even after death, in her bloody pink leotard and her final violent moments.

She says it one more time, urgently, ''You have to let us out.''

''All right,'' he says quickly. ''I got it.'' Then, ''Us?''

She flashes and then disappears altogether.

Dean startles at the sudden disappearance, spinning around just in time to see her pop up again by Laurel's side of the bed, over by the window. Her back is to him, facing the window. It's calm and silent for a minute before she turns her head to look at him, grinding out a harsh, ''Let. Us. Out.''

Shit. It's the fucking salt. For months now, they have kept up with the smoke cleansing, the hex bags, the protective sigils, and the fucking crystals. They only started lining the doors and windows with salt while they were in Malibu. Laurel had balked at the idea of it previously. She said she hadn't wanted to make a mess. He hadn't pushed it because he wasn't sure what good it would do when the biggest danger was in Laurel's head.

''Son of a bitch. All right, all right.'' He hurries over to the window, pulling back the curtains. He hesitates, for just a second, trying to squash down every instinct, and then he breaks the salt line.

Siobhan gives him one last ghostly flicker and then she's gone, disappearing all at once, a gust of wind whooshing through the air, rustling the curtains. It's all very anticlimactic. Until it isn't.

Over on the bed, Laurel gasps awake. It's a rattling gasp. Like someone drowning and finally breaking through the surface of the water.

''Laurel.'' He rushes back over to her, back to his seat, and the second he's in front of her, she's reaching blindly for him with one hand, the other clutched to her chest. ''Hey, Laur.'' He grimaces at the sound of her ragged, painful breathing. ''Honey.''

She grips his arm tightly, nails digging into his skin. ''Dean,'' she slurs, before a whimper escapes her lips.

''I'm right here,'' he tries to soothe. ''You're okay. You're safe.''

''S-Something's wrong.''

''I know. It's a long story. It's over now.''

''No.'' It's a wheeze, but it sounds a little stronger, a little more like her. ''No, you don't - you don't understand.'' She unfurls the hand pressed to her chest, reaching for him, grabbing his arms like she's trying to steady herself. ''Nothing's wrong with me.'' She looks up at him and the relief that he feels when he looks into her eyes and sees only her - scared, exhausted, but her - is astounding. But fleeting. ''It's Edie,'' she gasps out. ''Something's wrong with Edie.''

.

.

.

December, 2015

Lately, Laurel has been thinking a lot about time.

How quickly it goes by when you're not paying attention. You blink, you turn your head for one second, and suddenly half your life has gone by and you're left reeling, untethered and full of regrets, wondering how you could have missed all those moments you missed.

When you're a child, time is more of an abstract concept rather than an absolute. Life is long and slow and...preventative; a trap. You long to grow up. To be free. As an adult, especially as a mother, Laurel has finally realized how wrong she was as an impatient girl. Life is fast and short and she has made the mistake of blinking.

Now, she's here: Thirty years old, the last few years of her twenties a painful blur of mental illness and irrevocable damage, with a three year old daughter with growing independence who just yesterday was a tiny baby that never wanted to be anywhere but her parents' arms.

She has no idea why she has been caught in such a loop lately - perhaps it's the holiday season, or what happened to Felicity, or maybe she is simply tired - but, whatever the reason, she has been feeling awfully melancholy lately. As if her time is running out.

By all accounts, she should be feeling content and at peace with her life right now. She finally has it all. A wonderful, bright, funny, sweet daughter. A loving, supportive husband. Her sister is alive and well. She's on relatively good terms with her parents. She is young, fit, and healthy. She has a reliable group of friends, a cozy home in a desirable neighborhood, a steady well-paying job, and she has finally found her stride as Black Canary. And just the other day, she and Dean sat down and decided to talk about the possibility of trying for another baby in the new year.

She has everything to live for. All the puzzle pieces have come together. Nothing but joy and a wide open future full of endless possibilities.

But still.

The melancholy persists.

Something has shaken her. What happened - and what is still happening - to Felicity was horrific and barbaric. A woman brutally attacked because some cowardly man decided to use her to send a message to another man. It was gut wrenching. It still is. Damien Darhk stole from Felicity. Paralyzed her. Changed the entire course of her life, her future, because he wanted to hurt the man in her life.

He is a small, petty, impotent man who longs to be a God. Relies on brainwashed goons and parlor tricks because he knows he is nothing without them. A man like that, angry and pathetic and unpredictable, is dangerous. Small men will do anything to appear big. And this particular small man, with his theatrical dramatics and wolfish smile, likes to use women as chess pieces.

Damien Darhk knows where Quentin Lance's daughter and granddaughter live.

Laurel has not forgotten that. How could she? He used her and he used Mary to corrupt her father. Blackmail him into being his errand boy. Her biggest comfort when it comes to this new problem, the only thing that has kept her from packing her family up and telling them to get out of town, is Dean.

As far as she knows, Darhk has no idea who Dean is. While he seems to be aware there is a husband in the picture, he has never referred to him by name and has deemed him inconsequential. Which is good. As long as Dean's with her, Mary will be safe. Even if Darhk does come for her, he will not get far. Not with the Winchesters there.

However, Laurel, on the other hand...

Life is short.

And lately she's been feeling like she's nothing more than a bird caught in the wires. As if she is trapped in a very specific period of time. Perpetually living in one single solitary moment. The moment you realize you're going to fall. The space between the hammer and the nail. It's an eerie feeling. One she can't explain.

Then again, maybe it's just anxiety. For now, Darhk's focus seems to have shifted to Oliver. He enjoys antagonizing him. Relishes in hurting him. Maybe they'll keep each other busy. Leave her out of it.

Her gloomy mood is probably just weather related. She hasn't seen the sun in weeks. Or maybe it's just a her problem on a deeper level. A therapist once told her that she seeks out mud in a concentrated effort to stay dirty. She wallows. Misery is safe to her. It's familiar. She has the capacity for it. Cleanliness will only come when she's willing to give up the dirt.

So, yeah, you know, maybe that's it.

She feels unsettled lately, this bizaree sense of unease settling into her bones like a bad roommate. She has become unusually afraid of the dark. But perhaps it's only her own shadow. Maybe she just needs to make that appointment with her therapist that she's been meaning to make. Call her sponsor. That sounds like a good idea. She's sure she can carve out some time tomorrow to call Renee.

For now, for tonight, all she needs to focus on is picking up a few things and getting home as fast as she can. It's been a shitty day. A long one at that. She left work late and she's like 99% sure that not only has she missed dinner but she's not going to make it home to say goodnight to her baby. She just wants to go home.

Which would be easier if there were not so many people in Target right now clogging up the store. And also if Dean could just text her the list of things he needs. She's been standing in the laundry detergent aisle for - she checks her watch - three minutes and twenty-three seconds now, trying to hear what he's saying to her while Mary shrieks about cheese puffs and small oranges and Bubble Guppies.

She doesn't even know what Bubble Guppies is.

''Babe,'' she tries to break into the conversation. ''All I need to know is what laundry detergent you want me to get.''

''You don't know what - ''

In the background, there is a long, mournful screech of, ''ORAAAAAAANGES!''

Dean ignores it. ''You don't know what laundry detergent we use?''

''I know what we got last time, but you said you hated it.''

''TELL MOMMY, DADDY, TELL MOMMY, TELL MOMMY!''

''Oh. Right. Well, just get - ''

''TELL MOMMY SMALL ORANGES!''

''Just get whatever's on sale. Also,'' he adds on, completely nonchalant, as if there is not a howler monkey yelping directly into his ear. ''Mary would appreciate it if you could pick up some Cuties.''

Laurel pauses, hand on the laundry detergent that's on sale. ''I...don't know what it is.''

There is a long sigh on the other end of the phone line and then Dean says, weirdly hesitantly, like he really doesn't want to say it, ''They're those small oranges she likes.''

Right on cue, there's a high-pitched blast of, ''SMALL ORANGES'' and then a shriek and a giggle and, ''NO! LEAVE IT ALONE, LEAVE IT ALONE!''

Dean says, firmly but tiredly, ''Mary, stop that.''

More maniacal laughing.

''If I point out that they don't have small oranges here,'' Laurel starts, reluctant, ''which one of you is going to have the tantrum?''

There is another heavy sigh. He sounds like he is really going through it right now. Guess neither one of them is having a good day. She should probably pick up the pace a bit. ''Can you just get home?''

''Yes, I'm trying, but - ''

There's a clatter and a chaotic uproar of Dean and Mary talking over each other, with Mary shrieking for him to get away from her, she's fine, she doesn't need his help, while he tries to warn her not to do something, and then there's a crash and the sound of shattering glass. There's a seemingly stunned silence and then, ''Damn it. Mary Beatrice!''

Then Mary starts crying. Wailing, actually. Full on howling.

Laurel rubs at her forehead, closing her eyes. ''Dean - ''

''Look, I can't - I need to get her to bed,'' he says, voice abrupt, curt. ''Dropping naps is going great, by the way. Absolutely smashing. I fucking hate three.'' Then, almost as an afterthought, ''Don't forget the Pirate's Booty puffs. And diapers.''

''Wait,'' Laurel tries. ''Diapers or pull ups?''

Too late.

She stares helplessly at the phone for a second, silently willing him to maybe text her and tell her what she's supposed to get. No dice. Okay. Okay. Well, she is the mom here. She can figure it out. She should know. It's just - She's not sure how far into potty training he is right now? When they first started trying the potty training thing last spring, she was all in, but then they decided to shelve it because it was - no pun intended - a shit show and they wanted to wait until Mary was showing more signs of being ready. Even last October when Mary turned three, Laurel was paying more attention. She swears she was. However, ever since Damien Darhk came to town, it has been one thing after another. Literally one catastrophe after another.

Sometimes she wonders if dragging Oliver back to town was maybe possibly a huge mistake. Things were gearing up to get bad anyway, but where he goes, chaos follows. Which unfortunately means that Black Canary has been busier than usual. Mom's sort of taken a backseat, as bad as that sounds.

Laurel chews on her bottom lip, eyeing the shelves of Pampers and Huggies and Honest Company diapers and pull ups. Well - screw it, all right, she's just going to get both. She loads a pack of diapers and a pack of pull ups into the cart and sets off, intent on getting out of this fucking Target as soon as possible.

Then she comes upon the toy aisle and truth is she simply lacks the self-control needed to avoid it. In her defense, it is Christmas time and she and Dean have been searching everywhere for the action figure of the Flash that was supposed to come out back in September. She knows it exists, she's seen other people with it, but she's been searching for it for September, had originally wanted to get it for Mary's birthday, and she's had zero luck. It's frustrating. Mary's young, possibly too young to appreciate an action figure, and she'd likely get more use out of yet another stuffed animal, but that silly action figure is the one thing she's been consistent about wanting from Santa Claus.

Mary loves the Flash. Just adores him. She has never shown any interest in any of the Marvel superhero movies, remaining totally uninterested in the Captain America shield she got for her birthday, she has no opinion on the Starling - sorry, Star City - vigilantes other than being mildly frightened by Green Arrow's ''scary voice,'' and her reaction to learning that her mom is Black Canary was basically:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But something about that red speedster just makes her happy.

Barry was extremely flattered when he heard that.

Laurel ducks down the aisle, scanning the shelves, and finds nothing but an empty spot where the action figures should be. Evidently, Mary is not the only child who loves the Flash. She picks up the only action figure left. Captain Cold. Not a hero, but he is technically one of Flash's villains. Maybe Mary will appreciate that? Honestly, Laurel can't even be certain Mary knows who Captain Cold is, but she's gotta take what she can get.

She turns to leave when something catches her eye on the shelf of children's books. A coloring book. Specifically it's a coloring book titled Star City's Heroes. She grabs the book, opens it up, and finds herself looking at...herself. And Green Arrow. And Spartan. And Speedy. All four of them lined up, posing like the low budget Avengers. It makes her laugh. She flips through the coloring book, going from page to page, group shots and single shots, from Green Arrow all the way to Arsenal and even the Atom, all with cheesy taglines like ''The First Vigilante'' and ''Hero of the People,'' and then she turns a page and there's her. The Black Canary, immortalized.

The title of the page reads:

THE BLACK CANARY
SAVIOR OF THE GLADES

Oh.

Wow. Savior of the Glades. She's never been titled a ''savior'' before. That is…a lot of pressure. She hadn't realized they liked her so much down in the Glades. She does spend most of her time down there, if she's being honest. Most nights take her there. It's familiar ground. She was born there. It's home. No one else is going to save it.

She looks at the page of the coloring book for a long time. It is not a perfect likeness, none of the images are, no one has ever seen the faces of the vigilantes, most people haven't even gotten closer than blurry cell phone videos, but her suit looks fairly accurate and they nailed the spirit of it all. In the image, she is soaring through the air on a zip line, hair billowing behind her, determined and ready. Something about it makes her pause. She studies the look on the woman's face.

She never considered this part of being a vigilante. The adoration. The monetization. It's a little jarring. She's not sure how she feels about it. She knew about the ongoing comic book series by some local duo and she knew about the t-shirts, but as more and more vigilantes pop up, so does the inevitable merchandise. It's not surprising because, you know, fucking capitalism. Nothing is sacred there. It's just...

Here she is, standing in the shadows, watching herself become a cultural figure, and all she can think about is what her children will think of her one day. Will Mary proudly wear one of those t-shirts with Black Canary screaming that says Girl, Scream Your Heart Out? Will she start a novelty mug collection? Collect fridge magnets? Laugh it off? Or will she be embarrassed by her mother's unusual second job? Will she grow angry with the way the world has a piece of her mom that maybe she won't ever be able to reach? Will she understand why Laurel did this? That it was for her?

Laurel closes the coloring book and flips it over to read the blurb on the back. It was made and distributed by a local artist and a portion of the proceeds will be going to Seattle Children's Hospital. She puts the book in her cart. It'll make a good stocking stuffer, even if Mary doesn't really care about it. She hopes Mary, and any other child that comes after, will understand why Black Canary exists.

She gives the toy aisle one last cursory look over, checking behind a few items for an errant Flash toy, and then fires off a quick text to Dean to tell him she still has not found the damn toy. She fully expects him to text back with a Jingle All the Way joke. She tries to move as fast as she can, speed walking her way to the snack aisle to grab the cheese puffs and by some miracle, she finds a checkout lane that doesn't have a line.

Once she's outside, loading up the Jeep, her mind wanders, as it always does these days, to Felicity. Maybe she should stop by the hospital. Just to make sure Donna Smoak has something to eat. It would mean yet another place to go before she can go home. She doesn't think Dean would appreciate her coming home that late.

She just can't help the feeling that she should be doing something more for them. Part of her feels terribly guilty that she's just happily going about normal life, preparing for Christmas, fretting over presents, taking Mary to the Santa Claus Parade and the Christmas Tree Festival and the Christmas Market down in Seattle when one of her friends is in the ICU, paralyzed from the waist down. She feels like she should be doing more to help, but what else can she do? She has done as much as she can for Felicity, for her poor mother, and for Oliver.

She sends flowers regularly so Felicity has something to look at other than the dreary hospital room and even drearier winter weather outside the window. She was able to successfully sweet talk Dean into make a few quick and easy freezer meals and baked goods for Oliver and Donna so they'll have something easy to eat that isn't cold pizza, hospital food, or late night fast food burgers. She stops by on her lunch breaks whenever she can, even if it's just to keep Donna company. There isn't much else she can do. Plus, there's the added issue of...

Well, she is never quite sure how wanted her help - or her presence - is when it comes to Oliver and Felicity.

Donna has been nothing but warm and welcoming to her - though that could just be because she's dating her father - but Oliver looks surprised every time he sees her in Felicity's hospital room. And she can't help but think about how strange they have both been since they came back from Ivy Town.

When Laurel first put on that suit, Felicity was one of her biggest supporters. She gave pep talks. She believed in her. She was one of the only ones who did. Laurel thought that meant they were friends. Then Oliver and Felicity rode off into the sunset together and ever since they came back, it's like she's a stranger to them. Especially to Felicity. It feels like their friendship was just a placeholder. It was good when Oliver wasn't in the picture, they were solid, but now that he is, the friendship isn't needed.

Maybe that's to be expected. Laurel is the ex-girlfriend, after all. And Felicity's the new girlfriend - now the fiancée. Maybe that's too hard to get past.

Regardless, she still feels like she should be doing...something. Laurel puts the box of diapers in the back of the Jeep, the last of her haul, and closes the hatchback, pulling her phone out of her pocket to check the time and write out a text to her father, asking him if he's with Donna and if they'd like her to bring them something to eat. Just as she hits send, her phone dings with another text, this time from Dean. It's just a picture of a package, opened up to reveal what's inside. A whole box of Flash merchandise. Coloring books, comic books, Christmas tree ornaments, plushies, a mug, a knit cap, keychains, posters, etc. And that toy. That elusive action figure.

dont worry about the toy, Dean texts. barry and the wests sent mary some swag. we're supposed to tell her its from flash. he even wrote her a note.

Laurel stares at the picture for a minute, stunned. Holy shit, Mary's going to freak out on Christmas morning. Santa Claus is about to be upstaged. A smile tugs at her lips and her shoulders relax, her spirits buoyed by the act of kindness she hadn't been expecting. She scrolls through her contacts, searching for Iris' number, determined to call her and thank her. She's just spotted Iris' name in her contacts list when she hears someone say her name from behind her.

''Laurel?''

She turns, eyes falling on the smiling blonde walking up to her. It takes her a second to place the woman, but when she does, her entire body instantly shifts into work mode. ''Mrs. Lovejoy!'' Reflexively, her smile widens. That polite smile meant for when she sees clients or colleagues - or a former CNRI top investor in this case - in the wild. ''Hi!''

Katherine Lovejoy, bubbly and sugar sweet, instantly goes in for a hug, exclaiming, ''It's so good to see you!'' The warmth and kindness is standard Lovejoy. Alan and Katherine, despite their immense wealth, have always been nothing but humble, generous, and unflinchingly kind. That's how Laurel met them in the first place. They throw money at every charity, invest in fledgling startups, buy thousands of dollars' worth of toys for toy drives every year, spend Thanksgiving at the same soup kitchen in Seattle. Unlike some of the other rich people she has met over the years, the Lovejoys struck her, from the very beginning, as genuine.

She was terribly sad to hear about Alan's death last spring. She manages to get herself together after a stunned second, wrapping her arms around Katherine and hugging her back. ''It's good to see you too,'' she says. ''It's been a minute, hasn't it?''

Katherine holds onto her for just a minute too long, as usual, before she pulls away, smiling ear to ear. ''At least a year,'' she says. ''Too long. And, Laurel, sweetie, we've talked about this,'' she winks. ''Please call me Katie. Mrs. Lovejoy is my mother-in-law.''

Laurel laughs. ''Duly noted.'' She pauses before she asks, ''How are you doing, Katie?''

Katherine's smile falters, but she's too stubborn to let it drop completely. ''Oh, you know. It's - '' She tries to shrug. ''It's tough. I'm just trying to keep busy. That's why I'm here.'' She makes a concentrated effort to brighten up, regain her perky, endlessly cheerful mood. ''I have three toy drives to buy toys for. Alan's the one who does the toy shopping for the children's hospital, but I suppose it's all up to Mrs. Claus now.'' She does not look like she's dressed to go buy out Target's toy aisle, although an argument could be made for Mrs. Claus in her red dress and red heels, emphasized by apple red lips, earrings shaped like holly leaves, and an amazing cream colored coat that probably cost more than Laurel's car. ''It's certainly different this year,'' she admits, a little hesitantly.

Ain't that the truth.

''It is,'' Laurel offers. ''I'm - Katie, I was so sorry to hear about Alan's passing.''

Katherine nods her head with a small, sad looking smile. ''Everyone was.''

''He was a good man.''

''The best,'' Katherine agrees. ''I wish things could be different.''

It doesn't necessarily strike Laurel as an odd thing to say, but there's something...slightly off about the look on Katherine's face when she says it. It's brief and barely there. It probably means nothing - guilt, however irrational, comes with grief - but Laurel notices it.

In all probability, it's just the psychological training Nyssa had her working on all last summer. She can pick up on a lot of weird shit these days. Great for Black Canary, but it has made Laurel Lance a touch paranoid.

''But,'' Katherine goes on, doggedly positive. ''You know, he was a very devout man. He believed in a place better than here. I was never interested in that part of his life, but now that we're here, I - I don't know. I guess I like to believe that's where he ended up.''

''Of course.''

''Anyway,'' Katherine tries to move past the topic of her husband. ''Thank you, by the way. For the flowers. They were beautiful. I don't think I ever sent you a thank you card.''

''No thank you card necessary,'' Laurel says politely. ''I'm glad you liked them.''

''Enough about me,'' Katherine waves a hand dismissively. ''How are you? You look amazing!''

''Oh.'' Laurel is caught off guard by the sudden compliment, red creeping up to her ears. ''Thank you,'' she says. ''I'm good. I'm doing really good. Still with the DA's office.''

''And your...daughter, right? You have a daughter?''

''I do. She's three now.''

''She's three already?''

''Just turned three last October.''

''Oh my god,'' Katherine's eyes widen. ''I can't believe she's three! I remember when you were pregnant with her. Feels like it was just yesterday.''

''You're telling me,'' Laurel chuckles. ''One minute she was this tiny baby and the next she's her own little person. She's such a sweetheart, she's way too smart for her own good, and she's funny - she's so funny. I don't know when that happened. But she's incredible. I can't get enough of her.'' She's trying not to go overboard with her rambling, not to do the typical first time parent thing where she blathers on about small joys and baby steps and ordinary moments as if she is the first mother to ever exist and her child is some tremendous genius. Dean does that enough for the both of them. It's just it's hard not to.

She is a first time parent and she does think her baby is a genius worth gushing about. After a long road full of things like postpartum depression and anxiety, addiction, and a slew of other mental health issues, she finally feels ready to be that annoying first time mom.

Katherine, unlike others, does not look annoyed by that. Just amused with a soft look in her eyes like she wants to laugh. ''I take it you're enjoying motherhood then?''

''I am,'' Laurel answers. It feels good to finally be able to say that out loud and mean it. ''Very much.''

Katherine looks pleased by Laurel's statement. ''That's wonderful,'' she says. ''And she's your firstborn, right?''

''She is. Parenting has been a bit of a learning curve, but she is such a good kid,'' Laurel says. ''She's such a sweetie. Takes all my mistakes in stride.''

''Well, take it from the oldest of three - and the only daughter: Girls always give you a good start.''

Laurel is not entirely sure that's true, but she laughs anyway and says, ''Well, she's got her dad wrapped around her little finger, that's for sure.''

''Oh, I bet.'' Katherine looks closely at Laurel with an appraising look on her face. ''It's really good to see you happy, Laurel,'' she says kindly. ''I know that after CNRI...'' She trails off. ''The world has become a different place over the past few years. This city is a different place.''

''It...'' Laurel licks her lips, trying to figure out how to respond to that. ''It's been a difficult few years, yes.''

''But you seem like you're doing great now,'' Katherine goes on. ''And we're all about to get a fresh start, right? I, for one, am ready to leave 2015 behind.''

''Yes,'' Laurel nods. ''Me too. Here's hoping 2016 will be a better year for all of us.''

''Here's hoping,'' Katherine agrees. She says it softer than before, not quite as bubbly. There is a slightly troubled look in her eyes, like muted grief. Something that has, by now, settled, but still lives there, a poison in your bloodstream. It's understandable.

Alan and Katherine may have been an unconventional couple and the age difference may have given people a certain idea of what their relationship was like, but their marriage appeared genuinely loving in Laurel's eyes. They liked to take care of each other. That's the only way to put it. They were always fussing over each other. Always together. Everyone knew he would have done anything for her.

Laurel cannot imagine the pain Katherine must be feeling right now. She is well versed in grief, to the point where it sometimes feels like it is all she knows, but she simply can't imagine losing a spouse the way Katherine did. She thinks if Dean died, she would just be...

Well, she would be a mess.

Just an aimless, lost, likely frequently sobbing human disaster. For a long time. Evidently, Katherine is not the same. She's too determined to stay down for long. It's an admirable trait. ''Well.'' She makes a concentrated effort to brighten up. ''I've taken up enough of your time,'' she says with a smile. ''You have to get home to your baby and Mrs. Claus has work to do.'' She laughs warmly and abandons her empty cart one last time to pull Laurel in for another hug. ''It really was great to see you.''

''You too,'' Laurel says. When Katherine pulls away, Laurel hesitates for a split second, not wanting to overstep, and then she grabs onto the other woman's hand. ''Mrs. Lovejoy - ''

''Katie.''

''Katie,'' Laurel amends. ''Listen, I - I know how hard the holidays can be when you've had a loss. If you need anything - some company, or help with the house, or even somewhere to go on Christmas - please don't hesitate to call. My husband and I would be happy to help.''

Katherine looks surprised by the gesture - a rather small one, in Laurel's opinion, especially compared to everything Katherine and Alan have done over the years - but only for a second. Then she smiles again. Grins, really. It's an uncanny grin. It throws Laurel off, but she's not sure why. She's just aware of a sudden gnawing, a kind of pressure. It's not a typical sunny Katie Lovejoy smile. It's something different. Something familiar. She feels like she has seen it somewhere before.

It must have been a trick of the light.

''That's very kind of you,'' Katherine says, flipping back over to familiar territory. ''Someday,'' she squeezes Laurel's hand, leaning in with a brilliantly white smile. ''I might take you up on that.''

.

.

.

January, 2017

At first, it's the baby again.

Disembodied, echoed, desperate wails floating through the electric air. The screams of a child crying for its mother bounce off the walls, fill the air in a disorienting, seemingly directionless cacophony.

Laurel has no idea where she is let alone how to find the baby. She is in Iron Heights, standing on the bloodstained concrete where the arrow went in, but she's not. The heavy iron cell doors are fading before her eyes, the concrete under her feet morphing in rich mahogany wood, and with every step she takes, the harsh facade of a cold and lonely place, something of a grave, appears to dissolve into something warmer, something almost alive.

There is a door at the end of the corridor that has never been there before. Even the sound of the baby's cries begin to fade as she approaches it. She is still wearing her bloody nightgown. Like she never left at all. Which is strange because she swears there was a point where she woke up. She swears she did. But maybe she didn't.

Nobody ever really leaves here, after all.

As she inches her way to the wooden double doors at the end of the long hallway, the sound of the baby's cries settle. They fade, slowly giving way to another familiar sound.

It's soft, muffled, and coming from behind the door. The sound of a piano and a woman singing those delicate Latin verses. Ave Maria, once again.

She is growing very, very tired of that old spooky tune.

Still, she keeps going, keeps drifting over to the door. When she reaches it, she doesn't hesitate. She pushes open the heavy wooden doors and steps inside.

It's a theater, warm, with dim lights, and every seat is empty. On the stage, drenched in the spotlight, there is a ballerina. She's dancing for no one, the sound of Ave Maria drowning out the sound of the doors shutting.

Laurel hangs back in the shadows, watching the young ballerina. There is no need to question her identity. This is Siobhan Sweeney, before the crash. Perhaps on the last night of her life. Her final performance. Laurel, footfalls soundless on the carpeted floor, moves down the aisle toward the stage. In this light, without all the blood and gore, Siobhan looks beautiful. A lot less ominous with her head intact. She looks at home on that stage, under all those bright lights. There is color in her cheeks, light in her eyes, and she moves with fluid grace and impeccable elegance, enjoying every move she makes. She's young. She's so young.

Laurel forgets, sometimes, how young fifteen is. How young Edie and Siobhan were when that crash happened. Fifteen is too young to die the way Siobhan did. Too young to lose yourself the way Edie did.

Laurel takes her eyes off Siobhan for a second, looking to the empty seats on her right. There is only one person in the audience, sitting in the front row. As soon as Laurel sees her, she realizes, swiftly, that she is not meant to be here. This is not her dream. She's an intruder.

Edie is sitting in the front row, slumped in one of the seats, weeping, a raw wound of grief. She's younger here, presumably fifteen as well, scraped and bruised, draped in a hospital gown and robe with her arm in a sling. She's a memory, a young girl trapped in her own trauma, and it feels wrong to be here, to see that private pain.

Laurel can't look at her for too long. She looks back at Siobhan Sweeney's swan song and listens to the noise of the room - Ave Maria and Edie's sobs and a curious, oddly painful buzzing sound above the music. The air in the room feels heavy and she feels like she ought to be going.

None of this belongs to her.

She has no right to any of it. She has no idea why she is here or how she got here in the first place. But she can't seem to take her eyes off Siobhan.

Does she know she's dead? Does she know how she got here? Does she ever stop dancing? Does she know how much Edie loved (loves) her? When she died, fifteen and in love with her best friend, tangled up in all that twisted metal, with blood ruining her stage makeup, on that slick road just outside of Bellingham, Washington in the dark of night, was she scared? That scream that Laurel can't unhear, the one that echoes through her nightmares, one long and agonized death rattle - Is that her?

Out of the corner of her eye, Laurel sees a flash of movement, a flick of dark hair.

When she turns her attention to her right, Edie is standing next to her. Present day Edie, scars and all, eyes fixed completely on the memory in front of her. She looks softer here, mournful, more like herself, and still, even after twenty one years, deeply devoted to her lost love.

''She was beautiful,'' her voice rasps out. ''Wasn't she?''

She turns to look at Laurel, but before their eyes can met, there is a loud, blaring horn that sounds, filling the air and -

Laurel's eyes snap open in the back of the Impala.

Somewhere outside the car, what sounds like a big rig truck is speeding by on the highway, the driver laying on the horn for whatever reason. Somewhere closer, she can hear her husband's voice, muffled by the closed door.

Laurel, still groggy, nauseated, sore, and stiff from the night before, groans and sits up, leaning forward to put her head in her hands. She still can't remember anything about what happened the night before, but she knows she sure as hell feels like she took a beating. She still feels exhausted and sick. Hanna told her it's like a hangover. It's an extremely apt description. This is like a New Year's Day hangover. This is like when she got blackout drunk the night before she took the bar exam.

She moves gingerly, doing her best not to puke all over Dean's car. She is like 65% certain he would divorce her if she defiled his baby in that way. She raises her head, looking at the raindrops on the windshield. She fumbles around for her bottle of water and takes a few sips, squinting against the gray winter daylight.

Outside, in the soggy late morning, Dean is leaning back against her door and she can hear him talking to someone on the phone, but it's too muffled for her to make out what he's saying. She pushes away the blanket draped over her and tries to remember what's going on and why she is here and not in her bed. It was...something about Kitsap County. They're going to Kitsap County for something.

Oh, right. Coven. They're going to a coven in Seabeck. Some friends of Bernadette and Marlene. Something to do with Edie. One of them called Hanna yesterday and told her they needed to meet. Laurel is all for following new leads and all and there was no way she was going to miss this, but she would much rather be in bed right now. She has the stupid magic flu again. Hopefully it is just some kind of hangover and she's not on death's door again. That would be inconvenient. She takes a few more sips of water and then puts the cap back on before scooting closer to the door to eavesdrop.

''No,'' he's saying. ''I have no idea if that's what she is, but the kid's pretty sure. Hell, I'm - I gotta say, it makes sense, but - '' He stops and she can see his shoulders tense up, his left hand moving up to pinch the bridge of his nose, wedding ring catching the daylight. ''No, I know, Sam,'' he says. ''This is fucking weird. I mean, really fucking bonkers. We've been in some shit sandwiches, but this...this is up there.'' There's another pause and then his body noticeably tenses. ''No, she says she can't remember what happened.''

Ah, right.

That's her.

Well, she can suss out what they're talking about then.

She would prefer not to talk about last night. She knows they have to, it was kind of a major development in the ongoing mess that is her life now, but she just...doesn't want to talk about what happened. She doesn't even want to think about it. It makes her feel sick. She's not sure if that's a psychological response or if it's Edie. All she knows is that something happened last night, something that wasn't supposed to, and she can feel Edie's panic at the slip up. It's spinning inside of her like it's her own. She was never supposed to find out about the astral projection. She was not supposed to wake up last night in the thick of it.

It should be comforting. They have something to exploit now. They know more. Hanna says she might be able to block Edie from tugging Laurel away. They might have exposed an actual weakness here. That should be comforting. That should be good. But all Laurel can think about is how panicked Edie feels now that they know one of her secrets and how desperate people can do desperate things. Unraveling too much of Edie's web too fast and too openly could cause impulsiveness. Recklessness. And Edie has proven, time and time again, that she is nothing if not reckless.

''She's okay,'' Dean says. ''Better. I think she's just worn out. She's sleeping right now.'' He pushes off the car and turns around to check on her, only to stop short when he sees her staring back at her. ''Or not. Sammy, I gotta go. I'll call you when we get back to the city.'' It doesn't seem like he even waits for Sam to say goodbye, ending call likely before his brother even has a chance to get a word out.

Laurel pushes the car door open, shivering involuntarily at the gust of cold air.

He doesn't say anything, but she can feel his probing gaze. She looks up at him, squinting against the daylight, waiting for him to speak. ''Hey,'' he finally says, slipping his phone away before crouching down in front of her, moving a hand to her knee. ''How are you feeling?''

''Fine.''

''Yeah?''

''Yeah.''

He does not look like he believes her. ''Really? Because you've puked like three times today and woke up with a migraine.''

''I'm fine,'' she insists. ''It's just like a bad hangover. I've dealt with worse.'' She pulls the blanket off and swivels her feet out of the car, accepting the hand he offers her, letting him help her to her feet.

''Here.'' Dean fishes her water of out the backseat and hands it back over to her. ''You need to hydrate.''

She accepts the water and takes a couple more sips, mostly for his benefit.

''I told Hanna to get you some Gatorade and something to eat,'' he says, nodding toward the convenience store they're parked outside of.

She takes a minute to get her sea legs back, trying to push back the weak, dizzy feeling, breathing in the fresh, crisp air. ''Where are we?''

''Just outside of Seattle. Still about an hour and change away from Seabeck.''

She nods, eyes focused on the green trees lining the other side of the highway, swaying in the wind as cars speed past on the highway, filling the silence with the sound of engines and tires against wet pavement. ''You were talking to Sam about Siobhan Sweeney?''

''Thought I'd fill him in,'' he says. ''He was chomping at the bit. Called me like three times on the way here.'' He pauses before the next part before saying, reluctantly, ''I don't know if you remember much about what we told you was going on with Siobhan, but the popular theory is that she's... There's, uh - There's a type of spirit - ''

''A death omen,'' she finishes, smiling softly at the surprised look on his face. ''I do listen when you speak, you know.''

''It's just a theory.''

''A theory that I'm marked for death.''

''You or Edie,'' he corrects. ''It's possible she's primarily attached to Edie, which would make sense, and you're just getting residual blowback because of the connection between you two.''

He's trying to make her feel better. She loves him for that. It's not working, but she loves him for it. She keeps her eyes on the trees. ''It's not like I didn't know I was marked for death anyway.''

''You're not going to die,'' he says hastily, vehemently.

She smiles weakly, leaning into his touch when he moves a hand to the back of her neck, massaging her tense muscles. Death is not her main fear. It's what will happen to her body once she's gone. What Edie will do with it.

''You still don't remember anything about last night?''

''No,'' she shakes her head. ''It's all a blur. I - I remember I was having a nightmare, I remember I woke up, and then - '' She waves her hands. ''Poof. Nothing. Whenever I try to think back, it's like I get woozy. I feel like I'm falling. I don't think she wants me to think about what happened.''

He looks disturbed by that, but tries to move on past it right away. ''It could just be because of what you went through,'' he says, though it sounds like he's trying to convince himself of that. ''It was intense. And, if Hanna's right, you weren't even there anyway. You were locked in your head.''

''All I remember is a feeling,'' she says.

''Like something was wrong,'' he prompts. ''That's what you said.''

''Right,'' she nods. ''But not with me. With - ''

''Edie,'' he says. ''Yeah, you mentioned that.''

''I don't know what I meant.''

He seems to brush it off a little too easily. ''Well, we'll figure it out.''

She keeps her mouth shut, watching a car pull into the gas station. She keeps an eye on the three giddy, giggling teenage girls that spill out, animated and flushed with adrenaline, likely from playing hooky. She can't remember the last time she felt that young and free. She doesn't even think she felt that free when she was a teenager. She wonders if Edie did. If there were moments, even after the crash, where she got to be a kid, carefree and wild in the wilderness of Maine. Doubtful.

''Things were finally starting to get better,'' she says. ''We were getting our life back.'' It's a pathetic and ultimately useless moaning. They were going to end up back here no matter what. She knew that. Even if they had stayed in Malibu, holed themselves up in Rebecca Merlyn's beach house, Edie still would have found them eventually.

Dean is quiet beside her for a moment before he says, ''We knew she'd pop up again. She was down, not out.''

Laurel spins her engagement ring and chews on her bottom lip. She's mostly thoughtful rather than mournful, but he must be able to read her anxiety because he steps in front of her and places both hands on her shoulders. ''We will get her, Laur,'' he says fervently. ''I promise you that. Everything's going to be okay. That means you too. You're part of everything.'' His hands move from her shoulders down to her hands. ''You will get through this. I'll make sure of it. I'll take care of you.''

It's sweet, but guilt still nags at her. ''You ever feel like that's all you do?'' She asks. ''Just...take care of me?''

His answer is simple, easy, and expected. ''No.'' He squeezes her hands once and then lets go. ''In sickness and health, right?'' He digs his hands into his jacket pockets, either because he's cold or because he's trying to appear casual. It's undoubtedly the latter. ''I feel like an evil witch counts as a sickness.'' He shrugs. ''It won't always be this way. You know that.''

''I'll make it up to you someday,'' she promises. ''I'll return the favor.''

''You don't need to return the favor,'' he says. ''Do you not remember the first few years of our relationship? The ones where I was an insufferable bastard? A complete fucking disaster?''

''That wasn't the same.''

''You're right,'' he nods. ''It was worse. Frankly, it's a miracle you didn't throw me out on my ass. I'm lucky you have low standards.''

''Well, maybe you should be nicer to Oliver then,'' she says breezily. ''He's the one who gave me those low standards.'' He laughs and she tries to keep a straight face, but doesn't last long. ''Listen,'' she tugs at his shirt, pulling him over to her. ''It's nice you think we're even, but I don't. So here's my promise: When you're old and decrepit and I'm...also old and decrepit,'' she breaks off in a chuckle, ''but maybe a little less than you, I'll sit by your bedside every day at the old folks' home and spoon feed you. I'll listen to your rambling war stories and we'll play backgammon and watch the birds.'' She puts a hand on his cheek, listening for that familiar sharp inhale, feeling the way he still, even after years, leans into her touch like a puppy dog. ''I will be truly, utterly, wildly enraptured by you, Dean Winchester.''

His laugh is as warm as the hand that moves up to cover hers. ''So we're going to be your grandparents then?''

''Yep,'' she says brightly. ''That's the plan.''

He moves her hand from his cheek, covering it with both of his to warm it up. ''I don't know how to play backgammon.''

''I'd suggest you learn,'' she says, unable to keep a straight face as he kisses the palm of her hand. ''You're already getting up there, old man.''

He makes an offended noise in the back of his throat. ''How dare you. I'm thirty seven.''

''Uh, you're thirty eight now, love,'' she corrects. ''And yesterday you yelled at a kid to get off our lawn.''

''He was trampling the foliage!''

She snickers at him, pulling away from and turning back to the car. She rifles around in her nest in the back seat, grabbing her bag from the floor.

''What are you looking for?''

''I'm - '' She ducks back out of the car, standing straight. ''Did I not bring a heavier jacket?''

''You didn't bring much,'' he says. ''You were distracted. You weren't feeling well this morning. I haven't seen you that sick since you were pregnant.''

She scoffs, pulling her too thin sweater closer. It's not nearly warm enough for January. Especially not if the house they're going to is right by the water, according to Hanna. ''Never try to astral project,'' she advises. ''It's worse than an absinthe hangover.''

''Oh god. Absinthe.'' Dean, well versed in hangovers, winces in uncomfortable sympathy, looking both traumatized and wistful about whatever flashback he's having. ''Absinthe.'' He peels off his canvas jacket and holds onto it, precariously, with his teeth as he shrugs out of his standard Winchester uniform of plaid flannel. ''Here.'' He hands over the flannel. ''Layer up.''

She accepts it gratefully, slipping out of her sweater momentarily to put the flannel on.

''See, now you're really a Winchester,'' he jokes. ''Hey.'' He perks up, stepping into her space. ''Hold up.'' He pushes both the flannel and the hoodie aside before she can zip it up, eyes on the shirt she threw on without even paying attention this morning. ''What is that?''

''Christmas gift from Sara,'' she says, pulling her hair out of her sweater. ''It was a stocking stuffer. Literally she rolled it up and stuffed it in the toe.''

Dean smooths out the shirt to read the block letters. ''Keep Calm and Ask Mom.'' He laughs, but then lets out an exaggerated gasp, drawing away with wide eyes. ''Oh my god,'' he whispers in mock alarm. ''Your sister thinks you're a Pinterest Mom.''

''Her mistake,'' she responds, without missing a beat. ''Everyone knows you're the Pinterest Parent here.''

His face twists up in disgust. ''The fuck I am,'' he retorts. ''Don't even say that.''

''You do follow an awful lot of mommy bloggers.''

''That's not the same! That's just for the recipes!''

''Pinterest is 85% recipes.''

''Pinterest is bullshit,'' he declares passionately. ''It's all lies. I can't make roses out of deli meat, Laurel. No one can.''

''Ew.'' She wrinkles her nose. ''Why would you want to?''

He doesn't have an answer to that. She doesn't think anyone could have an answer to that. He looks away from her for a minute, craning his neck to peer in the window of the convenience store, checking for their errant ward, and then he looks back to Laurel with a wolfish grin. ''I like the shirt,'' he decides, leaning back against the car. ''I think it's cute.'' He loops an arm around her waist and tugs her into him.

''Yeah?'' She automatically winds her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her. ''That getting you all randy? Or is it the deli meat roses?''

''It's the deli meat roses.''

''I had a sneaking suspicion,'' she whispers, right before he catches her lips in his. She kisses him back eagerly, ready and willing to lean into the familiarity and comfort of her husband's tenderness, all things warm and safe, away from the coldness of the gray winter and her unnerving and endless nightmares. It helps. A little. It's getting harder to shove these things to the back of her mind, even momentarily.

''That shirt would look better on the bedroom floor,'' he murmurs against her lips.

She pulls away a little, just to let out a laugh. ''You've said that about nearly every item of clothing I've ever worn. Including my wedding dress.''

''And it's always true,'' he says. He kisses her again but pulls away much too quickly for her taste. ''You have no idea how much I want to say fuck Seabeck and go home. We could be in bed right now. Practicing that whole baby making thing.''

''God knows we need the practice,'' she quips. She grabs a fistful of his shirt and pulls him back down to her but in the span of about a fraction of a second, she catches sight of something over his shoulder. She lets out a gasp, instinctively stopping him before his lips can meet hers again. Regrettably.

It's Hanna, standing there with her arms crossed, tapping her foot impatiently. ''You guys are gross,'' she says. ''I was gone for like five minutes.''

Without turning his head to look at her, Dean checks his watch and says, ''More like fifteen.''

''Oh.'' Hanna frowns. ''I couldn't decide what I wanted.'' She peers down into her plastic bag of snacks. ''Do you guys think gas station sushi is safe to eat?''

There's a mini uproar as both Dean and Laurel simultaneously yelp, ''No!''

Hanna just nods. ''I thought so,'' she says, reaching into the bag. ''I got a sad looking sandwich instead. Look at it. It's so limp.'' She pulls out a sandwich, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap, waving it around to demonstrate how limp and soggy it looks. ''It's a good thing my mom isn't here to see this,'' she declares, sniffing at the suspicious sandwich. ''She never let us eat things from gas stations. Whenever we went on road trips, she would bring a cooler full of homemade sandwiches and wraps. But.'' She drops the sandwich back into the bag and flicks her hair over her shoulder. ''Not every family does that, I guess.''

Laurel can't help but raise an eyebrow at the girl's prissy tone of voice. ''Wow.''

''This isn't a vacation, Hanna,'' Dean says, reluctantly pulling away from Laurel. ''Did you get the things I asked you to get?''

Hanna freezes up like a deer in headlights. ''Um.'' She looks back down into the bag again and then up. ''I'm - '' She thrusts the bag at him. ''I'll be right back,'' she says, turning to dash back into the store.

He turns back to Laurel. ''The entire trip,'' he says. ''This has been the entire trip. For hours it's just been my mom wouldn't let me do this, my mom wouldn't let me do that, my mom always lets me pick the music, my mom plays word association games with us on road trips, my mom won't let me watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Friday the 13th or the fucking Disney Channel - ''

''To be fair, some of those Disney Channel shows do send some ugly messages to kids,'' Laurel says. ''Particularly young girls.''

''I know way too much about Marlene's parenting,'' Dean continues. ''And if the kid's not talking about helicopter mommy, she's trying to change the radio station. She's touched everything and she - '' He breaks off, pointing a rather accusing finger in the direction Hanna went in. ''That girl pees an insane amount.''

''That's good, right? It means she's well hydrated.''

''It's like I got a friggin' cat riding shotgun,'' he grumbles. ''I know she's supposed to be this tiny little uber witch but that is the most sheltered kid I have ever met. Like an eight year old trapped in an eighteen year old's body.''

''So maybe we should let Mary watch those scary dead parent Disney movies after all, huh?''

''I know we can be overprotective,'' he allows. ''But we are not like that. That's like attachment parenting turned up to one hundred.''

''Wasn't Hanna a preemie?'' Laurel turns to grab her water from the backseat. ''Who would have died without her mother's magical intervention? And has a slew of health issues?''

''Laurel, the girl wasn't allowed to trick or treat.''

''Okay, that's depressing.'' She takes a drink of water. ''Was that an overprotective thing or did Marlene find the depiction of witches in modern mainstream commercialized Halloween to be offensive?''

''I'm gonna go ahead and guess both.''

She chugs the rest of the water and tosses the bottle back into the car. ''If she and her mother are that enmeshed, I feel like we might be dropping the ball with her,'' she says. ''Her entire world has changed. She lost everything practically overnight. Her father and uncle are awful people, her grandmother and brother were murdered, her mother's soulless, and she's been thrust into not only sudden adulthood but also an unprecedented leadership that she likely wasn't prepared for. Now she's living with Dinah. Meanwhile, we're supposed to be looking after her and we went gallivanting off to California for a beach vacation.'' She grimaces, leaning back against the Impala, arms crossed. It sounds bad when you lay it all out like that. ''We should have her over for dinner more often.''

''If we have her over for dinner, we have to invite Dinah,'' Dean points out. ''And Mary still hisses at her whenever she sees her. Not sure what that's about.''

Well.

He has a point there.

They have done their best to explain Dinah to Mary, that she's a friend, that she looks like Mom and they know that's strange but she's not bad. Mary still seems to believe that Dinah is some kind of make believe imposter monster with Mom's face. They try to limit her exposure to her.

''I think we can give Dinah the night off every now and then. She would - okay, she wouldn't thank us out loud,'' she says, ''but maybe she'd think it.'' She ducks back into the car one last time to grab her back, heaving it over her shoulder. ''Either way, we need to start showing up for that girl more. We're all she has.''

''Fine,'' Dean says. ''We'll take in another stray. But if she makes one more sassy comment about my car, Little Orphan Annie's walking home.''

''Deal. I'm going to run to the bathroom real quick.'' She steps over to him, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. ''You go pry her away from the snack aisle.'' She nods to the store. ''I can see her through the window and she's just standing there staring longingly at the Ding Dongs.''

''Ding Dongs aren't even that good,'' he says. ''It's the Twinkies that get you there.''

''I don't know what that means - and also don't tell me - but please don't go in there and buy the diabetic Twinkies.''

''All right, I won't.'' He smiles innocently. ''I'll just buy them for myself.''

She shakes her head at him, but doesn't nag, leaving him to his Twinkie mission. She makes her way around to the other side of the store where the bathrooms are. She can't quite help her revulsion when she steps inside the small bathroom. It looks like it hasn't been cleaned since maybe the nineties and the lock on the door is apparently just for show. She heaves a sigh and resolves to go as quickly as she can. It's cold in the grimy bathroom, noticeably so, but she doesn't think much of it at first. Her mind is elsewhere. She's just relieved that, for all its faults, at least this bathroom has soap and toilet paper.

It's only when she's finishing up, washing her hands in the dirty sink, that she notices how icy the chill in the air has become. It is January and the bathroom isn't heated, so she tries to brush it off. She rummages around in her bag to see what she did think to bring, eventually pulling out some aspirin and her contact lenses. At least that's something. Couldn't remember to bring a jacket, but at least she remembered her contacts. Or Dean slipped them in her bag. That's the more likely scenario.

She takes a couple aspirin for her headache and she is just putting in one of her contacts when the light above the sink flickers. It's just for a second. Less than. She pauses, one contact in, and stares at her reflection in the mirror. The light does not flicker again. Slowly, suddenly very aware of the cold, she goes to put the second contact in. She's blinking, adjusting her vision when she notices a movement in the corner of her eye, a reflection in the mirror.

She jerks, and nearly pokes her eye out, whipping around to look at the door. There is nothing there. She turns back to the mirror. Nothing but her own reflection. And her breath hanging in the cold air. She closes her eyes. It's not just the winter weather. It's fine. She knows who it is. She opens her eyes.

There is frost creeping up the bathroom mirror. Laurel takes a step closer, leaning in close, and behind the frost, a pair of eyes opens. She turns around and -

There's Siobhan.

Right there. Inches away from her. Her eyes are wide and terrified, mouth open in a silent scream, blood pouring down the side of her head, her face, trickling down her neck, staining her pink leotard. It drips down her arm, her hand, her fingers, onto the floor. She says nothing. It doesn't look like she can. She just stands there, staring at Laurel with what essentially appears to be a death mask frozen on her face. The last expression she ever wore stuck on her young face. It's horrifyingly sad. Laurel almost prefers the chaos of last night.

''Siobhan,'' she croaks, backed up into the sink, ignoring every urge to look away, to close her eyes and will the image away.

Siobhan tries to speak, but only gurgles, blood leaking out of the corners of her mouth, coating her teeth. She looks even younger than her already fifteen years.

''I - '' Laurel shakes her head. ''I don't know what you're trying to say.''

Very slowly, stiffly, struggling with her dead limbs, Siobhan lifts a hand and points at the mirror.

Laurel turns, watching as two words are sloppily written in the frost, as if someone is dragging their nail down the mirror.

GO HOME.

''What? Why?''

Another word etches itself onto the mirror.

DANGER.

Laurel's heart sinks. ''What does that mean? What - '' She turns back to Siobhan, but the bloody ballerina is already gone. It doesn't stop her from demanding answers from the empty air. ''What's going to happen? Why do we need to go home?''

There is no answer.

The chill in the air is already dissipating and when she looks back to the mirror, the frost and the ominous warnings are already falling away.

She gives herself a minute to catch her breath and then grabs her bag and escapes the bathroom on unsteady legs.

Dean and Hanna are both back at the Impala when she finds her way back there. He's holding the back door open for her and she's standing there pouting. Neither one of them notice Laurel. ''But what if I get car sick?'' She's asking pitifully, doing her best to resist his attempts to get her to switch to the backseat.

Dean is unsympathetic to her hypothetical plight. ''Roll down a window,'' he tells her. ''Look, sorry, but there's a pecking order here, kid.'' He holds his hand up over his head. ''Wife.'' He bends down to move his hand to his knees. ''Neighbor kid. Very different places on the list.''

Hanna tries to pout her way into getting what she wants, which is no doubt something she is incredibly well versed in doing, but gives it up quick, grudgingly admitting, ''I suppose that's valid.'' She slides into the backseat and he closes the door for her, rolling his eyes.

He turns and all traces of irritation clear up when he sees Laurel standing there, eyes crinkling with the smile that spread across his face. ''Hey, did you - '' But then he gets a good look at her face. The smile fades. ''Are you okay? You look like you've seen a - '' He stops there, realization flaring in his eyes. ''Aw, fuck.'' He looks over his shoulder toward the girl in the backseat and then puts an arm around Laurel's shoulders, sweeping her away from the car. ''Did you see a ghost?''

''I, um - I think your theory about Siobhan might be right.''

He does not look at all triumphant. ''What happened?''

''She popped up in the bathroom. She wants us to go home. I don't know why, but - ''

''Something's in Seabeck.'' He inhales sharply, conflicted. He looks back over at Hanna, warily peeling back the plastic wrap off her sandwich. ''Maybe this lead is solid.''

Hanna seems to catch on that they're both staring at her, turning to look at them. They both awkwardly wave at her. She rolls her eyes at them before impatiently tapping an invisible watch on her wrist.

''I don't understand why Siobhan's only popping up now,'' Laurel says. ''Last I checked, I've been in danger for months. Why is she only making her presence known now?''

Dean doesn't answer that question. He seems to pretend he didn't hear it at all, still looking over at Hanna. When he finally turns back to Laurel, he just says, ''Maybe we should take the kid home.''

She crosses her arms over her chest. ''You know she would never agree to that.'' She shakes her head. ''If going to Seabeck is something that's going to piss off Edie, that means we're onto something. Whatever message this coven has for us could be important. There is no way Hanna's going to miss that.''

''All right, but we're not letting that girl out of our sight,'' Dean says. ''If we're about to walk into something Edie doesn't want us to walk into - or, worse, something she does - then we need to be on her like helicopter mom. We know she's one of Edie's priority targets right now.''

''Agreed.'' She looks over at Hanna once more. The kid's just sitting there, eyeing her sandwich, sniffing it hesitantly, looking equal parts hungry and repulsed. She doesn't look like a tiny little uber witch. ''If we get there and Edie and likely Ricky Moretti are already there...''

''We'll take care of it,'' Dean says. ''We'll...'' He trails off, eyes darkening with concern for a moment before he pointedly brightens up. ''Hey, you want me to seduce Moretti?''

''Do I - ''

''I'm really good at seducing meathead straight guys,'' he says matter-of-factly, with a self-congratulatory nod and a smug smile. ''Used to be even better at it when I was younger 'cause I looked like a twink, but I can get the job done just fine now.''

Laurel looks at him for a minute. You know, she feels like she should not have been expecting him to take it down that road but she's been with this man for close to seven years. She had fully been expecting it. ''You looked like a twink or you were a twink?''

''Fine,'' he throws his arms out. ''I was a twink. But I was a rockin' twink.''

''I know, honey.'' She reaches out to pat his cheek. ''You were the rockingest twink,'' she chirps. ''Thank you for offering your services, by the way. That is very selfless of you. How about we hang onto that thought and cross that bridge when we come to it, yeah?''

''I'm just saying. It's a thought. It's an option we have.''

''It's good to have options,'' she says with a serious nod. ''Look, we'll just - we'll be quick. We go in, we hear what they have to say, and then we get her home.'' She grabs his hand, pulling his sleeve back to check his watch. ''Let's get this over with.'' She sighs. Then looks at him. Then cocks her head to the side. ''Also, I should tell you there's icing on the corner of your mouth and it's been there the entire time we've been having this very serious conversation.''

''What?'' He's lightning fast in his efforts to scrub at his mouth. ''No, there's not!''

She snickers at him lightly, leaning into his space to peck his lips, and then she turns and goes back to the car.

Neither of them mention anything to Hanna.

It's not even discussion. They just keep their mouths shut. They should tell her about Siobhan's warning, but they don't. There is without a doubt a layer of parental protection to the decision. They don't want to worry her.

For Dean, there is likely a level of distrust as well. As helpful as she has been, as invaluable as she is, she is a witch and she lied to them for years. Her family's actions played a part in getting them here. It's hard for him to forget about that. He looks at her and sees a sheltered kid, yeah, but he also looks at her and sees a dangerous live wire.

Laurel just sees herself.

Hanna is strong willed and brave, but she is also stubborn, emotional, and reactionary. She doesn't think things through. She doesn't seem to know what to do with her power all the time. How much of it she has now. The shape of her, the concentration of her magic has changed since her grandmother died and her mother...went away. She has her own inheritance to cope with. And she's grieving. Everything has been taken from her.

Laurel wants to avoid, for as long as possible, triggering that grief soaked rage inside of that girl. She wants to avoid putting more on her shoulders. The poor kid's already got enough to deal with as it is.

She watches her in the rearview mirror as they roll back onto the highway, watching Hanna pick at her sandwich with trepidation, periodically lifting up the soggy bread to frown at the contents. She seems perkier today. Maybe even lighter. It's been rough for her, these past couple months. She likes Dinah more than she will ever let on and it's not hard to tell that she's grateful she doesn't have to live all alone in her house, but she is still a witch without a coven. She is essentially a wolf without a pack.

From what she's said, this coven they're going to see - the Marlowe coven - are friends of her family. People she knows and trusts. She's been nothing but professional about acting as the official liaison between a coven and a hunting family about to encroach on their territory, but it's easy to see the palpable relief on her face at the mere idea of being around people who know her as Hanna Moretti, the heir apparent of the Weber coven. Laurel has no interest in ruining that for her.

Seabeck is peaceful. It's not a place where much happens. It is certainly not a battlefield. They'll get in and get out. Everything will be fine. Maybe this coven will even have some helpful information on Edie's whereabouts or her organization.

Laurel looks away from the rearview mirror and pulls her brand new phone - that is not, thankfully, being held together with duct tape and stubbornness like her last one - out of her bag. She tries to put her mind at ease, mindlessly scrolling through Buzzfeed quizzes, unable to decide which rabbit hole to fall down. She pulls up her photos instead, flicking through pictures from Malibu. It just makes her miss Malibu and how peaceful things were for them there. Maybe, when this is all over, they should just pack up and move to California. Stay in the beach house until they can find their own place. Somewhere on the coast. Somewhere quiet. They could get a house in Big Sur. In the trees. On a cliffside overlooking the ocean. Far away from other people where it's just them - just the three of them.

A pipe dream. There is no lifetime where they would be able to afford a house in Big Sur. And Black Canary needs a city to work in. But it would be nice.

She looks over at Dean. He's grumbling to himself about top 40 music and fiddling with the radio station. It's weirdly comforting. He settles on Black Sabbath and looks in the rearview mirror, smirking for a split second before settling back in for the long haul.

When Laurel follows his gaze, Hanna is wrinkling her nose in the backseat. She lasts for about thirty seconds, listening to the sounds of Paranoid, and then she asks, ''What is this?''

It's hard not to laugh at her softly appalled tone of voice.

''Black Sabbath,'' says Dean.

''Oh.'' A sour, uppity look crosses her face. ''My mom's super passionate about animal rights so she doesn't let us listen to anything with Ozzy Osbourne because of that thing with the dove. Or was it a bat?''

''That's funny,'' he throws back, voice easy and light. ''Don't witches regularly sacrifice animals and use their blood and various other parts for spells and shit?''

Hanna glares from the backseat. ''That is such an outdated view. Just because you ignorant, neanderthal hunters think you know all about - ''

''Hey,'' Laurel jumps in, determinedly bright and cheerful. ''You know what I was thinking?'' She was not, to tell you the truth, thinking about anything. She was looking at copycat recipes for Olive Garden breadsticks. She has to think quickly, playing with the necklace around her neck, that Saint Christopher pendant that has become such a familiar comfort to her. She tries to think of something to say. ''As cute as this shirt is,'' she starts, zero idea where she's supposed to be going with this. ''It's not quite accurate for our family, is it?'' She throws a grin over at Dean. ''I feel like most people would be more inclined to keep calm and ask you around here. Which is reasonable because I only know where things are like half the time. No idea where the laundry detergent is. Or the dish soap. Or the remote control for that matter. Hey, on a related note: why do you keeping moving our stuff around lately?''

''Maybe Thea did it while we were in California.''

''Nope.''

His lips twitch and he looks over at her for a second, eyes twinkling. ''It's fun,'' he chirps. ''It's a game. Every day's a scavenger hunt.''

Laurel tries - and fails - not to smile.

''I'm hiding stuff from Sara,'' he confesses. ''She keeps touching my shit. It's really getting on my nerves.''

''I think she's just trying to be helpful,'' she says. ''You know. Pitch in around the house.''

''Well, she needs to knock it off,'' he responds. ''She's messing with my space. I hate it when people mess with my space. Especially my kitchen. I finally got everything how I want it, Mary's finally old enough to know not to fuck with dad's kitchen, and now here comes hurricane Sara and she's fucking with dad's kitchen. It's unacceptable.''

''I used to think it was sexy when you'd refer to yourself as Dad because you're my baby daddy. But now you do it way too much and it sounds like you think you're everyone's dad. It makes me feel like I'm married to Mister Rogers or Tom Hanks or Will Smith.''

''Or Bruce Wayne,'' Hanna adds on from the backseat.

''I'm just not sure I'm ready for the responsibility of being everyone's mom,'' Laurel continues, ignoring the interruption.

Dean's response is a lazy smirk and, ''Sounds like you should take that up with a qualified therapist.'' Then he tosses her this half confused, half genuinely touched look. ''You think I'm like Mister Rogers?''

''Eh,'' she shrugs. ''I mean, maybe if he was severely damaged.''

''Well, that's - '' He huffs a little. ''I don't know about severely.''

''Wait.'' Something occurs to her then and she turns in her seat to look at Hanna. ''Why did you just lump in Bruce Wayne with Mister Rogers?''

''He has a lot of kids,'' Hanna replies, picking through a bag of trail mix, looking decidedly disappointed by her limited snack options. ''Guy's a perpetual bachelor but he adopts kids left and right.''

''Maybe he's gay,'' Dean suggests.

Hanna looks up, confused. ''What's that got to do with anything?''

''Maybe he has a partner and they have a nice family unit but he's not ready to publicly come out. Like that one guy from that show. You know. He's got those real heartthrob-y eyes.''

''Oh, Matt Bomer,'' Laurel interprets.

''Yes,'' he snaps his fingers and points at her, looking victorious. ''That's the one. The dude with the eyes.''

''I have no idea what show you're referring to, but I know you're talking about Matt Bomer because I know you have a crush. You should consider knocking Scarlett Johansson off your ''Hall Pass'' list and replacing her with Matt Bomer. He is ridiculously handsome. And you know how I feel about Scarlett Johansson.''

''Maybe I keep Scarlett Johansson on my list just to annoy you,'' he quips. ''Anyway, the point I was making is that he had two or three kids with his husband before he publicly came out,'' Dean says, but does not confirm nor deny the validity of his crush on Matt Bomer. Not that he needs to. She's his wife. He totally has a thing for Matt Bomer and she knows it.

''Yeah, but isn't Bruce Wayne known as a womanizer?'' Hanna asks. ''Like, I swear every time I've seen him on the cover of tabloids, he's with some new mystery woman. Wasn't he with Vicki Vale at one point?''

''You ever hear of a beard?''

''A what?''

''Okay, I think we're getting off track here,'' Laurel announces. ''None of that is our business and we shouldn't be speculating about - ''

''Maybe the dude's just too dull to hang onto a romantic partner,'' Dean pipes up, earning himself looks from both women. ''What?'' He doesn't back down. ''You ever heard that guy speak? I've seen him on the news a few times and let me tell you: boring as fuck. He may be handsome and rich, but he's dullsville. Full on unseasoned chicken breast level bland as far as the eye can see.'' There's snickering from the backseat, which only eggs him on. ''I'd rather listen to Wolf Blitzer drone on,'' he says. ''And you know how I feel about the Wolf. That guy's such a monotone snooze that I'm not even sure he's 100% alive half the time. So imagine how fuckin' boring that Wayne dude is.''

''Dean - ''

''Trust me,'' he says seriously. ''There is nothing even remotely exciting about Bruce Wayne.'' A beat. ''Unless he's gay and has a secret husband and family. That'd earn him a point with me.''

Laurel is starting to think he should maybe get out of the house more often. He's spent way too much time thinking about Bruce Wayne. ''It's still nice he takes in kids without families,'' she says, still attempting to be the polite and diplomatic one - even though she does have to admit that Bruce Wayne is rather bland. Not going to go off on an unneeded rant about it, but he is dry as dust, she will admit that. ''Everyone deserves a family.''

There is a short-lived pause and then Hanna says, cheerfully, ''Unless he's diddling them.''

Dean, despite the fact that he's obviously trying not to, bursts into laughter.

Laurel does not. ''Hanna!'' The scandalized gasp sounds very Bea Drake. ''Oh my god!'' She covers her face with her hands, partly out of mortification and partly because all her traitorous mouth wants to do is smile. Even though it isn't funny. It isn't. That was a horrible joke. Awful. She fixes her lips into a straight line, with difficulty, and removes her hands. ''Dean.'' She swats at his arm. ''Stop laughing. Don't encourage her.''

Neither Dean nor Hanna stop laughing, although her delight might just be because she's successfully made him laugh.

''You guys,'' Laurel tries, failing miserably at making her voice sound as stern as possible. ''I'm serious. That's an awful joke.'' She leans over to pinch her giggling husband. ''Dean,'' she hisses in a whisper.

He, to his credit, does attempt to get it together. ''No - Yes, you're - You're right,'' he manages to get out, clearing his throat, forcing a serious expression onto his face. ''Not a funny joke.''

''God,'' Hanna mutters. ''You two really are parents.''

Laurel turns. ''What?''

''Nothing.'' Hanna smiles innocently, holding out a bag of pretzel rods. ''Pretzel?''

Laurel politely declines. ''I'll stick with the granola bars and Gatorade, but thanks.''

''Hey,'' Dean complains as Hanna draws her hand - and the bag of pretzel rods - back. ''What about me? Don't I get a pretzel?''

''I just watched you inhale a pack of Twinkies in less than a minute.''

''Less than a minute?'' Laurel questions, raising her eyebrows. ''Really, Dean?''

He is not bothered. ''Which is exactly why I need something salty now.''

Hanna rolls her eyes, but indulges him, offering him a pretzel rod, which he is unnecessarily excited about. ''Stealing snacks from a diabetic,'' she shakes her head at him, crunching on her own pretzel as she flops back in her seat. ''Tsk, tsk.''

''He once stole a cookie from our child,'' Laurel says.

Dean almost chokes on his pretzel, rushing to yelp out defensively, ''Well, she wasn't gonna eat it!''

She reaches a hand out, running her fingers through his hair. ''I know, honey.''

''As if you don't unhinge your jaw like a snake when you spot a breakfast buffet.''

''Ew,'' Hanna says. ''Buffets.''

''Unleashing you in a Denny's is like asking for a Mr. Creosote situation.''

Laurel takes no offense to this, still carding her fingers through his hair. ''I do like breakfast food.''

The corners of his lips tick up briefly and he glances over at her just long enough to meet her eyes, the corners of his crinkling softly. ''Eat your granola bar,'' is all he says, before he looks back to the road.

''Oh, sure,'' she jokes, retracting her hand. ''You get Twinkies. I get granola bars. That seems fair.''

Dean looks in the rearview mirror, catching Hanna's eye. She pulls something else out of the plastic bag, handing it over to Laurel. It's a pack of chocolate frosted Hostess mini doughnuts. ''They didn't have powdered.''

She accepts the package of doughnuts, touched by the gesture, even though it's not surprising at all that he would get her something he knows she likes. One time, when they were driving to Kansas with Mary when she was a baby, he bought her a Choco Pie at a gas station and fed it to her while she was breastfeeding. And he always makes sure there are Doritos and either an Entenmann's coffee cake or fresh cinnamon rolls from Carlyle's in the house when she has her period. She's aware that's bare minimum stuff, but she still thinks it's sweet.

Oliver once tried to drunkenly make Pillsbury cinnamon rolls at her apartment at three in the morning and when she stepped in to help him, he poked her in the stomach and told her she was getting ''squishy just like the dough boy.'' He almost died that night. He was so drunk he had forgotten how to get home and she thinks he might have meant it as a compliment of some sort, but he is lucky she didn't poison those cinnamon rolls. At least open the can by whacking him on the head with it.

For a few minutes, there is a peaceful quiet in the car. Hanna has popped her earbuds in, Dean plays around with the radio, and Laurel gladly eats her doughnuts and grudgingly drinks her Gatorade. She's feeling a little better now, the worst of the magical hangover has passed, but Siobhan's warning is still playing over and over again in her head. She can tell just from looking at him that Dean is feeling the same.

Part of her wishes Edie hadn't been interrupted last night. What would she have said? What did she want? Laurel keeps trying to think back to the previous night, worm her way back into that blank space, but every time she does, it's like her body has a physical reaction. Her head spins, her stomach flops, and her limbs feel weak and heavy. She can't go back to whatever happened. Her body won't let her.

She reluctantly opts to let it go and focus on getting some sustenance in her. She polishes off the mini doughnuts and one of the granola bars easily, but has a hard time doing more than sipping at the sickly sweet Gatorade. For the record, she hates Gatorade, but Dean seems to think it cures all ailments ever and is always pushing it on everyone whenever they show the slightest hint of sickness. One time, she sneezed over the phone and he had a sandwich and Gatorade delivered to her office. She thinks it might be a deeply ingrained John Winchester thing.

Beside her, Dean, once again, starts flipping through the radio stations. For the third time. She looks over at him, wordlessly arching a brow. He doesn't notice, restlessly switching from top 40 hits to country music with a frown on his face. She waits for him to find something he deems acceptable - Gimme Shelter is eventually what he settles on - before she asks, ''Are you okay?''

He keeps his eyes on the road. ''She bought a feather duster. Like the ones in movies.''

She sincerely doubts that is what's bothering him, but she rolls with it. ''Did she?''

''What the fuck's that gonna do? It just kicks up all the dust in the air and makes Mary sneeze. And you know that girl never covers her mouth.''

''Ew.''

''I should work on that.'' Then, upon catching the look on her face, a quick amendment. ''We. We should work on that.''

''Nice save.''

''Thanks, I thought so.''

''That's really what's bugging you?''

''Who buys a feather duster?''

Laurel takes one last sip of the electric blue colored sugar water and twists the cap back on. ''You sure this doesn't have anything to do with a hunter walking into a coven?'' He says nothing, but he doesn't have to. She can read the tension in his body. ''You think we're walking into a trap,'' she translates.

''Let's just say it wouldn't surprise me,'' he responds. ''I'm no Mister Rogers when it comes to witches. I'm more like the bogeyman.''

''You've worked with witches before,'' she points out. ''And what about that coven in Olympia?''

''They were all newbies,'' he brushes that off. ''I was just a story to them. This coven has been around for a long time. They know who I am. Who my father was.''

''Hanna trusts them.''

''Hanna and her entire family disappeared because of the consequences of an apocalypse I started.''

''You didn't start - ''

''Look, I don't care if people have beef with me,'' he says. ''I get it. The Winchester brothers fucked up the world. Sucks to suck. I just don't want them taking it out on you.'' His eyes slip up to the rearview mirror for maybe a second. ''Or the kid.''

She looks back at Hanna. She doesn't appear to have heard any part of their conversation, earbuds in, music turned up so loud Laurel can hear Ariana Grande even over the Rolling Stones. She's staring out the window, munching on pretzels. She does look fairly innocent like that. Like any other kid her age. She's the only reason Laurel's alive right now, she's technically the de facto leader of her family coven, and she almost killed Edie in a gruesome and peculiar way, but she looks so small right now. She has never been trick or treating. She is wearing Mary Janes and a pink floral dress. There is a yellow ribbon in her hair. Like, that's just what she chose to wear. As an adult. She does not look lethal in the slightest.

And yet.

The girl almost harnessed lightning.

''I think she can handle herself,'' Laurel says. She twists in her seat and reaches out to tap Hanna's knee, gesturing for her to take out her earbuds when she looks up.

The girl acquiesces, although reluctantly. ''What?''

''We need you to give us a rundown of this Marlowe coven.''

''A rundown?''

''How many people should we be expecting?''

''Oh, well...'' Hanna pauses, confused. ''I dunno. Kinda depends, I guess.''

''On?''

''The Marlowe property is a safe haven,'' Hanna says. ''Anyone in the community who needs help is welcome.''

''Anyone?'' Dean asks stiffly.

''They don't aid witches with nefarious goals,'' Hanna says, already defensive. ''They're not like that. They mostly help families. Like mine. People with kids. Younger witches out on their own. They're like social workers, but for witches. They help people who can't help themselves or who need something that's beyond their reach. They helped us leave our life in Buffalo and start over in Starling. Got us new names, found us our house, schools, jobs. Fawn and Murray Marlowe - they're retired witches. They don't practice anymore beyond basic maintenance magic and protection. They just want to help.''

''They sound like nice people,'' Laurel says.

Dean is having none of it. ''Aren't they natural witches? How do you retire from what's in your blood?''

''I don't know, Dean Winchester, legendary hunter, Righteous Man, the Michael Sword, descendant of the Campbell hunting clan - now retired to play house and spend your days wiping your kid's snotty nose on your shirt,'' Hanna says plainly. ''You tell me.'' She doesn't even give him a chance to defend himself. ''They moved here to raise their kids in peace. Not all of their kids are witches. They wanted to give them a quiet life. My mom wanted the same.'' She looks down at her hands. ''At least it worked for them.''

Laurel looks over at Dean, catching his eye in the one millisecond he looks at her, evidently searching for her gaze.

''I don't know how many people will be there when we get there,'' Hanna says, pushing away her bag of pretzels. ''They have an open door policy and, like, a boatload of kids. Fawn and Murray fostered and adopted a lot of kids over the years. But they're almost all grown up now and I think they're fairly spread out across the country so I'm not sure how many of them still live there. The youngest, Sadie, she'll be there. She just turned fifteen...? I think? They have a son my age but I think he's a freshman at Ohio State so he'll be back at school by now. Their daughter Penelope and her fiancé live there, I think they, like, just had a baby. And I know Marissa, one of the oldest kids, lives in Seattle with her family. But - '' She cuts off, frowning and playing with the charm bracelet on her wrist. ''Clementine Raymond, Fawn's younger sister. She lives on the property with her son. She's who we're going there to see. She's the one who called me.''

''And we trust this Clementine?'' Dean looks at her in the rearview mirror. ''This call did come out of nowhere, kid, you have to admit that.''

''Clem's a little...strange,'' Hanna admits. ''Her wife died shortly after they adopted their son and she moved into the guest cottage on Fawn and Murray's property. Her son - He doesn't...talk all the time? Sometimes he's okay, but a lot of the time... Obviously I don't know the specifics, but I think he had some trauma in his life before he was adopted. He primarily uses sign language, especially around people he doesn't know. Most of Clementine's time is spent with him. She was a child psychologist before she and her wife adopted him. Closed her practice in Michigan and moved up here when Elaine died. She homeschools him and works from home so they don't get out much. She does palm readings and heals people's auras and chakras or whatever. Sells incense bundles and cheap basic potions and crystals. She's very new agey and hippie-ish. She gets that from her parents. Lots of Enya.''

''She sounds like a bad SNL skit,'' Dean comments. ''If this is a waste of time - ''

''She's not a fake,'' Hanna insists. ''That's what makes her shtick so annoying. She's an active witch and a powerful one at that. But she is...incredibly overprotective of her son. It's made her a little tunnel visioned.''

Laurel asks, ''Did she tell you why she was calling?''

''She just said she had some information for us.''

''Information about Edie.''

''She didn't know her name, but yes, I'm assuming she was talking about Edie.''

''She didn't say anything else?''

''Just that it was urgent.''

''Okay, I'm going to say it,'' Dean declares. ''If this is a family of witches and witch adjacent people, how do they feel about hunters?''

''Hunters in general or specifically your family?''

''The second one.''

She folds her hands in her laps and considers the question, lips tightened. ''I imagine they're not overly fond of you. I've yet to meet a witch who's a fan. But they all know you're involved in this. I don't think it's a secret that a Winchester's wife is the one embroiled in this whole thing. They're inviting you into their home.''

''And how do we know this isn't a trap? If I'm so disliked - ''

''Fawn and Murray wouldn't do that,'' Hanna's voice is firm. ''They would never. Not these people. Not this family.''

Laurel sneaks a look at Dean, attempting to decode the purposefully blank expression on his face. His face, expressionless, eyes firmly on the road, gives her nothing. His hands are the real story. He is still holding onto the steering wheel too tightly, still too tense and too suspicious for Hanna's words to put him at ease. She wonders if he would be this distrustful, this overtly anxious if she wasn't with them. His sickly, dying wife with a witch in her head and a death omen dead girl attached to her. She thinks probably not. ''All right.'' She forces a smile, turning back to Hanna one last time. ''Thank you. You can go back to ignoring us for now.'' When the teenager hesitates, she reaches back to pat her knee. ''Really, it's okay. Put your earbuds back in. Go back to Ariana. We're still an hour out. Try to get some shut-eye if you can. We had another long night last night.''

Hanna's lips twitch up into a bitter, sad, fleeting smile. ''Every night is a long night,'' she mumbles, and then pops her earbuds back in and goes back to listening to her music at an unsafe volume while staring angstily out the window; a teenage rite of passage.

Laurel settles back in her seat, watching the road in front of them disappear under the wheels, smile fading from her face. She tries to enjoy the last hour of calm. She tries to focus on the familiarity of this, the nostalgia of taking a long drive with her husband, something that they used to do all the time before Mary and her hair trigger motion sickness came along.

After awhile, Dean seems to relax, at least enough to loosen his grip on the steering wheel, turn up the radio station when Fleetwood Mac comes on, and move his hand to her knee.

She is not relaxed. No amount of Gatorade or pointless Buzzfeed quizzes or Fleetwood Mac can help. Even the warm, normally comforting weight of Dean's hand on her knee can't quell the nagging unease that's been plaguing her not just since Siobhan's warning or last night's shit show, but ever since they came home from Malibu.

Things have been puzzling in her body ever since they came back to Washington. She never feels alone. Sometimes it's like her emotions don't belong to her. Like she is feeling someone else's pain. Even physically, she's been off. An unusual pins and needles feeling has been following her around for the past few days. Her whole body feels stiff. And she's been so tired. From the first day she walked back into her house and felt like she was walking directly into a fog, she suspected it had something to do with her supernatural baggage. She tried to ignore it, chalk it up to post vacation blues, the bleak winter weather, exhaustion from not sleeping right since coming home, she even entertained the idea that something might be wrong with Oliver or the connection between them might have been fraying, but both Hanna and Oliver assured her that wasn't the case.

It's Edie. It has to be Edie. Something is wrong with her. Something is off. She just doesn't know what. She doesn't even know if it's a good sign or...

Laurel looks out the window. She tries not to think about it. All they need to do is get to Seabeck, talk to the Marlowe coven, and then go home. That's all they need to do.

Seabeck, Washington is a small community out in Kitsap County on Hood Canal. It's a former mill town, not even a town really, that was mostly shut down by the late 1800s. What remains now is mostly the bones. It's a rural area with the residents spread out, a lot of them by the water or shrouded by the thick trees, and main street itself only consists of a conference center, a general store, a coffee shop, a pizza place, and Olympic View Marina.

Laurel has never actually been to Seabeck other than a few drive throughs over the years, but her grandfather was born in Bremerton and he was a writer and a history professor with a special interest in the Pacific Northwest region. Or, in Sara's words, he was a nerd. He knew everything about Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and even British Columbia - from the wilderness to the weather to the big cities to the tiny villages, all the dirty secrets of history and the triumphs, big and small. He loved this place dearly, the woods and the water, the rain, even the fog. It rained the day he died, an unusually harsh summer storm. Grandma said he would have appreciated that. Laurel has never been able to duplicate his love of the rain, but she listened to him anyway. She listened to him all the time. She was one of the only grandkids who did.

Edie was the other.

He was also a prolific writer. He wrote everything down. For whatever reason, she inherited a lot of his writings. His private journals and most of his unpublished manuscripts stayed with Grandma until she passed and then they went to Natasha, the family historian, but everything else, all the copious amounts of notes, research, lesson plans, even a few unfinished outlines of books he never got around to writing, went to Laurel. She's not sure why, she is not a history buff, but she said it would be nice to have something in his messy handwriting, a piece of him, and so Grandma made sure she got that. A...lot of it.

She is a little ashamed to say she hasn't done much with it in the years since his death, but she glances through it every now and then. She knows a lot about this state now. It's dreadfully boring.

But it's a damn good distraction. She spends the remainder of the drive, about an hour and some change, thinking about the things her grandfather used to tell her about the history of Washington State. It's the only state to be named after a president. The Pike Place Market in Seattle is said to be the most haunted place in the state. (She's always meant to ask Dean and Sam if that's true.) Kitsap County was originally named Slaughter County before it was quickly renamed. Her grandfather used to jot down things like that on post it notes. Washington grows more apples than any other state. Seattle is called the Emerald City because the city is filled with greenery all year round.

Grandpa had a younger half sister, Dorothy, who lived in Battle Ground, near the Oregon state line but had a place in Poulsbo where she came in the summer to fish. He loved her so much. She died unexpectedly in 1991. Complications of a stroke. He didn't do a whole lot of fishing after that.

His dream was to retire and move to Bainbridge Island. Get out of the city and be surrounded by nothing but saltwater, nature, and Grandma. It was always about her for him. He loved his children, of course, and he adored his grandchildren, but everyone knew his wife was his whole world. All he ever wanted was to give her a happy life, and he did. A thousand times over, Grandma used to say. He didn't need to give her the big house on Bainbridge Island, but he wanted to.

In fact, one thing she learned from the various notes and other assorted information she inherited, tucked away in file folders and boxes, is that he and Grandma were, once upon a time, very close to getting that dream house on Bainbridge. In the late 80's, they were getting ready to put their house on the market, they were spending a lot of time with some friends of theirs who had retired to Bainbridge, they were looking at houses there, and then...

The Lance family was evicted from their apartment in the Glades and were out on the street with no money, nowhere to go, and two little girls who needed a roof over their heads. Grandma and Grandpa, without hesitation, put the island dream on hold, kept their house in Starling, and moved the Lance family in. They never got another shot at Bainbridge.

It's almost strange; the hold this region of the state has on her family. Even Edie keeps ending right back here with the rain.

The last leg of the trip, like most endings, seems to drag on forever, but eventually, they reach Seabeck, nestled by the water and the woodlands. The Marlowe family's property is about ten minutes outside the main drag, hidden away in the trees. Laurel stays silent as Hanna directs Dean to the hard to spot tree lined driveway. She sits there and evaluates her body, attempting to determine just how much last night's debacle took out of her. If she can fight if needed. She doesn't want it to be a possibility, but... It's always a possibility. It's odd, she knows. To have the prospect of violence on your mind at all times. The person she was four years ago would be completely dismayed. It's a different world than it was four years ago.

For the record, she thinks she could coax Black Canary out if she needs to. She's just hoping she doesn't need to.

The Marlowe property is far more expansive than Laurel had been expecting. The long driveway that leads them to the house winds through the thick blankets of trees for at least three minutes before the forest opens up, revealing a stunning home, with at least two additional buildings nearby, right on the hood canal.

''Wow, what kind of spell do I have to do to get a place like this?'' Dean mutters under his breath.

''Inherit family money,'' Hanna says. ''And invest wisely.'' She wastes zero time hanging around, climbing out of the car the second it's in park, before the engine is even off.

Laurel at least waits until Dean pulls the keys out before she gets out. It is a gorgeous property. Everything is green, the calm water is sparkling in the daylight, even if the weather is dreary, and the main house is a picturesque Craftsman style home that looks like it's straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. But there's something about the stillness, the sight of the fog hovering over the water that makes her skin crawl with inexplicable dread. Everything is quiet here. Eerily so. It feels wrong. There is no movement whatsoever. No sign of life. Not even any animals. There are a handful of buildings on the property that she can see - the house, a guest cottage, a detached garage, a barn, and what looks like a greenhouse - and there is nothing in or around them that shows any signs of being occupied.

Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound. There is one lone seagull flying over the water. That's about it. Every instinct in her body is telling her to be on high alert right now. Her gut is telling her that something is off here. One look at Dean tells her he's feeling the same.

Hanna might need to work on fine-tuning her instincts. She doesn't seem to feel a lick of anything in the air, eagerly striding over to the house, calling out over her shoulder, ''You guys coming or what?''

Laurel catches Dean's eye over the roof of the Impala. He looks grim. He seems to already have an idea of what's happened here. She's hoping they're both just being paranoid. He hurries to catch up with Hanna, sticking to her like glue, but Laurel hangs behind.

She steps away from the car, but doesn't follow them. Her eyes move to the water line, her feet taking her across the dirt and gravel driveway to the plush green grass, damp and dotted with dewdrops. She stops short of the rocky, sandy shore, looking out at the dark waters of the Salish Sea. It's cold, late January cold, the soggy breeze chilling her to the bone, and it's unusually foreboding. She looks out at the water for a minute, listening to the tranquil sound of the waves, and then she turns.

She focuses her gaze on the guest cottage, presumably where Clementine Raymond lives with her son. It's a lonely looking house, situated away from the other buildings, closest to the water. It's just as picturesque as the main house but unlike the main house, which is draped in vibrant color, surrounded by brightly colored flowers, the guest cottage is muted. It's white with traditional black trims and shutters, highlighted only by a few lavender bushes in the front and sprawling green ivy creeping up all sides of the house. It doesn't look like the house of a new age-y witch who listens to Enya and lights too many scented candles while she swindles young white hipsters out of their craft beer money with flippant tarot card readings, pointless get rich quick spells, and loads of crystals.

Laurel catches no glimpse of Clementine or anyone else in the windows, but she cannot look away. She takes a step closer to it, eyes glued to the house for reasons she doesn't understand. She physically cannot look away. It's like something is pulling her toward the house. Like someone wants her to keep her eyes on it. She swears if she squints, she can see the ivy growing. Slow at first and then faster, urgently. It crawls up the side of the house, eats away at it, consumes it. It writhes up the siding, covers the windows, like something alive is wrapping it up, enveloping it in its arms.

A sharp whistle jolts her out of her trance and she jerks her head over to Dean, standing on the porch of the main house with Hanna. ''You wanna give me a hand over here?''

She looks back to the house that the ivy has not swallowed up. Looks at the rather small splotches of ivy crawling up the house, showing no signs of hunger, of consuming. She takes one last look at it, at the water, and then obliges, hurrying over to the main house and up the steps as Hanna raps on the door, punctuating her knock with a call of, ''Fawn? Fawn! Is everything okay?''

''No answer?'' Laurel smiles at Hanna, then looks at Dean.

He's looking down at his phone, visibly alert. ''No reception either.''

''What?'' Hanna looks over at him, brows furrowed. ''No reception? There's always reception here.''

Dean just says, ''Hm.''

Yeah, that's not good.

Laurel wraps an arm around Hanna's shoulders and moves her away from the door so Dean can get in there.

''I don't get it,'' Hanna says. ''They knew we were coming.''

''Well, maybe they went out and thought they'd have more time to get back home,'' Laurel suggests. ''We did make good time. Helps to have a driver with a lead foot.''

''There's always someone at the house,'' Hanna insists. ''Like I said, they're a safe haven. There's always someone here.''

Dean tries the doorknob, but it's locked.

''And the doorknob is never locked,'' Hanna yelps out, pointing accusingly at the traitorous doorknob. She shakes Laurel's arm off and moves over to the windows, trying to peer inside.

''Let's not rush to panic,'' Laurel says, soft but firm, pulling her away again. ''Come on. Let's check the back door.'' She turns Hanna around so she won't catch sight of Dean pulling out his gun, checking to see how many rounds he has left. ''Maybe something happened and they had to leave suddenly.''

''Then why wouldn't they call me?''

''Maybe they're not sure it's safe to,'' Laurel says. ''I'm sure they're fine.''

Hanna, growing increasingly agitated, does not look convinced, although she looks like she really, really wants to be. ''All their cars are here,'' she says. ''That's the baby's stroller.'' She points to a pricey looking stroller left out on the porch. ''Something's wrong,'' she says, leading them around to the back of the house. ''There's no reason they would just up and leave unless - '' She stops talking and stops short when they round the house where the back door lies open, creaking ominously in the wind, the faint sound of music wafting out from deep within the belly of the seemingly barren house.

Vera Lynn has never sounded so foreboding.

Instinctively, Laurel's hands move up to Hanna's arms and she tugs her back, letting Dean move in front.

He's not shy about drawing his weapon this time. ''You two stay out here.''

''Dean,'' Laurel objects. ''That's not a good idea.''

''Laurel, you're not even armed.''

Both women stare at him. ''Dean,'' Laurel says again. ''Sweetie. We're always armed.''

''Oh.'' He blinks. ''Right.'' He cocks his head to the side. ''Shit, maybe you should go in first.''

''Now you're getting it,'' Hanna says. She looks smug for about a second and a half, taking a step like she seriously thinks either one of them will let her go in there first. She is promptly thwarted, with Laurel pulling her back and Dean holding out a hand to stop her.

''You seriously think I'm letting you go in there first?'' He gives her one of those judgmental and extremely unimpressed eyebrow looks. ''Are you out of your mind?'' He switches his attention back to his wife. ''Laurel - ''

''Behind you.'' She nods, taking Hanna's hand. ''Got it.'' She allows him to do his whole hunter thing, like, with the gun and the creeping and everything, shuffling into the house behind him, keeping a tight hold of Hanna like she's an unpredictable toddler. In all honesty, she's ready to shove Dean out of the way if something jumps out at him, but she'll humor him. She is the big gun now, though. That's just how it is. Most people aren't used to that. She certainly isn't.

The first thing she notices upon entering the kitchen through the back door is that there is a faint electric pulse in the air, an enormous feeling of eerie dread. Somewhere in another part of the house, muffled by the distance, Vera Lynn sings on, the same song starting over again as soon as it's over. It's not particularly comforting or romantic today nor does it conjure up pleasant memories of her grandparents' house the way it usually does. Rather it gives the entire situation an oddly surreal feeling. It's like being haunted.

The other thing she notices, immediately, is the smell. So strong it burns her nostrils. It's a familiar smell. She waits until Hanna, predictably, tugs out of her grasp and moves over to the coffee pot before she catches Dean's eye and signs, Do you smell that?

He nods, mouthing back, ''Bleach.''

Laurel catches her lower lip between her teeth and looks at Hanna, pressing her hand to the coffee pot to check the temperature of it. ''Something bad happened here,'' the girl's voice wavers. ''Didn't it?''

''We - We don't know that,'' Laurel stutters out, even though it's abundantly clear that something bad did, in fact, happen here.

''Stay here,'' Dean orders, whispering it out harshly before he turns on his heel and walks through the doorway out into the family room.

Normally Laurel would argue, but she doesn't want Hanna to see whatever might be in the rest of this house.

Hanna apparently feels the same way because she doesn't even try to push back. She does look a little trembly.

''Hanna, listen - '' Laurel takes a step over to her, hand moving to the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

And then it's just like being thrown into a vicious memory that isn't hers. It's a short flash of images in her head, accompanied by a sharp pain. It's a violent wave, an image of a body being thrown into the kitchen table, sending the bowl of apples toppling over, the deep red apples bouncing one by one onto the floor, rolling into a puddle of blood. It's so quick and so jumbled, so marred by disorienting chaos that she cannot tell if she is the one throwing or the one thrown. Or, perhaps worse, if she is just a spectator, standing idly by, watching. She blinks a few times, nauseated by the off putting experience of remembering something that did not happen to her. Her fingers clutch the back of the chair and she stares at the table, perfectly in place, apples piled neatly in the bowl, all of it pristine and unbloodied.

She can still hear the music, the same song playing over and over again on repeat, Vera Lynn singing, We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

It sounds like a threat.

''What?''

She looks up at the sound of Hanna's voice, brought back to reality, pushing away the shivers running down her spine. ''Hmm?''

''What were you going to say?'' Hanna looks distracted, too concerned for her friends to worry about Laurel's oddness. ''You were going to say something to me.''

''Oh.'' Laurel tries to steady herself enough to appear nonchalant. But she looks around the room, the darkened empty kitchen, certain that she can hear echoes of ghostly sounding sobs. No one else can hear them. She doesn't even have to ask. ''I don't remember what I was going to say.''

In the background, the music cuts off, hopefully turned off by Dean. The echoes of the disembodied crying falls away with it. Laurel turns to look into what looks like the family room and it happens again; a flash of memory. A woman, older, bloodied and struggling against the man straddling her, screaming and screaming and screaming, but not because of him. Because of Laurel, whoever she is in that second, inching closer and closer. Laurel snaps out of it with a shudder, squeezing her eyes shut to black out the image. She knows what happened in this house.

''First floor's clear.'' She opens her eyes at the sound of Dean's voice, immediately catching his eye as he strides back into the kitchen. He looks at her briefly, concerned, but it's obvious most of his attention is on Hanna. ''I think you two should wait in the car while I check the rest of the house,'' he says. It does not sound like a suggestion.

Hanna glowers at the order. ''No.''

''Hanna - ''

''As the leader of an allied coven, I have an obligation to - '' She stops, breaking off in a sigh, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead tiredly. ''Look,'' she opens her eyes, pulling her phone out. ''Let me just try calling Fawn again.''

''Sweetie,'' Laurel makes an attempt. ''Maybe we should just go sit in the car and - ''

''I'm not sitting in the car! What is it you don't want me to see?''

''These people are your friends,'' Dean says. ''If something's happened to them, you don't need to see it. You're just a kid.''

''I am not just a - '' The sound of a cell phone ringing slices through the tension thick air, cutting her off. It sounds like it's coming from somewhere close by, but it's nowhere to be seen. All three of them startle at the sound, looking around the creepily neat and tidy kitchen. It's Dean who finally pulls open the drawer closest to the door, revealing five cell phones all lined up in a row. It's not a good sign. ''They wouldn't have left without their phones,'' Hanna says faintly.

Laurel is staring at the door across the room. The one that leads to the basement. There is an unnerving chill working its way up her spine. She doesn't know how she knows it's the door to the basement. There are no fluttering images in her head, no flashes of violence punctuated by a sharp pain, but she can hear the door creaking in her head. She knows where it leads. She doesn't know what they'll find, but she knows they have to go down there. ''We have to go to the basement,'' her voice says, the words slipping out shakily before she even realizes what she's said.

Dean and Hanna both turn to look at her. Something about the blankly horrified look on her face must worry them because she can feel Dean move closer to her. ''What?''

''The basement?'' Hanna throws a look over at the basement door. ''How do you even know there's a basement?''

I've been here before, is on the tip of Laurel's tongue, but she can't get it out. Not that it would even be true if she did. She has never been here before in her life.

...Edie has.

She's beginning to think the space between them is growing smaller and smaller with every day that passes.

''I just know,'' she says with a nervous swallow. ''I know we have to go down there.''

''All right...'' Dean looks understandably alarmed, but he takes it at face value, straightening his spine. ''Basement it is. Hanna - ''

''I don't want to go down to the basement,'' she says, voice small.

''Good.'' He grabs her hand, leading her over to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair for her to sit in. ''You stay here. Don't move. Don't even scratch your nose.''

Laurel looks over her shoulder, watching Hanna wriggle her nose and reach up to defiantly scratch it the second Dean turns his back on her. She looks at the basement door. It's just a door, but it feels sinister. She opens the door, revealing concrete steps that lead, seemingly, into nothing but darkness. The light bulb above is shattered, glass all over the steps, leaving behind a useless string. Dean sighs heavily. He already sounds exasperated.

Laurel feels...nothing much at all. She watches him fumble around in the unfamiliar kitchen, finally pulling a flashlight out of a drawer. ''Okay.'' He shuffles her out of the way, taking his spot in front of her. ''Let's get this over with.''

It is worth noting that he no longer has his weapon drawn. He doesn't seem to expect to find anything living. He moves slowly, though that mostly seems to be about making sure she stays behind him as they descend into the darkness. The basement is small and unfinished, more cellar like than basement. There's another hanging lightbulb at the bottom of the stairs, this one intact, and when Dean pulls the string, it illuminates the space in a sickly yellow light. There is nothing to be seen in the basement. No bodies, living or dead. No witches. No Edie.

But when Dean turns and shines the flashlight at the steps they just crept down, there's blood. Not a lot of it, but noticeable drops going down. Concrete is harder to bleach, I guess. They share a look. ''How did you know to go down here?'' He asks.

She's not sure how to explain that one. ''Edie was here.''

''How do you know?''

''I just do.''

He looks at her critically, shining the light at her, but then just accepts it. ''Stay close to me.''

''I always do.''

They move into the dimly lit basement, looking at all the various cardboard boxes and plastic storage bins all neatly labeled and slotted into place. There's an artificial Christmas tree that looks like it's just recently been moved down here and boxes of Christmas decorations that have been opened up, likely in the process of putting the decorations away. Jars of pickles and jams and other preserves, an old saggy looking couch, but no sign of anything nefarious.

Dean shines the light on all the nooks and crannies, he opens a few of the more suspicious looking boxes, but there's nothing.

''Maybe,'' she eventually pipes up, voice low, ''they did get out.'' She looks at the narrow window near the top of the back wall, unaware of him drifting away from her. ''You know?'' She looks at the small window, tilting her head to the side, trying to figure out if anyone could fit through it. ''Maybe she drove them down here, but they - they were able to flee. They are witches, right? At least some of them. Maybe - ''

''Laurel.'' Dean's voice is cold. ''Go upstairs.''

''What?'' She turns, spotting him standing with his back to her in front of what looks like a cold storage room. She knows just from the way he's standing, the way he tells her to go upstairs, the tension in his shoulders and back. ''Dean - ''

''Seriously, you need to go upstairs.''

She does not go upstairs. She barely even hears the suggestion. All she's thinking about is how Hanna said kids lived in this house. There's supposed to be a newborn here. ''Tell me there aren't dead kids in there.''

He doesn't answer. He doesn't even turn around to face her. He starts to close the door and her body just starts moving. She knows he's going to try to protect her from whatever is in that room and she loves him for it, but she needs to see for herself. She races across the room, ignoring his protests and the way he tries to push her back and keep her out of the room. She shoves her way into the room and -

It's carnage.

There are four bodies in the cold storage room, lying on the concrete, lined up close together, almost stacked up on top of each other. Two men, a woman, and a girl on the younger side of teens. Sadie Marlowe. Hanna said she was fifteen. Fifteen. A baby. Same age Edie and Siobhan were when that Bellingham car crash changed everything.

Three of the bodies - Sadie's and two other ones, both men - have been shot. Execution style from the looks of it. Hands tied behind their backs. One of the men, the younger one, looks bloodied and beaten. But the other body, an older woman, has a nasty wound on the side of her head, blood staining her hair, her skin, even her shirt. However, that's not how she died. Laurel knows that because this is the same woman who was screaming in her flashback. She had that same head wound then, but she was very much alive. Something else killed her, despite the lack of any other noticeable trauma. Her eyes are open, lifeless and vacant.

But it's Sadie Laurel can't keep her eyes off of. ''She - '' She jumps when Dean puts his hands on her shoulders, but lets him turn her around and steer her out of the room. ''She killed a kid,'' she gets out, turning to face him. ''That - She killed a child, Dean, she - ''

''I don't think she did any of the actual killing,'' he says, like that makes a fucking difference. ''She has people for that. Three of these people have been shot. That is not a witch thing. That's - ''

''Moretti,'' she finishes for him. ''This was Moretti.''

''Got his fingerprints all over it,'' he nods. ''Even the cleanup reeks of him. He may be a raging psychopath, but he's also a military man. He works with precision. He's disciplined, well trained, and cleanly violent.'' He scoffs. ''Quite the pair, those two.''

A terrifying pair, Laurel thinks. She's wondered about those two, she has to admit. Edie is obviously using Moretti as her muscle. He's her errand boy. He is someone she can manipulate. He's in love with her in what appears to be a startlingly obsessive and dangerous way but how she feels about him remains to be seen. She seems to feel more for Lady Shiva than Ricky Moretti. Regardless, he is not a good man. And he's not as dumb as he looks. He has abused, stalked, and harassed every woman he has ever been with. He craves violence. Laurel has to wonder if Edie realizes just how dangerous the path she's on with that man is. How horrifying it is that he has fallen in love her.

Laurel looks back at the bodies. ''How are we going to tell - ''

''Hey, guys,'' Hanna's voice pops up over Dean's shoulder, right on cue. ''I know you told me to wait upstairs, but - '' She stops. She never finishes the sentence. ''Oh my god.'' The weak attempt to stop her from seeing what she has already seen proves to be useless. ''Oh my god!''

Dean catches her when she tries to surge forward, pushing her back amidst her protests while Laurel hastily shuts the door to the storage room.

''Is that Sadie?'' Hanna struggles in Dean's hold, fighting fruitlessly even when he physically picks her up and hauls her away from the storage room. ''Is that Sadie? Oh my god!'' Her horrified shrieks quiet into moans and her wide eyes fill with tears as the reality of the situation sinks in. ''Oh god, Sadie,'' she sobs.

''Hanna.'' Laurel nudges Dean out of the way to get to the girl, taking her face in her hands even as she struggles, still trying to get a look at the now closed door. ''Sweetheart, don't look at that. Look at me.''

Surprisingly, uncharacteristically, Hanna listens. Then she wilts, sobbing, full of shocked grief, into Laurel's arms. Laurel protectively tucks the girl in close to her, the same way she would hold Mary.

Over Hanna's shoulder, Dean signs, We need to get her out of here.

Laurel nods. She gives Hanna a second, rubbing her back comfortingly, and then she pulls away. She keeps her arms wrapped around her and gently tries to steer her toward the stairs. ''Let's get you out of here.''

''But - '' Hanna tries to turn around, but Dean is there, blocking her view, trying to sweep her over to the stairs. ''We can't just leave them alone,'' she squeaks. ''It's cold.''

''Hanna - ''

''There were people missing.''

''I know.''

''Then we have to - we have to find them. There - There were people missing. There were only four of them. We have to - ''

Behind them, something clatters.

All three of them whip around, Dean drawing his weapon, finger on the trigger, Laurel instinctively pushing Hanna behind her.

Hanna is the one who voices is, ''What was that?''

''Something fell,'' Dean says. ''Things fall in basements. It happens.''

Laurel fishes the flashlight out of his jacket pocket and clicks it on, pointing it at the wall across from the stairs. There's a door off to the side, virtually camouflaged, and there is a viscous blue liquid seeping out from under the door. Her lip curls back in revulsion and she whispers, ''What are the chances that's some kind of freaky monster blood?''

Dean does not look particularly taken by that theory. ''I...'' He edges closer. ''I think it's laundry detergent.'' He crouches down to inspect it, but when his gaze moves up, he catches sight of something, body tensing. He rises up, whispering her name.

She follows his gaze, shining his flashlight on the doorknob where there is a small smear of blood. Like a fingerprint. Dean shoots Laurel a quick, sharp look and she takes a step back, pulling the still trembling Hanna with her. He tries the doorknob, finds it - unsurprisingly - locked, and then takes a step back and, without hesitation, kicks the door down.

Laurel shines the beam of the flashlight into what looks like a small laundry room. She sweeps the light over the shelves of cleaning products, the washer and dryer, and then gets to what looks to be a slow growing puddle of blood. She moves the light up and, despite what she's sure they were all expecting, jumps in surprise when the flashlight illuminates the body slumped against the far wall. It's not the presence of another body that startles her, as morbid as that sounds. It's the fact that the woman, bloodied and broken and bleeding profusely, is still alive.

Beside her, Hanna gasps, already trying to push her way into the room. ''Penelope!''

''Jesus.'' Dean is the first one to rush to her side, tucking his gun away and stepping over the puddle of detergent.

Laurel takes an additional second to snap out of it, momentarily taken aback by the gore in front of her when Dean flicks on the light.

Penelope Marlowe, the one who just had a baby in December, is not in good shape. She is alive, for now, with dull, tired eyes, but the amount of blood spilled out on the floor is not conducive to human life. Her hands, stained with blood, are clutching her abdomen, fruitlessly trying to staunch the blood flow from what looks like a gunshot wound. And she looks like she may have been beaten, at the very least sucker punched, with a bloody nose and blood trickling from her mouth. The brutality of it is appalling. It's what makes Laurel pause momentarily, nauseated by the viciousness of what has been done not only to Penelope but this whole family, none of whom did anything wrong. It's easy to blame Moretti and his love of violence, or Edie and her selfishness, but...

The Marlowe family offered Laurel help. They reached out to Hanna. They told them to come. Part of this is because of Laurel. She hovers for a second, listening to Hanna's frantic cries and Dean trying to soothe the dying woman, and then she snaps out of it. She sees Dean's hands pressed to Penelope's bloody abdomen and it's like Canary shifts into place.

She rushes forward, slipping off her hoodie to use it to apply pressure to the young woman's wound. ''Hi, Penelope,'' she greets softly, offering her a warm smile. ''I'm Laurel.''

Penelope looks up at her. ''I know who you are,'' she mumbles, voice hoarse. ''You're the Black Canary.''

''Damn, look at that,'' Dean says, attempting for a light tone of voice. ''Even the rural homesteaders know who you are.''

''My sister,'' Penelope swallows painfully. ''Sadie. She loves you. She has...all the comics. She runs a fan page. She couldn't wait to meet you.''

Laurel tries not to flinch at that. ''I'm very flattered to hear that.'' She smiles warmly. ''I had no idea I was so loved.'' She presses the fabric of her hoodie tighter against Penelope's wound and the girl cries out in pain. ''I know,'' she attempts to soothe. ''I know, honey, it hurts, but we have to keep the pressure on.'' She cuts her eyes to Dean. ''We need to call 911.''

''And tell them what? An evil witch and her sugar daddy attacked a coven?''

''Marissa,'' Hanna says, standing off to the side, unsure and pale as a ghost. ''Her sister. The one who lives in Seattle. She and her husband are both nurses. They could - ''

''Marissa,'' Penelope coughs. ''Marissa and Antonio are in Costa Rica...''

Hanna looks like she wants to cry. ''Oh.''

''Okay,'' Dean says shortly. ''Then it looks like you're stuck with us.'' He slips out of his jacket, attention on the woman bleeding out on the floor. ''All right, Penelope,'' he smiles. ''Do you go by Penelope or Penny?''

''Penny.''

''Okay, Penny,'' he says. ''We're going to move you, sweetheart.''

''No.'' She shakes her head weakly. ''It hurts.''

''I know, but we need to get you lying down.''

''Here.'' Laurel threads her fingers through Penny's. ''Just focus on me, Penny. Listen to my voice and squeeze my hand.''

Dean, as gently as possible, maneuvers Penny from her slumped position against the wall, getting her lying down, using his jacket as a cushion for her head.

''Good girl,'' Laurel coos, keeping a tight hold on Penny's hand. ''Good girl, just keep squeezing my hand, okay? You're doing great.''

A few tears leak out of Penny's eyes, trailing down her cheeks, but she looks more confused than anything, blinking up at the light.

''Penny,'' Laurel keeps her voice soft. ''Do you know where the rest of your family is? What about your baby?''

Penny keeps staring up at the ceiling, silent, eyes slowly glazing over.

''What about your aunt?'' Laurel persists. ''Was she here when you were attacked? Can you remember if she and her son got out? Were they taken?''

''Clem,'' Penny says, but offers no follow up. ''The man,'' she says. ''He thought I was a witch.''

''You're not?''

''I'm a...I'm a dental hygienist,'' Penny squeaks.

''Oh, see, now that's heroic,'' Laurel comments.

''How's the money in that?'' Dean inquires, pointedly lighthearted as he dumps a nearby laundry hamper out to grab whatever he can find to press to Penny's bleeding stomach, still soft with baby weight she hasn't had a chance to lose, or even attempt to. ''Because, you know, Black Canary here needs a day job. We've got bills to pay just like everyone else.'' He replaces Laurel's already soaked hoodie with the towel he grabs, pressing it tightly until Penny cries out again. Her eyes start to roll back into her head and her head lolls to the side. ''Hey, hey, hey, Penny.'' He grabs her face in his bloodied hands. ''Penny.'' His fingers move to her neck to check her pulse. ''Penelope, stay with me, honey, stay with me, your sister's on her way,'' he lies. ''You have to be here when she gets here.''

''Penny,'' Laurel says. ''Remember to keep squeezing my hand.''

Penny manages to sluggishly open her eyes and squeeze Laurel's hand, but it's evident she's fading fast and her sister is not on the way.

Laurel looks up at Dean and Hanna for a second, listening to him order Hanna to go back upstairs and see if she can get cell service. Which she will not. But he sends her anyway. She looks back to Penny, the brand new mother bleeding out on the cold laundry room floor. She looks young, can't be older than twenty-five but likely closer to twenty-three, and tremendously frightened. If she was able to hang on this long, she's undoubtedly a strong, determined young woman. But she's going to die. That's just a fact.

This isn't the first time Laurel has been in a situation like this. Comic books and action figures, street art and coloring books and novelty mugs and fan pages are all nice things. A statue is a touching gesture. Longform articles and saccharine obituaries are moving. All the tributes, public and private, were sweet. But there is no real glamour in heroism. It's not often pretty, not something for Hollywood or Instagram, not something that can be curated and gussied up with a filter. What she does is ugly, violent, and sad. It is not without its purpose - justice, accountability, helping people, saving people - but that doesn't make it any less of a wretched thing.

Black Canary is known for her kindness. Her mercy. Unlike others, most notably Green Arrow, she lingers. She does not run, she does not hide, and she does not melt into the shadows. She stays with the victim, even after the threat is gone. She had not meant to make that her thing, something that's expected of her all the time now. It's an incredibly reckless thing to do, which is why it's not common among the others. She had just been unable to leave. She couldn't make herself walk away. She has always had a bleeding heart. She was warned it would get her in trouble one day. It is a heavy burden to carry, being the one who stays. Especially on the nights where there is little she can do, the nights where she gets there too late, the nights where she misses a hidden weapon or is simply too far away from the screams to prevent the bloodshed. Sometimes being Black Canary just meant holding a hand, offering end of life reassurance, and being there while they left.

No one should have to die alone.

She has never told anyone about those nights. Not even Dean. They're precious to her. They're private. The last time it happened was last January, exactly a year ago. He was a nineteen-year-old homeless youth. A runaway, she suspected. She saw him practically every night in the Glades. He liked to chat. She kept trying to get him to go to the shelter nearby, the one where CNRI used to be, but he refused. He said he didn't want to take up a bed. Other people needed it more. He was stabbed because someone wanted his coat.

No hero can save everyone. She understands this better than people think. Her bleeding heart does not mean she's naive. Right now, what she understands, perhaps even more so than Dean, is that they are going to lose Penelope Marlowe. It seems, as the puddle of blood grows, an inevitability. But, before that, they need to know what information she has in her head. Not just for Clementine and her son, but also for the baby she recently gave birth to, the baby that is nowhere to be seen.

''Penny.'' She offers the young mother what she hopes is a comforting smile. ''You've been so brave. You've done such a good job. I know you must be tired, but you're still holding on. You're much stronger than I am. Now I need you to help me out here, Penny. You have a daughter, right?''

Penny looks blank for a second, colorless and ghostly, and then something clicks and recognition floods her eyes. For a moment, she rallies. ''Kaylie.''

''Kaylie,'' Laurel parrots. ''That's a beautiful name. Is that your baby?''

''I...I have to feed her,'' Penny rasps. ''What time is it? I have to feed Kaylie.''

''Penny,'' Laurel urges. ''Penelope, sweetie, look at me. Where is Kaylie?''

''I...hid her. I think.''

''You hid her. That's good,'' Laurel encourages. ''That's really good. You protected your baby. That's what moms do, right? We protect our babies. Can you tell me where you hid her?''

''Laurel - ''

''Penny.'' She ignores the sound of her Dean's voice and focuses only on Penny. ''Where did you hide Kaylie?''

''I...I don't...'' A few more tears slip down Penny's ashen cheeks. Her voice sounds fainter when she speaks, just on the edge of a whisper, but perfectly lucid, and her eyes are quickly losing their light. ''I loved being her mom,'' she says, and that's it. Her body goes slack and lifeless, her rattling chest falling still. Her eyes remain open and unseeing, emptied of all traces of the woman who loved her child ferociously.

Laurel sits back on her knees, still holding onto Penny's limp hand.

Dean is more stubborn than she is today. He is not willing to let her go that easily. He checks her pulse and then immediately, without hesitation, starts moving the towels from her wound, straightening her head. ''You need to find that baby.''

''What are you - ''

''I'm doing CPR.''

''Dean - ''

''I know,'' he snaps, harsher than expected, ''but I'm still trying. Go. Right now, Laurel. Go!''

As much as she doesn't want to, she leaves him with Penny, racing out of the room and up the stairs. ''We need to check the second floor for Penny's baby,'' she tells Hanna the second she emerges from the basement. ''Let's move.''

''What about - ''

''Right now, Hanna! Find baby now, talk later.''

Hanna looks like she already realizes what's likely happened to Penny, full of nervous, grief filled energy, but she doesn't argue, following after Laurel and up the stairs. The second floor of the house is a narrow hallway full of closed doors on either side and another staircase leading up to, she's assuming, an attic. And everything is hushed. There is no crying, no cooing, just a deafening silence. ''I'll check the attic,'' Hanna volunteers immediately, and doesn't give Laurel a chance to respond, tearing up the stairs.

Laurel ducks into the first room on the right. From the amount of glitter and sequins and the larger than life presence of literally a larger than life poster of Harry Styles, she's going to assume it's Sadie Marlowe's room. She checks the closet, the drawers, under the bed, but there's nothing. She does her best to avoid looking at the pictures tucked into the vanity mirror.

The next bedroom is bigger but cluttered and she can tell right away that it must be Penny and her fiancé's room. There is a picture of them on the dresser, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. She immediately recognizes the man as one of the bodies in the storage room downstairs. The one who looked like he had been beaten. Something about this bedroom feels like a punch in the gut. It's the empty crib in the corner of the room with the wall decals above spelling out the name KAYLIE. It's the pack of diapers on the floor, the unmade bed with the rumpled sheets and the nursing pillow and the Dock-a-Tot, the bassinet beside the bed. There is a baby book left open on the dresser where Penny was recording every milestone, no matter how small. She might've given up in a few weeks or months, that's what Laurel did anyway, but for now, she was dedicated. There is a breast pump beside the open book, a pile of parenting books stacked next to the rocking chair in the corner, and Penny's bedside table is cluttered with La La Leche print outs and supplements like fenugreek and milk thistle.

It's all very familiar.

This baby is four maybe five weeks old. Fresh out of the oven. At four weeks postpartum, you're still in the fourth trimester. You're sleep deprived, your hormones are still out of whack, your boobs hurt, your baby cries at all hours of the night, and you might still be bleeding like a stuck pig. You exist in a fog. You're in survival mode. Penny never even got a chance to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She loved her daughter, loved being her mom, but she didn't even get to experience the best parts. That is brutally unfair.

There is no baby in the crib. Baby Kaylie is not hidden under the bed or tucked away in a drawer. This is the most likely place Penny would have hid her, but she's nowhere to be found. Laurel steps into the small closet in the room. It's crowded and tiny but big enough to hide a four week old infant. She crouches down to unzip a duffel bag and that's when she hears Dean's voice, urgently calling her name, followed by the sound of a baby crying.

She tears out of the bedroom, finding him in the master bathroom with the baby in his arms. Relief settles into her body, shoulders slumping as she relaxes. Distantly, she is aware of a banging sound coming from somewhere outside. ''Is she okay?'' She glances in the bathtub where there's a nest of blankets Kaylie must have been in.

''She's fine,'' he says, comfortably bouncing the baby, patting her diaper. ''Pissed I woke her up.''

''Penny?''

His lips tighten and he looks up from the baby, shaking his head. He doesn't say the words. Just moves on. ''I don't think she was here for long. Whatever happened here just happened.''

Laurel looks at the baby in his arms, looking her over for any injuries, but avoids, at all costs, actually touching her. The image before her is not as comforting as it should be, the image of him standing there, cradling a baby while he is covered in the mother's blood. There is still something banging outside. She leaves the baby to Dean, wandering over to the window. From the window of the master bathroom, she can see the barn in the distance. The door is open, creaking back and forth in the wind, knocking against the side. She is positive that the barn door was closed when they got here.

''It didn't just happen,'' she says as the growing unease in her stomach settles into resigned horror. ''It's still happening.''

Instinctively, as soon as she says this, Dean shuffles the baby into one arm with well-practiced ease and yanks Laurel away from the window.

She barely notices. Her attention has gotten stuck on something over Dean's shoulder, eyes widening. ''Dean.''

He turns and she notices the way his body goes tense.

Siobhan, in all her bloody gory, is standing in the doorway of the bathroom with her terrified eyes and wide open mouth. She doesn't say anything this time. She doesn't have to.

''She's here,'' Laurel declares, watching as Siobhan flashes before their eyes, fading in and out before she vanishes entirely. ''Edie's here. Right now.''

''Right. Okay.'' Dean looks, for maybe about four and a half seconds, panicked and unsure of what to do next. Then he figures it out. It's like there's a switch, a click in his brain. ''Then we've got work to do. Here, take the baby.'' He doesn't give her much choice in the matter, basically shoving the baby into her reluctant arms. ''Where's Hanna?''

''Uh, the attic, but - ''

''There's a walk in closet in the bedroom. Take her there. I'm going to get Hanna.''

''Dean - ''

He's already halfway out the door, barely turning his head to order, ''Walk in closet. Now.''

She looks down at the baby in her arms. The baby - Kaylie - isn't crying anymore, almost as if she's been spooked into silence by the thick tension in the air, but she's fussing. When Laurel brings her in closer to her body, Kaylie immediately starts rooting around, eager to eat. Poor thing. She does what she's told, taking Kaylie into the walk in closet in the master bedroom. She's trying to figure out what happens now, her brain automatically working to make a list of what they'll need to get this baby out of here, how quickly they can gather it all together, how they can keep her safe from whatever is about to happen, but she's unfocused.

She hasn't held a baby in a long time and she is currently...uncomfortable with babies. That's a new thing. She doesn't know if it's because of the dreams she's been having lately or just another new symptom of her constantly shifting and evolving - and untreated - PTSD. With Edie out of the picture for so long, that's where most of her attention went. Just trying to cope with how things are right now. Trying to dig herself out of the hole she was pushed into and can't seem to get out of.

One of the things she realized - or, rather, one of the things she finally admitted to herself is that there is not one single part of April 6th that she has or knows how to properly deal with. Not the attack, not the motivations behind it, not the dying, and not the miscarriage.

Kinda realized that when John and Lyla accidentally let it slip that they are expecting their second child at the team's holiday party and she had to excuse herself to cry in the bathroom. Things were better in Malibu, better when she and Dean finally talked about it, opened the door to possibly having more children in the future, but PTSD is a lot like a boomerang. No matter how far you think you've come, you always wind up right back where you started.

She doesn't have time for that right now. She does not have time for PTSD, triggers, and trauma responses. But she looks at the baby, feels the weight of her little body in her arms, and she just goes hazy.

Black Canary is a dedicated, pragmatic professional. Laurel Lance is quite painfully fucked up right now. It's harder to merge the two than it used to be.

''I'm sorry, sweetie,'' she says, bouncing the fussy, hungry baby. ''I'm fresh out of milk right now. But we'll get you fed. Just hang tight, baby girl.''

It doesn't, thankfully, take Dean long to get Hanna and bring her back, ushering her into the windowless walk in closet.

''You want me to stay here?'' Hanna's exclaiming, eyes blown wide with incredulity. ''Dean, I'm the strongest of - ''

''Which is exactly why I want you here,'' he cuts in shortly. ''You stay here, you protect this baby with your life, and as soon as we get Clementine and her son, we get out of here.'' To demonstrate this, he takes the baby and plops her down in Hanna's arms.

''If Edie's here,'' Hanna starts, but is cut off by the sound of Kaylie's piercing wails.

Dean takes the baby back from her, urgently trying to shush the little girl. ''If Edie's here, we'll handle it.''

''Well, what am I supposed to do with a baby?'' Hanna asks helplessly. ''You've noticed that's a newborn, right? Like, freshly expelled newborn.''

''We're aware.''

''But what if - ''

''Right now, all you need to do is keep her alive,'' Laurel advises. ''Snuggle her close to your body, rub her belly. Just keep her as comfortable as you can.''

''We'll deal with the rest,'' Dean assures her, handing her back the baby. ''But if there are more people here, like Clementine and her son, we need to get to them.''

Hanna still looks uneasy, gently rocking baby Kaylie. ''Wyatt,'' she says eventually. ''Clem's son. His name is Wyatt.''

''Wyatt,'' Laurel repeats, mostly so Hanna can hear her say it. ''We'll remember that. How old is he?''

''Seven, I think.''

That is not what Laurel - or Dean, for that matter - had been expecting. He blurts out a, ''Shit'' and then looks at Hanna. ''We need to get to that kid. Hanna, you stay here, keep the door closed, and if you need our permission to destroy anyone who comes through that door, you've got it. Okay?''

She's silent, staring down at Kaylie.

He says it again, stressing it, ''Okay?''

''Okay!'' She looks up, looking between them. ''Okay, I'll stay with her. Just be careful.''

''We will.'' Laurel gives Hanna one last squeeze. ''Keep the door closed. Don't open it until we come get you.'' She waits until Hanna nods her head, then offers her one last smile, and follows Dean out the door.

It's cold in this old house, her body seems distantly aware of that, shivering under Dean's flannel now that she's lost her sweater. Dean has lost his jacket too. Both are down in the basement with Penelope's cooling body, wet and heavy with her blood. The same blood that is on his hands, his shirt, and even, now, transferred to Kaylie's onesie. He doesn't seem to notice the blood anymore. Just like he doesn't seem to notice the cold.

The window in the master bedroom has been opened, the same way all the windows in the kitchen and other bedrooms have been opened, letting in all the chilly January air that smells like saltwater and damp earth. That must mean something. All those open windows. A way to get out the smell of bleach? An attempt to slow down the decomp? She doesn't want to think about it.

''Seven years old,'' she says to Dean. She doesn't need to say more.

He closes the bedroom door, leaving a smear of Penelope's blood on the white door. ''Seven years old,'' he repeats. ''Let's go get him. We need to get these kids out of here.''

Despite the open barn door, the eerie sound of it banging against the side, the only thing moving outside are the trees and the water. The green branches of the trees sway and swish in the wind and the water of hood canal sparkles and drifts, soft, calm waves lapping at the shoreline. The wind rustles her hair as she darts across the green grass with Dean.

There does not appear to be anyone around. That doesn't mean there isn't. Laurel can feel eyes on her the entire time it takes them to reach the house. They go in through the unlocked back door. The guesthouse is smaller than the main house, but still exceedingly large for a guesthouse, with high ceilings, wide open spaces, and an open concept floorplan. There is a flight of stairs leading up to a loft that looks like it might double as Clementine's workspace. Unlike the main house, there has been zero attempt to clean up.

It looks like it's been ransacked, drawers and cupboards open and torn through, bookshelves emptied, books ripped, even the trashcans have been upended. It looks like there was a hell of a fight here. Furniture has been overturned and broken, there's a grand piano that's been completely destroyed, there is shattered glass and water and flowers scattered all over the floor, along with what looks like Clementine's broken cell phone, and there are random smears and splatters of blood in the living room, staining the couch. Other than the sound of their shoes crunching over the broken glass, it's muted and tranquil.

''Guess we interrupted the cleanup,'' Dean says lowly.

It's an easy house to clear, but it's frustrating that, also unlike the main house, it really is empty. There is no one in the main part of the house, no one in the loft, and no one in the bedrooms. There's no bathroom at all, which is an inexplicably bizarre design flaw. In what looks like it has to be the kid's bedroom, there is a bloody handprint on the wall near the door and a still wet spot of blood on a pillow that's been thrown off the bed, but there are no bodies, dead or alive. There's even less in Clementine's bedroom.

''Maybe they took them,'' Laurel suggests, staring into Clementine's stuffed closet. She owns a lot of flowy robes and kaftans. ''Ducked out while we were in the house. It makes sense. Hanna said Clementine is a strong witch. She'd make a great Doll.'' She shuts the closet door and turns back to Dean.

He's crouched in front of the empty space beside the dresser, examining something he's found on the floor. A crystal. Rose quartz, by the looks of it.

''I just don't know where they'd take the boy.'' She bites her bottom lip. ''Edie said she doesn't hurt kids, but...'' She can't bear to say the rest. She peeks out the bedroom window, but all she can see is the water. ''We need to get that baby out of here.''

Dean has no response to that. He hasn't had a response to any of this.

She turns back to him. ''Dean.''

He jerks, as if shocked by something. ''Huh?''

''Were you listening to me?''

''I - Yeah.'' He stands up, but keeps his gaze on the crystal in his hand, transfixed. ''I was listening.'' He closes his fist around the crystal. ''We need to leave.'' But he makes no move to leave. He is standing very still. He still has his back to her. ''Do you...Do you hear that?''

Worry creeps up in her throat. Tickles the back of her spine. ''Hear what?'' She reaches out to touch him on instinct. As soon as she does, it feels like an electric shock travels through her. Then it just feels like she's being iced over. Like an unbearable cold has directly entered her bloodstream, like a poison, an unkindness.

When he speaks again, his voice is thin and muffled. ''Do you hear that crackling noise?''

He turns around to face her and a sickening fear slams into her so violently she thinks she might vomit. That is not her husband standing in front of her. That is a decaying corpse. His skin is gray and waxy, and cracked, his eyes unseeing, and glazed over with a white film, and he is choking on the water that is rushing past his lips. It takes her a second, way too long, to remember where she has seen this before. When she does, the image in front of her has already twisted into Sara, the same nightmare she had for six years, the same nightmare she still sometimes has. Her baby sister's waterlogged corpse. It's over in a flash, but then the distorted image just becomes one, again, of Dean, dead. Bleeding, dying, blood gushing from his mouth, from a puncture wound in his throat.

She steps back, backs of her knees hitting the bed, and she blinks a few times. The image disappears. Reality, however, offers little comfort. He may not be a choking, bleeding, drowning corpse, but he doesn't look well. He looks pale and sick, feverish and damp with sweat, and there are these ugly black root looking things crawling under his skin, his hands, his arms, spreading out, all the way up to his neck, slowly but steadily consuming him the way she saw the ivy consuming this house.

There is a sudden empty feeling in her stomach, moving up to her chest. Out, a voice that isn't hers, that sounds a lot like Siobhan's bloody whisper, hisses in the back of her head. Get him out of here.

''Dean,'' her voice is urgent and shaky, but her eyes have moved down to the object clutched tightly in his hand. The crystal. It has gone black in his hand, the inky, shadowy wisps pushing their way into him.

Realization dawns in his eyes, but he seems unable to put the crystal down. ''Shit.''

Laurel crosses over to him, wrenching the crystal from his hand and throwing it across the room, but it doesn't do any good. It's too late.

When he looks up at her again, there is blood running from his nose. ''Laurel.''

''Oh god.'' Her hands move up to his face, the black roots creeping up his cheeks, unnoticeable under her palms even as they eat away at him. ''Honey, we have to - we have to get you out of here.''

He closes his eyes, tugging her hands away. He looks like he's...sinking. Losing this new peculiar fight.

''We have to get you to Hanna,'' she pleads. ''We have to - ''

His eyes snap open. She stops talking, voice dying in her throat. There is something wrong with his eyes. There is something unrecognizable about him. He looks at her, looks right into her eyes, and all she can see is rage and hate and fear.

But, she thinks. Last night. She remembers bits and pieces. Snapshots. She remembers looking at him and he was someone else. Only he wasn't. He was always him. She was the one who went wrong. She was someone else. Who's to say that's not what's happening now? How would she know? How would she be able to tell?

Dean drops her hands and backs away from her, his voice quiet with distress. ''You.'' A look of pure terror crosses his face and she feels like it's something she has seen before, a long time ago, but she can't quite place it. She opens her mouth to say something, to plead with him, but he doesn't let her. When he speaks again, he's angry, visceral. ''Where is she?'' His voice is a growl. ''Where's my wife?''

''Dean.'' An unsettling chill crawls up the back of her neck. When he moves toward her, she moves back. ''Baby, it's me,'' she tells him. ''I'm me. Whatever you're seeing - ''

''Shut up,'' he grinds out through his teeth. ''Shut up. Stop lying. You're not - ''

''I'm not lying.''

''What did you do with her, Alastair?''

''Alastair?'' Oh, shit. She remembers where she has seen that look before. The last time he looked at her like that, he was deep in withdrawal, an hour or two away from a seizure, hallucinating and sick.

''I know you took her!''

She flinches at the bellow, even though she tries not to. ''Dean, please.''

''I can't be back here,'' he says, shaking his head. ''I can't be back here. I didn't do anything wrong.''

''No,'' she assures him. ''No, you didn't. You didn't do anything wrong at all.''

''I have a life.''

''You do.'' She tries to soothe him, holding out a hand like she's trying to soothe a wild animal. ''You do have a life. You have one with me and our daughter. Remember Mary? We need to get you better so you can go home to her.''

The gun is drawn too quickly for her to react. He pulls it out without a second thought, releasing the safety, pointing it right at her head. He puts his finger on the trigger. You never put your finger on the trigger unless you intent to pull it. He puts his finger on the trigger without hesitation and points it at his wife. That tells her just how out of it he is right now.

''Stop talking,'' he orders. ''Stop trying to trick me.''

The black roots have wormed their way up his throat, inching up the side of his face. His eyes are no longer his eyes.

All right.

She doesn't have the patience for this.

''Whatever happens next,'' she says, ''I just want to preemptively apologize. I know you're sick, but I don't have time for this right now.''

And then she charges.

She's quick, managing to grab a hold of his arm and push it away, but she's not quick enough to stop him from pulling the trigger. The gunshot goes off like a bomb in her left ear, the bullet slicing through the air and violently tearing into the wall across the room, leaving her ear ringing. She doesn't have time to slow down. She bends his arm back as much as she can without seriously injuring him, brings her other hand up to jab him in the nose, and when he stumbles back, grip easing on the gun, she grabs it. Her mistake it not hitting him harder and wasting time removing the magazine from the gun. He comes at her and she is able to drop the gun and block the punch, but she can't avoid the backhand. She doesn't see it coming.

It sends her sprawling to the floor, dazed and winded. She recovers as fast as she can, but there is still ringing in her ears and a dull throbbing. She doesn't want to be doing this. She can't reason with him, can't talk him down when witchcraft is poisoning him against her, but she just really doesn't want to be doing this. She pushes herself up on her hands and turns, catching sight of him coming toward her. Practically without thinking, she kicks him as soon as he's close enough, sending him staggering back into the bedside table, the contents spilling onto the ground.

She's able to spring back up to her feet and when he comes at her again, she decides she's had just about enough of this. She rushes toward him, ducking a punch, latching onto his arm and using him as leverage to lift herself up and swing herself onto his shoulders, easily taking him down to the ground from there. She rolls and pops back up to her feet while he struggles to catch his breath. He doesn't have much of a chance to even attempt to get up. She turns, grabs a fallen lamp from the floor, and smashes it over his head.

He slumps to the ground and does not get back up again. In the following empty space, the frigid silence where she's just trying to catch her breath and figure out what comes next, most of her thoughts are on him. ''Oh my god, that was really violent.'' She doesn't even bother with checking herself over for injuries. She kneels down next to him, checking his pulse, swallowing hard at the sight of the blood on the side of his head. ''Please don't hate me when you wake up,'' she whispers. She starts to move her hand to his head, but freezes. She pulls her hands back, looking down at them in slow growing horror. There are black roots trailing up her hands, her wrists, all the way up to her forearm.

Somewhere in the house, a baby cries.

She rises to her suddenly shaky legs, turning around to look out the bedroom door. The baby keeps crying. Her vision blurs, either with sweat or tears, and, above her, something creaks. The roof groans under the weight of something heavy. She looks up, heartbeat erratic in her chest, and watches as the roof sags, shudders, visibly straining, and then it gives way and lets something in.

Dirt, damp and heavy, pours down on her head and she barely has the time to scream and feebly attempt to cover her head before the pounds, six feet worth, of dirt crash down on her head. Then there is nothing but darkness.

...Right up until she wakes up.

She jerks awake outside, in the bleak, foggy winter, somewhere else. She stares up at the white sky, and then she rolls over, heaving herself up. She's seen this place before. She's seen those trees before. She's seen the path winding through the woods. She stumbles through the twigs and branches, grasping onto the trees for support until she finally breaks through the thick forest and makes it to -

That lake. That peaceful looking lake down the trail and around the corner from that old farmhouse that never existed.

Laurel looks across the water at the little girl crouched on the rocky shoreline near the dock in her red rubber rain boots and her pink puffy jacket with her purple plastic bucket. Mary. She is examining every rock she picks up, occasionally dropping one into her bucket, chatting away as if she's not alone. She looks so focused on what she's doing. But she's so far away, all the way on the other side of the lake.

''Mary,'' Laurel tries to call out to her, but nothing comes out. She tries again, calling out to her child, but she's soundless.

Mary doesn't even look up. She picks up a rock and turns it over in her hand a few times, looking at it closely, inspecting it before she grins and drops it in her bucket. ''This one's going to be my special rock,'' she declares happily. She stands and stumbles over the rocks to a nearby piece of wood, bending down to look at the rocks there. She is so close to the water.

Laurel looks around frantically for Dean, for someone else, anyone else, but there is no one in sight. There's just Mary.

A few feet away, in the grass, brown in the cool weather, something jerks to life. It's a vaguely human-like shape, a woman, as if she is melting out of the earth, but she has no distinguishable features. There is no face, no eyes or mouth, no human expression, but heavy old fashioned skirts and wild, dirty, ragged hair, and somehow, Laurel just knows, deep in her gut, that whoever, whatever that thing is -

She's hungry.

The woman, or what used to be a woman, moves jerkily in some kind of half slither, half lurching crawl, claw like fingers pawing at the rocks. Right toward Mary.

''Mary!'' Still, no sound comes out of her mouth. ''Mary!'' She tries to scream, to shout, but no matter how hard she tries, she can't say a word.

Mary doesn't even notice her on the other side of the lake. She doesn't even see her. She doesn't see the thing moving toward her either.

The woman drags herself through the rocks and the sand, movements completely inhuman, fast, convulsive, and uncontrolled.

Laurel eyes the distance, trying to figure out how long it would take her to race around the lake. Too long. She would never make it. ''Mary!''

Mary cannot hear her.

The body keeps crawling closer.

Laurel doesn't even think about it. She runs right into the water, pushing past the freezing cold, splashing in until she's up to her knees, still uselessly trying to scream. She doesn't make it far. It doesn't matter how fast she tries to swim, how loud she tries to scream. It's all useless in the end. The water is so cold, so terrifyingly cold, that the minute she throws herself in, her muscles cramp up and it is like trying to swim through cement. She still cannot make a sound. She tries. She uses every breath to scream for her daughter, choking on the water, but it's no use.

The thing on the other side of the lake wins.

Laurel watches it - her - crawl over to Mary like some kind of horror movie reject and just as the figure reaches up a gnarled, twig like hand to grab Mary, both of them completely oblivious to the sound of Laurel's flails and desperate screams...

Something from beneath rises to devour.

It brushes against her leg first, and then, before she has a chance to react, before she has to watch her baby girl torn apart by whatever that thing is, something wraps around her ankle and pulls. It drags her down into the murky depths of the freezing lake, with nothing but her silenced scream and a faraway echo of someone calling her name.

She surfaces for breath in Clementine Raymond's bedroom with warm hands on her face and the dull thumping of her heart in her chest.

''Laurel,'' someone says, close by but still somehow far away. ''Laurel, hey, little sassafras, are you okay?''

There is no dirt piled on top of her, no cracks in the ceiling, no baby crying, and no inhuman monster woman tearing herself out of the earth to demolish Mary. Just the blood rushing in her ears. Laurel chokes on air, trying to get more to reach her lungs. Her vision clears enough for her to zero in on the owner of those soft hands and that familiar voice. It's Edie hovering over her, staring down at her with worried eyes. She looks so sincerely concerned that Laurel almost wonders if she has slipped into another world, maybe a better one.

''Laurel,'' Edie's saying. ''Talk to me here. Are you okay?''

''What,'' Laurel tries to croak out the words but her mouth feels like it has been stuffed with cotton. ''Where's...'' She weakly pushes Edie's hands away from her. ''What did you - ''

''This wasn't me,'' Edie claims, calm and direct. ''This was a Clementine Raymond specialty. She can be quite vindictive. I saved your life. A little appreciation would be - ''

''Dean.'' Laurel's body moves on impulse, instinct, a desperate need to get to him. She sits up with some minor difficulty, wincing, looking down at her hands, watching as those black roots recede and fade away. She looks up, instantly spotting Dean right where she left him, still unconscious, still bleeding sluggishly from the head.

''He's fine, Laurel,'' Edie's voice says. Then, to someone else, ''Get her up.''

Laurel struggles when two strong arms latch onto her, hauling her to her feet. She doesn't even have to look at him to know it's Moretti. She still feels hazy and weakened from whatever that was, body still shuddering involuntarily. She tries to shake it off, elbowing him in the gut, but he's too strong. Keeps a tight grip on her even when he groans and doubles over, muttering a, ''Fucking bitch.''

Edie ignores his whining, moving to stand in front of Laurel, in between her and Dean's prone form. She looks much better than the last time Laurel saw her. She looks healthy. She's hiding behind her magic, scars wiped away, skin fresh and glowing, voice smooth, but she looks healthy. Doesn't look like there's anything wrong with her at all. She looks more reminiscent of the girl who left for a dance recital and never came home again. There is less cruelty in her eyes. Less anger. She looks happy to see her cousin, relieved that they are both standing. If it weren't for Moretti and his imposing, inherently violent presence, it would almost be like...

But.

There are bodies in the main house. A dead fifteen-year-old girl. A young mother left to die in a pool of her own blood. An orphaned, hungry baby wailing in Hanna's arms. And they still don't know where Clementine and her son are. Moretti may have been the one to commit the massacre, but Edie gave him the greenlight.

Laurel tries to push past the anger. She tries to be as calm as she possibly can be. ''Edie,'' she greets smoothly. ''Long time no see. How are you? You get a good sleep last night?''

For a second, the corners of Edie's lips twitch. She opts not to respond to the question. ''It was a protection spell,'' she informs her. ''Just so you know. An aggressive one. It infects the entire body like poison. You're lucky you're not dead.''

Laurel risks a quick look at her husband. ''What was she protecting?''

Moretti grips her arm tighter and jerks her around, turning her to face the wall. Only it's not a wall anymore. There is a door there, right next to the dresser, right where Dean found the crystal. She is certain there was not a door there before. The bathroom. It has to be the bathroom. Clementine hid the bathroom. There is only one reason she would do that.

''Edie.'' Laurel looks at her cousin, hoping she doesn't look as panicked as she feels. ''You don't need him. You don't need the boy.''

Edie looks at her curiously, head tilted to the side. ''What do you think I'm going to do?''

''I know what you're going to do,'' Laurel accuses. ''The same thing you did to Sadie Marlowe.''

''Sadie - '' Edie steps back, eyes closed off. She looks at Moretti. ''I didn't do anything to Sadie Marlowe.''

There is a terrible silence.

Laurel doesn't bother to look at him but Moretti's face must give it away because Edie goes cold. ''I told you to tie them up. I didn't tell you to - ''

''Hey!'' Moretti moves, keeping a hold of Laurel's arm but moving her aside to take a step closer to Edie. It's like his first instinct is to physically intimidate a woman. A real stand up guy. An absolute winner.

Edie doesn't flinch. He's tall and close enough to her that she needs to tilt her head back and bare her throat just to look at him, but she doesn't look even the slightest bit intimidated. She looks like she could take him if she needed to.

''No fucking witnesses, Edie,'' he growls at her. ''What did you think that meant?''

''What - you think they would've gone to the cops?'' Edie scoffs, hands propped up on her hips. ''Really? Are you fucking kidding me, Moretti?''

''You gave me a job.'' He sounds entirely unapologetic. ''I did my job. And I'm gonna keep doing my fucking job. Which means no witnesses. Now, you gonna step out of the way and let me put down that Winchester or - ''

Laurel doesn't even think about it. She slams her elbow back into Moretti's gut, much harder this time, takes advantage of the way he loosens his grip, and whirls around, socking him in the nose. There's a sickening crunching noise and when his hands go up to his nose, blood pouring down his face, she kicks him back into the bookshelf, sending him slumping to the ground as heavy books and knick knacks crash down on his head.

Edie has little reaction to seeing her whatever he is get the snot kicked out of him. Merely a raised eyebrow and a small, barely audible sigh. Of course Laurel doesn't really give her a chance. As soon as Moretti's subdued, she cold cocks Edie before the wicked witch wannabe can even open her mouth. Edie drops like a stone, stunned but still barely conscious. Laurel hesitates, lingering where she is for a moment too long, but when Edie starts to mumble something and an unnerving heaviness begins to settle over the room like it's about to be blanketed in something suffocating, she strikes. Hard and fast. She jolts forward, kicking Edie, catching her under the chin, and the prodigal cousin goes still.

Laurel looks at her for a second, still unable to process the emotions that still rise up in her when faced with who Edie has become, and then she rushes over to Dean. She checks his pulse, makes sure he's still breathing okay, but she knows her focus needs to be elsewhere right now.

She approaches the mysterious door with determination but trepidation, eyeing the blood speckled on the white door. She turns the doorknob and - yep, it's a bathroom. Rather unremarkable. Except for the blood. It's a nice bathroom, sure, updated with shiny counter tops and a claw foot tub and equally shiny tile floors, spacious and uncluttered and very very white. But there's blood on the floor. There is blood in the sink.

There is a small, quiet noise - a sniffle, a shift of the body - coming from the bathtub behind the shower curtain. Laurel gulps. She steps over to the bathtub, extremely unsure of what she's going to find. She reaches for the shower curtain, takes a breath, and rips it open.

The boy huddled inside, curled up in a ball, does not scream. He doesn't cry out or beg. He just curls even tighter to himself, eyes squeezed shut, hands clasped over his ears, panting like he's on the verge of a panic attack. He's a young boy, dark skinned, with tears running down his cheeks, trying to make himself as possible, still wearing his space ship and solar system covered pajama pants and a blood specked gray t-shirt.

''Wyatt,'' Laurel gets out. ''Wyatt, honey, it's okay. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you.'' She reaches out to touch his knee gently and his eyes pop open, fearful. She smiles at him. ''I promise I'm not going to hurt you,'' she tells him. ''My name is Laurel Lance. I'm the Black Canary.''

He is still eyeing her critically.

She's not expecting him to talk. But she does need him to look at her. I was coming here to talk to your mom, she signs, watching his eyes widen, relief and surprise bleeding in. I'm here to help you.

He struggles for a second, body practically vibrating, and then he signs, Mom. He signs it over and over again. He doesn't seem to be able to think of much else. His hand is cut, which seems to be the source of the blood, but it looks like he has tried to bandage it himself. It looks cumbersome, but it doesn't seem to be a serious wound and other than that, he's unharmed.

When she turns to look at the bathroom door, she can see a sigil painted on the back in blood. There's a pocketknife in the bathtub with him. He protected himself. It wasn't Clementine who placed the trap. It was Wyatt. He saved himself.

''Okay,'' she smiles. ''Let's get you out of here, sweetie.''

But the boy just keeps signing, Mom. He lets Laurel help him out of the bathtub, but he's still only got one thing on his mind, mouth working soundlessly as he fruitlessly tries to speak, to tell her something, shaking hands unable to do anything more than plead, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom.

''What about your mom?'' She kneels in front of him, reaching up to wipe away the tears on his cheeks. ''Did you see - '' She stops. ''Did something happen to her?''

He nods frantically, skittish eyes darting over to the door. Finally, he manages to sign, even with his shaky hands, They took her.

She is not surprised by that, but her stomach still flips. ''They took her?''

He nods and then, like all the air has gone out of him, all the fight has drained, he just crumples into her arms and sobs.

Laurel envelops the poor kid into her arms, keeping him tight against her even as she nervously glances at the door. ''I'm so sorry, honey,'' she whispers, even though she knows it's meaningless. He's still trembling in her arms, a small shuddering boy clinging to a stranger in fear. It just makes her angry.

I don't hurt kids, Edie had said.

Bullshit.

She hurts everything she touches.

Laurel pulls Wyatt away from her gently, keeping a hold on his hands. ''Listen, we're going to find your mom, Wyatt, but we need to get you out of here, sound good?''

Adamant, he shakes his head. Tugs his hands out of her grip to sign, vehemently, Not without her.

''Buddy, I know - I know you want your mom, but we need to - ''

''No one,'' a rough voice growls from the doorway, ''is going anywhere.''

Fuck.

Laurel rises to her feet, pushing Wyatt behind her as she turns to the bleeding and battered Moretti. Wyatt lets out a choked gasping cry, gripping her shirt, hiding his face in her hip.

Moretti's lips pull back into a bloody grin. He still has blood coming from his nose, running into his mouth, coating his teeth red. He is also bleeding from the head, likely from the shelves falling on his head. But he's grinning. ''You thought you could run? Thought you could fly away home, birdie?'' Even his laugh is bloody. ''There's nowhere for you to go, Canary.''

''Spare me the villain monologue, Moretti,'' Laurel snaps. ''You're neither as clever as you think you are or as intimidating.''

His smile faces. This is the part where he calls her a ''fucking bitch'' or a ''cunt'' and slams her head into the marble counter top, but he doesn't. He looks from her, to Wyatt, and then back again. He asks, ''How do you want this to go?''

She stares at him, disconcerted by the question. ''Excuse me?''

''You got two options here,'' he says. ''Either I kill you first or I kill the kid and make you watch. I'll let you pick.'' He smiles again, all bloodied teeth. ''I'm merciful like that.''

Laurel doesn't have time to be scared. A movement over Moretti's shoulder catches her eye. She returns his smile with one of her own. ''Unfortunately, Riccardo, we're not feeling particularly merciful today.''

From behind him, Dean taps Moretti on the shoulder and says, ''Hey.''

Moretti turns.

Laurel has a split second to whirl around and pull Wyatt to her, keeping his face covered as the single gunshot rings out, echoing through the bathroom. In the silence left behind, she lets out a breath. ''Wyatt,'' she whispers. ''I need you to keep your eyes closed for me. Can you do that?''

A jerky nod.

She turns her head to look at Dean. He seems fine, alert with only minor injuries from before, rushing over to her. At least she has one thing to be relieved about. ''I know he was human,'' he starts.

''No,'' she says instantly. ''It was justified. It was self-defense.''

Wyatt sniffles into her shirt. Both Dean and Laurel forget all about the body on the floor. ''Hey, buddy,'' Dean greets, keeping his voice soft, the one he normally reserves for Mary. He crouches down in front of the boy, blocking his view of the body on the ground. ''You must be Wyatt.''

''This is Dean,'' Laurel says as the boy opens one eye, peeking out from her shirt to look at Dean. ''He's with me. You don't have to worry.''

''I'm going to carry you out of here, kiddo, okay?'' Dean lifts the little boy into his arms. ''Just keep your eyes closed.''

Laurel looks at the body of Ricky Moretti as they're stepping over it, looking at the gunshot wound between his wide open eyes, the spray of blood half on the wall, half on the mirror. She cannot muster up any remorse for the dead man. They make it out of the bathroom and the bedroom, leaving Edie's prone body on the floor, but there is a glaring issue that needs to be addressed here. They still don't know where Clementine is and her son is going to pitch a fit if they try to leave her.

''All right,'' Dean starts, pausing in the living room to turn back to Laurel. ''We get Hanna and the baby and get them to the car.''

''Dean - ''

My mom, Wyatt signs frantically. I can't leave my mom.

''We're not,'' he says. ''I promise we're not. Laurel's going to get you out of here and I'm going to find your mom.''

''What? No!'' Laurel grasps at his sleeve. ''I'm not leaving you,'' she refutes, somewhat weakly.

''Yes, you are. Someone needs to find Clementine - ''

''Dean - ''

''But someone needs to get these kids to safety. You're strong enough to protect them, you can - ''

''Dean,'' she says, voice sharp, eyes focused over his shoulder as Wyatt urgently taps Dean on the shoulder. ''The front door is open.''

He stiffens. Slowly, like he can sense something in the air, he puts Wyatt on the ground and turns his head to look at the open door. The front door was not open before. He turns back to her and that is when all hell breaks loose. She sees his eyes widen at something but she doesn't have time to ask him what's wrong before he's shoving both her and Wyatt out of the way and some big dude with a hatchet - a fucking hatchet - is tackling him to the ground.

Dean's quick, quicker than the Paul Bunyan looking brute and he manages to wrap his hands around the handle, preventing the guy from hacking him to death, but that doesn't mean it's not fucking alarming.

Laurel regroups with practiced ease. She has hit her limit for terror. She's mostly just peeved at this point. She gets Wyatt over to the desk in the corner, behind the grand piano, pulling the chair back and getting him under the desk. ''Stay here,'' she tells him. ''Don't come out until I come get you.''

Wyatt, eyes wide and scared, nods.

She offers him a smile, even as she spots the others. Three Dolls coming from the back, two moving down the stairs from the loft. ''Everything's going to be fine,'' she assures the boy. She winks at him and then stands up. Without even thinking, she wraps her hand around the heavy paperweight on the desk with a print of what she's sure is a Canadian Goose on it. She launches it as hard as she can at the two coming down the stairs, hitting one squarely in the forehead, sending him falling back into the other, the both of them tumbling down the stairs.

Something brushes against her from behind and she has just enough time to grab onto a stapler, turning around swinging. She bashes the meaty but particularly short guy in the head a few times, backing him as far away from the desk - and Wyatt - as possible. He sways, but does stay upright. She gets one last use out of the stapler, stapling his forehead, earning a scream of pain, and then she grabs onto him and smashes his head into the edge of the mantel.

She turns, frantically searching for Dean, catching sight of him just in time to see him throw some guy into the entertainment system against the opposite wall. The crashing sound is to be expected, but the explosion of music is unexpected. Mostly because of what the music is. Even the brainwashed goons pause, looking utterly bewildered by the sudden cheerful beats and the ethereal sounding woman singing, ''Let me sail, let me sail, let me Orinoco flow.''

To be fair, it is quite an abrupt tonal shift.

Dean, paused for a split second to catch his breath, scrunches up his face, flummoxed, and calls out, ''Holy shit, is that Enya?''

He doesn't notice the guy behind his back, scrambling for the shotgun his now concussed friend dropped. Laurel does. It's exceedingly rude, for the record, to shoot someone in the back. And it is just plain stupid to attempt to do that to the Black Canary's husband. Right in front of her face. She leaps up onto the coffee table and then throws herself onto the guy's back, sending him crashing forward, her legs pulling him down. The shotgun clatters out of his hand. She lands easily, rolling away from him, but he's a little quicker on his feet than she expected. He pops right back up almost as quick as she does.

Still not quick enough. By the time he's up, Dean's already snatched the shotgun off the floor, whipping the guy in the face with it before slamming it into his nose. There is not time for much more than a passing look between the spouses, but she is at least comforted to know that he does not look any worse for the wear than before.

But then Guy With Hatchet is getting back to his feet (although thankfully sans hatchet) and the two over the stairs are lumbering to their feet. Laurel grabs the fireplace poker, twirls it, testing the weight of it before she decides it'll do. She leaves Hatchet(less) Brawny Paper Towel Man to Dean. The two over by the stairs, gearing up to attack her, don't stand a chance. Especially given one of them is already bleeding badly from the head.

Laurel cracks him over the skull once and he drops. She sends the back of the poker into the other guy's chin. He rears back, grabbing at his face, and she goes low and dirty, giving the poker a twirl before she brings it down and then up into his groin. He screams and when he doubles over she whips him under the chin again and then kicks him back into the coffee table, wood splintering under his weight.

It's quiet then, for about a second. She tries to catch her breath, grip loosening somewhat on the poker, but then she senses someone behind her. Curling her fingers tighter around the poker, she whips around and points it at -

Dean.

Who is also on guard, shotgun pointed at her.

There's a beat and then they both slump in relief, dropping their respective weapons.

''Whew.'' He cracks a smile. Eyes the pile of unconscious bodies. His only new injury appears to be a bloody lip. ''Well, that was fun. Go team.'' He holds his hand up for a high five.

She stares at him, wondering if he might also be concussed.

''Come on.'' He waves his hand at her expectantly. ''High five! That was our first real team up. We've never done that before. Black Canary. Flannel Man. I think the Enya was what really made it.''

Her lips twitch. Damn it. She sighs, as long sufferingly as possible, and steps over him to press her hand against his in the world's most subdued high five.

''Okay, all right,'' he bobs his head up and down. ''We'll work on the high five. You know, it's good we do new things together. We've been together - what? Seven years?''

''Six and a half. You always round up.''

''Other couples might be in a rut by now.''

She shakes her head at him even as her eyes betray her fondness. ''Please don't call yourself Flannel Man.''

He nods understandingly. ''Too Canadian?''

She pinches her lips together to keep from smiling. She has no time to marvel at his stupidly endearing ridiculousness. She leaves him to turn off the Enya, hurrying back over to the desk to get Wyatt.

He is still huddled under the desk, but when she pops up again, he is staring at her with a mixture of relief and awe. ''It's okay,'' she assures him. ''No more bad guys.'' She offers him her hand. ''Let's get you somewhere safe.''

He takes her hand, crawling out from under the desk.

The music turns off, cutting Enya off, leaving them in silence.

Wyatt looks between Dean and Laurel for a second before he signs, still resolute and determined, What about my mom?

We will find your mom, Dean signs back. ''I promise,'' he says out loud. ''I promise we'll find her. But first we need to - ''

There is a sound from the direction of the bedroom where they left Edie. A clattering noise. Dean latches onto Wyatt reflexively, instantly pulling him behind him.

Laurel's response is different. ''Get him out of here.''

''Laurel,'' Dean tries.

''This is not a discussion,'' she says, shrugging him off when he tries to reach for her. ''You two need to get out of here. She needs me. She won't kill me. She doesn't need you.'' She steps over one of the Dolls to grab the abandoned shotgun. ''I mean it, Dean,'' she urges. ''There are kids involved here. You can't let something happen to them just because you love me. That's not something either one of us would be able to forgive.''

It gets to him. Of course it does. It's a cruel thing to say. It's manipulative. She's counting on that. Frankly, as much as she doesn't want these poor kids to be involved in this, there is a tiny part of her that's grateful they are. He wouldn't leave her for anyone else.

He looks at Wyatt, clinging to his hand, and then he looks in the direction of the hallway. It's not like Edie's rushing at them, spitting literal curses and trying to turn their organs to mush. She may not even be awake. But she's there. And she's alive.

''You make sure she's down,'' Dean instructs, ''and then you run.''

She pumps the shotgun and smiles tightly. ''Just worry about getting the kids out.'' She winks at Wyatt but then turns away from them so she doesn't have to watch them leave. Specifically so she doesn't have to see Dean turn back to look at her one last time before he ushers Wyatt out of the house, angry that she's forced his hand. She waits until she hears the door shut, until she is sure they're gone, before she starts slinking toward the hall.

She keeps the shotgun cocked and at the ready, even though she is sure it will be - for a plethora of reasons - useless. She tip toes back into the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Despite the nervous flip-flop of her stomach, she is not altogether surprised to find the room empty. No Edie in sight.

She backtracks, turning to retrace her steps and head for the back door. She does not get far. She takes maybe three steps and then there is a movement of shadow and Edie pops out from Wyatt's bedroom. She doesn't bother with her bag of tricks, her wicked witch rhetoric, she just goes for bodily harm. She wraps one hand around the shotgun, shoving it away from her, throws a right hook that doesn't properly land, knees Laurel in the gut, and then pulls the shotgun back and lets go, sending it into Laurel's face.

Edie is not particularly skilled in combat or physically strong, but she's good enough to drop the Black Canary. Evidently Moretti and/or Shiva have been teaching her a thing or two.

Laurel goes sprawling to the ground, seeing stars, with the taste of blood in her mouth.

''Pretty bird,'' Edie practically purrs. ''What are we going to do with you?''

Dazed but still very much conscious - and extremely annoyed - Laurel grits her teeth. ''Don't call me that,'' she spits out around the blood in her mouth.

''Please stay down,'' Edie requests mildly, her hands expertly unloading the shotgun. ''I don't want to have to hurt you.''

Laurel laughs wetly. ''Yeah, that'd be so unlike you.'' She rolls onto her stomach and tries to push herself up, shaking away the pained stupor. By some miracle, she has neither a broken nose nor missing teeth, but she can tell she's going to have a black eye and her mouth is bleeding. She doesn't much care. She'll worry about that later. She plainly ignores Edie's warning, struggling to her feet.

Also despite her warning, Edie does nothing to stop her.

''What did you do to Clementine Raymond?''

Edie only smiles. She looks over Laurel's shoulder. ''He's going to come back for you, you know,'' she says. ''Doesn't matter what you told him.''

Laurel tries to wipe some of the blood off her face. She is well aware that he'll come back to her. No shit he'll come back for her. Since when does Dean Winchester ever willingly let go of someone he loves? That's why she's determined to deal with this situation as quickly as she can. By any means necessary.

''What do you think he'll do to me when he comes back?'' Edie asks. ''Will he kill me?'' She eyes Laurel closely. ''Do you want him to kill me, little sassafras?''

''Stop calling me that.''

Edie's shoulders loosen up. She laughs. ''Why? That's what Grandpa used to call you.'' Boldly, completely unconcerned that Laurel might try to run, she brushes past her cousin and moves down the hall.

Laurel has no choice but to follow her.

Edie is in the kitchen, running something under the faucet. The living room, kitchen, and small dining room are all open concept so it's not like there's an escape route.

Technically, Laurel is closer to the front door, potentially close enough to make a break for it, except she has no doubt Edie would stop her. There is nothing else for her to do but stand in the living room, amongst all the ruin and broken Dolls, and wait for Edie to get back to her.

When she does, she hands over a wet, cold dishcloth. ''Sorry about your face,'' she says, waiting for Laurel to reluctantly accept the apparent olive branch. It is both uniquely comical and wholly disturbing that Edie has not even bothered to acknowledge that the floor is littered with unconscious bodies.

Laurel takes the cloth, pressing it to her bleeding, burning mouth. ''Did you see him?'' She asks. ''Before he died?''

Edie distances herself from Laurel. ''Who?''

''Grandpa,'' Laurel says. ''Right near the end. He told us you came to see him. He told us you read him The Little Prince. You held his hand.''

Edie says nothing for a long time, unreadable, unreachable. ''Probably just the morphine,'' she says eventually.

Laurel isn't buying that. ''Right. Just the morphine.'' She pulls the cloth away to look at all the blood on it. She doesn't think she's going to need stitches. She can't even feel the wound. Not really. It stings, throbs a little, but mostly what she's feeling is what she always feels around Edie now. Fucking angry and fucking devastated. ''He loved you, you know. So much.''

Edie is still a blank space, a desolate wilderness. ''I loved him.''

''Edie - ''

''You don't have to do this, Laurel. We can skip this part.''

''Are you okay?''

The question seems to stump Edie. ''Am I - ''

''Are you okay?'' Laurel repeats the question. She's not sure where to go from here. She's not sure what she wants Edie to say. But...what happened last night... It was something so new. Something disturbing. And she knows she wasn't the only one affected by it. Edie certainly doesn't look like something is wrong. She doesn't look put out by what happened last night. It's just that the feeling was so strong. Something in her hurt. Something that is connected to Edie. ''It was a rough night last night,'' Laurel reminds her. ''I saw you. I saw your face. Edie.'' She takes a cautious step forward. ''Did you see her?''

It is the only time Edie's carefully neutral facial expression changes, shifting, ever so briefly into something raw and wounded at the mere thought of Siobhan. She covers it up immediately. ''I don't know what you're talking about.''

Frustrated, Laurel tosses the rag to the floor and glares. ''What did you do to Clementine?''

Edie looks annoyed by the question. She doesn't answer it, choosing to look at Laurel with her dark eyes. ''When he tries to kill me,'' she begins slowly. ''Will you let him? Will you try to stop him? How much do you love me?''

''How much do I love you?'' It's a funny question, honestly. ''I loved you a hell of a lot more when you were dead.'' It's ugly but the worst part about it is that it's true. She did love her more when she was dead. When she was just a bittersweet memory of the way things used to be back in those precious few years where everyone was alive, together, and whole. She was a soft memory then, despite everything. The dead cannot hurt you. Now here she is: alive and full of venom, razor sharp and cruel. Maybe Laurel should have known better than to make her something in death that she never was in life. The dead can always hurt you.

As if to prove that point, Edie sneers in response to the dig. Her fist clenches at her side, barely noticeable.

All at once, out of nowhere, Laurel feels a crushing pain in her chest and abdomen. It feels like something is simultaneously being squeezed and twisted inside of her. As if her organs are being ground to nothing. It's a shocking pain, knocking her off her feet, sending her doubling over, then sinking her to her knees. A gasp slips out of her lips and she can taste blood on her tongue, can feel it rising in the back of her throat. She can't even breathe through the pain.

She coughs, more like gags, and the blood bubbles on her lips, dripping down her chin. She wilts like a dying flower, collapsing on the ground, limbs feeling weak and tingly. She coughs again, watching through blurry eyes as blood splatters onto the hardwood floor. Perhaps she was a little overzealous in her assertion that Edie wouldn't kill her. Weakly, she looks up at Edie, meeting her eyes.

As if snapping out of a trance, Edie unclenches her fist and the pain instantly goes away. Just like that.

Laurel coughs a few more times to clear her airway and takes a minute to regulate her breathing.

Edie almost looks regretful. Almost. She doesn't apologize, but she does say, blithely, ''I shouldn't have done that.''

Laurel, still shaken, afraid to move, tries to wheeze out a laugh. ''You ever think maybe there's a reason you have to brainwash people into spending time with you?'' She wipes at her mouth. ''Might want to work on that.'' She manages to shove herself up into a sitting position, but isn't quite ready to stand up yet. ''What happened to you?''

Edie cuts her a sharp look. ''You know what happened to me.''

''Oh boo hoo,'' Laurel mocks. ''So you were murdered. Get over it.''

Edie actually smiles at that, though it's severe and bitter. ''Have you? Gotten over it, I mean. Have you?''

Laurel can't answer that, but her non-answer seems answer enough. ''He won't kill you,'' she says, after a prolonged silence, neither one of them willing to make the first move. ''You think he's like his father, but he's not.''

''He's exactly like his father,'' Edie says, with extremely misplaced conviction. ''They both are. You have no idea what those boys have done to people like us.''

''Stop saying that,'' Laurel bites, eyes flashing. ''Stop saying - There is no people like us. I am nothing like you. And you have no idea who my husband is. He's not - He doesn't - ''

''He doesn't what?'' Edie cuts her off. ''He doesn't have it in him?'' Another scoff. A roll of her eyes. ''Oh please. Every man has it in him.'' She fixes her eyes on Laurel, peering down at her, scrutinizing her. ''Are you really that naive? Come on. You have to know.'' She looks at her for a second longer, an eerily searching look, as if trying to draw something out. ''Why did you used to hurry to your car after dark with your keys in your hand - between your fingers, pointed out like a weapon, just in case - the way every woman holds her keys in the dark while she rushes along, looking over her shoulder at every insignificant noise? Why take all those self-defense classes? Why become the Black Canary, a masked, unknowable woman no man can ever touch?'' She shuffles closer, unnervingly graceful. ''When you were running that legal aid clinic in the Glades and you stayed late and called Dean to come pick you up because you had parked your car too far away, what was it you were afraid of? What did you think was going to happen to you on that dark lonely walk?''

Laurel swallows hard.

Edie shakes her head, staring down at her cousin with an unnecessary mixture of pity and disgust. ''Name one man in your life who hasn't done something inexcusable that you've excused anyway because he didn't mean it - or because he said he was sorry. How many times have you looked at yourself in the mirror and said to yourself - I pushed him. Hm? How many times? I pushed him, I drove him to it, I shouldn't have done what I did, said what I said, it was my fault, it was me not him, he's a good man. Seriously, Laurel,'' she demands. ''Be honest with me. Be honest with yourself. Tell me about the good ones and the bad things they've done.''

Laurel can't look Edie in the eye. She stares down at her blood on the floor, sickened not by the blood but by the reminder that she can't. She can't name one.

''Every man has it in him,'' Edie says again, softer this time, like she is teaching her poor baby cousin a lesson. ''Even the good ones. Even yours.''

Laurel clenches her teeth. She looks back up at her and opts not to give her the reaction she is so desperately looking for. All she asks is, simply, ''What did you do to Clementine Raymond?''

Edie heaves this great big exasperated sigh, rolling her eyes and throwing up her hands. ''Hopeless,'' she gripes. ''You're hopeless.'' She turns away, pacing a few steps before turning back. ''What do you think I did to her?'' She looks offended that Laurel has automatically assumed the worst of her, which is bullshit because she is The Worst. ''Moretti wasn't supposed to kill the rest of the family, you know,'' she says. ''I told him to tie them up. I thought that's what he was doing. I can hardly be blamed for what he did. I was only here for the Raymond sisters.''

''Why?'' Laurel doesn't need to ask that question. ''You knew Clementine had contacted us, didn't you? You knew she was going to tell us something. Something about you.''

Edie doesn't bother with a denial. ''That,'' she allows. ''And I needed a little pick me up. It's been a rough winter.''

''A rough - '' The realization comes swiftly. ''You stole their magic.''

Edie waves a hand. ''Stole, borrowed, po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.''

''No, that's not - '' Laurel sighs, picking herself up off the ground slowly. ''Where is Clementine now?''

''Maybe she ran away,'' Edie suggests. ''Maybe we threw her in the sea. Maybe she's tucked away somewhere you'll never find her. Who knows with witches, really? So unpredictable.''

''How are you going to justify what went on here today, Edie?''

''I don't have to justify anything to you.''

''This wasn't a milk run,'' Laurel snarls. ''This was a massacre. You massacred a family. Six people are dead because of you.''

''Moretti - ''

''Shut up about Moretti, Edith! This is on you! You gave the orders. This is your show. These people - They were innocent. They did nothing wrong. What happened to them is on you. You orphaned two children. You had a fifteen-year-old girl slaughtered. You did that. Fifteen.'' She shakes her head in disgust. ''You think it matters that you didn't mean for her to die? That you only intended to murder two people instead of six? It doesn't. You should've known better. What are those kids going to do now? Huh? They have nothing. You've stripped away their entire lives.''

Edie remains completely fucking unreadable. Maybe she feels remorse, maybe she doesn't. It's believable that she might feel some sliver of something about Sadie Marlowe's death, possibly even for orphaning two other children, but it's not enough to stop her. Not enough to get her to regret what she has done.

''How many people does this make?'' Laurel demands, suddenly feeling more tired than angry. ''How many people have you killed? What's the tally up to? Do you even know?''

No answer.

Laurel shakes her head again. What else can she do? ''You go on and on about your trauma, but you seem perfectly fine with inflicting it on others.''

A dark look passes through Edie's eyes. ''We all have things to live through, Laurel.''

Laurel can't help but burst into laughter at that. She can't hold it in. It's not funny and she's not laughing because it's funny. She's laughing because it's so ridiculous and so fucking sad. She does not know this person. This foolish, desperately selfish witch. She has no idea who this is. ''Sure.'' She risks a look over her shoulder at the front door, the big picture window, but there's nothing to see. There is a lot left to say between her and Edie. There is a lot to bring up about these past sixteen years, all the things she's done, Valerie's part in it, the Katherine Lovejoy grift, but really - What's the difference? They could talk for hours and it wouldn't change a thing.

Nothing will change what Edie has done. Nothing takes it back.

''Well,'' Laurel clears her throat. ''Can you tell me how to do it?''

Edie looks a little caught off guard by the question.

''I'm serious,'' Laurel has to add on. ''How do I live through this? How do I live with what you've done? Because I've been trying to do that. Ever since I crawled home,'' she says. ''I've been trying to be alive, to be happy, to be who I was. But I'm not. I don't remember how to be any of those things. I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth here.'' She tries really, really hard to keep herself together, blinking away the stinging pressure behind her eyes. ''I try to be a good wife, I try to be a good mother, I try not to think about it, but how can I not think about it?''

She sits down on the couch, deliberately trying to make herself look smaller, more vulnerable than she is. ''I went on vacation with them,'' she says, choosing to look down at her hands instead of at Edie. ''We went to the beach. And I was better - at least I was better at pretending - but even then, I still had that pit in the bottom of my stomach. That grief that never goes away. It never goes away. Everything hurts. All the time.'' She looks up again. ''Do you know what that's like? I can barely breathe, Edie. I feel like I'm being suffocated. This world - It's too big and too small and I don't belong in it anymore. I don't know how to convince myself to...to not feel like I'm trespassing.'' She pushes past the hurt, shoves the grief down so she can settle on rage. ''And you did that. You did that to me. You emptied me out.''

Edie cannot quite keep her blank mask on, try as she might. Although that does not make the mysterious look on her face any less indecipherable, of course. She wouldn't be caught dead looking rattled, looking anything particularly human, anything that could be traced back to who she was before, but the look on her face is...unsettled perhaps. Maybe that's giving her too much credit. It's not like she's going to lose any sleep over it. She barely even thinks about it. Just fixes a stony look on her face, waves it all away like it's nothing and says, callous and blunt, ''I was hardly the first.''

It shouldn't be such a shock, that dismissive cruelty, but for some reason, Laurel just loses it. ''I lost my baby!'' It comes out in a scream, angrier than intended, near hysterical as she jumps back to her feet. ''You killed me! You took me away from my daughter! How can you care so little about what you've done? What's wrong with you? What's so broken inside of you that you can just brush this off?''

''Nothing is - ''

''I'm dying,'' Laurel shouts. ''You know that. You know what you did, you know what you're still doing. You're draining me. I'm dying. I'm dying slow and I'm dying scared. Because of your faulty witchcraft, your mistakes, your fuck up. I've got you pulling me out of my own head when you're bored because you can't stand to be alone and you made me crawl out of my own grave. But none of that - none of it - compares to what you made him do to me. You took everything,'' she chokes it out around the bitterness in her throat. ''So please tell me, Edie. Tell me how to let go. Tell me how to live through this.''

Edie says nothing.

Laurel shakes her head again, sinking back down onto the couch. ''Right.''

Edie moves, closing the space between them to kneel in front of Laurel. She's looking at her with this unfamiliar and heavy look in her eyes, unexpectedly softened around the edges. ''Come with me,'' she proposes, grasping onto her hands. ''Be with me.'' She says it like it's some bold promise, as if she's asking her to run away with her to some better life. She says it like she's trying to seduce her. ''All these things I'm trying to do - We can do them together.'' She says it almost pleadingly. ''And we won't be alone. Neither one of us. We'll be together,'' she begs. ''Laurel.'' She rises up, leaning in even closer, way too close, her cold hands moving to cup her younger cousin's cheeks. ''Pretty bird,'' she whispers, forehead almost touching Laurel's. ''Aren't you hungry?''

Laurel has no idea what she means by that, but she finds herself trapped in her own silence, unable to open her mouth.

Someone clears their throat off to the side and both women abruptly turn their attention to Dean.

''Sorry to interrupt what I can only describe as incestuous undertones,'' he says, both hands held up, either because he wants Edie to know he's unarmed or because he is that weirded out. ''But I came to rescue you.'' He looks from Edie to Laurel, visibly irritated and concerned by the amount of blood on her face. ''You good?''

She jerks at the sound of his voice, snapping out of...whatever that was. ''I - I'm fine,'' her voice sounds oddly hoarse. She is decidedly not fine.

''Uh-huh.'' By the sound of his dry, disbelieving voice, he is perfectly aware of this. ''You sure? You're not going Alabama on me, are you?''

''What?''

''Fuck's sake,'' Edie mutters. ''It was an incest joke.'' She glowers at him. ''Tasteless. Tacky. Juvenile.''

''It's nice to see you again too, Miss Edith,'' he responds, pointedly cheerful. ''You're looking psychotic as always.''

She smirks. ''And you look like an overcompensating redneck with half a brain cell and an addiction to huffing paint in your man cave garage.''

''That's rude and weirdly specific, but okay.'' He makes a show of checking his watch, casual, bored, and then looks at Laurel. ''Babe, I hope you've had a nice visit with non compos mentis here, but unless you two kissing cousins want to run off to Florida, get hitched, and open a tattoo parlor in Pensacola, it's about time for us to skedaddle. Got a kid to pick up from school and I should start thinking about dinner soon. I'm thinking dino nuggets with those baked zucchini fries Mary likes.''

Edie tilts her head to the side, curious and a little judgmental. With her focus on Dean, she doesn't notice Laurel leaning down to curl her fingers around a broken leg of the smashed coffee table. ''Aren't dino nuggets just those cheap, shitty frozen chicken - ''

''Well, I've been awfully busy today, Edith!'' Dean throws his arms out, exaggerating his exasperation to keep her attention on him. ''I said I was going to make baked zucchini fries! Do I look like someone who would make baked zucchini fries for anyone but my kid? It's a perfectly balanced meal!''

''Laurel,'' Edie begins, impatient. ''Can you tell your insufferably needy husband to scram?'' She starts to turn back to Laurel. ''He's starting to - ''

Laurel takes her chance, whipping Edie in the face with the table leg. Edie goes sprawling to the ground and Laurel springs to her feet, racing over to Dean. ''I think dino nuggets are fine,'' she says breathlessly.

''Oh, good.'' He grabs her hand, already pulling her to the door. ''Let's go pick some up then. We'll stop at Whole Foods.'' He starts to hustle her toward the door, but before he can reach for the half open door, it slams shut and the desk from all the way across the room goes hurtling over, blocking it.

''I don't recall saying you could leave,'' Edie's voice says from behind them, pained but mostly full of rage.

They both turn around, instinctively moving away from her. Dean is attempting to push Laurel behind him, to stand in front of her like a shield, but she keeps trying to pull him back. She looks behind her at the door, the picture window, and then to the back door off the kitchen over Edie's shoulder.

''What are you hoping to accomplish here, Edith?'' Dean asks. ''What's the plan?''

Edie, blood trickling down her temple, growls, ''It's Edie.''

Dean is not the slightest bit intimidated, but his sarcastic quips have given way to gravely serious protectiveness. ''You know I'm not letting you take her.''

Edie seems to think that is just hilarious. ''Letting me? That's funny. You really think you have a say? You?'' She snorts derisively. ''Dean, sweetie, you are entirely insignificant here. I could snap your neck with a flick of my wrist. I could turn your internal organs to paste without breaking a sweat. I could make you suffer just like that.'' She snaps her fingers and Dean hisses in pain, turning away from Laurel to clutch at his shoulder. When he brings his hand away, there's blood.

''No, Edie. Edie, stop!'' Laurel jumps in between Dean and Edie, holding one hand out to keep her at bay, the other pushing him back. ''He isn't part of this!''

''You know he is! Where you go, he follows. He'll never stop. You know that. Just like you know there's only one way out of here.''

Laurel takes in a few breaths. She looks back at Dean, still clutching his bleeding shoulder, but looking at her, only her. She squares her shoulders, fists clenching at her sides. ''You know,'' she speaks softly. ''I think I know another way.''

And then she screams.

She pulls her shoulders back, breathes in, and lets out that scream that has been building up inside of her since she first stepped out of the Impala and onto this wrong feeling property. It's a surefire hit. As scared as she is of this new thing inside of her, it has never let her down in a dire situation before.

Until now.

There is a first time for everything apparently.

As soon as Laurel opens her mouth, Edie throws up her hands, seemingly on instinct to protect herself. That's where things go off the rails. Somehow, some way, defying all logic, she redirects the Canary Cry. Sends it roaring back at Laurel and Dean. They have no time to protect themselves. No time to run, to take cover, to do anything at all. An explosion of noise, that otherworldly noise, that sonic scream so powerful it bends the world, hits them full force.

Laurel has never experienced it before. Never experienced anything like it. It's a wall of sound, a sonic boom that lifts her off her feet. The next thing she knows she can feel herself crashing through the glass picture window. She lands hard on the gravel outside, wind knocked out of her, pain shooting through every part of her, so intense that she thinks she blacks out for a minute. She is not out for long, barely a minute, and it hurts so much she almost wishes she'd been fully knocked out. She gasps, trying to get air into her shocked lungs, a tiny, pathetic sounding whimper slipping through her lips.

Weakly, she tries to pat herself down, feel for any major injuries, any blood, lacerations, impalements, things like that. She thinks she might be okay. Nothing feels broken. Severely bruised, with a massively wounded ego, but okay. Just pissed off. ''Shit,'' she gets out. ''That didn't go like I pictured.''

Her first thought when she is finally regains her wits is, Fucking goddamn it, Edie. Her second thought is -

''Dean.'' His name leaves her lips in a terrified murmur. Summoning up enough energy to push through this, at least to get to him, she rolls onto her stomach and tries to push herself up. Gravel and bits of broken glass cut into her palms, but she barely even feels it. He was right there with her. He was standing right beside her. He had to have been swept up in the Cry.

She looks over to where he should be and he's there, he's right there, but... But something's wrong. He's managed to pull himself up to his hands and knees, visibly attempting to struggle to his feet, but his movements look weak and unsteady. He has one hand clutched to his throat and he sounds like he's...choking? No. No, that's not it. He's gurgling.

An impending sense of doom, like the start of a panic attack, hovers over Laurel like a dark cloud. She watches him, she sees the blood coming out of his mouth, she sees him collapse, but it feels like it's happening to someone else. It has to be happening to someone else. Then, all at once, she feels no pain at all. ''No.'' She drags herself to her feet and limps over to him, falling onto her knees in front of him. ''Dean.''

He is still making that noise, that awful rattling noise, and when she realizes why, when she understands, her entire world just stops. There is a very large, very bloody shard of glass lying on the gravel next to him and there is blood, a lot of blood, way too much blood, leaking out from between his fingers pressed to his neck.

''No.'' She doesn't even hear herself say it. She is barely even dimly aware of herself, her actions, her own pain. All she can see is him and the blood and something she doesn't know if she can fix. ''No, no, no, Dean.'' She presses her hands over his, where the wound is. ''Oh god.''

His eyes look glassy and out of focus, but she can see him trying so hard to look at her, to focus on her, to stay. He keeps trying to talk, to say something around the blood in his mouth, but it just keeps coming, more and more of it, out of his mouth, out of the deep puncture wound in his neck. Just like the image she saw in Clementine's bedroom, the hallucination of the worst case scenario.

The worst things imaginable can happen in the blink of an eye.

Somewhere, the rational part of her understands what is happening and what is about to happen and what cannot be stopped. There is no way out. She doesn't need to be a doctor to be able to tell that his carotid artery has been severed. They are in the middle of nowhere, ten minutes outside of Seabeck, Washington, which is already rural enough as it is. She has no idea where the nearest trauma center is. There is no reception here. There is no way out. But she can't be rational about this. She can't. That can't be expected of her right now. There has to be a way out of this. There's always a way out. This can't be happening to them. This can't be it.

''Okay, it's okay,'' she smiles shakily. ''You're okay. You're okay. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. It's just - It's a little cut. This is nothing. You've had worse.'' His hand slips out from under hers and she presses harder against the wound, stomach turning, vision blurring as the hot blood pours out of his throat, her hands useless to stop it. ''We'll get you some help, okay? I'll fix it,'' she promises. ''I can fix it. I can fix this. I'll take care of you. Just hold on, baby, okay? You have to stay with me, Dean. Mary needs you to stay here. You're her best friend. Do you hear me? She needs her best friend.''

She looks up at the guesthouse, trying to see if she can spot Edie, stuck somewhere between rage and helplessness.

Dean has one hand gripping her shirt, holding onto it like he can tether himself to her, to this world if he can just keep holding on. ''L - Laur...'' He chokes out her name, barely managing to get it out around the blood in his mouth.

She looks back to him, regretful she ever looked away in the first place. Fuck Edie. What does it even matter anymore? ''Sshh, don't talk,'' her voice catches in her throat. ''Don't talk, honey, just look at me. You're going to be fine. You have to stay with me. We have to make it to that old folks' home, remember? We're going to get old and decrepit together. You're going to tell me stories and I'm going to listen. I'm going to listen to your every word. I'm going to be enraptured by you. Truly, utterly, wildly enraptured. Remember that? We have to make it there, Dean. We have to grow old together. Sixty-two years. Just like my grandparents, right? You're going to be fine.''

The look in his eyes, perhaps even more anguished than the look in hers, tells her that he knows he's not going to be fine. He knows and he doesn't want to go.

She is trying so hard here to keep it together. She is trying to keep the pressure on his wound, to stay in denial land where this isn't happening, where this can't be happening, but then she sees the tears slipping out of his eyes and she just loses it. ''No, no, no,'' she begs. ''Please, Dean, please don't do this, baby, please don't leave me here.''

He lets go of her shirt. He stops trying to talk. Instead he uses up whatever he has left to sign, as quickly as possible, two little things, as much as he can get out. I'm sorry. I love you.

She tries to stifle the sobs in her throat. ''Don't be sorry,'' she whispers. ''Don't be sorry. None of this is your fault. You were amazing. You were always amazing. I'm sorry. This is - This is my fault. You were right. You were right back at the gas station. We should have turned back when Siobhan told us to. We should have gone back to bed. I'm sorry, honey. I'm so sorry.'' She closes her eyes briefly, but opens them quickly because she doesn't want to miss a second. She removes her hands from the wound that she can't heal, can't fix, can't do anything about. She cups his face in her bloodied hands. ''Do you know how much I love you?'' Her voice sounds choked but she says it as tenderly as she can because she wants tenderness to be the last thing he hears, the last thing he feels. He lived without it for so long. He has always deserved better. ''I'm so in love with you, Dean Winchester. I'm so in love with you. Do you know that? I love you. And Mary loves you. She loves you so much. You're her favorite person in the whole world. And Sam - '' She stops, unable to get the words out.

She grabs onto his hand, holding it tightly between hers. ''You are so loved,'' she whispers. ''You have no idea. You were so brave,'' she says. ''For so long. Your mother would be proud of you.'' She pulls his hand up to brush her lips gently against his knuckles, the same thing he's always doing for her. She closes her eyes and tries to hold onto his hand as tight as she can, as if it will somehow make a difference.

She would love so badly to hide from this. To just keep her eyes closed until it's over. But she can hear him still struggling, still fighting, because he's always fighting, always trying so hard, always clawing for survival no matter what he's put through, and she knows he's scared. She knows he doesn't want to go. She opens her eyes and looks at him. Not the blood. Just him. The blood doesn't matter at the end of the day. He is still the beautiful light he was when they first met. Still the person who found her when she was lost, who makes her feel so alive and so loved. He gave her everything. She should have thanked him for that.

She squeezes his hand gently, one last time, and then lets go, offering him the best smile she can muster up before she leans in to kiss his bloodied lips. She doesn't care about the blood. She just wants him to know she's there. She doesn't want him to have to do this alone. She owes him that much. He made sure she wasn't alone when it was her. She pulls away to press her forehead against his. ''Be brave now, love,'' she whispers, and then, like he was waiting for permission, he's gone.

.

.

.

July, 2012

Richard Drake dies in July, less than a week after his 88th birthday.

He goes peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after a brief but courageous battle with colon cancer. He lived a long, happy, and full life ripe with laughter and music and family and more love than he ever felt he deserved. He had three daughters, six grandchildren, one soon to be born great granddaughter, and a wonderful wife of nearly 62 years who he loved more than anything in the world.

With his death came the tentative and guilt-ridden feeling of relief. The desperate hope that he still existed somewhere, above, in the cosmos, in the stars, the wind that blew through their hair, the sun in the sky, the air we breathe, wherever, as long as it was somewhere, and the cautious hope that, wherever he was, he was no longer in pain.

None of that eases the sting of grief that comes after the inevitably suddenness of loss. Grief is bitter and all consuming, no matter how expected it may be.

For Laurel, it is not made easier by pregnancy, the aches and pains, out of control hormones, persistent nausea, vivid nightmares, and troubling insomnia only serving to compound the vicious anguish of grief. She is tired. She is something so beyond tired that she has no idea how she is still standing.

Her grandfather's death feels like a blur. She barely remembers that night when they were all called and told to get down to the hospital. She remembers it was raining. It was viciously raining, unseasonably harsh and cold. She vaguely remembers it being lingering, painfully so, like he was leaving piece by piece. She has never experienced something like that before. Her previous experiences with grief have all come out of nowhere, like a train slamming into her. This was like a slow motion car crash. There was nothing she could do to stop it. All she could do was sit there and watch it happen.

This past week - helping with arrangements, planning the funeral, breaking the news to distant relatives, old friends, getting everything in place - was more of the same. Just agonizing blurs of slow yet somehow lightning fast grief. An uncomfortable amount of people coming in and out of her apartment because that's where Grandma was, keeping a sharp, protective bird-like eye on Mom whenever she was around Dean in order to mitigate any damage she might cause, letting Dean hover around her to make sure she ate and stayed hydrated.

In contrast, there has been nothing out of focus about today. None of it was a blur. Today has been visceral and long, passing at a glacial pace, vivid and in full color. It has been roughly about four years since the day started. The funeral was too long, too somber, too stuffy. The burial was a complete shit show. And this fucking wake feels like her own personal Groundhog Day.

Seeing all these people come out of the woodwork to memorialize her grandfather and support the family has been lovely. When there was a problem with finding a big enough space in Starling for the wake, some old family friends/former neighbors offered up their home. People have been bringing food and flowers to everyone. Just yesterday, a client of Laurel's sent flowers and a card to CNRI. Starling City University, where Grandpa taught for over thirty years has stated that they want to plan a memorial for him. Even Grandma and Grandpa's retirement community is planning to hold their own memorial luncheon next week.

Richard Drake was beloved in Starling City and nothing has made that more obvious than his death.

But -

This sucks. This fucking sucks. Mourning sucks. Grief is bullshit. Everything hurts. It's summer and it's hot and she's too pregnant for this. Her new dress feels itchy and heavy and she spent too much money on it when she knows she is never going to wear it again. Her eyes are puffy, her back hurts, the smell of all the various sympathy casseroles and deli trays is making her sick to her stomach, and the kid keeps kicking, which is way more noticeable now and feels weird and distracting, especially today.

She can't even drink. She seriously wishes she could drink. That is the only way she made it through Sara's funeral in one piece. She doesn't even remember Oliver's, she was so blitzed and angry. She keeps watching Valerie repeatedly refill her wine glass, staring longingly at her aunt's white wine with ice that she would normally scoff at.

She is so people'd out too. She feels like she has talked to every single person at this wake, thanking them for coming, politely answering their nosy questions about her pregnancy, and she's about ready to rip her hair out. She is normally great at mingling and she likes people, but she's too exhausted to be a person today, let alone a bubbly and personable one.

Dean has been the only saving grace. He has been so good to her. He always is, but he has really been her rock today, constantly by her side, making sure she's drinking enough water and eating enough to keep her going, running interference, easily, casually stepping in to charm any particularly chatty mourners. And he's fantastic with old people. She has always known that, always known that he's charming and can flirt with anyone, but it has been especially helpful today.

Her other family members, on the other hand, have done nothing but exhaust her. She respects that they're all grieving too, but she cannot be expected to carry that for them right now. She is barely holding it together and she's trying to save her most put together moments for Grandma. Not for breaking up fights between Valerie and Natasha and trying to get Jackson and Seth to stop pestering Bo for weed.

Grandma must be feeling similarly exhausted by today because she is nowhere to be found. Either that or she's just hiding from Mom, Valerie, and their ''Reasons Why You Should Move in With Val and Dan in Tacoma'' spreadsheet. Because that'll make her remaining years so peaceful.

Laurel checks the dining room, wandering through the throngs of people eating their cheese and crackers and laughing over their brandy as they share tales of Richard Drake that she just isn't up for hearing right now. She checks the living room, pausing only to check on Dean, standing over with Bo and Seth, listening to one of Grandpa's former students tell what looks like an incredibly lively story if the hand gestures are anything to go by.

She ducks into the foyer, even checks down the dark hall where the first floor powder room is. No sign of Grandma. Maybe the kitchen? She grimaces lightly and moving a hand to rub at her lower back. She should sit down. She...can't remember the last time she sat down? That doesn't seem good. She turns to head back into the living room, but stops, eyes drawn to the front door.

There is someone out there, on the front porch, right by the door. She can't see the person through the frosted window on the door, just a blurred, somewhat distorted image. It's a woman, that much she can tell. A woman with dark hair. She's just standing there.

Laurel feels oddly transfixed, standing still in the darkened alcove between the wall and the large staircase. The person on the other side of the door seems unable to bring herself to ring the doorbell. She moves away, then closer again, reaching out, and Laurel watches, waiting for the door to open, waiting for something to happen.

And then Jackson and his husband, Callum, walk across the foyer, heading for the empty sitting room.

Laurel jumps at the intrusion, though she's not sure why.

They don't notice her, hidden away in the dark, and they don't notice the figure on the other side of the door. They're too distracted, whispering to each other, Jackson sniffling and teary eyed while Cal leads him away from the other mourners, a steady hand on the back of his husband's neck.

When they've moved past the door, the woman on the other side of the door is gone.

For some reason, her heart leaps into her throat and she feels this strangely intense need to chase after her. She surges forward, rushing to fling open the door and hurry out onto the porch. There is no one out there. There is no sign anyone ever was. She steps further out onto the porch, all the way to the front steps, looking both ways down the sidewalk.

There is no one on the sidewalk.

It's a calm July day, warm but not too hot in the shade, and there are neighborhood kids playing nearby, riding their bikes, jumping rope, shrieking joyfully and chasing after each other. There are a few parents out, keeping an eye on the kids. Everything is peaceful and ordinary. All is well. Except...

Laurel stays rooted where she is, inexplicably frozen, feeling cold in the warm summer day. All at once, out of absolutely nowhere, she is overwhelmed, nearly knocked off her feet by the nonsensical urge to scream. Just scream at the top of her lungs. She has no idea why, there is no reason for it, but her throat all but aches with it.

She bursts into tears instead. She has been doing that a lot lately. The tears spill down her cheeks and the sobs catch in her throat. She staggers away from the stairs and over to the railing, clinging to it, trying to will the hysterics away. It doesn't work. She doesn't even know why she's crying. She brings a hand up to cover her mouth to stifle her ragged sobs, weeping into her hand. It's normal to cry when you are actively grieving, but this is more than that. It feels bigger in some way. She's just not sure why.

Hormones, probably.

Right on cue, the baby kicks, as if trying to comfort her poor mom. At least tell her to knock it off. Laurel does get her shit together after a moment or two, forcefully pushing the tears away, choking down the sobs. She wipes at her eyes, angrily mopping away the tears that do not feel like they belong to her. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, putting a hand on her swollen belly.

It's just grief. It's just the nature of loss. Sometimes it kicks you in the teeth. Sometimes you wind up wailing over nothing but an empty front porch.

The baby kicks under her hand again, and then again. She's been doing that a lot today. Laurel isn't sure if it's because the little thing can sense the heavy grief and sadness or if she's just reminding her absentminded mother that she exists. Laurel will admit she hasn't been warm to the baby over the past week or two. Being pregnant while in mourning is a marathon she didn't sign up for. Everything feels so much more intense. She has felt so scarily out of control, puffy eyed and hoarse and constantly on the verge or a panic attack. She feels like she's losing her mind.

Maybe she is.

It wouldn't be the first time.

She opens her eyes, blinking out at the bright sunny day from her spot on the shaded porch. It's too sunny.

''Laur?''

The unexpected sound of Dean's voice right in her ear throws her off and nearly makes her jump right out of her skin.

''Sorry,'' he says, offering her a lopsided smile, a hand on her back. ''You two doin' okay?''

''I...'' She throws one last look out at the neighborhood, searching for a head of dark hair to make sense of this. Still nothing. ''I was just getting some air,'' she eventually comes up with. She gives him a shaky smile of her own. ''She's been kicking a lot.''

His eyes light up. ''Yeah?'' He shuffles closer to her, meeting her eyes, waiting for her permission before he brings a hand to her stomach. The baby kicks - because this girl always kicks for Daddy - and when he smiles, that slow, half amazed, half incredulous smile that she can never get enough of...

Laurel can't help but hate the sunshine a little less.

He chuckles softly, rubbing her belly before he brings his hand up to her shoulder, then her neck. ''Gonna end up soccer parents, aren't we?''

''We'll be the ones bringing the orange slices,'' she agrees.

''Who doesn't love a good orange slice?'' He leans in to press a kiss to her forehead. ''What about Mom? How's Mom?''

She chews on her bottom lip. She opts not to mention the mysterious figure. ''I've been better.''

''I know,'' he says. ''Come here.'' He draws her in for a hug, wrapping his arms around her and she feels a bit of the day's tension dissolve at his touch.

She closes her eyes again. She should get back inside and track down Grandma, make sure she's doing all right, but - But first, she would like to have this moment. She thinks she can allow herself that much. ''He lived a really good life,'' she says, squeezing her eyes shut tighter when she feels that pressure starting in her chest again.

''He did,'' Dean says. ''Doesn't mean you can't be sad he's gone.'' He pulls away from the hug, but keeps a hand on her back. ''Come on. Let's sit down.'' He steers her over to the front porch and she lets him, even though she really should be getting back inside. ''You look tired.''

She tries to laugh. ''Thanks.''

''You know what I mean.''

She thinks of the nightmares that have been plaguing her ever since Grandpa took a turn for the worst, ever since death, that ruthless thief, crept back in her life and stole another. She thinks, as she often does, of Sara. There is not a day that goes by where she does not think of her. Her girl at the bottom of the sea. ''I just haven't been sleeping well.''

''I'm aware of that,'' he says patiently. ''We do share the same bed, babe. You've been tossing and turning for weeks now.''

She tries to shrug it off. ''Just more pregnancy stuff,'' she says. ''Alex says nightmares can be part of the package. Changes in hormones can affect your sleep rhythm.''

He looks dubious, but doesn't press her, rubbing circles on her back.

The porch swing is not particularly comfortable. It looks old, even though she is sure she doesn't remember the old Thorpe house having a porch swing when she used to hang out here as a kid. She used to spend a lot of time here with Shelley Thorpe, the granddaughter of the former owner, the younger sister of the current owner. Absently, she wonders what Shelley is up to now. Something to do with Greenpeace, she thinks. Shelley couldn't make it to the funeral, but she sent flowers and messaged Laurel over Facebook. They haven't seen each other since they were fifteen.

Laurel has told few people this, although she is not entirely sure why, but Ollie was not her first kiss. He was her first everything else, but not her first kiss. That was Shelley Thorpe. Before Joanna, before Dean, there was only one person who knew that.

Her grandfather.

He actually walked in on it. It was one of the most awkward moments of her life. Probably wasn't a particularly smooth moment for him either. He never mentioned it, at least not to her or her parents, never seemed to know if he should bring it up, but he winked at her the next time he saw her and gave her a peppermint candy. Which seems like it means nothing but, if you knew him, knew his somewhat stoic and quiet personality, you knew that was an act of profound love. And hopefully acceptance. She got a lot of those peppermint candies over the years. She has always been a mess. But she was never a mess to her grandfather.

Maybe that should be the story she tells at the wake.

She tries to get herself together before she loses it again. ''Everyone keeps talking about how he's not in pain anymore,'' she blurts out, without thinking. ''They all keep talking about a better place. I just keep thinking to myself - I don't care. I don't care,'' her voice cracks, either with grief or shame. ''I just want him to come back.'' She looks over at Dean, expecting pity, but it's not there. Of course it's not there. ''I want him to meet my baby,'' she admits. ''He wanted to meet her. He tried so hard to...''

''I know.'' He moves a hand to her knee. ''I know he did. I'm sorry, Laurel.''

''I know that's such a selfish thing to be thinking about,'' she croaks out. ''I know he - He was in so much pain at the end and I shouldn't - I shouldn't want - ''

''Hey.'' Dean sits up straighter, leaning in. ''Look at me.'' He takes her hand, squeezing gently. ''It's not selfish to love him. It's not. You're human. You're grieving. It's okay to want him back.''

She sniffles, ducking her gaze down to his hand holding hers. When she looks back up, she gives him a fleeting smile. From this angle, sitting on the porch swing, she can see down the street. Specifically, she can see two doors down, where there are hanging baskets of pink petunias on another familiar front porch. She looks at Dean, but, as usual, he is just looking at her. ''See that house down the street? Two doors down with the pink flowers?''

''Hmm.''

''That was their house.''

''That's the house?''

''Mmhmm, that's home. 1172 Sassafras Drive.''

She watches him peer at the house down the street. He looks contemplative, even though only the front porch is visible. She wonders what he's thinking. If he's thinking about what it was like to have that. If he's sad he never had that. If he knows how much she would like to give him that.

He looks at her, catching her eye. ''You miss it?''

She smiles. It's something bittersweet. ''Sometimes.''

''How long did you live there with them?''

''Um, about six years, I think? Maybe a little more.'' There is a stinging in her throat that isn't just grief for her grandfather but for all of it. The whole family that used to gather at that house down the street. You know, before all the dead girls. ''I loved that there were always people there,'' she says. ''I don't do well with...being alone.''

She can feel him inhale at that, as if he has been wounded. ''Yeah,'' he says. ''I don't either.''

''It was loud there,'' she continues. ''There was always music or laughing or conversation - usually one where everyone was talking over each other. Grandma sang, Grandpa whistled. There was always someone dropping by for a cup of tea.'' She grins at the memory, how frenetic it seemed back then, how wonderful it seems now. ''It was chaos. It could drive you crazy sometimes, all that noise and buzz, but it was comforting to me. Everything was so alive there. I never stopped to think - I mean, I guess I thought that was just how it was supposed to be. How every family was. But when we moved out and got our own place, it was - it was different. We were quiet.''

She's not sure how much more she should say. She doesn't want to disparage her parents in any way - or the life they gave their girls. They did the best they could and she's grateful for all of that. Her mother could often be cold and aloof and her father worked a lot and the Lance family townhouse was quiet in a way the Drake home never was, but that doesn't mean there was a lack of love. It's just that it was different.

''I miss that noise,'' she admits. ''All the time. I used to tell myself that when I grew up, I was going to own a home and fill it with life and noise and so much love that I would never have to be lonely again. You know what I mean?''

The look on his face tells her that - yes, he knows exactly what she means. ''I like noise,'' he declares. ''I'm noisy. Lost count of how many times I've been told to shut up.''

It gets a laugh, a real laugh, out of her. It is exactly the kind of joke her grandfather would have made. ''He liked you,'' she says. ''You know that? He didn't like Oliver, but you...'' Her lips pull back into a bright grin. ''You charmed him. He said you fit with us.''

Dean looks slightly astonished by that, even though she thought it was obvious that her grandparents liked him from the start. He's a lot like her grandfather when she thinks about it. Literally right down to flirting with her grandmother. ''He said that?''

''He did.''

''I've, uh - '' He has to blink a few times, caught somewhere between hopelessly confused and genuinely touched. ''I've never fit in with someone before. Definitely not with their family.''

''I sincerely doubt that, honey.''

He half smiles at that, but swiftly moves past it. ''Richard was a good man,'' he tells her. ''And he adored you, Laur. I hope you know that. He lit up when he saw you. I get why.''

She tries to laugh instead of cry, but it comes out more of a combination of the two. It can't be stopped. She doesn't mind the tears so much this time. She tugs him closer, catching his lips in a kiss as soon as he's close enough. It's not a particularly romantic kiss given that she is actively crying, but he doesn't complain. He just kisses her back. Rests his forehead on hers when she pulls back. She doesn't need him to say anything else. ''Thank you,'' she whispers. ''For being here with me today.''

He pulls back, but only to brush hair out of her face. ''Where else would I be?''

She takes his hand pressing herself as close to him as possible. ''I should go check on Grandma,'' she says, but doesn't move. ''God,'' she says, turning her head into his shoulder. ''I don't know what she's going to do without him. They were married for sixty-two years. How do you...?'' She trails off. It's almost too much to think about right now.

Everyone in the family knows that Richard and Beatrice Drake had the ideal marriage. The ideal love story. They were madly in love until the end. They were best friends. They bickered and picked at each other and teased, but they were deeply, searingly in love for sixty-two years. They still made each other blush and giggle. Still slow danced in their living room and gazed adoringly at each other. To think of one of them having to go on without the other is unfathomable.

''You know they've never been apart?''

''Never?''

She shakes her head. ''She once told me she could count on one hand the number of nights they'd slept apart.''

He whistles lowly. ''That's dedication.''

''I...'' She looks down at their entwined hands for a long time. ''I heard her apologize to him once. In the hospital. She was apologizing for all the things they never got to do. Traveling, retiring to Bainbridge, opening up that flower shop in Seattle when they were younger. But he wasn't having any of it. He said, I didn't need any of that. You loved me. We were together. That was enough.''

Her grandmother cried when he said that. Wept, actually. In front of everyone. She had never done that before. Laurel doesn't mention that part. She doesn't mention how the words were forced out either, through pain and morphine at the very end. She doesn't mention how hard Grandpa must have had to work just to be able to tell his wife that, to leave her with that.

Dean is silent after she says this. She thinks, for a second, that maybe he hasn't heard her, but then he looks at her with this look in his eyes that she just...hadn't been expecting. Even after years together, after marriage, after pregnancy and soon to be parenthood, even after all the times he has chosen her when he didn't have to, it still sometimes surprises her. His love for her. How deep it is. How unconditional. The uninhibited strength of it. She is still, even now, even when she is carrying his child, unsure if she's deserving of it.

''Yeah,'' Dean says. ''I woulda said the same thing.''

She tries to laugh, joke her way out of the lump in her throat. ''You're just trying to see how easy it is to make me cry.''

''Oh, I know how easy it is to make you cry. You cried at an Activia commercial the other day.''

''It was emotional! I was just so happy for Jamie Lee Curtis' gut flora. It's super important for your overall heath, you know.''

He snorts, but turns to press a kiss to the crown of her head.

She settles back against him, curling into his side like a needy cat, looping her arm through his. ''I've never known her without him,'' she says, after a minute or two.

''Well, we'll keep an eye on her,'' he responds. Doesn't even hesitate. ''She won't be alone. We've got her. You know that. We'll take care of her.''

She tilts her head up to throw him a soft smile. ''I love you.''

His response is immediate and expected. A cocky smirk and, ''I know.''

She rolls her eyes fondly. She really and truly does though. She loves this dumbass. So much. She's glad her grandfather at least got to meet him. She looks back at the front door of the house, releasing a small sigh. ''I really should get back in there.''

''You keep saying that.''

''Well, it's true.''

''Or we could get out of here,'' he offers. ''You've been on your feet all day. I'm sure your family would understand if you wanted to duck out early. You're pregnant. We can head home,'' he entices. ''You can get out of that dress. Get some rest. We'll order in from Mario's.''

''Pizza gives me heartburn now.''

''Then we'll stop and get some of that chicken soup you love from that place down the block.'' He nudges her shoulder. ''I'll even watch a boring documentary with you.''

''Documentaries aren't boring. They're informative.''

''Or that movie where Ethan Hawke shoots his shot way out of his league.''

''Before Sunrise.''

''Or the turkey drop episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. You love the turkey drop episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.''

''Yeah, 'cause it's funny.''

''It's not that funny.''

''You're right. It's not funny. It's hilarious.''

She can feel him laugh into her hair. ''Laur,'' he says. ''What do you know about Mouse Trap?''

A cold fear strikes in her heart. She jolts away from him, squinting suspiciously. ''Why?''

''Uh.'' He raises his eyebrows at the seemingly over the top reaction. ''It was in the box of baby stuff your uncle dropped off yesterday.''

She lets out an exaggerated groan. ''Oh god, not the Mouse Trap!''

''What are you - ''

''I should have known,'' she says. ''He dropped that box off and bailed. He didn't even stay when you offered him an apple tart. He never turns down my apple tarts. I should've known he and Valerie were just trying to unload that damned Mouse Trap on us.''

''Um, babe, what the hell are you talking about?''

''Okay.'' She sits up straight, pulling away from him, angling her body toward him. ''The first thing you need to know is that Mouse Trap is an evil, evil little game and we are never ever letting our daughter play it. It only leads to the destruction of family game night.''

He stares at her. ''All...right...''

''My grandparents first bought the game for Bo during his first Christmas with the family. They meant well. They had no idea what they were unleashing on us. But Aunt Natasha promptly learned that it is not all fun and games.''

''Uh-huh,'' he says. ''And when were you going to tell me that your family's cursed?''

''It's a horrible game,'' she goes on, pointedly ignoring that. ''It's infuriating. And impossible. There's no way to win and it inevitably ends in frustration boiling over into huge fights. Every time. Doesn't matter who plays, how old we are when we attempt it, how fun we try to make it. It always ends in a fight. Nothing good comes from playing Mouse Trap. Ever since that first Christmas, we've all been playing hot potato with the game. I should have known.'' She shakes her head. ''As soon as I got pregnant, I should have known they were going to find a way to stick us with it. Val's had it for years. She's been itching to hitch it to someone else's wagon.''

He's looking at her like she's lost her mind. ''Is it seriously that bad?''

''One time, Jackson flipped a table.''

''Jesus Christ.''

''Oh my god, Jackson,'' she gasps, grabbing his arm. ''Jackson,'' she repeats in a whisper. ''He and Cal are already talking about adopting. We have to find a way to pawn it off on them.''

''Or,'' he suggests brightly. ''We could go home and burn it. Because that is what you do with cursed objects.''

''Oh no, we can't burn it,'' she wrinkles her nose at the suggestion. ''It was a gift. Besides, it's the family Mouse Trap. It's a tradition.''

He looks like he wants to laugh, but doesn't out of respect. She loves him for that. ''And you're sure you don't want to go home and burn it? Purely to get rid of it. Not because I'm trying to convince you to leave.''

''Right. Sure.'' She leans in to give him a quick kiss. ''I love you for worrying about me, but I can't leave yet. I have to be here for Grandma. I made a promise. Just...give me an hour. One more hour, then ask me again. Deal?''

He sighs, but gives in. ''Deal.''

''We really are doing okay,'' she adds on. ''I've eaten. I'm staying hydrated.'' She looks down at her stomach. ''She's obviously doing fine in there. I just need to be here for Grandma. Mom and Valerie have been pestering her about moving to Tacoma to live with her and Danny and I think she's getting ready to smack them.''

He makes no comment on that. She loves him for that too. ''All right, we'll stay,'' he says. ''But as soon as we go back inside, I'm making you drink a tall glass of water.''

She can't disagree with that one. ''By the way.'' She settles back on the porch swing with him, reluctant to get up, even though she knows she needs to. ''Speaking of Val and Dan, they want to take the whole family out for dinner tomorrow. Are you - Would you...go to that?''

He looks uncertain. ''Am I family?''

''You're my family.'' She takes his hand, placing it on her belly. ''You're definitely her family.''

''Well.'' He shrugs. ''Where you go, I'll follow. Just lead the way.''

She does not get up. She can't bring herself to get up. She looks back at the house, peering into the window at the mourners inside. It's peaceful out here. Just the two of them - three of them. She pulls his sleeve up to check the time and then curls her cat-like self up next to him once again. ''Five more minutes,'' she decides. ''Five more minutes and then I'm going back inside.''

He seems relieved that she is willing to give herself that. ''I'll take what I can get.''

Neither of them says anything more.

She continues to cuddle into him like a needy child, desperate for tenderness, and he gladly lets her. It's only when she looks back to the house down the street, the old Drake family home, that she allows herself to think of her grandparents again. Of who will now be missing from that equation. Her grandparents were so fiercely in love. She wonders, idly, in the peace and quiet of the calm summer day, what they were like when they were like this. Young newlyweds just starting their family. It's hard to imagine they were that different honestly. Even decades and decades into their marriage, they still made each other melt.

She remembers the way Grandma would stare at him from across the table, like she was drinking him in, reminding herself that she was really there, that he was really hers. He'd notice and ask her what she was looking at and every time, she would wink and say, ''Just you, darling.'' It always flustered him - and not much flustered that man.

It is difficult to separate them from each other, to see where one ends and the other begins. Part of the unbearable grief of losing him is the unshakable fear that she will soon follow. That there will be nothing left of her to stay. They had an impossible kind of love. The grief that comes after that kind of love must be equally as impossible. Completely shattering. A heavy burden to carry. Laurel looks down at her rings - her sparkling wedding ring that cost way too much money and her engagement ring that used to belong to her grandmother.

Beside her, Dean's phone vibrates in her pocket. He doesn't remove his hand from hers. Just fishes it out with one hand, telling her it's Sam asking her how she's doing, responding to the text with one hand.

She watches him as he does this. She puts one hand atop her belly where their child is growing and keeps the other in his, warm where hers is cold. And she just...looks at him. The way her grandmother used to look at her grandfather.

It's not just that she loves him, this man who has been brutally broken so many times but still chooses to be good, to be kind, to love when he could so easily hate, to fight for what is right when he could give up. It's not just that she likes him and all of his small joys, the weird things that make him laugh, the pieces of happiness that he has clawed for, that he guards so protectively.

It's that she's fascinated by him. By the way he takes up space. The way he fills a room. His gravity. He is so charming, so full of life that people gravitate toward him without even realizing they're doing it. He is so larger than life that any room without him is an empty room, regardless of who else is in it. She has never known someone so easy to love. Someone so easy to be enthralled by.

She could know him for a hundred years and that still would not be enough time for her to know everything about him. Fifty years from now, she'll still be learning new things about him. She's so excited for this life they're building. She's so ready to be mesmerized by him for the rest of her life.

So, okay, maybe she gets it. Maybe she understands why her grandmother occasionally had to stop and look at her grandfather. Maybe she understands the impossible.

Laurel watches Dean's eyes crinkle softly at the corners as he smiles at something his brother has said and is struck, suddenly, by the overwhelming weight of all things.

Love is an intrinsic part of the human condition. It is engrained in all of us, written on our bones, flowing through our blood. A choice we make every day. And grief is the price we pay for that love. To love someone, you have to accept that one day, you will have to let them go. It is a terrible and wonderful thing to love something that can so easily be taken away.

Now, here, in the sun, the day of her grandfather's wake, Laurel is looking at her husband and realizing that, no matter what, one day she will likely be in the same position her grandmother is right now. It is a brutal realization. It feels silly to be thinking about it now. She has always known that he's older than her, that he eats like a garbage disposal, that he's reckless with seatbelts, that, regardless of whether or not his retirement is permanent, the world he lives in could snatch him away with little to no warning. She is no stranger to the notion of death. She just did not expect to love him this much. She didn't expect to be so scared of losing him.

When her grandparents first met, he was two days away from leaving Washington for good to go find work in Colorado. He was six years older than her, full of regrets, with his own secrets, his own pain, and she was trying to keep both her and her troubled older sister afloat. They met in Seattle, on a Saturday night, in the rain. They missed the last train back to Starling and were stuck with each other all night. They were married six months later.

A few years ago, Dean was just some guy who came into the restaurant she was working in at the time. Some guy she spent a weekend with in Seattle due to an extremely outlandish set of circumstances. Now here they are, married, expecting a baby, building a life just like her grandparents once did, and now she's being forced to come to terms with how cruel it can be to love something that cannot stay.

''What?''

She jolts out of her grim thoughts, focusing back on Dean, sitting there looking at her curiously. She blinks a few times. She tries to put the thought out of her head. ''What?''

''What are you looking at?''

She thinks, fleetingly, of her grandparents. The way she looked at him. The way he made her laugh. How lucky he always said he was. How happy they were for those sixty-two years. She thinks of that one Billie Holiday song they used to dance to, the one Grandma insisted on playing at the funeral. She thinks about what an amazing sixty-two years they had, all the things they did together, the life they had.

She thinks of, You loved me. We were together. That was enough.

And she thinks - well, yes, it is worth it, isn't it? Despite the eventual price we pay for love, who are we without it? Who would her grandparents have been if they hadn't found each other that rainy night in Seattle? Who would she be if Dean hadn't walked into her restaurant? If he hadn't picked up her car keys later that night when she dropped them on her way to her car? What would they have if they hadn't found each other? Where would they be?

There's no real use losing time thinking about what ifs. Just like there's no use worrying about losing him. It's not something to be concerned about right now. They still have, after all, sixty-two years.

Laurel smiles softly, knowingly, and lifts Dean's hand up, brushing her lips across his knuckles. ''Just you, love.''

.

.

.

end part sixteen

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AN: ADDITIONAL VERY SPOILERY WARNING: There is major character death in this chapter. Whether this death will stick remains to be seen, but as it stands right now, at the end of this chapter a major character is dead. I'm just...hoping you guys trust me enough to stick around after that.

Chapter title from In the Pines by Alice Notley. Specifically these two sentences that sum up the entire Laurel/Edie relationship in a nutshell and are my biggest inspiration when writing their scenes: ''I may be trying to destroy you in order to live. I may only be trying to love you.''