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Chapter 75 - Always Be A Martyr

✦Read on aO3! - Series Masterlist - Main Masterlist - Chapter 74✦

✦summary: you have some unexpected visitors✦

✦warnings/tags: friends to lovers, canon divergence, slow burn, angst, fluff, pining, action, smut, no use of y/n✦

✦author's note: always remember that dean without princess is a sad guy but princess without dean is. bad.✦

Apr. 11 - 2010

Princess,

Went to a bar last night. Going to bars most nights. I’d say it was just for hustling, but there not really anything to lie for. You’re not here. If I get you back, I don’t even know if you’ll ever read these. Point is, bar. They had a big Indiana Jones poster on the wall. Tested the Shirley Temples for you, too. You’d like it. I’ll take you there, when you get home.

You gotta come home.

I don’t know where I’m going, Princess. I miss you. Think about you all the time. Need you.

These letters all sound the same. Sorry. Never done this before, but you know that.

I hope you know that. Shit, I hope you never thought I didn’t want you. I know I sleep slept around a lot, but I only ever loved you. Fuck, Princess, I call your name when I have sex and I think about that apple pie life with you. Promised Sammy I’d have it, with you, after he went into the cage. Always thought I’d end up making you a house, getting you a ring, marrying you. We’d have a good wedding. You’d plan it, but I’d help. I’d want to help. I’d try to help, and you’d make me stop cause you’re bossy. But you’d do it better anyway. You’d look hot in the dress, and I’d wear a nice suit that doesn’t have any blood on it, then we’d get married. Go somewhere nice and sunny for our honeymoon.

I’ve had a lot of dreams about that honeymoon, Princess. Could do a whole separate letter about it.

But I mostly just have a lot of dreams about you.

This one is my favorite.

We get married. Live together, and no monsters come knocking. God never takes you. I give you kids. I’d like five, it’s a good number, but just one would make me the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet. If it’s gotta be one, I always hoped it was a girl. She’d look just like you, but I think she’d have my taste in music. She’d like Star Wars, too. Uncle Sammy would watch it with her (he’d try to be uncle sam, but you wouldn’t let that happen) and Grandpa Bobby would teach her about cars because she’s too cool to talk to her dad about it.

You give me nothing back, by the way. You’ve given enough, baby girl.

And I promised Sammy I’d at least give you this, but you jumped in the cage. And I know you saved the world, but fucking Christ, shouldn’t have been you. I don’t know why it always has to be you. It’s some fucking bullshit.

And you’d tell me it has to be you and i’d say it doesn’t then you say it does.

I’d never make it you.

I bought that box I mentioned. Last month? Can’t remember. You’ll check. Couldn’t find pink. Got gold and purple. Looks fancy. You’d like it.

Yours,

DAW

You look over to that same box, resting on the chipped, wooden workbench. More letters are strewn around it, divided by what you’ve read and what you’re reading today. The Lady is sitting on the read pile, and Indy’s sprawled next to your leg, her wing’s spread and tail twitching in her sleep. You’ve had to limit yourself to three a day at most. Anymore than that and you start to cry so much it feels like drowning. On the worst days you can’t see anything in negatives of Gold, a blur of muddied colors that aren’t Dean, and the last stains of him on your hands. You press them into your skin, trying to force them a layer deeper, to make them tattoo.

It isn’t quite working. And reading the letters hurts as much as it helps.

Dean left little Golden stains, on the faded paper. Spots where his palm must have pressed, where his fingers must’ve traced a word before deciding he’d gotten the spelling right, or scribbled it out and tried again. The thought makes you smile. Dean hunched over a table, chewing on the tip of his pen. Corrects his tenses, for sleep versus slept. Writing pricess before frowning and mouthing out the word, then trying again and getting it right. It couldn’t have been easy for him, to do this night after night. He doesn’t even like grocery lists, because he’s got it all in his head.

But he did. Every night, for at least a year, Dean sat down and wrote you a letter.

I mostly just have a lot of dreams about you.

You dream about him too. It’s all you dream about. All you’ve ever dreamt about. And you have no way to tell him that. No way for him to know you’re reading his letters, then holding them tight to your chest as you sob of the warehouse floor.

Thunder rumbles outside. The locals say it’s monsoon season come early, but you looked at the weather this morning. Clear skies, all the way into tomorrow.

You’re stretching out over the horizon, under the bridges until the water rises to try and get away from itself, into the clouds that can’t bear to be so high and cold and alone and untethered anymore. They’ve seen enough. Been too many places, and now everything is just Mountains they have to cross and views that means nothing alone. They want to come down. You want to come down. The sky vibrates and the static becomes violent, because you want to come down but there’s nowhere you can land that will be home.

Lightning splits the sky outside the warehouse window, lighting up the ghoul, limp and silent in the chair. You wipe the tears with the palm of your hand, glaring at the body. Bobby’s bottle glows on the bench next to the letters, and it feels awfully judgmental.

“That one wasn’t even me,” you mutter. “She was like that when I got here.”

Bobby shimmers with the roll of thunder. Disapproval prickles over your neck.

“It wasn’t me,” you glare at him, and he seems to twist. “It wasn’t, dad, it was- I don’t know, I think she killed herself or something.”

Your stomach gets small and tight as the warehouse flashes with more lightning. You didn’t know a bottle could raise its brows with quiet, measured doubt, but this one seems perfectly capable of it. It’s somehow the same face Bobby used to give you when he’d come back to a wolf pup in the shed that you weren’t allowed to keep—you’d just been trying to find it’s mother, it wasn’t your fault you bonded with it—or the garden overgrown with flowers that weren’t supposed to bloom for another few months, over the railings and sticking up between the cracks of the porch.

“I’m going to get rid of the body,” you mutter, tracing over Dean’s handwriting on that last letter. “I’m just- I’m busy.”

Bobby hums with doubt, and you shoot him a glare.

“Well- You do it then. Oh, right.” You stick your tongue out at him. “You’re a bottle. You don’t get a vote.”

You’re talking to a bottle, sweetheart,” Dean’s voice seems to murmur in your ear, and you sigh.

You know. You might be going a little crazy, but you’ve been crazier. At least you’re not tying a demon up in a bathtub to talk about your feelings this time. You put that on Indy and the Lady—who listen with half interest, although that might just be because you’re petting them—and Bobby’s soul.

And who knows. Maybe he can actually hear you in there. Sam remembered everything from when his soul was on blockers. You remember everything from the cage. And it’s a little different, but same principle. Maybe. You don’t think anyone’s ever been a soul in a bottle before, and as far as you know Bobby’s just sitting in the little heaven you made for him, blissfully unaware of the disaster outside.

You haven’t made much progress on finding Dean. Jo suggested you think of it less like no progress and more like closer to making progress. You told her to stop watching Dr. Phil reruns. There’s a reason she and Dean always did that without you and Sam. You’d get mad and shout at the TV and bitch about his inaccuracies until Dean covered your mouth and Sam got kicked out.

You cover your own mouth, and close your eyes. Your hand is too small. You don’t have the same callouses and scars. You just manage to block a small sob, and it makes your body shake with another burst of thunder. Indy nuzzles into your thigh, and you lean over yourself, trying to bottle up the aching, angry, cold that burns in your chest like a dying star. It leaks out in hot tears and trembling fingers that make the earth shake. The ghoul’s body makes a loud, gooey snapping sound as it’s neck finds a strange and ugly angle, but you only spare it a glance before you have to make yourself smaller.

Everything blurs, except for Dean’s words on the page.

You give me nothing back, by the way. You’ve given enough, baby girl.

You’ve barely given anything. You can’t even find him and bring him home, for that life you can’t stop thinking about, no matter how hard it makes it not to scream.

God is still hidden, leaving the sky empty and yours to rip in half. There’s more lightning. More thunder. The Lady jumps off the work bench and lays over Indy’s hide, clearly annoyed by the noise. You pet her ears and watch the rain fall, pulling yourself back together with a hand around your throat.

A new strategy might be in order. This is the fourth monster this month, who’s killed themselves before you could talk. It’s pretty fucking rude.

“Word must be gettin’ round,” Jo muttered last night. “You ain’t exactly subtle, and- Y’know.” She’d given you a pointed look. “Once you got eyes on ‘em, not much they can do.”

You’d grunted, cleaning your knife with short, brutal movements. The anger and exhaustion was starting to bubble up, and Dean always said you were worse at hiding it than you thought. You get pissy face, he’d murmur, petting your head. And start snappin’ at me like you wanna kill me.

Maybe I do wanna kill you, you’d snip, and Dean would raise his brows. You’d huff, and he’d chuckle.

Princess-

Shut up-

Just let me handle it, he’d duck down, smiling soft at your taut, narrowed face. Alright?

You’d agree, even if you didn’t want to. Dean always had a way to placate you, and when he said he’d handle it, you believed him. He’d never failed, when he made that promise. But he wasn’t here to handle things now. So you’re allowed to be as curt and pissy as you fucking want.

“I’ll figure it out,” you’d muttered, and Jo had hummed. You could feel her worry, poking under your skin. She knew you too well to push it. You knew her too well to think she didn’t want to.

Then, this morning, you showed up to the Ghoul dead, and you’d maybe snapped her neck in frustration. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair, and you were stomping around and whining like a child, but it wasn’t fucking fair.

The rain keeps falling. You’re exactly where you started, only with letters in your hands and a splitting pit in your gut that only gets deeper every day. Sometimes you can almost feel a warm, steady hand on your shoulder. Then you turn around, and there’s nothing there at all.

You start to clean up. The letters go back in the box, the box and the bottle go in the bag, the Ghoul gets taken out the river and burned to ash. It might be time to leave India, if Jo’s right. The monsters talk. If they all know you—know what you are, know what you want, and what you’ll do to get it—you’re basically running a euthanization camp, and that’s a little too fucked up, even for you.

“I would’ve let you go,” you mutter to the ghoul’s ashes as you dump them in the water. “I- I don’t like- I don’t like being this.”

The river swallows the gray, and sweeps it away down the swelling bank. Indy splashes about excitedly. You worry she’ll fall in, so you whistle and walk back inside. She whines, but follows.

“Can’t let people see you, baby,” you pet her head as she romps over to your side. “That’s how bad things happen.”

Indy looks like she’s rolling her eyes, and you smile faintly. Dean would’ve laughed. He would’ve said she’s acting just like her mom, and kissed you on the side of the head.

You hug yourself tight around the stomach, and let out a sigh that’s heavier than the thick, dark clouds. You miss him. You miss him so fucking much.

But you don’t miss him enough to be stupid. If anything, no Dean means you’re sharper than even, made of nothing but a steel resolve to get him back. Your head hurts and your back aches and there’s no color in the world to distract you, so everything is sharp, clear lines of black and white.

The door to the warehouse is ajar, and you pause with your head on the wood, eyes narrowing on the broken lock. Your lips tighten to a thin line, and you reach for your knife. Indy hangs back, the rain beating down over your heads. You slip inside, your back to the wall, your head on swivel. Something clatters by the bench, and you let out another, sharp whistle.

Indy bangs inside and Claire shrieks as she’s tackled to the ground.

You sigh, wiping your soaked hair from your face. “Claire, what- You’re supposed to be at the motel-“

“I was bored,” she whines, pushing at Indy’s wings as the dragon recognizes her and starts trying to lick her face. “And Jo- Jo’s too far away, and I know where you were-“

“And you know you’re not supposed to come here,” you scold, tucking your knife back away. “You could’ve gotten hurt-“

“But I didn’t. And it’s stupid I’m not supposed to come here, it’s just a warehouse-“

“It’s just a warehouse,” you say flatly, petting Indy’s horns as she trots back to your side. “Because I just got rid of the body.”

Claire’s eyes widen, her face lighting up with something too close to excitement. “The body?!”

You hum, and Claire stands a little taller.

“Can I see it? I’ve seen bodies before, and I- I won’t touch it, I promise-“

“I just got rid of it,” you give her a pointed look, and her shoulders slump.

“Oh- right.” She shifts of her feet, glancing back at the work bench, then the empty chair. “Did you… kill it?”

You sigh. For a second, you think about lying, although you’re not sure that’s better than the truth. Bobby wouldn’t have lied to you. “No,” you mutter. “It killed itself.”

“Why?”

You shrug. You’re sticking to the no lying thing. She still doesn’t need to know every brutal truth. You don’t need her to look at you like the monster, cleaving through the world to get want she wants and still coming up with nothing but blood covered hands. “I was just wrapping up,” you say softly, and if Claire notices you dodging the question, she only frowns. “And you know the rules. You’re allowed to stay with us, but-“

“No hunting stuff,” Claire finishes. “I know I- I wasn’t here for that.”

You give her a sideways look. Her voice had dropped to something small, and it’s worrying. She’s hugging her middle and looking at her shoes, and it makes worry itch over your skin, every muscle getting tight as you brace to fight something off. You lean against the workbench, dipping your head to try and meet her gaze. “Claire?”

She grunts, glancing up at you, then back down. Your frown deepens.

“Claire, if something happened, I need you to tell me-“

“Nothing happened,” she mutters, and you don’t believe her.

“Look, I- can’t promise I won’t be mad,” you murmur gently. “But I won’t yell, and I promise we’ll fix it-“

“Nothing happened!” Claire shouts, glaring at you under lidded eyes. “I just- I was hungry, okay? I wanted to go- To get dinner with you.” Her gaze drops back down. “But if you- If you’re busy.” She shrugs, kicking a pebble. “It’s fine. It’s like- Whatever.”

You stare at her for a moment, the words slow to sink in. First there’s relief, easing that clench in your stomach—she’s fine, everything’s fine—and then a smile that crawls over your face. “You want to get dinner? With me?”

Claire nods, though it’s more of a toss of her head.

“Are you- I mean,” you rub your wrist, watching her carefully. “I know Dean isn’t- Here- and you usually do dinner with him, but-“ You swallow. You love Dean, you do, but sometimes you wonder if people are surprised that he loves you back, and not even for the loud, sick reasons you used to be.

Dean’s fun. He can grumble about being old and strict all he wants, you know he used to take Sam out for fireworks and scrape by a little extra so they could see movies. He makes Cas try new human foods and plays drinking games over pool with Jo and gets you to smile and crawl a little out of your shell without feeling too bare, because he’s at your side the whole time. You dance with him. You smile with him, and actually… Do things.

You never do things, without Dean. Every single time you’ve been left without him—Brazil, Iran, Italy, and now India—it becomes painfully obvious you might be the most boring person alive. Dean would say you aren’t boring. That you’re just a different kind of fun.

If the letters are proving anything to you, it’s that Dean’s love for you might be the only thing that makes him blindly stupid. You are not fun. And if Claire is expecting fun—like when Dean brings her paintball shooting, or all of you to minigolf and he decides he simply has to guide the club in your hand while leaving Claire to her own devices, before you elbow him in the gut for thinking you need the extra help—you can’t offer anything like that by yourself. And you really, really don’t want her to be disappointed.

But right now, she mostly looks confused. As if she can’t even begin to figure out what you’re suggesting.

“I know I can’t do dinner with Dean,” she says, almost sounding offended. “I wouldn’t even want to right now, I- I want to have dinner with you.” She scowls to herself. “Or- Whatever.”

Your smile returns fast. “With me?”

“Duh.” She rolls her eyes. “You’ve asked that like, three times now. Did you hit your head or something-“

“No, I- I just-“ You shake off your shook, the smile feeling easier on your face. “Yeah,” you say softly. “We can do dinner.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

Claire says it like she doesn’t care, but you can hear the threat of joy, pushing under her voice. You grab the duffle bag and nod to the car. And when she stomps past you, it’s almost visible behind her slightly matted hair.

A smile.

You have to drop of Indy and the Lady first—regular pets aren’t allowed in restaurants, let alone magic ones—but Claire finds a place on her phone, and you text Jo to tell her you’ll be back later. You know she’ll make dinner for herself, after she gets back from getting the scrolls you asked for. You’d offer for her to join you, but some small, selfish part of you just wants it to be you and Claire.

“How’s school?” You ask when you sit down, watching her carefully. “You know, if you miss actual school-“

“Please don’t offer to bring me back again,” Claire says, crossing her arms. “I’m not doing it. My friends will be there when we get Dean back, and I’ll get to tell them all about my year abroad. This is making me cool. Going home will make me lame.”

You laugh softly, but nod. You’re trying not to offer too much, but you still think she should go back. You didn’t get to go to real school. She deserves better than that. “What do you tell your friends?” You ask, deciding that’s a safer path to go down. “About your life?”

“I dunno,” Claire shrugs, and you raise your brows.

“Dean told me you call him your dad-“

“No, I don’t!” Claire scowls. “Everyone- They just assumed he was my dad, because he kept dropping me off and picking me up after I told him not to, but-“

“He never listens to that kind of stuff,” you let out a small, light breath of a laugh. “God, it- It used to kill me and Sam, you know. I thought I was going to wake up and find him trying to microchip me.”

“He’s so annoying.” Claire grumbles. “It was awful, it was like he thought I was a baby-“

“He does think you’re a baby.”

Claire shoots upright. “I knew it-“

“He also thinks Sam’s a baby,” you push on, and Claire frowns. “And I’m a baby. And Cas, and Jo-“

“Jo’s not a baby,” Claire scoffs, and you snort.

“But I am?”

“No, I- No.” Claire goes a little red. “You’re just like- It makes sense that Dean’s so dramatic about you-“

“Because I’m a baby?” You raise your brows, and Claire shakes her head frantically.

“No, you’re his wife or whatever, and Sam’s his brother, and-“

“You’re his kid,” you cut, gently but firmly, and Claire deflates. “You’re our responsibility, and Dean- He takes that very seriously.”

Claire huffs, glaring at her fork, and your lips twitch.

“It’s also annoying.” You add, leaning across the table. “But- At least he’s never tried to handcuff you together.”

Her head shoots up, all the annoyance draining fast. “He tried to handcuff you?”

You nod, and tell the story. It was an old, old hunt. Before he died, right after he found out you weren’t exactly human. The Hell House hunt he’d insisted on doing, that you’d been resistant to tagging along on. You’d wanted to research, but Dean had begged, and you’d never been good at telling him no. When Sam and the geek-squad of fake hunters had started going missing, Dean had gotten paranoid. You’d told him you were going back upstairs to try and trace one of the death echoes. He demanded to come with you, you told him no—he’d be in danger, you’d be fine—so he’d started shouting about handcuffing you together. You’d smacked him and done it anyway, before going back to the duffle bag and making proper wards.

“He was so pissed,” you smile to yourself. “It was adorable.”

Claire hums, tilting her head slightly. “Huh.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, it’s just-“ She shrugs. “That’s not what happens in the books.”

You stare at her for a second, then sigh. Long and heavy, to hide your laugh. “You’ve been reading the books? Claire, I’ve told you, they’re not-“

“I know they’re not right!” She insists. “I know! But I want to know what happened, and what to do, and- They’re good books-“

“No, they’re not.”

She slumps. “No,” she mumbles. “They’re not. Did you know that the- The Carver guy-“

“Chuck,” you supply, and she nods.

“Right, Chuck- He made Jo and Dean a thing, I mean- It’s so gross.”

She mocks gags, and you snort. It’s more hilarious than disgusting, for you to think about. Jo would skin Dean alive if he hit on her. And Dean wouldn’t hit on her. That part’s just simple.

“And you’re really not in them,” Claire continues complaining. “Which is like- Crazy.”

You hum in agreement. “You know, I can tell you things that actually happened. There are parts that aren’t mine, but-“ You shrug. “I’ll tell you.”

Claire’s whole face lights up. “Really? For real?”

“Yeah.” You smile. “Really for real.”

Dinner goes quickly after that. Claire all but interrogates you about everything from Dean getting Sam at college to being dragged to hell. You tell her what you can, adding other detail about your life apart from them. Claire seems the most interested in those parts, asking question after question until you lose track.

“Sam and Dean are boring,” she says when you point it out. “They’re all just- Men.” She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t get why that’s so interesting.”

You snort. You’re using that one on Dean, when he gets home. “I’m just a woman-“

“No,” Claire shakes her head, swirling her straw around her drink. “You’re cool.”

That makes you laugh again, shaking your head. “I am not cool-“

“You kill demons-“

“All hunters kill demons-“

“You do it with your hands.” Claire insists. “You’re cool.”

You’re starting to think she might be Dean’s biological daughter. “Claire-“

“I agree with the girl,” a cool, measured voice says from behind you, and every nerve in your body sparks. “You are… Cool.”

You don’t need to turn, to know what you’re dealing with. Your back hurts, your head throbs, and the world stands still through you didn’t push time to a stop. The angel must have just dropped down, if you didn’t feel them before. They were smart, as well, to do it when you were with Claire. Otherwise you’d pluck it’s feathers clean, then introduce it to a lovely chair in a warehouse.

It’s not even that strong an angel, when they walk to stand behind Claire. Duller than Cas—the last time you saw him, at least—with no extra feathers or features. Electric rainbow and a stale kind of brown-purple, thousands of thinner hands and eyes that don’t seem to blink. Not much bigger than Balthazar, really. Not anything you’d need to worry about.

She’s keeping herself in the body of a red-headed woman that makes you look loose and carefree. You think you’ve seen her face in corporate commercials and stock photos of a businesswoman doing business. You wouldn’t glance twice in a crowd, if she wasn’t harboring this brave, stupid angel. You tip your head, waiting for her to speak, and she finally blinks. Once. Slowly. Like you’re not what she expected to see, despite the fact that—if there’s one thing about your situation that you’re certain of—you’re one of a kind.

“Your… Holiness,” she dips her head, and your mouth pulls down.

That’s better than what you expected. You still don’t like it. “Just-“ You say your name tightly. “That’s fine.”

She nods, but it’s a curt motion. Saying your holiness had seemed to pain her slightly. Your name doesn’t roll off any easier. “My apologies for interrupting your night. I needed to speak with you.”

You lean back in your chair, crossing your arms. “You know, I take calls.”

Her face twitches. “Yes, well, I figured this is a conversation best had in person.”

“Hm,” you look her up and down. “If you’re looking for Cas, I don’t know where-“

“I am not concerned about Castiel. I would not-“ Her jaw flexes. “Your time is more valuable than that… Strange little traitor. And I must say, I am glad you have finally realized such.”

You frown. You might be furious at Cas—really, really furious—but that doesn’t mean you’re above his time. He’s Cas. He’s strange and valuable, and he’s a little bit of a traitor but you’ve all betrayed each other all the time so it doesn’t really matter, and this angel doesn’t get to just come in and-

You take a long, deep breath. Steady. You need to be the mountains, not the wildfire. Steady.

“I’m sorry,” you say, making sure you don’t sound it. “Who are you?”

The angel tenses, then bows her head again. “Naomi, your-“ She cuts herself off from another holiness, and decides this time to say your name in Enochian. You like her even less.

“Naomi,” you echo. “You don’t look like a Naomi.”

She frowns, glancing down at her vessel and smoothing her pencil skirt. “My apologies. I rarely have time to concern myself with things like looks. That is a very… Human worry.”

She says the word human like it’s dirty. You decided you don’t like her at all. “I concern myself with looks,” you say, and Naomi’s wings flutter strangely.

“You are above judgement-“

“What do you want?” You cut her off, sliding your hand over your knife. “Because I don’t know if you’ve heard up there, but this isn’t exactly a good time.”

Naomi—to her very thin credit—doesn’t flinch. She glances at your hand and swallows, but takes a step forward. Arrogance does seem to pour off of her. She seems remarkably confident you’re not about to flay her grace from inside out, and—for Claire’s sake—you hope she’s right.

“We know everything,” she says, her voice odd, as if she’s trying to sound kind. “The Leviathan hive rotting, the death of Eve, the… Loss of Sam and Dean Winchester.” She pauses, eyeing you cautiously. “Heaven- We might keep our hands clean, but that does not mean we ever allow ourselves to be ignorant, especially after Castiel’s little stunt with the door.”

She makes a bitter face, and you narrow your eyes. She doesn’t like Cas. You think she needs to get away from Claire, now.

“It wasn’t just Cas,” you say, moving to your feet. She takes a step back. Good. “I was the one who opened the door-“

“You were under undue influence from a silver-tongued charlatan, and-“ Naomi cuts herself off with a huff, feathers shaking tightly out. “I am not here,” she snips. “To discuss the sentence of Castiel. I am here for you,” she says your name in Enochian, and your grip on your knife tightens. “And nothing else.”

“I don’t know if you’re aware.” You mutter, moving closer again. Naomi goes another step back. “But people who come for me don’t usually walk away, let alone with their intended prize.”

“I did not say I was here to collect you,” Naomi says. “I said I was here for you.” She sniffs, almost offended. “Heaven knows better than to try and take you-“

“Do they?” You mock. “Because if that’s the case, and the rest of you have been so clear about our relationship,” you gesture between your bodies with the knife. “Then you’ve been putting some real dummies in charge.”

Naomi’s jaw ticks. “Raphael- He had to make choices, to move against Castiel-“

“Not Raphael,” you click your tongue. “Zachariah. Michael. They both tried what even Lucifer knew better than to attempt, hell, even God,” you laugh, and Naomi pales. “He doesn’t just grab me. He can’t.” You twist a ring on your finger, sticking your chin high. “So if Heaven is under new management, you might want to pass on a memo about previous bad decision.”

“Heaven is under new management,” Naomi says tightly. “Me.”

“Oh, congratulations-“

“And as the new management,” she raises her voice over yours, twitching at your amused look. “I have decided that it is time to request, politely,” she takes a deep breath. “That you come home.”

You stare at her for a long moment. Naomi glance at your hand, then your openly surprised expression. Her wings flutter, seemingly ready to take off.

And you start to laugh. You laugh so hard your throat hurts, so hard you have to grab the back of Claire’s chair to stay upright.

“No,” you snort, shaking your head. “No, oh my- Did you think that was going to work?”

Naomi swallows, going stiff again. “I believe that my predecessors took the wrong foot, with the woman destined to be our Queen-“

“Yeah, they didn’t think I was destined for that, or- Well, Michael did. But he was kind of stupid and crazy, and Zacharaih, well, I put him in a jar for a reason. And I’ve gotten better at that, too- Hey,” you smile at her. “Would you like to be in a jar?”

“No,” Naomi mutters. “I would not, your holiness.”

“Great. Makes sense.” You wave. “See you around, then.”

You start to walk back to your chair. You’ve made yourself clear, though you didn’t think you’d have to. Between going up to Heaven and being tossed back into the cage for a few weeks, you’d pick the cage. At least you’d get to see Dean.

But Naomi—for all her talk about not being like her predecessors—doesn’t get your very strict, well-communicated message. She clears her throat. She doesn’t leave.

You’re starting to think she does want to be put in a jar.

“What?” You spin around, crossing your arms. “Are you going to try saying please?”

Naomi doesn’t pretend to smile. She pushes her chin to match yours and plants her heels, her wings spreading in her vessel like she’s trying to get bigger. If she thinks that’s going to intimidate you, she’s getting stupider by the second. You’re bigger than the sky.

“Heaven knows everything,” she repeats, and she’s making it way too easy to laugh.

“Yeah, I got that-“

“We know about Eve’s plan,” she adds, and you go still. “And we know that Old Heaven was not quiet as locked as she assumed.”

You swallow. There’s no fear buzzing under your skin, but there is a sickening kind of clarity. A deep, rooting sense that if Naomi isn’t asking you a question. She’s giving you a warning. A reminder.

You’re never going to be someone who gets out.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say, twisting Dean’s ring on your finger. Naomi’s mouth curves slightly, making her look snakish and cold.

“Forgive me, your holiness, but I think you do.”

You don’t answer. If she wants to speak, she can, but you won’t be entertaining this. Not now. Not when you’re still clawing back to a bed you can stand to sleep in.

“When the Winchester’s went to Heaven, the first time, after Zachariah took the boy,” Naomi smiles faintly, taking a daring step closer. “Old Heaven was breached. We thought it was one of ours, a young one who’d gotten too curious, a fool who thought they could go home, but no.” She tips her head. “It was only after Michael’s failure that we realized it had been you. Slipping in and out of a door we thought we’d shut so well it could never open, even with the combined grace of Heaven. We should’ve known from the start. After all, the only other individual who could’ve done such a thing was our father, and well-“ She laughs coldly. “We all know about that.”

Your eyes flick out to the sky. Still empty. You wonder—when you look back to Naomi’s cold expression—if she knows he’s not all that gone at all.

“The angels closed it?” You ask before you can think better, and Naomi nods.

“Yes, we did.”

“Hm,” you work your lips. “Why.”

“The Leviathan’s- The were unforgiving, when Eve unleashed them.” A shadow passes over Naomi’s face. “They tore through our home, destroyed everything we’d built, everything our father had given us-“ Her words turned sour. “Everything he refused to give us after.”

You swallow, glancing back down at Claire. There’s a kernel of pity, at the bottom of your heart. It’s the same thing that strains for monsters, before they try to hurt your Dean. It burned for the Oracle girl you had to kill last year. It pulses for Naomi, small and quiet, but there all the same. You’ve never had a place that you could hold onto like a home. Even Bobby’s house was more about Bobby that the foundation in the ground.

But Dean is gone. And you feel like everywhere you are is wrong. And you understand.

“I am sorry,” you say gently. “For your home. But-“

“Just- Listen.” Naomi moves forward again. Her voice drops to something desperate. “God never opened the door, after it was closed. He left our home to rot, he made us live in that- Cold place full of humans and stone and-“ She lets out a sharp, slow breath, visibly collecting herself. “Many of us still call Old Heaven home. It could be our home again, and your precious little pets,” she nods around the restaurant, around the human’s frozen in laughter and mirth and arguments and quiet satisfaction, with the beauty of a world they don’t even know they could lose. “We’d leave them alone,” Naomi says, giving you a quiet, pleading look. “We’d leave the apocalypse to lie. You’d be where you belong, with other beings of Heaven. All you’d need to do is open the door, and you- You’d be giving us-“

“Paradise?” You finish, and Naomi shakes her head.

“A home.”

You take a deep, slow breath, staring down at your feet. You can’t count the things that are real, swimming through this frozen time. You want to help. The kernel pulls, and the idea of angels never bothering you again, and-

Home. Never running. Never getting out.

Naomi leans a little forward, voice dropping low. “We’d do everything you asked. We’ve already prepared most of the spell, if you wish to do it like that. You have the first beast, and we could get your man of god-“

Your head snaps up, and Naomi goes silent. Her eyes widen ever so slightly, as the heat in the air rises. You know she heard it.

Her mistake.

“My man,” you repeat, spinning your knife in your hands. “You know where he is.”

Naomi shakes her head, retreating on shaking legs. “No, I didn’t-“

“You said you could retrieve him,” you snap. “Which means you know, which means you could bring him back-“

“We- We have ideas-“ Naomi’s attention flits around the room, like she’s looking for a way out. “We’re willing to help, on our terms.”

“No,” you raise a finger. “No. You don’t get terms. You bring me my Dean back. Now.”

“We have conditions.”

“You have nothing,” you hiss. “And you will have even less, if you don’t get my Dean-“

The world cracks, loud enough you feel it in your chest. You lunge for Naomi, right as she shoots up into the sky. Your fingers just slip against her feathers, and you’re all the celestial winds between the worlds, always trying to be something else, somewhere else, never satisfied enough and never allowed to rest. You’d let them rest. If they brought you Naomi, they’d never have to rush again-

The restaurant bursts back to life. A waiter trips against you, her platter slipping to the floor. You catch it, still staring up at the sky, and pass it into her hands without a glance. Heaven knows. Heaven literally knows where Sam and Dean are, they could get them back, you could get him back-

“Woah,” Claire says, still seated at the table. “How did you get there?”

And you deflate. You let the winds go, let Naomi go, just for tonight. You have something to work with, and if Naomi says she could get Dean, that means you could get him. That means he’s somewhere you can reach.

You smile at the ceiling. A few of the lights, humming with excitement, burst their fixtures, sending sparks around a gasping room. Your smile widens, and you offer a hand to Claire’s bemused face.

“Do you want ice cream?” You ask. “We could do that, then a movie.”

Claire blinks for a second—sharp girl, she probably noticed more than just you moving—but nods, and takes your hand. “I want toppings,” she says before you’re out the door, and you laugh.

“You can have whatever you want.”

And what Claire wants turns out to be a pile of toppings so high, they have to get her a second bowl to hold it.

“I think you’re just eating candy now, kiddo,” you observe, and she shrugs.

“I’m making up for time.”

“Time? You’re barely fifteen-“

“Yeah, but- I wasn’t allowed to have candy at all when I was a kid,” she wrinkles her nose. “My mom said it was bad for my teeth.”

You hum, licking some of your own ice cream. “It’s still bad for your teeth.”

“But you’ll fix me if I get cavities,” Claire says smugly, and she’s right. You will.

“Only twice,” you warn. “Then I start bringing you to the dentist.”

“Gross, that’s- We don’t even have insurance-“

“I know we don’t.” You smirk. “The dentist is what I call Jo and her pliers.”

Claire squawks, and you laugh at her slack expression. “That- That was so mean,” she says, but it almost seems to be in awe. “You’re never mean.”

“I’m never mean to you,” you correct. “I’m very mean to people who deserve it.”

Claire’s eyes gleam. “Who deserves it?” She demands. “Who are you mean to?”

“Hm,” you tilt your head at the air. “You remember Ruby?”

Claire nods eagerly, and you tell her all about that disaster on the way home. You wish you’d been the one to kill her, but since you were running around Europe, you’re glad it was Dean. Claire seems glad too, huffing about it by the time you get back to the motel, acting like she’d been personally there the whole time. Just like Dean, you smile to yourself. He’d do the same thing, when you told him about other witches or hunters that were pissing you off.

Claire talks you into one of her movies tonight. You hesitate—that’s supposed to be a her and Dean thing—but she drags you onto the couch, specifically picking one you’ve never seen. That Dean’s been trying to get you to see for almost eleven years.

“I don’t like horror,” you say. “Dean only likes it because he gets to watch it like a sports match-“

“Yeah, but I’m going to watch it like a person.” Claire hits play. “And then,” she mutters under her breath. “Rub it in Dean’s face that I got you to watch it first.”

You laugh at that, and settle into the couch. It can’t be all that scary. You’ve seen the face of the devil and the man that tried to eat him. Everything else looks like rainbows in comparison. Claire hugs herself around the middle, oddly quiet for a little too long. You wait for her to say something, watching the shadows move over her soft cheeks, and-

“I miss him,” she whispers, and you sigh, feeling the weight over every inch of your heart like an iron blanket.

“I know,” you murmur. “Me too.”

She leans into your side, eyes fixed ahead. “I- I keep- I just-“ Her voice gets small. “I tried to stay in the car, I did, but if I hadn’t- If he didn’t need to save me-“

She cuts herself off like the words hurt, and you’re sure they do. They cut under your skin in tiny, jagged pieces that shine like reflective glass, because you know the feeling all too well.

“Claire,” you whisper, pausing the movie, making sure she hears you. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” she snaps, but it’s venomless. “But- It’s just-“

“No.” You pull her closer. “It wasn’t. That’s it.”

Claire grunts. You tap her shoulder, holding her attention.

“Say that’s it.”

She doesn’t, so you adjust her, forcing her to at least see your face in her periphery.

“Listen to me,” you murmur, squeezing her hands between yours. “That- That wasn’t you. It wasn’t anyone. It was a kickback of power from the knife, and we weren’t ready for it. That’s it. They were always going to use it, and unless I had caught it sooner-“

“You couldn’t have caught it sooner,” Claire blurts, and you give her a pointed look.

“So you couldn’t have stopped it from happening.”

Claire scowls. Her face pinches like she’s trying to make it hide, her eyes glossy and red and her shoulders hunched. You wipe away a single, stray tear, and she collapses right into your chest.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, choked and small. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen, I just- I don’t want to- I didn’t mean to-“

“I know,” you whisper, stroking the back of her head. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”

Claire cries until she can’t, and you lay together on the couch. When you unpause the movie, it hums in the background, and you almost find it amusing. When you giggle, Claire starts to as well, and soon very few things are scary at all.

After Claire falls asleep, you tuck her in bed. When you check your phone, there’s a voicemail from Jo that she’s staying at the town until morning, the storm still raging too much to drive. You text her a small update, knowing you won’t get a response until morning.

Then you open the contact.

Cas’s contact.

You don’t know what you’d say to him. If he already knows, and he’s just been waiting for you to ask. If he’s been just as lost. If he keeps almost calling you as well, before remembering the fight. Your thumb hovers over the call button. The warm, phantom weight of a hand you know too well rests on your wrist, lightly guiding you to just call-

You toss the phone back onto your bed. Thunder rolls through the room, lightning painting half the world white, and leaving everything else dark. If Cas wants to talk, he can come to you. It wasn’t anyone.

If only you’d believed that, enough to let go.

The bell rings, and everyone starts to move. A sea of kids—thin and tall and short and soft—bump over and against each other, shouting and laughing and pressing their shoulders together without a care in the world. You stay against your locker, waiting for the noise to die down, trying to just focus on your breathing like Rufus told you to. The world wasn’t flooding colors yet, but a lot of it was still pain. It made your knees weak and your tongue sharp. You’d barely lasted a month here, and—if the red mark on your wrists are any indication—you’re already halfway towards the end.

“Hey!” One of the boys—Peter, you remember—runs up next to you when you try to slip through the masses, his hand landing on your shoulder, his smile toothy and wide. “I heard we’re doing the frog lab in bio today, if Miss Browne lets us pick partners…”

He trails off, giving you an open, pointed look. You blink at him for a few seconds, not able to read the silent question between the lines. “You want me to…”

“Be my partner,” he prompts. “If you want. It’s like- fine if you don’t really, just thought I’d ask-“

“No, it’s okay, I just didn’t-“ You glance behind you, sure you’re going to find Peter’s gaggle of friends smirking and making faces behind you. They’d all been nice to you, the weeks you were here. Suspiciously nice. Like they wanted something. “We can be- We can do that.” You give Peter a small smile—you’re not going to do much better, are you—and he grins.

“Great, that’s- Great,” he bounces on his feet, pumping his face. “Mark’s gonna- Great.”

He moves like he’s about to try and get closer to you, then takes a large step back, still smiling wide.

A big, warm hand wraps around your waist, and Dean rests his chin on top of you head. The world freezes, and you let out a slow, stuttering breath.

“I hated it here,” you mumble, and Dean chuckles, pressing a kiss to your crown.

“Can’t see why,” he teases. “You were batting better numbers than me, sweetheart. I need to be jealous of hair gel?”

He nods to Peter, and you frown. “He’s not using hair gel, that’s mean-“

“He’s all hair gel, and I’m allowed to be a bit of a dick. He’s tryin’ to steal my girl.”

You roll your eyes, leaning back to meet his gaze. “He wasn’t- Doing that- He was being nice-“

“By askin’ to be your lab partner before class starts?” Dean snorts, his arm coming fully around your stomach. “No, baby- That’s an old trick. Shit, I pulled it once or twice-“

“You pulled it?” Your voice gets sharp with a tug in your heart, spiking and ugly and vigilant. Dean can’t change his… past. With others. You wouldn’t ask him to. But that doesn’t stop that vile, green vine from seizing your heart every time you remember how many hands have touched his body before yours. They must have been better. Less uncertain, less shaking, less scarred and possessive and-

“Hey,” Dean pets the bridge of your nose, and you hadn’t even realized you’d scrunched it so tight. “Nothin’ to be jealous of, Princess. I was an ass, and if Bobby lemme through the door without hiding the merchandise,” he squeezing your stomach, smirking at your tiny squeak. “I never woulda been a wandering man again.”

You flush, but still manage to shake your head. “That’s not true-“

“Course it’s true,” Dean dismisses, but you’re not willing to let go that quickly.

“Dean-“

“You think I look at other chicks, when I got my so- only one in front of me.” Dean makes an adorable, sour face, and your mouth twitches against your will. “I’d rather get it cut off, baby, swear to god.”

And that pulls a tired giggle from the last place in your chest that isn’t hollow. The place that pounds for Dean, just to the right of your heart, bright and warm no matter how cloudy the rest of the world gets. “I’m just- We were a few years apart, De. And you were- Cool and popular and-“

“A douche,” he offers, and you frown.

“You were never a douche-“

“Oh, baby- All you gotta do is ask Sammy-“

“I believe you were an idiot,” you grab his hand over your stomach, narrowing you eyes. “And an asshole. And annoying.”

Dean raises his brows, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Flattery will get you everywhere, smartass-“

“But you were a kid,” you whisper, and his jaw goes tight. “You weren’t a douche.”

Dean’s mouth twitches. His free hand slides up your throat, cupping under your chin, and you hold his watery gaze. You don’t get a real response—just a low, choked grunt—before he kisses you, slow and deep.

You grab his forearm and push on your toes. He’s warm. He smells more like pine trees than you’re used to, but the heavy, thick cinnamon that’s purely Dean still lingers, and it makes you smile against his lips. He lets out a slow, battered breath, his fingers digging into your skin. You hope that when you wake up you’ll have a bruise. You hope you’ll get to hold onto any of this at all.

“I woulda been a goner, Princess,” he murmurs when you pull apart. “Forget hair gel, you woulda been fending me off with a damn broom.”

You laugh softly, rocking back and forth on your toes. “You wouldn’t have looked at me-“

“I wouldn’t have been able to look away from you,” Dean cuts you off, his grip on your chin tightening, something final under his tone. “Sammy and I got tossed into school after school, sweetheart, and I never bothered askin’ Dad to let us stay. Sammy- Sammy asked every damn time, but I was- I’d known better.” A long, darkened pain—dulled like a faded bruise, still aching to press—crosses his features. “Dad wasn’t gonna budge. Sammy never had to learn to stop pushin’, but I- I knew I wasn’t gonna get anything to hold onto.”

“Dean…” You murmur, and he shakes his head.

“Don’t- I’m not askin’ you to-“ He sighs, rubbing his jaw. “I’m just tellin’ you, Princess. I had a few good things going, and I always ruined ‘em on purpose. I never woulda ruined you.”

You smile sadly, reaching up to cup his cheek. He leans in with a tiny, forceful rumble in his chest that he can’t seem to hold back, his eyes fluttering shut. You know the stories. Sam’s told you, on late night cases where it was just the two of you, and he was so sick of you and Dean calling every night that he started trying to talk you into something. Dean and his girlfriends, how he never looked at them when he had their mouths on his neck the same way he looks at you, just standing a few feet away. You’d rolled you eyes then, and told Sam to shove it.

But you believe him now. Dean takes you hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing over your knuckles like he can’t help it, and you’ve never believed anything more.

And you wake up suddenly, in a cold sweat with your hand outstretched and twitching. Claire snores on the other side of the room and Indy eeprs, giving you an annoyed but curious look. Your fingers ball, like you can grab the dream and bring it back. Tears burn behind your eyes, and slip out with no warm, certain hands to wipe them away. You pad on light feet to the bathroom, needing a shower, a scrub, anything to get the layer of cold grime—of loneliness—off your skin.

You pause when you look in the mirror, naked and tired and made of tangled hair and heavy eyes.

There’s Gold on your hips. It looks fresher than yesterday, and tingles when you trace it. You swallow, looking down, checking your fingers, making sure you’re not going crazier than you already are. But it’s there. You grab Dean’s amulet, resting between your breast, cold against clammy skin, and close your eyes. When you count the things that are real, you can’t stop yourself from tracing over the mark. It doesn’t wash away with the water, or float off into the steam. You stare at it in the mirror for too long, when your hair is dried and treated for the morning. When you get back into bed, you pull your shirt—Dean’s shirt—up and hold the mark like you’re trying to trap it against your skin.

It must’ve been the shirt, rubbing off. But it’s still real, and you don’t want to let it go.

You don’t sleep for the rest of the night and come morning—when the Gold is still there, glowing in the sunrise—you let out a broken sob of a breath, and close your eyes.

You’ll see him again. You don’t let yourself think of a future where you don’t, because there isn’t one. You have a lead, so now all that’s left is following it. Prying it open, with words or hands or knives.

And that, you smile like a madwoman, is going to be the easy part.

Apr. 24 - 2010

Princess,

I keep looking at the stupid box. It’s gold. I think I told you that, last time I wrote about it. But it’s golden.

You said I was golden. That you’ve never seen another golden soul.

There are a lot of souls in the world. Lot of people. I can’t be only golden one, but you weren’t lying. I know when you do.

Maybe you’ve just never seen another one.

I never asked you why souls are different colors. The internet doesn’t know. Just got a lot of ads for psychics. Was fucking bullshit.

Your soul would’ve been a pretty color. Like the stars.

Yours,

DAW

You haven’t ever seen another Golden soul. Not like Dean’s, and not just because of the special star-stuff he and Sam are made of. You’d never really thought about it as much as you should’ve, not outside of knowing that Dean was beautiful, and you’d always wanted him all over your body until everything was right and easy. Every soul was different, but you used to do double takes when you saw pastel blue, misty souls in crowds. You still push through people to double check that the dark green, rooted soul isn’t Bobby, even though you know he’s settled in your bag at that very moment. You swallow, tracing over the scar on your palm as you reread Dean’s letter again, and again, trying to memorize it. You can hear him speaking. You can almost feel his lips, brushing against the curve of your ear.

The door closes, and you glace up. Jo shoots you a small, curious grin, kicking off her shoes.

“Any-“

“Nope,” she sighs, wiping her hands on her pants. “Nothin’.”

You sigh, and reach for the scratched out list. Singapore, New Delhi, Mumbai, Ho Chi, Bangkok-

You scratch out Bangkok, and toss the paper off to the side before burying your face in your hands. Jo chuckles, patting your head as she crosses over to her bed and flops down. You lean back, frowning at the ceiling and trying to push all your thoughts into something coherent. They’ve mostly been a rushing river of white water and black depth. Jo says it seems like you’re drowning in yourself lately. You wish you could say she was wrong.

“Not Bangkok,” you murmur, and Jo grunts.

“Not Bangkok.”

“Was there a temple? Or- A shrine?”

Jo shakes her head, and you groan.

“So- Nothing. Fucking nothing- That’s-“ You scowl, pressing Dean’s letter back into the box. “That’s great.”

“More nothin’ than we had yesterday,” Jo jokes, and you laugh, but it’s dry.

“I guess. Yeah. Claire-“

“In her room with Sparky. Checked before I came back.”

You hum, glancing over at the door that connect you and Jo to Claire. You’ve been trying to find motels with adjoined rooms available, just to give Claire a little space. Lord knows that if you’d been stuck sharing a room with Bobby for half a year you would’ve lost it. Sam would probably say the same thing about John, although he and Dean were always better at sharing than either of them will admit.

“Rowena got anything new?” Jo asks, and you sigh.

“Haven’t called her yet, I was hoping-“ You cut yourself off, and Jo hums, low and tired.

“Yeah. Me too.”

The last month has been nothing but moving. Naomi might not have given you a clear road, but she gave you a wooded path, and you can carve your way through it just fine. If Heaven knows were Dean is, that means someone else can to. Someone who will be more cooperative, someone who might not even need to be threatened to be helpful. Someone like an Oracle.

“You know,” Rowena had drawled when you’d called her the first time. “As the Magdalene, there is not magic outside of your pretty little hands-“

“I’ve tried divination,” you’d said flatly. “Scrying, tea leaves, forcing vision- I did it all months ago. All I got was flashes, and they weren’t- It didn’t help.” It just made you want to scream, like the mountain. Jo made you stop doing it, after she came back to the motel and found it flooded bioluminescent water.

“Hm,” Rowena had sniffed. “Something’s blocking you? Or is it just… Performance issues.”

You hadn’t dignified her with an answer. If it was a blocked signal, you had a pretty good idea of who was doing it, and you couldn’t oppose him anyway. You needed an Oracle. God could block a psychic. Kevin only got what God wanted him to see. An Oracle was sort of your last hope before you had to pick up your knife and start hacking through Heaven.

“Bangkok was nothing,” you say, the moment Rowena picks up your call. “Less than nothing, actually. Jo says she got chased by dogs and didn’t even find a shrine.”

Rowena sighs, giving you an annoyed look through the scrying bowl. “I did tell you, it is not a perfect science, little tiger-“

“Make it a better one, then.”

Rowena huffs, and you ignore her. The list has been getting longer—she calls you every few days, when she finds something new—but it’s not enough. You don’t want to leave Sam and Dean wherever they are, any longer than you have to. It could be dangerous. They could need help, and if you’re not there to give it-

You take a deep breath, wrapping a hand around your throat. The Spiderweb is still alight. If Dean was hurt in a way you couldn’t fix, you would’ve known by now. But alive doesn’t mean safe. And you really don’t want to know the extent of what the Spiderweb can tell you about his livihood.

“What about Indonesia?” You ask, scrolling through the map on your computer. “It’s a big country, mostly island, but-“

“Remote,” Rowena murmurs. “Mostly jungle, dearie, I don’t think that’s wise-“

“I don’t mind jungle.”

“No one minds the jungle until it’s in their bedroom-“

“I’m chill with the jungle,” you shake your head, drumming your fingers on the keyboard. “Do you know any witches-“

“I know every witch,” Rowena clips. “Even if they don’t know me.”

“Congratulation, stalker.” You roll your eyes. “Do you have a little black book, or something?”

“I have four hundred years of experience,” Rowena says dryly, and you pause.

“Oh. Right. Forgot you were old.”

She glares at you through the water, and you smile to yourself, bending back over your notes.

“Have we considered they’re in Purgatory?” You ask, following the tight, looping script with your finger. Jo and Dean have both said your writing is unintelligible. You thought it was an English thing until Cas—before his brain was back together—commented on your words being as sensical as the stars. Sam could always read it just fine, and it’s not like anyone else needs to be able to read it anyway.

Although when you’re doing nothing but writing and reading—when the world is pressing on your shoulders and there’s a thin layer of mist over your eyes, clouding everything but the strict line forward—you do sort of understand what they’re saying. You can’t tell if you’d written Purgatory or Bulgaria.

“Or… Have we thought of Eastern Europe?”

Rowena shakes her head to both. “There are no Oracles left in Europe, eastern or western.”

“Hm,” you give her a pointed look. “Didn’t you think there were no oracles in the world at all?”

“Yes. Because there were none in Europe.”

“Well, it’s not like you were trapped in Europe-“

“I was a member of the high coven,” Rowena snaps. “They are based in Europe, they know every magical dealing, and if there was an Oracle-“

“You would’ve known,” you finish, smiling to yourself. “So touchy.”

Rowena huffs, muttering a Gaelic curse under your breath that—if you’re right—is cursing you to be a moor frog that never finds a mate. You snort, and keep going through your notes. Rowena clears her throat, words muffled as she talks to someone on her side.

“Don’t touch that, boy, it will burn your eyes out- There you go. Good boy.”

You glance back at the scrying bowl, and find Rowena’s lip curled and eyes gleaming.

“Fools,” she mutters to herself. “Fools in their bloodline, simpering, pathetic little fools-“

“Adam?” You call, and Rowena gives you an annoyed look.

“Don’t beckon him-“

Adam pokes his head over the bowl with a wide smile and wave. You smile softly, and wave back. You can see the soft gleam of his soul through the bowl, and while it’s not as bright as Sam and Dean’s, it’s nothing to pass over. He seems to be settling into it. Into himself. It’s nice to see, from the scruff of a beard he really isn’t managing to grow to the excited light in his eyes that realty does remind you of Dean.

“How’s Thailand?” He calls, and you shrug.

“Warm. Full of bugs, but-“ You shoot Rowena a pointed look. “I’m one with the jungle.”

She scoffs, but her mouth twitches. Adam nods eagerly, pushing further over the bowl.

“You- You look nice,” he rubs the back of his neck, his smile light and twitchy. “Your hair- It’s- Shinier than usual.”

“Oh- Thanks.” You glance over to the mirror. “I think it’s the sweat.”

Adam nods. “Well, it’s- Sweat looks good on you- Not that no sweat doesn’t- You’re-“ His face is going red, starting from his ears and spreading out. Just like Dean’s. “Um- You know what I mean-“

“We all know what you mean,” Rowena mutters under her breath, and you blink. “Go. Make yourself useful, instead of drooling all over my bowl.”’

“Right, sorry, I just-“ He glances back to you, and Rowena clears her throat loudly.

“We’re discussing Dean,” she says sharply, and you hum, poking back over your notes.

“And the jungle. And Rowena’s ex friend group-“

“Shh.” Rowena snaps, and you laugh to yourself, focusing fully back on your tight, sloppy words.

Rowena gets Adam to wander away with a few more harsh words and reminder that they need dinner. You glance back when he shuffles off, curious and a little amused. She gives you nothing but a glare in return, and your mouth twitches.

“He’s growing on you-“

“He is doing no such thing,” she huffs. “He’s only a little dumber than Samuel, and he takes orders better than both those boys combined. It’s the only reason I’m keeping him around, rather than making him into a dog.”

You hum. “He’d make a cute dog.”

“He’d make a splendid dog. But he wouldn’t be able to carry things.” Rowena shakes her head. “You’re lucky you’re tied to Dean, little tiger. You get to keep the pretty one all to yourself.”

You flip her off and she laughs. It’s a softer sound than anyone else gets. Bobby and Dean both used to comment on it, whenever they’d get her to cackle and look at them like she was imagining which of their limbs would look best in a stew. You’d tell them she was just trying to get a rise, that she was nice when you pushed it out of her. They both said she was nice because you were you. And you still don’t quite understand what that means. You’re annoying and bossy and mean. If anything, you should be the one in the stew, although you don’t think rotted meat would make good food.

Yet still, Rowena helps you. And like with everything else, there’s nothing you can do but accept it’s sometimes useless to ask why.

“Are you in the city?” Rowena asks after another hour, and you shake your head.

“We’re an hour north, I’ve been… Off. We didn’t want to take risks.”

Rowena hears the words under the explanation. You’ve been dangerous. The closer you get to something and nothing, the easier it is to light your fuse. You’ve gotten better at controlling it—at being in a crowd without folding over yourself, at lose and not making the sky fall—but you still have bad days. Bad weeks. Moments where anything that gets close to you needs to retreat or burn or turn to something harmless and colorful, and you can’t do much to pull yourself back together. The Silver hurts then, like concrete bleeding through your body, filling up your lungs until you can’t breathe. On those days you count what’s real and pull the blankets around you until they’re shaped like Dean, but you’re still free-falling with no one who knows how to catch you. The best you can do is soften the plummet. Ease the fallout.

And it’s been one of those weeks.

So you’re staying away from the city.

Rowena hums, squinting at something you can’t see. You watch with raised brows, and she lets out a slow, worried sigh.

“What-“

“Shh.” She squints, then nods to herself.

You frown. “Rowena-“

“Patience,” she says firmly, and you stick out your tongue. “Ah, well- Listen,” she looks back to you, features grim. “This may be nothing. You know there is always the risk of it being nothing.”

You nod, your nails digging into your wrist. You know it can be nothing. But she’s saying it like it’s something, and you can’t stop the chinks from letting light in.

And there are local legends about a cave, not too far west of your motel. A cave where the flowers float like they’re in water, and the water glows like it’s made of starlight. They don’t use the word oracle or prophet, but they speak of finding the truth. Of seeing the glory of the Sun.

“You are not allowed to be terse with me if it’s nothing,” Rowena points at you through the bowl, and you hum, scraping together your stuff.

“Yeah. Got it.”

Rowena says your name, and you give her a tight smile.

“I got it-“

“Be cautious,” she says, and that makes you pause. “Be… Very cautious.”

And you could tease her about being worried about you, but there’s a strain in her gaze that stops you. You smile again, but it’s gentler. Real, without any of the jagged edges you and Rowena usually trade.

“I always am.”

You both know that isn’t true. But it’s not a lie either, and Rowena’s nose twitches enough for you to know she’s placated by the half-promise. You give her a small salute, and she closes the scrying with a scoff that’s dangerously fond.

And you pack up, text Jo—who went out to get food halfway through your call—that you’ll be back. You poke in to check on Claire—watching TV with the Lady on her lap and Sparky on her head—and go. Time is not something you let pass anymore. You don’t know how to do that little freezing trick the angels have, and learning it will just waste moments you could be looking for Sam and Dean. There will be plenty of time for stalling and lazy mornings and being late, when they’re home. Until then, every second is a needle, and you’re not resting until they stop pricking over your skin.

Thailand jungles are cooler than Indian ones, but your joke to Rowena was more of a brag than an actual bit. The bugs buzz curiously a few feet away, but never get close, let alone try to land on or feed from you. The tangled undergrowth pulls itself apart when you ask nicely, and the leaves shift to offer you shade. Everything here is almost as alive as you are, and you’re an infection of exhausted love that creeps though the roots and shifting sunlight. The Silver howls for Dean and the jungle—painted in the depth of your loss, in the blind determination of your love—howls back. The leaves get to learn what it would feel like to lose their branches. The tigers feel the split of your heart, fracturing everything around them until it’s like being trapped in a tree.

And you feel all of them. You always have. So they move with you, and it’s not a battle to find what you need.

You find the cave before sunset. Behind a waterfall—water that glows, that you can feel carrying the weight of keeping everything else alive, that would never want to be anyway but still screams with the pressure and begins to show it—the stone is carved into something like a temple, mock brick and shrines and inlaid gold. Flowers float around, untethered from the weight of changing seasons, blessed with knowing that they’re always going end up blooming again, no matter how cold the winter.

And the Oracle.

She’s sitting on the ground, watching you with wide eyes. She scrambles to her knees, bowing her head and pressing her hands flat to the ground. You blink, tucking you knife back under your skirt, and tilt your head.

“Hi,” you try, but her head just bows further. “Um- You’re- You look better than the last oracle I met.”

“Thank you, my lady,” she says, her accent thick but clear. “I am honored, to have you, and anything you desire I will offer-“

“Oh, that’s-“ You raise a hand, chewing on your lower lip. You should’ve expected this. You’re kind of annoyed that you didn’t. “I mean, I do have questions, but- I don’t realty desire a lot of things, and- You don’t have to do that.”

You wave to her kneeling position, but she doesn’t see. Her head is still bowed, her hair shrouding your face, and you sigh.

A quick second look at the temple answers your first question. The biggest stature, shining copper and erected near the back wall, covered in flowers and perfectly tended, it looks an awful lot like you. There’s even a little bird that looks like Sparky in your cupped hands. You wrinkle your nose and look up to the ceiling, collecting yourself with tight hands. That’s not the Oracles fault. You don’t have the time to fall apart about it.

You sit across from her, crossing your legs and rocking back and forth as you wait. She glances up under thick lashes, and you smile.

“Hi.”

She blinks rapidly, looking back to the waterfall, to where you’d stood before. Her face flushes and her fingers clench at her skirt, her shoulders heaving with shallow breathes. “He- Hello.”

“Hey.” You settle a little further, making your voice soft. “What’s your name?”

“Madee,” she whispers, and you nod.

“It’s nice to meet you, Madee.” You offer out a hand. “I’m-“

“I know who you are.”

You swallow, and glance over her shoulder to the statue. “Right,” you murmur, hand still hovering in the air. “Right.”

Madee tentatively reaches out, wrapping her fingers through yours and shifting your hand around, as if she’s checking that you don’t turn to dust or mist. “You’re… Real.”

“Unfortunately, yeah.”

“You are here…” She murmurs, then suddenly sits tall. “Why are you here? Have I failed? Is there- Do I have to leave-“

“No, no.” You grab her before she can shrink away, and she stills immediately. Her eyes are big, watery and puppy like. You pause, watching the light of the waterfall shifting over her soft features.

She can’t be much older than Claire.

“How long have you been here?” You ask worriedly, and Madee’s lip trembles.

“Many years,” she breathes. “Since I was a girl. When the woods called me.”

“The… Woods?”

She nods. “One night the clouds split. The world shook. Everything cried, so I cried back. My mother told me to be quiet. The woods told me to be loud, so I followed them. I found here.”

“And you,” you take a deep, careful breath. “You want to be here?”

“More than anything,” Madee whispers. “Please. Do not make me leave.”

And you think of the last oracle. The dead girl in the swamp, marred by the Leviathans, surrounded by crocodiles that protected her until their last breath. My mother told me to be quiet. Your mother used to tell you the same thing.

“I won’t make you leave,” you say, and Madee’s eyes glow with visible relief. “But I have some questions for you, and I need to answer them. Can you do that for me?”

Madee nods eagerly, leaning forward. She’s still holding your hand. You don’t make her pull it away.

“There’s a place,” you start slowly, picking out every word. “Far away from here, from anywhere. It was destroyed many, many years ago, more than we can count, but it’s still there, just-“

“Dead.” Madee finished for you, nodding along. “It is the dead world. Nothing but the King remains.”

“The King? Do you mean-“

“The taker,” Madee’s voice echoes around the cave, melodical, almost flowing through the air. “The maker and the breaker and the last man to wait for her. He sits on his throne and feasts on his bones and waits for life to come to his side so he’s never alone.”

Oh. She rhymes. That’s fun. “Right. That.” You clear your throat. “Nothing remains there, right? No life?”

Madee shakes her head. “All of life is here.”

“Cool. That’s- Good.” It is, you have to remind yourself. Sam and Dean aren’t stuck in dead heaven. You didn’t think they were—Naomi would’ve just told you so, to get you to open it up—but it’s always nice to get confirmation. “What about Hell? Have you ever seen Hell?”

Madee nods solemnly. “The first place the forest showed me was cages and broken brothers and names I can’t smother.”

“Broken- Oh. Sam.” You sigh, and Madee tilts her head.

“The boy with the black blood and tense love and anger at those who push his head under his gut?”

“Yeah. Sam.” You press your lips in a thin line. If she saw Sam… “The boy- can you find him now?”

Madee pauses. She cocks her head and closes her eyes, her nails digging into your hands. You wait, hope crawling up your throat with a sickening certainty that it will wither before it knows the sun.

And Madee shakes her head, and you knew it was coming, but that doesn’t manage to stop the burn.

“I am sorry,” she says, eyes red and voice wobbly.

“It’s okay,” you squeeze her hands, and you mean it. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t- It’s okay.” You take a deep breath, the Spiderweb twisting over itself in your chest, like a million prisms colliding. “There’s another boy,” you say. “A man. He’s-“

Madee’s eyes seem to glow. Not like a star, but like fire, trapped under amber. “Dean Winchester,” she says, and your heart stills with the wind. “King of men, bleeding and spent, on his knees and begging for rest. Lover and cover and greater than the thunder. The only one, the only one, the only one-“

She takes a sharp panicked breath, and it restarts your heart. You move up to a knee, grabbing her face and trying to drag her out of it.

“The only one,” she gasps, even as her eyes come into focus on your face. “The world will be done if he does not bow, if he does not run. The world will be done and the wrong man will have won.”

You swallow, a looming, dreaded cold gathering in your gut. Ominous. A little fucking on the nose, if whatever oracle spirit in this poor girl is taking notes. You’re glad Dean wasn’t here for it, at least. He’d probably end up pacing for the rest of the night then deciding he needed to put you on a leash and never sit down again.

“My Dean,” you say softly, and Madee nods. “You know him.”

“Everything with color knows him,” she whispers. “Everything negative wishes for him. Everything outside of your reach loathes him.

A lump presses up in your throat. Your lungs feel tight. “Do you ever see him?”

“In the steed,” Madee breathes. “On his knees, in the wing, pressing love to the trees-“

“No- Just-“ You sigh. That one was your fault. “Literally. Do you ever literally see him, in a vision or something.”

Madde nods. That persistent, deformed, malnourished hope flutters again.

“Can you see him now?” You whisper, and Madee shakes her head.

You let go of her with a pained sound that rips from your chest. You don’t mean to, but it hurts. Hope crumbles back up and refuses to just be stomped into the gutter, into that emptiness that hold every bit of love and loss and anger in the universe. You wipe your face until it’s red. Madee reaches out then shrinks back, like she’s not sure if she’s allowed to help.

“It’s okay,” you manage to say through the cancerous, angry rock of grief. “It- It’s okay, it’s not your fault. It’s not.”

Madee nods, but she doesn’t look like she believes you. You sigh, and crouch back down before her.

“It’s not,” you make yourself smaller. Kinder than you want to be, but more unwavering than you feel. “It’s okay. Really.”

And Madee believes your illusion. She doesn’t see that, through every nerve and bone and brittle heartstring, you feel more fragile and lost than a peace of driftwood in the ocean. You’re surrounded by everything, and you know that—above you, below you, and far off on the horizon—there will be a place to rest. But you can’t see it. All you can see is the never ending, dark water.

“I have heard him,” Madee says, barely loud enough for you to hear.

You blink, your voice breaking with another, trembling wing of hope. “What?”

“I have heard Dean Winchester,” she says, holding you gaze. “We all have. Have you- Have you not?”

You shake your head, sinking back to your knees. “Wha- What has he said? Is he okay, is he hurt- Where- Has he asked for me-“

“He prays,” Madde whispers. “He prays and prays. I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m calling anyway. Sammy and I are on our feet again. Or- Sammy’s on his feet. Never got to get off mine. We found a fuckin’ castle, Princess, and I’m not even joking. It’s big. Way too big, if anyone’s asking me. No one needs a castle this big, let alone a crazy bitch with no friends. I can smell her evil plotting, smells like bad eggs. Sam says that’s cause I ate eggs this morning. He’s being so mean to me, sweetheart. You’d kick his butt for me, if you were here. Wish you were here. That’s- Uh… That’s kinda why I’m praying. Duh.”

You laugh, wet and choked with your tears. Madee’s features are glazed, as Dean’s voice falls from her lips. And it’s Dean’s voice. Right down to the rumbling bass and rapid, unpaced thoughts. You have to grab your skirt, to stop yourself from reaching for poor Madee like she’s him.

“Sam doesn’t think you’re getting these. You probably aren’t. You woulda answered me by now, but- That doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop tryin’. If there’s even a tiny chance you’re gonna pick one of these up, I’m gonna keep doin’ them. And you know how I am in Vegas. Never met a buck I couldn’t turn into ten dollars.”

And the air starts to shift.

It’s the smallest feeling. Madee certainly doesn’t seem to notice it, but you- You feel it everywhere. It’s a shift in the pressure, like a headache blooming before a coming storm. Your back gets that stabbing, carving feeling at the very top of your spine. The Silver consolidates, turning and stressed like an animal in a cage. The wind picks up, and the water flows ever so slightly, everything from the ground under your feet to the birds in the trees getting a little more busy. Like workers being worried the boss will catch them slacking.

The boss.

Something so, so quiet hums above your head. You see the flicker before the strike, and lunge forward. Poor Madee gets shoved headfirst into her moss bed, and you take her place beneath the brewing cloud.

The world roars your name, and you throw everything behind you. The moss becomes radioactive and repellant, growing quickly around the cave. Trapping all three of you in.

He’s fast. You didn’t expect him to be anything else. A hand wraps around your wrist and drags you through the very world. Everything’s a sickening blur, for a very long second, before you land on your feet.

“What was that?!” God shouts, and you’ve never seen his eyes so wild and angry. “I could have seriously hurt you, I could have-“

“Smited me?” You shout back, your voice echoing through the trees, almost in harmony with the birds. “You could have smited me? Like you were going to smite the fucking child?!”

God sighs, raising his hands. “Hey, you can’t- It was a warning-“

“A warning smite?!”

“A warning,.. Tickle?” He tries. Your scowl deepens, and he takes a small step back. “Okay, it was- Not my best call. I promise not to do it again-“

“Your promises mean nothing to me.”

“Ouch,” God chuckles weakly. “Hurtful.”

You stare at him, flat and annoyed. He sighs, giving you a pleading look.

“I’m sorry-“

“Your apologies also mean nothing.”

“But-“ God sighs. “Fine. I’ve earned that. We can put Madee on the list with Job and that one guy I asked to kill his son-“

“Abraham?” You say incredulously, and God snaps his fingers.

“Yes. Him,” he whistles, smiling faintly. “Now that- That was crazy. Did you know he almost did it? He had the kid drugged out and everything, I was like- I wasn’t actually gonna make you kill your son, man. That would be insane!”

You stare at him, gaping slightly. “I- Yeah, I know that. Everyone knows that, it’s like- the third story in the bible.”

“Is it?” God blinks in surprise. “Really?”

You nod, and he hums.

“Huh. I mean, I never read it.”

“You’ve never read the-“ You shake your head. Not the point, or the time. “Never mind. You- You were about to smite a kid-“

“Yeah, yeah, we already argued about that, babe. Can I call you babe?” He gives you what he seems to think is a winning smile. “I’ve been testing out pet names, and you don’t really seem like a honey or- Kitten is really weird- So babe. I like it.” He spreads his arms. “Do you like it?”

“No,” you say flatly, crossing your arms. “And I’m not done arguing about this, you don’t just get to go around smiting people I’m talking to-“

“C’mon, that was like- The first time I ever did it! And it didn’t even work!” He scoffs. “Trust me, if I was going to smite anyone, it wouldn’t be some girl-“

You take a large step forward, your hands curling into fists. The wind starts to whip through the trees, and the bird song starts to sound like battle cries. God steps back, glancing up at the sky, then back to you.

“Hey,” he coaxes. “Hey. I’m not your enemy, babe-“

“You say babe one more time,” you spit. “I cut out your tongue.”

God smiles, but his eyes are cold. Almost… Barren. Like looking at an icy tundra, not even trying to grow something new. Just still, quiet perfection, all the way down to the white light in his core.

And you’ve made a vow to yourself. That you will, one day, be the last thing he ever sees, and the first thing he regrets. But you’re not a fool. You’re rash when you’re blind, and barely able to hold back the storm when it’s ripping you apart. But there’s just enough of you left at the base of your skull to act as an anchor. To keep you from being the very thing that you swore he’d never make you. One day, you will kill him. Maybe tomorrow, if you learn to grow a million feet tall without crushing yourself and everything you love. When you’re strong enough to be in control.

But that day is not today. So you lift your chin, and make yourself as cold as he is. Colder, translucent, impossible to touch. God sees the shift. He feels the temperature drop, as you dismiss the humid dew on the leave. It isn’t their fight. It isn’t anyone’s but yours.

God isn’t a fool either. An invisible wall juts up between you, making the air shimmer ever so slightly. If you’re a magnet, it’s polarity. And you smile. He’s afraid.

“Why,” you say, not letting an ounce of emotion into your voice. “Are you here.”

“The girl-“

“No,” you click your tongue. “Try again.”

God frowns. “I am not lying to you,” he says your name gently. “I would never-“

“Ah,” you raise a hand. “Wrong. One more try.”

“I- You’re really coming into yourself, you know?” He tries a thin, fond smile that slithers over your skin. “I knew you would-“

You cut him off with a single step forward. He gives in.

“Relax, okay? Just- I’m not hurting anyone, I’ll even pinky promise not to go back, but- I couldn’t let her keep going,” he gives you a pleading look that comes out all crooked. “She was going to ruin so many things.”

You believe him. You don’t think he’s brave enough to lie, even to placate you. “What things?”

“Well, I can’t tell you, but-“ He trips a little, when you take another step. “It’s nothing for you to worry about-“

“I disagree-“

“And I wanted to see you!” He reaches out a hand, smiling with a charm that lands dull. “I’ve missed you, we haven’t had us time in months-“

“There is no us time,” you hiss between your teeth, and God sighs.

“I know. I know, and that’s my mistake. I never thanked you, for saving me-“

“I didn’t save you,” you cut over him, raising your chin. “I stopped the Leviathans for the world, that’s it.”

“And that’s why I love you!” He beams, and the words land like acid. “You never do anything selfish, you’re- You’re amazing.”

You swallow. You don’t feel amazing. And you do selfish things all the time. “That spell,” you mutter. “It would’ve done…”

“Bad things, yeah.” God shrugs, as if the weight of the world can just brush off his shoulders like a feather. “But,” he grins. “You still saved me.”

You give him a daggered glare, no patience left on your tongue. “Where’s Dean.”

And God’s face crumbles. The casual mockery of boyish, nervous charm fades. The twitchy mannerisms vanish, and the false levity dissolves from his voice.

“I thought,” he says cooly. “That we could get through this without talking about Dean.”

He says the name like it’s wrong. You can’t wait to smash his head in like a bad melon. “You thought wrong.”

“He isn’t even-“ God tenses, his fists flexing, his hair messing itself up as he shifts on his feet. “He isn’t even here,” he points between you with a rigid finger. “I’m here. I’m here, with you, for whatever you need-“

“I need Dean-“

“You don’t-“ God cuts himself off, grinding his teeth. “You don’t. Need. Dean. You’re stronger than that. I made you stronger than that, I- I mean, I should be getting points for that, for- A strong, female lead.” His hands wring, and the world starts to feel like it’s closing. “I’ve done everything, I’ve offered everything, and you just want Dean? Car boy? The only human I’ve ever personally designed, with my own two hands, who can’t spell Hippopotamus?”

“It’s a hard word-“

“No. No it’s not. You know that, and you just- You still-“

“You gave me free will,” you say, quiet and stiff. “You could’ve made me a doll. You didn’t. You can’t be mad I fell in love with the only person who’s ever been there, who’s ever really known me-“

“I’ve been there!” God shouts, and trees creak from their roots. “I’ve known you, and I- Do I not even get points for the free will thing-“

You shake your head, and God sighs.

“You know, I’m trying really hard,” he mutters bitterly. “And you’re just- You’re not giving me anything.”

You bite on your tongue, watching him carefully. He’s right, about you not giving him anything. You’re not interested in giving him anything. You don’t care what dramatic, buzzing words he throws around about you and Dean and destiny, you’re stronger than you want to be and Dean’s the only thing that lets you break. You’re an injury and an open wound that can’t afford to be treated, and Dean is the only one who can convince you to rest before you get too sick to turn back. It’s not strength. You don’t need strength, and it’s a cheap man who whines about getting what he paid for.

You love that hotdog pants wearing, charming, adorably dumb and dorky man. You’ve been done fighting that for a while. And God doesn’t get to make you doubt that.

But you need something for him. And you’ve never been above plunging into the mud and digging up something dirty.

“I’ll go out with you, if you tell me where Dean is.”

God’s head shoots up. The trees stop creaking, and his white bores into your soul, like he’s trying to check for a lie. You don’t waver. You’re done with that too. “Really?”

You nod. “One date,” you hold up a finger. “Right now. You’ll have men until sundown, and-“

“I tell you where Dean is.” He doesn’t sound too pleased about that part. “Would you offer, if I said I wouldn’t?”

It’s a bad question. You think he knows it, based on how he sighs when you shake your head.

“You will,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “You will.”

And he offers out a hand. You hesitate, fingers curled away as you reach out.

“I don’t lie to you,” he says, like he’s soothing a baby. “Sundown. Then I tell you where Dean is.”

You nod, fingers brushing his horribly cold ones, then yank back. “Sundown here,” you add quickly. “In Thailand. No matter where we are, it’s sundown here.”

God laughs tightly. “I know. I’m not a genie.”

Your mouth half-twitches. You’re still eyeing his head wearily, and he sighs.

“Please. I was serious, we can pinky promise.”

You shake your head, because that’s not God’s to have. But you take a long breath, grab Dean’s amulet, and take God’s hand.

The world doesn’t end. You are flitted away to that white palace in Old Heaven, or trapped on some planet far, far away. You’d screwed your eyes shut, and you drag them slowly open to find that you’re still in the jungle. You fist held in God’s clammy, surprisingly strong hand. It’s not Dean’s certain strength, though, like the weight of a house, keeping you safe and warm. It’s like being glue to a statue, slowly compressing, threatening to trap you in it’s grasp.

God smiles, not seeming to notice the pale in your face, the silence that’s crept over your tongue. You don’t dare to speak. Don’t dare to breathe too deep, to move enough that he’ll smell your fear. Your heart pounds in your ears, your head light, and maybe you’ll black out. God can toss around your body a bit, and you won’t even have to remember it.

But you’re not that lucky. Because God’s smile is wide, and his grip is tight, and he can’t see how you’d rip yourself out of your body to get away from his hallowed gaze.

“I have something I’ve wanted to show you,” he says, his thumb dragging over your wrist. “That I’ve wanted to show you for so long.”

You nod tightly, and God tugs you a little closer. He smells like nothing. It’s really just like being pressed up again stone.

“Hold on,” he whispers, and you think it’s supposed to make you flush, but it comes out mocking, and it just makes your stomach twist.

God whoosh you through the world, the same way you’d dragged him away from Madee. He looks far too pleased, when he lands on the sand and you’re clinging to his shirt. You’ve never flown that far and remembered. You’ve never looked at such a small face of a big man and wondered if plummeting through the air would be a better fate. You shove off his chest, and he grabs your wrist, pulling you back with a jerked motion.

“This is a date,” he reminds you. “And you promised you’d try.”

You made no such promises. “I said I’d be yours until sundown,” you jerk your hand away, and his touch seems to scrape along your skin. “And all you did was bring me to the desert.”

“Not just the desert,” God rolls his eyes. “Your desert. Your city, your- The first people who knew you. Who worshipped you, who-“ He sighs, at the guarded look on your face. “Just… Look for yourself.”

And God sweeps out a single hand, and the sand begins to swirl. And swirl and swirl and rise over the world until it’s more of a golden mist that hangs over a beautiful, lively city.

You gasp, stumbling on still feet. God smirks, but you couldn’t help it. You’ve been all over the world. You’ve lived in the Garden of Heaven, and seen the deepest pits of Hell, and there’s never been anything like this.

It’s all arches and domes of stars and gardens that hang from rooves and pour out of ledges. Water runs through cracks in marble pavement, little carts made of pale wood overflow with fruits and pelts and goods, and a cool breeze eases the beating heat of the sun. Everywhere you look there’s life, from the dove nests in the columns to the children running underfoot, laughing with bruised knees and not a single burden of the world on their flushed cheeks.

Your eyes burn. When you trace a wall, you find etching of a language you can’t read, and drawings of a story you know like the back of your heart. A father and fire. A boy who needs to be a lion, and a baby who will never look at anything and not wonder if it’s another lie to keep him safe from the only shadows that have ever offered him clarity. A world collapsing, and blood spilt, and chains that only ever seem to grow like vines, until they’re tight around a neck.

You hover on a drawing Dean’s little face. The clean lines got the crook of his nose wrong, but the shine in his eyes right. When you look at the next panel of brick, though, they’re different. Darker than you’ve ever know, as little Sam sits on his knees with a bleeding lip. The brick after that, his eyes are normal again, but there’s a strange scar on his arm, that seems to spread up like an infection. The brick after that, you’re there—you haven’t been anywhere else—and you look angry, and Dean’s reaching up over his head for a familiar sword-

Sand falls over the wall like water. When it’s gone, the brick is clean. The drawings are gone.

“Hey, I- I was looking at that-“

“You were going to be there all day,” God waves you off, smiling around the city. “And we’re on a clock, remember. You gave it to me, and I- I would like to show you things. Please.”

He holds out his hand again. You don’t take it, but you stomp back to his side with only a glance over your shoulder. He didn’t want you to see it. That’s never meant anything good.

“Babylon,” God breathes, smiling around at the towering, grand city. “My last project, before I retried. I mean, I was still on call, but I wanted to see how humans did by themselves, so I only took special cases, and, well,” he laughs. “You know how that went.”

You grunt, hugging yourself tight. One of the smiling children runs right through you, and you freeze in your steps. God sighs apologetically, at the look of horror on your face.

“Well, I couldn’t exactly bring you back to the real Babylon,” he explains. “They have statues of you, murals, writings- It would be like me dropping into the Vatican, you understand.”

You hum weakly, watching the echo of the little boy run back into the crowd. Ghosts. All of these people, just ghosts. Echoes that God pulled up, within a few seconds. Toys that he’s maneuvering around, so you see what he needs you to.

You feel sick. Your vision is too blurry, yet not enough to stop you from seeing everything God shows you. Garden after garden, temples with paintings you’ve seen a million times, palaces and temples and deep pools of water that glitter in the sun. All his favorite places, he says, sweeping his hand over the city from a high tower. All yours.

But all you can see is Dean.

You see him in the gold of palace walls and yellow blossoms at the market. You see him in the sandstone walls and at the bottom of the pools, in the bells in the towers and stitched into your thin, linen dress. You feel him in the heat and the wind. You smell him drifting out of homes and on the merchant carts, and it’s the only thing that makes you smile all day.

And you see the others, too. You see Jo in the massive wells of water and flowing rivers and steam houses. You see her and Cas in the infinite sky, Jo the unending, unwavering horizon and Cas in all the biggest clouds. You see Bobby in the gardens and Claire in the pale, yellow ghost of some long extinct, wolf-like puppy, being sold in one of the marketplaces.

When God isn’t looking, you reach out to scratch it’s ears. Your fingers pass through misty air, and you have to close your eyes to breathe.

Then there’s a yip. And a nuzzle at your knuckles, and a rough tongue licking your wrist. Your eyes shoot open, and the puppy blinks up at you, wagging its tail and panting. You swallow and glance back to God, busy marveling over another one of the—many identical—gardens. They are beautiful. They’re also so contained and stressed with the performance of beauty, you can barely stand to look at them too long.

You grab the puppy, and try to stuff it into a jacket you left at the motel. You scan around the tight street frantically, then look up at the sky. The sand will fall back down, when God breaks the illusion. You could just… let him know about the puppy, but something turns in your gut and tells you he’s not going to take it all that well. The puppy squirms, pawing at your stupid, poorly made dress.

“Shit,” you mutter under your breath, and God turns.

“Do you disagree? About the irrigation. I mean- I gave the architect the dream for it, but he could’ve…” His lip curls. “Taken some liberties.”

“Um….” You blink at God, and realize your hands are on your hips, your dress back to normal, the fabric stronger and the stiches tighter than before. Your lips part, a small sound of surprises falling from your lips. God gives you a strange look. You’d give you a strange look. You don’t know what the hell is happening.

“Is something wrong?” He asks, and you hear it. Thinly coated suspicion.

So you just shake your head, tuck your hands behind your back, and shrug. If God doesn’t buy it, you only get another weary look, and he goes right back to talking about how amazing he made the city. You would’ve loved to hear from the actual people who did the labor. You don’t think you’re going to get the privilege of anyone but Mr. McGenius and his magic, clammy hands.

The day passes like a turtle swimming molasses, but it passes. God keeps the sun in the same spot like he thinks that will trick you, but he forgets to look beneath him. The shadows change. And when they’re flat on the ground, you clear your throat and stretch out a hand.

God takes it with a sigh and a smile. He seems to think this has gone in his favor. That taking you somewhere without air conditioning or real food or anything you can actually do is going to put him over Dean stealing Bobby’s truck to take you to a drive-in movie theater, wrapping you up in one of his burrito blankets, and hand feeding you popcorn whenever you started talking too much. And that wasn’t eve a real date.

But when God takes you back home—just outside the motel, at least he isn’t going to make you walk back through the jungle—he doesn’t let go of your hand. He leans forward, staring at your lips, the scraggle of his beard even patchier up close. His breath smells like nothing. You’d rather have Dean after eating garlic and fish, than have to ever make out with God’s too smooth, pale lips.

You turn your cheek, and God sighs.

“Fair enough,” he murmurs, and you yank your hand away.

“Dean-“

“I know, I know. But-“ He smiles like a rat. “Did you have a good time?”

You didn’t kill yourself. “No.”

He doesn’t deflate, like you’d hoped. His smile widens. It chills you, deeper than your bones. “Purgatory.”

You blink. “What-“

“Dean’s in purgatory,” God crosses his arms. “All the way in it. About as central as you can go.”

“He’s- He and Sam- Get them out!”

God vanishes, reappearing up on the walkway, overlooking the cloudy motel pool. You run after him on shaking feet.

“Get them out, they- They’re humans, they can’t- Get them out-“

Just before you reach him, he’s gone. Your head whips around, panting from the everything, and the water shifts. Your gaze whips down, and the leaves and silt in the pool are swirling and changing color, until they’re all faded like an old picture. You lean over the railing, watching with shallow breaths, letting out a tiny, broken sound when the image comes into focus.

Sam and Dean in a forest. It’s barren and cold looking, nothing but dirt and thin grass and blood on the ground-

Blood.

Sam’s curled in a little ball, and there’s blood all over the ground. All over Dean’s hands, when he reaches out and Sam rolls away with a twitching body. Dean’s face falls, then steels. He says something you can’t hear, and starts grabbing around Sam’s neck. Sam goes limp. Dean rubs his jaw, exhaustion etched over every handsome feature, blood staining his untrimmed beard. He looks at the sky.

He looks at you.

Your back hurts like it’s going to break open. Like you’re only an egg, and letting yourself fall apart will bring something new, something better. You’d take the risk, if you understood it. If you weren’t closer to Dean than you’ve been in months, and that might make you scream in unbridled agony, but it almost jumpstarts that dangerous, dangerous hope.

Because he’s there. Tired but alive. Carrying Sam—limp but breathing—over his back with an unbreakable glint in his eye. And you’re allowed to hope that he’ll be home by morning. That you’ll get through this, and Dean will collapse on the edge of your bed and let you cradle him until you’re both patched up.

It could all be fine in the morning.

“I could get him,” God whispers, back at your side. “Him and Sam, and Bobby. I could bring them all back.”

You shake your head, unable to look away from Dean. “I’m never going with you,” you rasp, and God hums.

“I’m not asking you to.”

You laugh disbelievingly, and he sighs.

“Well, I am, but- It’s not like the other times, okay? I just want five- Maybe ten years. To show you how good it would be, to- To get a real chance. All I’m asking for is one real chance, nothing in the way. I’ll even toss in world peace, whenever we go on a date. And world peace, plus Dean safe?” He whistles. “What more could you possibly want?”

And you don’t answer. He right. You’re not going to get a better deal than that.

But Dean…

You can still see him, laying Sam on the ground of a cave, wiping the sweat from his baby brother’s brow and working his jaw as he figures out what he’s going to do. And you can see the shattered expression he’d give you, if you told him you traded yourself for his freedom. Ten years is nothing to God. It’s everything to you. It’s how long you knew Dean, before you were allowed to touch him. How much time you wasted clawing away from his side and gnawing off your hands when they just reached back out. You can’t waste another ten years. You can’t see your own heartbreak on Dean’s face.

God sighs, and the vision vanishes from the water.

“Think about it,” he mutters, and then he’s gone.

You sigh, and linger for only a moment long. When you push back into the motel room, you find Jo splayed over her own bed, her nose wrinkled and hand swatting at something in her dreams. You smile and shuffle to the bathroom, splashing cold water over your cheeks and squinting at your flushed, scrunched face in the flickering, yellow light. You sigh, and look back to the sink. The water in the faucet misses being free to follow it’s own stream. You understand, and turn it off.

When you look up again, Cas is right behind you, and your eyes only go wide.

He looks the same as how you last saw him. Bags under his eyes and messy hair, electric blue clean and the colors of his rainbow back in line. There’s something more lean to his body—to his wings, trapped in his vessel—but maybe he’s been doing a lot. You want to ask. You want to grab his hand, and tell him you found Dean.

But you’re tired.

You’re tired, and it’s been months, and he only reaches out now. Now that you have something, now that you might need him, but not enough that he’s going to have to deal with what he did. You spin around and press yourself against the counter, and he just fucking stares at you, and all that beaten down, bottled up frustration and fury… it just bursts.

“Get out,” you hiss, and Cas only blinks. “Get out!”

He doesn’t move. Your voice rises to shrill scream.

“Get out, get out- I- I don’t want to fucking see you, I don’t want talk to you, I don’t- Get out!”

Cas doesn’t budge. Something in your chest that’s been held up by the thinnest string snaps, and you start to sob, your body shaking and hands wringing and tears streaming, hot and angry down your face.

“You put them there!” You scream, and Cas still only stares. “You didn’t let me stop them, you- You didn’t let me save them, you put them there!”

Cas tilts his head. You can barely breathe.

“They’re gone- He’s gone- He’s gone, and I- I don’t know how- I don’t know how- And it’s your fault- Your fault-“ Your voice cracks. “You didn’t let me save him,” you barely whisper. “Why didn’t you let me save him?”

And he doesn’t answer. You let out another twisted, wretching sob and stumble forward, unsure if you’re going to push him or hug him, but your hands meet nothing but tiled wall. Cas is gone. Like he was never even there at all. And you fall to the bathroom floor, crying until you can’t feel anything but the pain of it, but the ache of the Spiderweb over your heart.

Jo finds you. She helps you back to bed and sits on the edge of the mattress, holding your hand as your breathing evens out. She knows better than to talk about it now.

“In the morning,” you breathe, half asleep, and she gives you a worried look.

“What?”

“It’ll-“ You yawn, your eyes easing shut, rolling into her side and squeezing her hand tight. “’s gonna be better in the morning.”

“There aren’t stars,” you whisper, curled into Dean’s side on the forest floor.

You’re dreaming of Purgatory. Of the dark forest and Dean, safer than he probably is out there. You found him bathing in a river, and he led you to that cave where you saw him hide Sam. You lay on the ground, half curled over his chest, and you watch the empty sky with his heartbeat steady in your ear.

“I don’t like that there aren’t stars,” you mutter, and Dean chuckles, pressing a kiss to your brow.

“I know.”

The dark shimmers. Golden, flickering stars light up the skyline, making Dean look like he’s a steady candle. He smiles, playing with a baby hair curled near your ear. Tears slide down your cheek, and Dean kisses then away with soft, warm lips.

“Look at that,” he murmurs, mouth brushing yours. “Nothin’ you can’t do.”

You laugh, breathy and broken. Dean kisses that away to, and you let yourself close your eyes.

You’ll get him back, you promise the fake stars. You will, or-

No or.

You’re just going to get him back.

✦chapter 76

✦End note: i'm so sorry this was late, the fic writers curse might finally be hitting me squad... but it's okay. we persist. i will not be weaker than my characters Chapter Title from Lonely is the Muse by Halsey

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