Chapter 7 Second Chance

Dean turned off the headlights as the sky brightened beyond his brother's sleeping profile, lighting the fields to either side in shades of pewter and steel and iron. They'd be in Sioux Falls in another hour and he flexed his fingers around the steering wheel, feeling a disconcerting flutter in his stomach at the thought of calling the angel and asking for a ride.

For months he'd been investing time and effort in doing his best not to think of Terry. Had nearly drowned himself in booze to avoid the memories and the dreams that appeared with a regular monotony whenever he'd closed his eyes. Had thrown himself recklessly into hunts half-assed with the distant thought in the background that one time, his luck might run out and it would be over and he wouldn't have to keep fighting.

The idea that he could be talking to her again before nightfall today was much too unsettling to look at for long.

He swallowed hard and stared at the road and reminded himself impatiently that he was just going to talk. Nothing else. Just get whatever she had on what the writers on her show had seen of their world, their lives, and get back here. She'd made her position clear by asking Cas to take her back. There was no room for anything as fragile and uncertain as hope. Thinking of what Melanie had said to him, he wondered, more than a little bitterly, if he'd better off abandoning every shred of hope right here and now. Giving up what he wanted for the good of the world was already pretty goddamned old and stale and tired.

Every time he let his thoughts wind around to what might happen, sometime later today, he felt like a teenager. The teenage crush he'd never had, he thought, his lips curling down in self-derision. Only about twenty years late, but better late than never, right? He couldn't figure what Terry'd seen in him…and he couldn't bring himself to admit, even to himself, what he'd wanted to find in her.

Sioux Falls was seventy miles further up the road, the sign that zipped by reminded him. His leg ached slightly, not having given it enough time in the cast to heal up completely. He rubbed a hand along his thigh, a tear in the denim catching a thumbnail.

I mean, you basically have been looking out for me your whole life. Now you finally get to take care of yourself. About time, huh?

Dean blinked as his brother's words came back. Take care of yourself, he thought. Yeah, right. Well, he'd been seriously thinking about it back when he'd had something…someone…else to think about. Now, he couldn't see the point. It wasn't a second-chance kind of life. One person had walked in with a knowledge of what he'd done and who he'd been and what he and Sam had gone through. Just one that he didn't have to tell, didn't have to explain all the…all the everything.

You could find another Becky, a small, sarcastic voice in his head said slyly. That'd be someone who'd know.

The thought sent a deep, palsied shiver from the back of his neck down to his feet.

No. One person. In thirty-two years. The odds weren't looking great for that to happen again.

"Where are we?" Sam asked mushily, knuckling his eyes as he pushed himself higher in the passenger seat. "Crap, Dean, you should've woken me."

"S'okay," Dean said, sucking in a breath of relief as Sam's conscious presence pushed aside his sorry thoughts. "Not far, 'bout an hour."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"What – exactly – did Frank say?" Dean asked as he stretched back out in the armchair, fingers tickling the cold bottle of beer on the side table. He felt stiff and sore, not enough sleep, but wound up at the same time, those nervous knots still plucking at his insides. He wanted to put off the moment he had to call Cas for as long as possible.

"He got into a section of Roman's network, after you put us onto the Biggerson's outlets and the Midwest Meat & Poultry," Lauren said, sitting as close to Sam as she could. "There were files and files of building plans, he said."

"That, plus the analysis of the additives in the food they're serving at that place suggests that these guys are not playing penny ante," Bobby added, his toes wriggling in his socks as he extended them closer to the open fire on the hearth. "The behaviour modification isn't perfect yet, which is why you two found the glamper-eater, but they're working on it 'round the clock and sooner or later it will be. You know what the food production system is like, additives in absolutely everything. Most of the species is going to be as placid and docile as cows on morphine."

"Aside from the borax and decapitation, we haven't found anything that so much as slows those monsters down," Jody said, setting her wine glass down on the low table in front of the sofa and sitting next to Bobby. "As a one-by-one basis, getting rid of them all that way is gunna be a long, long process."

"Not to mention time-consuming," Bobby said. "We need a one-stop solution, and I'd prefer something that's actually within our capabilities."

Sam looked from him to Lauren. "Nothing else on the tablets or any other monster from Purgatory?"

"No," Lauren said, with a deeply rueful shake of her head. "Whatever their vulnerability is, and they have to have one, it's on the tablet about them and we don't know where that is, how to find it or even how to read it if we did, miraculously, come across it."

Dean stared at the flames in the fireplace. It all brought them to the point he was procrastinating on, he thought sourly. If the writers in her world hadn't screwed up, Terry would have seen some of the answers, at least. Would know some of how to get rid of these things. I'm not going back to screw up her life, he told himself. Just to ask. That's all. Just to ask…and see that she was okay. He nodded to himself and got up, walking out of the room and across the hall and through the dining room and kitchen to the back door.

It was clear and very cold outside, the starshine thin, a barely-there pale grey light that let him see enough to avoid running into anything. His breath was visible on every exhale and he pulled his coat collar up around his ears as he looked around.

"Cas? Earth to angel. Got your ears on, man?" he said softly, standing in the alleyway of piled cars past the workshop. "End of the line. I need a ride."

He wasn't sure if he was hoping for the angel to hear him or not.

The loose dirt of the dry yard swirled up and the alley filled with the faint sound of beating wings. He turned around, huffing out a white fog of breath as he looked at Castiel.

"I do not believe that this is a good idea," Cas said, his tone gruffly formal.

"You're not getting an argument from me," Dean told him with an uncaring shrug. "You got an alternative plan, lay it on me."

"There's still time –"

"No," Dean interrupted, his voice hard. "Time's what we don't have. The bigmouths are poisoning everybody with this mood-altering food crap and we don't even know if those people are going to turn back to normal, even if we nuke every last one of Dick's army." He looked back at the house. "We got no time left, Cas. We need answers now."

As the angel hesitated, Dean walked a little way down the alley. "How come the god-squad's got bupkis on these things anyway? I thought you guys had all the answers up there."

Cas examined his shoes. "No, not even close to 'all the answers'," he admitted ruefully. "The Leviathan are older than angel-kind –"

"But someone there had the low-down on them, Cas," Dean argued, turning around and looking at him. "Someone wrote those tablets."

"The Scribe disappeared two thousand years ago, Dean," Cas said with a deep sigh. "We looked – the archangels have been searching for Metatron for all of that time and have never found him."

Dean made a disbelieving face. "You need those kiddie-locators to keep track of your own?"

Cas thought about that for a moment, then nodded in agreement. "Apparently."

"Well, this is like, Plan F, and we ain't got a Plan G…so, fire up your wings."

"We could lead them to her world –"

Dean let out a soft snort, repressing his fears about that very thing. "Cas, we've been through this before. No other options. Let's go."

The angel looked…guilty, Dean thought as Cas stepped close and lifted his hand. Guilty and pissed, he amended, looking at his expression. Like he'd been found out in another deception or evasion. That was all the thought he had time for as blackness descended, snuffing out breath and sensation and leaving him hanging alone in the nothing for long, long moments.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

His knees popped loudly when air and light and sound and smell returned, assailing him on every level. Dean opened his eyes cautiously and looked around.

"This it?" he asked the angel. Cas nodded.

They were standing on a street not more than a block or two from some main thoroughfare, he thought, hearing the rush and hum of the traffic under the patter of the steady rain that was soaking them. Turning around, he saw a nondescript apartment building rising behind them and he hurried to the shelter of the entryway, hitting a buzzer at random. The front door clicked open without a query from the intercom, and he pushed it wide, looking for the mailboxes.

Therese E. Alcott.

Printed, right there, on the box. Putting an eye to the dark slit at the top he could just make out a few letters inside it.

Apartment 4D.

He started up the stairs, looking around curiously as he climbed, hearing the angel's heavy thumping tread behind him. It was clean, he thought, tidy. Not low-rent but somewhere in the middle. No weird smells. No arguments or TV too loud behind any of the doors. He looked down at his watch and swore under his breath when he saw that it'd stopped.

"Are…there, um, any time differences here from home?" he asked Cas in a low voice.

Cas shook his head. "It's precisely the same time and date here as it was when we left your world's plane."

Friday night then, sometime past eight. He stopped at the green-painted door of Apartment 4D and made himself knock on it.

Nothing happened.

He knocked again, louder this time, and waited. The door, and the apartment beyond it, remained silent and barred to him. He remembered Terry telling him how late she'd worked some nights and he pulled out his picks, setting them into the simple lock and opening it. The apartment was dark and slightly sterile-smelling, like no one lived here.

Reaching around the doorjamb, his fingers found the light switch and he flicked it on. The apartment wasn't large. A very short hall held a slatted closet door and on the opposite wall, a mirror. Beyond that, the little hall opened into a living room, painted white on three of the walls, a deep gold on the fourth. The kitchen was only little more than an alcove, separated from the living room by a long counter. On the other side of the comfortable but characterless room, a pair of glass-paned doors were closed, sheer curtains hiding the details of the room they gave entrance to, but he guessed, her bedroom, with a bathroom off it.

Two of the white-painted walls were almost hidden behind pale gold, timber bookshelves, adding colour and texture to the room with their countless volumes of paperbacks and hardbacks, all kinds of books, large and small. A small, floral-print sofa and two solid-coloured armchairs took up the centre of the room, with a dining table that might just seat four at a pinch in the corner between the end of the kitchen counter and the apartment's floor to ceiling windows. In between two of the windows, an old-fashioned rolltop desk held a laptop and a small printer. As he scanned the place, he thought most of the furniture in it had come with the rental. The desk was the only odd piece out in the room.

He put the picks away and prowled around the living room, glancing randomly at the titles of the books, opening the cupboard doors beneath the higher shelving. In the cupboard next to the TV, he saw something pushed right to the back, and knelt down, reaching in to pull out the rectangular box. The title leapt out at him, and he looked from the air-brushed renditions of him and Sam – or their physical doubles in this world – and back to the cupboard, returning the boxed set of DVDs slowly. They'd been shoved back there for a reason, he told himself, closing the door and standing up. Out of sight, out of mind. He wondered uneasily if she was still working for the show. If she wasn't, it meant the trip was going to net them a fat donut for their effort. Except that he would see her, the thought fluttering his stomach again.

Chuck's books weren't there and he belatedly reminded himself that the prophet had only existed in his world. There were too many damned versions of his life, he thought uncomfortably, swinging around to investigate the kitchen.

Opening the fridge door and peering inside, then the kitchen cupboards, he wondered what the hell Terry had been living on. A withered apple was the only thing fridge had contained and the neatly arranged but dusty plates and glasses had obviously remained unused for some time. On the front of the fridge a magnetic calendar held a number of entries hastily scribbled in a fine whiteboard marker ink. He noted that tonight there was a note to meet D.F. at 6.30. On the wall above the window, a cheap, round-faced clock showed that it was now eight-ten p.m. He turned away and walked to the desk.

Piled to one side of the laptop, there were a dozen or more books. He looked at the top one, lying open to a page and closed it. The title was 'H.P. Lovecraft: A Biography'. He moved it aside. Under it was another book about the horror writer, 'The Trail of Cthulu'. Beneath that, a plain medical-style text book with the title of 'The Psychology of Torture'. Dean's brows drew together as he read that. Not even close to light reading. Pushing it to one side, the last two on the stack were Dante's 'Purgatorio', and Lovecraft's 'Necronomicron'.

He shook his head slightly. Why the hell had she been reading this stuff? Here? Hiding the boxset and reading about monsters and Purgatory? He felt as if he should know why, but he couldn't imagine a reason for her to do either. That wasn't quite right. He could imagine the reasons. He couldn't believe them.

Looking around the apartment, he couldn't see the woman he thought he'd known. It was her place, undoubtedly, he thought, looking back at the books on the desk. But aside from what seemed to be a wide-ranging taste in fiction, it held very little of the few things he knew about her. No photographs or knick-knacks cluttered the shelves or tables. No flowers in vases. The furniture and the soft furnishings were decidedly utilitarian. Where the hell was the woman who'd gotten married for the sex and lost her parents as a child and had told him he was kidding himself about what he'd done in the pit?

He looked at the clock in the kitchen again. And literally, where the hell was she? The hands now pointed to the nine and the one.

He walked to the glass doors, pushing them open. The bedroom was small, a queen-sized bed taking up most of the available floor space. Recessed into the common wall between apartments, a full-length built-in closet, with the same slatted doors as the hall closet, faced him. The bathroom door was ajar to his left. The bed was under the windows to his right. He turned on the lights and walked in, seeing a familiar leather folder sitting on the nightstand next to a reading lamp.

It wasn't as full as her old one had been, he thought, the one still in her room at Bobby's, waiting fruitlessly for her. Bobby hadn't explained why he hadn't taken out her stuff, just shrugging and turning away when he'd asked. The old man had been fond of her, he knew. Terry had managed to find a way into all of their hearts, in one way or another, despite her not-very-inspiring start in their world.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he reached for the folder. Typed pages, handwritten notes, rough diagrams of sets and several folded up maps filled it. At the back, a notebook of lined pages was tucked into a pocket and he pulled it out, opening it randomly.

Do these people even know the characters?! The first line almost yelled at him, the pen's tip had been pushed hard into the paper and the familiar slanted handwriting made his mouth twitch involuntarily to one side. She was a note-taker, she'd told him, sometime when they'd been talking about nothing much. That's what she did, how she got it all to make sense. He missed just shooting the breeze with her, he realised slowly, as her voice muttered and yelled and murmured from the pages. Missed too many things.

Day four, shooting and once again the plot has been sketched in with no explanations for how they're getting around the country (rocket-powered cars?) in such short time frames. No explanation of Dean's deepening depression once he tells Sam about Amy. No explanations of what Frank's doing. Arrgh. Forget it. None of this is probably happening anyway.

He turned the page, skimming over the contents. Most of it was similar, short-lived rants against something or another. He could almost hear her saying them out loud, her tone impatient and snappy.

Karen's developed dementia, I swear. Three times she's forgotten about the schedule and told me I haven't finished the scripts and three times I've handed copies to her. Flying to LA tomorrow to get next batch and do the pre-plan schedule for the Seattle episode and Coeur d'Alene.

Of course the pony won't run head first into a fence!? What's WRONG with these people. Cut away shot, yeah, right, duh.

Googled Karen's friend's brother. Seems okay. Friday's a dog's breakfast anyway, maybe it'll provide some light relief.

He closed the notebook and stood up. There was a single photograph in the room, a portrait of a family. He walked around the bed to it, picking it up and studying the man and the woman who smiled blithely into the camera, their gap-toothed young daughter standing in front of them, curly hair subdued into braids. Her eyes were the same, he thought, lifting the frame closer. A blue-green lined in a darker shade of blue, filled with flecks and half-shadowed by long, thick eyelashes. The family had had no idea that it would all be wrecked soon. Terry had told him she'd been nine when her parents had died. She looked about eight or nine in the picture.

He put the photo down and went into the bathroom, turning the cold tap on and filling his hands with water, dunking his face into it. When he came up for air, he looked at the dripping face in the mirror, droplets hanging from his lashes. I don't even know what the hell I'm feeling, he admitted to himself, closing his eyes and shutting out the image of his reflection.

He wanted to tell the angel in the next room to take a hike, go find something else to do for a few hours, wait and…what? Talk to her? Kiss her? Rip her friggin' clothes off and wrap himself around her, bury himself deep inside her…he sucked in a deep breath at the mental image, a flush of heat washing over him, it was so strong. He hadn't told her, in words, how it'd felt to him to wake up in the morning with her lying next to him. He hadn't told her how it felt when she was around, to talk to, to listen to, to watch.

Straightening, he wiped a hand over his face and reached for the towel hanging behind the door. As he dried his face, the scent – her scent – filled him and he leaned against the vanity, face buried in the towel, memory pushing out thought and reason, his breathing raggedly loud in the tiled room.

She'd left, he said to himself, returning the towel to the rail through an act of iron willpower. Of her own choice. She'd asked Cas to take her home and that was a good thing. She could be safe here. Have a normal life here. Far away from him and all the monsters and fates and world-ending freakin' catastrophes that hounded him and his brother. Besides, he acknowledged with a sour laugh, Cas was agitated enough being here, he wouldn't leave.

Walking back out into the bedroom, the shrill ring of the phone made him startle and he looked around for the handset. An answering machine caught the call before he could, the sharp beep loud in the silent apartment.

"Terry, it's Karen, just calling to see how the date went and what you think of David," a woman's voice brayed on the machine. "Don't keep me in suspense."

Another beep signalled the end of the call and Dean stood there, staring at the machine for a few moments. A date? That's where she was? On a date? The thought wouldn't get out of his head and he stared blankly at the bedroom wall for several minutes, unable to even move.

"Dean, are you okay?" Cas said from the doorway.

He looked around at the angel, frowning as he realised he'd been standing in the bedroom, staring at nothing. "Yeah."

"Uh, I didn't realise this would take so long –"

"She's on a date," Dean said, his tone carefully neutral as he glanced up at the kitchen clock. Nine-twenty. "We could be here for a while. Make yourself comfortable."

He walked past the angel and dropped into an armchair, staring at the opposite wall. A date. With Karen's friend's brother presumably, he thought, remembering the notation in her book. Who seemed 'okay'.

His chest was tight and his hands were aching, and he looked down to see them curled into fists. Unclenching them and shaking his fingers a bit, he wondered what the hell had possessed him to make this trip with Cas. Sam would've done it. Would've come and asked and gone back none the worse. How'd he kidded himself that this would be a good thing? How'd he imagined that he could ask her anything? She had a whole friggin' life here that he knew hardly anything about.

He wanted a drink. Double. Neat. No, make it a triple. Just leave the damned bottle.

"Maybe we should just leave?" Cas suggested tentatively. "If you think that she might not come back for some time? Dates sometimes last all night, isn't that correct?"

Dean killed the image the angel's question raised before it had a chance to fully form. It was true. Dates, successful dates, could last all night. He hadn't even asked her on a date. Dating was something for normal lives. Normal people.

"No." He decided that the word covered all of Cas' need-to-know questions.

"The conjunction between the planes doesn't last all that long, Dean, we could be trapped –"

Dean scowled at him. Was it impossible for the angel to see that he didn't give a freakin' rat's ass about the conjunctions? "Which part of 'no', are you having trouble with, Cas?"

"It doesn't further our cause to become –"

The paperweight on the side table next to the chair was a glass ball and his hand curled around it without thought. He didn't aim it at the angel, he threw it at the opposite wall where it exploded in a shower of shattered glass fragments and left a deep divot in the wall.

Cas looked at the mess on the floor and moved a few steps further from Dean.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The seconds ticked by incrementally, the minute hand of the clock dragging its way around the face with agonising slowness.

He heard the car at five minutes past ten, almost catapulting from the chair and going to the window. A silver late-model Mercedes sat by the kerb, purring to itself, and Dean pressed closer to the glass, trying to see straight down as the engine was stopped and the doors opened. Terry got out, and Dean left a big smeary, fogged breath on the window as she looked around, lifting her head for a moment. Her hair was longer, he thought. The dress looked good on her. He didn't think he'd seen her in a dress. Ever. She turned her head to look over the car's roof.

The friend's brother, he thought, watching a tall, blond guy get out and hurry around the front of the car. He swore, his breath leaving another heavy fogged patch on the window pane as he realised that the guy wasn't coming back, was obviously on his way up the stairs with Terry right this friggin' minute.

Did he need this, he asked himself furiously, crossing back to the chair and dropping into it. Did he need the constant reminders? Or the aggravation? Or the angel standing there, his face completely expressionless. No. No, he didn't.

Their voices were hardly audible through the door, and he hunched back in the chair as he heard the key turn in the lock.

"…aren't such a good night for me," Terry's voice came clear as the door opened. Dean thought she sounded tired and flat. "Work's been frantic these last couple of weeks."

"How about Saturday night then? Next week? Something relaxing?" the guy's voice was light, casual, Dean thought, but he could hear the determination underneath. There was a I-get-you're-not-totally-into-me-right-now-but-I'm-totally-into-you tone to it. Terry had done something to the dude, in spite of her less-than-enthusiastic attitude.

"Uh, um…sure," Terry said, and Dean felt his stomach flop over. He savagely suppressed his instinctive reaction and gripped the arms of the chair with both hands. "Give me a call."

"I will," the guy said. His voice was lower when he added, "I enjoyed tonight, Terry."

The drop in volume suggested intimacy and Dean closed his eyes and hummed under his breath, trying to block out the visual of the blond guy leaning closer…kissing her…

"Thank you, goodnight."

He heard the door close, the lock snick into place and opened his eyes as Terry took a step into the room and froze, her attention locked onto the angel standing by her sofa.

Getting up, he watched her warily as she turned to him. The dress did look good. And her hair was longer, curls framing her face. She was thinner, he thought distractedly, her eyes looked huge. For a second, when her eyes met his, he saw past her disbelief and behind her astonishment, to something else. Some kind of emotion that his brother had told him about and that he hadn't let himself believe in.

The reality of the situation dropped back onto him when she didn't move, didn't even take a step toward him. Maybe she had, he thought, his walls snapping back into place self-defensively, but she'd made her choice and she was living her life and there was definitely no room for him here.

"Hey, Dorothy."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

AN: I hope this read okay. Third person is a lot different to first and some parts were harder than I thought they'd be! This should continue straight into the end of Chapter 23 of Crossing Over. I have to admit that this story has definitely outed me as a hopeless romantic, hope you had fun! By the way, just because the story's completed doesn't mean that I don't want to hear what you thought of it! If you enjoyed this tale, let me know, writers crave feedback!