dotfic (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dotfic) wrote,@ 2008-05-05 20:50:00 |
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| Entry tags: | a thin chain of next moments, fic: spn |
A Thin Chain of Next Moments (2/4), Gen, PG-13, AU
Title: A Thin Chain of Next Moments (2/4)
Authors: batyatoon and dotfic
Rating: Gen, AU, PG-13
Warning: Character death
Word count: ~22,000 (total)
Characters/pairings: Sam, Dean, John, Bobby and others (both canon and our own), Sam/Ava, Dean/CRD, Dean/OFC, Jo/OMC
Disclaimer: Sadly, none of them belong to us except the OC's.
a/n: Follows canon up to Crossroad Blues. Puts season two canon in the blender, diverges completely from season three. It took us a while to write this; during the process we got Jossed and Kripked so many times our heads were spinning. Many thanks to our beta reader destina for her patience and her careful editing above and beyond the call of beta-dom. Title is from Bruce Springsteen.
Summary: Dean makes a deal, and lives a life.
YEAR TWO
On the anniversary of the day he came back from Hell, Dad doesn’t get out of bed, doesn’t react when they say his name and touch his shoulder. He’s not asleep, his breathing is too fast and shallow for that, but they can’t get him to respond. Dean sits on the bed with him for hours, gets up only because Sam insists Dean take a break.
Around noon, Sam brings in a tray with soup on it. Dean brings in the same soup, reheated, around dinnertime.
The dark worry settles in: maybe this is it. Maybe Dad really will be lost to them this time around. Dean's out of options; it's not like it's something he can fix with a deal. Not like he has anything left to deal with.
He knows Sam's praying, even though he doesn't do it aloud, face buried in his hands as he sits in the chair in the corner of Dad's room while Dean sits on the floor with his back against Dad's bed. He can't pray, he can't do much but watch in the semi-darkness, only a small bedside lamp to break it, grateful Sam's there with him.
It’s maybe ten-thirty when Dad opens his eyes, looks up at each of them before letting out a long deep breath. "All right," he says in a low husky voice. "If I don’t shake this thing I might as well have stayed there." His hand fumbles for Dean’s, grips it, uses it as support to sit up.
Dean hears Sam's long, shaky exhale, echoing his own.
The next few months are like the training when they were teenagers, only in reverse. Dean pushes as hard as he dares, throws back questions Dad should already know the answers to (you asked me that this morning, remember?), goads him through exercises before going to sleep. One more. Good. One more.
Middle of April and he's just exorcised the ghost of a half-crazy widow in Alabama; it’s two in the afternoon and he's been up for almost thirty hours straight, and feels like he needs sleep more than oxygen. He’s folding up the altar cloth when his cell phone buzzes, and has to fumble it right way around before he can thumb the talk button. "Yeah?"
Unfamiliar female voice, young and trying hard to sound professional: "I’m trying to reach a Mr. Dean Winchester? You were listed as an emergency contact for our employee Sam Win --"
The altar cloth flutters to the floor. "Is he okay?"
"He was complaining of headaches earlier today, and he, he lost consciousness at his desk about twenty minutes ago. They’ve taken him to the emergency room --"
"What hospital?" He’s on his feet and moving even as the secretary says a name and starts to recite a phone number. He cuts her off in mid-digit, saying "Text me the address. I’m out of town, but I’m on my way back. You tell him that, hear me? Tell him I’m coming."
He drives for four hours without a break, fighting off exhaustion with truck-stop coffee and No-Doz and the loudest music he's got. Running on fumes by the time he pulls into the hospital parking lot, he staggers out of the car on legs that don't want to support him, and leans for a moment on the side of the Impala. Takes two deep breaths of the cool evening air to steady himself. Checks to make sure his gun's within easy reach, in case it's a trap.
Finds the visitors’ entrance, heads in fast.
It was a vision, Sam tells him quietly while they’re processing his release from the hospital. He’s still pale, and his voice is low and strained as he gives Dean the details. Some teenagers in Illinois are going to die, an ancient evil they didn't mean to wake up turning on them, unless someone intervenes.
This might be too big for either of them to handle alone.
This time last year they couldn’t have left Dad, not without getting Bobby or somebody to stay with him, but he says that he can cope by himself for a few days and he’ll call them if anything goes wrong.
It’s their first joint hunt in over a year, and it’s damn good to be a team again.
Their second night there, Sam steps out of the motel room to get some ice -- they both took some bad bruises during the fight with the thing.
He's back inside a moment later, with a girl. The top of her head barely reaches the middle of Sam's chest, and she paces, agitated, in their hotel room, making it a point to tell them how she's not at all insane, but she had a nightmare and watched Sam die.
Her name is Ava, and they can't let her go home. Sam is adamant on that point: she's in danger if she goes home, the demon will be after her, they have to convince her of that. Have to.
When they can't, Sam doesn't bend an inch, just shifts his ground. If they can't talk her out of going home, they follow her. Dean's still arguing as they drive, even as they pull into a parking space on the street opposite her house.
Then the radio dissolves into a gasp of static, and all the lights in the house flicker out and in again, and Dean curses under his breath and throws open the car door. Sam's already ahead of him, running hard for the house, drawing his gun.
There's a man on the floor in a welter of blood, and Ava crouching by his head with her face distorted in a silent scream, staring up at the third figure standing over them both. She doesn't react to their appearance, or to the sound of gunfire. When the demon dissolves into a swirl of black smoke and vanishes, she doesn’t lose the look of bewildered horror on her face, just turns it onto them.
It's hours before Ava says anything, hunched in the back seat of the car with her arms wrapped tight around herself. At the first rest stop Sam asks if she wants coffee, water, anything to eat; she doesn't even shake her head. At the second he just looks at her, and looks away without speaking.
They can't leave her alone, which means Dean doesn't get a chance to talk privately to Sam until she falls asleep just past the state line.
"She didn't mean it, you know."
Sam's gaze goes to Dean, flicks over his shoulder at the sleeping girl, back to him. He doesn't say a word, and the flat line of his mouth is altogether too much like Ava's for comfort.
Dean tries again; he has no idea if it’s true or not, he doesn’t know this girl from a hole in the wall, but it’s the only thing he can think to say that might pull that look out of his brother’s face. "Last thing she said back there. She was in shock or something, that's all. It's not like --"
"She meant it." Sam's voice is flat and calm, almost completely toneless. "She meant every word she said."
A short silence. Dean's thumb taps an uneasy drumbeat against the steering wheel.
This is your fault. I should never have come looking for you.
"Then she's an idiot," he says finally.
Despite her cold anger at them, Ava seems to accept that they aren't going to hurt her, that they're the lesser of evils. But when they take her to the roadhouse, ask Ellen if she can stay there for a little while, she can't seem to get away from them fast enough.
In the next few months, Sam quits his job, and the demon becomes their main focus.
Some of the emptiness leaves Dad's eyes. He starts sitting with them when they pore over his journal and their notebooks, making suggestions.
But Dean's not fooled. It's not a renewed interest in the hunt. Dean sees it, flickering at the corners of his father's eyes -- he's afraid of losing them, and that's the only thing that makes Dad look at his own journals again.
One morning Dean goes to wake up Sam and finds the bed rumpled, room empty. Window's wide open, and there's something dusting the chipped paint of the sill.
He runs his finger through the yellowish powder. His vision does a funny thing, going dark at the edges. All he can see is the windowsill and his finger with the sulfur dust on it and all he can hear for a few seconds is a rushing sound.
Then things snap sharply back into clarity, letting his fear savagely loose with it, and he turns, runs from the room, yelling for his father.
The vision-flash a few hours later sends them to the ghost town Cold Oak, and then everything starts to speed up, events rolling downhill like an avalanche.
They keep the yellow-eyed fucker from opening the Hellgate. Certain moments from that night burn deep into Dean's memory, too vivid, return to him in dreams years later.
Andy's unsteady smile, as he steps out of the shadows among the gravestones. Ellen and Bobby, blasting the Acheri demons with ironshot. The sound of Ava’s scream of warning, and the rage twisting Sam's blood-streaked face as he lunges for Azazel.
The look on his father’s face when he aims the Colt at the spot between those yellow eyes and pulls the trigger. In that moment, it's every gun Dean's ever seen Dad fire.
Staring down at the body afterwards, the hollow dark shell Azazel had inhabited, used to torment them; Sam at his shoulder, raising his eyes to Dad's face. The others are somewhere behind them, he’s dimly aware, but for a moment it feels like it’s just them.
That’s the moment he wants to keep, to tuck into a photo album and bring out to look at years later. The three of them standing over the demon’s body, the smell of sulfur and ashes in the air and the salt-and-iron taste of his own blood in his mouth, every ache in his body singing. He got him, he got him, Dad GOT the son of a bitch.
"You did it," Sam says, voice thin with shock.
Dad’s voice is rough and cracking. "I didn't do it alone." His hand trembles and the Colt falls to the grass; he grabs Dean's shoulder, Sam's arm, pulling them fiercely to him. They grab on back, the three of them keeping each other upright until they can manage to stand on their own.
"So, what now?" Ava says, her voice a little scratchy.
"Now," Sam says, sprinkling more cinnamon on his cappuccino. "You go do whatever you want. Go back to your home. Your job. Have a life."
She stares down into her half-finished mug of hot cocoa. Her eyes flicker up to Dean, then to Sam, then back down to her cocoa. A little half-smile forms on her face. "A life." She looks up again. "Oh, yeah, I remember having a life."
"I hear it's great," Dean says.
"It's all different now, though. I don't have a life. Not the same one I had before. What exactly am I supposed to do with that?"
"Ava," Sam says. "You need to put all this behind you..."
"Put it behind me?" She lets out a bitter laugh. "Oh, sure, if I can stop dreaming about it every night. So I go build a brand new life, huh? As if Brady wasn't brutally murdered right in front of me? Pretend everything's perfectly all right now? Get a new job -- because I lost my old one because of this craziness, thank you very much. New house -- because there's no way I'm going back there. New everything. And then some bizarre...supernatural..." Ava flaps a hand as if she can't describe it so she'll do it with hand gestures, "....thing comes along and tears it apart again. Nuh-uh. I don't think so, buddy."
Dean doesn't like where this is headed, at all.
Sam's frowning; he hasn't quite gotten it yet. "What will you do then?"
Ava folds her arms and shoots him a look. "What else can I do? That door is open, I can't shut it. Your friend? Ellen? She told me a few things. She was going teach me more, said she would if I stuck around long enough and didn't annoy her too much."
Crap. Dean drops his head down on the coffee shop table, next to his cup of ordinary, bitter brew, no foam, no sugar, definitely no cinnamon or chocolate shavings or sprinkles of any kind.
"I want to learn how to shoot," says Ava.
When Dean lifts his head, Sam's nodding. Dean lets out a groan.
"What could we say, Dean?" Sam says as they walk back to the car. "I think she's right."
"Not everyone who gets mixed up in some supernatural shit becomes a hunter, Sam. Think of the people we've saved. They didn't become hunters. They didn't ask how to shoot. They went back to their lives."
"Her life is ruined, Dean. And the way she lost her fiancé...maybe it's not a situation where she can just go back."
They reach the car and Dean puts the key in the lock, wrenches open the door. "She's better off without it. Better off if she never..."
He hesitates, his hand on the door, while Sam stands still.
Dean doesn't finish the sentence, just gets in the car.
He's sure Sam's thought, a million times, what if Dad had never started hunting. Dean's thought of it, fleetingly, once or twice, wondered what his own life would be like if he weren't a hunter.
But it's the first time Dean can remember thinking it in such clearly defined terms. Ava's alive, they accomplished that much. She seems like a nice girl. Cute.
But now she feels like failure to him -- someone they couldn't save.
"No, shift your grip a little higher. More to the left...not there. That gun's gonna kick when you fire, it'll knock you right over if you don't hold it right." Dean's trying to keep the impatience out of his voice. They've been out in the woods for hours with a line of empty beer cans lined up along a fallen trunk.
"Hey!" Ava says, voice sharp. "Mister smart guy, like you were perfect at everything the first time you did it?"
"You want to learn how to shoot, you pay attention," Dean snaps back. He bends over and pulls the Glock out of the duffel bag. "Maybe we should have you practice more with this instead. At least you managed to fire it." He can't keep the annoyance from his voice, rubs his free hand over his face.
The afternoon light's slanting through the trees, shadows going longer. Sam, who's been sitting on a boulder watching, unfolds himself. He gets to his feet and goes over to Dean and Ava. "Dean," he says, a rebuke in his voice. Ever the diplomat.
In answer, Dean puts the Glock away and steps back. "Be my guest," he says.
Dean leans against a nearby maple trunk, folds his arms, and watches while Ava huffs an impatient sigh that ruffles the hair around her face that's fallen loose from her ponytail. As Sam steps in close beside her, she looks up at him and her irritation fades into a wry half-smile.
"Here, try it like this," Sam says, soft-voiced, his fingers adjusting her shoulder, his other hand moving the barrel of the gun. He touches her wrist, moving her left hand just so, and then her right hand, his fingers arranging hers. Ava's head comes up to about the middle of Sam's chest but Dean notices he's not hunching with her, isn't trying to diminish his height the way he does with some people in order not to alarm them.
Dean unfolds his arms and starts paying closer attention, because he knows all Sam's tells and he hasn't seen this particular set, not in a long time. Maybe not since Sarah. He wasn't around for Jessica so he doesn't know how Sam was when that started, but Dean has a small pocket of memory of how Sam looked standing beside her in their Palo Alto apartment, comfortably in place, slightly protective, easy, as if he didn't tower over her. Ava's a whole lot shorter than Jessica but the effect is the same. Ava and Sam fit the same way, at least from the angle Dean's looking.
Then Ava gets the grip just right, holding the shotgun like she's been doing this for years, and Sam says "That's it." When Sam smiles down at her, Dean sees everything he wants for him, right there.
That would be one good thing to come out of all of this, at least.
"Wow, look at the time." Dean pushes himself off the tree trunk and glances at his watch.
Startled, Sam and Ava turn at him. "You have somewhere else to be?" Sam says, forehead crinkling.
"Oh, yeah. Gotta...go see this guy about another gun. Keep working with her, Sam, don't let her leave until she's hit at least one can, okay?"
That was Dad's way, when they were each first learning: you didn't leave, you didn't eat, until you hit one. Dean's dinner got missed only by a few hours. A few years later, Sam didn't do as well and Dean remembers sitting on the damp ground, cold, watching Sam who kept trying and trying well after the stars were out, until Dean could hear Sam's stomach grumbling from way over where he was sitting. He'd slipped a chocolate bar into Sam's hand, told him to eat it quick before Dad came out to check on them.
But Sam became a good shot. And Ava will, too.
There's time yet. Eight years to go.
YEAR THREE
The ironic thing, Dean thinks later, is that Ash probably had this figured out months ago.
Old Yellow-Eyes had planned a war. An army of demons released from Hell, all ready to follow him and his chosen human general. But the ones in Hell weren't the only ones ready to follow, and the rest of his people already on Earth -- the ones he called his children -- would have been psyched up and ready for the fight.
And then the Hellgate didn't open, and Yellow-Eyes got killed. It only stood to reason they'd be out for revenge; it only stood to reason they'd gather and try again.
If the second battle at the Hellgate teaches them anything, it's that it's possible to kill demons. Not just exorcise them, not just send them back to Hell; kill them.
It teaches the demons that too.
Thirteen demons flee the battlefield that night, all with vengeance still on their minds, all out to punish the world in general and the Winchesters in particular for Azazel's death. And this, maybe even more than the first one, is their job.
There are other hunters at work, occasionally crossing paths with them. But he and Sam are the ones keeping track of the whole thing, sweeping a widening circle around the area, constantly checking in with Dad back home, Bobby at his place, Ellen at hers. If they need more hands on a given job, they find outside help: Quentin, Latimer, a new guy name of Resnick, Jo once or twice. Ava, once -- her first kill. Thirteen demons fled the battlefield that night, and one after another is tracked down and destroyed.
The idea probably builds for months, but it doesn't swim into conscious focus until around the time they finally catch up with the last one. It may be the strongest and nastiest of them all, but in the end it's just another demon. Just another spook, just another monster, just another evil son of a bitch.
Get the right weapon, and pick your line of attack, and it goes down.
Dean loses track of days in that final hunt. Sam doesn't, and that's why he's the one to point out what Dean should have realized earlier: it's after midnight when they kill the last demon, and that makes it officially Dean's thirtieth birthday.
They go to a steakhouse the next night to celebrate, the first time since the beginning that they've ever all seven been together in one place -- himself and Sam, Dad, Bobby, Ava, Ellen, Jo. And it's damn good to have them all together, and all getting along, for a wonder.
And wow. Thirty. Some part of him hadn't expected to live that long. Getting old, he thinks -- and then, before he can stop himself: well, that won't be a problem for much longer --
He downs most of a glass of champagne in one gulp, and starts looking for something stronger.
Sometime during the second round of toasts Jo says something -- Dean doesn't remember exactly what it was, later, something about that's thirteen demons that'll never bother anybody again.
And as simply as that the idea's there, like an arc light hitting him square in the face, and Sam straightens abruptly in his chair and looks at him and Dean knows he's seen it too. And suddenly he can't wait for this party to hurry the hell up and be over so he can talk to Sammy alone.
And when he follows Sam's glance, he sees Dad looking steadily at both of them. And giving a single firm nod.
"She's already got what she wants from you." Sam paces the floor, his long legs eating up the width of the kitchen in two and a half strides. "There's no reason for her to come out after a deal she's already got."
"So I'll tell her I want to revisit the deal. Maybe --"
He's already shaking his head. "You know that won't work."
Dean pushes off the wall and steps into his brother's way. "Sammy, what're you thinking."
Sammy comes to a halt, takes a deep breath. "I'll tell her I want to make the deal. Put together a box --"
"No." He can feel every hair on the back of his neck trying to stand up straight. "Not a chance, man."
"I'm not going to go through with it, Dean. But it's got to look like I mean it. You know it's our best chance of luring her into the open. And -- "
He breaks off, and there's a long pause before Dean says "And what?"
Sam looks away.
"And what, Sammy?"
"And she'll believe it." Sam's voice is very low, and taut with control. "She knows what I'd be asking for."
Dean's fists clench, hard enough to drive his nails into his palms. Don't you dare, he thinks incoherently, and he's not sure whether he's addressing his brother or himself. Don't you dare. Oh, don't you dare.
Sam turns away, as though to pick up pacing again. "We set up the Devil's Trap before we summon her. Get her to exactly the right spot, and --" He brings his hands together in a gesture as of trapping something between them.
"And then we kill it." Dean makes his own hands relax, stretches his fingers to uncramp them.
"It'll still be a fight," Sam warns. "Trapping her won't trap the hounds."
"Gee, a fight? I wonder what that'd be like." He grins at his brother, the sardonic overlay completely failing to hide the growing excitement at the idea.
Excitement, and something more.
I could get out of this.
As it turns out, the hellhounds don't come to the demon's defense until she realizes they're not just planning to send her back to Hell. And by that time it's too late for them to stop it.
Not too late for them to be a serious pain in the ass, but too late to stop it.
Limping back to the car afterwards, half leaning on his brother and half supporting him, Dean isn't sure at first why Sam has stopped walking within sight of the car. Another threat, another trap, now? -- he tenses, barely feeling the acidic burn of fresh adrenaline in overstressed muscles and nerves. "What?"
Sam's voice is completely toneless. "It's a parking ticket."
The words might as well be in Swahili for all the sense they make, until Dean follows his gaze and sees the ticket tucked under the Impala's wiper.
And somehow that tiny pink scrap of paper is the single most absurd thing he's ever seen in his life, the most cosmically fucked-up punchline ever, and he starts to laugh. And can't stop.
Sam stares at him. "Dean," he says, reproach and question and concern all together.
Dean struggles to swallow, and drags air into his lungs, wincing at the pain in his cracked rib. "We got a parking ticket," he explains earnestly, and then he's off again, staggering over to the car and leaning on it. He barely hears it when Sam says his name again, and again more sharply, because by that time the laughter isn't fun anymore but he still can't stop it. It's hardly even laughter anymore by the time he slides down the side of the car and folds up on the pavement, just ragged broken breath like a series of sobs.
Gradually it tapers off, and he becomes aware that Sam's down on one knee next to him, one hand out as though trying to steady him, not quite touching. "No, I'm good," he wheezes, flapping one hand weakly at his brother. "I'm good. Quit lookin' at me like that, Sasquatch, I'm okay."
When they tell Dad, he doesn't speak. His fingers clench convulsively around his knee, the knuckles going white.
Even Bobby stares at them with his mouth open a moment before he gathers his wits. "So, it's done," Bobby says, standing next to Dad's chair. "You boys sure? You absolutely sure you killed her?" He's peering at them dubiously -- no, make that suspiciously -- from beneath his cap. As if wondering if they had a shared hallucination, if they've finally cracked from the stress.
"It's done," Sam says, glancing at Dean, his voice hard with triumph. "She's dead. Gone."
"We're pretty damned sure," Dean says, surprised when his voice comes out a little shaky.
"Well." Bobby says. "Well." His eyes are a little too bright and he looks away.
There's no sound, no one saying anything, for half a minute, until a rasping sob breaks from Dad, all the more harsh-edged because he's struggling to hold it in; Dean can see him physically fighting against it. He goes over to where Dad's sitting, bends, grips his father's shoulders, feels them go steadier under his touch. Dad's arms go around him and Dean holds on as tight as he can.
"So what's stopping you?"
"I don't know, man. I just..." Sam looks out the window, and Dean would bet he's completely unaware of the goofy little smile hovering on his face. "It could work, couldn't it?"
"Hell, yeah." Dean eases to a stop at the red light, throws another quick look at his brother. "And it's not like you've got any reason to keep putting it off, anymore."
By the time Sam's head snaps around to look at him, he's nonchalantly studying the road ahead, fingers drumming lightly on the wheel. After a second he glances around, raises his eyebrows in innocence. "What?"
"What are you talking about?"
"What, you think I haven't noticed?"
Sam starts to say something, and stops.
Dean gives him his best serious look. "When we get home from this job, you call her. Got it?"
The waitress pours coffee, leaves two plates of waffles and bacon, and trips off to the next table. Dean watches her leave, absently appreciating the view, before picking up his fork and digging in. Sam's already halfway through his first waffle, and studying the road map.
"We made pretty good time," he says, gesturing with his fork. "I think we could be home before dark."
"Sounds good," Dean says through a mouthful of waffle. He's a bit distracted; the waitress is bending to talk to another customer, a cute redhead -- not his type, really, too short and skinny, but definitely cute.
The redhead glances over as he thinks the word, and smiles right at him before turning back to the waitress. Still got it, he tells himself smugly.
"...you gonna do next?" Sam's saying, stirring his coffee.
"I'm going to Disneyland," he answers automatically. "I mean, what?"
Sam gives him a dirty look, the kind that means I'm laughing, but I don't want you to know it. "Seriously. You should start thinking about that."
Dean chews on that, and on a forkful of bacon. The bacon's a lot tastier. The idea that he can make long-range plans now is slow to process ... possibly because making long-range plans has never really been something he does.
Maybe it's time I started.
"Um -- hi." The new voice interrupts his train of thought, and he looks up. It's the redhead, standing over their table with a smile.
Sam looks up and leans back a little, his easy friendly-with-strangers smile coming up to answer hers. "Hi."
She bites her lower lip on one side; the effect is charming. "Okay, um ... this is awkward," she says. "But kind of important. Can I sit down?"
A glance flicks between them, and it's Dean who nods. "Sure," he says, and scoots around on the circular bench to make room. As an afterthought, he pulls the remains of his breakfast over, and starts cutting another bite of waffle with the side of his fork.
"Thanks." She smiles again, and slides into the vacated seat that's now across from both of them. None of the hesitation in her voice and words is there in her posture, in the sureness of her movements, and that's starting to set off a very quiet alarm in the back of Dean's head.
Until she looks directly at him over her folded hands and says his name out loud. "So, Dean? I figured you should know." Her smile's deprecating, apologetic. "I've inherited your contract."
He stops chewing. Under the flavors of maple syrup and butter and crisp fried dough, he can taste something charred. Something bitter.
It's Sam who breaks the silence. "You what."
"I inherited your brother's contract," she repeats patiently. "Took a while for the paperwork to go through after you killed 'Cia -- you would not believe the bureaucracy we have to deal with, I swear -- anyway, she had about half a dozen contracts outstanding, and yours was --"
"No."
"Mm?" The redhead -- the demon -- looks at Sam with wide grey eyes.
"I said no," Sam repeats, hard and implacable. And, to Dean's ears, fraying into desperation on the edges. "It's over."
"Sorry, honey." And she even sounds sorry, genuinely but shallowly, like a sympathetic bartender telling you it's closing time and she'sgonna have to throw you out. "Doesn't work that way."
Dean swallows the half-chewed mess in his mouth, feels it scrape his throat going down. "The fuck it doesn't," he says, and the sound of his own shaking voice scares him; Christ, he sounds like he's about to faint, or bawl like a little kid. " The fuck it doesn't. We killed the bitch."
"Dean, sweetie, you can't just kill any demon that holds a contract on your soul," the redhead chides. Then tilts her head consideringly, and adds in a conscientious tone, "Well, you can. I mean, you probably could. I hear you're good at that."
"Yeah, I could kill you without any trouble at all." The sound of it is still all wrong, forced instead of easy, threat masking terror. Under the table, Sam's foot kicks his ankle in warning.
The demon shrugs one shoulder, looking remarkably unconcerned. "You could, but I'm warning you, they'd just send double-o-eight." She grins at his disbelieving stare. "Sorry. Anyway, yeah. You wouldn't gain anything by killing me. It doesn't invalidate your contract; that just goes to my heir. And if you keep it up, well..." That shallowly sympathetic smile again. "It starts to rack up costs."
"Kind of costs?" Dean's throat tightens down even harder, and it's an effort to get the words out. His hands clench on the edge of the table.
She shrugs again. "Depends on the circumstances. Maybe we cut a year or two off the end of your alloted time. Maybe we take back what you bought with your soul. Maybe we take something else." He's not sure whether he imagines her eyes flicking to Sam as she says the words something else, but she's looking straight at him now, smile gone. "Breach of contract with Hell is not something you want to get into, Dean. Seriously."
That charred taste is back in his mouth, stronger. He can't look at Sam.
She unfolds her hands and leans back, her tone going brisk and cheerful again. "Anyway, look -- I don't hate you, Dean. Or you, Sam," she adds, turning to include him. "Really, I owe you. I mean, the crossroads job? That is such a plum position, and I never thought I'd get it, and --" A brilliant smile, eyes sparkling in genuine happiness. "Now I do. And I've got the two of you to thank. So I don't want you to think I'm, you know, out to get you personally. This is just business."
"Really." The word rasps, but it doesn't shake.
"Really." She pauses, shifts in her seat, and does that thing with her lower lip again, catching it in her teeth on one side. It's not nearly as cute this time. "Okay, that's a lie." She grins, and confides: "It's also fun."
Sam starts up from his seat, about to lunge across the table. Dean grabs him by the back of the shirt and hauls him back down, hard enough to rattle the silverware. Across the room, the waitress straightens sharply and turns to look at them; a few of the diner's other customers crane their necks to see what's going on.
The demon's smile goes even more brilliant, and strangely tender. "Oh," she says softly, "the two of you are just heartbreaking. I could watch you for hours."
"Get out." Sam's voice is a harsh rasping snarl, his lip curling up over his teeth.
She slides out of the chair smoothly. "You boys take care, now." The smile flashes out at Dean again. "See you in seven years."
They both stand outside the diner, their breath misting in the cold air. Before they do anything else, Sam calls Bobby, a wild grasp at hope.
"So that's what happened. Is there anything we can..." Sam winces and holds the phone away from his ear. He shoots a helpless look at Dean, then puts the phone back to listen. "Uh-huh," Sam says. "Yeah, Bobby....yeah...yes, we know....okay. Uh...Bobby? I'm sorry. I'm really--" Sam snaps the phone shut and tilts his head to one side. "He hung up on me."
Dean looks across the street at his car, spattered with dirty slush. He'll have to get her a bath soon.
He doesn't know how they're going to tell Dad. As they cross the street, he considers suggesting to Sam that they don't. They could lie. No, it wouldn't be a lie, only a refusal to volunteer information.
But it's too late for that. He should've thought of that before he let Sam call Bobby. If they don't tell Dad, Bobby will, and if Bobby ever found out they lied, Bobby would drop-kick both of them into Hell personally. And anyway Dean knows he couldn't keep it up. Years going by with Dad thinking Dean had a life ahead of him, and Dean knowing he didn't. It couldn't be done. It would be an impossible thing.
You'd think by now he could figure out how to live with an impossible thing.
"No," Dad says, voice flat. "You said she was dead. You said you got her..."
"Inherited contract," Sam repeats, his voice low and quiet. "New demon."
Sam and Dad are seated at the kitchen table. Hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, Dean leans against the doorframe, halfway in the room, halfway out.
There's a terrible stillness and then Dad shoves back his chair, stands up. Dean jumps, startled, as Dad kicks the chair across the room. It slams into the fridge and tips over. Magnets and sheets of paper rain after it, a shopping list, a bus schedule, recent snapshots of Sam and Dean, ordinary detritus of this life that's more ordinary than Dean can really remember having except for his haziest memories.
"Dad..." Dean starts, his own voice like a stranger's, separate from him. "We're sorry. We thought...we're really sorry." He stops. "I'm sorry."
There's nothing left to do or to say. Dad leans his palms against the counter a moment, shoulders hunched, head down. Then he walks over and picks up the chair, begins gathering up the fallen papers.
It's after that Dean sees Dad taking notes in his journal. He'd stopped after Cold Oak, after Sam almost got killed. But this wasn't like when he'd returned to it before then. That had been half-hearted, and only when Sam and Dean were discussing a hunt.
Now the journal's become a part of Dad again, never far out of reach, and he develops a habit of grabbing it at odd moments and scribbling in it.
They're going seventy in a sixty-mile an hour zone when Sam says, "I have to break up with Ava."
Dean swerves, and the driver of the van next to the Impala flips up his middle finger. Dean slows, then pulls the Impala onto the shoulder of the highway. He stops and turns off the engine. ""No. Okay? No. You are not doing this."
"What, because you say so?"
"You're goddamn right because I say so."
Morning traffic rushes past, a semi blowing its horn, and Sam flinches. "Dean, I'm not gonna just --"
"You're not gonna just what, Sam? Have a life? Be happy?"
"Happy." A bitter almost-laugh. "Right, happy." Sam looks out the window, at the electrical towers and the woods beyond. Then he turns back to Dean. "Three years gone and we're back at square one, and I'm supposed to go have a life while your time's running out."
"Yeah." Dean folds his arms. "That's what you're supposed to do."
Sam curses under his breath.
"Sammy, think a minute. What if," and it's hard to say it aloud, but he makes himself finish the sentence: "what if I don't get out of this deal? What if at the end of all this, I'm gone?"
That sentence he can't finish aloud: ...and you're alone?
"That's not gonna happen." Sam's jaw sets. "I'm going to get you out of this."
"Fine, great, do that. But you can have a life while you're doing it. Look, she's a hunter too, she'll understand. A hell of a lot better than she will if you cut her off now."
"Dean --"
"Sammy, I got seven years left of this. Whether or not you get me out of the deal, I don't wanna spend that whole time being the only thing you get to think about. I don't wanna be the thing that keeps you from getting the life you want. Whether or not, you understand me?"
Sam just looks at him silently, mouth tight, eyes damp.
"Just -- it's what you wanted. It's what you were gonna do when you thought things were okay. So go through with it, will you?" He leans forward, lowers his voice. "Marry the girl."
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