Nemesis
When Sam arrived back at the motel, it was to find Faith calmly stirring a mug of second-rate tea and watching Dean pace a hole in the floor. He could feel the tension in the room the moment he walked in, and as he hung up his jacket, Sam asked warily, "Everything all right?"
Dean opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked pleadingly at Faith, who held up her hands just as helplessly. He sighed and ran a hand down the length of his face.
"I got a call."
"Bobby?" Sam asked.
"Dad," Dean croaked.
For a moment Sam didn't know what to say. He stood there, staring at his brother carefully, trying to do what Faith had and slot all these puzzle pieces together. Or, at the very least, make sure his brother wasn't going crazy.
"Dad," Sam finally echoed, both dubious and careful. Faith took a sip of her tea, sitting silently in the corner. Dean said nothing, and slowly Sam sat down on the edge of his bed. "You really think it was Dad?"
Dean continued to pace. "I don't know, maybe."
"Well, what did he sound like?"
Dean finally stopped pacing long enough to pin Sam with a dead-eyed stare. Faith might have chuckled were things not so serious. "Like Oprah," said Dean, utterly dry. Sam sent him a bitch-face and Dean huffed. "He sounded like Dad, what do you think?"
"What did he say?"
"My name. Then the call dropped out."
Sam hesitated in his next words. "Why would he even call in the first place, Dean?"
"I don't know, man," Dean snapped. "Why are ghosts calling anybody in this town? But I mean, other people are hearing from their loved ones, why can't we? It's at least a possibility, right?"
"Yeah, I guess?"
Dean gritted his teeth and shook his head. Then, with a sigh, he collapsed on Faith's bed, crinkling her sheets. She thought absently that if he sat there for too long, they might start to smell of him. She banished the thought as suddenly as it had appeared.
"Okay, so what if … what if it really is Dad?" Dean asked his brother nervously. "What happens if he calls back?"
"What do you mean?"
"What do I say?"
Sam shrugged. "Hello?"
Dean was incredulous. "Hello?" he echoed. Sam shrugged again. "That's what you come back with. Hello?" Sam said nothing more, and Dean shot to his feet, grabbing his jacket and muttered, "Jesus Christ – hello?" to himself under his breath.
He left the room, slamming the door behind him. Faith and Sam stared at the door in varying degrees of surprise. "Touchy subject?" Faith asked quietly. Sam blinked in surprise, as though he'd forgotten she was there.
"Uh, yeah," Sam chuckled, but it wasn't a happy sound. "I think when it comes to Dad, it always will be." He stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans and moving over to his laptop bag. "I'm gonna get into research mode. There's gotta be some reason the dead are calling the living in this town. Maybe it's hiding some sort of bloody, barbaric past."
Faith lifted her mug in a toast. "We can dream."
Sam sighed. "Can you go check on Dean?" he asked as he settled into place on the couch in the back of the room, laptop booting up on the table.
She looked up from her tea in surprise. "What? Why?"
"Because I'm worried about him," Sam confessed. "I think this shook him up more than he'll admit. Or admit to me, at least."
Faith snorted. "He's not gonna be any more honest with me, Sam."
"Would you just go?" he pressed. "Please?"
She narrowed her eyes shrewdly, but he continued to look steadfastly innocent, so she threw back her tea like it was hard liquor and set the mug down in the sink with a loud clink. "Fine," she muttered, grabbing her jacket and tugging it on with more force than strictly necessary. "Don't go slacking while we're gone!" she warned over her shoulder.
"Wouldn't dream of it!"
She slammed the door just as Dean had. Outside the parking lot was empty apart from a beat-up Honda down the end of the lot and the Impala shining brightly in the midday sun. Dean was nowhere to be seen, but considering the car was still there, he couldn't have gone far.
Across the road was a row of shops, and she caught a flash of dark brown leather in the sun, looking up just in time to see Dean slip into a diner with a sign out front reading, 'Free coffee with every purchase of cherry pie!'
It might as well have been a beacon, as glaring a trail towards Dean as the goddamn bat signal. Faith followed his path across the street and slipped into the diner after him.
By now she'd been in a hundred diners up and down the length of the continental US, and this one felt no different to any other. Cheap vinyl booths, checkered flooring, the pictures hung on the walls practically a museum of the town's local history.
Faith saw Dean towards the back of the room, sat in a booth and staring down at his phone like it was about to grow a mouth and impart some miraculous wisdom. Faith sighed, stopped a passing waitress to order three pieces of cherry pie and coffee, then crossed the room and slid into the booth opposite a thoughtful Dean.
He glanced up lazily, looking unsurprised to find her sat across from him.
"You think my loved ones are gonna start calling me?" she asked, a touch callous, but she wasn't exactly known for her gentle touch. "I hope not. It'd be too weird to speak to my mom. I don't even remember the sound of her voice."
"Your dad, maybe?" Dean suggested, and she honestly wasn't sure whether he was trying to create a new wound or peck at an old one.
Her insides twisted into knots and Faith picked up the saltshaker, rolling it between her palms distractedly. "Knowing my luck, the bastard probably isn't even dead."
"No?"
"Nah," she said again. "Just an asshole."
Dean snorted and had nothing more to say. Neither of them spoke until the waitress appeared, three plates of pie balanced on one arm and a pot of coffee in the other.
"Thanks," Faith said before Dean had a chance to say they hadn't ordered anything. The waitress smiled, quickly poured their free coffees, then swept away as quickly as she'd appeared. Faith dug into one of the pieces of pie, eagerly stabbing her fork into the crust and listening to it flake.
Dean was staring at her when she glanced up, but when their eyes met his own darted away. "Three?" he asked gruffly.
"Two for you, obviously," she said. "You're like the cookie monster, but with pie. I figured I'd better tame the beast."
"Oh sweetheart, there's no taming this beast," said Dean without a second thought. Faith looked up from her lunch.
He was frowning at himself, and Faith's smile was impish. "Was that you being smooth?"
"Let's not talk about it," he muttered, stabbing at his own pie, then all but moaning once he'd stuffed some onto his tongue. Faith's thighs clenched at the sound, and she refocused her attention on her own pie in an attempt to distract herself.
They ate in companionable quiet for a long few minutes, but it couldn't last forever, and eventually Faith was the one to break it.
"You want it to be your dad, don't you?" she asked. This time, Dean didn't look up at all. "You can admit it, y'know," she pressed. "For me, if it was…"
It was almost too difficult to say the name, even though she'd said it a hundred times before. Something about it seemed too real, now. Like saying his name might summon his ghost to this very diner. And then where would she be?
Thankfully, Dean already knew what she was going to say. "Nathan?" he asked, keeping his eyes on his pie.
She swallowed a mouthful that went down dry, and Faith swigged at her scalding coffee to wash it down. "Yeah," she said after a beat. "If it was him … I guess I'd want it to be real, too."
It felt like handing him a piece of her soul – even if it was something he could have easily guessed on his own. But Faith wanted to say it aloud; wanted to say it to Dean. Maybe because she knew he needed to hear he wasn't alone in his want. She knew, in his place, she'd want to know someone else felt the same terrible temptation.
"I mean, I dunno," said Dean, stabbing at his pie like it had wronged him. "My dad barely even liked me when he was alive. I doubt he's suddenly gonna have wonderful things to say from beyond the grave."
It felt like an admission bigger than he was making it out to be, so Faith schooled her expression, careful not to react in a way that might make him uncomfortable.
In her mind's eye, she remembered that night at the hospital all those months ago. Dean had still been in his coma after the car crash, and an exhausted-looking John had ambled into the room, worn out and sad beyond anything she'd seen. She remembered how he'd looked at her across Dean's still, limp body and ordered her, "Don't fall in love with Dean. Not even if he falls in love with you."
There weren't many days she didn't think about that night. She never found out why he'd asked such a thing of her; at least she'd been able to so far keep her promise.
John might have been a stern and hard man, and most certainly a poor father, but that night, she'd looked into the man's eyes and seen true love for his son. She wondered whether Dean would ever truly know the depths of his father's love.
"You should give him more credit," Faith said quietly. "I think he was very proud of you, Dean."
Across from her, Dean snorted sceptically. "Yeah? How d'you figure?"
"How could he not be?"
Dean didn't seem to know what to say, but then the waitress reappeared, topping up their coffees with a smile. Once she was gone again, Faith changed the topic smoothly, talking instead about the case, asking Dean if he'd ever encountered a spirit using technology to communicate before.
She could tell Dean was relieved for the distraction, and together they ate pie and drank mediocre coffee, talking about ghosts, spirits, and the EMF detectors Dean had once taught himself to build out of simple household items as a teenager.
It was easy, and they barely even bickered at all. The cherry pie was tart on her tongue, the coffee hot, and the company surprisingly easy. They finished their pie, so Dean ordered them another plate each. She got the sense he didn't want to go back to the motel yet, and even if this strange ceasefire was out of character, it was nice, so she played along.
Finally, after Dean had finished telling her about a job he'd once worked where a spirit had attached itself to an old boombox, and both their plates were scraped clean, they had to accept reality. It was time to go back to real life.
"We've gotta book the room for another night," Faith reminded him after he'd dropped a couple of bills on the table to cover their small hoard of pie. "I don't think the lady behind the desk likes me, so we'd better do it now, before closing."
The motel's small reception building was empty when they arrived, and Faith made her way to the desk, gently tapping on the little bell there, and waited for the grumpy lady to appear. Dean wandered away, hovering near the pamphlet rack set into the far wall.
The grumpy lady reappeared, her scowl never lifting no matter how sweetly Faith smiled. She reluctantly booked them in for another night's stay and ignored Faith's thanks before sweeping back into the room behind the desk and unmuting the TV program she'd been watching.
Faith met Dean at the pamphlet rack, frowning. "See? I told you she didn't like me," she complained. "Do I really seem so unfriendly? What is it, the leather?"
"Shut up," said Dean.
She scoffed. "Real mature, Winchester—"
"No, I mean look," he thrusted a pamphlet in her face. Faith took it, peering down at the words on the local advertisement sceptically. Very quickly, however, that scepticism turned to surprise, then sly amusement.
"You're kidding," she said, looking back up at Dean. His grin widened and his eyes sparkled like sea glass.
Two hours later found her, Sam, and Dean at the local Thomas Edison museum, which also happened to be the house Edison had lived in as a child. Their tour guide was a bright, perky woman a little younger than them, her smile far too white for comfort.
"And, here we have one of the museum's most unique and treasured possessions. Thomas Edison's spirit phone. Did you know that Mr Edison, as well as being one of America's most beloved inventors, was also a devout occultist? He spent years working on this, his final invention, which he was convinced could be used to communicate with the dead. Pretty spooky, huh?"
She barely paused for breath, the people in their group getting maybe all of seven seconds to peer at the alleged 'spirit phone' before the guide was perkily urging them onwards once again, leading them deeper into the museum.
The three hunters, however, lingered at the spirit phone. Faith bent until she was level with the gramophone-looking device, peering at it dubiously. It seemed innocuous, but she'd been in this business long enough now to know that appearances could be deceiving when it came to the supernatural.
Sam's EMF was silent, no matter where on the spirit phone he put it. "Nothing," he told a hopeful Dean grimly.
Dean examined the piece just as closely. "What do you think?"
"Honestly?" murmured Sam. "It kinda looks like an old pile of junk to me."
"It's not even plugged in."
Sam shrugged. "Maybe it didn't work like that."
"Actually, the wall socket wasn't invented until 1904, but it wasn't until years after that they became a staple in every household," said Faith offhandedly, eyes tracing the grooves and marks on the phone's tarnished surface, as though it might have secrets to spill.
When Sam and Dean said nothing in reply, she looked up to find them staring at her.
"What?" she asked defensively. "I read."
Dean snorted. "When? I've never even seen you pick up a book that wasn't about demons."
She opened her mouth to retort, only for Sam to make a hissing sound. The two of them fell instantly silent, and they all pretended to be fascinated by the spirit phone as an elderly couple hobbled their way through the room, following slowly after the guided tour.
"Okay," said Dean once they were gone. "So maybe it's like a radio tower, broadcasting the dead all over town."
"Could be."
"This caller ID is a hundred years old, right?" Dean pressed. "Right around the time this thing was built?"
Sam remained unconvinced. "Yeah, but why would it all of a sudden start working now?"
"I don't know," snapped his brother. "But as long as the mouldy are calling the freshers around here, it's the best reason we've got."
"Yeah … maybe."
Dean took a shuddering breath. "So … maybe it really is Dad."
Faith glanced up at Sam in the same moment he glanced down at her. Their eyes met and a moment of silent communication passed between them. Across from them, Dean's face hardened in anger.
"What?" he snapped, looking between the two of them combatively. "What's with the Look? Don't do the Look. The Look is off limits."
"I just … I don't want you to get your hopes up, Dean," sighed Sam, delicate as he could be.
"My hopes aren't up," Dean hissed. Sam frowned and Faith rocked back on her heels, chewing on her lip and saying nothing at all. Dean sighed, reaching up to scratch at his temple before checking the time on his phone. "C'mon, it's getting late," he muttered. "Let's grab some grub and head back to the motel."
"But the tour isn't over—" Faith began to say, because as someone who'd barely travelled before three years ago, dammit was she a sucker for tourist traps. Besides, the museum was interesting, and if Edison was an occultist, who knew what else they might unearth?
But Dean wasn't interested. "Come on, Bill Nye," he snapped. "We're going."
Faith pouted but for once didn't argue, letting Dean lead the way out of the house that served as a monument to Edison and towards the Impala. They grabbed burgers from a local diner on the way past, then ate in the motel room with some sports game playing on the TV that none of them watched.
Sam continued to dig for information, fingers a near blur on his laptop's keyboard, while Dean sat at the table and stared into empty air, fingers tapping a restless rhythm against the wooden tabletop. Sam had relinquished their father's journal to Faith, who sat on her bed and half-heartedly flipped the pages, skimming for anything that might relate to the case.
Eventually, Sam grew tired and went to bed. Faith did the same, changing into pyjamas and curling into a ball underneath her starchy motel covers. Dean just murmured that he was going out to grab some coffee and was gone before either of them could argue.
"Should we be worried about him?" Faith wondered into the darkness.
"Yeah," sighed Sam. "I think we should be."
She tried to stay awake, but it was no use, and she fell asleep at some point before Dean returned from his 'coffee run'. She dreamt of snow that night, but as the pristine flakes fluttered down from a grey sky, it wasn't to the muted, hushed hum of falling snow, but instead to a blaring white noise, like a hundred televisions surrounded her, and none of them had any signal.
When she woke up, white noise rang in her ears. Dean was already awake as she climbed blearily to her feet, and as she considered him where he was sat at the table, typing at the computer, she realised he hadn't slept at all, still in the clothes from the day before, with dark circles ringing his forest eyes.
Deciding against saying anything, Faith slipped into the bathroom for a long, hot shower.
Under the steaming spray, she remembered the strange noise and the frigid cold of her dream. The thought of stepping out of the hot water was like frost licking down her spine, and so she was in there so long that even the motel's supply began to run cool.
Finally, she climbed out, changing into jeans and a tank top, throwing her purple jacket on over that and shoving shoes onto her feet. Sam was just tying his own laces when she came out of the shower, and he looked vaguely spooked. Dean's expression was stiff and withdrawn, and he was concentrating hard on the laptop screen. The tension was palpable.
"What happened?" Faith asked, because clearly, she'd missed something big while hiding under the shower spray.
"Dean got another call," said Sam. He didn't need to specify which kind of call this was. Not today.
"Your dad?" she asked, turning to look at Dean, who was typing with one hand and writing with the other, eyes darting between projects in a focused way she'd never seen on him before.
"Demon holding my contract's in town," Dean said casually, as though they weren't talking about Hell with a capital H. "Dad told me where to find it, and how to kill it."
"Well, that's…" she searched desperately for the right word, "…convenient."
The pained look in Sam's eyes told her he agreed.
Dean didn't speak again. Sam's phone began to ring, and he left to answer it. Faith sighed and took a seat on the couch next to Dean, who continued to work at a pace that honestly took her by surprise. He liked to play at being lazy, but when he was given the right motivation, Dean could be a downright machine.
"Dean…don't take this the wrong way—" she began slowly.
"I'm not crazy," he said, voice unforgiving as stone.
"I never said you were," she replied. "But this thing – whatever it is—"
"It's Dad," he snapped without looking up from the screen.
"Dean—"
"Can you just trust me on this?" he said, turning to glare at her. "I think I know my own father."
She could see she wasn't going to be able to get through to him, so Faith held up her hands in silent surrender. For once, she didn't feel like fighting him. She climbed to her feet and set about making herself a cup of tea.
Coffee would certainly do a better job of waking her up, but she wanted a piece of Toby close by, even if it was just the brand of tea he preferred in the mornings. Faith was just wondering if she should call him, calculating the time difference in her head, when her own ringtone blared from across the room.
Leaving the kettle to finish boiling, she picked up her phone and glanced breezily at the caller ID.
SHA33 read the name on her screen, and every muscle in Faith's body went rigid, teeth locking together until her jaw creaked under the strain. When she answered this call, who was going to be on the other end? Did she even want to know?
"Are you gonna get that?" snapped Dean from where he'd yet to move an inch. Clearly just her existence was an annoyance to him, the blaring ringtone doubly so.
Faith answered the call and began walking for the door. Sam was just coming inside from his own call; she passed him on the way out. He sent her a small smile that she couldn't quite manage to return.
"Hello?" she answered the call with a shaking voice, letting the door creak shut behind her.
Whoever it was going to be, it wasn't really them. She knew that with at least 90% certainty. But even just the thought of hearing a voice… One she didn't remember, but somehow knew in her bones…
"Hello?" she asked again, when nobody on the other end spoke.
"Faith," said Nate finally, relief colouring his familiar voice. Years ago, she'd decided his voice had reminded her of someone playing the violin. Where Dean's was all gravel and whiskey, Nate's had almost been musical. Even his laughter had sounded like a song.
Faith walked briskly away from the doorway to their room, phone gripped so tightly, it was a miracle she didn't snap it in two. "Nate?" she barely managed to get his name out around the lump in her throat. "Nate, is that you?"
"It's me, baby," Nate's voice said. Faith had to steady herself against the wall of the motel, every inch of her trembling.
"How do I know it's really you?" she rasped, mind flitting to every corner of everything she knew. Maybe the spirit phone really was amplifying the spirit realm, making it possible for their loved ones to reach out and contact them. Maybe this was real. Maybe it really was Nate on the other end of this line, as desperate to hear her voice as she was to hear his.
"You're just going to have to trust me," he told her, using that tone he always did when he thought she was being silly; the one where she could hear the smile in the words without even seeing his lips. "Don't you trust me, Faith?"
"Of course I trust you," she breathed, but it felt like someone else saying the words. Or maybe it was still her, but the her from over a year ago. The her that had shared an apartment and a life with Nate, had cooked spaghetti beside him and put up with his terrible taste in music and washed his clothes with lemon soap just because it was his favourite scent. "Are you – where are you?" she asked, the words coming out choked.
His laugh was exactly the same, and although it had been an age since it had last graced her ears, it still felt like something she heard every single day. "It's hard to explain," he said gently, musically. "Are you safe?"
That was a difficult question to answer. Knowing what she did now about the world, was anyone anywhere ever truly safe? She looked around the near-empty parking lot. The sun was shining and there was nobody in sight. Of all the places she was usually in danger, this ranked pretty low on the list.
"I'm safe," she told him, heart a hammer against her sternum.
"You're with the Winchesters, aren't you? Sam? Dean?"
Faith wasn't sure why hearing their names from her dead boyfriend's lips made everything in her shrivel. Maybe it was her old-world colliding with her new one; maybe it was just how much she missed him; or maybe it had something to do with the way her heart squeezed every time Dean sent her that look, green eyes smouldering like moss set alight.
"How do you know about them?" she asked shakily.
"I know everything," Nate said, and the ominous words shuddered through her like the aftershocks of an earthquake. "I want to see you."
She felt like she couldn't catch her breath. "See me?"
"I miss you," he told her in that singsong voice she'd once held so dear. "I miss you and I need to see you."
Faith's breath came out rough, the scrape of a metal blade against flint. Her nails on the hand braced against the wall curled inwards, and she felt them break against the unforgiving brick, but it didn't make her blink.
It was stupid. She knew that like she knew the sky was blue. The chances of this actually being Nate… She should just hang up now and get a new phone number. She shouldn't be entertaining this; not like she was. It was dangerous; who knew what this thing might be? What it might want from her?
…But what if by some stark, impossible miracle, it was Nate? How could she just hang up on what had been the love of her life?
"How?" she breathed despite her own terrible misgivings.
"Come to me," said Nate, voice echoing with want.
Something about the words were familiar, but in that moment the familiarity was overrun by the shock of actually speaking to her dead boyfriend. "Where are you?" she whispered, some part of her already planning how she was going to get away from the Winchesters long enough to see him.
He rattled off an address, and Faith committed it to memory. If she recalled the basic layout of the town correctly, then it was a building downtown, not too far from the phone company they'd visited the day before.
"Why are you there?" she pressed, once again feeling like she were treading water in a sea of puzzle pieces she couldn't fit together.
"My spirit's trapped – I can't explain, not now. Please, Faith. It's cold, and I'm scared, and I need to see you. Just, please, come to me," Nate begged, a note of raw desperation to his voice that she wasn't sure she'd ever heard before. It was that, more than anything else, that undid her. Something deep inside broke, the part of her that still loved Nate – and always would – tearing at itself, wrenching her in the direction of her lost love.
"Okay," she whispered, knowing her voice wasn't strong enough to speak. "Okay, I'll come. You've just got to give me some time – Sam and Dean won't—"
"Just hurry," urged Nate. "Please."
"Okay," she whispered again.
The line went dead.
The door to their motel room opened with a creak and Faith turned, every inch of her guilty. Sam was frowning and seemed surprised to find her stood there, the crease in his brow growing deeper. He winced like he was the guilty one. "How much of that did you hear?" he asked quietly.
Faith had no idea what he was talking about, most of her attention still focused on the call and her forthcoming test. "None," she said honestly, vaguely.
Sam looked concerned by her weariness and nodded down at her phone, which she continued to hold in a white-knuckle grip. "Everything okay?"
He sounded so genuine, so worried, that it physically hurt to lie. "It was just Toby," she said, voice coming out hoarse. She cleared her throat. "You know how I worry about him."
Sam dropped a comforting hand on her shoulder, taking her lie at face value. "Toby can look after himself, even if he is an ocean away," he told her, doing his best to sound reassuring. And if that had been the issue, she might have even felt better.
"Everything okay with you?" she asked instead of acknowledging the words, eager to get the focus off her own lie.
Sam's face creased in dismay, glancing over his shoulder at the door to their room as if he could see through the wood and plaster to Dean inside. "I'm really worried about Dean," Sam confessed quietly, the words meant for her alone. "I've got to go check on Lanie – she's really freaked out – but I don't want to leave Dean."
"Dean can look after himself," Faith said, half to be comforting and half as a way to take any responsibility off her own shoulders.
Sam shook his head. "Usually. But when it comes to Dad … plus the whole thing with this demon … I just really need you to make sure he doesn't go anywhere until I get back and we can work through all this together, okay?"
The request took her off guard, Sam's expression open and hopeful. Guilt struck again, its cold hands taking hold of her insides and wrenching, but Faith hadn't gotten as far as she had without learning how to conceal her own pain. "Sure," she said calmly. "And you'll be gone for…?"
"About an hour, maybe two," said Sam. "You sure you can handle Dean?"
She forced herself to laugh. "I've taken down Wendigos, Sam. I can handle Dean Winchester."
Somehow, Sam didn't look entirely convinced. "Will you call me if there's any trouble?"
"Will do."
With a final pat of her shoulder, Sam headed for his rental car. Faith stood in the waning daylight, waiting for him to get inside the car and drive away, then with her heart racing like it were trying to escape its prison, she opened the door and saw Dean sat motionless at the back of the room.
He turned as she shut the door with a quiet thud, expression twisted in frustration. "Sam tell you to look after me?" he grumbled, a wild look to his eyes that would have left her uneasy, were her own head not a minefield of panic.
"Nope," she lied again, acting now on auto-pilot. She cared about Sam and Dean – she truly did – but how could she ever put them above Nate? Besides, Dean would be fine. She hadn't been wrong – he could definitely look after himself. "I've actually gotta run out for a while," she added, lacing her voice with as much casualness as she could handle. "Toby's working a job across the pond, and he wants me to do some research for him."
Either she was a phenomenal liar, or Dean was just too distracted to take notice of the sketchiness of her excuse. "Okay," he shrugged, attention already half back on his phone, staring at it intently.
"Call me if you need anything, yeah?" she asked, already gathering her things.
"Sure."
Nothing more was said as she left the room and didn't look back.
She caught a cab downtown, knowing it was too far to walk if she wanted to get there before dark. The cab driver tried to make pleasant conversation as they drove, but Faith might as well have been a statue in the back of his taxi. He quickly got the message and simply turned up whatever pop song was playing from the radio.
The building Nate wanted to meet at was a rundown warehouse, but Faith didn't question it. If he was right and his spirit was somehow trapped, it would make sense that it was to a derelict building. Maybe it had a dark, bloody history, making it the local ghost central.
She paid the driver with a fistful of cash, then waited until the cab had disappeared around a corner before she pulled out her gun. Nate wouldn't hurt her – not if he was still in his right mind – but she had no way of knowing there wasn't anything else lurking in the shadows of the building that might want to do her harm.
She checked the clip then made sure the safety was on before she shoved the gun back into her waistband. The cool iron of her knife pressed against her shin, and she could feel the weight of the flask of holy water in her pocket. She was as prepared as she was going to get.
The building was utterly still when as she picked the lock and slid silently inside. It looked like some kind of old factory, with giant, rusted machines filling the cavernous space. She didn't know what it used to produce, but that didn't matter now. There was only Nate.
"Hello?" she called into the discomforting quiet.
Nothing and nobody called back, but the silence felt full somehow, so she withdrew her gun again, inching her way deeper into the warehouse. The space was lit only by the sunlight streaming through the broken windows set up high near the ceiling, making some corners bright while others remained shrouded in shadow.
As she made her way forwards she scanned each shadow, trying to ignore the overwhelming feeling that something was very, very wrong. It was hard not to think of herself as a fly that had buzzed right into a spider's web; prey walking willingly into a trap. That thought should have been enough to turn her around, but then she remembered Nate's pealing voice and it pushed her stubbornly on.
Live or die, she had to know the truth.
From somewhere deep in the warehouse came a ringing thud, like something had tripped over an old lead pipe. Faith spun towards the noise, finger poised on the trigger, heart in her throat.
"Hello?" she called again.
"You came to me," said Nate's voice from somewhere behind her. She stopped breathing altogether and spun around so fast that the world blurred. The gun was still extended, even though she knew if it was Nate, she'd never have the strength to pull the trigger.
But it wasn't Nate who stood just out of the beam of sunlight streaming in from high above. It was an older, balding man she didn't recognise at first because she'd been expecting Nate's face. It took her several moments of choked shock to recall the name from memory.
"Clark Adams?" she asked hoarsely, head still spinning.
When the manager of the phone company smiled, it was filled with far too many teeth. "Hello, Ms Bueller," he said pleasantly, his voice his own. "Fancy meeting you here."
It took Faith another moment to realise he'd used her real name, rather than the alias she'd given the day before. "It was you," she snarled, finger tightening on the trigger, though not quite enough to shoot. "You were Nate."
"I knew you would be the easiest to draw out," Adams continued, hands tucked into his pockets as he began to pace a slow circle around her, a shark circling its prey. "Women are so much more emotional than men. They tend to be easier to convince. Sentimental creatures they are."
Faith felt like someone had sucked all the oxygen from the room. "How?"
"How do I do this?" he asked, but this time in Nate's lilting voice. It was the most perfect mimic she'd ever heard, and it made the hair on her arms stand on end. "Well, once I heard all those lovely voicemails saved to your old account, it was easy to replicate your dear Nate's voice. I guess you could say I have an ear for voices. Call it a talent."
Come to me, she recalled him saying, and she realised far too late why those words were so familiar. "You're a Crocotta," she breathed, defeat making her want to sink through the floor.
"Ooh, you're a clever one," said Adams, his pacing circles getting closer with every step. "Not clever enough, of course, but then again – you're only human."
Faith had heard all she'd needed to, and the cavernous warehouse filled with the deafening roar of gunfire as she emptied her clip into his chest. The Crocotta flinched backwards with every bullet, but it never went down entirely. Once she was done the ring of her gunshots remained, echoing through the quiet like ghosts of their own, but the Crocotta was still standing.
It looked down at its front, cheap suit now ruined with holes. When it looked back up, it was with a smile, teeth needle-like and yellowed – the furthest from human she'd seen in a while. In one smooth move, Faith had her iron knife in hand and began to run – not away, but towards it.
Somehow, this Crocotta had adapted to use cell phones and satellites to lure innocent people into its trap. She needed to kill it, here and now, before it had a chance to escape and start fresh in some new, unsuspecting town.
It was ready for her attack, dodging out of the way with inhuman speed. Faith readjusted, slashing her dagger at its throat while some distant part of her desperately tried to recall the lore she'd read – only once – at Bobby's place. For the life of her, she couldn't remember how to kill a Crocotta, but she figured decapitation was probably her best bet.
But the thing was strong, and quicker than she'd been expecting. It dodged her attempts to strike it, the sharpened blade of her dagger always passing just shy of its skin.
It moved so fast, one moment she was swiping at its exposed jugular, and the next her dagger was across the room, clattering to the floor loudly, out of reach. The Crocotta flexed its hand and flashed a yellow grin.
"Your soul smells particularly delightful," it said in a hungry hiss, all traces of Nate far, far gone. "It's been eons since I've had one so … powerful."
She thrust out her foot, landing a kick to its gut. It was forced backwards, a horrible snarl ripping from its rank mouth. Faith didn't give it time to recover, upon it in a flash of violence. It gave a pathetic yelp as she forced it down, smashing her hand against its face until her knuckles began to bleed.
"How dare you use his voice!" she screamed, distantly aware of the light growing dim, the sun beginning its decent behind the distant mountains. "How dare you use him against me!"
So blind was Faith in her rage, she didn't notice the Crocotta's hand, which grabbed at her ankle with supernatural strength, wrenching her sideways. A scream of mixed rage and pain ripped from her throat as she was forced aside. Her shoulder caught a nearby, nameless machine, the rusted iron of it unforgiving, and she felt something in her torso crack under the impact. She fell to the floor, where it was cold and it hurt to breathe.
Standing calmly to its feet, the Crocotta adjusted its bullet-ruined tie and used a handkerchief to wipe the dark, rotting blood from its face. Faith glowered up at it from the concrete, trying to breathe through the pain, hoping none of her ribs had splintered into her lungs. She wasn't sure if even demigod healing could fix that.
She wanted to tear the smug look from its face. She wanted to rip out his voice box with her bare hands, then crush the thing that had given her and so many others such cruel, false hope. More than anything she just wanted revenge, because it had used against her the one good thing that had ever happened to her. And that was unforgivable.
She wasn't one to pray, but in that moment, she knew she could do nothing, and that with her death, this would go unpunished. And that was unacceptable. Please, she begged the sky, the moon, the gods themselves – whichever one cared to listen, Please, just let me make him pay for this.
"You put up a good effort, hunter," drawled the Crocotta, pacing ever closer. "But you alone aren't enough to kill me."
"You fool," came a voice, this one loud and quiet and lyrical and deep all at once. It rang with power and bloodlust. "She isn't alone."
Light filled the room, and there came a terrible scream, the stuff of nightmares. It went on for a small eternity, but the light filling the room made it impossible to see. Faith had no choice but to squeeze her eyes shut tight, arms thrown over her head to protect it.
Eventually, the inhuman screeching came to a choked end and the impossible light began to fade. As it disappeared, Faith slowly forced open her eyelids, blinking away the imprint the light had left behind.
A woman was stood in the centre of the room. She wore tight, dark clothes, with a halo of inky hair ringing her head and a glistening sword held casually in hand. She reached out with one foot, gently nudging at the corpse of the Crocotta splayed on the floor like a human hunter might check its prey were properly killed, only a million times more callous.
Faith scrambled for her gun, then remembered she had no bullets left and began instead to shuffle backwards, hands blindly searching for the knife the Crocotta had knocked away. The woman – the gorgeous, impossible woman – looked up in surprise, as if she'd forgotten Faith was even there.
"Would you relax?" she asked, seeming annoyed by Faith's very justifiable terror. "I came here to help you, god-spawn."
God-spawn, she'd called her. Faith's searching hands slowed to a stop. The woman was beautiful, almost impossibly so; she looked like a renaissance painting, only stuffed into a pair of skin-tight pants and wearing winged eyeliner.
"You're one of them," Faith breathed. The woman looked down at her sword, assessing the blade in the dying light coming through the windows. After a moment, it became clear that she wasn't going to speak unless given a reason to. Faith cleared her throat. "Why did you come?"
Sea-blue eyes met Faith's. "You asked me to."
"No," Faith said slowly. "I didn't."
Now the woman just looked impatient. That impatience sparked a memory. Hadn't Faith prayed? Moments before getting her soul sucked out, hadn't she begged someone, anyone, to make that Crocotta pay?
"Who are you?" Faith asked breathlessly.
"Nemesis," the woman said, returning her attention to her blade. When Faith didn't react, she looked up at again, annoyed. "Goddess of retribution," she added slowly, like a physicist explaining quantum mechanics to a monkey. Her clear eyes narrowed. "You called for me, yet you didn't know who I was?"
Faith's mouth felt dry. "I'm new to this."
Nemesis stared down the length of her elegant nose. "You seem old enough."
"I mean I only recently found out I'm…" the words tangled and knotted in her throat.
"God-spawn," finished Nemesis with a sigh. She began to tap her foot impatiently, looking like she'd rather be anywhere but there. "Whose are you, then?"
It took another moment for Faith to find her voice, and she was horrified to find she was shaking all over. The question was without context, but somehow Faith knew what she was asking. "Ares," she whispered, the name coming out weak and full of resentment.
For the first time in their conversation, the goddess looked interested, sliding her sword into a sheath Faith hadn't noticed hanging from her side. "Ares," she said, nearly a purr. "Now, isn't this a treat? I've heard about you, you know."
"Is that why you answered my prayer?"
The goddess laughed, the sound like ringing bells, if bells were made from scythes. "I came because you asked with hatred in your heart," said Nemesis, her sweet smile making her violent words seem all the more frightening.
Faith tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry, and it felt like her insides were made of sandpaper. "I don't understand."
"Of course you don't."
She crouched down beside the dead Crocotta, and just then Faith noticed a pool of rotten blood spilling from a slice in the back of its neck. The smell was awful – like a hundred years of death and decay – but the goddess didn't seem bothered by the stench.
"You're god-spawn," she began, assessing her kill with bright eyes – like it were a prize buck. "You have certain…privileges…that regular mortals do not."
Faith turned those words over carefully in her head. "I can pray to the gods?"
Nemesis' attention was still on the body between them. "And if your need is great enough, or powerful enough, or if we're just feeling particularly generous, your prayer may be answered."
Faith swallowed knives again. "So, you came because—"
"Because your want for revenge was pure enough that it called me here, and I granted your prayer."
Slowly, Faith began to stand to her feet. She felt shaky and sick, but thankfully the contents of her stomach stayed down. Her torso burned with pain, and she pressed a hand to what was undoubtedly cracked ribs. "What is it going to cost?" she asked Nemesis wearily.
The goddess laughed again; this time even sharper than before. "I have no need for payment," she spat the word like it was rotten on her tongue.
"I don't understand," said Faith again.
Nemesis stood abruptly to her feet – crouching one second, upright and scowling the next. It took a great deal of control for Faith not to flinch backwards at the sudden, graceful movement. "I did not come here to explain the ways of the gods," she snapped, patience running thin. "You have your retribution – and your life – take them and leave me now."
But Faith was relentlessly stubborn, even when it wasn't in her best interest. "I just – I don't understand anything, and you're the first god I've spoken to who isn't a damn trickster—"
Nemesis' scowl deepened. "I care not for your questions. Find your answers elsewhere, Child of War. I have better things to do than coddle you."
"I just need to know—"
From the front of the warehouse came a loud thudding noise – someone was trying to break in the door. Faith turned to look, wincing when it tugged at her broken ribs. When she looked back at Nemesis, it was to realise she was gone, and Faith was alone.
The front door was broken down with a bang, then Sam's voice was yelling, "Hello?!"
Despite the cold shock of everything that had happened, Faith couldn't help but feel potent relief at the sound of Sam's voice. "Sam?" she shouted back, crouching with a wince to pick up her knife, slipping it back into the brace on her leg.
"Faith?" Sam sounded bemused, and closer than before.
A beat, then he appeared around the corner, gun held out and ready. He hastily took in the situation – Faith bruised and bloody, the Crocotta on the floor, still leaking blackish blood but unmistakably dead – and slowly slid his gun back into his waistband.
"You okay?" Sam asked, sweeping towards her in concern. "What the hell happened?"
It was a difficult task to sort through her maelstrom of thoughts to find something that cleanly walked the line between the unknowable truth and a believable lie. "It was a Crocotta," Faith sighed, leaning gladly into Sam's warmth as he wrapped an arm around her, helping her hold up her own weight.
"I know," said Sam. Frowning, she look up in confusion, and he hurried to explain. "I figured it out after something Lanie said. I rang Dean – or at least, who I thought was Dean – and he mentioned the phone company. I assumed it was that guy – Stewie – but it turns out he was just, uh, creepy. But once it was clear it wasn't him, I made him help me track down who it really was. After that, it was clear Adams was the killer. Stewie tracked his cell to this building."
Faith absorbed the information distantly, wondering if she'd even remember it all come morning.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, still holding her weight.
"We should burn the corpse," was all Faith said. "Just to be safe."
Despite his suspicion, Sam agreed. Together they found some decade-old oil in a supply closet, and Sam lit a match, setting the corpse alight. With the concrete floor, there was little else for the fire to spread to, so they felt confident enough to leave it burning. Sam hovered nearby as they made their way out of the warehouse, seeming convinced she was going to pass out without his assistance.
She proved him wrong, no matter how much it hurt.
"Faith, what happened?" Sam asked as they climbed back into his rental. Faith distantly wondered what would happen when they dropped it back at the dealership and they found it reeking of blood and smoke; but she realised the three of them would be long gone by the time anyone would have noticed.
"The Crocotta called me," Faith said quietly, peering out the window, one hand still braced on her broken ribs.
For a moment, Sam was silent. "Who did it use?"
"Nate," she swallowed thickly. "I'm sorry I let it sway me. I know it was stupid. For a moment, I guess I just wanted to believe…"
"I get it," Sam assured her. She cast him a skeptical glance. "Really, I do. If it had called me, pretending to be Jess… I'd want it to be real, too."
It was nearly exactly what she'd told Dean in that diner. She wondered if this was their fate, doomed to dole out identical advice that nobody followed, for all their lives.
"So, it called you to the warehouse…" Sam pressed quietly.
"And I killed it," Faith shrugged, regretting it when her ribs protested loudly. "It wasn't that hard. It was cocky. I used that against it."
It was a lie, but one she didn't feel bad for. Hadn't she been the one to pray for its end, anyway? Hadn't she been the one whose hatred was so deep that it called the goddess of retribution from wherever she dwelled to come slay the beast causing harm? Either way, she was too tired to feel guilty. She just wanted to sleep.
"You did good," Sam told her quietly.
"Yeah," she whispered, and they left it at that.
The motel looked alien as they pulled up to it. Faith climbed gingerly out of the car, following Sam to their room. He unlocked the door, slipping through first.
"I see they improved your face," came Dean's voice from the warmth and light within. Hearing the warm gravel of it calmed something in Faith, and she followed Sam into the room, eager to lay eyes on Dean and find him okay. A dash of normalcy in this incredibly abnormal day.
When Dean caught sight of Faith, however, all the tentative levity disappeared from his face. He was holding a wet towel to his bruised face, but he pulled it away to get a better look at her, scanning his eyes up and down her battered body.
"What the hell happened to you?" he demanded hotly.
"I could ask the same," said Faith, but it came out weak.
"She killed it, Dean," Sam interjected. "She killed the Crocotta."
But Dean wasn't done being angry. His eyes flashed with rage. "I thought you were going to the library."
Faith attempted a shrug. "I got distracted?"
Dean exhaled heavily through his nose, and Faith walked around a tired-looking Sam and began to head for the bathroom. Dean followed like a dog with a bone, so she didn't even bother shutting the door as she began to rinse the dried blood from her swollen knuckles.
"What happened?" Dean demanded gruffly. "And please, spare no detail."
Faith figured he'd find out either way, so she just told the truth – or rather, an edited version of it – explaining that the Crocotta had gotten in her head using Nate's voice, and that she'd gone expecting to find him, only to come across the Crocotta and thus killed the thing before it could hurt anyone else.
She explained all of it without so much as glancing up from the sink. She didn't want to see the expression on Dean's face when he heard her story and realised she'd lied point-blank to his face. Once she was done, his silence spoke volumes. She still didn't look up as she gingerly dried her hands on a nearby towel.
Dean exhaled loudly. "Well, I can't exactly be mad," he muttered, almost to himself. Cautious, Faith glanced at him through her lashes. "The lengths I went to, thinking I was talking to my dad? I'd be a hypocrite if I called you stupid."
"I was stupid," she muttered, slipping past him and taking a seat on her bed to toe off her shoes.
"Well, yeah," Dean agreed, "but so was I."
It was big of him to admit. Faith looked up again, brown meeting green. Dean had a tentative look about him, and Faith attempted a smile. "Guess this one got in all our heads, didn't it?"
"Seems like it."
Faith breathed deep, then grimaced as her broken ribs protested. Her eyes were shut just a moment, but in the time before she opened them, Dean had made his way over and crouched down at her side. She vaguely took note of Sam disappearing into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him, but her attention was on Dean.
Reaching out, he tentatively took hold of the bottom of her shirt, slowly beginning to lift it up her torso. He moved gradually, giving her plenty of time to stop him, but Faith did nothing, letting him get a look at her exposed side.
The left side of her torso was already an ugly kaleidoscope of black and blue, and even Dean grimaced at the sight of the injury. He gently prodded at the sore spot and nodded knowingly when she hissed in pain.
Without speaking he left the room. Faith stared after him, a frown on her face and her head empty of thoughts, but he was back in under a minute, a small bucket of ice in hand. Still without saying so much as a word he tipped some of the ice into a towel, twisted it shut, then gently pressed it against her broken ribs.
"How bad is it when you breathe?"
"Not too bad," she assured him. "I don't think it punctured a lung."
He nodded. "That's good."
Exhaustion hit her like a wave, and Faith slumped backwards onto the bed. She was still dressed in everything but her shoes, but she felt too sore and drained of energy to bother changing into anything more comfortable. All she wanted was to sleep.
She was loathe to ask Dean for help, but she hurt all over, and even the thought of lifting the covers seemed too much for her to handle alone. "Will you help me into bed?" she asked without meeting his eye.
Dean's only answer was to gently peel back the covers and help her underneath them.
"Thanks," she murmured, snuggling her face into a starchy pillow and keeping the ice pressed against her aching side.
"You did good with the Crocotta," Dean said. She wondered if he realised he was fussing with the covers, tucking them tightly around her like a mother hen. "Not many hunters can take one out on their own. Even less who've been at this so short a time."
Despite the horror and confusion of her day, it made her smile. "Careful, Winchester," she said, amusement warming her voice. "That was dangerously close to a compliment."
Dean chuckled, but the sound was laced with exhaustion. He said nothing else, and so Faith just let herself drift. It was some time before Sam reappeared from the bathroom, having spent an age in the shower – probably equal parts to wash off the day and give her and Dean some time alone – but by then she was half asleep, curled under the warm covers, breathing deep and steady.
Dean remained perched on the edge of her bed like a sentinel, but strangely enough it comforted Faith. She liked knowing someone was there – liked it even more knowing that someone was Dean.
"She asleep?" Sam whispered to his brother.
"Out like a light," Dean whispered back. Faith sank deeper into her pillow, listening in that vague way that would make it all seem like a dream come morning.
"Hey, um…" Sam paused awkwardly, "look, I'm sorry it wasn't Dad."
A beat as Dean huffed. "I gave you a hell of a time on this one. You were right."
"Forget about it."
"I can't," Dean told him. "I wanted to believe so badly that there was a way outta this. I mean I'm staring down the barrel at this thing. You know, Hell. For real, forever, and I just…"
Sam sighed, the sound laced with pain. "Yeah."
Another pause, this one lengthy and pregnant. "I'm scared, Sam," Dean confessed, the words coming out choked. "I'm really scared."
The sound of Sam swallowing. "I know."
"I guess I was willing to believe anything," Dean sighed. "You know, the last act of a desperate man."
"There's nothing wrong with having hope, Dean."
"Hope doesn't get you jack squat. I can't expect Dad to show up with some miracle at the last minute. I can't expect anybody to, you know. I mean the only person that can get me out of this thing is me."
"And me."
"And me?"
"What?"
"Deep revelation, having a real moment here, that's what you come back with? And me?"
"Uh…do you want a poem?"
"The moment's gone," Dean muttered.
Sam chuckled softly. "Wanna watch the game?" he asked, voice still low.
A pause from Dean. "Nah," he said quietly. For as sleepy and drifting as Faith was, she still felt the heat of his gaze upon her face.
"You should say something," Sam said suddenly, the words a whisper into the silence, there but not, like he knew they would be met with rage.
The heat of Dean's gaze on the side of her face abruptly disappeared. "About what?"
Judgemental silence, then, "Dean."
"Shut up, Sam."
"Dean, we're doing everything we possibly can to stop this – but, just in case, I mean – I hate to say it, I really do, but I don't want you to have any regrets—"
"I said shut up."
A minute of tense quiet, the only noise filling the room the puttering of the brothers getting ready for bed. Faith was almost entirely unconscious when the bed beside her dipped and she was enveloped by the scent of leather and sunshine. She instinctively rolled towards the source, seeking out Dean's warmth like a port in a storm.
A minute passed, then two, and then an arm gingerly wrapped around her, pulling her limp body up against his warm side. Faith sighed into his chest and finally let the last vestiges of consciousness slip away, succumbing to the dreamy call of sleep.
A/N: Hey all, thanks for reading. Sorry for my mini-absence. Life, y'know?
Next time: Faith and Dean have some real-talk, and then they meet Rufus, who has a surprising connection to Faith's past!
See you soon!