Fic: Our Invincibe Heights, DeanOFC, Sam (Supernatural)

[rubykatewriting]

TITLE: Our Invincible Heights
AUTHOR: rubykatewriting
PAIRING: DeanOFC, Sam
RATING: R
WORDS: 11,422
SUMMARY: FutureFic. The dust kicks up as they pull away from the house and she gazes into the side view mirror, watches it disappear behind the bend in the road.
DISCLAIMER: John, Dean and Sam Winchester as well as Ash are the creations of others. I am only borrowing them. The rest of the characters herein belong to me. No harm intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The title comes from Pablo Neruda’s poem And because love battles, which can be found here. Special thanks go to Green Eve for the awesome (as always) beta and halfway2home for giving this a look in its earliest stages.



Lia spots the car as they take the final curve towards the house. Beside her, Annie immediately tenses and she reaches out, fingers searching under the lip of the dashboard, looking for the key to the storage bin in the back.

“Not yet.” Lia glances in the rear view mirror, catching John’s eye. “John, you and Bea hunker down behind the front seats. Do not make a sound. You hear me?”

John and Bea nod solemnly, setting aside their candy and magazines. She hears them slip into the space between the front and back seats. Soon that won’t be an option for John; even at twelve, he’s just a few inches shorter than his father. Lia tries to place the car. It could be any number of people. Hunters come to see Dean, or needing a place to stay for the night. Even after Dean’s retirement, they have boarded so many in the last ten years that it’s hard to keep track.

She parks the Jeep behind the last gathering of trees. (It had seemed like such a good idea when they bought the house that it was situated in the middle of a large clearing.) It leaves her little cover the rest of the way up to the house, but she wants to put as much distance as she can between their visitor and the kids. Pushing open the door, she hops down to the hard-packed dirt, easily liberating the sawed-off shotgun from the pocket Dean built into the door. Bea turns towards her, head resting against the back of the driver’s seat, eyes wide. Her nostrils flare, but she doesn’t make a sound.

Lia skims her fingers along her daughter’s brow. “Beetle, keep close to your brother.” Without waiting for a response, she glances to her eldest daughter. “Annie, the other 12-gauge is in the back. Get it and fill it half-and-half. I may need you to cover me.”

Annie jerks her head in reply and eases open the passenger side door. Lia watches as her daughter quietly pushes the door closed, then listens for the hushed footsteps as she moves towards the back of the Jeep. When they bought it used six years ago, Dean raised the floor of the small cargo area and rigged a storage container under it. It stored just about every weapon he could think of, from knives to guns to holy water.

Shaking with nerves, Lia quietly presses her door shut, moving slowly alongside the vehicle and around the hood. For a moment, she remains under the protective canopy of the leafy branches, mentally preparing for what she may have to do. Get your head in the game, Winchester. Glancing to her left and right, she spies Annie taking up a post at the tree with the best view of the house. Time to go.

She carries the gun high up on the handle, finger a hairsbreadth from the trigger, ready to raise it in an instant as she strides across the yard. Her nerves jitter under her skin at being this exposed. Up close, the car is black underneath a thick coating of dust; whoever it is has been on the road for a while. Late model Saturn, Montana plates. She goes through the list of hunters she’s met through the years and none spring to mind. Most have trucks or older cars with large enough trunks to store a cache of weapons.

As she makes her way up the porch steps, careful of the squeaky spots, the first thing that she notices is the absence of barking. If a stranger even stepped toward the house, BoBo and Tink would be going wild, scratching at the doors and windows. She reaches out a hand to open the screen door when she hears the telltale groan of wood – left side of the house by the nearest living room window. Raising the shotgun, she sights slightly ahead of the trim and waits. Shouldn’t be long; she takes a steadying breath, going completely still.

When their visitor finally steps out from the side of the house, his back is to her, head turned as if glancing back at someone. There is something familiar about him, and she hesitates for half a second before pumping the shotgun.

-

“Mommy! Wake up!”

She feels Bea’s hands on her face, tiny and cool, patting at her cheeks. Lia opens her eyes and finds her youngest curled over her, Bea’s hair falling like a dark curtain around their heads. Bea has her feet tucked under her butt, with Lia’s head in her small lap. “Hi,” Bea whispers, as if this is an every day occurrence.

Next to them, BoBo and Tink whine and dance about, the sound of their feet against the wood planks like a really odd tap routine. Their anxiety is palpable, and it worms its way into Lia’s gut. Then there is the small matter of her throbbing head.

It takes a moment to focus solely on Bea. “What happened?”

“A man hit you on the back of the head, and Annie shot him.”

Lia’s eyes widen and she jerks herself into a sitting position, somehow managing not to knock heads with Bea. Her stomach roils at the sudden change and she’s almost positive she has a concussion. The sight before her stuns her momentarily mute.

It’s been nearly five years, but she recognizes Ash instantly. He leans against the front door in a stained white tank. “Why the hell was she shooting at me?” Sam inspects his left shoulder. Blood trails down his arm, dripping from his curled fingers onto the wood plank of the porch, discoloring it.

Snorting, Sam shakes his head. “You knocked her mother unconscious.”

“I didn’t know it was Lia, and this was my favorite shirt!” Ash shakes the fabric bunched up in his fist at Sam. “And fucking hell, this hurts like a motherfucker!”

Sam scoffs at him. “It’s barely a flesh wound, man. And watch your mouth.”

Darting her eyes to the car then back to her brother-in-law, Lia feels her stomach drop.

“Sam?”

His dark gaze sweeps to hers and his expression is suddenly grim. “It’s not good, Lia.”

-

Annie takes the dogs over to the Miller’s for safekeeping, and they take Lia’s old SUV to Tillamook since it’s the only car that will seat all of them. She and Sam take turns behind the wheel, driving straight through the night while the kids sleep in the backseat and Ash fiddles on his laptop, muttering under his breath.

This is the first time she’s heard anything about Tillamook. Dean was supposed to be in Portland, tracking down a part for his beloved Impala. These days they were becoming scarcer, and he wanted to have it fixed up in time for Annie’s eighteenth birthday next month. How did he end up seventy miles off course and with Sam and Ash? She shakes her head at the questions. She can’t think about it right now, anything beyond just getting to him.

Ash’s presence only further sets her on edge. It means all of this has to do with the demon that killed their parents, and the way Sam’s eyes slide away from hers whenever she looks at him leaves little room for doubt.

There was always a chance of this happening, even when Dean gave up the life, because the demon was a whole other story. It simply stopped being the first thing in Dean’s mind. Now it’s back or on its way, and she can’t do anything about it. Her husband is in a strange hospital over six hours away, and she can’t seem to make the miles pass fast enough.

Part of her craves the breakdown she can feel simmering just beneath her skin. She wants to fall back into that hysteria and throw all of her pain at the sky, and for the first time in years, she feels that old rage, sharp and achy in the pit of her belly. I haven’t missed a mass since I was six years old, you bastard. Don’t you even fucking dare. Letting out a shuddering breath, she focuses on the blurring landscape.

“Lia, look at me.”

“No, Sam.” She shakes her head, keeping her eyes trained on the small bit of shoulder caught in the headlights. “If I look at you right now, I won’t be any good to anyone.”

He blows out a tired breath. “Well, then listen to me, okay?”

Swallowing hard, she nods, rapping her knuckles against her mouth. “I’m listening.”

“We’re going to get through this, I promise.”

“Don’t, okay? You can’t promise me that, and -" Lia closes her hands into fists, banging them on her thighs. “If he – if I lose him – I can’t.”

“I know my brother, Lia. I’ve seen him come back from the brink before.”

She glares at his profile in the dark. “He cheated death twice, Sam. There’s a difference.”

Sam shrugs, and she remembers her first impression of him: irrepressible puppy. “Well, yeah, but he didn’t have you and the kids then. It’s different for him now.”

“What happened?”

“It’s like I told you, Dean –“

“No, Sam. Why are you back here? Last time I checked you were out of the business for good, living the suburban dream in New York.”

He checks the rear view and both side mirrors before finally giving a one-shouldered shrug. “Sarah left me a year ago.” He clears his throat. “Apparently I wasn’t happy working a nine-to-five gig. Or at least that’s what the note said.”

She doesn’t say anything but lays a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.

-

When they get to Tillamook County General, Dean still hasn’t regained consciousness. She only half-listens to the surgeon as he explains the extent of the injuries; instead, she makes a catalogue of her own. There is a laceration running the entire length of the left of his face, an angry red gash on his pale skin. Dark stitches criss-cross their way down from his hairline until just past his ear. The rest is held together with Steri-strips and butterfly bandages.

It’s been awhile since she saw those. The last time was when Bea, ever the adventurer, fell out of the old Speckled Adler in the backyard. She came traipsing into the kitchen sporting a nasty cut over her right eyebrow and a swollen lip. Blinking back tears, Lia cleaned her up and bandaged the wound. Somehow she managed to keep her hands steady as fear twisted her gut like a pretzel. It worked. Her four-year-old daughter was oblivious as she described in an exhilarated voice what it felt like to free-fall from what amounted to five feet.

Afterward, Lia walked out to the work shed and climbed up onto the riding mower. It took her five minutes to let go, to let the tears work their way out of her. Dean found her there, still in his coveralls. She didn’t care about the grease as he pulled her close (she could feel him shaking).

He rested his chin on her shoulder. “John told me what happened.”

“She could have gotten so hurt, Dean, and I wouldn’t have heard it."

“I know.” He held her away from him, shook her gently until she looked him in the eye. “But she didn’t. We’ll sit her down and have the same talk with her we had with Annie and John. Okay?”

Even through her tears, she laughed, a short bark of noise. “Winchesters can’t fly?”

He nodded, a slight smirk flashing. “Yes, ma’am. Short and effective.”

“So you keep telling me,” she remarked, shaking her head at him.

“It stopped the first two. It should work on Bea.” Seeing her expression, he shrugged. “It won’t hurt to at least try.” He held out his hand to her and she took it, and they walked back to the house.

All the fingers of his right hand are broken, as well as all the metacarpal bones. (I haven’t forgotten everything I learned first year, she thinks wryly.) From the little she let penetrate when Sam offered up details of the fight on the way here, she knows that what they ran into wasn’t the demon, but a possessed human. “It, uh, got Dean on the ground.” Sam had swallowed hard, blinking rapidly. “The thing just kept stomping his hand, Lia. I could hear him crying out. He couldn’t do anything and I couldn’t –” His voice broke. “I couldn’t get to him.”

That’s when it turned Dean’s own gun on him (“It was empty, thank Christ.”), but Sam’s relief (and Dean’s) had been short-lived. “The thing – it was laughing this crazy laugh and took the rifle and beat him. Used it like a bat.” Multiple rib fractures, the fibula and tibia of his right leg, internal bleeding, bruised liver. Lia takes several breaths and tries to focus on what the surgeon is telling them. He’s relentless.

“He’s in bad shape, Mrs. Jones, but we’ve set all of his bones. Fortunately none were compound breaks and all rather clean.” The surgeon pauses, dark eyes scanning her face briefly, and she nods. “He’ll be out of commission for several months and he’ll need extensive rehab, but those are all minor compared to the internal damage he suffered during the fall. His spleen ruptured, which we’ve removed, but his body is in shock right now as he lost quite a bit of blood due to the internal bleeding. As I understand it, you drove him in yourself, Mr. Jones, rather than wait for an ambulance.”

Sam flushes. “I didn’t think there was time to wait since we were in such a remote area.”

“I see.” The surgeon makes a face as if to say he doesn’t before glancing back at Dean’s chart. Lia grabs hold of Sam’s shirtsleeve. There’s no point in arguing, not right now. “I have to be honest here. The odds are not in your husband’s favor, Mrs. Jones. There is no telling the true extent of his injuries much less their lasting effects.”

He slides his pen back into his lab coat pocket. “Now I have to continue my rounds, but the nurse can page me if you have any more questions.”

“Thank you, Dr. Soto.” She waits until he is out of earshot before she turns to Sam. “What’s the story?”

“We were out hiking when he fell from a cliff.”

Her knees go out from under her and Sam catches her around the waist. He helps her into the chair by Dean’s bed, squatting down in front of her, hands on her knees.

She covers her face, her breath catching. “Jesus, Sam. Sweet Jesus. I think that might have almost been preferable.”

“I know.”

The tears come now, hot as they hit her skin, and she lets Sam pull her against his shoulder. Her arms slide around his neck and she buries her face into the side of his neck.

“I can’t lose him, Sam. I can’t,” she mumbles, knowing she’s getting snot and tears all over his shirt but not caring. She feels him shake his head.

“You’re not going to.”

Pulling back, Lia wipes messily at her nose. She meets his eyes and a fresh ache sends her heart plummeting into her gut. He wanted normal so badly. She cups his face in her hands, wanting to know the right words to say here, but they don’t come.

“We’ve missed you, Sam,” she whispers, and he smiles a quiet smile.

“Me too, Lia, me too.”

-

She comes out of the bathroom feeling more herself, face washed, her eyes a little less puffy and red. Sam waits for her by the nurses’ station, watching the flurry of activity with a faraway look on his face.

“Hey,” Sam calls softly and she joins him. “Ready?”

Lia laughs mirthlessly. “Not the least little bit.”

He smiles, squeezing her upper arm comfortingly as they walk towards the waiting room. She eyes him surreptitiously, wondering. Sarah left him over a year ago and he’s been off God knows where, doing God knows what. That’s the part that bothers Lia the most. Sarah left him, and he didn’t come home.

He catches her watching him, and for a second their eyes hold. She guesses he knows exactly what is on her mind.

“What do I tell them?” she asks, pushing away the awkwardness of the growing silence. This is the one question she knows the answer to, but she wants to hear it from him.

“The truth.”

The kids know on some level that Dean is hurt, badly hurt, but they didn’t grow up like Dean and Sam. They have never hunted, and except for Annie, weren’t even alive when Dean was a hunter. Since Dean’s retirement, Lia’s only been inside an ER twice, once when Annie broke her arm in the 7th grade, and then a year later when John fell from the monkey bars and split his lip open.

“I –" Lia turns, covering her mouth with her hand. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, refusing to give into the tears again. She will not let her kids see her fall apart.

Sam wraps her up in his arms until she stops shaking. When he lets her go, he offers his hand. “Come on.”

Looking at his face, the set of his jaw, she is reminded of that first night, the first time she ever set eyes on Dean Winchester.

-

Pushing through the double doors into the waiting room, she spots them immediately. It’s half-past three in the morning. Aside from Ash and the kids, there are maybe four other people, asleep, huddled up, using purses as pillows, or their folded arms. The room is set up with couches grouped into fours around little coffee tables so that families can have at least the semblance of privacy.

Bea is sound asleep, curled up against John’s side. In the time it takes Lia to work her way through the maze of furniture, she notices John’s head bobbing as he tries to stay awake. Annie sits on John’s other side, reading a book. She has grown quite a bit in the past year, with nearly two inches on Lia, and her heart breaks at the sight of those long legs hugged so tightly against her daughter’s chest. Suddenly ten years are gone and she’s seven again, her little body folded in on itself, crying her eyes out over the loss of her beloved pet turtle, Ike.

Ash’s shoulder is bandaged up, and he looks up with unfocused eyes. “Hey,” he slurs, trying to push up into a sitting position using just his right arm. In his current state, he can’t quite manage it, and his elbow slips off the armrest several times before he finally gives up. “So what’s the verdict?”

Lia turns from him to look at her children. This close up, she sees how there is barely any space between them. They sit huddled together, and for the first time in nearly twelve hours, Lia feels in control of herself. Three pairs of eyes settle on her, and she sits down on the little coffee table.

-

It takes her a long time to get Bea back to sleep. Annie and Sam go back to see Dean, while John stares off into space and drinks a coke from the vending machine. His silence worries her. He’s never been an emotional boy – even as a baby he hardly cried – but he’s not reacting at all.

“John.”

He glances at her, his dark blue eyes giving away nothing. “I’m okay, Mom.”

“It’s okay not to be, too,” she offers, feeling out of her depth and not for the first time. John has always been a singular experience, not the affectionate child Annie was, or the preternaturally wise Bea, four going on forty, but there used to be a time when he would talk to her.

“Dad’s hurt and it’s bad. I get all that,” he whispers, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. He stares at his feet for a while, and she wonders if that’s all she’s going to get.

“I want him to get better, Mom, but what about the demon? Is he going to go after it again?”

Lia falls back against the chair, stunned. She didn’t expect that question to come out of her twelve year old son’s mouth, but then he doesn’t know the whole story. That had been the point; to keep Annie and him and Bea as protected as possible. Stop the cycle.

She sits up, mentally squaring her shoulders. It is time for the truth, the whole truth. “It’s not just about your grandmother, or your uncle’s girlfriend from college. It came after Annie.”

John jerks his head up and she knows she has his attention. “What?”

“It was like clockwork, really. Ash emailed several times to warn us, but we thought it was going after someone else’s kid. We were moving around so much, just following the next job, that it never occurred to us that it was Annie. Then I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a shadowy figure standing over her crib.” She pauses, shaking her head, the fear still gnawing at her gut. “It nearly killed me that night, John, and it just about took your father and sister too.”

Lia lets out a sigh, the memories overwhelming her. The too-close smell of burning, her daughter’s frightened cries as they worked their way through the smoke, or the way Dean touched her for weeks afterward. As if she was breakable and it was a dangerous affirmation. Life was too short, and Dean couldn’t protect them all the time, not from every demon let alone the most dangerous one of all.

“Your father left the business, and we all went into hiding.”

-

His skin looks waxy, not quite real. She can’t bring herself to touch him; afraid he’ll feel too similar to the cadaver she dissected back in medical school. That girl she used to be seems so foreign, too prepared for all the wrong things and it’s as if she somehow co-opted someone else’s memories. She can’t quite imagine ever being her again, or in the first place, but then that was what bonded her and Dean. Though he was young when it happened, he could still recall the clear demarcation. The before and the after, and her twenty-fourth year was definitely when she started living her after.

She pulls the chair closer to the side of the bed and sits on the edge of the seat; afraid she’ll fall asleep if she gets too comfortable. The hours are starting to wear at her, but she can’t leave yet. It feels too risky with him still so fragile, and she can’t chance it. Push comes to shove, she’ll send Sam to get a motel room for the kids, get them settled.

It’s strange to think there was a time when this could have been her life. A hospital day in, day out, the monotony of normal, and she wonders how it could have ever seemed appealing. Her decision to go to medical school had more to do with her family than any real desire to study medicine. Her parents were immigrants and they only wanted the best for their daughters. If her sister Anne had survived, she would have gone on to law school. It was the American dream, and her parents wanted nothing less for them.

After her family was murdered, everything changed. She changed. She dropped out of school and started searching for answers. All her years of religious study, of profound faith and she couldn’t find her answers in God. It was devastating, and it wasn’t long before she flung herself headfirst into the occult, and from there, every lore, urban legend, folk tale – anything she could get her hands on – spending nearly a year lost in old texts and dusty bookshops.

Eventually it became clear that it wasn’t random. Looking into her parents’ past, suddenly things started standing out, things that had before seemed random superstition, a holdover from their native country. What she couldn’t figure out was why her parents left Brazil so unexpectedly. Why they chose to settle in a town where they had no family or friends. The reason why carvings of the mano fico hung in every room of the house and the amulets were strung up at the four corners. Why her father told her and Anne if there was ever any trouble to go to the fountain at the center of their neighborhood and stay under the water until the danger had passed.

All she knew was her parents had been scared and they had some idea of what was out there.

The answer lay in the papers she found in her parents’ closet the morning after. Whatever numbness remained from her night in the fountain left her as she tore the place apart. Having to tip-toe on bare feet around the bodies of her family had nearly undone her, and she knew her window of escape was dwindling. The sky was the color of a new bruise as she slipped out the back gate.

With the little bit of money she had on her, she got a motel room, cleaned up, and waited around until the banks opened. She had signing authority on all of her parents’ accounts. If she was going to survive, she needed money. If she was going to find who had done this, she needed to use that money.

A year to the day the manifestation struck, a contact led her to a bar in San Antonio where Dean and Sam were busy hustling pool. She watched them for hours that first night, seeing a strange salvation in them. They would give her the final answers and help her track down the thing that had cast the spell, and then somehow she would go back to her old life. Become a doctor like her parents would have wanted and pretend away the things she now knew.

The days that followed were hazy. She was running on empty, her body spent from too many sleepless nights and not enough food, but she managed to tail them to the next town, the next job. It never occurred to her that they had known she was looking for them, or that they knew she was following them. Dean finally cornered her at a gas station while she feigned a perusal of the soda selection. It was such a relief she passed out right there on the grimy floor of the Texaco just outside of El Paso.

When she came to, Sam was leaning over her, his brow furrowed with concern, and he smiled when he noticed she was awake. “Hey there.” His voice was higher than she expected for a guy his size. He twisted off the cap of a water bottle and handed it to her. Pushing up into a sitting position, she realized she’d been out awhile; she was in their motel room. It was the safest she’d felt in months.

Dean was across the room, leaning against the wall. From the expression on his face, she doubted he was the one who carried her in. Sam sat on the other bed, earnestness personified.

It wasn’t difficult to get them to take her case. She had nearly $40,000 leftover from her parents’ life savings. Convincing Dean to let her help was another argument entirely. “You don’t seem to understand how lucky you were to survive it the first time,” he bit out angrily, his gaze hard and she looked away, feeling like a petulant child. She really had no idea what all of this entailed, but she needed to see it through. Needed to see her family avenged, and that he understood.

“Fine, but you’re on research detail. Nothing else.”

Sam was the one who made the connection when they were translating some old letters between her mother and grandmother. There was something about an old feud between her parents’ families. Her parents had run away, left Brazil to be together. But what grabbed their attention most was one of her grandmother’s last letters. She wrote of strange things happening, shadows that shouldn’t be there, Lia’s uncle’s strange illness. And then nothing until a letter arrived from Lia’s great-aunt (her father’s aunt) to inform Iara of her family’s death – every one of them murdered in their beds.

Someone had cast the olho gordo on her family, and from what she and Sam could figure, it had grown, taken on a life of its own. The shadow she saw attack her family wasn’t a demon or anything to be sent back to Hell. There was a person – flesh and blood and human – behind it. That was who they had to go after.

They headed back to Dallas. Dean was sure whoever had cast the spell had found Lia’s family and had to have been nearby at the time of the attack. What they couldn’t figure out was why it struck then. There was a nearly twenty year gap between the murders. Had it really taken that long to track them down?

The house was still empty. Clean, a blank slate, nothing to give away the horror that had happened there. Their little experiments in social engineering had come to an end; too many cops knew their faces. They needed to get a look at the crime scene photos so Sam called Ash to hack the police file. In the second to last photograph, Lia finally figured it out. The pentagram that hung in the eastern corner was missing, and after another review of the photographs, she could see it lying in pieces on the hardwood floor. It was as if they had opened their front door and invited their killer in. Nothing could have stopped it.

She couldn’t stay in the motel room so she paced the parking lot, hands stuffed in her pockets. Dean came out and leaned on the trunk of the Impala. He didn’t say anything, simply kept her company.

The asphalt had several layers of old cracks, large and small fissures patched over and then re-opened over time. She tried to avoid meeting his eyes. It had been several weeks since El Paso, and she wasn’t quite as comfortable around him as she was Sam.

“My father’s friend Antero, he hired some guys to finish these built-in bookshelves. It was supposed to be a surprise for my mother’s birthday.” Lia couldn’t look away from him as she spoke. “The workers must have –” She pressed her lips together tight, like a seal, trying to staunch the urge to puke.

He pulled her up against him, his arms a strong anchor around her, and she let herself cry for them. It felt good to finally mourn them but even better to know the truth. To know that there was nothing she could have done differently.

It only took her a day to figure out who was behind the spell. She was re-reading the last letter her grandmother wrote when he was mentioned by name. Her mother wrote of an “an old friend” from Recife that had written Tadeu to tell him he would soon be in America. Growing up, Lia had always felt uneasy around Antero. She had never been able to put her finger on it, but it had been there, in the back of her mind, a nagging persistence that this man was not to be trusted. And when he showed up at the motel, seemingly out of nowhere, all the pieces fell together. It was almost anti-climatic when he pulled a gun on her.

“Liliana, sweet little Liliana.” The ticking vein in his temple belied the casual tone. “It’s so good to see you again.”

She stared at him, a sense of calm washing over her. Every moment since her mother had woken her up and frantically told her to run had been leading up to this point. It was the only conclusion. The ending was still up in the air. “Why?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Your father didn’t appreciate how lucky he was.”

Anger flared in her chest, fortifying her. “What does that even mean?”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re here now. This can be over.” He pointed the gun at the bed. “There – sit down. This has to look as realistic as possible.”

She did as she was told. “I’m killing myself, then?”

“Well the guilt over killing your parents and sister has been weighing heavily on you,” he said conversationally, moving in close. He tapped her mouth with the barrel. “Open up.”

Coward that he was, he kept averting his gaze. Her fingers slipped under the pillow and the feel of cold metal made her entire body sing. Before Antero had an inkling that the situation was no longer in his control, she was sinking the blade into his belly. It was easier than she expected but then Dean was anal about his weapons.

Sam drove and Dean sat in the back with her. She could tell he was worried, the way his eyes kept sliding over her, but he was trying to play it cool. She felt numb. It was as if she was watching it from inside some bubble. It was over, her family was avenged, Antero was dead. The spell broken. But she couldn’t feel it.

They salted and burned the body before burying it (“Better safe than sorry,” Dean had grunted as he upended the bag of salt over Antero’s corpse.) in a secluded wooded area off I-67. Standing at the edge of the grave, Lia pulled out the small wooden figure (a wolf) she’d found in Antero’s jacket pocket. Her mother had given her father one like it back in Recife and again when they came here. She fingered the initials carved into the belly of the wolf. TJA. Her father. He had always carried it around with him, his version of a rabbit’s foot. She tossed it in and watched until it was black and splintered.

They kept on as they had been, except now between jobs Dean and Sam took turns training her on every weapon in their arsenal while she became resident research girl. Over the next six months, she saw more of the US than she had in all her twenty-four years before it, and somewhere along the way, she started feeling whole again, there in the backseat of the Impala.

By the following year, she was ready to strike out on her own. She wasn’t going to hunt, but it seemed like it was time to start her life again. Make a fresh beginning in some new place. During one of their many criss-crosses of the Midwest, she fell in love with a little town in Southeastern Iowa. It wasn’t long before she found a job at a small bookstore and a charming attic apartment in a converted Victorian nearby.

Before they left, Dean gave her two rifles, a pistol, and a plastic bottle of holy water. “Just in case,” he murmured, grinning, and in that moment, she finally gave in and kissed him. Long and desperate and it was like breathing for the first time. Falling in love with him had been an afterthought.

“Thank you,” she whispered against his mouth. “Be safe, okay?”

“You too.” His fingers tapped a light trail down her cheek, and she wondered – hoped – he would ask her to leave with them. “Call me if anything comes up. Anything, you hear?”

Nodding, she stepped back and watched him walk away.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she admits softly, slipping her arm through the bed railing, taking his one good hand in hers. It’s warm and she feels the familiar scar starting at the base of his index finger. He sliced his whole palm open the night she tried to teach him how to make Quibebe. “And then you were there, and it finally felt like Christmas.”

Sam was in the next town over, handling a rather simple poltergeist (the homeowners caught it early and knew a guy who knew a guy who knew about the Winchesters), and somehow she and Dean made it back to her apartment.

It was quick and hardly worth remembering save for the way she couldn’t look away from his eyes as he pressed into her the first time. The pain was sharp but brief and he was coming soon after, and he murmured things like “I’m sorry,” and “Next time, I promise,” as his head dropped against her shoulder, breath skipping across her skin.

He rolled off her onto his back, and for several minutes, it was intolerable. She focused on the ceiling tiles and the tickle of his bare thigh and hip against hers. As if on cue, he raised up onto his elbow, head resting on his fist. His hand rested on her stomach, fingers splayed.

Grinning (and flushing more than a little), she answered the question she could see working itself out in his head, “It’s called masturbation, Dean.”

Laughing, he nodded. “Yeah, that’ll do in a pinch, but why?” he asked. “You’re hot,” he finished lamely, gesturing as if it was obvious.

“Once upon a time I used to be a good Catholic girl,” she responded, and she had meant it as a joke. But she was sore beyond belief and overly emotional and the tears were slipping down her cheeks before she even realized she was crying. Dean, flustered and looking more than a little guilty, sat up and for a minute she was sure he was going to leave.

Mortified, Lia covered her face, willing with all her might that she could just stop. It was as if she had no control over herself, as if some unseen force was pulling the sobs out of her. He tugged her into his lap, his arms snaking around her back, hands in her hair.

“Dean,” she pleaded, tucking herself inside his embrace.

Her promise to remain chaste until marriage was the last holdout of her old life. It had been easy to forget about; it had become like breathing after awhile. Then she met Dean. It didn’t take anyone long to figure out he liked women, but he liked fucking them best. Being in such close proximity to someone so overtly sexual was, if not an awakening, certainly a reminder of what she’d given up without ever asking herself if it was her choice or her parents.

Now not only were her parents gone, she, the daughter she used to be, was gone, too.

He proposed to her outside of a gas station off of I-15. Lia was sitting on the trunk of the Impala as the gas pumped and Dean was cursing about the gas prices going up again. It was the first truly warm day of spring and the sun sat high in the blue sky, and she was finally starting to get some color in her legs again.

“Hey, Lia, you ever want to get married?”

Yanking on an errant thread of her jean cutoffs, Lia grunted, only half-listening. “What, you mean in general?”

“No, I mean you ever want to marry me?”

It was a full five seconds before she realized the tip of her index finger was a bright violet, the thread wrapped around it several times. “Shit,” she murmured and pulled it free, letting it flutter to the pavement. Straightening, she turned to look Dean in the eyes. “Really?”

He shrugged nonchalantly but he was smiling. “Yes, really.”

She caught his wrist and he moved in between her knees, his hands skimming nervously up and down her thighs. “Yes,” she whispered, afraid to say it too loud as if it were some spell to be broken.

He rested his forehead against hers. “You know, it’s only another hundred miles to Vegas.”

Without any hesitation, she murmured, “Let’s go,” and pressed a brief kiss to his lips.

It was the Vegas cliché. Sam stood as Dean’s best man and as their witness, and it took everything in them not to burst out laughing as their string bean of an Elvis officiated in his flashy, too-big white jumpsuit. They stayed the day after, sleeping in, and Dean and Sam managed to make some cash playing cards and blackjack. Then they were back on the road, back to their real lives.

When she discovered she was pregnant, she and Dean talked over all the options, but there was never really any question about what they would do. Their Annie arrived on a bitterly cold day in January (her father’s birthday) just outside of Madonna, Maryland.

It wasn’t long before Ash started sending warnings. The weather patterns, the cattle mutilations. It was centralized to a small town called Murray, Kentucky. They went looking for the child, only to end up playing right into the demon’s trap.

“That’s what this was all about, then?” she whispers, the anger like a hard nugget of fire in her chest. “You could have told me, you know. We almost died that night remember? I’m a little pissed at the bastard myself.”

She stares at him, at his bare chest as it rises and falls with the aid of a respirator. He is only two years younger than his father when he died. Her own father never saw past fifty. Hunting was a job for the young and it took its price, but she had always hoped by getting out when they did, it would mean a different ending for Dean and Sam.

She curls her fist around a wad of his blankets, anger giving way to hysteria with a quick punch. “Dean – please. Don’t leave, okay? I’m not ready to let you go.”

When she grabs his hand again, she can hardly breathe around the sobs. “Not yet. Please not yet.”

-

The chapel is small and rather nondescript. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, Lia supposes as she slips into a pew near the back. It is warm from all the candles, and she stares at them for long minutes until she has tiny flame-shaped spots marring her vision.

She still goes to mass every week, but she hasn’t been to confession since she lost her family. She just can’t quit the church completely, no matter how fractured her relationship has become with God over the years. It is the one thing, besides her son’s dark blue eyes, Annie’s temperament so reminiscent of Lia’s mother, and Bea’s striking resemblance to Anne (their photographs are nearly interchangeable), that keeps her connected to her parents and sister. Despite all the hardships her parents faced coming here from Recife, they relied on their faith to see them through, and it did. Through the language barrier, the leanness of those first few years after they opened their restaurant, her mother’s multiple miscarriages before finally having her and Anne. Their faith was unbreakable, and there was a time when Lia would have thought the same of hers.

As a little girl, she had found magic in religion, in the stained glass, in the smell of incense and the priest’s deep, melodic voice. The candles were especially powerful, for every time her mother or father helped her light one in prayer, God answered. (Even the smallest of things, like when she made choir in seventh grade.) St. Bernard’s was her haven from a world that wasn’t always so welcoming to the daughter of immigrants, or a girl who found herself most comfortable in books and church.

Sighing, she pulls down the kneeler and sinks to her knees. She rests her arms on the back of the pew in front of her, folding her hands together in prayer, and closes her eyes. The words falter on her tongue at first, but she pushes them out and up into the air.

-

She spies John exiting the elevator as she comes around the corner. He doesn’t see her, is too busy searching the other direction, and she can’t believe how much he takes after his namesakes. His eyes and his pale blond hair are her father’s while just about everything else is John Winchester – face, smile, build – and she wonders what his grandfathers would make of their grandson. Their fathers were such strong influences on them; it’s fitting that Dean and Lia’s only son is a living reminder of John and Tadeu.

As soon as he notices her, he starts running, fast, and she immediately fears the worst. Before the panic grips her, he is upon her and blurts it out.

“Dad’s...awake.”

-

His eyes are impossibly green. That’s the first thing she thinks when she enters his room. None of their children got his eyes and she always thought it a pity, but then neither she nor Anne got their father’s eyes. Maybe she’ll get her wish with green-eyed grandbabies.

“Mrs. Jones?”

Sam is suddenly beside her, his hand grabbing hold of hers, and they face down the new doctor together. It’s been nearly three full days since Dean was admitted, and twelve hours since he started breathing on his own.

“I’m Dr. Reilly. I took over your husband’s case from Dr. Soto.”

“Yes?”

Dr. Reilly is tall, nearly as tall as Sam and young looking and he smiles down at her with kind eyes. “Well, to put it mildly, your husband’s recovery is remarkable. He hasn’t had a recurrence of the internal bleeding since his surgery, and his vitals have stabilized over the last several hours and remain strong. At this point, we’re optimistic that the worst has passed, but we’re going to keep him in ICU for another day – just to err on the side of caution.”

Lia stares at him, unsure what to do. Laugh or cry, or collapse. Fortunately, Sam still has his wits about him and thanks the doctor, shaking his hand. Not for the first time, she is happy he’s here with her. That he has always been there when she needed him.

The doctor excuses himself, and they move towards Dean’s bed. His eyes open a little, wandering between the two of them, before drifting closed again, but when Lia takes his good hand, he squeezes hers. She laughs then, tears slipping down her face, and she kisses each of his fingers.

“Hey, baby,” she whispers and Sam sinks into the chair on the other side of Dean’s bed. He looks dazed, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

Dean is no longer intubated, and his mouth works for a minute, swallowing several times. “Couldn’t get rid of me that easily.” The words come out slowly, haltingly, but the sound of his voice hits her square in the chest. She has missed that voice so much.

Sam is openly crying now and he can’t stop shaking his head. He leans forward on his elbows, dropping his head into his hands. Dean tries to touch him, to reach out a hand, but that hand is in a cast. He murmurs his brother’s name, and Sam finally looks up, meets Dean’s eyes.

“Good, Sammy. Okay?”

Wiping messily at his face, Sam nods, giving his brother a smile. “Yeah, Dean. You’re good.”

They stay a minute more, before Dean reluctantly admits, “Tired,” and they leave him to sleep. The kids are standing by the double doors leading into the waiting room, practically dancing with anticipation. Sam swings Bea up into his arms, and it’s like all of them breathe for the first time in forty-eight hours. Annie and John push for details and Lia tries to give them as best she can. She is hopeful (it’s nearly bursting out of her) but she knows what a long road of recovery lays ahead.

“He’s awake but he’s still pretty groggy. They’re going to move him to another room tomorrow some time, so John and Bea, you’ll get to see him then.” Lia looks at Annie. “It looks good, Annie. It looks like he’s going to be okay.”

Annie nods, arms wrapped around her middle, and she half-turns away from Lia, her face scrunching up as the sobs come. Lia pulls her into her arms, and for all the recent fights they’ve had over curfews and privacy and schools, Lia can’t help the relief that floods through her. Their last fight ended with Annie screaming, “I don’t need you!” and slamming her bedroom door so hard it shook the entire house.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she shudders, her arms tight around Lia’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of it.”

“I know, I know.” Lia smoothes a hand up and down Annie’s back. “We’re just fine, kiddo.”

-

John was about ten months old when she and Dean found the old ranch in Yreka. It needed a lot of work, which knocked off quite a bit of the asking price, but it was in good enough shape they could live in it while they renovated. The town was ideal: small but adequately sized that a family of newcomers wouldn’t attract too much notice. After so many years on the run, doing odd jobs here and there to make ends meet (and preserve her money) but always staying off the grid, finding a home brought a small measure of peace.

The long hours of manual labor felt good and she hadn’t slept so well in years it seemed, falling into a nightly coma beside Dean. Always before dawn, Annie snuck into their bedroom, carrying a groggy John. Every day Lia woke up to her babies and Dean beside her and it felt good, the routine of it. There was no packing up for the next town over, and in the fall, Annie would start first grade in her last elementary school.

It took them a year to get the house back to its former glory. They had to sell off some of the outermost land to do it, but they didn’t need all thirty acres anyway, and they did most of the work themselves. Between her, Dean, and some old Bob Villa books she found in the local library, they fixed all the plumbing in the house. Sam and Dean did most of the woodwork together, restoring the wood floors and redoing both of the porches. By the end, they even built a table for the dining room big enough to seat the entire family.

Sam stayed with them for those first few years. It just seemed the smart thing to do. Once, while they washed dishes together, he admitted to Lia that he felt like it felt right to look out for Dean’s kids since Dean had all but raised him. And after nearly five years off the grid, all of them were on edge. He took part time work here and there but mainly kept to the house. He was the sentry at the gate.

Somewhere along the way, they became friends with their closest neighbors. The Millers, who owned the ten-acre spread which shared their eastern property line, were the first to welcome them with a tuna fish casserole and a six-pack of beer. They had a girl Annie’s age (it wasn’t long before Holly Miller became a regular guest at their house) and one off at college down in San Francisco. Greg Miller was the one who recommended the electrician, Kyle Walter, and it was through Kyle that Dean found work at Chuck Harris’s car garage. A weekly poker night was established, and pretty soon it was easy to forget they weren’t really the Jones’s seeking the quiet life in the country.

It didn’t seem to matter to their friends if they were a little more wary of strangers than most, or that they had funny habits like salting all the doors and windows, or if they never spoke of their families or their past. Some time in that first year, Lia lied to Tonya over coffee and slices of Tonya’s pound cake that their parents had been murdered years before and they had met at a support group for family members left behind. It answered any pesky questions that might arise, and even then, when Lia had barely allowed herself to like Tonya, she felt guilty for lying. But it was a relief to let the truth out, even if it was only a small part of it, to share it with someone else.

And when she and Sam bring Dean home, the people they have come to know and love are there to give him a hero’s welcome. They only know the hiking story and give him some much-needed ribbing about being such a klutz, reminding Dean about the time he tried to fix the leak in the roof himself. “There you were, hanging on for dear life to the gutters,” Greg reminisces.

“Never thought I’d see the day when you, you heathen, would invoke the Lord’s name,” Kyle adds, grinning.

“Jesus, guys, would you let the poor man get settled first?” Tonya complains, shooing them into the living room. Her dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail and her heart-shaped face crumples slightly when she sets her full attention on Dean. She blinks back tears as she gives him a careful but warm hug. “Don’t let their blustering fool you, Dean. They missed you like crazy.”

Still on crutches, Dean tilts awkwardly into her embrace. “Thanks for helping Lia with everything,” he murmurs. “I appreciate it.”

Tonya pulls back, wagging her finger at him. “Not another word about it. Either one of you would have done the same if it was me or Greg.”

Dean nods and glances at Lia. There are dark circles under his eyes. The drugs have ensured he’s slept a lot – most of the drive home – but his slumber has been fitful at best. In the days since his discharge, the nightmares have grown progressively worse, waking him and her, and she can’t help him. She can’t make them stop.

“Couch?” she offers instead.

He passes her his right crutch in answer and she angles it against the wall behind the coat rack. She presses close, her hand slipping across his lower back, around to his belly, and she takes his good arm and loops it about her shoulders. His breath is warm on her neck as he lets her steer him slowly into the front room.

Tonya has the couch set up for Dean, with two pillows and several blankets set out. Lia sits down with him, keeping him as straight as possible. The ribs are healing but the doctors decided against binding them. He huffs a shaky laugh in relief once he’s down.

Lia grins. “Comfortable?”

“Yeah.” He scoots back carefully, one hip at a time. “Yeah.”

Tonya hovers in the doorway between the living room and the dining room. “Do you want anything? Iced tea? Water? Soda?”

Chuck blows past her with a beer already half gone and happily plops down into Dean’s beloved recliner.

Dean eyes him enviously, licking his lips, then tells Tonya, “Iced tea would be great.”

Oblivious, Chuck flips on the television. “Clippers are up by twelve,” he informs Dean.

Dean groans. “Well, shit, what do you expect? The Hornets suck at defense.”

-

Lia has missed sharing a bed with him. She is deliberate as she curves herself around him, careful, but desperate too. She still feels stuck in the aftershocks, reacting but not grasping. He’s alive. He has months of rehab ahead of him, but he’s alive. Solid and broken all at once, and she skims a hand over his face, down his chest, feeling the way his body moves with each breath.

He shifts towards her, and she mirrors the movement.

“Hey,” he murmurs.

She smiles against his arm. “I thought you were asleep.”

He yawns, making a funny clicking noise in the back of his throat. “Can’t.”

“I’ll get the prescription for the sleeping pills filled tomorrow.”

“No, I don’t want to take anything more than I have to.”

She rises up onto her elbow. “Dean, you aren’t going to heal if you don’t get some sleep.”

“Lia, no. If I take those, I wouldn’t be any good.”

She stares at him, comprehending at last, and then she shakes her head. “Jesus, Dean. With or without the drugs, you wouldn’t be able to handle a regular burglar much less something supernatural. You have a broken leg, a broken hand, a broken clavicle, and a couple of broken ribs. For the time being, you’re out of the protection business.”

He struggles up into a sitting position, hissing, holding his elbow tight against his side. “Fuck, Lia, why don’t you just castrate me while you’re at it.” When she reaches out to help him, he bats her hand away.

He rises slowly and she is up and around the bed in what feels like seconds, blocking him. He glares at her but it isn’t nearly as effective as it could be. The dark circles and the way he gently sways on his feet, favoring his broken leg, totally undercut the heat of it.

“You shouldn’t be on your feet,” she tries gently.

“Fuck, Lia. I’m not a fucking child. I think I know what I should and shouldn’t be doing.” The fight leeched out of him, he sinks down tiredly on the mattress.

She kneels between his knees. “I’m sorry,” she offers.

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes meet hers. This is the part that hurts the worst. He can’t protect his own family. “I guess it’s a good thing we taught Annie and John how to shoot,” he says finally.

She rises up and kisses him.

-

Lia pulls the front door shut behind her, but Sam doesn’t look in her direction. His gaze has a faraway glint to it, but he’s been quiet in the weeks since they brought Dean home. She sits in the other chair, letting the late evening chill cool her outside in.

“I’ve missed this,” he says at last.

She makes a noncommittal noise, glancing at him.

He turns to her, gesturing at the house and the yard. “All of it.” He grins. “Getting the kids to bed, all the little excuses they come up with to put it off.”

“Bea broke John’s record last year. Sixty-two consecutive nights. He helped her figure it out.” Lia laughs and shakes her head. “That girl, she’s such a storyteller. And once she gets going there is no stopping her.”

“She told me this story about dinosaurs and turkeys the other day when I picked her up from school,” Sam says.

“It really is all about the details, right?”

He nods, eyes wide with amazement. “One word: tutus.”

Lia doubles over with laughter. “That one is my favorite,” she gasps out. “You know, Dean nearly drove off the road he was laughing so hard.”

“I could see that.”

They fall into companionable silence for a while. Lia has missed having her brother-in-law around. From the moment they met, there was an easiness between them. They knew normal; they’d had normal, a future full of it. It was different with Dean. He’d never particularly wanted normal as long as it kept his family together, and even then, it was a grudging acceptance.

“Sam?”

He meets her eyes.

She takes his hand. “Stay.”

-

Ash races up in a cloud of dust the day after Thanksgiving. It’s coming again. He knows where it’s going to show up, and he has it narrowed down to two babies. They’ll be turning six months in a week’s time, two days apart.

Sam folds his arms over his chest, head cocked in that way of his that never fails to convey his skepticism. “You’re sure?”

Ash gives a one-shouldered shrug and rolls his eyes. “Not 100%. We’re talking about an evil entity from Hell and it hasn’t been the most consistent over the years. There’s no guarantee with that kind of thing.”

“Well,” Sam replies and he turns to Lia and Dean.

She glances at Sam and Ash, then Dean. Feeling suddenly exhausted, she waves in the general direction of the house. “Come on in, Ash. We have plenty of leftovers.”

-

She finds Dean upstairs in what used to be their guest bedroom. Since he took over the business when Chuck retired, he has slowly turned it into his home office. She raps her knuckles on the door. He doesn’t look up; instead he concentrates on some paperwork from the shop.

“This isn’t up for discussion,” he says at last.

“Dean.”

“No, Lia.” He jerks around to look at her and his eyes are bright. “I will not lose one more person I love to this fucker, you hear me? I won’t.”

She drags the other chair across the room and sets it in front of him. She wants to reach out to him but she folds her hands in her lap. “Do you remember when you and Sam found me?”

He stares at her for several seconds, as if trying to gauge where this conversation is going. Clearing his throat, he finally offers, “I think it was more that you found us.”

“You saved me. Not just from Antero, but after that. You and Sam took me in and gave me my life back.”

His eyes narrow. “Where is this going, Lia?”

“Pursuing this thing is dangerous. I know that, but we’re ahead of the game now. Ash thinks he’s got it all figured out, and after twenty years on the case, I think he might be right.”

He catches her hand, tugging gently, and she stands up, carefully situating herself on his lap. They sit together for long minutes. His hand is warm on her back, fingers splayed against her bare skin. It would be easy to ignore the signs and go on as they have all these years. But then that wouldn’t be Dean, and she knows it. He knows it.

She can feel the refusal before he says it, before the slight shake of his head. Not her, anyone but her. “I’ve lost too many people to this thing.” His arm is like a vise around her middle as he lets out a shuddering breath. “My mom, my dad? Sammy with his visions? When does it stop, Lia? When do I get to say no more?”

“Now. We’re going to get it this time.” Lia almost believes herself as she says the words.

He pushes her back, holds her by the arms. “Don’t do that. Don’t make guarantees like that. You and Sam – you’re putting yourselves in harm’s way. For nothing.”

“You don’t believe that,” Lia bites out, disentangling herself from him. “If you were in hunting shape, you’d already be gone. You’d be halfway there already. So don’t you go thinking I’ve checked by brain at the door.”

He pushes himself up from the desk chair. “You aren’t doing this, Lia. That’s final.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “I don’t need your permission, Dean.”

“You have a family, Lia. You have three kids. You have me.”

“And I want to keep them safe. They aren’t safe as long as that thing is out there. We have a chance again, Dean. We can save that baby, that family from this life.” Lia feels the pressure building up in the pit of her belly, panic and fear and want. She wants to be out from under this once and for all, so much so she can hardly see straight. “Do you think your mother would have wanted you and Sam to be raised that way? To see your father turn into that kind of man?”

“Hey, don’t you talk about him like that! He did the best he could in a bad situation.”

“You don’t really believe that, Dean. It’s the reason why you chose the opposite for your children. You aren’t your father. Don’t start acting like him now.”

He stares at her for a long second then grabs his cane and limps out of the room.

-

She can’t sleep. She finally gets out of bed just before four, glancing at Dean’s side of the bed, empty, no signs he’s been to bed at all. They’ll be hitting the road soon, and she wants to check on the kids one last time.

She went to see Tonya last night, needing to let someone know, even in some small measure, what she and Sam and Ash were heading off to do. Tonya looked at her seriously, quiet for a long minute after Lia’s long explanation.

“You’re not sure you’re coming back?” Tonya had asked. Her grey eyes were dark, like the underside of a storm cloud just before it let forth the rain. They always got that way when she was worried, or when she knew Holly or Eric were lying to her.

Lia sighed. “Yeah, and I need you to look after Dean and the kids if I don’t.”

“You don’t have to ask, Lia. You know I will.”

She wants to come home to them, to keep her promise to Dean, and she figures they’re due after all these years. She just can’t take any chances. When she left, Tonya hugged her tight for a long minute and Lia had to blink back tears as she held on to her best friend. “I love you, Tonya,” she whispered.

Tonya had pulled back, wiping both cheeks with the back of her hand. “Love you too.”

Lia stops short when she reaches Bea’s room. Dean leans in the doorway, his head resting against the jamb. He doesn’t give any indication he’s heard her, save for the hand he offers. She takes it and he pulls her in front of him, holding her tight against him, his chin on her shoulder.

They don’t say anything. Bea is sound asleep, a comma under the covers. She was a lot like John as a baby. The only time she cried was upon waking from a nap, and then it was a screaming fit, tears and red, anguished faces. She didn’t handle separation well and it would take seeing either her or Dean (sometimes one or the other) for her to quiet, to settle into shuddering exhausted sniffles.

Even now it’s a battle. Pre-K was a nightmare for three weeks, and Lia was sure Bea would single-handedly end Ms. Chin’s young teaching career. But the repetition of the days eventually lulled Bea, and the rest of the year was uneventful, save for the time Bea elbowed Zach Henry in the gut when he stole her beloved stuffed bunny, Hoppy, on Show and Tell day. Kindergarten has been downright ho-hum by comparison.

“She’s going to be fine,” Dean promises, but she can feel what he isn’t saying in the way he holds her.

Laughing wryly, Lia shakes her head. “I know.”

He tugs her closer. “We’re all going to be fine.”

Tears blur her vision, the pink glow of Bea’s bunny-shaped nightlight like a starburst. “I know.”

-

Dean stands in the yellowed circle of porch light. She can’t see his face, but she can tell from the hunch of his shoulders. Blessing or no blessing, he still isn’t happy about this, but he raises a hand in a silent goodbye. She mouths an “I love you” he can’t see, feeling like a coward.

Turning, she slides behind the wheel. Sam is already sitting in the passenger seat, map and penlight out. He and Ash are discussing the best route.

“If we push it, drive straight through, we can make Auburn by tomorrow afternoon.” Sam pauses at the roar of the Impala turning over. It’s a beautiful sound and no one speaks for a full minute, just listening to her purr.

Lia allows herself one last look at Dean. “Ready?” she asks, mostly herself, but she speaks loud enough to be heard.

Sam’s gaze is solemn, the set of his chin showing his resolve. “Ready.”

Ash simply grunts in response, clearly oblivious to the moment, and she can’t help but laugh. Sam shakes his head and glares at the top of Ash’s mullet.

The dust kicks up as they pull away from the house and she gazes into the side view mirror, watches it disappear behind the bend in the road.

End