SPN: In Another Life, You and I

[edenbound]

Fandom: Supernatural
Main characters: Dean, Cassie, John, Sam, Jess
Background characters: Azazel, Cassie's parents
Pairings: Dean/Cassie, Sam/Jess
Contains: AU, violence
Rating: PG13
Summary: Cassie has two choices: assume Dean's crazy and end it, or listen to the stupid instinct that wants her to give him a chance to prove it. In another life, maybe she wouldn't hesitate to tell him where to shove it, but she can't quite let it go like this. She has to know. So before she even knows she's made the decision, she's opened her mouth and said, "Prove it."
Notes: This is my fic for ladiesbigbang! There are other awesome projects there, and I am most especially fond of aithine's women of Supernatural icons. The title of this fic is, in case anyone wondered, from Vienna Teng's song, "In Another Life". feywood and cantarina helped me get this into shape, so thank you to them. cantarina is also working on recording this as a podfic, which is exciting, and I will add a way for people to grab that once it's done!
Accessibility: There is a .rtf file available here, for anyone who needs to be able to change the font and so on. It's also useful for people with ereaders, etc, of course.


Cassie has the sense of standing at a crossroads. There's a stupid idea stuck in her head, a little cautioning voice that's telling her that whatever she says to Dean now will determine the rest of her life. Which is just... stupid, but she holds still and lets herself consider it. Dean can wait: you don't unload this crap on someone and then just expect them to blurt out a sensible response on the spur of the moment. By all rights she should be telling him to leave, anyway, because it sounds to her like a load of bullshit, just like he's trying to scare her away, too scared to just say it's over. If he isn't doing it for that, if he really believes this stuff, then she should be glad she might get rid of him, 'cause he's utterly crazy.

But she isn't taking the easy way out, because -- because of the look in his eyes, this weird earnestness, and the way he's holding onto her arm, like he expects her to run away. Like he knows how crazy it sounds but he can't bear it if she walks away now. Doesn't that mean something? That he knows how crazy it sounds? She thinks that maybe the time they've spent together -- short and bright; incendiary, but not burning out, not yet anyway -- has given him the right to her giving herself a minute to think it over.

She does journalism. Writes for the college and local newspapers, when she's got anything to write. She hears some damn crazy stories, not all of them from drunken college students. And sometimes people come through and she gets to write this amazing front page thing that came totally out of left field. The thing she says first?

"Prove it," she says, meeting Dean's eyes. "Show me some proof."

---

Dean gave her orders, then, when she'd said that -- Cassie's not a big fan of being ordered around, but he seems to think she'd be in some kind of danger if she didn't follow his orders, and it's easier to do it this way. Easier to just do as he says, let him show her whatever it is he wants to show her, and then get the fuck out of here.

It's a cold night, and she rubs her goose-pimpled arms a little, trying to warm them up. She should've brought a jacket, but it's been a warm day, close and still, and she hadn't expected the temperature to drop so fast now it's finally night. Not that the sun's all the way down yet, she thinks: the night is grey rather than black, the sky above clear, still streaked with light down near the horizon. If she could walk around, it'd be better, but Dean told her to stay put once she was there, stay put until he came to get her -- she might disobey that order, once she's seen whatever it is: she can judge for herself when something might be dangerous or not, thank you very much. And she suspects that there won't be any danger, still holds onto her scepticism about this whole thing. She's only agreeing to it at all because of the look in Dean's eyes, the honesty. Not that she thinks he's some kind of saint: he's lied to her before already, with the most perfect poker face. And she won't have been the first.

It takes her a moment to pick out Dean and the other man as they enter the graveyard -- a graveyard, Jesus, like a crappy horror movie, cheap thrills with no real bite -- because they're wearing dark clothes. She's not quite close enough, either, but she sees that the other guy is the one she's seen Dean with before. His dad, he'd said. His hunting partner, the one who taught him all he supposedly knows about the supernatural. A family business, Dean said.

They seem to take it seriously enough, anyway. They're both carrying shovels and torches. They pick their way through the graves, bending down to look at the names on the stones and then moving on, working their way to the back of the graveyard.

God, it's cold. Her teeth are chattering, ridiculously. It's like the temperature just dropped even further, all in one go. She even shudders, one long shudder right down her back -- the kind of delicious shiver you get when reading horror novels at the age of twelve, still half credulous, temporarily afraid of the dark when you put the book down. It's kind of less exciting now, though, in a real graveyard, even if she doesn't believe Dean's story, even though she's technically not in the graveyard.

Dean and his dad, or whoever it is, are conferring over something, but the breeze muffles their voices. She hears Dean say something that sounds like her name, and though she doesn't catch the words, she can hear impatience, anger, in his dad's reply. She wishes she could've taken up position somewhere downwind, instead. Wonders if maybe Dean set this all up as some kind of joke. Maybe if she could hear them... She shakes her head, shakes that thought away -- for now.

For a moment she can't see what they're doing, but then she realises that they've started to dig. Apparently they've found the grave they were looking for. The thought of that sends another shiver down her spine, makes her feel a little sick. It's not proof of anything, though, or she thinks she might go already. But she told Dean she'd stay until he proved it to her, and she's stubborn: she's not going to give him a chance to say that she didn't keep up her end of the bargain. Nor does she want him to think that she's scared.

They don't dig deep enough to get to the coffin when she hears Dean curse, sees him reel back. The other man keeps digging, but Dean stumbles back as if pushed. She still can't see anything... She creeps forward, moving closer to the crumbling wall of the graveyard. The wind changes, whipping into her face now, like ice cold fingers against her cheeks, dragging through her hair, catching...

She ducks behind the shelter of a tree, which seems to help. She can see Dean more clearly now -- he's holding a shotgun, a grim expression on his face. The other man, his dad, is still digging, stabbing his shovel down into the packed earth and flicking up the dirt into a pile, like he does this all the time -- quick, steady, economical movements. Dean's attention is drawn to something down the other end of the graveyard -- whatever it is, she can't see it for the bulky shape of a memorial -- and he curses, and fires. It's way too loud, nothing like the movies. Her breath catches in her throat, and she expects to hear the cry of some animal, something like that... Or worse, a yell of pain, something all too familiar. Instead, an inhuman shriek makes her flinch, makes her want to cover her ears, makes her breath quicken.

The wind, or something like that, but for a moment, she thought...

Dean fires again, says something to his dad through gritted teeth. His dad nods, clearing more earth from the grave. They're still not deep enough to have found the coffin, but they seem satisfied... She creeps forward a little more, pressing against another tree, her cheek against the rough bark. She can just about see into the grave...

Cassie has to turn away when she sees it -- a rotted, but still almost recognisable body. She thinks she knows who it was, thinks wildly that she can tell his mother what happened to him. She wrote an article about his disappearance, not that long ago. Interviewed the mother for it. She looks back towards Dean and his dad in time to see Dean striking a match and flinging it down into the grave. It catches light quickly -- they must have put something flammable down there -- and the flames leap up, lighting Dean's face. He looks grim, tired, his face streaked with dirt and blood from a split lip, but he doesn't look disgusted, or surprised, or... He looks as though this is something he does every day.

He looks up in her direction -- in the direction of where she's supposed to be, anyway -- and his expression is unreadable.

Cassie feels sick to her stomach. She slips out from the cover of the tree when Dean has his back turned, and runs all the way back to her car. She slips and stumbles once or twice, muddying the knees of her jeans, and when she gets to the car she finds that her hands have been scraped in the fall, shallow but raw, and she can hardly grip the steering wheel for it.

She gets out of there as fast as she can, even so.

---

"Were you there?" Dean asks her, right away, without even bothering to say hello. "When I went to look for you, there was no sign of you."

"I was there," she says. She can't help the frost already coming into her voice, when she thinks of that body in the grave, the body of a boy she'd known a little, whose mother lives close enough to borrow a bit of sugar from, and other such neighbourly things. She didn't think of it at first, but now she's had time to think, she has to wonder how Dean and his dad knew that body was there, and the thought fills her with a dark anger that surprises her in its intensity.

"What did you see?"

"I saw you desecrating a grave and finding the body of a boy who disappeared under suspicious circumstances a while before you supposedly first came to town."

"It was your article that alerted us to it," Dean says, with a crooked smile. She remembers now, how they met, how he'd wanted to speak to her about that article. She feels sick with anger at that, at how he's used her.

"Really. I think you put him there yourself. And I'm about to go to the police with what I know."

Dean stares at her. "What?"

"You heard me," she says, realising that she should have gone to the police before she had this conversation with Dean -- that she should have taken steps not to have this conversation with Dean at all, if possible. She's got to brazen it out now, though.

"Cassie, we didn't have anything to do with his death. We figured out where he was by looking at the dates people were buried in that cemetery." Dean shrugs. "It was easy, once we figured that out -- we had to look for a grave that would have been recent enough when he disappeared that the disturbance of the earth wouldn't have been noticed. The murderer was pretty clever about that. We opened a different grave, the night before, but we didn't find the body. It was actually just luck we found him last night."

It'd be so easy to believe him, Cassie thinks. She wants to believe him, wants to believe that she judged him right the first time. But it's too easy, too glib, and her anger surges up again at the thought of how easily he's manipulating her.

"You expect me to believe that?"

"If you don't, me and Dad will be out of town before you can convince the cops to investigate. There's not much evidence now that we've burned the body." He gives her one of those intense looks of his. "That wasn't a fun job, you know. He wasn't that long dead. It's easier when they're already just bones. But we had to do it, to remove the ghost's link to this world. He was a vengeful ghost, which is pretty common when it comes to violent death. The murderer was pretty sadistic, judging from the state of the body. The ghost started out by attacking its killer, that professor who died a few weeks back, but..."

"You're disgusting," she says, her voice coming out weirdly flat. He reaches out to her and she knocks his hand away.

"Cassie -- "

"I'm serious. Trying to put the blame on someone who is dead, who can't prove otherwise, and saying that it's all the work of some ghost... And digging up the body like that -- "

Dean's voice is as flat and fake as hers was. "If you're seriously going to go to the police, Dad and I are gonna have to leave town. We've done what we came here to do, anyway." He goes off to his car -- Cassie has no idea what to feel, her heart is pounding and some alarm bell in the back of her head is clamouring at the idea of Dean going now -- but he comes back less than a minute later, carrying a bundle of papers in his hands. "This is the research me and my dad did. Everything we found out about the area, and the killings. The guy in that grave wasn't the only one, he was just the first to hang on, to stick around after death."

"Dean -- "

"Do your damn research before coming to bullshit conclusions," he says, and she can see she's hurt him. She looks down at the papers he thrusts into her hands, biting her lip.

"Dean," she starts, again, but he's walking away, slamming the door of his car. He isn't going to listen to her.

---

She's been trying to call him all day. Dean's good at being elusive, sure, but normally he'll eventually pick up. She hasn't left a voicemail, figuring that she'd rather speak to him properly. They've been fighting all the time they've been together -- and it's not as if that's been a long time -- and they don't need much of a prompt to get going. The less fuel to the fire, the better.

But he's not picking up his damn phone, and he wasn't there when she went to check the motel room he'd been staying in, and his car wasn't outside... She's starting to think that he's left town already, and doesn't want to see her ever again. The only reason she doesn't just give up is...

Well, she feels something for him. It wouldn't be like combustion if she didn't: he makes her feel lit up from the inside, makes her want to push until she gets him to react, makes her react when he pushes. She won't call it love, not after so short a time, not when they fight like this, but... There's something, and she doesn't want to give up on it yet. Even if she's still not sure whether he's crazy or not.

Finally, she lets a call go to voice mail. "Dean, it's Cassie," she says, and launches herself into it so she can't chicken out, because a part of her would like to. Playing with fire is dangerous, after all. And she could stay safe. "I looked at the stuff you gave me, okay? I still don't know if I believe you, and I'm not buying the crap about having to stay out of the way so I don't get hurt. You can take me on one of these... hunts with you, or something, if you're so desperate to prove to me that you're saying is true." She takes a breath, surprised to find that she's shaking a little. "You'd better not have left town, or I'll hunt you down. I swear to god."

She puts the phone down hastily after that.

Dean fucking Winchester. Sometimes she wishes she'd never met him. Hell, most of the time.

---

Cassie heads to the motel again the next morning, even though Dean hasn't called her back. She knocks on the door of their motel room, and peers through the window, but she can't see anything in there. The room's a bit too neat to be lived in.

A big part of her is tempted to take this as an out, to walk away from this now. She's still thinking in metaphors, of the combustion, the fireworks, the raw chemistry between them, and she's thinking of scorched earth where nothing grows. But she won't take the easy way out, she wasn't brought up to do that. She's always faced everything with her head up and her heart set, and damned if she's going to walk away from this just because it's hard, just because it might hurt. Just because she's scared.

Hell, she'll face it because she's scared.

She heads for the reception -- such as it is -- and asks for Dean Winchester. They don't know a Dean Winchester, it turns out, but whoever was in room six left without paying for the last couple of days.

"Did they leave any message?"

"What name?" the guy asks, chewing with his mouth open. As if Dean was likely to have left whole piles of notes.

"Cassie. Cassie Robinson."

The guy narrows his eyes at the grubby piles of paperwork in front of him, and then slowly, almost reluctantly, picks something up and holds it out to her. "Guess this is for you, then. You know the guy?" His eyes narrow a bit. "They didn't pay for the room, you know. If you're..."

"I'm a reporter," she says, giving him a fake smile. "This was business."

The guy grunts, obviously disappointed, and then seems to forget she exists at all, flipping open a porn magazine quite openly. Cassie can't feel anything but contempt about that. She takes the letter outside to read it, to get away from the smell. No need to stay there, anyway: Dean's gone, clearly.

She doesn't know what she was expecting -- love notes aren't Dean's style, after all -- but all the note has is a list of numbers and a quickly scrawled message: 'You wanna see a real hunt?' It's signed with just his initial.

Coordinates, she thinks, looking at it. She remembers Dean saying something about when his dad wants to meet up with him somewhere, he just gives him a set of coordinates and he has to figure out how to get there himself. Well, she can do that.

He's an ass, doing this, expecting her to chase him across the country, but... It's almost a dare, and she can't resist that, not from Dean. And she doesn't have to be in class or anything, and if she tells the guys who do the college newspaper that she's chasing some kind of a story... She'll find something interesting for them, no doubt.

"You're not going to get away from this that easily, Dean," she says, and then feels silly for saying it out loud.

---

The car isn't outside, but it's quite possible that Dean's taken the car somewhere, to do research or something, and that this is still the motel he'll be staying in. Cassie is sure it'll be a motel, from what she knows of Dean's life thus far. This one is the only place in town that seems, well, grubby enough. Lax enough. There are a couple of other places she might try, but... She takes a deep breath and heads inside. The receptionist is a woman -- a young one, too much makeup and stupidly long nails, with something shrewish and disappointed about her face. Cassie doesn't blame her, working here.

"Hello," she says, carefully, "I'm looking for a man called Dean Winchester. I think he's taken a room here."

"No Winchester here," the girl says, inspecting her nails in a bored sort of way.

Cassie remembers the constant aliases -- she had seen through the one he tried with her, and demanded the real name: she's not sure why he gave it to her, except perhaps out of sheer surprise -- so she persists. "He sometimes uses a different name. He... drives a black car, a Chevy Impala."

The girl looks at her blankly. "There's a black one, alright, don't know about no Chevy Impalas."

"That's probably him. Would you -- "

"You his girlfriend?" she asks, abruptly. Her eyes narrow, suspicious and hurt. "He didn't say nothin' about any girlfriend."

"I'm a reporter," Cassie says -- not at all sure how she should feel about this girl's suspicion. She expects Dean has probably been flirting with her, and she finds that she doesn't even mind. He probably made her day. And if he's fucked her, well, what of it? She doesn't know about hunting, about what his life is really like.

She surprises herself with that thought, with her own belief. And with the feeling of being honoured by it.

She bites her lip hard, as if in punishment for thinking like this. "I'm a reporter," she repeats, to the girl's mulish expression. "I'm doing a follow-up interview with him, but he wasn't very specific about his destination. I'm sure I've tracked him down this time, so would you be able to help me?"

"A reporter, huh?" The girl's face brightens. "Sure. He's in room two, with his dad. They're not in right now, but I think they'll be back soon. You want a room here?"

Cassie thinks of what the rooms are likely to be like, and shudders a little. No help for it, though, unless she wants to risk missing Dean. "Yes, please."

She takes the key and heads for the room right away, figuring that there's no point in hanging around. Dean will come back to the motel room sooner or later, and if she's not careful, she'll miss seeing him then. She doesn't know how long he's planning to stay in this town. He could be leaving tonight, his business already done.

The room isn't quite as bad as she'd thought it might be, though she does have to suppress the urge to start cleaning it. Instead she takes her coat off and throws it on the bed, and takes up a seat by the window. She brought her laptop in with her, so she opens that up and answers some email while she waits, listening for the sound of the Impala's engine the whole time.

By the time she's done that, it's getting dark, and there's no sign of Dean. Cassie's stomach rumbles a protest and, sighing, she gets up, grabs her coat, and heads out. There's got to be somewhere she can find something to eat, somewhere near here. The worst comes to the worst, Dean will arrive while she's out and she won't be able to catch him without going up to his motel room. That isn't the end of the world. And maybe she'll meet him there, at... wherever she ends up finding something edible, if her luck's in.

---

When she gets back to the motel, the Impala's there. Cassie can't help a weird lurch in her heart -- or is it her stomach? the meal wasn't as edible as she could have wished -- when she sees it. She's got butterflies when she goes up to knock on the door, which is stupid, but there it is. She wonders if Dean really expected her to follow, if he's really expecting to see her.

She guesses she'll find out, in a moment.

There's a long pause before the door opens, during which her stomach cramps horribly, and then the other guy from the graveyard, Dean's dad, opens the door. He looks her up and down with suspicion, and she feels weirdly naked under his eyes, and weirdly like an object: like she's being assessed for her worth. She almost jumps when he speaks, a low rumble that makes her think of thunder: "You lookin' for someone?"

"Dean Winchester," she says, as clearly as she can.

The man frowns. "Saw you, before, in..."

"Athens, Ohio."

"Why'd you follow us?" he asks. He looks past her, now, searching the car park and then looking at her again, secretive, angry. "What are you doing?" He turns to look into the room. "Dean, why did you tell this girl where to find us?"

"I didn't tell any girl where to find us," Dean says, from somewhere in the depths of the motel room, "I wouldn -- wait." He comes to the door now, looks past his father. For a moment he seems paralysed at the sight of her and then he says, slowly, incredulously, "Cassie."

"'Cassie'?" his dad asks, mocking his tone. He glances at Dean. "This the girl...?"

"Forgotten me already?" Cassie asks, before Dean can say anything, surprised at how cool her own voice is now.

"Like I would," Dean says, with one of his all too glib grins. "You're unforgettable."

"I'll let you two have a chat and get reacquainted," his dad says, pushing past Cassie. "Give me the keys, boy. And don't wait up for me." He gives his son a look which Cassie can guess holds a lot of meaning.

"Yes sir," Dean says, and tosses the keys to him easily, without even looking. "Didn't think you'd follow me," he says, to Cassie.

"Why'd you give me the coordinates, then?"

"I..." Dean waits until his dad's out of earshot and then jerks his head back at the room. "Come on in."

Cassie follows him into the room. There's a mess on the table, a pile of newspaper cuttings and scraps of paper with notes on. It's professional curiosity that makes her go over to see what kind of story they're making of it. Dean watches her warily.

"He probably thinks you got me pregnant," she says, without looking at him. "That happen before?"

"There might be a couple of little Deans wandering around, but none of the mothers would know where to find me," Dean says, shrugging. That makes her angrier, somehow.

"And if I was pregnant? If that was why I was trying to find you?"

"You aren't, though. We were careful."

She answers him with silence. He comes across the room, reaching out for her, and then stopping.

"You aren't, are you? That isn't why you followed me?"

She lets him stew in it for a minute more, and then shakes her head. "No, I'm not pregnant. I followed you to find out more about all of this."

"It's not safe," he says, like he's going to baulk now and not show her what she came all this way to see. Like he doesn't trust her to hold her own.

She turns to him, head held high. "To hell with safe," she snaps, and is surprised by the way he grins back at her.

"Okay," he says. "To hell with safe. You want proof? I'll show you proof."

---

Cassie is ready by nine o' clock the next morning. Dean told her to wait until his dad goes out -- which is annoyingly teenage, sneaking around behind a parent's back, but he was insistent -- and then join him in the motel room, and he'd explain a few things and then take her with him, if she wanted, on today's case.

She already has an idea of what's going on. She looked it up on the internet as soon as she got back to her motel room, scanning through the news stories and looking for anything that might be similar to what Dean and his dad tackled in Athens. There are a couple of candidates, various unexplained deaths. A couple of drownings, a rash of cases of SIDS, one or two unexplained disappearances. Some of them have to be normal -- if not all of them -- but one of them, she's sure, is what Dean's focusing on.

She grabs her jacket the minute she sees Dean's dad coming out of the motel room. She sees Dean in the doorway, sleepy-eyed, his hair still tousled, but with something of the soldier about the way he stands. She's pretty sure she hears him say 'yes, sir' again, too. She watches until Dean's dad has disappeared, then crosses to Dean's room before he's even had chance to go back inside.

"You haven't changed your mind then," he says. He looks serious, today, and almost naked without the flirtatious grin he usually turns on her. His eyes are hard, like he's not going to give an inch today.

"I've been doing some research of my own," she says, ignoring that, and looking away from the eye contact. He seems okay with that, closing the door behind her and going to a bag on the floor. "What exactly are we investigating?"

"You tell me, if you've been doing some research," he says, crouching down. She can't see what he's doing for a moment, and then she sees him bringing a gun out.

"What are you doing that for?"

"Tell you in a minute. Go on. What did your research turn up?"

"A bunch of unexplained deaths and disappearances. A few more than normal for a town of this size, maybe. Some of them are probably legitimate, but..."

"But some of them are supernatural," he says, straightening up. "You'd be surprised at how many 'normal' disappearances are actually due to some kind of supernatural cause. You don't believe in it, but it's there. Or you didn't believe in it, anyway."

"I'm still not sure I believe in it."

"Alright then. After today, I can pretty much guarantee that you will. So go on, what deaths drew your attention?"

"Babies dying for no reason anyone can explain, mostly. Way more than average. And a bunch of drownings, all in the same lake. One every month."

"And the same time each month, if you looked at the dates on the articles." He grins at her suddenly, sharp-edged. "A bit too much to be coincidence, don't you think?"

"It could still be a human thing. Some serial killers like working like that."

"Maybe it is. Anyway, that's Dad's case, actually. We're working on the case with the dead kids. It's a pretty basic haunting as far as I can tell, but we need to go ask some questions. You should be good at that."

"It's my job, after all," she says, pointedly.

"Might be pretty decent cover," he says. "Normally we pose as FBI agents."

"How do you... Wait, I don't think I want to know."

"Fake ID."

"I said I didn't think I wanted to know."

"And we pay for the motel rooms by credit card fraud. Or, if we're not running that kind of scam at the time, hustling, or sometimes plain stealing."

She looks up at him, finding that hardness in his eyes again, but also... a vulnerability, like whatever she says now could shatter him, like he's brittle. "Why are you telling me this? It's not going to impress me."

"I've told you everything else," he says, looking away from her. "I wanted you to know me for real, you know."

"Are you sure you still want that?" she asks, almost teasing, raising an eyebrow at him. He doesn't answer, though, just shakes his head and, a moment later, holds the gun out to her.

"I don't think we're going to need firepower, but you never know. If the deaths are something, well, normal -- if you call that kind of thing normal -- then we might need to defend ourselves. Sometimes me and Dad have gone barging in where the FBI would actually have been the right people for the case. Sometimes it hasn't ended well. Dad's pretty good at calling it, though."

She takes the gun hesitantly. "I don't know how to..."

"Let's hope you don't have to, then." He lifts his shirt at the back, tucks a gun into his waistband and conceals it with his shirt.

"Not very well hidden," she says, glancing at it, and he shrugs.

"I'll wear a jacket, too. You never noticed."

She nods slightly, even as she's trying to think back, figure out when he'd have been carrying a gun, how he'd have hidden it from her. "So, where are we going to start?"

"We need to talk to some of the mothers," Dean says, and then hesitates. "You might... This bit is kinda... Well, it isn't..."

"Nice?" Cassie shakes her head at him. "I didn't expect it to be. I'll probably have more tact than you."

"Hey, I'm tactful."

"You think you're being tactful. You tell me what we need to know, and I'll find out, okay?" She pauses for a second. "Have you got a camera or anything?"

"Why would we need a camera?"

"If we're posing as reporters, some people like to think they're getting the works. A reporter, a photographer..." She shrugs. "It'll put some people off, in which case I might have to send you back to the car, but..."

"I won't go back to the car. It could be dangerous. For you."

She holds back a flash of irritation at the idea that he's being all chivalrous, trying to protect her. "We'll get you a notebook, too, then. You can take notes for me, if they don't want a photographer."

He nods a little. She starts to head for the door, and he touches her shoulder lightly. "Hey, Cassie... You're pretty good at this."

Cassie looks up at him. He looks awkward, and that makes him look younger, and there's vulnerability there again. She nods a little, reaches up to brush her fingers over his hand. "Thanks."

He jerks his hand back like he's burnt, and heads out, holding the door open for her.

The first place they call at, the woman is suspicious, keeping them on the step and demanding proof, her voice rising in pitch all the time. Dean shifts at Cassie's side, impatient, but Cassie keeps going. "I strongly feel that your voice should be heard in this matter. People are very quick to lay blame, but from what I've read, you're not the only woman in this town to have this happen. People are just stereotyping. It's important that you get a chance to speak out against them. I promise I'll do everything I can to make sure this article fairly represents you and your views."

Dean gives her another of those looks of confused admiration as they finally step inside the house. Cassie had seen from the doorstep that it was grubby, untidy, and she could imagine the stereotypes about this woman, about how she might have treated her kids. It isn't rocket science: just observation.

"I didn't do anything wrong," the woman says. There's something empty in her voice, something haunted. "I swear I didn't. I looked after Abby better than I look after myself. I loved her so much."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

It's the same story every time, Cassie finds. They visit eight different houses -- eight different women, of all backgrounds; the houses quiet or loud, full of children or empty, from tidy to downright disgusting. Every time Cassie comes out, though, she feels like she's surfacing from deep water, shaking off a dark despair. Even Dean seems to feel it, more uncomfortable with every moment they spend inside the houses.

Every mother tells the same story: "I was looking after her, I swear. I'd never have done anything to endanger her. I wasn't neglectful. I don't care what they say. I'd checked on her two minutes before it happened, and it was fine."

Dean always chips in then, asking about... cold spots, and feelings of being haunted, of strange noises and things not being where they were supposed to be. The first reaction is always incredulity, but then, when coaxed, they'll talk.

"They said I was imagining it. Even my husband said that I was imagining it. But I was sure, just as I came into the room, that I saw a woman leaning over the cot. And it was cold. I remember turning the heating up just before I went in to check on her, but it'd been warm that day..."

"It's a haunting," Dean says, as soon as they come out of the eighth house. "We didn't even need to go through all this, I knew from the second house. But I still have no idea what spirit might be doing this. None of the women knew anybody else who'd had a baby die like that, or who might have killed their child..."

"I think I read something," Cassie says, after a moment. She feels oddly weighed down, now, like the despair of those eight women has transferred to her. All of those houses had one thing in common. They were sad -- not just the women, but the houses themselves, the whole atmosphere...

"Yeah?"

"It was in an article from a few years ago... A woman who was unable to have children, who was jealous, who started killing other people's kids... She was caught pretty fast. She's dead now, though. The article was about her death. She died in the prison, and someone said that she was unrepentant to the end, sure that what she had done was simply... justice."

"That makes it even more likely that she's the one we're dealing with."

"Why didn't the deaths start immediately?"

Dean shrugs. "Sometimes they just don't. Something triggers them, months or years later... Come on, we need to find that article, and where that woman is likely to be buried."

"And then?"

"Dig her up," Dean says, a grim note in his voice. "Salt and burn her."

---

The hole is already half dug. Dean's leaning against a tree beside it, his face shiny with sweat, strained. The earth is packed down hard, so the digging's a long job. Cassie watches Dean catching his breath for a minute, denying the feeling of tenderness that flutters in her chest and throat, and then grabs the shovel and jumps into the shallow hole.

"What are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Cassie grits her teeth as she gets to work. She can imagine that tomorrow her hands are going to be sore, maybe blistered, and she's not as strong as Dean -- hasn't had as much practice digging as he has, either. It's even slower work with her on the shovel, but she can keep going while Dean's catching his breath.

"You're going to hurt your hands," he observes, practically hanging over her shoulder.

"Look, Dean, I can dig a hole without supervision, okay?"

There's a pause, in which Dean looks kind of hurt, and then he steps back. "Yeah, okay."

She keeps on digging, gritting her teeth. She's too hot, her own face shining with sweat now, but she's also stubborn. She keeps working, blessing it for a moment when the temperature finally seems to fall a bit, but then looking up when Dean curses under his breath. "What?"

"Give me the shovel," he says, but he takes it from her before she's even registered what he's said. "Need to get this done fast. Grab the shotgun."

"What? There's no one else here."

"The bitch doesn't want us digging her up and putting a stop to this," Dean says. "Pick up the damn shotgun."

Cassie moves to do that, mystified. "She's dead, how is a shotgun going to do any good?"

"It's loaded with rock salt." Dean's digging now, fast, economical movements, getting as deep as he can as quickly as he can, stabbing the shovel deep into the ground with every bite. "Salt keeps spirits away. You see her, you shoot."

Cassie nods slightly, gripping the shotgun tighter. She bites her lip a little. "Can't ghosts be invisible?"

Dean doesn't answer that, just keeps digging, and Cassie guesses that he's right. Whether ghosts can be invisible or not -- if they exist at all, which, she reminds herself, she still doesn't have any concrete proof of -- she can't do anything about that. Best not to think about it.

She's starting to relax a little when it happens. There's no sign of anything, though the temperature is still cooler than it was. A night breeze, that's all, she thinks, even though the air doesn't really seem to be moving.

She has no time to cry out when something closes over her mouth. Something soft, something that seems to cover and smother her whole face. A pillow, she thinks, and then her stomach lurches in sudden, desperate fear. She screams into it and Dean looks up, cursing. He stabs down with the shovel, and Cassie hears the shattering of wood, even as her eyesight is starting to fail, as the pillow presses harder and harder into her face. He grabs the salt, and Cassie hears him strike a match, even as she's falling...

She comes to herself what might be a moment or an hour later, lying with her head in Dean's lap. His expression is worried and wide open, his face still sweaty and streaked with dirt, but pale under that. For a moment she can't remember what's happening, and when she does, she flinches.

"It's okay," Dean says, immediately. He touches her hair lightly, reassuringly -- reassuring her, or himself, she doesn't know. "She was stupid. Got all caught up in getting rid of you before getting me, when I was the dangerous one. I salted and burned her. Haven't closed it up, yet, but..."

"I guess I've got proof now," she says, weakly. He grins at her, strained around the edges, but trying.

"You only felt her, you didn't see her. Is that -- "

"That's enough," she says, wearily. Her head feels like it's packed with cotton wool.

He helps her up, slowly, and then hands her a bag full of things. "Take these back to the Impala -- and check on her, okay? Here's the keys. I need to fill in this hole."

Cassie nods and heads back to the car, stumbling a little. When she gets there, she locks herself in and slides down in the seat.

It's real. Dean isn't crazy. That isn't the reassuring thought it might once have been.

---

"I'm sorry Dean did that," John Winchester says. Cassie is sat down while Dean and his dad hover over her, which is a little bit daunting. More than a little, actually. But she's too tired to care, her legs still weak and shaky. "There's a reason I don't like taking civilians along with us. Not that I expected Dean to do as he was told, where you're concerned."

"She did fine, Dad."

"Did I ask you?" John gives Dean a quelling look, and Cassie almost laughs at how crestfallen he is. He goes to sit down, clearly realising his dad intends him to sit this one out. John looks down at Cassie again. "Why did you want to come on a hunt?"

"I wanted proof. Dean told me..." She makes a vague gesture. John glances over his shoulder at Dean again, questioningly, and Dean makes a helpless movement. John seems to get what's going on, then -- and Cassie thinks it would be nice if she knew, too -- and smiles in this oddly sweet little way that looks out of place on his gruff face.

"I see. Do you believe in it now?"

Cassie laughs helplessly. "How could I not?"

"You'd be surprised how many people just run away from it and pretend they never saw or felt a thing." John shrugs slightly. "Don't blame them, either. So, are you along for the ride?"

Dean opens his mouth to say something, and then shuts it again. Cassie's frozen for a moment, not knowing what to do. There's the sensible thing, telling him she's not going to stick around and do this, that she's not... What she and Dean have isn't worth this, surely, this dingy and dangerous life, going through a series of anonymous motel rooms, never looking back... She's got a job to go back to -- she's got college to go back to, for god's sake. And her parents...

Her parents, concerned and protective and stifling. Unadventurous. Going to college was a first bid to get away from them. That's not a new story at all. Half the kids in college had the same thing. She loves her parents, but sometimes she just can't stand them. She's all fire where her mother is nothing but air, changeable and changing where her father is steady as the earth and stuck in an orbit just as invariable.

But this... this would be more than running away. This would have to be a clean break, because she can't imagine how they would feel, never knowing where she was or what she was doing, never able to understand. If they'd heard Dean's story, they'd have dismissed it right away -- if they heard her story, they'd probably think that she was crazy.

And yet...

John keeps looking down at her, patient. There's kindness in his face, behind the gruffness, and humour. There's something of the drill sergeant about him, but there's also a well-hidden tenderness towards Dean and somehow towards her, too. She'd never have pictured this life as being anything like that of a white knight, but she guesses that John is just as driven -- if not more -- and just as desperate to do this, to save people, hunt things... And Dean, she knows Dean, in some instinctive way, knows what's important to him about this.

There's sadness in both their faces, where she reads a loss -- and oh, she's used to reading people, used to milking every last drop of pathos out of a potential story, but they're a closed book in some ways, even to her. The sadness is easy to see, but why, there's no telling. Except that this... this might be a key, a way into that, a way to become a part of that.

It should feel abrupt, but it doesn't. It simply feels like something sliding into place when she looks up at him and nods. "Yeah, I'm in."

"Are you sure?"

It'll be hard. Already she's quailing from the idea of how to deal with her parents, how to do that. There isn't a right thing to do in that situation, she thinks. But this -- this would be right, and she would be with Dean...

"I'm sure," she says, though a part of her is angry at that last thought, berating herself for being too much of a moth, too drawn to a flame that will simply destroy her in the end. A part of her is angry because she's not that girl, she's not the kind to give up her life to follow some man.

But this -- this isn't about that, or really about Dean. It's about that moment of weakness, utter helplessness, her life in Dean's hands, confronted with something strange and supernatural, confronted with the darkness that she's spent most of her life ridiculing, minimising, hiding from.

She isn't good at hiding, and she isn't good at letting people remain alone in the dark, when she could do something about it and shine a light on in. Which is, she thinks, how it should be.

"I know what's out there," she says, slowly. "And I need to know how to fight it."

"I'll teach you," John says. Dean starts to his feet.

"Dad, this is cr -- "

"You're the one who brought her into this."

"I didn't..."

Cassie lifts her head, despite her exhaustion, squares her shoulders. "You think I can't do this?"

"You're..." Dean flings his hands up. "I've been training for this since I was a child! You've barely ever held a gun!"

"I'm pretty good at paintball," she tells him, trying hard not to smile, and is surprised when John Winchester actually laughs.

"I'll test you out," he says. He looks her up and down. "Now."

She should protest. She's bone-weary, her head still spinning, just having made what is probably the most important decision of her life. But John's expression is amused, challenging, and she can't help but rise to the taunt.

"Now," she agrees. Dean makes another helpless, irritated sound, but he doesn't say anything.

---

There's something oddly satisfying about practising this. John is watching her with a patient, calm look -- he's not letting on whether he thinks she's any good or not -- but she is. She's been practising for a while now -- long enough to have lost track of time -- and she's getting it right almost every time now, missing the target only one time in ten.

It's like things clicking into place again. It does scare her a little, thinking of this life, thinking of this choice that she's making without even giving herself time to sleep on it, while she's so tired she's ready to drop. But she knows about this underworld of supernatural attacks, has felt the terror of it, and she knows that not many people will know and believe, not many people will be ready to face it. The fact that she can find it in herself to face it means she has to. There's no walking away now she knows about it.

John stops her in the end, putting a hand on her shoulder, heavy and warm. "You should pack up your things and get some sleep. We'll leave tonight. I finished my hunt last night as well."

Cassie nods a little and glances back at the thing he set up as her target. "How did I do?"

"Better than I expected," he says, with a bit of a grin. "Not as good as Dean."

Dean rolls his eyes. "That's because I've been doing this for a long time."

"It's because even the first time I gave you a gun, you hit the target every time."

Cassie looks at Dean sidelong as they walk back to the car, sees a baffled kind of pride on his face, like he can hardly grasp the fact that his dad just praised him in front of someone.

Men, seriously.

"Why do you two hunt?" she asks, after a moment. They're close to the car, but John stops and looks at her.

"Dean didn't tell you?"

"I didn't tell her everything," Dean says, quickly, suddenly strained. "Dad..."

Cassie raises an eyebrow, and she knows she's treading on toes here, but she has to know. "Tell me now."

John looks at her for a moment. She thinks he's considering it, deciding whether to or not, but then she's somehow still surprised when he does speak, something thick and strained in his voice that makes him and Dean sound even more alike. "My wife," he says. "Mary."

He turns away then and keeps going to the car. Dean watches him, his face shut off from her, and then moves slowly, following him. Cassie follows too, but Dean puts out a hand to keep her from walking too fast.

"My mom," he says, in almost the same tone as John did. "When I was four. It was a demon."

"A demon?"

A slow nod. "Yeah. A demon, as in, literally, a thing from hell. We don't know why, but... One day we'll track the bastard down and kill it."

"I'm sorry," Cassie says, into the awkward silence, at the same time as she feels as if there is no real awkwardness anymore: as if, just like that, she's taking her first step into the grief the family feel, becoming a part of that silence, that loss, that quest for revenge. She doesn't kid herself that it's going to be easy -- that either of them are going to think her as competent as them, or trust her as they would each other, or spill all their secrets... But this is a start, a first step, and she's surprised they've got this far already.

John's turned to look at them, now, standing beside the car. He gives her this tiny smile, almost like an apology for dragging that history out in front of her, as if she hadn't asked.

She falls asleep in the car on the way home. Dean drives and John sits in the front. She's more or less all of the way asleep when John leans over the seat and drapes his coat over her, heavy and warm.

"She's tough," he says, to Dean, and Cassie wants to open her eyes and stay awake and find out what Dean says in response, but there's no fighting the wave of exhaustion that just broke over her head. All her instincts are lulled, every nerve telling her that she's safe, that she can sleep now, so she just... gives into it, remembering the cliche in books or some tv show or other, telling her that soldiers need to get sleep whenever they can.

It's a jarring thought, herself as a soldier, but when she thinks of the Winchesters, it fits, and it isn't startling enough -- she's not sure anything could be startling enough -- to wake her up again.

---

The next few months blur into each other. There's so much she has to learn, and she's uncomfortably aware that until she's learnt it, she's a big liability -- and that she has got to catch up to years and years of experience, years and years of just doing the job, figuring it out as you go along... She's getting told all this, trying to retain all this information, trying to contain all this experience that she herself hasn't lived through, won't live through.

Sometimes, though, she's better than them. The research part is easy. It's what she's wanted to do her whole life, really. Peel back the facades and find the truth -- and now she's going deeper than she's ever had to go before, finding a different truth. She can't tell people about it. They'd think she was crazy. But she can use it, and it's better than being sat behind a desk typing up an article. Better, 'cause she knows she's doing some real and tangible good, instead of hoping vaguely that her words will bring some changes.

The first time John sees it, they're on the trail of some kind of lake monster. That's easy stuff, for a journalist. Cassie goes straight to work, the minute they get there, leaving Dean and John hovering behind her, not quite knowing what to do.

"I heard about sightings of a lake monster here," she says, and the old fisherman looks up at her, screws up his face, and spits. Her expression doesn't change. "I'm sure you know all the stories."

"Journalist, are ya?" he asks, looking her up and down. He's visibly reluctant -- she's a stranger, a woman, a journalist... and it might even be the colour of her skin. But she doesn't lose the smile.

"That's right. I'm looking into the truth of the stories here."

The man scowls, his face creasing up more and more. "Nobody believes me, not even round here."

"I heard there's a group of kids that do." She slides one of the newspaper clippings out of her folder and shows it to him. "These kids?"

Suddenly, the man brightens. "Hey, I never saw that. That's my granddaughter," he points a grubby finger at the girl in the top corner, "right there."

"She's beautiful," Cassie says. The man grins all of a sudden, the creases around his mouth and eyes shifting, lightening a little. She smiles back at him. "But people around here don't believe her, either, do they?"

"She's a good girl. Helps her parents, helps me when she can. She even comes to fish with me sometimes. She saw it, alright, just like I have. People are sayin' she musta been on drugs or drunk or lying, but I know her. You talk to her, she'll give you the whole story."

"Where does she live?"

The old man points across the water. "Down round there. You just ask for Hope Myers."

"I'll do that." Cassie straightens up, smiling again. "Thanks for your help. Do you want to keep this article? With the photo?"

The old man looks over his shoulder at her, like he didn't hear the last part, and then, spotting Dean and John hanging around there, sizes them up critically. "Don't date that one," he says, pointing to Dean. "Too damn pretty. You want a guy who actually looks like a guy."

The look on Dean's face is just about priceless.

"Did well there," John says, as they're walking back to the car to drive round the lake. "Found out what we needed to know."

"I was going to be a journalist," she says, getting into the car and ducking her head to hide the blush. John's a hard guy to please, Dean says, but she seems to be doing just fine, and she's surprised at how good that feels, how good it is to have John Winchester look at her and see her as competent, as promising, as worth all this trouble.

"We'll do it this way whenever we can," he says, getting into the driver's seat. "Dean and I'll do the research work in the library while you go ask questions."

"Dad -- "

"Unless it's girls," John says, and grins that startling grin of his. "He can charm them with his pretty face."

Dean makes a pretty ugly face and turns up the volume of the radio. Cassie sits back in the back seat and tries to muffle her laughter. She can see John's smirk, so it's hard.

She can do this. Week by week, month by month, she gets better at it and John trusts her more. Splits off from her and Dean and leaves them to do hunts alone together. Takes her on a hunt and leaves Dean behind. Trusts her, teaches her, surprisingly patient for all his gruffness.

She can do this.

---

"He probably already has her number," John says, pushing his hands into his pockets. Cassie waits beside him, tense in every muscle, angry... John looks at her and frowns a little. "What's going on between you two, anyway?"

"Nothing," she says, and if she snaps a little, well... It's none of his business. And she's telling the truth. Ever since the day Dean first told her about the supernatural, ever since she demanded proof, there's been nothing. She's gained his trust, he can trust her with his life and does, but he doesn't look at her like he used to. It's an unfair trade. She never knew how much she -- but she doesn't want to think about it. She tramples over the embers in her mind, smothering the flames, her jaw clenching tight. "There's nothing."

"Funny kind of nothing to make you look at him like that."

"There was something. Now there isn't."

John Winchester looks at her and she gets the impression that, somewhere behind his eyes, he's smiling one of his secret smiles. "Isn't there?"

She looks away. Dean's flirting with the librarian easier than he ever flirted with her -- the charm's on full, and the librarian is more of a moth to the flame than she ever was. Cassie isn't sure whether to feel sorry for her or not. Even if Dean... even if Dean fucks her tonight, she'll probably escape pretty much unscathed. A little singed, maybe. But not... She shakes her head, clenching her fists again.

She'd never thought Dean meant that much to her. A part of her had known that she didn't want to lose him, didn't want to let him go. And that part of her kept her from sending him away, that part of her brought her here. But she never realised how strong it was.

"You should talk to him," John says. She looks up at him in disbelief.

"You want me to talk to him?"

He raises an eyebrow. "What's so surprising about that?"

"It's not exactly... the Winchester way."

"You're not a Winchester," he says, with a shrug. A pause. "Yet."

It feels a little like rejection, him saying that, but he catches that look in her eyes and smiles a little.

"Not saying you're not family, in a way, now. But you're not..." Another shrug. "You haven't been raised like he has, you haven't seen the things... Just talk to him."

"We always fought," she says, not sure why she's saying it, and John puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes a little.

"You wouldn't fight if you didn't care."

"I'll hurt him," she says, weakly. John looks over at Dean, raising an eyebrow at his flirtations.

"Not always the worst possible thing," he says. His voice drops and he gives her an awkward look. "Dean... hasn't had the best life, I know. And it's partially my fault. He'll be difficult to deal with. But he'd be worth it, wouldn't he? I know I'm his father, but..."

Cassie feels a surprising lump in her throat. "Yeah," she says, her voice roughening a little. She clears her throat and tries again. "Yeah, Dean would be worth it."

John nods in satisfaction. "So do it."

She doesn't get chance to answer -- he probably doesn't want to give her a chance to argue -- because he's heading towards Dean, interrupting his flirtations and saying something to him in a low voice. She hopes it isn't anything to do with her. In any case, the two of them come back over. Dean avoids her eyes -- which isn't unusual, lately -- but offers them both a cocky little smile.

"She's gonna get us what we need. Said we should come back after her lunch break."

"I want to do some research of my own," John says, in his usual rumble now, loud enough to make someone look up and dart an irritated, pointed glance towards the sign that begs patrons of the library to respect others and keep quiet. "You two go on and have lunch."

Cassie gives him a suspicious look, which he doesn't meet. He turns away and heads further into the library, purposeful and unsmiling now. Dean looks at her and then away. "See anywhere you wanted to go to eat?"

She leads the way out of the library, into the bite of the winter air. "Didn't see anywhere special."

"Let's just walk until we find somewhere."

"Somewhere that serves something that isn't deep-fried grease," she says, warningly, and Dean rolls his eyes.

---

Cassie didn't think she'd be thrown by blood. But there's so much of it. Dean's arm hangs limply by his side, the sleeve of his jacket soaked with blood, clinging to his skin. She cuts it off, her breath sobbing in her throat -- she has to do it, she has to, she can't run away. John isn't here, it's just her, just her and Dean... His face is white, white with pain. She tears the sleeve all the way off and looks helplessly at the bloody claw marks.

She's done first aid. She's never needed it, though, not like she does now. She tries to steady herself, tries to think... She tears off Dean's other sleeve, wads it up and presses it to the wound, putting pressure on it. He's gritting his teeth, his face covered in sweat, his eyes screwed shut with the effort of coping. He's more calm and together than she is right now, her hands shaking and... She's known this was dangerous, of course she has, but there's never been so much blood before, never so much blood this fast...

"Bound to happen sooner or later," Dean says, in a low and pained hiss. She looks up, startled, and he tries to give her his cocky grin. "Not readin' your mind, just... It's obvious. It's okay, Cassie. It's nothing."

"Doesn't look like nothing to me," she snaps. She grabs his other hand and puts it on the wadded up sleeve. "Keep pressure on it."

"Didn't know you cared," he says, in his stupid mocking tone, and she can't stand it. She's trying to make a bandage now, trying to tear fabric, and it bursts out of her, the flame she's been trying to smother, like he just poured fuel on it --

"Of course I care," she says -- practically shouts. "I've always cared! Why do you think I'm here? Do you think I followed you from Athens for fun? To satisfy idle curiosity? I love you!" She shuts her mouth with an audible click. Everything seems to still, and the silence rings in her ears. She clenches her fists in the fabric and wrenches it, using her anger now, making even strips. She pushes Dean's hand away and starts to bandage him roughly, not daring to look at his face.

"Cassie," he says, gently, but she still doesn't look. Her hands are messy with his blood, going sticky with it, and blood is showing through the bandage already, but it'll have to do -- it'll probably need stitches, and she can't do this here, practically on the side of the road -- they'll have to --

Dean grabs her arm. His hands are wet with blood, too, leaving fingerprints there on her skin.

"Cassie," he says again, and she has to look at him. He's still pained -- still sweating with it -- but his eyes are open now, open and tender and looking right at her, right open so that she could look inside him if she wanted to. Like he's let the veneer slide back, let her in. He tries to pull her closer, and she shakes her head.

"Not letting you get me covered in blood," she says, shakily. He laughs.

"You're already covered in blood."

"I -- "

"Cassie," he says, again, and leans in, and she lets him kiss her. The first time, anyway. The second time she crowds closer, kisses him fiercely, bites at his lip.

"Scared me, you bastard," she whispers, and he nods, his sticky bloody fingers in her hair, and she doesn't care -- not about her hair, anyway. She has to pull back, though. "We have to go, have to..." She gestures at his arm and he nods.

"Dad should be able to stitch me up." He winces as he digs the keys to the Impala out of his pocket. "You'll have to drive."

He says it casually, but... it's the first time, the first time she's ever been allowed, and she can't see it as anything less than an admission of trust. She closes her hand around the keys. "I'll drive like a maniac," she promises, smiling at him slyly, but he doesn't take the bait. He's too focused on the pain in his arm, now, and she can't help but berate herself for having a moment with him while he was bleeding to death. She helps him to the car, startled by how weak he seems, realising that he's lost more blood than he'd let on. The stupid ass.

"Where else are you bleeding?" she asks, narrowing her eyes, and leaning against the side of the car, he starts to laugh.

"Should've known I couldn't keep it from you," he says, breathless, gritting his teeth again as if at some fresh wave of pain. She glares at him and he gestures at his leg. "It isn't so bad."

She ignores that as she moves to cut his jeans off just above the bloody slash, wondering how she could have missed it. He leans against the car above her and she tries not to be distracted by the memory of the kiss, the first one in a long time. If she's not careful, it'll be the last, too.

---

It isn't easy, it isn't just like that. As if it could ever be, between them. It's ages before Dean's healed up enough that she agrees to sleep with him, and then John makes himself a nuisance in a way that he obviously thinks is funny but really, really isn't.

But it's kind of worth it when she wakes up beside Dean, her head on his shoulder, and listens to him breathing, and thinks this is perfect. Which is a stupid thing to think, because Dean's still got an infected scratch and John snores and living in each others' pockets is awkward, and they're risking their lives every other day, and when they're not risking their lives they're driving forever down dusty roads with a broken radio -- and Dean is hell without music when he's driving -- but --

It's somehow pretty perfect anyway. Dean stirs a little, dislodging her, and she cuddles closer, sliding an arm around his waist. She liked watching him sleep right from the start -- there's something hypnotic about how still he gets, how calm, when normally he's a perpetual motion machine.

"Go back to sleep," he mumbles, into her hair, and brings a hand up to smooth it back. He keeps touching her, then: his fingers in her hair, trailing over the curve of her shoulder, fingers tracing up the neck. It's intimacy without intent; something new for him, she thinks. She closes her eyes and lets it lull her back to sleep.

---

Sometimes, she just isn't versed enough in Winchester telepathy to read the two of them. She and Dean are both working through their guns and knives, cleaning, doing maintenance, when John comes in, and something passes between them -- a look, a shared thought... She doesn't know what. Dean jumps to his feet, the knife that he'd been sharpening tumbling out of his hand.

"You found it?"

"I think I know how to track it, now," John says, with a short nod. He's moving as he speaks, grabbing his bag and beginning to stuff things into it. Cassie knows what this means, at least: they're moving on. She starts to pack away the guns and the knives, making sure they're all ready for use, so she can put her hand immediately on whatever's necessary for whatever they might face. That's becoming instinct now, too.

Dean's fists are clenched. "Do you know how to kill it yet?"

"I've got a fair idea."

Cassie doesn't like keeping her mouth shut -- and normally, they wouldn't expect her to -- but this is Dean and John's business. She waits for them to bring her into it. They always do, eventually, and it's usually sooner rather than later by now. Dean comes over to her and starts to help, his voice low and excited. "Dad tracked down the demon that killed my mom."

"And we're going to go after it?"

Dean nods. He finishes off sharpening the knives before he lets her pack them away, his eyes brighter and sharper than their blades. "Dad's figured out how to kill it."

Cassie's hands are shaking. She isn't afraid -- not really -- not more than she always is, anyway: she knows how to deal with demons, knows how to exorcise them, but -- "And you'll take me along?"

"Don't think you'd let us leave you behind," John says, when Dean doesn't answer. There's amusement in his voice, which is a surprise. Normally, when he's thinking about the demon, when he's thinking about Mary, he's gruff, quiet. He glances over his shoulder at her. "You can come with us. At least until we find the Colt."

"The Colt?" Dean asks.

John comes over to them, his bag already packed. "I'll help Dean finish this," he says, to Cassie. "You go pack, get it done yourself so you don't have to deal with creases in your lingerie, or whatever it was."

It was Dean stuffing things that needed to be washed in with everything else that had irritated her, last time, but it isn't the time to bring that up. She just leaves John to it, going over to pack her bag. "What's the Colt? And do you seriously think you're going to get rid of me once we've found it?"

"It's a gun. A gun that kill supernatural beings that an ordinary bullet wouldn't touch."

"What about my other question?"

He looks across the room at her, and actually gives a handful of seconds to considering it. "I don't want you or Dean with me -- "

"But -- "

"Dad -- "

" -- but I don't think I'm going to be able to stop you," he says, with a mock-frown, warmth still in his eyes. "No respect for your elders."

"I want to go after this thing," Cassie says. She thinks of the hurt in Dean, the hurt in both of them, the hurt that they rarely let even her see. Sometimes, when Dean wakes in the night, he calls out for his mother, and she cradles him close in her arms and puts her fingers in his hair, and hates. Hates the demon that took his mother from him, that left him this way. He isn't broken, not in the way John is, but he isn't whole, either. "I want to kill it."

"Get in line," Dean says, with a look that's actually a little bit hostile. "He's mine."

"He killed my wife," John says, calmly, too calmly. "I'll be the one that actually puts the bullet in him. Get your bag packed, Dean."

"I'm a better shot than you."

John doesn't look at Dean. "Get your bag packed."

"I wouldn't miss, Dad."

"Dean."

The tension holds for a moment, and then Cassie lets out a breath and straightens up. "Go pack your bag, Dean, unless you're desperate for me to start throwing out all your ratty old clothes."

John's eyes meet hers across the room, measuring, not sure if he should be thanking her for deferring the inevitable little power struggle. She looks away, not caring.

The demon. The end to this little saga. And then -- what? Maybe they'll stop hunting. At least they might find somewhere of their own to hunt from, rather than their current lack of direction, their nomad lifestyle, always ready to go. She misses the feeling of a home, thinks that by now she'd like to make one, thinks that by now Dean might like to make one with her.

"Time enough for dreaming once the demon is dead," John says, softly, like he's seen into her thoughts.

---

The Colt. The demon-killing Colt. John placed it in the center of the table, and now they're all just... looking at it, ridiculously, like they expect it to somehow answer their questions, come up with a plan. John looks tired, worn out, and Cassie's pretty sure she doesn't look much better. She doesn't look at Dean, just feels him beside her, his shoulder against hers. Warm and solid. When she shifts slightly, reaching for his hand, he lets her take it, tangle their fingers, but she can feel all the tension in his body. John looks up when he catches the movement, clears his throat a little.

"There are... signs, signs that show when the demon is coming," he says, slowly. "I've been tracking him, the pattern before he appears. Supernatural activity in the area goes up, there's temperature fluctuations, storms... We can predict when he's going to arrive. Normally he sticks to a pattern, too, goes after babies six months to the day after they're born."

"He doesn't always kill the mothers, though," Cassie says, remembering John's notes, and he nods slowly.

"But he does something to the children."

Dean shifts again at her side. "So Sammy -- "

"I don't know," John says, sharply, and Dean takes a deep breath and subsides again.

Cassie bites her lip, squeezing Dean's hand. "Why are you telling us this? We know about the patterns."

"The pattern is emerging around Stanford. In Palo Alto."

For a moment, Cassie can't think what that means, even as Dean tenses up impossibly more beside her, his grip on her hand almost painful. And then she remembers: the brother, the guy she's never met. The one who left, who turned his back. The one whose space remains, conspicuously, no matter what she does, no matter what happens to the three of them. She wonders if Dean and John even realise they're keeping a place for him, but knowing them, kinda thinks they don't. It's something that happens on instinct, the Winchesters as a united front against the world, never quite able to let go of one of their own...

They'll never let go of her, if they can help it. She knows that, knows she's one of them now, and it's a little frightening -- that she's in this life now, for good, that she can never turn back. But she doesn't want to. At least, not most of the time.

"Sam," she says, aloud, since neither of them seem about to do it, and John nods, a quick jerk of his head.

"Sam," he agrees.

"But that doesn't make any sense," she says, shaking her head. "It's... already done anything it wanted to do to Sam. It doesn't chase the kids down and do anything to them later, that we know of."

"That we know of," John says, shaking his head too. "We can't track down all the children like Sam. Not all the mothers died, there weren't that many nursery fires that match the pattern. But there are other children, maybe older than him."

"It wants to finish the job, whatever it wanted in the first place," Dean says, almost blankly, and then he takes his hand from Cassie's, reaches over and picks up the Colt. "Maybe Mom disturbed it in the middle of something, and that's why she had to die. So we need to kill it."

"There's another thing I thought of," John says, an odd reluctance in his voice now. He won't look at Cassie, won't look at Dean, though both of them are looking at him, waiting. "There's a girl. Sam's girlfriend."

"You've been watching out for him," Dean says, unsurprised, and -- yeah, Cassie isn't surprised either, knowing this family, how they take care of their own.

"Yeah." John shrugs slightly, looking up at them finally. "Her name's Jess. What if she's in some kind of danger? Like Mary?"

"The demon doesn't go after the women, though."

"It doesn't spare them, either," John says. There's a short silence. Cassie takes the Colt from Dean's loose hold, looks down at it.

"We need to check this out," she says, slowly. "We need to go to Stanford and find out what the demon's planning to do."

"I've got some things I need to do. People I need to see." John stands up, straightening, a decision made. "You two go. Pack up tonight, go in the morning. I don't know how much time you'll have."

"Are we taking the Colt?"

John hesitates for a moment, two, and then slowly nods -- not really agreeing, more like giving in, giving in to necessity and inevitability. "Yeah. You'd better take it. If you get the chance of a shot -- "

"Yeah," Dean says, thickly. Cassie takes his hand again, watching John, watching his face. He avoids her eyes, turning to start packing his own gear.

---

"Are we going to see you again?"

John glances up quickly and looks to the door, checking Dean's still outside, checking the car over. There won't be time to stop once they're on the road. He looks back at Cassie. "Why do you ask that?"

She shrugs slightly. "The way you're acting today... it's like you're saying goodbye. You always thought you'd go down fighting the demon that killed your wife, right? And now we're going to do it, and you don't know what to do with yourself. And if we succeed... you probably figure that we'll give up hunting, settle down, have babies. That there won't be room for you in our lives."

"Leave the psychoanalysing to people who get paid for it," he says, gruffly. "But you're right. After the demon is dead, there's no reason for you and Dean -- "

"You don't get to make that decision for us."

John narrows his eyes. "You -- "

"Look," she says, impatiently, knowing Dean will be back any moment. "Just promise me you won't disappear. Even if we kill the demon."

John shakes his head. "I don't know how this will turn out. The Colt hasn't been used like this in our lifetimes, as far as we know. There's enough time to plan what we'll do when the demon is dead when we've figured out if this will actually kill the bastard."

"But -- "

"Look after Dean," John says, and Cassie rolls her eyes.

"You've already told him to look after me," she says. "What good am I going to be?"

A shrug. "You should both look after each other. And you'll be more good than you think." He crosses the room slowly, standing in front of her, both of them suddenly awkward. "You make a better daughter in law than I'd have thought Dean would pick out," he says, and Cassie's throat closes and the tears are pricking her eyes.

"We're not married, yet," she points out, and John huffs a laugh.

"Yet," he says, and suddenly he's tugging her in, hugging her just like he does Dean. It's a goodbye, surely, and it makes Cassie want to cry and hit things, all at once. "Take care of him," he says again. "Promise."

"I promise," she says, softly, and he squeezes her and brushes a rough-gentle hand over her hair, then lets go.

"You'd better get outside and help Dean," he says, and somehow she finds her feet moving to obey without her own permission. But he clears his throat. "Cassie?"

She turns again.

"I can't promise anything, kid. Whether the demon dies or not."

"Don't you dare just disappear," she tells him, fiercely, and -- goddamnit, she loves them, both these stupid stubborn bastards.

"I'll do my best," John says, but he's a liar, Cassie knows.

---

"This is the place," Dean says, and then doesn't move. Cassie glances at him, and reads tension and eagerness in the way he's sitting, in the clench of his jaw and the leap of his pulse in his neck. If nothing else, close quarters for all this time has got her up to speed on Dean's body language. She rolls her eyes.

"Are you going to go in, or not?"

"Gonna wait and make sure he's around," Dean says. He turns off the engine, turns off the music, too, and settles back. "According to Dad, he's probably in class at this time. I could just let myself in..."

"If his girlfriend's there, you'll freak her out."

"Yeah, I guess so," he says. Cassie thinks he probably isn't paying attention to her, really, but she kinda doesn't mind. An idiot could see how important his brother is to him, and she's not any kind of idiot. She could almost conjure a story out of this, she thinks, smiling a little wryly. Exploiting the tender concern angle, the mixed emotions. It'd make a perfect article if there was some kind of story with it, just to give it some spice -- some kind of story that could actually be told, anyway.

There'd be a good story in the Winchester's lives -- more than a story, a whole damn book. But nobody would believe it was true. Nobody would understand that every single bit of it was for real.

Cassie's jolted out of that thought by Dean suddenly starting to get out of the car. "That's Sam," he says, longing and anticipation and God knows what all in his voice, all at once.

"Break a leg," she says, but he doesn't even hear her. Sam goes into the place before Dean gets there -- Cassie watches him, all long legs and big smile and not much else, from here, and wonders how much he's going to hate this intrusion into whatever life he's made here. They don't talk much about him, but she knows he wanted out. She can imagine it, understand it, even though she's the kind who had to opt in once she knew what was out there. Sam was raised to it, could never escape from it, never knew any other option.

She thinks he's probably going to hate this. Still -- it's not as though they're making this up. Sam really does need to be warned. Jess really does need to be saved.

Cassie gets a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, a metallic taste in her mouth, when she thinks about the demon, and the few details John and Dean have given her on the specifics. The worst part is that she can imagine it -- imagine it happening even to her and Dean. Imagine Dean looking up at her, pinned to the ceiling -- she can almost feel the blood...

She shakes away the thought and rolls her eyes at Dean, making an exaggerated thumbs up motion as he's about to head into the building. She half-expects Sam to not even let him in, but suspects that that wouldn't trouble Dean too much -- he has ways round that kind of thing. Even she could probably deal with the lock, now. She has good steady hands, has more patience than Dean with the difficult locks. Still, she's not that good, and Sam's probably the paranoid type -- probably made sure they had a really good lock... She would.

Not that it would keep the demon out, she thinks, and wishes she could stop thinking like this.

Dean's out again within ten minutes, and she can see just from the set of his shoulders that he's angry. She scoots into the driver's seat, starts the car, puts a tape in. Led Zeppelin. Not that it'll really calm him down, but it'll cover the awkward silence.

She doesn't need him to tell her that it didn't go well. There's nothing much to be said.

She drives them back to the motel room, and Dean doesn't complain. He just taps his fingers against the leather seats, and doesn't look at her.

"We'll need to wait outside their place, tonight," he says, finally, and Cassie nods.

"Yeah," she says, and wishes she wondered when that kind of suggestion became normal, wishes she didn't know how exactly she'd come to knowing what Dean would say to this new problem before he ever said it. And she wishes she didn't have a good idea of how tonight's going to go down, wishes she didn't think that her first glimpse of Jessica Moore is going to be the last, is going to be her pinned to the ceiling. If she even sees that much of her.

This life's going to be the death of them all, she thinks, even her and Dean, especially her and Dean -- and she winces a little at how damned true that probably is.

---

Cassie's restless. She peers up at the lighted windows in all the apartments, and then glances at Dean, at her watch, at the few people still wandering around. It's dark out now, mostly, though there's still enough light to see most things by. She can see Dean's face, oddly calm, like he's ready for anything. The box containing the Colt is at her feet -- by some unspoken agreement, neither of them have taken it out, though they know it should be ready at a moment's notice. Dean loaded it earlier, got everything ready, but then they put it back in the box, as if to deny they'd need it.

She glances at her watch again. Time is crawling, she thinks. It can't have been more than a minute since she last looked at her watch, but it felt like ten.

Something scrapes at the back of her mind, a warning, something in John's voice --

She looks down at the watch again. The second hand is still. Her heart leaps up into her throat. "Dean," she says, urgently, and he seems to understand at the same moment, opening the car door and already running, recklessly. Running for Sam, she thinks, because nothing else matters to him right now. Sam comes first, before anything else. She has to stop long enough to grab the Colt, because they're all going to be in danger, Dean is going to be in danger, and she has to -- she has to do this right, for John's sake, because he told her to take care of Dean, and she's letting him just run wildly into the place without taking the damn gun --

It fits in her hand shockingly well, and she feels a sort of resolution fill her. She's known it before, even before she was a hunter -- she felt it when Dean first told her about hunting. This is the moment, this is the exact moment, and she can take her life in her hands now and do it, whatever it is that needs to be done, or she can let it pass by and regret it forever.

She's barely aware of the run into the place, the stairs, the sounds of Dean's feet ahead of her or the cry as he wrenches open the door. Sam's there, she sees him, that strangely familiar face and voice as he says something to Dean -- she knows him, somehow, knows him by the shape of his absence all this time -- and there's Jess, startled, her mouth open. She's wearing a nightgown or something, something light and soft and white, and she looks... somehow just like Cassie imagined it, and --

And there he is.

Cassie wishes she could give the gun to Dean. She wishes she could do that. She raises the gun, and sees Jess' startled exclamation -- her heart is pounding too hard for her to hear it -- and she wonders if this is going to be it, the end of the Winchesters' quest, the end of their curse, and she wonders where John is and what he's doing, and wonders if the Colt is going to really work --

All these months with Dean, all this time, and all for this -- like things falling into place.

As Dean drags Jess and Sam out of the way, Cassie fires.

---

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Comments

Excellent

[singingchickadee]

I loved this fic; I hope you do a follow up but this is Perfection. Thanks for posting, I love Cassie/Dean stories. The whole lay out of this fic was just right. I also write cassie/dean fics usually under the name EdenWrites. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Excellent

[edenbound]

Thank you! I don't normally read/write Dean/Cassie, but sometimes when the idea strikes, you just have to go with it, haha.