A Place to be Horny, Silly, and Sad

“Well, Amy, it’s not getting better.” Mike, with his hundred-dollar haircut and his pinstripe tie, smiled at the camera like he wasn’t reporting on the doom of America. Hughie ran his fingers through his own hair. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a cut at all. “Vought’s certainly pouring everything they have into this defense, but that’s exactly what we expected. Homelander isn’t just their hero, he’s their money-maker. I mean, over the past fifteen years, have you been able to even hear the word ‘Vought’ without thinking of Homelander right after?” Mike laughed. “I didn’t think so.”

“They got anything new?” MM materialized on the sofa arm, and Hughie yelped.

“Holy- How are you so quiet-“

“I move like the wind, Hughie. I’m one with the sky, sky’s one with me.”

Hughie blinked. “Really?”

“No.” MM jerked his head at the TV. “News?”

“Right, I- Sorry.” Hughie looked back to Amy and Mike, both smiling so wide it must’ve hurt their faces. “Amy, she- She says there are rumors. About a new witness.”

MM’s jaw tightened. “Our side, or theirs?”

“They don’t know yet.”

“Shit,” MM ran a hand over his face, glaring at the TV. “Well, you text me when you know. Our best hope is that it’s just another fuckin’ Homelander fanatic, they discredit him to the jury, just- Getting up on that stand and kissing his ass and being useless.”

Hughie nodded. His chest felt hollow. “Or it doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “Because all of our guys are just- Starlighters. Doing the same thing.” He glanced up nervously, meeting MM’s sharp gaze. “I mean- To them. I don’t think our guys are the same, but- You know.”

For a second, they just started at each other. MM looked back to the TV. His lips pressed in a thin line.

“Yeah. I know.” MM stood back up, giving Hughie that half-smile none of them ever had energy to back up in their voices. “Text me.”

“Yeah, I- I will.” 

MM grunted, and wandered away. Hughie looked back to the TV, but they’d moved on to banter about Amy’s new porch. Her husband was building it for her. Their dog liked the darker wood they’d chosen, for sunbathing. Amy was laughing about it now, but she’d get frustrated with something about the development soon. Just like with the kitchen renovation. Hughie knew the anchors pretty well, by now. It was what happened, when their voices basically lived full-time in his house.

“Amy is talking about her kitchen again?” Frenchie slid next to him, and Hughie bit his tongue. He needed to stop jumping.

“Actually, it’s the porch now.”

“Ah. Are they using a smoothed wood, or a-“

“I- I don’t know. It’s dark.”

“Oak, or cherry, or-“

“Frenchie. I don’t know.”

Frenchie shrugged it off, leaning further back in the couch. Hughie coughed, settling back into the cushions, his hands braced on his knees. Better, he supposed, to lose it a little at Frenchie. He never let it stick anyways.

The TV kept playing. Kimiko moved to sit near Frenchie’s feet, and Annie came out of the bathroom to perch at Hughie’s side. She ran her fingers through his hair in a silent greeting, and Hughie offered her a small smile. She returned it, something that had been heavy over her features softening. He grabbed her hand, and she squeezed it in return.

“Where’s-“

“I don’t know.”

Annie glanced back to the door. “Do you think he’s-“

“Yeah. Probably,” Hughie sighed, and he knew it didn’t matter, but he looked anyway. Save for them at the couch, and MM at his desk, it was all quiet. No press outside, like at their apartment. No Mallory pacing, or blaring phone calls just so Singer could yell at them for being useless.

No Butcher.

They hadn’t seen him in a day or two, but that wasn’t anything new. Not over the past few months. Hughie rolled out of bed, and people were already yelling at him for a comment about the trial. He got to work and MM clapped him on the shoulder and Kimiko smiled at him and gave him coffee and when he asked where Butcher was, everyone went quiet. He went through the day, and people yelled at him about not finding the thing. The one that would bring Homelander down, no space for Vought paying their way around it, no excuses. Just death, or downfall. He got home, another day with nothing in his hands but a phone he was afraid to look at, and the silence yelled at him for not doing more.

“He’s obsessed,” Annie murmured. “I’m worried about him.”

Hughie gave her a half-amused look. “You’re worried? About- Butcher?”

Annie sighed. “It’s- I don’t like him, but- He’s still a person.”

“He is a person,” Frenchie said, not looking away from the TV. “An obsessive, angry, bastard of a person.”

Kimiko gestured something, and Frenchie hummed an agreement.

“She says he is so far into his own arse, he will not see when the answer walks right,” Frenchie whistled, mocking a walk with his fingers. “In front of him. And I agree.”

Hughie gave them an incredulous look, but couldn’t seem to find an agreement that didn’t taste like sandpaper. Butcher had been obsessive, ever since Maeve told him that thing about the supe. She’d claimed—at least to Butcher, who was never the most reliable source—that it wouldn’t be like Soldier Boy. This supe would be stronger than Homelander, more willing to fight him, and easier to control. Hughie, privately, thought Soldier Boy had been all those things, except maybe the stronger than Homelander part. He’d been close, though. Close enough that it didn’t matter. But all they’d had to do was wave some weed and burgers under his nose, and he’d listened. He’d even ended up being so willing to fight Homelander, it was a problem. That’s how they’d lost.

Butcher said this supe—the Anomaly—wouldn’t lose.

“She’s gonna see it like I see it,” he’d said, smiling with teeth and a glint in his eyes. “And we’re gonna kill ‘im, once and for all.”

They’d all looked at each other, worried and silent. Killing Homelander wouldn’t fix everything. Another supe never fixed anything. But that didn’t stop Butcher. They still hadn’t found something that could.

“This just in,” Amy told the camera. “New poll numbers show that 37% of the American public believe Vought, that Homelander acted in self-defense. 43% favor some form of guilty charge, although the split among their answered varied from the death penalty, to a hundred dollar fine. 20% remain unsure, and are waiting to hear more evidence as it’s presented.”

“Thirty-seven.” Hughie breathed. “That’s- There are videos, of him lasering that guy in half! People can’t actually believe this, can they?!”

MM grunted, setting down his gun on the desk. “Yes, they can.”

Hughie swallowed, and Annie’s grip on his hand tightened. This was their last shot. The last way to do it right, clean and easy, before- 

He could still hear the crackle of wires and cracks of bone, from Vought Tower. It was one of the many things, he still heard, when it was a little too quiet. He didn’t want to hear anything like it, for the rest of his life. If this didn’t work, he didn’t see a world where that was the only kind of sound he heard, ever again.

The door cracked open, and their heads all shot up.

“Mornin’ cunts!” Butcher walked into the office, holding a big paper bag that was either bagels, or a bomb. “Anyone put the coffee on yet?”

“It’s 2pm, Butcher,” MM said, hands fisting on the desk. “Where the hell have you been.”

“Out. Around. Under, just a tad. Bagel?”

MM’s face didn’t turn any less sour, but he paused. “You got-“

“Cinnamon raisin and schmear. Fuckin’ disgusting, but only the best for my best.”

MM grunted, and took the bagel. Butcher smiled, smug and pleased with it, and turned to the rest of them on the couch.

“Bloody hell, you lot ain’t moved since I left-“

“We’re watching the trial,” Hughie said, scanning over Butcher for any bullet wound or serration. He always tended to come back with those and not say anything. “What have you been doing?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Butcher waved him off, and Hughie only worried more. “You got any progress, on trackin’ the Anomaly.”

Annie crossed her arms. “No. Because we haven’t been doing that.”

Butcher stiffened. The mock merriment stuttered and twisted on his face. “Why not. I fuckin’ told you-“

“You’re not my boss, Butcher-“

“I am now, sweetheart,” he tossed the bag off to the side, and Kimiko crawled over to poke around inside. “You want to come play cowboy, that’s the deal, though I done made myself clear-“

“You did,” Annie tipped her chin. “That doesn’t mean I have to agree.”

Butcher’s lip curled, and Annie’s hands fisted. Not again.

“We’re just not sure she’s real, Butcher.” Hughie tried, putting a hand on Annie’s knee. Silently begging her not to do anything, to rock the boat. “We’ve been looking- You’ve been looking- I mean, everywhere. There’s nothing. Not a trace.”

Butcher grunted. “Soldier Boy wasn’t supposed to be around and kickin’ either.”

“Well, that was Soldier Boy,” MM muttered. “And I’m glad he ain’t up anymore.”

“Of course you are glad,” Frenchie said, taking the bagel Kimiko passed him. “He killed your family.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“I am just saying, it makes sense that you are sensitive-“

“I am not sensitive, I just don’t like working with coked-up egomaniacs-“

“Did we give him coke?” Hughie frowned. “I don’t think we gave him coke.”

“I mighta given ‘im coke,” Butcher said, waving them off. “But that ain’t the point. This isn’t gonna be another Soldier Boy, MM. It’ll be different, I swear.”

 MM took a deep breath, leaning back in his seat and glaring at Butcher down the bridge of his nose. Hughie was never sure how he did that. The man was sitting down.

“It ain’t ever different, Butcher.”

“But it will be. This time.”

MM shook his head. “We need other options-“

“No- No.” Butcher’s mouth worked, his body getting loose the way Hughie saw predators relax on the Nature channel. Like he was going to pounce. “We ain’t got the time. Homelander’s out there, right now, about to cheat the system in front of the whole world, and no one is liftin’ a damn finger to stop it. They won’t lift a finger when he wins either. It’s us, or nothing.”

“It’s never nothing-“

“It’s always nothin’, Starlight,” Butcher sneered. “So we find the Anomaly, we fuckin’ make her if we have to, but I ain’t walkin’ into the new regime without a weapon to tear it apart.”

None of them had an answer. There was never, really, a good thing to say. Butcher was right, and wrong, and they’d been in this cycle for three years, and Hughie was getting tired. Annie got him the bagel. Plain, with blueberry cream cheese. He looked back to the TV, and Amy was talking about how she was worried her dog was eating the new wood. Nothing changed.

They really needed something to change.

Hughie wished that he had any clue, what the hell that was.

The clerk of court told the room to rise. Homelander stayed seated, his legs crossed and gaze fixed on his gloves. There was something gray there, on the leather, and no matter how he scrubbed at it, it wasn’t just going away. His face pushed down, and a pressure of heat built behind his eyes. It was unprofessional, noticeable, dirty-

“Homelander,” Ashley hissed. “Please stand up.”

Homelander rolled his eyes, but stood at the last second. This judge—balding, thin, wearing glasses for fucks sake—didn’t deserve his attention. None of these people did. Ashley’s little sigh of relief grated into his brain, the scribble of pencil and clack of typewriters made his skin itch, and everyone in this room was breathing so loudly. He could feel their eyes, trying to bore through him. Trying to see something he wasn’t going to offer them.

Guilt. Remorse. All those stupid buzzwords Ashley had been feeding him, since the trial started. He’d gotten out of interviews by just taking off whenever the trial was called for the day, but then there had been the helicopter. Trying to follow him around, a vulture, whirring blades and a grinding engine that he could cut through like butter if he wanted.

“Please,” Ashley begged every morning. “Nothing today.”

She said please too much. Looked at him with those beady little bug eyes and her bald head and always looked seconds from getting on her knees and kissing his boots. Pathetic.

But he didn’t do anything. He was being a good little show dog, smiling at the cameras and grinding his teeth to stop the shoot of lasers. Maybe they’d give him an ugly metal for it. He’d take it with a smile.

He always took everything with a smile.

Homelander sat back down, when the trial started back up again. They had another one of his supporters on the stand—Vought lawyers, good for fucking something—and the testimony was going to be the exact same as the last one. The Starlighter assaulted Ryan. Homelander dealt with it. Self-defense, protecting a little boy from a crazed, anti-American revolutionary. Homelander didn’t bother to listen to it. It was hollow, all of this was fucking hollow. Everyone in this courtroom should be rising for him. He should be the only witness they needed, he should just take the stand and tell the judge he was innocent, and this would all be over. No more trial of the century bullshit. He wasn’t even on real trial, he was playing dollhouse to please the Vought Board, he was a fucking puppet again and this piece of dirt wouldn’t get off his fucking glove-

The gavel banged, cleaving through the ringing in his ears, and Homelander looked up. It was over. The judge was walking off. Finally. That had taken a million years.

He stood up, rolling his shoulders and starting for the exit, and Ashley’s head shot up from her phone.

“Sir- Homelander, just- Sir, please wait-“

“Stop saying please, Ashley,” he called, not looking back. “Follow me or keep making out with your little fucking phone.”

He heard the scramble of boots and fabric. Ashley was shoving away her phone and following him. Homelander rolled his eyes. Kissass.

“Sir, we have a meeting with the lawyers-“

“No, you have a meeting with the lawyers.” He smiled at the reporters, bowing his head. They all started barking and shouting, like starved fucking wolves in a cage. Homelander didn’t let his plastered smile drop from his face. “I am going home. Back to my son.”

“Your- Ryan is at school, sir-“

“Then I’ll take him out of school.”

“Of- Of course, but-“ Ashley tripped over the ledge of the door, boots clacking on the wooden floor. “If you could just- Do the meeting, then take him out of school-“

“I don’t need to do the meeting.”

“I- I know that. But- Sir, the Board would really feel better if I could reassure them that you’re sticking to the plan-“

“The plan?” Homelander spat, whipping in a circle.

Ashley scrambled back, steadying herself on a water fountain. Homelander braced his hands on his hips, taking a deep breath through his nose. He wouldn’t kill her. Not here. The floor was too polished, it would be a waste.

“Ashley,” he said slowly. Controlled. Nicely. “I do not care about the plan.”

“I- I know, but-“

“Shh.” He held a finger up to his lips. “I’m talking right now.”

Ashley nodded, her heart racing so fast it might burst. Homelander’s lip curled. Maybe it would drop right to her stomach, and she’d finally grow something fucking balls.

“I am not going to that meeting. You are going to go for me, and anything actually important, you will tell me about immediately. But anything else, anything stupid or- Or anything? I do not care.”

Ashley swallowed, and nodded. Her jaw worked. Homelander rolled his eyes.

“Speak.”

“The Deep is taking the stand!” She blurted. “Tomorrow. This is a strategy meeting for that, they- They want him to be a character witness-“

“For me?” Homelander scoffed. “Tell them I don’t need a character witness. My character is the only thing keeping this fucking shit-show afloat, Ashley, and- Actually, tell me who thinks it isn’t.” He nodded to himself. “They should know better. You should know better.”

Everyone should know better. He was Vought, the Tower was his tower, this trial was more a test of who he was going to slice in half by the end of it. The people who’d doubted. Who’d thought he could possibly ever fucking lose.

“And tell them I want to testify,” he added, waving a hand at Ashley’s frozen body. “We can just get it over with.”

“O- Over with?” Ashley blinked. “Sir, you- You can’t rush justice- Not that it’s justice you’re going to lose, but- We have to do it the right way-“

“No, you have to do it the right way. I do it whatever fucking way I want.”

He turned again, making his way towards the doors. Ashley followed. She always did. Sometimes, Homelander wondered if one of his powers had secretly always been keeping women on a leash.

It wasn’t. His mouth ticked, a chill pushing through his spine. If it was, you wouldn’t have lost her.

He didn’t lose her. She died. Big difference. He would’ve saved her, if Butcher and his team and Soldier Boy hadn’t been pulling him in fifty different directions. They killed her. They killed her.

“Tell me if we have anything on Butcher, too,” he called back to Ashley, shoving open the courtroom door. “And tell the Deep that if he wants to testify, he better not mention a single fucking tentacle or fish, or I’ll cut off his dick and feed it to his fuckbuddy sharks.”

The crowd roared at the sight of him. Cameras flashed, people reached over the barricade to try and touch him, Starlighters booed but he didn’t let it make anything but his jaw twitch. They’d be set right soon. They’d see. Everyone always fucking saw, that he wasn’t the problem, he was the solution. They’d fucking see.

He glanced at his glove. The smudge was still there. He tucked his arm behind his back.

“Go- Got it- Sharks and- Butcher, and-“ Ashley stopped next to him, panting and sweating and smelling horrible. “Sir, I really would appreciate it if you could just come to this one meeting-“

“It’s not just this one meeting, Ashley! It’s this one, then another, then another,” Homelander said through his toothy smile, waving his clean hand at the crowd. “I’m not doing it.”

“But-“

“But?”

He gave her a sharp look, and she balked immediately. His nose twitched, and he looked back to the crowd.

“Please let us try and handle this,” she whispered. Homelander could fucking taste her fear. “The Deep- I know he’s stupid, but people love him for- some reason.” She took a long inhale, inching closer. Homelander considered swatting her like a fly. “If we get even a whiff that our way isn’t working, I’ll tell them you’re going on the stand, but- But-“

Don’t fucking say it.

“Please,” Ashley breathed. “You’re doing perfect, sir. You have enough on your plate. We can finish this, for you.”

Homelander shot her a look. She was flushed and pale, her wig starting to get askew, her eyes wide and flicking over his face, like he was some bomb she expected to go off.

He did have enough on his plate. He had more than they could possibly imagine. The world was a heavy thing, to carry, even with all his strength.

He didn’t bother to give Ashley an answer. She wasn’t worthy of any more words. He took off into the sky, leaving the roaring crowd behind and getting high enough that they couldn’t be heard.

The world was even bigger, that humans were able to fathom. But he could fathom it. He could see from the ocean to the deep woods, he could look over all of it and understand exactly what it needed. What all those people, smaller than ants, deserved. He was the judge. He was the jury. This trial wouldn’t matter, when they all saw that.

And everyone was going to see it.

And if they didn’t, well.

Ants were quite easy, to be stomped under larger feet.

There it was. That pretty woosh of air, that was William Butcher’s favorite sound in the world. It meant Homelander was out there. Meant he was close, and too stupid and arrogant to think to look down. He was going to cherish it, that last time he heard the sound. When it was a fall right into the ugly mud with the rest of them, and there was nothing to catch him. No one who cared enough to try. Just Butcher, waiting. Ready.

He’d be ready. He was always ready. And if Homelander looked down, he’d see it. Butcher would smile. He always smiled, when he thought of Homelander’s ugly face marred and bloody and twisted in pain.

One day.

One day he’d smile, and Homelander would be too fucking dead to smile back.

“We’re clear,” he jerked his head to MM and Kimiko, waiting behind him in the ally. “Let’s move it, cunts.”

Kimiko rolled her eyes, and marched past him with her tongue sticking out. Butcher made a face at the back of her head, and MM sighed.

“Y’know, maybe if you said please every once in a fuckin’ while-“

“Please is for schoolgirls and alter boys, Mate. You waitin’ for one, be my guest. I hear they got supe patrolin’ the alleys, take your chances with them.”

MM glared at him, and Butcher laughed. He clapped him on the shoulder, spun his crowbar in his hand, and walked after Kimiko. They stuck to the walls, as they slipped past the crowd outside the courthouse. Bunch of braindead sheep, screaming about the glory of their great leader and his fun little cape. Whatever kind of happy pills they were taking, to make them that fucking stupid, Butcher wanted one. What he wouldn’t give, to have an empty head and smile on his face.

“Hughie givin’ you anything on that new witness?” He muttered to MM, sighing when he shook his head. “The fuck’s the point of sittin’ in front of the box all day, if they ain’t gonna figure anythin’ out-“

“They’re worried, Butcher,” MM said flatly. “Hell, I’m worried. There’s no way this trial is clean, and if he wins-“

“He’s gonna win, MM. Don’t worry your pretty head ‘bout that.”

MM scowled, and Butcher held up a hand for silence. They were getting close to the backdoor. If they were going in and out, they had to be quiet. Vought got word they were sneaking around their computers, they’d get their heads mounted in Times Square like it was London fucking Bridge.

“I’m not worried,” MM hissed. “Hughie’s right, there’s video, this should be cut and fucking clean-“

“Never is, though. You know better than to think anythin’ else.” Butcher glanced down the alley to Kimiko, typing some shit on her phone. “Oi!”

She flipped him off, not looking up. Butcher shot MM an exasperated look, and only got a the fuck am I supposed to do about it shrug in return.

“You wanna give us a fuckin’ hand?” He called again, and Kimiko huffed, tucking her phone back in her jacket.

She marched over, kicked the door open, and gave Butcher one of those you’re welcome, dickhead looks. Butcher smirked in return.

“You textin’ Frenchie? Tellin’ him all about you day?”

Kimiko’s nose wrinkled in disgust, and she walked through the door without another look back. She was lucky she was useful, and more amusing than Butcher would ever admit. One of the better ones. A good tool, willing to do what it took.

She’d scored some extra favor, by agreeing to this. Butcher had been sure he was heading in alone, but MM had muttered something about not having the time to attend a funeral, and Kimiko had—according to Frenchie, although Butcher was pretty fucking sure that sometimes the man just lied about what she was saying—been open to looking for the Anomaly.

“She’d like to find someone, stronger than Homelander. And a woman,” Frenchie had smiled. “Girl power, no?”

Kimiko had signed something else, and Frenchie had nodded.

“She is hoping this one isn’t a Nazi.”

Butcher was hoping that too. Stormfront had been a pain in the ass to deal with. Whatever the Anomaly was, she’d have to be easier. Butcher imagined some angry cunt like Maeve, all teeth and sharp smiles and fisted hands. He’d tell her to get Homelander, and she would without blinking. Hell, even if she did have some psycho tendencies, all the better. More willing. Easier to control. 

Soldier Boy had been too far up his own little dick, to listen. That had been Butcher’s mistake, last time. Getting involved with someone who was self-righteous. The Anomaly wouldn’t be.

She better fucking not be. Or Butcher was going to have another Supe to kill, and the Boys were going give him their sad we told you so puppy faces. They were all already running around the city, trying something stupid and soft and downright fucking foolish. Talking about their feelings, thinking if they said please and got on their knees, someone would listen. They should know better by now. No one ever listened. If something was going to change, they had to do it with their own two, doomed, blood-caked hands.

“Butcher,” MM hissed behind him. “You’re tracking mud on the fucking floor-“

“They got maids to clean it up,” Butcher shrugged, and MM sighed, all dramatic and loud.

“You’re leaving tracks, asshole.”

Ah. Butcher looked over his shoulder, and he had, in fact, left a clean map of where he was walking. Oops.

He smiled at MM, though. No weakness. Everything was part of the plan, and when it wasn’t, yes, it was. “Then we better move fuckin’ fast, eh?”

MM looked like he was going to sock him, but he looked like that most days. It hadn’t bothered Butcher in years.

“You wanna kiss me, or keep your eye on the prize?”

MM shook his head, shouldering past him into. “You’re such a fucking dick.”

“Aww. Hurtin’ my feelings, mate. Here I was, thinkin’ we were about to go steady.”

MM ignored him, and Butcher laughed. That had always been something he loved about the man. The mission got done, dicking and twirling around or not.

Vought lawyers were just as arrogant as the people that paid them. They used public Wi-Fi, left their laptops unattended while they got coffee, and didn’t sweep their fancy meeting rooms for bugs. It wasn’t that hard to plant something that—if Hughie had done his job—would let them poke around in some poor cunt’s drive for the files they needed.

“I still think we should just ask Mallory for the Supe records,” MM muttered. “Vought has to register all of them, like guns-“

“And like guns, a few always slip between their tight little cracks.” Butcher examined the table. All it’s leather briefcases and sleek computers and-

He smirked. He was getting lucky today.

“That one,” he nodded to the head of the table. The computer with the Vought logo and ugly striped blazer over the back of the seat. “Put it in that one.”

Kimiko nodded, pulling the drive out of her pocket, and MM frowned.

“Butcher-“

“Vought logo. Ain’t a contractor.” Butcher shoved his hands in his pockets. “More than just a couple fuckin’ emails on that thing.”

MM sighed, but when Kimiko gave him a questioning look, he nodded. “Just- Do it.”

Butcher grinned, leaning out the door. It was quiet. Everyone was still out on the lawn, simpering and fawning over Vought.

“You think you’ll look for Ryan?”

Butcher’s head whipped back around. MM was staring at him, arms crossed over his chest, and Butcher narrowed his eyes. “Fuck you on about.”

“Ryan-“

“What about ‘im?”

MM shrugged, not even blinking. “That computer might have something on him.”

“Something on ‘im?” Butcher scoffed. “What, you think we’re gonna fuckin’ try to off him or something?”

“Jesus, Butcher, no-“

“I ain’t pokin’ around for info on the lad. He wants to talk, he can fly, just like his daddy.”

MM gave him one of those tired, almost pitying looks. Butcher tolerated them, from Hughie. From anyone else, he was seconds from throwing a punch.

“You got something you wanna say to me?” He spat, and MM just shook his head.

“Nope. Not a thing.”

Butcher grunted, looking back to the hall. This wasn’t therapy. Ryan had gone with Homelander. That had been his fucking choice, and Butcher wasn’t about to drag the kid back by his ear. Wasn’t even his fucking kid. It was Becca’s. Becca’s boy. No blood. Nothing to pull him back.

Just his smile. Always looked more like Becca’s than Homelanders. He’d talked like Becca, too. Laughed like Becca. Liked the same cereal and bounced on his feet like she used to.

He’d made a promise. Wasn’t much good, a promise did a dead person. He didn’t even have the means to protect Ryan. The boy wouldn’t be safe until he was away from Homelander. This was what would get Ryan safe. Ending this, once and for all.

Shoes sounded down the hall. MM stiffened, and Butcher looked to Kimiko.

“You think you wanna hurry it up, before we get turned into lawyer chow?”

Kimiko closed the laptop, stuck her tongue out at him, and gave MM a thumbs up.

“Done?” He said, clapping his hands when she nodded. “Alright. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

 They walked out, but Butcher lingered. He looked at the crowbar in his hands. Heard his heartbeat in his ears, mixing in time with the clack of expensive heels and loafers. They could play spy, or he could just get what he needed out of their big mouths, quick and easy, bloody and fast-

“Butcher.” MM hissed. “Move.”

Butcher grit his jaw, and moved. He’d play nice, until they all realized what he already knew. What he’d known from the start.

This ended one way. This elevator only went down, and Butcher was already at the bottom. Waiting for them to catch up. Ready.

When he finally had his supe, to get Homelander on his knees, he was going to be fucking ready, whether he clawed out of the pit after or not.

Homelander pulled Ryan out of school. It wasn’t really school anyways, just some tutoring thing Vought had arranged. Homelander had thought about pushing against it—he’d never gone to any kind of school, and he’d turned out perfect—but Ryan had asked him not to. Something about liking learning, which was boring, and strange, but Homelander would allow it for now. He’d just spent too much time with his mother speaking Spanish and reading books. He’d grow out of it, once he was shown the better way. The good way.

“I got us ice cream,” he announced, pushing through the doors of his apartment. “And I got you a new ga ming… thingy.”

He swept a hand to the console he’d had marketing drop off. Ryan blinked at it, then Homelander.

“It’s a Voughtbox.” He prompted, when Ryan just kept staring at him. “Voughtbox six. It has more games and- Shiny buttons, and- I don’t fucking know. It’s the new one.”

Ryan nodded slowly, shifting in that nervous way Homelander was trying to work out of him. They weren’t babyish mortals who needed to be nervous. The Sun didn’t get nervous about the Earth. It didn’t even think about the Earth. And when the Earth got to cocky and close, the Sun would just fucking eat it.

Homelander opened his mouth to share that bit of wisdom—he was good at it, maybe he should write book—when Ryan finally managed to remember how to speak.

“Does it have a Kindle function?”

“A- What?!”

“Kindle. Or- Any e-book.” Ryan looked down to his shoes. “All my books are just- Vought stories now. I miss reading.”

“Books.” Homelander muttered, his jaw twitching. “You- You want books. All the things in the world in this tower and you want a book.”

“I- I’m sorry-“

“Don’t.” He pointed at Ryan firmly. “Say sorry. We don’t say sorry. We,” he gestured between them. “Are never sorry for anything. You- You want books, you get books. My son gets whatever he wants, even-“ His nose wrinkled, his voice dropping under his breath. “Weird, nerdy things.”

“Oh- Okay.” Ryan’s ears turned red, but a smile pulled on his face. “Thank you, Dad.”

Homelander’s shoulder relaxed. Dad. That was right. He was a father. He had to be patient, because that’s what parents did. Probably. He was working it out, but whatever his instinct was would end up being the right call. He’d thought about what he’d want from a father his whole life. It had prepared him for this. For being exactly what Ryan needed.

The only thing that was missing was a mother, but he’d tried. He’d really fucking tried, to bring Ryan a good, self-respecting, sweet mother. It would’ve been perfect.  

They’d be fine on their own. Homelander would mourn, and Ryan would never have to know what they’d lost. He still had a father. A good father. Was more than Homelander had ever gotten, so he should be fucking grateful.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “You are very welcome, Ryan. Let’s- Ice cream.”

 He clapped his hands together, and turned for the freezer. Ryan liked ice cream. At least that part of him wasn’t awkward and fucking weird.

“You going to open the Voughtbox?” Homelander asked while they ate. “I heard it has Hero-Fighter 5000.”

Ryan frowned. “What’s Hero-Fighter 5000?”

“I don’t know. I never played it,” Homelander shrugged. “I just remember that they made me do voices, for my character.”

Ryan’s eyes widened. “You have a character? In the game?”

“I have a character in every game.”

“That’s so cool.”

Homelander’s mouth ticked up, and he hummed in approval. Ryan smiled at him, with big, blue eyes. His eyes. Ryan was his son, of course he understood that was cool. Maybe Ryan was finally starting to see, how amazing and perfect their lives were when the ants didn’t get brave and bite at their ankles-

“Dad?” Ryan poked at his ice cream with his spoon. “Can I ask you something? Please?”

Homelander leaned back in his seat. “Of course. Anything, son.”

Ryan smiled again, a little smaller. Homelander returned it, raising his brows in question, and Ryan cleared his throat.

“What was my- My mom like? When you knew her?”

Homelander hand curled into a fist. He kept fucking asking this. Poking around it, trying to get Homelander to reminisce about some sort of love story that had never existed. As a woman, Becca Butcher had been next to nothing. Pretty and feisty and there. As a lover, Homelander had wanted her, and he’d gotten what he wanted, and it hadn’t even been that good. He hadn’t even thought about her again, until Butcher showed up, getting loud and dramatic about everything. As a mother, she’d been annoying, and breeding his son to be weak.

He’d never loved her. Ryan wanted him to have, though, he could see it in that soft, gooey part of the kids face that was still too human. He’d hoped Stormfront would’ve helped him understand that gods loved gods, before she’d been burnt to a crisp. But Homelander hadn’t loved Stormfront either. Not really. She’d been too much like Stillwell. Tricking him. Trying to control him.  

Homelander had only loved one woman. And you were gone.  

“Dad?” Ryan said softly, and Homelander blinked.

“What- Becca?” He laughed, loud and sharp. “Oh, we didn’t really know each other. Not really. I had fun- We both had fun,” he said quickly, at the confused look on Ryan’s face. “And of course she- She meant something to me. She gave me you,” he grabbed Ryan’s hand over the table, smiling wide. “And that is all that really matters.”

Ryan’s throat bobbed. He looked to Homelander’s hand over his, and slowly held it back. Homelander’s smile widened.

Progress-

“So you didn’t- Love her?” Ryan whispers, and Homelander jaw ticked. “Not like- Like Butcher-“

“Butcher doesn’t know how to love anything,” Homelander spat. “Not you, not heroes, certainly not a- a woman. The woman I loved, he never could’ve-“

“The woman you loved?” Ryan cut him off, and Homelander went rigid.

 There was a ringing in his ears. A loud, loud ringing that was turning into slow music. There was a sweet smell and glowing haze, your sharp eyes that fawned and batted and the coyest, prettiest smile he’d ever seen. Hair blowing in the wind and a shy, endearing bow of a slender neck. It fit like it was meant to be in his hand. Your voice blended with the music. You fought him before getting on your knees, then watched him like he was the only star in the sky as he grinned down on you.  

The counter cracked. Homelander’s fist had gone right through it.

Ryan winced and leaned back, but Homelander yanked him forward with their hands locked together.

“Let’s play Hero-Fighter 5000,” he said firmly. “Now.”

Ryan nodded, and Homelander smiled. He guided them to the couch, never letting go of his sons elbow.

He wasn’t going to let anyone else go.

“I’ve known Homelander forever, bro.” The Deep stuck out his chest, grinning around the courtroom. “Give me that Bible back, I’ll swear on it again-“

“That is not how it works, Mr. Moskowitz,” the Judge said. “As we have told you, many times.”

“Well, I’ve told you not to call me that, and you keep doing it anyways-“

“It is your name, in the eyes of the law. Please answer Mr. Goodman’s question.”

“Ugh.” The Deep rolled his eyes, looking back to the seedy, thin Vought lawyer in front of him. “What am I supposed to be answering again?”

A-Train slumped in his seat, fighting the sigh pushing up his throat. “Does Homelander have violent tendencies,” he said under his breath. “The question is does Homelander have violent fucking tendencies-“

“Stop muttering,” Ashley hissed, shoving his arm. “It’s rude.”

A-Train gave her a flat look. She still had that crazed, stiff look of focus, that she wore in meetings about new brand pitches and everyone’s various fuck ups. Like she wanted to tear out her how eyes but couldn’t bring herself to look away from the car crash. Like she thought the train barreling off the cliff might suddenly just grow wings and fly back to the track.

“You can’t seriously think this is working,” A-Train said, and she shot him a tight glare.

“I think he’s doing his best-“

“His best is shit-“

“Well it’s all we fucking have, okay? Unless you want to get up there and talk about how good and generous a person-"

“Ashley.” A-Train sat a little taller, glancing over his shoulder.

He wasn’t here. He’d fucked off to hang out with his kid, and he probably wasn’t going to be back for the day. He hated these things—more than the rest of them, probably, which was a real feat because they were soul-draining and mind numbing—and liked to leave everyone else to suffer through them without him. Even though it was his fault. A-Train hadn’t killed that Starlighter. He hadn’t even been around when it happened, and somehow he was the one stuck in this stupid courthouse, listening to the Deep test the limits of perjury.”

“We’re best friends,” he was telling the jury, that big, white-toothed smile on his face. “Homelander and I, we go way back-“

“We have established,” Goodman muttered, running a hand over his face. “That you and Homelander go way back. Could you please tell me if he has violent tendencies.”

“Right. Sorry, bro, I just-“ He waved a hand at his head. “I keep forgetting. Probably not sleeping enough, you know. I’ve been trying these melatonin gummies, but they might be the ones laced with weed- Not that I smoke weed,” he looked at the judge with wide eyes. “And- If I do- I’m not the one on trial right now-“

“Mr. Moskowitz,” Goodman snapped. “Does Homelander have violent tendencies.”

“Um….”

The Deep looked at Ashley. She shook her head frantically, turning it into fixing her hair when the judge followed the Deep’s gaze.

“No!” The Deep said confidently, and Ashley almost seemed to shudder in relief.

“Nice one,” A-Train muttered, and she flipped him off under the bench.

“Shut up,” she tugged her phone out of her pants pocket, eyeing the bailiff. She’d already been yelled at about phones in the courtroom five times.

“Where’s your blazer?” A-Train frowned. “I’ve never seen you without one, it’s like a- A naked turtle-“

“All turtles are naked, asshole,” she muttered. “I left it in the meeting room, it’s too hot in here, and- Where the fuck is Homelander? He was supposed to be back for this, a character witness doesn’t work if he’s not here, he has to show that they’re actually friends-“’

“They’re not actually friends.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter, he doesn’t even have to touch Deep, he just- He said he’d be here-“

“Ashley, it’s fine.” A-Train shrugged. It was actually pretty nice to not have Homelander here. The whole room didn’t feel like a bomb, about to go off. “We’re winning right now-“

“Are we?!” She hissed, voice rising to more than a whisper. “Are you sure we’re winning? Because we have to be sure we’re winning, we- We have to win- You don’t understand what happens if we don’t win-“

A-Train leaned back a little. She was spitting on him again. “Jesus, calm down-“

“No, you calm down-“

“We’re going to win, we always win-“

“Until we don’t,” Ashley hissed. “What the fuck happens when we don’t?”

A-Train blinked. He didn’t think about that, ever. It wasn’t something that needed to be thought about. That was one of the things that kept him here, even when everything felt like chains wrapping around his bones. They had the money, they had the people, they had everything. They always won. A few loud dissenters like Annie and Hughie and their little gang were nothing, compared to the might of the empire.

They had to win. That was just how it worked. So A-Train stayed on the winning side.

“I have to go get him,” Ashley muttered. “I- I have to. Stay here.”

She slipped out of the courtroom, and A-Train slumped back into his seat.

Stay here.

Like he had a fucking choice.

Hughie’s knee was bouncing. Annie put a gentle hand on it, and gave him a smile.

“It’s going to be fine,” she said softly, and Hughie nodded.

“Right- Right. It’s going to be fine.”

Annie wished, in the very delicate fibers of her heart, that either of them sounded convincing at all.

This plan wasn’t their best, but she’d learned after a few months of working with the Boys that when Hughie had sheepishly told her this plan isn’t our best, okay, he’d been a liar. These people didn’t have best and worst plans. They had plans that were either going to get them all killed, or plans that should get them all killed, but somehow didn’t.

Annie really hoped this was one of those last plans. Especially because she’d come up with it, and if she had to go back to Butcher with head down and Hughie’s limp body in her arms, she might as well just turn herself into Homelander.

She’d thought she’d be good at this. She thought that she’d come in and show them the right way to do things, and then they’d do them, and everything would go back to being fine. But everything was in shades of gray that she couldn’t turn white, and it was complicated and difficult and exhausting.

Which didn’t mean she’d give up. But she also wasn’t going to tell Butcher he was right. Giving up would come before that.

No one was worried enough, for Annie’s tastes. About Butcher’s infatuation with the Anomaly. At least with Soldier Boy, Annie had MM in her corner. But now he was off chasing ghosts, and she was stuck with Hughie and Frenchie.

Not stuck with. She loved Hughie, and Frenchie could be fun. She needed them both, if this was going to work. Just like they needed her, if it went sideways. Not that she’d be able to do much. 

“Do you think they’re going to find anything,” Hughie mumbled, eyeing the door. “Or- You know. Another dead end.”

Annie shrugged, letting out a slow breath. “I don’t know. I just- I hope that if she is real, Butcher’s right. And it’s different.”

Hughie gave her a confused look. “Different like…”

“Not like another weapon.”

“Oh.” Hughie nodded slowly. “You think she’ll be like- a pacifist or something? I- I don’t think supes are pacifist - You’re not a pacifist-“

“I’m careful.” Annie said smoothly. “And I don’t hurt people.”

Hughie hummed, and she squeezed his knee.

“It doesn’t matter, Hughie. This is going to work.”

Annie needed to practice her convincing voice in the mirror. She’d been so good at it, when she was lying to a camera. But Hughie, with his big, trusting, puppy eyes and affectionate smile, it was harder. She wondered sometimes, if he was disappointed in how bad a liar she was too. If he’d noticed how quiet and dim she’d been lately, and was getting sick of it. Getting sick of her.

“You’re right,” he squeezed her hand, and she felt a little sick. “It’s a good plan, Annie. It’ll work.”

Annie smiled, and it hurt her cheeks. Hughie had always been a much better liar.

“Any word from Butcher?” Hughie asked Frenchie, who hummed, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

“Non. Which is either very good, or-“

“Very, very bad.” Hughie ran a hand over his face. “Can you text MM? Make sure they haven’t- I don’t know. Been kidnapped?”

Frenchie nodded, pulling out his phone, right as Hughie’s buzzed.

“Oh- Shit,” he glanced up at Annie. “It’s her, I have to-“

“It’s okay. Go.”

Annie scooted back, making room for him to move past. Hughie kissed her cheek before he went, and Annie caught his arm.

“Be careful.”

“I will be.” Hughie smiled tightly. He shifted on his feet. “She won’t hurt me. I- She won’t.”

Annie nodded, and let him go. He was less convincing that time.

“MM says they’re still alive,” Frenchie told her, after a few minutes of the van being empty. Annie nodded, pressing her lips in a tight line.

The silence was sticky. It pressed on her chest and wound in her stomach, tighter than she knew how to handle. Frenchie had lit up a cigarette and opened the window, and she watched the smoke fade into nothing. Careless. Free. Must be nice.

“Why didn’t you go with them?” She asked Frenchie, and he tilted his head, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth. 

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to use Butcher’s weapon.”

“Ah. Wise.” Frenchie huffed, something close to amusement. “He is not good at controlling them, ever.”

Annie hummed in agreement, looking down at her shoes and pulling at the laces. Hughie was taking too long, maybe she should-

“I’d like less people,” Frenchie said suddenly. “To… Be hurt.” He met her gaze in the mirror, something tired in his voice that reached his eyes. “It is getting hard, isn’t it. To clean up all the blood.”

It was. A lot of things were getting very, very hard. 

“Do you miss it?” Frenchie asked. “Not knowing what a human bone looked like?”

Annie swallowed, and nodded. “Every day.”

Frenchie nodded, putting out his cigarette on the window, and the door swung open. 

“Sorry that took so long- Oh, Jesus.” Hughie pinched his nose, climbing back into the vehicle. “Frenchie, were you smoking in here again?”

“Non?”

“No-“ Hughie huffed, giving Frenchie an exasperated expression—hands on his hips and face loose—that made him look like a disappointed mother. “It’s still in your hand, dude.”

Frenchie flicked it out the window, and gave Hughie a winning smile. Hughie ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

“You know what, whatever.” He stepped to the side. “I found her.”

Victoria Neuman rolled her eyes, stepping past him into the van. “Found me,” she scoffed. “He got lost. I found him.” She smiled at Annie. “Hey. Long time, no see. You guys- You’re always avoiding me. It’s actually pretty rude.”

Annnie returned the smile, and it felt cold on her face. “Sorry, we’ve been busy-“

“No, you haven’t been. You’re afraid, I get it- It’s just-“ She looked between Annie and Hughie with a long sigh. “You two. Of all people. I thought you’d get it.”

“Well, we- We didn’t-“ Hughie shot Annie a nervous look, and she gave him a what am I supposed to do look. She wasn’t friends with Neuman. Hughie was. He was the one who believed she’d be helpful.

Annie wondered sometimes, against her will, if Hughie would still believe in her if she turned into something darker than she was supposed to be. If his kindness and hope would extend to her, if she stopped being the light.

“Oh- We don’t have time for this. I’m on a schedule.” Neuman sat down on the van bench, then froze. She looked down at her hand, horror creeping over her face. “Is this sticky?”

“Um- Yeah.” Hughie grimaced. “Please don’t ask why, because I don’t know.”

Neuman blinked at him for a second, mouth open and brows knit. She looked at Annie, then Frenchie, and let out a sharp breath.

“Jesus,” she glanced over her shoulder, leaning slowly back. “You people- How are you still alive?”

“We’re not sure,” Hughie mumbled, fidgeting with his sleeves. “Listen, Vicki, we really appreciate you meeting with us-“

“Yeah, I know you do. You want to actually tell me what I’m doing here?”

Hughie looked at Annie, and she just nodded. Neuman wasn’t her friend.

“We were hoping,” Hughie said slowly. “That you might have something that could help us? With taking down Homelander?”

Neuman snorted. She grinned at him, then Annie, then paused. Her smile twitched down. She blinked, shook her head, and laughed again. “You- You’re fucking serious.”

“We’re at a dead end,” Annie said, leaning forward. “And we know it’s a big ask, but you know how dangerous he is-“

“Yeah, I know how dangerous he is!” Neuman’s voice raised to something harsh. “Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I’ve just- Had a way to kill him this whole time and just not used it?”

 Frenchie hummed, giving her a pointed look. “You did work with him, no? To send away your own father-“

“I didn’t have a choice,” Neuman snapped. “He- He was threatening my-“ She held up a hand, as if to physically stop herself. “You know what, no. I don’t have to explain myself to a bunch of- Unemployed idiots-“

“Technically we still work for the CIA-“

“Do you?!” Neuman rolled her eyes. “You could’ve fooled me, with how you’re dressed and- Smell, and-“ She looked around the van. “This.”

Hughie’s ears turned red. “Well, they- They’ve never really paid us a lot.”

“No shit. They must really value your services-“

“Vicki, please,” Annie said, pressing her hands together and trying not to balk under Neuman’s gaze. They were both supes. Annie was no less, than the shaper, cleaner woman across from her.

She needed to get better at lying to herself, too.

“We just need anything,” she tried to keep her voice steady. Like delivering lines. She was just delivering lines. “Anything you can give us at all, no matter how small. If you really want him gone, just- Just this once. Not for us,” she paused, watching Neuman carefully. “For Zoe.”

Neuman sat taller. A strange shadow crossed her face, and her fingers flexed on her phone. She sighed, looked up to the ceiling, and shook her head.

“You people are like- Like fucking ants,” she said. “You just- You keep coming back.”

“Oh,” Frenchie tipped his head. “That is good, I am going to use that-“

“Shut up.”

He swallowed, and nodded quickly. Neuman let out a slow breath, her tongue flicking over her lips, and a taut smile pushed at her lips.

“Tell you what,” she sat up, adjusting her coat. “I’ll give you a little snack to- To fucking choke or whatever, and you leave me alone. You leave my daughter alone, and you don’t tell anyone I told you. Deal?”

Annie’s throat was tight. She exchanged looks with Hughie and Frenchie, and got tiny, reluctant nods in return. What other choice did they have. Annie looked back to Neuman, opened her mouth, and-

“Can we tell Butcher?” Frenchie asked, frowning at the air. “And Kimiko, and-“

“Obviously you can fucking tell your team,” Neuman snapped. “It would be insane if you didn’t.”

Frenchie shrugged, slumping fully over his seat and raising his hands, palms up. “I was only checking. No need to pop any heads.”

Neuman’s eyes narrowed. Annie quickly cleared her throat.

“We won’t tell anyone else. We promise, just- Anything.”

Neuman’s mouth worked. She drummed her fingers, looking around like she was expecting cameras, and for a second, Annie thought she wasn’t going to say anything at all.

When she did speak, it was quiet. Slow. Careful.

“About three years ago,” she murmured. “Stan- He asked me to bury something. And I mean really bury it. Kill even the thought of an investigation, any kind of evidence, any story- All of it. Not a word, even in their own heads. That’s what he said.”

Hughie swallowed, crossing his arms. “What- Was it like flight 37? Or-“ He went pallid, as Neuman’s jaw tightened, her eyes getting almost sad. “What? Worse?”

“I- I don’t know.” Neuman sighed. “When he came to me, I expected that. I- I expected Herogasm, I was ready to clean up a massacre, a disaster, a- a fucking nightmare. But-“ She shook her head, her voice getting quieter. “It was just one girl.”

Silence hung in the van. The lump in Annie’s throat was like a rock, and it was sinking down to her stomach. None of them seemed brave enough to speak, even Frenchie’s mouth in a thin, worried line.

Neuman breathed your name, brows knitting tight. “Twenty-four. Smart girl. PhD candidate, actually. Saw a picture- Pretty. Really pretty.”

The rock hit Annie’s gut, and the bile of her lunch was pushed up her throat.

“Official story- The one Stan gave me, to make official, was that she killed herself. And I- I don’t know what actually happened, he didn’t’ tell me, but-“ Neuman swallowed. “I know the night before she vanished- A few weeks before Stan came to me- She was at a Vought party. A few people- They saw him near her. And they won’t remember now, but if… If there’s anything…”

She trailed off, and Hughie swallowed, his words tight and choked.

“The trial. If Homelander, if- he-“ He looked to Annie. “That’s- If it is that, and we can prove it-“

“But that is what happened with Becca, no?” Frenchie cut in. “We could use Becca-“

“No,” Hughie shook his head. “Ryan. And- Butcher would never let us. But, this girl-“ Hughie’s voice wavered. “Is she dead?”

"Is she dead?”

“Legally? Completely.” Neuman straightened her jacket, moving to her feet. “But that’s all I know. The rest is-“ She smiled between them. “All you. Good luck. Try not to die.”

She smiled at Hughie, before she left. Nodded at Annie. 

But Annie’s head was spinning. Her vision was blurred, and she was still fighting that vomit. A girl. A dead girl. That was all Neuman could offer them. And Annie-

She wasn’t even shocked anymore. Just sick, and tired, and frozen.

She couldn’t bring herself to nod back.

When Butcher was angry, he got loud. Kimiko hated it. It was like the bark of the war dogs, right into her skull.

They’d been in this bathroom for almost two hours. MM was on his phone, watching the trial coverage with the subtitles. He’d turn it to Kimiko, when she leaned closer. Butcher had been ignoring them both, leering at the laptop and slamming on keys. Hughie said that never made computers work faster. Butcher never seemed to care.

“Fuckin’- Fuckin’ hell,” Butcher hissed, slapping the tilted back screen. “They got files on files ‘bout supes who can grow their nails and shit glitter, but not a single mention of a supe stronger than Homelander?”

Kimiko would think that was on purpose. If she had a secret weapon to kill her other weapon, she wouldn’t keep information about it on a laptop. She looked at MM and his pinched expression, and wondered if he thought the same thing. If he did, he wasn’t saying anything. If Kimiko could get words out, she’d be saying so very many things to Butcher all the time. She didn’t understand how the rest of them didn’t, sometimes.

“Maybe she doesn’t exist, Butcher,” MM muttered, and Butcher’s lip curled.

“Nah. That ain’t it.”

MM glanced up, face heavy with exhaustion. “Man, come on-“

“She’s out there,” Butcher snapped, slamming on the laptop again. “Somewhere. Fuckin’- Somewhere, there’s somethin’- They’re just- Hidin’ it-“

“Or we should stop wasting time, and look for other options-“

“I swear to the fuckin’ lord and his sweet little bloody lamb,” Butcher hissed, everything on his face filled with venom. “You mention other options again, I’m smashin’ your precious phone through the wall and flushin’ the pieces down the toilet.”

MM didn’t look impressed. None of them ever were anymore, expect maybe Hughie. But they backed off. They always backed off with sighs and annoyed grunts. Kimiko glared at Butcher. She wouldn’t back off. He was wasting everyone’s time, looking for another supe to try and control, and it made something in her chest burn.

“Don’t gimme that look,” Butcher said, shooting her a smirk. “Frenchie’ll start gettin’ jealous.”

She flipped him off. It was the best thing she’d ever learned how to do. There was a lot of white-hot, atomic fury—the kind that swirled in her chest and tightened her muscles and made it hard to breathe sometimes—that she could put into the gestures. And Butcher never flinched, but his lips twitched and he took the tiniest step back. He thought she didn’t see it. She always did.

“I think they put the Deep on the stand,” MM muttered, peering at his screen. “Either means their floundering, or they’re just- Real fuckin’ confident.”

“That one,” Butcher grunted. “The don’t flounder. Not with their million dollar floaties.”

MM sighed, rubbing his jaw, and Kimiko raised her brows. She didn’t understand how American trials worked. Frenchie had tried to explain it to her, but it had all been very confusing and contradictory. Couldn’t be that good a system anyway, if they had to spend months figuring out that Vought was evil.

Frenchie said it was more complicated than that. Kimiko didn’t think it should be. It was one of those things she found herself agreeing with Butcher about, which was always sticky and crawling on her skin. 

She tapped MM’s shoulder, and nodded to the door. They were on the floor of the big stall of the men’s room, because Butcher said Men didn’t shit in public. Kimiko believed that. She was starting to think men just swallowed all their shit, and then spewed it back out their throat with words.

Maybe she should try that, to speak.

No, too gross.

MM gave her a questioning look, and she sighed, cupping her hands and pretending to drink from them.

“Ah.” He glanced at Butcher, still glowering at the screen. “Be fast.”

Kimiko nodded, and bounced off the toilet. She didn’t really need a drink. The area was just starting to smell like sweat and salt and spit, and it reminded her of wet, toxic gasses that used to sting her nose. She slipped into the women’s room and washed her hands, keeping an ear on the hallway. Everyone should be in the trial. She’d be fine, just stretching a bit. Fixing her hair, her jacket, using the lip gloss Annie gave her.

She liked it. She liked having Annie around—and her lip gloss, and knowledge of reality television, the best thing America had to offer—even if she seemed very concerned every time Kimiko came into the office with blood on her knuckles.

“We don’t have to do it like this, you know,” she’d said last time, touching Kimiko’s shoulder like they were both made of glass. “You don’t have to do it like this.”

Kimiko had smiled, but known those were the words of a woman who had been in the light for so much of her life, it took the shadows creeping over her skin for her to notice the dark. Kimiko would like there to be another way. She’d like to be made of glass, if they didn’t like in a world where anything weaker than concrete broke.

At least the lip gloss made her mouth shiny. That was a little bit of light she’d never been able to have to herself.

Heels clacked in the hallway, and Kimiko’s head shot up. She grabbed the sink, ready to rip it off and throw it and run. The door pushed open.

“I don’t care that you don’t know where he is, I don’t pay you to just- Think about it and give up, you have to find him.” The red-headed Vought lady marched into the bathroom, and Kimiko froze, grip on the sink tightening. “No- No- Don’t guess. Look. I swear to God, Tyler, if you say the Tower one more time-“

The lady’s looked at Kimiko, as if she trying to share the exasperation. Then she looked away. Kimiko blinked. Her grip slacked.

The lady froze. She looked back, eyes slowly getting wider and wider. A strangled sound escaped her throat, and her phone clattered to the tile.

“Holy- Holy- Fuck no-“

She turned back to the door, heels clacking, and Kimiko lunged.

The woman was bigger than her, but felt small in her hands. She went down easy, but screamed and kicked her way into the men’s room. It was pretty rude, in Kimiko’s opinion. She could’ve just killed her, but she was very nice and Hughie said killing was bad.

Butcher and MM stared at her, when she presented the lady. Butcher mouth curved into that crude, kind of ugly smirk. MM grabbed the bar against the wall to stay up right.

“Where the fuck did you find her?”

Kimiko shrugged vaguely. It didn’t really matter. They had her now.

“Motherfuckin’- This means we have to go-“

“Ah, hold on,” Butcher closed the laptop, taking a slow step forward. “Not so fast now. This is a gift, mate. Let’s not be idiot cunts and throw it back.”

MM crossed his arms, giving Butcher a flat look. “How the fuck is this,” he jerked his head at Ashley, who had started to tremble like a baby. “A gift.”

“Good question,” Butcher said, almost alight with glee. “Guess who’s computer I’ve got, livestreamin’ right into ours?”

Ashley went almost limp, a weak sound escaping her throat. MM’s jaw ticked.

“You- Fucker.” He turned to Ashley. “No screaming, alright? Or she snaps your neck. Got it?”

Ashley glanced back at Kimiko, and she tried to give her a reassuring smile. No necks would be snapped. She’d just knock her out a little.

She probably needed to work on her smile more. Ashley made a sound like a cornered animal, and nodded frantically to MM. He nodded at Kimiko, and she let her hand go from Ashley’s mouth.

“Oh- Oh fuck-“ Ashley coughed, glaring around the bathroom stall. She was still shaking in Kimiko’s grip. “You- You psycho’s, you’re going to get us all killed-“

“Awww,” Butcher drawled. “You’re worried about us, ain’t that sweet. We’re worried ‘bout you too.”

 “I- I’m not-“ Ashley swallowed, hands pressing against Kimiko uselessly. “You- You’re going to kill me-“

“Not yet-“

“Butcher,” MM grunted, and Butcher chuckled.

“I’m just bein’ honest with the lass, ain’t my fault she sided herself with the blood suckin’ cunt team-“

“You’re the blood sucker’s,” Ashley spat. “At least I don’t actually hurt people-“

“Yeah, you just get out the fuckin’ Mr. Clean and scrub the street when your moneybags do-“

“Hey,” MM clapped his hands. “Focus. They’ll notice she’d missing, Butcher. Ask her what you want, or we need to start running, now.”

Butcher’s smile tightened—it reminded Kimiko of Kenji, when she told him to stop playing with his toys before dinner—and he sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets. He looked Ashely up and down, titled his head, and took another step forward. Kimiko could smell that fruity vodka he’d always used as perfume. Sickly sweet and stifling.

“Tell us every fuckin’ thing you now,” Butcher hissed. “’Bout a supe called the Anomaly.”

Ashley paused. Her heart stuttered under Kimiko’s hands, and for a second, she thought Butcher might’ve been right the whole time. Ashley was going to tell them where to look. They’d be given the weapon, they’d have the way out, this could be over-

“The what?”

MM sighed. Butcher stiffened.

“The Anomaly,” he spat. “Vought secret, female supe, powers bigger than Homelander-“

Ashley laughed nervously. “Are you crazy? There- There’s no one stronger than Homelander for- For fucks sake, Vought designed him to be unstoppable, he’s unstoppable-“

“Everything is stoppable when you got the machinery, love,” Butcher sneered. “And I don’t know what you think is happenin’ right now, but company secrets ain’t gonna matter when we smash your head through this fuckin’ wall-“

“What secrets!” Ashley shrieked, her heart pounding. Kimiko could almost hear it in her own skull. “There- There are no secrets, there are no secrets-“

“Don’t you fuckin’ lie, you Vought suckin’ little cunt-“

“Butcher,” MM grabbed his shoulder, his grip on his phone making his wrist flex. “Just- Look.”

He shoved his phone under Butcher’s nose, and Butcher paused. His eyes narrowed on the screen. He grabbed the screen, eyes darting back and forth.

“Hm,” Butcher grunted. “You really trust-“

“It’s from Annie.”

Butcher’s jaw ticked. “Well, if it’s real, it ain’t enough-“

“But it’s something. And-“ MM glanced at Ashley. “Even this Anomaly thing is real, they clearly don’t tell her fucking shit.”

Ashley’s face fell,  and Kimiko smiled. She’d laugh if she could.

“They- They tell me things- I’m the CEO-“

“You really think braggin’ about your clearance to us is gonna help you right now?” MM said, and Ashley swallowed. Kimiko didn’t know someone could be that pale, and she hung out with Hughie all the time.

“We’ll- Bloody hell,” Butcher shoved the phone back to MM. “Let’s get eyes on that shit, but- I ain’t givin’ this up-“

“I know you’re not.” MM muttered. “You stubborn fucking bastard.”

Butcher smiled and spread his arms. “Hey, you don’t love me for my pretty face.”

MM rolled his eyes, and jerked his head at Kimiko. “Let her go.”

Butcher stiffened. “Now, hold on-“

Kimiko held Butcher’s gaze as he raised a hand to stop her, and let go of Ashley.

She stumbled forward, right up to Butcher’s chest. His eyes narrowed. He lurched forward, and Kimiko almost dived forward. She didn’t like Ashley, but she liked her clothing and didn’t want to burn it to hide another murder, and she was really trying to murder less overall-

Ashley scrambled back. She hit the sink next to Kimiko, breathing fast and shallow like a deer. Butcher’s sneer curled, eyes glinting, and Ashley made a weak sound. She turned, and sprinted out the door. MM caught Butcher’s arm before he could follow.

“Not worth it.”

Butcher grunted, but didn’t look like he agreed. That dark, predatory look turned to Kimiko, but she didn’t flinch. She’d been on the other side of it too many times to care anymore.

“Let’s move,” MM said, and they did. The laptop got smashed. They slipped out the bathroom window, and took off.

MM gave Kimiko his phone in the car. She pulled her knees up to her chest, and scanned over the screen. Something, MM had called it. But Butcher was right. It didn’t seem like enough.

What was another victim, in a world built on bodies. Not much. Never much. All that usually remained was anger. Anger like hers. Like Butchers. He was still glaring Kimiko her in the mirror, but she didn’t get afraid of things. Not anymore. Not the way Butcher seemed to want her to. The wrath of a war dog scared her as a child. Now it was just an annoying sound, as the anger built and built and built in her own chest. She wouldn’t bite on his word. She wouldn’t do anything on his word. Not when she was made of so much anger it pushed her eyes open at night, and Butcher—filled with so much more wrath, she sometimes saw it simmering off his skin—seemed to be filled with more.

Homelander waited until the sun was down. Ryan had gone to bed, and he was an impossibly obedient child. He was supposed to ask to stay up late, instead of just agreeing. Homelander had even offered another ten minutes—for them to be together, to bond, to make up for all that time Becca Butcher had stolen from them—and Ryan had refused it.

“I- I think I’m tired,” he’d said, yawning wide. Homelander had almost rolled his eyes. The yawn was overkill, as if Ryan didn’t think he’d believe him.

But Homelander hadn’t pushed. He’d have other ways, later, to test if Ryan was still harboring some kind of secret hatred. If he was just waiting for the right moment to stab Homelander in the back, like everyone else had before him. He’d remind Ryan in the morning, that they were family. A real family. Blood. Homelander made Ryan, and they had the same V running through their veins, and there was nothing—fucking nothing—that meant more than that.

He hovered in the air, outside the red-brick building. His cape was supposed to catch the wind, but there wasn’t enough of it. The lights of the city didn’t reach this part of town, and Homelander liked it like that. Everything that glowed was his. His empire, his legacy, his world. Everywhere humans—real, meat and bone humans that bowed like sheep to the wolf—were, was Homelander’s.

This place was all rats and sewage in the streets. Of course, it belonged to Butcher.

A light flicked on in the apartment, and Homelander adjusted his gloved. That goddamn speck still hadn’t come off, but he’d make it. His will wasn’t about to be defeated by a bit of fucking dirt.

He landed on the fire escape, his hands behind his back, and waited. Butcher let his shoulders slump, when he was alone. His features etched in exhaustion, his shirt unbuttoned and hands slower than Homelander ever saw, anywhere else.

Butcher started boiling water, probably for tea.Homelander huffed. British people.

“You waitin’ for me slip into somethin’ for you?” Butcher said, not looking away from the stove. “Or are you comin’ in?”

Homelander’s jaw ticked. He slid open the window and ducked inside, trying to keep his spine as straight as possible. “You look,” he looked Butcher up and down. “Tired.”

Butcher grunted, and didn’t answer. Homelander scowled, bracing his hands on his hips.

“How do I look?”

“Like a cunt.”

Butcher hadn’t even looked up. Homelander shifted on his feet and cleared his throat, and still nothing.

“You know, I haven’t seen you and your little team in a while,” he started. “I’m starting to think you’ve given up on killing me, William. Which isn’t very nice of you, we made each other promises.”

Butcher’s lips twitched. Homelander leaned around, trying to figure out what the fuck that smug, bored expression meant.

“Do you have something for me soon? Is it a surprise? If it’s a surprise, you have to tell me.”

Butcher gave him another strange look, eyes gleaming like coal in the dark. Cold and heavy but—if scratch and sparked right, the way Homelander was fucking trying to do—dangerous and bright.

“If it’s a surprise,” Homelander said. “Don’t say anything-“

“Ah,” Butcher grinned, brows raised, and said your name. “Who’s she?”

Homelander stumbled back. The words settled into his chest like shrapnel, aching and ripping at his heart. He’d never heard her name aloud. Not from another mouth. From Butcher’s mouth. The pain curled. It rubbed against the steel of his ribs and burned.

“What.” Homelander kept his voice slow and cold. All the heat was building in his chest. Behind his eyes. Butcher wasn’t allowed to see it. She’d been too elegant, too holy, too sacred, for Butcher’s dirty fucking hands to touch.”

Butcher repeated your name, crossing his arms and leaning back against the counter. “Young girl. ‘Bout mid-twenties, real fuckin’ knockout, even in just a pervy photo.” Butcher whistled, and Homelander grinded his teeth.

He didn’t know what the fuck he what the fuck he was talking about, he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, he didn’t know what the fuck-

“You heard of her?” Butcher asked, and Homelander swallowed. He didn’t let his face twitch, didn’t let his legs move back.

Steam was pouring out of the kettle, fanning around Butcher’s smirk. He was stronger than this. Stronger than Butcher’s mind games. Stronger than the shriek of the kettle in his ears, the ghost in his skull, the sound of her name.

“Who? Nike?” He scoffed. “I don’t know every supe on the planet, Butcher, that’s- It’s very bigoted of you to assume-“

Butcher cut him off with your name again, grabbing a mug from his sink without breaking Homelander’s gaze, and Homelander rolled his eyes.

“Whatever, that’s still- I expected better-“

“Never said she was a supe, either.” Butcher hummed, reaching for the kettle. “What kinda powers she got?”

Homelander took a long, slow breath through his nose. He’d come here to have fun. To distract himself, with something that mattered even less than this stupid trial. And Butcher- Butcher wasn’t playing nice.

But he was still asking. Homelander shoved down the thick, smoldering anger Butcher had dragged from the base of his neck. He stretched it out, nose twitching, and didn’t entertain this. Butcher just knew a name. Anyone could know a name. If he knew everything—if he knew what she’d been, what she’d meant—he’d be saying that. He’d be aiming for Homelander’s heart, not his throat.

“Ryan’s asking about his mother.” Homelander said, and Butcher stopped pouring his tea. “He wants to know if I loved her.”

Butcher looked up slowly, and Homelander smiled.

There it was. That hatred. That burning flame that they shared, that was going to consume the world. And when Homelander stood in the ashes alone, he’d miss it. He’d miss them.

“I tell him the truth, of course. Becca was just- a fling to me. Nothing real. You’re the one she really loved, for-“ His nose wrinkled. “Some reason.”

Butcher wasn’t moving. His heartbeat was slower than a turtle, but that was something Homelander had always admired about him. The anger. How it outweighed the fear, just like him.  

“I think I should be going, before you break your jaw brooding all over me,” he waved, taking a step back to the window. “Don’t wait up for me, tomorrow. And- Remember. I’d like the surprise.”

And Butcher’s lips curled back up. And Homelander froze.

“Trust me,” Butcher said, low enough that only Homelander would ever be able to hear. “We got one.”

Homelander laughed and nodded and waved it off, but he couldn’t hear his own dismissal and mockery. Not over the whistle of the kettle, although the steam had stopped minutes ago. When he stepped out into the fire escape, it wasn’t even drowned out by the wind. And when he flew and flew and flew, it only got louder and louder. Instruments swelled behind it. Strings and the clash of cymbals and the croon of an angel. A glowing angel.

His glowing angel. Higher in the clouds than he could reach, now. Than anyone could.

Homelander landed in a crater of ash, far in the upstate of New York. There wasn’t a living thing for miles, to see him staring with hollow eyes at the wreckage. Any bit of the burned rubble could be her bones. That pressure, that boiling wrath, it pushed up Homelander’s throat. His eyes flickered and his hands curled and uncurled and his breathing turned short.

The roar split the sky, and red beams of light carved into the already dead ground. The world didn’t move. Didn’t care. The ground should be shaking, it should be afraid, Homelander had lost and so the world should be afraid, should be blooming with new offerings, new songbirds, new angels. But it didn’t understand.

It would. Homelander would make sure it did, and then he’d have it. Everything that was left, he’d have it all.  

A bit of ash, floated up and landed on the lapel of his suit. He brushed it off, but didn’t look back to see that it stuck. He flew back to the tower, with it graying into his suit. And the rest of the world was quiet. The daisies and weeds that had been pushing through the ashes of the crater had been missed by the slice of Homelander’s laser, but still been buried in the ash of the aftermath.

There was going to be wind tomorrow. There usually was, after a while. And it would blow away the ash, and something would always, always grow.

✦chapter 2

✦End note: butcher got a single w today with his ragebaiting but guys i dont think it's going to last ✦

✦If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3✦

✦Buy me a coffee!☕️ (and get early access!)✦

You sweep through long halls in a dress that flows behind you, covering the shadows with lace and silk. You run out to the empty yard and slam into Dean, right where you knew you’d find him. Standing with the stake in his hand that he drops, in favor of spinning you off the ground and cradling your trembling body. One hand cups the back of your head, and the other digs into your hips. You trip trying to pull yourself closer, and drops a thick arm under your thighs, hauling you up into his arms.

He’s warm. So warm you let yourself pretend this is real. You bury your face in his neck and dig your nails into his neck. Wherever he is—the real Dean—you hope he can feel the dull, claiming pain. You hope he knows that you brush wet, swollen and tear stained lips over the crescent dents after, trying to push them a little deeper into his skin. You’re allowed to be possessive and selfish here.

Because, no matter how much it hurts you to know, it’s not real. 

Dean guides your face away from his neck, tugging your hair gently, forcing your gaze onto his. Tired, glassy eyes flicker like a jumping engine, a heart being shocked back to life. His mouth works in that tiny way, where he’s trying to think of something to say but only seems to know how to touch. He brushes your hair once, twice, and third time with this thumb sweeping over your cheekbone, his lips parting with a long, broken sigh.

You press a tender, worried kiss to his lips, and he snaps. His hand fists in your hair. He stumbles back like he’s been punched, kissing you until you’re both breathless and drunk on a phantom taste. He trips his way to a soft pile of grass in the courtyard, somehow managing not to come up for air. Dean lands flat on his ass and holds you over his chest, attacking your neck and jaw with brutal lips, sucking tiny bruises before flicking his tongue over the ache. You dig your fingers into his hair, biting back wrecked moans.

Dean grabs your chin, squeezing your cheeks and shooting you a stern, lust-blown glare.

“Don’t be like that, Princess,” he mutters, grazing his mouth over your puckered lips. “I gotta hear you. Lemme hear you.”

He traces his fingers teasingly up your side and nips at your lower lip. You let out a high, pathetic whine, and he smirks.

“There she is.”

Dean kisses you again, before gliding his mouth back down. There isn’t an inch of your skin he doesn’t seem determined to mark. Your moans echo off the courtyard walls, and his grunts vibrate against your skin, sending tiny, sweet shivers up your spine. Your shirt gets peeled off, so he can mouth at your breasts. He traces the curve of your ass and sits you right on the growing bulge in his pants, but never does anything more than rock his hips.

If Sam ever got a peak in your head, he’d vomit and then say something about you not even letting yourself feel good in a useless fantasy, and then you’d punch him in the face. Holding Dean after he cuts off the… other stuff, it’s just as good as anything else. You just need him, really. To be close for a fleeting hour of rapid sleep, where you can trace over his Golden features and beg the stains on your skin to keep you dirty, because the idea of being clean sounds so harrowing you think it might eat you alive.

“You doing alright up there?” Dean murmurs against your skin, his face buried between your breasts, and you nod.

There’s a long, aching sting at your eyes. You hug his head and breathe deeply, trying to burn the sweet smell of cinnamon into your nostrils. 

Dean says your name, splaying his fingers on your lower back. He tries to lean back, but you hold him in a headlock, the tears streaming down your cheeks. He grunts and pries at your forearms, grabbing your wrists with light hands and forcing your grip to slacken. He smiles faintly, at your scrunched up, snotty nose and red eyes. It’s tired. Everything about him seems tired, but he still smiles, as if you’re the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Easy, baby,” he murmurs, taking both of your hands between his. “It’s gonna be alright, you’re gonna be alright.”

He kisses his knuckles, trapping yours, and you sob so hard it shakes your body. You’re not worried about you. You’ve learned, for better or worse, that you really always will get through it. The universe doesn’t seem all that open to letting you tread down that other path.

But you’re worried about him. You’re worried about him in a way that almost cleaves you in half, that threatens to be the only thing that could possible overrule the universe, that frays the already weak threads that stich up whatever foul, glorious thing you’re made of. You’re held together by hooks and needles, at this point. You’re twisting yourself into knots that half ease right here, in Dean’s arms, but all that happens is your heart spills and spills and spills, until the rotting grass is overgrown and stained with silver dew.

Dean glances down, but doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t say much but soft reassurances, until you’re able to speak again. His thumb pets down the bridge of your nose, and—if you’re shaking so much the ground starts to shake with you—he flips you onto your back and hold you until you the weight makes you breathe.

Tonight is one of those nights. He traces over your face with the most cautious touch, his face twisted with a heavy, painfully blatant longing. Hooded eyes shine, scanning over your crumpled features. His mouth hangs open, like he’s trying to inhale you, the same way you hold his fisted hand over your lips. Just trying to get a little extra of something you’ve never been able to be satisfied with. Something that’s never going to be able to be close enough.

“Better?” He rasps, when your breathing steadies. You shake your head, your lips wobbling and he sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He kisses your brow, brow knitting like he’s in pain. “I know.”

He never tells you much, but there isn’t much your brain seems to need to hear. Sam’s alive. They’re working to get back. Dean loves you, and he swears up and down and left and right, on his both his babies—you and the damn car—and his mother and brother and Scooby Doo boxers and Led Zepplin cassettes, that he’s going to come home and say it to your face again. You tell him he already has, and he laughs and tells you that you have no idea. He asks you about things, every single time. How’s Claire. How’s Jo. Are you talking to Cas again, have you spoken to Eileen at all, has Crowley come crawling out from underground. You tell him the truth, and sometimes he makes a face like he wants to argue. Sometimes he does argue, and you think you miss him so much you’re going mad.

“You gotta talk to Cas, sweetheart, who the hell knows what the angels are up to-“

“No.”

Dean sighs your name, and you shove his chest with a flat hand.

“You talk to him, if it’s so important.”

“I’d like to,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Could tell him to talk some sense back into your smart ass.”

You shove him again, and he just catches your wrist and guides it away.

“I’m serious,” he says, strict and heavy, even as he drags his thumb over your knuckles and uses a soft, coaxing tone. “If I get back and you’re still fightin’ with Cas, I’m gonna be pissed.”

And you just hold his gaze, your throat closing up so tight the words have to break to get out. “So come back,” you whisper. “And prove it.”

India is hot in the middle of April. Wet and hot, mud always coating your boots and dirt getting under your nails, a sticky warmth filling up your lungs with every breath, a million smells that remind you of Dean flooding your senses and making you press your lips tight enough to crack.

He’d love it here. The people and the food, the bartering and the TV and, again, the food. He’d pull you through the markets with your hands locked, spending half an hour talking to one seller about his fish before storming off for a reason he sputters trying to explain. You’d kiss his cheek and ask if he wants to go fishing. He’d light up like a child and drag you back to the hotel, kissing all over your face as you stumble through the door, giggling like a lovesick fool in his arms.

Instead, you lean against the old table in the warehouse, sharpening your knife and ignoring the muffled curses of the man in the chair. Bobby’s bottle shines green, in the dim, flickering light. You kick your bag a little away from your feet, dancing and humming while you wait for everyone to calm the hell down.

For him, specifically, to calm down. You tied him up in the nice binds, you’ve given him a lot of wiggle and breathing room—Jo was worried he’d get out, you know he won’t—and brought him some very expensive and stolen lamb that he didn’t get to eat, because he tried to bite your fingers off. He’d have it pretty good, if he’s stop overreacting. You’re the one who should be freaking out, and you’re perfectly calm. The Silver is bright and smooth and calm, iced over your veins and melded into your muscles. It moves when you move, and screams when you scream, and it’s like learning to walk all over again, but you’re doing it. And you’re calm.

Psychotic, the man before this one said. You sliced his hand open and dripped salt on the wound, for that one. It wasn’t the claim, but the way he said it. Like you were just some crazy, scorned bitch. Which another former captive called you, and he lost his tongue, but he’d also crossed your very, very clear line about Claire, so you think he earned it.

That’s why this one can call you whatever the fuck he wants. You’ve been called worse, and you’re past caring what kind of whore or slut or bitch or cunt you have to be. If anything, it’s a compliment. It means they’re afraid.

The man spits something, then chokes and thrashes the chair. The chains rattle unpleasantly against the floor, and you shoot him an unimpressed look.

“Neal, I can’t understand you,” you remind him, and his eyes narrow. “And remember what we talked about? Good behavior?

Neal’s face curls and contorts into something like a sneer. You sigh and spin your knife in your hand, pushing off the table with a tiny kick of your feet.

“This,” you wave the blade over his general, rather rude demeanor. “Isn’t good behavior. This isn’t how we earn speaking privileges again, buddy. I don’t want to have to remind you again.”

Neal’s eyes flash with fury. He growls something and you stop right in front of him, crossing your arms and scanning over his locked down body with a frown. He’s been here almost two weeks, and all you’ve really gotten is an uncooperative attitude and a lot of insulting comments about your body. You would’ve thought he’d give up after a while. The rest of them did.

You tap your foot and chew on your lower lip. Neal’s gag is getting dirty, but it didn’t exactly start clean. Maybe you’d soaked it in dirty dish water, before stuffing it in his mouth. He deserved it. He made a comment about Claire that he was lucky to survive.

Luck that came with being one of the last Alphas left. If there had been hundreds of them before, the count is down to double digits. You, Cas, and Crowley sort of did a lot of damage to the population, leaving only the smart ones that evaded capture, and know to stay underground. Those are the ones like the Alpha Vampire, who you haven’t been able to find after months of looking.

And then there are the ones who didn’t get caught because they were too stupid to be worth it.

The ones like Neal.

There isn’t a corner of the Earth you don’t think is worth ripping up to find Dean. For a week after Michigan, you thought God might have taken him. Jo barely managed to talk you down from truly, fully losing it, and she only got the chance because of your exhaustion from killing Eve.

“You felt God grabbin’ me, right?” She’d said, holding your hands and pleading in a way that was so unlike Jo, you’d managed to focus on her words. “You told me, you felt God yankin’ me away, just like you felt my mom. Like you felt him tryin’ to grab Bobby. You woulda stopped him, if he was goin’ for Sam and Dean. You woulda,” she’d squeezed your hand, even as you’d stared at her with empty eyes. “I know it. You know it. Hell, God himself knew it, so- Wasn’t him.”

You’d blinked at her, and nodded slowly. She was right. It couldn’t have been God. He’d vanished from the sky again, so you couldn’t ask, but you knew. One of the only things that had saved you, in that moment, was that you hadn’t been wrestling with God to pull Sam and Dean back. You would’ve detonated, if you had. But instead they’d just vanished, and you’d been hit by the despair before the wrath.

It had been long. Long and harrowing and cold, in the week after. Jo says you barely spoke, and you have to believe her, because you don’t really remember that much otherwise. It’s all a blur of a bed that didn’t have the warmth it was supposed to, showers that you were afraid to take and scars of Gold you traced with trembling, fearful fingers. The only sharp memory is the fight with Cas, and even that is sanded around the edges. You’d drifted until Jo reminded you that it couldn’t be God, and it had been like slamming against a rock. 

If it wasn’t God, it was something else. Something weaker.

You could kill something weaker. You could do it without destroying yourself, and dragging the rest of the world down with you. You could get Dean home.

In the days after that, you’d moved fast. Kevin had been sent off with Meg, who promised to keep him away from Crowley. You and Jo had packed up Bobby’s house and left, looking for something. Anything, that would even tell you where Dean had landed. That would tell you how to get him home.

“Listen,” Meg had said before you separated, low and careful. “Things like that bone? My daddy told me to be careful with them.” She’d given you a pointed look. “Told me they had kickback.”

Kickback.  

A rebound of power, Rowena had explained. An aftertaste, but everyone in a few yards gets it shoved down your throat. Dean and Sam got dragged somewhere. All you had to do was drag them back.

Which means all you have to do is figure out where they got dragged.

It’s a harder task, than you originally thought. You’ve gone after countless people and beasts and entities for answers. God convicts who were willing to talk without anyone needing to be tortured, rogue angels who looked for you to help, demons who you trapped and witches and cult members who got to find out exactly how many of the rumors have been true. And in all of them, from the annoying to the unless to the rude, Neal is, by miles and margins, the fucking stupidest.

“I’m going to take out your gag,” you tell him slowly, leaning down over his chair. “You’re not going to call me any names, I won’t cut out your tongue, and we all win, okay?”

Neal eyes the weapon, inches from slicing his cheek. You smile sweetly and flick your wrist, taking out a lock of his hair, and he flinches. Like a little fucking bitch.   

“Okay?” You prompt again, and his throat bobs.

He nods. You beam, and saw at his gag with a wide smile. The cloth falls and you let it hang around his neck, watching with raised brows and a warning curve to your lips. Neal glares at you, and you tip your head, letting your hair brush over his cheeks. He recoils back, his breathing shallow and hot over your face, and you smile in slow, smug satisfaction.

“That’s a good boy,” you purr, drawing yourself back up.

Neal—the idiot—snaps.

“You little fucking bitch-“

“Ah,” you slam the gag back up to his mouth, choking him on the fabric. His eyes flicker, hatful and beady and small. You sigh. You really wanted to do this the easy way. “That’s not what we talked about,” you tug the fabric tighter, and he grunts. “I’m being very nice right now, and you- You didn’t even eat the food I bought you! Do you know how hurtful that is?” You roll your eyes. “And- Even if I didn’t buy it, I still got it for you. And you call me a bitch? Rude.”

You shove him back and let go of the gag, taking a large step back before he can spit in your face.

He tries. He always tries, because he’s an idiot. You dodge it without blinking, but it lands only a few inches away from Bobby’s bottle. The old wood sizzles and hisses under the venom. You turn back around with a furious flurry and rage in your chest, a growing winter storm that Neal seems to feel, with how he goes still.

“Do you know what happens?” You ask slowly. “If you destroy that bottle.”

Neal opens his mouth. You don’t give him a real chance to respond.

“I kill you,” you spit, taking a large step forward. Neal’s fingernails and lips are starting to go purple. The warehouse creaks under your feet, as slow frost spreads over your feet.

“I didn’t hit the damn bottle,” Neal tries to snap, but it’s weak. His voice cracks, and his eyes are too wide. You hold a finger to your lips and shake your head. He swallows loud enough that you can hear it, and you smile.

“I kill you,” you repeat, honeyed and low. “And then I track down every one of your children, and I kill them too. Then I open Purgatory, and I kill all of you all over again. Do you understand.”

Neal’s eyes narrow. For a second, you think he really might be stupid enough to test you, but he only nods.

“Great,” you spin you knife, kneeling down to his height. “See? Isn’t it easy to listen to me?”

Neal’s mouth ticks. He still doesn’t speak, and you sigh.

“Now, I know you’re going to try and tell me you have no idea where the Leviathan bone goes, but if you do that, I’m going to have to cut off your hand. And I don’t wanna do that. It’s gross, it smells bad, now I have to get rid of a hand- You get it,” you shrug. “So, if you’d be so perfectly kind to think a little bit harder, maybe we can figure out a version of this where you only lose your finger.”

The column of Neal’s throat works. His jaw does a funny little motion, and you grab his cheeks with a sigh, pressing the knife to his throat.

“I told you to stop doing that, it’s not going to work.”

“Fuck-“ Neal pushes out the words through his teeth little bits of spittle landing on your skin.

It burns, but the sores heal in seconds. Cockatrice venom doesn’t do much to you, apparently. It’s still annoying to have to heal it.

“Fuck- You-“

“Everyone’s trying,” you say dryly, pressing the knife down until a thin bead of blood coats the blade. “Where is my Dean.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t fucking know-“

“Liar,” you lean closer, eyes narrowing. “I know you’re a liar, I know what Mommy taught you, I- I fucking know-“

Your voice breaks, and the frozen coating over your hands is giving way to pure, raw wrath. You will get him back. You have to get him back. There is nothing ahead of you, if you don’t get Dean home. This power is useless if you can’t find him, life is useless if you have to feel all of it but you don’t get to have something that’s just yours, everything has been nothing if you don’t get to have Dean.

And Neal sees it, between the shattered cracks of the Silver, waxing and waning like an ocean storm, crashing up high enough that the chains turn to roots and the pain under all of it becomes so obviously, dangerously clear.

Most Alpha and demons caved under it. They’d been trying to barter or mock, not understanding that the rumors about you and Dean didn’t cover the thinnest scope of your love. You’ve long learned that people talk about the Winchesters and their strange little monster. The demon boy and his black eyes and breakdowns. The brute hunter that carves through anything in his way, to get to his baby brother and his girl.

The Magdalene. The Whore. The Bride, who’s stuck herself to the brother’s side and sleeps in the brute’s bed. They say everything about you and Dean. That you fuck like rabbits, that he sits at your feet like a dog, that you follow him around like a lovesick schoolgirl and crawl into his lap with blood on both your hands.

And yet it takes that peak behind your fury, for them to get it. To understand that they are not looking at some tragic little star-crossed love, some Bonnie and Clyde pairing that talks big and shoots bigger.

They are looking at a Horror. They are looking at something that can’t fit in their little minds, who could sweep over lands and mold them in her name, who could hold the stars in her hands or bring paradise to the earth, but only wants one, perfect, sweet idiot of a man.

And you don’t have him right now. There’s no Dean, to tell you that you need to sleep, or breathe, or think your plan through a little bit harder. They call him the Brute Winchester, but he was the only thing that could ever get you to bow your head for a leash. He could’ve saved them. He’s not here, so there’s nothing but you, and an unending pain that you need the world to fucking feel.

Neal sees it. He blinks and leans back, under the blinding floodlight of the truth. They all do.

But most of them see it as something like a supernova, that’s going to consume them if they don’t look for cover or cower.

Neal is an idiot. Neal smiles.

“You don’t know how to get him back, do you,” he coos. “Little Whore, bragging about killing Eve and not even able to find her little boyfriend. You’re what they’re afraid of. You can’t even track him like the fucking mutt you’re supposed to be.”

You cover Neal’s mouth with your hand. Your eyes squeeze shut, your breathing shallow, your palm burning at Neal tries to bite it.

You are the weight of the roots under your feet, happy to be alive, to be connected, to grow instead of sink. You’re the cold fear of the ground, worried the heat will come, but won’t be enough to thaw it. You’re the sky far overhead, filled with so much it’s not sure what to call itself, unsure what it even is if not empty.

It is everything. You are everything. The leather cord of Dean’s amulet is stuck to your skin, trying to hold onto you when he can’t, and you are everything.

This Alpha is nothing. So you make him everything too.

When you open your eyes, Neal is frozen. His eye sockets have been overgrown with flowers that burst from under the lids and through the pupils. Grass and thin weeds grow under his nails. You uncover his mouth, and branches burst forward, a million tiny birds taking off in a swarm. You wipe the trickle of water that falls down his chin and sigh.

Better than the last one. He got a little too confident, said that Dean was probably hiding from you, or begging God to take you so you’d leave him alone, and got turned into a pile of brushel and kindle that burned rather easily, to nothing but flecks of ash in the air. You think Dean would be proud of you for controlling it. Neal only got turned into a blooming corpse, once he earned it.

And he was wrong. He was wrong. You press your hands flat against the table and take deep breaths, repeating it over and over and over. Pushing the thought out of your head like a parasite being fished up your throat. You will get Dean back. There is nowhere in the universe that you can’t reach, no cage you can’t rip open to get back to his side. Lucifer and Michael couldn’t hold you. Some little rebound of a magic bone isn’t going to out preform God’s favorite sons.

But it has. You haven’t found him.

But you will. You will. You chew on the inside of your cheek until you taste blood. Your fingers twitch and curl, trying to burrow into your palms, and you scrape them along the table instead. It starts to hurt, the pressure building under your skin and bubbling over in your chest. It hurts more than the brief sting or stab of a bite or cut ever would. You squeeze your eyes shut and grab your knife, driving it straight into the wood. You lean over, rubbing your face like you can push back the burn in your eyes and heavy stress on the bridge of your nose. A dam, threatening every second to break.

You pinch it and try to breathe slow. If you let yourself drown in the blood, pounding in your ears, you can almost hear Dean’s voice, coaching you through it.

In and out. Easy for me, Princess. Just breathe. I’ve got you.

He doesn’t have you. He said he was going to. He said he wouldn’t leave and now you’re fucking alone, suffocating on thick air in a warehouse, grabbing at wood like it’s not just going to rot under your fingers, and you’re not about to slip away into nothing, nothing, nothing, you’re going to be nothing again and you should’ve saved him, why didn’t you save him, what foul kind of use are you to the world if you can’t save the best thing about it, if you can’t do anything but cry and run around and be nothing-

Your breathing is ragged. Sharp. There’s a dull sting to your palms, and you open your eyes to find you’d started scratching at your palms until you drew thin lines of blood. You swallow, a boulder settling in your throat that you’ve never been able to dislodge alone. Bobby’s bottle shines in your periphery, knocked onto its side and cradled in a little nest of grass and leaves. Containing yourself when you use your powers- It’s a work in progress. You right the bottle with a mumbled apology you know he’s never going to be able to hear.

And you think you almost got away with it. You drag Neal’s body out back, and flick Dean’s lighter until you’ve got a sweet little flame going. You watch it for a moment, bending light in the sunrise. It seems to know you’re not Dean, whenever you use it. There’s a shadow of distrust that almost puts it out, but then it realizes it’s you, and that seems to be close enough.

You know it sounds crazy—even for you—but all of Dean’s things miss him. You wear his shirts to bed, trying to pretend he’s still there to hold you in the dark, and the fabric clings to the Gold on your skin the same way you cling to its collar, inhaling every last bit of cinnamon and grass until you can almost pretend Dean is there. You have his keys in your pocket, and they keep begging you to drive back to  an empty home. They seem to think that he’ll be there, and don’t listen when you tell them that he’s gone. He never goes, they demand. He’s just waiting for you at home. And you shake your head and clean his guns—and you do a bad job, but he’ll fix it when he gets home—and they seem to be the same kind of restless he is, where they’re itching for something to get in front of. Something to defend. They ask you with every touch, if your safe. They beg you to let them help, when you tell them you’re fine. The bullets say they exist to lodge in the skulls of your enemies. You tell them they’re being a little dramatic, and put them back in Dean’s actual bullet box with a sigh.

And you really, really almost get away with it.

Neal’s body burns, and you throw the rest of it into the backwoods river, asking the water to carry it where no one will ever find. You go back inside and clean up, rubbing your eyes and fighting a yawn. You’ve been up all night. Your eyes are drooping and your skin is raw and sensitive, a live nerve that wants to peel off your iron-heavy bones. There isn’t an artery in your chest and neck that isn’t trying to burst. A joint or tendon in your gut or legs that doesn’t want to snap. You hold it together, with the thinnest of wires. You jabbed them through every inch that threatens to unravel and pull them tight, because you don’t have the privilege of falling apart.

But you’ve never been lucky enough, to not have something go rancid and soft. To not trip over the only loose stone, and plunge face first into freefall.

You stuff all your tools and knives—you lost the Blade, throwing it at Dick Roman’s eye, and replaced it with a smaller set Claire found in China—into the bag. You wrap Bobby’s bottle in a woven cloth and wedge it between your books. You check the ground for anything else, and there it is. The loose stone. The branch that your wire catches on, that pulls you right apart.

Dean’s box slid a little under the table, when you kicked over the bag. You have to stretch to grab it, and frantically wipe off the quickly gathered dust and cobwebs. Your fingers linger on the latch. Your knees draw to your chest, and you stare at the silver detailing until your vison blurs.

Hot tears land on the back of your hand. A shattered, uncontrollable sob rips from your throat, and your shoulders pull tight. You’re curling into a ball around the box, dropping your face between your legs and shuddering with every single breath. The air feels like it’s burning up in your body. The soil beneath you becomes rich and wet, and the wood behind you mends from time, setting down roots in a place nothing else has been allowed to stay.

You scream so loud it bounces off the walls, and outside, the river seems to scream back. Lightning cracks, somewhere faraway. You scream again, and thunder rolls through the air. It’s loud because it’s trying to find him. Because if it’s loud enough, it will glow like a beacon in the dark, and Dean will come home.

You need him to come home.

It’s a while, before you’re able to stand again. Your legs are shaking, and there are no warm arms to hold you upright. You wipe your own tears, and little dandelions bloom when they hit the muddied earth. You gather yourself, because no one else will, and that was only a fissure. You can stich up a fissure.

A break—a true, untenable break—will not leave a living world in its wake. Not a world that isn’t molded to your hands. Salvation. Damnation.  

You wonder if Azazel knew that the only difference between the two would be whether or not you got to have Dean. You’re sure he didn’t. He would’ve let Dean die in that hospital bed if he did. Long before you could save him. When you weren’t capable of much more than squinting at a soul or stomping out a demon like a spider that jumped on you in the shower.

It would be the easy thing, to let yourself break. But this world deserves better than a righteous blight. There are still things in it, that you can find to be beautiful. The river spit up nuggets of gold, gathered on the bank like shells on a beach. The morning glows like you’re wandering through Dean’s heaven, when the sun splits over green mountains. You have Bobby in your bag, and you’re going to get him back. You have Dean’s box, and if you explode, you’re never going to find out what’s inside.

You’ve been telling yourself you’re waiting for him to be back. You know, deep in your gut, that you just can’t. You can’t name why. You can’t justify it. But you cry when you see it and you don’t want to open it without him.

You don’t want to do any of this without him.

You have to. It’s either that or giving up, and you’ve been running too long to let your feet fail now. You’re going to get through this.

You always do.

The motel you’ve been staying at is on the nicer side. You have a large room and complementary breakfasts. There’s a pool that only has a handful of bugs in it, at any given time. The wallpaper is peeling but the bathroom is clean, and the water pressure is strong, and the beds are covered in so many pillows you can almost shape them into a perfect Dean, whenever you sleep.

Not that you sleep much.

You took three hours, somewhere around twilight, and headed to the warehouse around midnight. You unlock the door and slip inside before anyone should be up.

And yet, waiting for you on the bed with a glare, Claire is wide awake. Her arms are cross and her chin is jutted up in that way Dean used to say was all you. The Lady is curled in her lap, Indy is flopped at her feet, and the Phoenix chick—Sparky, Claire’s been calling him, and you haven’t really been able to stop her—is pecking at her hair. You almost laugh at the absurd sight. Claire doesn’t look that amused.

“Where did you go,” she whisper shouts, and you kick off your shoes with a sigh.

“You don’t need to worry about that, Claire-“

“Yes, I do! What if there was another break-in, what if the police showed up, what if the leviathans came back-“

“Did you have another nightmare?”

Claire scowls. It’s not an accusation, but you know she takes it as one. She’s trying to play up the gum-like toughness Dean always carried with his every word and step. The sense that bending him was impossible, without him snapping back like a rubber band. She’s been doing that hewn, tight jawed expression whenever the police do come around—you dispose a lot of bodies, and people in India are really annoyingly observant—and doesn’t seem open to hearing that you really don’t need her to grow up for this.

If anything, you’re still a little annoyed she talked you into coming. You wanted her to go back to Jody, but she flat out refused. She locked herself in the Firebird and said she’d go on a hunger strike. Jody said she could take her anyway.

A selfish part of you didn’t want to let her out of your sight. Not after Michigan. Not when there were all too familiar bags forming under her eyes, and paranoid twitch that made your heart ache—that reminded you of Sam—every time the wind got a little too loud.

She’d been allowed to come on the rule that she’d listen, stay out of your warpath, and continue with school. Staying out of the warpath just means no hunting. School just means the homeschooling curriculum you stole from Bobby and Rufus. Dean’s going to have some things to say about that, when he gets home. He’ll be welcome to. He can shout at you and argue all he wants, as long as he’s in front of you. As long as you get to hear his voice.

You dump your bag on the floor and bite your cheek. You’re doing your best with what you have. It isn’t much. It’s better than nothing at all.

“Claire,” you say gently, keeping your voice down. Jo’s passed out, in the other bed. If you wake her up, she’s going to have opinions. “It’s okay if you are having nightmares-‘

“I’m not!” Claire snaps, too fast, too loud. Jo stirs a little, and you give Claire a stern look. She swallows and bows her head, her voice dropping back down. “I’m not,” she mumbles. “I- I just couldn’t sleep.”

You sigh, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Indy eerps, rolling onto her back and nosing at your knee. You rub her stomach, watching Claire in your periphery, letting her words linger in the hum of the fan and wet morning air.

“It’s not like I wake up screaming,” Claire grumbles, and your mouth twitches.

“I know.”

“Do you? ‘Cause you keep saying I’m having nightmares, so it sounds like you don’t-“

“Claire.”

She curls back, under your flat stare. You sigh and lean forward, touching her knee lightly. She keeps her gaze locked down, just as stubborn as always.

“I have nightmares,” you say softly, and Claire’s scowl deepens. “Dean has nightmares. And he never wakes up screaming.”

That makes her pause. She looks up with a poorly hidden surprise, pulling at a loose string on her shorts. You smile sadly and squeeze her knee, leaning a little further. Like you’re telling her a secret, even if you’re sure Dean would tell her the exact same.

“I wake up,” you murmur. “Because he’s not making any sounds.”

“That- But-“

“He snores,” your smile turns misty. Tired and fond and a little smooth around the edges, the weight of missing him settling right at the top of your chest. You stave it off for now. For Claire. “He snores like a fucking machine.”

Claire makes a face like she’s trying to fight off a laugh, and your cheeks ache just a little less.

“So when he’s quiet,” you say, watching her carefully. “I know something is wrong.”

Claire presses her lips in a thin line. She stares down at her fingers, and you let out a slow breath.

“He gets stiff. I realize I woke up because he was squeezing me, or lying on top of me, or just- Grabbing me. His face does that frown,” you pinch your face up, trying to mimic Dean’s worried and angry scowl, and Claire’s throat bobs. “And he breathes really heavy, and I- I wake him up. Carefully, but- I know whatever he’s dreaming about- I- I have to get him out of it.”

And it hurts just to think about. It makes every space around you feel bigger, to speak about him. Some small part of your brain thinks that if you do it enough he’ll just appear, but the rest of you knows better, and doesn’t want to talk about him at all. But that little part, it’s loud. It expands and begs, every time you indulge it. Spreading memories in every dip and space in your ribcage, pushing just to the right of your heart until you think you’re going to burst.

You can almost see him, in the longest corners of the room. The sun plays a cruel trick where the golden light takes his shape, and you can’t help yourself from looking. In case it is him. If it is, you’ll need to grab him before he vanishes behind the clouds. Tell him that if you’re not dreaming of him, you’re having nightmares. The boring kind, where you wake up screaming in a pool of sweat that’s already collecting algae, reaching for him and only finding an empty bed, then screaming louder. Nightmares that would make him take your face between his hands, that he could tell you weren’t real. John isn’t going to kill you in front of him and Sam. Bobby’s soul isn’t going to be ripped from your hands like Jo’s. Sam isn’t going to crumble to dust in your arms, falling apart too fast for you to put him back together.

You don’t know what Dean had his nightmares about. They were rare for both of you, when you shared a bed. After you’d wake him up, he’d bury his face in your chest and refuse to speak until the sun rose, his hands mapping your body and his back flexed and tense until he convinced himself he was allowed to relax. Then all you’d get was a kiss and mumbled thanks, before he clambored out of bed for coffee. You always had guesses. You pieced things together from the low, pained groans and pleas that would push themselves out, before you managed to wake him. You have the same kind of guesses about Claire.

But she’ll talk about it when she’s ready. You don’t need to know what the nightmare is about, to seal over the damage for a single day. It’s just a band aide on an open wound, but it will stop the infection. You’ll worry about the scar, when you’re not trying to keep her from being cut wide open again.

“Everyone has nightmares,” you duck, forcing Claire to meet your gaze. “But they’re just nightmares. The leviathans are gone. Jo can handle the police or a monster, and anything else- I won’t let it hurt you. Okay?”

Claire’s silent for a long while, and you wait. You have no time. You’re willing to stretch what you do have thin, for her.

She nods, and you bite back your sharp relief, just squeezing her knee one more time and taking a deep breath through your nose.

“Do you want to talk about it?” You offer, already knowing the answer.

Claire shakes her head. You glance over at Jo, fully knocked out and starfished, obvious to the world around her. You’d been planning to catch a few hours before she and Claire woke up, but the motel has strong coffee, and you’ve slept less for longer.

“You wanna watch a movie?” You offer, and Claire sits up. You laugh, and it’s small but real.

Dean would be proud.

You settle against the headboard, Claire tucked into your side, the Lady padding over and curling between your bodies, and Indy splayed over your legs, her tail whipping back and forth over the sheets. She’s almost the size of a Great Dane, now. It’s getting harder and harder, to sneak her around. You’ll call Rowena later. Ask about a shielding or illusion spell, or make one up if she can’t help.

Sparky stays on Claire’s head. They seem to have developed a bond you’re not willing to try and break. You offer the chick a finger, while Claire picks out a movie, and he nips you, nudges you for a pet, and then immediately turns back to Claire’s hair.

They motel has most of the channels. Claire asks you what you want, but you know she’s just trying to be polite.

“Whatever you want,” you tell her, and she smiles. She picks an old western that’s near the start of its run, and slumps down into the mattress. You only half watch, your eyes lidded and glazed. You’re all but asleep with your eyes open, the voices and music all blending into a white noise that threatens to lull you into sleep.

“Did they help?” Claire asks quietly, and you frown at her, unsure if you heard right. “Whoever you were- With,” she clarifies, still staring at the TV. “Are they going to help you find Sam and Dean?”

The question is so small. So unsure, like she’s not sure that she’s allowed to ask it. You twist the skin of your finger and tip your head back, trying to let the headrest carry the weight of it. The lie. The pair, that you don’t want rolling off of you and poisoning her.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think they might.”

Claire hums, and it doesn’t matter how much she believes you. She relaxes, and that ease leave a wake, settling over your skin and tendons and knotted organs. You let out a breath, and it doesn’t catch in your throat.

You don’t sleep. Not fully. But your eyes fall, and your body goes as loose as it’s allowed, and you drift in and out of the world without so much as a nightmare or tear. Claire knocks out on your arm, and the sun pushes over the sky and through the curtains. The weight of Indy comes and goes. A door creaks, and you twist enough to see Jo gone from the bed before you’re pulled back under. It’s not fruitful sleep. It’s bobbing through the calmest parts of the ocean, able to breathe, never able to fully rest.

You’ll find the land. You’ll make it, if you have to.

For now, you just drift.

Jo’s at the table with a coffee, when you finally drag yourself out of bed. Indy’s sitting at the foot of your bed, watching you with wide, curious eyes. You tuck Claire—fully asleep, but still angled like she’s  trying to watch TV—under the sheets, and pad over to Jo’s side. Indy bounds after you, dropping her chin onto your knee and whining softly. Jo rolls her eyes and pushes the coffee across the table, shooting Indy a distasteful glare.

“She’s actin’ like I let her starve,” Jo grumbles. “I took her out. Got her- Really the biggest fuckin’ fish you’ve ever seen. I mean, I still don’t know how she got the whole thing down, it was-“

She holds her hands up, almost all the way apart, and you laugh softly. “She’s a growing girl-“

“She’s grown big enough. We’re gonna have to make a fuckin’ stable.”

You raise your brows. “We?”

Jo shrugs. You both know who we is, and it’s not anyone in the room. “He will,” she doesn’t say his name. You think, sometimes, she’s worried it will set you off, like cutting the wrong wire on a bomb.

“Sam thinks she’s going to be as big as the house,” you murmur into your coffee, and Jo makes a face.

“That’s too fuckin’ big.”

“Yeah, but- At least Dean will get to build his barn.”

Jo stares at you, for just a little too long. You know she hears it. Dean will. Sam thinks.

“Have I told you he wants to build a barn?” You ask, still not meeting her gaze. Silently begging her, to just go along with it. Just right now, while you can’t bear to do anything else.

“No,” she says slowly. “Don’t think you have.”

“Well, he does. He told me he wants to build a barn, a farm, a house, and a garage. I told him he doesn’t know how architecture works, and he- He just said he’d figure it out.” You laugh to yourself, watery and almost floating through the air. “The annoying thing is he probably will. He’ll skim one book and say he’s got it, and then I’ll blink and he’ll have a house.”

Jo says your name. You ignore her.

“I mean- One time I asked him how he built my car, and he just said he put stuff together in the way that made sense. That doesn’t mean anything, but- It worked. He always makes it work.”

You choke on the last word. Jo reaches for your hand, and you curl it into a tight fist. She mutters your name, and you shake your head, tears pricking at the edge of your eyes.

“Don’t,” you whisper, staring at the table. “Please.”

Jo sighs, but doesn’t say a word. She grabs your hand, and you immediately grab it back, trying not to dig in your nails. You watch the coffee slush around in your mug. It’s going cold. Everything, from the sink pit in the hollow of your chest to the churning in your gut, is going cold. Jo’s hand is warm. It keeps your fingers from shaking, and that keeps the world from shaking with it.

Sometimes, you wonder why she sticks around too. She could’ve gone with Meg or Charlie or Adam. She could’ve gone with the Amazons. Could’ve left to look for her mom, even if you’re more than willing to be Ellen is trapped with God. But Jo just… Stays. So maybe people stay, and you begin to feel like a leech. Draining them to make yourself bigger. Suctioned onto their kindness, unable to do anything on your own.

You’re learning, that sometimes, people just… Love you.

You lean on Jo until you’re both about to topple, and she holds you up until you can drag her off the edge of the cliff. You press Sam until he’s about to break, and he doesn’t try to lock you out or push you away. You run around like a pigeon that can’t quite remember where home is supposed to be, and Bobby waits for you to remember how to turn around and find your way back. You screw up again and again and again, and you learn so slow and love so quietly and spill your guts all over Dean’s hands and chest and thighs, and he just cleans you up and stays. He loves you, without any kind of payment or justification. You rip yourself up to try and find some part of you that’s good enough for him to touch, for any of them to touch, and they just… ask you to put yourself back together.

They love you more with the cracks, even if they let the infection of you creep out. They love you when you’re small and withered, they love you when you’re consuming and so alive you can’t bear it, and you’re learning it in the slowest, hardest way possible. The way that involves contorting into every possible shape, before Dean takes you and tells you he likes this one just fine. The way that has blood under your nails and dirt on your knees and foam at your mouth, snarling and snapped like a rabid animal until you learn to trust the water again. It almost kills you, but the blood dries, and you-

You get better.

You miss Dean with more than you can fit in your heart, but you eat, and try to sleep, and you stick with Jo and Claire. You miss Dean, and—without realizing it, like the crawl of a shadow across the ground—you never doubt if he’s missing you.

“The alpha get us anything?” Jo asks a little before Claire gets up, and you shake your head. “And- You didn’t-“

You give her an apologetic look, and she sighs you name.

“You can’t keep fuckin’ killing them-“

“He was saying some very mean things,” you snap defensively. “You would’ve killed him-“

“Of course I woulda killed him! But you’re supposed to be better than me!”

You nose wrinkles. “No, I’m not-“

“Uh- Yeah. You are.” Jo rolls her eyes, leaning back with a huff. “You’re ‘supposed to torture ‘em and then say, you think that’s bad,” she turns her voice into a mockery of yours, and you frown. “Just wait until you meet my little friend.”

“I’m not Scarface, Jo-“

“Yeah, you are.”

Your mouth falls open. “No, I’m not- I don’t even- I’d never run a drug ring.”

Jo makes a doubtful expression, and squawks when you throw a balled up napkin straight at her head. Indy shoots over the table, cooped up and eager to fetch, and Jo topples back with a shout. You laugh, covering your mouth with a hand, and Jo chucks the napkin right back at your face. You block it.

You don’t block Indy.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Claire sits up, her hair falling over her face, swollen with sleep. You wish you had an answer that wasn’t childish and insane. You don’t, so you take Claire for breakfast, and flip Jo off over your shoulder.

She’s right, in the long run. Maybe you shouldn’t have killed Neal, but there are other Alphas. Other angels, other demons, other pagan gods that can—that will—help you. You don’t let yourself think of another option, for the whole day. You have to help Claire with school. You have to read and get lunch and call Kevin and get dinner. The world might stop when you’re caving in, but when you’re keeping yourself just upright, when you’re rushing through the day like it’s a current, and you’re just waiting to be spat out the other side, time does nothing but plow on forward.

You read anything you can find. You and Jo scout for leads on other Alpha’s, while Claire does her homework with a sour expression. You look online, Jo makes a few more calls on leads. If you didn’t know better, every day would just feel like a very long, strange case.

“What was that thing you were tellin’ me about?” Jo asks, peering at the translation notes you’ve scribbled through countless notebooks and loose pieces of paper.

You hum, not looking up from the Book. You always think you’ve read all of it, only for new pages to appear out of thin air. It’s suspicious. You’d think it was God, if you didn’t know he hasn’t been watching you for months. “What thing?”

“Y’know, the thing-“

“I tell you about a lot of things, Jo-“

“Yeah, but- This one was all magic and shit.”

You give her a dry, blanket expression of annoyance. She rolls her eyes.

“C’mon. It’s- What the hell else am I supposed to call it?”

“I don’t know? Its name-“

“I dunno its name- It’s-“ She sighs, glaring at the air. “You know, that magic spot thingy. You went lookin’ for one when Dean was- Well-“ She cringes slightly. “Last time.”

Your frown deepens, pulling down in thought. The magic spot thingy. “You mean the Vortex points?”

“Yes- Yes,” Jo snaps, leaning forward with a wide grin. “That. Why don’t we try that?”

“Um…” You look at the book, then the notes. Your hands flex, and your mouth falls a little open.

Why don’t you try that? Why haven’t you tried that?

“Because we don’t know where Dean is,” you answer yourself softly, and Jo’s face falls.

“Oh. Right- That’s- Never-“

“But,” you cut her off, your brain turning too fast to track. “If- It’s stronger there. Everything. Bridges, spells, enchantments-“ You swallow. “Prayers.”

Jo blinks. “You want us to… pray?”

“No,” you close the book, mouth set in a grim line. “I want Dean to pray. Somewhere- Somewhere I’m able to hear.”

Jo’s doubtful. You don’t blame her. Whatever let you hear Dean’s prayer in Heaven, whatever let him call you from across the world, over and over and over again, you don’t know how it works. You know it’s woven just to the right of your heart. You think it might be that part of you that’s embedded in him, that branch of love that grew over him, that he never pushed out. The mechanics don’t matter right now. If Dean is praying, you aren’t hearing it. If you can hear it, you can try and trace it.

“Like a radio signal?” Jo asks, and you nod. She sighs. “But- What if we ain’t able to do that?”

“Then,” you say, dark and firm. “We figure something else out.”

Jo doesn’t argue past that. This is the kind of thing, where she knows far better. It takes you the rest of the day, but there’s a Vortex point in the Himalayas. It’s a long trip. You work out a spell, that will get you there and back in a day. Claire gets clear instructions not to leave the motel room for anything, while you’re gone.

“We’re leaving at sunrise,” you tell her. “We’ll be back by sunset.”

And you don’t say hopefully. You don’t say you’ll try. You will be back by sunset, whether you have something or not.

You hope you have something. You need it. You need anything, to weave into another wire. Another way to keep yourself going, an extension of the rope you’re hanging onto, something metal you can from into a new rail before you reach the end of the line.  And you can almost convince yourself that this, this single, small mission, will be it.

You’ll go to the Vortex point, pull Dean out of the ground like a potato, and go home. If you really let yourself play pretend, you’re going to the Vortex point for nothing but research. You’re going to do some experiments, collect some data, and call Sam on the drive home. You’ll try to tell him about what you found. Dean will try to steal the phone, and Sam will lock himself in the bathroom so he can’t. You’ll smile to yourself, at the sound of him banging on the door. The moment you get home, Dean will sweep you into his arms and kiss you up against the wall.

“Sammy was bein’ a dick, sweetheart,” he’ll mutter, his arms caging you against his body.

You’ll giggle against his lips and pull on his shirt, unsure what to do with yourself but melt into him. He’ll carry you to bed, ignoring your false protests. You’ll sit on your knees when he tosses you onto the mattress, watching with wide eyes and an embarrassing heat pooling between your thighs, as he peels off his shirt. He’ll ask you about the hunt. You’ll forget everything you wanted to tell him, until he smiles fondly, cups your face, and bends down to kiss you stupid.

“Missed me, huh?” He’ll tease, his thumb gliding over the nape of your neck, and you’ll nod. Hopeless. Entirely his, in ways you think he still doesn’t quite understand.

“You have no idea,” you’ll whisper, and he’ll grin like he won a prize.

“You have no idea,” you whisper to the dark.

And if the day passes fast, with odd normalcy and smiles that only bring a little bit of guilt, the night drags. It buries you, until your lungs are stuffed and you’re sure you’re never going to see the morning again.

If you don’t have a lead, you spend the sleepless hours trying to practice. You coax a spring to shoot out of the ground, you ask an old bush to light itself on fire, you convince a river it would be better flowing north. You’re getting stronger. More comfortable, in being everything. It doesn’t hurt, when it’s not against your will. The soreness that lingers in your body after gets smaller and smaller every night, and you find yourself getting bigger and bigger.

You still don’t understand most of what you can do, but no one does. So you just test the limits, and find that the boundary is further past your fingertips than you could’ve possibly dreamt.

It’s a good distraction, until it’s not. Until you remember why you’re not letting the Silver go dormant again. Until you push a little too hard and the Spiderweb flares like the core of the Sun, rocking from the force of a solar storm.

You let yourself be weak. You spent so long in self-pity, so long trying to be small and fragile. Small and fragile things don’t survive in the wild. Small and fragile things get put in cages, and it doesn’t matter what kind of light they’re made of. They don’t have enough of themselves to break free.

Stand tall.

You are.

But it took falling, to learn how. And it cost you Dean, and now you sit on the curb of a packed street in India, surrounded by hundreds of people. Entirety alone.

The darkness doesn’t swallow you anymore, but the brighter you let yourself get, the longer the shadows become. The pain grows like a bacterial infection, finding every place it can settle and overtaking your view of the world. The guilt becomes acidic. The sorrow you didn’t let Claire see presses back up like magma, demanding and burning in your lungs. You wander the streets for somewhere that’s louder than your head, but even the most crowded bar can’t compare.

A million songs, a million men, and million unwanted touches as people shoulder past you or trying to take the empty spot next to you. None of them are Dean, so all of them are wrong. One bold drunk tries to follow you out to the street, and you cover your ears, crouching in the gutter and begging the darkness to swallow you whole.

It doesn’t. It swallows him, and spits him back out when you ask it to. He stares at you with a gaunt, sober face. You smile and know it’s nothing but a manic, crude mask. You leave him on the ground, and keep wandering for that cove you know you won’t find.

It won’t even exist, until you get Dean back. And that just makes the pain bigger. You really don’t know where to put it, when there’s nothing to distract you. It’s just you, and the pain, and everything else in the dark. Rain might fall for you. The wind might pick up, to howl for your grief. The colors dull themselves, and the golden lights glow until the marks of Dean on your body seem to glow brighter than the stars. But that’s still all just fucking pain.

There isn’t a thing you wouldn’t do, just to feel it a little less.

A year ago, you would’ve taken you knife to the soft, unblemished parts of your skin. A punishment for daring to, even in the smallest of ways, be clean. But if Dean comes back and sees new scars, he’s going to have questions, and then you’ll have to answer them, and he’ll make that mournful, adoring face, and you’ll feel all the guilt just slamming back into you like a freight train. So you find other options.

You steal a bottle from one of the crowded bars. You drink until you can’t tell were you stop and the infinite waterfall of stars begins. You wander the streets and smile at the birds. You trip over loose pebbles and they unfurl into silver butterflies that blend into the night sky. You crouch, back on the curb, the bottle tight in your hand, and you whistle until your slow, haunted song is being sung back by every bird in the city.

You smile at nothing, tears streaming down your cheeks. You pour the rest of the bottle out in the gutter, and hope that wherever Dean is, he gets to be drunk too.

Somewhere in your addled brain, you figure out that you’re in no state to go back to the room. You stumble wherever the wind carries you, and find yourself at the motel pool, your feet dangling in the water and the blue, neon light dancing on your bare thighs and hands.

And you know you’ve been here before. And you know you’re going to be here again.

You sit at the edge of the pool, watching the light swim in the water before. It’s beautiful. That irreplicable chlorine blue, vibrant and glowing on your skin in the dark. Quiet wind blows over the marshes behind you. You breathe through your nose and smooth out your tennis skirt. You remember this one. In about five to six hours, it’s going to be coated in blood, and Bobby’s going to burn it in his backyard.

It’s a shame. You really liked it.

You feel him before you see him. The world shifts a little Golden. Warm fingers trace your arms, then your wrist. A thick thigh pressing against yours, and a hand slowly drags up, splaying over your lower back. Chapped lips press to your temple, and you lean your head on his shoulder, letting your eyes drift shut.

“You remember this?” Dean asks quietly, and you hum.

“Of course I do.”

He swallows, loud enough for you to hear. You turn your face into his neck, and he pulls you a little closer. There isn’t a space between your bodies that you leave untended. Your arms wrap around his torso, and his mouth rests on the top of your head. His breathing is slow. Steady. His heart pounds in that way you memorized, before you even let yourself admit that you needed him. You used to press your fingers together until you could feel your own heartbeat, and you’d try to pretend it was Dean. You must’ve gotten good at it. This almost sounds real.

“You were so pissed at me,” he murmurs, and you roll your eyes.

“You called me a spoiled brat.”

“Well- In my defense, sweetheart, I really thought you were.”

You lean back to glare at him, and he catches your chin with a knowing smirk. His thumb drags over your lower lip, and you pout, trying to make your glower the savage, blinding one that lends you that title of Whore Beast. Instead you think you might just be mimicking a bunny. Dean taps your nose, and it scrunches. His smile widens, and you try to hide your face back in his body. He doesn’t let you, holding your chin with a firm but gentle grip.

“Mighta been right,” he teases, light dancing over every word. “Look at you.” He flicks your nose again. “Spoiled brat.”

Your glare doesn’t seem to be focused enough to block out the building eruption from every part of you that matters. It’s made of longing and love and an inability to ever really be mad at him. Not when he says ‘brat’ the same way he says ‘baby’ and ‘princess’. Like there isn’t a thing he could think of, that wouldn’t be endearing. Like there aren’t any words that capture whatever he thinks of you, so he just settles for calling you like a lighthouse, shining only to guide one ship back to shore.

“I am not spoiled,” your voice is breathless, and Dean chuckles, leaning just close enough for you to feel the heat of his lips.

“Guess I gotta step up my game, sweetheart,” he holds your gaze, and your flush might be enough to set this misty, scared little world on fire. “You’re supposed to be so spoiled you can’t even remember what it feels like to want.”

You flatten a hand on his chest for balance. Your lips part, and Dean leans a little closer, his fingers curling on your hip. You take a ragged breath, and his nostrils flare.

And you remember what it feels like to want. You remember it so clearly, because it’s still reflected behind you, fading on the horizon, stretching so long you don’t know how you ever got to the other side. You remember wanting so bad it was cannibalizing, wanting so bad you lost sleep, lost sight, lost balance. You did nothing but want, did nothing but memorize the landscape of a world you were sure you’d never be allowed to step a single, dreadened foot upon.  You wanted so bad you sat on the alter, begging to be a sacrifice he’d use to find himself someone he deserved.

And you remember him walking up to you at that alter, pushing you so carefully down, and using his body to pin you there. To keep you with him, whispering something too close to a vow against your skin, moving the marker of what was holy. The alter was only stone. You and Dean, upon it, where the only things that mattered in the world.

Dean’s brow has furrowed. He’s scanning over your features with worry, his murmur of your name soft. You wrap your arms around his neck and climb into his lap, and he holds you steady with a light, revertant touch. It seems to wash like steam over his whole body. It’s in the way his shoulders relax, in his eyes, gleaming with a pooling adoration, and in the soft, awestruck downturn of his lips. You used to think he only looked at you like this in your dreams. You’ve long learned that if there’s one thing you can never trust, it’s the reflection staring back at you, even only an echo of it on another person’s face.

“I was so mad at you,” you remind him, and his throat bobs.

“I know,” he rasps. “Said that. I think.”

You nod, pressing further forward. “I thought you hated me,” you whisper, and he shakes his head.

“Never. Never hated you, I- Hell, I tried, but-“ He swallows, a desperate edge creeping over his voice. “Couldn’t. Never could. Never did.”

You hum, looking down to your fingers. You trace his collarbone, and you could swear he shivers. “I hated you,” you mumble, and his hands twitch.

“Yeah?”

You nod, and Dean takes a ragged breath.

“When’d you-“

“When you left me,” you look at him under your lashes, and he seems afraid to move. “When you died, and you- You didn’t let me say goodbye.”

“Didn’t wanna hurt you,” he defends, but it’s weak. You just stare at him, combing through the stubble on his jaw. It’s getting longer. You haven’t seen in him in this kind of tight tee-shirt in so long, you forgot how thin they were. How they clung to his arms, how you could see every breath, even the stumbling, unsure ones. That, combined with the thickening, borderline beard he has in your dreams, it’s enough to make you fall for him all over again.

The first time you were here, he had a baby face and a smile that was only smaller than his heart. He slouched more, and never seemed willing to grab you with tighter hands than you held him. You wonder what kind of handprints he would’ve left, if you told him to hold on however he wanted. You think it would be closer to something like now.

You think that if you met Dean with this shirt and those eyes and these calloused hands, you might’ve fallen lower than your knees. You might’ve crashed into him so fast that neither of you would’ve had the time to even consider pulling away.

When he gets home, you’re hiding his razor and dragging him to the mall. He’s earned it. You’ve earned it. He’s too pretty, to bury under layers of ugly lumberjack clothing.

“Do you hate me know?” Dean asks, and you can hear it in the rare crack in his tone. His fear of the answer.

You thought he would’ve known better, from being nothing but a bought of madness, woven together from a love that spreads like a flood across everything you’ve ever known.

“No,” you breathe. “I- I was never good enough at it anyways.”

Dean’s mouth twitches up. He lets out a broken laugh of relief, cradling the back of your head. “Well, I guess we’re made for each other, huh?”

You nod, because there’s nothing else you could possibly be made for. You could cure the world of yourself, of other disease, of the devil and God in one fell swoop or scream. You could walk through the gates of Heaven, you could raze the castle of Hell, take all that promised world and rule over it the way God wants you to. Even without Dean, you’d still be doing it for some kind of love.

There is much, much more you can do than love Dean. But there is no world where you want to do everything, and not have Dean at your side. You have long decided that greatness does not negate your love for him. Your love for him only allows you to be greater.

Dean kisses you, and you press over him with everything you have. He’ll be home soon.

You both tumble into the water, as fast as you’ve always fallen together, and you don’t let go of him until the dream slips away.

Jo woke you up with a glass of water in the face. You told her that wasn’t necessary. She said it was, because you were crying in your sleep. You check the motel mirror before you go, and scowl, because she was right. There are tear stains on your cheeks, and a bloodshot ring around your pupils. You fix it, and ignore her smug look. There’s a job to do. Steps to be taken, that might be forward, or backward, or nothing but a standing march in place.

The fun part is finding out.

“This is- So fuckin’ cold-“ Jo hugs herself tight, bundled in about five jackets and poofy shoes that make her walk like a penguin. “How the hell ain’t you cold?”

You shrug, kneeling in the snow and brushing flakes off your shorts. It was like this at the other Vortex point too. You’d gotten to the top of the mountain in Brazil, and all the jungle heat had just felt like… nothing. Like you were floating through a perfectly regulated room.

“I’m gonna die,” Jo mutters to herself, rocking back and forth on her feet. “I’m gonna die, just ‘cause Dean had to stab a dick, I’m gonna die-“

“Stop saying you’re gonna die,” you tell her flatly, scooping away the piles of snow. “You’re not gonna die.”

“Yes, I am-“

“With that attitude, maybe.”

She glares, hard enough it prickles on the back of your neck. You sigh and sit back, giving her a pointed, expectant look.

“You know, the faster we do this, the faster we go back.”

Jo pauses. She looks out over the mountain—mostly just gray shadows in an infinite sea of white—and her nose wrinkles. You go back to scooping and sorting through your bag, waiting for her to catch up. She huffs. You hum to yourself, pulling out your knife and digging it into the spot you want.

There’s a loud scoff, and the snow shifts as Jo waddles over to your side. You smile at her, and she sticks out her tongue, before quickly pulling it back in with a wince.

“What’re we doin’?” She squints at your knife, and you grab her mittened hand, guiding it around the hilt.

“You’re hold that there,” you say, moving to your feet. “And I’m getting rid of the snow.”

“Alright,” Jo nods, then looks up with wide eyes. “You’re- What-“

“Shh,” you snap, and she snaps her jaw shut, looking from you to the falling snow like you’re crazy.

And you are. But you’re also getting better at it.

You stretch your arms, plant your feet, and close your eyes. You’re the snow. You’re the snow, falling from the sky without care for where it’s going, know only that it is will either find more of its kind and they will survive together in long, strong banks, or it will land somewhere hostile, and die alone. It goes with the wind, because it doesn’t have much of a choice. Not a single snowflake has ever even thought that there might be another way.

So when you offer it, every single one of them falters. Jo gasps softly behind you, and when you try to glare at her, you realize why.

The snow didn’t just stop in your head. Every single flake is suspended in the air, glowing like diamonds over the endless mountains. Rays of sun split through the thick clouds, and the light fractures in a million colors, giving the world an impression that it’s been trapped in a prism. Your hands fall slightly, stunned by the never-ending rainbow, the glory of a world that only carries one kind of life, getting to remember what it hasn’t been allowed to see in countless years. The snow doesn’t move. It just hangs there, clinging to your every breath, waiting for you to tell it what to do.

Jo covers her mouth with her hand, and you take a slow, concentrated breath. You press your hands out, and ask the snow to move, just from here, just for a little while.

There’s a flurry of white. The cold bites your skin for a half second, and you have to cover your eyes. But when you look again, you see it.

The snow is gone. It’s piled up on the edge of the cliffs and flown to other mountains, scattering across the land to grant you access to what you knew you’d find.

The stone courtyard is wide. The columns are tall and the statues of everything from monkeys to lions to tigers are finely detailed with gold. You look at Jo, still crouched on the ground, holding your knife like a life raft. She doesn’t seem sure where to look, and you understand. The temple is massive. A feat of architecture, at this elevation, built likely longer ago than either of you can imagine. You turn in a slow circle, and it would steal your breath if you weren’t so focused on it.

That small, pulsing pull, just to the right of your heart. It’s magnetic, but completely still. You press your hand flat on your chest, almost trying to pull it out, and it gets a little stronger. The Spiderweb sparks in return, and you know. That’s your Dean.

You close your eyes, trying to follow the thin, static thread that powers it like a cable. You tug a little too hard, and everything vibrates and turns to colors and a rush of gold and purple and green and blue and silver. You loosen too much, and it starts to slip through your fingers like fine sand. You kneel down, bowing your head and just trying to feel it.

Just feel it, Princess.

You’re trying. But all you can make out is his voice. Deep and rough in a way you haven’t heard in a while. Scraping at the edge of every word, like he’s hasn’t been drinking water. Croaking in his throat like he’s been shouting. He sounds tired, and it makes your heart flip.

Yet still, you can’t make out a single fucking word.

You try. You try so hard, and Dean’s voice gets so loud you reach back, some instinctive, foolish part of you thinking he’s going to be right behind you. He’s in your ear, saying words that you can’t understand, that you can’t even begin to unscramble, because it seems to be really nothing but noise. You start to pant, scraping at the ground and doubling over. Jo breathes out your name, and you shake your head.

You can hear him. He’s out there, he’s alive, he’s praying to you so why can’t you fucking hear him, you should be able to hear him-

He says your name. It’s clearer than all the snow on the mountains, and your eyes shoot open. You let out a strangled sound, and he says your name again.

“Love you,” Dean rasps, and you can almost feel his breath on the back of your neck.

And you scream.

You scream so loud lightning cleaves through the mountains behind you, righteous and desperate to break something the same way you’re broken. You scream until you can’t hear the wind or the snowfall or Jo calling your name. You can only hear Dean. I love you, baby. Baby, I love you, easy, baby, I love you. It echoes around the valleys. Your head hurts so much you think it’s going to split open like a geode. Your back hurts like the sky itself is pressing down, but you’ve never had the resolve of an Atlas. You’ve never had the strength. Jo grabs you. You hold her back, trying to keep your feet on the ground.

The whole world becomes a blur of color and light and Dean’s voice, and then there’s just… Silence.

The hum of a fan. The rustle of sheets and eerp of Indy, romping across the small room as you fall to your knees. Claire says something you can’t hear, and Jo pulls her away. You hug yourself, trying to hold onto just a little bit of it. That kernel of Dean, already melting back into the Spiderweb with the rain, a heavy downpour on the roof, blowing in through the window, turning to something it didn’t think it could be. Something that doesn’t thaw, but flows through every bit of life, in the woods, the streets, the sewers and out into the ocean.

Jo takes Claire out. She says it’s for food. You know it’s so you can be alone, and you’ll thank her for it, when you can feel anything outside of yourself. You don’t want Claire around you like this. Dean would’ve done the same thing.

And he’s out there. You scratch at your chest and wrap a hand around your throat to calm down, but repeat it over and over until it’s embedded in your head. He’s alive. Dean’s alive. He’s out there, and alive.

The Lady curls in your lap, and Indy noses at your hand until you scratch her ears. Even Sparky darts over to sit on your head, pecking at your head until you offer in a finger, and move him to perch on your shoulder. Slowly, just like always, you come down.

He’s out there. Alive. Tired, but still able to speak. Still bothering to think of you.

Your gaze drifts to the box. Innocuous, peeking out from the folds of your bag. He wanted you to have it. He probably thinks you’ve already opened it.

I love you.

You crawl slowly across the ground and pull it out. The Lady and Indy poke at it, the Lady quickly losing interest and jumping on the bed, Indy seeming to recognize it as something of Dean’s and letting out a loud whine. You pat her head, settling against the foot of the bed, toying with the latch until it just… unclicks.

And you don’t know what you expected. A knife. A ring. A nice perfume, or more lingerie. Something important. Something worth giving you, then asking you not to open in front of him. You’d formed a curious mental list, of what that could possibly be.

You never once considered a pile of paper.

You frown. The box is overflowing with loose paper after loose paper, all of them covered in Dean’s blocky, uncoordinated scrawl. Sam used to say he had the handwriting of a fourth grader, and you’d smack Sam upside the head, because the little fucker didn’t teach himself the alphabet.

You miss him too. It’s smaller than that chasm of Dean that’s split through your spinal cord, but that’s a unique kind of pain. Sam alone is enough that you keep picking up the phone to ask him a question, before remembering he won’t pick up. If you asked Sam about these papers, he’d tell you to read them. He’d probably take one and just start reading it himself. At his invisible direction, you take the one off the very top. It’s crumpled. Almost a year old, if the date—April 17th, 2011—is correct.

It’s addressed to you.

Princess, 

Come home. 

You blink, the paper crinkling under your fingers. April 2011 you were in Heaven with Cas. And Dean-

Dean was writing this. For you.

I know that I’ve spent the last few months pissed at you. I know I wrote about twenty damn letters about it. A deep breath. Your biting your tongue enough to sting. And I know you’re gonna read them and only think that I hate you, but I don’t. Never did. Never could. 

You love something, you want it to be better. Heard that on TV, once. Might’ve been on the radio. Shit, maybe Sammy or you said it. But it’s the truth, baby. I love you, and I want you to be better. Not you, but you. I want you to be okay, and you aren’t okay. Not when you’re making crazy decisions like you think no one’s going to care if you go off the deep end. I care. Bobby cares. Sammy cares. And it goddamn kills me, that you think we don’t. So I need you to be okay.

I love you.

You close your eyes. It takes a moment to remember how to breathe. A moment to rub your eyes and collect yourself, so that the words don’t just float off the page.

You fucking killed me again, and I still love you. I’ve been trying to tell you. You never goddamn listen. You’re too smart for your own good, sweetheart. Can talk yourself into anything, and I- 

i think i feel you, sometimes. think i felt you now. its insane, but i feel you. the air smells more like you, and i can hear something that dont got words, but it sounds lie like you. and i know thats freaking batshit, but stranger things, right? you feel like an angel. you feel like everything good. and i wish you could understand that. sammy says you dont know. you gotta know. i wish i knew how to tell you. i wish that you’d believe me, when i did. 

i can show you. i know people can say things all they want and you dont believe them. got that spelled out for me, when it took me pinning you to a wall for you to realize maybe i wanted to fuck you. so ill keep doing it like that. ill help rowena get those souls out of you. ill kill eve for you. i wont let you pull that shit again, cause im about to make it real clear that i love you, and you can think nothing about me all you want (you probably should) but nothing you say is gonna make me love you less. i let you boss me around about a lot, princess. youre not getting the upper hand on this. you break my heart, you either stitch it back up like my hands or leave it like that till i die. but no one else is touching it. so deal with that. 

Not much for life updates. Had to tie Sammy’s shoes yesterday, cause he keeps falling over whenever he does them. Been taking Claire out to shoot bottles, she’s getting pretty good. Rowena ate dinner with us, which was weird, because I didn’t even know she ate. I don’t think she sleeps. I know she doesn’t cause I’m not either. 

I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. 

Yours, DAW  

The world can’t be spinning. Your heart can’t still be beating. The edge of the paper crinkles too loud, and you drop it, terrified you broke it. Just as fast as you let it go, you pick it up. You read it again. A third time. You can hear him behind you, like at the mountain. You never goddamn listen. He thinks you might hate him. Never did. Never could. I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. It’sso clear it presses on your nose, it burns in your chest, it rattles something so deep inside you the whole world seems to tilt. But not off axis.

Something flips, and you feel sick, but your feet are beneath you in a way they haven’t been maybe your whole life. Like your neck was snapped, but it just righted a part of your spine that had been wrong. Everything was upside down.

You read it until you’ve memorized it. You count the I love yous—all seven of them—like a squirrel stocking for winter.  

Then you remember the rest of the box. Not a box of paper.

A box of letters. A supply of them, enough that he barely seemed to be able to fit them all.

You fumble with the one in your hand, dropping it back at the top and pulling out the one beneath it. April 16th. You don’t read it yet, checking the one before that. April 15th. One for each day. Back through March, February, January, December. You dig all the way to the bottom, trying so hard to move fast and not rip a single page. The very first one is shorter. Dated February 21st, 2010. A little less than month after you and Sam fell in the cage, and stained with something that smells like beer.

Princess,

I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to spell things wrong. You’ll know what I’m saying. You usually do. One time I said boom and meant Molotov, but you got it. Sammy said I was the luckiest asshole alive, because he would’ve just made me go to bed with how much I was drinking.

I’m drinking more now. 

Youd be pissed.

I miss you.

This is shit. I’ll try again in the morning.

I love you

DAW.

Eight. Eight I love yous. Twelve, if you count the ones he said to your face. Twelve drops of love that hit you like a tsunami, that shake your world like falling stars. You hold it to your chest and close your eyes, tears burning over your face. You smear them like warpaint, before looking at February 22nd. He spells everything wrong, and you laugh because you can almost see his pretty face, scrunched in concentration. He doesn’t say he loves you in this one, just he says he needs you, and that’s more than enough. You grab February 23rd, and he talks about needing you to come home, and Bobby hating him for letting you jump in, and drinking rubbing alcohol—god, you hope he didn’t—before signing off.

I’ll be back tomorrow. 

Wait for me. 

I’m sorry. 

DAW.

You can’t keep reading. You can’t even see through the tears. You clutch the letters to your face, hyperventilating and shaking and feeling it. It’s so easy it makes you furious you didn’t let yourself have it sooner, and that just makes you cry harder, and soon your throat is too closed up and your nose is stuffed and your whole body has this bone deep exhaustion that can only let you sit there and feel it. All of it, unrelenting and permanent and inevitable, the same ways as yours.

Just through the scraps of paper in your hands, you can feel Dean’s love.

But you can’t say it back. You can’t have it without worrying it’s going to be taken away. You can’t just have a good thing and cherish and worship it, without looking out the window and waiting for the sky to warn you. For it to try and take it away. You can only bathe in it and fight for it and scream for it until you run out of breathe in a world where the air changes direction, just to blow your way.

And you’re glad you didn’t let the Leviathans kill God.

But you.

You can’t fucking wait to do it yourself.

Sam and Dean were celebrities. The icky, dramatic kind, that got their faces plastered on tabloids and everyone loved to hate. Dean had always thought everyone was exaggerating about it, but there was no way to ignore the truth. Not now. When it was punching him in the face.

There wasn’t a single monster in Purgatory that didn’t know the Winchesters. They had some nicknames. Some legends and rumors. Sammy got the good end of the stick.

“Beware the Younger,” Dean read off the tablet, smirking at the carved words. “Taller than the trees, colder than the winter. Demon boy- They’re all really hung up on the demon thing, huh?”

Across the firepit, Sammy sighed. “I did start the apocalypse,” he muttered, and Dean shrugged.

“Yeah, but who hasn’t. Don’t get a big head, Sammy, it’s gonna fall off your titan body.”

He laughed, and Sam made a face. “Come on, Dean, there’s no way it says that-

“Demon boy, head bigger than his heart, titan body that cuts through the world. Tower on the sunrise, never let him know your name, never let him know your game- Oh, they’re rhyming now- Never tell him where you come from or go, never make a deal you don’t plan to break.” Dean’s nose scrunched. “Dude, you sound like Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Shut up,” Sam muttered, looking around the dark woods. “What about you? Little burger man, head of ass?”

“Haha,” Dean flipped him off, squinting down the tablet. “Handsome Winchester, cooler Winchester, just surrender right now ‘cause he’s gonna kick your ass-“

“Gimme that.” Sam snatched the tablet out of Dean’s hand, and Dean laughed, letting it echo through the forest.

Sammy had warded the perimeter. They should be set for at least five hours. Enough to eat, breathe, sleep, patch up. And if something was determined enough to break through, they were already prowling past the wood line. Dean letting himself get a rare laugh wasn’t gonna change a thing.

“Fear the Elder,” Sam read and Dean leaned forward with a smirk. “Moving like the Mountains and unforgiving, blood on his hands and gold in his teeth. Silver tongue, red heart, beating louder than the sun. Never falters. Never turns around. No path he can’t tread. Man of God, Killer of God, End of the line, more vengeful than the most foul beast. Do not take what is his. Do not make his smile fall.”

Dean shrugged, a half-satisfied press to his lips. “Hey, y’know- Could be worse. I sound pretty freakin’ cool, you just sound like a knockoff bigfoot-“

“And never spill Winchester blood,” Sam said, his face falling, grim and pained. “Where the Whore will be able to smell it.”

Dean’s jaw locked. Sam glanced up, heavy, apologetic regret all over his puppy-dog face. Dean stretched at hand, beckoning Sam to pass it back over. He did, slowly, like he already kind of wanted to take it back.

“We don’t need to worry about this, it’s- She’s not here-“

“Do not think of the Whore,” Dean muttered, and Sam fell quiet. “If you need think of her, you are already dead.”

Dean swallowed, and he wanted to break this damn tablet in half. Sam bowed his head, watching Dean carefully, speaking like he was trying to talk down a damn jumper.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Dean,” he muttered. “And- I mean, that’s a warning, not a call to battle.”

Dean grunted and dropped the tablet on the ground. He knew She wasn’t in any danger of a monster taking her out. Not like Sam and Dean were.

But She wasn’t alright.

Dean didn’t know how long he and Sammy had been stuck here. Time moves differently in these places, and Purgatory nights seemed to crawl twice as long as the days. They’d touched down a lifetime ago, figured out that they were pretty much screwed, and never had a second to tally up the weeks since.

They’d made an agreement. No giving up. Not on each other. Not on getting back home. They’d either stay alive long enough for someone topside to yank them out, or figure out a way home themselves. Dean thought She and Cas might work it out in the first month, until She told him that she hadn’t spoken to Cas since some big fight after Michigan. Dean should’ve seen that one coming. He loved Her to death and past it, but she’d never exactly been open to people telling her what to do, or stopping her, or getting in her way. Cas had—under Dean’s instruction—done all three.

He’d tried to soft pitch the idea that maybe Cas had just been listening to Dean, and it was more his fault that he’d landed his ass in Purgatory. She hadn’t given Dean the impression that she listened.

But She could figure this out herself. Weird stuff was her specialty, and there wasn’t much weirder than being trapped in Purgatory. Dean tried to give Her all the help he could, from the other side. There wasn’t much. He didn’t know anything about any of this, and She didn’t think he was real.

He’d thought about telling Her. He thought about it until his head hurt. He opened his mouth and choked on the words. He got a half-confession out, then looked at her a little too long and lost his voice. She might not believe him. She didn’t seem to, whenever he got too close to the truth.

A few nights ago, he’d written out this whole damn speech. Sammy had been knocked out, Dean had been on watch duty, and he’d used his makeshift knife to scratch the words in the dirt. He’d look up at rustles in the woods, or one of Sam’s bigger sleep-snorts, but that was it. He was going out next. He’d see Her, and she wouldn’t know she was seeing him, and it was one of those things Dean knew was going to bite him in the ass about, if he didn’t deal with it soon.

It’s me, Princess. Really me. Real me, Dean. Your Dean. Not a dream Dean- He’d laughed to himself, then groaned.

There was no good way to do it. The more he thought about it, the worse it got. This wasn’t a monster of his own making, it was an infection he’d already let sit too long. It was already a big if, whether or not she’d believe him. There wasn’t much he could say to prove it, when she thought he was just a figment of her imagination. If he told Her something about herself, she’d know it. If he said something about himself, She’d think he was making it up, and he’d have no way to convince her otherwise. She’d think it was too good, too easy to be true. Dean would’ve thought the same thing two years ago. Before Death. Before soulmates.

And if he got her to listen, there wasn’t an explanation that wouldn’t end there. Soulmates.

Dean had sort of dug himself a very big, very deep grave with this one. He kinda wanted to tell Sammy, just to give the kid a good laugh at his expense.

He only had two ways through this one. He said soulmates, and She didn’t believe him—pretty likely, as even if it made perfect sense, if there was one thing his girl had always been good at doing it was talking circles around herself until she believed up was right and left was down—and she didn’t believe the dreams were real, and Dean got stranded in the grave. He’d prove it when he got home, and She’d blame herself for not listening, and have a pretty big freakout, and then calm down and kill Dean for keeping that from her for a whole year.

Or he said soulmates, and She believed him, and she dragged him out of Purgatory by his ear just to kill him. For keeping that from her. For a whole damn year.

He’d groaned and kicked dirt of his speech, dropping his face into his hands. He was screwed. He was so fucking screwed, he might as well start figuring out how he wanted to decorate the doghouse.

And he knew making it, that this wasn’t going to be his best call, but he didn’t have many others to choose from.

He wouldn’t tell Her. It wouldn’t work. She didn’t trust Her own head, enough for Dean to talk her into it. And with everything She’d told him, there was more than enough for her to worry about. If he told Her, the small sanctuaries of their dreams would just turn into another place for her to freak out. She’d ask him to relay theories to Sam, and demand to see all his injuries, babying and smacking him at the same time when he told her how he and Sammy had dealt with the latest rush of vamps.

Dean knew it could be called selfish. He didn’t care. Not for this. Not when the dreams were all he goddamn had.

If you need think of her, you are already dead.

Dean almost snorted. He did nothing but think of Her, and he felt kinda dead. He and Sammy were both just cutting their way through the motions, mechanical and unwavering until they came out the other side.  

“You made any progress on that map thingy?” He muttered, and Sammy sighed.

“No, not really. I- I don’t know, Dean, how useful is it even gonna be-“

Dean cut him off with Her name. “She’ll wanna see it. You two can geek out about rivers or whatever, soon as we’re out.”

Sam’s mouth twitched, doubtful and quiet. His eyes dropped to the dirt, Dean leaned forward on his log, making his voice firm.

“Sammy, don’t make the freakin’- grieving wife face-“

“Why not?” Sam snapped, but it wasn’t forceful. It was just… tired.

They were both so damn tired.

“I mean, what the are we even doing, Dean? Wandering around, hoping we don’t die in the morning? We don’t even have a clue where to start, where this ends-“ Sam waved a hand, his voice raising. “All I do is try not to lose it and shoot you by accident, and all you do is make- Make stupid jokes and pray before bed! You, Dean, you’re praying.” Sam scoffed. “I’d think you were a shifter if we didn’t test each other every freakin’ day. I mean, who are you even pray to. Who’s going to care?”

Sam’s shout lingered in the air. He let out a heaving, long breath—Dean had a feeling he’d been holding it in for a while—and slumped back down. Dean stared at the fire, at the long shadows, flickering in the dark.

Sammy wasn’t wrong. He had been praying. Every night during his watch, every day when he stopped to take a piss, he was about three Hail Mary’s away from calling himself an altar boy.

But he couldn’t think of another damn thing to do.

He said Her name, slow and hallowed. The most important word in the world. He could swear that, in the starless Purgatory sky, something glowed past the dark.

Sammy looked up with a frown, and Dean swallowed, repeating Her name, a little louder this time.

“I’ve been prayin’ to her. Every night.” He shook his head. “And- I know it ain’t doing much, but- Hell, Sammy, I can’t stop. It’s gotta get help her, right? I tell her where we are, I tell her what we’re seeing, everything. That’ll help.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said softly. “I mean, why would she even be hearing it? I know- In Heaven- But this isn’t Heaven. Cas can’t hear our prayers down here-“

“She isn’t Cas.” Dean muttered. “It’s- It’s different-“

“No, I- I know, Dean, but- She doesn’t exactly take prayers, dude-“

“She takes them from me.”

Sam fell silent. Dean sighed, staring at his hands. Caked in mud. Cold and clasped together. He felt goddamn sick.

“We’re- Me and her-“ The words just wouldn’t come out. Not without Dean twisting them. “We got a soul-bond.”

“A soul-bond?”

Dean grunted an agreement, and Sam stared at him.

“What- What the hell does that even mean-“

“Means what it means,” Dean snapped. “Means she should be able to hear it, when I’m the one praying. But- I don’t know, Sammy. Some kinda wire must be getting crossed, ‘cause I don’t think it’s working.”

They were silent for a moment. Dean glanced up, only to find Sam still frowning at him. There was that far-off look on his face, though. Like he was more in his head than out there with the rest of the world. Dean leaned into his vision, waving for attention, and Sammy blinked.

“Huh?”

“Nothin’, just- Earth to Sammy,” Dean narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing the nerd eyes about.”

“The-“ Sam sighed. “I told you not to call it that-“

“I’ll call it what I want,” Dean shrugged. “What’s up.”

“It’s- I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing,” Sam said it all small, and Dean knew it wasn’t nothing.

“Sam…” He warned, and Sam caved quick.

“Just- What if- And I’m not saying this is it, but-“ Sam glanced up, then back to Dean, dropping his voice. “We’re in a weird spot. And I know he doesn’t stand much against her or whatever, but- He can pretty easily mess with you, Dean. No offense.”

Dean scowled. “How am I not supposed to take offense to that-“

“Because it’s God,” Sammy hissed. “And you’re like- A dude.”

“A dude who stole his wife,” Dean muttered under his breath, and Sammy rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, dude. That’s my point. Maybe he’s not super happy about that, and he’s… I don’t know, messing with the prayer signal.” Sam’s throat bobbed, his voice getting tight. “And she… She just can’t hear you at all.”

And a critical, cardiac thing in Dean plunged. His lungs faltered like they’d collapsed, and his heart slowed to a titanic pace, and his jaw tightened so much he knew that—if She was here—She’d grab it and pry it open and yell at him about grinding his teeth.

She had to have been hearing. She had to know he was in Purgatory, that he was looking for a way back to Her, that he loved Her. God was a son of a bitch, but he owed Dean that much. Dean had saved his damn life. He’d given everything—mostly for Her, but God sure was reaping the benefits—and the bastard didn’t get to just swoop in. To take Her away from Dean, when She needed him.

If She hadn’t been hearing him, She- She might think he was dead.

Sam said Dean’s name, worried and tense. Dean waved him off. He didn’t want to talk about this. Not now. Not when he could feel parts of the ground crumbling, and he couldn’t afford to lose his footing.

“I’m getting’ my two,” he grunted, moving down to his back. “Wake me up to trade watch.”

Sam sighed and gave him that sad, pitiful look again, but he knew better than to argue. They could go to bat about strategy, about next moves, about food or camp or any other damn thing, and they’d work it out. It was the closest to the team Dad had trained them to be, for better or worse.

But Dean wasn’t gonna talk about Her. Not in any way that might turn to a fight.

He twisted so his back was to Sammy, closed his eyes, and counted himself luckier than most. At least he still got a part of her, even if it was going to vanish from his fingers by morning.

If you can hear me, he prayed. And Christ, I hope you can, I’m coming home, sweetheart. I swear I’m coming home. I’ll hold on if you hold on. Fuck, I’ll hold on for both of us. Just don’t give up on me. Dean squeezed his eyes tighter, fighting off the burn. I love you. All the way down, remember. You and me. Just you and me.

And all Dean heard in response was the howl of the wind, high above his head, untouchable, untamable, and wild in the dark.

Dean didn’t count the money on the table. He remembered exactly how much there had been. He remembered exactly how long it had lasted, before he’d needed to make some difficult calls. He turned over a few bills in his hands, and wondered if there had been another way. One where he’d stretched everything thinner, while keeping Sammy in one piece. There wasn’t going to be any avoiding the rougher parts. There never was. You didn’t get outta the mountains without crawling through the caves. But if he’d been a little smarter, maybe the would’ve come out with a few less bruises, or he could’ve taken more bullets.

“What’s the money for?” She murmured, and Dean wrapped his arm around Her shoulders, pulling her almost fully into his lap.

“Nothing,” he lied easily. She didn’t have to worry about it. Dean knew She was probably doing enough of that already. “You have a good day, Princess?”

She shook Her head, her lips pursed into a swollen little line, her whole face crestfallen and her body shaking like a damn toy poodle. She climbed over him, legs hooking around his waist and head bowing. Dean knew Her well. He cradled the back of Her head and kissed her brow, frowning against the warm skin.

“Fight with Jo?” He asked quietly, and got no answer. “You talk to Cas-“

“No,” She mumbled, and Dean sighed.

He left Her cling to him. She almost burrowed Her face into his neck, and when Dean spread his fingers on her lower back and pushed Her closer, she let out a soft, sweet little noise and eased fully into his arms. It filled Dean with a strange, warped kind of pride. He was caring for Her. She was letting herself relax, and he was willing to bet a real cut of money that she hadn’t stopped moving since he and Sammy had vanished.

A few days after this night at the table, he’d be out with Sammy at the park, and the kid would ask him about girls. What was ‘up’  with them, how he was supposed to talk to them, why Dad didn’t like either of them hanging around them too long. Dean could chalk up a lot of Sammy’s lapses in charm to Dad giving him the impression that the prettier the girl was, the more likely she was to be venomous or something.

And Dean had done his best to combat that, but he’d been a bit of an idiot. He hadn’t met Her yet. He hadn’t known how good the world could get, when you had something so beautiful it caught all the light and cast it around her, like a diamond that melted into water, a river that swept Dean away to a kind of paradise he should’ve known better than to fight.

He’d told Sammy then that women were like dogs. He’d barely been thirteen. He’d been failing most of his classes, scraping by with hands covered in things a boy’s hands should never know, and he’d been trying to get big enough to match Dad’s shadow. Dad said women were like dogs. All different kinds of them, loud or quiet, loyal or violent, lazy or constantly running around for attention. They brought you joy, but they were just damn dogs. Nothing you wouldn’t do for yours. No real, logical need  for them outside of a companion.

Sammy had been doubtful. He’d always been smarter than Dean anyway.

But Dean knew better now. He needed Her, just for the damn logical reason of a third, better opinion than he and Sammy were going to offer. He needed Her to swoop in like of God from the Machine and save their asses, and he need to feel Her outside of these dreams. He needed Her to be okay. It was better than nothing, that he could take this wolf of a woman and turn her into a snuggling koala, but She didn’t think it was real. And Dean didn’t know how that was going to carry over into the real world.

“You gonna be alright?” He asked, because even if She lied, at least that meant she had some fight left.

She leaned back and stared at him. She had those doe eyes again, and it made Dean swallow. He couldn’t fuck her in here. Not when She didn’t think it was real.

Her eyes dropped to his lips, and Dean’s tongue darted out, almost against his will. He muttered Her name, and she leaned forward until their brows were resting together, her breathing short and ragged. Dean rubbed a slow circle on Her back, almost purely to ground himself. She stared at his mouth, then slowly dragged her gaze up, and Dean thought he might choke on his heart.

“Don’t gimme that,” he said, pleading and quiet, and She shied a little back.

No. Dean couldn’t have that. He grabbed Her neck, keeping her forward, and let their lips brush in the lightest possible touch.

“C’mon, Bambi,” he said, soft and teasing. “Look at me.”

She did. Tears made Her eyes glow, and Dean dug his fingers into her soft skin, trying to keep her together with just a touch. Even one she didn’t think was real.

“You’re gonna be alright,” he said, and it came out like an order. He was past caring. “Got it?”

She nodded. It was small. Tight and unsure. Dean took it anyway.

“C’mere,” he pulled Her closer, moving into a deep, slow kiss. She made that pretty little sound of surprise, like she still didn’t expect it to always feel this good. Dean pressed his tongue on Her swollen lower lip, and she shivered, pulling herself closer by her thighs.

He smiled against Her lips. He didn’t rush. This was all he had. This was what he was fighting to get back to.

He wasn’t about to let a single moment slip through his fingers. Not now. And never when he got home.

✦chapter 74

✦End note: sooooo much planned this season. 2 secrets i believe. many many things :). thank you for reading! Chapter Title from Ain't No Mountain by Marvin Gaye

✦If you like this story, please reblog, like, or leave a comment! <3

You sweep through long halls in a dress that flows behind you, covering the shadows with lace and silk. You run out to the empty yard and slam into Dean, right where you knew you’d find him. Standing with the stake in his hand that he drops, in favor of spinning you off the ground and cradling your trembling body. One hand cups the back of your head, and the other digs into your hips. You trip trying to pull yourself closer, and drops a thick arm under your thighs, hauling you up into his arms.

He’s warm. So warm you let yourself pretend this is real. You bury your face in his neck and dig your nails into his neck. Wherever he is—the real Dean—you hope he can feel the dull, claiming pain. You hope he knows that you brush wet, swollen and tear stained lips over the crescent dents after, trying to push them a little deeper into his skin. You’re allowed to be possessive and selfish here.

Because, no matter how much it hurts you to know, it’s not real. 

Dean guides your face away from his neck, tugging your hair gently, forcing your gaze onto his. Tired, glassy eyes flicker like a jumping engine, a heart being shocked back to life. His mouth works in that tiny way, where he’s trying to think of something to say but only seems to know how to touch. He brushes your hair once, twice, and third time with this thumb sweeping over your cheekbone, his lips parting with a long, broken sigh.

You press a tender, worried kiss to his lips, and he snaps. His hand fists in your hair. He stumbles back like he’s been punched, kissing you until you’re both breathless and drunk on a phantom taste. He trips his way to a soft pile of grass in the courtyard, somehow managing not to come up for air. Dean lands flat on his ass and holds you over his chest, attacking your neck and jaw with brutal lips, sucking tiny bruises before flicking his tongue over the ache. You dig your fingers into his hair, biting back wrecked moans.

Dean grabs your chin, squeezing your cheeks and shooting you a stern, lust-blown glare.

“Don’t be like that, Princess,” he mutters, grazing his mouth over your puckered lips. “I gotta hear you. Lemme hear you.”

He traces his fingers teasingly up your side and nips at your lower lip. You let out a high, pathetic whine, and he smirks.

“There she is.”

Dean kisses you again, before gliding his mouth back down. There isn’t an inch of your skin he doesn’t seem determined to mark. Your moans echo off the courtyard walls, and his grunts vibrate against your skin, sending tiny, sweet shivers up your spine. Your shirt gets peeled off, so he can mouth at your breasts. He traces the curve of your ass and sits you right on the growing bulge in his pants, but never does anything more than rock his hips.

If Sam ever got a peak in your head, he’d vomit and then say something about you not even letting yourself feel good in a useless fantasy, and then you’d punch him in the face. Holding Dean after he cuts off the… other stuff, it’s just as good as anything else. You just need him, really. To be close for a fleeting hour of rapid sleep, where you can trace over his Golden features and beg the stains on your skin to keep you dirty, because the idea of being clean sounds so harrowing you think it might eat you alive.

“You doing alright up there?” Dean murmurs against your skin, his face buried between your breasts, and you nod.

There’s a long, aching sting at your eyes. You hug his head and breathe deeply, trying to burn the sweet smell of cinnamon into your nostrils. 

Dean says your name, splaying his fingers on your lower back. He tries to lean back, but you hold him in a headlock, the tears streaming down your cheeks. He grunts and pries at your forearms, grabbing your wrists with light hands and forcing your grip to slacken. He smiles faintly, at your scrunched up, snotty nose and red eyes. It’s tired. Everything about him seems tired, but he still smiles, as if you’re the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Easy, baby,” he murmurs, taking both of your hands between his. “It’s gonna be alright, you’re gonna be alright.”

He kisses his knuckles, trapping yours, and you sob so hard it shakes your body. You’re not worried about you. You’ve learned, for better or worse, that you really always will get through it. The universe doesn’t seem all that open to letting you tread down that other path.

But you’re worried about him. You’re worried about him in a way that almost cleaves you in half, that threatens to be the only thing that could possible overrule the universe, that frays the already weak threads that stich up whatever foul, glorious thing you’re made of. You’re held together by hooks and needles, at this point. You’re twisting yourself into knots that half ease right here, in Dean’s arms, but all that happens is your heart spills and spills and spills, until the rotting grass is overgrown and stained with silver dew.

Dean glances down, but doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t say much but soft reassurances, until you’re able to speak again. His thumb pets down the bridge of your nose, and—if you’re shaking so much the ground starts to shake with you—he flips you onto your back and hold you until you the weight makes you breathe.

Tonight is one of those nights. He traces over your face with the most cautious touch, his face twisted with a heavy, painfully blatant longing. Hooded eyes shine, scanning over your crumpled features. His mouth hangs open, like he’s trying to inhale you, the same way you hold his fisted hand over your lips. Just trying to get a little extra of something you’ve never been able to be satisfied with. Something that’s never going to be able to be close enough.

“Better?” He rasps, when your breathing steadies. You shake your head, your lips wobbling and he sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He kisses your brow, brow knitting like he’s in pain. “I know.”

He never tells you much, but there isn’t much your brain seems to need to hear. Sam’s alive. They’re working to get back. Dean loves you, and he swears up and down and left and right, on his both his babies—you and the damn car—and his mother and brother and Scooby Doo boxers and Led Zepplin cassettes, that he’s going to come home and say it to your face again. You tell him he already has, and he laughs and tells you that you have no idea. He asks you about things, every single time. How’s Claire. How’s Jo. Are you talking to Cas again, have you spoken to Eileen at all, has Crowley come crawling out from underground. You tell him the truth, and sometimes he makes a face like he wants to argue. Sometimes he does argue, and you think you miss him so much you’re going mad.

“You gotta talk to Cas, sweetheart, who the hell knows what the angels are up to-“

“No.”

Dean sighs your name, and you shove his chest with a flat hand.

“You talk to him, if it’s so important.”

“I’d like to,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Could tell him to talk some sense back into your smart ass.”

You shove him again, and he just catches your wrist and guides it away.

“I’m serious,” he says, strict and heavy, even as he drags his thumb over your knuckles and uses a soft, coaxing tone. “If I get back and you’re still fightin’ with Cas, I’m gonna be pissed.”

And you just hold his gaze, your throat closing up so tight the words have to break to get out. “So come back,” you whisper. “And prove it.”

India is hot in the middle of April. Wet and hot, mud always coating your boots and dirt getting under your nails, a sticky warmth filling up your lungs with every breath, a million smells that remind you of Dean flooding your senses and making you press your lips tight enough to crack.

He’d love it here. The people and the food, the bartering and the TV and, again, the food. He’d pull you through the markets with your hands locked, spending half an hour talking to one seller about his fish before storming off for a reason he sputters trying to explain. You’d kiss his cheek and ask if he wants to go fishing. He’d light up like a child and drag you back to the hotel, kissing all over your face as you stumble through the door, giggling like a lovesick fool in his arms.

Instead, you lean against the old table in the warehouse, sharpening your knife and ignoring the muffled curses of the man in the chair. Bobby’s bottle shines green, in the dim, flickering light. You kick your bag a little away from your feet, dancing and humming while you wait for everyone to calm the hell down.

For him, specifically, to calm down. You tied him up in the nice binds, you’ve given him a lot of wiggle and breathing room—Jo was worried he’d get out, you know he won’t—and brought him some very expensive and stolen lamb that he didn’t get to eat, because he tried to bite your fingers off. He’d have it pretty good, if he’s stop overreacting. You’re the one who should be freaking out, and you’re perfectly calm. The Silver is bright and smooth and calm, iced over your veins and melded into your muscles. It moves when you move, and screams when you scream, and it’s like learning to walk all over again, but you’re doing it. And you’re calm.

Psychotic, the man before this one said. You sliced his hand open and dripped salt on the wound, for that one. It wasn’t the claim, but the way he said it. Like you were just some crazy, scorned bitch. Which another former captive called you, and he lost his tongue, but he’d also crossed your very, very clear line about Claire, so you think he earned it.

That’s why this one can call you whatever the fuck he wants. You’ve been called worse, and you’re past caring what kind of whore or slut or bitch or cunt you have to be. If anything, it’s a compliment. It means they’re afraid.

The man spits something, then chokes and thrashes the chair. The chains rattle unpleasantly against the floor, and you shoot him an unimpressed look.

“Neal, I can’t understand you,” you remind him, and his eyes narrow. “And remember what we talked about? Good behavior?

Neal’s face curls and contorts into something like a sneer. You sigh and spin your knife in your hand, pushing off the table with a tiny kick of your feet.

“This,” you wave the blade over his general, rather rude demeanor. “Isn’t good behavior. This isn’t how we earn speaking privileges again, buddy. I don’t want to have to remind you again.”

Neal’s eyes flash with fury. He growls something and you stop right in front of him, crossing your arms and scanning over his locked down body with a frown. He’s been here almost two weeks, and all you’ve really gotten is an uncooperative attitude and a lot of insulting comments about your body. You would’ve thought he’d give up after a while. The rest of them did.

You tap your foot and chew on your lower lip. Neal’s gag is getting dirty, but it didn’t exactly start clean. Maybe you’d soaked it in dirty dish water, before stuffing it in his mouth. He deserved it. He made a comment about Claire that he was lucky to survive.

Luck that came with being one of the last Alphas left. If there had been hundreds of them before, the count is down to double digits. You, Cas, and Crowley sort of did a lot of damage to the population, leaving only the smart ones that evaded capture, and know to stay underground. Those are the ones like the Alpha Vampire, who you haven’t been able to find after months of looking.

And then there are the ones who didn’t get caught because they were too stupid to be worth it.

The ones like Neal.

There isn’t a corner of the Earth you don’t think is worth ripping up to find Dean. For a week after Michigan, you thought God might have taken him. Jo barely managed to talk you down from truly, fully losing it, and she only got the chance because of your exhaustion from killing Eve.

“You felt God grabbin’ me, right?” She’d said, holding your hands and pleading in a way that was so unlike Jo, you’d managed to focus on her words. “You told me, you felt God yankin’ me away, just like you felt my mom. Like you felt him tryin’ to grab Bobby. You woulda stopped him, if he was goin’ for Sam and Dean. You woulda,” she’d squeezed your hand, even as you’d stared at her with empty eyes. “I know it. You know it. Hell, God himself knew it, so- Wasn’t him.”

You’d blinked at her, and nodded slowly. She was right. It couldn’t have been God. He’d vanished from the sky again, so you couldn’t ask, but you knew. One of the only things that had saved you, in that moment, was that you hadn’t been wrestling with God to pull Sam and Dean back. You would’ve detonated, if you had. But instead they’d just vanished, and you’d been hit by the despair before the wrath.

It had been long. Long and harrowing and cold, in the week after. Jo says you barely spoke, and you have to believe her, because you don’t really remember that much otherwise. It’s all a blur of a bed that didn’t have the warmth it was supposed to, showers that you were afraid to take and scars of Gold you traced with trembling, fearful fingers. The only sharp memory is the fight with Cas, and even that is sanded around the edges. You’d drifted until Jo reminded you that it couldn’t be God, and it had been like slamming against a rock. 

If it wasn’t God, it was something else. Something weaker.

You could kill something weaker. You could do it without destroying yourself, and dragging the rest of the world down with you. You could get Dean home.

In the days after that, you’d moved fast. Kevin had been sent off with Meg, who promised to keep him away from Crowley. You and Jo had packed up Bobby’s house and left, looking for something. Anything, that would even tell you where Dean had landed. That would tell you how to get him home.

“Listen,” Meg had said before you separated, low and careful. “Things like that bone? My daddy told me to be careful with them.” She’d given you a pointed look. “Told me they had kickback.”

Kickback.  

A rebound of power, Rowena had explained. An aftertaste, but everyone in a few yards gets it shoved down your throat. Dean and Sam got dragged somewhere. All you had to do was drag them back.

Which means all you have to do is figure out where they got dragged.

It’s a harder task, than you originally thought. You’ve gone after countless people and beasts and entities for answers. God convicts who were willing to talk without anyone needing to be tortured, rogue angels who looked for you to help, demons who you trapped and witches and cult members who got to find out exactly how many of the rumors have been true. And in all of them, from the annoying to the unless to the rude, Neal is, by miles and margins, the fucking stupidest.

“I’m going to take out your gag,” you tell him slowly, leaning down over his chair. “You’re not going to call me any names, I won’t cut out your tongue, and we all win, okay?”

Neal eyes the weapon, inches from slicing his cheek. You smile sweetly and flick your wrist, taking out a lock of his hair, and he flinches. Like a little fucking bitch.   

“Okay?” You prompt again, and his throat bobs.

He nods. You beam, and saw at his gag with a wide smile. The cloth falls and you let it hang around his neck, watching with raised brows and a warning curve to your lips. Neal glares at you, and you tip your head, letting your hair brush over his cheeks. He recoils back, his breathing shallow and hot over your face, and you smile in slow, smug satisfaction.

“That’s a good boy,” you purr, drawing yourself back up.

Neal—the idiot—snaps.

“You little fucking bitch-“

“Ah,” you slam the gag back up to his mouth, choking him on the fabric. His eyes flicker, hatful and beady and small. You sigh. You really wanted to do this the easy way. “That’s not what we talked about,” you tug the fabric tighter, and he grunts. “I’m being very nice right now, and you- You didn’t even eat the food I bought you! Do you know how hurtful that is?” You roll your eyes. “And- Even if I didn’t buy it, I still got it for you. And you call me a bitch? Rude.”

You shove him back and let go of the gag, taking a large step back before he can spit in your face.

He tries. He always tries, because he’s an idiot. You dodge it without blinking, but it lands only a few inches away from Bobby’s bottle. The old wood sizzles and hisses under the venom. You turn back around with a furious flurry and rage in your chest, a growing winter storm that Neal seems to feel, with how he goes still.

“Do you know what happens?” You ask slowly. “If you destroy that bottle.”

Neal opens his mouth. You don’t give him a real chance to respond.

“I kill you,” you spit, taking a large step forward. Neal’s fingernails and lips are starting to go purple. The warehouse creaks under your feet, as slow frost spreads over your feet.

“I didn’t hit the damn bottle,” Neal tries to snap, but it’s weak. His voice cracks, and his eyes are too wide. You hold a finger to your lips and shake your head. He swallows loud enough that you can hear it, and you smile.

“I kill you,” you repeat, honeyed and low. “And then I track down every one of your children, and I kill them too. Then I open Purgatory, and I kill all of you all over again. Do you understand.”

Neal’s eyes narrow. For a second, you think he really might be stupid enough to test you, but he only nods.

“Great,” you spin you knife, kneeling down to his height. “See? Isn’t it easy to listen to me?”

Neal’s mouth ticks. He still doesn’t speak, and you sigh.

“Now, I know you’re going to try and tell me you have no idea where the Leviathan bone goes, but if you do that, I’m going to have to cut off your hand. And I don’t wanna do that. It’s gross, it smells bad, now I have to get rid of a hand- You get it,” you shrug. “So, if you’d be so perfectly kind to think a little bit harder, maybe we can figure out a version of this where you only lose your finger.”

The column of Neal’s throat works. His jaw does a funny little motion, and you grab his cheeks with a sigh, pressing the knife to his throat.

“I told you to stop doing that, it’s not going to work.”

“Fuck-“ Neal pushes out the words through his teeth little bits of spittle landing on your skin.

It burns, but the sores heal in seconds. Cockatrice venom doesn’t do much to you, apparently. It’s still annoying to have to heal it.

“Fuck- You-“

“Everyone’s trying,” you say dryly, pressing the knife down until a thin bead of blood coats the blade. “Where is my Dean.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t fucking know-“

“Liar,” you lean closer, eyes narrowing. “I know you’re a liar, I know what Mommy taught you, I- I fucking know-“

Your voice breaks, and the frozen coating over your hands is giving way to pure, raw wrath. You will get him back. You have to get him back. There is nothing ahead of you, if you don’t get Dean home. This power is useless if you can’t find him, life is useless if you have to feel all of it but you don’t get to have something that’s just yours, everything has been nothing if you don’t get to have Dean.

And Neal sees it, between the shattered cracks of the Silver, waxing and waning like an ocean storm, crashing up high enough that the chains turn to roots and the pain under all of it becomes so obviously, dangerously clear.

Most Alpha and demons caved under it. They’d been trying to barter or mock, not understanding that the rumors about you and Dean didn’t cover the thinnest scope of your love. You’ve long learned that people talk about the Winchesters and their strange little monster. The demon boy and his black eyes and breakdowns. The brute hunter that carves through anything in his way, to get to his baby brother and his girl.

The Magdalene. The Whore. The Bride, who’s stuck herself to the brother’s side and sleeps in the brute’s bed. They say everything about you and Dean. That you fuck like rabbits, that he sits at your feet like a dog, that you follow him around like a lovesick schoolgirl and crawl into his lap with blood on both your hands.

And yet it takes that peak behind your fury, for them to get it. To understand that they are not looking at some tragic little star-crossed love, some Bonnie and Clyde pairing that talks big and shoots bigger.

They are looking at a Horror. They are looking at something that can’t fit in their little minds, who could sweep over lands and mold them in her name, who could hold the stars in her hands or bring paradise to the earth, but only wants one, perfect, sweet idiot of a man.

And you don’t have him right now. There’s no Dean, to tell you that you need to sleep, or breathe, or think your plan through a little bit harder. They call him the Brute Winchester, but he was the only thing that could ever get you to bow your head for a leash. He could’ve saved them. He’s not here, so there’s nothing but you, and an unending pain that you need the world to fucking feel.

Neal sees it. He blinks and leans back, under the blinding floodlight of the truth. They all do.

But most of them see it as something like a supernova, that’s going to consume them if they don’t look for cover or cower.

Neal is an idiot. Neal smiles.

“You don’t know how to get him back, do you,” he coos. “Little Whore, bragging about killing Eve and not even able to find her little boyfriend. You’re what they’re afraid of. You can’t even track him like the fucking mutt you’re supposed to be.”

You cover Neal’s mouth with your hand. Your eyes squeeze shut, your breathing shallow, your palm burning at Neal tries to bite it.

You are the weight of the roots under your feet, happy to be alive, to be connected, to grow instead of sink. You’re the cold fear of the ground, worried the heat will come, but won’t be enough to thaw it. You’re the sky far overhead, filled with so much it’s not sure what to call itself, unsure what it even is if not empty.

It is everything. You are everything. The leather cord of Dean’s amulet is stuck to your skin, trying to hold onto you when he can’t, and you are everything.

This Alpha is nothing. So you make him everything too.

When you open your eyes, Neal is frozen. His eye sockets have been overgrown with flowers that burst from under the lids and through the pupils. Grass and thin weeds grow under his nails. You uncover his mouth, and branches burst forward, a million tiny birds taking off in a swarm. You wipe the trickle of water that falls down his chin and sigh.

Better than the last one. He got a little too confident, said that Dean was probably hiding from you, or begging God to take you so you’d leave him alone, and got turned into a pile of brushel and kindle that burned rather easily, to nothing but flecks of ash in the air. You think Dean would be proud of you for controlling it. Neal only got turned into a blooming corpse, once he earned it.

And he was wrong. He was wrong. You press your hands flat against the table and take deep breaths, repeating it over and over and over. Pushing the thought out of your head like a parasite being fished up your throat. You will get Dean back. There is nowhere in the universe that you can’t reach, no cage you can’t rip open to get back to his side. Lucifer and Michael couldn’t hold you. Some little rebound of a magic bone isn’t going to out preform God’s favorite sons.

But it has. You haven’t found him.

But you will. You will. You chew on the inside of your cheek until you taste blood. Your fingers twitch and curl, trying to burrow into your palms, and you scrape them along the table instead. It starts to hurt, the pressure building under your skin and bubbling over in your chest. It hurts more than the brief sting or stab of a bite or cut ever would. You squeeze your eyes shut and grab your knife, driving it straight into the wood. You lean over, rubbing your face like you can push back the burn in your eyes and heavy stress on the bridge of your nose. A dam, threatening every second to break.

You pinch it and try to breathe slow. If you let yourself drown in the blood, pounding in your ears, you can almost hear Dean’s voice, coaching you through it.

In and out. Easy for me, Princess. Just breathe. I’ve got you.

He doesn’t have you. He said he was going to. He said he wouldn’t leave and now you’re fucking alone, suffocating on thick air in a warehouse, grabbing at wood like it’s not just going to rot under your fingers, and you’re not about to slip away into nothing, nothing, nothing, you’re going to be nothing again and you should’ve saved him, why didn’t you save him, what foul kind of use are you to the world if you can’t save the best thing about it, if you can’t do anything but cry and run around and be nothing-

Your breathing is ragged. Sharp. There’s a dull sting to your palms, and you open your eyes to find you’d started scratching at your palms until you drew thin lines of blood. You swallow, a boulder settling in your throat that you’ve never been able to dislodge alone. Bobby’s bottle shines in your periphery, knocked onto its side and cradled in a little nest of grass and leaves. Containing yourself when you use your powers- It’s a work in progress. You right the bottle with a mumbled apology you know he’s never going to be able to hear.

And you think you almost got away with it. You drag Neal’s body out back, and flick Dean’s lighter until you’ve got a sweet little flame going. You watch it for a moment, bending light in the sunrise. It seems to know you’re not Dean, whenever you use it. There’s a shadow of distrust that almost puts it out, but then it realizes it’s you, and that seems to be close enough.

You know it sounds crazy—even for you—but all of Dean’s things miss him. You wear his shirts to bed, trying to pretend he’s still there to hold you in the dark, and the fabric clings to the Gold on your skin the same way you cling to its collar, inhaling every last bit of cinnamon and grass until you can almost pretend Dean is there. You have his keys in your pocket, and they keep begging you to drive back to  an empty home. They seem to think that he’ll be there, and don’t listen when you tell them that he’s gone. He never goes, they demand. He’s just waiting for you at home. And you shake your head and clean his guns—and you do a bad job, but he’ll fix it when he gets home—and they seem to be the same kind of restless he is, where they’re itching for something to get in front of. Something to defend. They ask you with every touch, if your safe. They beg you to let them help, when you tell them you’re fine. The bullets say they exist to lodge in the skulls of your enemies. You tell them they’re being a little dramatic, and put them back in Dean’s actual bullet box with a sigh.

And you really, really almost get away with it.

Neal’s body burns, and you throw the rest of it into the backwoods river, asking the water to carry it where no one will ever find. You go back inside and clean up, rubbing your eyes and fighting a yawn. You’ve been up all night. Your eyes are drooping and your skin is raw and sensitive, a live nerve that wants to peel off your iron-heavy bones. There isn’t an artery in your chest and neck that isn’t trying to burst. A joint or tendon in your gut or legs that doesn’t want to snap. You hold it together, with the thinnest of wires. You jabbed them through every inch that threatens to unravel and pull them tight, because you don’t have the privilege of falling apart.

But you’ve never been lucky enough, to not have something go rancid and soft. To not trip over the only loose stone, and plunge face first into freefall.

You stuff all your tools and knives—you lost the Blade, throwing it at Dick Roman’s eye, and replaced it with a smaller set Claire found in China—into the bag. You wrap Bobby’s bottle in a woven cloth and wedge it between your books. You check the ground for anything else, and there it is. The loose stone. The branch that your wire catches on, that pulls you right apart.

Dean’s box slid a little under the table, when you kicked over the bag. You have to stretch to grab it, and frantically wipe off the quickly gathered dust and cobwebs. Your fingers linger on the latch. Your knees draw to your chest, and you stare at the silver detailing until your vison blurs.

Hot tears land on the back of your hand. A shattered, uncontrollable sob rips from your throat, and your shoulders pull tight. You’re curling into a ball around the box, dropping your face between your legs and shuddering with every single breath. The air feels like it’s burning up in your body. The soil beneath you becomes rich and wet, and the wood behind you mends from time, setting down roots in a place nothing else has been allowed to stay.

You scream so loud it bounces off the walls, and outside, the river seems to scream back. Lightning cracks, somewhere faraway. You scream again, and thunder rolls through the air. It’s loud because it’s trying to find him. Because if it’s loud enough, it will glow like a beacon in the dark, and Dean will come home.

You need him to come home.

It’s a while, before you’re able to stand again. Your legs are shaking, and there are no warm arms to hold you upright. You wipe your own tears, and little dandelions bloom when they hit the muddied earth. You gather yourself, because no one else will, and that was only a fissure. You can stich up a fissure.

A break—a true, untenable break—will not leave a living world in its wake. Not a world that isn’t molded to your hands. Salvation. Damnation.  

You wonder if Azazel knew that the only difference between the two would be whether or not you got to have Dean. You’re sure he didn’t. He would’ve let Dean die in that hospital bed if he did. Long before you could save him. When you weren’t capable of much more than squinting at a soul or stomping out a demon like a spider that jumped on you in the shower.

It would be the easy thing, to let yourself break. But this world deserves better than a righteous blight. There are still things in it, that you can find to be beautiful. The river spit up nuggets of gold, gathered on the bank like shells on a beach. The morning glows like you’re wandering through Dean’s heaven, when the sun splits over green mountains. You have Bobby in your bag, and you’re going to get him back. You have Dean’s box, and if you explode, you’re never going to find out what’s inside.

You’ve been telling yourself you’re waiting for him to be back. You know, deep in your gut, that you just can’t. You can’t name why. You can’t justify it. But you cry when you see it and you don’t want to open it without him.

You don’t want to do any of this without him.

You have to. It’s either that or giving up, and you’ve been running too long to let your feet fail now. You’re going to get through this.

You always do.

The motel you’ve been staying at is on the nicer side. You have a large room and complementary breakfasts. There’s a pool that only has a handful of bugs in it, at any given time. The wallpaper is peeling but the bathroom is clean, and the water pressure is strong, and the beds are covered in so many pillows you can almost shape them into a perfect Dean, whenever you sleep.

Not that you sleep much.

You took three hours, somewhere around twilight, and headed to the warehouse around midnight. You unlock the door and slip inside before anyone should be up.

And yet, waiting for you on the bed with a glare, Claire is wide awake. Her arms are cross and her chin is jutted up in that way Dean used to say was all you. The Lady is curled in her lap, Indy is flopped at her feet, and the Phoenix chick—Sparky, Claire’s been calling him, and you haven’t really been able to stop her—is pecking at her hair. You almost laugh at the absurd sight. Claire doesn’t look that amused.

“Where did you go,” she whisper shouts, and you kick off your shoes with a sigh.

“You don’t need to worry about that, Claire-“

“Yes, I do! What if there was another break-in, what if the police showed up, what if the leviathans came back-“

“Did you have another nightmare?”

Claire scowls. It’s not an accusation, but you know she takes it as one. She’s trying to play up the gum-like toughness Dean always carried with his every word and step. The sense that bending him was impossible, without him snapping back like a rubber band. She’s been doing that hewn, tight jawed expression whenever the police do come around—you dispose a lot of bodies, and people in India are really annoyingly observant—and doesn’t seem open to hearing that you really don’t need her to grow up for this.

If anything, you’re still a little annoyed she talked you into coming. You wanted her to go back to Jody, but she flat out refused. She locked herself in the Firebird and said she’d go on a hunger strike. Jody said she could take her anyway.

A selfish part of you didn’t want to let her out of your sight. Not after Michigan. Not when there were all too familiar bags forming under her eyes, and paranoid twitch that made your heart ache—that reminded you of Sam—every time the wind got a little too loud.

She’d been allowed to come on the rule that she’d listen, stay out of your warpath, and continue with school. Staying out of the warpath just means no hunting. School just means the homeschooling curriculum you stole from Bobby and Rufus. Dean’s going to have some things to say about that, when he gets home. He’ll be welcome to. He can shout at you and argue all he wants, as long as he’s in front of you. As long as you get to hear his voice.

You dump your bag on the floor and bite your cheek. You’re doing your best with what you have. It isn’t much. It’s better than nothing at all.

“Claire,” you say gently, keeping your voice down. Jo’s passed out, in the other bed. If you wake her up, she’s going to have opinions. “It’s okay if you are having nightmares-‘

“I’m not!” Claire snaps, too fast, too loud. Jo stirs a little, and you give Claire a stern look. She swallows and bows her head, her voice dropping back down. “I’m not,” she mumbles. “I- I just couldn’t sleep.”

You sigh, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Indy eerps, rolling onto her back and nosing at your knee. You rub her stomach, watching Claire in your periphery, letting her words linger in the hum of the fan and wet morning air.

“It’s not like I wake up screaming,” Claire grumbles, and your mouth twitches.

“I know.”

“Do you? ‘Cause you keep saying I’m having nightmares, so it sounds like you don’t-“

“Claire.”

She curls back, under your flat stare. You sigh and lean forward, touching her knee lightly. She keeps her gaze locked down, just as stubborn as always.

“I have nightmares,” you say softly, and Claire’s scowl deepens. “Dean has nightmares. And he never wakes up screaming.”

That makes her pause. She looks up with a poorly hidden surprise, pulling at a loose string on her shorts. You smile sadly and squeeze her knee, leaning a little further. Like you’re telling her a secret, even if you’re sure Dean would tell her the exact same.

“I wake up,” you murmur. “Because he’s not making any sounds.”

“That- But-“

“He snores,” your smile turns misty. Tired and fond and a little smooth around the edges, the weight of missing him settling right at the top of your chest. You stave it off for now. For Claire. “He snores like a fucking machine.”

Claire makes a face like she’s trying to fight off a laugh, and your cheeks ache just a little less.

“So when he’s quiet,” you say, watching her carefully. “I know something is wrong.”

Claire presses her lips in a thin line. She stares down at her fingers, and you let out a slow breath.

“He gets stiff. I realize I woke up because he was squeezing me, or lying on top of me, or just- Grabbing me. His face does that frown,” you pinch your face up, trying to mimic Dean’s worried and angry scowl, and Claire’s throat bobs. “And he breathes really heavy, and I- I wake him up. Carefully, but- I know whatever he’s dreaming about- I- I have to get him out of it.”

And it hurts just to think about. It makes every space around you feel bigger, to speak about him. Some small part of your brain thinks that if you do it enough he’ll just appear, but the rest of you knows better, and doesn’t want to talk about him at all. But that little part, it’s loud. It expands and begs, every time you indulge it. Spreading memories in every dip and space in your ribcage, pushing just to the right of your heart until you think you’re going to burst.

You can almost see him, in the longest corners of the room. The sun plays a cruel trick where the golden light takes his shape, and you can’t help yourself from looking. In case it is him. If it is, you’ll need to grab him before he vanishes behind the clouds. Tell him that if you’re not dreaming of him, you’re having nightmares. The boring kind, where you wake up screaming in a pool of sweat that’s already collecting algae, reaching for him and only finding an empty bed, then screaming louder. Nightmares that would make him take your face between his hands, that he could tell you weren’t real. John isn’t going to kill you in front of him and Sam. Bobby’s soul isn’t going to be ripped from your hands like Jo’s. Sam isn’t going to crumble to dust in your arms, falling apart too fast for you to put him back together.

You don’t know what Dean had his nightmares about. They were rare for both of you, when you shared a bed. After you’d wake him up, he’d bury his face in your chest and refuse to speak until the sun rose, his hands mapping your body and his back flexed and tense until he convinced himself he was allowed to relax. Then all you’d get was a kiss and mumbled thanks, before he clambored out of bed for coffee. You always had guesses. You pieced things together from the low, pained groans and pleas that would push themselves out, before you managed to wake him. You have the same kind of guesses about Claire.

But she’ll talk about it when she’s ready. You don’t need to know what the nightmare is about, to seal over the damage for a single day. It’s just a band aide on an open wound, but it will stop the infection. You’ll worry about the scar, when you’re not trying to keep her from being cut wide open again.

“Everyone has nightmares,” you duck, forcing Claire to meet your gaze. “But they’re just nightmares. The leviathans are gone. Jo can handle the police or a monster, and anything else- I won’t let it hurt you. Okay?”

Claire’s silent for a long while, and you wait. You have no time. You’re willing to stretch what you do have thin, for her.

She nods, and you bite back your sharp relief, just squeezing her knee one more time and taking a deep breath through your nose.

“Do you want to talk about it?” You offer, already knowing the answer.

Claire shakes her head. You glance over at Jo, fully knocked out and starfished, obvious to the world around her. You’d been planning to catch a few hours before she and Claire woke up, but the motel has strong coffee, and you’ve slept less for longer.

“You wanna watch a movie?” You offer, and Claire sits up. You laugh, and it’s small but real.

Dean would be proud.

You settle against the headboard, Claire tucked into your side, the Lady padding over and curling between your bodies, and Indy splayed over your legs, her tail whipping back and forth over the sheets. She’s almost the size of a Great Dane, now. It’s getting harder and harder, to sneak her around. You’ll call Rowena later. Ask about a shielding or illusion spell, or make one up if she can’t help.

Sparky stays on Claire’s head. They seem to have developed a bond you’re not willing to try and break. You offer the chick a finger, while Claire picks out a movie, and he nips you, nudges you for a pet, and then immediately turns back to Claire’s hair.

They motel has most of the channels. Claire asks you what you want, but you know she’s just trying to be polite.

“Whatever you want,” you tell her, and she smiles. She picks an old western that’s near the start of its run, and slumps down into the mattress. You only half watch, your eyes lidded and glazed. You’re all but asleep with your eyes open, the voices and music all blending into a white noise that threatens to lull you into sleep.

“Did they help?” Claire asks quietly, and you frown at her, unsure if you heard right. “Whoever you were- With,” she clarifies, still staring at the TV. “Are they going to help you find Sam and Dean?”

The question is so small. So unsure, like she’s not sure that she’s allowed to ask it. You twist the skin of your finger and tip your head back, trying to let the headrest carry the weight of it. The lie. The pair, that you don’t want rolling off of you and poisoning her.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think they might.”

Claire hums, and it doesn’t matter how much she believes you. She relaxes, and that ease leave a wake, settling over your skin and tendons and knotted organs. You let out a breath, and it doesn’t catch in your throat.

You don’t sleep. Not fully. But your eyes fall, and your body goes as loose as it’s allowed, and you drift in and out of the world without so much as a nightmare or tear. Claire knocks out on your arm, and the sun pushes over the sky and through the curtains. The weight of Indy comes and goes. A door creaks, and you twist enough to see Jo gone from the bed before you’re pulled back under. It’s not fruitful sleep. It’s bobbing through the calmest parts of the ocean, able to breathe, never able to fully rest.

You’ll find the land. You’ll make it, if you have to.

For now, you just drift.

Jo’s at the table with a coffee, when you finally drag yourself out of bed. Indy’s sitting at the foot of your bed, watching you with wide, curious eyes. You tuck Claire—fully asleep, but still angled like she’s  trying to watch TV—under the sheets, and pad over to Jo’s side. Indy bounds after you, dropping her chin onto your knee and whining softly. Jo rolls her eyes and pushes the coffee across the table, shooting Indy a distasteful glare.

“She’s actin’ like I let her starve,” Jo grumbles. “I took her out. Got her- Really the biggest fuckin’ fish you’ve ever seen. I mean, I still don’t know how she got the whole thing down, it was-“

She holds her hands up, almost all the way apart, and you laugh softly. “She’s a growing girl-“

“She’s grown big enough. We’re gonna have to make a fuckin’ stable.”

You raise your brows. “We?”

Jo shrugs. You both know who we is, and it’s not anyone in the room. “He will,” she doesn’t say his name. You think, sometimes, she’s worried it will set you off, like cutting the wrong wire on a bomb.

“Sam thinks she’s going to be as big as the house,” you murmur into your coffee, and Jo makes a face.

“That’s too fuckin’ big.”

“Yeah, but- At least Dean will get to build his barn.”

Jo stares at you, for just a little too long. You know she hears it. Dean will. Sam thinks.

“Have I told you he wants to build a barn?” You ask, still not meeting her gaze. Silently begging her, to just go along with it. Just right now, while you can’t bear to do anything else.

“No,” she says slowly. “Don’t think you have.”

“Well, he does. He told me he wants to build a barn, a farm, a house, and a garage. I told him he doesn’t know how architecture works, and he- He just said he’d figure it out.” You laugh to yourself, watery and almost floating through the air. “The annoying thing is he probably will. He’ll skim one book and say he’s got it, and then I’ll blink and he’ll have a house.”

Jo says your name. You ignore her.

“I mean- One time I asked him how he built my car, and he just said he put stuff together in the way that made sense. That doesn’t mean anything, but- It worked. He always makes it work.”

You choke on the last word. Jo reaches for your hand, and you curl it into a tight fist. She mutters your name, and you shake your head, tears pricking at the edge of your eyes.

“Don’t,” you whisper, staring at the table. “Please.”

Jo sighs, but doesn’t say a word. She grabs your hand, and you immediately grab it back, trying not to dig in your nails. You watch the coffee slush around in your mug. It’s going cold. Everything, from the sink pit in the hollow of your chest to the churning in your gut, is going cold. Jo’s hand is warm. It keeps your fingers from shaking, and that keeps the world from shaking with it.

Sometimes, you wonder why she sticks around too. She could’ve gone with Meg or Charlie or Adam. She could’ve gone with the Amazons. Could’ve left to look for her mom, even if you’re more than willing to be Ellen is trapped with God. But Jo just… Stays. So maybe people stay, and you begin to feel like a leech. Draining them to make yourself bigger. Suctioned onto their kindness, unable to do anything on your own.

You’re learning, that sometimes, people just… Love you.

You lean on Jo until you’re both about to topple, and she holds you up until you can drag her off the edge of the cliff. You press Sam until he’s about to break, and he doesn’t try to lock you out or push you away. You run around like a pigeon that can’t quite remember where home is supposed to be, and Bobby waits for you to remember how to turn around and find your way back. You screw up again and again and again, and you learn so slow and love so quietly and spill your guts all over Dean’s hands and chest and thighs, and he just cleans you up and stays. He loves you, without any kind of payment or justification. You rip yourself up to try and find some part of you that’s good enough for him to touch, for any of them to touch, and they just… ask you to put yourself back together.

They love you more with the cracks, even if they let the infection of you creep out. They love you when you’re small and withered, they love you when you’re consuming and so alive you can’t bear it, and you’re learning it in the slowest, hardest way possible. The way that involves contorting into every possible shape, before Dean takes you and tells you he likes this one just fine. The way that has blood under your nails and dirt on your knees and foam at your mouth, snarling and snapped like a rabid animal until you learn to trust the water again. It almost kills you, but the blood dries, and you-

You get better.

You miss Dean with more than you can fit in your heart, but you eat, and try to sleep, and you stick with Jo and Claire. You miss Dean, and—without realizing it, like the crawl of a shadow across the ground—you never doubt if he’s missing you.

“The alpha get us anything?” Jo asks a little before Claire gets up, and you shake your head. “And- You didn’t-“

You give her an apologetic look, and she sighs you name.

“You can’t keep fuckin’ killing them-“

“He was saying some very mean things,” you snap defensively. “You would’ve killed him-“

“Of course I woulda killed him! But you’re supposed to be better than me!”

You nose wrinkles. “No, I’m not-“

“Uh- Yeah. You are.” Jo rolls her eyes, leaning back with a huff. “You’re ‘supposed to torture ‘em and then say, you think that’s bad,” she turns her voice into a mockery of yours, and you frown. “Just wait until you meet my little friend.”

“I’m not Scarface, Jo-“

“Yeah, you are.”

Your mouth falls open. “No, I’m not- I don’t even- I’d never run a drug ring.”

Jo makes a doubtful expression, and squawks when you throw a balled up napkin straight at her head. Indy shoots over the table, cooped up and eager to fetch, and Jo topples back with a shout. You laugh, covering your mouth with a hand, and Jo chucks the napkin right back at your face. You block it.

You don’t block Indy.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Claire sits up, her hair falling over her face, swollen with sleep. You wish you had an answer that wasn’t childish and insane. You don’t, so you take Claire for breakfast, and flip Jo off over your shoulder.

She’s right, in the long run. Maybe you shouldn’t have killed Neal, but there are other Alphas. Other angels, other demons, other pagan gods that can—that will—help you. You don’t let yourself think of another option, for the whole day. You have to help Claire with school. You have to read and get lunch and call Kevin and get dinner. The world might stop when you’re caving in, but when you’re keeping yourself just upright, when you’re rushing through the day like it’s a current, and you’re just waiting to be spat out the other side, time does nothing but plow on forward.

You read anything you can find. You and Jo scout for leads on other Alpha’s, while Claire does her homework with a sour expression. You look online, Jo makes a few more calls on leads. If you didn’t know better, every day would just feel like a very long, strange case.

“What was that thing you were tellin’ me about?” Jo asks, peering at the translation notes you’ve scribbled through countless notebooks and loose pieces of paper.

You hum, not looking up from the Book. You always think you’ve read all of it, only for new pages to appear out of thin air. It’s suspicious. You’d think it was God, if you didn’t know he hasn’t been watching you for months. “What thing?”

“Y’know, the thing-“

“I tell you about a lot of things, Jo-“

“Yeah, but- This one was all magic and shit.”

You give her a dry, blanket expression of annoyance. She rolls her eyes.

“C’mon. It’s- What the hell else am I supposed to call it?”

“I don’t know? Its name-“

“I dunno its name- It’s-“ She sighs, glaring at the air. “You know, that magic spot thingy. You went lookin’ for one when Dean was- Well-“ She cringes slightly. “Last time.”

Your frown deepens, pulling down in thought. The magic spot thingy. “You mean the Vortex points?”

“Yes- Yes,” Jo snaps, leaning forward with a wide grin. “That. Why don’t we try that?”

“Um…” You look at the book, then the notes. Your hands flex, and your mouth falls a little open.

Why don’t you try that? Why haven’t you tried that?

“Because we don’t know where Dean is,” you answer yourself softly, and Jo’s face falls.

“Oh. Right- That’s- Never-“

“But,” you cut her off, your brain turning too fast to track. “If- It’s stronger there. Everything. Bridges, spells, enchantments-“ You swallow. “Prayers.”

Jo blinks. “You want us to… pray?”

“No,” you close the book, mouth set in a grim line. “I want Dean to pray. Somewhere- Somewhere I’m able to hear.”

Jo’s doubtful. You don’t blame her. Whatever let you hear Dean’s prayer in Heaven, whatever let him call you from across the world, over and over and over again, you don’t know how it works. You know it’s woven just to the right of your heart. You think it might be that part of you that’s embedded in him, that branch of love that grew over him, that he never pushed out. The mechanics don’t matter right now. If Dean is praying, you aren’t hearing it. If you can hear it, you can try and trace it.

“Like a radio signal?” Jo asks, and you nod. She sighs. “But- What if we ain’t able to do that?”

“Then,” you say, dark and firm. “We figure something else out.”

Jo doesn’t argue past that. This is the kind of thing, where she knows far better. It takes you the rest of the day, but there’s a Vortex point in the Himalayas. It’s a long trip. You work out a spell, that will get you there and back in a day. Claire gets clear instructions not to leave the motel room for anything, while you’re gone.

“We’re leaving at sunrise,” you tell her. “We’ll be back by sunset.”

And you don’t say hopefully. You don’t say you’ll try. You will be back by sunset, whether you have something or not.

You hope you have something. You need it. You need anything, to weave into another wire. Another way to keep yourself going, an extension of the rope you’re hanging onto, something metal you can from into a new rail before you reach the end of the line.  And you can almost convince yourself that this, this single, small mission, will be it.

You’ll go to the Vortex point, pull Dean out of the ground like a potato, and go home. If you really let yourself play pretend, you’re going to the Vortex point for nothing but research. You’re going to do some experiments, collect some data, and call Sam on the drive home. You’ll try to tell him about what you found. Dean will try to steal the phone, and Sam will lock himself in the bathroom so he can’t. You’ll smile to yourself, at the sound of him banging on the door. The moment you get home, Dean will sweep you into his arms and kiss you up against the wall.

“Sammy was bein’ a dick, sweetheart,” he’ll mutter, his arms caging you against his body.

You’ll giggle against his lips and pull on his shirt, unsure what to do with yourself but melt into him. He’ll carry you to bed, ignoring your false protests. You’ll sit on your knees when he tosses you onto the mattress, watching with wide eyes and an embarrassing heat pooling between your thighs, as he peels off his shirt. He’ll ask you about the hunt. You’ll forget everything you wanted to tell him, until he smiles fondly, cups your face, and bends down to kiss you stupid.

“Missed me, huh?” He’ll tease, his thumb gliding over the nape of your neck, and you’ll nod. Hopeless. Entirely his, in ways you think he still doesn’t quite understand.

“You have no idea,” you’ll whisper, and he’ll grin like he won a prize.

“You have no idea,” you whisper to the dark.

And if the day passes fast, with odd normalcy and smiles that only bring a little bit of guilt, the night drags. It buries you, until your lungs are stuffed and you’re sure you’re never going to see the morning again.

If you don’t have a lead, you spend the sleepless hours trying to practice. You coax a spring to shoot out of the ground, you ask an old bush to light itself on fire, you convince a river it would be better flowing north. You’re getting stronger. More comfortable, in being everything. It doesn’t hurt, when it’s not against your will. The soreness that lingers in your body after gets smaller and smaller every night, and you find yourself getting bigger and bigger.

You still don’t understand most of what you can do, but no one does. So you just test the limits, and find that the boundary is further past your fingertips than you could’ve possibly dreamt.

It’s a good distraction, until it’s not. Until you remember why you’re not letting the Silver go dormant again. Until you push a little too hard and the Spiderweb flares like the core of the Sun, rocking from the force of a solar storm.

You let yourself be weak. You spent so long in self-pity, so long trying to be small and fragile. Small and fragile things don’t survive in the wild. Small and fragile things get put in cages, and it doesn’t matter what kind of light they’re made of. They don’t have enough of themselves to break free.

Stand tall.

You are.

But it took falling, to learn how. And it cost you Dean, and now you sit on the curb of a packed street in India, surrounded by hundreds of people. Entirety alone.

The darkness doesn’t swallow you anymore, but the brighter you let yourself get, the longer the shadows become. The pain grows like a bacterial infection, finding every place it can settle and overtaking your view of the world. The guilt becomes acidic. The sorrow you didn’t let Claire see presses back up like magma, demanding and burning in your lungs. You wander the streets for somewhere that’s louder than your head, but even the most crowded bar can’t compare.

A million songs, a million men, and million unwanted touches as people shoulder past you or trying to take the empty spot next to you. None of them are Dean, so all of them are wrong. One bold drunk tries to follow you out to the street, and you cover your ears, crouching in the gutter and begging the darkness to swallow you whole.

It doesn’t. It swallows him, and spits him back out when you ask it to. He stares at you with a gaunt, sober face. You smile and know it’s nothing but a manic, crude mask. You leave him on the ground, and keep wandering for that cove you know you won’t find.

It won’t even exist, until you get Dean back. And that just makes the pain bigger. You really don’t know where to put it, when there’s nothing to distract you. It’s just you, and the pain, and everything else in the dark. Rain might fall for you. The wind might pick up, to howl for your grief. The colors dull themselves, and the golden lights glow until the marks of Dean on your body seem to glow brighter than the stars. But that’s still all just fucking pain.

There isn’t a thing you wouldn’t do, just to feel it a little less.

A year ago, you would’ve taken you knife to the soft, unblemished parts of your skin. A punishment for daring to, even in the smallest of ways, be clean. But if Dean comes back and sees new scars, he’s going to have questions, and then you’ll have to answer them, and he’ll make that mournful, adoring face, and you’ll feel all the guilt just slamming back into you like a freight train. So you find other options.

You steal a bottle from one of the crowded bars. You drink until you can’t tell were you stop and the infinite waterfall of stars begins. You wander the streets and smile at the birds. You trip over loose pebbles and they unfurl into silver butterflies that blend into the night sky. You crouch, back on the curb, the bottle tight in your hand, and you whistle until your slow, haunted song is being sung back by every bird in the city.

You smile at nothing, tears streaming down your cheeks. You pour the rest of the bottle out in the gutter, and hope that wherever Dean is, he gets to be drunk too.

Somewhere in your addled brain, you figure out that you’re in no state to go back to the room. You stumble wherever the wind carries you, and find yourself at the motel pool, your feet dangling in the water and the blue, neon light dancing on your bare thighs and hands.

And you know you’ve been here before. And you know you’re going to be here again.

You sit at the edge of the pool, watching the light swim in the water before. It’s beautiful. That irreplicable chlorine blue, vibrant and glowing on your skin in the dark. Quiet wind blows over the marshes behind you. You breathe through your nose and smooth out your tennis skirt. You remember this one. In about five to six hours, it’s going to be coated in blood, and Bobby’s going to burn it in his backyard.

It’s a shame. You really liked it.

You feel him before you see him. The world shifts a little Golden. Warm fingers trace your arms, then your wrist. A thick thigh pressing against yours, and a hand slowly drags up, splaying over your lower back. Chapped lips press to your temple, and you lean your head on his shoulder, letting your eyes drift shut.

“You remember this?” Dean asks quietly, and you hum.

“Of course I do.”

He swallows, loud enough for you to hear. You turn your face into his neck, and he pulls you a little closer. There isn’t a space between your bodies that you leave untended. Your arms wrap around his torso, and his mouth rests on the top of your head. His breathing is slow. Steady. His heart pounds in that way you memorized, before you even let yourself admit that you needed him. You used to press your fingers together until you could feel your own heartbeat, and you’d try to pretend it was Dean. You must’ve gotten good at it. This almost sounds real.

“You were so pissed at me,” he murmurs, and you roll your eyes.

“You called me a spoiled brat.”

“Well- In my defense, sweetheart, I really thought you were.”

You lean back to glare at him, and he catches your chin with a knowing smirk. His thumb drags over your lower lip, and you pout, trying to make your glower the savage, blinding one that lends you that title of Whore Beast. Instead you think you might just be mimicking a bunny. Dean taps your nose, and it scrunches. His smile widens, and you try to hide your face back in his body. He doesn’t let you, holding your chin with a firm but gentle grip.

“Mighta been right,” he teases, light dancing over every word. “Look at you.” He flicks your nose again. “Spoiled brat.”

Your glare doesn’t seem to be focused enough to block out the building eruption from every part of you that matters. It’s made of longing and love and an inability to ever really be mad at him. Not when he says ‘brat’ the same way he says ‘baby’ and ‘princess’. Like there isn’t a thing he could think of, that wouldn’t be endearing. Like there aren’t any words that capture whatever he thinks of you, so he just settles for calling you like a lighthouse, shining only to guide one ship back to shore.

“I am not spoiled,” your voice is breathless, and Dean chuckles, leaning just close enough for you to feel the heat of his lips.

“Guess I gotta step up my game, sweetheart,” he holds your gaze, and your flush might be enough to set this misty, scared little world on fire. “You’re supposed to be so spoiled you can’t even remember what it feels like to want.”

You flatten a hand on his chest for balance. Your lips part, and Dean leans a little closer, his fingers curling on your hip. You take a ragged breath, and his nostrils flare.

And you remember what it feels like to want. You remember it so clearly, because it’s still reflected behind you, fading on the horizon, stretching so long you don’t know how you ever got to the other side. You remember wanting so bad it was cannibalizing, wanting so bad you lost sleep, lost sight, lost balance. You did nothing but want, did nothing but memorize the landscape of a world you were sure you’d never be allowed to step a single, dreadened foot upon.  You wanted so bad you sat on the alter, begging to be a sacrifice he’d use to find himself someone he deserved.

And you remember him walking up to you at that alter, pushing you so carefully down, and using his body to pin you there. To keep you with him, whispering something too close to a vow against your skin, moving the marker of what was holy. The alter was only stone. You and Dean, upon it, where the only things that mattered in the world.

Dean’s brow has furrowed. He’s scanning over your features with worry, his murmur of your name soft. You wrap your arms around his neck and climb into his lap, and he holds you steady with a light, revertant touch. It seems to wash like steam over his whole body. It’s in the way his shoulders relax, in his eyes, gleaming with a pooling adoration, and in the soft, awestruck downturn of his lips. You used to think he only looked at you like this in your dreams. You’ve long learned that if there’s one thing you can never trust, it’s the reflection staring back at you, even only an echo of it on another person’s face.

“I was so mad at you,” you remind him, and his throat bobs.

“I know,” he rasps. “Said that. I think.”

You nod, pressing further forward. “I thought you hated me,” you whisper, and he shakes his head.

“Never. Never hated you, I- Hell, I tried, but-“ He swallows, a desperate edge creeping over his voice. “Couldn’t. Never could. Never did.”

You hum, looking down to your fingers. You trace his collarbone, and you could swear he shivers. “I hated you,” you mumble, and his hands twitch.

“Yeah?”

You nod, and Dean takes a ragged breath.

“When’d you-“

“When you left me,” you look at him under your lashes, and he seems afraid to move. “When you died, and you- You didn’t let me say goodbye.”

“Didn’t wanna hurt you,” he defends, but it’s weak. You just stare at him, combing through the stubble on his jaw. It’s getting longer. You haven’t seen in him in this kind of tight tee-shirt in so long, you forgot how thin they were. How they clung to his arms, how you could see every breath, even the stumbling, unsure ones. That, combined with the thickening, borderline beard he has in your dreams, it’s enough to make you fall for him all over again.

The first time you were here, he had a baby face and a smile that was only smaller than his heart. He slouched more, and never seemed willing to grab you with tighter hands than you held him. You wonder what kind of handprints he would’ve left, if you told him to hold on however he wanted. You think it would be closer to something like now.

You think that if you met Dean with this shirt and those eyes and these calloused hands, you might’ve fallen lower than your knees. You might’ve crashed into him so fast that neither of you would’ve had the time to even consider pulling away.

When he gets home, you’re hiding his razor and dragging him to the mall. He’s earned it. You’ve earned it. He’s too pretty, to bury under layers of ugly lumberjack clothing.

“Do you hate me know?” Dean asks, and you can hear it in the rare crack in his tone. His fear of the answer.

You thought he would’ve known better, from being nothing but a bought of madness, woven together from a love that spreads like a flood across everything you’ve ever known.

“No,” you breathe. “I- I was never good enough at it anyways.”

Dean’s mouth twitches up. He lets out a broken laugh of relief, cradling the back of your head. “Well, I guess we’re made for each other, huh?”

You nod, because there’s nothing else you could possibly be made for. You could cure the world of yourself, of other disease, of the devil and God in one fell swoop or scream. You could walk through the gates of Heaven, you could raze the castle of Hell, take all that promised world and rule over it the way God wants you to. Even without Dean, you’d still be doing it for some kind of love.

There is much, much more you can do than love Dean. But there is no world where you want to do everything, and not have Dean at your side. You have long decided that greatness does not negate your love for him. Your love for him only allows you to be greater.

Dean kisses you, and you press over him with everything you have. He’ll be home soon.

You both tumble into the water, as fast as you’ve always fallen together, and you don’t let go of him until the dream slips away.

Jo woke you up with a glass of water in the face. You told her that wasn’t necessary. She said it was, because you were crying in your sleep. You check the motel mirror before you go, and scowl, because she was right. There are tear stains on your cheeks, and a bloodshot ring around your pupils. You fix it, and ignore her smug look. There’s a job to do. Steps to be taken, that might be forward, or backward, or nothing but a standing march in place.

The fun part is finding out.

“This is- So fuckin’ cold-“ Jo hugs herself tight, bundled in about five jackets and poofy shoes that make her walk like a penguin. “How the hell ain’t you cold?”

You shrug, kneeling in the snow and brushing flakes off your shorts. It was like this at the other Vortex point too. You’d gotten to the top of the mountain in Brazil, and all the jungle heat had just felt like… nothing. Like you were floating through a perfectly regulated room.

“I’m gonna die,” Jo mutters to herself, rocking back and forth on her feet. “I’m gonna die, just ‘cause Dean had to stab a dick, I’m gonna die-“

“Stop saying you’re gonna die,” you tell her flatly, scooping away the piles of snow. “You’re not gonna die.”

“Yes, I am-“

“With that attitude, maybe.”

She glares, hard enough it prickles on the back of your neck. You sigh and sit back, giving her a pointed, expectant look.

“You know, the faster we do this, the faster we go back.”

Jo pauses. She looks out over the mountain—mostly just gray shadows in an infinite sea of white—and her nose wrinkles. You go back to scooping and sorting through your bag, waiting for her to catch up. She huffs. You hum to yourself, pulling out your knife and digging it into the spot you want.

There’s a loud scoff, and the snow shifts as Jo waddles over to your side. You smile at her, and she sticks out her tongue, before quickly pulling it back in with a wince.

“What’re we doin’?” She squints at your knife, and you grab her mittened hand, guiding it around the hilt.

“You’re hold that there,” you say, moving to your feet. “And I’m getting rid of the snow.”

“Alright,” Jo nods, then looks up with wide eyes. “You’re- What-“

“Shh,” you snap, and she snaps her jaw shut, looking from you to the falling snow like you’re crazy.

And you are. But you’re also getting better at it.

You stretch your arms, plant your feet, and close your eyes. You’re the snow. You’re the snow, falling from the sky without care for where it’s going, know only that it is will either find more of its kind and they will survive together in long, strong banks, or it will land somewhere hostile, and die alone. It goes with the wind, because it doesn’t have much of a choice. Not a single snowflake has ever even thought that there might be another way.

So when you offer it, every single one of them falters. Jo gasps softly behind you, and when you try to glare at her, you realize why.

The snow didn’t just stop in your head. Every single flake is suspended in the air, glowing like diamonds over the endless mountains. Rays of sun split through the thick clouds, and the light fractures in a million colors, giving the world an impression that it’s been trapped in a prism. Your hands fall slightly, stunned by the never-ending rainbow, the glory of a world that only carries one kind of life, getting to remember what it hasn’t been allowed to see in countless years. The snow doesn’t move. It just hangs there, clinging to your every breath, waiting for you to tell it what to do.

Jo covers her mouth with her hand, and you take a slow, concentrated breath. You press your hands out, and ask the snow to move, just from here, just for a little while.

There’s a flurry of white. The cold bites your skin for a half second, and you have to cover your eyes. But when you look again, you see it.

The snow is gone. It’s piled up on the edge of the cliffs and flown to other mountains, scattering across the land to grant you access to what you knew you’d find.

The stone courtyard is wide. The columns are tall and the statues of everything from monkeys to lions to tigers are finely detailed with gold. You look at Jo, still crouched on the ground, holding your knife like a life raft. She doesn’t seem sure where to look, and you understand. The temple is massive. A feat of architecture, at this elevation, built likely longer ago than either of you can imagine. You turn in a slow circle, and it would steal your breath if you weren’t so focused on it.

That small, pulsing pull, just to the right of your heart. It’s magnetic, but completely still. You press your hand flat on your chest, almost trying to pull it out, and it gets a little stronger. The Spiderweb sparks in return, and you know. That’s your Dean.

You close your eyes, trying to follow the thin, static thread that powers it like a cable. You tug a little too hard, and everything vibrates and turns to colors and a rush of gold and purple and green and blue and silver. You loosen too much, and it starts to slip through your fingers like fine sand. You kneel down, bowing your head and just trying to feel it.

Just feel it, Princess.

You’re trying. But all you can make out is his voice. Deep and rough in a way you haven’t heard in a while. Scraping at the edge of every word, like he’s hasn’t been drinking water. Croaking in his throat like he’s been shouting. He sounds tired, and it makes your heart flip.

Yet still, you can’t make out a single fucking word.

You try. You try so hard, and Dean’s voice gets so loud you reach back, some instinctive, foolish part of you thinking he’s going to be right behind you. He’s in your ear, saying words that you can’t understand, that you can’t even begin to unscramble, because it seems to be really nothing but noise. You start to pant, scraping at the ground and doubling over. Jo breathes out your name, and you shake your head.

You can hear him. He’s out there, he’s alive, he’s praying to you so why can’t you fucking hear him, you should be able to hear him-

He says your name. It’s clearer than all the snow on the mountains, and your eyes shoot open. You let out a strangled sound, and he says your name again.

“Love you,” Dean rasps, and you can almost feel his breath on the back of your neck.

And you scream.

You scream so loud lightning cleaves through the mountains behind you, righteous and desperate to break something the same way you’re broken. You scream until you can’t hear the wind or the snowfall or Jo calling your name. You can only hear Dean. I love you, baby. Baby, I love you, easy, baby, I love you. It echoes around the valleys. Your head hurts so much you think it’s going to split open like a geode. Your back hurts like the sky itself is pressing down, but you’ve never had the resolve of an Atlas. You’ve never had the strength. Jo grabs you. You hold her back, trying to keep your feet on the ground.

The whole world becomes a blur of color and light and Dean’s voice, and then there’s just… Silence.

The hum of a fan. The rustle of sheets and eerp of Indy, romping across the small room as you fall to your knees. Claire says something you can’t hear, and Jo pulls her away. You hug yourself, trying to hold onto just a little bit of it. That kernel of Dean, already melting back into the Spiderweb with the rain, a heavy downpour on the roof, blowing in through the window, turning to something it didn’t think it could be. Something that doesn’t thaw, but flows through every bit of life, in the woods, the streets, the sewers and out into the ocean.

Jo takes Claire out. She says it’s for food. You know it’s so you can be alone, and you’ll thank her for it, when you can feel anything outside of yourself. You don’t want Claire around you like this. Dean would’ve done the same thing.

And he’s out there. You scratch at your chest and wrap a hand around your throat to calm down, but repeat it over and over until it’s embedded in your head. He’s alive. Dean’s alive. He’s out there, and alive.

The Lady curls in your lap, and Indy noses at your hand until you scratch her ears. Even Sparky darts over to sit on your head, pecking at your head until you offer in a finger, and move him to perch on your shoulder. Slowly, just like always, you come down.

He’s out there. Alive. Tired, but still able to speak. Still bothering to think of you.

Your gaze drifts to the box. Innocuous, peeking out from the folds of your bag. He wanted you to have it. He probably thinks you’ve already opened it.

I love you.

You crawl slowly across the ground and pull it out. The Lady and Indy poke at it, the Lady quickly losing interest and jumping on the bed, Indy seeming to recognize it as something of Dean’s and letting out a loud whine. You pat her head, settling against the foot of the bed, toying with the latch until it just… unclicks.

And you don’t know what you expected. A knife. A ring. A nice perfume, or more lingerie. Something important. Something worth giving you, then asking you not to open in front of him. You’d formed a curious mental list, of what that could possibly be.

You never once considered a pile of paper.

You frown. The box is overflowing with loose paper after loose paper, all of them covered in Dean’s blocky, uncoordinated scrawl. Sam used to say he had the handwriting of a fourth grader, and you’d smack Sam upside the head, because the little fucker didn’t teach himself the alphabet.

You miss him too. It’s smaller than that chasm of Dean that’s split through your spinal cord, but that’s a unique kind of pain. Sam alone is enough that you keep picking up the phone to ask him a question, before remembering he won’t pick up. If you asked Sam about these papers, he’d tell you to read them. He’d probably take one and just start reading it himself. At his invisible direction, you take the one off the very top. It’s crumpled. Almost a year old, if the date—April 17th, 2011—is correct.

It’s addressed to you.

Princess, 

Come home. 

You blink, the paper crinkling under your fingers. April 2011 you were in Heaven with Cas. And Dean-

Dean was writing this. For you.

I know that I’ve spent the last few months pissed at you. I know I wrote about twenty damn letters about it. A deep breath. Your biting your tongue enough to sting. And I know you’re gonna read them and only think that I hate you, but I don’t. Never did. Never could. 

You love something, you want it to be better. Heard that on TV, once. Might’ve been on the radio. Shit, maybe Sammy or you said it. But it’s the truth, baby. I love you, and I want you to be better. Not you, but you. I want you to be okay, and you aren’t okay. Not when you’re making crazy decisions like you think no one’s going to care if you go off the deep end. I care. Bobby cares. Sammy cares. And it goddamn kills me, that you think we don’t. So I need you to be okay.

I love you.

You close your eyes. It takes a moment to remember how to breathe. A moment to rub your eyes and collect yourself, so that the words don’t just float off the page.

You fucking killed me again, and I still love you. I’ve been trying to tell you. You never goddamn listen. You’re too smart for your own good, sweetheart. Can talk yourself into anything, and I- 

i think i feel you, sometimes. think i felt you now. its insane, but i feel you. the air smells more like you, and i can hear something that dont got words, but it sounds lie like you. and i know thats freaking batshit, but stranger things, right? you feel like an angel. you feel like everything good. and i wish you could understand that. sammy says you dont know. you gotta know. i wish i knew how to tell you. i wish that you’d believe me, when i did. 

i can show you. i know people can say things all they want and you dont believe them. got that spelled out for me, when it took me pinning you to a wall for you to realize maybe i wanted to fuck you. so ill keep doing it like that. ill help rowena get those souls out of you. ill kill eve for you. i wont let you pull that shit again, cause im about to make it real clear that i love you, and you can think nothing about me all you want (you probably should) but nothing you say is gonna make me love you less. i let you boss me around about a lot, princess. youre not getting the upper hand on this. you break my heart, you either stitch it back up like my hands or leave it like that till i die. but no one else is touching it. so deal with that. 

Not much for life updates. Had to tie Sammy’s shoes yesterday, cause he keeps falling over whenever he does them. Been taking Claire out to shoot bottles, she’s getting pretty good. Rowena ate dinner with us, which was weird, because I didn’t even know she ate. I don’t think she sleeps. I know she doesn’t cause I’m not either. 

I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. 

Yours, DAW  

The world can’t be spinning. Your heart can’t still be beating. The edge of the paper crinkles too loud, and you drop it, terrified you broke it. Just as fast as you let it go, you pick it up. You read it again. A third time. You can hear him behind you, like at the mountain. You never goddamn listen. He thinks you might hate him. Never did. Never could. I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. It’sso clear it presses on your nose, it burns in your chest, it rattles something so deep inside you the whole world seems to tilt. But not off axis.

Something flips, and you feel sick, but your feet are beneath you in a way they haven’t been maybe your whole life. Like your neck was snapped, but it just righted a part of your spine that had been wrong. Everything was upside down.

You read it until you’ve memorized it. You count the I love yous—all seven of them—like a squirrel stocking for winter.  

Then you remember the rest of the box. Not a box of paper.

A box of letters. A supply of them, enough that he barely seemed to be able to fit them all.

You fumble with the one in your hand, dropping it back at the top and pulling out the one beneath it. April 16th. You don’t read it yet, checking the one before that. April 15th. One for each day. Back through March, February, January, December. You dig all the way to the bottom, trying so hard to move fast and not rip a single page. The very first one is shorter. Dated February 21st, 2010. A little less than month after you and Sam fell in the cage, and stained with something that smells like beer.

Princess,

I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to spell things wrong. You’ll know what I’m saying. You usually do. One time I said boom and meant Molotov, but you got it. Sammy said I was the luckiest asshole alive, because he would’ve just made me go to bed with how much I was drinking.

I’m drinking more now. 

Youd be pissed.

I miss you.

This is shit. I’ll try again in the morning.

I love you

DAW.

Eight. Eight I love yous. Twelve, if you count the ones he said to your face. Twelve drops of love that hit you like a tsunami, that shake your world like falling stars. You hold it to your chest and close your eyes, tears burning over your face. You smear them like warpaint, before looking at February 22nd. He spells everything wrong, and you laugh because you can almost see his pretty face, scrunched in concentration. He doesn’t say he loves you in this one, just he says he needs you, and that’s more than enough. You grab February 23rd, and he talks about needing you to come home, and Bobby hating him for letting you jump in, and drinking rubbing alcohol—god, you hope he didn’t—before signing off.

I’ll be back tomorrow. 

Wait for me. 

I’m sorry. 

DAW.

You can’t keep reading. You can’t even see through the tears. You clutch the letters to your face, hyperventilating and shaking and feeling it. It’s so easy it makes you furious you didn’t let yourself have it sooner, and that just makes you cry harder, and soon your throat is too closed up and your nose is stuffed and your whole body has this bone deep exhaustion that can only let you sit there and feel it. All of it, unrelenting and permanent and inevitable, the same ways as yours.

Just through the scraps of paper in your hands, you can feel Dean’s love.

But you can’t say it back. You can’t have it without worrying it’s going to be taken away. You can’t just have a good thing and cherish and worship it, without looking out the window and waiting for the sky to warn you. For it to try and take it away. You can only bathe in it and fight for it and scream for it until you run out of breathe in a world where the air changes direction, just to blow your way.

And you’re glad you didn’t let the Leviathans kill God.

But you.

You can’t fucking wait to do it yourself.

Sam and Dean were celebrities. The icky, dramatic kind, that got their faces plastered on tabloids and everyone loved to hate. Dean had always thought everyone was exaggerating about it, but there was no way to ignore the truth. Not now. When it was punching him in the face.

There wasn’t a single monster in Purgatory that didn’t know the Winchesters. They had some nicknames. Some legends and rumors. Sammy got the good end of the stick.

“Beware the Younger,” Dean read off the tablet, smirking at the carved words. “Taller than the trees, colder than the winter. Demon boy- They’re all really hung up on the demon thing, huh?”

Across the firepit, Sammy sighed. “I did start the apocalypse,” he muttered, and Dean shrugged.

“Yeah, but who hasn’t. Don’t get a big head, Sammy, it’s gonna fall off your titan body.”

He laughed, and Sam made a face. “Come on, Dean, there’s no way it says that-

“Demon boy, head bigger than his heart, titan body that cuts through the world. Tower on the sunrise, never let him know your name, never let him know your game- Oh, they’re rhyming now- Never tell him where you come from or go, never make a deal you don’t plan to break.” Dean’s nose scrunched. “Dude, you sound like Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Shut up,” Sam muttered, looking around the dark woods. “What about you? Little burger man, head of ass?”

“Haha,” Dean flipped him off, squinting down the tablet. “Handsome Winchester, cooler Winchester, just surrender right now ‘cause he’s gonna kick your ass-“

“Gimme that.” Sam snatched the tablet out of Dean’s hand, and Dean laughed, letting it echo through the forest.

Sammy had warded the perimeter. They should be set for at least five hours. Enough to eat, breathe, sleep, patch up. And if something was determined enough to break through, they were already prowling past the wood line. Dean letting himself get a rare laugh wasn’t gonna change a thing.

“Fear the Elder,” Sam read and Dean leaned forward with a smirk. “Moving like the Mountains and unforgiving, blood on his hands and gold in his teeth. Silver tongue, red heart, beating louder than the sun. Never falters. Never turns around. No path he can’t tread. Man of God, Killer of God, End of the line, more vengeful than the most foul beast. Do not take what is his. Do not make his smile fall.”

Dean shrugged, a half-satisfied press to his lips. “Hey, y’know- Could be worse. I sound pretty freakin’ cool, you just sound like a knockoff bigfoot-“

“And never spill Winchester blood,” Sam said, his face falling, grim and pained. “Where the Whore will be able to smell it.”

Dean’s jaw locked. Sam glanced up, heavy, apologetic regret all over his puppy-dog face. Dean stretched at hand, beckoning Sam to pass it back over. He did, slowly, like he already kind of wanted to take it back.

“We don’t need to worry about this, it’s- She’s not here-“

“Do not think of the Whore,” Dean muttered, and Sam fell quiet. “If you need think of her, you are already dead.”

Dean swallowed, and he wanted to break this damn tablet in half. Sam bowed his head, watching Dean carefully, speaking like he was trying to talk down a damn jumper.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Dean,” he muttered. “And- I mean, that’s a warning, not a call to battle.”

Dean grunted and dropped the tablet on the ground. He knew She wasn’t in any danger of a monster taking her out. Not like Sam and Dean were.

But She wasn’t alright.

Dean didn’t know how long he and Sammy had been stuck here. Time moves differently in these places, and Purgatory nights seemed to crawl twice as long as the days. They’d touched down a lifetime ago, figured out that they were pretty much screwed, and never had a second to tally up the weeks since.

They’d made an agreement. No giving up. Not on each other. Not on getting back home. They’d either stay alive long enough for someone topside to yank them out, or figure out a way home themselves. Dean thought She and Cas might work it out in the first month, until She told him that she hadn’t spoken to Cas since some big fight after Michigan. Dean should’ve seen that one coming. He loved Her to death and past it, but she’d never exactly been open to people telling her what to do, or stopping her, or getting in her way. Cas had—under Dean’s instruction—done all three.

He’d tried to soft pitch the idea that maybe Cas had just been listening to Dean, and it was more his fault that he’d landed his ass in Purgatory. She hadn’t given Dean the impression that she listened.

But She could figure this out herself. Weird stuff was her specialty, and there wasn’t much weirder than being trapped in Purgatory. Dean tried to give Her all the help he could, from the other side. There wasn’t much. He didn’t know anything about any of this, and She didn’t think he was real.

He’d thought about telling Her. He thought about it until his head hurt. He opened his mouth and choked on the words. He got a half-confession out, then looked at her a little too long and lost his voice. She might not believe him. She didn’t seem to, whenever he got too close to the truth.

A few nights ago, he’d written out this whole damn speech. Sammy had been knocked out, Dean had been on watch duty, and he’d used his makeshift knife to scratch the words in the dirt. He’d look up at rustles in the woods, or one of Sam’s bigger sleep-snorts, but that was it. He was going out next. He’d see Her, and she wouldn’t know she was seeing him, and it was one of those things Dean knew was going to bite him in the ass about, if he didn’t deal with it soon.

It’s me, Princess. Really me. Real me, Dean. Your Dean. Not a dream Dean- He’d laughed to himself, then groaned.

There was no good way to do it. The more he thought about it, the worse it got. This wasn’t a monster of his own making, it was an infection he’d already let sit too long. It was already a big if, whether or not she’d believe him. There wasn’t much he could say to prove it, when she thought he was just a figment of her imagination. If he told Her something about herself, she’d know it. If he said something about himself, She’d think he was making it up, and he’d have no way to convince her otherwise. She’d think it was too good, too easy to be true. Dean would’ve thought the same thing two years ago. Before Death. Before soulmates.

And if he got her to listen, there wasn’t an explanation that wouldn’t end there. Soulmates.

Dean had sort of dug himself a very big, very deep grave with this one. He kinda wanted to tell Sammy, just to give the kid a good laugh at his expense.

He only had two ways through this one. He said soulmates, and She didn’t believe him—pretty likely, as even if it made perfect sense, if there was one thing his girl had always been good at doing it was talking circles around herself until she believed up was right and left was down—and she didn’t believe the dreams were real, and Dean got stranded in the grave. He’d prove it when he got home, and She’d blame herself for not listening, and have a pretty big freakout, and then calm down and kill Dean for keeping that from her for a whole year.

Or he said soulmates, and She believed him, and she dragged him out of Purgatory by his ear just to kill him. For keeping that from her. For a whole damn year.

He’d groaned and kicked dirt of his speech, dropping his face into his hands. He was screwed. He was so fucking screwed, he might as well start figuring out how he wanted to decorate the doghouse.

And he knew making it, that this wasn’t going to be his best call, but he didn’t have many others to choose from.

He wouldn’t tell Her. It wouldn’t work. She didn’t trust Her own head, enough for Dean to talk her into it. And with everything She’d told him, there was more than enough for her to worry about. If he told Her, the small sanctuaries of their dreams would just turn into another place for her to freak out. She’d ask him to relay theories to Sam, and demand to see all his injuries, babying and smacking him at the same time when he told her how he and Sammy had dealt with the latest rush of vamps.

Dean knew it could be called selfish. He didn’t care. Not for this. Not when the dreams were all he goddamn had.

If you need think of her, you are already dead.

Dean almost snorted. He did nothing but think of Her, and he felt kinda dead. He and Sammy were both just cutting their way through the motions, mechanical and unwavering until they came out the other side.  

“You made any progress on that map thingy?” He muttered, and Sammy sighed.

“No, not really. I- I don’t know, Dean, how useful is it even gonna be-“

Dean cut him off with Her name. “She’ll wanna see it. You two can geek out about rivers or whatever, soon as we’re out.”

Sam’s mouth twitched, doubtful and quiet. His eyes dropped to the dirt, Dean leaned forward on his log, making his voice firm.

“Sammy, don’t make the freakin’- grieving wife face-“

“Why not?” Sam snapped, but it wasn’t forceful. It was just… tired.

They were both so damn tired.

“I mean, what the are we even doing, Dean? Wandering around, hoping we don’t die in the morning? We don’t even have a clue where to start, where this ends-“ Sam waved a hand, his voice raising. “All I do is try not to lose it and shoot you by accident, and all you do is make- Make stupid jokes and pray before bed! You, Dean, you’re praying.” Sam scoffed. “I’d think you were a shifter if we didn’t test each other every freakin’ day. I mean, who are you even pray to. Who’s going to care?”

Sam’s shout lingered in the air. He let out a heaving, long breath—Dean had a feeling he’d been holding it in for a while—and slumped back down. Dean stared at the fire, at the long shadows, flickering in the dark.

Sammy wasn’t wrong. He had been praying. Every night during his watch, every day when he stopped to take a piss, he was about three Hail Mary’s away from calling himself an altar boy.

But he couldn’t think of another damn thing to do.

He said Her name, slow and hallowed. The most important word in the world. He could swear that, in the starless Purgatory sky, something glowed past the dark.

Sammy looked up with a frown, and Dean swallowed, repeating Her name, a little louder this time.

“I’ve been prayin’ to her. Every night.” He shook his head. “And- I know it ain’t doing much, but- Hell, Sammy, I can’t stop. It’s gotta get help her, right? I tell her where we are, I tell her what we’re seeing, everything. That’ll help.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said softly. “I mean, why would she even be hearing it? I know- In Heaven- But this isn’t Heaven. Cas can’t hear our prayers down here-“

“She isn’t Cas.” Dean muttered. “It’s- It’s different-“

“No, I- I know, Dean, but- She doesn’t exactly take prayers, dude-“

“She takes them from me.”

Sam fell silent. Dean sighed, staring at his hands. Caked in mud. Cold and clasped together. He felt goddamn sick.

“We’re- Me and her-“ The words just wouldn’t come out. Not without Dean twisting them. “We got a soul-bond.”

“A soul-bond?”

Dean grunted an agreement, and Sam stared at him.

“What- What the hell does that even mean-“

“Means what it means,” Dean snapped. “Means she should be able to hear it, when I’m the one praying. But- I don’t know, Sammy. Some kinda wire must be getting crossed, ‘cause I don’t think it’s working.”

They were silent for a moment. Dean glanced up, only to find Sam still frowning at him. There was that far-off look on his face, though. Like he was more in his head than out there with the rest of the world. Dean leaned into his vision, waving for attention, and Sammy blinked.

“Huh?”

“Nothin’, just- Earth to Sammy,” Dean narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing the nerd eyes about.”

“The-“ Sam sighed. “I told you not to call it that-“

“I’ll call it what I want,” Dean shrugged. “What’s up.”

“It’s- I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing,” Sam said it all small, and Dean knew it wasn’t nothing.

“Sam…” He warned, and Sam caved quick.

“Just- What if- And I’m not saying this is it, but-“ Sam glanced up, then back to Dean, dropping his voice. “We’re in a weird spot. And I know he doesn’t stand much against her or whatever, but- He can pretty easily mess with you, Dean. No offense.”

Dean scowled. “How am I not supposed to take offense to that-“

“Because it’s God,” Sammy hissed. “And you’re like- A dude.”

“A dude who stole his wife,” Dean muttered under his breath, and Sammy rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, dude. That’s my point. Maybe he’s not super happy about that, and he’s… I don’t know, messing with the prayer signal.” Sam’s throat bobbed, his voice getting tight. “And she… She just can’t hear you at all.”

And a critical, cardiac thing in Dean plunged. His lungs faltered like they’d collapsed, and his heart slowed to a titanic pace, and his jaw tightened so much he knew that—if She was here—She’d grab it and pry it open and yell at him about grinding his teeth.

She had to have been hearing. She had to know he was in Purgatory, that he was looking for a way back to Her, that he loved Her. God was a son of a bitch, but he owed Dean that much. Dean had saved his damn life. He’d given everything—mostly for Her, but God sure was reaping the benefits—and the bastard didn’t get to just swoop in. To take Her away from Dean, when She needed him.

If She hadn’t been hearing him, She- She might think he was dead.

Sam said Dean’s name, worried and tense. Dean waved him off. He didn’t want to talk about this. Not now. Not when he could feel parts of the ground crumbling, and he couldn’t afford to lose his footing.

“I’m getting’ my two,” he grunted, moving down to his back. “Wake me up to trade watch.”

Sam sighed and gave him that sad, pitiful look again, but he knew better than to argue. They could go to bat about strategy, about next moves, about food or camp or any other damn thing, and they’d work it out. It was the closest to the team Dad had trained them to be, for better or worse.

But Dean wasn’t gonna talk about Her. Not in any way that might turn to a fight.

He twisted so his back was to Sammy, closed his eyes, and counted himself luckier than most. At least he still got a part of her, even if it was going to vanish from his fingers by morning.

If you can hear me, he prayed. And Christ, I hope you can, I’m coming home, sweetheart. I swear I’m coming home. I’ll hold on if you hold on. Fuck, I’ll hold on for both of us. Just don’t give up on me. Dean squeezed his eyes tighter, fighting off the burn. I love you. All the way down, remember. You and me. Just you and me.

And all Dean heard in response was the howl of the wind, high above his head, untouchable, untamable, and wild in the dark.

Dean didn’t count the money on the table. He remembered exactly how much there had been. He remembered exactly how long it had lasted, before he’d needed to make some difficult calls. He turned over a few bills in his hands, and wondered if there had been another way. One where he’d stretched everything thinner, while keeping Sammy in one piece. There wasn’t going to be any avoiding the rougher parts. There never was. You didn’t get outta the mountains without crawling through the caves. But if he’d been a little smarter, maybe the would’ve come out with a few less bruises, or he could’ve taken more bullets.

“What’s the money for?” She murmured, and Dean wrapped his arm around Her shoulders, pulling her almost fully into his lap.

“Nothing,” he lied easily. She didn’t have to worry about it. Dean knew She was probably doing enough of that already. “You have a good day, Princess?”

She shook Her head, her lips pursed into a swollen little line, her whole face crestfallen and her body shaking like a damn toy poodle. She climbed over him, legs hooking around his waist and head bowing. Dean knew Her well. He cradled the back of Her head and kissed her brow, frowning against the warm skin.

“Fight with Jo?” He asked quietly, and got no answer. “You talk to Cas-“

“No,” She mumbled, and Dean sighed.

He left Her cling to him. She almost burrowed Her face into his neck, and when Dean spread his fingers on her lower back and pushed Her closer, she let out a soft, sweet little noise and eased fully into his arms. It filled Dean with a strange, warped kind of pride. He was caring for Her. She was letting herself relax, and he was willing to bet a real cut of money that she hadn’t stopped moving since he and Sammy had vanished.

A few days after this night at the table, he’d be out with Sammy at the park, and the kid would ask him about girls. What was ‘up’  with them, how he was supposed to talk to them, why Dad didn’t like either of them hanging around them too long. Dean could chalk up a lot of Sammy’s lapses in charm to Dad giving him the impression that the prettier the girl was, the more likely she was to be venomous or something.

And Dean had done his best to combat that, but he’d been a bit of an idiot. He hadn’t met Her yet. He hadn’t known how good the world could get, when you had something so beautiful it caught all the light and cast it around her, like a diamond that melted into water, a river that swept Dean away to a kind of paradise he should’ve known better than to fight.

He’d told Sammy then that women were like dogs. He’d barely been thirteen. He’d been failing most of his classes, scraping by with hands covered in things a boy’s hands should never know, and he’d been trying to get big enough to match Dad’s shadow. Dad said women were like dogs. All different kinds of them, loud or quiet, loyal or violent, lazy or constantly running around for attention. They brought you joy, but they were just damn dogs. Nothing you wouldn’t do for yours. No real, logical need  for them outside of a companion.

Sammy had been doubtful. He’d always been smarter than Dean anyway.

But Dean knew better now. He needed Her, just for the damn logical reason of a third, better opinion than he and Sammy were going to offer. He needed Her to swoop in like of God from the Machine and save their asses, and he need to feel Her outside of these dreams. He needed Her to be okay. It was better than nothing, that he could take this wolf of a woman and turn her into a snuggling koala, but She didn’t think it was real. And Dean didn’t know how that was going to carry over into the real world.

“You gonna be alright?” He asked, because even if She lied, at least that meant she had some fight left.

She leaned back and stared at him. She had those doe eyes again, and it made Dean swallow. He couldn’t fuck her in here. Not when She didn’t think it was real.

Her eyes dropped to his lips, and Dean’s tongue darted out, almost against his will. He muttered Her name, and she leaned forward until their brows were resting together, her breathing short and ragged. Dean rubbed a slow circle on Her back, almost purely to ground himself. She stared at his mouth, then slowly dragged her gaze up, and Dean thought he might choke on his heart.

“Don’t gimme that,” he said, pleading and quiet, and She shied a little back.

No. Dean couldn’t have that. He grabbed Her neck, keeping her forward, and let their lips brush in the lightest possible touch.

“C’mon, Bambi,” he said, soft and teasing. “Look at me.”

She did. Tears made Her eyes glow, and Dean dug his fingers into her soft skin, trying to keep her together with just a touch. Even one she didn’t think was real.

“You’re gonna be alright,” he said, and it came out like an order. He was past caring. “Got it?”

She nodded. It was small. Tight and unsure. Dean took it anyway.

“C’mere,” he pulled Her closer, moving into a deep, slow kiss. She made that pretty little sound of surprise, like she still didn’t expect it to always feel this good. Dean pressed his tongue on Her swollen lower lip, and she shivered, pulling herself closer by her thighs.

He smiled against Her lips. He didn’t rush. This was all he had. This was what he was fighting to get back to.

He wasn’t about to let a single moment slip through his fingers. Not now. And never when he got home.

✦chapter 74

✦End note: sooooo much planned this season. 2 secrets i believe. many many things :). thank you for reading! Chapter Title from Ain't No Mountain by Marvin Gaye

✦If you like this story, please reblog, like, or leave a comment! <3

You sweep through long halls in a dress that flows behind you, covering the shadows with lace and silk. You run out to the empty yard and slam into Dean, right where you knew you’d find him. Standing with the stake in his hand that he drops, in favor of spinning you off the ground and cradling your trembling body. One hand cups the back of your head, and the other digs into your hips. You trip trying to pull yourself closer, and drops a thick arm under your thighs, hauling you up into his arms.

He’s warm. So warm you let yourself pretend this is real. You bury your face in his neck and dig your nails into his neck. Wherever he is—the real Dean—you hope he can feel the dull, claiming pain. You hope he knows that you brush wet, swollen and tear stained lips over the crescent dents after, trying to push them a little deeper into his skin. You’re allowed to be possessive and selfish here.

Because, no matter how much it hurts you to know, it’s not real. 

Dean guides your face away from his neck, tugging your hair gently, forcing your gaze onto his. Tired, glassy eyes flicker like a jumping engine, a heart being shocked back to life. His mouth works in that tiny way, where he’s trying to think of something to say but only seems to know how to touch. He brushes your hair once, twice, and third time with this thumb sweeping over your cheekbone, his lips parting with a long, broken sigh.

You press a tender, worried kiss to his lips, and he snaps. His hand fists in your hair. He stumbles back like he’s been punched, kissing you until you’re both breathless and drunk on a phantom taste. He trips his way to a soft pile of grass in the courtyard, somehow managing not to come up for air. Dean lands flat on his ass and holds you over his chest, attacking your neck and jaw with brutal lips, sucking tiny bruises before flicking his tongue over the ache. You dig your fingers into his hair, biting back wrecked moans.

Dean grabs your chin, squeezing your cheeks and shooting you a stern, lust-blown glare.

“Don’t be like that, Princess,” he mutters, grazing his mouth over your puckered lips. “I gotta hear you. Lemme hear you.”

He traces his fingers teasingly up your side and nips at your lower lip. You let out a high, pathetic whine, and he smirks.

“There she is.”

Dean kisses you again, before gliding his mouth back down. There isn’t an inch of your skin he doesn’t seem determined to mark. Your moans echo off the courtyard walls, and his grunts vibrate against your skin, sending tiny, sweet shivers up your spine. Your shirt gets peeled off, so he can mouth at your breasts. He traces the curve of your ass and sits you right on the growing bulge in his pants, but never does anything more than rock his hips.

If Sam ever got a peak in your head, he’d vomit and then say something about you not even letting yourself feel good in a useless fantasy, and then you’d punch him in the face. Holding Dean after he cuts off the… other stuff, it’s just as good as anything else. You just need him, really. To be close for a fleeting hour of rapid sleep, where you can trace over his Golden features and beg the stains on your skin to keep you dirty, because the idea of being clean sounds so harrowing you think it might eat you alive.

“You doing alright up there?” Dean murmurs against your skin, his face buried between your breasts, and you nod.

There’s a long, aching sting at your eyes. You hug his head and breathe deeply, trying to burn the sweet smell of cinnamon into your nostrils. 

Dean says your name, splaying his fingers on your lower back. He tries to lean back, but you hold him in a headlock, the tears streaming down your cheeks. He grunts and pries at your forearms, grabbing your wrists with light hands and forcing your grip to slacken. He smiles faintly, at your scrunched up, snotty nose and red eyes. It’s tired. Everything about him seems tired, but he still smiles, as if you’re the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Easy, baby,” he murmurs, taking both of your hands between his. “It’s gonna be alright, you’re gonna be alright.”

He kisses his knuckles, trapping yours, and you sob so hard it shakes your body. You’re not worried about you. You’ve learned, for better or worse, that you really always will get through it. The universe doesn’t seem all that open to letting you tread down that other path.

But you’re worried about him. You’re worried about him in a way that almost cleaves you in half, that threatens to be the only thing that could possible overrule the universe, that frays the already weak threads that stich up whatever foul, glorious thing you’re made of. You’re held together by hooks and needles, at this point. You’re twisting yourself into knots that half ease right here, in Dean’s arms, but all that happens is your heart spills and spills and spills, until the rotting grass is overgrown and stained with silver dew.

Dean glances down, but doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t say much but soft reassurances, until you’re able to speak again. His thumb pets down the bridge of your nose, and—if you’re shaking so much the ground starts to shake with you—he flips you onto your back and hold you until you the weight makes you breathe.

Tonight is one of those nights. He traces over your face with the most cautious touch, his face twisted with a heavy, painfully blatant longing. Hooded eyes shine, scanning over your crumpled features. His mouth hangs open, like he’s trying to inhale you, the same way you hold his fisted hand over your lips. Just trying to get a little extra of something you’ve never been able to be satisfied with. Something that’s never going to be able to be close enough.

“Better?” He rasps, when your breathing steadies. You shake your head, your lips wobbling and he sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He kisses your brow, brow knitting like he’s in pain. “I know.”

He never tells you much, but there isn’t much your brain seems to need to hear. Sam’s alive. They’re working to get back. Dean loves you, and he swears up and down and left and right, on his both his babies—you and the damn car—and his mother and brother and Scooby Doo boxers and Led Zepplin cassettes, that he’s going to come home and say it to your face again. You tell him he already has, and he laughs and tells you that you have no idea. He asks you about things, every single time. How’s Claire. How’s Jo. Are you talking to Cas again, have you spoken to Eileen at all, has Crowley come crawling out from underground. You tell him the truth, and sometimes he makes a face like he wants to argue. Sometimes he does argue, and you think you miss him so much you’re going mad.

“You gotta talk to Cas, sweetheart, who the hell knows what the angels are up to-“

“No.”

Dean sighs your name, and you shove his chest with a flat hand.

“You talk to him, if it’s so important.”

“I’d like to,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Could tell him to talk some sense back into your smart ass.”

You shove him again, and he just catches your wrist and guides it away.

“I’m serious,” he says, strict and heavy, even as he drags his thumb over your knuckles and uses a soft, coaxing tone. “If I get back and you’re still fightin’ with Cas, I’m gonna be pissed.”

And you just hold his gaze, your throat closing up so tight the words have to break to get out. “So come back,” you whisper. “And prove it.”

India is hot in the middle of April. Wet and hot, mud always coating your boots and dirt getting under your nails, a sticky warmth filling up your lungs with every breath, a million smells that remind you of Dean flooding your senses and making you press your lips tight enough to crack.

He’d love it here. The people and the food, the bartering and the TV and, again, the food. He’d pull you through the markets with your hands locked, spending half an hour talking to one seller about his fish before storming off for a reason he sputters trying to explain. You’d kiss his cheek and ask if he wants to go fishing. He’d light up like a child and drag you back to the hotel, kissing all over your face as you stumble through the door, giggling like a lovesick fool in his arms.

Instead, you lean against the old table in the warehouse, sharpening your knife and ignoring the muffled curses of the man in the chair. Bobby’s bottle shines green, in the dim, flickering light. You kick your bag a little away from your feet, dancing and humming while you wait for everyone to calm the hell down.

For him, specifically, to calm down. You tied him up in the nice binds, you’ve given him a lot of wiggle and breathing room—Jo was worried he’d get out, you know he won’t—and brought him some very expensive and stolen lamb that he didn’t get to eat, because he tried to bite your fingers off. He’d have it pretty good, if he’s stop overreacting. You’re the one who should be freaking out, and you’re perfectly calm. The Silver is bright and smooth and calm, iced over your veins and melded into your muscles. It moves when you move, and screams when you scream, and it’s like learning to walk all over again, but you’re doing it. And you’re calm.

Psychotic, the man before this one said. You sliced his hand open and dripped salt on the wound, for that one. It wasn’t the claim, but the way he said it. Like you were just some crazy, scorned bitch. Which another former captive called you, and he lost his tongue, but he’d also crossed your very, very clear line about Claire, so you think he earned it.

That’s why this one can call you whatever the fuck he wants. You’ve been called worse, and you’re past caring what kind of whore or slut or bitch or cunt you have to be. If anything, it’s a compliment. It means they’re afraid.

The man spits something, then chokes and thrashes the chair. The chains rattle unpleasantly against the floor, and you shoot him an unimpressed look.

“Neal, I can’t understand you,” you remind him, and his eyes narrow. “And remember what we talked about? Good behavior?

Neal’s face curls and contorts into something like a sneer. You sigh and spin your knife in your hand, pushing off the table with a tiny kick of your feet.

“This,” you wave the blade over his general, rather rude demeanor. “Isn’t good behavior. This isn’t how we earn speaking privileges again, buddy. I don’t want to have to remind you again.”

Neal’s eyes flash with fury. He growls something and you stop right in front of him, crossing your arms and scanning over his locked down body with a frown. He’s been here almost two weeks, and all you’ve really gotten is an uncooperative attitude and a lot of insulting comments about your body. You would’ve thought he’d give up after a while. The rest of them did.

You tap your foot and chew on your lower lip. Neal’s gag is getting dirty, but it didn’t exactly start clean. Maybe you’d soaked it in dirty dish water, before stuffing it in his mouth. He deserved it. He made a comment about Claire that he was lucky to survive.

Luck that came with being one of the last Alphas left. If there had been hundreds of them before, the count is down to double digits. You, Cas, and Crowley sort of did a lot of damage to the population, leaving only the smart ones that evaded capture, and know to stay underground. Those are the ones like the Alpha Vampire, who you haven’t been able to find after months of looking.

And then there are the ones who didn’t get caught because they were too stupid to be worth it.

The ones like Neal.

There isn’t a corner of the Earth you don’t think is worth ripping up to find Dean. For a week after Michigan, you thought God might have taken him. Jo barely managed to talk you down from truly, fully losing it, and she only got the chance because of your exhaustion from killing Eve.

“You felt God grabbin’ me, right?” She’d said, holding your hands and pleading in a way that was so unlike Jo, you’d managed to focus on her words. “You told me, you felt God yankin’ me away, just like you felt my mom. Like you felt him tryin’ to grab Bobby. You woulda stopped him, if he was goin’ for Sam and Dean. You woulda,” she’d squeezed your hand, even as you’d stared at her with empty eyes. “I know it. You know it. Hell, God himself knew it, so- Wasn’t him.”

You’d blinked at her, and nodded slowly. She was right. It couldn’t have been God. He’d vanished from the sky again, so you couldn’t ask, but you knew. One of the only things that had saved you, in that moment, was that you hadn’t been wrestling with God to pull Sam and Dean back. You would’ve detonated, if you had. But instead they’d just vanished, and you’d been hit by the despair before the wrath.

It had been long. Long and harrowing and cold, in the week after. Jo says you barely spoke, and you have to believe her, because you don’t really remember that much otherwise. It’s all a blur of a bed that didn’t have the warmth it was supposed to, showers that you were afraid to take and scars of Gold you traced with trembling, fearful fingers. The only sharp memory is the fight with Cas, and even that is sanded around the edges. You’d drifted until Jo reminded you that it couldn’t be God, and it had been like slamming against a rock. 

If it wasn’t God, it was something else. Something weaker.

You could kill something weaker. You could do it without destroying yourself, and dragging the rest of the world down with you. You could get Dean home.

In the days after that, you’d moved fast. Kevin had been sent off with Meg, who promised to keep him away from Crowley. You and Jo had packed up Bobby’s house and left, looking for something. Anything, that would even tell you where Dean had landed. That would tell you how to get him home.

“Listen,” Meg had said before you separated, low and careful. “Things like that bone? My daddy told me to be careful with them.” She’d given you a pointed look. “Told me they had kickback.”

Kickback.  

A rebound of power, Rowena had explained. An aftertaste, but everyone in a few yards gets it shoved down your throat. Dean and Sam got dragged somewhere. All you had to do was drag them back.

Which means all you have to do is figure out where they got dragged.

It’s a harder task, than you originally thought. You’ve gone after countless people and beasts and entities for answers. God convicts who were willing to talk without anyone needing to be tortured, rogue angels who looked for you to help, demons who you trapped and witches and cult members who got to find out exactly how many of the rumors have been true. And in all of them, from the annoying to the unless to the rude, Neal is, by miles and margins, the fucking stupidest.

“I’m going to take out your gag,” you tell him slowly, leaning down over his chair. “You’re not going to call me any names, I won’t cut out your tongue, and we all win, okay?”

Neal eyes the weapon, inches from slicing his cheek. You smile sweetly and flick your wrist, taking out a lock of his hair, and he flinches. Like a little fucking bitch.   

“Okay?” You prompt again, and his throat bobs.

He nods. You beam, and saw at his gag with a wide smile. The cloth falls and you let it hang around his neck, watching with raised brows and a warning curve to your lips. Neal glares at you, and you tip your head, letting your hair brush over his cheeks. He recoils back, his breathing shallow and hot over your face, and you smile in slow, smug satisfaction.

“That’s a good boy,” you purr, drawing yourself back up.

Neal—the idiot—snaps.

“You little fucking bitch-“

“Ah,” you slam the gag back up to his mouth, choking him on the fabric. His eyes flicker, hatful and beady and small. You sigh. You really wanted to do this the easy way. “That’s not what we talked about,” you tug the fabric tighter, and he grunts. “I’m being very nice right now, and you- You didn’t even eat the food I bought you! Do you know how hurtful that is?” You roll your eyes. “And- Even if I didn’t buy it, I still got it for you. And you call me a bitch? Rude.”

You shove him back and let go of the gag, taking a large step back before he can spit in your face.

He tries. He always tries, because he’s an idiot. You dodge it without blinking, but it lands only a few inches away from Bobby’s bottle. The old wood sizzles and hisses under the venom. You turn back around with a furious flurry and rage in your chest, a growing winter storm that Neal seems to feel, with how he goes still.

“Do you know what happens?” You ask slowly. “If you destroy that bottle.”

Neal opens his mouth. You don’t give him a real chance to respond.

“I kill you,” you spit, taking a large step forward. Neal’s fingernails and lips are starting to go purple. The warehouse creaks under your feet, as slow frost spreads over your feet.

“I didn’t hit the damn bottle,” Neal tries to snap, but it’s weak. His voice cracks, and his eyes are too wide. You hold a finger to your lips and shake your head. He swallows loud enough that you can hear it, and you smile.

“I kill you,” you repeat, honeyed and low. “And then I track down every one of your children, and I kill them too. Then I open Purgatory, and I kill all of you all over again. Do you understand.”

Neal’s eyes narrow. For a second, you think he really might be stupid enough to test you, but he only nods.

“Great,” you spin you knife, kneeling down to his height. “See? Isn’t it easy to listen to me?”

Neal’s mouth ticks. He still doesn’t speak, and you sigh.

“Now, I know you’re going to try and tell me you have no idea where the Leviathan bone goes, but if you do that, I’m going to have to cut off your hand. And I don’t wanna do that. It’s gross, it smells bad, now I have to get rid of a hand- You get it,” you shrug. “So, if you’d be so perfectly kind to think a little bit harder, maybe we can figure out a version of this where you only lose your finger.”

The column of Neal’s throat works. His jaw does a funny little motion, and you grab his cheeks with a sigh, pressing the knife to his throat.

“I told you to stop doing that, it’s not going to work.”

“Fuck-“ Neal pushes out the words through his teeth little bits of spittle landing on your skin.

It burns, but the sores heal in seconds. Cockatrice venom doesn’t do much to you, apparently. It’s still annoying to have to heal it.

“Fuck- You-“

“Everyone’s trying,” you say dryly, pressing the knife down until a thin bead of blood coats the blade. “Where is my Dean.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t fucking know-“

“Liar,” you lean closer, eyes narrowing. “I know you’re a liar, I know what Mommy taught you, I- I fucking know-“

Your voice breaks, and the frozen coating over your hands is giving way to pure, raw wrath. You will get him back. You have to get him back. There is nothing ahead of you, if you don’t get Dean home. This power is useless if you can’t find him, life is useless if you have to feel all of it but you don’t get to have something that’s just yours, everything has been nothing if you don’t get to have Dean.

And Neal sees it, between the shattered cracks of the Silver, waxing and waning like an ocean storm, crashing up high enough that the chains turn to roots and the pain under all of it becomes so obviously, dangerously clear.

Most Alpha and demons caved under it. They’d been trying to barter or mock, not understanding that the rumors about you and Dean didn’t cover the thinnest scope of your love. You’ve long learned that people talk about the Winchesters and their strange little monster. The demon boy and his black eyes and breakdowns. The brute hunter that carves through anything in his way, to get to his baby brother and his girl.

The Magdalene. The Whore. The Bride, who’s stuck herself to the brother’s side and sleeps in the brute’s bed. They say everything about you and Dean. That you fuck like rabbits, that he sits at your feet like a dog, that you follow him around like a lovesick schoolgirl and crawl into his lap with blood on both your hands.

And yet it takes that peak behind your fury, for them to get it. To understand that they are not looking at some tragic little star-crossed love, some Bonnie and Clyde pairing that talks big and shoots bigger.

They are looking at a Horror. They are looking at something that can’t fit in their little minds, who could sweep over lands and mold them in her name, who could hold the stars in her hands or bring paradise to the earth, but only wants one, perfect, sweet idiot of a man.

And you don’t have him right now. There’s no Dean, to tell you that you need to sleep, or breathe, or think your plan through a little bit harder. They call him the Brute Winchester, but he was the only thing that could ever get you to bow your head for a leash. He could’ve saved them. He’s not here, so there’s nothing but you, and an unending pain that you need the world to fucking feel.

Neal sees it. He blinks and leans back, under the blinding floodlight of the truth. They all do.

But most of them see it as something like a supernova, that’s going to consume them if they don’t look for cover or cower.

Neal is an idiot. Neal smiles.

“You don’t know how to get him back, do you,” he coos. “Little Whore, bragging about killing Eve and not even able to find her little boyfriend. You’re what they’re afraid of. You can’t even track him like the fucking mutt you’re supposed to be.”

You cover Neal’s mouth with your hand. Your eyes squeeze shut, your breathing shallow, your palm burning at Neal tries to bite it.

You are the weight of the roots under your feet, happy to be alive, to be connected, to grow instead of sink. You’re the cold fear of the ground, worried the heat will come, but won’t be enough to thaw it. You’re the sky far overhead, filled with so much it’s not sure what to call itself, unsure what it even is if not empty.

It is everything. You are everything. The leather cord of Dean’s amulet is stuck to your skin, trying to hold onto you when he can’t, and you are everything.

This Alpha is nothing. So you make him everything too.

When you open your eyes, Neal is frozen. His eye sockets have been overgrown with flowers that burst from under the lids and through the pupils. Grass and thin weeds grow under his nails. You uncover his mouth, and branches burst forward, a million tiny birds taking off in a swarm. You wipe the trickle of water that falls down his chin and sigh.

Better than the last one. He got a little too confident, said that Dean was probably hiding from you, or begging God to take you so you’d leave him alone, and got turned into a pile of brushel and kindle that burned rather easily, to nothing but flecks of ash in the air. You think Dean would be proud of you for controlling it. Neal only got turned into a blooming corpse, once he earned it.

And he was wrong. He was wrong. You press your hands flat against the table and take deep breaths, repeating it over and over and over. Pushing the thought out of your head like a parasite being fished up your throat. You will get Dean back. There is nowhere in the universe that you can’t reach, no cage you can’t rip open to get back to his side. Lucifer and Michael couldn’t hold you. Some little rebound of a magic bone isn’t going to out preform God’s favorite sons.

But it has. You haven’t found him.

But you will. You will. You chew on the inside of your cheek until you taste blood. Your fingers twitch and curl, trying to burrow into your palms, and you scrape them along the table instead. It starts to hurt, the pressure building under your skin and bubbling over in your chest. It hurts more than the brief sting or stab of a bite or cut ever would. You squeeze your eyes shut and grab your knife, driving it straight into the wood. You lean over, rubbing your face like you can push back the burn in your eyes and heavy stress on the bridge of your nose. A dam, threatening every second to break.

You pinch it and try to breathe slow. If you let yourself drown in the blood, pounding in your ears, you can almost hear Dean’s voice, coaching you through it.

In and out. Easy for me, Princess. Just breathe. I’ve got you.

He doesn’t have you. He said he was going to. He said he wouldn’t leave and now you’re fucking alone, suffocating on thick air in a warehouse, grabbing at wood like it’s not just going to rot under your fingers, and you’re not about to slip away into nothing, nothing, nothing, you’re going to be nothing again and you should’ve saved him, why didn’t you save him, what foul kind of use are you to the world if you can’t save the best thing about it, if you can’t do anything but cry and run around and be nothing-

Your breathing is ragged. Sharp. There’s a dull sting to your palms, and you open your eyes to find you’d started scratching at your palms until you drew thin lines of blood. You swallow, a boulder settling in your throat that you’ve never been able to dislodge alone. Bobby’s bottle shines in your periphery, knocked onto its side and cradled in a little nest of grass and leaves. Containing yourself when you use your powers- It’s a work in progress. You right the bottle with a mumbled apology you know he’s never going to be able to hear.

And you think you almost got away with it. You drag Neal’s body out back, and flick Dean’s lighter until you’ve got a sweet little flame going. You watch it for a moment, bending light in the sunrise. It seems to know you’re not Dean, whenever you use it. There’s a shadow of distrust that almost puts it out, but then it realizes it’s you, and that seems to be close enough.

You know it sounds crazy—even for you—but all of Dean’s things miss him. You wear his shirts to bed, trying to pretend he’s still there to hold you in the dark, and the fabric clings to the Gold on your skin the same way you cling to its collar, inhaling every last bit of cinnamon and grass until you can almost pretend Dean is there. You have his keys in your pocket, and they keep begging you to drive back to  an empty home. They seem to think that he’ll be there, and don’t listen when you tell them that he’s gone. He never goes, they demand. He’s just waiting for you at home. And you shake your head and clean his guns—and you do a bad job, but he’ll fix it when he gets home—and they seem to be the same kind of restless he is, where they’re itching for something to get in front of. Something to defend. They ask you with every touch, if your safe. They beg you to let them help, when you tell them you’re fine. The bullets say they exist to lodge in the skulls of your enemies. You tell them they’re being a little dramatic, and put them back in Dean’s actual bullet box with a sigh.

And you really, really almost get away with it.

Neal’s body burns, and you throw the rest of it into the backwoods river, asking the water to carry it where no one will ever find. You go back inside and clean up, rubbing your eyes and fighting a yawn. You’ve been up all night. Your eyes are drooping and your skin is raw and sensitive, a live nerve that wants to peel off your iron-heavy bones. There isn’t an artery in your chest and neck that isn’t trying to burst. A joint or tendon in your gut or legs that doesn’t want to snap. You hold it together, with the thinnest of wires. You jabbed them through every inch that threatens to unravel and pull them tight, because you don’t have the privilege of falling apart.

But you’ve never been lucky enough, to not have something go rancid and soft. To not trip over the only loose stone, and plunge face first into freefall.

You stuff all your tools and knives—you lost the Blade, throwing it at Dick Roman’s eye, and replaced it with a smaller set Claire found in China—into the bag. You wrap Bobby’s bottle in a woven cloth and wedge it between your books. You check the ground for anything else, and there it is. The loose stone. The branch that your wire catches on, that pulls you right apart.

Dean’s box slid a little under the table, when you kicked over the bag. You have to stretch to grab it, and frantically wipe off the quickly gathered dust and cobwebs. Your fingers linger on the latch. Your knees draw to your chest, and you stare at the silver detailing until your vison blurs.

Hot tears land on the back of your hand. A shattered, uncontrollable sob rips from your throat, and your shoulders pull tight. You’re curling into a ball around the box, dropping your face between your legs and shuddering with every single breath. The air feels like it’s burning up in your body. The soil beneath you becomes rich and wet, and the wood behind you mends from time, setting down roots in a place nothing else has been allowed to stay.

You scream so loud it bounces off the walls, and outside, the river seems to scream back. Lightning cracks, somewhere faraway. You scream again, and thunder rolls through the air. It’s loud because it’s trying to find him. Because if it’s loud enough, it will glow like a beacon in the dark, and Dean will come home.

You need him to come home.

It’s a while, before you’re able to stand again. Your legs are shaking, and there are no warm arms to hold you upright. You wipe your own tears, and little dandelions bloom when they hit the muddied earth. You gather yourself, because no one else will, and that was only a fissure. You can stich up a fissure.

A break—a true, untenable break—will not leave a living world in its wake. Not a world that isn’t molded to your hands. Salvation. Damnation.  

You wonder if Azazel knew that the only difference between the two would be whether or not you got to have Dean. You’re sure he didn’t. He would’ve let Dean die in that hospital bed if he did. Long before you could save him. When you weren’t capable of much more than squinting at a soul or stomping out a demon like a spider that jumped on you in the shower.

It would be the easy thing, to let yourself break. But this world deserves better than a righteous blight. There are still things in it, that you can find to be beautiful. The river spit up nuggets of gold, gathered on the bank like shells on a beach. The morning glows like you’re wandering through Dean’s heaven, when the sun splits over green mountains. You have Bobby in your bag, and you’re going to get him back. You have Dean’s box, and if you explode, you’re never going to find out what’s inside.

You’ve been telling yourself you’re waiting for him to be back. You know, deep in your gut, that you just can’t. You can’t name why. You can’t justify it. But you cry when you see it and you don’t want to open it without him.

You don’t want to do any of this without him.

You have to. It’s either that or giving up, and you’ve been running too long to let your feet fail now. You’re going to get through this.

You always do.

The motel you’ve been staying at is on the nicer side. You have a large room and complementary breakfasts. There’s a pool that only has a handful of bugs in it, at any given time. The wallpaper is peeling but the bathroom is clean, and the water pressure is strong, and the beds are covered in so many pillows you can almost shape them into a perfect Dean, whenever you sleep.

Not that you sleep much.

You took three hours, somewhere around twilight, and headed to the warehouse around midnight. You unlock the door and slip inside before anyone should be up.

And yet, waiting for you on the bed with a glare, Claire is wide awake. Her arms are cross and her chin is jutted up in that way Dean used to say was all you. The Lady is curled in her lap, Indy is flopped at her feet, and the Phoenix chick—Sparky, Claire’s been calling him, and you haven’t really been able to stop her—is pecking at her hair. You almost laugh at the absurd sight. Claire doesn’t look that amused.

“Where did you go,” she whisper shouts, and you kick off your shoes with a sigh.

“You don’t need to worry about that, Claire-“

“Yes, I do! What if there was another break-in, what if the police showed up, what if the leviathans came back-“

“Did you have another nightmare?”

Claire scowls. It’s not an accusation, but you know she takes it as one. She’s trying to play up the gum-like toughness Dean always carried with his every word and step. The sense that bending him was impossible, without him snapping back like a rubber band. She’s been doing that hewn, tight jawed expression whenever the police do come around—you dispose a lot of bodies, and people in India are really annoyingly observant—and doesn’t seem open to hearing that you really don’t need her to grow up for this.

If anything, you’re still a little annoyed she talked you into coming. You wanted her to go back to Jody, but she flat out refused. She locked herself in the Firebird and said she’d go on a hunger strike. Jody said she could take her anyway.

A selfish part of you didn’t want to let her out of your sight. Not after Michigan. Not when there were all too familiar bags forming under her eyes, and paranoid twitch that made your heart ache—that reminded you of Sam—every time the wind got a little too loud.

She’d been allowed to come on the rule that she’d listen, stay out of your warpath, and continue with school. Staying out of the warpath just means no hunting. School just means the homeschooling curriculum you stole from Bobby and Rufus. Dean’s going to have some things to say about that, when he gets home. He’ll be welcome to. He can shout at you and argue all he wants, as long as he’s in front of you. As long as you get to hear his voice.

You dump your bag on the floor and bite your cheek. You’re doing your best with what you have. It isn’t much. It’s better than nothing at all.

“Claire,” you say gently, keeping your voice down. Jo’s passed out, in the other bed. If you wake her up, she’s going to have opinions. “It’s okay if you are having nightmares-‘

“I’m not!” Claire snaps, too fast, too loud. Jo stirs a little, and you give Claire a stern look. She swallows and bows her head, her voice dropping back down. “I’m not,” she mumbles. “I- I just couldn’t sleep.”

You sigh, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Indy eerps, rolling onto her back and nosing at your knee. You rub her stomach, watching Claire in your periphery, letting her words linger in the hum of the fan and wet morning air.

“It’s not like I wake up screaming,” Claire grumbles, and your mouth twitches.

“I know.”

“Do you? ‘Cause you keep saying I’m having nightmares, so it sounds like you don’t-“

“Claire.”

She curls back, under your flat stare. You sigh and lean forward, touching her knee lightly. She keeps her gaze locked down, just as stubborn as always.

“I have nightmares,” you say softly, and Claire’s scowl deepens. “Dean has nightmares. And he never wakes up screaming.”

That makes her pause. She looks up with a poorly hidden surprise, pulling at a loose string on her shorts. You smile sadly and squeeze her knee, leaning a little further. Like you’re telling her a secret, even if you’re sure Dean would tell her the exact same.

“I wake up,” you murmur. “Because he’s not making any sounds.”

“That- But-“

“He snores,” your smile turns misty. Tired and fond and a little smooth around the edges, the weight of missing him settling right at the top of your chest. You stave it off for now. For Claire. “He snores like a fucking machine.”

Claire makes a face like she’s trying to fight off a laugh, and your cheeks ache just a little less.

“So when he’s quiet,” you say, watching her carefully. “I know something is wrong.”

Claire presses her lips in a thin line. She stares down at her fingers, and you let out a slow breath.

“He gets stiff. I realize I woke up because he was squeezing me, or lying on top of me, or just- Grabbing me. His face does that frown,” you pinch your face up, trying to mimic Dean’s worried and angry scowl, and Claire’s throat bobs. “And he breathes really heavy, and I- I wake him up. Carefully, but- I know whatever he’s dreaming about- I- I have to get him out of it.”

And it hurts just to think about. It makes every space around you feel bigger, to speak about him. Some small part of your brain thinks that if you do it enough he’ll just appear, but the rest of you knows better, and doesn’t want to talk about him at all. But that little part, it’s loud. It expands and begs, every time you indulge it. Spreading memories in every dip and space in your ribcage, pushing just to the right of your heart until you think you’re going to burst.

You can almost see him, in the longest corners of the room. The sun plays a cruel trick where the golden light takes his shape, and you can’t help yourself from looking. In case it is him. If it is, you’ll need to grab him before he vanishes behind the clouds. Tell him that if you’re not dreaming of him, you’re having nightmares. The boring kind, where you wake up screaming in a pool of sweat that’s already collecting algae, reaching for him and only finding an empty bed, then screaming louder. Nightmares that would make him take your face between his hands, that he could tell you weren’t real. John isn’t going to kill you in front of him and Sam. Bobby’s soul isn’t going to be ripped from your hands like Jo’s. Sam isn’t going to crumble to dust in your arms, falling apart too fast for you to put him back together.

You don’t know what Dean had his nightmares about. They were rare for both of you, when you shared a bed. After you’d wake him up, he’d bury his face in your chest and refuse to speak until the sun rose, his hands mapping your body and his back flexed and tense until he convinced himself he was allowed to relax. Then all you’d get was a kiss and mumbled thanks, before he clambored out of bed for coffee. You always had guesses. You pieced things together from the low, pained groans and pleas that would push themselves out, before you managed to wake him. You have the same kind of guesses about Claire.

But she’ll talk about it when she’s ready. You don’t need to know what the nightmare is about, to seal over the damage for a single day. It’s just a band aide on an open wound, but it will stop the infection. You’ll worry about the scar, when you’re not trying to keep her from being cut wide open again.

“Everyone has nightmares,” you duck, forcing Claire to meet your gaze. “But they’re just nightmares. The leviathans are gone. Jo can handle the police or a monster, and anything else- I won’t let it hurt you. Okay?”

Claire’s silent for a long while, and you wait. You have no time. You’re willing to stretch what you do have thin, for her.

She nods, and you bite back your sharp relief, just squeezing her knee one more time and taking a deep breath through your nose.

“Do you want to talk about it?” You offer, already knowing the answer.

Claire shakes her head. You glance over at Jo, fully knocked out and starfished, obvious to the world around her. You’d been planning to catch a few hours before she and Claire woke up, but the motel has strong coffee, and you’ve slept less for longer.

“You wanna watch a movie?” You offer, and Claire sits up. You laugh, and it’s small but real.

Dean would be proud.

You settle against the headboard, Claire tucked into your side, the Lady padding over and curling between your bodies, and Indy splayed over your legs, her tail whipping back and forth over the sheets. She’s almost the size of a Great Dane, now. It’s getting harder and harder, to sneak her around. You’ll call Rowena later. Ask about a shielding or illusion spell, or make one up if she can’t help.

Sparky stays on Claire’s head. They seem to have developed a bond you’re not willing to try and break. You offer the chick a finger, while Claire picks out a movie, and he nips you, nudges you for a pet, and then immediately turns back to Claire’s hair.

They motel has most of the channels. Claire asks you what you want, but you know she’s just trying to be polite.

“Whatever you want,” you tell her, and she smiles. She picks an old western that’s near the start of its run, and slumps down into the mattress. You only half watch, your eyes lidded and glazed. You’re all but asleep with your eyes open, the voices and music all blending into a white noise that threatens to lull you into sleep.

“Did they help?” Claire asks quietly, and you frown at her, unsure if you heard right. “Whoever you were- With,” she clarifies, still staring at the TV. “Are they going to help you find Sam and Dean?”

The question is so small. So unsure, like she’s not sure that she’s allowed to ask it. You twist the skin of your finger and tip your head back, trying to let the headrest carry the weight of it. The lie. The pair, that you don’t want rolling off of you and poisoning her.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think they might.”

Claire hums, and it doesn’t matter how much she believes you. She relaxes, and that ease leave a wake, settling over your skin and tendons and knotted organs. You let out a breath, and it doesn’t catch in your throat.

You don’t sleep. Not fully. But your eyes fall, and your body goes as loose as it’s allowed, and you drift in and out of the world without so much as a nightmare or tear. Claire knocks out on your arm, and the sun pushes over the sky and through the curtains. The weight of Indy comes and goes. A door creaks, and you twist enough to see Jo gone from the bed before you’re pulled back under. It’s not fruitful sleep. It’s bobbing through the calmest parts of the ocean, able to breathe, never able to fully rest.

You’ll find the land. You’ll make it, if you have to.

For now, you just drift.

Jo’s at the table with a coffee, when you finally drag yourself out of bed. Indy’s sitting at the foot of your bed, watching you with wide, curious eyes. You tuck Claire—fully asleep, but still angled like she’s  trying to watch TV—under the sheets, and pad over to Jo’s side. Indy bounds after you, dropping her chin onto your knee and whining softly. Jo rolls her eyes and pushes the coffee across the table, shooting Indy a distasteful glare.

“She’s actin’ like I let her starve,” Jo grumbles. “I took her out. Got her- Really the biggest fuckin’ fish you’ve ever seen. I mean, I still don’t know how she got the whole thing down, it was-“

She holds her hands up, almost all the way apart, and you laugh softly. “She’s a growing girl-“

“She’s grown big enough. We’re gonna have to make a fuckin’ stable.”

You raise your brows. “We?”

Jo shrugs. You both know who we is, and it’s not anyone in the room. “He will,” she doesn’t say his name. You think, sometimes, she’s worried it will set you off, like cutting the wrong wire on a bomb.

“Sam thinks she’s going to be as big as the house,” you murmur into your coffee, and Jo makes a face.

“That’s too fuckin’ big.”

“Yeah, but- At least Dean will get to build his barn.”

Jo stares at you, for just a little too long. You know she hears it. Dean will. Sam thinks.

“Have I told you he wants to build a barn?” You ask, still not meeting her gaze. Silently begging her, to just go along with it. Just right now, while you can’t bear to do anything else.

“No,” she says slowly. “Don’t think you have.”

“Well, he does. He told me he wants to build a barn, a farm, a house, and a garage. I told him he doesn’t know how architecture works, and he- He just said he’d figure it out.” You laugh to yourself, watery and almost floating through the air. “The annoying thing is he probably will. He’ll skim one book and say he’s got it, and then I’ll blink and he’ll have a house.”

Jo says your name. You ignore her.

“I mean- One time I asked him how he built my car, and he just said he put stuff together in the way that made sense. That doesn’t mean anything, but- It worked. He always makes it work.”

You choke on the last word. Jo reaches for your hand, and you curl it into a tight fist. She mutters your name, and you shake your head, tears pricking at the edge of your eyes.

“Don’t,” you whisper, staring at the table. “Please.”

Jo sighs, but doesn’t say a word. She grabs your hand, and you immediately grab it back, trying not to dig in your nails. You watch the coffee slush around in your mug. It’s going cold. Everything, from the sink pit in the hollow of your chest to the churning in your gut, is going cold. Jo’s hand is warm. It keeps your fingers from shaking, and that keeps the world from shaking with it.

Sometimes, you wonder why she sticks around too. She could’ve gone with Meg or Charlie or Adam. She could’ve gone with the Amazons. Could’ve left to look for her mom, even if you’re more than willing to be Ellen is trapped with God. But Jo just… Stays. So maybe people stay, and you begin to feel like a leech. Draining them to make yourself bigger. Suctioned onto their kindness, unable to do anything on your own.

You’re learning, that sometimes, people just… Love you.

You lean on Jo until you’re both about to topple, and she holds you up until you can drag her off the edge of the cliff. You press Sam until he’s about to break, and he doesn’t try to lock you out or push you away. You run around like a pigeon that can’t quite remember where home is supposed to be, and Bobby waits for you to remember how to turn around and find your way back. You screw up again and again and again, and you learn so slow and love so quietly and spill your guts all over Dean’s hands and chest and thighs, and he just cleans you up and stays. He loves you, without any kind of payment or justification. You rip yourself up to try and find some part of you that’s good enough for him to touch, for any of them to touch, and they just… ask you to put yourself back together.

They love you more with the cracks, even if they let the infection of you creep out. They love you when you’re small and withered, they love you when you’re consuming and so alive you can’t bear it, and you’re learning it in the slowest, hardest way possible. The way that involves contorting into every possible shape, before Dean takes you and tells you he likes this one just fine. The way that has blood under your nails and dirt on your knees and foam at your mouth, snarling and snapped like a rabid animal until you learn to trust the water again. It almost kills you, but the blood dries, and you-

You get better.

You miss Dean with more than you can fit in your heart, but you eat, and try to sleep, and you stick with Jo and Claire. You miss Dean, and—without realizing it, like the crawl of a shadow across the ground—you never doubt if he’s missing you.

“The alpha get us anything?” Jo asks a little before Claire gets up, and you shake your head. “And- You didn’t-“

You give her an apologetic look, and she sighs you name.

“You can’t keep fuckin’ killing them-“

“He was saying some very mean things,” you snap defensively. “You would’ve killed him-“

“Of course I woulda killed him! But you’re supposed to be better than me!”

You nose wrinkles. “No, I’m not-“

“Uh- Yeah. You are.” Jo rolls her eyes, leaning back with a huff. “You’re ‘supposed to torture ‘em and then say, you think that’s bad,” she turns her voice into a mockery of yours, and you frown. “Just wait until you meet my little friend.”

“I’m not Scarface, Jo-“

“Yeah, you are.”

Your mouth falls open. “No, I’m not- I don’t even- I’d never run a drug ring.”

Jo makes a doubtful expression, and squawks when you throw a balled up napkin straight at her head. Indy shoots over the table, cooped up and eager to fetch, and Jo topples back with a shout. You laugh, covering your mouth with a hand, and Jo chucks the napkin right back at your face. You block it.

You don’t block Indy.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Claire sits up, her hair falling over her face, swollen with sleep. You wish you had an answer that wasn’t childish and insane. You don’t, so you take Claire for breakfast, and flip Jo off over your shoulder.

She’s right, in the long run. Maybe you shouldn’t have killed Neal, but there are other Alphas. Other angels, other demons, other pagan gods that can—that will—help you. You don’t let yourself think of another option, for the whole day. You have to help Claire with school. You have to read and get lunch and call Kevin and get dinner. The world might stop when you’re caving in, but when you’re keeping yourself just upright, when you’re rushing through the day like it’s a current, and you’re just waiting to be spat out the other side, time does nothing but plow on forward.

You read anything you can find. You and Jo scout for leads on other Alpha’s, while Claire does her homework with a sour expression. You look online, Jo makes a few more calls on leads. If you didn’t know better, every day would just feel like a very long, strange case.

“What was that thing you were tellin’ me about?” Jo asks, peering at the translation notes you’ve scribbled through countless notebooks and loose pieces of paper.

You hum, not looking up from the Book. You always think you’ve read all of it, only for new pages to appear out of thin air. It’s suspicious. You’d think it was God, if you didn’t know he hasn’t been watching you for months. “What thing?”

“Y’know, the thing-“

“I tell you about a lot of things, Jo-“

“Yeah, but- This one was all magic and shit.”

You give her a dry, blanket expression of annoyance. She rolls her eyes.

“C’mon. It’s- What the hell else am I supposed to call it?”

“I don’t know? Its name-“

“I dunno its name- It’s-“ She sighs, glaring at the air. “You know, that magic spot thingy. You went lookin’ for one when Dean was- Well-“ She cringes slightly. “Last time.”

Your frown deepens, pulling down in thought. The magic spot thingy. “You mean the Vortex points?”

“Yes- Yes,” Jo snaps, leaning forward with a wide grin. “That. Why don’t we try that?”

“Um…” You look at the book, then the notes. Your hands flex, and your mouth falls a little open.

Why don’t you try that? Why haven’t you tried that?

“Because we don’t know where Dean is,” you answer yourself softly, and Jo’s face falls.

“Oh. Right- That’s- Never-“

“But,” you cut her off, your brain turning too fast to track. “If- It’s stronger there. Everything. Bridges, spells, enchantments-“ You swallow. “Prayers.”

Jo blinks. “You want us to… pray?”

“No,” you close the book, mouth set in a grim line. “I want Dean to pray. Somewhere- Somewhere I’m able to hear.”

Jo’s doubtful. You don’t blame her. Whatever let you hear Dean’s prayer in Heaven, whatever let him call you from across the world, over and over and over again, you don’t know how it works. You know it’s woven just to the right of your heart. You think it might be that part of you that’s embedded in him, that branch of love that grew over him, that he never pushed out. The mechanics don’t matter right now. If Dean is praying, you aren’t hearing it. If you can hear it, you can try and trace it.

“Like a radio signal?” Jo asks, and you nod. She sighs. “But- What if we ain’t able to do that?”

“Then,” you say, dark and firm. “We figure something else out.”

Jo doesn’t argue past that. This is the kind of thing, where she knows far better. It takes you the rest of the day, but there’s a Vortex point in the Himalayas. It’s a long trip. You work out a spell, that will get you there and back in a day. Claire gets clear instructions not to leave the motel room for anything, while you’re gone.

“We’re leaving at sunrise,” you tell her. “We’ll be back by sunset.”

And you don’t say hopefully. You don’t say you’ll try. You will be back by sunset, whether you have something or not.

You hope you have something. You need it. You need anything, to weave into another wire. Another way to keep yourself going, an extension of the rope you’re hanging onto, something metal you can from into a new rail before you reach the end of the line.  And you can almost convince yourself that this, this single, small mission, will be it.

You’ll go to the Vortex point, pull Dean out of the ground like a potato, and go home. If you really let yourself play pretend, you’re going to the Vortex point for nothing but research. You’re going to do some experiments, collect some data, and call Sam on the drive home. You’ll try to tell him about what you found. Dean will try to steal the phone, and Sam will lock himself in the bathroom so he can’t. You’ll smile to yourself, at the sound of him banging on the door. The moment you get home, Dean will sweep you into his arms and kiss you up against the wall.

“Sammy was bein’ a dick, sweetheart,” he’ll mutter, his arms caging you against his body.

You’ll giggle against his lips and pull on his shirt, unsure what to do with yourself but melt into him. He’ll carry you to bed, ignoring your false protests. You’ll sit on your knees when he tosses you onto the mattress, watching with wide eyes and an embarrassing heat pooling between your thighs, as he peels off his shirt. He’ll ask you about the hunt. You’ll forget everything you wanted to tell him, until he smiles fondly, cups your face, and bends down to kiss you stupid.

“Missed me, huh?” He’ll tease, his thumb gliding over the nape of your neck, and you’ll nod. Hopeless. Entirely his, in ways you think he still doesn’t quite understand.

“You have no idea,” you’ll whisper, and he’ll grin like he won a prize.

“You have no idea,” you whisper to the dark.

And if the day passes fast, with odd normalcy and smiles that only bring a little bit of guilt, the night drags. It buries you, until your lungs are stuffed and you’re sure you’re never going to see the morning again.

If you don’t have a lead, you spend the sleepless hours trying to practice. You coax a spring to shoot out of the ground, you ask an old bush to light itself on fire, you convince a river it would be better flowing north. You’re getting stronger. More comfortable, in being everything. It doesn’t hurt, when it’s not against your will. The soreness that lingers in your body after gets smaller and smaller every night, and you find yourself getting bigger and bigger.

You still don’t understand most of what you can do, but no one does. So you just test the limits, and find that the boundary is further past your fingertips than you could’ve possibly dreamt.

It’s a good distraction, until it’s not. Until you remember why you’re not letting the Silver go dormant again. Until you push a little too hard and the Spiderweb flares like the core of the Sun, rocking from the force of a solar storm.

You let yourself be weak. You spent so long in self-pity, so long trying to be small and fragile. Small and fragile things don’t survive in the wild. Small and fragile things get put in cages, and it doesn’t matter what kind of light they’re made of. They don’t have enough of themselves to break free.

Stand tall.

You are.

But it took falling, to learn how. And it cost you Dean, and now you sit on the curb of a packed street in India, surrounded by hundreds of people. Entirety alone.

The darkness doesn’t swallow you anymore, but the brighter you let yourself get, the longer the shadows become. The pain grows like a bacterial infection, finding every place it can settle and overtaking your view of the world. The guilt becomes acidic. The sorrow you didn’t let Claire see presses back up like magma, demanding and burning in your lungs. You wander the streets for somewhere that’s louder than your head, but even the most crowded bar can’t compare.

A million songs, a million men, and million unwanted touches as people shoulder past you or trying to take the empty spot next to you. None of them are Dean, so all of them are wrong. One bold drunk tries to follow you out to the street, and you cover your ears, crouching in the gutter and begging the darkness to swallow you whole.

It doesn’t. It swallows him, and spits him back out when you ask it to. He stares at you with a gaunt, sober face. You smile and know it’s nothing but a manic, crude mask. You leave him on the ground, and keep wandering for that cove you know you won’t find.

It won’t even exist, until you get Dean back. And that just makes the pain bigger. You really don’t know where to put it, when there’s nothing to distract you. It’s just you, and the pain, and everything else in the dark. Rain might fall for you. The wind might pick up, to howl for your grief. The colors dull themselves, and the golden lights glow until the marks of Dean on your body seem to glow brighter than the stars. But that’s still all just fucking pain.

There isn’t a thing you wouldn’t do, just to feel it a little less.

A year ago, you would’ve taken you knife to the soft, unblemished parts of your skin. A punishment for daring to, even in the smallest of ways, be clean. But if Dean comes back and sees new scars, he’s going to have questions, and then you’ll have to answer them, and he’ll make that mournful, adoring face, and you’ll feel all the guilt just slamming back into you like a freight train. So you find other options.

You steal a bottle from one of the crowded bars. You drink until you can’t tell were you stop and the infinite waterfall of stars begins. You wander the streets and smile at the birds. You trip over loose pebbles and they unfurl into silver butterflies that blend into the night sky. You crouch, back on the curb, the bottle tight in your hand, and you whistle until your slow, haunted song is being sung back by every bird in the city.

You smile at nothing, tears streaming down your cheeks. You pour the rest of the bottle out in the gutter, and hope that wherever Dean is, he gets to be drunk too.

Somewhere in your addled brain, you figure out that you’re in no state to go back to the room. You stumble wherever the wind carries you, and find yourself at the motel pool, your feet dangling in the water and the blue, neon light dancing on your bare thighs and hands.

And you know you’ve been here before. And you know you’re going to be here again.

You sit at the edge of the pool, watching the light swim in the water before. It’s beautiful. That irreplicable chlorine blue, vibrant and glowing on your skin in the dark. Quiet wind blows over the marshes behind you. You breathe through your nose and smooth out your tennis skirt. You remember this one. In about five to six hours, it’s going to be coated in blood, and Bobby’s going to burn it in his backyard.

It’s a shame. You really liked it.

You feel him before you see him. The world shifts a little Golden. Warm fingers trace your arms, then your wrist. A thick thigh pressing against yours, and a hand slowly drags up, splaying over your lower back. Chapped lips press to your temple, and you lean your head on his shoulder, letting your eyes drift shut.

“You remember this?” Dean asks quietly, and you hum.

“Of course I do.”

He swallows, loud enough for you to hear. You turn your face into his neck, and he pulls you a little closer. There isn’t a space between your bodies that you leave untended. Your arms wrap around his torso, and his mouth rests on the top of your head. His breathing is slow. Steady. His heart pounds in that way you memorized, before you even let yourself admit that you needed him. You used to press your fingers together until you could feel your own heartbeat, and you’d try to pretend it was Dean. You must’ve gotten good at it. This almost sounds real.

“You were so pissed at me,” he murmurs, and you roll your eyes.

“You called me a spoiled brat.”

“Well- In my defense, sweetheart, I really thought you were.”

You lean back to glare at him, and he catches your chin with a knowing smirk. His thumb drags over your lower lip, and you pout, trying to make your glower the savage, blinding one that lends you that title of Whore Beast. Instead you think you might just be mimicking a bunny. Dean taps your nose, and it scrunches. His smile widens, and you try to hide your face back in his body. He doesn’t let you, holding your chin with a firm but gentle grip.

“Mighta been right,” he teases, light dancing over every word. “Look at you.” He flicks your nose again. “Spoiled brat.”

Your glare doesn’t seem to be focused enough to block out the building eruption from every part of you that matters. It’s made of longing and love and an inability to ever really be mad at him. Not when he says ‘brat’ the same way he says ‘baby’ and ‘princess’. Like there isn’t a thing he could think of, that wouldn’t be endearing. Like there aren’t any words that capture whatever he thinks of you, so he just settles for calling you like a lighthouse, shining only to guide one ship back to shore.

“I am not spoiled,” your voice is breathless, and Dean chuckles, leaning just close enough for you to feel the heat of his lips.

“Guess I gotta step up my game, sweetheart,” he holds your gaze, and your flush might be enough to set this misty, scared little world on fire. “You’re supposed to be so spoiled you can’t even remember what it feels like to want.”

You flatten a hand on his chest for balance. Your lips part, and Dean leans a little closer, his fingers curling on your hip. You take a ragged breath, and his nostrils flare.

And you remember what it feels like to want. You remember it so clearly, because it’s still reflected behind you, fading on the horizon, stretching so long you don’t know how you ever got to the other side. You remember wanting so bad it was cannibalizing, wanting so bad you lost sleep, lost sight, lost balance. You did nothing but want, did nothing but memorize the landscape of a world you were sure you’d never be allowed to step a single, dreadened foot upon.  You wanted so bad you sat on the alter, begging to be a sacrifice he’d use to find himself someone he deserved.

And you remember him walking up to you at that alter, pushing you so carefully down, and using his body to pin you there. To keep you with him, whispering something too close to a vow against your skin, moving the marker of what was holy. The alter was only stone. You and Dean, upon it, where the only things that mattered in the world.

Dean’s brow has furrowed. He’s scanning over your features with worry, his murmur of your name soft. You wrap your arms around his neck and climb into his lap, and he holds you steady with a light, revertant touch. It seems to wash like steam over his whole body. It’s in the way his shoulders relax, in his eyes, gleaming with a pooling adoration, and in the soft, awestruck downturn of his lips. You used to think he only looked at you like this in your dreams. You’ve long learned that if there’s one thing you can never trust, it’s the reflection staring back at you, even only an echo of it on another person’s face.

“I was so mad at you,” you remind him, and his throat bobs.

“I know,” he rasps. “Said that. I think.”

You nod, pressing further forward. “I thought you hated me,” you whisper, and he shakes his head.

“Never. Never hated you, I- Hell, I tried, but-“ He swallows, a desperate edge creeping over his voice. “Couldn’t. Never could. Never did.”

You hum, looking down to your fingers. You trace his collarbone, and you could swear he shivers. “I hated you,” you mumble, and his hands twitch.

“Yeah?”

You nod, and Dean takes a ragged breath.

“When’d you-“

“When you left me,” you look at him under your lashes, and he seems afraid to move. “When you died, and you- You didn’t let me say goodbye.”

“Didn’t wanna hurt you,” he defends, but it’s weak. You just stare at him, combing through the stubble on his jaw. It’s getting longer. You haven’t seen in him in this kind of tight tee-shirt in so long, you forgot how thin they were. How they clung to his arms, how you could see every breath, even the stumbling, unsure ones. That, combined with the thickening, borderline beard he has in your dreams, it’s enough to make you fall for him all over again.

The first time you were here, he had a baby face and a smile that was only smaller than his heart. He slouched more, and never seemed willing to grab you with tighter hands than you held him. You wonder what kind of handprints he would’ve left, if you told him to hold on however he wanted. You think it would be closer to something like now.

You think that if you met Dean with this shirt and those eyes and these calloused hands, you might’ve fallen lower than your knees. You might’ve crashed into him so fast that neither of you would’ve had the time to even consider pulling away.

When he gets home, you’re hiding his razor and dragging him to the mall. He’s earned it. You’ve earned it. He’s too pretty, to bury under layers of ugly lumberjack clothing.

“Do you hate me know?” Dean asks, and you can hear it in the rare crack in his tone. His fear of the answer.

You thought he would’ve known better, from being nothing but a bought of madness, woven together from a love that spreads like a flood across everything you’ve ever known.

“No,” you breathe. “I- I was never good enough at it anyways.”

Dean’s mouth twitches up. He lets out a broken laugh of relief, cradling the back of your head. “Well, I guess we’re made for each other, huh?”

You nod, because there’s nothing else you could possibly be made for. You could cure the world of yourself, of other disease, of the devil and God in one fell swoop or scream. You could walk through the gates of Heaven, you could raze the castle of Hell, take all that promised world and rule over it the way God wants you to. Even without Dean, you’d still be doing it for some kind of love.

There is much, much more you can do than love Dean. But there is no world where you want to do everything, and not have Dean at your side. You have long decided that greatness does not negate your love for him. Your love for him only allows you to be greater.

Dean kisses you, and you press over him with everything you have. He’ll be home soon.

You both tumble into the water, as fast as you’ve always fallen together, and you don’t let go of him until the dream slips away.

Jo woke you up with a glass of water in the face. You told her that wasn’t necessary. She said it was, because you were crying in your sleep. You check the motel mirror before you go, and scowl, because she was right. There are tear stains on your cheeks, and a bloodshot ring around your pupils. You fix it, and ignore her smug look. There’s a job to do. Steps to be taken, that might be forward, or backward, or nothing but a standing march in place.

The fun part is finding out.

“This is- So fuckin’ cold-“ Jo hugs herself tight, bundled in about five jackets and poofy shoes that make her walk like a penguin. “How the hell ain’t you cold?”

You shrug, kneeling in the snow and brushing flakes off your shorts. It was like this at the other Vortex point too. You’d gotten to the top of the mountain in Brazil, and all the jungle heat had just felt like… nothing. Like you were floating through a perfectly regulated room.

“I’m gonna die,” Jo mutters to herself, rocking back and forth on her feet. “I’m gonna die, just ‘cause Dean had to stab a dick, I’m gonna die-“

“Stop saying you’re gonna die,” you tell her flatly, scooping away the piles of snow. “You’re not gonna die.”

“Yes, I am-“

“With that attitude, maybe.”

She glares, hard enough it prickles on the back of your neck. You sigh and sit back, giving her a pointed, expectant look.

“You know, the faster we do this, the faster we go back.”

Jo pauses. She looks out over the mountain—mostly just gray shadows in an infinite sea of white—and her nose wrinkles. You go back to scooping and sorting through your bag, waiting for her to catch up. She huffs. You hum to yourself, pulling out your knife and digging it into the spot you want.

There’s a loud scoff, and the snow shifts as Jo waddles over to your side. You smile at her, and she sticks out her tongue, before quickly pulling it back in with a wince.

“What’re we doin’?” She squints at your knife, and you grab her mittened hand, guiding it around the hilt.

“You’re hold that there,” you say, moving to your feet. “And I’m getting rid of the snow.”

“Alright,” Jo nods, then looks up with wide eyes. “You’re- What-“

“Shh,” you snap, and she snaps her jaw shut, looking from you to the falling snow like you’re crazy.

And you are. But you’re also getting better at it.

You stretch your arms, plant your feet, and close your eyes. You’re the snow. You’re the snow, falling from the sky without care for where it’s going, know only that it is will either find more of its kind and they will survive together in long, strong banks, or it will land somewhere hostile, and die alone. It goes with the wind, because it doesn’t have much of a choice. Not a single snowflake has ever even thought that there might be another way.

So when you offer it, every single one of them falters. Jo gasps softly behind you, and when you try to glare at her, you realize why.

The snow didn’t just stop in your head. Every single flake is suspended in the air, glowing like diamonds over the endless mountains. Rays of sun split through the thick clouds, and the light fractures in a million colors, giving the world an impression that it’s been trapped in a prism. Your hands fall slightly, stunned by the never-ending rainbow, the glory of a world that only carries one kind of life, getting to remember what it hasn’t been allowed to see in countless years. The snow doesn’t move. It just hangs there, clinging to your every breath, waiting for you to tell it what to do.

Jo covers her mouth with her hand, and you take a slow, concentrated breath. You press your hands out, and ask the snow to move, just from here, just for a little while.

There’s a flurry of white. The cold bites your skin for a half second, and you have to cover your eyes. But when you look again, you see it.

The snow is gone. It’s piled up on the edge of the cliffs and flown to other mountains, scattering across the land to grant you access to what you knew you’d find.

The stone courtyard is wide. The columns are tall and the statues of everything from monkeys to lions to tigers are finely detailed with gold. You look at Jo, still crouched on the ground, holding your knife like a life raft. She doesn’t seem sure where to look, and you understand. The temple is massive. A feat of architecture, at this elevation, built likely longer ago than either of you can imagine. You turn in a slow circle, and it would steal your breath if you weren’t so focused on it.

That small, pulsing pull, just to the right of your heart. It’s magnetic, but completely still. You press your hand flat on your chest, almost trying to pull it out, and it gets a little stronger. The Spiderweb sparks in return, and you know. That’s your Dean.

You close your eyes, trying to follow the thin, static thread that powers it like a cable. You tug a little too hard, and everything vibrates and turns to colors and a rush of gold and purple and green and blue and silver. You loosen too much, and it starts to slip through your fingers like fine sand. You kneel down, bowing your head and just trying to feel it.

Just feel it, Princess.

You’re trying. But all you can make out is his voice. Deep and rough in a way you haven’t heard in a while. Scraping at the edge of every word, like he’s hasn’t been drinking water. Croaking in his throat like he’s been shouting. He sounds tired, and it makes your heart flip.

Yet still, you can’t make out a single fucking word.

You try. You try so hard, and Dean’s voice gets so loud you reach back, some instinctive, foolish part of you thinking he’s going to be right behind you. He’s in your ear, saying words that you can’t understand, that you can’t even begin to unscramble, because it seems to be really nothing but noise. You start to pant, scraping at the ground and doubling over. Jo breathes out your name, and you shake your head.

You can hear him. He’s out there, he’s alive, he’s praying to you so why can’t you fucking hear him, you should be able to hear him-

He says your name. It’s clearer than all the snow on the mountains, and your eyes shoot open. You let out a strangled sound, and he says your name again.

“Love you,” Dean rasps, and you can almost feel his breath on the back of your neck.

And you scream.

You scream so loud lightning cleaves through the mountains behind you, righteous and desperate to break something the same way you’re broken. You scream until you can’t hear the wind or the snowfall or Jo calling your name. You can only hear Dean. I love you, baby. Baby, I love you, easy, baby, I love you. It echoes around the valleys. Your head hurts so much you think it’s going to split open like a geode. Your back hurts like the sky itself is pressing down, but you’ve never had the resolve of an Atlas. You’ve never had the strength. Jo grabs you. You hold her back, trying to keep your feet on the ground.

The whole world becomes a blur of color and light and Dean’s voice, and then there’s just… Silence.

The hum of a fan. The rustle of sheets and eerp of Indy, romping across the small room as you fall to your knees. Claire says something you can’t hear, and Jo pulls her away. You hug yourself, trying to hold onto just a little bit of it. That kernel of Dean, already melting back into the Spiderweb with the rain, a heavy downpour on the roof, blowing in through the window, turning to something it didn’t think it could be. Something that doesn’t thaw, but flows through every bit of life, in the woods, the streets, the sewers and out into the ocean.

Jo takes Claire out. She says it’s for food. You know it’s so you can be alone, and you’ll thank her for it, when you can feel anything outside of yourself. You don’t want Claire around you like this. Dean would’ve done the same thing.

And he’s out there. You scratch at your chest and wrap a hand around your throat to calm down, but repeat it over and over until it’s embedded in your head. He’s alive. Dean’s alive. He’s out there, and alive.

The Lady curls in your lap, and Indy noses at your hand until you scratch her ears. Even Sparky darts over to sit on your head, pecking at your head until you offer in a finger, and move him to perch on your shoulder. Slowly, just like always, you come down.

He’s out there. Alive. Tired, but still able to speak. Still bothering to think of you.

Your gaze drifts to the box. Innocuous, peeking out from the folds of your bag. He wanted you to have it. He probably thinks you’ve already opened it.

I love you.

You crawl slowly across the ground and pull it out. The Lady and Indy poke at it, the Lady quickly losing interest and jumping on the bed, Indy seeming to recognize it as something of Dean’s and letting out a loud whine. You pat her head, settling against the foot of the bed, toying with the latch until it just… unclicks.

And you don’t know what you expected. A knife. A ring. A nice perfume, or more lingerie. Something important. Something worth giving you, then asking you not to open in front of him. You’d formed a curious mental list, of what that could possibly be.

You never once considered a pile of paper.

You frown. The box is overflowing with loose paper after loose paper, all of them covered in Dean’s blocky, uncoordinated scrawl. Sam used to say he had the handwriting of a fourth grader, and you’d smack Sam upside the head, because the little fucker didn’t teach himself the alphabet.

You miss him too. It’s smaller than that chasm of Dean that’s split through your spinal cord, but that’s a unique kind of pain. Sam alone is enough that you keep picking up the phone to ask him a question, before remembering he won’t pick up. If you asked Sam about these papers, he’d tell you to read them. He’d probably take one and just start reading it himself. At his invisible direction, you take the one off the very top. It’s crumpled. Almost a year old, if the date—April 17th, 2011—is correct.

It’s addressed to you.

Princess, 

Come home. 

You blink, the paper crinkling under your fingers. April 2011 you were in Heaven with Cas. And Dean-

Dean was writing this. For you.

I know that I’ve spent the last few months pissed at you. I know I wrote about twenty damn letters about it. A deep breath. Your biting your tongue enough to sting. And I know you’re gonna read them and only think that I hate you, but I don’t. Never did. Never could. 

You love something, you want it to be better. Heard that on TV, once. Might’ve been on the radio. Shit, maybe Sammy or you said it. But it’s the truth, baby. I love you, and I want you to be better. Not you, but you. I want you to be okay, and you aren’t okay. Not when you’re making crazy decisions like you think no one’s going to care if you go off the deep end. I care. Bobby cares. Sammy cares. And it goddamn kills me, that you think we don’t. So I need you to be okay.

I love you.

You close your eyes. It takes a moment to remember how to breathe. A moment to rub your eyes and collect yourself, so that the words don’t just float off the page.

You fucking killed me again, and I still love you. I’ve been trying to tell you. You never goddamn listen. You’re too smart for your own good, sweetheart. Can talk yourself into anything, and I- 

i think i feel you, sometimes. think i felt you now. its insane, but i feel you. the air smells more like you, and i can hear something that dont got words, but it sounds lie like you. and i know thats freaking batshit, but stranger things, right? you feel like an angel. you feel like everything good. and i wish you could understand that. sammy says you dont know. you gotta know. i wish i knew how to tell you. i wish that you’d believe me, when i did. 

i can show you. i know people can say things all they want and you dont believe them. got that spelled out for me, when it took me pinning you to a wall for you to realize maybe i wanted to fuck you. so ill keep doing it like that. ill help rowena get those souls out of you. ill kill eve for you. i wont let you pull that shit again, cause im about to make it real clear that i love you, and you can think nothing about me all you want (you probably should) but nothing you say is gonna make me love you less. i let you boss me around about a lot, princess. youre not getting the upper hand on this. you break my heart, you either stitch it back up like my hands or leave it like that till i die. but no one else is touching it. so deal with that. 

Not much for life updates. Had to tie Sammy’s shoes yesterday, cause he keeps falling over whenever he does them. Been taking Claire out to shoot bottles, she’s getting pretty good. Rowena ate dinner with us, which was weird, because I didn’t even know she ate. I don’t think she sleeps. I know she doesn’t cause I’m not either. 

I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. 

Yours, DAW  

The world can’t be spinning. Your heart can’t still be beating. The edge of the paper crinkles too loud, and you drop it, terrified you broke it. Just as fast as you let it go, you pick it up. You read it again. A third time. You can hear him behind you, like at the mountain. You never goddamn listen. He thinks you might hate him. Never did. Never could. I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. It’sso clear it presses on your nose, it burns in your chest, it rattles something so deep inside you the whole world seems to tilt. But not off axis.

Something flips, and you feel sick, but your feet are beneath you in a way they haven’t been maybe your whole life. Like your neck was snapped, but it just righted a part of your spine that had been wrong. Everything was upside down.

You read it until you’ve memorized it. You count the I love yous—all seven of them—like a squirrel stocking for winter.  

Then you remember the rest of the box. Not a box of paper.

A box of letters. A supply of them, enough that he barely seemed to be able to fit them all.

You fumble with the one in your hand, dropping it back at the top and pulling out the one beneath it. April 16th. You don’t read it yet, checking the one before that. April 15th. One for each day. Back through March, February, January, December. You dig all the way to the bottom, trying so hard to move fast and not rip a single page. The very first one is shorter. Dated February 21st, 2010. A little less than month after you and Sam fell in the cage, and stained with something that smells like beer.

Princess,

I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to spell things wrong. You’ll know what I’m saying. You usually do. One time I said boom and meant Molotov, but you got it. Sammy said I was the luckiest asshole alive, because he would’ve just made me go to bed with how much I was drinking.

I’m drinking more now. 

Youd be pissed.

I miss you.

This is shit. I’ll try again in the morning.

I love you

DAW.

Eight. Eight I love yous. Twelve, if you count the ones he said to your face. Twelve drops of love that hit you like a tsunami, that shake your world like falling stars. You hold it to your chest and close your eyes, tears burning over your face. You smear them like warpaint, before looking at February 22nd. He spells everything wrong, and you laugh because you can almost see his pretty face, scrunched in concentration. He doesn’t say he loves you in this one, just he says he needs you, and that’s more than enough. You grab February 23rd, and he talks about needing you to come home, and Bobby hating him for letting you jump in, and drinking rubbing alcohol—god, you hope he didn’t—before signing off.

I’ll be back tomorrow. 

Wait for me. 

I’m sorry. 

DAW.

You can’t keep reading. You can’t even see through the tears. You clutch the letters to your face, hyperventilating and shaking and feeling it. It’s so easy it makes you furious you didn’t let yourself have it sooner, and that just makes you cry harder, and soon your throat is too closed up and your nose is stuffed and your whole body has this bone deep exhaustion that can only let you sit there and feel it. All of it, unrelenting and permanent and inevitable, the same ways as yours.

Just through the scraps of paper in your hands, you can feel Dean’s love.

But you can’t say it back. You can’t have it without worrying it’s going to be taken away. You can’t just have a good thing and cherish and worship it, without looking out the window and waiting for the sky to warn you. For it to try and take it away. You can only bathe in it and fight for it and scream for it until you run out of breathe in a world where the air changes direction, just to blow your way.

And you’re glad you didn’t let the Leviathans kill God.

But you.

You can’t fucking wait to do it yourself.

Sam and Dean were celebrities. The icky, dramatic kind, that got their faces plastered on tabloids and everyone loved to hate. Dean had always thought everyone was exaggerating about it, but there was no way to ignore the truth. Not now. When it was punching him in the face.

There wasn’t a single monster in Purgatory that didn’t know the Winchesters. They had some nicknames. Some legends and rumors. Sammy got the good end of the stick.

“Beware the Younger,” Dean read off the tablet, smirking at the carved words. “Taller than the trees, colder than the winter. Demon boy- They’re all really hung up on the demon thing, huh?”

Across the firepit, Sammy sighed. “I did start the apocalypse,” he muttered, and Dean shrugged.

“Yeah, but who hasn’t. Don’t get a big head, Sammy, it’s gonna fall off your titan body.”

He laughed, and Sam made a face. “Come on, Dean, there’s no way it says that-

“Demon boy, head bigger than his heart, titan body that cuts through the world. Tower on the sunrise, never let him know your name, never let him know your game- Oh, they’re rhyming now- Never tell him where you come from or go, never make a deal you don’t plan to break.” Dean’s nose scrunched. “Dude, you sound like Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Shut up,” Sam muttered, looking around the dark woods. “What about you? Little burger man, head of ass?”

“Haha,” Dean flipped him off, squinting down the tablet. “Handsome Winchester, cooler Winchester, just surrender right now ‘cause he’s gonna kick your ass-“

“Gimme that.” Sam snatched the tablet out of Dean’s hand, and Dean laughed, letting it echo through the forest.

Sammy had warded the perimeter. They should be set for at least five hours. Enough to eat, breathe, sleep, patch up. And if something was determined enough to break through, they were already prowling past the wood line. Dean letting himself get a rare laugh wasn’t gonna change a thing.

“Fear the Elder,” Sam read and Dean leaned forward with a smirk. “Moving like the Mountains and unforgiving, blood on his hands and gold in his teeth. Silver tongue, red heart, beating louder than the sun. Never falters. Never turns around. No path he can’t tread. Man of God, Killer of God, End of the line, more vengeful than the most foul beast. Do not take what is his. Do not make his smile fall.”

Dean shrugged, a half-satisfied press to his lips. “Hey, y’know- Could be worse. I sound pretty freakin’ cool, you just sound like a knockoff bigfoot-“

“And never spill Winchester blood,” Sam said, his face falling, grim and pained. “Where the Whore will be able to smell it.”

Dean’s jaw locked. Sam glanced up, heavy, apologetic regret all over his puppy-dog face. Dean stretched at hand, beckoning Sam to pass it back over. He did, slowly, like he already kind of wanted to take it back.

“We don’t need to worry about this, it’s- She’s not here-“

“Do not think of the Whore,” Dean muttered, and Sam fell quiet. “If you need think of her, you are already dead.”

Dean swallowed, and he wanted to break this damn tablet in half. Sam bowed his head, watching Dean carefully, speaking like he was trying to talk down a damn jumper.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Dean,” he muttered. “And- I mean, that’s a warning, not a call to battle.”

Dean grunted and dropped the tablet on the ground. He knew She wasn’t in any danger of a monster taking her out. Not like Sam and Dean were.

But She wasn’t alright.

Dean didn’t know how long he and Sammy had been stuck here. Time moves differently in these places, and Purgatory nights seemed to crawl twice as long as the days. They’d touched down a lifetime ago, figured out that they were pretty much screwed, and never had a second to tally up the weeks since.

They’d made an agreement. No giving up. Not on each other. Not on getting back home. They’d either stay alive long enough for someone topside to yank them out, or figure out a way home themselves. Dean thought She and Cas might work it out in the first month, until She told him that she hadn’t spoken to Cas since some big fight after Michigan. Dean should’ve seen that one coming. He loved Her to death and past it, but she’d never exactly been open to people telling her what to do, or stopping her, or getting in her way. Cas had—under Dean’s instruction—done all three.

He’d tried to soft pitch the idea that maybe Cas had just been listening to Dean, and it was more his fault that he’d landed his ass in Purgatory. She hadn’t given Dean the impression that she listened.

But She could figure this out herself. Weird stuff was her specialty, and there wasn’t much weirder than being trapped in Purgatory. Dean tried to give Her all the help he could, from the other side. There wasn’t much. He didn’t know anything about any of this, and She didn’t think he was real.

He’d thought about telling Her. He thought about it until his head hurt. He opened his mouth and choked on the words. He got a half-confession out, then looked at her a little too long and lost his voice. She might not believe him. She didn’t seem to, whenever he got too close to the truth.

A few nights ago, he’d written out this whole damn speech. Sammy had been knocked out, Dean had been on watch duty, and he’d used his makeshift knife to scratch the words in the dirt. He’d look up at rustles in the woods, or one of Sam’s bigger sleep-snorts, but that was it. He was going out next. He’d see Her, and she wouldn’t know she was seeing him, and it was one of those things Dean knew was going to bite him in the ass about, if he didn’t deal with it soon.

It’s me, Princess. Really me. Real me, Dean. Your Dean. Not a dream Dean- He’d laughed to himself, then groaned.

There was no good way to do it. The more he thought about it, the worse it got. This wasn’t a monster of his own making, it was an infection he’d already let sit too long. It was already a big if, whether or not she’d believe him. There wasn’t much he could say to prove it, when she thought he was just a figment of her imagination. If he told Her something about herself, she’d know it. If he said something about himself, She’d think he was making it up, and he’d have no way to convince her otherwise. She’d think it was too good, too easy to be true. Dean would’ve thought the same thing two years ago. Before Death. Before soulmates.

And if he got her to listen, there wasn’t an explanation that wouldn’t end there. Soulmates.

Dean had sort of dug himself a very big, very deep grave with this one. He kinda wanted to tell Sammy, just to give the kid a good laugh at his expense.

He only had two ways through this one. He said soulmates, and She didn’t believe him—pretty likely, as even if it made perfect sense, if there was one thing his girl had always been good at doing it was talking circles around herself until she believed up was right and left was down—and she didn’t believe the dreams were real, and Dean got stranded in the grave. He’d prove it when he got home, and She’d blame herself for not listening, and have a pretty big freakout, and then calm down and kill Dean for keeping that from her for a whole year.

Or he said soulmates, and She believed him, and she dragged him out of Purgatory by his ear just to kill him. For keeping that from her. For a whole damn year.

He’d groaned and kicked dirt of his speech, dropping his face into his hands. He was screwed. He was so fucking screwed, he might as well start figuring out how he wanted to decorate the doghouse.

And he knew making it, that this wasn’t going to be his best call, but he didn’t have many others to choose from.

He wouldn’t tell Her. It wouldn’t work. She didn’t trust Her own head, enough for Dean to talk her into it. And with everything She’d told him, there was more than enough for her to worry about. If he told Her, the small sanctuaries of their dreams would just turn into another place for her to freak out. She’d ask him to relay theories to Sam, and demand to see all his injuries, babying and smacking him at the same time when he told her how he and Sammy had dealt with the latest rush of vamps.

Dean knew it could be called selfish. He didn’t care. Not for this. Not when the dreams were all he goddamn had.

If you need think of her, you are already dead.

Dean almost snorted. He did nothing but think of Her, and he felt kinda dead. He and Sammy were both just cutting their way through the motions, mechanical and unwavering until they came out the other side.  

“You made any progress on that map thingy?” He muttered, and Sammy sighed.

“No, not really. I- I don’t know, Dean, how useful is it even gonna be-“

Dean cut him off with Her name. “She’ll wanna see it. You two can geek out about rivers or whatever, soon as we’re out.”

Sam’s mouth twitched, doubtful and quiet. His eyes dropped to the dirt, Dean leaned forward on his log, making his voice firm.

“Sammy, don’t make the freakin’- grieving wife face-“

“Why not?” Sam snapped, but it wasn’t forceful. It was just… tired.

They were both so damn tired.

“I mean, what the are we even doing, Dean? Wandering around, hoping we don’t die in the morning? We don’t even have a clue where to start, where this ends-“ Sam waved a hand, his voice raising. “All I do is try not to lose it and shoot you by accident, and all you do is make- Make stupid jokes and pray before bed! You, Dean, you’re praying.” Sam scoffed. “I’d think you were a shifter if we didn’t test each other every freakin’ day. I mean, who are you even pray to. Who’s going to care?”

Sam’s shout lingered in the air. He let out a heaving, long breath—Dean had a feeling he’d been holding it in for a while—and slumped back down. Dean stared at the fire, at the long shadows, flickering in the dark.

Sammy wasn’t wrong. He had been praying. Every night during his watch, every day when he stopped to take a piss, he was about three Hail Mary’s away from calling himself an altar boy.

But he couldn’t think of another damn thing to do.

He said Her name, slow and hallowed. The most important word in the world. He could swear that, in the starless Purgatory sky, something glowed past the dark.

Sammy looked up with a frown, and Dean swallowed, repeating Her name, a little louder this time.

“I’ve been prayin’ to her. Every night.” He shook his head. “And- I know it ain’t doing much, but- Hell, Sammy, I can’t stop. It’s gotta get help her, right? I tell her where we are, I tell her what we’re seeing, everything. That’ll help.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said softly. “I mean, why would she even be hearing it? I know- In Heaven- But this isn’t Heaven. Cas can’t hear our prayers down here-“

“She isn’t Cas.” Dean muttered. “It’s- It’s different-“

“No, I- I know, Dean, but- She doesn’t exactly take prayers, dude-“

“She takes them from me.”

Sam fell silent. Dean sighed, staring at his hands. Caked in mud. Cold and clasped together. He felt goddamn sick.

“We’re- Me and her-“ The words just wouldn’t come out. Not without Dean twisting them. “We got a soul-bond.”

“A soul-bond?”

Dean grunted an agreement, and Sam stared at him.

“What- What the hell does that even mean-“

“Means what it means,” Dean snapped. “Means she should be able to hear it, when I’m the one praying. But- I don’t know, Sammy. Some kinda wire must be getting crossed, ‘cause I don’t think it’s working.”

They were silent for a moment. Dean glanced up, only to find Sam still frowning at him. There was that far-off look on his face, though. Like he was more in his head than out there with the rest of the world. Dean leaned into his vision, waving for attention, and Sammy blinked.

“Huh?”

“Nothin’, just- Earth to Sammy,” Dean narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing the nerd eyes about.”

“The-“ Sam sighed. “I told you not to call it that-“

“I’ll call it what I want,” Dean shrugged. “What’s up.”

“It’s- I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing,” Sam said it all small, and Dean knew it wasn’t nothing.

“Sam…” He warned, and Sam caved quick.

“Just- What if- And I’m not saying this is it, but-“ Sam glanced up, then back to Dean, dropping his voice. “We’re in a weird spot. And I know he doesn’t stand much against her or whatever, but- He can pretty easily mess with you, Dean. No offense.”

Dean scowled. “How am I not supposed to take offense to that-“

“Because it’s God,” Sammy hissed. “And you’re like- A dude.”

“A dude who stole his wife,” Dean muttered under his breath, and Sammy rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, dude. That’s my point. Maybe he’s not super happy about that, and he’s… I don’t know, messing with the prayer signal.” Sam’s throat bobbed, his voice getting tight. “And she… She just can’t hear you at all.”

And a critical, cardiac thing in Dean plunged. His lungs faltered like they’d collapsed, and his heart slowed to a titanic pace, and his jaw tightened so much he knew that—if She was here—She’d grab it and pry it open and yell at him about grinding his teeth.

She had to have been hearing. She had to know he was in Purgatory, that he was looking for a way back to Her, that he loved Her. God was a son of a bitch, but he owed Dean that much. Dean had saved his damn life. He’d given everything—mostly for Her, but God sure was reaping the benefits—and the bastard didn’t get to just swoop in. To take Her away from Dean, when She needed him.

If She hadn’t been hearing him, She- She might think he was dead.

Sam said Dean’s name, worried and tense. Dean waved him off. He didn’t want to talk about this. Not now. Not when he could feel parts of the ground crumbling, and he couldn’t afford to lose his footing.

“I’m getting’ my two,” he grunted, moving down to his back. “Wake me up to trade watch.”

Sam sighed and gave him that sad, pitiful look again, but he knew better than to argue. They could go to bat about strategy, about next moves, about food or camp or any other damn thing, and they’d work it out. It was the closest to the team Dad had trained them to be, for better or worse.

But Dean wasn’t gonna talk about Her. Not in any way that might turn to a fight.

He twisted so his back was to Sammy, closed his eyes, and counted himself luckier than most. At least he still got a part of her, even if it was going to vanish from his fingers by morning.

If you can hear me, he prayed. And Christ, I hope you can, I’m coming home, sweetheart. I swear I’m coming home. I’ll hold on if you hold on. Fuck, I’ll hold on for both of us. Just don’t give up on me. Dean squeezed his eyes tighter, fighting off the burn. I love you. All the way down, remember. You and me. Just you and me.

And all Dean heard in response was the howl of the wind, high above his head, untouchable, untamable, and wild in the dark.

Dean didn’t count the money on the table. He remembered exactly how much there had been. He remembered exactly how long it had lasted, before he’d needed to make some difficult calls. He turned over a few bills in his hands, and wondered if there had been another way. One where he’d stretched everything thinner, while keeping Sammy in one piece. There wasn’t going to be any avoiding the rougher parts. There never was. You didn’t get outta the mountains without crawling through the caves. But if he’d been a little smarter, maybe the would’ve come out with a few less bruises, or he could’ve taken more bullets.

“What’s the money for?” She murmured, and Dean wrapped his arm around Her shoulders, pulling her almost fully into his lap.

“Nothing,” he lied easily. She didn’t have to worry about it. Dean knew She was probably doing enough of that already. “You have a good day, Princess?”

She shook Her head, her lips pursed into a swollen little line, her whole face crestfallen and her body shaking like a damn toy poodle. She climbed over him, legs hooking around his waist and head bowing. Dean knew Her well. He cradled the back of Her head and kissed her brow, frowning against the warm skin.

“Fight with Jo?” He asked quietly, and got no answer. “You talk to Cas-“

“No,” She mumbled, and Dean sighed.

He left Her cling to him. She almost burrowed Her face into his neck, and when Dean spread his fingers on her lower back and pushed Her closer, she let out a soft, sweet little noise and eased fully into his arms. It filled Dean with a strange, warped kind of pride. He was caring for Her. She was letting herself relax, and he was willing to bet a real cut of money that she hadn’t stopped moving since he and Sammy had vanished.

A few days after this night at the table, he’d be out with Sammy at the park, and the kid would ask him about girls. What was ‘up’  with them, how he was supposed to talk to them, why Dad didn’t like either of them hanging around them too long. Dean could chalk up a lot of Sammy’s lapses in charm to Dad giving him the impression that the prettier the girl was, the more likely she was to be venomous or something.

And Dean had done his best to combat that, but he’d been a bit of an idiot. He hadn’t met Her yet. He hadn’t known how good the world could get, when you had something so beautiful it caught all the light and cast it around her, like a diamond that melted into water, a river that swept Dean away to a kind of paradise he should’ve known better than to fight.

He’d told Sammy then that women were like dogs. He’d barely been thirteen. He’d been failing most of his classes, scraping by with hands covered in things a boy’s hands should never know, and he’d been trying to get big enough to match Dad’s shadow. Dad said women were like dogs. All different kinds of them, loud or quiet, loyal or violent, lazy or constantly running around for attention. They brought you joy, but they were just damn dogs. Nothing you wouldn’t do for yours. No real, logical need  for them outside of a companion.

Sammy had been doubtful. He’d always been smarter than Dean anyway.

But Dean knew better now. He needed Her, just for the damn logical reason of a third, better opinion than he and Sammy were going to offer. He needed Her to swoop in like of God from the Machine and save their asses, and he need to feel Her outside of these dreams. He needed Her to be okay. It was better than nothing, that he could take this wolf of a woman and turn her into a snuggling koala, but She didn’t think it was real. And Dean didn’t know how that was going to carry over into the real world.

“You gonna be alright?” He asked, because even if She lied, at least that meant she had some fight left.

She leaned back and stared at him. She had those doe eyes again, and it made Dean swallow. He couldn’t fuck her in here. Not when She didn’t think it was real.

Her eyes dropped to his lips, and Dean’s tongue darted out, almost against his will. He muttered Her name, and she leaned forward until their brows were resting together, her breathing short and ragged. Dean rubbed a slow circle on Her back, almost purely to ground himself. She stared at his mouth, then slowly dragged her gaze up, and Dean thought he might choke on his heart.

“Don’t gimme that,” he said, pleading and quiet, and She shied a little back.

No. Dean couldn’t have that. He grabbed Her neck, keeping her forward, and let their lips brush in the lightest possible touch.

“C’mon, Bambi,” he said, soft and teasing. “Look at me.”

She did. Tears made Her eyes glow, and Dean dug his fingers into her soft skin, trying to keep her together with just a touch. Even one she didn’t think was real.

“You’re gonna be alright,” he said, and it came out like an order. He was past caring. “Got it?”

She nodded. It was small. Tight and unsure. Dean took it anyway.

“C’mere,” he pulled Her closer, moving into a deep, slow kiss. She made that pretty little sound of surprise, like she still didn’t expect it to always feel this good. Dean pressed his tongue on Her swollen lower lip, and she shivered, pulling herself closer by her thighs.

He smiled against Her lips. He didn’t rush. This was all he had. This was what he was fighting to get back to.

He wasn’t about to let a single moment slip through his fingers. Not now. And never when he got home.

✦chapter 74

✦End note: sooooo much planned this season. 2 secrets i believe. many many things :). thank you for reading! Chapter Title from Ain't No Mountain by Marvin Gaye

✦If you like this story, please reblog, like, or leave a comment! <3

You sweep through long halls in a dress that flows behind you, covering the shadows with lace and silk. You run out to the empty yard and slam into Dean, right where you knew you’d find him. Standing with the stake in his hand that he drops, in favor of spinning you off the ground and cradling your trembling body. One hand cups the back of your head, and the other digs into your hips. You trip trying to pull yourself closer, and drops a thick arm under your thighs, hauling you up into his arms.

He’s warm. So warm you let yourself pretend this is real. You bury your face in his neck and dig your nails into his neck. Wherever he is—the real Dean—you hope he can feel the dull, claiming pain. You hope he knows that you brush wet, swollen and tear stained lips over the crescent dents after, trying to push them a little deeper into his skin. You’re allowed to be possessive and selfish here.

Because, no matter how much it hurts you to know, it’s not real. 

Dean guides your face away from his neck, tugging your hair gently, forcing your gaze onto his. Tired, glassy eyes flicker like a jumping engine, a heart being shocked back to life. His mouth works in that tiny way, where he’s trying to think of something to say but only seems to know how to touch. He brushes your hair once, twice, and third time with this thumb sweeping over your cheekbone, his lips parting with a long, broken sigh.

You press a tender, worried kiss to his lips, and he snaps. His hand fists in your hair. He stumbles back like he’s been punched, kissing you until you’re both breathless and drunk on a phantom taste. He trips his way to a soft pile of grass in the courtyard, somehow managing not to come up for air. Dean lands flat on his ass and holds you over his chest, attacking your neck and jaw with brutal lips, sucking tiny bruises before flicking his tongue over the ache. You dig your fingers into his hair, biting back wrecked moans.

Dean grabs your chin, squeezing your cheeks and shooting you a stern, lust-blown glare.

“Don’t be like that, Princess,” he mutters, grazing his mouth over your puckered lips. “I gotta hear you. Lemme hear you.”

He traces his fingers teasingly up your side and nips at your lower lip. You let out a high, pathetic whine, and he smirks.

“There she is.”

Dean kisses you again, before gliding his mouth back down. There isn’t an inch of your skin he doesn’t seem determined to mark. Your moans echo off the courtyard walls, and his grunts vibrate against your skin, sending tiny, sweet shivers up your spine. Your shirt gets peeled off, so he can mouth at your breasts. He traces the curve of your ass and sits you right on the growing bulge in his pants, but never does anything more than rock his hips.

If Sam ever got a peak in your head, he’d vomit and then say something about you not even letting yourself feel good in a useless fantasy, and then you’d punch him in the face. Holding Dean after he cuts off the… other stuff, it’s just as good as anything else. You just need him, really. To be close for a fleeting hour of rapid sleep, where you can trace over his Golden features and beg the stains on your skin to keep you dirty, because the idea of being clean sounds so harrowing you think it might eat you alive.

“You doing alright up there?” Dean murmurs against your skin, his face buried between your breasts, and you nod.

There’s a long, aching sting at your eyes. You hug his head and breathe deeply, trying to burn the sweet smell of cinnamon into your nostrils. 

Dean says your name, splaying his fingers on your lower back. He tries to lean back, but you hold him in a headlock, the tears streaming down your cheeks. He grunts and pries at your forearms, grabbing your wrists with light hands and forcing your grip to slacken. He smiles faintly, at your scrunched up, snotty nose and red eyes. It’s tired. Everything about him seems tired, but he still smiles, as if you’re the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Easy, baby,” he murmurs, taking both of your hands between his. “It’s gonna be alright, you’re gonna be alright.”

He kisses his knuckles, trapping yours, and you sob so hard it shakes your body. You’re not worried about you. You’ve learned, for better or worse, that you really always will get through it. The universe doesn’t seem all that open to letting you tread down that other path.

But you’re worried about him. You’re worried about him in a way that almost cleaves you in half, that threatens to be the only thing that could possible overrule the universe, that frays the already weak threads that stich up whatever foul, glorious thing you’re made of. You’re held together by hooks and needles, at this point. You’re twisting yourself into knots that half ease right here, in Dean’s arms, but all that happens is your heart spills and spills and spills, until the rotting grass is overgrown and stained with silver dew.

Dean glances down, but doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t say much but soft reassurances, until you’re able to speak again. His thumb pets down the bridge of your nose, and—if you’re shaking so much the ground starts to shake with you—he flips you onto your back and hold you until you the weight makes you breathe.

Tonight is one of those nights. He traces over your face with the most cautious touch, his face twisted with a heavy, painfully blatant longing. Hooded eyes shine, scanning over your crumpled features. His mouth hangs open, like he’s trying to inhale you, the same way you hold his fisted hand over your lips. Just trying to get a little extra of something you’ve never been able to be satisfied with. Something that’s never going to be able to be close enough.

“Better?” He rasps, when your breathing steadies. You shake your head, your lips wobbling and he sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He kisses your brow, brow knitting like he’s in pain. “I know.”

He never tells you much, but there isn’t much your brain seems to need to hear. Sam’s alive. They’re working to get back. Dean loves you, and he swears up and down and left and right, on his both his babies—you and the damn car—and his mother and brother and Scooby Doo boxers and Led Zepplin cassettes, that he’s going to come home and say it to your face again. You tell him he already has, and he laughs and tells you that you have no idea. He asks you about things, every single time. How’s Claire. How’s Jo. Are you talking to Cas again, have you spoken to Eileen at all, has Crowley come crawling out from underground. You tell him the truth, and sometimes he makes a face like he wants to argue. Sometimes he does argue, and you think you miss him so much you’re going mad.

“You gotta talk to Cas, sweetheart, who the hell knows what the angels are up to-“

“No.”

Dean sighs your name, and you shove his chest with a flat hand.

“You talk to him, if it’s so important.”

“I’d like to,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Could tell him to talk some sense back into your smart ass.”

You shove him again, and he just catches your wrist and guides it away.

“I’m serious,” he says, strict and heavy, even as he drags his thumb over your knuckles and uses a soft, coaxing tone. “If I get back and you’re still fightin’ with Cas, I’m gonna be pissed.”

And you just hold his gaze, your throat closing up so tight the words have to break to get out. “So come back,” you whisper. “And prove it.”

India is hot in the middle of April. Wet and hot, mud always coating your boots and dirt getting under your nails, a sticky warmth filling up your lungs with every breath, a million smells that remind you of Dean flooding your senses and making you press your lips tight enough to crack.

He’d love it here. The people and the food, the bartering and the TV and, again, the food. He’d pull you through the markets with your hands locked, spending half an hour talking to one seller about his fish before storming off for a reason he sputters trying to explain. You’d kiss his cheek and ask if he wants to go fishing. He’d light up like a child and drag you back to the hotel, kissing all over your face as you stumble through the door, giggling like a lovesick fool in his arms.

Instead, you lean against the old table in the warehouse, sharpening your knife and ignoring the muffled curses of the man in the chair. Bobby’s bottle shines green, in the dim, flickering light. You kick your bag a little away from your feet, dancing and humming while you wait for everyone to calm the hell down.

For him, specifically, to calm down. You tied him up in the nice binds, you’ve given him a lot of wiggle and breathing room—Jo was worried he’d get out, you know he won’t—and brought him some very expensive and stolen lamb that he didn’t get to eat, because he tried to bite your fingers off. He’d have it pretty good, if he’s stop overreacting. You’re the one who should be freaking out, and you’re perfectly calm. The Silver is bright and smooth and calm, iced over your veins and melded into your muscles. It moves when you move, and screams when you scream, and it’s like learning to walk all over again, but you’re doing it. And you’re calm.

Psychotic, the man before this one said. You sliced his hand open and dripped salt on the wound, for that one. It wasn’t the claim, but the way he said it. Like you were just some crazy, scorned bitch. Which another former captive called you, and he lost his tongue, but he’d also crossed your very, very clear line about Claire, so you think he earned it.

That’s why this one can call you whatever the fuck he wants. You’ve been called worse, and you’re past caring what kind of whore or slut or bitch or cunt you have to be. If anything, it’s a compliment. It means they’re afraid.

The man spits something, then chokes and thrashes the chair. The chains rattle unpleasantly against the floor, and you shoot him an unimpressed look.

“Neal, I can’t understand you,” you remind him, and his eyes narrow. “And remember what we talked about? Good behavior?

Neal’s face curls and contorts into something like a sneer. You sigh and spin your knife in your hand, pushing off the table with a tiny kick of your feet.

“This,” you wave the blade over his general, rather rude demeanor. “Isn’t good behavior. This isn’t how we earn speaking privileges again, buddy. I don’t want to have to remind you again.”

Neal’s eyes flash with fury. He growls something and you stop right in front of him, crossing your arms and scanning over his locked down body with a frown. He’s been here almost two weeks, and all you’ve really gotten is an uncooperative attitude and a lot of insulting comments about your body. You would’ve thought he’d give up after a while. The rest of them did.

You tap your foot and chew on your lower lip. Neal’s gag is getting dirty, but it didn’t exactly start clean. Maybe you’d soaked it in dirty dish water, before stuffing it in his mouth. He deserved it. He made a comment about Claire that he was lucky to survive.

Luck that came with being one of the last Alphas left. If there had been hundreds of them before, the count is down to double digits. You, Cas, and Crowley sort of did a lot of damage to the population, leaving only the smart ones that evaded capture, and know to stay underground. Those are the ones like the Alpha Vampire, who you haven’t been able to find after months of looking.

And then there are the ones who didn’t get caught because they were too stupid to be worth it.

The ones like Neal.

There isn’t a corner of the Earth you don’t think is worth ripping up to find Dean. For a week after Michigan, you thought God might have taken him. Jo barely managed to talk you down from truly, fully losing it, and she only got the chance because of your exhaustion from killing Eve.

“You felt God grabbin’ me, right?” She’d said, holding your hands and pleading in a way that was so unlike Jo, you’d managed to focus on her words. “You told me, you felt God yankin’ me away, just like you felt my mom. Like you felt him tryin’ to grab Bobby. You woulda stopped him, if he was goin’ for Sam and Dean. You woulda,” she’d squeezed your hand, even as you’d stared at her with empty eyes. “I know it. You know it. Hell, God himself knew it, so- Wasn’t him.”

You’d blinked at her, and nodded slowly. She was right. It couldn’t have been God. He’d vanished from the sky again, so you couldn’t ask, but you knew. One of the only things that had saved you, in that moment, was that you hadn’t been wrestling with God to pull Sam and Dean back. You would’ve detonated, if you had. But instead they’d just vanished, and you’d been hit by the despair before the wrath.

It had been long. Long and harrowing and cold, in the week after. Jo says you barely spoke, and you have to believe her, because you don’t really remember that much otherwise. It’s all a blur of a bed that didn’t have the warmth it was supposed to, showers that you were afraid to take and scars of Gold you traced with trembling, fearful fingers. The only sharp memory is the fight with Cas, and even that is sanded around the edges. You’d drifted until Jo reminded you that it couldn’t be God, and it had been like slamming against a rock. 

If it wasn’t God, it was something else. Something weaker.

You could kill something weaker. You could do it without destroying yourself, and dragging the rest of the world down with you. You could get Dean home.

In the days after that, you’d moved fast. Kevin had been sent off with Meg, who promised to keep him away from Crowley. You and Jo had packed up Bobby’s house and left, looking for something. Anything, that would even tell you where Dean had landed. That would tell you how to get him home.

“Listen,” Meg had said before you separated, low and careful. “Things like that bone? My daddy told me to be careful with them.” She’d given you a pointed look. “Told me they had kickback.”

Kickback.  

A rebound of power, Rowena had explained. An aftertaste, but everyone in a few yards gets it shoved down your throat. Dean and Sam got dragged somewhere. All you had to do was drag them back.

Which means all you have to do is figure out where they got dragged.

It’s a harder task, than you originally thought. You’ve gone after countless people and beasts and entities for answers. God convicts who were willing to talk without anyone needing to be tortured, rogue angels who looked for you to help, demons who you trapped and witches and cult members who got to find out exactly how many of the rumors have been true. And in all of them, from the annoying to the unless to the rude, Neal is, by miles and margins, the fucking stupidest.

“I’m going to take out your gag,” you tell him slowly, leaning down over his chair. “You’re not going to call me any names, I won’t cut out your tongue, and we all win, okay?”

Neal eyes the weapon, inches from slicing his cheek. You smile sweetly and flick your wrist, taking out a lock of his hair, and he flinches. Like a little fucking bitch.   

“Okay?” You prompt again, and his throat bobs.

He nods. You beam, and saw at his gag with a wide smile. The cloth falls and you let it hang around his neck, watching with raised brows and a warning curve to your lips. Neal glares at you, and you tip your head, letting your hair brush over his cheeks. He recoils back, his breathing shallow and hot over your face, and you smile in slow, smug satisfaction.

“That’s a good boy,” you purr, drawing yourself back up.

Neal—the idiot—snaps.

“You little fucking bitch-“

“Ah,” you slam the gag back up to his mouth, choking him on the fabric. His eyes flicker, hatful and beady and small. You sigh. You really wanted to do this the easy way. “That’s not what we talked about,” you tug the fabric tighter, and he grunts. “I’m being very nice right now, and you- You didn’t even eat the food I bought you! Do you know how hurtful that is?” You roll your eyes. “And- Even if I didn’t buy it, I still got it for you. And you call me a bitch? Rude.”

You shove him back and let go of the gag, taking a large step back before he can spit in your face.

He tries. He always tries, because he’s an idiot. You dodge it without blinking, but it lands only a few inches away from Bobby’s bottle. The old wood sizzles and hisses under the venom. You turn back around with a furious flurry and rage in your chest, a growing winter storm that Neal seems to feel, with how he goes still.

“Do you know what happens?” You ask slowly. “If you destroy that bottle.”

Neal opens his mouth. You don’t give him a real chance to respond.

“I kill you,” you spit, taking a large step forward. Neal’s fingernails and lips are starting to go purple. The warehouse creaks under your feet, as slow frost spreads over your feet.

“I didn’t hit the damn bottle,” Neal tries to snap, but it’s weak. His voice cracks, and his eyes are too wide. You hold a finger to your lips and shake your head. He swallows loud enough that you can hear it, and you smile.

“I kill you,” you repeat, honeyed and low. “And then I track down every one of your children, and I kill them too. Then I open Purgatory, and I kill all of you all over again. Do you understand.”

Neal’s eyes narrow. For a second, you think he really might be stupid enough to test you, but he only nods.

“Great,” you spin you knife, kneeling down to his height. “See? Isn’t it easy to listen to me?”

Neal’s mouth ticks. He still doesn’t speak, and you sigh.

“Now, I know you’re going to try and tell me you have no idea where the Leviathan bone goes, but if you do that, I’m going to have to cut off your hand. And I don’t wanna do that. It’s gross, it smells bad, now I have to get rid of a hand- You get it,” you shrug. “So, if you’d be so perfectly kind to think a little bit harder, maybe we can figure out a version of this where you only lose your finger.”

The column of Neal’s throat works. His jaw does a funny little motion, and you grab his cheeks with a sigh, pressing the knife to his throat.

“I told you to stop doing that, it’s not going to work.”

“Fuck-“ Neal pushes out the words through his teeth little bits of spittle landing on your skin.

It burns, but the sores heal in seconds. Cockatrice venom doesn’t do much to you, apparently. It’s still annoying to have to heal it.

“Fuck- You-“

“Everyone’s trying,” you say dryly, pressing the knife down until a thin bead of blood coats the blade. “Where is my Dean.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t fucking know-“

“Liar,” you lean closer, eyes narrowing. “I know you’re a liar, I know what Mommy taught you, I- I fucking know-“

Your voice breaks, and the frozen coating over your hands is giving way to pure, raw wrath. You will get him back. You have to get him back. There is nothing ahead of you, if you don’t get Dean home. This power is useless if you can’t find him, life is useless if you have to feel all of it but you don’t get to have something that’s just yours, everything has been nothing if you don’t get to have Dean.

And Neal sees it, between the shattered cracks of the Silver, waxing and waning like an ocean storm, crashing up high enough that the chains turn to roots and the pain under all of it becomes so obviously, dangerously clear.

Most Alpha and demons caved under it. They’d been trying to barter or mock, not understanding that the rumors about you and Dean didn’t cover the thinnest scope of your love. You’ve long learned that people talk about the Winchesters and their strange little monster. The demon boy and his black eyes and breakdowns. The brute hunter that carves through anything in his way, to get to his baby brother and his girl.

The Magdalene. The Whore. The Bride, who’s stuck herself to the brother’s side and sleeps in the brute’s bed. They say everything about you and Dean. That you fuck like rabbits, that he sits at your feet like a dog, that you follow him around like a lovesick schoolgirl and crawl into his lap with blood on both your hands.

And yet it takes that peak behind your fury, for them to get it. To understand that they are not looking at some tragic little star-crossed love, some Bonnie and Clyde pairing that talks big and shoots bigger.

They are looking at a Horror. They are looking at something that can’t fit in their little minds, who could sweep over lands and mold them in her name, who could hold the stars in her hands or bring paradise to the earth, but only wants one, perfect, sweet idiot of a man.

And you don’t have him right now. There’s no Dean, to tell you that you need to sleep, or breathe, or think your plan through a little bit harder. They call him the Brute Winchester, but he was the only thing that could ever get you to bow your head for a leash. He could’ve saved them. He’s not here, so there’s nothing but you, and an unending pain that you need the world to fucking feel.

Neal sees it. He blinks and leans back, under the blinding floodlight of the truth. They all do.

But most of them see it as something like a supernova, that’s going to consume them if they don’t look for cover or cower.

Neal is an idiot. Neal smiles.

“You don’t know how to get him back, do you,” he coos. “Little Whore, bragging about killing Eve and not even able to find her little boyfriend. You’re what they’re afraid of. You can’t even track him like the fucking mutt you’re supposed to be.”

You cover Neal’s mouth with your hand. Your eyes squeeze shut, your breathing shallow, your palm burning at Neal tries to bite it.

You are the weight of the roots under your feet, happy to be alive, to be connected, to grow instead of sink. You’re the cold fear of the ground, worried the heat will come, but won’t be enough to thaw it. You’re the sky far overhead, filled with so much it’s not sure what to call itself, unsure what it even is if not empty.

It is everything. You are everything. The leather cord of Dean’s amulet is stuck to your skin, trying to hold onto you when he can’t, and you are everything.

This Alpha is nothing. So you make him everything too.

When you open your eyes, Neal is frozen. His eye sockets have been overgrown with flowers that burst from under the lids and through the pupils. Grass and thin weeds grow under his nails. You uncover his mouth, and branches burst forward, a million tiny birds taking off in a swarm. You wipe the trickle of water that falls down his chin and sigh.

Better than the last one. He got a little too confident, said that Dean was probably hiding from you, or begging God to take you so you’d leave him alone, and got turned into a pile of brushel and kindle that burned rather easily, to nothing but flecks of ash in the air. You think Dean would be proud of you for controlling it. Neal only got turned into a blooming corpse, once he earned it.

And he was wrong. He was wrong. You press your hands flat against the table and take deep breaths, repeating it over and over and over. Pushing the thought out of your head like a parasite being fished up your throat. You will get Dean back. There is nowhere in the universe that you can’t reach, no cage you can’t rip open to get back to his side. Lucifer and Michael couldn’t hold you. Some little rebound of a magic bone isn’t going to out preform God’s favorite sons.

But it has. You haven’t found him.

But you will. You will. You chew on the inside of your cheek until you taste blood. Your fingers twitch and curl, trying to burrow into your palms, and you scrape them along the table instead. It starts to hurt, the pressure building under your skin and bubbling over in your chest. It hurts more than the brief sting or stab of a bite or cut ever would. You squeeze your eyes shut and grab your knife, driving it straight into the wood. You lean over, rubbing your face like you can push back the burn in your eyes and heavy stress on the bridge of your nose. A dam, threatening every second to break.

You pinch it and try to breathe slow. If you let yourself drown in the blood, pounding in your ears, you can almost hear Dean’s voice, coaching you through it.

In and out. Easy for me, Princess. Just breathe. I’ve got you.

He doesn’t have you. He said he was going to. He said he wouldn’t leave and now you’re fucking alone, suffocating on thick air in a warehouse, grabbing at wood like it’s not just going to rot under your fingers, and you’re not about to slip away into nothing, nothing, nothing, you’re going to be nothing again and you should’ve saved him, why didn’t you save him, what foul kind of use are you to the world if you can’t save the best thing about it, if you can’t do anything but cry and run around and be nothing-

Your breathing is ragged. Sharp. There’s a dull sting to your palms, and you open your eyes to find you’d started scratching at your palms until you drew thin lines of blood. You swallow, a boulder settling in your throat that you’ve never been able to dislodge alone. Bobby’s bottle shines in your periphery, knocked onto its side and cradled in a little nest of grass and leaves. Containing yourself when you use your powers- It’s a work in progress. You right the bottle with a mumbled apology you know he’s never going to be able to hear.

And you think you almost got away with it. You drag Neal’s body out back, and flick Dean’s lighter until you’ve got a sweet little flame going. You watch it for a moment, bending light in the sunrise. It seems to know you’re not Dean, whenever you use it. There’s a shadow of distrust that almost puts it out, but then it realizes it’s you, and that seems to be close enough.

You know it sounds crazy—even for you—but all of Dean’s things miss him. You wear his shirts to bed, trying to pretend he’s still there to hold you in the dark, and the fabric clings to the Gold on your skin the same way you cling to its collar, inhaling every last bit of cinnamon and grass until you can almost pretend Dean is there. You have his keys in your pocket, and they keep begging you to drive back to  an empty home. They seem to think that he’ll be there, and don’t listen when you tell them that he’s gone. He never goes, they demand. He’s just waiting for you at home. And you shake your head and clean his guns—and you do a bad job, but he’ll fix it when he gets home—and they seem to be the same kind of restless he is, where they’re itching for something to get in front of. Something to defend. They ask you with every touch, if your safe. They beg you to let them help, when you tell them you’re fine. The bullets say they exist to lodge in the skulls of your enemies. You tell them they’re being a little dramatic, and put them back in Dean’s actual bullet box with a sigh.

And you really, really almost get away with it.

Neal’s body burns, and you throw the rest of it into the backwoods river, asking the water to carry it where no one will ever find. You go back inside and clean up, rubbing your eyes and fighting a yawn. You’ve been up all night. Your eyes are drooping and your skin is raw and sensitive, a live nerve that wants to peel off your iron-heavy bones. There isn’t an artery in your chest and neck that isn’t trying to burst. A joint or tendon in your gut or legs that doesn’t want to snap. You hold it together, with the thinnest of wires. You jabbed them through every inch that threatens to unravel and pull them tight, because you don’t have the privilege of falling apart.

But you’ve never been lucky enough, to not have something go rancid and soft. To not trip over the only loose stone, and plunge face first into freefall.

You stuff all your tools and knives—you lost the Blade, throwing it at Dick Roman’s eye, and replaced it with a smaller set Claire found in China—into the bag. You wrap Bobby’s bottle in a woven cloth and wedge it between your books. You check the ground for anything else, and there it is. The loose stone. The branch that your wire catches on, that pulls you right apart.

Dean’s box slid a little under the table, when you kicked over the bag. You have to stretch to grab it, and frantically wipe off the quickly gathered dust and cobwebs. Your fingers linger on the latch. Your knees draw to your chest, and you stare at the silver detailing until your vison blurs.

Hot tears land on the back of your hand. A shattered, uncontrollable sob rips from your throat, and your shoulders pull tight. You’re curling into a ball around the box, dropping your face between your legs and shuddering with every single breath. The air feels like it’s burning up in your body. The soil beneath you becomes rich and wet, and the wood behind you mends from time, setting down roots in a place nothing else has been allowed to stay.

You scream so loud it bounces off the walls, and outside, the river seems to scream back. Lightning cracks, somewhere faraway. You scream again, and thunder rolls through the air. It’s loud because it’s trying to find him. Because if it’s loud enough, it will glow like a beacon in the dark, and Dean will come home.

You need him to come home.

It’s a while, before you’re able to stand again. Your legs are shaking, and there are no warm arms to hold you upright. You wipe your own tears, and little dandelions bloom when they hit the muddied earth. You gather yourself, because no one else will, and that was only a fissure. You can stich up a fissure.

A break—a true, untenable break—will not leave a living world in its wake. Not a world that isn’t molded to your hands. Salvation. Damnation.  

You wonder if Azazel knew that the only difference between the two would be whether or not you got to have Dean. You’re sure he didn’t. He would’ve let Dean die in that hospital bed if he did. Long before you could save him. When you weren’t capable of much more than squinting at a soul or stomping out a demon like a spider that jumped on you in the shower.

It would be the easy thing, to let yourself break. But this world deserves better than a righteous blight. There are still things in it, that you can find to be beautiful. The river spit up nuggets of gold, gathered on the bank like shells on a beach. The morning glows like you’re wandering through Dean’s heaven, when the sun splits over green mountains. You have Bobby in your bag, and you’re going to get him back. You have Dean’s box, and if you explode, you’re never going to find out what’s inside.

You’ve been telling yourself you’re waiting for him to be back. You know, deep in your gut, that you just can’t. You can’t name why. You can’t justify it. But you cry when you see it and you don’t want to open it without him.

You don’t want to do any of this without him.

You have to. It’s either that or giving up, and you’ve been running too long to let your feet fail now. You’re going to get through this.

You always do.

The motel you’ve been staying at is on the nicer side. You have a large room and complementary breakfasts. There’s a pool that only has a handful of bugs in it, at any given time. The wallpaper is peeling but the bathroom is clean, and the water pressure is strong, and the beds are covered in so many pillows you can almost shape them into a perfect Dean, whenever you sleep.

Not that you sleep much.

You took three hours, somewhere around twilight, and headed to the warehouse around midnight. You unlock the door and slip inside before anyone should be up.

And yet, waiting for you on the bed with a glare, Claire is wide awake. Her arms are cross and her chin is jutted up in that way Dean used to say was all you. The Lady is curled in her lap, Indy is flopped at her feet, and the Phoenix chick—Sparky, Claire’s been calling him, and you haven’t really been able to stop her—is pecking at her hair. You almost laugh at the absurd sight. Claire doesn’t look that amused.

“Where did you go,” she whisper shouts, and you kick off your shoes with a sigh.

“You don’t need to worry about that, Claire-“

“Yes, I do! What if there was another break-in, what if the police showed up, what if the leviathans came back-“

“Did you have another nightmare?”

Claire scowls. It’s not an accusation, but you know she takes it as one. She’s trying to play up the gum-like toughness Dean always carried with his every word and step. The sense that bending him was impossible, without him snapping back like a rubber band. She’s been doing that hewn, tight jawed expression whenever the police do come around—you dispose a lot of bodies, and people in India are really annoyingly observant—and doesn’t seem open to hearing that you really don’t need her to grow up for this.

If anything, you’re still a little annoyed she talked you into coming. You wanted her to go back to Jody, but she flat out refused. She locked herself in the Firebird and said she’d go on a hunger strike. Jody said she could take her anyway.

A selfish part of you didn’t want to let her out of your sight. Not after Michigan. Not when there were all too familiar bags forming under her eyes, and paranoid twitch that made your heart ache—that reminded you of Sam—every time the wind got a little too loud.

She’d been allowed to come on the rule that she’d listen, stay out of your warpath, and continue with school. Staying out of the warpath just means no hunting. School just means the homeschooling curriculum you stole from Bobby and Rufus. Dean’s going to have some things to say about that, when he gets home. He’ll be welcome to. He can shout at you and argue all he wants, as long as he’s in front of you. As long as you get to hear his voice.

You dump your bag on the floor and bite your cheek. You’re doing your best with what you have. It isn’t much. It’s better than nothing at all.

“Claire,” you say gently, keeping your voice down. Jo’s passed out, in the other bed. If you wake her up, she’s going to have opinions. “It’s okay if you are having nightmares-‘

“I’m not!” Claire snaps, too fast, too loud. Jo stirs a little, and you give Claire a stern look. She swallows and bows her head, her voice dropping back down. “I’m not,” she mumbles. “I- I just couldn’t sleep.”

You sigh, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Indy eerps, rolling onto her back and nosing at your knee. You rub her stomach, watching Claire in your periphery, letting her words linger in the hum of the fan and wet morning air.

“It’s not like I wake up screaming,” Claire grumbles, and your mouth twitches.

“I know.”

“Do you? ‘Cause you keep saying I’m having nightmares, so it sounds like you don’t-“

“Claire.”

She curls back, under your flat stare. You sigh and lean forward, touching her knee lightly. She keeps her gaze locked down, just as stubborn as always.

“I have nightmares,” you say softly, and Claire’s scowl deepens. “Dean has nightmares. And he never wakes up screaming.”

That makes her pause. She looks up with a poorly hidden surprise, pulling at a loose string on her shorts. You smile sadly and squeeze her knee, leaning a little further. Like you’re telling her a secret, even if you’re sure Dean would tell her the exact same.

“I wake up,” you murmur. “Because he’s not making any sounds.”

“That- But-“

“He snores,” your smile turns misty. Tired and fond and a little smooth around the edges, the weight of missing him settling right at the top of your chest. You stave it off for now. For Claire. “He snores like a fucking machine.”

Claire makes a face like she’s trying to fight off a laugh, and your cheeks ache just a little less.

“So when he’s quiet,” you say, watching her carefully. “I know something is wrong.”

Claire presses her lips in a thin line. She stares down at her fingers, and you let out a slow breath.

“He gets stiff. I realize I woke up because he was squeezing me, or lying on top of me, or just- Grabbing me. His face does that frown,” you pinch your face up, trying to mimic Dean’s worried and angry scowl, and Claire’s throat bobs. “And he breathes really heavy, and I- I wake him up. Carefully, but- I know whatever he’s dreaming about- I- I have to get him out of it.”

And it hurts just to think about. It makes every space around you feel bigger, to speak about him. Some small part of your brain thinks that if you do it enough he’ll just appear, but the rest of you knows better, and doesn’t want to talk about him at all. But that little part, it’s loud. It expands and begs, every time you indulge it. Spreading memories in every dip and space in your ribcage, pushing just to the right of your heart until you think you’re going to burst.

You can almost see him, in the longest corners of the room. The sun plays a cruel trick where the golden light takes his shape, and you can’t help yourself from looking. In case it is him. If it is, you’ll need to grab him before he vanishes behind the clouds. Tell him that if you’re not dreaming of him, you’re having nightmares. The boring kind, where you wake up screaming in a pool of sweat that’s already collecting algae, reaching for him and only finding an empty bed, then screaming louder. Nightmares that would make him take your face between his hands, that he could tell you weren’t real. John isn’t going to kill you in front of him and Sam. Bobby’s soul isn’t going to be ripped from your hands like Jo’s. Sam isn’t going to crumble to dust in your arms, falling apart too fast for you to put him back together.

You don’t know what Dean had his nightmares about. They were rare for both of you, when you shared a bed. After you’d wake him up, he’d bury his face in your chest and refuse to speak until the sun rose, his hands mapping your body and his back flexed and tense until he convinced himself he was allowed to relax. Then all you’d get was a kiss and mumbled thanks, before he clambored out of bed for coffee. You always had guesses. You pieced things together from the low, pained groans and pleas that would push themselves out, before you managed to wake him. You have the same kind of guesses about Claire.

But she’ll talk about it when she’s ready. You don’t need to know what the nightmare is about, to seal over the damage for a single day. It’s just a band aide on an open wound, but it will stop the infection. You’ll worry about the scar, when you’re not trying to keep her from being cut wide open again.

“Everyone has nightmares,” you duck, forcing Claire to meet your gaze. “But they’re just nightmares. The leviathans are gone. Jo can handle the police or a monster, and anything else- I won’t let it hurt you. Okay?”

Claire’s silent for a long while, and you wait. You have no time. You’re willing to stretch what you do have thin, for her.

She nods, and you bite back your sharp relief, just squeezing her knee one more time and taking a deep breath through your nose.

“Do you want to talk about it?” You offer, already knowing the answer.

Claire shakes her head. You glance over at Jo, fully knocked out and starfished, obvious to the world around her. You’d been planning to catch a few hours before she and Claire woke up, but the motel has strong coffee, and you’ve slept less for longer.

“You wanna watch a movie?” You offer, and Claire sits up. You laugh, and it’s small but real.

Dean would be proud.

You settle against the headboard, Claire tucked into your side, the Lady padding over and curling between your bodies, and Indy splayed over your legs, her tail whipping back and forth over the sheets. She’s almost the size of a Great Dane, now. It’s getting harder and harder, to sneak her around. You’ll call Rowena later. Ask about a shielding or illusion spell, or make one up if she can’t help.

Sparky stays on Claire’s head. They seem to have developed a bond you’re not willing to try and break. You offer the chick a finger, while Claire picks out a movie, and he nips you, nudges you for a pet, and then immediately turns back to Claire’s hair.

They motel has most of the channels. Claire asks you what you want, but you know she’s just trying to be polite.

“Whatever you want,” you tell her, and she smiles. She picks an old western that’s near the start of its run, and slumps down into the mattress. You only half watch, your eyes lidded and glazed. You’re all but asleep with your eyes open, the voices and music all blending into a white noise that threatens to lull you into sleep.

“Did they help?” Claire asks quietly, and you frown at her, unsure if you heard right. “Whoever you were- With,” she clarifies, still staring at the TV. “Are they going to help you find Sam and Dean?”

The question is so small. So unsure, like she’s not sure that she’s allowed to ask it. You twist the skin of your finger and tip your head back, trying to let the headrest carry the weight of it. The lie. The pair, that you don’t want rolling off of you and poisoning her.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think they might.”

Claire hums, and it doesn’t matter how much she believes you. She relaxes, and that ease leave a wake, settling over your skin and tendons and knotted organs. You let out a breath, and it doesn’t catch in your throat.

You don’t sleep. Not fully. But your eyes fall, and your body goes as loose as it’s allowed, and you drift in and out of the world without so much as a nightmare or tear. Claire knocks out on your arm, and the sun pushes over the sky and through the curtains. The weight of Indy comes and goes. A door creaks, and you twist enough to see Jo gone from the bed before you’re pulled back under. It’s not fruitful sleep. It’s bobbing through the calmest parts of the ocean, able to breathe, never able to fully rest.

You’ll find the land. You’ll make it, if you have to.

For now, you just drift.

Jo’s at the table with a coffee, when you finally drag yourself out of bed. Indy’s sitting at the foot of your bed, watching you with wide, curious eyes. You tuck Claire—fully asleep, but still angled like she’s  trying to watch TV—under the sheets, and pad over to Jo’s side. Indy bounds after you, dropping her chin onto your knee and whining softly. Jo rolls her eyes and pushes the coffee across the table, shooting Indy a distasteful glare.

“She’s actin’ like I let her starve,” Jo grumbles. “I took her out. Got her- Really the biggest fuckin’ fish you’ve ever seen. I mean, I still don’t know how she got the whole thing down, it was-“

She holds her hands up, almost all the way apart, and you laugh softly. “She’s a growing girl-“

“She’s grown big enough. We’re gonna have to make a fuckin’ stable.”

You raise your brows. “We?”

Jo shrugs. You both know who we is, and it’s not anyone in the room. “He will,” she doesn’t say his name. You think, sometimes, she’s worried it will set you off, like cutting the wrong wire on a bomb.

“Sam thinks she’s going to be as big as the house,” you murmur into your coffee, and Jo makes a face.

“That’s too fuckin’ big.”

“Yeah, but- At least Dean will get to build his barn.”

Jo stares at you, for just a little too long. You know she hears it. Dean will. Sam thinks.

“Have I told you he wants to build a barn?” You ask, still not meeting her gaze. Silently begging her, to just go along with it. Just right now, while you can’t bear to do anything else.

“No,” she says slowly. “Don’t think you have.”

“Well, he does. He told me he wants to build a barn, a farm, a house, and a garage. I told him he doesn’t know how architecture works, and he- He just said he’d figure it out.” You laugh to yourself, watery and almost floating through the air. “The annoying thing is he probably will. He’ll skim one book and say he’s got it, and then I’ll blink and he’ll have a house.”

Jo says your name. You ignore her.

“I mean- One time I asked him how he built my car, and he just said he put stuff together in the way that made sense. That doesn’t mean anything, but- It worked. He always makes it work.”

You choke on the last word. Jo reaches for your hand, and you curl it into a tight fist. She mutters your name, and you shake your head, tears pricking at the edge of your eyes.

“Don’t,” you whisper, staring at the table. “Please.”

Jo sighs, but doesn’t say a word. She grabs your hand, and you immediately grab it back, trying not to dig in your nails. You watch the coffee slush around in your mug. It’s going cold. Everything, from the sink pit in the hollow of your chest to the churning in your gut, is going cold. Jo’s hand is warm. It keeps your fingers from shaking, and that keeps the world from shaking with it.

Sometimes, you wonder why she sticks around too. She could’ve gone with Meg or Charlie or Adam. She could’ve gone with the Amazons. Could’ve left to look for her mom, even if you’re more than willing to be Ellen is trapped with God. But Jo just… Stays. So maybe people stay, and you begin to feel like a leech. Draining them to make yourself bigger. Suctioned onto their kindness, unable to do anything on your own.

You’re learning, that sometimes, people just… Love you.

You lean on Jo until you’re both about to topple, and she holds you up until you can drag her off the edge of the cliff. You press Sam until he’s about to break, and he doesn’t try to lock you out or push you away. You run around like a pigeon that can’t quite remember where home is supposed to be, and Bobby waits for you to remember how to turn around and find your way back. You screw up again and again and again, and you learn so slow and love so quietly and spill your guts all over Dean’s hands and chest and thighs, and he just cleans you up and stays. He loves you, without any kind of payment or justification. You rip yourself up to try and find some part of you that’s good enough for him to touch, for any of them to touch, and they just… ask you to put yourself back together.

They love you more with the cracks, even if they let the infection of you creep out. They love you when you’re small and withered, they love you when you’re consuming and so alive you can’t bear it, and you’re learning it in the slowest, hardest way possible. The way that involves contorting into every possible shape, before Dean takes you and tells you he likes this one just fine. The way that has blood under your nails and dirt on your knees and foam at your mouth, snarling and snapped like a rabid animal until you learn to trust the water again. It almost kills you, but the blood dries, and you-

You get better.

You miss Dean with more than you can fit in your heart, but you eat, and try to sleep, and you stick with Jo and Claire. You miss Dean, and—without realizing it, like the crawl of a shadow across the ground—you never doubt if he’s missing you.

“The alpha get us anything?” Jo asks a little before Claire gets up, and you shake your head. “And- You didn’t-“

You give her an apologetic look, and she sighs you name.

“You can’t keep fuckin’ killing them-“

“He was saying some very mean things,” you snap defensively. “You would’ve killed him-“

“Of course I woulda killed him! But you’re supposed to be better than me!”

You nose wrinkles. “No, I’m not-“

“Uh- Yeah. You are.” Jo rolls her eyes, leaning back with a huff. “You’re ‘supposed to torture ‘em and then say, you think that’s bad,” she turns her voice into a mockery of yours, and you frown. “Just wait until you meet my little friend.”

“I’m not Scarface, Jo-“

“Yeah, you are.”

Your mouth falls open. “No, I’m not- I don’t even- I’d never run a drug ring.”

Jo makes a doubtful expression, and squawks when you throw a balled up napkin straight at her head. Indy shoots over the table, cooped up and eager to fetch, and Jo topples back with a shout. You laugh, covering your mouth with a hand, and Jo chucks the napkin right back at your face. You block it.

You don’t block Indy.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Claire sits up, her hair falling over her face, swollen with sleep. You wish you had an answer that wasn’t childish and insane. You don’t, so you take Claire for breakfast, and flip Jo off over your shoulder.

She’s right, in the long run. Maybe you shouldn’t have killed Neal, but there are other Alphas. Other angels, other demons, other pagan gods that can—that will—help you. You don’t let yourself think of another option, for the whole day. You have to help Claire with school. You have to read and get lunch and call Kevin and get dinner. The world might stop when you’re caving in, but when you’re keeping yourself just upright, when you’re rushing through the day like it’s a current, and you’re just waiting to be spat out the other side, time does nothing but plow on forward.

You read anything you can find. You and Jo scout for leads on other Alpha’s, while Claire does her homework with a sour expression. You look online, Jo makes a few more calls on leads. If you didn’t know better, every day would just feel like a very long, strange case.

“What was that thing you were tellin’ me about?” Jo asks, peering at the translation notes you’ve scribbled through countless notebooks and loose pieces of paper.

You hum, not looking up from the Book. You always think you’ve read all of it, only for new pages to appear out of thin air. It’s suspicious. You’d think it was God, if you didn’t know he hasn’t been watching you for months. “What thing?”

“Y’know, the thing-“

“I tell you about a lot of things, Jo-“

“Yeah, but- This one was all magic and shit.”

You give her a dry, blanket expression of annoyance. She rolls her eyes.

“C’mon. It’s- What the hell else am I supposed to call it?”

“I don’t know? Its name-“

“I dunno its name- It’s-“ She sighs, glaring at the air. “You know, that magic spot thingy. You went lookin’ for one when Dean was- Well-“ She cringes slightly. “Last time.”

Your frown deepens, pulling down in thought. The magic spot thingy. “You mean the Vortex points?”

“Yes- Yes,” Jo snaps, leaning forward with a wide grin. “That. Why don’t we try that?”

“Um…” You look at the book, then the notes. Your hands flex, and your mouth falls a little open.

Why don’t you try that? Why haven’t you tried that?

“Because we don’t know where Dean is,” you answer yourself softly, and Jo’s face falls.

“Oh. Right- That’s- Never-“

“But,” you cut her off, your brain turning too fast to track. “If- It’s stronger there. Everything. Bridges, spells, enchantments-“ You swallow. “Prayers.”

Jo blinks. “You want us to… pray?”

“No,” you close the book, mouth set in a grim line. “I want Dean to pray. Somewhere- Somewhere I’m able to hear.”

Jo’s doubtful. You don’t blame her. Whatever let you hear Dean’s prayer in Heaven, whatever let him call you from across the world, over and over and over again, you don’t know how it works. You know it’s woven just to the right of your heart. You think it might be that part of you that’s embedded in him, that branch of love that grew over him, that he never pushed out. The mechanics don’t matter right now. If Dean is praying, you aren’t hearing it. If you can hear it, you can try and trace it.

“Like a radio signal?” Jo asks, and you nod. She sighs. “But- What if we ain’t able to do that?”

“Then,” you say, dark and firm. “We figure something else out.”

Jo doesn’t argue past that. This is the kind of thing, where she knows far better. It takes you the rest of the day, but there’s a Vortex point in the Himalayas. It’s a long trip. You work out a spell, that will get you there and back in a day. Claire gets clear instructions not to leave the motel room for anything, while you’re gone.

“We’re leaving at sunrise,” you tell her. “We’ll be back by sunset.”

And you don’t say hopefully. You don’t say you’ll try. You will be back by sunset, whether you have something or not.

You hope you have something. You need it. You need anything, to weave into another wire. Another way to keep yourself going, an extension of the rope you’re hanging onto, something metal you can from into a new rail before you reach the end of the line.  And you can almost convince yourself that this, this single, small mission, will be it.

You’ll go to the Vortex point, pull Dean out of the ground like a potato, and go home. If you really let yourself play pretend, you’re going to the Vortex point for nothing but research. You’re going to do some experiments, collect some data, and call Sam on the drive home. You’ll try to tell him about what you found. Dean will try to steal the phone, and Sam will lock himself in the bathroom so he can’t. You’ll smile to yourself, at the sound of him banging on the door. The moment you get home, Dean will sweep you into his arms and kiss you up against the wall.

“Sammy was bein’ a dick, sweetheart,” he’ll mutter, his arms caging you against his body.

You’ll giggle against his lips and pull on his shirt, unsure what to do with yourself but melt into him. He’ll carry you to bed, ignoring your false protests. You’ll sit on your knees when he tosses you onto the mattress, watching with wide eyes and an embarrassing heat pooling between your thighs, as he peels off his shirt. He’ll ask you about the hunt. You’ll forget everything you wanted to tell him, until he smiles fondly, cups your face, and bends down to kiss you stupid.

“Missed me, huh?” He’ll tease, his thumb gliding over the nape of your neck, and you’ll nod. Hopeless. Entirely his, in ways you think he still doesn’t quite understand.

“You have no idea,” you’ll whisper, and he’ll grin like he won a prize.

“You have no idea,” you whisper to the dark.

And if the day passes fast, with odd normalcy and smiles that only bring a little bit of guilt, the night drags. It buries you, until your lungs are stuffed and you’re sure you’re never going to see the morning again.

If you don’t have a lead, you spend the sleepless hours trying to practice. You coax a spring to shoot out of the ground, you ask an old bush to light itself on fire, you convince a river it would be better flowing north. You’re getting stronger. More comfortable, in being everything. It doesn’t hurt, when it’s not against your will. The soreness that lingers in your body after gets smaller and smaller every night, and you find yourself getting bigger and bigger.

You still don’t understand most of what you can do, but no one does. So you just test the limits, and find that the boundary is further past your fingertips than you could’ve possibly dreamt.

It’s a good distraction, until it’s not. Until you remember why you’re not letting the Silver go dormant again. Until you push a little too hard and the Spiderweb flares like the core of the Sun, rocking from the force of a solar storm.

You let yourself be weak. You spent so long in self-pity, so long trying to be small and fragile. Small and fragile things don’t survive in the wild. Small and fragile things get put in cages, and it doesn’t matter what kind of light they’re made of. They don’t have enough of themselves to break free.

Stand tall.

You are.

But it took falling, to learn how. And it cost you Dean, and now you sit on the curb of a packed street in India, surrounded by hundreds of people. Entirety alone.

The darkness doesn’t swallow you anymore, but the brighter you let yourself get, the longer the shadows become. The pain grows like a bacterial infection, finding every place it can settle and overtaking your view of the world. The guilt becomes acidic. The sorrow you didn’t let Claire see presses back up like magma, demanding and burning in your lungs. You wander the streets for somewhere that’s louder than your head, but even the most crowded bar can’t compare.

A million songs, a million men, and million unwanted touches as people shoulder past you or trying to take the empty spot next to you. None of them are Dean, so all of them are wrong. One bold drunk tries to follow you out to the street, and you cover your ears, crouching in the gutter and begging the darkness to swallow you whole.

It doesn’t. It swallows him, and spits him back out when you ask it to. He stares at you with a gaunt, sober face. You smile and know it’s nothing but a manic, crude mask. You leave him on the ground, and keep wandering for that cove you know you won’t find.

It won’t even exist, until you get Dean back. And that just makes the pain bigger. You really don’t know where to put it, when there’s nothing to distract you. It’s just you, and the pain, and everything else in the dark. Rain might fall for you. The wind might pick up, to howl for your grief. The colors dull themselves, and the golden lights glow until the marks of Dean on your body seem to glow brighter than the stars. But that’s still all just fucking pain.

There isn’t a thing you wouldn’t do, just to feel it a little less.

A year ago, you would’ve taken you knife to the soft, unblemished parts of your skin. A punishment for daring to, even in the smallest of ways, be clean. But if Dean comes back and sees new scars, he’s going to have questions, and then you’ll have to answer them, and he’ll make that mournful, adoring face, and you’ll feel all the guilt just slamming back into you like a freight train. So you find other options.

You steal a bottle from one of the crowded bars. You drink until you can’t tell were you stop and the infinite waterfall of stars begins. You wander the streets and smile at the birds. You trip over loose pebbles and they unfurl into silver butterflies that blend into the night sky. You crouch, back on the curb, the bottle tight in your hand, and you whistle until your slow, haunted song is being sung back by every bird in the city.

You smile at nothing, tears streaming down your cheeks. You pour the rest of the bottle out in the gutter, and hope that wherever Dean is, he gets to be drunk too.

Somewhere in your addled brain, you figure out that you’re in no state to go back to the room. You stumble wherever the wind carries you, and find yourself at the motel pool, your feet dangling in the water and the blue, neon light dancing on your bare thighs and hands.

And you know you’ve been here before. And you know you’re going to be here again.

You sit at the edge of the pool, watching the light swim in the water before. It’s beautiful. That irreplicable chlorine blue, vibrant and glowing on your skin in the dark. Quiet wind blows over the marshes behind you. You breathe through your nose and smooth out your tennis skirt. You remember this one. In about five to six hours, it’s going to be coated in blood, and Bobby’s going to burn it in his backyard.

It’s a shame. You really liked it.

You feel him before you see him. The world shifts a little Golden. Warm fingers trace your arms, then your wrist. A thick thigh pressing against yours, and a hand slowly drags up, splaying over your lower back. Chapped lips press to your temple, and you lean your head on his shoulder, letting your eyes drift shut.

“You remember this?” Dean asks quietly, and you hum.

“Of course I do.”

He swallows, loud enough for you to hear. You turn your face into his neck, and he pulls you a little closer. There isn’t a space between your bodies that you leave untended. Your arms wrap around his torso, and his mouth rests on the top of your head. His breathing is slow. Steady. His heart pounds in that way you memorized, before you even let yourself admit that you needed him. You used to press your fingers together until you could feel your own heartbeat, and you’d try to pretend it was Dean. You must’ve gotten good at it. This almost sounds real.

“You were so pissed at me,” he murmurs, and you roll your eyes.

“You called me a spoiled brat.”

“Well- In my defense, sweetheart, I really thought you were.”

You lean back to glare at him, and he catches your chin with a knowing smirk. His thumb drags over your lower lip, and you pout, trying to make your glower the savage, blinding one that lends you that title of Whore Beast. Instead you think you might just be mimicking a bunny. Dean taps your nose, and it scrunches. His smile widens, and you try to hide your face back in his body. He doesn’t let you, holding your chin with a firm but gentle grip.

“Mighta been right,” he teases, light dancing over every word. “Look at you.” He flicks your nose again. “Spoiled brat.”

Your glare doesn’t seem to be focused enough to block out the building eruption from every part of you that matters. It’s made of longing and love and an inability to ever really be mad at him. Not when he says ‘brat’ the same way he says ‘baby’ and ‘princess’. Like there isn’t a thing he could think of, that wouldn’t be endearing. Like there aren’t any words that capture whatever he thinks of you, so he just settles for calling you like a lighthouse, shining only to guide one ship back to shore.

“I am not spoiled,” your voice is breathless, and Dean chuckles, leaning just close enough for you to feel the heat of his lips.

“Guess I gotta step up my game, sweetheart,” he holds your gaze, and your flush might be enough to set this misty, scared little world on fire. “You’re supposed to be so spoiled you can’t even remember what it feels like to want.”

You flatten a hand on his chest for balance. Your lips part, and Dean leans a little closer, his fingers curling on your hip. You take a ragged breath, and his nostrils flare.

And you remember what it feels like to want. You remember it so clearly, because it’s still reflected behind you, fading on the horizon, stretching so long you don’t know how you ever got to the other side. You remember wanting so bad it was cannibalizing, wanting so bad you lost sleep, lost sight, lost balance. You did nothing but want, did nothing but memorize the landscape of a world you were sure you’d never be allowed to step a single, dreadened foot upon.  You wanted so bad you sat on the alter, begging to be a sacrifice he’d use to find himself someone he deserved.

And you remember him walking up to you at that alter, pushing you so carefully down, and using his body to pin you there. To keep you with him, whispering something too close to a vow against your skin, moving the marker of what was holy. The alter was only stone. You and Dean, upon it, where the only things that mattered in the world.

Dean’s brow has furrowed. He’s scanning over your features with worry, his murmur of your name soft. You wrap your arms around his neck and climb into his lap, and he holds you steady with a light, revertant touch. It seems to wash like steam over his whole body. It’s in the way his shoulders relax, in his eyes, gleaming with a pooling adoration, and in the soft, awestruck downturn of his lips. You used to think he only looked at you like this in your dreams. You’ve long learned that if there’s one thing you can never trust, it’s the reflection staring back at you, even only an echo of it on another person’s face.

“I was so mad at you,” you remind him, and his throat bobs.

“I know,” he rasps. “Said that. I think.”

You nod, pressing further forward. “I thought you hated me,” you whisper, and he shakes his head.

“Never. Never hated you, I- Hell, I tried, but-“ He swallows, a desperate edge creeping over his voice. “Couldn’t. Never could. Never did.”

You hum, looking down to your fingers. You trace his collarbone, and you could swear he shivers. “I hated you,” you mumble, and his hands twitch.

“Yeah?”

You nod, and Dean takes a ragged breath.

“When’d you-“

“When you left me,” you look at him under your lashes, and he seems afraid to move. “When you died, and you- You didn’t let me say goodbye.”

“Didn’t wanna hurt you,” he defends, but it’s weak. You just stare at him, combing through the stubble on his jaw. It’s getting longer. You haven’t seen in him in this kind of tight tee-shirt in so long, you forgot how thin they were. How they clung to his arms, how you could see every breath, even the stumbling, unsure ones. That, combined with the thickening, borderline beard he has in your dreams, it’s enough to make you fall for him all over again.

The first time you were here, he had a baby face and a smile that was only smaller than his heart. He slouched more, and never seemed willing to grab you with tighter hands than you held him. You wonder what kind of handprints he would’ve left, if you told him to hold on however he wanted. You think it would be closer to something like now.

You think that if you met Dean with this shirt and those eyes and these calloused hands, you might’ve fallen lower than your knees. You might’ve crashed into him so fast that neither of you would’ve had the time to even consider pulling away.

When he gets home, you’re hiding his razor and dragging him to the mall. He’s earned it. You’ve earned it. He’s too pretty, to bury under layers of ugly lumberjack clothing.

“Do you hate me know?” Dean asks, and you can hear it in the rare crack in his tone. His fear of the answer.

You thought he would’ve known better, from being nothing but a bought of madness, woven together from a love that spreads like a flood across everything you’ve ever known.

“No,” you breathe. “I- I was never good enough at it anyways.”

Dean’s mouth twitches up. He lets out a broken laugh of relief, cradling the back of your head. “Well, I guess we’re made for each other, huh?”

You nod, because there’s nothing else you could possibly be made for. You could cure the world of yourself, of other disease, of the devil and God in one fell swoop or scream. You could walk through the gates of Heaven, you could raze the castle of Hell, take all that promised world and rule over it the way God wants you to. Even without Dean, you’d still be doing it for some kind of love.

There is much, much more you can do than love Dean. But there is no world where you want to do everything, and not have Dean at your side. You have long decided that greatness does not negate your love for him. Your love for him only allows you to be greater.

Dean kisses you, and you press over him with everything you have. He’ll be home soon.

You both tumble into the water, as fast as you’ve always fallen together, and you don’t let go of him until the dream slips away.

Jo woke you up with a glass of water in the face. You told her that wasn’t necessary. She said it was, because you were crying in your sleep. You check the motel mirror before you go, and scowl, because she was right. There are tear stains on your cheeks, and a bloodshot ring around your pupils. You fix it, and ignore her smug look. There’s a job to do. Steps to be taken, that might be forward, or backward, or nothing but a standing march in place.

The fun part is finding out.

“This is- So fuckin’ cold-“ Jo hugs herself tight, bundled in about five jackets and poofy shoes that make her walk like a penguin. “How the hell ain’t you cold?”

You shrug, kneeling in the snow and brushing flakes off your shorts. It was like this at the other Vortex point too. You’d gotten to the top of the mountain in Brazil, and all the jungle heat had just felt like… nothing. Like you were floating through a perfectly regulated room.

“I’m gonna die,” Jo mutters to herself, rocking back and forth on her feet. “I’m gonna die, just ‘cause Dean had to stab a dick, I’m gonna die-“

“Stop saying you’re gonna die,” you tell her flatly, scooping away the piles of snow. “You’re not gonna die.”

“Yes, I am-“

“With that attitude, maybe.”

She glares, hard enough it prickles on the back of your neck. You sigh and sit back, giving her a pointed, expectant look.

“You know, the faster we do this, the faster we go back.”

Jo pauses. She looks out over the mountain—mostly just gray shadows in an infinite sea of white—and her nose wrinkles. You go back to scooping and sorting through your bag, waiting for her to catch up. She huffs. You hum to yourself, pulling out your knife and digging it into the spot you want.

There’s a loud scoff, and the snow shifts as Jo waddles over to your side. You smile at her, and she sticks out her tongue, before quickly pulling it back in with a wince.

“What’re we doin’?” She squints at your knife, and you grab her mittened hand, guiding it around the hilt.

“You’re hold that there,” you say, moving to your feet. “And I’m getting rid of the snow.”

“Alright,” Jo nods, then looks up with wide eyes. “You’re- What-“

“Shh,” you snap, and she snaps her jaw shut, looking from you to the falling snow like you’re crazy.

And you are. But you’re also getting better at it.

You stretch your arms, plant your feet, and close your eyes. You’re the snow. You’re the snow, falling from the sky without care for where it’s going, know only that it is will either find more of its kind and they will survive together in long, strong banks, or it will land somewhere hostile, and die alone. It goes with the wind, because it doesn’t have much of a choice. Not a single snowflake has ever even thought that there might be another way.

So when you offer it, every single one of them falters. Jo gasps softly behind you, and when you try to glare at her, you realize why.

The snow didn’t just stop in your head. Every single flake is suspended in the air, glowing like diamonds over the endless mountains. Rays of sun split through the thick clouds, and the light fractures in a million colors, giving the world an impression that it’s been trapped in a prism. Your hands fall slightly, stunned by the never-ending rainbow, the glory of a world that only carries one kind of life, getting to remember what it hasn’t been allowed to see in countless years. The snow doesn’t move. It just hangs there, clinging to your every breath, waiting for you to tell it what to do.

Jo covers her mouth with her hand, and you take a slow, concentrated breath. You press your hands out, and ask the snow to move, just from here, just for a little while.

There’s a flurry of white. The cold bites your skin for a half second, and you have to cover your eyes. But when you look again, you see it.

The snow is gone. It’s piled up on the edge of the cliffs and flown to other mountains, scattering across the land to grant you access to what you knew you’d find.

The stone courtyard is wide. The columns are tall and the statues of everything from monkeys to lions to tigers are finely detailed with gold. You look at Jo, still crouched on the ground, holding your knife like a life raft. She doesn’t seem sure where to look, and you understand. The temple is massive. A feat of architecture, at this elevation, built likely longer ago than either of you can imagine. You turn in a slow circle, and it would steal your breath if you weren’t so focused on it.

That small, pulsing pull, just to the right of your heart. It’s magnetic, but completely still. You press your hand flat on your chest, almost trying to pull it out, and it gets a little stronger. The Spiderweb sparks in return, and you know. That’s your Dean.

You close your eyes, trying to follow the thin, static thread that powers it like a cable. You tug a little too hard, and everything vibrates and turns to colors and a rush of gold and purple and green and blue and silver. You loosen too much, and it starts to slip through your fingers like fine sand. You kneel down, bowing your head and just trying to feel it.

Just feel it, Princess.

You’re trying. But all you can make out is his voice. Deep and rough in a way you haven’t heard in a while. Scraping at the edge of every word, like he’s hasn’t been drinking water. Croaking in his throat like he’s been shouting. He sounds tired, and it makes your heart flip.

Yet still, you can’t make out a single fucking word.

You try. You try so hard, and Dean’s voice gets so loud you reach back, some instinctive, foolish part of you thinking he’s going to be right behind you. He’s in your ear, saying words that you can’t understand, that you can’t even begin to unscramble, because it seems to be really nothing but noise. You start to pant, scraping at the ground and doubling over. Jo breathes out your name, and you shake your head.

You can hear him. He’s out there, he’s alive, he’s praying to you so why can’t you fucking hear him, you should be able to hear him-

He says your name. It’s clearer than all the snow on the mountains, and your eyes shoot open. You let out a strangled sound, and he says your name again.

“Love you,” Dean rasps, and you can almost feel his breath on the back of your neck.

And you scream.

You scream so loud lightning cleaves through the mountains behind you, righteous and desperate to break something the same way you’re broken. You scream until you can’t hear the wind or the snowfall or Jo calling your name. You can only hear Dean. I love you, baby. Baby, I love you, easy, baby, I love you. It echoes around the valleys. Your head hurts so much you think it’s going to split open like a geode. Your back hurts like the sky itself is pressing down, but you’ve never had the resolve of an Atlas. You’ve never had the strength. Jo grabs you. You hold her back, trying to keep your feet on the ground.

The whole world becomes a blur of color and light and Dean’s voice, and then there’s just… Silence.

The hum of a fan. The rustle of sheets and eerp of Indy, romping across the small room as you fall to your knees. Claire says something you can’t hear, and Jo pulls her away. You hug yourself, trying to hold onto just a little bit of it. That kernel of Dean, already melting back into the Spiderweb with the rain, a heavy downpour on the roof, blowing in through the window, turning to something it didn’t think it could be. Something that doesn’t thaw, but flows through every bit of life, in the woods, the streets, the sewers and out into the ocean.

Jo takes Claire out. She says it’s for food. You know it’s so you can be alone, and you’ll thank her for it, when you can feel anything outside of yourself. You don’t want Claire around you like this. Dean would’ve done the same thing.

And he’s out there. You scratch at your chest and wrap a hand around your throat to calm down, but repeat it over and over until it’s embedded in your head. He’s alive. Dean’s alive. He’s out there, and alive.

The Lady curls in your lap, and Indy noses at your hand until you scratch her ears. Even Sparky darts over to sit on your head, pecking at your head until you offer in a finger, and move him to perch on your shoulder. Slowly, just like always, you come down.

He’s out there. Alive. Tired, but still able to speak. Still bothering to think of you.

Your gaze drifts to the box. Innocuous, peeking out from the folds of your bag. He wanted you to have it. He probably thinks you’ve already opened it.

I love you.

You crawl slowly across the ground and pull it out. The Lady and Indy poke at it, the Lady quickly losing interest and jumping on the bed, Indy seeming to recognize it as something of Dean’s and letting out a loud whine. You pat her head, settling against the foot of the bed, toying with the latch until it just… unclicks.

And you don’t know what you expected. A knife. A ring. A nice perfume, or more lingerie. Something important. Something worth giving you, then asking you not to open in front of him. You’d formed a curious mental list, of what that could possibly be.

You never once considered a pile of paper.

You frown. The box is overflowing with loose paper after loose paper, all of them covered in Dean’s blocky, uncoordinated scrawl. Sam used to say he had the handwriting of a fourth grader, and you’d smack Sam upside the head, because the little fucker didn’t teach himself the alphabet.

You miss him too. It’s smaller than that chasm of Dean that’s split through your spinal cord, but that’s a unique kind of pain. Sam alone is enough that you keep picking up the phone to ask him a question, before remembering he won’t pick up. If you asked Sam about these papers, he’d tell you to read them. He’d probably take one and just start reading it himself. At his invisible direction, you take the one off the very top. It’s crumpled. Almost a year old, if the date—April 17th, 2011—is correct.

It’s addressed to you.

Princess, 

Come home. 

You blink, the paper crinkling under your fingers. April 2011 you were in Heaven with Cas. And Dean-

Dean was writing this. For you.

I know that I’ve spent the last few months pissed at you. I know I wrote about twenty damn letters about it. A deep breath. Your biting your tongue enough to sting. And I know you’re gonna read them and only think that I hate you, but I don’t. Never did. Never could. 

You love something, you want it to be better. Heard that on TV, once. Might’ve been on the radio. Shit, maybe Sammy or you said it. But it’s the truth, baby. I love you, and I want you to be better. Not you, but you. I want you to be okay, and you aren’t okay. Not when you’re making crazy decisions like you think no one’s going to care if you go off the deep end. I care. Bobby cares. Sammy cares. And it goddamn kills me, that you think we don’t. So I need you to be okay.

I love you.

You close your eyes. It takes a moment to remember how to breathe. A moment to rub your eyes and collect yourself, so that the words don’t just float off the page.

You fucking killed me again, and I still love you. I’ve been trying to tell you. You never goddamn listen. You’re too smart for your own good, sweetheart. Can talk yourself into anything, and I- 

i think i feel you, sometimes. think i felt you now. its insane, but i feel you. the air smells more like you, and i can hear something that dont got words, but it sounds lie like you. and i know thats freaking batshit, but stranger things, right? you feel like an angel. you feel like everything good. and i wish you could understand that. sammy says you dont know. you gotta know. i wish i knew how to tell you. i wish that you’d believe me, when i did. 

i can show you. i know people can say things all they want and you dont believe them. got that spelled out for me, when it took me pinning you to a wall for you to realize maybe i wanted to fuck you. so ill keep doing it like that. ill help rowena get those souls out of you. ill kill eve for you. i wont let you pull that shit again, cause im about to make it real clear that i love you, and you can think nothing about me all you want (you probably should) but nothing you say is gonna make me love you less. i let you boss me around about a lot, princess. youre not getting the upper hand on this. you break my heart, you either stitch it back up like my hands or leave it like that till i die. but no one else is touching it. so deal with that. 

Not much for life updates. Had to tie Sammy’s shoes yesterday, cause he keeps falling over whenever he does them. Been taking Claire out to shoot bottles, she’s getting pretty good. Rowena ate dinner with us, which was weird, because I didn’t even know she ate. I don’t think she sleeps. I know she doesn’t cause I’m not either. 

I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. 

Yours, DAW  

The world can’t be spinning. Your heart can’t still be beating. The edge of the paper crinkles too loud, and you drop it, terrified you broke it. Just as fast as you let it go, you pick it up. You read it again. A third time. You can hear him behind you, like at the mountain. You never goddamn listen. He thinks you might hate him. Never did. Never could. I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. It’sso clear it presses on your nose, it burns in your chest, it rattles something so deep inside you the whole world seems to tilt. But not off axis.

Something flips, and you feel sick, but your feet are beneath you in a way they haven’t been maybe your whole life. Like your neck was snapped, but it just righted a part of your spine that had been wrong. Everything was upside down.

You read it until you’ve memorized it. You count the I love yous—all seven of them—like a squirrel stocking for winter.  

Then you remember the rest of the box. Not a box of paper.

A box of letters. A supply of them, enough that he barely seemed to be able to fit them all.

You fumble with the one in your hand, dropping it back at the top and pulling out the one beneath it. April 16th. You don’t read it yet, checking the one before that. April 15th. One for each day. Back through March, February, January, December. You dig all the way to the bottom, trying so hard to move fast and not rip a single page. The very first one is shorter. Dated February 21st, 2010. A little less than month after you and Sam fell in the cage, and stained with something that smells like beer.

Princess,

I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to spell things wrong. You’ll know what I’m saying. You usually do. One time I said boom and meant Molotov, but you got it. Sammy said I was the luckiest asshole alive, because he would’ve just made me go to bed with how much I was drinking.

I’m drinking more now. 

Youd be pissed.

I miss you.

This is shit. I’ll try again in the morning.

I love you

DAW.

Eight. Eight I love yous. Twelve, if you count the ones he said to your face. Twelve drops of love that hit you like a tsunami, that shake your world like falling stars. You hold it to your chest and close your eyes, tears burning over your face. You smear them like warpaint, before looking at February 22nd. He spells everything wrong, and you laugh because you can almost see his pretty face, scrunched in concentration. He doesn’t say he loves you in this one, just he says he needs you, and that’s more than enough. You grab February 23rd, and he talks about needing you to come home, and Bobby hating him for letting you jump in, and drinking rubbing alcohol—god, you hope he didn’t—before signing off.

I’ll be back tomorrow. 

Wait for me. 

I’m sorry. 

DAW.

You can’t keep reading. You can’t even see through the tears. You clutch the letters to your face, hyperventilating and shaking and feeling it. It’s so easy it makes you furious you didn’t let yourself have it sooner, and that just makes you cry harder, and soon your throat is too closed up and your nose is stuffed and your whole body has this bone deep exhaustion that can only let you sit there and feel it. All of it, unrelenting and permanent and inevitable, the same ways as yours.

Just through the scraps of paper in your hands, you can feel Dean’s love.

But you can’t say it back. You can’t have it without worrying it’s going to be taken away. You can’t just have a good thing and cherish and worship it, without looking out the window and waiting for the sky to warn you. For it to try and take it away. You can only bathe in it and fight for it and scream for it until you run out of breathe in a world where the air changes direction, just to blow your way.

And you’re glad you didn’t let the Leviathans kill God.

But you.

You can’t fucking wait to do it yourself.

Sam and Dean were celebrities. The icky, dramatic kind, that got their faces plastered on tabloids and everyone loved to hate. Dean had always thought everyone was exaggerating about it, but there was no way to ignore the truth. Not now. When it was punching him in the face.

There wasn’t a single monster in Purgatory that didn’t know the Winchesters. They had some nicknames. Some legends and rumors. Sammy got the good end of the stick.

“Beware the Younger,” Dean read off the tablet, smirking at the carved words. “Taller than the trees, colder than the winter. Demon boy- They’re all really hung up on the demon thing, huh?”

Across the firepit, Sammy sighed. “I did start the apocalypse,” he muttered, and Dean shrugged.

“Yeah, but who hasn’t. Don’t get a big head, Sammy, it’s gonna fall off your titan body.”

He laughed, and Sam made a face. “Come on, Dean, there’s no way it says that-

“Demon boy, head bigger than his heart, titan body that cuts through the world. Tower on the sunrise, never let him know your name, never let him know your game- Oh, they’re rhyming now- Never tell him where you come from or go, never make a deal you don’t plan to break.” Dean’s nose scrunched. “Dude, you sound like Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Shut up,” Sam muttered, looking around the dark woods. “What about you? Little burger man, head of ass?”

“Haha,” Dean flipped him off, squinting down the tablet. “Handsome Winchester, cooler Winchester, just surrender right now ‘cause he’s gonna kick your ass-“

“Gimme that.” Sam snatched the tablet out of Dean’s hand, and Dean laughed, letting it echo through the forest.

Sammy had warded the perimeter. They should be set for at least five hours. Enough to eat, breathe, sleep, patch up. And if something was determined enough to break through, they were already prowling past the wood line. Dean letting himself get a rare laugh wasn’t gonna change a thing.

“Fear the Elder,” Sam read and Dean leaned forward with a smirk. “Moving like the Mountains and unforgiving, blood on his hands and gold in his teeth. Silver tongue, red heart, beating louder than the sun. Never falters. Never turns around. No path he can’t tread. Man of God, Killer of God, End of the line, more vengeful than the most foul beast. Do not take what is his. Do not make his smile fall.”

Dean shrugged, a half-satisfied press to his lips. “Hey, y’know- Could be worse. I sound pretty freakin’ cool, you just sound like a knockoff bigfoot-“

“And never spill Winchester blood,” Sam said, his face falling, grim and pained. “Where the Whore will be able to smell it.”

Dean’s jaw locked. Sam glanced up, heavy, apologetic regret all over his puppy-dog face. Dean stretched at hand, beckoning Sam to pass it back over. He did, slowly, like he already kind of wanted to take it back.

“We don’t need to worry about this, it’s- She’s not here-“

“Do not think of the Whore,” Dean muttered, and Sam fell quiet. “If you need think of her, you are already dead.”

Dean swallowed, and he wanted to break this damn tablet in half. Sam bowed his head, watching Dean carefully, speaking like he was trying to talk down a damn jumper.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Dean,” he muttered. “And- I mean, that’s a warning, not a call to battle.”

Dean grunted and dropped the tablet on the ground. He knew She wasn’t in any danger of a monster taking her out. Not like Sam and Dean were.

But She wasn’t alright.

Dean didn’t know how long he and Sammy had been stuck here. Time moves differently in these places, and Purgatory nights seemed to crawl twice as long as the days. They’d touched down a lifetime ago, figured out that they were pretty much screwed, and never had a second to tally up the weeks since.

They’d made an agreement. No giving up. Not on each other. Not on getting back home. They’d either stay alive long enough for someone topside to yank them out, or figure out a way home themselves. Dean thought She and Cas might work it out in the first month, until She told him that she hadn’t spoken to Cas since some big fight after Michigan. Dean should’ve seen that one coming. He loved Her to death and past it, but she’d never exactly been open to people telling her what to do, or stopping her, or getting in her way. Cas had—under Dean’s instruction—done all three.

He’d tried to soft pitch the idea that maybe Cas had just been listening to Dean, and it was more his fault that he’d landed his ass in Purgatory. She hadn’t given Dean the impression that she listened.

But She could figure this out herself. Weird stuff was her specialty, and there wasn’t much weirder than being trapped in Purgatory. Dean tried to give Her all the help he could, from the other side. There wasn’t much. He didn’t know anything about any of this, and She didn’t think he was real.

He’d thought about telling Her. He thought about it until his head hurt. He opened his mouth and choked on the words. He got a half-confession out, then looked at her a little too long and lost his voice. She might not believe him. She didn’t seem to, whenever he got too close to the truth.

A few nights ago, he’d written out this whole damn speech. Sammy had been knocked out, Dean had been on watch duty, and he’d used his makeshift knife to scratch the words in the dirt. He’d look up at rustles in the woods, or one of Sam’s bigger sleep-snorts, but that was it. He was going out next. He’d see Her, and she wouldn’t know she was seeing him, and it was one of those things Dean knew was going to bite him in the ass about, if he didn’t deal with it soon.

It’s me, Princess. Really me. Real me, Dean. Your Dean. Not a dream Dean- He’d laughed to himself, then groaned.

There was no good way to do it. The more he thought about it, the worse it got. This wasn’t a monster of his own making, it was an infection he’d already let sit too long. It was already a big if, whether or not she’d believe him. There wasn’t much he could say to prove it, when she thought he was just a figment of her imagination. If he told Her something about herself, she’d know it. If he said something about himself, She’d think he was making it up, and he’d have no way to convince her otherwise. She’d think it was too good, too easy to be true. Dean would’ve thought the same thing two years ago. Before Death. Before soulmates.

And if he got her to listen, there wasn’t an explanation that wouldn’t end there. Soulmates.

Dean had sort of dug himself a very big, very deep grave with this one. He kinda wanted to tell Sammy, just to give the kid a good laugh at his expense.

He only had two ways through this one. He said soulmates, and She didn’t believe him—pretty likely, as even if it made perfect sense, if there was one thing his girl had always been good at doing it was talking circles around herself until she believed up was right and left was down—and she didn’t believe the dreams were real, and Dean got stranded in the grave. He’d prove it when he got home, and She’d blame herself for not listening, and have a pretty big freakout, and then calm down and kill Dean for keeping that from her for a whole year.

Or he said soulmates, and She believed him, and she dragged him out of Purgatory by his ear just to kill him. For keeping that from her. For a whole damn year.

He’d groaned and kicked dirt of his speech, dropping his face into his hands. He was screwed. He was so fucking screwed, he might as well start figuring out how he wanted to decorate the doghouse.

And he knew making it, that this wasn’t going to be his best call, but he didn’t have many others to choose from.

He wouldn’t tell Her. It wouldn’t work. She didn’t trust Her own head, enough for Dean to talk her into it. And with everything She’d told him, there was more than enough for her to worry about. If he told Her, the small sanctuaries of their dreams would just turn into another place for her to freak out. She’d ask him to relay theories to Sam, and demand to see all his injuries, babying and smacking him at the same time when he told her how he and Sammy had dealt with the latest rush of vamps.

Dean knew it could be called selfish. He didn’t care. Not for this. Not when the dreams were all he goddamn had.

If you need think of her, you are already dead.

Dean almost snorted. He did nothing but think of Her, and he felt kinda dead. He and Sammy were both just cutting their way through the motions, mechanical and unwavering until they came out the other side.  

“You made any progress on that map thingy?” He muttered, and Sammy sighed.

“No, not really. I- I don’t know, Dean, how useful is it even gonna be-“

Dean cut him off with Her name. “She’ll wanna see it. You two can geek out about rivers or whatever, soon as we’re out.”

Sam’s mouth twitched, doubtful and quiet. His eyes dropped to the dirt, Dean leaned forward on his log, making his voice firm.

“Sammy, don’t make the freakin’- grieving wife face-“

“Why not?” Sam snapped, but it wasn’t forceful. It was just… tired.

They were both so damn tired.

“I mean, what the are we even doing, Dean? Wandering around, hoping we don’t die in the morning? We don’t even have a clue where to start, where this ends-“ Sam waved a hand, his voice raising. “All I do is try not to lose it and shoot you by accident, and all you do is make- Make stupid jokes and pray before bed! You, Dean, you’re praying.” Sam scoffed. “I’d think you were a shifter if we didn’t test each other every freakin’ day. I mean, who are you even pray to. Who’s going to care?”

Sam’s shout lingered in the air. He let out a heaving, long breath—Dean had a feeling he’d been holding it in for a while—and slumped back down. Dean stared at the fire, at the long shadows, flickering in the dark.

Sammy wasn’t wrong. He had been praying. Every night during his watch, every day when he stopped to take a piss, he was about three Hail Mary’s away from calling himself an altar boy.

But he couldn’t think of another damn thing to do.

He said Her name, slow and hallowed. The most important word in the world. He could swear that, in the starless Purgatory sky, something glowed past the dark.

Sammy looked up with a frown, and Dean swallowed, repeating Her name, a little louder this time.

“I’ve been prayin’ to her. Every night.” He shook his head. “And- I know it ain’t doing much, but- Hell, Sammy, I can’t stop. It’s gotta get help her, right? I tell her where we are, I tell her what we’re seeing, everything. That’ll help.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said softly. “I mean, why would she even be hearing it? I know- In Heaven- But this isn’t Heaven. Cas can’t hear our prayers down here-“

“She isn’t Cas.” Dean muttered. “It’s- It’s different-“

“No, I- I know, Dean, but- She doesn’t exactly take prayers, dude-“

“She takes them from me.”

Sam fell silent. Dean sighed, staring at his hands. Caked in mud. Cold and clasped together. He felt goddamn sick.

“We’re- Me and her-“ The words just wouldn’t come out. Not without Dean twisting them. “We got a soul-bond.”

“A soul-bond?”

Dean grunted an agreement, and Sam stared at him.

“What- What the hell does that even mean-“

“Means what it means,” Dean snapped. “Means she should be able to hear it, when I’m the one praying. But- I don’t know, Sammy. Some kinda wire must be getting crossed, ‘cause I don’t think it’s working.”

They were silent for a moment. Dean glanced up, only to find Sam still frowning at him. There was that far-off look on his face, though. Like he was more in his head than out there with the rest of the world. Dean leaned into his vision, waving for attention, and Sammy blinked.

“Huh?”

“Nothin’, just- Earth to Sammy,” Dean narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing the nerd eyes about.”

“The-“ Sam sighed. “I told you not to call it that-“

“I’ll call it what I want,” Dean shrugged. “What’s up.”

“It’s- I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing,” Sam said it all small, and Dean knew it wasn’t nothing.

“Sam…” He warned, and Sam caved quick.

“Just- What if- And I’m not saying this is it, but-“ Sam glanced up, then back to Dean, dropping his voice. “We’re in a weird spot. And I know he doesn’t stand much against her or whatever, but- He can pretty easily mess with you, Dean. No offense.”

Dean scowled. “How am I not supposed to take offense to that-“

“Because it’s God,” Sammy hissed. “And you’re like- A dude.”

“A dude who stole his wife,” Dean muttered under his breath, and Sammy rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, dude. That’s my point. Maybe he’s not super happy about that, and he’s… I don’t know, messing with the prayer signal.” Sam’s throat bobbed, his voice getting tight. “And she… She just can’t hear you at all.”

And a critical, cardiac thing in Dean plunged. His lungs faltered like they’d collapsed, and his heart slowed to a titanic pace, and his jaw tightened so much he knew that—if She was here—She’d grab it and pry it open and yell at him about grinding his teeth.

She had to have been hearing. She had to know he was in Purgatory, that he was looking for a way back to Her, that he loved Her. God was a son of a bitch, but he owed Dean that much. Dean had saved his damn life. He’d given everything—mostly for Her, but God sure was reaping the benefits—and the bastard didn’t get to just swoop in. To take Her away from Dean, when She needed him.

If She hadn’t been hearing him, She- She might think he was dead.

Sam said Dean’s name, worried and tense. Dean waved him off. He didn’t want to talk about this. Not now. Not when he could feel parts of the ground crumbling, and he couldn’t afford to lose his footing.

“I’m getting’ my two,” he grunted, moving down to his back. “Wake me up to trade watch.”

Sam sighed and gave him that sad, pitiful look again, but he knew better than to argue. They could go to bat about strategy, about next moves, about food or camp or any other damn thing, and they’d work it out. It was the closest to the team Dad had trained them to be, for better or worse.

But Dean wasn’t gonna talk about Her. Not in any way that might turn to a fight.

He twisted so his back was to Sammy, closed his eyes, and counted himself luckier than most. At least he still got a part of her, even if it was going to vanish from his fingers by morning.

If you can hear me, he prayed. And Christ, I hope you can, I’m coming home, sweetheart. I swear I’m coming home. I’ll hold on if you hold on. Fuck, I’ll hold on for both of us. Just don’t give up on me. Dean squeezed his eyes tighter, fighting off the burn. I love you. All the way down, remember. You and me. Just you and me.

And all Dean heard in response was the howl of the wind, high above his head, untouchable, untamable, and wild in the dark.

Dean didn’t count the money on the table. He remembered exactly how much there had been. He remembered exactly how long it had lasted, before he’d needed to make some difficult calls. He turned over a few bills in his hands, and wondered if there had been another way. One where he’d stretched everything thinner, while keeping Sammy in one piece. There wasn’t going to be any avoiding the rougher parts. There never was. You didn’t get outta the mountains without crawling through the caves. But if he’d been a little smarter, maybe the would’ve come out with a few less bruises, or he could’ve taken more bullets.

“What’s the money for?” She murmured, and Dean wrapped his arm around Her shoulders, pulling her almost fully into his lap.

“Nothing,” he lied easily. She didn’t have to worry about it. Dean knew She was probably doing enough of that already. “You have a good day, Princess?”

She shook Her head, her lips pursed into a swollen little line, her whole face crestfallen and her body shaking like a damn toy poodle. She climbed over him, legs hooking around his waist and head bowing. Dean knew Her well. He cradled the back of Her head and kissed her brow, frowning against the warm skin.

“Fight with Jo?” He asked quietly, and got no answer. “You talk to Cas-“

“No,” She mumbled, and Dean sighed.

He left Her cling to him. She almost burrowed Her face into his neck, and when Dean spread his fingers on her lower back and pushed Her closer, she let out a soft, sweet little noise and eased fully into his arms. It filled Dean with a strange, warped kind of pride. He was caring for Her. She was letting herself relax, and he was willing to bet a real cut of money that she hadn’t stopped moving since he and Sammy had vanished.

A few days after this night at the table, he’d be out with Sammy at the park, and the kid would ask him about girls. What was ‘up’  with them, how he was supposed to talk to them, why Dad didn’t like either of them hanging around them too long. Dean could chalk up a lot of Sammy’s lapses in charm to Dad giving him the impression that the prettier the girl was, the more likely she was to be venomous or something.

And Dean had done his best to combat that, but he’d been a bit of an idiot. He hadn’t met Her yet. He hadn’t known how good the world could get, when you had something so beautiful it caught all the light and cast it around her, like a diamond that melted into water, a river that swept Dean away to a kind of paradise he should’ve known better than to fight.

He’d told Sammy then that women were like dogs. He’d barely been thirteen. He’d been failing most of his classes, scraping by with hands covered in things a boy’s hands should never know, and he’d been trying to get big enough to match Dad’s shadow. Dad said women were like dogs. All different kinds of them, loud or quiet, loyal or violent, lazy or constantly running around for attention. They brought you joy, but they were just damn dogs. Nothing you wouldn’t do for yours. No real, logical need  for them outside of a companion.

Sammy had been doubtful. He’d always been smarter than Dean anyway.

But Dean knew better now. He needed Her, just for the damn logical reason of a third, better opinion than he and Sammy were going to offer. He needed Her to swoop in like of God from the Machine and save their asses, and he need to feel Her outside of these dreams. He needed Her to be okay. It was better than nothing, that he could take this wolf of a woman and turn her into a snuggling koala, but She didn’t think it was real. And Dean didn’t know how that was going to carry over into the real world.

“You gonna be alright?” He asked, because even if She lied, at least that meant she had some fight left.

She leaned back and stared at him. She had those doe eyes again, and it made Dean swallow. He couldn’t fuck her in here. Not when She didn’t think it was real.

Her eyes dropped to his lips, and Dean’s tongue darted out, almost against his will. He muttered Her name, and she leaned forward until their brows were resting together, her breathing short and ragged. Dean rubbed a slow circle on Her back, almost purely to ground himself. She stared at his mouth, then slowly dragged her gaze up, and Dean thought he might choke on his heart.

“Don’t gimme that,” he said, pleading and quiet, and She shied a little back.

No. Dean couldn’t have that. He grabbed Her neck, keeping her forward, and let their lips brush in the lightest possible touch.

“C’mon, Bambi,” he said, soft and teasing. “Look at me.”

She did. Tears made Her eyes glow, and Dean dug his fingers into her soft skin, trying to keep her together with just a touch. Even one she didn’t think was real.

“You’re gonna be alright,” he said, and it came out like an order. He was past caring. “Got it?”

She nodded. It was small. Tight and unsure. Dean took it anyway.

“C’mere,” he pulled Her closer, moving into a deep, slow kiss. She made that pretty little sound of surprise, like she still didn’t expect it to always feel this good. Dean pressed his tongue on Her swollen lower lip, and she shivered, pulling herself closer by her thighs.

He smiled against Her lips. He didn’t rush. This was all he had. This was what he was fighting to get back to.

He wasn’t about to let a single moment slip through his fingers. Not now. And never when he got home.

✦chapter 74

✦End note: sooooo much planned this season. 2 secrets i believe. many many things :). thank you for reading! Chapter Title from Ain't No Mountain by Marvin Gaye

✦If you like this story, please reblog, like, or leave a comment! <3

You sweep through long halls in a dress that flows behind you, covering the shadows with lace and silk. You run out to the empty yard and slam into Dean, right where you knew you’d find him. Standing with the stake in his hand that he drops, in favor of spinning you off the ground and cradling your trembling body. One hand cups the back of your head, and the other digs into your hips. You trip trying to pull yourself closer, and drops a thick arm under your thighs, hauling you up into his arms.

He’s warm. So warm you let yourself pretend this is real. You bury your face in his neck and dig your nails into his neck. Wherever he is—the real Dean—you hope he can feel the dull, claiming pain. You hope he knows that you brush wet, swollen and tear stained lips over the crescent dents after, trying to push them a little deeper into his skin. You’re allowed to be possessive and selfish here.

Because, no matter how much it hurts you to know, it’s not real. 

Dean guides your face away from his neck, tugging your hair gently, forcing your gaze onto his. Tired, glassy eyes flicker like a jumping engine, a heart being shocked back to life. His mouth works in that tiny way, where he’s trying to think of something to say but only seems to know how to touch. He brushes your hair once, twice, and third time with this thumb sweeping over your cheekbone, his lips parting with a long, broken sigh.

You press a tender, worried kiss to his lips, and he snaps. His hand fists in your hair. He stumbles back like he’s been punched, kissing you until you’re both breathless and drunk on a phantom taste. He trips his way to a soft pile of grass in the courtyard, somehow managing not to come up for air. Dean lands flat on his ass and holds you over his chest, attacking your neck and jaw with brutal lips, sucking tiny bruises before flicking his tongue over the ache. You dig your fingers into his hair, biting back wrecked moans.

Dean grabs your chin, squeezing your cheeks and shooting you a stern, lust-blown glare.

“Don’t be like that, Princess,” he mutters, grazing his mouth over your puckered lips. “I gotta hear you. Lemme hear you.”

He traces his fingers teasingly up your side and nips at your lower lip. You let out a high, pathetic whine, and he smirks.

“There she is.”

Dean kisses you again, before gliding his mouth back down. There isn’t an inch of your skin he doesn’t seem determined to mark. Your moans echo off the courtyard walls, and his grunts vibrate against your skin, sending tiny, sweet shivers up your spine. Your shirt gets peeled off, so he can mouth at your breasts. He traces the curve of your ass and sits you right on the growing bulge in his pants, but never does anything more than rock his hips.

If Sam ever got a peak in your head, he’d vomit and then say something about you not even letting yourself feel good in a useless fantasy, and then you’d punch him in the face. Holding Dean after he cuts off the… other stuff, it’s just as good as anything else. You just need him, really. To be close for a fleeting hour of rapid sleep, where you can trace over his Golden features and beg the stains on your skin to keep you dirty, because the idea of being clean sounds so harrowing you think it might eat you alive.

“You doing alright up there?” Dean murmurs against your skin, his face buried between your breasts, and you nod.

There’s a long, aching sting at your eyes. You hug his head and breathe deeply, trying to burn the sweet smell of cinnamon into your nostrils. 

Dean says your name, splaying his fingers on your lower back. He tries to lean back, but you hold him in a headlock, the tears streaming down your cheeks. He grunts and pries at your forearms, grabbing your wrists with light hands and forcing your grip to slacken. He smiles faintly, at your scrunched up, snotty nose and red eyes. It’s tired. Everything about him seems tired, but he still smiles, as if you’re the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Easy, baby,” he murmurs, taking both of your hands between his. “It’s gonna be alright, you’re gonna be alright.”

He kisses his knuckles, trapping yours, and you sob so hard it shakes your body. You’re not worried about you. You’ve learned, for better or worse, that you really always will get through it. The universe doesn’t seem all that open to letting you tread down that other path.

But you’re worried about him. You’re worried about him in a way that almost cleaves you in half, that threatens to be the only thing that could possible overrule the universe, that frays the already weak threads that stich up whatever foul, glorious thing you’re made of. You’re held together by hooks and needles, at this point. You’re twisting yourself into knots that half ease right here, in Dean’s arms, but all that happens is your heart spills and spills and spills, until the rotting grass is overgrown and stained with silver dew.

Dean glances down, but doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t say much but soft reassurances, until you’re able to speak again. His thumb pets down the bridge of your nose, and—if you’re shaking so much the ground starts to shake with you—he flips you onto your back and hold you until you the weight makes you breathe.

Tonight is one of those nights. He traces over your face with the most cautious touch, his face twisted with a heavy, painfully blatant longing. Hooded eyes shine, scanning over your crumpled features. His mouth hangs open, like he’s trying to inhale you, the same way you hold his fisted hand over your lips. Just trying to get a little extra of something you’ve never been able to be satisfied with. Something that’s never going to be able to be close enough.

“Better?” He rasps, when your breathing steadies. You shake your head, your lips wobbling and he sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He kisses your brow, brow knitting like he’s in pain. “I know.”

He never tells you much, but there isn’t much your brain seems to need to hear. Sam’s alive. They’re working to get back. Dean loves you, and he swears up and down and left and right, on his both his babies—you and the damn car—and his mother and brother and Scooby Doo boxers and Led Zepplin cassettes, that he’s going to come home and say it to your face again. You tell him he already has, and he laughs and tells you that you have no idea. He asks you about things, every single time. How’s Claire. How’s Jo. Are you talking to Cas again, have you spoken to Eileen at all, has Crowley come crawling out from underground. You tell him the truth, and sometimes he makes a face like he wants to argue. Sometimes he does argue, and you think you miss him so much you’re going mad.

“You gotta talk to Cas, sweetheart, who the hell knows what the angels are up to-“

“No.”

Dean sighs your name, and you shove his chest with a flat hand.

“You talk to him, if it’s so important.”

“I’d like to,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Could tell him to talk some sense back into your smart ass.”

You shove him again, and he just catches your wrist and guides it away.

“I’m serious,” he says, strict and heavy, even as he drags his thumb over your knuckles and uses a soft, coaxing tone. “If I get back and you’re still fightin’ with Cas, I’m gonna be pissed.”

And you just hold his gaze, your throat closing up so tight the words have to break to get out. “So come back,” you whisper. “And prove it.”

India is hot in the middle of April. Wet and hot, mud always coating your boots and dirt getting under your nails, a sticky warmth filling up your lungs with every breath, a million smells that remind you of Dean flooding your senses and making you press your lips tight enough to crack.

He’d love it here. The people and the food, the bartering and the TV and, again, the food. He’d pull you through the markets with your hands locked, spending half an hour talking to one seller about his fish before storming off for a reason he sputters trying to explain. You’d kiss his cheek and ask if he wants to go fishing. He’d light up like a child and drag you back to the hotel, kissing all over your face as you stumble through the door, giggling like a lovesick fool in his arms.

Instead, you lean against the old table in the warehouse, sharpening your knife and ignoring the muffled curses of the man in the chair. Bobby’s bottle shines green, in the dim, flickering light. You kick your bag a little away from your feet, dancing and humming while you wait for everyone to calm the hell down.

For him, specifically, to calm down. You tied him up in the nice binds, you’ve given him a lot of wiggle and breathing room—Jo was worried he’d get out, you know he won’t—and brought him some very expensive and stolen lamb that he didn’t get to eat, because he tried to bite your fingers off. He’d have it pretty good, if he’s stop overreacting. You’re the one who should be freaking out, and you’re perfectly calm. The Silver is bright and smooth and calm, iced over your veins and melded into your muscles. It moves when you move, and screams when you scream, and it’s like learning to walk all over again, but you’re doing it. And you’re calm.

Psychotic, the man before this one said. You sliced his hand open and dripped salt on the wound, for that one. It wasn’t the claim, but the way he said it. Like you were just some crazy, scorned bitch. Which another former captive called you, and he lost his tongue, but he’d also crossed your very, very clear line about Claire, so you think he earned it.

That’s why this one can call you whatever the fuck he wants. You’ve been called worse, and you’re past caring what kind of whore or slut or bitch or cunt you have to be. If anything, it’s a compliment. It means they’re afraid.

The man spits something, then chokes and thrashes the chair. The chains rattle unpleasantly against the floor, and you shoot him an unimpressed look.

“Neal, I can’t understand you,” you remind him, and his eyes narrow. “And remember what we talked about? Good behavior?

Neal’s face curls and contorts into something like a sneer. You sigh and spin your knife in your hand, pushing off the table with a tiny kick of your feet.

“This,” you wave the blade over his general, rather rude demeanor. “Isn’t good behavior. This isn’t how we earn speaking privileges again, buddy. I don’t want to have to remind you again.”

Neal’s eyes flash with fury. He growls something and you stop right in front of him, crossing your arms and scanning over his locked down body with a frown. He’s been here almost two weeks, and all you’ve really gotten is an uncooperative attitude and a lot of insulting comments about your body. You would’ve thought he’d give up after a while. The rest of them did.

You tap your foot and chew on your lower lip. Neal’s gag is getting dirty, but it didn’t exactly start clean. Maybe you’d soaked it in dirty dish water, before stuffing it in his mouth. He deserved it. He made a comment about Claire that he was lucky to survive.

Luck that came with being one of the last Alphas left. If there had been hundreds of them before, the count is down to double digits. You, Cas, and Crowley sort of did a lot of damage to the population, leaving only the smart ones that evaded capture, and know to stay underground. Those are the ones like the Alpha Vampire, who you haven’t been able to find after months of looking.

And then there are the ones who didn’t get caught because they were too stupid to be worth it.

The ones like Neal.

There isn’t a corner of the Earth you don’t think is worth ripping up to find Dean. For a week after Michigan, you thought God might have taken him. Jo barely managed to talk you down from truly, fully losing it, and she only got the chance because of your exhaustion from killing Eve.

“You felt God grabbin’ me, right?” She’d said, holding your hands and pleading in a way that was so unlike Jo, you’d managed to focus on her words. “You told me, you felt God yankin’ me away, just like you felt my mom. Like you felt him tryin’ to grab Bobby. You woulda stopped him, if he was goin’ for Sam and Dean. You woulda,” she’d squeezed your hand, even as you’d stared at her with empty eyes. “I know it. You know it. Hell, God himself knew it, so- Wasn’t him.”

You’d blinked at her, and nodded slowly. She was right. It couldn’t have been God. He’d vanished from the sky again, so you couldn’t ask, but you knew. One of the only things that had saved you, in that moment, was that you hadn’t been wrestling with God to pull Sam and Dean back. You would’ve detonated, if you had. But instead they’d just vanished, and you’d been hit by the despair before the wrath.

It had been long. Long and harrowing and cold, in the week after. Jo says you barely spoke, and you have to believe her, because you don’t really remember that much otherwise. It’s all a blur of a bed that didn’t have the warmth it was supposed to, showers that you were afraid to take and scars of Gold you traced with trembling, fearful fingers. The only sharp memory is the fight with Cas, and even that is sanded around the edges. You’d drifted until Jo reminded you that it couldn’t be God, and it had been like slamming against a rock. 

If it wasn’t God, it was something else. Something weaker.

You could kill something weaker. You could do it without destroying yourself, and dragging the rest of the world down with you. You could get Dean home.

In the days after that, you’d moved fast. Kevin had been sent off with Meg, who promised to keep him away from Crowley. You and Jo had packed up Bobby’s house and left, looking for something. Anything, that would even tell you where Dean had landed. That would tell you how to get him home.

“Listen,” Meg had said before you separated, low and careful. “Things like that bone? My daddy told me to be careful with them.” She’d given you a pointed look. “Told me they had kickback.”

Kickback.  

A rebound of power, Rowena had explained. An aftertaste, but everyone in a few yards gets it shoved down your throat. Dean and Sam got dragged somewhere. All you had to do was drag them back.

Which means all you have to do is figure out where they got dragged.

It’s a harder task, than you originally thought. You’ve gone after countless people and beasts and entities for answers. God convicts who were willing to talk without anyone needing to be tortured, rogue angels who looked for you to help, demons who you trapped and witches and cult members who got to find out exactly how many of the rumors have been true. And in all of them, from the annoying to the unless to the rude, Neal is, by miles and margins, the fucking stupidest.

“I’m going to take out your gag,” you tell him slowly, leaning down over his chair. “You’re not going to call me any names, I won’t cut out your tongue, and we all win, okay?”

Neal eyes the weapon, inches from slicing his cheek. You smile sweetly and flick your wrist, taking out a lock of his hair, and he flinches. Like a little fucking bitch.   

“Okay?” You prompt again, and his throat bobs.

He nods. You beam, and saw at his gag with a wide smile. The cloth falls and you let it hang around his neck, watching with raised brows and a warning curve to your lips. Neal glares at you, and you tip your head, letting your hair brush over his cheeks. He recoils back, his breathing shallow and hot over your face, and you smile in slow, smug satisfaction.

“That’s a good boy,” you purr, drawing yourself back up.

Neal—the idiot—snaps.

“You little fucking bitch-“

“Ah,” you slam the gag back up to his mouth, choking him on the fabric. His eyes flicker, hatful and beady and small. You sigh. You really wanted to do this the easy way. “That’s not what we talked about,” you tug the fabric tighter, and he grunts. “I’m being very nice right now, and you- You didn’t even eat the food I bought you! Do you know how hurtful that is?” You roll your eyes. “And- Even if I didn’t buy it, I still got it for you. And you call me a bitch? Rude.”

You shove him back and let go of the gag, taking a large step back before he can spit in your face.

He tries. He always tries, because he’s an idiot. You dodge it without blinking, but it lands only a few inches away from Bobby’s bottle. The old wood sizzles and hisses under the venom. You turn back around with a furious flurry and rage in your chest, a growing winter storm that Neal seems to feel, with how he goes still.

“Do you know what happens?” You ask slowly. “If you destroy that bottle.”

Neal opens his mouth. You don’t give him a real chance to respond.

“I kill you,” you spit, taking a large step forward. Neal’s fingernails and lips are starting to go purple. The warehouse creaks under your feet, as slow frost spreads over your feet.

“I didn’t hit the damn bottle,” Neal tries to snap, but it’s weak. His voice cracks, and his eyes are too wide. You hold a finger to your lips and shake your head. He swallows loud enough that you can hear it, and you smile.

“I kill you,” you repeat, honeyed and low. “And then I track down every one of your children, and I kill them too. Then I open Purgatory, and I kill all of you all over again. Do you understand.”

Neal’s eyes narrow. For a second, you think he really might be stupid enough to test you, but he only nods.

“Great,” you spin you knife, kneeling down to his height. “See? Isn’t it easy to listen to me?”

Neal’s mouth ticks. He still doesn’t speak, and you sigh.

“Now, I know you’re going to try and tell me you have no idea where the Leviathan bone goes, but if you do that, I’m going to have to cut off your hand. And I don’t wanna do that. It’s gross, it smells bad, now I have to get rid of a hand- You get it,” you shrug. “So, if you’d be so perfectly kind to think a little bit harder, maybe we can figure out a version of this where you only lose your finger.”

The column of Neal’s throat works. His jaw does a funny little motion, and you grab his cheeks with a sigh, pressing the knife to his throat.

“I told you to stop doing that, it’s not going to work.”

“Fuck-“ Neal pushes out the words through his teeth little bits of spittle landing on your skin.

It burns, but the sores heal in seconds. Cockatrice venom doesn’t do much to you, apparently. It’s still annoying to have to heal it.

“Fuck- You-“

“Everyone’s trying,” you say dryly, pressing the knife down until a thin bead of blood coats the blade. “Where is my Dean.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t fucking know-“

“Liar,” you lean closer, eyes narrowing. “I know you’re a liar, I know what Mommy taught you, I- I fucking know-“

Your voice breaks, and the frozen coating over your hands is giving way to pure, raw wrath. You will get him back. You have to get him back. There is nothing ahead of you, if you don’t get Dean home. This power is useless if you can’t find him, life is useless if you have to feel all of it but you don’t get to have something that’s just yours, everything has been nothing if you don’t get to have Dean.

And Neal sees it, between the shattered cracks of the Silver, waxing and waning like an ocean storm, crashing up high enough that the chains turn to roots and the pain under all of it becomes so obviously, dangerously clear.

Most Alpha and demons caved under it. They’d been trying to barter or mock, not understanding that the rumors about you and Dean didn’t cover the thinnest scope of your love. You’ve long learned that people talk about the Winchesters and their strange little monster. The demon boy and his black eyes and breakdowns. The brute hunter that carves through anything in his way, to get to his baby brother and his girl.

The Magdalene. The Whore. The Bride, who’s stuck herself to the brother’s side and sleeps in the brute’s bed. They say everything about you and Dean. That you fuck like rabbits, that he sits at your feet like a dog, that you follow him around like a lovesick schoolgirl and crawl into his lap with blood on both your hands.

And yet it takes that peak behind your fury, for them to get it. To understand that they are not looking at some tragic little star-crossed love, some Bonnie and Clyde pairing that talks big and shoots bigger.

They are looking at a Horror. They are looking at something that can’t fit in their little minds, who could sweep over lands and mold them in her name, who could hold the stars in her hands or bring paradise to the earth, but only wants one, perfect, sweet idiot of a man.

And you don’t have him right now. There’s no Dean, to tell you that you need to sleep, or breathe, or think your plan through a little bit harder. They call him the Brute Winchester, but he was the only thing that could ever get you to bow your head for a leash. He could’ve saved them. He’s not here, so there’s nothing but you, and an unending pain that you need the world to fucking feel.

Neal sees it. He blinks and leans back, under the blinding floodlight of the truth. They all do.

But most of them see it as something like a supernova, that’s going to consume them if they don’t look for cover or cower.

Neal is an idiot. Neal smiles.

“You don’t know how to get him back, do you,” he coos. “Little Whore, bragging about killing Eve and not even able to find her little boyfriend. You’re what they’re afraid of. You can’t even track him like the fucking mutt you’re supposed to be.”

You cover Neal’s mouth with your hand. Your eyes squeeze shut, your breathing shallow, your palm burning at Neal tries to bite it.

You are the weight of the roots under your feet, happy to be alive, to be connected, to grow instead of sink. You’re the cold fear of the ground, worried the heat will come, but won’t be enough to thaw it. You’re the sky far overhead, filled with so much it’s not sure what to call itself, unsure what it even is if not empty.

It is everything. You are everything. The leather cord of Dean’s amulet is stuck to your skin, trying to hold onto you when he can’t, and you are everything.

This Alpha is nothing. So you make him everything too.

When you open your eyes, Neal is frozen. His eye sockets have been overgrown with flowers that burst from under the lids and through the pupils. Grass and thin weeds grow under his nails. You uncover his mouth, and branches burst forward, a million tiny birds taking off in a swarm. You wipe the trickle of water that falls down his chin and sigh.

Better than the last one. He got a little too confident, said that Dean was probably hiding from you, or begging God to take you so you’d leave him alone, and got turned into a pile of brushel and kindle that burned rather easily, to nothing but flecks of ash in the air. You think Dean would be proud of you for controlling it. Neal only got turned into a blooming corpse, once he earned it.

And he was wrong. He was wrong. You press your hands flat against the table and take deep breaths, repeating it over and over and over. Pushing the thought out of your head like a parasite being fished up your throat. You will get Dean back. There is nowhere in the universe that you can’t reach, no cage you can’t rip open to get back to his side. Lucifer and Michael couldn’t hold you. Some little rebound of a magic bone isn’t going to out preform God’s favorite sons.

But it has. You haven’t found him.

But you will. You will. You chew on the inside of your cheek until you taste blood. Your fingers twitch and curl, trying to burrow into your palms, and you scrape them along the table instead. It starts to hurt, the pressure building under your skin and bubbling over in your chest. It hurts more than the brief sting or stab of a bite or cut ever would. You squeeze your eyes shut and grab your knife, driving it straight into the wood. You lean over, rubbing your face like you can push back the burn in your eyes and heavy stress on the bridge of your nose. A dam, threatening every second to break.

You pinch it and try to breathe slow. If you let yourself drown in the blood, pounding in your ears, you can almost hear Dean’s voice, coaching you through it.

In and out. Easy for me, Princess. Just breathe. I’ve got you.

He doesn’t have you. He said he was going to. He said he wouldn’t leave and now you’re fucking alone, suffocating on thick air in a warehouse, grabbing at wood like it’s not just going to rot under your fingers, and you’re not about to slip away into nothing, nothing, nothing, you’re going to be nothing again and you should’ve saved him, why didn’t you save him, what foul kind of use are you to the world if you can’t save the best thing about it, if you can’t do anything but cry and run around and be nothing-

Your breathing is ragged. Sharp. There’s a dull sting to your palms, and you open your eyes to find you’d started scratching at your palms until you drew thin lines of blood. You swallow, a boulder settling in your throat that you’ve never been able to dislodge alone. Bobby’s bottle shines in your periphery, knocked onto its side and cradled in a little nest of grass and leaves. Containing yourself when you use your powers- It’s a work in progress. You right the bottle with a mumbled apology you know he’s never going to be able to hear.

And you think you almost got away with it. You drag Neal’s body out back, and flick Dean’s lighter until you’ve got a sweet little flame going. You watch it for a moment, bending light in the sunrise. It seems to know you’re not Dean, whenever you use it. There’s a shadow of distrust that almost puts it out, but then it realizes it’s you, and that seems to be close enough.

You know it sounds crazy—even for you—but all of Dean’s things miss him. You wear his shirts to bed, trying to pretend he’s still there to hold you in the dark, and the fabric clings to the Gold on your skin the same way you cling to its collar, inhaling every last bit of cinnamon and grass until you can almost pretend Dean is there. You have his keys in your pocket, and they keep begging you to drive back to  an empty home. They seem to think that he’ll be there, and don’t listen when you tell them that he’s gone. He never goes, they demand. He’s just waiting for you at home. And you shake your head and clean his guns—and you do a bad job, but he’ll fix it when he gets home—and they seem to be the same kind of restless he is, where they’re itching for something to get in front of. Something to defend. They ask you with every touch, if your safe. They beg you to let them help, when you tell them you’re fine. The bullets say they exist to lodge in the skulls of your enemies. You tell them they’re being a little dramatic, and put them back in Dean’s actual bullet box with a sigh.

And you really, really almost get away with it.

Neal’s body burns, and you throw the rest of it into the backwoods river, asking the water to carry it where no one will ever find. You go back inside and clean up, rubbing your eyes and fighting a yawn. You’ve been up all night. Your eyes are drooping and your skin is raw and sensitive, a live nerve that wants to peel off your iron-heavy bones. There isn’t an artery in your chest and neck that isn’t trying to burst. A joint or tendon in your gut or legs that doesn’t want to snap. You hold it together, with the thinnest of wires. You jabbed them through every inch that threatens to unravel and pull them tight, because you don’t have the privilege of falling apart.

But you’ve never been lucky enough, to not have something go rancid and soft. To not trip over the only loose stone, and plunge face first into freefall.

You stuff all your tools and knives—you lost the Blade, throwing it at Dick Roman’s eye, and replaced it with a smaller set Claire found in China—into the bag. You wrap Bobby’s bottle in a woven cloth and wedge it between your books. You check the ground for anything else, and there it is. The loose stone. The branch that your wire catches on, that pulls you right apart.

Dean’s box slid a little under the table, when you kicked over the bag. You have to stretch to grab it, and frantically wipe off the quickly gathered dust and cobwebs. Your fingers linger on the latch. Your knees draw to your chest, and you stare at the silver detailing until your vison blurs.

Hot tears land on the back of your hand. A shattered, uncontrollable sob rips from your throat, and your shoulders pull tight. You’re curling into a ball around the box, dropping your face between your legs and shuddering with every single breath. The air feels like it’s burning up in your body. The soil beneath you becomes rich and wet, and the wood behind you mends from time, setting down roots in a place nothing else has been allowed to stay.

You scream so loud it bounces off the walls, and outside, the river seems to scream back. Lightning cracks, somewhere faraway. You scream again, and thunder rolls through the air. It’s loud because it’s trying to find him. Because if it’s loud enough, it will glow like a beacon in the dark, and Dean will come home.

You need him to come home.

It’s a while, before you’re able to stand again. Your legs are shaking, and there are no warm arms to hold you upright. You wipe your own tears, and little dandelions bloom when they hit the muddied earth. You gather yourself, because no one else will, and that was only a fissure. You can stich up a fissure.

A break—a true, untenable break—will not leave a living world in its wake. Not a world that isn’t molded to your hands. Salvation. Damnation.  

You wonder if Azazel knew that the only difference between the two would be whether or not you got to have Dean. You’re sure he didn’t. He would’ve let Dean die in that hospital bed if he did. Long before you could save him. When you weren’t capable of much more than squinting at a soul or stomping out a demon like a spider that jumped on you in the shower.

It would be the easy thing, to let yourself break. But this world deserves better than a righteous blight. There are still things in it, that you can find to be beautiful. The river spit up nuggets of gold, gathered on the bank like shells on a beach. The morning glows like you’re wandering through Dean’s heaven, when the sun splits over green mountains. You have Bobby in your bag, and you’re going to get him back. You have Dean’s box, and if you explode, you’re never going to find out what’s inside.

You’ve been telling yourself you’re waiting for him to be back. You know, deep in your gut, that you just can’t. You can’t name why. You can’t justify it. But you cry when you see it and you don’t want to open it without him.

You don’t want to do any of this without him.

You have to. It’s either that or giving up, and you’ve been running too long to let your feet fail now. You’re going to get through this.

You always do.

The motel you’ve been staying at is on the nicer side. You have a large room and complementary breakfasts. There’s a pool that only has a handful of bugs in it, at any given time. The wallpaper is peeling but the bathroom is clean, and the water pressure is strong, and the beds are covered in so many pillows you can almost shape them into a perfect Dean, whenever you sleep.

Not that you sleep much.

You took three hours, somewhere around twilight, and headed to the warehouse around midnight. You unlock the door and slip inside before anyone should be up.

And yet, waiting for you on the bed with a glare, Claire is wide awake. Her arms are cross and her chin is jutted up in that way Dean used to say was all you. The Lady is curled in her lap, Indy is flopped at her feet, and the Phoenix chick—Sparky, Claire’s been calling him, and you haven’t really been able to stop her—is pecking at her hair. You almost laugh at the absurd sight. Claire doesn’t look that amused.

“Where did you go,” she whisper shouts, and you kick off your shoes with a sigh.

“You don’t need to worry about that, Claire-“

“Yes, I do! What if there was another break-in, what if the police showed up, what if the leviathans came back-“

“Did you have another nightmare?”

Claire scowls. It’s not an accusation, but you know she takes it as one. She’s trying to play up the gum-like toughness Dean always carried with his every word and step. The sense that bending him was impossible, without him snapping back like a rubber band. She’s been doing that hewn, tight jawed expression whenever the police do come around—you dispose a lot of bodies, and people in India are really annoyingly observant—and doesn’t seem open to hearing that you really don’t need her to grow up for this.

If anything, you’re still a little annoyed she talked you into coming. You wanted her to go back to Jody, but she flat out refused. She locked herself in the Firebird and said she’d go on a hunger strike. Jody said she could take her anyway.

A selfish part of you didn’t want to let her out of your sight. Not after Michigan. Not when there were all too familiar bags forming under her eyes, and paranoid twitch that made your heart ache—that reminded you of Sam—every time the wind got a little too loud.

She’d been allowed to come on the rule that she’d listen, stay out of your warpath, and continue with school. Staying out of the warpath just means no hunting. School just means the homeschooling curriculum you stole from Bobby and Rufus. Dean’s going to have some things to say about that, when he gets home. He’ll be welcome to. He can shout at you and argue all he wants, as long as he’s in front of you. As long as you get to hear his voice.

You dump your bag on the floor and bite your cheek. You’re doing your best with what you have. It isn’t much. It’s better than nothing at all.

“Claire,” you say gently, keeping your voice down. Jo’s passed out, in the other bed. If you wake her up, she’s going to have opinions. “It’s okay if you are having nightmares-‘

“I’m not!” Claire snaps, too fast, too loud. Jo stirs a little, and you give Claire a stern look. She swallows and bows her head, her voice dropping back down. “I’m not,” she mumbles. “I- I just couldn’t sleep.”

You sigh, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Indy eerps, rolling onto her back and nosing at your knee. You rub her stomach, watching Claire in your periphery, letting her words linger in the hum of the fan and wet morning air.

“It’s not like I wake up screaming,” Claire grumbles, and your mouth twitches.

“I know.”

“Do you? ‘Cause you keep saying I’m having nightmares, so it sounds like you don’t-“

“Claire.”

She curls back, under your flat stare. You sigh and lean forward, touching her knee lightly. She keeps her gaze locked down, just as stubborn as always.

“I have nightmares,” you say softly, and Claire’s scowl deepens. “Dean has nightmares. And he never wakes up screaming.”

That makes her pause. She looks up with a poorly hidden surprise, pulling at a loose string on her shorts. You smile sadly and squeeze her knee, leaning a little further. Like you’re telling her a secret, even if you’re sure Dean would tell her the exact same.

“I wake up,” you murmur. “Because he’s not making any sounds.”

“That- But-“

“He snores,” your smile turns misty. Tired and fond and a little smooth around the edges, the weight of missing him settling right at the top of your chest. You stave it off for now. For Claire. “He snores like a fucking machine.”

Claire makes a face like she’s trying to fight off a laugh, and your cheeks ache just a little less.

“So when he’s quiet,” you say, watching her carefully. “I know something is wrong.”

Claire presses her lips in a thin line. She stares down at her fingers, and you let out a slow breath.

“He gets stiff. I realize I woke up because he was squeezing me, or lying on top of me, or just- Grabbing me. His face does that frown,” you pinch your face up, trying to mimic Dean’s worried and angry scowl, and Claire’s throat bobs. “And he breathes really heavy, and I- I wake him up. Carefully, but- I know whatever he’s dreaming about- I- I have to get him out of it.”

And it hurts just to think about. It makes every space around you feel bigger, to speak about him. Some small part of your brain thinks that if you do it enough he’ll just appear, but the rest of you knows better, and doesn’t want to talk about him at all. But that little part, it’s loud. It expands and begs, every time you indulge it. Spreading memories in every dip and space in your ribcage, pushing just to the right of your heart until you think you’re going to burst.

You can almost see him, in the longest corners of the room. The sun plays a cruel trick where the golden light takes his shape, and you can’t help yourself from looking. In case it is him. If it is, you’ll need to grab him before he vanishes behind the clouds. Tell him that if you’re not dreaming of him, you’re having nightmares. The boring kind, where you wake up screaming in a pool of sweat that’s already collecting algae, reaching for him and only finding an empty bed, then screaming louder. Nightmares that would make him take your face between his hands, that he could tell you weren’t real. John isn’t going to kill you in front of him and Sam. Bobby’s soul isn’t going to be ripped from your hands like Jo’s. Sam isn’t going to crumble to dust in your arms, falling apart too fast for you to put him back together.

You don’t know what Dean had his nightmares about. They were rare for both of you, when you shared a bed. After you’d wake him up, he’d bury his face in your chest and refuse to speak until the sun rose, his hands mapping your body and his back flexed and tense until he convinced himself he was allowed to relax. Then all you’d get was a kiss and mumbled thanks, before he clambored out of bed for coffee. You always had guesses. You pieced things together from the low, pained groans and pleas that would push themselves out, before you managed to wake him. You have the same kind of guesses about Claire.

But she’ll talk about it when she’s ready. You don’t need to know what the nightmare is about, to seal over the damage for a single day. It’s just a band aide on an open wound, but it will stop the infection. You’ll worry about the scar, when you’re not trying to keep her from being cut wide open again.

“Everyone has nightmares,” you duck, forcing Claire to meet your gaze. “But they’re just nightmares. The leviathans are gone. Jo can handle the police or a monster, and anything else- I won’t let it hurt you. Okay?”

Claire’s silent for a long while, and you wait. You have no time. You’re willing to stretch what you do have thin, for her.

She nods, and you bite back your sharp relief, just squeezing her knee one more time and taking a deep breath through your nose.

“Do you want to talk about it?” You offer, already knowing the answer.

Claire shakes her head. You glance over at Jo, fully knocked out and starfished, obvious to the world around her. You’d been planning to catch a few hours before she and Claire woke up, but the motel has strong coffee, and you’ve slept less for longer.

“You wanna watch a movie?” You offer, and Claire sits up. You laugh, and it’s small but real.

Dean would be proud.

You settle against the headboard, Claire tucked into your side, the Lady padding over and curling between your bodies, and Indy splayed over your legs, her tail whipping back and forth over the sheets. She’s almost the size of a Great Dane, now. It’s getting harder and harder, to sneak her around. You’ll call Rowena later. Ask about a shielding or illusion spell, or make one up if she can’t help.

Sparky stays on Claire’s head. They seem to have developed a bond you’re not willing to try and break. You offer the chick a finger, while Claire picks out a movie, and he nips you, nudges you for a pet, and then immediately turns back to Claire’s hair.

They motel has most of the channels. Claire asks you what you want, but you know she’s just trying to be polite.

“Whatever you want,” you tell her, and she smiles. She picks an old western that’s near the start of its run, and slumps down into the mattress. You only half watch, your eyes lidded and glazed. You’re all but asleep with your eyes open, the voices and music all blending into a white noise that threatens to lull you into sleep.

“Did they help?” Claire asks quietly, and you frown at her, unsure if you heard right. “Whoever you were- With,” she clarifies, still staring at the TV. “Are they going to help you find Sam and Dean?”

The question is so small. So unsure, like she’s not sure that she’s allowed to ask it. You twist the skin of your finger and tip your head back, trying to let the headrest carry the weight of it. The lie. The pair, that you don’t want rolling off of you and poisoning her.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think they might.”

Claire hums, and it doesn’t matter how much she believes you. She relaxes, and that ease leave a wake, settling over your skin and tendons and knotted organs. You let out a breath, and it doesn’t catch in your throat.

You don’t sleep. Not fully. But your eyes fall, and your body goes as loose as it’s allowed, and you drift in and out of the world without so much as a nightmare or tear. Claire knocks out on your arm, and the sun pushes over the sky and through the curtains. The weight of Indy comes and goes. A door creaks, and you twist enough to see Jo gone from the bed before you’re pulled back under. It’s not fruitful sleep. It’s bobbing through the calmest parts of the ocean, able to breathe, never able to fully rest.

You’ll find the land. You’ll make it, if you have to.

For now, you just drift.

Jo’s at the table with a coffee, when you finally drag yourself out of bed. Indy’s sitting at the foot of your bed, watching you with wide, curious eyes. You tuck Claire—fully asleep, but still angled like she’s  trying to watch TV—under the sheets, and pad over to Jo’s side. Indy bounds after you, dropping her chin onto your knee and whining softly. Jo rolls her eyes and pushes the coffee across the table, shooting Indy a distasteful glare.

“She’s actin’ like I let her starve,” Jo grumbles. “I took her out. Got her- Really the biggest fuckin’ fish you’ve ever seen. I mean, I still don’t know how she got the whole thing down, it was-“

She holds her hands up, almost all the way apart, and you laugh softly. “She’s a growing girl-“

“She’s grown big enough. We’re gonna have to make a fuckin’ stable.”

You raise your brows. “We?”

Jo shrugs. You both know who we is, and it’s not anyone in the room. “He will,” she doesn’t say his name. You think, sometimes, she’s worried it will set you off, like cutting the wrong wire on a bomb.

“Sam thinks she’s going to be as big as the house,” you murmur into your coffee, and Jo makes a face.

“That’s too fuckin’ big.”

“Yeah, but- At least Dean will get to build his barn.”

Jo stares at you, for just a little too long. You know she hears it. Dean will. Sam thinks.

“Have I told you he wants to build a barn?” You ask, still not meeting her gaze. Silently begging her, to just go along with it. Just right now, while you can’t bear to do anything else.

“No,” she says slowly. “Don’t think you have.”

“Well, he does. He told me he wants to build a barn, a farm, a house, and a garage. I told him he doesn’t know how architecture works, and he- He just said he’d figure it out.” You laugh to yourself, watery and almost floating through the air. “The annoying thing is he probably will. He’ll skim one book and say he’s got it, and then I’ll blink and he’ll have a house.”

Jo says your name. You ignore her.

“I mean- One time I asked him how he built my car, and he just said he put stuff together in the way that made sense. That doesn’t mean anything, but- It worked. He always makes it work.”

You choke on the last word. Jo reaches for your hand, and you curl it into a tight fist. She mutters your name, and you shake your head, tears pricking at the edge of your eyes.

“Don’t,” you whisper, staring at the table. “Please.”

Jo sighs, but doesn’t say a word. She grabs your hand, and you immediately grab it back, trying not to dig in your nails. You watch the coffee slush around in your mug. It’s going cold. Everything, from the sink pit in the hollow of your chest to the churning in your gut, is going cold. Jo’s hand is warm. It keeps your fingers from shaking, and that keeps the world from shaking with it.

Sometimes, you wonder why she sticks around too. She could’ve gone with Meg or Charlie or Adam. She could’ve gone with the Amazons. Could’ve left to look for her mom, even if you’re more than willing to be Ellen is trapped with God. But Jo just… Stays. So maybe people stay, and you begin to feel like a leech. Draining them to make yourself bigger. Suctioned onto their kindness, unable to do anything on your own.

You’re learning, that sometimes, people just… Love you.

You lean on Jo until you’re both about to topple, and she holds you up until you can drag her off the edge of the cliff. You press Sam until he’s about to break, and he doesn’t try to lock you out or push you away. You run around like a pigeon that can’t quite remember where home is supposed to be, and Bobby waits for you to remember how to turn around and find your way back. You screw up again and again and again, and you learn so slow and love so quietly and spill your guts all over Dean’s hands and chest and thighs, and he just cleans you up and stays. He loves you, without any kind of payment or justification. You rip yourself up to try and find some part of you that’s good enough for him to touch, for any of them to touch, and they just… ask you to put yourself back together.

They love you more with the cracks, even if they let the infection of you creep out. They love you when you’re small and withered, they love you when you’re consuming and so alive you can’t bear it, and you’re learning it in the slowest, hardest way possible. The way that involves contorting into every possible shape, before Dean takes you and tells you he likes this one just fine. The way that has blood under your nails and dirt on your knees and foam at your mouth, snarling and snapped like a rabid animal until you learn to trust the water again. It almost kills you, but the blood dries, and you-

You get better.

You miss Dean with more than you can fit in your heart, but you eat, and try to sleep, and you stick with Jo and Claire. You miss Dean, and—without realizing it, like the crawl of a shadow across the ground—you never doubt if he’s missing you.

“The alpha get us anything?” Jo asks a little before Claire gets up, and you shake your head. “And- You didn’t-“

You give her an apologetic look, and she sighs you name.

“You can’t keep fuckin’ killing them-“

“He was saying some very mean things,” you snap defensively. “You would’ve killed him-“

“Of course I woulda killed him! But you’re supposed to be better than me!”

You nose wrinkles. “No, I’m not-“

“Uh- Yeah. You are.” Jo rolls her eyes, leaning back with a huff. “You’re ‘supposed to torture ‘em and then say, you think that’s bad,” she turns her voice into a mockery of yours, and you frown. “Just wait until you meet my little friend.”

“I’m not Scarface, Jo-“

“Yeah, you are.”

Your mouth falls open. “No, I’m not- I don’t even- I’d never run a drug ring.”

Jo makes a doubtful expression, and squawks when you throw a balled up napkin straight at her head. Indy shoots over the table, cooped up and eager to fetch, and Jo topples back with a shout. You laugh, covering your mouth with a hand, and Jo chucks the napkin right back at your face. You block it.

You don’t block Indy.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Claire sits up, her hair falling over her face, swollen with sleep. You wish you had an answer that wasn’t childish and insane. You don’t, so you take Claire for breakfast, and flip Jo off over your shoulder.

She’s right, in the long run. Maybe you shouldn’t have killed Neal, but there are other Alphas. Other angels, other demons, other pagan gods that can—that will—help you. You don’t let yourself think of another option, for the whole day. You have to help Claire with school. You have to read and get lunch and call Kevin and get dinner. The world might stop when you’re caving in, but when you’re keeping yourself just upright, when you’re rushing through the day like it’s a current, and you’re just waiting to be spat out the other side, time does nothing but plow on forward.

You read anything you can find. You and Jo scout for leads on other Alpha’s, while Claire does her homework with a sour expression. You look online, Jo makes a few more calls on leads. If you didn’t know better, every day would just feel like a very long, strange case.

“What was that thing you were tellin’ me about?” Jo asks, peering at the translation notes you’ve scribbled through countless notebooks and loose pieces of paper.

You hum, not looking up from the Book. You always think you’ve read all of it, only for new pages to appear out of thin air. It’s suspicious. You’d think it was God, if you didn’t know he hasn’t been watching you for months. “What thing?”

“Y’know, the thing-“

“I tell you about a lot of things, Jo-“

“Yeah, but- This one was all magic and shit.”

You give her a dry, blanket expression of annoyance. She rolls her eyes.

“C’mon. It’s- What the hell else am I supposed to call it?”

“I don’t know? Its name-“

“I dunno its name- It’s-“ She sighs, glaring at the air. “You know, that magic spot thingy. You went lookin’ for one when Dean was- Well-“ She cringes slightly. “Last time.”

Your frown deepens, pulling down in thought. The magic spot thingy. “You mean the Vortex points?”

“Yes- Yes,” Jo snaps, leaning forward with a wide grin. “That. Why don’t we try that?”

“Um…” You look at the book, then the notes. Your hands flex, and your mouth falls a little open.

Why don’t you try that? Why haven’t you tried that?

“Because we don’t know where Dean is,” you answer yourself softly, and Jo’s face falls.

“Oh. Right- That’s- Never-“

“But,” you cut her off, your brain turning too fast to track. “If- It’s stronger there. Everything. Bridges, spells, enchantments-“ You swallow. “Prayers.”

Jo blinks. “You want us to… pray?”

“No,” you close the book, mouth set in a grim line. “I want Dean to pray. Somewhere- Somewhere I’m able to hear.”

Jo’s doubtful. You don’t blame her. Whatever let you hear Dean’s prayer in Heaven, whatever let him call you from across the world, over and over and over again, you don’t know how it works. You know it’s woven just to the right of your heart. You think it might be that part of you that’s embedded in him, that branch of love that grew over him, that he never pushed out. The mechanics don’t matter right now. If Dean is praying, you aren’t hearing it. If you can hear it, you can try and trace it.

“Like a radio signal?” Jo asks, and you nod. She sighs. “But- What if we ain’t able to do that?”

“Then,” you say, dark and firm. “We figure something else out.”

Jo doesn’t argue past that. This is the kind of thing, where she knows far better. It takes you the rest of the day, but there’s a Vortex point in the Himalayas. It’s a long trip. You work out a spell, that will get you there and back in a day. Claire gets clear instructions not to leave the motel room for anything, while you’re gone.

“We’re leaving at sunrise,” you tell her. “We’ll be back by sunset.”

And you don’t say hopefully. You don’t say you’ll try. You will be back by sunset, whether you have something or not.

You hope you have something. You need it. You need anything, to weave into another wire. Another way to keep yourself going, an extension of the rope you’re hanging onto, something metal you can from into a new rail before you reach the end of the line.  And you can almost convince yourself that this, this single, small mission, will be it.

You’ll go to the Vortex point, pull Dean out of the ground like a potato, and go home. If you really let yourself play pretend, you’re going to the Vortex point for nothing but research. You’re going to do some experiments, collect some data, and call Sam on the drive home. You’ll try to tell him about what you found. Dean will try to steal the phone, and Sam will lock himself in the bathroom so he can’t. You’ll smile to yourself, at the sound of him banging on the door. The moment you get home, Dean will sweep you into his arms and kiss you up against the wall.

“Sammy was bein’ a dick, sweetheart,” he’ll mutter, his arms caging you against his body.

You’ll giggle against his lips and pull on his shirt, unsure what to do with yourself but melt into him. He’ll carry you to bed, ignoring your false protests. You’ll sit on your knees when he tosses you onto the mattress, watching with wide eyes and an embarrassing heat pooling between your thighs, as he peels off his shirt. He’ll ask you about the hunt. You’ll forget everything you wanted to tell him, until he smiles fondly, cups your face, and bends down to kiss you stupid.

“Missed me, huh?” He’ll tease, his thumb gliding over the nape of your neck, and you’ll nod. Hopeless. Entirely his, in ways you think he still doesn’t quite understand.

“You have no idea,” you’ll whisper, and he’ll grin like he won a prize.

“You have no idea,” you whisper to the dark.

And if the day passes fast, with odd normalcy and smiles that only bring a little bit of guilt, the night drags. It buries you, until your lungs are stuffed and you’re sure you’re never going to see the morning again.

If you don’t have a lead, you spend the sleepless hours trying to practice. You coax a spring to shoot out of the ground, you ask an old bush to light itself on fire, you convince a river it would be better flowing north. You’re getting stronger. More comfortable, in being everything. It doesn’t hurt, when it’s not against your will. The soreness that lingers in your body after gets smaller and smaller every night, and you find yourself getting bigger and bigger.

You still don’t understand most of what you can do, but no one does. So you just test the limits, and find that the boundary is further past your fingertips than you could’ve possibly dreamt.

It’s a good distraction, until it’s not. Until you remember why you’re not letting the Silver go dormant again. Until you push a little too hard and the Spiderweb flares like the core of the Sun, rocking from the force of a solar storm.

You let yourself be weak. You spent so long in self-pity, so long trying to be small and fragile. Small and fragile things don’t survive in the wild. Small and fragile things get put in cages, and it doesn’t matter what kind of light they’re made of. They don’t have enough of themselves to break free.

Stand tall.

You are.

But it took falling, to learn how. And it cost you Dean, and now you sit on the curb of a packed street in India, surrounded by hundreds of people. Entirety alone.

The darkness doesn’t swallow you anymore, but the brighter you let yourself get, the longer the shadows become. The pain grows like a bacterial infection, finding every place it can settle and overtaking your view of the world. The guilt becomes acidic. The sorrow you didn’t let Claire see presses back up like magma, demanding and burning in your lungs. You wander the streets for somewhere that’s louder than your head, but even the most crowded bar can’t compare.

A million songs, a million men, and million unwanted touches as people shoulder past you or trying to take the empty spot next to you. None of them are Dean, so all of them are wrong. One bold drunk tries to follow you out to the street, and you cover your ears, crouching in the gutter and begging the darkness to swallow you whole.

It doesn’t. It swallows him, and spits him back out when you ask it to. He stares at you with a gaunt, sober face. You smile and know it’s nothing but a manic, crude mask. You leave him on the ground, and keep wandering for that cove you know you won’t find.

It won’t even exist, until you get Dean back. And that just makes the pain bigger. You really don’t know where to put it, when there’s nothing to distract you. It’s just you, and the pain, and everything else in the dark. Rain might fall for you. The wind might pick up, to howl for your grief. The colors dull themselves, and the golden lights glow until the marks of Dean on your body seem to glow brighter than the stars. But that’s still all just fucking pain.

There isn’t a thing you wouldn’t do, just to feel it a little less.

A year ago, you would’ve taken you knife to the soft, unblemished parts of your skin. A punishment for daring to, even in the smallest of ways, be clean. But if Dean comes back and sees new scars, he’s going to have questions, and then you’ll have to answer them, and he’ll make that mournful, adoring face, and you’ll feel all the guilt just slamming back into you like a freight train. So you find other options.

You steal a bottle from one of the crowded bars. You drink until you can’t tell were you stop and the infinite waterfall of stars begins. You wander the streets and smile at the birds. You trip over loose pebbles and they unfurl into silver butterflies that blend into the night sky. You crouch, back on the curb, the bottle tight in your hand, and you whistle until your slow, haunted song is being sung back by every bird in the city.

You smile at nothing, tears streaming down your cheeks. You pour the rest of the bottle out in the gutter, and hope that wherever Dean is, he gets to be drunk too.

Somewhere in your addled brain, you figure out that you’re in no state to go back to the room. You stumble wherever the wind carries you, and find yourself at the motel pool, your feet dangling in the water and the blue, neon light dancing on your bare thighs and hands.

And you know you’ve been here before. And you know you’re going to be here again.

You sit at the edge of the pool, watching the light swim in the water before. It’s beautiful. That irreplicable chlorine blue, vibrant and glowing on your skin in the dark. Quiet wind blows over the marshes behind you. You breathe through your nose and smooth out your tennis skirt. You remember this one. In about five to six hours, it’s going to be coated in blood, and Bobby’s going to burn it in his backyard.

It’s a shame. You really liked it.

You feel him before you see him. The world shifts a little Golden. Warm fingers trace your arms, then your wrist. A thick thigh pressing against yours, and a hand slowly drags up, splaying over your lower back. Chapped lips press to your temple, and you lean your head on his shoulder, letting your eyes drift shut.

“You remember this?” Dean asks quietly, and you hum.

“Of course I do.”

He swallows, loud enough for you to hear. You turn your face into his neck, and he pulls you a little closer. There isn’t a space between your bodies that you leave untended. Your arms wrap around his torso, and his mouth rests on the top of your head. His breathing is slow. Steady. His heart pounds in that way you memorized, before you even let yourself admit that you needed him. You used to press your fingers together until you could feel your own heartbeat, and you’d try to pretend it was Dean. You must’ve gotten good at it. This almost sounds real.

“You were so pissed at me,” he murmurs, and you roll your eyes.

“You called me a spoiled brat.”

“Well- In my defense, sweetheart, I really thought you were.”

You lean back to glare at him, and he catches your chin with a knowing smirk. His thumb drags over your lower lip, and you pout, trying to make your glower the savage, blinding one that lends you that title of Whore Beast. Instead you think you might just be mimicking a bunny. Dean taps your nose, and it scrunches. His smile widens, and you try to hide your face back in his body. He doesn’t let you, holding your chin with a firm but gentle grip.

“Mighta been right,” he teases, light dancing over every word. “Look at you.” He flicks your nose again. “Spoiled brat.”

Your glare doesn’t seem to be focused enough to block out the building eruption from every part of you that matters. It’s made of longing and love and an inability to ever really be mad at him. Not when he says ‘brat’ the same way he says ‘baby’ and ‘princess’. Like there isn’t a thing he could think of, that wouldn’t be endearing. Like there aren’t any words that capture whatever he thinks of you, so he just settles for calling you like a lighthouse, shining only to guide one ship back to shore.

“I am not spoiled,” your voice is breathless, and Dean chuckles, leaning just close enough for you to feel the heat of his lips.

“Guess I gotta step up my game, sweetheart,” he holds your gaze, and your flush might be enough to set this misty, scared little world on fire. “You’re supposed to be so spoiled you can’t even remember what it feels like to want.”

You flatten a hand on his chest for balance. Your lips part, and Dean leans a little closer, his fingers curling on your hip. You take a ragged breath, and his nostrils flare.

And you remember what it feels like to want. You remember it so clearly, because it’s still reflected behind you, fading on the horizon, stretching so long you don’t know how you ever got to the other side. You remember wanting so bad it was cannibalizing, wanting so bad you lost sleep, lost sight, lost balance. You did nothing but want, did nothing but memorize the landscape of a world you were sure you’d never be allowed to step a single, dreadened foot upon.  You wanted so bad you sat on the alter, begging to be a sacrifice he’d use to find himself someone he deserved.

And you remember him walking up to you at that alter, pushing you so carefully down, and using his body to pin you there. To keep you with him, whispering something too close to a vow against your skin, moving the marker of what was holy. The alter was only stone. You and Dean, upon it, where the only things that mattered in the world.

Dean’s brow has furrowed. He’s scanning over your features with worry, his murmur of your name soft. You wrap your arms around his neck and climb into his lap, and he holds you steady with a light, revertant touch. It seems to wash like steam over his whole body. It’s in the way his shoulders relax, in his eyes, gleaming with a pooling adoration, and in the soft, awestruck downturn of his lips. You used to think he only looked at you like this in your dreams. You’ve long learned that if there’s one thing you can never trust, it’s the reflection staring back at you, even only an echo of it on another person’s face.

“I was so mad at you,” you remind him, and his throat bobs.

“I know,” he rasps. “Said that. I think.”

You nod, pressing further forward. “I thought you hated me,” you whisper, and he shakes his head.

“Never. Never hated you, I- Hell, I tried, but-“ He swallows, a desperate edge creeping over his voice. “Couldn’t. Never could. Never did.”

You hum, looking down to your fingers. You trace his collarbone, and you could swear he shivers. “I hated you,” you mumble, and his hands twitch.

“Yeah?”

You nod, and Dean takes a ragged breath.

“When’d you-“

“When you left me,” you look at him under your lashes, and he seems afraid to move. “When you died, and you- You didn’t let me say goodbye.”

“Didn’t wanna hurt you,” he defends, but it’s weak. You just stare at him, combing through the stubble on his jaw. It’s getting longer. You haven’t seen in him in this kind of tight tee-shirt in so long, you forgot how thin they were. How they clung to his arms, how you could see every breath, even the stumbling, unsure ones. That, combined with the thickening, borderline beard he has in your dreams, it’s enough to make you fall for him all over again.

The first time you were here, he had a baby face and a smile that was only smaller than his heart. He slouched more, and never seemed willing to grab you with tighter hands than you held him. You wonder what kind of handprints he would’ve left, if you told him to hold on however he wanted. You think it would be closer to something like now.

You think that if you met Dean with this shirt and those eyes and these calloused hands, you might’ve fallen lower than your knees. You might’ve crashed into him so fast that neither of you would’ve had the time to even consider pulling away.

When he gets home, you’re hiding his razor and dragging him to the mall. He’s earned it. You’ve earned it. He’s too pretty, to bury under layers of ugly lumberjack clothing.

“Do you hate me know?” Dean asks, and you can hear it in the rare crack in his tone. His fear of the answer.

You thought he would’ve known better, from being nothing but a bought of madness, woven together from a love that spreads like a flood across everything you’ve ever known.

“No,” you breathe. “I- I was never good enough at it anyways.”

Dean’s mouth twitches up. He lets out a broken laugh of relief, cradling the back of your head. “Well, I guess we’re made for each other, huh?”

You nod, because there’s nothing else you could possibly be made for. You could cure the world of yourself, of other disease, of the devil and God in one fell swoop or scream. You could walk through the gates of Heaven, you could raze the castle of Hell, take all that promised world and rule over it the way God wants you to. Even without Dean, you’d still be doing it for some kind of love.

There is much, much more you can do than love Dean. But there is no world where you want to do everything, and not have Dean at your side. You have long decided that greatness does not negate your love for him. Your love for him only allows you to be greater.

Dean kisses you, and you press over him with everything you have. He’ll be home soon.

You both tumble into the water, as fast as you’ve always fallen together, and you don’t let go of him until the dream slips away.

Jo woke you up with a glass of water in the face. You told her that wasn’t necessary. She said it was, because you were crying in your sleep. You check the motel mirror before you go, and scowl, because she was right. There are tear stains on your cheeks, and a bloodshot ring around your pupils. You fix it, and ignore her smug look. There’s a job to do. Steps to be taken, that might be forward, or backward, or nothing but a standing march in place.

The fun part is finding out.

“This is- So fuckin’ cold-“ Jo hugs herself tight, bundled in about five jackets and poofy shoes that make her walk like a penguin. “How the hell ain’t you cold?”

You shrug, kneeling in the snow and brushing flakes off your shorts. It was like this at the other Vortex point too. You’d gotten to the top of the mountain in Brazil, and all the jungle heat had just felt like… nothing. Like you were floating through a perfectly regulated room.

“I’m gonna die,” Jo mutters to herself, rocking back and forth on her feet. “I’m gonna die, just ‘cause Dean had to stab a dick, I’m gonna die-“

“Stop saying you’re gonna die,” you tell her flatly, scooping away the piles of snow. “You’re not gonna die.”

“Yes, I am-“

“With that attitude, maybe.”

She glares, hard enough it prickles on the back of your neck. You sigh and sit back, giving her a pointed, expectant look.

“You know, the faster we do this, the faster we go back.”

Jo pauses. She looks out over the mountain—mostly just gray shadows in an infinite sea of white—and her nose wrinkles. You go back to scooping and sorting through your bag, waiting for her to catch up. She huffs. You hum to yourself, pulling out your knife and digging it into the spot you want.

There’s a loud scoff, and the snow shifts as Jo waddles over to your side. You smile at her, and she sticks out her tongue, before quickly pulling it back in with a wince.

“What’re we doin’?” She squints at your knife, and you grab her mittened hand, guiding it around the hilt.

“You’re hold that there,” you say, moving to your feet. “And I’m getting rid of the snow.”

“Alright,” Jo nods, then looks up with wide eyes. “You’re- What-“

“Shh,” you snap, and she snaps her jaw shut, looking from you to the falling snow like you’re crazy.

And you are. But you’re also getting better at it.

You stretch your arms, plant your feet, and close your eyes. You’re the snow. You’re the snow, falling from the sky without care for where it’s going, know only that it is will either find more of its kind and they will survive together in long, strong banks, or it will land somewhere hostile, and die alone. It goes with the wind, because it doesn’t have much of a choice. Not a single snowflake has ever even thought that there might be another way.

So when you offer it, every single one of them falters. Jo gasps softly behind you, and when you try to glare at her, you realize why.

The snow didn’t just stop in your head. Every single flake is suspended in the air, glowing like diamonds over the endless mountains. Rays of sun split through the thick clouds, and the light fractures in a million colors, giving the world an impression that it’s been trapped in a prism. Your hands fall slightly, stunned by the never-ending rainbow, the glory of a world that only carries one kind of life, getting to remember what it hasn’t been allowed to see in countless years. The snow doesn’t move. It just hangs there, clinging to your every breath, waiting for you to tell it what to do.

Jo covers her mouth with her hand, and you take a slow, concentrated breath. You press your hands out, and ask the snow to move, just from here, just for a little while.

There’s a flurry of white. The cold bites your skin for a half second, and you have to cover your eyes. But when you look again, you see it.

The snow is gone. It’s piled up on the edge of the cliffs and flown to other mountains, scattering across the land to grant you access to what you knew you’d find.

The stone courtyard is wide. The columns are tall and the statues of everything from monkeys to lions to tigers are finely detailed with gold. You look at Jo, still crouched on the ground, holding your knife like a life raft. She doesn’t seem sure where to look, and you understand. The temple is massive. A feat of architecture, at this elevation, built likely longer ago than either of you can imagine. You turn in a slow circle, and it would steal your breath if you weren’t so focused on it.

That small, pulsing pull, just to the right of your heart. It’s magnetic, but completely still. You press your hand flat on your chest, almost trying to pull it out, and it gets a little stronger. The Spiderweb sparks in return, and you know. That’s your Dean.

You close your eyes, trying to follow the thin, static thread that powers it like a cable. You tug a little too hard, and everything vibrates and turns to colors and a rush of gold and purple and green and blue and silver. You loosen too much, and it starts to slip through your fingers like fine sand. You kneel down, bowing your head and just trying to feel it.

Just feel it, Princess.

You’re trying. But all you can make out is his voice. Deep and rough in a way you haven’t heard in a while. Scraping at the edge of every word, like he’s hasn’t been drinking water. Croaking in his throat like he’s been shouting. He sounds tired, and it makes your heart flip.

Yet still, you can’t make out a single fucking word.

You try. You try so hard, and Dean’s voice gets so loud you reach back, some instinctive, foolish part of you thinking he’s going to be right behind you. He’s in your ear, saying words that you can’t understand, that you can’t even begin to unscramble, because it seems to be really nothing but noise. You start to pant, scraping at the ground and doubling over. Jo breathes out your name, and you shake your head.

You can hear him. He’s out there, he’s alive, he’s praying to you so why can’t you fucking hear him, you should be able to hear him-

He says your name. It’s clearer than all the snow on the mountains, and your eyes shoot open. You let out a strangled sound, and he says your name again.

“Love you,” Dean rasps, and you can almost feel his breath on the back of your neck.

And you scream.

You scream so loud lightning cleaves through the mountains behind you, righteous and desperate to break something the same way you’re broken. You scream until you can’t hear the wind or the snowfall or Jo calling your name. You can only hear Dean. I love you, baby. Baby, I love you, easy, baby, I love you. It echoes around the valleys. Your head hurts so much you think it’s going to split open like a geode. Your back hurts like the sky itself is pressing down, but you’ve never had the resolve of an Atlas. You’ve never had the strength. Jo grabs you. You hold her back, trying to keep your feet on the ground.

The whole world becomes a blur of color and light and Dean’s voice, and then there’s just… Silence.

The hum of a fan. The rustle of sheets and eerp of Indy, romping across the small room as you fall to your knees. Claire says something you can’t hear, and Jo pulls her away. You hug yourself, trying to hold onto just a little bit of it. That kernel of Dean, already melting back into the Spiderweb with the rain, a heavy downpour on the roof, blowing in through the window, turning to something it didn’t think it could be. Something that doesn’t thaw, but flows through every bit of life, in the woods, the streets, the sewers and out into the ocean.

Jo takes Claire out. She says it’s for food. You know it’s so you can be alone, and you’ll thank her for it, when you can feel anything outside of yourself. You don’t want Claire around you like this. Dean would’ve done the same thing.

And he’s out there. You scratch at your chest and wrap a hand around your throat to calm down, but repeat it over and over until it’s embedded in your head. He’s alive. Dean’s alive. He’s out there, and alive.

The Lady curls in your lap, and Indy noses at your hand until you scratch her ears. Even Sparky darts over to sit on your head, pecking at your head until you offer in a finger, and move him to perch on your shoulder. Slowly, just like always, you come down.

He’s out there. Alive. Tired, but still able to speak. Still bothering to think of you.

Your gaze drifts to the box. Innocuous, peeking out from the folds of your bag. He wanted you to have it. He probably thinks you’ve already opened it.

I love you.

You crawl slowly across the ground and pull it out. The Lady and Indy poke at it, the Lady quickly losing interest and jumping on the bed, Indy seeming to recognize it as something of Dean’s and letting out a loud whine. You pat her head, settling against the foot of the bed, toying with the latch until it just… unclicks.

And you don’t know what you expected. A knife. A ring. A nice perfume, or more lingerie. Something important. Something worth giving you, then asking you not to open in front of him. You’d formed a curious mental list, of what that could possibly be.

You never once considered a pile of paper.

You frown. The box is overflowing with loose paper after loose paper, all of them covered in Dean’s blocky, uncoordinated scrawl. Sam used to say he had the handwriting of a fourth grader, and you’d smack Sam upside the head, because the little fucker didn’t teach himself the alphabet.

You miss him too. It’s smaller than that chasm of Dean that’s split through your spinal cord, but that’s a unique kind of pain. Sam alone is enough that you keep picking up the phone to ask him a question, before remembering he won’t pick up. If you asked Sam about these papers, he’d tell you to read them. He’d probably take one and just start reading it himself. At his invisible direction, you take the one off the very top. It’s crumpled. Almost a year old, if the date—April 17th, 2011—is correct.

It’s addressed to you.

Princess, 

Come home. 

You blink, the paper crinkling under your fingers. April 2011 you were in Heaven with Cas. And Dean-

Dean was writing this. For you.

I know that I’ve spent the last few months pissed at you. I know I wrote about twenty damn letters about it. A deep breath. Your biting your tongue enough to sting. And I know you’re gonna read them and only think that I hate you, but I don’t. Never did. Never could. 

You love something, you want it to be better. Heard that on TV, once. Might’ve been on the radio. Shit, maybe Sammy or you said it. But it’s the truth, baby. I love you, and I want you to be better. Not you, but you. I want you to be okay, and you aren’t okay. Not when you’re making crazy decisions like you think no one’s going to care if you go off the deep end. I care. Bobby cares. Sammy cares. And it goddamn kills me, that you think we don’t. So I need you to be okay.

I love you.

You close your eyes. It takes a moment to remember how to breathe. A moment to rub your eyes and collect yourself, so that the words don’t just float off the page.

You fucking killed me again, and I still love you. I’ve been trying to tell you. You never goddamn listen. You’re too smart for your own good, sweetheart. Can talk yourself into anything, and I- 

i think i feel you, sometimes. think i felt you now. its insane, but i feel you. the air smells more like you, and i can hear something that dont got words, but it sounds lie like you. and i know thats freaking batshit, but stranger things, right? you feel like an angel. you feel like everything good. and i wish you could understand that. sammy says you dont know. you gotta know. i wish i knew how to tell you. i wish that you’d believe me, when i did. 

i can show you. i know people can say things all they want and you dont believe them. got that spelled out for me, when it took me pinning you to a wall for you to realize maybe i wanted to fuck you. so ill keep doing it like that. ill help rowena get those souls out of you. ill kill eve for you. i wont let you pull that shit again, cause im about to make it real clear that i love you, and you can think nothing about me all you want (you probably should) but nothing you say is gonna make me love you less. i let you boss me around about a lot, princess. youre not getting the upper hand on this. you break my heart, you either stitch it back up like my hands or leave it like that till i die. but no one else is touching it. so deal with that. 

Not much for life updates. Had to tie Sammy’s shoes yesterday, cause he keeps falling over whenever he does them. Been taking Claire out to shoot bottles, she’s getting pretty good. Rowena ate dinner with us, which was weird, because I didn’t even know she ate. I don’t think she sleeps. I know she doesn’t cause I’m not either. 

I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. 

Yours, DAW  

The world can’t be spinning. Your heart can’t still be beating. The edge of the paper crinkles too loud, and you drop it, terrified you broke it. Just as fast as you let it go, you pick it up. You read it again. A third time. You can hear him behind you, like at the mountain. You never goddamn listen. He thinks you might hate him. Never did. Never could. I love you. And you’re going to goddamn feel it. It’sso clear it presses on your nose, it burns in your chest, it rattles something so deep inside you the whole world seems to tilt. But not off axis.

Something flips, and you feel sick, but your feet are beneath you in a way they haven’t been maybe your whole life. Like your neck was snapped, but it just righted a part of your spine that had been wrong. Everything was upside down.

You read it until you’ve memorized it. You count the I love yous—all seven of them—like a squirrel stocking for winter.  

Then you remember the rest of the box. Not a box of paper.

A box of letters. A supply of them, enough that he barely seemed to be able to fit them all.

You fumble with the one in your hand, dropping it back at the top and pulling out the one beneath it. April 16th. You don’t read it yet, checking the one before that. April 15th. One for each day. Back through March, February, January, December. You dig all the way to the bottom, trying so hard to move fast and not rip a single page. The very first one is shorter. Dated February 21st, 2010. A little less than month after you and Sam fell in the cage, and stained with something that smells like beer.

Princess,

I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to spell things wrong. You’ll know what I’m saying. You usually do. One time I said boom and meant Molotov, but you got it. Sammy said I was the luckiest asshole alive, because he would’ve just made me go to bed with how much I was drinking.

I’m drinking more now. 

Youd be pissed.

I miss you.

This is shit. I’ll try again in the morning.

I love you

DAW.

Eight. Eight I love yous. Twelve, if you count the ones he said to your face. Twelve drops of love that hit you like a tsunami, that shake your world like falling stars. You hold it to your chest and close your eyes, tears burning over your face. You smear them like warpaint, before looking at February 22nd. He spells everything wrong, and you laugh because you can almost see his pretty face, scrunched in concentration. He doesn’t say he loves you in this one, just he says he needs you, and that’s more than enough. You grab February 23rd, and he talks about needing you to come home, and Bobby hating him for letting you jump in, and drinking rubbing alcohol—god, you hope he didn’t—before signing off.

I’ll be back tomorrow. 

Wait for me. 

I’m sorry. 

DAW.

You can’t keep reading. You can’t even see through the tears. You clutch the letters to your face, hyperventilating and shaking and feeling it. It’s so easy it makes you furious you didn’t let yourself have it sooner, and that just makes you cry harder, and soon your throat is too closed up and your nose is stuffed and your whole body has this bone deep exhaustion that can only let you sit there and feel it. All of it, unrelenting and permanent and inevitable, the same ways as yours.

Just through the scraps of paper in your hands, you can feel Dean’s love.

But you can’t say it back. You can’t have it without worrying it’s going to be taken away. You can’t just have a good thing and cherish and worship it, without looking out the window and waiting for the sky to warn you. For it to try and take it away. You can only bathe in it and fight for it and scream for it until you run out of breathe in a world where the air changes direction, just to blow your way.

And you’re glad you didn’t let the Leviathans kill God.

But you.

You can’t fucking wait to do it yourself.

Sam and Dean were celebrities. The icky, dramatic kind, that got their faces plastered on tabloids and everyone loved to hate. Dean had always thought everyone was exaggerating about it, but there was no way to ignore the truth. Not now. When it was punching him in the face.

There wasn’t a single monster in Purgatory that didn’t know the Winchesters. They had some nicknames. Some legends and rumors. Sammy got the good end of the stick.

“Beware the Younger,” Dean read off the tablet, smirking at the carved words. “Taller than the trees, colder than the winter. Demon boy- They’re all really hung up on the demon thing, huh?”

Across the firepit, Sammy sighed. “I did start the apocalypse,” he muttered, and Dean shrugged.

“Yeah, but who hasn’t. Don’t get a big head, Sammy, it’s gonna fall off your titan body.”

He laughed, and Sam made a face. “Come on, Dean, there’s no way it says that-

“Demon boy, head bigger than his heart, titan body that cuts through the world. Tower on the sunrise, never let him know your name, never let him know your game- Oh, they’re rhyming now- Never tell him where you come from or go, never make a deal you don’t plan to break.” Dean’s nose scrunched. “Dude, you sound like Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Shut up,” Sam muttered, looking around the dark woods. “What about you? Little burger man, head of ass?”

“Haha,” Dean flipped him off, squinting down the tablet. “Handsome Winchester, cooler Winchester, just surrender right now ‘cause he’s gonna kick your ass-“

“Gimme that.” Sam snatched the tablet out of Dean’s hand, and Dean laughed, letting it echo through the forest.

Sammy had warded the perimeter. They should be set for at least five hours. Enough to eat, breathe, sleep, patch up. And if something was determined enough to break through, they were already prowling past the wood line. Dean letting himself get a rare laugh wasn’t gonna change a thing.

“Fear the Elder,” Sam read and Dean leaned forward with a smirk. “Moving like the Mountains and unforgiving, blood on his hands and gold in his teeth. Silver tongue, red heart, beating louder than the sun. Never falters. Never turns around. No path he can’t tread. Man of God, Killer of God, End of the line, more vengeful than the most foul beast. Do not take what is his. Do not make his smile fall.”

Dean shrugged, a half-satisfied press to his lips. “Hey, y’know- Could be worse. I sound pretty freakin’ cool, you just sound like a knockoff bigfoot-“

“And never spill Winchester blood,” Sam said, his face falling, grim and pained. “Where the Whore will be able to smell it.”

Dean’s jaw locked. Sam glanced up, heavy, apologetic regret all over his puppy-dog face. Dean stretched at hand, beckoning Sam to pass it back over. He did, slowly, like he already kind of wanted to take it back.

“We don’t need to worry about this, it’s- She’s not here-“

“Do not think of the Whore,” Dean muttered, and Sam fell quiet. “If you need think of her, you are already dead.”

Dean swallowed, and he wanted to break this damn tablet in half. Sam bowed his head, watching Dean carefully, speaking like he was trying to talk down a damn jumper.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Dean,” he muttered. “And- I mean, that’s a warning, not a call to battle.”

Dean grunted and dropped the tablet on the ground. He knew She wasn’t in any danger of a monster taking her out. Not like Sam and Dean were.

But She wasn’t alright.

Dean didn’t know how long he and Sammy had been stuck here. Time moves differently in these places, and Purgatory nights seemed to crawl twice as long as the days. They’d touched down a lifetime ago, figured out that they were pretty much screwed, and never had a second to tally up the weeks since.

They’d made an agreement. No giving up. Not on each other. Not on getting back home. They’d either stay alive long enough for someone topside to yank them out, or figure out a way home themselves. Dean thought She and Cas might work it out in the first month, until She told him that she hadn’t spoken to Cas since some big fight after Michigan. Dean should’ve seen that one coming. He loved Her to death and past it, but she’d never exactly been open to people telling her what to do, or stopping her, or getting in her way. Cas had—under Dean’s instruction—done all three.

He’d tried to soft pitch the idea that maybe Cas had just been listening to Dean, and it was more his fault that he’d landed his ass in Purgatory. She hadn’t given Dean the impression that she listened.

But She could figure this out herself. Weird stuff was her specialty, and there wasn’t much weirder than being trapped in Purgatory. Dean tried to give Her all the help he could, from the other side. There wasn’t much. He didn’t know anything about any of this, and She didn’t think he was real.

He’d thought about telling Her. He thought about it until his head hurt. He opened his mouth and choked on the words. He got a half-confession out, then looked at her a little too long and lost his voice. She might not believe him. She didn’t seem to, whenever he got too close to the truth.

A few nights ago, he’d written out this whole damn speech. Sammy had been knocked out, Dean had been on watch duty, and he’d used his makeshift knife to scratch the words in the dirt. He’d look up at rustles in the woods, or one of Sam’s bigger sleep-snorts, but that was it. He was going out next. He’d see Her, and she wouldn’t know she was seeing him, and it was one of those things Dean knew was going to bite him in the ass about, if he didn’t deal with it soon.

It’s me, Princess. Really me. Real me, Dean. Your Dean. Not a dream Dean- He’d laughed to himself, then groaned.

There was no good way to do it. The more he thought about it, the worse it got. This wasn’t a monster of his own making, it was an infection he’d already let sit too long. It was already a big if, whether or not she’d believe him. There wasn’t much he could say to prove it, when she thought he was just a figment of her imagination. If he told Her something about herself, she’d know it. If he said something about himself, She’d think he was making it up, and he’d have no way to convince her otherwise. She’d think it was too good, too easy to be true. Dean would’ve thought the same thing two years ago. Before Death. Before soulmates.

And if he got her to listen, there wasn’t an explanation that wouldn’t end there. Soulmates.

Dean had sort of dug himself a very big, very deep grave with this one. He kinda wanted to tell Sammy, just to give the kid a good laugh at his expense.

He only had two ways through this one. He said soulmates, and She didn’t believe him—pretty likely, as even if it made perfect sense, if there was one thing his girl had always been good at doing it was talking circles around herself until she believed up was right and left was down—and she didn’t believe the dreams were real, and Dean got stranded in the grave. He’d prove it when he got home, and She’d blame herself for not listening, and have a pretty big freakout, and then calm down and kill Dean for keeping that from her for a whole year.

Or he said soulmates, and She believed him, and she dragged him out of Purgatory by his ear just to kill him. For keeping that from her. For a whole damn year.

He’d groaned and kicked dirt of his speech, dropping his face into his hands. He was screwed. He was so fucking screwed, he might as well start figuring out how he wanted to decorate the doghouse.

And he knew making it, that this wasn’t going to be his best call, but he didn’t have many others to choose from.

He wouldn’t tell Her. It wouldn’t work. She didn’t trust Her own head, enough for Dean to talk her into it. And with everything She’d told him, there was more than enough for her to worry about. If he told Her, the small sanctuaries of their dreams would just turn into another place for her to freak out. She’d ask him to relay theories to Sam, and demand to see all his injuries, babying and smacking him at the same time when he told her how he and Sammy had dealt with the latest rush of vamps.

Dean knew it could be called selfish. He didn’t care. Not for this. Not when the dreams were all he goddamn had.

If you need think of her, you are already dead.

Dean almost snorted. He did nothing but think of Her, and he felt kinda dead. He and Sammy were both just cutting their way through the motions, mechanical and unwavering until they came out the other side.  

“You made any progress on that map thingy?” He muttered, and Sammy sighed.

“No, not really. I- I don’t know, Dean, how useful is it even gonna be-“

Dean cut him off with Her name. “She’ll wanna see it. You two can geek out about rivers or whatever, soon as we’re out.”

Sam’s mouth twitched, doubtful and quiet. His eyes dropped to the dirt, Dean leaned forward on his log, making his voice firm.

“Sammy, don’t make the freakin’- grieving wife face-“

“Why not?” Sam snapped, but it wasn’t forceful. It was just… tired.

They were both so damn tired.

“I mean, what the are we even doing, Dean? Wandering around, hoping we don’t die in the morning? We don’t even have a clue where to start, where this ends-“ Sam waved a hand, his voice raising. “All I do is try not to lose it and shoot you by accident, and all you do is make- Make stupid jokes and pray before bed! You, Dean, you’re praying.” Sam scoffed. “I’d think you were a shifter if we didn’t test each other every freakin’ day. I mean, who are you even pray to. Who’s going to care?”

Sam’s shout lingered in the air. He let out a heaving, long breath—Dean had a feeling he’d been holding it in for a while—and slumped back down. Dean stared at the fire, at the long shadows, flickering in the dark.

Sammy wasn’t wrong. He had been praying. Every night during his watch, every day when he stopped to take a piss, he was about three Hail Mary’s away from calling himself an altar boy.

But he couldn’t think of another damn thing to do.

He said Her name, slow and hallowed. The most important word in the world. He could swear that, in the starless Purgatory sky, something glowed past the dark.

Sammy looked up with a frown, and Dean swallowed, repeating Her name, a little louder this time.

“I’ve been prayin’ to her. Every night.” He shook his head. “And- I know it ain’t doing much, but- Hell, Sammy, I can’t stop. It’s gotta get help her, right? I tell her where we are, I tell her what we’re seeing, everything. That’ll help.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said softly. “I mean, why would she even be hearing it? I know- In Heaven- But this isn’t Heaven. Cas can’t hear our prayers down here-“

“She isn’t Cas.” Dean muttered. “It’s- It’s different-“

“No, I- I know, Dean, but- She doesn’t exactly take prayers, dude-“

“She takes them from me.”

Sam fell silent. Dean sighed, staring at his hands. Caked in mud. Cold and clasped together. He felt goddamn sick.

“We’re- Me and her-“ The words just wouldn’t come out. Not without Dean twisting them. “We got a soul-bond.”

“A soul-bond?”

Dean grunted an agreement, and Sam stared at him.

“What- What the hell does that even mean-“

“Means what it means,” Dean snapped. “Means she should be able to hear it, when I’m the one praying. But- I don’t know, Sammy. Some kinda wire must be getting crossed, ‘cause I don’t think it’s working.”

They were silent for a moment. Dean glanced up, only to find Sam still frowning at him. There was that far-off look on his face, though. Like he was more in his head than out there with the rest of the world. Dean leaned into his vision, waving for attention, and Sammy blinked.

“Huh?”

“Nothin’, just- Earth to Sammy,” Dean narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing the nerd eyes about.”

“The-“ Sam sighed. “I told you not to call it that-“

“I’ll call it what I want,” Dean shrugged. “What’s up.”

“It’s- I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing,” Sam said it all small, and Dean knew it wasn’t nothing.

“Sam…” He warned, and Sam caved quick.

“Just- What if- And I’m not saying this is it, but-“ Sam glanced up, then back to Dean, dropping his voice. “We’re in a weird spot. And I know he doesn’t stand much against her or whatever, but- He can pretty easily mess with you, Dean. No offense.”

Dean scowled. “How am I not supposed to take offense to that-“

“Because it’s God,” Sammy hissed. “And you’re like- A dude.”

“A dude who stole his wife,” Dean muttered under his breath, and Sammy rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, dude. That’s my point. Maybe he’s not super happy about that, and he’s… I don’t know, messing with the prayer signal.” Sam’s throat bobbed, his voice getting tight. “And she… She just can’t hear you at all.”

And a critical, cardiac thing in Dean plunged. His lungs faltered like they’d collapsed, and his heart slowed to a titanic pace, and his jaw tightened so much he knew that—if She was here—She’d grab it and pry it open and yell at him about grinding his teeth.

She had to have been hearing. She had to know he was in Purgatory, that he was looking for a way back to Her, that he loved Her. God was a son of a bitch, but he owed Dean that much. Dean had saved his damn life. He’d given everything—mostly for Her, but God sure was reaping the benefits—and the bastard didn’t get to just swoop in. To take Her away from Dean, when She needed him.