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.

22. In Your Mother's House

AN: Wow, am I ever late with this update! I am so so sorry for such a long wait. I've made some changes to the overall structure of HTLGI, so unfortunately this chapter took much longer than I wanted it to. Plus, I made an attempt to write this chapter and the next chapter at the same time and, um... I will not be doing that again lol. That was not the time saver I, for whatever reason, thought it would be.

Before we get into the meat of the chapter, I just want to put out a blanket warning for the remaining chapters - especially the next three, which are almost one contained arc within the bigger story. From here on out, HTLGI is going to be noticeably more horror focused. Specifically there's going to be an uptick in gore and body horror. Obviously it's a bit different to read about these things than to actually see them on screen, but if you're particularly squeamish, I do want to say that the next few chapters might be a lot.

The themes we'll be dealing with are also specifically tied to motherhood and mommy issues (the next chapter's working title was literally ''Motherhood: A Horror Story'' for the longest time) so there will be somewhat graphic descriptions and talk of things like pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum mental health struggles, and child abuse. If you are sensitive to these things, please proceed with caution.

With that said, this chapter is Dean's chapter so the biggest monster in this chapter is grief.

Additional warnings for this chapter: Vomit. Like, a lot of vomit. I'm sorry. I promise I'll stop making characters sick soon. I don't know why that keeps happening? Frank discussions of mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and suicide. Additional spoilery warnings can be found at the bottom of the chapter.

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How the Light Gets In

Written by Becks Rylynn

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Part Twenty One

You Will Always Be in Your Mother's House

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''Daddy...''

At first, the small voice, nearly a whisper, is what drags him out of the fog of slumber. The voice is muffled and tinny sounding, garbled over the sound of white noise filtering through the monitor on the bedside table, but it still catches his attention. It hooks onto him in his sleep and pulls him out from under.

Then it's the sound of static that yanks him full force back into consciousness, a strange buzzing noise that grows louder and louder and louder still, much louder than it should be.

''Daddy,'' Mary's voice hisses, and Dean's eyes snap open in the dark.

A second of groggy confusion and then he lifts his head up to look at the baby monitor, frowning at the static coming from it. He blearily rubs at his tired eyes and pushes himself up enough to turn on the lamp. ''Laurel?'' He reaches out, an instinct, to where his wife should be, but his hand finds only air and a cold pillow on the other side of the bed.

He blinks to clear his sleep blurred vision. He looks at the empty spot she has not slept in. Something curls in his gut, a feeling of sickness, something halfway between anger and concern, and he can't remember why. It's familiar, but he doesn't know where it's coming from. Can't quite fit the puzzle pieces together. Eventually, he shakes it off.

It doesn't strike him as important in the moment.

By the time he grabs the baby monitor and gives it a smack, the static has stopped. He holds it in his hand for a moment, a nagging feeling in the back of his mind as he examines the old school baby monitor. He doesn't remember ever owning this. He furrows his brow, turning it over in his hand, confused. But then he hears his daughter's soft voice, whining softly to herself, and he forgets why he is confused.

The fever, he thinks. Must be the fever.

He puts the monitor down, pulls back the covers, and rises to his feet, scratching absently at the shoulder of his white t-shirt. He steps out of the bedroom and into the still lit hallway, avoiding the creaky floorboards on autopilot as he trudges over to Mary's room, trying to remember what time it was when he gave her that last dose of Tylenol.

Mary's door, left open a crack, groans when he pushes it open and Dean finds himself stopping short in the doorway, looking at a shadowy figure standing over his daughter, a tiny bundle of blankets in her bed, seemingly fast asleep despite the whines that have woken him up. There is a second of panic, a shot of adrenaline, and his body tenses.

But it's just a second.

The shape of the silhouette is familiar, the way her hair falls, the curve of her fingers, and he relaxes. He lets down his guard. ''Laur?'' His voice is a thick, sleep encrusted whisper. ''Is she okay?''

She turns her head, only a little, not enough to see her face, bringing a finger to her lips. ''Sshh.''

He raises an eyebrow at the dismissal, but relents. He figures it's fine. She is her mother, after all, and he is exhausted after a long day of toddler sickness, so he lets it go. She can handle whatever is thrown her way. ''Okay.'' He hesitates, but ultimately turns to walk away. He leaves Mary with her mother, safe.

Down the hallway, the light fixture on the wall beside the door to his bedroom flickers.

For a moment, Dean stops. He stands in the hallway. He feels very cold. He watches the light. He thinks -

This is for someone else.

It is a peculiar thing to be thinking and he cannot explain why he is thinking it, but that is the one thought that pops into his head at that moment; the moment he sees the light flicker. This is not mine, he thinks. This is hers.

This is not his story.

Not his warning.

One day, his mother told him, back in that sunny kitchen in Lawrence, this will all be yours.

He turns back around, looking in the direction of Mary's room, fingers twitching at his side, something tugging at his insides. When he looks back at the light, it flickers again.

Since he can't make sense of the chill, the puzzling feeling of dread running down his spine, he chalks it up to exhaustion and a bad mood, and he moves on. He frowns, pressing his lips together, opting for the ordinary feeling of annoyance.

He swears he just changed that bulb last week.

He approaches the light currently threatening to die slowly, reaching out to tap at it with the tips of his fingers. Under his touch, the light steadies. ''Hm.''

Tomorrow's problem.

He leaves the light on and goes back to the bedroom, stepping inside, closing the door behind him, ready to go back to sleep. He stops halfway to the bed, eyes on the empty side of the bed.

And remembers.

It happens just like that. It hits like a fist. He goes still, his entire body stiffening up as a horrifying realization sweeps over him, grips him tight and pulls him back into reality, all the parts of it that he has somehow forgotten.

Laurel left.

Almost a month ago now. She left him. She left Mary. She turned tail and ran and she hasn't come back, still too busy punishing herself, addicted to her own misery. He has tried, the best he can, to cope with that and to understand. It's not going great. A few hours ago, that was his biggest concern. But now...

If Laurel is gone, who the hell is standing over his daughter's bed?

''Mary!'' Dean turns and takes off running. ''Mary!'' He is out the door, down the hall, and skidding to a halt in the doorway of her bedroom, one hand gripping at the doorjamb in record time.

The figure in the dark, standing over Mary, turns and smiles at him and he can see her. It's dark and she is still mostly in the shadows, lit only by a stream of moonlight and the glow of light from the hallway, but he can see her.

He can even tell her nightgown is pink.

''Mom?''

His mother steps further into the light. When she smiles at him, there is blood on her teeth, just like there is blood on her nightgown, spreading over her belly. She moves unsteadily, lurching her way to him, one hand held out in front of her as if to touch him. She smells like burnt flesh and smoke. She is not burnt, not on fire, but she smolders anyway, the smoke rising from her flesh.

He can't seem to make himself move away from her.

''Hello, my little lovebug,'' she coos, and blood runs out of her mouth. It drips down her chin, onto her nightgown. ''I've been waiting for you.'' He can see her so much better now when she is this close to him. He can see the details he could not see before.

Her eyes are yellow.

''It's time now, baby,'' she tells him. ''You know that, don't you? You know what's going to happen next.'' She reaches up with both hands to touch him, to grasp his face, and when her hands come into contact with his skin, they're hot, too hot, like fire spreading through his entire body, a single flame setting him ablaze. She leans in close, lips right next to his ear, and he finds he can still smell lilacs over the scent of ashes. ''Come home, sweetheart,'' she murmurs, the fire licking at his cheek, the glint of it reflected in her golden eyes. ''Be with me.''

Dean wakes up with something stuck in his throat, bolting upright, struggling for oxygen.

He can't be sure if the thing stuck in his throat is a scream or a cry. His stomach rolls unpleasantly, the image of his mother with those hideous yellow eyes playing on a loop in his brain, the smell of her burning flesh singed into his nostrils, the taste of soot and smoke in his mouth. He still feels like he's burning.

One day, he remembers, this will all be yours.

His breathing settles eventually, but the taste of ashes remains. He holds his hand out in front of him and watches it shake.

It's not that big of a deal. He tries to lie to himself. He does that often. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't a big deal. It's nothing. It's fine. Everything is fine. Sure, as nightmares go, it was pretty fucked up, but it's not as if that was the first time he had a dream like that. He used to dream of his bloodied, burning mother all the time. There were times, when he was a kid, that it was the only time he could see his mother. The only way he could remember her. Keep her with him. Burned, burning, about to burn. Her bloody mouth and burning flesh. That was all he had.

When Laurel was pregnant, especially in the beginning, he had constant nightmares of a yellow eyed thing in his child's nursery and his wife bleeding and burning on the ceiling.

Who can blame him for that?

And it's not like this dream was anywhere near as creepy as the one Mary had earlier when she woke up from her fever induced nap and informed him -

I saw Mommy in the trees. She's going to die there.

There was something wicked about that one. This was just more of the same for a Winchester. The usual. Suppose the part where he swapped places with his mother was new, but even that can be explained when you really think about it. The thing about mothers is that they haunt. Dead or alive, they haunt.

If you don't know that yet, you will someday.

For his entire life, he has been followed by ashes trailing along behind him, caught in the wind, the scent of lilacs, the heat of an invisible fire nipping at his heels. He knows what it feels like to be chased by ghosts. He should be used to it by now.

Dean takes in a few slightly shaky breaths and scrubs at his face, waiting out the trembling.

Beside him, Mary sleeps on, still fitful, still restless, still sweating out the fever that has plagued her since she woke up this morning.

When he sees her, looking so uncomfortable even in her sleep, he forgets about the shakiness. He pushes the yellow eyes to the back of his mind and drowns out his mother's creaky voice. He's exhausted and today sucked and he doesn't understand why the nightmare versions of his parents have been on his ass since Seabeck, but none of that matters right now. He looks at Mary, and switches back on. There is little time for brooding when you're a parent.

Well.

If you're a decent one anyway.

He glances at his watch, thinking back to when he gave her that last dose of Children's Tylenol, and sighs. He hasn't been asleep for as long as he thought he was and there are still a couple hours before he can give her another dose. As silently as possible, he heaves himself out of Mary's bed, aching and sore from being cramped up in her too small bed. He moves around to the other side of the bed to make sure that she has her tissues handy. He places the plastic puke bowl in his vacated spot and leans down to kiss her sweaty forehead, mostly to check her fever.

Mary stirs at the light touch, waking up just enough to grab blindly for him, eyes opening into barely a squint. ''Daddy?''

''I'm right here.'' He takes her hand in his before she can swat at his face. ''I'm sorry, kiddo, I didn't mean to wake you. I was just checking your fever.''

She makes a tiny mewl like noise and then whimpers, ''Daddy, I don't feel good.''

''I know you don't, honey.''

''It hurts,'' she mumbles, and then lets out a sob, a little cough. ''It hurts.''

Man, if that isn't just a knife in the gut.

He looks around for the cool cloth he knows was here a minute ago, finding it dampening her sheets by her head. It's not as cold as it was before, but he mops at her sweaty face with it anyway. ''Can you tell Dad where it hurts?''

She whines softly, and squeezes her eyes shut. ''All over.''

He perches himself on the side of her bed, dabbing at her flushed cheeks. ''Do you feel like you're going to throw up?''

She just moans at that, rolling away from him, but still reaching around to take his hand again.

''Try to get some rest, Mary,'' he murmurs, leaning down again to press a kiss to her cheek. ''I'll stay right here with you.'' He keeps his hand in hers, rubbing her back with the other. ''You'll feel better soon. We just need to get some sleep and let the medicine do its job, okay?''

She sniffles and rolls onto her back, peering up at him. ''Okay,'' she whispers, and holds tight to his hand. ''Don't go away. Hold my hand 'til I'm asleep again.''

''I promise,'' he says. ''I'll stay right here until you fall asleep.''

She nods, letting him drape the cloth over her forehead. She lets go of his hand only once, for barely a second, just long enough to sign I love you, and then she grabs onto his hand again and closes her eyes. She falls back to sleep so fast it's kind of freaky. One minute she's holding onto his hand and whimpering softly and the next she is dropping off into slumber, her tight grip loosening, her whimpers growing quiet.

He stays where he is for a moment, not willing to risk waking her up, watching her sleep, trying to decide just how concerned he should be.

Impulsively, mostly just because he feels like he needs to do something, he checks her pulse before he lets go of her hand, standing up. Her pulse is fine - maybe a touch fast but still within normal range, nowhere near the danger zone. Her fever is still an issue and she is obviously not feeling good at all but it hasn't been that long since her last dose of Tylenol. He'll keep checking on her, give her some ibuprofen if she needs it, but chances are she will be just fine. It's not ER worthy. It's just the flu. Her pediatrician wasn't worried at all.

Sounds like a virus, she'd said earlier when he called. Keep an eye on her for today, bring her into Emerg if her oxygen levels dip below what we're comfortable with. Otherwise, I can get you in tomorrow.

It's probably nothing.

Just normal kid stuff. Your garden variety preschool germs. Kids are gross. They smear their germs all over and you just have to accept that this is part of life with small children. Which he usually does. He's usually much better at the acceptance part of this. He doesn't panic when Mary gets sick. He just helps her through it. He doesn't know why he's so worried now. He's not sure what's different.

Maybe it's the bad bout of pneumonia she had before Christmas. When she was hospitalized for a few days and he was spending every waking hour at her bedside, handling it all alone while Laurel climbed the walls at home. Maybe that got to him more than he thought it did. Whatever the reason, he has been tense all day and Mary has been absolutely miserable.

The poor kid has spent the day tossing and turning in bed, sweating through her clothes and sheets, waking up mostly just to puke, cry, or demand cuddles. She had a few periods throughout the day where she was lethargic but awake, fever held at bay with meds, able to hold down some Pedialyte Freezer Pops, chilling with Uncle Cas on the couch or allowing Uncle Sammy to read to her, but for the most part, she's been gloomy, out of sorts, and attached to Dean like a koala bear.

And desperate for her mom.

Let's not forget that.

Every time she would start to fall asleep, she would end up jerking herself awake and exclaiming, eyes wide, ''I hear Mommy! Is Mommy home?'' When she did manage to fall asleep, it was the first question on her lips when she awoke. ''Is Mommy home yet? I want Mommy to be home.''

Given that her immune system still isn't what it was before the pneumonia, it's likely a totally normal thing. Because kids get sick. Then they get better. That's nature. Or whatever. It's nothing to worry about.

It's nothing to worry about.

Dean gives Mary one last look, just checking to make sure she's still breathing, and then ducks out of the bedroom. He pauses in the hallway, gaze drawn to the light fixture on the wall. There is no flickering. The light remains steady.

Nothing is wrong.

He still can't quite get that nightmare out of his head, the memory of the flickering light and the dread he could not explain, the thought of his mother, moments away from her death, tapping at the light. Doesn't help that he still feels like he's burning and his mouth still tastes like ashes. He tries not to look at the light as he walks past.

His house, usually buzzing with activity and life, is quiet and empty tonight. The television is on in the lit up living room, Law and Order droning on, volume low, but there's no one there to watch it.

In the kitchen, Sam is the only one he finds, unloading the dishwasher with one hand, scrolling on his phone with the other. Everyone else is out and Dean feels like he would, on a good day, be relieved to have a night of peace and quiet, but part of him feels like he'd love a distraction right about now. His head doesn't feel like it's on right. He doesn't particularly want to talk about why.

He'd rather get in a pointless argument with Sara about Top Gun. That's how badly he doesn't want to talk about it.

Sam looks up when Dean walks into the kitchen, immediately putting his phone away, sliding it into his pocket. ''Hey.'' He goes back to unloading the dishwasher. ''You were in there for a while. She have trouble going down for the night?''

Dean steals a glass from the dishwasher before Sam can get to it. ''I fell asleep.'' He opens the fridge and grabs the jug of water, pouring some into the glass. ''Girls aren't back yet?''

''No, they're - '' Sam stops. ''Dude, are you okay?'' There is an edge of concern to his voice.

''What do you mean?'' Dean puts the jug of water back into the fridge and turns around, thrown by the sight of his little brother's thin-lipped worry face. ''Why wouldn't I be?''

Sam stares at him for a second, looking mildly alarmed, and then he raises an eyebrow. ''You're sweating.''

Yeah, well, blame Mom, Dean does not say. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would lessen Sam's concern.

''Maybe you caught whatever Mary has,'' Sam suggests.

''I'm not sick. I'm just - ''

Sam ignores the protests, stepping into Dean's space, bringing his hand to his forehead. ''Huh.'' He pulls his giant mitt back after a second, still frowning. ''You're not warm. You're kind of clammy actually.''

''I'm fine,'' Dean tells him, an automatic reflex, the instinct so ingrained in him that the words are halfway out before he even realizes he's saying them. ''I'm just tired. I've had a sick kid attached to me like a barnacle all day.''

Sam looks like he wants to say more, push the issue, maybe even point out that even when she's perfectly healthy Mary can still typically be found attached to him like a barnacle, but he's smart enough not to say any of those things tonight. He goes back to the dishwasher, pulling the last few dishes out and stacking them on the counter before closing it up. ''She feeling any better?''

''Not really.''

''Hm.''

Oh, Dean does not trust that hm.

''Thea did call, by the way,'' Sam says. ''She said she's having a movie night with Oliver because he's been moody and spending all his time alone lately and she's worried about him so don't wait up.''

''Isn't he always moody and alone?''

''See, that's what I thought but I didn't think she would appreciate it if I asked.'' Sam looks thoughtful, pondering something for a moment before he asks, ''What do you think that guy even does when he's alone?''

''Cries and jerks off to She Will Be Loved while he thinks about my wife,'' Dean deadpans. It's possible, given the look he gets, that he might have answered that a little too quickly.

Yes, he has thought about it before.

''I'm sorry,'' Sam says, voice laced with heavy sarcasm, ''I asked what do you think Oliver does. Not what have you been doing for the past month.''

Dean makes a face, deeply offended by the barb. ''Fucking disgusting you think I'd ever listen to Maroon 5.''

Sam rolls his eyes and shakes his head, going back to the dishes. ''When's the last time you ate something?''

Dean's instinct to deflect, to insist he's fine is thwarted when he pauses to think and realizes he can't remember. He's had water and a lot of coffee, like most days, and he knows he ate what Mary didn't eat of her breakfast, also like most days, but the day, which has not otherwise been like most days, was derailed in dramatic fashion pretty early on when she full on projectile vomited all over the hallway - with zero warning - while he was trying to get her ready to go to the library.

They did not go to the library today.

And now he's thinking he hasn't eaten since breakfast.

Sam doesn't ask again, but he does jerk his thumb in the direction of the kitchen table and the unopened box of pizza sitting on top of it. ''I ordered extra pepperoni,'' he says. ''Go nuts. Got the cheesy breadsticks too.''

Dean hesitates to take a slice. He is starving, now that he thinks about it, but he hesitates. It's not about the pizza. It's about Sam's presence. He's not going to say that out loud because he's not an asshole, but he's been avoiding being alone with his brother lately. Which is not something he ever thought he would do. The version of him that existed ten years ago would want to slam present day Dean's head into the wall just for thinking it. Understandable. It does sound bad. He's just wary of the conversation that Sam wants to have, the one he has been trying to start for weeks now.

The one about Laurel.

The thing about Sam and Laurel is that when things are good, when everything is fine and dandy, they're good with each other. They have a bond. They have things in common, shared interests, inside jokes. They consider themselves family. They love each other. Most importantly, they respect each other. That was not always the case, especially considering when they first met Sam was a soulless douchebag with no filter, but they have worked at it and, generally speaking, they are in a good place with each other. If life is moving along smoothly, they are model in-laws.

However, life does not always move along smoothly, is the thing, and that is where the trouble starts. When something happens and the train inevitably veers off the tracks, it becomes more obvious that despite their closeness, despite whatever genuine love they may have for each other, their main connection is Dean and each one of them would not hesitate to push the other in front of the runaway train if it meant saving him from just about anything.

Sam really wants to push Laurel in front of the train right about now.

There is no doubt about that.

He may think he's doing a fantastic job keeping his simmering anger to himself, but let's face it: Dean can read the kid like a book.

Sam is pissed off. He has been mad since she left and he has especially been mad since Mary started acting out and being visibly more distressed about her mother's absence.

And that's -

I mean, fair enough.

Not like Dean can say he's in love with a lot of Laurel's choices lately. She is being reckless, self-destructive, and self-punishing. She is being damn near a Winchester. It's infuriating. He can't quite figure out if Sam's anger comes from him being personally offended because of his own metric fuckton of Mommy Issues or because he's feeling protective of his brother and niece, but it doesn't matter.

Kid can be pissed off if he feels he needs to be.

The uncomfortable and aggravating run in they had with her the other day at Mendoza's Market in the Glades sure as fuck did not help with the exasperation.

Dean can appreciate the frustration he must be feeling. What he does not appreciate, however, is the way everything Sam says about her lately seems to be skirting on the edge of unintentionally (for the most part) offensive. I'm angry that she has hurt people I care about is reasonable. Her mental illness is no longer tolerable to me is not. Some of the shit Sam's been mumbling under his breath is starting to step over that line.

If this were anyone else, at any other time, Dean wouldn't have an issue with laying them out. He has lived his wife's illness, thank you very much, and he doesn't need anyone acting like a dick on his behalf. But this isn't any other time and this isn't anyone else. This is Sam, who - A) should know better, and B) would refuse to let it go and turn it into a whole thing.

So fuck it.

Call him a coward if you want, but Dean just does not have it in him to have this argument right now. Life is shit. His kid is sick. His wife is all alone and he has no idea if she's gone full Black Canary or if she's off somewhere getting high and/or drunk. And he's fucking starving. And he's just...

He's lonely, okay? He's fucking lonely. It is lonely to be married to a shadow. It is lonely to go through parenthood all by yourself. He thought he was done being lonely when he married the nice normal lawyer and now look where he is. Right back where he started.

He thought, for some stupid, misguided reason, that things would get easier the longer Laurel was gone. It's becoming crystal clear that unfortunately she doesn't plan on coming home anytime soon so might as well get used to the new normal, right?

Well, that hasn't happened.

If anything, things have only gotten harder.

Mary especially is not handling this well. She's struggling. She seems to struggle more and more every day. She's little. She wants her mom and doesn't understand why she can't have her. He doesn't know what to tell her anymore because he doesn't understand why they can't have her either.

Last thing he wants to do is talk this to death.

And you know what else?

Dean can't be sure if this is related to the Laurel situation or not, but Sam has been acting so goddamn weird lately. Everyone has been down lately, but there is a different between being off because of the shit show that is life currently and being a shady weirdo.

Sammy is being a shady weirdo.

Again.

Don't like that. Didn't like it all the other times, don't like it now. He's keeping secrets. Dodging telling people where he's been spending his time. Just all around shifty behavior. He has gotten his paws into something. No question about it. Historically speaking, this never ends well. Gonna go ahead and hope it's just a secret fuck buddy, but - well, even that has the potential to be a mess.

Historically speaking.

But of course Dean can bring any of this up without being a massive hypocrite because - after all, it's not like he's told anyone about Rick Flag. Or about his mom friend Tina Boland - whose name, he is beginning to suspect, is not actually Tina Boland. He definitely hasn't told anyone about his suspicions regarding Amanda Waller.

That can of worms he will not open until he knows for sure the worms are alive.

So, yeah, he's not in a sharing and caring mood.

Not tonight.

He grabs a breadstick out of the box and shoves close to the entire hunk of lukewarm greasy congealed cheese and carbs into his mouth. ''You didn't get wings?''

Sam throws him a look over his shoulder as he puts the last plate away. ''You're welcome,'' he volleys back, tone dripping with sarcasm.

Dean gives him a cheerful (and cheeky) grin. He finishes off the breadstick and moves onto the pizza, grabbing the slice with the most pepperoni.

Just as he takes a big bite, Sam shuts the cupboard, turns around, and asks, ''You ever get a hold of Laurel?''

''Not since this morning.''

''Huh.'' Sam nods, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms. He is trying way too hard to sound casual. He doesn't say anything for a minute, but Dean can see him thinking about it, trying to formulate what he wants to say.

Honestly, Dean could just leave.

The phantom burning feeling of his mother's hands on his face is finally starting to fade, but he still feels like he needs a shower. And he swears he can still taste a hint of ashes in his mouth. He could excuse himself to go shower, finish the load of laundry he started earlier, and clean up the living room. But... He kinda wants to see what Sammy comes up with. Is that wrong? Sue him, he's curious. He leisurely eats his pizza and drinks the entire glass of water and watches his brother squirm.

Finally, Sam spits it out. ''Do you think it's possible maybe - '' He stops. Presses his lips together. He looks like he is rethinking his sentence. ''What's the plan here?''

''What do you mean?''

''I mean - '' Sam pauses to huff, the tightly wound look on his face loosening for a second, but just enough for him to replace it with a split second of exasperation. He's good at being exasperated. He's had a lot of practice. ''With the Laurel situation.''

''I'm supposed to have a plan for that?'' Dean stuffs the last chunk of crust into his mouth, giving Sam a flat look. ''What do you think I can do about it?''

''I just meant - I don't think she's...doing well,'' Sam tries, which - yeah, no fucking shit. ''So I'm wondering if it's a good idea to let her go off on her own.''

''I can't force her to come home, Sam.''

''Why not?''

Dean can't help the laugh that escapes at that. ''You've clearly never tried to get Laurel Lance to do something she doesn't want to do,'' he says, trying to keep the snicker out of his voice. ''Seriously, how do you picture that going down? You think I can just roll up next to her on the street and grab her? She'd take me down in thirty seconds flat. Probably less.''

''Okay,'' Sam sighs, rubbing at his forehead. ''But, Dean, man, she is messed up right now. I mean, you saw her at the market. She was out of her skull.''

''We don't know that,'' Dean snaps back, an automatic response, the need to protect her so instinctual he barely even thinks about it. ''She said she was just tired.''

A pause. Sam lets the silence hang between them for a few seconds before he says, failing to suppress the condescending pity, ''Dean.''

''Don't do that,'' Dean pushes off the counter, pointing a finger at him. ''Don't use your pity voice on me. I'm not a mark. We don't know if she was drunk. We don't. How could we know that? She could've been tired. She could've been injured.''

''She was seeing things.''

''We don't know for a fact that she was seeing things.''

Sam huffs - again. Because he does that. Guy's huffy. He was five when he started that shit. ''Okay,'' he says, a halfhearted peace offering. ''If we don't know for sure what's going on with her then isn't that all the more reason to go get her? Maybe she's drunk, maybe she's not, but whatever's going on with her she is visibly ill.''

''Sam - ''

''And I'm not saying - '' Sam stops short. There is a guilty look on his face that does not bode well. ''I'm not talking about forcing her to come home. I don't...'' He trails off awkwardly, fighting back a wince. ''I don't think she should come home.''

Dean bristles. ''What the hell does that mean?''

''It means exactly what I said,'' Sam responds. ''Listen, I get that she's been through a lot. I'm not trying to undercut that. She's been through a lot of shit. Anyone would be messed up in her shoes. But I'm just - With her history and the way she's been spiraling...'' He takes a minute to choose his words. ''Do you think it's a good idea for her to be around Mary?'' He shifts from foot to foot and something seems to snap in him, a simmering anger momentarily boiling over. ''Do you honestly think she's capable of being a mother right now?''

''You know what, Sam?'' Dean's response is quick, without much thought, and it is biting. ''I don't know when you decided to jump on the anti Laurel train,'' he starts, ''but I'm not loving your subtle digs about my wife. Like it or not, she is the mother of your niece and you can't just decide - ''

''My niece is miserable.''

''You think I don't know that?''

Sam, it seems, is not finished yet. ''She's four years old,'' he barks out. ''Four years old and she's miserable and terrified all the time to the point of making herself sick with stress,'' he waves a hand in the general direction of Mary's room, ''because her mother keeps abandoning her.''

Dean rubs at his forehead. ''Edie - ''

''No,'' Sam points a finger at him. ''We're not using that as an excuse. Laurel was an absent mother long before witchcraft and her deranged cousin entered the picture.''

''How would you know?'' Dean doesn't mean for his voice to come out so icy, but when it happens, he goes with it. ''I'm serious,'' he pokes. ''How do you know what Laurel was or wasn't? Do you live here?''

Sam is unbothered by the attempts to pester. ''You think I don't pay attention to what's going on with you? You're my brother. I care about what hurts you and Laurel hurts you,'' he insists. ''All she's ever done is hurt you.''

''No,'' Dean shakes his head. ''No.'' He runs a hand over his face, ignoring the flashes of her in his head, the crackling images of her on the bedroom floor, overdosing, her in that hospital bed, convulsing. ''That's not true. You have no idea what you're talking about.''

For a second at least, Sam backs off. He physically takes a step back, cowed by something in Dean's posture, something in his face. ''But it's true that she's sick,'' he states eventually, after an unbearably quiet moment passes between them. ''It's true that she's unstable. You can't tell me that's not at least part of what's going on here.''

''There's no way to know if - ''

''You know that's part of it!'' Sam raises his voice. ''I'm serious! There is a lot of crap going on with her right now and I know some of it is our brand of bizarre but do you really believe all the choices she's been making are because of witchcraft and family curses? Come on.'' He scoffs. ''How much of what's going on right now is Edie and how much of it is just who Laurel is?'' He stops, staring at Dean with a pointed expression and constipated looking eyebrows, but doesn't get the response he's waiting for. ''You two act like this is something that can be treated with therapy or controlled with diet and exercise, but it's not. You know that. I know you know that. She has a serious mental illness and now she's off the grid, off the rails, and oh yeah - She has majorly leveled up in the power department. We can't just act like that's not a big deal. You and me,'' he gestures between them. ''We can't just act like that's not a big deal.''

''Who is acting like it's not a big deal?'' Dean is trying not to snap right now because his kid is sleeping and he doesn't want to wake her, but he doesn't know how much longer he's got in him before he loses it. He doesn't have the patience for this tonight, he doesn't have the energy, and he doesn't have the words. Simple as that. Because what is he supposed to say? What's his play here? Denial? What is there to deny? He just. Doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to do this. He has been trying so hard to avoid doing this and now here he is and he has been lured in with pizza.

Fucking pizza.

''What is it you want me to do, Sam?'' He is doing his best to speak firmly but not loudly, but he mostly just sounds, even to his own ears, drained. ''Please tell me. You want me to barge into her motel room and carry her out of there?'' He shrugs his shoulders. ''Fine. I can do that. Then what? You don't think it's a good idea for her to be around Mary, so what do I do? Take her to her father? She'll be drunk off her ass in 24 hours. You want me to toss her in the nearest psych ward? Where she can be unstable and super powered in front of incredibly fragile and normal humans? Do I hand her over to ARGUS? What are you thinking? I'm serious. Tell me. What's our move here?''

Sam is silent. Finally. He leans back against the counter and crosses his arms. ''I don't know,'' he allows. ''I don't know.'' He exhales sharply and pinches the bridge of his nose for a minute, frustrated. ''I love Laurel,'' he says lowly, lifting his eyes back up to Dean. ''She's my family too. She always will be. And she's a good person. Probably better than you and me.''

Well, yeah.

Duh.

''But she's not well,'' Sam goes on. ''She's just...not. I don't think she ever has been. She has good times,'' he says quickly, speaking over Dean's protests before he can even open his mouth. ''I know that. I know she's had some stability. But it never lasts long. We both know that.''

''You sure seem to know a lot about shit you're not even here to see,'' Dean says, cold.

Sam barely even reacts to that - a thinning of the lips, the start of a dramatic eye roll that he manages to squash, and then he moves on. ''This is a pattern with her,'' he says, very confident for someone who has no real idea what he's talking about. ''She'll work hard to stabilize herself, maintain that stability for a little while, and then - ''

''And then what?'' Dean levels a blank stare at him. ''What happens then, Sam?'' He waits, but gets no response. ''And then another horrible thing happens to her,'' he says. ''Her sister dies, her grandmother dies, her father turns on her, she gets ripped apart by her shitty ex because she happened to exist near him and he's bitter she doesn't want to fuck him, she - '' He stops short before he says it, unable to get the words unstuck.

She dies.

That's what he was going to say.

''None of that is her fault,'' he finally says after a second, voice quiet.

''I'm not saying this is her fault,'' Sam says. ''I know the things that have happened to her aren't her fault.''

''Then what is it you want her to do? Bottle it up? Because that strategy worked so well for us?''

''I want her to be healthy.''

Dean has to physically turn away and pretend to focus on picking out another piece of pizza. Gotta say, it sure is irritating that this is all happening in front of the pizza. Now that it has been brought to his attention, he really is famished. He'd like to focus more on demolishing the entire box of cheesy bread rather than getting into yet another argument with Sam about how someone isn't behaving the exact way he finds correct.

You want to talk about patterns?

Let's talk about that one.

The one where Sam pushes and pushes and pushes for someone to open up to him, talk to him, operate the way he personally views to be right and healthy, but even when they do, it's not enough. Or how about the one where he (rightfully) asserts boundaries for himself and (understandably) demands people respect them, but can't seem to respect anyone else's.

You know the pattern Dean is the most familiar with? The one where people look at them, those infamous Winchester brothers, and decide that Sam is the normal and healthy one while Dean is fucked up and broken when in reality Sam is the same fifty shades of fucked up.

He's just palatable.

Funny how no one ever wants to talk about that one. Least of all Sam. He will go on an hour long tirade about Dean, or Laurel, or random internet people, or that time that old lady down the street cut him off, but his own issues?

No, we don't talk about those.

Just like Dean is not going to talk about it now. He is self-aware enough to know he is being unfair. He also knows damn well that Sam is...not entirely wrong here. Still gonna stew about it.

''I want her to be happy,'' Sam continues, although his tone says otherwise. ''I want her to not make shit decisions that hurt you and Mary and then turn around and whine that she's mentally ill when she's called out.''

''She doesn't!'' Dean whips back around, glaring, the protective husband in him coming out, even despite the anger he currently feels towards her. ''She doesn't do that.''

''She - Okay.'' Sam stands down at that one. At least for a second. ''Actually,'' he acknowledges. ''Yeah, you're right. She doesn't do that. But you do.''

Fuck's sake.

Dean collapses into the breakfast nook. He props his elbows up on the table and drops his head into his hands.

''You are constantly making excuses for her,'' Sam says. ''It's the same thing you did with Dad.''

''Oh my fucking - '' Dean snaps his head back up, face contorted into something between exhaustion and irritation. ''Now this is about Dad? What - '' He throws his arms out. ''What's your goal here, Sam? What do you want from me right now?''

Not sure if Sam has just now realized that maybe this is a bad time to be talking about this or if he just doesn't want to answer that question, but he goes silent once that question is asked. He backs away, leaning back against the counter. He says nothing else for a moment, looking at Dean for a moment, and then looking away. He looks at the kitchen door, like he's waiting for it to open - or perhaps thinking about making a hasty escape. ''Look,'' he sighs. He looks back, his words quieter, hesitant. ''You have this drive to take care of people,'' he says. ''Especially the people you love. And I can - I respect that,'' he says firmly. ''I do. And I...'' He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. ''I know I've benefited from it in the past.''

Great.

Another thing Dean does not want to talk about tonight.

''You've been taking care of me for your whole life,'' Sam reminds him, as if he could ever forget. ''Since you were four. I get that this is the role you're comfortable in. I don't want to take that from you. That's not what I...'' He doesn't seem to know how to say what he wants to say. ''Sometimes caretaking and enabling go hand in hand,'' he says. ''That's all I'm saying.''

''But what have I enabled?'' Dean rubs at his forehead. ''Her self-destruction? Her depression? What has she gotten out of me taking care of her? Obviously she's not happy.''

''She's not happy,'' says Sam, ''because she's a mentally ill addict who can't get out of her own way.''

''And what were you?''

For the record, Dean does not mean to say it. Does not even want to say it. He doesn't intend for it to come out at all. But he's agitated and he's aggravated and he's hungry and he's tired and lately it feels like everything he built is crumbling down around him and as much as he tries, he can't keep the walls up. The words slip out, the accusation that flings them both back to what was quite possibly the worst year of both of their lives. He shouldn't have said it, but he can't take it back.

Sam stiffens, quiet at first, like he can't quite figure out what to say, and then he makes this choked bitter noise in the back of his throat. ''What was I?'' He twitches like he's pushing back a scowl. ''I was a bloodsucking freak,'' he snaps. ''According to you.''

Dean can't quite figure out how to respond to that one. Mostly because - what? ''Hang on,'' he says, brows furrowing. ''I never said - ''

''Yes, you did,'' Sam cuts in, voice clipped. ''Don't do the I never said that game, Dean. I'm not playing.''

''I'm not playing a - Sam, what the hell are you talking about?''

''The voicemail,'' says Sam, insistent. ''The one you left me before the - '' He stops, wincing, the strain around his eyes showing a familiar sense of shame. ''Before Lucifer,'' he lands on. ''You said I was a bloodsucking freak and you were done trying to save me. You wanted to kill me.''

...The fuck?

Dean is not quite sure what to make of that. He doesn't love thinking about the apocalypse years. It's not like they were fun for him. They sure as hell were not fun for Sam. He tries, most of the time, to avoid the roads that lead him down to those thoughts, the roads that always lead to Stull Cemetery and Sam, falling. But - okay.

Maybe he did say that?

It was a bad time. It was an awful time. He was half drunk and half out of his mind like 90% of the time. He could have, in theory, gotten wasted and said something stupid. It's not like it would be unbelievable. He wishes it was, but he was an asshole back then. He knows that. He knows he didn't handle things right.

Cas says he did the best he could under the circumstances. Laurel says he's not responsible for Sam's choices. Whatever the truth is or isn't doesn't matter. Dean is still going to blame himself for what happened to his brother back then. He doesn't know how to do anything else. It is always going to be his fault. He has accepted this.

Except, however, with this.

Because he is certain he knows exactly what voicemail Sam is talking about here and guess what?

He did not fucking say that.

''Sammy,'' he nearly begs. ''I never said that.''

Sam looks so angry that it's turning into hurt. ''Yes, you - ''

''No,'' Dean holds up a hand. ''I'm not doing this. Just shut up for a second and listen to me. I know what voicemail you're talking about. And that's not what I said. I never called you a - A bloodsucking freak?'' How…pedestrian. He's almost offended. ''What am I? Twelve? No, wait,'' he laughs, hard, humorless. ''A twelve year old could come up with a better insult than that. My daughter could come up with a better dig and she's four.'' He shakes his head. ''I never called you a bloodsucking freak,'' he says, adamant. ''I never said I was done trying to save you. Because I would never say that. Not ever. Not then and not now. And I never once wanted to...''

He can't even say it.

There is a nasty little part of him that wants to remind Sam of everything else that happened before that voicemail. What he did.

You strangled me, he could say. You remember that? You almost choked me to death and I still called you to make it right. He could say that. He could bring that up.

He won't.

''It was a long time ago. I was angry,'' he acknowledges. ''I was. I was pissed. And I had a right to be.'' He stops, just long enough for Sam to look away for a second, a guilty look on his face, same look Mary gets on her face when he catches her drawing on the walls. ''But I called you to tell you that I shouldn't have said what I said. I shouldn't have told you that you couldn't come back. Because you can always come back to me. You and I - We're brothers. We're family. And I'm not Dad. There is a place for you with me no matter what. That's what I was calling to tell you. That was the message I left.''

It's hard to read Sam's expression at first - as it is when he makes an attempt at stoicism. But then that stoicism crumbles and he looks visibly wounded. ''Well,'' his voice is low. ''That's not the message I got.''

''And I'm sorry about that,'' Dean acknowledges, honest. ''I'm sorry for whatever it was you heard. It sucks you've been holding onto something like that for all these years.'' He does mean that when he says it. This is not something he can fault Sam for holding onto. He would have done the same thing. And what a shitty thing to have to carry around with you. What a shitty thing to have to just silently live with, pretending it's not always there in the back of your mind. ''I'm sorry for what you went through back then,'' he says. He means that too. ''I'm sorry I didn't...''

He thinks of Laurel. The way he watches her closely. The way he notices, immediately, just from a fleeting look, when she is unraveling. When she needs him. He can spot a panic attack from a mile away. He knows when she's going to have a depressive episode before she does. He knows when she has a hankering for a vodka martini with extra olives. He can see when the anxiety closes in, he can see when the self-loathing starts to drown her. He can see the fear that keeps her from them, the drinking and the sadness that crumbles her into pieces, the recklessness that tends to result in a bruise or two.

Because he learned.

He learned how to do that for her. He has tried, over the years, to make it look effortless. Like it's nothing. Not a bother, not hard work, just part of him, of them, of their life together. He steps in when she needs help. He doesn't make it a big deal. He just does it. The same way he has tried, since he was four, to do with Sam.

The one thing he failed to do back then, back when it really counted, when he was needed.

''I'm sorry,'' he says, he finally says, after years, the one thing he should have said by now. ''I'm sorry I didn't take care of you the way I've taken care of her.''

Sam looks uncomfortable. ''That's not - I'm not trying to... That's not what this is about.''

No?

'Cause it seems like that might be what this is about.

''Okay, well, I'm still sorry. I'm sorry I didn't know how to help you then. I am. I will be sorry about the way things were back then for the rest of my life. I'm sorry I didn't know what I didn't know. If I could go back and do things differently, I would. But I can't. We can't.'' Dean leans back in the seat. Offers a wry smile. ''We screwed things up back then. We can't change that. Just like we can't change whatever it was you heard on that voicemail.'' He gives it a second. ''But you don't get to hold something I didn't even do over my head for the rest of my life,'' he adds. ''And you sure as hell don't get to hold it over Laurel's head. That's not fair to anyone.''

Sam only looks like he wants to fight for a minute, if that. Then he just deflates. All but collapses back against the counter. He looks like a giant weight has come off his shoulders, one he has been carrying around for years.

''Listen,'' Dean says, desperate to move past this. Get away from this mess of a subject. ''It's late.''

''It's nine.''

''It's - '' Dean looks at his watch. ''Jesus, how is it only nine,'' he mumbles under his breath. ''Doesn't matter. I got a bunch of crap to do. I think we can leave it here for now.'' There is an attempt to counter this, but Dean waves it off before Sam can even get a word out. ''Pack it up for later,'' he advises. ''I don't have the patience today. I'm gonna grab a quick shower.'' He grabs another slice of pizza for the long walk to the bathroom. ''Don't eat all the cheesy bread,'' he warns, and then retreats, pushing through the kitchen door into the dining room.

He stops just before he heads down the hall, exhaling sharply, whatever emotional adrenaline he has left starting to fade. He was not expecting to deal with any of that tonight. Weird day.

Weird fucking day.

Before he can dive too deep into ruminating on that eventful conversation, he finds himself distracted by the television in the living room. At first, he isn't exactly sure what it is that catches his attention on the television and then he realizes.

The local news is on.

He frowns at that, curious. He is sure the last time he was in here, Law and Order was on. He's also sure Channel 52 doesn't air Law and Order. He wanders over to the television, watching it for a second, checking his watch, chewing on the pizza slowly. To be fair, he did only glance at the television before. It's not like he stopped to watch. He just recognized Mariska Hargitay. Who doesn't at this point? Maybe he just caught a promo. He watches the news for a minute, finishing off his pizza, and pretends he's not waiting to see if there are any reports of Black Canary sightings.

He shakes himself out of it, muttering to himself, and bends down to turn off the television. The second it clicks off, the screen going dark, he nearly jumps out of his skin when he catches his daughter's reflection in the screen - standing right behind him, perfectly still. He turns, blurting out her name, but she's not there. He turns back to the television screen, blank and harmless.

He looks around the living room, just in case, and then beelines down the hall to her room. He only opens the door a little, just to make sure, and there she is, safe and sound and fast asleep in her bed. Right where she should be.

Maybe he does have a fever.

He leaves the door cracked and ducks into the bathroom, absently moving the back of his hand to his forehead. It wouldn't be the first time he caught something from Mary. That's the plight of a parent. But he doesn't think that's what's happening. He doesn't feel off, he doesn't feel sick, he doesn't feel feverish. That is not the problem here.

The problem is that he's tired, okay?

He's tired, he's having a hard time sleeping, and he is apparently being ghost stalked by his dead parents for some reason. The problem is that Laurel left him and he can't decide if he's angry with her or terrified for her or both. And now Mary, already miserable because she misses her mom, is sick and the last time she was sick, she wound up hospitalized.

He's not sick. He's just running on fumes.

Dean takes a long shower, cool at first, then hot, and he feels fine after. He feels more like himself. He no longer feels like he's on fire. But the echo of that nightmare persists. The bones of it remain. His mother's blood. His wife's absence. The way it burned.

He doesn't go back to the kitchen once he's thrown his clothes back on, cleansed but still haunted. Instead, he creeps back into Mary's room, feeling anxious to check her fever, his mind stuck on all things burning. Her skin is still hot to the touch when he places his hand on her forehead, but it's not quite as warm as it was. He thinks.

Maybe.

He will admit his headspace isn't amazing right now.

This fever has been relentless and he feels like all day long he's been walking on eggshells, mentally preparing himself for another hospital admittance, the memories of December's pneumonia scare still fresh and stinging. He takes the washcloth off her forehead, refreshes it with cool water in the bathroom sink, and puts it back in place. She makes a tiny mouse like noise in the back of her throat, but doesn't wake.

Knowing she's safe and that her fever seems to be going down doesn't make him feel any better. He's not sure why. He's not sure what it is. The atmosphere is off tonight. The house is too quiet, too still. There is an unsettling energy in the air, like a crackle of electricity, something vaguely familiar but not something he can place right away. Something is...

Something is just off.

He reluctantly leaves Mary to her slumber and retreats to the bathroom, intent on checking their stock of Children's Tylenol and ibuprofen. His thoughts, as he rummages through the drawers and medicine cabinet, go to his wife. As they always do.

When she was dead, back during those muddled months where he was a widower who barely slept and trudged through life in a fog of exhaustion and grief, holding onto his sobriety by the skin of his teeth, keeping his head above water only for his daughter, he laid in the dark at night and thought of her.

There was nothing else he could do but think of her.

He thought of her on their wedding day and he thought of her pregnant with their child and he thought of her in that hospital bed, still and lifeless, right in front of him but out of reach.

He thought of her on the first night they met, that frazzled waitress who didn't know what to do with him, and he thought of her on their bedroom floor after she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, trying to decide if she wanted to live or die, and he thought of her as she was in Seattle when she said I'm glad we didn't die before I could do this and kissed him, both of them rain wet and flushed with adrenaline, catching him off guard. Not many people could have caught him off guard back then, in that space he existed in without Sam, useless and foggy yet hyper aware of the world around him and how empty it felt without his brother, but she did.

She still does.

He unspooled her in his head on those nights. He searched. He did that every night, picking through memories, sifting through every piece of her, chest tight with all the love he had for her that no longer had anywhere to go. It was like he was looking for a part of her that he loved less so he could use it to pull himself back up, climb out of the rotting hole of loss and keep going.

He wanted to be angry with her for leaving. He wanted to blame her for being the Black Canary, for choosing things that took her away from their daughter, for desiring what would kill her in the end. He wanted to hate her for being so far away, even before she died. He wanted to resent her so he could stop grieving her.

It never did work.

Not a huge surprise, is it?

If he loved her less, he might have been able to sleep.

One night, he worked himself into a panic when he thought about how he had allowed her parents to have her embalmed. He laid there, on his side of the bed, still unwilling to move to the middle, to take up any part of the space that should have been hers, and he scrolled through the graphic details of the embalming process, details he already, in the back of his mind, knew. He tortured himself, reading everything he could get his hands on, play by plays and medical articles, looking up pictures and instructional videos, his face lit by the blue light of his phone, until he felt cold and numb and sick with horror.

What had they done to her? What had he allowed them to do to her?

His wife was in the ground.

She was in her favorite blue dress and sensible heels, with her hair and makeup done, her hands folded over her stomach, her nails manicured in a way she never would have chosen for herself.

But where was the rest of her?

They took her out, those funeral home freaks. They took her out and put something else in. Those were parts of her. That was her blood. How do we justify that as just another part of the process? How do we make sense of the theft? The loss on top of loss on top of loss? The way the bodies of people we love are cleaved and cracked and pulled apart, turned into nothing but biological waste?

What happened to what they took out? What did they do with it? Where did she go? How can people choose this for their loved ones? How can people want to do this for a living - drain the blood and bag up the organs and call it waste?

What truly demented things humans do to one another.

That was a person once, that shell you have vacuumed out, all that red you call waste, unusable remains, garbage. It made a living thing. All that red. That was his wife. Her body held her heart and her blood, kidneys and liver, muscles and tendons. It breathed once, it walked and talked, it smiled. Her body grew and birthed their child, it was a home, it created life, it lived through all that suffering and all that pain, and these people just emptied it out, poured it full of chemicals, and didn't look back? That's fucking deranged.

And that's what her parents wanted?

How can a parent want that for their child?

When his father died, he and Sam wrapped him in sheets, tied knots to keep it in place, threw a tarp over him, and burned him in a field in the middle of nowhere.

When Sam died, he put his baby brother to bed and sold his soul to hell to bring him back.

These things felt more like love than this.

How did this - embalming, chemicals and caked on makeup, sensible heels and shitty manicures - become a normal part of death for the average person? He could have taken her body from the hospital that night and buried her in the backyard in her garden like a fucking psychopath and that would have been more loving than what he let them do to her. He could have thrown her body from a cliff in Big Sur and watched the ocean wind its arms around her and take her away and that would have been kinder. How can they just take her out of her body and throw her away and act like that's just how it goes? How could her parents do that to her?

How could he have let them?

They hurt her. They stole parts of her. Poured her out and poured something else in. Slapped a coat of paint on her to cover the damage. They hurt her. They hurt her. He didn't stop them.

When they drained her out of herself and split her open and took what they figured she no longer needed, did they ever stop to consider that maybe he still needed it? Maybe he still needed all the pieces of her. Maybe he still needed her to be whole. Buried in the ground or burned into ashes, he needed her to be whole. She would have wanted to be whole.

He couldn't even give her that.

And she was all alone.

He left her all alone on that cold table and they came and took her out of her own body and he let them. He let her go through that by herself. Her entire life was a patchwork of cruelty, a series of bodily harm and bizarre brutalizations, violation after violation, betrayal after betrayal, and he could not save her from any of it. Not even after she was dead.

Was that cowardice or just plain failure?

He doesn't remember getting any sleep that night.

Another night, he laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling, with the most baffling thought running through his head, over and over again, like a song on repeat. It was just this one line. He had no idea where it came from, where it was from, but it wouldn't go away. He couldn't get it out of his head no matter what he did.

I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

In his head, he searched through every movie, every song, every book, every television show, and got nothing. Finally, just before sunrise, it clicked, as if something had suddenly fallen into place. He wound up digging through all the bookshelves in the bedroom and then moving onto the ones out in the living room until he found a dog-eared copy of Rilke's Book of Hours in the drawer of her desk and flicked through it in the dark.

Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

She read that to him once. A long time ago. Back when they had just gotten engaged, when she was planning the fairytale wedding he ultimately would never be able to give her. She wanted them to use it in their vows. Say it at the altar.

He laughed. He fucking laughed at her. ''I don't know,'' he'd said. ''Don't you think that's a little dramatic?''

What an asshole. What a stupid fucking douchebag. Why did she ever agree to marry that waste of space prick?

''Yeah,'' she agreed, and they both pretended not to notice the way her face fell at his dismissal. ''It's not very us.''

He was such a dick back then. He was terrified of her and how much he loved her and what that meant for her future and what that meant for his, so he was hot and cold, pulled her closer just to push her away - and that's not even getting into the drinking. Nevertheless, she was patient. She loved him anyway. Everything he wanted, she gave him.

He wanted a home, so she gave him hers. He wanted love, so she loved him. He wanted a child, so she gave him a daughter. He wanted her, so she gave him her body and her heart and let him see all the pieces of her she kept hidden away. She handed over anything and everything he ever asked for. She promised him the world, and then followed through.

And he couldn't even give her poetry?

What would it have cost him? (Without feet I can make my way to you.) What was he afraid of? (Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as with a hand.) Why couldn't he just say the words for her? (I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.)

It's not like they weren't true. It's not very us. Yes, it was. Of course it was them. It was them right down to the last word.

He doesn't remember getting any sleep that night either, but he does remember what day it was, what was waiting for him when the sun rose.

It was Mary's first day of preschool.

Laurel was five months gone by then and everyone else had started to heal, managing to love her without burning, remember her without feeling like their heart was being scraped out of their chest, but he never quite made it to that point. He tried, he pretended, he went on, but his grief remained where it was, smoldering inside of him like a carryover fire, deep underground. Sometimes it was quieter, barely a hint of smoke in his throat, and sometimes it was a roaring forest fire in his chest, right where his heart should have been.

I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

The wildfires of grief were always worse at night. He still remembers that. Even now. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to forget.

It's different now that she's back, now that she's alive.

...Only it isn't.

He still lies alone in bed at night, unable to sleep, his body unsettled by the absence of her next to him, the lack of her body heat, her breathing, her heartbeat. He still doom scrolls and stares at the ceiling while he thinks of her, leaving her side of the bed untouched and waiting, just in case. There is still someone out there that wants to take her out of herself and put something else in. She is still cold and alone and far away, somewhere he can't get to, and he cannot save her.

And she's still missing everything.

Their daughter is growing.

It's happening before his eyes. Every day, Mary changes a little more - as children tend to do. She learns and grows; becomes steadier on her feet, confident in her sign language, her lip reading, her ability to move through life with one hearing ear.

She runs.

The shape of her changes. In the blink of an eye. Her little rain boots don't fit her anymore. She needs a new sweater for spring. Her hair is getting long. She just learned how to open and close her umbrella all by herself. She no longer requires PT for her balance issues.

She is becoming a whole person. She is coming into focus more and more with every passing day, her amazing personality bursting out of her, smart and funny, even crafty at times. She is kind, like her mother, and nurturing, so full of devotion and compassion. She likes to take care of things. She carries band aids in her backpack in case she needs to help someone. She loves hugs and kisses, a lot of snuggles, but, sooner than he'd like, she might grow out of that. She makes jokes now. She tells stories. She loves hard, like both of her parents, and she likes to show that to the world.

He takes her to school in the mornings, even when she doesn't want to go, and she comes home with the giggles and all these new tales of adventures she had and the things she learned - though they're still working on the whole making friends thing. She likes to smell the flowers and always asks to pick them to take home because she doesn't want the garden in their backyard to be lonely. She points out every animal she sees, from the dogs to the bees to the line of ants on the sidewalk, all of them treated with the same benevolence.

He takes her to the park and she runs around like a feral child and scrapes her knees and cries a little but gets right back up again. She always gets back up. She gets that from her mother. The same way she got her kindness. Her sense of mercy.

Mommy says be good. I try to be good.

Her mother is missing that.

She is missing the way everything she is has shaped their girl in ways she cannot even begin to imagine. She's missing the jokes and the stories and the snuggles, the feral child and the mother hen with band aids in her backpack, the brand new marks on the height chart in the kitchen, the little rain boots that don't fit. She's missing the changes. All the little details. The hugs and kisses. She has never seen Mary run the way she runs now. She has never seen her open and close her umbrella all by herself.

How can she just let that all pass her by?

It's like they put all the things they took out of her back in place, but she's still lying on that cold table in the funeral home, all alone, waiting to be drained away.

She's missing all the other things too.

The consequences.

Mary tries, he knows that. She tries and tries. She has been so brave, so much stronger than he ever was, but she is not okay. She is really not okay. As her dad, he can see that. How could she be okay after everything she's been put through? She is four years old and her life has already been blown apart by chaotic grief. He knows what that's like. Of course she's not okay.

It's in her broken sleep and poor appetite, her recurring nightmare about her mother being carried off into the dark by snakes and the way she always seems so afraid now, even when he assures her there's nothing to be afraid of. The constant bedwetting and random outbursts. The way she, every now and then, stops what she's doing, starts crying hysterically, and pleads with him to ''go get my mommy, I need her.''

''Make sure she's not in heaven again,'' she sobs. ''Make sure they didn't take her away.''

They go to the library and she picks out every book with a mom on the cover and asks him to read them to her before bed so she ''doesn't forget how to have a mommy.'' She slinks into his room at night while he's scrolling on his phone and tells him she can't sleep because ''my heart hurts'' and ''everything feels heavy.''

Yeah, everything feels heavy all right.

That's on Mommy.

Life was supposed to be better with her alive, there was supposed to be less hurt, but instead they're just trapped in a new kind of grief. The fear and sadness is starting to make Mary physically ill, Dean feels like he's coming out of his skin all the time, and Laurel...

Something is wrong with Laurel.

He can feel it like a rattle in his chest, a gnawing dread in his gut.

It has been ten days since their stupid screaming match in that 7-11 parking lot and in those ten days, they have had limited contact. The last time he saw her was two days ago when they ran into each other at Mendoza's Market in the Glades. It was a short meeting, awkward and tense for the both of them, made even worse by the fact that Sam was also there, but it was long enough for him to get a good look at her.

He hadn't been trying to find her, for the record. It was not an ambush. He genuinely did just go there because they have the best produce in town. She obviously hadn't been planning on running into him either because she didn't even have time to cover up how wrecked she was. He's still not sure if she was sick or drunk or on something else, but she was not herself.

Despite what he said to Sam, he does know that.

She was fucking blitzed, red eyed and unsteady on her feet. She seemed disoriented and anxious, almost paranoid, eyes darting around like she was looking for something or someone. Like someone was following her, even though no one was. Her voice was tight, like she was putting all her effort into trying not to slur her words, pale in the daylight, so fucked up that she didn't even seem to realize how fucked up she was and how noticeable it was.

At the time, he had been concerned about the wound on her shoulder, the one that was infected. His immediate suspicion was that it had spread and she was septic. She had assured him she was fine, that she was taking the antibiotics, even showed him the healing wound, no sign of infection. She told him she was just tired. It didn't even occur to him until she was gone, until he saw the look Sam was giving him, that she was probably drunk.

He still doesn't know what to do with that.

Is he supposed to track her down? Force her to come home? Take her to the hospital and have her admitted? He doesn't even know how he would do that. He's not even sure what's going on with her. He talked to her today so they could discuss Mary and he knew she sounded off, he knew something was wrong, but all she would tell him was that she hadn't slept well.

Logically speaking, what can he do?

He'd like to kill her bloodthirsty cousin, that's for sure.

Even that seems out of his reach. He doesn't get to go play action hero. He doesn't get to drop everything and throw himself in the line of fire. Not when she's already doing that. One of them has to be here, one of them has to be a parent, and apparently, that is always going to be him. Which is fine. It is. Mary needs him, so that's where he'll be.

But today was a veritable shit show and he is on his last nerve and he is starting to feel that crawling sensation on the back of his neck, down his spine, that ice cold feeling of unease that he knows all too well. The feeling of a storm coming.

It's the sickness.

He doesn't know why it's messing with him so much, but it is. Yeah, yeah, kids get sick, whatever, but Mary is her mother's daughter. For better or for worse. That's the thing. She has always been Laurel's girl. He loves that about her, but it's not always a good thing. Not when part of that involves a literal curse.

Dean hides out in the bathroom, distractedly pawing through the drawer for the Children's Tylenol without really looking for it, trying to stop himself from fishing his phone out of his pocket while he runs over worse case scenarios in the back of his mind.

What if Laurel wasn't wasted two days ago at the market? What if she wasn't just tired when he called earlier? What if this isn't some ordinary preschool germ illness?

He pulls his phone out, calls his wife, and listens while it rings and rings and rings and, finally, goes to voicemail. He clenches his teeth, trying to convince himself that the way his heart drops is frustration and not worry. ''Laur, it's me,'' he tries not to sound as tense as he feels. He pinches the bridge of his nose with his free hand and squeezes his eyes shut. ''I need you to call me back as soon as you get this, pretty bird. It's about Mary.'' He doesn't go into detail, ending it there, slipping his phone back into his pocket, and giving up on the messy drawer, shoving a few items back in and closing it hastily.

The light above the mirror flickers.

Dean looks at the light.

He gets stuck there, looking at the light. It probably doesn't mean anything. How can it? This house is safe. The safest on the block. He has made sure of that since the day they moved in here. Even more so over the past handful of months. It's just a coincidence.

Home is safe.

Nothing is getting in.

The light blinks a few more times, off and on in quick succession, like the fluttering of wings.

He flinches when it happens, like a hurt child, looking away. He looks at his reflection in the mirrored medicine cabinet above the sink, weary and frightened, something halfway between scared boy and tired father.

Truth be told, he's not entirely sure he would be this on edge if it wasn't for the nightmares that have fogged up this already shit day - both his and Mary's.

Earlier this afternoon, after she had willingly gone down for an afternoon nap, she woke up screaming for Laurel, fever spiking, and when he asked her if she wanted to talk about her dream, she just said, ''I saw Mommy in the trees. She's going to die there.'' It was the way she said it, her tired voice hoarse and dulled but matter-of-fact, like she had accepted what was happening and that he wouldn't believe her.

Something about it reminded him of Sam.

Not as he is now but as he was back in '05, after Jess, after Dad, after Dean had exploded back into his pristine life at Stanford and dragged him back into the mud.

Twenty-two and in pain, angry and terrified and hurt, raw with grief, struggling with the horrifying new power he did not understand, too scared to speak of it. It's not the same situation, not even close, but there was something about the look in Mary's eyes, the resigned tone of her voice, that reminded him of the scared kid Sammy was back then. One of his biggest fears with Mary is that he will fuck up with her the way he fucked up with Sam.

So he had asked her, as calm as he could be, ''What do you mean?''

She didn't answer, glazed over eyes staring at nothing, fingers toying with the ears of the stuffed dog she had clutched close to her. Eventually, she looked back at him, vacant, and said, ''I was in the trees.''

''The trees?'' He sat down on the bed with her, thermometer in hand. ''The woods?''

''Yeah.''

''That sounds scary,'' he said.

''But I wasn't scared,'' she countered, and then opened her mouth, no complaining, no fuss, so he could stick the thermometer in. ''I was just sad,'' she mumbled around the thermometer.

He waited until the thermometer beeped before he asked, taking it out of her mouth, ''Why were you sad?''

''Because Mommy couldn't see me.''

''No?'' He looked down at the digital thermometer, blinking 103 at him mockingly. ''But you could see her?''

''I could see her,'' Mary said, lying back down in her bed. ''I was in the woods with Mommy. I...'' She trailed off as he draped a cool cloth over her forehead, frowning, confused. ''I was in the woods with Mommy...''

''Did Mommy say anything?''

''Mommy was...in the trees...'' She shook her head, frowning again, squinting like she was trying to see something off in the distance that only she could see. ''She... She came out of the trees. Maybe she was the trees. I don't remember. I'm too hot.'' She whined a little, rubbing a hand over her face. ''She was running. And then she fell. She was crying.''

''Why was she crying?''

''I don't know,'' she shrugged. ''She was sick.''

''She was sick?''

''Yeah.'' She tugged at her hair and rolled on her side slightly, the cool cloth sliding onto her pillow. ''She throwed up on the ground. It was all black. Or maybe red.'' She wrinkled her nose. ''Yucky. A - And she was bleeding.''

He picked up the cloth, dabbing at her flushed cheeks with it. ''Do you know where she was bleeding from?''

''It was on her clothes,'' Mary told him. ''She was wearing a white dress. She was crying a lot. I think she's scared.''

''Why do you think she's scared?''

''I don't know. Maybe she got lost,'' she proposed. ''Maybe she got lost and we have to find her. You should do that, Daddy. You should go find Mommy. She needs you to find her.''

Now he is standing here, in the bathroom, the light flickering, the memory of his own sickening nightmare running through his head, and he can't get her hollow voice out of his head. She needs you to find her. Mary has had nightmares before, even night terrors, it's not an uncommon occurrence, but she has never before been so detailed, so specific, so...blank.

In all likelihood, it's the fever. That is what makes sense. She's not herself. It's messing with her. Fever dreams can be brutal. Especially when you're already dealing with so much inner turmoil.

But what if it's more than that?

He opens the medicine cabinet and the light flickers again, the flap of a butterfly's wings, the stuttering of a nervous heart. It's just the bulb. He hasn't changed it in a while. Light bulbs can just flicker.

He still can't help but think of his mother. Not just because of tonight's eerie nightmare, but because...he's been thinking about her a lot lately. His mother.

Mary I.

The fading light of her that only exists in memories - specifically his. He has been thinking about her a lot lately, he says, as if he is not always thinking about her. As if he has not been thinking of her since he was four years old. His father lingers in his dreams. His mother lingers everywhere else. She was the first. She was the beginning and the end. Always on his mind. He thinks about her when there is nothing else to think about. He thinks about how heavy she is, about how terrifying it is to be the only one left alive who remembers someone, but he's been thinking about her even more than usual lately. The parts of her he remembers and the parts he doesn't. Who she was and who she wasn't. The secrets she kept. The way she died.

The way she lives on.

You look like her, Dad used to say, worn ragged, drunk on rotgut and the maddening grief of December, her birthday like a cage around what they called a family every year. You have her eyes.

Hello, my little lovebug, her voice said, clear as a bell while he laid in the dirt and gravel on the Marlowe coven's property just outside of Seabeck, Washington, bleeding out, the winter air crisp and thick with the smell of saltwater, his hysterical wife pleading, her hands covered with his blood. Are you ready to go?

He doesn't remember ever hearing her voice before during death. He remembers searching for it a few times. When his heart was giving out. When the hounds came. In the Pit. He didn't find it until Seabeck. He doesn't know why.

Dean stares at the inside of the medicine cabinet, the band aids and the Neosporin, Pepto Bismol and addict safe meds. He has been seeing his mother in the mirror, not a ghost but a shadow, a warning. He's just not sure what the warning is. Who it's for. He is his mother's son - at least that's what Dad used to say, an insult and a compliment and a horrible fear all rolled into one - but that seems too easy. This isn't about him.

Thing is, sometimes his wife reminds him of his mother. Not in the way she looks or the way she speaks but the way she leaves a room. The burdens she carries with her and the ones she leaves people with when she goes, all that pain and all those secrets, a well-intentioned betrayal but still a betrayal. He does not particularly care if that's a fair thought.

In fact, let's take it a step further.

This is a pattern with all of them - all these destructive people he loves. Mom, Dad, Laurel, Sam, Cas. They blow everything to pieces without ever thinking about who has to clean up the wreckage and tell themselves that they mean well. That they're doing the best they can. If there's mess to make, you can be sure they'll make it. If there is a choice to be made, you can be sure they'll make the wrong one. If there is a room to leave, you can be damn sure they'll leave it.

And he will always be the one left behind, standing here by himself, bracing himself for the long slow clean up ahead.

This is the mess I said you would make, he thinks, and now I have to wash it away for you. Aren't you tired of this? Aren't you tired?

Earlier, he sat in the rocking chair in Mary's room and held her in his arms and he thought about his wife and he thought about his mother and he thought about how unfair it was that neither of them had the chance to do this for very long. How unfair it was that neither one of them seemed to think about that when they made the choices they made that ultimately led to November 2nd 1983 and April 6th 2016.

Mary is four now, she rarely asks to be held and rocked to sleep anymore because she says she's a ''big girl now'' and just needs ''hugs and kisses and some stories'' but she was restless tonight, not feeling well, tugging at him, constantly begging for her mother, sad eyed and pale, so it didn't take much for him to give in. It was nice to sit there with her in the silence, to remember when she was tiny, when this was all she needed to fall asleep, but it hurt to think about them.

About what they missed out on.

He was born hungry, born starved, and so he latched onto his mother and didn't let go. Even when she died, he didn't let go. He smelled ash every day of his life. He loved his father, loves his father, he thinks of him often, but he remembers him the way the forest remembers the fire. His mother is different. She is a softer memory, despite everything; the scent of lilac and the taste of honey, the sound of Led Zeppelin's Ramble On and Katharine Hepburn's laugh.

When she died, he made her up inside his head to keep her with him. He made a conscious choice to be haunted by her. To stand in her shadow. He searched for her everywhere - mostly the mirror. The softness in her is the softness in him is the softness in his little girl, and that's what he has.

That is what he has of his dead mother.

Yesterday, he caught Mary standing in front of the full length mirror, giggling at her reflection and when he asked her what she was doing, she turned to him, bright eyed, and said, ''Grandpa says I have Mommy's eyes!''

He wonders what Laurel will be for Mary when she grows up, if she will just be a memory, the ghost in the mirror, a drifting nostalgic scent caught in the wind, a lifetime of loss.

Years ago, in that apartment downtown, on a Halloween night, Laurel held Mary on her chest, both of them still slick with blood, and said, I know you.

Before that, back in Kansas, the first Mary held Dean in her arms in a sterile white hospital on a cold January day and promised him, Angels are watching over you.

What neither of them thought to say, maybe what neither of them knew at the time, what they didn't want to think about, was a warning: Eventually, I will have to let go.

That's the lesson.

The first person you love is the first person you lose. What is a mother if not the first hands that hold you and the first hands that let go?

Dean and Mary know that. It's not fair, but they do know that.

He sighs heavily and grabs the Children's Tylenol. He closes the cabinet, his eyes just barely catching the mirror and he startles, his whole body going cold as he whirls around to confront -

Nothing.

There is nothing there. There is no one behind him.

He could have sworn he saw...

''Daddy.''

The tiny voice is shaky and scared and when he turns his attention to his daughter, he swears he short circuits for a second, freezing in place, a feeling of complete and utter terror slamming into him like a runaway train at the sight before him.

Mary, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, covered in blood.

His breathing speeds up as his sluggish, exhausted brain struggles to catch up, to understand what he's seeing. No, he thinks. Not her.

She looks up at him, pouting, pitiful and distressed but not quite panicked, blood all over her face, dripping onto her Frozen nightgown, coating her hands. ''I need a band aid,'' she tells him, and he realizes, belatedly, air returning to his lungs, that she has a nosebleed.

''Son of a - '' He stops, clenching his teeth. He shoves past the feeling of dizziness when the air returns with a whoosh and pulls himself together, abandoning the Tylenol for the box of Kleenex on the top of the shelf behind the toilet. ''Come here, honey.'' He plucks a few tissues from the box and gets down on the ground with her, careful to position himself by her hearing ear, instinctively moving to catch the blood running from her nose with the tissues. ''Lean forward for me.'' He places a hand on the back of her neck gently, coaxing her forward to help the blood drain. ''Just like that. Good girl.''

''Daddy,'' she whimpers.

''I know,'' he says. ''I know it's scary. It's a nosebleed, sweetheart. It's okay. I've got you.'' He tosses the bloody tissues onto the floor and grabs a couple more, red droplets landing on the floor in the small amount of time it takes him to replace the tissues.

It's just a nosebleed. Not uncommon during illnesses. Not uncommon during winter. Although it is a lot of blood. Much more than usual. She's had nosebleeds before, but those were just a few dribbles. It's pouring from her nose right now, bright red splashed against her pale skin, her blue Frozen nightgown.

Mary gags, choking on the blood, and then starts crying. ''I don't like this!''

''I don't blame you,'' he says, his hand moving down to rub her back. ''It sucks. It'll be over soon. Breathe through your mouth for me, okay? Can you do that? Like this.'' He demonstrates it for her a few times, waits until he's sure she's breathing correctly and not inhaling the blood, and then he leans around her and calls out, ''Sam! A little help here!''

She gags on the blood again, then coughs, and he turns his attention to her as quickly as possible. It's not quick enough. Reflexively, as she's coughing, she stands up straight, inhales directly through her nose, chokes on the blood in her throat, and the whole situation just goes straight to shit. She gags again, he takes a frantic look around, searching for the trashcan, but doesn't have time to make a dive for it, doesn't even have time to put his hands out, before she's puking all over him.

Then she starts bawling.

He grimaces, sighs, and then just moves on. There are worse things to be covered in. Learned that one the hard way. Before fatherhood was even a thought on his mind. Once the initial wave hits, he moves fast. He grabs the trashcan, successfully gets it in front of her for the second wave, and is just groping around for the towel on the towel rack when his brother appears in the doorway.

''Dean, what - '' Sam takes one rather horrified look at the gruesome situation in front of him and mutters a stunned, ''Jesus.''

''I need towels,'' Dean orders. ''Not the good ones. The ones on the bottom shelf. And at least two wet washcloths.''

Sam doesn't even question it. He gives a short nod and then he's off to get towels, and also presumably to get away from the puking.

Dean takes about five seconds to regroup. Less than. He thinks about how nice it would be if he had, like, a co-parent to help him here, maybe this kid's mother or something, and then he comes up with a game plan and keeps going. It's not like he has a choice. He's all there is. He hauls his vomit covered self to his feet, picks up Mary, and gets her over to the toilet, lifting the seat in time for her to sob and retch and throw up another round of mostly bile and some swallowed blood.

''Daddy,'' she chokes out, and then, struggling to catch her breath, a more distressed and panicked, ''Daddy!''

''It's okay, pumpkin,'' he says, hastily wiping the vomit off his shirt with the towel from the towel rack. ''Daddy's right here.'' He sits back down on the ground with her, pulling her hair back as she retches again.

''I don't like this,'' she gets out, gulping, making the situation worse with every sniffle. ''Make it stop!''

''I can't make it stop. We just have to get through it.'' He wipes at her nose with the tissues and gently pinches the bridge of her nose. ''I know it's hard, Mary, but I need you to try not to swallow the blood and breathe through your mouth.''

''I can't!''

''You can.''

''I want Mommy!''

''Mary - ''

''I want Mommy,'' she blubbers. ''Go get my mommy!''

''Sweetie, I know you want your mom,'' he tries. ''I want her too, but she can't be here right now.''

''Go get her,'' she screeches. ''Go get my mommy! I need my mommy!'' She stomps her foot, coughs, and pukes again.

If he hadn't learned it the hard way years and years ago during Sam's carsickness phase when he was seven, today would have been a real lesson to never underestimate the amount of vomit a child can have in them. As a whole, the Exorcist was not super realistic, but that one specific part was pretty on the nose for life with a kid who has a sensitive gag reflex.

''I'm sorry, honeybee,'' he tells her, because it's all he can tell her, rubbing her back. ''I know you need her. I'm so sorry she's not here.''

''Hey.'' Sam appears right on time, handing over a towel, getting to work wetting a couple washcloths. ''Should I get her some water?''

''I don't want water,'' she screams. ''I want my mommy!''

Dean uses the towel from the rack to scrub at his shirt, then drapes the fresh one over his shoulder, and takes a risk. He sits back against the bathtub and lifts Mary into his arms. He keeps the trashcan close, just in case, but she's crying and she's scared and she doesn't understand what's happening, why he can't fix it for her, where her mother is, so he needs to hold her. He is the only one left who can do this. He takes her feverish body onto his lap and gets her leaning forward. ''Just breathe with me for a minute here, Mary Bea,'' he encourages. ''We're okay. We can do it.'' He takes the wet cloth from Sam and places it over the bridge of her nose, pinching. ''I know,'' he soothes when she whimpers. ''But it'll help stop the bleeding.''

''I want - I want my mommy to come back,'' she croaks out, a sob in her throat, miserable and exhausted and sweaty with fever again.

''I want your mommy to come back too,'' he says. He doesn't know what else to say. ''Maybe we'll call her in a bit.'' He can feel his brother's eyes boring into him at that one, but he, mercifully, doesn't say anything.

Sam wets another cloth, grabs the box of forgotten Kleenex, and sits down in front of them, wiping the blood drying on Mary's hands off with the wet cloth. Once he's done that, he grabs a tissue and wipes at the dribbling blood on her face. ''I'm just going to keep the blood out of our mouth, bee,'' he says. ''You don't want that yucky stuff in there. Keep breathing with your dad.''

Mary gets out a rather pitiful sounding, ''Okay.''

''Uncle Sammy knows all about nosebleeds,'' Dean says, trying his best to liven up his voice. ''He used to get them all the time when he was a kid.''

''I did,'' Sam nods. ''Every winter. Like clockwork.''

''I don't like it,'' Mary declares tearfully. ''I want it to go away.''

''It will, baby, you just have to be patient,'' Sam says. ''It's already slowing down. That's a good sign.''

''My mouth tastes funny.''

''As soon as the bleeding stops, we'll get you some water,'' Dean promises.

She's quiet for a minute and then asks, voice small, ''And then we'll call Mommy?''

Dean avoids Sam's gaze. Yes, okay, fine, that might have been...not the best thing to promise. It's not like Laurel is reliable when it comes to answering her phone lately. Especially at night, which are Canary's busiest business hours. This morning was the first time she picked up the phone for him in weeks.

It was also the first time she directly told him to give Mary a message. Tell her I said hi, was the message. Tell her I said hi and that I'm okay and that I love her so much.

So he did.

Mary was over the moon.

She was so excited that her mom had said something to her. For about five minutes. Then the disappointment set in. ''But when is she coming home?'' She'd asked, and then burst into tears. She hadn't been able to articulate why she was upset - ''I'm not sad,'' she had cried out, pushing him away when he tried to hug her - but he understood. It's nice to know Mom's out there and that she remembers her, but it doesn't make her absence any easier to bear.

He saw his mother once. After she was gone. Lawrence, Kansas. 2006. A house full of ghosts, both real and imagined, made out of grief and trauma scars and leftover energy. The price of love and the stink of death. Mom was one of those leftovers. A woman made of flames. Just remnants left behind. Not her, not really, but close enough. And he saw her.

He saw her face. He heard her voice. She looked right at him. For the first time since he was four, he heard what his name sounded like when it came from his mother's mouth. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He hoarded the sound of her voice in his head until, eventually, it faded once more. He loved her then like he loved her before. Like he still loves her now.

But it didn't change anything.

His mother was in front of him for a split second and then she was gone again. She was still dead, still gone, there was still an empty space in his life where she should have been, a hollow spot in his chest, an ache in his throat where the grief lived and still lives now.

Grief, like fire, requires oxygen.

As long as he's breathing, he will miss his mother. She could come back tomorrow, walk into his life just as she was, a miracle like his wife, like his brother, and he would still miss her. It's part of him. The grief and love he has for his mother, the sorrow and devotion he has been shaped with, are woven into the very fabric of his being at this point. He wouldn't know who he was without it.

At four, the same age he was when his mother died, Mary is learning how to live with equal parts adoration and despair when it comes to her mother. It's a harsh lesson to learn. It hurts.

Dean has never hated Laurel, not once, not when he was angry with her, resentful of her choices, not when he was scared, when he was suffering without her, but if she keeps doing this to his kid, he's starting to think he could learn.

''Sure,'' he says, and then clears his throat. ''We'll call Mom later. She might be sleeping, though. It's late.''

''Oh,'' Mary says, dejected. She doesn't say anything else for a minute or two, and he wishes he could see her face, gauge how upset she is, but then she lets out this great big long suffering sigh and says, seriously, ''I should be in bed.''

He laughs, relieved, leaning in to press a kiss to her sweat dampened hair. ''Yes, you should be.''

''The good news,'' Sam says, pulling away from her, ''is that the bleeding has stopped. Which means you can go back to bed. You might even be able to get another story out of your dad.''

''No more blood?'' Mary asks.

''No more blood,'' Sam confirms.

''See,'' Dean says, as cheerful as he can muster, draping the wet cloth over his other shoulder, letting her turn around and curl into him, burrowing her face into the towel. ''I told you we'd get through it.''

She wipes her face on the towel and winds her arms around his neck. ''I did not like that,'' she says for the thousandth time.

''I know you didn't.''

Scary, she signs.

''But it's over now.''

''No one likes nosebleeds,'' Sam adds, rising to his feet. ''Or vomiting, for that matter.''

''Yeah, you got your mom's sensitive stomach,'' Dean says. ''Didn't you?''

Mary doesn't respond. Doesn't even pull away, snuggled into him, nervous fingers playing with the collar of his shirt.

''Holy shit!''

All eyes go to the doorway, where Sara is standing, still in her jacket, keys in hand, surveying the three bloody Winchesters and the vomit splattered bathroom with a look of abject horror on her face. ''What happened?'' She looks at Mary, still and bloody in Dean's arms, and her eyes blow wide. ''Mary - ''

''She's okay,'' Dean says. ''She's fine.''

''She had a nosebleed,'' Sam supplies.

''This is from a nosebleed?!''

''Hey.'' Dean runs a hand through Mary's hair, keeping his voice cool and calm. ''You want to tell Auntie Sara you're okay?''

Mary draws away from him, with some hesitance, to look over at Sara. She waves - somewhat morosely - and says, voice tired and glum, ''I'm okay.''

Precisely none of that seems to comfort Sara. She doesn't look convinced. She looks like she's about ten seconds away from snatching Mary out of his arms and speeding her to the closest ER.

''Sara,'' Dean says firmly. ''She's fine. She's sick and she had a nosebleed. It happens.''

''But - ''

''And now she has to get cleaned up and go back to bed.'' He struggles to his feet with Mary wrapped around him like a clingy ferret. ''I'll clean up the bathroom as soon as - ''

''Don't worry about it,'' Sam cuts in. ''I got it.''

''You sure?''

''I think I can handle it, yeah.''

''Okay. Thanks.'' He looks at Mary, staring down at her hands, frowning, like she wants to stuff her fingers in her mouth but worries they'll taste like blood. ''Mary, say goodnight to your aunt and uncle.''

She reaches out a hand, catching it in Sara's hair as they pass by her. ''Goodnight, Aunt and Uncle.''

She seems better now. She's still sick, still pale and tired, her small body still warm with fever in his arms, but there are no more tears and her voice is no longer hollow and dull. When he deposits her on her bed, she's smiling at him and the first thing she asks is, ''Can I snuggle with Betty until I fall asleep?''

He has never been so happy to hear her ask for that ugly reptile. He looks over at the terrarium. He considers it for a minute because she's sick and he wants to do anything to make her feel better, but what she needs is rest and he knows that's not going to happen if she starts playing with her scaly BFF. ''Not tonight,'' he tells her. ''Betty's sleeping - and you should be too. You can play with her when you wake up.''

He rests his hand on her forehead. Warm, but not quite as warm as earlier. He's sure of it this time. He lingers for a minute, having one of those internal parenting debates most parents have at least once. Does he give her the Tylenol or not? Let the fever run its course and do its job or risk another round of vomiting by trying to get her to choke down that disgusting fake grape flavored syrup?

What would Laurel do?

Nothing, a very uncharitable and bitter part of his brain grumbles. She'd just get you to deal with it.

''How's your tummy doing?'' He crouches down in front of her, wet cloth in hand, and wipes at her hands to get any remaining trace of blood off. ''Do you feel like you're going to throw up again?''

Mary shakes her head, wiping her hands on her nightgown. ''I feel hot,'' she says, scrunching up her nose, pushing her hair out of her face. ''I don't want blankets.''

''That's the fever. Come here.'' He tugs her closer so he can get her face, gently wiping away the blood smeared on her skin. ''There we go.'' He pulls back, giving her a smile. ''There's my girl. Now let's get this bloody mess off,'' he says, standing. ''Arms up.'' He peels off her bloodied nightgown, pulling it over her head as she dutifully lifts her arms up. Poor kid's going to need a bath tomorrow, but right now the primary focus is on just getting her to sleep. He bundles up the nightgown with the wet cloth and makes a note to soak both before he washes them. ''How's your pull up? Still dry?''

She nods, but says nothing because she already has her fingers in her mouth, sucking away.

A shock, truly.

He pulls open the top drawer on her dresser and rummages around for a second, eventually pulling out two options, holding them out to her. ''Little Mermaid or unicorns and rainbows?''

She takes her fingers out of her mouth, bouncing up onto her knees. ''That one!'' She points to the Little Mermaid nightgown excitedly. ''Ariel!'' Thinking it's safe to skip the fever meds for now. ''It has Flounder on it,'' she exclaims. ''He's so cute. He's my favorite.''

''Really? Does Nemo know this?'' He shoves the unicorn pajamas back into the drawer and shuts it. ''What if he gets jealous?''

She sails right past his joke, happily holding her arms up, letting him help her into the pajamas. ''Mommy - '' She pulls her head free to beam at him. ''Mommy can do Flounder's voice.''

''Oh yeah?''

''Yeah.'' She pats at the picture of Flounder on her nightgown and giggles to herself. ''Mommy can do lots of silly voices.'' She snaps her attention back to him with wide eyes. ''Let's call her right now and get her to do Flounder's voice!''

''Mary...''

''You said I could,'' she reminds him, which - shit, can't argue with that.

There's no getting out of this, is there? ''Fine,'' he relents. ''We can call her. But remember that it's very late, so she's probably sleeping. We might have to leave a message.''

She retains exactly none of that. ''Okay,'' she nods. ''Okay, okay.'' She pats the spot on the bed next to her, nearly bouncing up and down. Definitely not going to need those meds tonight. ''Sit here now please, Daddy. I need your phone.'' It is hours past her bedtime, and she is happier and more herself than she has been all day. Mere minutes ago she was puking all over, her nose was pouring blood, she was bawling her eyes out, and now she's practically vibrating in excitement.

Hell, she's happier than she's been in weeks.

He can appreciate her excitement. She misses her mother. She wants to hear her voice. She thinks she's about to talk to her for the first time in nearly a month. He has his doubts about whether or not that's going to happen. Which is also why he hasn't told her the other thing he and Laurel discussed during their phone call this morning. The tentative plans for a meet up so Laurel and Mary can see each other.

His idea.

It was his idea to call her, his idea to push to get his girls together again, even for an hour or two, and, to her credit, Laurel agreed. I mean, he basically had to guilt trip her into it, but she agreed. She even suggested they do it tomorrow. They made a plan. They had an agreement. Yet he has said nothing about it to Mary and he has spent the day walking around feeling like he's walking on eggshells whenever he thinks about it. Not because Mary's sick, but because as painful and frustrating as it is to admit, Laurel is no longer someone he can rely on to not disappoint their daughter.

He's not saying a word about the visit to Mary until he has Laurel in his sight.

Calling her on the phone is an even bigger landmine. He's not even sure why she answered his call earlier when she hasn't been since she left. Still, he does as he's told, fishing his phone out of his pocket and sitting down on her bed. He brings up Laurel's contact information. ''Mary,'' he starts slowly. ''If she doesn't answer, are you going to get upset?''

She shakes her head, adamant. ''I won't get upset,'' she says. ''I won't get upset, Daddy, I promise! I'll leave her a message.''

He bites at his lip, hesitating, and then hands the phone over. ''All right.'' He points to the call button. ''Press that and hold it to your ear.''

She happily takes the phone and presses the button. She holds the phone to her ear, squirming around on the bed like she's got ants in her pants, bright smile on her face while he sits there, watching her, hoping her mother will come through for her. ''It's ringing! It's ringing, Daddy,'' she squeals, standing on the bed, and then presses a finger to her lips. ''Sshh.''

He mimes zipping his mouth shut.

She waits and waits and waits, pacing on her bed, and then, abruptly, all at once, she deflates. ''Oh.''

He looks away from her so she doesn't see his disappointed but not surprised wince.

''Mommy,'' Mary sighs out, the smile dropping off her face as she sits down on the bed. ''How come you didn't - you didn't pick up the phone?'' She cuts her eyes to him. ''Daddy, she's not talking.''

''That's okay,'' he encourages, forcing a smile. ''Leave a message for her. She'll hear it when she wakes up.''

''Mommy,'' she says, and then pauses, frowning deeply. She thinks for a second, thrown off. ''My nose was bleeding and it was really scary and I threw up a lot and Daddy wouldn't go get you and I want you to talk to me so you can do Flounder's voice.'' It comes out fast and jumbled, and he can see her visibly trying so hard not to get upset, but when she turns to look at him again, her face has fallen, all the excitement drained away. ''Is she mad at me?''

''No.'' He refutes that adamantly, possibly a little too adamantly because she jumps at the tone of his voice. ''No,'' he says again, softer. ''She's not mad at you, baby girl. Never.''

She doesn't believe him. He can see it in her crestfallen expression. The way she shrinks away from him when he tries to touch her. ''Mommy,'' she says into the phone, her head ducked down, one hand reaching up to rub at her eye. ''I'm sorry I got blood on Elsa. Please don't be mad at me.''

''Mary,'' Dean says, desperate. ''She's not mad. She's just sleeping.''

''But I don't want her to be sleeping,'' she cries back. ''Mommy, I want you to come into my room and lie down with me.'' There is, presumably, no answer. The look on her face is so heartbroken and let down that he's just...

This sucks so fucking much.

He is horrified that Mary thinks her mom is mad at her, that she's been carrying that around and he missed it, and he is so angry with Laurel for doing this. He understands, the best he can, why she's doing what she's doing. He's trying to give her space. He's trying to be supportive from a distance. He is trying so fucking hard with her right now. But she's dragging this out and she's hurting their kid and he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with that.

Does he ignore the problems? Make excuses for his invisible wife? Pretend like it's all fine? Does he lie to Mary? Tell her that Mom will be home soon? That everything will be okay?

Mary is the best kid anyone could ever ask for. She is kind and sweet and patient, wise beyond her years, and all she ever does is love fiercely and wear her heart on her sleeve. He doesn't think he has ever met anyone bursting with as much love as she has. And so much of that love is for her mother.

The same mother who just keeps hurting her.

''Daddy,'' Mary chokes out, holding the phone out to him, devastated. ''She won't talk to me.''

He takes the phone from her and ends the call without ever uttering a single word to Laurel's voicemail. ''Mary - ''

''She's mad at me!''

''No. Mary Bea.'' Since she doesn't seem all that receptive to hugs right now - and also because he's still wearing his puke covered shirt - he takes her hand. ''Look at me.'' She wipes her face with her free hand, but doesn't pull the other one out of his grasp. ''She is not mad at you,'' he tells her. ''Why would she be mad at you? You didn't do anything wrong.''

''But she won't talk to me! She won't talk to me on the phone or in - in the trees! She won't talk to me!''

''The trees? Sweetheart, that was a dream.''

She slumps, tugging her hand out of his and crossing her arms, pouting. ''It wasn't a dream,'' she mumbles, sounding 100% sure of herself.

Okay, kind of unsettling.

He wants so badly to hug her, even reaches for her instinctively, but she moves away from him, flopping down on her bed, face in her pillow. ''I'm hot,'' she says after a second, turning her head to look at him. ''I need water.''

''I can do get that. No problem.'' He gets up, slipping his phone into his pocket. ''I'll just be a minute.'' He leans down to rub her back. ''When I get back, I'll lie down with you until you fall asleep and we can read any story you want. Sound good?''

She nods and then buries her face in her pillow with a muffled, ''Good.''

He looks at her for a minute, his baby, small and sad and sick in her bed, wrestling the urge to pick her up and give her a hug or go down to the Glades and drag her mother back here. He wants to make this better for her. He wants to fix this. He doesn't want this hurt to be the rest of her life. He would do anything to keep that from happening.

Unfortunately, right now, all he can do is get her some water.

He gathers up her bloody nightgown and grabs her sippy cup off her bedside table. ''I'll be right back,'' he promises, sneaking out of the room, closing the door behind him.

In the glowing light of the hallway, he lets out a sigh. Fucking hell, Laurel. You couldn't have just picked up the damn phone? How hard would it have been?

She is being real John Winchester circa 2005-2006 lately.

Can't say he's personally enjoying that new personality trait.

''Everything okay?''

''Fine,'' Dean says, without looking in his brother's direction. ''Just need to get this soaking.'' He avoids a conversation, turning away before Sam can say another word.

He ducks into the laundry room first, focused and determined not to think about anything other than peeling off his puke splattered shirt and getting Mary's bloody nightgown soaking. He fills the sink and drops in the soiled article of clothing. He thinks maybe at least he'll be able to save Elsa. He puts his shirt in the washing machine, pulls on a wrinkled henley from the basket of clean laundry he hasn't been able to get to yet, makes a note to get a load of towels from the bathroom going as soon as he gets Mary down for the night, and he almost makes it. He almost makes it through without thinking about Laurel. Without being angry.

God, he is so sick and tired of being angry with her. He's just not sure what else he can be right now.

For nearly Mary's entire life, since she was six weeks old, he has been her primary caregiver. That's just how it is. How it has always been. Daddy raises the babies. Mommy brings home the bacon. That was what they agreed on when she was pregnant. It was what made sense. It was what worked for their family. And it did work. It did. There is nothing wrong with that arrangement. If they patch things up and get to a good place where they want more kids, it will most likely still be their arrangement.

However, they got a little muddled there, didn't they?

They messed it up. Somewhere along the way, they messed it up. They made mistakes, fell back into old habits, old issues took over, and it cost them. It ate them up inside, those old issues, those insecurities. Swallowed them both whole. The arrangement was fine. The people were the ones who needed to change.

Dean, over time, took over everything regarding parenting. He allowed Laurel to slip in, make appointments, read stories, sing lullabies, help with ASL lessons, be the fun weekend mom, the snuggly novelty item, but he snatched up that control the second he could, the moment she let him. Because that was what he knew. Because he wanted her to relax, to be comfortable, to rest, to be stable in her recovery, her sobriety and her mental health.

There were times when he felt lonely in parenthood, sure, overburdened and rundown, occasionally even resentful of the heavy load that rested only on his shoulders, but mostly he felt protective. He wanted Mary to be okay and he wanted Laurel to be okay, so he did everything in his power to make things okay for them. He operated as a single parent because what was what was easier for him. Because it was what he was used to. Because that was his entire life. Because things ran smoothly when he did. Because he was scared of what would happen if he let her in more.

Because he didn't trust her.

That is not something he often admits, even to himself, but that is the ugly truth of it. He did not trust his wife as a mother. He did not trust her with his child. He didn't know how.

And she knew that.

She never, he thinks now, fully recovered from her postpartum depression. She was never able to let go of the trauma of childbirth, the nightmares and flashbacks that had her bolting upright in the middle of night sweating bullets and crying out in phantom pain for close to two years. The remembrance of that pain followed her wherever she went, poked and prodded at her, wore her down until her cheeks burned in humiliation, and she was never able to let go of it. She was definitely never able to let go of her guilt over her apathy and detachment during her pregnancy, her fragility during the first few months, her downward spiral after the earthquake.

She took her medication. Until she didn't. She went to therapy. Until she didn't. She drank more and more, turned Xanax, which was supposed to be a rescue med, into a lifeline, bought drugs from her dealer ex-girlfriend, and that was it. Even when she clawed herself out of the deep dark nothingness and back into the light, she never went back to specifically treating the postpartum depression. She treated the addiction. The suicidal thoughts. The general anxiety. But not the core issue of motherhood and her intense fear of it.

Laurel has consistently had some form of anxiety since she was a child. She has panic disorder. She was diagnosed as a teenager. The anxiety was always there. It was just different before Mary was born. It was mild. It wasn't as debilitating. It was a tickle in her throat. Not a suffocation. It didn't build a wall between her and the rest of her life. But it changed after the baby was born.

It started immediately. The same night Mary was born. He remembers that. After it was all over, after the baby was out and the afterbirth had been taken care of, their midwife, Alex, wanted to move Laurel back to bed where she would be comfortable, so they helped her up to her shaky legs and...she couldn't move. She literally could not take a single step. She was still sore and in pain, still bloody and uncomfortable, but physical discomfort was not what he saw in her wide eyes.

It was as if something went off in her brain. He swears he saw it happen. It was as if someone flipped a switch inside of her, stealing away every last ounce of confidence she had in herself, draining her courage, and leaving behind only a paralyzing sense of not just fear, not just anxiety, but terror.

She stood there, blood running down her legs, still sweaty and shaky, clutching Mary, sobbing that she was going to drop her. Not that she was afraid she was going to drop her, but that she was going to drop her. There was not a doubt in her mind. Moments after their daughter's birth, something told her she was going to fail her, something told her that she was going to destroy, and she believed that.

It consumed her from that moment on.

One night, before Mary was even a month old, he had to run out on an emergency diaper run around midnight. He couldn't have been gone more than half an hour. When he got back, he found Laurel, sitting on the couch, weeping, coming down from a panic attack, while their kind neighbors tended to both her and Mary. They found her in the parking garage, disoriented and confused, in a completely dissociative state, unable to even tell them her name. They barely got her in the elevator before she started having a full on panic attack.

Another time, in the week between Christmas and New Year's, he went out to pick up dinner and when he got back, she was melting down in the bathroom. She hadn't even been alone that time. They had a full house. Tommy, Sam, Cas, Joanna, they were all there. It was one of those nights that just happened to turn into a dinner party. That used to happen a lot. Still, even with all those people around, even on a night she seemed so happy, she wound up deteriorating and collapsing into a panic attack. She was changing Mary's diaper, dissociated, and when Tommy came to check on them because the baby was screaming her lungs out, Laurel was sitting on the bed, blank and empty, and Mary was on the changing table alone.

When Cyrus Vanch kidnapped her, she did not care one bit that she had been put in danger. All she cared about was that she had left Mary alone. She had tried so hard to fight off the intruders, all alone with their baby, and she was overpowered. It wasn't her fault, there was no way that could have been her fault, but she saw it differently. She didn't sleep at all that night, even after everything she had been through, still keyed up and jittery, crying on and off, repeatedly apologizing. She didn't sleep at all the next day either. She would try, she would lie down and close her eyes, only to jerk awake at the slightest movement, tearing off the covers and rushing to check on Mary. The only reason she got to sleep, on day four, was because he and Tommy straight up told her that it was time to consider going to the ER and she then proceeded to have two back to back panic attacks and finally wore herself out. (And also, as he would later learn, because she mixed her Xanax and Ambien together.)

Dean tells himself, and he tells other people, and he especially tells her, that her panic attacks started worsening and her mental health started its rapid decline after the earthquake. After Tommy died. It is not necessarily a lie. It was a race to the bottom for her after that loss. But that's not where it started. Not really.

It started with Mary.

She has not been the woman he married since the night their girl came into the world. He didn't expect her to be. There was no way for her to be. He knew that. He was okay with that. Major life events have a way of changing you. However, she never quite found her way back to him, back to their child, and he didn't do a good enough job of bringing her back, so she just drifted away. Little by little. Piece by piece. It happened so slowly neither one of them realized it was happening until she was too far away, until the current took her away and he could no longer reach her.

She loves Mary, anyone can see that, and she is not and has never been a bad mother, but she is scared of her.

Anyone can see that, too.

Everything her own mother touches turns to stone and she is terrified of becoming that. So terrified that eventually it paralyzed her. Left her out on the water while her husband and daughter were on the shore. She let them go. She let them go in the water. Gave them to each other and washed herself away. And he just...let her. She was sinking and he knew it and he let her.

He should have seen what was happening. He should have understood. Because how can he not understand? He knows what it feels like to be scared. To feel like you're not good enough. He knows how disorienting it is to get a glimpse of what the world looks like without you and think to yourself, Maybe that's the best version of this. Maybe the thing that went wrong was me all along.

He understands letting go in the water.

The night she told him she was pregnant, he got drunk, he waited until she fell asleep, and he left. He was going to leave. He was sure of it. Sure that it was for the best. He was certain she and the little thing growing inside of her would be better off without him. He got as far as the elevator. Stood in front of it for what felt like hours, physically unable to go any further. To leave her. He could not see beyond that single moment, standing in front of the elevator doors, trying to run. He could see nothing without her. Even when he decided to stay, he wasn't present. It took his sick and pregnant wife literally vomiting blood to get him to snap out of it.

So, yeah, he should have understood. He should have seen it. Some part of her has been standing in front of those elevator doors for years, unable to stay, unable to go, and he should have led her home, he should have told her to come back inside, but he didn't. He just took over. He just kept going without her. Convinced himself she was right beside him, matching his stride, when she had already fallen behind. He never should have let it get this far, but it did.

They should have been able to actually make it work the way they thought they were making it work, but they were both too busy with their own stupid shit and now here they fucking are and the worst part of this dumbass separation, the space between them blown wide, is that he's realized when it comes to parenting in this household...

Nothing has changed that much.

That is how badly they have managed to, without realizing it, fuck up the arrangement they made.

And yet...

Dean has spent every day of Mary's life tending to her every need. He has reshaped his world for her - without hesitation, without regret. He has changed the diapers, given the baths, read the bedtime stories, bandaged the wounds. He takes her to school and doctor's appointments. He did the potty training and the night wakings and the picky eating phase and the nonstop question phase. He plays nurse when she's sick. He was the one who slept in that hospital room when she had pneumonia. He's the one who gets puked on. He is the default. The constant.

But if you ask Mary who hung the moon in the sky for her?

She will say Mommy. She will always say Mommy.

Mary idolizes her mother.

She is enthralled by her. Everything about her. Completely enraptured. She thinks the friggin' sun shines out of her ass. She hangs on her every word. Copies her every move. There is nothing and no one more fascinating to her than Mommy. She is her mother and her best friend and everything she wants to have and everything she wants to be. Everything Mom does is talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, showstopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique.

Laurel walks into the room and it's like all the light in the world comes loose only to be harnessed in the form of this one single person, this one bright beacon. All the gravity leads to her. She could do anything, she could get away with anything, and Mary will still love her. Still adore her. Still search for her when she needs the light.

Laurel, for whatever reason, can't see that. She can't grasp it. Can't understand it. Never could.

That's what hurts the most.

He watches the interactions between mother and daughter, watches the love between them grow, and he watches them miss each other, misunderstand each other, the space between them rife with all they cannot say. Mary wants Laurel to hold her close and Laurel is too scared to do so. He can't fix that for them. He can't make Laurel see herself the way their girl sees her.

At the end of the day, that is the crux of the issue.

See, Dean?

He knows what he is. He knows who he is. All the things his hands have done. The terrible, unfathomable things he will have to pay for. He knows what the end looks like for him. When the road runs out, he knows where he's going.

Most of his past is bloody, a history of violence, drunken misery, and hurt that never healed right. A vacant childhood. A burnt out shell of a life. He is a wounded thing, an animal running from the flames he could never get away from. A shattered, hollow person. He has been since the beginning. And that's fine. He has made peace with his brokenness.

Because when Mary looks at him, he's whole.

He is brighter in her light. His edges are less rough. He is a whole person. He is someone different, someone real, someone soft and kind. Someone to be loved. Someone you trust. All she knows him as is her father. She knows nothing of his past, his crimes, the things his bloody hands have done. To her, he is her one safe place, her soft landing, and the only thing his hands are for is holding her.

Nobody has ever looked at him the way his daughter looks at him. No one has ever made him want to be seen the way she does.

Laurel has never been able to get there. She has never been able to see what Mary sees. She is still the wounded thing, still bloody and caged, and he doesn't know what else he can do to help her.

He blames her mother for that - because a child raised on ice alone can never truly understand the warmth - but does the blame even matter at this point? It is what it is. We are where we are. What's broken in her is broken in her and she can't fix it and she won't let anyone help her.

What matters, right now, to him is that Mary loves her mother completely and her mother has left her behind. She keeps leaving her behind. It bothers him that all his baby is learning is how entwined love and hurt are. He wants her to know so much more than that. He wants Laurel to be able to give her so much more than that.

He just doesn't know how she's going to get there.

Dean leaves the light on in the laundry room when he leaves to remind himself not to forget about the soaking nightgown. In the hallway, he avoids Sam's questions again and in the kitchen, he avoids Sara's. He brushes it off as tiredness, tells them it's been a long day, and focuses on getting Mary water.

Sara, he's pretty sure, believes him. Sam, he's pretty sure, doesn't.

To be expected.

When he pops back into Mary's room, armed with a sippy cup full of cold water and a clean wet cloth, she is already tucked under the covers, sitting up against the pillows. She has Sharkie under one arm and a thick photo album open and propped up on her knees. He recognizes it as soon as he sees it. ''Hey, is that your Mommy Book?'' He closes the door behind him and pads over to the bed. ''You haven't looked at that in a while.''

She hasn't looked at that in a while because she hasn't needed to. Mommy Book is for when Mommy's gone and Mommy came back. She wasn't supposed to leave again.

Mary doesn't respond, wordlessly accepting the sippy cup from him, looking back down at the photo album.

He lets it go, fussing around her bed, making sure she has tissues and her puke bucket within reach, adding an extra blanket and some towels to the end of the bed just in case.

She takes a few sips of water and then looks up from the photo album, handing him the cup. ''Will you look at pictures with me?''

''I will.'' He puts the cup on her bedside table and holds up the thermometer. ''Will you let me take your temperature?''

''No!''

''Mary Bea.'' He raises a brow at her. ''Come on now.''

She scowls and rolls her eyes at him. Can't tell if that's the Winchester in her or the Lance, but the little nose scrunch she does is for sure inherited from her mother. She glares at him for a second, but seems to realize he's not budging and folds. ''Fine,'' she sighs. ''But you hafta – you hafta lie down with me until I fall asleep. And tell me stories about pictures.''

''You've got yourself a deal.'' He holds out his hand and waits for her to take it, giving hers a firm shake. ''Nice doing business with you, counselor. Now open up.''

She narrows her eyes at him, but opens her mouth, allowing him to pop the thermometer in and under her tongue.

''That's my girl,'' he says. ''Hold it there. Scoot over for me.''

She wiggles over to the side, letting him climb into her bed - that is way too small for him. Even with the thermometer in her mouth, she still makes sure to offer him some of her blanket.

''Nah, you keep that. I'm good.'' He takes the Mommy Book from its spot on the bed, glancing down at the cover, just in time for the thermometer to beep. He takes it out of her mouth and she pulls an exaggerated face, rubbing at her tongue with her hands, looking disgusted.

What a ham.

He looks at the digital window on the thermometer, still concerned but relieved at the 100 reading. Still a fever, but much lower than before and her mood seems much better than it was for most of the day. She's not drenched in sweat or lethargic either, which seems like improvement. She doesn't even look all that tired, sitting there, wide awake, meticulously arranging her stuffed animals before she snatches the Mommy Book from him. Hopefully this means they're past the worst of it. There's no way he'll be sending her to school tomorrow, but if all goes well, he'd like to be able to get her and her mother together again.

''So.'' He puts the thermometer on the nightstand and leans back against the headboard, pulling out a stuffed rabbit - whose name, he's like 98% certain, is Rosie - from behind him. ''How are you feeling?''

Mary giggles, watching him hug the bunny rabbit to his chest, and then backs herself up against the pillows right next to him, close enough that she is all but pressed against him. She also, for the record, does not answer the question. She flips open the Mommy Book and starts scouring her mother's life. She flicks past Laurel's childhood and into the teenage years, pauses on the young adult Oliver Queen's arm candy phase to look up at him, making sure he's still there, still watching her, and then she flips all the way to 2012. ''Look,'' she says, pointing to a picture. ''That's me and Mommy.''

He looks down at the picture, taken during Christmas of 2012. In the picture, mother and daughter are both wearing red dresses, standing in front of a window lit up by a string of Christmas lights.

Mary's dress is frilly and poufy and there is a tiny red ribbon on her head that, if he remembers the ribbon phase correctly, was very likely wriggled out of approximately six seconds after this picture was taken. She's not even two months old yet, so she's basically a potato. Got that slightly glazed over I have no idea what is happening new baby look in her eyes. Part milk drunk, part shocked to be out in the world. But she looks comfortable in her mother's arms. She looks at home.

Laurel looks tired, the standard new parent look, and it's a posed picture so she's doing her best to look okay, to make her smile fit her face, hiding behind her hair, staring down at Mary. But the way she's looking at that baby isn't a lie. It's not just for the picture. She probably wasn't at her best then. She probably wasn't feeling great. He knows she wasn't feeling great. It was Christmas time. Sara's birthday. She was a new mom with postpartum depression, dealing with not only the usual chaos of the holidays but the grief for her lost sister that had settled into her bones over the years. Despite that, despite the pain, the love on her face in that moment, staged or not, is real. The complete adoration. It rises above all else.

He remembers taking this picture. He think it's one of the best pictures he has ever taken. It's one of his favorites.

He wonders what Laurel would see if she looked at this picture. Would she see how drop dead gorgeous she is, or would she just see the baby weight not yet lost? Would she see her baby's first Christmas or her baby sister's birthday, the fifth one missed? Could she understand why it's one of his favorites? Why he took it in the first place? Would she be able to see the love in it, or would she only see the ghosts?

''Sure is,'' he says softly. ''You were brand new here.''

''I was a tiny baby.''

''You were.''

Mary looks at the picture for a moment longer. She touches her mother's face. It's a second, only a second, and then she looks up at him, curious. ''But you still loved me, right?''

''We did,'' he says, instant. ''We loved you the minute we met you. We loved you even before.''

It's not the first time he's told her this. Every time she asks to hear the story of her birth, he tells her this. Every time he does, she reacts the same way. Her eyes get wide and soft, like a real life Pixar character, and she asks, incredulous, the same way she asks tonight, ''You did?''

He winds an arm around her tiny shoulders and pulls her close, leaning down to nuzzle her hair. ''We did.'' He pulls back, hands over Rosie, and gently takes the Mommy Book from her hands, flipping back to another picture.

Laurel, seven months pregnant, standing on the beach in a white sundress with her eyes closed and a soft, serene smile on her face, wind in her hair, soaking up the last of the fading summer's sunshine.

''See this picture?''

Mary nods, but doesn't say anything, too busy sucking on her fingers.

''You were in your mom's belly here,'' he says, tapping his finger against the image of Laurel's baby bump, her arms curled around it protectively. ''We didn't even know you yet. And we loved you then. Just like we love you now.''

She looks down at the picture, thoughtful. Her non slobbery fingers graze the image of her mother's face again, like she's trying to feel through the plastic, through the photograph, right to Laurel's warm skin. Just to prove to herself that she was real once. She takes her fingers out of her mouth just long enough to ask, ''Mommy loved me then too?''

''Absolutely she did,'' he nods. He turns the page and - unexpectedly, a lump forms in his throat. He pauses for a moment, staring at the picture. ''And she loved you here,'' he gets out. ''That's the night you were born. The first time she held you.'' He looks over at Mary, looking down at the picture, captivated, fingers back in her mouth, staring. ''She couldn't wait to see your face.''

Mary doesn't look up from the picture. She steals the photo album from him, pulling it back into her lap, eyes fixed on the picture, the very first photo of mother and daughter.

It's Laurel, what must have been mere moments after birth, still sweaty and red faced, visibly overwhelmed, half of her scared out of her mind, the other half falling hopelessly in love with the gooey little thing covered in blood on her chest.

Dean has no memory of who took this picture. It wasn't him because he can see himself in the upper left corner, just the lower half of his face as he leans in to kiss the side of Laurel's head. He doubts it was their midwife. Alex still had her hands full at that moment. It must have been the assistant, the one who was so quiet and mousy - although great with Laurel - that he doesn't think she ever spoke directly to him. He doesn't even remember her name.

Whoever took the picture, he's grateful.

He's not sure how Laurel would look at it, what she would see, but he knows how Mary is looking at it right now, a sweet awestruck expression on her face. She stares and stares at the picture, that first moment, that first meeting. After a minute, she takes her fingers out of her mouth, absently wiping them on her nightgown. ''Why did...'' She looks up at him. ''Why did she want to see my face?''

''Oh, we just wanted to see how cute you were,'' he says, casual, light.

In truth, that was the one promise that got Laurel through that day.

She had a miserable labor.

It was hours upon hours of her repeatedly sobbing that she couldn't do it, that it hurt too much, that she felt like she was dying, that she needed a break. Back labor is, if you don't know and what she unfortunately found out the hard way, horrific and constant agony. There are no breaks the way there are with contractions. It does not stop and there is little relief for the pain without an epidural. And that is what Laurel had to deal with. Add onto that panic attacks, vomiting, screaming and roaring herself hoarse, hours of pushing, a near hospital trauma, and it was traumatic for her.

It actually all went as smoothly as it could have, everyone was fine at the end, he was told several times that despite Laurel's intense reaction and despite Mary's last minute sunny side up presentation, both mother and baby handled labor just fine, but that is not, understandably, how she saw it. The only thing that kept her going, that made her want to keep going, was that she wanted so badly to see their baby's face. That was what she kept saying. I just want to look at her. I want to see her face.

''We wanted to see your eyes,'' he tells their baby now, the way he has told her before, waiting, as always, for that smile of hers. ''We'd never seen your eyes before.''

''Was I cute?''

''Are you kidding? You were the cutest! You still are.'' He tweaks her nose. ''Even when you're sucking on your fingers - which you're not supposed to do.''

She laughs at this, completely unapologetic, and then offers, ''And you're cute too, Daddy!''

''Thanks for noticing. I try.''

''And Mommy!'' She stabs a finger at the photo. ''My mommy is soooo pretty,'' she boasts. ''Right, Daddy? She's so pretty.''

An interesting photograph to choose as evidence of that.

In the picture she's looking at, Laurel is flushed and soaked with sweat and tears, swollen and bawling her eyes out, exhausted and still sore and shaky and in shock. Still, Dean can't disagree with Mary's assessment. He remembers that moment, there is no way he could ever forget, and he remembers thinking that she had never looked more beautiful. She was a warrior that night. A force of nature. He was so proud of her. He loved her so much. He still does. He thinks - no, he knows - that no matter how this ends, he always will.

''The prettiest girl in the whole damn world,'' he confirms, putting a smile on his face. ''We're so lucky, aren't we?''

''Yeah. Lucky.'' Mary grins and looks back at the picture. ''Me and Mommy,'' she whispers. She looks at it for a second longer and then turns the page. She flicks through the pages quickly after that, sifting through memories until she gets to the place where the pictures stop.

The problem with the Mommy Book is that it ends.

It ends quickly and abruptly, with no warning, and you're left thinking there has to be more, it can't just end like that. There are pages and pages of empty space left, but there's nothing to fill it. In the Mommy Book, all that was left for over half a year, Mary is three. She will always be three. Laurel will always be thirty. There are no more pictures of Mommy and Mary, pieces of time held in place for that one fragile moment.

The last picture in the book is Laurel and Mary, turned away from the camera so only their profiles are visible, giggling away together, happy and carefree. Laurel looks healthy, vibrant, and alive, holding her daughter in her arms, and Mary is a joyous ray of sunshine.

If life ran smoothly, it would just be a picture. It wouldn't have any special meaning other than being a sweet memory of spring. There would be many more where that came from. Dean and Laurel would find it one day, years from now, bicker lightheartedly about when it was taken, and slip it into an album in between all the other pictures.

In this life, this hard as hell life, Dean's heart drops into his stomach every time he sees it. Ending the book with this picture wasn't a choice any of them made. It wasn't like the picture is some prelude to happily ever after. It was simply the last picture. He knows when and where it was taken. He knows who took it. He knows what is written on the back.

April 3rd, 2016.

It was a Sunday.

Laurel would be dead by Wednesday.

It used to wreck him to get to the end of this book. It would just suck all the oxygen out of the room. The last picture. Nobody's last picture with their mother should be taken at three years old. He knows that better than anyone.

Tonight's reaction is different, unexpected. There is an ache in his chest where all that missed time lives, but there is an explosion of something else as well, something red hot. Anger simmers in his gut. The feeling of frustration makes him want to crawl out of his skin.

Imagine being given a second chance to be with your little girl - and making the choice to run instead.

As much as he tries to understand, as much as he wants to, he doesn't fucking get that.

He looks at Mary and that is when he catches the look on her face. The anger drains away. She is looking at that last picture with a contemplative frown on her face, caught somewhere between confused and sad, her fingers inching towards her mother's face. She stops before she gets there, pulling her hand back, curling her fingers away from her mother.

She looks at the piece of paper on the other side of the album, the one she can't read. That little scrap he found tucked away in Laurel's clothes a few weeks before she came back with the familiar scrawl and the unfamiliar words that he still doesn't know the origin of.

I will tell you what I know of home. It's you. Always you.

Never did get the story behind that.

He looks back to Mary. ''What are you thinking about?''

She keeps her eyes fixed on the picture for a second, like she's trying to commit it to memory, and then she sighs heavily and sits back. She looks up at him, somewhat shyly, and says, ''I don't want Mommy to get lost.''

Dean swallows down a sigh of his own, keeping his expression reassuring. He is better at it now than before he was a father, but he knows he still slips and he knows this girl, with her mother's sharp eyes and her mother's sharp brain, is started to be able to read him like a book.

It stings, like salt in a wound, to hear her say something like that. It bothers him that she has to worry about this. He wanted different for her. He knows Laurel did too. They had very different childhoods but the one thing they had in common was loneliness. They never wanted that for their daughter. They wanted her life to be full. They didn't want her to earn her spot in the world. They wanted the world to earn her. She was supposed to be innocent. She was supposed to be a child.

People keep telling him how strong she is. How brave. They're right - of course they're right. Look at her! Every time she smiles, she chooses courage. She laughs and it is a warning to the world that it cannot break her the way it broke her parents. She has always been the sweetest thing his hands have held. She has always been the hope in the dark. The bravest person in this entire cursed city. Girl's got moxie coming out of her ears.

It's just that's not what they wanted to give her.

They wanted her to be a child more than they wanted her to be strong. They did not want her to have to endure life. They wanted her to live it.

Maybe that was wishful thinking. Her blood is what it is. Cursed from every direction.

''I don't want her to get lost either,'' he says.

She tugs at the bunny's floppy ears. ''I want her to come home.''

''Me too.''

She curls Rosie closer to her chest and buries her face in the stuffed animal.

Dean thinks about Laurel and Mary from Christmas time, 2012. He thinks about the two of them on Halloween night of the same year, the first time they met. He thinks about them on Sunday, April 3rd, 2016, the way they were in that picture, happy and carefree.

They drove to Seattle that day. They got up bright and early, got her in the car, and took her to the Pacific Science Center because Laurel randomly decided like a week earlier that she wanted to take Mary to the Planetarium. They made a day out of it. They took her to the Planetarium and were there in time for the morning kid's show. They watched her stare up at the projection of the stars in awe, watched her experience, for the first time, how small you feel when you're under that big sky. They took her to the tropical butterfly house and the salt water tide pool and the laser show - which she hated, by the way.

They went to Pike Place Market, even though they both agree that it's an incredibly overrated part of Seattle, and they spent too much money on overpriced food and they had a picnic at Discovery Park on the beach and watched the sunset. For the entire day, Mary was glued to Laurel's side.

Could not have been less interested in Dad if she tried.

She only wanted to hold Mommy's hand and she only wanted to sit with Mommy and she only wanted Mommy to carry her and when she got cold at the beach, she only wanted Mommy to wrap her in blankets and cuddle with her.

Days later, after Laurel was gone, Dean would lie in that empty bed and wonder if there was something in them that could feel how close they were to the end on that Sunday in Seattle. If that myth that a soul can feel when its time is growing short could be true. If Mary could feel her mother fading. If, perhaps, somewhere inside both mother and daughter, they knew that was their last day.

It made sense when he thought back to Mary, curled up in a blanket in Laurel's lap, the orange glow of the sunset reflected on their faces. If you have to go, that's a good way to say goodbye. It made sense to him when he thought about it then, back when he was sleep deprived and destroyed, walking around feeling like his chest had been caved in.

Course that's not what really happened.

Reality is, they spent a lot of weekends in Seattle. Any chance they got to flee Star City, they took. There was nothing out of the ordinary about Mary latching onto her mother during something fun and exciting either. That's generally how it goes. If Dad is the default safe place then Mom is the novelty. If Dad is the one with strict routines, Mom is the one who plans random fun adventures like a day at the Science Center or a weekend on the Oregon coast. There was nothing out of the ordinary about that Sunday, but damn if it didn't burn afterwards.

Like it burns now.

He thinks about that Sunday and about that version of their family. Before the bomb went off. And he thinks about April 7th. About what it was like to sit here, in this room, on that spot on the floor by Mary's play mat, and tell her that her mother was dead, that she wasn't coming back, that she wasn't ever coming back. He thinks about that a lot. About the look in her eyes, the struggle to understand something that even adults don't properly understand, the fear that set in.

She didn't understand what was happening, couldn't quite grasp the enormity and the finality of death, but she was scared anyway. He remembers that most of all. She was confused - because she was three and had no real concrete understanding of what death means - and she was sad, but more than anything, she was scared.

She stood there, his brave girl, wringing her hands and desperately trying to understand. ''Mommy's dead?'' She asked that question over and over again, repeating it like she was trying to work out what it meant, testing it out on her tongue, until she finally started to cry. She may not have understood death, but she understood that it scared her.

He thinks about that a lot.

He ruined his daughter's life that day. It's not an exaggeration. He knows what it did to her. He remembers what it was like to lose your mother. He has never forgotten the words to that song. It's an awful curse. A horrible, wrenching pain to learn to live with. Whoever she was, whoever she was going to be, that child no longer exists. He has had to live with that for close to a year now. The fact that he was the one who blew her life to pieces. The fact that he changed her life, and not for the better.

He knows Laurel thinks about that too. He knows she feels guilty. He knows how heavily this has weighed on her. Didn't stop her from doing it again. Except this time, she had a choice. She had a choice and she chose to walk away.

He meant what he said when he told her to go do what she needed to do. He meant what he said when he told her to come home whenever she was ready. He also meant what he said when he told her that things had to change. When he told her that if they couldn't find a way to make all the pieces of their lives fit together then they weren't going to make it.

Maybe he's just being impatient now, his frustration and hurt amplified by how fragile Mary has become lately, but it's been almost two weeks since that conversation and nothing has changed. Laurel is still gone, still running around the Glades like Warrior Barbie, and she hasn't even called or texted. She has been communicating with her father, but she has given Dean and Mary nothing to work with and the other day at the market...

Fuck.

Maybe what he's really pissed off about is that he knows his ultimatum to her meant, at the end of the day, basically nothing.

This is the last shot, his dumb ass said. At some point, we either have to fix things or we have to cut our losses.

As if he would be the one to leave. As if he ever could.

''Mary,'' he says, bringing a hand to her warm cheek. ''Listen, your mom...'' He trails off, feeling a little lost himself, unsure how to explain what's going on. What is he supposed to say here? His kid is blinking up at him, sick and missing her mom, patiently waiting for him to make sense of this mess for her. How does he do that? ''Your mother loves you,'' he decides on, signing along with his words, just to make sure it gets through. ''She loves you so much. You have no idea. She loves you more than anything.''

She looks surprised at that, eyes widening. ''More than - than the moon?''

A warmth settles into his chest. ''Honeybee, the love your mom and I have for you is bigger than the moon ever could be,'' he tells her. ''You're our best girl. I don't want you to ever doubt that. I want you to know your mother loves you. Everything about you, she loves. Always.''

She thinks about this for a second, looking skeptical. ''Even...Even when I'm ornery?''

He can't help but laugh at that one. ''Even when you're ornery.''

She looks amazed by that. ''Wow.''

''There is nothing you could do to make her love you less.'' He could leave it there. Let it rest. It's a good place to leave it. At least for tonight. But he's done that too many times. There are parts of their life that he and Laurel have never wanted to burden Mary with and he still feels that way, but she deserves a better explanation than what she's been getting. She deserves at least a piece of the hard truth. ''But she can't be with you right now. I know that sucks,'' he rushes to add when her face visibly falls. ''I know you want her back and I know she wants to come back, but we have to give her some time. She can't be with us right now.''

She looks discouraged but curious. ''Why not?''

The million dollar question.

He glances down at the Mommy Book, still lying open on the bed. He looks at that last picture. It was taken at Discovery Park, on the trail down by the beach. Mary was overtired, hungry, and giggly. She couldn't stop laughing. Laurel looked so happy. She was so happy. The woman he saw last, the other day at Mendoza's Market, two weeks ago in the parking lot of that 7-11...

She wasn't happy. She wasn't well.

Dean does everything in his power not to sound as downtrodden as he feels. ''Do you remember when she died?''

Mary nods her head and states, matter-of-factly, ''Mommy died. She went away to heaven.''

''She did,'' he agrees. ''And then she came back. We're so lucky she did, but that's... That's not normally what happens when someone dies. That's not how it works.''

''It's not?''

''No.''

''Why?''

''I don't know,'' he admits. ''That's just how it is. Death is a part of life. Do you remember when we talked about this before? When I said that when someone dies, it means they're finished?'' He waits for her to nod her head before he continues. ''When someone is finished, they can't come back. But your mom came back. And it... It hurts to come back.''

Her face softens, concern trickling through. Her mother's daughter every step of the way. ''Mommy's hurt?''

''She is.''

''Does she need a band aid?''

''It's not that kind of hurt,'' he says, regretfully. ''You know how you say Mommy can have sad times and needs to rest?''

''Yeah.''

''The truth is...'' He almost stops there. He almost backs out of the conversation. ''Sometimes when someone has a sad time the way your mom had sad times, it's because they're sick,'' he explains. ''Mom's sick, Mary.''

''Oh.'' She looks thoughtful, running her fingers of the soft fur of her bunny's ears. She seems to be processing, so he doesn't push. ''Does...'' She frowns, brows furrowing. ''Does she need medicine?''

''No. Well.'' He pauses. ''I'm not sure,'' he amends. ''She might. One day. You don't need to worry about that. I can help her get medicine if she needs it,'' he assures her. ''But the kind of sick she is... It's not something we can fix for her. I would give anything to be able to fix it for her, but I can't. It's not like the way you've been sick today. She's sick here,'' he presses his palm against his chest, ''and here,'' he taps his temple. ''It's hard to get better when that's where your sick is. Her brain plays tricks on her and makes her sad and tired.''

Mary looks disgruntled. ''But that's not nice.''

''No,'' Dean agrees. ''You're right. It's not. Mommy's brain isn't always nice to her.'' It's an overly simple explanation, he thinks, but it's the best he can do. He's trying here. He can't change the facts, he can't make any of this go away, can't patch it up, but he can soften the blow. ''Sometimes it makes her sad and tired, sometimes it makes her scared, sometimes it can even make her angry. That's the sick. And that's why she's hurt. When she came back the way she came back, it was scary. It made the sick worse. It made the sick grow. And I couldn't...'' He stops, trying to quell the feeling of crawling shame, the stench of failure. ''I couldn't take care of her. I couldn't make the sick go away and neither could she, so it got bigger and bigger and her brain got meaner and meaner.''

''Oh no.'' His girl winces in sympathy, such a grown up expression on such a young face and so much like her mother. ''That's scary.''

''It is,'' he agrees with a nod. ''It's really scary. It scared her too. And when people are sick and scared the way your mom is, they can make bad choices and they can hurt people. Like the way she hurt us when she left.''

She frowns and covers it up with Rosie the rabbit.

''She didn't mean to hurt us,'' he rushes to assure her. ''She thought she was doing the right thing. She thought she was doing what was best for us. She thought she was protecting us. But she did hurt us, didn't she?''

She looks at him for a second, crumbling. ''I didn't want her to go away again.''

''I know.'' He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. ''I didn't either.''

''I'm scared when she's not here,'' she says, voice barely above a whisper.

''Me too,'' he replies.

She looks up slowly. ''Really?''

''Really.''

The concept of Daddy being scared seems to be endlessly amusing to her.

''And she's sorry,'' he tells her. ''She's so sorry she hurt us. She didn't mean to do that. But she did and she got lost and now she has to find her way back home to us. She has to do it on her own. Which she will. She just needs some time and she needs to be away from here to get better.''

Mary rubs at her eyes. He can't tell if she's tired or upset. ''And then she comes home?''

''Hopefully.''

''And she won't have sick inside her anymore?''

He is not entirely sure the best way to answer that. ''Come here for a minute,'' he prompts, opening his arms, waiting for her to happily climb into his lap and curl into him. ''I think there will always be a little bit of sick in her,'' he says, keeping her close. ''Just like there will always be a little bit of sick in me. But we will do our best to take care of ourselves and take care of each other so that we can take care of you. No matter what. Because you're the most important part of us.''

She peers up at him. ''I am?''

''Of course,'' he says. ''You made us a family, honeybee. Sometimes your mom and I might need a little extra help and sometimes we might get lost, but...we'll always find each other and we will always come home to you.'' He drops a kiss to the top of her head. ''Does that sound okay?''

She hums thoughtfully, still toying with her stuffed rabbit's ears. She tilts her head back to look up at him. ''Can we call Mommy again?''

''Mary - ''

''I want to leave her a message!'' She pulls herself out of his arms and turns to face him, big grin on her face. ''I want to leave her a good message for when she's not sleeping anymore,'' she insists. ''A really really really nice message! So I can - I can help the sick get smaller.''

He does pause, looking at her closely, but mostly because he's trying to determine how this is going to go if he lets her call again. Laurel isn't going to answer. He doesn't know if she really is sleeping or if Canary's out beating the tar out of criminals or if she's just screening her calls and avoiding him, but he knows she's not going to answer. But…

How can he say no to that?

He checks his watch, makes a show of hesitating, and then pulls his phone out of his pocket. ''You can call and leave her a message,'' he tells her. ''As long as you know that she's not going to answer.''

''I know.''

''Are you sure? Because last time you got upset.''

''I won't get upset,'' she insists. ''I won't get upset, Daddy, pleeeease.''

Despite the fact that he does not love that whiny tone, he caves. ''All right. Then it's time to sleep. It's late and you're still sick, Mary. You need to go to bed.''

''Okay, okay! Bedtime after!''

He hits speed dial again, hands his phone over, and she accepts it with a big excited smile. She completely abandons Rosie the rabbit, throwing her at him and rolling off the bed so she can jump up and down, phone pressed to her ear. ''It's ringing! It's ringing!'' She's excited, pacing back and forth, but he's not sure how long that's going to last.

As expected, Laurel does not answer the call. He can tell this from the slight stiffening of Mary's posture. The way she stops pacing and freezes for a second, unsure what to say. But she doesn't get upset this time. There is a pause, just briefly, and then she smiles again and starts talking. ''Hello, Mommy,'' she greets happily, cheerful as ever, even throwing in a wave. ''This is Mary Beatrice Winchester.''

His lips twitch at the formal introduction.

''It's okay that you're sleeping,'' Mary declares. ''I hafta go to sleep now too 'cause Daddy says it's late and I'm sick,'' she adds on. ''But I leave you a message first! Okay? Okay. Okie-dokie. This is the message for you, Mommy.'' She pauses, looking gravely serious about this message she has. She takes a deep breath. ''You're the prettiest girl in the whole world,'' she blurts out. ''We're so lucky. And I love you lots.'' She nods her head up and down. ''Lots! I love you so much! Bigger than the whole moon!'' She throws a hand out as if to measure it. ''And the sun and stars too! And the grass and the ocean and elephants and the whole world!'' She stops to giggle into the phone, turning away from him.

He has to swallow.

''I don't want you to be lost,'' she adds on once she has stopped giggling, back to serious, a small note of sadness in her voice. ''But it's okay if you are because - because Daddy will always find you. And I can help! We'll find you anywhere. The sick - The sick gets smaller,'' she says. ''It gets better. So it's okay and you don't - you don't hafta be scared, Mommy. You should just rest. And then you'll feel better.'' She turns, catching sight of him, still sitting on her bed, and she smiles. ''And that's it,'' she chirps. ''I gotta go to bed now. Love you, bye! Kiss!'' She pulls the phone away from her ear, plants a kiss on the screen, and thrusts it back at him. She looks proud of herself.

She should.

He takes the phone back and ends the call - again without saying anything to Laurel. There's a second there where he just...doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything at all and they both sit there in the quiet while he struggles to figure out how to react to that.

Lance girls, man.

They never stop surprising you.

''Daddy,'' Mary says eventually, wringing her hands nervously. ''Do you think that was a good message?''

Dean just starts laughing. He can't help it. His kid is so fucking great. He knows he's biased and he knows all parents feel this way about their kids, but in his case, it's true. ''Yes,'' he gets out, leaning down to pick her up and sweep her up into his arms. ''That was a good message.'' He kisses her cheek and she relaxes, winding her arms around his neck, leaning her head on his shoulder. ''That was a very good message, honeybee. That was amazing.''

''Do you think Mommy will smile when she hears it?''

''I think so. How could she not?''

She pulls back. ''Will it make her feel happy?''

He answers the question as honestly as he can. ''I hope so,'' he says. ''It would make me happy to hear a message like that.'' He smooths her messy hair out of her face and leans his forehead against hers. It feels like her fever has finally broken. He hopes that means tomorrow will be a better day. For both of them. ''You're such a good kid, you know that? You're all the best parts of me and your mom.''

''I am?''

''You are.''

''I like that.'' She smiles shyly. ''I like to be like you and Mommy. I love you and Mommy a lot.''

''We love you too, kid.''

''Mommy loves us even when she's lost?''

''Mary, she loves you all the time.'' He presses a kiss to her forehead and then whispering in her hearing ear, ''We won't let her stay lost.''

''Yeah.'' She nods, decisively. ''We'll find her when she gets lost. Like when you lost me at the store.''

''All right, okay, that's – '' He pulls back. ''I don't think we need to...'' He narrows his eyes. ''I don't know if I'd say I lost you. You're the one who opened the dairy freezer and went inside.'' He stands up, taking her with him while she's giggling away. ''All right, let's get you tucked in, Miss Mary. You still want me to lie down with you?''

She nods, willingly allowing him tuck her into bed and pull the blanket up over her, which hopefully means she isn't feeling as hot anymore. ''Daddy,'' she says, pulling her stuffed shark over to her. ''Can we listen to a song?''

''A song.'' He picks up the Mommy Book and gets back in the tiny bed with her. ''Instead of a story?''

''Yeah.'' She rolls onto her side to face him. ''I want to listen to the song Mommy sings me.''

''Sea of Love?''

''Yeah!''

He smiles. He hopes it reaches his eyes. ''Sure, kiddo,'' he says. ''I think we can do that.''

.

.

.

Last night, he dreamt that a sinkhole opened up in the backyard and filled with salt water. It wasn't big but it wasn't small, taking up a fairly sizable chunk of the yard, a deep dark nothing. Rushing water and the smell of the ocean. A yawning mouth right in front of him.

It was deep enough that if you fell in, you would never reach the bottom.

The water was clear and sparkling, calm once it had filled up enough, barely rippling in the breeze. It reflected the night sky, dotted with stars, those little crumbling worlds, dead before you even realize they're gone.

The air was damp and heavy, humid somehow, despite it still being winter, but everything was hushed. He could taste the salt on his tongue.

He stood at the edge of the sinkhole and looked down into the abyss. Blood from the wound in his throat dripped into the clear water, inky red spilling into the perfect crystalline water, making cloudy red shadows. He was holding a bloodied piece of glass in his hand. He could not remember where he'd gotten it.

Beside him, in the darkness of the still night, his father said, ''They used to drown witches, you know.'' He looked at Dean out of the corner of his eye. ''That's how they knew they had a witch. They'd tie her to a chair, throw her in the water, and if she floated, they knew they were dealing with a witch. If she sank - well.'' His father grinned then, with all his teeth. ''There are necessary evils in life.''

''I know,'' said Dean, choking it out around the blood in his mouth. ''What does that have to do with anything?''

Dad shrugged his shoulders. He looked older than Dean remembered, weary in the light of the moon, but alive, even more alive than he looked the last time he saw him. He was smiling. He was smiling. Before all of this, a long time ago, Dean would have done anything to make that man smile, and there he was, in the backyard, by the water, smiling.

''I'm sure you'll figure it out, son,'' the old man said, and smiled again, softer this time, like the man he was before the fire. ''Everyone always does.'' He took the piece of glass from Dean's hand. ''We all get to where we're going eventually.''

The glass was heavier than it should have been. Without it, Dean felt like he was floating away.

Dad dropped it into the water and didn't look back.

Dean always looked back.

From the very beginning, that was the problem.

His father clapped a hand on his shoulder and pinned him back to earth, the coldest of weights. ''Part of love is letting go.''

Dean sneered at him, his rage white hot in his veins, and tried to speak, to ask him what that meant, ask him why he was here, but instead he just woke up in his bed, pissed off at the world.

This morning, in the sunlight, he stood in the backyard, the air still cold and crisp, frost sparkling on the grass, and he stared at the space where the sinkhole had been.

Someone he could not see stood right next to him, in the spot his father had been in, and she never said a word, but he felt her presence just as he had felt his father's, the sharpness of her, the cold, the familiarity of it.

Tessa.

He hasn't worked out what any of it means. He has been having a hard time working out what anything means lately.

.

.

.

Tonight, when Mary falls back to sleep, he lingers.

He does not fall asleep with her, curled up in her cramped bed, but he does not do the Parent of a Bad Sleeper Shuffle either; doesn't slowly lift himself out of the bed and creep out of the room like a cat burglar. He lies beside her in the dark and he watches her sleep, the way he did when she was a baby. She is lying on her stomach, body relaxed, one arm curled around Sharkie, peaceful at last after a long day of illness.

He rolls onto his side and looks at her. Her baby soft skin, her honey blonde hair, her little fingers with the tiny fingernails, thick eyelashes and full lips, her mother's cute nose, her closed eyes. He tries to memorize everything about her as she is now. As she never will be again.

He listens to the sound of her breathing.

In his life, the long and short of it, through all the messes he made and all the messes he had to clean up, the paths he was forced down and the ones he bulldozed for himself, he has been happy and he has been miserable and he has been everything in between. It was never easy, it was never honest, it was often grueling and painful, and it has left claw marks on his insides, shredded him alive. Life cracks you open and pulls you apart. He knows that better than most.

There was a time, after Stull Cemetery, after Sammy, where he did not know how to survive his own survival. The hardest thing about life, he has learned, is that you have to live with yourself.

Everything ends - yes, that's true.

But sometimes it doesn't. Every now and then, on a rare sunny day, you live past your own ending. And then what? What do you do when there is no road map? Nowhere left to go?

For him, there was a routine case, something normal, something he could do without his brother, something that would maybe even kill him, if he was lucky, if that was what he wanted.

And there was Laurel.

She likes to say that he was the one who exploded into her life and all she had to do was let him in, but he had a different experience. She was something unexpected, something he never could have seen coming. He staggered into this miserable city, half empty and half gone, and the second he saw her, it was like...

It's hard to explain.

It wasn't love at first sight. And it was not fate. It was something more than that. He chose that case, that city, that restaurant, he stumbled into her, that waitress with the name tag that said Dinah, a raw nerve ending in a sluggish place, with bright eyes and one of those smiles that hooks you in about 3.5 seconds, and it was like -

Oh.

There you are.

He has never regretted loving his wife, although sometimes he tried to.

When she died, it was like seven months of suffocating. He would wake up in the morning after a night of terrible sleep and his entire body would physically ache. Every morning, it ached more. His throat was scratchy, his head throbbed, his eyes were red, and he could barely breathe around it. Grief is a full body event, inside and out, and there is no timeline for when it stops. He still doesn't know when it would have stopped. She was gone seven months when she came back and he was still regularly waking up in agony.

He understood, then, why his father drank.

On those mornings, when he could not see beyond it, he tried with everything in him to regret her, to resent her, to be angry instead of sad. He grumbled about what a dumbass he was when he chose that case, this city, that restaurant all those years ago. Wish I could go back and warn that stupid little shit how it ends, he would mumble.

Not that he ever meant it.

How could he?

It hurt. Even now, here, there is still a phantom ache of grief inside of him, a sharp pain in his ribs.

But look at this.

He married that waitress with the smile that hooks you and she gave him a daughter with her bright eyes and cute nose and those thick eyelashes and little fingers that only know how to hold on tight and if he died tomorrow then at least he'd be able to say he lived a full life. Lying here, in this bed that is too small for him, memorizing the way his four year old looks when she sleeps because she's growing up too fast for him, slipping through his fingers already, he knows that for sure.

This is what he wants for Laurel.

He has, against all odds, learned to love his life in a way that he never has before. He wants her to learn how to love life that way too. That is all he has ever wanted for her. That is all he has ever wanted to give her. He wants her to have this so fucking much. He wants her to have these moments, the quiet ones just like this, where she just gets to lie down next to their daughter and memorize her face before it changes again, before she grows up. But he doesn't know how to give her that. He has tried. He has done everything in his power to love her through the hurt inside of her and the rotten people around her but it wasn't enough. It has never been enough.

He doesn't know what else he can do.

Dean gives himself an extra few minutes to lie here with Mary, watching her sleep, comforted, at least, by the steady rise and fall of her chest, and then he reluctantly crawls out of her bed. He makes sure she has her puke bucket and her water and a box of tissues and then he creeps out of the room, leaving the door open a crack behind him.

Instead of going back out to the living room or the kitchen where Sam and Sara are, he goes right, down the hall, past the laundry room, and out the sliding glass door. He steps out onto the back porch and shuts the door behind him. It's a peaceful night tonight, no rain, light breeze, but it's still February, still winter, and the cold air chills him right away. He ignores the goosebumps rising on his skin and steps over to the edge of the porch, eyes drawn to the spot on the lawn where the sinkhole was in his dream.

He can still see it in his mind. The way the ground seemed to just fold into itself, the sound of rushing water, the taste of blood and salt. If he closes his eyes and catches the scent of the ocean, carried in by the wind, he can almost convince himself he can still taste it. He crosses his arms and keeps staring, eyes narrowed, at the spot the sinkhole never was. The place his father never stood in.

Part of love is letting go.

All throughout the spring and into the summer of 2016, after Laurel died, while Dean was busy losing grip and trying to raise their kid by himself, people brought him things.

Family and friends, Laurel's co-workers, former co-workers, clients, former friends and classmates, neighbors, all the various doctors and specialists Mary had, Dean's mom friends from the park, even people from his old life on the road. It was like a never ending train of sympathy.

People brought food - casseroles, freezer meals, baked goods, deli trays, edible arrangements, fresh produce, chocolate, various kinds of soothing teas - and flowers, sent cards and letters and toys for Mary and so many gift cards he lost track. There was a GoFundMe at one point. There was a huge uptick in donations to the local women's shelter and various other local charities in Laurel's name.

A Twitter thread about Laurel written by a client she had worked with at CNRI went viral because it essentially painted her as this patron saint of all that is good and just and kind. The best person you will never have the chance to meet now. Everyone kept texting him about it and sharing it with him, so he could see how much she was loved. As if he didn't know. As if he didn't love her more than social media strangers ever could.

For the first couple of months after, the people closest to him set up a schedule. They made sure there was someone around at all times to help him with whatever he needed, made sure a babysitter for Mary was available at the drop of a hat. They worked in shifts, so he never had to be alone. There was a spreadsheet. He is not supposed to know about this, but it wasn't that hard to work out.

It was all a little irritating, to be honest. He appreciates the gesture, the effort everyone put in, the support he was given, but it got to the point where it was just smothering.

Mary loved it because there were constantly baked goods in the house and she was constantly getting new toys so he never shut it down. He allowed it to peter out on its own, diminish over time as everyone went back to their normal lives, leaving him to navigate his brand new life, the one he never asked for, the one where he had to exist around the hole in the world.

Out of everyone, all of those frantic attempts to love him through loss, Cas was the quietest.

He wasn't frenzied, the way Sam was. He wasn't lost in his own tangle of grief, the way Thea was. He didn't bring casseroles or pumpkin loaf or zucchini bread. He did not act like he was afraid to leave Dean alone with himself. He hovered, sure, but he wasn't as conspicuous about it. He was just there. Like a support beam. Quietly, steadily, he remained.

Sometimes he brought honey. There were a few days somewhere in those first few awful months where he would come over and pick up Mary for an afternoon, taking her to the bookstore or the library, the Farmer's Market or to see the bees he kept, which, naturally, she loved. It's always been all creatures great and small for her.

At some point, after one of those Saturday afternoon trips to the bookstore, he started bringing Dean books. He never said a word about the books, never gave any of those meaningless platitudes, never pressured, and never brought anything else. He just brought the books and he left them with Dean.

The books were all the same: they were about love and the immeasurable loss that inevitably follows and how to live life after you have experienced these things. Every single one of them was about what it's like to love someone and pay the price for it. Novels and memoirs, poetry books and self-help crap. There were angry books and sad books and lyrical prose and some of it was weird as shit and some of it was beyond pretentious.

Nevertheless, there they were.

Every Saturday, new books.

Dean accepted the gifts with zero enthusiasm, tossing them on the coffee table or on the bed, sometimes without saying anything. Cas was on a fool's mission with those books and everyone knew it. But he is very stubborn and he is very patient. He never took offense to the indifference, never looked hurt by the occasional vitriol, never asked for more.

He also never stopped bringing books.

The books piled up on the floor beside the bed - Joan Didion and Richard Siken and Cheryl Strayed and Elisabeth-Kubler Ross and Gary Roe and Bukowski and a whole lot of Mary Oliver. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis and A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates and How to Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies by Therese A. Rando and Grief Is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter and I'm Grieving as Fast as I Can by Linda Sones Feinberg, which, by the way -

Most ridiculous title for a grief guide ever.

What the fuck, Linda?

There were a lot of books, is the point. At least fifty by the time Cas finally stopped bringing them, which only happened after Laurel came back. There was a stack of grief in the house for months, all parts of it, the despair and the anger, the part where you don't get out of bed, the part where you beg, the ugliness of it, the wildness, feral and screaming, the healing and recovery, things you should do and things you shouldn't, both the bitter and the sweet.

An abundance of literature that not one single person believed Dean would benefit from him. No one in his life thought he would read those books.

He read every single one of them.

That is not an exaggeration. Every book Cas brought him, Dean read. He read Didion, even though he generally finds her to be overly dry, dull, and dripping with an incredible pretention that only an old rich white lady could have. He read The Year of Magical Thinking, which made him think, absently, before he realized his error, that it was more of a Laurel book, that it was something he should keep for when she would eventually need it after his death because his death that was supposed to come first. He read Blue Nights, which he hopes he is never able to fully understand.

He read

I realize as I write this that I do not want to finish this account.

Nor did I want to finish the year.

The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place.

I look for resolution and find none.

I did not want to finish the year because I know as the days pass, as January becomes February and February becomes summer, certain things will happen. My image of John at the instant of his death will become less immediate, less raw. It will become something that happened in another year. My sense of John himself, John alive, will become more remote, even ''mudgy,'' softened, transmuted into whatever best serves my life without him. In fact this is already beginning to happen. All year I have been keeping time by last year's calendar: what were we doing on this day last year, where did we have dinner, is it the day a year ago we flew to Honolulu after Quintana's wedding, is it the day a year ago we flew back from Paris, is it the day. I realized today for the first time that my memory of this day a year ago is a memory that does not involve John. This day a year ago was December 31, 2003. John did not see this day a year ago. John was dead.

and he read

I know what it is I am now experiencing.

I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.

The fear is not for what is lost.

What is lost is already in the wall.

What is lost is already behind the locked doors.

The fear is for what is still to be lost.

You may see nothing still to be lost.

Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her.

He read Bukowski, the things that he had already read throughout his life, the things he knew by heart, the things that had been on repeat in his head ever since April 6th, 2016, at 11:59 pm

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.

is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.

I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

and he read the things he hadn't read before, or at least the things he hadn't memorized

no matter how hard they tried they
just couldn't find anybody exactly like
you.

and neither can
I.

He read the endlessly tortured Siken

I woke up in the morning and I didn't want anything, didn't do anything,
couldn't do it anyway,
just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made
any sense, anything.

And I can't eat, can't sleep, can't sit still or fix things and I wake up and I
wake up and you're still dead

and he read the Atwood

That's your hand sticking out of the rubble.
I touch it, you're still living;
to have this happen, I would give anything,
to keep you alive with me despite the wreckage.

and he read all the Mary Oliver, all the things Laurel had been trying to get him to read for years

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

He read the bizarre British book about the grieving Ted Hughes fanboy and the heavy handed crow = grief metaphor. He read

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her.

and he read

She won't ever use (make-up, turmeric, hairbrush, thesaurus).

She will never finish (Patricia Highsmith novel, peanut butter, lip balm).

And I will never shop for green Virago Classics for her birthday.

I will stop finding her hairs.

I will stop hearing her breathing.

And – okay, yes.

Maybe that one fucked him up a little bit.

A Grief Observed was the one he saved for last. More like the one he avoided until he couldn't avoid it any longer.

It was not the first time he read it.

The first time he read it, he was twenty-four.

Sam was at Stanford. Dad was ostensibly hunting - or playing house with Adam. Who the fuck knows. Dean was in some Motel 6 in Wichita, feeling restless in Kansas, on home soil, the closest he would ever get to Mom, and he was reading a book. No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear, Lewis wrote, and twenty four year old Dean threw the book at the wall. He finished it later, drunk as a skunk, and retained little.

When he was thirty-seven and it was August and his wife was dead, he read it all again. All alone at night, in the bed he couldn't sleep in, with his motherless daughter asleep in the room next to his, he read

Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left? You have stripped me even of my past, even of the things we never shared.

and he read

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.

and it felt like swallowing shards of glass.

He read them all. Every book, big or small, thick or thin. He read all of it. None of them were helpful. They did not lighten the load he was carrying. They did not soothe the burning pain of loss. They did not help him to understand why, the one question no one has ever been able to answer for him in a way he has understood, not even Death himself.

Some of the books he read were unnerving, though. Uncanny in their familiarity. He would pick up one of the books and read a few lines and it was like reading thoughts from his own head. They knew the battering ram of grief. They knew his pain, knew all his secrets, and he hated that.

He hated that they put it all out there for everyone to see, he hated that people could read this and look at him and know, he hated that he felt every word they wrote because he wanted his grief to be his own. He wanted to hoard it, to keep it safe inside his ribcage.

He hated the ones he didn't understand too, all the memoirs he couldn't relate to, couldn't fathom.

He read intimate firsthand accounts of people losing their spouses to illness, some long, torturous, drawn out event, and he got mad at them for not appreciating how lucky they were that they had a chance to have more time. He sat there and stewed and scowled and hated these people for getting all that time he didn't. He thought about what it would have been like if Laurel had died after a long illness, what it would have been like if he had watched her waste away instead of watching her just blink out of existence, and he actually had the nerve to internally whine about it, to think to himself -

That would have been better.

Which is, he realizes now, with a clearer head, an offensive, cruel, and downright batshit thing to think. To sit there and have the gall to wish his wife had died a slow and agonizing death just so he could have more time. To think, spitefully, that the people who burned themselves out cleaning up chemo vomit and bedpans and piles of shed hair just didn't understand how lucky they were. What an insane take. What kind of asshole thinks like that?

But he thought like that.

He would have done it. That's what he thought. If the situation had called for it, he would have taken care of her and he would have done it right. He was the only one who could have done it right. The only one who could have taken care of her the way she needed to be taken care of. It would have actively destroyed him, but he would have done it and he would have refused help and he would have, at least in the moment, cherished it.

Because that is all he knows.

All he is.

Okay, big guy, I'm heading out, Dad used to say, with that lazy hollow grin on his face, a weak attempt to make abandonment into some sort of treat, some kind of badge of honor. You're in charge. Don't screw it up.

The night Laurel died, in the moments and hours before she left, Dean was thinking of everything they were going to need, everything he was going to have to do to aid her recovery. How he was going to take care of her.

There would be painkillers, which, in her case, will always be a complicated thing. She would no doubt refuse to take anything stronger than Advil or Tylenol, nowhere near the level of trust needed to even do a controlled dose of anything that was on her list of things to avoid, which meant that she would likely struggle with pain.

She would be out of work for a while. She would need help getting around, would need help bathing. There would have to be wound checks and bandages, follow up appointments and therapy to get ahead of whatever road lay in front of them in terms of her mental health. She was also actively miscarrying, something that neither one of them wanted to think about or talk about, but had to be taken into account. He'd need to call her OB and set her up with an appointment.

There were a lot of obstacles in their near future and a lot of pain. She was going to be...fragile for a while. He knew that. But she was alive. She was alive and he was going to take care of her.

He kept adding things to the growing list in his head of all the things he needed to do and all the things he needed to buy. The mental notes in his head ranged from look up what pads are best for heavy bleeding to make sure there's enough bandages and gauze all the way to pick up a stack of those trashy tabloid magazines she pretends she doesn't read so she has enough light reading material.

He was worrying about whether or not their bed was too high for her to comfortably get into when her breathing changed, when she shifted in the bed, looking ill, eyes glazing over, barely mumbling out a murmur of his name and I don't feel good before she started seizing.

When she was pregnant with Mary, shortly after they got married, Laurel had an awful weekend of HG when she ran out of the meds that helped curb the vomiting.

He was off with Sam, somewhere in another state, hunting monsters and ignoring that he had a pregnant wife at home like an asshole. Her aunts and grandmother were the ones with her that weekend and they did their best to take care of her but by the time he got home, she had reached the Fucked Up level of dehydration. She was confused, weak, irrational, and vomiting uncontrollably.

When she started puking up bile streaked with blood, he knew it was hospital time. He vividly remembers lifting her to her feet, helping her into the bedroom, leaving her with her aunts to go get her shoes and coat while they helped her change, and when he came back into the bedroom, she had collapsed and was vomiting on the floor, too weak and out of it to even walk back to the bathroom.

That was the night he quit hunting for good and settled down. It was because he wanted to be there for their child. It was because he didn't want to miss anything. Because he knew they couldn't keep going like they were going. It was also because he wanted to make sure he was there to take care of her when she needed him.

That's who he is.

None of the books he read covered that. He read about people who took care of their dying spouses. He didn't read anything about the ones who failed to do that. Because that is what he did. He failed in his duty of care. The one time she desperately needed him to take care of her, to save her, and he could not do it.

You're in charge, said Dad. Don't screw it up.

And he screwed it up.

He didn't know what to do with that. The books didn't either.

However, the biggest problem he had with the library Cas brought him was that all books about grief, especially the memoirs, tend to be the same. They have the same basic structural arc, the same three acts - misery, acceptance, healing - and the same basic message - it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all - and he struggled with that. He struggles with that.

Misery.

Acceptance.

Healing.

The grief story. The widower's arc.

Historically speaking, he is not great with those last two parts of the arc. He is forever stuck in the first scene. He is standing on the front lawn in Lawrence with Sammy in his arms and his whole world is burning. The mud of Cold Oak is soaking through his jeans and his baby brother is dying in his arms. His wife is lying still in a hospital bed with her eyes and mouth open, her skin cooling, her body rigid, unmoving.

He did not want to heal. He did not want the three acts. He did not want the widower's arc. He did not want people to teach him how to let go.

He just wanted her back.

It was as simple and as complicated as that.

He wanted to keep finding her hairs. He wanted to keep the cold cream and the unwashed mug with the lipstick on the rim and the red date night lipstick. He wanted to keep time by last year's calendar when she was here. He wanted to wake up and wake up and for her to still be alive.

He did not care about the tigers. He did not care about the crow. He cared about her absence spread over everything like the sky. He wanted to hold her against his bones knowing his whole life depended on it and not let go. He wanted to take care of her when she was sick. He wanted his body to stay an empty house, waiting for her to come home.

He wanted her to come home.

He just never thought about what would happen if she did.

As it turns out, even with her alive and breathing despite the wreckage, the grief remained. The loss is still lodged in his chest like a bullet, even though she is no longer a dry stick in a basket. The fires went out and the black river of loss receded, but the heaviness of mourning stuck around.

She didn't.

He doesn't know what to do with that either.

The thing that pisses him off the most is that Sam was right. What he said in the kitchen earlier. About Laurel. He was right. Of course he was right. Usually is, Dean thinks. That's why people call him the smart brother.

We are walking a tightrope here.

This is not something that can be improved by diet, exercise, and daily fucking affirmations. Therapy helps but it's only one thing. This is not a television plot where she gets to move on to something different after a string of half-assed sloppily written episodes, a carefully timed bottoming out, and an implied recovery that happens mostly off screen. This isn't fiction where, at the end of a story arc, she gets to leave her illness behind.

She does not get to leave this behind.

This is the rest of her life. For better or worse, this is the rest of her life. It's the rest of their life. Laurel is sick, has always been sick, will always be sick, and she is getting worse. He thinks most people in her current situation would be.

Dean knew that when they ran into each other at the market. He knew it when they screamed at each other in the parking lot of that 7-11. He knew it when she left.

Laurel does not heal the way other people heal.

She just masks.

He did his best to ignore that.

There are parts of it that can be blamed on Edie, parts of it that can be blamed on her cursed blood, the untamed wilderness that runs through her veins like a poison there is no cure for, a hair trigger and a blast of uncontrollable power, but there are parts of this that have been there from the very beginning. There are parts of her brokenness that are just who she is.

She's ill.

It's not a case of teenagers on social media romanticizing and fetishizing mental illness out of loneliness. This can't be cured with acupuncture and crystals and meditation and green juice and looking at the moon. California white women hippies and their wellness journeys that they refuse to stop talking about are not going to solve this problem. It's not going to go away if they move out of the rain and into the sun. It's not going to go away if they escape, if they leave her family, if they have another baby, if she takes out her stress by beating up criminals.

It's not going to go away at all.

Something like this - It just is what it is. It will come and go, ebb and flow, there will be remission and relapse, sometimes she will be sober and sometimes she will be under the influence, one day she'll be happy and the next she'll be sad. Sometimes she might even want to die. She will always be in a fight.

Controlled, maybe, but never cured.

It will always be inside of her, raw and bloodthirsty, the lion at the foot of the bed.

Major depressive disorder. Also known as clinical depression. The most severe form of depression. Possibly caused by a variety of things. For her, it's most likely a combination of brain chemistry, genetics, and traumatic events.

Without treatment, he read once, depression can worse in someone with MDD and last longer. Like many chronic illnesses, MDD can be fatal if treatment is not sought out or is unsuccessful. In severe cases, it can eventually lead to self-harm and death by suicide.

I think there will always be a little bit of sick in her, he told their daughter. Just like there will always be a little bit of sick in me.

When he met her, he knew she had her demons. Even before she told him everything she had been through, even before he learned of her depression and panic attacks, he could see it. He knew there was pain inside of her. He knew she was burning. He recognized that. Things that have burned learn to recognize flames.

She reminded him of his mother. She reminded him of himself. It was not her body that was on fire, it was her mind, the very core of her - flames everywhere, uninhabitable, corrupted, sick.

Maybe that should have been a warning sign, a show of what was to come, but he chose her anyway. He loved her still. Every day since, he has loved her. Even knowing what he knows now, knowing the fear, the burden of it all, he loves her. He will continue to love her for the rest of his life and beyond. Even knowing what could happen, being acutely aware of all the possible endings, he will still choose her.

The learning curve, over the years, has been steep.

He's not an idiot, he has never been the redneck asshole people want him to be, but he can admit that he was ignorant when it came to mental illness. He failed Sam and he didn't even know how to cope with his own issues, how to live with the buzzing of PTSD, so what could he know about hers?

But he learned.

He did that for her. He would have done anything for her.

The night he first saw her have a panic attack, the night she told him about her panic disorder and opened up to him about her mental health, he started researching. There were countless nights he stayed up late looking everything up, googling, reading articles and medical journals and personal testimonies. He visited forums and chat rooms and even willingly ventured into the cesspool that is Reddit. He asked questions. He did his best. He cared about her, so he learned to care for her.

He didn't think that was a problem. He didn't think that was a problem, but maybe it was. Maybe he was an enabler. Fuck, he so badly does not want that to be the problem. He doesn't want to stop taking care of her. That's where he stands. He wants her to feel better, he wants her to be happy, but he doesn't see why he should stop taking care of her when she needs help.

And he really doesn't want to put his wife in a fucking loony bin. Sorry. Mental health facility. Psychiatric care unit. Whatever you want to call it, he just doesn't want to put her in one. He gets that the picture he has in his head of padded walls and straitjackets isn't accurate. He knows that's outdated and dramatized, nothing like reality. He knows that the option of inpatient treatment is necessary and he knows that mental health care has come a long way since the days of lobotomies and electric shock therapy.

Sometimes people need more help than you can give them.

Inpatient treatment is not something to be scared of. It's not the big bad. It's not the scary room at the end of the hall with dying lights and loud machines. It's just help. It's just another form of help. He understands that.

The thing about all those mental health facilities, however, is that they're all away from here. Away from him. She would be in good hands, yeah, but he wants her in his. Maybe that's wrong, maybe that's paternalistic, but he can't make that fear go away. It's the same reason he never pushed rehab on her. The idea of her sick and scared and all alone, without him, being taken care of by strangers instead of him makes his skin crawl with shame. He should be able to do this for her. He should be able to take care of her. To fix things for her. Maybe it's the wrong way of thinking, but it's all he's ever had.

I want you to be my husband, Laurel said, not my caretaker.

He doesn't understand the difference.

Dean draws in a shaky break of cold air. He looks away from the spot on the lawn where the sinkhole never was and where his father never clapped him on the shoulder and said part of love is letting go.

''Hey there, neighbor,'' a voice says to his right. ''Penny for your thoughts?''

He shivers at the sound of the silk smooth voice, soft but still with that undercurrent of danger, and still tainted with that aching familiarity. He can't even bring himself to look at her. ''What do you want, Dinah?''

She clicks her tongue at him and makes a noise, something halfway to a chuckle, but he still can't make himself look her way. ''Someone's testy tonight.''

He tilts his head back to look at the starry sky. When he speaks, he watches his breath curl in the air, small gray wisps. ''How long have you been standing there?''

She blows out, sending the faint smell of cigarette smoke over the fence. ''How long have you known I was here?''

A smirk pulls at one corner of his mouth. He slowly turns to look at her, ignoring the ever present gut punch that is looking at her face. She's not Laurel, she does not look like Laurel, her eyes are all wrong, the curve of her mouth is unfamiliar, but...

A doppelganger is a doppelganger.

Dinah grins when he sees her, peering over the fence, arms propped up on the wooden slats, cigarette smoldering away in her hand. ''Well,'' she purrs. ''Come on, slugger. Tell Auntie Dinah what's wrong.''

He looks away from her, shaking his head. ''Not a good idea.''

''Let me guess,'' she says, and it's hard to tell if she's mocking him or not. ''Girl troubles?''

''Dee, you've been out here for ten seconds and I'm already exhausted by the sound of your voice.''

''Aww.'' She puts on an exaggerated pout. ''I bet you wouldn't be saying that if I was your wife. Who has the exact same voice.''

''She doesn't have the exact same voice,'' he denies. ''Your voices are extremely different. Because you are two different people.''

''In theory.'' She takes a drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke directly at him. Typical. ''Say, have you tried drugging, shooting, and illegally arresting her.''

''What?''

''To get her where you want her,'' she elaborates. ''That's what you did to me.''

''Well, yeah.'' It's his turn to shrug, entirely unapologetic. '' 'Cause you were bringing down buildings, you mean little skunk.''

''I wasn't bringing - '' She presses her lips together. ''Did you just call me a mean little skunk?''

''I did.'' He nods, straightening up. ''Yes. I did.''

''Hm.'' She stick her tongue out at him, childish even for her, and steps down, off whatever she's standing on, disappearing from sight behind the fence.

Oh, that is so not going to be good.

He looks at the fence for a moment longer, waiting for her to throw a lawn chair at him or launch herself over the fence, but nothing happens. He looks behind him, back towards the warm, inviting light of home. He should go back inside. In case Mary wakes up and needs him. But Sam and Sara are in there. He's not sure he has it in him to be big brother right now. He might need a few more minutes to be...whatever he is out here.

Dean sinks onto the low step of the porch, stretching his legs out in front of him. He looks down at the grass, the damp earth, the dew drops, and his left hand absently moves up to scratch at his throat. Right where the scar is from what happened in Seabeck.

He closes his eyes. When he closes his eyes, he just sees Laurel. The way she was. The way she is now. He doesn't know what happens to them next.

Did you know that statistics show that if a woman is diagnosed with a serious illness, either mental or physical, there is a 60% chance her male partner will leave her?

Yeah, he thought that was pretty grim too.

He thinks it's horseshit. He believes the statistic. He just thinks those men are horseshit. Complete snakes. That's selfish. And weak. How do men like that walk around when they have no spines?

Caregiver burnout, some of them say.

Fucking please.

As if they did an ounce of caregiving.

What did those useless jagoffs expect? What was their thought process? What was their line of thinking? That it was going to be rainbows and unicorns and puppies every day? That's bullshit. I mean -

Sixty fucking percent!

What were they even there for? Just to get their dicks wet? They thought they could just get off, pretend not to notice her faking it, and keep coasting along like the lazy little limp dicks they've always been? And they thought that was reasonable? They thought they could get away with that? They thought they could just run when things got hard? When they needed them?

Man, that's messed up.

Who raised these rats? Weak willed cowards, the lot of them.

Hope you enjoy your hand, bro. Because that's what you have to look forward to for the rest of your miserable, pathetic life. Die alone, dipshit.

A relationship is a partnership. It's a give and take. It's teamwork - and yes, that does mean that from time to time there will be work to do. You learn to take the bad with the good, to accept it as a whole and not just parts of a whole, and you don't regret it because that's what life is and that's what love is. You should not be in a relationship if you are not ready for that. And marriage -

A marriage is a vow. It's a responsibility. It's a fucking promise. In sickness and health, for better or for worse, till death do us part. Dean takes that seriously, even if other men don't. He understands, better than anyone, what a privilege it is to be able to make that promise and to have it made to you.

I will grow old with you. I will stand by your side. I will walk with you until there is nowhere left to walk, choose you for the rest of my life, love you for the rest of our days. And take care of you whenever you need me to.

That's the promise. Life is good and bad, happy and horrible, all things all at once, and so is love. It won't always be perfect. No one ever said it would be. Sometimes it will be work. Sometimes it will hurt. But you chose that person for a reason. You wanted to spend the rest of your life with her. Suddenly that changes when she needs help? It's that easy?

No.

Couldn't be him. Could never be him.

I take you as you are, loving who you are now and who you are yet to become. I promise to listen to you and learn from you, to support you and accept your support. I will laugh with you, cry with you, grow with you, and create with you. I will love you and have faith in your love for me through all our years and all that life may bring us.

That is his marriage. That's what he promised. That's what he would promise today if he had to do it all over again.

He knew what he was getting into. He knew the sun wasn't always going to shine. He went into this with his eyes wide open. He knew what the vow he made meant. None of that has changed for him.

Dean twists his wedding ring, a nervous habit that isn't even his but Laurel's. Her nervous hands are always fiddling with her rings. He'll look over at her while they're sitting on the couch watching a movie and she'll be playing with her wedding rings without even thinking about it, just to make sure they're still there.

She doesn't even have her rings wherever she is right now. She left them behind when she ran. They're in a box in the drawer of his bedside table now. He is doing his best to keep them safe for her. If she ever comes back for them. He wonders if she still does it. Still thoughtlessly goes for her rings only to realize that they're not there. The thought makes something in his chest clench. He flexes his left hand and takes his eyes off the ring before checking his watch once more.

Then, all at once, his body tenses.

He feels her before he even hears her footfalls, soft on the grass. There is no hesitation in her approach, no sense of caution, but also no sense of danger. He sees the pack of cigarettes first, pushed into his line of vision, and then her shoes, slippers probably pilfered from Marlene Moretti's closet.

Funny.

He never took Dinah Lance for a slipper person. At least not this version of her. He looks up at her, a half amused smile tugging at his lips.

She says nothing. Not even a scowl. She just holds out the pack of cigarettes and waits for him to take one.

He does, after a brief hesitation. He should not be smoking. Not with a kid in the house. Laurel was adamant about that when Mary was born. There would be no sneaking a smoke or two in this house - not for either of them.

Laurel isn't here.

He figures he can brush his teeth, change his shirt, and get away with it, so he takes one anyway. It's a nostalgic - and disgusting - thing. When he was younger, after Sam took off for California, during those years Dean was all alone, he took up smoking. To be more specific, he took up chain smoking.

Lee smoked. That old friend of his, always down for a good time and some Japanese whiskey. Said it made his singing voice better. Dean mostly smoked because he knew it was unhealthy and he liked to skirt around the edges of that particular oblivion. And also because Lee smoked. Not gonna pretend that wasn't a factor.

Cassie hated it. Refused to let him kiss her if he had smoked beforehand. She was the one who helped him quit. It was easier than he thought it would be. At the end of the day, there was something he wanted more.

In all of the years since, he has never slipped.

Alcohol, he found, was better. There was no need for nicotine when he had that. He went through his father's death, his brother's death, his own death, the inevitable post Hell PTSD, the apocalypse years, his brother's death again, Cas' betrayal and presumed death, Bobby's death, Tommy's death, his wife's death, all those nightmare scenarios, every bit of awful bullshit, death after death after death, and he never went back to smoking. He never slipped.

Tonight, he slips.

Dinah grins at him when he takes the cigarette. She takes a seat next to him on the step, a little too close, her shoulder pressed to his, her knee touching his leg.

He's ashamed of how much he likes it. He doesn't know how he feels about that. This is not his wife, even if the body is similar. This is not her scent, not her smile, not her voice. But it's been a while since anyone touched him quite like this; calm, friendly, with a hint of something more, an electric energy, flirty and vivacious.

Even when Laurel was here, it wasn't like this. It hasn't been like this since before she died. The closest they got was the time they spent in California. In general, ever since she woke up in that grave, her touch has been different. Everything about her has been different. There has been an urgency to the way she touched him. Something desperate, frantic. Like she wants to leave a mark before she leaves. Like she wants to get as much of him as she can before there is nothing left of them. She touched him, when she was here, like she wanted to feel alive before she...

Yeah.

He doesn't regret the cigarette. One smoke won't kill him.

Dinah sends him a sidelong glance, one of those looks he used to give people. She tucks an unlit cigarette between her lips and pulls a lighter out of the pocket of the baggy, oversized hoodie she's wearing, also probably stolen from a Moretti closet. ''I was not bringing down buildings when you citizen arrested me, by the way,'' she says around the cigarette in her mouth. ''I wanted that noted on the record.''

''Noted.''

She lights his cigarette first, and when he takes his first drag and starts coughing, hacking away, she seems very judgmental, shaking her head at him. She looks like she wants to laugh at him. ''Pussy,'' she mutters, without any real heat.

''Give me a break,'' he croaks. ''I haven't done this in over a decade.''

''You quit for a girl?''

He looks at her sharply, raising an eyebrow. ''How did you know that?''

She snickers and lights up her own cigarette. ''It's always a girl.'' She does not choke when she draws in, but relaxes, leaning away from him slightly, but keeping her eyes on him, studying him, curious.

He tries to ignore it. He gets used to the smoke and the burn by the third pull. It reminds him of a long time ago, makes him feel as lost as he was when he was young, and it makes him think about his mother. Same way it used to.

...All right, so maybe there was another reason why he used to smoke.

Even when he was that arrogant little daredevil prick, he was forever chasing his mother. When he takes the next drag, he doesn't cough and he begins to remember why he used to do this. Why this was so appealing to him. It does feel good. It does feel relaxing in a way. Like a release. A buzz - although not as good as the one that comes with whiskey.

No, it's not worth it.

To Dinah, it must be worth it.

She's a chain smoker. An impulsive one. She smokes when she's bored and she smokes when she's angry and she smokes when she's stressed. She smokes when she wants to be annoying - which she always succeeds at - and she smokes when she wants to make a point and she smokes when she feels helpless. She's the worst kind of smoker. The one who can't stop, won't stop, and doesn't care to stop or how her actions affect the people around her. The kind who purposefully blows smoke at you while she sits there and narrows her eyes at you, judgy and snide.

Dean supposes he can't all the way blame her. If he lost his wife and child, he probably wouldn't care that much about lung cancer either.

''Is there a reason,'' she begins in a slow drawl, ''you're sitting out here pouting?''

''I'm not pouting,'' he denies, a reflex.

''Do you prefer brooding?''

''I'm not brooding either.''

''You seem a little broody.''

''Well, I'm not.''

She puts the cigarette in her mouth and holds her hands up in surrender, drawing back from him, surrendering, though mockingly. She looks like she wants to make fun of him, but she doesn't.

He figures he must look thoroughly pitiful for her to stop poking fun at him. He feels pretty fucking pitiful right now, that's for damn sure. He is leisurely with the cigarette. He takes his time, sitting in a strangely companionable silence with his wife's evil twin for a few minutes that feel like hours. He savors every last moment, greedy, like an addict relapsing, because he knows this can't happen again.

He ignores Dinah's sharp eyes watching him, but when she looks away from him, he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. He could pretend, if he tried. He could make her something different in his head. Except that he already did try. Didn't work. For either of them. Even if it did, it wouldn't be fair. Not for anyone. He looks away from her and blows smoke into the night air. ''Can I ask you a question without you using your fingernails to pluck the eyeballs out of my skull?''

She looks over at him, both wary and impressed by the violent description. ''Depends on the question.''

He already regrets starting this. The question he wants to ask her is...delicate. He's not sure it's the best idea to ask her.

The reality is that Dinah is not a strong person. She likes to give the impression that she is and people may mistake her rough and tumble Strong Female Character persona as strength, but that's just a facade.

Her husband died, then her son died, and then her friend who might have been more than a friend turned into a serial killing demon and has spent the past however long torturing her and trying to kill her. And she made it through that. She survived. That's admirable. He can appreciate that is a kind of strength.

But she's a killer.

A killer who ultimately kills for nothing. No higher purpose, no ends justify the means shit, no good reason. She killed because she could. Because it probably felt good to inflict pain rather than feel it for once.

She hides herself behind her snark and her sneer, all that violence she disperses because it makes her feel in control of an uncontrollable world, and smokes until her body is made of mostly nicotine and spite, but none of that is strength. It's cowardice. He can't blame her for that, can't say what he would do or who he would be if he lived her life, but that's what it is.

Strength, the real kind, comes from fortitude. It's not that it comes from grace under fire and rising above and taking the high road or any of those meaningless Instagram quotes people throw out. It's that strength comes from being plunged into the icy water, from staring into the darkest abyss you can find, and still choosing the light above it all, still choosing to be good. It comes from not giving up, not giving in.

Dinah gave in.

She took the easy way out. She made the choice to go dark, to become, essentially, a serial killer. She took her pain and forced it on others. That is not strength. That is weakness.

Dean knows this weakness well. He grew up with a father who did the same thing. There have been so many times he could have gone down the same road simply because it was the only road he was ever presented with.

He doesn't want to bring up anything that will set Dinah off. He doesn't want to hurt her. He takes the risk anyway. He finishes his cigarette and reluctantly stubs it out on the step below. He's going to have to clean that up tomorrow. ''It's about your family.''

''Hm.'' Dinah doesn't seem like she wants to pluck his eyeballs out. She also doesn't respond. At least not right away. She gets everything she can out of her cigarette and she does it slowly, stalling, purposefully making him wait. Then she blows out the last bit of smoke, drops the stub on the step below, stomps it out, and says, without looking at him. ''Ask quickly. We'll see what happens.''

He watches her profile for a second, uncertain. ''How did you...?'' He pauses, struggling both with how to word what he wants to ask and why he wants to ask it in the first place. ''When your husband died...''

She looks at him, head cocked to the side. ''Yeah...?''

''How did you - I don't know.'' He looks away from her and closes his eyes. When he closes his eyes, all he sees is Laurel, the sadness in her and the happiness, the exuberant joy he knows is in her, the mother he knows she can be, and the fear holding her back. ''I don't know,'' he says again. ''How did you keep his memory alive for your son? How did you...'' He shrugs somewhat helplessly. ''How did you make sure Connor knew his dad even though he... Even though they couldn't be together?''

Dinah looks at him cautiously, and then answers the question. ''I talked about him,'' she says. ''Especially when Connor was little.'' She stops at that, licking her lips, turning her head away from him, gazing out at the backyard, a small sad smile taking residence on her lips for half a second. ''I guess he was always little,'' she concedes. ''He never really had a chance to be anything but little.''

Fuck.

That's depressing.

He doesn't know many details about her son, he thinks that might have been the first time he used the kid's name, but he does know that her lost boy sits perched in her sad, lonely, bitter eyes day in and day out, that little boy who never got to grow up.

He can't even imagine what that would be like.

You know, yeah, he thinks he can understand why she chose weakness and spite.

''Ollie,'' she starts, and then pauses, clearing her throat. ''My Ollie,'' she elaborates. ''He was a good man.'' She says this firmly, as if she needs him to know this. ''He was fun and sweet and kind. All the things I'm not. He had a goofy sense of humor, but he was also serious and smart. Very politically aware. He could be a privileged douche sometimes, but he...'' She trails off, looks away again. ''He wanted to help people. He was passionate about that.'' She laughs, the sincere love and grief on her face twisting into callous humor. ''He was also kind of an idiot. I mean, he had to be. I was clearly a gold digger at the beginning. But he...'' She stops. Her edgy humor falters. ''He loved me anyway. That's the thing I remember the most about him. He was full of love. He may have loved all the wrong people, but he loved with his whole heart.''

Huh.

Sounds like Earth-2 Oliver Queen and Earth-1 Dinah Laurel lance would have been a perfect match.

''That's the thing I wanted Connor to have the most,'' says Dinah. ''That love. I wanted him to be able to feel that even if his dad wasn't physically there with us. That was the most important thing to me. Because - Me - I don't know if I'm capable of that kind of love,'' she confesses, tossing him a wry smile. ''I did my best, but...my best only got us so far.'' She winds her arms around her middle as if to protect herself, her body, the one that carried her boy, the only time she could keep him safe. ''I wanted to make sure he knew how his dad lived his life. How good he was. Ollie may have lived a short life, but it was full. I tried really hard to make that real and vivid for our boy.''

She pauses again, unsteady, and Dean is not sure what he should do. If it was Laurel, he might know. This is not Laurel. He's not sure if he should keep his mouth shut or try to comfort her. In the end, he will always choose to try. ''I can understand that. How did you make it real for him?''

''Oh, I told him everything,'' she responds. ''I made sure that we talked about his dad all the time. I answered all of his questions. I told him all the stories.'' She smirks a little. ''All the ones that were appropriate for him to hear anyway. I showed him all the pictures. I made sure he was surrounded by pictures of his father. I kept some of Ollie's clothes in Connor's closet. I kept things like the cologne he used, his shampoo, the coffee he liked. I tried to cover all the senses. He was gone, but I did my best to keep him alive around us. I don't know if...'' She stops again, swallowing hard when her voice tightens. ''If I did it right,'' she gets out. ''I rarely did things right. But that's what I did.''

''It sounds like you did it right,'' Dean offers.

Dinah cuts her eyes to him, uncharacteristically soft at first, and then just like that there's the switch. Right back to that snark and sneer. ''None of this is relevant to you, though,'' she says. ''You know that, right?'' Her body language relaxes. She sits back, movements languid and cat-like, hands splayed out on the cold wood. She crosses one leg over the other. ''Laurel isn't dead, Dean.''

''No,'' he agrees. ''But she's not here. I don't know if she'll ever...'' He exhales slowly in the cold air. He hopes she doesn't shove another cigarette at him because with the day he's had, he would be stupid enough to take it. ''If she can ever be - ''

''What? Who she was?'' Dinah cackles dismissively. ''She'll never be who she was,'' she states, blunt as ever. ''Neither will you. Not possible. That doesn't mean she won't come home and it doesn't mean you two will never be happy again.''

Right, sure, yeah, she might come home. But then what? ''Right,'' he mumbles, running a hand over his face. Maybe he just needs to get some sleep. He doesn't mean to be this melancholic and bitter. He just feels so...stuck. He feels stuck in this quicksand Laurel pushed him into and he can't get out.

''So what is it you're worried about?'' Dinah questions. ''You think she can't take care of herself?''

''What makes you think I'm worried?''

She lets out a fond laugh and shakes her head. She tilts her head back to look up at the starry night sky. She likes to look at the sky. He's noticed that. Sometimes he'll come outside and notice her next door, in the backyard of the Moretti house, lying on her back in the yard, a cigarette burning away in her mouth, staring up at the sky, looking at it like she is looking for something specific, a message in the clouds only she can read. Sometimes he catches himself looking at her that way.

''He was nothing like you,'' she says after a minute or two. ''My Dean.'' She keeps her gaze on the stars. ''Even before he was what he is now. He wasn't like you at all.'' She looks back to him. ''But he still had your face. I know what worry looks like on it.''

Suppose he can't argue with that. ''I'm not worried she can't take care of herself,'' he says, which is...

Mostly true.

''No?'' She arches a brow. ''Are you worried she can?''

''Why would that worry me?''

''Because then she wouldn't need you.''

He isn't sure how to take that. He doesn't think she means it as an insult, despite her...everything. But it does sting. People say shit like that to and about him all the time and the part that makes him the most annoyed is that he can't even say they're wrong. ''Laurel can take care of herself,'' he says. ''She could before me and she - ''

''Will after?'' She stares at him blankly, waiting for his response, but he has no idea what to say to that. She pushes herself back up after a long, awkward moment of silence. She looks unbothered by it, casually pulling her pack of Marlboro Lights out of her pocket. ''You know,'' she says, drawing it out, in a tone that makes him nervous. ''Right after I had Connor, there was this girl from our group of friends who went missing. Her name was Sloane. She was pretty, popular, rich - as they all were. She had a loving family. A seemingly devoted boyfriend. Incredibly loyal friends.''

''You notwithstanding, I assume.''

She rolls her eyes and halts her story to pop an unlit cancer stick in her mouth. She tucks the pack away and pulls out her lighter. ''She had it all,'' she says, lighting the cigarette. ''She had a great life.'' She takes the first pull and does not blow it at his face but up in the air, towards that starry sky. ''Then one night she didn't come home.''

Oh, good.

A happy story.

''Her boyfriend reported her missing,'' she goes on. ''Her parents were terrified. And she was rich and white so the cops were all over it from the start. They found her car on this dirt road out in Snohomish County less than 24 hours after she was reported missing. Middle of nowhere. Thick woods on one side, open field on the other. The car was still running, all the lights were on, driver's side door was open, blood all over. It was a chaotic scene.'' She takes another puff of her cigarette while Dean tries to figure out why she's telling him this. ''She left her phone, her ID, and her coat, even though it was a cold night and she was last seen in a tiny party dress that was basically nothing more than a sparkly bandage. And they found her shoes by the car, one on the dirt road, one in the grass leading into the woods. It really did look like there had been a violent struggle.''

''...Okay...''

''It was a huge deal for months in Starling,'' she says. ''There were weeks of searching, missing flyers were everywhere, his family put out this huge reward, and the rumors were flying. I mean, they were everywhere.''

''You start any of those rumors?''

''Please,'' she sorts. ''I had a new baby. I didn't have time to make trouble.''

''You're always making trouble.''

She sucks away on her cigarette for a second, and then she looks at him and smiles. ''I guess that's fair. But I didn't need to make any trouble in this case. The trouble was already there,'' she tells him. ''Sloane's disappearance was all anyone could talk about. No one knew what happened but everyone knew one thing. She didn't leave on her own. She never would. Even the police investigated it as a homicide.''

''This is a riveting story, Dinah, but are we nearing your point?''

''I'm getting there,'' she yelps. ''Don't rush me!''

He motions for her to continue with her bizarre true crime story.

''They found her body about six months later,'' she says. ''Luck, I guess. Some people are never found at all. It was a mushroom forager.'' She makes a noise in the back of her throat, not quite a laugh, not quite a hum, almost grimly amused somehow. ''Doesn't get more Pacific Northwest than that, does it? He found her body curled up in a blanket in the woods in a thicket of trees. Still sparkling in her party dress. Wasn't much left of her, but it was enough for the medical examiner to determine cause of death. Turns out it was suicide.''

He blinks a few times, stunned. ''What?''

''Mmhmm,'' she nods. ''She went out to the boonies, slit her wrists, staggered into the woods, and died. All alone in the dark. Everyone was gobsmacked. This was the girl who loved life. She was always happy. She lit up the room with her smile when she walked in.'' She shakes her head, exasperated. She takes another drag of the cigarette. ''Course every dead girl lit up the room with her smile.'' She blows out and looks at the cigarette for a second, as if contemplating putting it out. She doesn't. She does look over at Dean again, meeting his eyes directly. ''I wasn't surprised,'' she reveals. ''I was surprised she didn't leave a note. I was surprised it seemed like an impulsive choice instead of a planned out one. But I wasn't surprised she killed herself.''

Well, that's dark as shit.

''See, I knew her,'' she says. ''And I'm a con woman. I can read people. She was a dead girl walking.''

He flinches at the caustic bite of her words, drawing back.

If anything, it only eggs her on. ''She was a depressed addict with an unfaithful boyfriend who liked to smack her around when he was high on cocaine. Her big full happy life was nothing but a tour of emptiness. She was never going to win that fight. Of course she killed herself.''

He stares at her. He waits for her to say something else, anything else. He waits for her to reach the point, whatever it is, that she must be trying to make. But she says nothing else, and now all he can think of is Laurel. All those worst fears you try not to think about when you love someone who frequently gets lost in the dark maze of their head. ''...What the fuck, Dinah.''

''What?''

''Why would you tell me that?''

''Just making conversation.''

''Just starting trouble is what you were doing.''

''Always.'' She opts to stub out her cigarette before it burns down to her fingers. It's not something he's ever seen her do before. ''You're not worried that Laurel can't take care of herself,'' she says. ''And you're not worried because she's out there all alone. You're worried because she's out there with herself.''

''And you chose to tell me your fun little story about your friend who committed suicide because...?''

''Because that's not going to happen to Laurel.'' Dinah says it in her typical remarkably forthright tone, not a doubt in her mind.

Dean is almost ashamed of his own doubts, his own fears that he has spent so long ignoring that now they're screaming out at the top of their lungs, blooming in his chest and bursting through his skin. He wants to believe Laurel is not a danger to herself, but he also once believed that she would never willingly leave Mary. ''You sound very sure of that,'' he says, looking at his wife's doppelganger and her eerie stillness, the exact opposite of her usual chaos.

She looks at him for a long moment without saying a word, all traces of her signature snark gone. ''I helped her leave,'' she says eventually. She does not sound regretful or apologetic in the slightest. ''Did you know that? The night she left,'' she clarifies. ''I stashed a bag for her at the Moretti house. I gave her cash. I let her go.''

Figures.

No, he's not surprised.

The only part that surprises him is that Laurel accepted her help. She's kinda lone wolfy these days. Still, he did know she had to have gotten some monetary help from someone. He figured her father at first, then thought maybe Oliver, but Dinah makes sense. She is the only person who would help her run and not tell him. ''I wondered,'' he allows.

If Dinah is surprised by the lack of reaction, she doesn't show it. ''And that doesn't piss you off?''

''Course it pisses me off,'' he replies. ''But what am I going to do about it?''

That time, she does look thrown. ''I understood,'' she says, and then stops and restarts. ''I understand,'' she decides on. ''Why she left. I understand. You know you do too. You would have done the same thing.''

Not the first time he's heard that one. Never sure how to respond to it. After all, he can't exactly deny it. Unlike Laurel, he has a track record. For most of his life, he was all about squealing tires and a trail of broken hearts and tears. He left a few notes on pillows when he was young. He was careless then. And afraid. He has always been afraid. He was good at convincing himself that it was better to remove himself from certain situations.

He never said he didn't understand Laurel's initial mental gymnastics. Her ability to convince herself that people are better off without her is something indeed familiar. He gets that part. He sympathizes. To a point. But the boy who left and the man who ran, all that fear and self-punishment, all that self-inflicted loneliness and torment -

It was a long time ago. More importantly, it was before Mary. Before he knew that little girl, leaving was easy. Now that he knows her, now that he has seen her eyes and her smile and her cute nose, now that he has held her in his arms and marveled at her small hands and tiny fingernails and watched her grow into her own personality, complete with strong opinions and cheesy jokes, nothing could ever drag him away from her.

And it's not just because he loves her.

It's because that is his responsibility as her parent. She did not choose to be here. Her parents chose to have her. They both owe it to her to do everything possible to give her a decent life. Maybe that's the disconnect.

He understands the fear and self-loathing she feels. He understands the selfishness of pain. It's just that none of that is stronger than the love he has for Mary. It bothers him that it's not the same for Laurel. It bothers him that her pain runs so deep that even the love he knows she has for their child is being overshadowed.

He doesn't understand where her sense of responsibility went. Her sense of duty. Maybe it's not fair for him to compare like that, maybe there are things about motherhood that he will never be able to understand, but that's where he's at. That's the only place he can be.

''That doesn't make it right,'' he says. ''Sure doesn't make it healthy.''

''No, it doesn't,'' Dinah agrees. ''That's not what I said. I said I understand why she did it. There's a difference.'' She tucks her hands into the pockets of the hoodie she's wearing. ''And it wasn't a death wish mission,'' she says, adding that part on with a pointed look at him. ''You should know that. It was selfishness disguised as selflessness, but it was not a death wish. The night she left, she told me she was going to fight. That was her plan. She wasn't going to lie down and die. She was going to fight to live. So - yes.'' She leans in closer to him. ''I am sure that what happened to Sloane is not going to happen to her. Question is,'' she pulls back, away from him. ''Why aren't you?''

He can't look at her and her piercing eyes. She is looking at him with those twinkly, knowing eyes of hers. Now that reminds him of Laurel. He looks out at his backyard, avoiding the spot where the sinkhole was in his dream, staring out at his wife's dead garden instead. ''I love my wife,'' he says. ''But she's...sick.'' He says this as delicately as he can. ''She's strong and brave. So fucking brave. I could never...'' He trails off, and thinks of Laurel and everything she's been through. All the things he was there to see and all the things he wasn't. And he knows there was more. He knows there's even more she hasn't told him. Most of it likely has to do with her mother. She has lived through more than one lifetime's worth of hurt.

That's what terrifies him. Everyone has a limit. Everyone has a breaking point. He doesn't know where hers is. He doesn't know how much room inside of her she has left. That scares the hell out of him.

''But at the end of the day...'' He chews on his bottom lip. ''She's in so much pain most of the time,'' he acknowledges. ''She's not...all that stable and I don't know how to help her. I've done everything I can think of to support her and take care of her. I've done my best to take the weight off. I don't know what else I can do for her. I'm scared of how sick she is,'' he admits, more to himself, just to say it out loud for once. ''I'm scared of how sick she could get. Now or in the future. She's made a lot of reckless choices because of that.''

''...Do you do that a lot?''

''Do what?''

''Use her mental illness as an excuse for her shitty choices.''

He snaps his head back to look at her. ''Dinah - ''

''Laurel left you,'' she cuts in, not necessarily harsh but resolute. ''She packed up in the middle of the night, snuck out, and left you. Wrote you a Dear John letter and everything.''

''It wasn't a - '' Ugh. Why even bother? ''Never mind.''

''And it wasn't just you,'' Dinah carries on, ignoring him. ''She didn't just leave you. She left her daughter. She left her here without her.''

''Dee, whatever you're doing - ''

''Even I never left my kid,'' she cuts in. ''I never even thought about it. Nothing could have dragged me away from him. But she left. Just like that. It wasn't because she was sick. It was because she made a choice,'' she says, firm, leaving no room for argument. ''Whether or not it was the right choice to make, we could debate about all night long, but it was her choice. You can't take that from her. You can't absolve her just because you want to. It doesn't work that way.''

''I get that,'' he snaps, and can't quite keep the frustration out of his voice. ''I'm not trying to - I know she made a choice.''

''But you want to make it about mental illness,'' she reminds him. ''Sometimes a choice is just a choice, Dean.'' She bumps her knee against his, not playful, not unkind, but possibly an attempt at friendliness. Hard to tell with her. ''You want to understand. I get that. You want to tell yourself she's sick and because of that she has no responsibility for her actions, but that's not true.''

''That's not - ''

''And don't tell me that's not what you're trying to do,'' she says. ''I know it is. You know it too. How we feel may affect our choices, but it doesn't take away the responsibility. She is not as fragile as you want her to be. She is a grown woman and she made a choice.''

He looks at her for a moment, taking in the sight of her sitting there, a rare serious look in her eyes. It makes him feel oddly soft. ''You sound like her right now,'' he muses. ''You know that?''

''Ugh.'' Her lip curls in disgust. ''Ew.'' Unusually, there is no actual malice or heat behind the revulsion. She can't even keep it up for long, the scorn fading, her lips softening into a small smile as she looks out at the yard, away from him. Maybe chain smoking really does chill her out. Or maybe she smoked something else earlier.

Or maybe he's not the only one who misses the other version of the person sitting next to them. The way it was back before things got smashed to bits.

''I should get back to the kid,'' she says, nodding towards the Moretti house. ''She's been more neurotic than usual lately. Always locked in her room working on witch shit. Weirdest kid I've ever met.''

''Hanna is a teenager who lost her entire family,'' he says, rising to his feet, offering her his hand and pulling her to her feet.

''Yeah, okay, whatever, but she's also just fucking weird.'' She brushes off her clothes. ''I think I've found her currency, though,'' she announces. ''I manage to coax her out of her room, like, once a day with Taco Bell and Netflix.''

''Such great parenting.''

''I think so. You should try it.''

''You know she's diabetic, right?''

She snorts and waves that off. ''Relax, I log everything she - '' She stops, very suddenly, and presses her lips together, narrowing her eyes, glaring at nothing.

He feels a smirk pulling at his lips. ''You log what she eats?'' The smirk blooms into a full grin. ''You've spent actual time logging what she eats and figuring out how to get her out of her own head?'' He does try not to outright guffaw at her or look at her with too much sincerity, but he doesn't try that hard. Wow, he thinks but doesn't say out loud out of an abundance of caution. You really are a mom. ''Oh my god, Dee, are you actually starting to like Hanna?''

''No,'' she denies, and then scowls.

''You are!''

''I am not!''

''You're becoming a regular white hat, aren't you, Ms. Lance?''

She looks peeved at the suggestion, pointing an accusing finger at him. ''You take that back!''

He just laughs and before he even thinks about what he's doing and the risks associated with it, he grasps onto her outstretched hand, and tugs her over to him. ''I like your hair, by the way,'' he says, and does his best to stomp down the urge to reach out and touch the short bob she's been rocking since Christmas. ''Have I said that?''

''You haven't,'' she says, ''but my hair does look great. Took you long enough to notice.''

For many different reasons, what he does next is not a good idea, but he does it anyway. He leans down and kisses her on the cheek. He realizes about halfway there that there's a good chance he is about to get slapped upside the head.

Instead, she just makes a vaguely amused humming noise when he pulls back and says, ''Better not be trying to train a replacement, Winchester. I don't do leftovers. Besides,'' she tweaks his ear. ''You can't afford me. I only go for the rich guys. Sorry.''

''Damn,'' he mutters. ''Thwarted by poverty once again.''

She doesn't laugh at the joke, but she smiles, like a real smile, so he considers it a win. ''Listen.'' She pulls her pack of cigarettes back out of her pocket and fishes one out. ''Just remember what I said.''

''You said a lot, Dee.''

''She is not out there trying to die,'' she says. ''She's out there fighting to come home.'' She looks at him for a moment, tilting her head to the side, and then she takes a step back from him. ''Remember that,'' she advises, backing away. ''She made a choice that hurt you and she may not be the healthiest person, but she does love you and she does love Mary. She'll come home when she's ready. And then you can go from there.'' She pops the unlit cigarette into her mouth. ''Just believe in her a little more, Dean.'' It's the last thing she says before she turns away from him and walks away, stepping off the porch and melting into the shadows.

He watches her until she disappears and then turns his head, looking back out into the backyard, at the space where the sinkhole wasn't, at the dead garden Laurel used to care for, the empty spot where flowers used to grow. Just believe in her a little more.

Somehow he doesn't think that's their biggest problem.

When you left you took almost everything, Bukowski wrote.

If the dead were truly to come back, Didion said in The Year of Magical Thinking, what would they come back knowing? Could we face them? We who allowed them to die?

We who allowed them to die.

He believes in her. He's just not sure she believes in herself. And he doesn't know if he believes in himself anymore. If she can't get to that place where she can be at peace with herself and if he can't get to the place where he gets to let go of his sense of failure, what's left for them and their family?

He takes in a breath of cold air and then lets it back out into the night, looking up at the clear sky. It's unusual for the sky to be so clear at this time of year. More often than not, it's cloudy or covered by fog, but tonight it's all stars. He stays where he is for a moment, staring up at the blackened sky dotted with sparkling stars. He wonders, like a big sap, if Laurel is looking up right now, if she's seeing how clear the sky is, if she can still point out the constellations the way she used to, the way she did with him on the fire escape that night in the summer of 2010.

When she was pregnant, that's what he would imagine. Her, with their child, teaching her the constellations. He doesn't think he has ever seen Laurel teach Mary about the constellations.

He turns to go back inside, but he doesn't make it all the way. Something stops him at the sliding glass door, his hand on the handle. A change, a shift in the atmosphere. A chill. A very specific kind of chill. He ducks his head down slightly and licks his lips, but doesn't turn around, hand still on the handle.

He doesn't have to say anything. He could just go inside. He looks up, looking into the warm light of his warm house. His hand falls away from the handle. He still doesn't turn around. ''Is there a reason you've been dreamwalking with me lately?''

There is a pause before an answer comes. He swears he can feel her smiling behind him. ''Maybe I just missed you,'' the familiar voice says. ''You don't miss me?''

There is a split second where Dean wishes he had a drink in his hands. Or maybe another cigarette. Just something to calm the nerves in his body, the pressure in his chest. He turns back around, forcing every bit of arrogance and charm to the surface with a smirk. ''Keep talking. Maybe we'll get there.''

Tessa, standing in the backyard, just a step away from the porch, arms crossed, small breeze combing through her dark hair, chuckles warmly. She looks the same as she always looks. Poised, almost serene, her skin pale against the dark of her hair, smiling just a little, that same enticing smile. ''Such a tease,'' she says. ''Does your wife know about your habit of flirting with death?''

''My wife isn't here,'' he says, taking the first step towards her. ''And you're not Death.''

''I'm close enough.''

''Hmm.'' He nods, squinting at her slightly, trying to read her, even though he knows he won't be able to. He never could. ''Is that why you're here? Your boss sent you?''

''Technically my boss sends me everywhere I go,'' she says, voice still oozing that specific sort of confidence she has. She steps onto the porch, but doesn't come any closer. ''Kind of what a boss does,'' she adds, leaning back against the railing, elbows up.

There has always been, if he's being honest with himself, something comforting about Tessa, something he's never been able to put his finger on, a part of himself he's never wanted to confront, but that strange comfort isn't there tonight. Nothing in his life is as it should be right now. ''Tessa,'' he starts, serious, allowing his own cocky facade to fall away. ''If this is about Laurel - ''

''It's not.''

''Because I don't give a shit about the natural order of things, you know.''

''I do know that about you, yes.''

''I will not let you take her,'' he informs her. ''Not again. I don't care if it's your job. I will stop you.''

She looks, for a moment, amused. Like she wants to tease him. Mock his pointless arrogance. But she doesn't. She just says, ''This isn't about her.''

''Then what's it about?''

Something happens then, like a lightning strike inside of him, a flash of memory, of Seabeck and the blood spurting out of his carotid artery. The way the air felt heavy there. The drizzle of the overcast day, the dampness of everything from the green grass to the muddy gravel. The smell of death and salt and blood. His wife's voice begging him to stay. His mother's voice. And...

Something else.

A fuzziness. A static. A hand. A hand that was not his wife's hand. His memory blurs and shifts in his mind, like part of it has been cut out. All of a sudden, his mouth feels dry and papery. All he can taste is earth. When he woke up in Seabeck, choking on the blood that had pooled in his throat, all he could taste was dirt. Like it wasn't blood he was choking on but grass and soil and gravel.

He looks at Tessa, still standing there, leaning back against the railing, looking comfortable, completely at ease. She is watching him closely, wondering, waiting for him to remember something, but she wants to appear she's not. He knows this because he knows her - as well as anyone can. Even if she doesn't want him to. He may not be able to read her, but they do have a connection.

He swallows down the taste of wet earth. ''Does it have anything to do with what happened in Seabeck?''

She moves her jaw a little, tilts her head to the side briefly, and then straightens up. She looks mostly curious, but he can see something else in her eyes, something heavier. He's just not sure what it is. ''Dean...''

''Tessa,'' he sighs, and shakes his head. He tries to look as annoyed and exasperated as possible, even though he's mostly just trying to bury down an unexplainable case of hysteria. ''I swear if this is a fuckin' Sixth Sense thing and I've been dead the whole time, I am going to be - ''

She cuts him off with a scoff. ''Obviously,'' she begins, deadpan, ''you're not dead.''

''I'm not?''

''You're not,'' she nods. ''You are very much alive. As always.'' She crosses her arms again and her body moves slightly, like she wants to move closer but chickens out. ''You're one of the most alive people I've ever known.''

Behind him, as if on cue, the porch light flashes.

He tries not to react. ''But I'm not like I was before,'' he says. ''Am I?''

Tessa frowns at that. She looks genuinely surprised by the question. ''What makes you say that?''

He thinks of the dreams he has been having lately, vivid yet nonsensical. He thinks of the flickering light. His mother's ghost. His father's heavy hand on his shoulder. The fact that he can never seem to relax his body anymore, always uneasy, always under threat. ''Call it a hunch,'' is all he says.

She remains quiet, watching him with that steady gaze of hers, those piercing, somehow unending eyes of hers.

Something about Tessa, something he can't explain, has called out to him from the moment they met. He'll joke and say it's just because she's ''hot'' but that's not it. Although she is, it's worth repeating, gorgeous. He thought for a long time it was his exhaustion, his unyielding desire to be done, to stop, to be at peace, but now he thinks it's something else.

Tessa has always been, despite her line of work, full of life. She has a spark, a gentleness that comes from affection. She is quick witted and razor sharp when she wants to be, brusque and even harsh when she needs to be, caustic when the situation calls for it, arrogant, but tender. She calls a spade a space. Never minces her words. But. Underneath it all, she has a certain kind of benevolence to her. It's the most unsettling thing about her, he thinks. How someone who seems so warm and so alive can be a weapon.

A blunt instrument.

''You are who you were before,'' she says at last, and finally takes those slow, deliberate steps over to him. ''You are what you were before.'' She stops, barely inches away from him, in his personal space but still not quite touching. ''You are alive,'' she tells him, and the way she says it makes him want to believe her. ''Flesh and blood. You breathe, your heart beats. There is nothing wrong with you. You're Dean Winchester. As you were. As you will be.''

He stares down at her, focused on the dark pools of her eyes, the soothing tone of her voice. He feels calmer now, but at the same time, he doesn't trust the calm.

She seems to sense this. ''You have questions,'' she says, tone clipped, more professional. ''I understand.''

''Yeah.'' He clears his throat. Tries to regain his wit. ''I got a lot of questions, Tessa,'' he snarks. ''Is Elvis really dead? What's going on in the Denver International Airport? Why did John Denver think West Virginia was almost heaven? Had he ever even been to West Virginia? You know what's there?'' He starts ticking things off on his fingers. ''Poverty, a total lack of diversity, teenage pregnancy, poor economic growth and job outlook, a rapid decline in life expectancy, and the heart of the opioid crisis. What part of that sounds like almost heaven?''

Tessa does not look amused, but she does look perplexed. ''Why do you know so much about West Virginia?''

''I know things.''

''Fine, fine.'' She holds her hands up. ''Just asking. I thought maybe - ''

''You did something to me,'' he accuses, the words slipping out before he can stop them. He's not sure what he's accusing her of exactly, but it's been in the back of his head since Seabeck. That something is off with him. That something is wrong. ''You did something to me when I was dead.''

''I didn't.''

''You're lying.''

''I'm not,'' she declares. ''I swear. I wasn't even in Seabeck when you - ''

''But he was,'' he snaps. ''He was. I know he was.''

She draws back, but makes it look strategic, narrowing her eyes slightly, staring. ''Dean,'' she says, voice soft. ''There is nothing wrong with you. I'm not lying to you. Have I ever?''

He shakes his head, feeling dismayed but not quite understanding why. ''But you're not going to tell me what happened.''

All she gives him is a small, almost sympathetic smile. ''You know what happened.''

''Pretty fuckin' sure I don't.''

She steps forward again, closer than before, close enough that he can smell her. She smells like damp earth. ''When it's time,'' she tells him, ''you'll know.'' She extends a hand like she's going to touch his cheek and he closes his eyes, but the touch never comes. Just a light cold breeze that sends shivers down his spine.

When he opens his eyes, he is alone.

He looks out at the backyard, heart thudding in his chest, as if coming down from an adrenaline high, and all he can feel is this sweeping wave of incredible...annoyance.

Okay, so, everyone in his life is irritating the shit out of him for no good reason lately. What's that about?

He scowls. He scowls at the spectre of death who is probably still standing right there, out of sight, out of reach, and he scowls at his well-meaning but sanctimonious little brother. He scowls at his wayward wife who he can't even trust to find her way back home, and her infuriatingly knowing and mischievous doppelganger, and the witch bitch cousin who won't stop tormenting them.

He absolutely scowls at whichever parent brought their kid to school with a contagious illness and got his baby girl so sick she's been puking her guts out all day. He knows it was one of them rich folks.

Bet it was that Sebastian kid's mom.

Dean scrubs at his eyes with the palms of his hands. He feels mad at the world right now. He is sick and tired of feeling so trapped in his own life. No, it's not even that. He feels like he's trapped in someone else's choices. He feels like there's so much he's missing. Things that are probably right in front of his face. Things he probably already knows.

Oh, fuck this.

Fuck standing out here and agonizing over every detail. Fuck brooding. It is what it is. Things are what they are right now. Can't do anything about it. His marriage is on the rocks, all their hasty patchwork coming loose, exposing all the rips and tears the years have given them. His wife is fucked up and self-destructing, trying so hard not to hurt the people she loves and failing miserably. He's basically living in a constant state of dread, waiting for the day - that is starting to feel inevitable - he gets the phone call telling him she's overdosed on some bathroom floor in some cheap motel room, lying there all alone for days until someone finally found her. His kid spent the day throwing up, sick and scared and wanting her mother.

And something happened in Seabeck.

It has to have been Seabeck. It has to have been Seabeck. Something changed that day, something happened while he was under, while he was gone, and he can't remember what it was. He can't remember what happened in the space between dying and being resurrected, but something happened. Nothing has felt right since. He hasn't felt right.

But he can't do anything about that tonight. What he can do is go eat some pizza and cheer himself up with bad movies.

He spins on his heel, grumbling to himself, trying not to think about how relaxing it would be right now to have a beer with a few slices of pizza and then drink himself to sleep with the harder stuff. That's what sounds soothing to him. He pulls the sliding glass door open and steps back into the warmly lit, cozy house, his body suddenly becoming aware of just how cold he is. He shudders, automatically rubbing his hands together, body relaxing in the warmth, adjusting to the temperature.

Pizza, he thinks. That's what he's going to do. He's going to get another slice of pizza, maybe some cheesy bread, watch something that doesn't make him need to think about anything, and then go curl up in his warm - empty - bed and...probably not sleep. Shit, he also needs to finish the laundry. Ugh, fine, he's going to eat a slice of pizza and then do the laundry. There's always fucking laundry.

His own personal This Is Spinal Tap.

He yawns and starts down the hall. His thought, right now, is that he still can't believe Sam didn't spring for the wings. His thought, as he stops in his tracks just outside his daughter's bedroom, body tensing up, becomes -

Why is Mary's bed empty?

He snaps his head around to look into her room, door open, covers thrown back, empty. He steps inside, calling out to her softly, and an inexplicable feeling of dread rises in his throat like bile. He's not sure why. It's not as if this is uncommon. His girl is a terrible sleeper. Has been since the day she was born. She probably had another nightmare or woke up feeling sick, went looking for him, and now she's taking refuge with Auntie Sara and Uncle Sammy. Maybe she wet her bed. But -

Sharkie.

The stuffed shark, worn and well-loved by two generations of Lance girls, is lying forgotten on the floor just inside the door. That's not typical behavior. He sweeps Sharkie off the ground and glances at Betty, wide awake and pacing her terrarium. Which is...also not typical behavior? The little lizard looks distressed.

The inexplicable dread is not getting better.

Dean checks Mary's bed - dry - and he checks her closet - empty - and then he retreats. He intends to check his room and then head for the kitchen, but as soon as he steps back out into the hall, he is confronted with something else.

The bathroom door is closed.

He relaxes slightly, shoulders slumping. Hell of a night for those talks about bathroom etiquette to sink in. Dad's been a raw nerve ending all day long but, sure, let's choose tonight to start closing the door.

He tosses Sharkie back onto her bed and steps over to the bathroom door, knocking. ''Mary, you doing okay in there?''

No answer.

See, this is why they've never tried super hard to get her to close the door when she uses the bathroom. She can't hear when the door's closed. He knocks louder. Raises his voice so she'll be able to hear him. ''Mary!'' He tries the handle, but it's locked, which is...odd. He didn't think she even knew how to lock the bathroom door. ''Mary,'' he calls. ''Honey, do you need any help?''

''Everything okay?''

He barely looks at Sara, poking her head into the hallway. ''Did you see Mary go into the bathroom? Did she come looking for me when she woke up?''

''No, I...'' She approaches with some hesitation, looking into Mary's room. ''I didn't even know she woke up.'' The look on her face tells him she's seeing the agitation on his face, the stress he is trying - and evidently failing - to conceal, and she doesn't understand it. ''Is it that big of a deal? She can go pee by herself now, can't she?'' She crosses her arms, casual, like she's just feeling cold.

Is it colder in here than it was a moment ago?

''She can - I just need to know if she's in there,'' he says. He doesn't bother to sound calm or cool. Doesn't bother to pretend. He keeps knocking on the door. He doesn't know what he's afraid of here, but he is afraid. It's like a knot in his chest.

Something is wrong here.

This is his house, his home, cozy and old, a place to start, a place that feels smaller every year as Mary grows older, bigger, in need of more space to run around, a place he knows well, a little too well, and it feels different. The air is heavier than it usually is. Something feels electric. Something feels cold.

Behind him, while he's knocking on the door and calling for Mary, the light by his bedroom door winks off and then on again. His body goes still and rigid as his heart slams against his ribcage. He looks at the light, his entire life moving in slow motion. He's an idiot. He's a fucking idiot. He knows what that means. Of all people, he knows what that means. His sister-in-law says something else, a frown pulling at her lips, but he doesn't hear a word she says, turning back to the bathroom door, his urgency turning into full blown panic. ''Mary!'' He outright bangs on the door this time, pounding his fist against the wood. ''Mary, I need you to answer me!''

''What's going on?''

He doesn't even bother to look at his brother. ''Mary's in the bathroom and the door's locked.'' He jiggles the locked handle uselessly, and then resumes banging on the door, unease growing. ''Mary!''

''Dean,'' Sam tries. ''I'm sure she's - '' The light flickers again. After a second of tense silence, he says, ''Shit.''

''Daddy!'' Mary's voice calls out, sounding happy as a clam, followed by a giggle. There's a faint noise from inside the bathroom. Much to Dean's dismay, it sounds like a splash. Followed closely by the faucet in the tub turning on, pouring water into what sounds like an already full bathtub. ''I woke up and my tummy hurted again,'' she shouts. ''Mommy's giving me a bath! She says it's gonna make me feel all better and then I won't hurt ever again!''

What the fuck. What the fuck.

There is a single split second, barely even that, where he thinks this cannot possibly be happening. This doesn't happen here. Not in his home. Not in this home that he has done everything in his power to protect. This is a dream. This is a nightmare. He's going to wake up, any second now, and everything will be fine. Then, like muscle memory, something he barely has to think about, Dean looks at Sam, eyes locking together, catches the expression on his face, and knows. This is not a nightmare.

Sara, on the outside looking in, is the one who speaks up. ''Wait,'' her voice, low and shaky, sounds unlike her. ''That's not possible. Laurel's not - ''

That's when things, all at once, go south.

Mary screams, just one short, sharp shriek that pierces the air, no longer happy as a clam but frightened, viscerally terrified. Every light in the hallway flashes and buzzes behind them and the entire house is momentarily blisteringly cold.

''Mary!' He grabs the doorknob again, even though he knows it's useless, only to draw his hand back when he touches only ice.

''Daddy!'' Her voice sounds choked and scared and wet. ''Daddy!'' She coughs and gags. The sound of water splashing onto the floor, innocuous on any other day, is foreboding now, a horrifying thing to put together with she says it's gonna make me feel all better and then I won't hurt ever again. ''Daddy, help me!'' Her pleas are abruptly muted by another shriek and the sound of a more violent splash.

''Mary!'' This time, as water begins to seep out from under the door, it's Sara diving at the door, trying to break the doorknob off. ''Mary!''

''Move.'' Dean thinks that might be his voice barking out the order, thinks those might be his hands grabbing Sara and all but lifting her up and tossing her out of the way, but he's not thinking about it. He's not thinking about what he's doing. His body just moves. He notices Sam breaking away, tearing back down the hallway and into the dining room and he notices the water on the floor, but all he cares about is getting that door open. He pays little attention to Sara aside from nearly tossing her out of his way, steps back, and brings his foot to the door. The door caves in, springing open and back.

He is all tunnel vision at this point, focused entirely on his daughter, unbothered by the water on the floor, flooding his house. So focused that it's all he sees when that door bangs open. She is all he sees.

His baby in the bathtub - under the water.

They used to drown witches, you know, his father said.

He notices, vaguely, that the bathroom smells like the the pungent odor of the Puget Sound, seaweed and that slight fishy scent, all of it permeating the bathroom. He notices the heavy feeling in the air, too. It's so overwhelming it is nearly tangible, like a thick fog. The only way to describe it would be to say it feels like despair. Complete anguish and desperation.

Sara seems stunned by it, just for a moment, stopping before she can make it too far into the room with a sharp intake of breath. She looks woozy, bowled over by the strength of the distress in the room.

Dean doesn't even stop long enough to think his own actions through. He feels the oppressive wave of emotional agony that does not belong to him. He notices the way his own heart feels like it's being put through a grinder. He smells the ocean and he sees the flood of water on the floor.

But his baby's in the water. He doesn't care what's in his way. Beetlejuice himself could crawl out of the toilet and try to get his attention and Dean would still be focused on Mary, only Mary.

''Mary!'' He splashes through the spilled water, still pouring out of the overflowing bathtub, and lunges, reaching in and grabbing her little body out of the water. She is limp when he first pulls her out and it feels like standing on the edge of the world, like a black hole is about to rip him apart and swallow him up. ''Mary,'' he pleads. ''Honeybee. Honeybee.''

The span of time between her screaming for him and being pulled under the water and him pulling her out is less than a minute. He's sure of it. Thirty seconds. Thirty five at the most. The span of time between him holding her limp body in his arms and her coughing up water is somewhere between three to five seconds.

It feels like an eternity.

She starts sputtering before he can even do two proper back blows, springing back to life in his arms, coughing up a few mouthfuls of water, and then she starts wailing. It is the best sound he has ever heard. ''Hey. Hey, honey.'' He sinks to the ground with her and doesn't even care that the floor is soaking wet. ''It's okay,'' he lies. ''We're okay.'' He claps her on the back and she brings up more water, just a little bit, sobbing harder, even when he encourages her to throw up as much as she needs to. The crying, he needs to remind himself, is good. Her lungs have to be strong for her to cry like that. But if he hadn't kicked down that door...

If he had waited even just a few seconds longer...

''I know,'' he murmurs. ''I know that was scary. I've got you. You're safe.'' He tries to pull her away from him, but she is clinging too tightly to his neck, wailing hysterically into his shirt, shaking like a leaf. ''Mary Bea, I need you to look at me for a second.'' He gets her peeled away enough for him to look at her face, giving her a quick onceover, trying to assess her breathing. ''Do you know how much water you swallowed?''

Still shivering, a look of abject horror on her face, all she does is shake her head and sob through her chattering teeth, ''Not Mommy.'' She looks up at him, face white as a ghost, twisted into misery, choked sobs escaping. ''Not Mommy.''

''No,'' he agrees. ''No, that wasn't Mommy. You're right. That was not Mommy. Mommy would never ever do something like that.''

''Baby,'' Sara's voice says, and Dean realizes that she has knelt down by their side, wrapping a towel around Mary. ''I know it's tough, but you need to try to calm down and take a few breaths for me, okay?'' She looks decently terrified herself, but she still manages to sound composed and even keeled. ''Did you get water up your nose?''

Mary shakes her head, peering up at Dean. ''I want Mommy,'' she declares, voice still shaking, still scared, but very determined.

''I know, Mary, but - ''

''No! No, we have to find Mommy! We have to find her right now!''

''Mary - ''

It happens quickly.

She wrenches free of him, in a show of surprisingly brute strength, and gets to her unsteady feet, still dripping wet, and then -

There she is.

A strong breeze blows through the room, bringing with it the scent of the sea, and a wave of water that seems to rise up off the floor, growing taller and taller until it is a column of somewhat murky but glistening water, slowly morphing into the shape of a person. A woman. A spindly, watery hand spirals out from the water, pointing straight at Mary, and behind the water -

He reacts fast, one hand shoving Sara away hard, the other grasping Mary around the waist and yanking her back. He throws himself on top of her and ducks to the side just as a deafening blast from a shotgun sounds, followed by a ghastly wail, and then nothing. He doesn't move, doesn't let Mary up until he hears Sam's voice. ''You guys okay?''

Dean sits up, pulling Mary with him. He looks at Sara, wedged between the toilet and sink. Then he looks at Sam, standing in the doorway, with a rock salt filled shotgun. For a moment, everything in the bathroom is hushed. The faucet in the tub has been turned off, but the tub is still full and the floor is still flooded. The smell is gone, however. As is the gruesome feeling of sorrow.

''What,'' Sara bites out, mostly pissed off by now, wriggling herself out of the tight spot. ''The hell was that?''

''That,'' Sam says, shouldering the gun, ''was a ghost.''

She looks far more surprised than she should. ''That was a ghost?''

''A poltergeist, to be specific,'' Dean says, hauling himself to his feet with Mary still clinging to him like velcro.

''Is - Okay. Okay.'' She appears to struggle with this for precisely five seconds and then just rolls with the punches. It's not always easy to spot, but sometimes the family resemblance between the Lance sisters really does come out swinging. ''What do we do now? Is it gone?''

Right on cue, the lights blink twice and then go off entirely, plunging them into a murky darkness.

''I'm gonna go with no,'' says Sam.

Mary whimpers. ''Oh no,'' she moans, burying her face in Dean's chest. ''Oh no, oh no, oh no.''

The sound is the next red flag. Somewhere from in the darkness, quiet at first and then louder, comes the sound of scratching from inside the walls. Singular and then a flurry, as if a thousand rats are running around, trapped inside the walls, trying to claw their way out.

Dean and Sam know, better than anyone, that this sound is not the sound of a rat race. They look at each other for a second, barely, and then Dean says, definitively, leaving no room for argument, ''We need to get out of here.'' All he can think about is Mary. He needs to get her out of this house and somewhere safe. He doesn't understand how this is happening in his home, how there's a fucking ghost in here, but he does not have the time to think about that right now.

He needs to get Mary out of this situation.

''Grab whatever you can carry,'' he orders as the sound of the scratching grows muffled, giving Sam and Sara a cursory look, making sure they're hearing him. ''I'm changing Mary, grabbing Betty, and then we need to get gone. I don't know what the hell is going on and I don't care.'' He looks down at Mary, crying into his chest, hiding her face, shivering and holding onto him with all her strength. ''We need to get Mary out.''

This is not a problem that any of the parenting books covered. What to do in the event of a divorce or separation, sure. How to handle grief if one parent dies, yeah, there's stuff for that, even though none of it feels like enough when the time comes when you need it. They will give you tips on tantrums, tell you all about blow ups and blow outs, recommend car seats and ideas for your kid's lunch box, but you are very much on your own if you find yourself in a situation like this one. Parenting ''experts'' will teach you what to do if your child is being bullied. Not if your child is being haunted.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, Dean does have some experience in this area. Like thirty years of it. Can't believe he's even thinking it but in this very specific situation - thank god for John Winchester.

He pushes past Sam and Sara, out of the bathroom and into the dark hallway, intent on getting to Mary's bedroom to change her clothes. It shouldn't be hard. Her bedroom is right across the hall. He can see it from the bathroom. Then he steps into the hallway and the earth moves under his feet.

Literally.

He takes one single step out of the dark bathroom, into the dark hallway, and the ground quakes. There is a rumbling sound, low and deep, and it feels like the entire house shudders. The pictures on the walls sway and he can hear the knick-knacks in the living room and bedrooms rocking on their shelves, some of them crashing to the ground. Something shatters in his bedroom, a lamp most likely, and Mary shrieks and lets out a cry. He clutches her tighter, instinctively turns to look into the bedroom, and there she is again, that woman in the water, standing in the doorway.

He sighs.

At this point, the fear has mostly switched over to serious fucking annoyance.

The ghost woman disappears as fast as she appeared and, just as abruptly, the rumbling stops.

''I don't - How is this - How is this even happening here?'' Sam bursts out from behind him, grip tight on the shotgun. ''I thought we had this placed locked down! How are they getting in?''

''I don't know,'' Dean snaps, impatient. ''I don't know. I thought we'd covered all the bases here.''

''Well, clearly we missed something.''

''You think?''

''All right,'' Sara's voice is sharper than usual, cool and business-like, missing her usual humor. She sounds like her sister. She storms over to the linen closet, yanking it open. ''We need to get out of here. We don't have time to pack.'' She hands Dean a few towels and closes the closet. ''Keep her warm. We can get her new clothes. Let's go. We are not staying in a haunted house.'' She starts to stride away, taking charge of the situation, confident and ready to go, and then -

Something flashes into existence right in front of Sara, a flickering woman, old and glaring, opening her mouth wide, too wide, in a silent unheard scream, and then even wider still, until it seems less like she's screaming and more like she's getting ready to devour them. Sara screeches, leaping back, but when she turns, the ghost pops right back up in front of her, and she's so caught off guard that she yelps and falls on her ass.

''Seriously?!'' Sam stares at the brand new ghost, incredulous. ''What is going on right now?!''

Sara shows no sign of moving or getting up, staring up at the woman standing there with her mouth open. She doesn't seem to...be able to move? It's out of character for her.

Dean shifts Mary, sobbing and covering her hearing ear with her hand, onto his hip and reaches down with one hand to pull Sara to her feet, tugging her - possibly a little too hard - over to him, giving Sam a chance to blast at the new spook with another shot of rock salt. ''Sara - ''

''Oh my god,'' she cuts in, weirdly hysterical, eyes still fixated on the spot the ghost was. ''Oh my god!''

''Sara - ''

''No, I know who that was,'' she cries out, turning to look at Dean with wide, horrified eyes. ''It was Faye! It was my great aunt Faye!''

''Faye? As in - ''

''As in one of the eldest Ellard girls,'' she nods. ''But how is that – She was never – I mean, sure, she was kind of grouchy, but she was never a violent person.''

''She's not a person anymore,'' Dean says. ''She's a spirit. She's probably been here too long. She's not herself.''

''You mean she has unfinished business,'' she states, earning a slight raised eyebrow from him. ''I know some stuff,'' she says, preemptively defensive, hands on hips. ''That's how ghosts work, right? They stick around when they have unfinished business. So she's - she's not at peace.''

''Uh,'' Sam's says, his gaze traveling over Dean's shoulder. ''I'm kinda thinking none of them are.''

Both Dean and Sara turn, eyes drawn to the sliding glass door and the swarm of ghostly figures standing on the porch, a glowing mist made up of lost girls. They watch silently from the other side of the glass, all of their faces gaunt and hollowed out, dead and disoriented and baleful, full of wrath and menace and fear. The firstborn daughters. The cursed Ellard women.

All of them.

His heart drops when he sees them - a crowd of ghostly women, souls lost and, apparently, trapped on this earth, caught in the veil, wandering.

He looks down at Mary in his arms. She has pulled her face out of his chest to look around and she's staring right at the ghosts. He looks at her wide eyes, her fingers clutching at his shirt so tightly that her tiny knuckles are turning white, her wet stringy hair and blue lips. She hasn't stopped shaking since he pulled her out of the water. He can feel the terror in her little body, but it sure doesn't feel like the fear of the unknown.

The house shudders again, the walls shaking, the sound of scratches and disembodied moans growing louder and louder.

Mary keeps staring at the ghosts.

Oh, fuck.

These women didn't somehow find their way past all the countermeasures meant to keep things like them out. They were already here. They've been here the whole time.

And Mary knew that.

She is not surprised to see them. She knows what's happening. She knows how these ghosts got in. She knows why. He's starting to wonder if she knows more than them about a lot of things.

I saw Mommy in the trees, she said. She's going to die there.

She needs you to find her.

He looks at the ghosts of the cursed, then back at Mary, and he gives up. He gets the feeling these women are not going to let them out of this house. More specifically, he gets the feeling that they're not going to let Mary out of this house. So he doesn't even try. He retreats to the bedroom, taking her with him.

''Dean,'' Sam tries. ''We need to - ''

''We're not going anywhere,'' Dean says, somewhat off handedly. ''They're not going to let us.'' He goes straight to the bed and puts Mary down, wrapping her in a blanket and then crouching in front of her, trying to get her to look him in the eye. ''Mary,'' he says. He gets nothing in response. ''Mary, can you look at me?'' He reaches out to grasp her tiny arms, which are cold, which are too cold. ''Mary,'' he says, sharper this time, and she finally looks at him. She does not look like herself in this lack of light.

She looks like them.

He realizes, all at once, why he has felt so uneasy all day long. Why the air in the house has felt so heavy, so off, so rotten. It's not him. It's not Laurel. It's not angst or grief or anger. It's her.

It's Mary.

How could he have missed that? How could he just ignore all the signs? It was right there. The red flags were waving right in front of his face - her fever, her nightmares, her nosebleed, the flickering lights - and he was too wrapped up in his own anguish to see what was happening to his own daughter.

She looks at him now, still sopping wet and shaking, without saying a word, and he doesn't know her. She doesn't seem like herself. She doesn't look like his baby. She looks older than her four years. There is something about the expression on her face that looks crooked, corrupt somehow. It does not belong to her. Slowly, her lips pull back into a smile, a leer almost, that can only be described as wicked.

That is not her smile.

He takes his hands off her unnaturally cold skin and stands straight, drawing away from her, feeling ice cold, freezing all the way to his bones.

Abruptly, her face falls after a second, the eerie look dissolving into a look of manic fright that also looks wrong on her face. She looks at him, knowing exactly what she is afraid of and what she has been unable to put into words, and says, plainly, matter-of-fact, ''Mommy's in the water.''

''What?'' Sara's voice asks, shaky, hovering somewhere over by the doorway. ''What does that mean?''

Mary, whoever she is right now, does not take her eyes off Dean. ''Mommy's in the water,'' she says again, directly to him, her voice deadpan. ''And she's bleeding.'' She slips off the bed and lands on her feet, her movements seamless and steady, not at all the movements of a four year old, as she steps forward, over to him.

He steps back.

''Daddy,'' she says, and he recoils. ''Mommy's in the water.''

For a second, no one says a word.

Outside the bedroom, maybe in the hallway, maybe just somewhere out of reach, something lets out a wail.

And then Mary promptly doubles over and vomits up a copious amount of thick black goo onto the floor.

''Mary!'' Sara tries, as horrified as she is, to make a move to rush over to help her niece.

Sam stops her, latching onto her wrist, catching her before she can go too far. ''Sara, don't.'' There is no hysteria or panic in his voice. Just a grim understanding. ''Don't go near her.'' He knows, the same way Dean does, the second he sees that black tar-like substance. The second he feels that heavy feeling of anger that coats the room, thickens the air between them. ''That's not Mary.''

Dean flinches at words and he flinches at the sight of his daughter's tiny body uncontrollably vomiting up ectoplasm, but he doesn't move. He doesn't move closer and he doesn't move farther away. There is a memory in his head, instincts and reflexes he's trying to bury right now, the training that was drilled into him by his father, and he feels like he needs to be doing something, but he can't remember what he's supposed to be doing and he can't leave her. He can't leave her.

A mysterious wind begins to sweep through the room, a swirling mess of cold air and someone else's rage. The ground, once again, rumbles.

He remains right where he is. ''Mary,'' he begs, unfazed by the cold wind and quaking. ''Mary, can you hear me?''

His daughter does not answer him. His daughter is not currently available. But her body stands in front of him, bent over, retching. She looks up at him, eyes bleary and tired. He can't even tell if it's her or whatever else is roiling inside of her, a vicious storm pushing her down, burying her in her own body, away from him.

He could have come up with at least a dozen horrifying ways for their current predicament to end, but this is not one that ever even made the list.

''We have to - We have to do something,'' Sara exclaims, eyes stuck on Mary. ''We can't just let her suffer like this.''

''Mary,'' he tries again, louder, urgent, desperate. ''Pumpkin, if you can hear me, I need you to walk towards the sound of my voice, okay? I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.''

She looks away from him, snapping her head back, collapsing to the ground, twitching, puking up even more ectoplasm.

''Sam.'' He doesn't look away from Mary. He doesn't dare. He feels like he's being gutted just watching her, but he doesn't look away. ''Get out,'' he orders, voice cold, even. ''Both of you. Right now.''

''No,'' Sam's refusal is instant and expected, but now is not the fucking time. ''No way. I'm not leaving you.''

''Sam - ''

He never gets to give the order. The explosion of noise is what comes hurtling at them first, a ghostly moan that turns into a scream, like Laurel's Canary Cry, that old family curse, but far away, like it's coming at them from underwater, like it's just an echo. Even then, garbled and muffled by the veil of death, it still carries a wallop. The destruction is what comes next. In a split second, while Dean is trying to figure out what that noise is, the wind picks up and the shaking gets worse, the walls groaning and shifting, the scream grows louder and louder, and then, all at once, it becomes a tangible thing.

A wall of sound coming straight at them.

His first thought is that he needs to get to Mary. His second thought is that he needs to get to Sam. He can only pick one.

Dean reaches for Mary.

He manages to grasp onto her hand, small and soft, but finds himself blown back by the force of the sonic wave, away from her and against the far wall. When the window behind the bed blows out and the mirror on Laurel's vanity shatters and sends glass particles exploding through the air, he can't do anything but roll away and cover his face.

It lasts thirty seconds at most.

Then there is nothing but silence and the ringing in his ears.

The scream dies down, the rumbling stops, the wind settles, and when he raises his head, scanning the darkness, Sam and Sara are nowhere to be seen. The bedroom door is shut tightly, the lock turned, and Dean is alone, on the ground, with Mary and whoever is trying to steal her away from him. He's pretty sure he's got a few cuts and bruises, he knows he's got a killer headache, and he swears there are eyes everywhere in this seemingly empty bedroom, watching him, watching Mary, an unknown number of ghostly spectators. He doesn't care about any of that. He cares about the girl, limp and lying flat on her back on the ground, wheezing and twitching.

''Mary.'' Even knowing it could be a trap, he goes straight to her, pushing through the ringing in his ears, the dizzying headache to crawl over to her. ''Mary?''

She's not moving. She's not moving.

''No!'' His hands are frantically grabbing at her face. ''No, no, no, Mary.'' He doesn't even recognize his own voice, the awful sickening plunge his heart takes when he feels how cold she is. ''Mary.'' He doesn't want to think about Sam on that mattress in Cold Oak. He doesn't want to think about Laurel on that hospital bed, waiting to be taken to the morgue. ''Mary!''

She is still not moving and everything in the room is too still, too quiet, too hushed. It doesn't even feel like real life. This cannot be real life.

''Mary,'' he begs, grasping at her hand. ''Sweetheart, come on, come on, my girl, open your eyes for me. Please, Mary, please.''

Her eyes snap open and she gasps, a wheezing, rattling sound that doesn't sound like it's coming from a little kid. He nearly jumps back, but cannot force himself to let go of her. Her mouth starts moving - sluggishly at first, and then rapidly, like she's trying to say something, trying to spit something out, but she can't make her voice work.

''Mary?''

''Daddy?'' Now awake and whimpering, she turns her head to him, and he gets a look at her. He gets a look at her eyes. There are a few cuts on her face from the glass and her nose is bleeding, black ectoplasm still streaming down her cheeks. And her eyes, those eyes, those Ellard eyes just like her mother's, are covered by a cloudy film. When she breathes out, she wheezes, foamy blood bubbling past her lips, dribbling down the corners of her mouth. Her voice, when she speaks, is her voice, scared and small. ''Daddy?''

''I'm right here,'' he promises, brushing hair from her face with one hand, moving the other to her chest to feel her breathing. ''Daddy's right here, I'm not leaving you.''

''I can't see,'' she cries. ''My eyes are asleep!''

''I - I know, honey. That's okay. It won't be like this forever. Everything's going to be okay.''

She coughs and chokes, wheezing, struggling to catch her breath. ''There's something in my throat,'' she complains. ''It hurts. I want Mommy,'' she sobs, scrambling for his hand, clutching it as tightly as she can. ''I'm scared! I want Mommy!''

''We can get Mommy,'' he says. ''We can go get her as soon as you're better.''

''We can't,'' she moans. ''We can't go get her. Mommy's in the water! Mommy's in the water and there's too much blood!''

This can't be happening. This can't be happening here. He did everything he could to protect her. He did everything he could to keep this house safe, to keep his baby safe, and now there's something inside of her, twisting up her insides, terrorizing her, hurting her from the inside, and he can't do a goddamn thing. Because this is her blood. How can he protect her from her blood?

He certainly couldn't protect her mother.

There will always be a little bit of sick in her, he said, just tonight, hours ago, as good of an explanation as he could come up with for Laurel's absence, for the sadness that has covered her like a thick blanket for her entire life, the inherited vulnerability that makes him wonder, occasionally, if it's inevitable that she will leave this earth before he does.

You're in charge, said Dad. Don't screw it up.

He screwed up.

Oh god, he screwed up.

''Mary,'' he says, just to be able to say her name. He wants her to hear her name, to hear his voice, to have something to fight for. ''Mary, sweetie, try to slow your breathing for me, can you do that? I know it's scary. I know it hurts. But everything's going to be okay. I'm right here with you.''

''Mommy's bleeding,'' she whispers. ''She's - She's bleeding all over the bed and her eyes don't work.''

''All right,'' he tells her. ''That's okay. We can fix her up and she'll be good as new. Sound good?'' He has no idea how he's managing to keep his composure when he feels like he's on the verge of losing it altogether. ''We're going to find Mommy, honeybee.'' He squeezes her hand. ''We'll find her anywhere. Remember? That's what you told her. We can find her anywhere.''

Mary doesn't even seem to have heard him. She's crying and shaking, coughing up blood and clutching at his hand. ''Daddy,'' she sobs. ''Her eyes don't work.''

Dean thinks of Laurel, in that hospital bed in April, jaw slack, eyes open and not working. He looks at Mary, here right now, on the floor, with her eyes blocked out by a thin film, gurgling on the blood in her mouth. No. No, that can't be happening. That can't be what's happening. He can't be losing them both. ''What do you mean her eyes don't work?''

''They're not working,'' she says. ''She can't see.'' She coughs and then coughs again, more forcefully, blood splattering up onto his shirt. He moves to turn her onto her side, but she twists away from him with strength that cannot belong to her, pushing herself up onto her hands and knees.

She gags, her tiny body writhing and heaving and shuddering, struggling to expel something until she finally gets it out, finally chokes and vomits up the thing in her throat.

It's a bird.

A dead black bird covered in blood and saliva.

She whimpers, undeniably her, tiny and scared, and then she laughs, a deep, baritone laugh that barely even sounds human let alone like her. She raises her head, looking up at him with black ectoplasm running from her nose and eyes, blood all over her mouth and chin, and then she's not Mary anymore. The thing inside of his baby girl has the nerve to snarl at him. ''We warned you,'' it hisses at him through clenched teeth, pulling itself, unsteady and jerky, to Mary's feet.

He rises with her, very aware that despite the extreme height difference going on here, the power dynamic is not on his side. He looks at the door, even though he knows there is no way he's running. He looks at the shotgun on the floor, even though he knows there is no way for him to grab it and he doesn't know if Sam had time to reload before he was thrown out of the room.

''We gave you time. We tried to tell you,'' it says, in a voice that most definitely does not belong to Mary. ''You didn't listen.''

''Maybe you need to work on your communication style,'' he goads, and then adds on, just because he knows it will make this thing angry, ''you crazy little bitch.''

As expected, the littlest ghost over there does not take kindly to the insult. ''You failed her.'' The malevolent spirit inside of his baby rolls her shoulders and her neck, the movements jerky and unnatural, nothing like Mary. ''That's all you seem to do, isn't it?'' It takes a step and then another, slow, mocking, as if this is some sort of game, but it pointedly does not attack. ''She's going to die screaming now, boy,'' it growls. ''That thing is going to rip her apart from the inside out, shred her into ribbons on the way out, and you can't stop it. You can't stop her.''

''We tried to tell you,'' a watery voice says from right beside him. ''We gave you a chance.''

He is not surprised to see the water spirit standing beside him nor is he surprised to see the old woman on the other side of him, the dozens of other eldest daughters, a long line of sad cursed women, ghosts flickering in his bedroom, invading his home. He thinks he might even be able to name a few of them. Dinah Ellard, the woman who Virginia Woolf'd herself in the bay is obviously the water spirit, her daughter Faye, Faye's daughter Elizabeth. He's not surprised at all. It is what it is. But it's getting old now.

And he still doesn't know who the hell is possessing his daughter.

One of them, the ghost that used to be anxious Aunt Faye, must be able to pick up on his growing frustrations because she giggles at him, and clicks her tongue, feigning pity. ''Sad little boy,'' she mocks, nothing like the beloved older sister Beatrice once told him about. ''You have no idea what you're doing.''

''You don't even know what's happening,'' whispers another.

''You've never known,'' yet another voice wheezes.

''We tried to tell you,'' they say, all of them flashing around him like dying light bulbs, weak and rickety, about to blink out for good, a swarm of bees ready to sting, their voices melding together until he can't tell them apart. ''What are you still doing here? You should have run. You should have left. What are you still doing here? What are you still doing here? You failed her.''

''Enough!'' He takes a step to the left, turning his back to the door, facing the crowd of nightmare in-laws. ''Enough! I didn't ask for a performance review from the shadowy peanut gallery.'' He puts a glower on his face and tries not to check and see how close he is to the shotgun on the ground. ''It's time for you gal pals to pack up your Magical Mystery Tour and move the fuck on because I am done with the show. You let her go and you leave. I don't want you here,'' he declares. ''Do you hear me? I do not want you in my house.''

Dinah Ellard, the woman in the water, laughs at him. Something about it sounds mournful, her sorrow evident even in her taunts. ''This isn't about what you want, baby.''

''This is my house,'' he states, ''and this is my daughter.''

They seem to take offense to that, swirling their dead selves away from him and over to Mary, surrounding her. ''This is our blood,'' one of them says.

He scoffs at them, as derisive and rude as possible, taking the final step over to the shotgun on the floor. ''Yeah, and you know what?'' He sweeps the gun off the floor, pumps it, and points it right at Great Grandma Dinah. ''I'm getting real sick and tired of your fucking family drama. Either take it to Facebook like every other dysfunctional family or shut up. You think you get to haunt me and possess my child and act like I'm the biggest knife in Laurel's back? If you've been here the whole time,'' he points the gun at Faye, ''where were you? Why didn't you do something?''

''We've been here the whole time,'' one of them - Faye's daughter, Elizabeth, he's guessing, from the similarities - says with a glower. ''But we were on the inside. We couldn't do anything from the inside. We just got out.''

''Out?''

''She keeps us.'' It's his daughter's voice, but it is not his daughter. Her voice no longer fits her, no longer fits her words. ''She keeps us with her when we die. She won't let us go.''

''Who? Edie?''

''Edie?'' Faye does not look impressed. ''Please. That girl has never once been the queen she thinks she is. She's a pawn. Just like the others.''

''Edie freed us,'' someone says from behind him. ''She let us out. We were held down before her. We were chained.'' The voice lunges, whispering right in his ear, close enough for him to feel the cold spot, smell the cold dirt and rot, but when he turns, instinctively batting at whoever is right next to him, there's no one there.

''It's my mother,'' the thing that isn't Mary says. ''It has always been my mother. From the very beginning. It was her. It was her. Don't you understand?'' She sounds desperate, pleading, taking a step towards him. ''Don't you see what's happening? It's always been her. She's a monster. Edie was a child. She's just a child. She's just a girl,'' she rambles. ''It was my mother who did this. She always does this.'' She shakes Mary's head, looking tearful. ''She will always be one step ahead and you will always be two steps back. My mother will always win. I know this. I lived her. I lived her. Even when I was free, I was never free. She is the cause of all of this. You need to know this. You need to know. She will always find a way to be the most powerful person in the room. Even when a room isn't a room. Even when the body isn't hers to take. It's my mother. It's my mother.''

''Your...'' He blinks a few times. ''You're Alice,'' he realizes. Which means her mother would be...

Oh. Well, fuck. That would have been nice to know when this shit storm started.

''Hazel.''

''Please,'' Dinah Ellard begs, voice choked, full of water. ''You have to get to Laurel. You have to. If you knew what was happening to her right now, if you knew what Hazel was doing to her...''

''She's going to tear her apart,'' says Elizabeth. ''She's going to tear her apart from the inside out.''

''There will be nothing left of her,'' adds Alice. ''She'll end up just like us. Right where we are. Just like before.''

''Just like - No. No, that's not possible,'' he tries weakly. ''Laurel wasn't... She died. She wasn't with you. She was...'' She was with our son, he doesn't say. She lived a life up there. The one we couldn't live together. She was at peace. ''She had an afterlife. She was in heaven.''

''Was she?'' Alice looks at him with his Mary's eyes, steady and calm, and doesn't back down. ''Do you know that for sure?''

He wants to say yes. He means to say yes. Because - of course he knows that for sure. They've talked about it. He and Laurel. They've discussed it. Granted, they haven't talked about it often, but they've talked about it a little. Whenever she feels comfortable. She lived lifetimes in her heaven. She had Henry. She raised him. They were happy. And then they did it again. They were going to live that life, peaceful and full of sun, in that big house with the big garden, the trees, the lake down the path and around the bend, until Dean and Mary came to join them, and then they were going to go the next step together. Mom, Dad, Daughter, and little What Could Have Been.

Laurel was always hesitant when she talked about her slice of Paradise or whatever it was. As she got farther and farther away from it, her memories have shifted. She has a hard time remembering it all. What it was. What she had up there on her lofty perch.

She doesn't like to talk about Henry.

It's hard to talk about someone who possibly never existed. She has told Dean about their son. She has told him everything she could. But it ate at her, dug away at something in her chest every time she opened up about him. He could see her struggling to reconcile what was and what wasn't. He could see her get lost in what ifs, unsure of her own memories, her own experiences, so he stopped asking. He doesn't know what Henry was. He doesn't know if he was a child that could have been, a child who existed only in a timeline where she lived through April 6th, a child possibly connected to the miscarriage, or just...another one of those ways the higher ups try to control you. But he's always assumed he was real. The way she has talked about their son never made him think anything other than I would have liked to have met him.

But...

Now that he thinks about it...

That's not exactly his experience with so-called heaven. He never questioned it because he thought maybe things in the upstairs office had gotten better over time, thought maybe they had made some improvements in the years since he was there. He never questioned it because it was Laurel telling him. He believed her. He still does. He believes she experienced what she said she experienced. But that's not the heaven he knows, is it? Heaven, for him, for everyone else, was a scrapbook of memories, all the best ones. It wasn't something - It wasn't someone new.

Fuck.

Holy shit, what if she wasn't in heaven at all?

He almost lowers his weapon. His almost puts the shotgun down. But then he sees Mary, his baby's body surrounded by ghosts, the expression on her face belonging to someone else. Mary is stuffed so far down into the darkness of her own body that she probably doesn't even know which way is up. And she's probably scared. She's probably so scared.

Okay, fine, so maybe he has work to do. Maybe he has been ignoring some red flags. Maybe he's out of practice and off his game. But maybe he doesn't care what these incredibly rude and intrusive ghosts have to say if this is the way they're going to say it.

He thinks about his mother. Just for a moment. He thinks about her in her house. Sitting at her kitchen table in the sun. As she was in life. As she was in death. The ghost in his head and the ghost in that old house in Kansas.

One day, this will all be yours.

''You,'' he says, practically a snarl. ''Get out of my house.'' He raises the shotgun and points it directly at his daughter's possessed body. ''And let go of my daughter.''

Alice cocks Mary's head to the side, curious more than threatening. She smiles softly. She locks eyes with him, catching him on the hook, and then, all at once, her movements inhuman, too fast, she's across the room, she's right in front of him, she's knocking him back down to the ground, against the wall, the gun falling out of his hand. ''You think you know.'' She crawls close to him, grasping his face with Mary's tiny hand, so much stronger than it should be. ''You think you're ready. You have no idea. You have no idea what's to come,'' she murmurs. ''This has never been about Edie. This has never been about witches. It's about power.'' She leans in close, then closer, Mary's voice, Mary's body, but not Mary's words and not Mary's breath that smells like blood and earth as she whispers in his ear, ''It's about birds.''

There is no time for him to attempt a witty retort. Before he even has a chance to process any of this, a pair of pale hands with perfectly manicured black fingernails are placed on either side of Mary's head and her eyes are fluttering shut, her body going slack and falling into his arms, leaving only the ghost of Alice Aelard standing in front of him. He gets maybe a split second look at her - blonde, his age maybe, pretty, with a striking, incredibly startling resemblance to his estranged wife and gruesomely slashed wrists - and then she screams.

And then they all start screaming.

''Creative way to send your message, ladies,'' a smarmy voice says over the ghostly howls, ''but I'll take it from here.''

The wind picks up again, gusting through the room as the ghosts of the Ellard firstborn daughters swirl together into one big mass of pain and death, enveloped by light and then sucked into a small, intricately carved silver box. A silver box being held tightly in Edie's hand. She claps it shut with one hand, silencing the sound of the screams, and tucks it into the pocket of her coat. In the aftermath, the silent stillness in the room, she looks at Dean - and smiles.

His jaw ticks. ''You.''

Her smile widens, all teeth. ''Me.''

Protectively, he gather's Mary's limp body in his arms, holding her close, inspecting her for injuries. Aside from the ectoplasm still smeared on her face, she seems fine. Her breathing is even and strong, not at all wheezing. There is no foamy blood left in her mouth. Even the little cuts from the glass are gone. She just looks fast asleep. Peaceful, even. Still, he glowers. ''If you hurt her - ''

''Relax,'' Edie says, flippant, waving a hand dismissively, eyes trailing around the darkened room. ''She's fine. She's sleeping.'' She allows her gaze to trail down to Mary. ''She won't remember any of this when she wakes up,'' she says, voice uncharacteristically gentle. ''She'll be rested and refreshed. All she will know is that she got a good night's sleep and she's not sick anymore.''

He tries not to look too relieved when she says that, holding Mary tight, looking down at her figure, slumped against his shoulder, drooling. He brushes hair out of her eyes and realizes, as his hand moves to her forehead, that her fever is gone. He looks at Edie, her eyes now raking over the bedroom, taking in the destruction, and then he looks over at the open bedroom door.

His brother is nowhere in sight.

Edie whistles lowly, propping one hand up on her hip as she inspects the damage. ''Sorry about all this,'' she remarks, casual as can be. She looks completely relaxed. Her seemingly casual outfit choice of jeans, a thick knit turtleneck, and beige wrap coat probably cost thousands of dollars and there is a definite hint of judgment in her eyes as she looks around the room, but otherwise she looks perfectly comfortable and at ease here. Standing in the bedroom that belongs to the man whose father slit her throat and the cousin she had murdered. ''They mean well,'' she says, taking a heeled boot off a broken picture on the ground. ''But they came on a little strong. Their ability to communicate is not what it once was. They lack tact. And they're frustrated. Understandably.'' She brings her focus back to him. ''You would be too if you went through what they've been through.''

''Edie, I swear if you had anything to - ''

''I had nothing to do with this,'' she says, but then pauses. Relents. ''All right, I had very little to do with this. Let's put it that way.'' She steps closer, bending over so she can meet his eyes, hovering over him. ''And you can quit with the posturing, you brave little toaster. It's not going to do you any good. You can't hurt me. You'd be dead before you tried.''

He wisely opts to not argue with that tonight, even as the anger and sarcasm burns in his throat. He looks at the bedroom door again, wide open, the doorway empty, the hallway dark. ''My brother - ''

''Your brother is fine,'' she says with a roll of her eyes, standing straight. ''So is Sara, by the way. Thanks for asking.'' She smiles again. It would be a nice looking smile if she wasn't borderline psychotic. ''They're taking a nap,'' she tells him. ''It's been a stressful day for us all. They need their sleep.''

He grits his teeth together, trying hard not to snap at her. He pulls himself to his feet and shifts Mary to his hip. He'd like to get her into some dry clothes and tuck her into bed, but there's glass all in his bed and the window is still open, cold February air streaming in from outside.

He takes a second to look around his room. It's destroyed, glass everywhere, trinkets and lamps broken, the shattered glass from the mirror and various picture frames still clinking onto the floor from various perches. Couple that with the water damage from the flood and he's thinking this place, this house, his home that he has worked so hard to maintain, to keep safe, is going to need some serious work after this. Not that he has the money for that.

As if reading his mind, Edie clicks her tongue, giving the room another quick scan. Her lips quirk up into a smirk as she looks back at him. ''In-laws, am I right? Can't live with 'em, can't even get away from them when they're dead.'' She takes a seemingly cautious step over to him and waves a hand over Mary before Dean has a chance to sweep her away.

In less than a second, the time it takes to wave her hand, Mary has dried completely.

Edie looks at him like she's hoping, for whatever reason, that this act of kindness gets her a point.

It doesn't.

He tries his best to remain visually unimpressed, blank and neutral. ''If this is all part of your grand plan or something - ''

''Forget the plan,'' her voice is suddenly sharp. ''The plan's off. It was a bad plan and it didn't work. I'm done with that.''

''Bullshit.''

She studies him with her cold eyes for a moment and then steps back and rolls her eyes again. ''Look,'' she says, tone clipped, exasperated. ''I need your help.''

He stares at her, bewildered. ''Excuse me?''

''More to the point,'' she tucks her hands in the pockets of her coat, ''I need your help to save Laurel.''

''You need my help to save Laurel,'' he echoes, dumbfounded. ''You need my help to save Laurel.'' Truth be told, he is trying hard not to panic here and he is about 99.9% sure that he is failing. Today may have sucked, but tonight has taken him to his limit. He has no idea what the fuck is going on anymore. With anything. He doesn't know if anything those ghosts said was real, especially with how twisted their communication style was, but everything they said was horrifying. Everything Mary said was horrifying.

I saw Mommy in the trees. She's going to die there.

Mommy's in the water.

She's bleeding all over the bed and her eyes don't work.

She's going to die screaming now, boy, Alice Aelard snarled at him. That thing is going to rip her apart from the inside out, shred her into ribbons on the way out, and you can't stop it.

''And I'm supposed to believe that?'' He shifts Mary again, trying to keep his voice down, glaring at Edie. ''Coming from you?''

''You know this isn't just coming from me. Haven't you been listening to anything your kid has been saying all day long?'' She makes her way over to the bed, crunching over broken glass. ''What are you going to do?'' She holds one of her dainty hands over the bed, wiggles her finger, and every piece of glass on the bed levitates into the air, hovering over the sheets. She looks up for a second, like she's making sure he's watching, and then she waves her hand and all the glass melts back into place in the widow, the frame righting itself, the window back in place like nothing ever happened to it at all. ''Let an ancient evil split your wife apart because you're mad she left you on read?'' She hums, disappointed, and then clicks her tongue. ''Suck it up, buttercup.''

''Just - '' He clenches his teeth. Is it possible for her to pretend to be a pleasant person for once in her miserable life? ''You need to tell me what's going on. How is this - '' He stops again, lost. He examines the bed closely, maneuvering Mary into one arm, leaning down to check the bed for any glass with the other. Finding none, he tucks his sleeping baby under the covers but doesn't leave her side. ''Mary's dreams - ''

''Not dreams,'' Edie says. ''She's connected to her mother the same way her mother and I are connected. The same way we're all connected. I just...activated that connection.''

''You activated - ''

''Laurel was in trouble,'' she says. ''You needed to know. I thought if it came from her, you'd believe her.'' She doesn't look even a little bit apologetic about that. She looks, instead, irritated. ''Obviously I was wrong. Because here you still are. Wasting time.''

He has to physically clench his fists to keep himself from grabbing this wicked witch by the throat. He doesn't want to make any sudden movements. He knows how powerful she is. He can act as unconcerned as he wants, but he is not in a safe situation right now. The power balance is not on his side.

He doesn't know where Sam is or where Sara is. He doesn't even know if they're alive. Something is happening to Laurel. Everyone and their mother have made that clear to him. But he doesn't know what and he doesn't know where and he doesn't know what he can do. And he can't just...leave Mary here.

He is doing everything in his power to play Edie's game, to keep her talking, but he doesn't know how much patience he has left and he doesn't know what's going to happen when that well runs dry. ''You still haven't told me what is happening to Laurel,'' he points out. ''What does Hazel have to do with this? What they said,'' he gestures to nothing, the spot the ghosts were, the shattered mirror. ''About what happens to a firstborn daughter when she dies,'' he elaborates. ''Was that true?''

Edie bites down on her bottom lip and looks at Mary. She looks regretful. Or at least as close to it as she can get. ''I think so,'' she affirms. ''I'm still...working that part out. I'm not sure if they've always been trapped or if she somehow pulled them back, but - yes. She's been holding them captive. I didn't know until recently. I knew Hazel was feeding off us while we were alive, draining us to keep herself alive, but I didn't know she was using us even after death.'' She stops, licking her lips. The look in her eyes slightly resembles guilt, but doesn't quite get there. ''I should have. I should have known.''

''I thought Hazel was imprisoned,'' he says. ''That's what this whole thing was about. Getting her out of that box.''

''And it is,'' she says. ''Long story short? About 95% of Hazel is in that box. The other 5% is in us. The cursed.'' She crosses her arms over her chest, but fails to look as intimidating or as casual as she is undoubtedly aiming for. She mostly just looks scared. ''And trust me when I say that 5% is enough to wreak some serious havoc.''

''How is that possible?''

''The story goes,'' she starts, ''that Alice and her boy toy ripped Hazel's soul out of her body, trapped it in the box, and made sure no one could open it but Alice - or any other firstborn with a switched on scream. All of that is true.'' She backs away from the bed, moving away from Mary, over to Laurel's now shattered vanity. ''But there's a little more to it.''

Dean eyes Mary, unwilling to move away from her, but still struggling to figure out how to get to Sam. ''You really like to trickle truth, don't you?''

''I said what I was allowed to say.''

''What you were allowed to - ''

''Hazel knew Alice was going to come for her.'' Edie sweeps some glass off the vanity chair and sits down, daintily crossing one leg over the other. ''But she was smarter and stronger than ever at that point. So she prepared. She tucked a piece of her soul in the bloodline. Basically, it means she's in our heads.'' She leans forward, like a teacher. ''She isn't very powerful - or she wasn't anyway - and she's mostly spent the centuries since being the original mean girl, but now she's... She's ready.''

Well, that's vague.

And ominous.

''Ready for what?''

She leans back, shifting slightly, one hand draped over the back of the chair. She looks at him like she's annoyed at him for asking her questions about this story that she has chosen to tell. ''The entire time I've known Hazel,'' she starts, which...he also has questions about, but refrains from asking, ''all she's talked about is how she was waiting for her perfect girl. She knew eventually, somewhere down the line, an eldest daughter would be born, stronger than the others, someone who has touched the veil and come back, and that girl would be hers. Made for her. That girl's body, specifically, would be her ticket to freedom.''

He's starting to feel sick.

''I thought...'' Edie trails off. ''I thought that was me,'' she confesses. ''I think she did too. Turns out - Not so much. I may have been her favorite battery, but I'm not her girl. The one she really wants - ''

''Is Laurel,'' Dean finishes for her, voice quiet, numb.

She snaps her fingers, giving him a grin. ''Got it in one.''

''Okay.'' He rubs at his throat, unsure if his throat is feeling achy because of the new scar there or because he is starting to wonder if he's having a panic attack. ''Okay, so she's going to - what? Possess her, use the Cry to open the box and level up, and then - ''

''No.''

''No?''

''This isn't...'' There is something she's not saying. It hovers in the air between them, thick and rotten. She rises to her feet. ''I thought this was about possession,'' she says, inching her way towards him. ''I was wrong.'' The way she says that, the way she so freely admits that she was wrong, with an undercurrent of what seems like genuine fear is...concerning. ''Hazel doesn't need a body to house her. She needs the opposite. She has a physical form. She has a physical form more terrifying than you can ever imagine. She just needs her girl, the strong daughter made just for her, a body in between, something neither living nor dead, to bring that physical form into this world.''

A sickening thought rankles at him, nags at him. ''How is Laurel supposed to bring Hazel into the physical world?''

Edie says nothing.

Dean seriously thinks he might vomit. ''Edie - ''

''I'm...I'm not...sure,'' she says haltingly. ''But I suspect it's likely...'' She pauses. Her gaze lands, very pointedly, on Mary. ''Every story starts the same way, doesn't it?''

Yeah, he is definitely going to throw up.

He tries to push the image that pops up to the back of his mind, swallowing bile. All this time, he's been sickened by the idea of her, ill, being away from him, taken care of by someone who isn't him. This is so much worse than that. This is so much worse. ''Okay.'' He tenses, body straightening up, automatically clicking into hunter mode, going over what he needs to do, where his focus needs to be.

He needs Sam, first of all. And Cas - for back up, mostly, but also because he's got the best bullshit meter out of all of them and that's going to be invaluable if they're going to hang out with Maleficent over here. He needs to get Mary somewhere safe. He needs an arsenal. He needs to get to Laurel. He needs to get to Laurel.

''All right.'' He scrubs a hand over his face, trying to shake it off, get it together. He barely even notices the way his hand is trembling. He looks at Edie before he does anything, really looks at her, the wicked witch, the world's worst in-law, the cause of all this pain and strife, the reason Laurel is in the predicament she's in right now. She is not as scary as she wants to be. She is far more pathetic than she knows. But she is a damn good con woman. ''How do I know this isn't just another one of your lies? You've told so many stories. Each one more convoluted than the last. How do I know this isn't a trick?''

She actually has the audacity to look indignant and ticked off. ''It's not a trick,'' she snaps, impatient. ''Laurel's life is on the line here, you fucking walnut. That's your wife. That's your whole world. The woman you love is in pain right now and - ''

''Yeah, and you're the bitch who caused that pain,'' he cuts in, voice gruff, temper flaring. ''Or have you forgotten that part?''

''You're the one who left her all alone.''

''She left. She chose to leave.''

''And you let her go,'' she reminds him, mockingly.

''Don't try to turn this around on me like I'm the one who - ''

''Who what?'' She eyes him, hoping for a reaction. ''Failed her? Are you so sure you didn't?''

He doesn't give her the anger she's hoping for. Just laughs coldly in her face. ''You want to blame me to take the edge off your own guilt, Edith, you go right ahead, but we both know the truth. You are the reason for all of this. Every part of this is on you.''

''You don't understand,'' she says lowly. ''You wouldn't understand.''

''You're right,'' he confirms. ''I wouldn't understand. I could never. And I don't care. Nothing you can say would justify what you did to her.''

She's quiet. She looks at him and keeps looking at him, standing there silent and disconcerting. ''Someone took something from me,'' she says, a barely there murmur. ''A long time ago. While I was in Aberdeen. And I'm not talking about what your father did.'' She squints at him, like she's trying to decide whether or not he's worthy of this information. Evidently, she decides she might as well just let it rip. ''My memory was tampered with,'' she says. ''I think my mother had something to do with it. My own mother. I... I am missing parts of my life, Dean. There's just - It's like there's a hole in my chest.'' She swallows and then shivers, stuffing her hands in her pockets. ''And I don't know what's not there. I'm empty. I'm empty all the time. Do you have any idea what that's like?'' She levels the accusation at him with a, quite frankly unfounded, sense of contempt, scowling at him. ''Do you have any idea what it's like to be empty? I mean really, truly empty. Do you know what that's like?''

''...Yeah,'' he says, at last. ''I do.''

If she's surprised, she doesn't show it. ''Then you should know,'' she says. ''You should know where I'm coming from. My mother took something from me - ''

''My mother took something from me,'' he interrupts, nearly a shout, and then has to stop because - no, no, that's not right. His mother was taken. She didn't... It's not like it was her fault. It just... He looks at Mary, making sure she's still fast asleep, which she is, curled under the covers, sucking on her fingers, with no idea what's happening or what's going to happen or what's already happened. He tries not to spend too much time thinking about what he said. ''Move on,'' he growls, turning back to Edie. ''That's what I know. You get hurt, you walk it off, and move on. You get help. You don't get to hurt people just because you don't want to suffer alone, you petty, pathetic child.''

She looks, for a second, like she wants to flick her wrist and snap his neck. ''Are you going to help me or not?''

''Are you going to tell me why I should trust you?''

''Oh, you shouldn't trust me,'' she says, not even bothering to beat around the bush, wasting no time with attempts at sincerity. ''You shouldn't trust me at all.'' A slow smirk starts on her lips, something troubling sparking in her eyes. ''In case you haven't noticed, I'm a real slippery fish.'' She seems very proud of that. ''But I'm also all you've got.'' She seems very proud of that too. ''You heard the ladies from the Broken Hearts Club,'' she quips. ''The big bad is about to tear her apart from the inside out.'' She slinks over to him, uncomfortably close. ''This is it, cupcake,'' she taunts. ''This is the big one. You seem like the kind of guy who wants to save the girl at the end of the movie - and here we are. Here's your chance to finally save the one girl you never could.''

''And what's in it for you?'' He smiles when she balks at the question. ''Come on now, Miss Edith,'' he mocks. ''You think I'm gonna believe you're doing this out - what? Love? Please. I ain't buying what you're selling. There's gotta be something in this for you.''

''I have my reasons,'' is all she'll say, turning away from him. ''Maybe I've seen the error of my ways.'' She leans back against the vanity desk. ''Or maybe I'm the snake in the grass. That sounds like me, doesn't it?'' She perches on the vanity and grins, amused by her own ominous joke.

You know, he's beginning to see the family resemblance.

Not between her and Laurel, but between her and Ruby.

That's what his Earth-2 counterpart said, wasn't it? Long before Hazel, there was another bad seed in the bloodline, and that was Ruby. Sam believed it immediately. Dean had a bit more trouble with it. He thought it was a lie. Just something said by a demon to get under their skin. He thinks he's starting to see it now.

Birds of a feather and all.

''Maybe I'm a lying liar who lies,'' Edie suggests, ''and I'm over here sitting on my throne of lies in my false kingdom, waiting for my next mark.'' In the darkness, her cheerful smile looks far more dangerous than it would in the light. ''Maybe you're the mark.'' She lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. ''Either way, can you afford to take a gamble on this one? The price is pretty steep, you know. Are you really willing to pay it just to be stubborn?''

He hesitates.

Working with the enemy has not really been a stellar experience in the past for the Winchester family and their associates. He should know better. He does know better. But...

Son of a bitch.

Edie pulls her sleeve up and taps her watch that undoubtedly cost about as much as a new car would. ''Clock's ticking here, pal. We need to get a move on if we're going to get to her before this goes down.''

He is still a little dubious. ''Just to be clear,'' he starts. ''What is it you're wanting to do here? Because if you just want to gain control of Hazel - ''

''No,'' she shakes her head, slipping off the desk. ''She needs to be taken care of for good.'' She sounds definitive when she says it, but since when has anything she's said been trustworthy? ''If we can get rid of her, not only do we save Laurel, we save the entire family line. The entire future family line. The bloodline curse may have been put on the firstborn daughters, but Hazel is the cause of that curse. If we kill her, it might just break that curse.'' She looks over at Mary, just for a second, a softening in her eyes. ''There's no way to stop what's already been done - Laurel will always have her scream, so will Mary - but if we can stop the curse in its tracks now, no one else will ever have to go through any of this. It will end with Mary. And we'll be able to move on when we die,'' she adds. ''No interference from Hazel because she needs to feed. Only rest. Peace.''

It's a good pitch, he'll give her that.

He looks at Mary. He thinks of those ghosts, the ones who held his daughter under the water and possessed her and made her vomit up the dead bird currently hanging out on the floor by his left foot. He thinks of most earthbound spirits. How lost they become. The way they deteriorate. Becoming so entangled with their pain that they can't tell grief and fear from anger. That's going to happen to Laurel. That's going to happen to Mary.

Unless they stop it.

''Dean.'' Edie moves closer to him once more but stops before she gets too close, keeping a respectable distance. ''If you work with me, you won't just be saving your wife, you'll be saving your daughter. If you have a granddaughter, a great granddaughter, a great great granddaughter, entire generations from now, you'll be saving them all.'' One more step closer. ''I'm proposing a truce. Temporarily, of course. For Laurel. What do you say?'' She holds out a hand to him in the darkness and waits for him to take it. ''Partners?''

He takes a second to calculate the risks. Realistically, what are the chances he's being manipulated here? Likely pretty high. He knows that. Every fiber of his being knows that. But what if he's not?

Mommy's in the water, said Mary.

They used to drown witches, you know, said his father.

She's going to tear her apart, said one of the ghosts. From the inside out.

He is the one who failed in his duty of care the first time around. He is the one who screwed up. He is the one who wanted to take care of her, even when it hurt, even when it was hard. He wants her to come home, to add pictures to the Mommy Book, to stand on the beach with their daughter again, wind in their hair, giggling and happy and alive. He wants her to get better, whatever that means, and that isn't going to happen if her villainous ancestor rips her apart from the inside out.

I take you as you are, loving who you are now and who you are yet to become, he promised her. March 15th, 2012. He remembers it was a Thursday. I promise to listen to you and learn from you, to support you and accept your support. I will laugh with you, cry with you, grow with you, and create with you. I will love you and have faith in your love for me through all our years and all that life may bring us, he said once, and has remembered it every day since.

We'll find you anywhere, Mary said.

We who allowed them to die, wrote Didion.

He can't just do nothing. He can't. It's not in him. He will not allow her to die this time. He will not be part of that 60% of men who walk away. He will not put her back on that cold funeral home table, all alone, waiting to be drained away. It's not an option. It has never been an option. He told Tessa, he warned her, I will not let you take her. I will stop you. He meant that.

''Okay,'' says Dean, but does not take the hand Edie offers him. ''Tell me what we have to do.''

.

.

.

end part twenty one

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Additional spoilery warnings for this chapter: This chapter contains harm to a child, including an attempted drowning and a somewhat violent possession.

(Also, yes, this is the first of two chapters that will not involve flashbacks. If you're missing them, they will return in chapter twenty three!)

Chapter title comes from the poem ''Do Not Reply'' by Joan Tierney.