A/Ns: Oooooh boy. Okay. So. This one. This one is going to hurt, guys. I procrastinated it so hardcore, even though I was sure of my choices. Even after all the decision making, and pep talking, and re-pep talking when I lost confidence, and the writing, and the finishing of the writing, and the thinking I did great and could move on, I am still, even now, procrastinating the hell out of this one.

Chapter Warnings: Things are getting real heavy as we enter the true season finale, the big one. Not everyone is gonna get to walk away and I foresee a lot of all caps in my future.

Actual Chapter Warnings: Character Death (did I mention this one is gonna hurt, y'all?)

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The Road So Far (This Time Around)

Season 2: Chapter 96

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"You're supposed to be dead," Ava said, staring at Andy with a look in her eye that was hardly human, lip curled up in an ugly snarl.

Andy regarded the woman with unimpressed annoyance. He raised his hands and, after a rude gesture, Signed, "You're supposed to have better aim."

Sam was by his side in an instant, one hand snatching onto a wrist, forcing him to stop antagonizing Lady McStabStab. Not that she understood what he'd Signed, of course. But the distasteful scowl across her once beautiful face said she understood well enough.

The younger Winchester had to resist the urge to push Andy behind him, both to stop him from antagonizing the murderous woman in front of them, and to protect his already injured little brother. But Andy was safer in his peripheral. They didn't know where Daggett had gone, but Sam doubted the ghost would be gone for long. He didn't want to risk putting Andy at his back, only for the ghost to appear behind them.

Ava was blocking the only way out. Which meant going through her was their only escape. Unless Sam could get through to her.

"What happened to you, Ava?" he started, keeping his hand on Andy's wrist, lowering his arm. Half of his intention was to keep Andy from Signing, the other half to keep him back.

Ava stared at Sam, the man who'd told her exactly where she'd end up and had been right. After a moment, she looked away with a little sniff. She raised the hand holding the bloody knife, using the back of her fist to swipe beneath her nose. There was something so very dead in her eyes and in the smile she sent their way.

"Had you going, didn't I?" She laughed, and it was a broken sound that Sam's heart ached for. "Yeah… I've been here a long time, Sam. And not alone, either. People just keep showing up. Kids like us, batches of three or four at a time."

Sam's heart fell at the confirmation of what he'd already known. How? How could this sweet, caring woman have become a monster? "You killed them? All of them?"

Ava offered a winning grin, but it was dark. Wrong. All teeth and no enjoyment. "I'm the undefeated heavyweight champ."

Andy moved beside him and Sam held him back. He knew Andy's history with losing people to this Battle Royale bullshit. Sam knew how much it hurt him to be confronted by another version of the evil Azazel cultivated in his special children. Another Jonathan, who'd killed others without care. Without any respect to the lives they had, the souls he'd destroyed. Just to win.

Sam squeezed his wrist and Andy relented, but he was seething beside the younger Winchester. Sam didn't blame him.

"How could you?" he asked, voice soft and broken in its own way. He was mourning the loss of the woman who had come to a stranger's hotel room in the middle of the night just to save his life.

"I had no choice," she spat back, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. "It was me or them. You or me."

"It doesn't have to be," Sam bit back almost before the words were out of her mouth.

Ava just tilted her head back and laughed. When she lowered her gaze to them once more, there was nothing in her eyes that could be called human. "Oh, you haven't been here long enough, Sam. But you'll learn. Or not."

She loosened her arms with a one-shouldered shrug, raising the knife as a reminder of what was coming. Ava wasn't going to let them leave this room alive, and Sam didn't know how much longer he could stall her.

"Ava, my brother is on his way," he tried, words taking on a desperate edge. "Please, we can all leave here, alive. You can go home."

"Home?" she echoed with disbelief, then scoffed. Her next words were shouted. Practically shrieked. "My home was Brady! Don't you get it, Sam? All of this- I did all of this, so that I could go home. And you come here, after months of this fucking hell, and you tell me I can never go home again. Brady's gone."

Sam's eyes widened, realizing with a sinking feeling in his gut, that there was no stalling Ava. There was no talking her down, no saving her. She was gone. She'd died the same night her fiancé had, they just hadn't known it.

"He's dead," Ava bit out. There were tears in her eyes, but her eyes were empty of any other sign of life. She started towards them. "There's no point fighting it anymore."

Sam took a step back, stumbling slightly on the mess of spilled objects on the floor. He pulled Andy with him, keeping his surrogate little brother behind him as much as possible. He knew they were in trouble. Trapped, weaponless. He could likely take Ava in a fight, but every instinct was screaming that it wouldn't be that simple.

"Fighting what?"

She sniffed again, offering a weak and watery smile. "What we are, Sam."

The hunter stiffened at the words. Too reminiscent of Azazel's. With trepidation matching anger, he growled out, "And what are we, Ava?"

She laughed, and a shiver slithered its way down his spine. She lowered her head, looking up at him through lashes that had once been a look of innocence and fragility. Now the expression was one of promised blood and pain. "Powerful."

Andy jumped as the bookcase to his right suddenly up-righted itself and slammed back into place, blocking the bunker Sam had slowly been backing them into. His head snapped back to Ava, eyes wide. She was telekinetic. Andy used his other hand to grab onto Sam's wrist, the one gripping his own.

Oh, they were so screwed.

"The learning curve is so fast, it's crazy," Ava said with a laugh that was nothing short of maniacal. Sam swallowed roughly, realizing what his body had been trying to tell him. Ava wasn't just armed, she was dangerous. Really dangerous. She shook her head, still advancing towards them, knife catching the light with the same murderous intent as her eyes. "The switches that just flip in your brain. I can't believe I started out just having dreams. Do you know what I can do now?"

Sam took another step back, pushing Andy behind him now that there was nowhere to go. "You can control ghosts."

Andy's head whipped his way, mouth dropping open, but Sam didn't have time to explain.

Ava huffed something that could be a laugh, surprisingly callous in its nonchalance. "I shouldn't be surprised you figured it out."

She raised her hands to her head, knife still fisted in her right. Her eyes narrowed in concentration, brow furling, and Sam knew what came next.

Daggett.

"Sorry about this, Sam, but it's over."

Without waiting around to be proven right, Sam charged. He tackled Ava around the waist, taking both of them to the ground before the much smaller woman could react to his sudden movement. They hit the floor hard, a plume of dust billowing up around them from the old cement floor, particles catching in the flashes of Jake's cell phone, still gripped in Sam's hand.

Ava released a scream of frustration, trying to stab him with the knife he had given her to keep her safe. To keep her alive, should the worst happen.

Well, it did happen. And she had kept herself alive.

Sam cried out in pain, having managed to block a much more serious hit to his side with his arm, but that meant taking a knife to the bicep. It wasn't great, but it wasn't fatal, either. His arm was on fire – a warning of torn muscles that wouldn't respond should he use his dominant hand – but he'd live.

Taking advantage of the fact that her weapon was currently buried hilt-deep in his arm, Sam rolled to the left, off of Ava, twisting his arm as he did it. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but it ripped the hilt of the blade free from her grip, and Sam wrapped his left hand around it, pulling it free of muscle and skin, as he rolled across the floor and away from his now unarmed opponent.

The only problem was that Ava, at least this new version of her, was never unarmed.

Her hands pressed against her temples, eyes squinting in concentration, and Sam braced himself for the return of Daggett. He didn't have any iron on him, he realized belatedly, having lost it when the ghost first took him. Sam went to charge, hoping to interrupt her summoning before she could complete it, when every muscle in his body seized up, rendering him immobile. The knife clattered to the ground beside him.

"Stop!"

That was Andy! Sam's eyes darted to the side when he found he couldn't turn his head. The boy was standing a few feet in front of the righted bookcase, hand held out in front of him, fingers splayed and entire arm shaking with effort. His eyes were locked on Ava, and Sam followed that gaze to find that she, too, had been rendered frozen. Hazel-brown eyes widened as he realized Andy was controlling them both in his efforts to stop her.

Ava glared furiously at the other psychic holding her captive. Her own hands shook where they strained to remain against her temples and blood began to drip from her nose as she fought his powers with her own, determined to summon the Morton House ghost despite this interloper. She was stronger than him. She knew it.

Her eyes slipped fully closed, and Sam's heart leapt with fear.

"Andy!" he yelled, struggling against his friend's powers if only to save him. But there was a shift in the air and Sam knew, knew with terror in his heart, that he couldn't.

Andy made a choking noise and suddenly Sam was released, staggering forward. He righted himself in time to see Daggett behind his little brother, knife in hand, buried high in Andy's back.

"No!" The scream tore from his throat and Sam ran. "Andy!"

The kid turned, half staggering, and swiped weakly with his other arm – the one still clutching the iron rod – right through the ghost. Daggett disappeared with a flicker and a rageful cry and Andy fell to his hands and knees, trying to reach over his shoulder and free the knife from his back. He fell onto his side before he managed it.

Sam was feet from him when a force tore him off his feet and he soared through the air only to slam into a wall and crumple to the floor. Ava had tossed him, he realized with a groan as he scrambled back to his feet, and she'd made a run for the knife.

His eyes locked on Andy's limp form, blood pooling beneath him, and Sam realized with a trill of terror that if he wanted to save him, he had to end this now.

But he was outmatched. Ava was fighting with weapons Sam didn't have a defense against. He and Andy would lose this fight if he didn't figure something out.

'I need demon blood.'

The errant thought was not new, and Sam slammed his eyes shut against it.

'No,' he repeated firmly to himself, fisting his hands on the cold cement beneath him before pushing himself back to his feet. 'I said no, and I meant it.'

It's not like Ava needed demon blood to kick his ass, he thought bitterly. But that thought brought him up short, and Sam straightened as the truth of that hit him. Ava didn't need demon blood. Neither did Andy. Both of them had far surpassed their original abilities, and certainly Sam's, without the crutch that Sam had been so reliant on.

His eyes widened, possibility flooding his brain.

'The learning curve is so fast.' Ava's words echoed in his head as Sam turned away from Andy and to the woman standing in his way of saving his brother. 'Stop fighting what you are.'

"And what am I?" he whispered just under his breath as the woman he had once thought of as a friend and an innocent, turned to him. The smile in the corner of her mouth was inhuman. She raised the knife, soaked to the hilt in blood.

'Powerful.'

Sam remembered the Baku, writhing in pain beneath his mental hand. Dripping blackness from its once-pure soul. Like Max Miller had, as Sam had tried to tear that darkness from the boy. He remembered the car he'd crushed into nothing more than a wrecking ball on the side of a road outside Sioux Falls. And the gun he'd emptied into Azazel in that cabin in Michigan. He'd had another brother dying in his arms that night.

Closing his eyes, Sam lifted his hand and splayed his fingers wide, feeling the air - the temperature, the flow, the fill of it all – in the room and looking for more. He didn't need demon blood to access what had always been in him. That crawl beneath his skin that had always been there. Always set him apart, made him different, made it so he didn't belong.

'Demon blood don't add to you,' Azazel had said. He'd meant it to break Sam's resolve, but the boy used it now for strength. For a power he'd always had. 'It only brings out more of what's already in there.'

Sam opened his eyes and saw a very different world around him.

The same darkness that had slid and dripped from the Baku, from Max Miller, was wrapped tightly around Ava's soul. It writhed and pulsed and squirmed about her center, clutching tight to what had once been the woman. Sam could see it for what it was: protection. That blackness had curled around a once pure light, covering and coveting, and now it clung to her with such possessiveness that there was no breaking through. There was no freeing her from what she had become.

Ava had turned to that darkness to protect herself and now it would never let her go.

Sam reached out with his mind, grabbed onto that darkness, and threw it to the side. Ava went flying through the air with a screech, hitting the floor and rolling several times from the force of his toss. Sam did not waste time, running straight to Andy, who had yet to move.

"Andy!" he gasped as he reached the boy's side, gently easing him up and into his lap, mindful of the blade still sticking out of his back, just below his shoulder blade. Shit, there was no way it hadn't pierced his lungs. Sam hesitated to pull it out for fear that Andy would bleed to death before he could get him help.

A hand, weak and bloody, wrapped around his, and Sam's gaze shifted to his friend's face. Andy gave him a weak smile, and that hand over his formed a loose thumbs up. Sam huffed a laugh, but he could feel the tears already building.

"You're going to be okay," he whispered, glancing around the room for anything he could use against the wound. Ava was staggering to her feet on the other side of the room. Sam would have to deal with her again shortly. She was already preparing another ghost summoning, trembling hands rising towards her head.

But in his arms, Andy was shaking his. His left arm wouldn't move properly – probably due to the whole being stabbed thing (again) – so he gave up Signing and mouthed, "It's no good, Sam."

"No, no, you're going to be fine," the younger Winchester insisted, shaking his head. But Andy knew what death felt like. It had never come with the wet rattle in his lungs before, but the rest of it was all the same: cold, numbness, acceptance. Sam, however, was still shaking his head. "I'm going to get you out of here."

Like he'd promised he would.

"It's okay," Andy mouthed again, lips stained with flecks of blood that confirmed a punctured lung. He raised his trembling hand to grip Sam's again. "Get out of here. I got this."

Sam started at the voice, loud and clear, that filled his head. The words were confident – resigned even – and tinged with an edge of black humor that could only ever be Andy Gallagher. Those blood-stained fingers curled against his own, turning Sam's hand over to deposit something in his hand.

"Run, Sam."

Sam stared down in unseeing confusion at the bloodied Persian sleep coin pressed to his palm. His gaze snapped back to his fatally wounded friend, but Andy had closed his eyes, hand now limp by his side. The only sign that he still had life in him was the furl of concentration sharp across his blood-smeared brow.

Sam's head whipped up in shock as Ava suddenly screamed. Dagget, who had just reappeared in the room with them, flickered and staggered, as if he too could feel the psychic attack. And then he was gone and Ava was on her knees, clutching her head like it was going to explode and her fingers alone might keep it together.

With the surprising realization that it was Andy attacking her, and the coin in his hand protected him from that attack, Sam hastily set his injured friend back onto the floor, keeping him on his side so as not to jostle the knife still sticking out of his back. He pulled his arms out of his flannel shirt as quickly as he could, practically ripping the fabric off his lanky frame.

He had to stabilize that knife before he could move Andy.

Keeping his eyes locked on the struggling, screaming Ava, Sam hoisted his friend back upright so he could wrap the flannel around Andy's torso, under one arm and over the other shoulder. He crossed the arms of the shirt over the kid's chest, then fed them over and under his arms once more to the back. He tied the sleeves together, pulling as tight as he could. The boy in his arms grunted, brow furling as Sam pulled back to check on him, but he couldn't afford to be more careful. Leaning over Andy's shoulder, his head pressed to the boy's, Sam checked that the hilt of the knife stuck out between the two strips of flannel – edges already staining red – was braced, as much as could be, by the tightly crossed fabric.

God, that wasn't going to be good enough, but Sam was out of time and options.

Scooping his dying friend into his arms, one arm under his knees, the other low on his back and pressing Andy into his chest, Sam clambered to his feet. Ava wasn't screaming anymore, her voice having died out. But she was still on the ground, writhing in pain and clutching at her head. Sam had to risk moving past her, running and praying Andy would hold on, his attack lasted, and Ava stayed down.

The boy in his arms needed medical attention immediately, which meant he was the priority. If Ava died under Andy's assault, the doors would unlock, and Sam could get his friend to a hospital. Sam wished he could take the stairs two at a time – his legs were certainly long enough – but with the weight of Andy in his arms and that knife very much on his mind, he couldn't risk it. Balancing speed with care was slowing him down, and Sam wasn't sure which was more important at this point.

He had just made it to the top stair when the door to the basement slammed shut in his face. Sam almost toppled backwards down the stairs as he reared back to keep Andy – and his own face – from getting hit.

"Where are you going, Sam?" Ava called from below, and he turned on the top step to find her at the base of the stairs. There was blood running down her nose – smeared all over her lips and chin – her hair was a frantic mess, and the look in her wide, unblinking eyes was crazed.

Sam tightened his hold on Andy, glancing down only to find him unconscious in his arms. The hunter's hands dug into the boy, pulling him close to his body, desperate for any sign of life and terrified he wouldn't find one. Andy's head lolled, limp and heavy, into his neck and Sam's own breath caught in his throat. He should have felt Andy's breath against his skin, and he didn't.

"You can't leave," Ava continued, setting a foot onto the first step but going no further. "The house is still on lockdown. It will be, as long as there's still two of us."

Hazel eyes slid shut at her words. She had no way of knowing if it was two or three, but the words still dug their barbs deep into his heart. Andy had stopped breathing, he was sure of it.

Sam tightened his hold on the boy who had become a brother to him, and turned fully to face Ava. He was prepared to fight her, probably kill her, when his eyes shifted at movement behind her. His forehead smoothed out, and he took a steadying, deep breath.

"I don't think that's going to be a problem for much longer."

Ava's once beautiful eyes narrowed at first, then widened as she sensed what Sam could clearly see. The psychic spun only to find Freeman Daggett directly behind her. And by the look on his face, he had not enjoyed being controlled.

She tumbled onto the stairs as she tried to back up. He towered over her, reaching out to grip her shoulders.

"Don't worry," he said. "This won't hurt for long."

Ava screamed just before the two disappeared together.

Sam turned and shouldered the basement door open. It gave easily. He could still hear Ava screaming, further away now and muffled by a wall and bookcase. Sam kept going and didn't look back.

The front door unlocked with a loud, echoing click as Sam approached it. He didn't bother with the knob. The door slammed open with a resounding kick, frame splintering and glass shattering. It bounced off the wall with a loud crack, the top hinge snapping off with a screech of rusted metal tearing. The younger Winchester left the Morton House and stepped into the fresh, frigid outside air, Andy tucked in his arms.

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A/Ns: I'm sooooooooooo sorry, please don't murder me. This one was real hard; even the no good dirty rotten author doesn't want to take credit for it.

Yell at me in the comments; I could use it. I haven't written in weeks and I honestly think this chapter is the cause. I was fine. I was fine, and I did fine, and I knew it had to happen, and I was okay with it happening. And then I realized I had to post it and suddenly I was not so fine. Cue epic procrastination. So line up the-all caps reviews, please. The muse needs to be yelled at: it's her fuel. That and incoherent keyboard strokes.

Nom-nom-nom

(I'm sooooo sorry, please don't kill us. We could really use the reassurance we didn't lose you all by being no-good-dirty-rotten authors)