Chapter 1 Gone Too Long

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

~ Buddha

Carrs Mill, Pennsylvania. September, 2012.

On the river's broad and sluggishly moving surface, the colours of the sky were reflected, pinks and golds, indigo and lavender, the shapes of the lit edges of cloud disturbed and distorted by the ripples on the water.

Dean stared through the window at the scene, hardly noticing it, his thoughts following the same track they'd been on for the last week.

"Hi, there, you're back."

He blinked and looked around, seeing the woman standing beside his table. "Uh, yeah, why not? Best food in town, right?"

"Right!" she agreed, her smile bright. "What can I get you tonight?"

"What d'you recommend?"

"Carol's doing jalapeno and cheese steak tonight," the waitress told him, glancing over her shoulder at the specials board. "Or there's a sweet chilli chicken, grilled with –"

"Steak's fine," he said. "Uh, medium –"

"Rare," she finished for him, smiling again. "I remember. You want a beer?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Be right back," she promised, writing up the order and turning away.

He'd been here for three days, not sure of what he was doing. Sam wasn't answering his phone, no surprise there, but it'd still stung. Ellie's phone was going to voicemail and so was Bobby's, a message on the old man's service on his other-other-line advising he'd be down in Mexico for a few days. He'd been looking through the papers, on the internet, half-heartedly, looking for any kind of job that would take his mind off the looping track it'd been on since Sam had told him to get lost.

At the time, he'd been sure he was doing the right thing. It wasn't until the kid had come into the room as he'd let the kitsune down on the bed that he'd really felt a doubt about it. Then he'd wondered if there really had been a difference between Amy and himself. He'd killed for his family. Without hesitation or thought. And those thoughts had screwed him over.

"Here you go."

He looked up to see the waitress back, a cold beer and a frosted glass being set down on the table. "Thanks."

"Not a problem." She hesitated by the edge of the table. "You going to be here for a little while?"

"A couple of days, I guess," he said, giving a one-shoulder shrug. He couldn't seem to find the enthusiasm to leave. Or even think about leaving. "Kind of taking a break from the road."

"What do you do?"

He repressed the snort that rose in his throat. "Uh, sort of freelance pest control," he told her, smiling at the involuntary face she made. "It's not that bad. I, uh, travel a lot. Tell people how to fix their, uh, pest problems."

"I'm almost sorry I don't have any," she said, smiling down at him. "I'm Kelly."

"Yeah, I – uh, Dean," he responded, looking down at his beer.

"Nice to meet you, Dean," Kelly said. "Food won't be long."

He nodded and watched her walk away, pulling out his phone again. The phone rang then cut over to voicemail again, and he frowned, catching it in the reflection from the window as the interior lights of the restaurant took over from the dying light outside. Where the hell was everyone?

"How'd you get into something like pest control anyway?" Kelly asked him.

She'd gotten off her shift at nine and had walked over, bringing two beers and asking if she could join him. He hadn't been able to think of a reason to say no. The idea of going back to his room to sit in front of the laptop screen and stare at it for the next couple of hours had made the choice a no-brainer.

"Long story," he said, smiling to take the edge from the brush off. "Kind of a family business."

Not a lie and not the truth, he thought, picking up his beer and swallowing a mouthful, his gaze sliding to his watch. Half-past ten. He should call it a night.

"You look like you've been doing some heavy-duty thinking," she said, making it not quite a question as she picked up her own bottle. "Problems?"

"Too many to keep count of," he agreed lightly.

"You know," she said, leaning on the table, and looking at him. "I've been told I'm not a bad listener."

He looked away, mouth curving up at one side. "Not really those kind of problems," he said, putting the empty bottle on the table and pulling out his wallet. "Thanks for the drinks and the company, but I gotta go."

He watched her lean back in the booth from the corner of his eye, relieved at her easy shrug.

"Anytime," she said, lifting her gaze as he got to his feet. "Tomorrow's special is grain-fed eye fillet."

He nodded. "Then I'll see you tomorrow."

Walking through the half-filled restaurant, he wondered again what the hell he was doing. The Duster sat outside, its faded blue paint failing to hide the aggressive lines of the car and he got into it, starting the engine and turning out of the lot.

It'd been two months since Ellie had left Sioux Falls. Two months of nothing but crap, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. Until four weeks ago, she'd been calling, first from Egypt, then from Italy, and then London. The Watcher had told her about Leviathan, some of it, anyway, mostly too late to be of any use to them since the big-mouths had found Bobby's place a lot more quickly than they'd thought. Time inside of the angel, Ellie'd suggested when she gotten through. Probably, he'd thought. They'd gone off the grid when they'd been duplicated and he had no idea if she would even be able to find them now.

His leg twinged as he changed down to pull into the motel's parking lot, and he tried to ignore it. He hadn't given it enough time in the cast, but Sam's problems had outweighed his own. Stopping the car in front of his room, he got out and locked it, and forced himself to walk evenly to the door.

Their names and faces had been all over the news for the last few weeks and sooner or later, someone was going to recognise him from those broadcasts. He'd been lucky so far, but he'd kept moving. It was stupid to stay in one small town and wait for that recognition to find him. He couldn't make himself care.

Inside the room, he dropped his keys and phone on the nightstand, and pulled off his coat, leaving it on the back of a chair. He walked to the kitchen and got a glass from the sink. The bottle was nearly three-quarters full and he poured himself a half glass, carrying it back to the small table.

The laptop sat there, mutely accusing. He pushed it to the other side of the table and stared at the wall opposite. Even if Amy had been able to control herself, she'd still taken lives, he thought, brows drawn together as he went over the situation again. Sam hadn't wanted to listen. His brother hadn't even given him the opportunity to hear his side. He picked up the glass and swallowed a mouthful, relishing the smooth descent and the warming fire it left in his stomach.

Sam hadn't wanted to listen … and he'd been too impatient with his brother to take the time to convince him, he admitted, looking down into the glass. The hallucinations had scared him. Not because of what Sam'd been seeing but because there were no reasons for him to be seeing anything. Bobby'd told him it'd take time. They didn't have time. They never had enough fucking time to get themselves clear on what was happening and what to do next.

He looked across the room to the canvas bag, sitting at the foot of the bed. He'd grabbed a half dozen or so psychological texts in the last town. None of them had given him anything useful on what Sam'd described had been happening to him. Ellie had seen it, before any of them, but he couldn't get hold of her and he'd been changing his numbers so often, he was more and more sure she wouldn't be able to find him.

I keep my marbles in a friggin' lead box, he'd told Bobby, the scowl deepening as he realised that'd been only partly true. He needed someone to talk to. Needed someone to listen to him. It couldn't be Bobby and it sure as hell couldn't be Sam. They both had more than enough problems of their own, and for all Bobby's gruffly given advice, the older hunter wouldn't push at him if he stonewalled. Only she did that.

Maybe he should've trusted Sam on the kitsune. Maybe he should've had it out with him when he'd done it. Maybe he'd been wrong to try and keep it a secret – another secret, part of the growing mountain of mistrust between them – and he should've been able to trust in his brother. Maybe the levis would drown in their own evil and make hunting them down unnecessary, he thought sourly, rubbing a hand over his jaw. He was going around in circles with the same thoughts, the same guilt and pain, over and over again.

And for all he knew, the one person he wanted to see, his hand tightening around the glass as he took another couple of gulps, could be dead or missing or lying half-eaten in a ditch somewhere. Like all the other times before, there was no way of knowing and no way of finding out.

West Plains, Missouri

Ellie backed up, keeping herself in view of the side mirrors on the truck as it reversed toward her. When the end of the chute was over the hole, she held up her hand and the driver stopped, getting out of the cab and walking to the rear of the truck. She adjusted the angle of the chute over the shallow grave and the mixer released its load.

That was two of them who'd find it hard to get themselves together again, she thought as the wet cement filled the hole and started to creep over the edges. Morrison stopped the flow and tipped the chute up, securing it for the drive.

"Well, you can tell Singer the boron works a treat," he said, walking to stand beside her.

Nodding, Ellie looked at him. "You'll let everyone know, Paddy?"

"Got the bags ready to mix up and put into spray packs," the Irish hunter told her, scratching at the ruff of white beard that fringed his jawline. "Once they're down, decapitation, dismemberment and a few concrete-filled holes – or," he said with a wink. "A steel mill, if one's handy."

"Not exactly elegant, is it?"

He laughed, eyes crinkling up. "Not looking for elegant in this line of work, Ellie. It works, an' that, by god, is good enough."

"The other thing is communications," she said, turning to follow him back to the cab of the truck. "If they are tracking cells through the networks, they'll be able to find a lot of hunters that way, even if they're wading through a ton of conversations. A few key words would filter out most of the civilian stuff."

Marcus and Twist had told her about the cell phones. Both had had near miss run-ins with the monsters after contacting others, and one of those contacted had gone missing a short time after the calls. Phone security hadn't been much of a priority for most of the hunters. It was a whole new ballgame now. She'd kept her phone turned off for the last four weeks, not sure if Dean would leave a message – or know about the need for discretion. After trying his old numbers and hearing the disconnect messages, she figured they'd found that out.

"I'll let everyone know to either ditch their phones or keep the lines free of hunter chatter," Paddy promised, swinging up into the cab. "You sure you're gonna be alright on your own?"

"I'll be careful," she told him. "It'll take me a while to figure out where Bobby's gone to ground anyway."

"Give him my regards when you do find him," the hunter said, starting up the truck. "Tell him he still owes me sixty bucks for that poker game in '85!"

Backing away, she waved and turned away, walking slowly across the cracked and pitted tarmac to her truck.

Bobby'd disappeared but when she'd swung by his place, she could see why. The house had been a pile of rubble and the yard looked worse. She thought they'd gotten themselves off the grid and out of sight after she'd seen the news reports. It wasn't going to be easy finding them.

She got into the truck and started the engine, pulling her phone out of her pocket and looking at it. Two more missed calls that hadn't left a message. Dean, she wondered? She needed to get somewhere she could check with Franklin about tracing them. The calls had originated from somewhere and that would, at least, give her someplace to start.

As she pulled out of the vacant lot, she thought about the last two months. Penemue had confirmed the slaughter in Heaven. There were no leaders left and Castiel had disappeared when the leviathan had begun to show up. There was only one conclusion to draw from that, and she bit her lip, wondering how Dean had taken the loss of another friend.

She'd been gone too long, she knew. A week, maybe two, she'd told him. At first, it'd seemed like the leviathans had been confined to the US. It'd only taken a few weeks for the first couple to turn up in Italy and France. Organisms that could copy anyone were going to be a major pain in the ass to keep track of.

The Church's library in Rome had information on the creatures. An experiment gone wrong, that much had been clear. Locked away in the timeless plane of Purgatory. There had been three references she'd found interesting enough to follow up. When created, there had been only one of each of the first creatures. Leviathan, created to populate the seas. And Behemoth, to fill the land masses. Behemoth had apparently been less voracious and had died out well before the dinosaurs had made their appearance. Leviathan had had an advantage. A self-contained breeding cycle that'd resulted in a population boom and some genetic mutation, possibly caused by the irradiation of the planet millions of years before, that had allowed the creature to move from the seas to the land.

A little further biological research had returned the possibility that the black-blooded monsters were limited, single-intelligence animals. Clones, she thought, frowning at the road, in other words. How that was going to help in the immediate situation, she wasn't sure. Not yet. But if they were a multi-cellular organism with a single original 'mind', it might be a key to being able to destroy them. If they could find the original, she reminded herself.

Olney, Illinois

The old man's grumblings were a constant mutter in her ear as the lock yielded on the exchange's office door and she slipped inside. It was one of the smaller offices, primarily automated but with a few tech stations for line access and maintenance and no one would be there until the morning. She hoped it would have the necessary equipment to do the traces she needed, if she could get Franklin to stop complaining long enough to take her through it.

"I'm in," she said, her voice very low, the mike against her throat picking up the words.

"Right," Franklin stopped his griping and she heard a soft rustle of paper from his end. "Find a terminal."

Sitting down at one of the operator terminals, Ellie brought up a query screen. "Go."

"You need to run ANI to get the number and then a diagnostics on the location towers it last used."

"Okay." Ellie looked at the list of options. "Can I ping the phone to get a more recent location?"

"Maybe," Franklin said. "See what comes back on the ANI."

It took fifteen seconds to the get the number and another fourteen minutes to route through the last used towers and get a region. The phone was either off or had been ditched when she tried to send a signal through and she started the process again, with the second of the calls reported on her cell, picking up the number from the time stamp.

"What the –?"

"What's the number returned?"

"0414 555 6798," Ellie told him, staring impatiently at the screen, a crease between her brows. "The region is, um, Kalispell."

"Gimme twenty-five minutes," Franklin said enigmatically.

"Dammit, Frank – wait," Ellie said, her voice rising slightly. "I got another hit on a third number, this one's in Ohio."

"Location?"

"Canton."

"You think that's one of the Winchesters?" he asked her.

"Why wouldn't they be together?" she countered, mostly to herself.

"Why're you askin' me?"

"Never mind," she said. "I'm getting out of here, can you send whatever you find on the Montana location to me via the forum network?"

"Yep."

The line dropped and she shut down the terminal, pulling the headset from her ears and neck and pushing them into her pocket. Canton and, or, possibly Montana. She was closer to Canton.

Seymour, Indiana.

Ellie took the exit when she saw the diner, her stomach rumbling. Pulling into a space out the front, she parked the truck and headed inside, ordering at the counter and helping herself to a booth at the back, where she'd have a view of the front door and the service door for staff. She gulped the black coffee the waitress brought and dragged her cell from her pocket, inserting the new sim as the first refill arrived.

Looking down at the phone, she dialled the third number, hearing it ring.

"Yeah?"

"Sam?" Ellie breathed a sigh of relief. "It's Ellie."

"What the – where are you?" he asked, a loud exhale gusting into her ear. "Dean's been – are you alright?"

"Yeah, fine," she reassured him. "What about you – I've been trying the old numbers but guessing you've had to ditch them?"

"Yeah, prepaid throwaways now," Sam said. "Look, Ellie, it's complicated – you know where I am?"

"Think so," Ellie said. "Where's Dean?"

"I'll tell you when you get here," he said. "Airwaves aren't so secure these days for us."

"Heard that." She looked at her watch. "I'm about three or four hours away. There's a troll's relative's place just off the main throughway that's good for talking."

There was a moment's silence on the line as he digested that. "Uh, yeah, okay."

"See you there."

Canton, Ohio

"You know what he did?" Sam waved his glass around, its contents splashing up perilously close to the rim. "He went and killed her. After I'd told him that I let her go. And then he lied to me."

Ellie nodded sympathetically. It wasn't the first time she'd seen Sam drunk, but it was the first time she'd seen him loud, and this angry with his brother.

Ogre's Bar and Grill was about half full of customers, watching a football game replay on the big screen to one side of the room, or leaning up against the counter, having a last one for the road. A few looked around at Sam's outburst, but most continued to mind their own business, the antics of a stranger of no particular interest.

He looked around, blinking rapidly as he noticed they weren't alone, then down at her, slouching back his chair.

"He doesn't trust me to make a simple decision, Ellie." He shook his head.

"Sam, how have you been controlling the hallucinations?"

He held up his hand. A thick and twisted scar crossed the palm. "Dean – he told me to press on it. Told me it was real. It would make anything not real go away."

"And it works?" she said. "You're still getting a bit of pain from it?"

"It's getting less, but yeah, it's still working." He looked down at it. "It's just the memories, isn't it? Coming back?"

"I don't know," Ellie admitted. From Sam's descriptions, it sounded more complex than that. And looking at him, she thought he'd integrated the three disparate parts of his personality well enough that there shouldn't have been any mismatched edges. "Are you dreaming a lot?"

"No," Sam said, frowning. "Hardly at all – not that I remember."

She could see that he was thinking about that. Psychosis, in most forms, came out first through the subconscious, then crept through the consciousness. He might not be remembering his dreams, she told herself.

"When the hallucinations come, what do you see?" she asked.

"Uh, Lucifer, somewhere close," he told her reluctantly. "Sometimes, flames, you know. Hell. The last few times he told me it was all a dream, I hadn't gotten out at all."

"That's been the gist of most of them? Trying to convince you that you're still in the cage?"

He nodded. "He told me the only way I'd get free was if I killed myself."

"What?" Ellie leaned across the table. "Was that a push, Sam? Did it feel like someone was trying to get you to do it?"

"It was blatant," he said. "He said he'd keep the illusions going until I couldn't take it anymore."

He turned his head, looking at the bar. "The next set, I thought it was Dean, you know? He needed backup and Bobby'd gone to help out Sheriff Mills and I just – I don't know. I thought it was my brother."

Ellie looked at the expressions flashing over Sam's face as he ducked his head.

"Sam, this does not sound like the usual round of malfunctions caused by trauma," she said softly.

"Yeah, I been reading through everything I can find on severe trauma, personality displacement, memory shock …" He shook his head. "Everything. Nothing sounds like this stuff, but …"

"But what?"

"The last time Dean and Bobby tried to dry me out," he said slowly, eyes narrowing with the memories. "In the panic room, I had hallucinations a bit like this. Other people, you know, telling me things."

"Telling you what?"

His brow wrinkled up. "I thought – at the time – I thought it was different perspectives on what I'd done, sort of pro and con stuff."

"That doesn't sound like this – did those people push you to do something?"

"Uh, my mom –" he hesitated, eyes closing. "She told me I was the strong one, I had to stop it."

Ellie bit her lip and looked at Sam and after a moment, he raised his gaze to meet hers. "That was just me, wasn't it?"

"I think so," she said. "The hallucinations you're seeing – and hearing – and feeling – from Lucifer … have you ever felt like those were your thoughts? Maybe twisted around or disguised, but still something you've considered?"

"No." He leaned back in his chair, his face drawn. "No, never."

"Does anyone know what happened in the cage when Death got your soul back?" she asked him.

He shook his head again. "No one said anything. Cas – Cas admitted he screwed it up when he tried to get me out, but we haven't – well, you know he died when the levis got out?"

She nodded. "Penemue told me they couldn't feel him after that."

"You don't think these are hallucinations? What I'm seeing?"

"They're hallucinations, alright," she said. "The question is are they from the trauma of the reintegration or … are they, maybe, from something else."

"What else could they be?"

"I need – there are some things I need to check on, Sam," she hedged, looking down at the table. "People who know more about this than I do. In the meantime, you need to find a way to shut it out –"

"Ellie, so long as I have something to tie me to reality, I can get rid of him," Sam said, leaning forward slightly. "I'm okay, you know. I mean, not okay, but I'm functioning. I can handle myself. But Dean, he –"

She looked at him, recognising the change of topic and letting it go. "Sam, she killed three people – you said it."

He ducked his head. "We've killed people to save family," he said. "More than three. She was desperate. She promised it wouldn't happen again."

"I know," she agreed. "And maybe it wouldn't. Or maybe it would. You know Dean would've felt any other deaths on him, because he'd a chance to do something."

"He agreed with me to let Lenore go," he argued, running a hand through his hair as he lifted his gaze.

"Didn't you say Lenore hadn't killed anyone? Had been living on animals for the whole time?"

"She killed when Eve started messing with her mind." Sam looked away.

"And Cas killed her." She let out a small sigh. "You're not pissed at your brother because of what he did to the kitsune, Sam."

He was silent for a moment, staring at the floor, then he looked up. "No."

"What else happened?"

He snorted. "God, what didn't?" He picked up his glass and tossed the last mouthful down. "I don't know what's going on with him – maybe it was just keeping the secret – I don't know, but he's – he's been all over the place. He's drinking hard again, going off on his own … "

She listened as he told her about the Egyptian god and the witches, his narrative wandering around the points, tangled up with his feelings and doubts.

"I know," Sam said slowly, his hands playing with a coaster on the table. "I know he can't just find that trust again. I knew it was gonna take time, but this …"

"He's scared to death for you, Sam," she reminded him gently. "That might not be what you want to hear, but that's what's behind everything he does."

"I can take care of myself!"

"I know that," she said. "But let's get real for a minute here," she continued, holding his gaze with her own. "You think disappearing and trying to take care of Amy on your own, without telling him, without letting him see you're rational about it, is the way to convince him of that?"

"I was trying not to worry him –"

He stopped as he caught her expression. "Alright, I didn't think he'd let her go, if we found her."

"Right," she said. "And what does that say to your brother?"

He scowled at her and looked away.

"All I'm saying here is that if you want to get free of the patterns you two have been stuck in, one of you is going to have to change how you do things," she told him.

"He doesn't listen to me," Sam argued, half-heartedly, Ellie thought.

"He does, and he always has, provided you tell him the truth, straight out, and don't automatically assume he'll jump the other way."

She thought he wasn't going to listen to that, but he nodded slowly. "Maybe," he allowed. "But I – I need to be on my own for a while anyway."

His brow furrowed as he looked back at her. "Where have you been, anyway? He's been freaking out the last four weeks."

"Long story. I was at Heathrow when one of the levis turned up in Paris and killed two hunters," she said, with a shrug. "By the time I got back to the States, there were reports everywhere. We were looking at the periodic table for correlating elements that might have an effect and just starting using everything we could get our hands on, turned out that boron was the stopper."

"Bobby found that out too, but not until just a couple of weeks ago."

"Yeah, I got a message from Marcus from him," she told him. "In any case, the last three weeks, I've been in Missouri, dodging them, and you guys had changed your numbers, took me a while to figure out how to trace you."

"Frank – Devereaux – you know him?" Sam asked.

Ellie nodded. She'd met the man a few years ago. Frank was a contact of Bobby's and he'd told her a bit about the man and his past. "Yeah, worked with him once."

"He's a friend of Bobby's, you know? He, uh, got us off the grid. We've been changing phones ever since. Most paranoid guy you've ever seen."

She shrugged. "Well, sometimes they're really out to get you."

"Dean –" Sam stopped, making a vague gesture as he looked away. "I think – he took Cas' death hard, you know. And something happened to him, with that god, Osiris. I – we didn't – he wouldn't talk about it, but he hasn't been the same lately."

She rubbed her eyes and sighed. "I knew this was going to be hard to work out."

Sam looked at her. "Don't get me wrong, Ellie, I'm not making excuses for what I did, but at least some of what's going on for him is because you haven't been around. He's – it's like he just loses something, you know?"

"Do you know where he is, Sam?"

"He left a message yesterday. Said he was in Carrs Mill, PA."

Staring down at the table top, he rubbed his knuckles over his forehead. "I can't talk to him, Ellie. I …" He shook his head helplessly. "I need time on my own."

"Sam, take care of yourself first." She looked at the empty glass. "Don't try and blunt the edges like Dean does."

"Yeah," he agreed with a soft sigh. "You have to make him listen, Ellie. Make him talk. He's a pressure cooker on high heat, and he doesn't know it, he won't look at it."

She nodded as she stood and picked up her coat from the back of the chair. Pulling it on, she retrieved her backpack from the floor. "I'll see you later, Sam. Stay in touch."

"Yeah. You too."

I-80E, Ohio

Another rain storm passed over and Ellie watched the road absently, through the back-and-forth flick of the wipers, her thoughts circling around what Sam had told her about his brother. Too many things had happened to them. Too many bad things.

She'd thought Dean's trust in the angel had been undermined in Chicago. Maybe it had been, but fighting together to stop Lucifer from rising, and putting the devil back in his cage had smoothed a lot of that over. Cas betraying him, first with the deal with Crowley, and then by forcibly trying to stop him by breaking Sam's mind had been a blow he hadn't recovered from, even when she'd seen him last. She didn't think he'd had the time to get any of it straight before losing the angel completely.

The cellular structure of the cloned parts to the whole organism is such that each clone knows what all others know. Speculation, that was all, she thought. The fragments from the Vatican texts had suggested it and the biological data had come from research into the largest known living organism on the planet – a grove of aspens in the US – each individual tree rising from a common root system, an identical clone to the first tree and to all the others. Expanding that data to an intelligent organism was a reach, she knew. But it could be an explanation for the knowledge they had, for their abilities, even, to copy a person exactly.

Each levi knew what the others knew. And they'd known Cas, had been a part of the angel, while he'd carried them around from Purgatory. They'd known Bobby's place, known the hunter and the Winchesters and their relationship to each other. Known other hunters as well. She remembered the expression on the face of the one she'd faced in Missouri, a flash of familiarity as it'd looked at her, before Paddy had taken its head off from behind with an old Japanese sword. It'd known her. Not very well, because Cas hadn't known her very well. Just well enough to recognise her.

It would make it all a lot harder, she thought. Harder to fight them. Harder to stay in touch with the others.

With difficulty, she pushed the thoughts of the levis aside, and tried to focus her attention on what Sam'd said about the hallucinations. There were a lot of reasons for the brain to produce hallucinations. Self-defence, chemical imbalances, damaged connections … too many possibilities and not enough solid fact. Sam had said that the hallucinations had begun after they gotten back from trying to return the souls in Cas to Purgatory. He'd told her that he'd attempted the reintegration before following Dean and Bobby. The soulless hunter, efficient, indifferent to life or death, including his own; the shredded and rent scapegoat, who'd borne the torture of the angels and the memories of his time in Hell; and the part of himself, Sam had thought, that was closest to who he really was … the core of his soul, perhaps, she thought. As in all things subconscious, the process had been largely symbolic, laid out in terms he'd understood and had known instinctively. He'd killed the other two, he'd said, to achieve the rejoining.

Psychic trauma might've pushed him to recall Lucifer. Some kind of atonement or punishment for what he'd done, or what he'd thought he'd done to himself. That the hallucinations had taken the form of the devil attempting to convince him that he was dreaming, that it was all an illusion and he was still down in the cage … she wasn't sure about that. A denial mechanism was possible. That it was a hallucination, that Dean's suggested use of pain as a dispersing tool had worked, wasn't in doubt. Sam had told her that the hallucinations had come on at any time, there'd been no obvious triggers to them.

It would, she considered, be all too easy to put this down to a purely physical or psychological problem. They lived in a world that had answers that most people would never have thought of, too far from the reach of science or technology, but which were just as real and just as dangerous. In her apartment, she had books that had touched on the aspects of possession that were very rare. She thought she needed to go and look at them again.

He's drinking hard again.

Not surprising but not welcomed news either, she thought. He would dull down the edges as much as he could. Do whatever he could to bury or ignore the pain or fear. They'd talked around it a little, but she hadn't been able to offer him a different short-term solution and he'd told her he had to get out of his head somehow.

He'd gone through a lot in the year he'd spent with the Braedens. But it hadn't been enough, not on his own and not in that situation where he'd been struggling with people who hadn't known him well enough to give him a lead. He'd done a lot of growing up, he'd said. He still didn't really understand that it was the way he saw himself that was the problem. Guilt and responsibility that weren't his to bear.

Pulling in a deep breath, she wondered how mad he was going to be when he saw her.

Carrs Mill, Pennsylvania

The streets were bathed in the ghostly lavender light of dusk as she drove slowly into Carrs Mill. The small town's only motel was at the eastern end, set back from the road. She pulled in and parked in the visitor's parking slot, turning off the engine and listening for a moment to the tick of the hot metal cooling.

Sighing, she reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed her bag, opening the driver's door and sliding out. She scanned the row of parked cars in front of the rooms. Sam had told her that the Impala was hidden away now, some anonymous storage place. He'd described the little hatchback he'd last seen Dean driving, but she was pretty sure he wouldn't be driving it anymore.

There. At the far end of the row, the light blue '72 Plymouth Duster stood out from the modern SUVs and compacts like an old racehorse in a field of show ponies. She walked along the row, and smiled suddenly as she got near enough to see which state the plates were from.

Walking up to the corresponding room door, the smile disappeared. She knocked twice, then once, then once again.

The door opened slowly. Dean looked at her, his face twisting into an expression she couldn't define. He looked tired, she thought. He opened the door wider, standing back and she stepped through.

"You know," he said, his tone light and conversational as he closed the door behind her. "I'm pretty sure you said it was just going to be a week – maybe two."

"I don't work for Amtrak, Dean. The schedule gets messed up sometimes. You know that."

"And your phone was off," he said levelly. "You know how I know that? 'Cause I tried it, about a thousand times."

She looked at him. "Yeah, it was. When one of the levis made me in Paris, I figured it was safer if I wasn't broadcasting my location around the globe."

She turned away from him, walking to the sofa to dump her bag. "You got some borax, holy water, salt and silver handy?"

He nodded, gesturing to the duffel at the foot of the bed. She walked over and unzipped it, pulling out the two flasks, small bag and slim, silver knife that lay on the top. Handing them to him, she watched as he handled them and poured small amounts over her held-out arm, his face closed up and expressionless.

The room showed a couple of days of constant occupancy, the kitchen bench covered with the debris from several take out places, the bed rumpled, a half dozen empty beer bottles on the low table in front of the table, two empty whiskey bottles sitting in the sink. Walking to the sink, she pulled the two bottles out and dumped them in the trash can, turning back to the sink to wash the borax and salt from her arm.

"Do we have to go through this every time?" She turned back to him. "Why is it so easy for you to think I haven't been frantically trying to get back since I left?"

She watched his expression change, his shoulders slumping as he leaned back against the door. His hunted expression and the apathy in his posture knifed into her heart.

"I'm sorry." She walked over to him slowly. "I tried to figure out a way to get back in contact but there wasn't enough time." Gesturing vaguely, she added, "Once you guys started changing phones, I couldn't trace you anyway."

She reached up, her arms sliding around his neck, pressing herself against him. His arms encircled her and she felt the faint shudder pass through his frame as he pulled her close, his breath warm against the side of her neck.

"What happened this time, Ellie?" he said quietly next to her ear, all the fight gone from his voice.

"About the same as what's been happening here, by the sounds of it," she said. "Not the same level of urgency. There was a levi in Paris, and one arrived in Italy, then I came home and there were a lot more here." She pressed her cheek to his, feeling his stubble rasp along her skin.

"Yeah." He straightened, rubbing his hand along his cheek and jaw, looking at the faint redness along her cheek. "Sorry. I haven't been too worried about personal appearance lately."

She shook her head dismissively. "That doesn't matter."

Looking around the room, she asked, "Have you eaten?"

"No." He thought for a moment. "There's a good place around the corner."

"Let's go. I'm starving." Extracting her wallet, phone and keys from her bag, Ellie put them into her jacket pocket. "We can talk about what's been happening over dinner, okay?"

"Sure," he said, remaining in front of the door until she looked up at him expectantly. "But, uh, gimme a minute."

"What?"

He shook his head, his gaze intent on her face, then he bent his head, and she felt her tension dissolve as his mouth covered hers, the kiss reaching into her and through her, stirring and intoxicating and conversely, giving her a sense of coming home.

AN: The dates reflect the year Dean spent with Lisa and Ben. This story takes place between S7's Slash Fiction and The Mentalists.