A/N: This chapter picks up after Nightmare.

The first person Dean thought to call was Mae. She was kind of all he had left. He would have called Sam, except this was about Sam. He would have called Dad, but he never answered anymore. So, there was Mae. She'd come to his side when he was dying. After that, she was different, warmer and a little less resistant. Maybe he was different too. He was, he supposed.

He was still wary to push her, knowing that for Mae, one too many hearts to heart conversations could leave her feeling too exposed and her defenses would kick in, shutting down any progress. But he didn't need her to have another emotional breakthrough. Dean didn't know what he needed exactly. He was worried, bordering on scared about this thing with his brother.

During their prior conversations, he'd offered her help on cases. At the time, it was an excuse to talk to her more. She could put together details on a job all on her own. She didn't need his help but she took it. Sometimes, he was useful giving a second opinion, but he didn't think she needed him for research. That had to extend both ways. She'd discuss a case with him.

But this wasn't a case, not really. It was about his brother. Now, he reasoned, Mae did care if Sam was okay and she told him, albeit in jest, that she would come if Sam were dying. If he asked her to come now, he was pretty sure she'd still show up. And, she had also witnessed a vision that Sam had. It wasn't exactly the same as any of his other ones. Maybe there was a similar connection between her and Sam. That could explain Sam's vision during their last job. Maybe it could explain hers too. The idea spurned him to call her first, neatly allowing him to pretend he wasn't shaken up.

"Hey." She said after a few rings.

"How did your mom die?"

He could almost hear her blink confusedly at the question. "I-what?"

"I can't remember how she died. Maybe you told me... but I just can't remember."

Mae tried to keep emotion out of her voice. "Why are you even asking this?"

"Because...just humor me, okay?"

Mae considered the request cautiously. "I... she might be alive. I don't know. Bobby said both my parents were probably dead but... I don't know for sure one way or the other. Now, tell me why you're asking."

"I... for a minute, I had a theory about how we were all connected."

His 'theory' did little to alleviate the feeling that crept up her spine and gripped at her throat. "That's it? A theory?"

"Yeah, why?"

She was quite for a while. They were in ripe fight territory, but she knew Dean wouldn't understand what made her defensive. Mae drew a breath. "Can I ask you something Dean?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Do you know my full name?"

"Mavis."

She smirked. "Middle name."

Dean tried to recall. He must have, at some point learned her name, right? A person couldn't know someone as long as they'd known each other and not know something as simple as a middle name. "Uh...Victoria?"

"Wow, that is not even close."

"I don't know, babe, I... I guess I should know that."

"But Victoria? I'm not a haunted doll dude."

He smirked. "C'mon, I know both your first and last name and consistently remember both. Do you know how many women can actually say that?"

"Don't worry," she said with a laugh, "I'm not in the habit of telling of people since it's worse than my first name. But if you're asking these questions looking for a connection, I guess you should know the story. But you can't make fun of me for it."

"How bad can your middle name be?"

"Just promise me you won't."

"I promise."

"It's Lake."

He laughed. "Seriously? Lake? Your real name is Mavis Lake Singer? I can promise you, I would have remembered that if I'd known. Why is this important?"

"What did John or Bobby ever tell you boys about how he ended up raising me?"

Frowning, he ran an unsure hand over his head. "You're his niece and I guess, he told us your folks were dead too. Now you're putting me on the spot."

"No, this isn't some sort of quiz to see if you remember enough about me. But I need you to tell me, because when you start a call asking about my mother, it sets off all the warning signs for me."

"Why?"

"No. You can ask that later, but you need to tell me what you know or remember."

"I guess I don't know whatever you're hinting at. I think it was something...like a ghost?"

Mae didn't know if she was supposed to laugh or not. "Wow. You don't know anything about me."

"I'm sorry Mae. I never thought to ask and... I figured maybe you didn't want to talk about it. I... I guess I wasn't always that...attentive."

"It's fine. Besides, I don't know everything either. Just what Bobby would tell me and a few things I've pieced together along the way. Bobby never really knew what happened to my parents. Or, if he know, he never told me. Anyway, his brother was my father."

"And your mom?"

"Pamela Garret. So I'm told. I've never found much on her before she married my dad, less after."

"So what's the rest of the story, Red."

She sighed. "I was found when I was about three days old, at basically a fishing hole in northern Minnesota called Mavis Lake. There's nothing up there but lakes and more lakes. It's almost on the Canadian border. I don't know how long I was there. I don't know who found me. I don't know who left me out there. I don't know why. I had a note pinned to me that said 'Singer' and one of Bobby's number and the word 'uncle'."

Dean knew he would have remember that if she or Bobby had ever shared it. He frowned. He couldn't imagine who would leave a new born in the middle of nowhere. It was just as likely she would have died as it was she would be found. He was a a loss for how to respond. "Were you in a basket?"

Now Mae did laugh. "Um... I think so. Is that important?"

Not for the first time, he wished he was there with her. He wasn't sure what he could or should do but he wanted to hold her, comfort her in some way. Instead, he was just left with fumbling words. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say here, Mae."

"That was weird. Anyway, it's possible Bobby isn't even my uncle. We never...never looked into it or anything. I guess, we just took it on faith. But why he believed it more I guess, was because my parents were expecting around the same time I was born. And I do resemble my mother, according to Bobby. Anyway, Bobby adopted me after my parents disappeared and we've never heard from either of them again."

"You don't think you're related to Bobby?"

"I don't know. It doesn't really matter. He adopted me. He raised me when he didn't need to."

"Well, I didn't know any of that."

"You had your own shit to deal with growing up. There wasn't anything you or me could have done about it. If you really want to know about my mom, Bobby might know more. I mean, he can hunt down just about anything so...I don't know, I guess I still believe that maybe..." she cleared her throat, "That's what he told me, and I've never found any other information. Once your dad said he found something."

"I didn't know that either. Did he find her?"

Mae hadn't intended to tell him that but she supposed it didn't matter. Maybe Dean would connect the dots on his own, without her having to expressly tell him what happened after that. "No. That was like three years ago."

Dean pressed his lips together, not expecting the conversation to turn this way. This had certainly become an unexpected but effective distraction from his original worry for Sam. "Oh. That's the hunt you and he were on? It wasn't for a... creature, it was for your mom?"

"Yeah, except it wasn't a hunt. I asked him once, year ago to see if he could find anything. I figured there just wasn't enough to tell me about or he forgot or...something. Then, kind of out of the blue, he found something. Whatever it was convinced him enough to call me but when he and followed the trail, things when south. I'm convinced it was a trap. To what end, I haven't figured out yet." She took a breath, "So, it's a little weird when a Winchester calls me up to talk about my mom."

"Noted. Sorry I brought it up."

He wasn't sure where to go next with her and after he through it over, Dean came up with an easy but dumb solution. He hung up. It wasn't his best move, he knew, but it was the easiest way to break up the conversation and he hoped ultimately, she would think so too. He waited only a few more beats before he called her back.

Dean wasn't sure she'd pick up but maybe she would have assumed they were just momentarily disconnected. "Hey, Red." He said when she answered.

"Did you just hang up on me after I told you about being abandoned as an infant?"

"How's it goin'"

His voice, that simple greeting was soothing. It was soothing in a way it

shouldn't have been. And it left her suspicious. "I've been getting some harassing calls lately from this dense asshole. So, you know, same ol' same ol'."

He thought maybe talking to her about anything else might help him make sense of it all or at least take his mind off it. "Well surely the bastard will stop once he knows the kinda damage you could do to him. But maybe he's just trying to start over because he didn't know how make a turn in a delicate conversation and he didn't just want to fumble through some idle chit chat, so he was hoping you'd be willing to start over. Any good cases?"

She huffed a little but smiled anyway. She let him have it, deciding against an argument or pushing him in an uncomfortable direction. So, she played along. "You ever fight a gulon?

"Gulon..." he mulled the name over in his mind for a few moments, "you make me feel like I'm wet behind the ears."

"What can I say, you got to go out and hunt, I got to stay home and read. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that it's nicer to not know one than to meet one."

"What is it?"

"Picture the world's hungriest badger. Seriously, this thing is an eating machine. Alive, dead, inanimate, anything in between… the gulon eats and eats and eats until it's ready to explode. Then it wedges itself in a tight space so it can, ahem, relieve itself before it goes on to devour everything else it can find. The only time you can kill it is when it's…"

"Taking a shit?"

"Yeah, it's a glamorous job, I know." Dean laughed a bit at her tale before she continued, "But I've got all my fingers, toes and important bits. And I'm not covered in monster shit so all in all it was a good day."

He wasn't sure what more to say. "Yeah."

Mae pressed her lips together, deciding whether or not to broach the subject that hung so heavily in the air right then. "Okay, we've had the obligatory greeting, little weird hunting story, and personal confession part of our calls. So, you wanna tell me what's wrong with you, handsome?"

Dean smiled to himself. Sometimes, he wished he liked her just a little less. "Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice. What makes you think something's wrong?" He said with a sigh.

"The way you said hey and then pretty much everything else. We don't have to talk about it if you don't want but you've got me here so…?"

He wanted to talk to her. He hadn't anticipated her sharing what she had. It was perhaps first personal thing she'd told him that made things fall into place for him. Her fear abandonment, the feeling like she didn't belong, and her trust issues. Her behavior made more sense but it did make him uncomfortable because he felt like he had failed her. For all the times he'd thought of her as the love of his life, he didn't know her.

Dean cleared his throat. Aside from her revelation, he did have an original point to his call. On that count, he was just letting worry, possibly needless worry stop him. He had gone out of his way to leave the room he was sharing with his brother to call her from the car. "What would you do if you heard about a guy who had prophetic dreams and… could move stuff with his mind?"

"What would I do? I don't know, check it out, see if he was dangerous. Wait, Sam?" She knew Dean well enough to know that his first instinct would have been to hunt something like that, it just would have. He didn't normally ask those questions unless it wasn't so clear cut for him, "I knew about the dreams but... Is he's getting… worse or did you just leave out the moving things with his mind thing before?"

"Maybe he is getting worse, maybe it's... something else. I'm... worried though. His visions are getting worse and now he's, I don't know, maybe he's got other abilities developing."

"Other abilities?"

"He was able to pull of some telekinetic mind-bending sort of thing when he thought some kid was gonna kill me."

"Are you sure?"

It was such a strange question he almost laughed at it. Of course, he was sure. "He's sure. I-It's a little over my head."

"Maybe you're too close. Tell me the whole story."

She was still a hunter, needing all those details but there was something comforting about the way she asked, the way she tried to figure it out or lay it out so it would make sense. He'd tried the same thing, but it couldn't hurt, he thought.

"There's not much more. He just wakes me up in the middle of the night to drive to freakin' Saginaw. Cuz he has this vision of this guy getting killed and everything about it says suicide except his damn 6th sense. And he's right, you know? It's freakin' me out."

He listened to her measured exhale and the silence that was too uncomfortable for both of them before she said anything more. "Well yeah. That is kind of thing that would freak anyone out."

He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair as he glanced back at the motel room. "Mavis, I don't know what to do here."

"Well you could stop calling me Mavis for one." She said wryly, trying to shake Dean from his current mood.

"I'm serious. I don't, I don't know what to do here."

She took a deep breath. "Maybe it's nothing. I mean, the visions aren't the worst thing to ever happen. Maybe he just… imagined the whole telekinetic thing. Stress, you know?"

"When it is ever nothing? When is something not normal ever good?"

"So far haven't the visions been beneficial? I mean, he dreamed about Jessica's death and maybe he could have stopped it if he understood them. He dreamed about your old house and you guys not only saved that woman and her kids but also found your mom's spirit again. And he dreamed about me and you and… well, if we had listened maybe—"

"I didn't tell you the end. It's this kid, he's doing it. He's controlling these things with his mind. Telekineticlly. And he's killed his dad, his uncle, and almost his step mom. All the people who hurt him. And get this, he's Sam's age. His mom died in a fire in the nursery—"

"Dean-"

"I'm tellin' you, this isn't normal… even for us. What if whatever is happening to Sam, whatever he's becoming isn't good, what if… what if he's some kind of—of what if he's something we hunt?"

She was glad for once they were on the phone. He couldn't read her expressions and there was little she could do to conceal the worry or what he would hate more, the thoughts that were going through her head. "I wasn't there but Sam's not the sort to go off on a killing spree just because he's got psychic visions and some... light telekinesis. Dean, this is Sam we're talking about here. He's the least likely to hurt people out of any hunter I've met."

Her words, her voice were all reassuring and he wanted to believe all of them. He wanted her words to be true. And while they were on the phone together in that moment, it was. Sam still had qualms about the lying, stealing, breaking and entering- pretty much everything that was either outright illegal or skirted the law that made up the job.

"I know it is. I know but," he sighed, "I don't know. If other people find out about him-"

"Well, don't tell anyone."

Dean closed his eyes, smiled. There was something so definitive, so authoritative about the way she said it. And the 'don't be stupid' tone helped make him feel like he was being foolish. "Obviously. Besides, who the hell would I tell... except for you? I'm just…" he scrubbed a hand over his mouth, "You know the worst part? I can't get a hold of dad to save my life. I can reach you but my own father? I don't get him sometimes."

It wasn't the first time he'd expressed doubt over his father, but it was the first time that that doubt was laced with disgust. Of course, this wasn't about the job, this was about family. She wanted to do something, say something that might make it better for him or bolster him in some way. "If I knew where he was, I'd tell you. But we can figure it out, okay?"

If he could have grabbed her right then, he would have held her tight. He knew there was no reason to feel this way. He knew he should have been more cautious, guarded but with her, he didn't want to be. As much as he wanted her support, companionship, and a slew of other things that came with her, he didn't want to lose the ground they had gained so far. "Mae, you don't have to…"

"I want to." She said softly before the uncertainty crept in, "I mean for whatever it's worth, whatever I can actually do, I'll help."

"Even if it means seeing me again? I wouldn't want to encroach in your space Red."

It was a bit of a low blow, he knew but it was the only way he could test the waters. Fortunately, he could see the smile in her voice, and he imagined a little blush eased over her pale checks when she spoke. "Yeah. You're not the worst to look at. I could stand seeing you again."

"You sure?" And, he decided to take yet another risk, "Because I wanna see you, you have no idea how much but—well, I don't want to screw things up anymore. I can't deal with that all over again, not right now."

"Even if I were totally and completely pissed off with you, I'll help you with big things. If you need help, I'll help. We're… well, neither of has a lot of anything so… I wouldn't tell you I would help if I wasn't willing to do whatever that entailed."

Dean wasn't sure what had changed. Maybe it was the calls, maybe it really was the time and space. He didn't know what it could be, but he wasn't about to take it for granted. "Don't say it like it's a bad thing."

"I'm not." She sighed, "I'm sorry if you thought it was because of you. It's not."

"I don't know if that's what I think. I just kind of feel like there should be more." Even as he said it, he knew he was laying his own minefield.

"More? I can't give you more right now. I know this isn't going as you planned or want but...sometimes," She sighed, "I'm just as confused by the way I feel about you as you are by my reactions. I want to be with you, sometimes so much that I...can't think about anything else. I don't want to hurt you. Anymore. I still... I haven't found what I'm hunting yet. I haven't killed and I need to before...before I have more. But maybe this...well, I think there is a connection. I don't know why entirely but maybe I need to help you too."

"Maybe we end up with better luck together."

"Maybe. for what it's worth, I miss you. I had to stop feeling to survive. It's been a long, long time since I've let myself feel enough to miss someone let alone care about you the way I do. I know I don't make it easy for you."

"Well I guess I never asked for easy."

Mae let her lips curve up a little. "Hey, look at that, we didn't turn that into some over blown fight."

"We sure didn't. You know that might have been what I was looking for."

"What that I admit I'm a pain in the ass?"

"No, I'm pretty sure you've always known that. But just... You know this doesn't exactly come natural for me either."

"You seem to know exactly what you want, and it doesn't scare you. You seem to have this faith in us that I don't."

Well, he thought, she wasn't entirely wrong. He knew what he wanted, he did believe that they should be together, and that didn't scare him. He wasn't sure if it was faith that led him there, but he knew he didn't have the energy to fight the way he felt. "I don't know what to say to that Red. What do you want me to say?"

"Nothin'. There's nothing you could say. I'm only trying to make sense of things. But you know, that's not why you called so maybe there's something I can do."

Dean thought about it a moment, the last part of her statement anyway. "You could look into mom's death."

"Didn't you already do that when you were in Lawrence?"

"It's… it's too close to me and Sam and dad. Maybe you might find a clue about that or what's happening to Sam? Something."

"Okay. I'll see what I can find. And Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"I lo... Be safe."

He heard the pause, knew what she was going to say and then pulled herself back from. He didn't know what it would take for her to say 'I love you' out loud but not wasn't the time to worry about it. "You too."