A/Ns: Thanks so so so so so much for the reviews last chapter! I'm really glad so many of you told me you liked the last four chapters, since I was sitting there bashing my head about just how long that one episode was getting.

I am once more sitting in an airport next to a plug desperately trying to get this chapter up while they start boarding my plane. I'm cutting it even closer this time XD

Chapter Warnings: Chuck's sharing State secrets, Persephone's reminded where her loyalties are supposed to lie, Dean's getting unhappy hunches, Sam's being stubborn but not altogether wrong, and poor Andy's just dragged along for the ride he can't bring himself to get off of.

Actual Chapter Warnings: Drug use and judgment against that particular drug of choice. Due to this, I am going to post the following disclaimer: the below opinions concerning drug usage, both positive and negative, belong to the characters and do not reflect personal opinion on my part.

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The Road So Far (This Time Around)

Season 2: Chapter 40

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

When Chuck opened his door Monday morning to the standard, three-rap knock of his no-nonsense Editorial Assistant, he beamed like a kid coming down the stairs Christmas morning. Stephanie just raised one eyebrow, and Chuck sheepishly admitted he hadn't been sure she'd come back.

"I told you I would," was all the woman had said, like that should have been enough from the get-go. She walked past Chuck, straight to his living room and her chair, which was still in its spot over by the window.

The writer, caught between further embarrassment and a touch of defense (it wasn't like he was used to people showing up in the first place, let alone sticking around long enough to be missed), closed his front door and followed after the blonde, who immediately demanded to see the progress he'd made while she'd been away. Chuck scrambled for the new chapters, Stephanie sat in her chair, and all was right in the world.

That was Monday. Today was Thursday, and Chuck and Steph were in the kitchen sharing a glass of lemonade while Chuck babbled on about the characters and their most recent experience with the Baltimore Police department. He'd managed to get two (two!) smiles out of her so far and even a partial chuckle (he was on a roll), when the woman suddenly hissed as if in pain, head twitching and tilting to the side like she had a bad neck cramp.

"Steph?" Chuck paused in his animated retelling of a Andy Gallagher role-playing a mustached lawyer, as his Editorial Assistant raised a hand to her throat and rubbed at the skin there until it was ringed red. "You okay?"

Whatever it was – a cramp, Chuck suspected, though how weird for it to come out of nowhere (perhaps she needed more potassium and magnesium in her diet?) – seemed to pass and Stephanie offered him a tight smile.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt." She set her glass of lemonade, barely more than a quarter drank, down on the counter beside her.

"Not at all-"

"I'm going to step outside for a minute," she continued, much to Chuck's confusion (and slight alarm, certain it was probably something he'd done, again). "I'll be right back."

Before she'd made it out of the kitchen, Chuck, who was definitely internally panicking because he liked his Editorial Assistant, yet kept getting the weirdest sensation he was going to lose her every time she walked out the door, blurted, "Do you wanna see something cool first?"

Steph paused on the threshold of the kitchen, raising that sardonic eyebrow in his direction. At least this time it was partially amused. "Right this second?"

"Sure." Chuck shrugged, laughing weakly at his own awkwardness. He crossed the kitchen, passing her in the doorway and leading the way into the living room. "It'll only take a sec. I wanted to show it to you earlier, but kinda forgot."

The woman followed after him, so Chuck decided not to be too embarrassed by the poor and panicked attempt to keep her around. He set his own glass of lemonade down on his writing desk and shuffled through the multitude of papers there. It took a bit of scrambling, but he finally found the one he was looking for. "It's kind of like a deleted scene. I thought you might enjoy it."

She took the pages from him, nothing more than a small excerpt about a demon encounter the boys had had. Steph scanned the paragraphs quickly, while Chuck rambled on about what she was reading even as she read it.

"It's a hex bag that paralyzes demons! The idea just came to me." He moved his hands around as he talked, both in a nervous fidget and animated excitement that he so rarely got about his own story. Or, well, used to rarely get. He'd never really been a fan of his own writing; he always thought he'd like to write something else, sci-fi or mystery perhaps, but it was only ever flashes of 'Supernatural' that came to him. However, it turned out what he'd needed was someone to talk about it with, someone who was both detached and also weirdly invested. Encouraging, at the very least. It was odd and out of his comfort zone, but considering this was the most human interaction Chuck had possibly ever had in his adult life and the best he'd ever felt about his chosen career, he'd take what he could get. "You can tie it to a string and wrap it around the demon and bam, instant paralysis! Cool, right?"

"Very cool," Stephanie replied in that sort of monotone way that always had Chuck questioning whether it was, in fact, cool at all. He was starting to figure out that was just Steph though. Like she knew the words to say but hadn't figured out the meaning behind them. Probably had to do with English being her second language, again. Not that Chuck had ever figured out what that first language was. "Why did you take it out of the story?"

She was reading the page again, which included a thorough description of how to make the bag, with all its ingredients and even the necessary incantation. Chuck didn't really know why he'd written it out in that much detail – he usually kept all the magic and hoodoo a lot vaguer – but it just seemed important at the time.

"Oh, it was too easy." He laughed another weak little laugh, rubbing at the back of his neck self-consciously. "Readers like it when the characters struggle, you know?"

Stephanie regarded him with that look again, definitely amused but also so, so harsh. "Didn't you give them a gun that could kill anything?"

The laugh that left Chuck's chest this time was entirely self-deprecating, as was the sheepish smile and red tinge to his cheeks. "Yeah…that had to go too. I think it's why I killed John Winchester, honestly. I guess I could have just had them chuck it or something…."

The eyebrow got worse. "Why would they throw away a weapon that valuable?"

Chuck's laugh got a little more nervous, his cheeks a little more red. "Yeah, you're right. Killing John Winchester was probably better."

Steph didn't agree one way or the other, she just handed the pages back. Even as she did, her expression pinched sharply, her head twitching in another spasm of pain, and her arm raised in an ultimately aborted move towards her neck.

Chuck's smile was strained but he pushed her hand and the pages back towards her. "Keep them. It's not like I'm gonna put it in the story."

Or even keep the excerpt. He hadn't been sure why he wrote it in the first place. His Editorial Assistant looked surprised for a scant moment before she folded the pages and walked over to her chair and the purse sitting beside it. Steph slid the papers inside and gathered the handles. She was rubbing her neck again, bag over one shoulder, when she returned.

"You have to go?" Chuck asked, and Steph nodded, reaffirming that she would only be stepping out for a moment. The writer smiled and tried to believe her. As he escorted her to the front door, he paused, hand on the knob, and glanced back at her. "You sure you're okay, Steph?"

The smile she gave was one of those rare real ones and it made the writer smile in return. The little knot in his stomach he couldn't explain but wrote off as a pathetic crush loosened ever so slightly.

"I'm fine, Chuck. I'll be right back."

With a weak nod he tried to have more faith in, he opened the door and watched his Editorial Assistant disappear down the steps and around the corner of his neighbor's hedges, like she did every evening at six pm. Only it was just after two and he didn't like the boulder sized rock in his gut. An identical set of eyes, set into the same face and similar in every way but for the age and knowledge in them, also watched the woman leave with a touch more suspicion and knowledge of real cause behind the knot in Chuck Shurley's stomach.

-o-o-o-

It was the yellow-eyed Prince of Hell waiting for her, this time, and Persephone regarded him with the distaste a demon of his caliber deserved.

"You are aware there is an Archangel attached to the Prophet, are you not?" she immediately spat as she came to a stop in front of him, glaring up as she shouldered the stupid bag that passed for fashion these days. The straps lay only an inch from the reddened, irritated skin of her neck, where an invisible, gold chain lay wrapped around her throat. A chain Azazel had enjoyed tugging on for the last seven and a half minutes. "Raphael may not be the most observant, but you are playing with fire, demon."

"I was going to say the same to you," Azazel returned with a lazy, toothy smile. He dropped the chain from his hand, or at least he did on the plane of existence he'd hidden the thing, and Persephone twisted and cracked her neck in annoyance as it was freed. The chain remained, but it was looser where it lay against her skin.

The demon crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the fence of some white collar family home. He'd considered spending some time with the woman and two children residing inside while he waited for his wayward asset. Just because he could (and because he hated waiting). However, Persephone had shown up before he'd quite settled on what he would do to them. Azazel regarded her now with the same smile he would have worn when he slaughtered those children in front of their mother.

"Tom says you're not being a team player, Princess. Didn't your parents teach you how to share?"

The twitch in her jaw and the aborted twist of her neck had nothing to do with the chain this time. Persephone bared her teeth like an animal. "What exactly are you expecting here? You told me to watch the boys from afar and I am doing that. Providing you or your incompetent offspring with information is not why I am playing house with the Prophet. If you expected it to be, then you are stupid." She crossed her arms over her chest, a move Azazel was beginning to recognize as a tell. "Chuck doesn't even use their last name in his writings! He does not get more specific than that, demon. There has been nothing to share."

Azazel hummed, running his tongue over his teeth behind sealed lips. Reaching out with a lazy hand, he tapped a finger against the top of her head. "Oh, I don't know. I think your daddy sculpted more than beauty into that head of yours, Princess; you're not fooling me. You might not have specifics, but that doesn't mean you don't have information worth sharing."

She shoved his hand away with a hiss, eyes ablaze with a fiery green glow, and Azazel grinned all the wider. The woman seethed, but he knew she was quickly losing the control she desperately fought for.

"See, we need the boys to visit a little town in Oregon." He stretched out to muss her hair but this time she dodged him, taking a step and a half back and out of his reach. Azazel didn't bother following; he was content with the point he'd made. "So, put that pretty head of yours to use and get them there."

When her fierce gaze did not budge – all of that loss of control so clear beneath rage – the yellow eyed demon sighed dramatically.

"How about we skip the part of the conversation where I remind you that I dug you out of that hole-"

"You dug me out of that hole to bind with Sam Winchester!" she cut him off, anger and that famous temper of hers finally boiling over. Azazel's hand twitched for the chain once more but if Persephone noticed the threat, she didn't care. "Instead, you have be babysitting a Prophet right under an Archangel's nose."

Azazel did wrap his hand around the end of that chain, giving it a hard enough tug that Persephone bent practically double and lurched into the demon's waiting grip. Azazel could feel the thin links of metal beneath his hand, wrapped tightly around her neck, and he decided a little extra pressure was needed. A creature such as she could not be choked to death, but it was still rewarding to hear her struggle for the air she was compelled to take in.

"I dug you out of that hole to do as I say, when I say." The demon lifted his arm until the tips of her toes were left struggling for purchase on the sidewalk. "You can start making yourself useful or you can go back to being chained up in the motel room twenty-four-seven until I do have use of you."

He released both her neck and the chain and she stumbled for footing, hacking through a partially crushed larynx.

"It's your choice, Princess."

Persephone hacked several harsh exhales, bent over with one hand braced on her knee, the other on her throat, before she was able to look up enough to glare at him. The first time she tried to speak, her voice broke before she'd finished the first word, and Azazel waited patiently through the second round of coughs. The woman straightened a second time and held out her hand as she took deep, even breaths.

"Give me your phone." Her voice was still rough, but she gestured with her hand when Azazel merely stared at her. "I know you have one. Give it to me."

The demon stared her down for another moment – a power play, she knew – before he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a slim smart phone. Persephone took it, unlocking the device and pulling up the virtual keypad.

"Bobby Singer's landline." It was a question in the form of a demand and she glanced expectantly from phone to demon. Those green beauties were pissed but also quite a lovely shade of defeated and Azazel rather enjoyed preening under that gaze. When he only raised an eyebrow in response, Persephone added, annoyed, "The one he uses as FBI."

"He has six," the demon answered, that lazy smile back in place. "We don't know which is which."

Her jaw clenched around tightly ground teeth. "The one with the DC area code."

Azazel hummed again, smile stretching smug across his face. He reached up and tapped his own head mockingly, waggling eyebrows at her. That jaw clenched even tighter. The demon rattled off the two-o-two number and she punched it into the phone.

The gruff voice of Bobby Singer answered after three rings. "This is Agent Willis."

"Hello Agent Willis, this is Detective Diana Ballard, with the Baltimore Police Department." At her words, the yellow-eyed demon raised a languid eyebrow and Persephone kept right on glaring at him. "I'm trying to reach Agents Frehley and Simmons? Um…Sam and Dean?"

She dropped her voice at the end, tinged with uncertainty and the likes of a secret. She knew the second Singer picked up on it. "Of course. Everything alright, officer?"

"Yes, everything's fine here. We haven't had anymore, uh, problems since your agents left. But a friend of mine in Oregon called me. It sounded like they were having the kind of…thing your boys might be interested in?"

There was a shuffle in the background of the line as Bobby grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. "Well, I can get a message to them. This friend of yours got a name?"

"Rachel Williams." Persephone sent a glance Azazel's way. He was watching her indolently, but in response to a sharp look, mouthed the name of the town widely. "She's with the Rivergrove Sheriff's department."

"I'll send them her way."

"Thank you, Agent Willis." Persephone lowered the phone, ending the call and tossing it back at the demon. "It will take them a while. The Winchesters are in Mississippi."

"Oh," Azazel said offhandedly, tucking the phone back into the front pocket of his flannel with the flair of a man purposefully acting nonchalant. "Their location we already know."

Persephone's glare darkened, realizing he'd been testing her in more ways than one, and she shifted her weight in the face of his purposefully obnoxious smile. "We done?"

That expression shifted even more so, now the cat who'd caught the canary, and Persephone wanted to rip it off his face. The chain around her still-irritated neck was a painful reminder that she could do no such thing. The demon tapped the phone against his palm. "We're done. But I'll be checking in on you again real soon."

Without bothering to respond, she turned her back on the demon and headed for the Prophet's house, hand wrapped tight against her purse and the pages within that Chuck had given her.

-o-o-o-

Dean hung up with a quick, "Yeah, we got it. Thanks, Bobby," and tucked the phone into his pocket, leaning back in his seat to do so. Across from him, typing away on his computer in the internet café they were camped out at, Sam raised a brow.

"Detective Ballard called him," Dean answered the unspoken question, reaching out to grab his coffee, giving it the side eye when he realized it wasn't the beer he wanted it to be. Stupid coffee shops. Bars had wifi, too. Of course, bars weren't usually open at ten in the morning. "Said she's got a friend in Oregon with a possible case."

Oregon would be quite a trek, having just wrapped up a case way down south, but if that's where the next job was, that's where they'd go. Besides, Diana had done them one hell of a favor letting them just walk like that (again). They owed her, and this time if she'd come to collect, they were sure as hell going to answer.

They'd have to wait for Andy to get back from wherever he'd gone. The hunt hadn't been an easy one for him. Back to back, really, what with getting held hostage with a gun to his head in Baltimore. Hell, the kid still had one hell of a shiner from that encounter, the thing now an ugly yellow-green across his eye and temple. But this case… Dean shook his head. Crossroad demons were a piece of work, that was for sure, and the one they'd gone and summoned in an attempt to save Evan Hudson's life had certainly worked the angle on the poor kid.

Dean, having the more experience with the bastards, had planned to go to the crossroads alone and bargain for Evan's contract once more. It was a stupid play, really. Yes, they were hunters, but Evan had made his choice ten years ago. Risking everything – the damn apocalypse – on something like summoning and chatting up a crossroads demon just to save one man…

It was Winchester level stupid. Which is probably why they did it, because Dean Winchester was not capable of looking a person in the eye, knowing firsthand the fate they were about to suffer, and turn his back on them. There wasn't a person on the planet he wouldn't try to save from a lifetime on the rack downstairs. That was just one of his crosses to bare.

So he'd gone, but he'd had an unexpected tagalong. Andy had spent the case growing quieter and quieter, to the point where both Winchesters were sharing worried glances behind the kid's back. When it came time to split up, Sam buying some time against the hellhounds and Dean off to the crossroads, Andy had been insistent he go with Dean.

The hunter should have known better.

He'd just about wrapped the deal with the devil-trapped hell-bitch – her continued non-exorcised existence for Evan's contract – when she'd turned red eyes on the kid and asked, "What about you, handsome?"

Before Dean could shut it down, he knew they were neck deep, a mile up a certain creek without so much as a floaty, let alone a paddle.

"What about me?"

"You miss your girl, don't you?" Andy went paler than any ghost Dean had ever seen, and that was no simple challenge. Damnit, he needed to put an end to this right friggin' now. "I could bring her back."

"Don't, Andy," Dean hissed, turning his back on the demon to face Andy, whose wide, horrified, and so, so desperate eyes stayed locked on the woman in the center of the devil's trap. "Believe me, kid. It's not worth it."

Andy's gaze turned his way, but it was numb and glassy and Dean's stomach sank down to the dirt floor. "I got her killed, Dean. If I could bring her back-"

"And what? Tell her you sold your soul for her? Ten years, if you're lucky, and then a lifetime of pain until you turn into one of those?" Dean tossed his head in the direction of the red eyed bitch behind him. "You think Tracy would want you to become like her? Tricking other people into trading away their souls for the thing they want most?"

Andy's eyes dropped and they took Dean's heart (the one he usually wouldn't admit to having) with them.

"I get kid. I do." He put a hand on Andy's shoulder and squeezed, hard enough to remind the kid that he was still alive. "I've been there, I did that. And I've been the reason someone else did that. I will tell you right now, you don't want to do this. Tracy won't want to be the person left behind, knowing her life cost you yours. Trust me."

"You should let the boy make his own decisions, Dean." The demon, head cocked to the side, desperately trying to listen in, smiled sweetly when she recaptured Andy's gaze. "I'm not talking you into anything, honey. I'm just putting all your options on the table."

"Yeah, sure you are." If they'd had the Colt, Dean would have shot her right between the eyes.

Andy lowered his gaze, fists clenched by his sides, but he didn't speak again. The demon sighed, but turned her attention back to the Winchester, and they sealed their deal without a part in it for Andy.

Afterward, she smacked her lips with thinly veiled distaste while Andy dug his heel through the dirt-drawn devil's trap. "You taste like righteousness, honey. It's disgusting."

"Yeah, yeah," Dean wiped his own mouth with the back of his hand. "And you taste like roses. Now beat it."

The demon scoffed but was gone with the parting words of, "Gotta love a man with manners."

Andy didn't say a word on their drive back, Dean calling Sam to make sure they'd pulled through the hellhounds attack. The kid they knew didn't resurface, even when Dean tried to pull him out of that dark, dangerous headspace he knew only too well. They'd gotten back to the motel, Andy going straight to bed without so much as a mumbled, 'night', leaving Dean to drag Sam outside and give him the recap.

The kid hadn't been much better in the morning, though at least he'd been speaking. The jargon that came out of his mouth had been another language, at least to Dean, but the context gave was sufficient to figure out the mumbling was pot-related. Andy was planning on finding a score, which was reason for enough for Dean to wave his hand and tell the kid to get lost, come back when he was done. Not like they couldn't all use a little time apart.

Although, currently, the two brothers hadn't exactly gotten more than a foot and a half between them yet. Sam wanted internet and Dean didn't have anywhere better to be, other than morosely finding the bottom of a bottle after a case involving Crossroad deals, especially one hitting so close to home for one of their own. But that seemed like a terrible idea to do alone and he'd been better in recent years. Or, at least trying.

"Did Bobby say how she was?"

Dean glanced up, blinking at his brother as he was brought back to the conversation at hand. Sam spared him a telling glance over the top of his laptop before he went back to typing. Dean didn't even know what he was up to over there. They'd wrapped the case, saved the guy who'd been stupid and desperate enough to make a deal ten years ago. Nothing more to be clack-clacking about.

"Uh…why would he?"

Sam sent him another one, not quite a bitchface, but a key building block: exasperation. "He wouldn't, it's just… you know, Diana really stuck her neck out for us. Something like that could cost a cop their career."

Like Dean needed the reminder. Perhaps Diana Ballard's willingness to look the other way hadn't ended up as live-saving for him this time around as it had for Sam and Andy, what with Cas having not been up to much and amenable to an earth-side assist when Dean sent an if-you-happen-to-be-free prayer heavenward. But he remembered what she'd done for him the first time. She and Sam saved his life, and her letting them go had been far more a save for Dean, who would have been sent back to St. Louis on murder charges. It didn't matter that that's not what had gone down this time; he owed the detective for both, regardless.

"Yeah, well, I kinda doubt she shared her life story with Bobby." Dean played with the straw of his to-go cup, iced coffee growing pretty watery by now. He shoved the thing in out and out of its top, making an obnoxious, plastic screeching that earned him a glare from his brother.

Sam couldn't really refute Dean's point. Still, he wondered how the detective was fairing. Her life had been turned upside down, although for once on a case it was largely not due to the Winchesters. There wasn't much to do about it, however. The woman probably wanted them out of her life completely, sans sending them in the direction of a hunt. Sam sure would.

Dean set his cup down another minute later, a frown on his face. Sam wasn't really paying attention, having gone back to researching Crossroads Deals. Dean had told him plenty on and off, but Sam found control in researching something for himself, and that control offered the kind of comfort his big brother just couldn't. The recent case hadn't just struck a nerve for Andy; Sam was plenty unnerved himself. The deal Dean had made and Evan Hudson's narrowly avoided fate drudged up the still-recent death of their own father. As if that wasn't enough emotional turmoil to trudge through, it was a reminder of what, according to the world Dean had already lived through, would be Dean's fate in less than a year's time.

But his brother didn't need to know that was what he was researching.

"Did you give her Bobby's number?"

Sam paused at the question, blinking at Dean's tone. And now his face, which had grown serious in the oh-shit sort of way that never spelled anything good for them. Sam shook his head. He'd thought it after he and Andy had left the supply store on Ashland, regretting not leaving Diana a way to contact them. A cop with knowledge of the supernatural and a hunter's number in her back pocket could be huge for getting on cases quickly, before multiple victims piled up. But Sam had been focused on getting Dean out of the precinct before Diana called in Sheridan's deeds and death.

Not that he'd need to, of course. No, the jerk had been back at the motel all along, Cas having gotten him out almost twenty minutes earlier.

In the end, though, it was probably for the best that they hadn't left any traceable ties to Diana Ballard, in case her department went heavy on the investigation into her involvement.

Dean's eyes were narrowed now, jaw tightening in a way that made Sam close his computer, full attention on his brother. "I didn't, either. So how the hell did she get Bobby's number?"

Huh. Okay, so maybe that was a little weird, but Sam didn't really think much of it. He shrugged. "We're in the system now. Known associates are something cops keep track of." Dean still didn't look convinced – how would Bobby have even popped up on their radar? – but Sam continued, "Diana knew all about me. The house fire, dad dragging us across the country. They probably knew about Bobby, too."

The older Winchester was shaking his head. "Something doesn't feel right. What's she doing calling us about some small town in Oregon? She just happens to have a friend out there who calls her about a mysterious case and our number on hand, which we didn't give her? Nah, something about this stinks."

Sam watched as Dean fidgeted, pulling at his t-shirt like it was too tight across his chest, despite the fact it was the same size as every shirt his brother owned. The first swirls of unease stirred in his gut as he stared at his sibling's agitated tell. "Is this a timey-sense thing?"

"I don't know. But somethings up." Dean abandoned the pretense and just flat out rubbed at his sternum. Cas was fidgeting in there as much as he was, and something ugly – like suspicion – was building in Dean's gut. His stupid chest angel only ever reacted to two things: Dean's own self-loathing and demons. While the recent case and dealing with those red-eyed bastards had stirred up some seriously unpleasant memories, Dean had a feeling that had nothing to do with the tightness behind his ribcage now.

In fact, the hunter had a growing hunch.

The hunter dug his phone back out of his pocket, dialing Bobby's number. The phone rang three times before the older hunter answered. "Hey, Bobby. That woman you talked to, did she have an accent?"

Across the table, Sam's brow pinched. Diana Ballard didn't have an accent. At least, not much of one. What was Dean getting at?

Whatever Bobby's response was, it turned Dean's face stone-cold blank. He thanked the older man and hung up again.

"What'd he say?" That knotted unease was full-well on its way to dread.

"Lady had an accent. Bobby thought Jewish, maybe Arabic." Dean tapped his cell on the tabletop, his glare deadly but not meant for Sam. "Sound familiar?"

It took only a moment, but the younger Winchester's frame tensed with an unpleasant memory. "The wrong number call. The one Crowley warned us about, that Hell had traced."

Dean's tight-lipped smile was anything but friendly. "Azazel's girl."

Sam glanced down at the top of his laptop, thinking about the implication. "Oregon's a trap."

His brother swore, tossing his phone onto the wood. Its clatter made Sam twitch, but he covered it well. "We need to know everything about this Rivergrove place, and why Azazel wants us there."

But Sam's thoughts were on another trap. The motel in that college town where Crowley had found them and warned them Azazel was coming. The bar they'd gone to afterward, hoping to trap a demon trying to search their room. The utter nothing that had come out of it all. And a woman he'd met who had a strange accent.

"What's with the constipation face?" Dean was staring at him, and although his words were pure snark, the look on his face was serious.

Sam ignored the quip, shifting in his chair, jaw squared with growing realization. "Both of those are Semitic languages."

The older hunter just stared at his kid brother. "…yeah, so?"

Sam chewed on the left side of his cheek, grinding his teeth together not out of anger but indecision. "Semitic languages, that alphabet, they all came out of the same place, Dean: Phoenicia. You know what else they call the Phoenician alphabet?"

"I bet your gonna tell me."

"Proto-Canaanite."

Dean stilled at the word. It wasn't immediately familiar to him – he never was and never would be the geek genius his brother was – but he'd heard it before, from the kid's own mouth, even. He closed his eyes briefly as it hit. "The green-eyed lady in your vision."

Sam didn't look any happier about it. "Azazel was in that vision too."

"Great." Dean leaned back in his chair harder than was probably necessary, glaring at the table like it was a physical representation for the mess this was turning into. "So now Yellow Eyes has some mystery monster playing phone tag with us, leading us wherever the hell he wants. That's just great."

The younger Winchester fell quiet again, thinking about the bar and the woman he'd 'bumped' into. He went back to grinding his teeth in indecision once again. "There's something else." When Dean looked up, an unhappy expression on his face that didn't actually have a whole lot to do with Sam (yet), the younger Winchester continued. "There was a woman. I met her in the bar that night, after Crowley."

That expression shifted from 'you dog!' into 'you've got to be kidding me' so fast it was impressive Dean didn't get a headache. But Sam couldn't help but take offense to where that look ended. He wasn't stupid; he hadn't done anything with her. They'd just talked. Well…and that one other thing.

"She didn't look like the lady in the dream. She was blonde and had blue eyes." Although, thinking back on it now like he certainly hadn't been then, the two had been about the same height and build. "She had an accent. I thought it was maybe Yiddish, but it easily could have been one of the ones Bobby mentioned."

His brother was looking more and more grumpy, and Sam hadn't even gotten to the bad part. He was stalling, and he knew it.

"She bumped into me while I was getting a beer. Spilled her drink." The hunter looked down at his hand, the cut having long ago scabbed over and faded. He couldn't remember what had happened to her glass. Sam thought maybe it had ended up on the bar, but really, that only meant anyone could have taken it. The younger Winchester didn't want to meet Dean's eye. It was stupid. Careless. To let a demon – or someone working for a demon – so easily trick him with a cute smile and batted eyelashes. Damn it, he was so much smarter than that. "Her glass cut my hand."

Across from him, Dean went still. Terrifyingly still. "So…they have your blood?"

"Yeah," Sam answered, voice cold and quiet. "They could."

"Great, Sam. That's great. Are you kidding me?" Dean slammed his hand down on the table, causing his kid brother to jump, however little, and several other patrons to glance their way. They were lucky it wasn't peak coffee-shop hours, but that didn't mean the place was empty.

Dean knew it wasn't actually Sammy's fault, and the kid certainly looked like he was stewing in enough guilt and self-loathing to not need his brother's help there. The older Winchester let out an aggravated sigh, never having been much good at biting back his temper or assuaging the guilt when he inevitably failed. Damnit, he remembered the way Sammy had looked at the bar, suddenly relaxed and, dare he think it, almost happy. He'd known in a second the kid had found some cute thing that raised his spirits, and he'd been proud of him.

Whoever this lady was, she was good as dead in his book.

"There's nothing we can do about it now," he growled out instead and reached for Sam's computer, spinning it around to his side, flipping it open. "Let's find out what the hell is so important to that Yellow Eyed bastard in Rivergrove, for starters."

It wasn't much of an olive branch, and it certainly wasn't healing any wounds, but Sam took the out as Dean googled the town and waited for the crappy-ass wifi to finish loading the images. When it did, he swore a blue streak that had even Sam staring at him in surprise, let alone the rest of the patrons near them.

"What is it?" Sam grabbed the laptop and turned it around, but the only pictures on the screen were of a quaint little mountain town. Nothing worth the words coming out of his brother's mouth or the look on his face that Sam couldn't even quite place.

Dean didn't do scared, otherwise that's what Sam would call it.

"What's in Rivergrove?" he asked, kind of dreading the answer.

Not that the answer, when Dean gave it, made any sort of sense to him.

"Croats."

-o-o-o-

When Andy eventually made it back to the motel, blessedly high off some pretty good shit, it was to the middle of one hell of an argument.

"We're not going!" Dean was shouting at Sam, the volume of his voice and aggravation in it a readable measure of how long this fight had apparently been waging. "What part of walking into a trap are you not getting?"

"The part where we leave an entire town to die, Dean!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Andy interrupted, standing wide-eyed, utterly stoned, and very, very lost in the doorway of the motel. "What'd I miss?"

Sam huffed something between a sigh and a scoff, but at this point in their relationship, Andy was used to being the kid, kid brother. Sam had never gotten to be the older one, so he had a tendency to be a little condescending. But Andy had never had a brother either, so he figured they were both overdue. Dean, meanwhile, just crossed his arms and refused to talk, so the duty fell to Sam to explain just what the hell was going on.

Hell being the key word there.

Andy sank onto one of the mattresses, desperately chasing a high that, while still chemically existent in his body, suddenly felt a lot less blissful.

"Zombies." He blinked slowly at the two brothers. "You're telling me we just got an SOS from a town in Oregon, but it's a trap-" and here he turned from one brother to the other- "because it's full of…angry zombies. Reavers. We're going to a town full of Reavers."

Sam dropped his arms with a heavy sigh. Which was apparently a yes.

Andy looked down at the backpack he'd left the motel room with earlier, woefully empty at the time and now happily holding enough weed to last him till the next time they had enough downtime after a hunt to hunt down a dealer. It sat on the bed beside him, staring up at him, beckoning him with oblivion that he only just realized how badly he needed.

"I'm not high enough for this."

Dean rolled his eyes, throwing up his hands from where he was leaning against the tv-stand. Whatever he might have been about to say, though, was silenced by a look from Sam. Andy had been shaky since Baltimore, to say the least, and yesterday's case had not helped. The kid was toughing his way through it, (smoking his way through it, more like), but the brothers had both noticed the change well before they'd made Mississippi. It wasn't that they disapproved so much as it wasn't either of their pick of poison when it came to forgetting the hell that could be their lives. Besides, Winchesters were so much better at worrying about each other than taking care of themselves.

"Maybe you should sit this one out," Sam suggested, offering an understanding smile, though Dean still thought it looked judgmental. Pitying, if nothing else. Not that any expression Dean had had around the kid when he was high lately had been much better. He wasn't the greatest at being non-judgmental in general. At least not with vices, hypocritical as that may be.

"We're all sitting this one out," Dean countered before Andy could take Sam up on his offer or decline it, as he had once again on the crossroads case. Much to his regret and now Dean's sense of smell. He was so not letting Andy in Baby like that. Kid stank. "Because we're not going."

"It's fine. I'm good," Andy said, voice about as vacant as his eyes, but Sam was already arguing back, neither of the Winchesters really hearing him.

"We can't just ignore this, Dean. You said we wouldn't run from everything!" Sam wasn't going to back down on this. It was a whole town of people – over three hundred from the city census – and according to his brother, they were all about to suffer pretty horrible fates. "You talk like Time is going to screw us over, but maybe we're supposed to go! What if it's been pointing us in the right direction all along?"

Dean could only stare, dumbstruck. "Are you serious? This is not a direction we wanna go, Sammy!"

"Well, we're supposed to be sticking to the timeline."

It was kind of a dirty trick, bringing Cas's words into this, but Sam was ready to pull out any of the tricks, including using Dean's sentiment for the angel against him.

"No," the older Winchester argued right back, pointer finger jabbing at Sam even from across the room, "we're supposed to be sticking to you-not-getting-yourself-killed!"

Sam held out his arms mockingly. "Did this kill me last time?"

Dean gritted his teeth, because the smug bastard already knew the answer to that question. "It tried its damnedest, Sam! Besides, there was no woman last time, therefore, timeline's already broken!"

Silence fell for half a minute, Dean temporarily in the lead but far from victor. Sam dropped his arms, staring at his brother with a heavy rise and fall of his chest.

"What woman?" Andy looked back and forth between the two of them, but neither brother answered his question.

"Then how did it happen?" Sam's question was posed innocently enough, even if it made Dean bristle with aggravation. He ran a hand through his hair, actually having to think about it.

When the answer came to him, he wasn't happy any more happy with it than he was with anything else in this discussion. "A vision."

The younger Winchester frowned, working through the differences in the timelines. "So, Azazel then. It was a trap last time too, Dean. Only this time, we blocked his ability to give me visions, so he found someone who could dial a phone."

The sarcasm wasn't helping Dean's non-existent calm. "Someone new, Sam. And new is bad!"

He hated the expression that overtook his brother's face. It was the one he got any time he'd managed to back his brother into a verbal corner. It was the lawyer look. The man from the future hated that look. Actually, just about every version of Dean hated that look.

"Not going to Rivergrove would be new."

"God damn it, Sammy." Dean threw his arms up again, shoving off the tv stand. "Stop twisting my words around. We are not going!"

-o-o-o-

Baby sat idling in the middle of the forest road, her driver white-knuckled on the steering wheel, staring at the last bridge between them and the town of Rivergrove, Oregon.

"This is a bad idea. This is the definition of a bad idea. In the history of bad ideas, this is right up there with not killing Adolf Hitler as a baby."

Sam glanced sidelong at his brother, who'd practically slammed on the breaks when they'd rounded the last bend and come across the bridge. A bridge Dean remembered crossing only once before. He'd tried for twice, but the damn thing had been barricaded with armed men, all of which had opened fire on him and one of which had tried to tag along for a ride through his window.

Dean really hadn't been okay with any of this for the entire two day drive. Sam was expecting him to eventually collapse into the grumbling older brother who didn't like it but was going along with it because he couldn't stop Sammy from doing it. And hell if his baby brother was going alone. But Dean never made it to that stage, and Sam hadn't ever seen him quite like this. Not much scared his big brother. Sure, the idea of losing Sam, the way they lost John, even losing Jo or Cas; those were the sorts of things that scared Dean. Intangible things beyond his control.

But not monsters. Not even zombies.

There was something about these 'croats' that had Dean pretty shaken up and he wouldn't really talk about it. So far, despite all the information he'd given them about the event itself, he'd only said the creatures were bad mothers: quick to spread, difficult to kill, and the version of the virus waiting for them in Rivergrove, Oregon was difficult to spot in innocents until they turned on you. Sulfur in the blood was the only way they'd figured last time, and the incubation period could take hours.

Still, there was something more going on that Sam couldn't place. Something about the familiarity with which Dean used the slang term. Like he hadn't dealt with them just once, but a lot. It was the kind of future that fit right in with a coming apocalypse, and the kind of thing Sam needed to know, but really didn't want to ask. A reality too terrible to even imagine. One he was starting to worry Dean had lived through.

"Well, we're here," Sam said, but not harshly. "So we might as well check it out."

"Not with Baby, we're not." Dean continue to idle in the middle of the road, staring at the bridge. Sam frowned, but his brother was already switching to aggravation again. "They put the town on lockdown shortly after the breakout. Roadblocks at all the bridges, armed croats stopping anyone from leaving. No way out except on foot."

Dean put the car in reverse, spinning the wheel to turn her around. "If we're doing this, we're going in on foot because it's the only way we're getting back out if it all goes to hell."

Which it would. This was them they were talking about, after all.

Sam hesitated, the first inkling of just how bad an idea this really was setting his nerves on edge. Not that Dean hadn't warned him in every single way, using every possible word combination in existence, and all of the adjectives over the last thirty six hours. Sam had heard every single one, even accepted them, but he was still adamant that they need to do this.

Three hundred and twenty seven people lived in that town. Three hundred and twenty seven lives that needed saving, and only they could save them.

Still, as they drove about a half mile away from the bridge and pulled onto the shoulder, as much into the trees and bushes as they could, Sam did wonder how ill-conceived his notion of saving this town was. The road to Hell was paved with good intentions, after all, and they were quite literally walking into Hell's waiting hands.

But, like he'd said, they were already here, and they had a job to do.

The three hunters took several minutes to arm themselves, filling packs with guns, plenty of ammunition, holy water, rosaries – the works – before they covered Baby with some cut branches, hiding her among the growth as much as possible. Then they shouldered their bags, turned down the road, and started the hike into Rivergrove and whatever was waiting for them there.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A/Ns: Dun-Dun-Dunnnnn! Hehe, I've been waiting to write Croatoan for months, guys. Months! And it just gets better from here on out :D Oooh, you all are gonna hate me and I *can't* wait. ….There may be something very wrong with me…

Cas: Hang with me, he is coming. I'm just incapable of writing anything less than three chapters for every one episode. So, I promise, he's coming, but we've got to set the stage first ;)

Reviews: Thanks so much to everyone who has been reviewing or commenting. I love hearing from you guys and it really keeps me going! So keep those thoughts, words, all out screaming, you name it, coming :)

Delay Question Mark? Okay, so I'm off to meet my infant niece for the first time ever, which is very exciting, but also one giant question mark in terms of writing. Will I have time to write? Will I have time to edit a chapter? Will I even be getting enough sleep to function properly? That last one's probably a no… which means there is a good possibility I won't get a chapter up next weekend. It'll be a two-week delay at most though, so hang tight if you don't hear from me by next Sunday! I will do my best (I'm sure hoping to get some writing time on this 'vacation' but I imagine it just might not happen…)