A/N: Here we are at last, the final chapter! Thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, or followed! I greatly appreciate all of your feedback. Not sure what my next project will be, but I'm always open to Faith & Dean prompts! :)

September 16th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 8:30 a.m.

"What the hell?" Morgan stared after the Audi as it disappeared onto the freeway. He limped over the asphalt to Prentiss, and once he had reassured himself of her safety, he trekked the twenty yards to the SUV that Reid and Rossi had been in. His earpiece was crackling in his ear.

In a moment or two, he would need to find a phone and let Garcia know that the team was all in one piece. No need to freak his Baby Girl out unnecessarily. She had been on the coms, joking around with JJ, when everything went down. Morgan knew from experience that she was likely panicking now.

Reinforcements arrived, sirens blaring, five minutes too late and coming from the wrong direction. As emergency personnel set up a first-aid tent to begin treating all the scrapes and scratches from the incident (miraculously, no one had actually been shot), the BAU team slowly regrouped, their ears still ringing from the gunfire. Nearly everyone had road rash or lacerations from shattered glass or exploding SUVS, but they were all more or less safe. Good. Morgan stepped away briefly to call Penelope.

When he returned, the others were murmuring quietly together.

"I don't understand any of this." Emily rubbed at the gauze-wrapped cut on her left forearm, winced in pain, and then continued to rub it anyway.

"Hotch -" Morgan threw in his own angry two cents. "What just happened?

The senior federal agent wiped grime and drying blood off of his forehead. He had been struck by debris during the firefight. Under different circumstances, he would have been shocked that none of the law enforcement personnel had been pierced by any one of the hundreds of bullets that had been flying through the air. Now, having had the distinctly uncomfortable experience that had been the last few days, it all seemed to make some grim kind of sense. "I'll tell you what happened," he said to his team as they huddled together underneath the first-aid tent. "We just got Winchester'd."

September 16th, 2012, San Francisco, California, 1:00 p.m.

When the Cessna landed, there was a car waiting for them on the tarmac - yet another black SUV with heavily tinted windows. As it was early afternoon, Angel and Spike pulled back on their balaclavas and gloves and held their black dusters over their heads as they rushed down the mobile stairway down to the steady earth below and across the asphalt into the back seat of the SUV. The others followed at a more sedate pace. Illyria strolled forwards, eating up the middle ground with her quick stride, while Faith, Sam, and Dean lollygagged.

Sam's head was feeling a bit clearer. Perhaps it was the presence of his brother (or maybe sitting near an actual demon of great power) but the Devil had not shown his face or worn anyone else's face for the entirety of their flight. For the first time in a while, Sam had been able to focus, and to join in the sarcastic sing-along, to tease his brother a little bit about his plane-phobia, to watch Dean studiously not get jealous as Faith got more than a little handsy with the vampires on either side of her.

Sometimes, he thought, taking the shotgun seat at the Slayer's hollered direction, grateful to be able to stretch his legs instead of confined to the far back of the SUV like the vampires. Spike and Angel had wrapped themselves in the giant blankets left in the car by whoever had sent it, and only the glint of their eyes was visible.

Sometimes, Sam repeated the word in his mind as he buckled his seat belt. Sometimes being around his brother and the Slayer was incredibly annoying. Not solely because they kept secrets from him, including important secrets, like what they did to Amy Pond and her son. It was hard to have something that he was excluded from where Dean was concerned, something that he could not belong to or be a part of. Dean had the occasional tendency toward being an over-sharer where women were involved, but here, Sam was on the outside.

Still, despite all the things that he did not like – and there were many – at other times, Sam did get a kick out of watching his brother and Faith navigate whatever it was between them that they didn't talk about. Not least because it opened up endless opportunities for teasing.

Once everyone was in the car and buckled, Faith leaned forward from her seat behind Sam, reaching across Dean (who had somehow gotten stuck with the hump) and said to the driver, "Will, you're an absolute life-saver. That tingle juice thing you gave us really worked!"

Sam surveyed the woman sitting next to him curiously. This must be Willow, the red-haired witch who he vaguely knew was Best Friends Forevuh with Buffy and perhaps the one exception to Dean's anti-witch rules.

"Happy to help," replied the ginger woman, in a tone that suggested she really would rather have not given Faith whatever the heck that "tingle juice" thing was that the Slayer was referring to. "I see you brought lots of friends."

"What better than a party?" said Faith, leaning back again. Sam was tall enough to peer into the rear-view mirror, and he caught sight of Dean's hand slowly sliding over from his leg to rest on the Slayer's knee. Faith remained expressionless, her left hand gradually migrating sideways to cover his as she continued talking to Willow. Her fingers curved downwards, nails pressing into the man's skin. "Who all's at the compound?"

"The usual suspects," answered Willow easily, sounding far more comfortable now that they were off the subject of her role as procurer of potentially lethal, quasi-magical substances. "Buffy and Daniel, of course. Dawn's up for the weekend from LA, as are Xander and Andrew." She paused and then added, "Heads up, Xander and Dawn are still doing the awkward dance of the used-to-date."

"And soon there will be two more," Faith grinned. She tipped her head to indicate the vampires in the back seat.

"I heard that," grumbled Angel, his voice muffled by the blanket.

"Yeah," echoed Spike. "And for the record, can't speak for Captain Forehead here, but I am officially over the Buff."

"Buffy and I agreed to go our separate ways a long time ago," Angel said loftily.

Faith and Willow snorted with laughter and rolled their eyes at one another in the rearview mirror, while Illyria announced, deadpan, "They're lying, by the way."

"Blue!"

"Unhelpful, Illyria."

"Very helpful, I think," said Faith. "Speaking of awkward dancing . . ." Her tone was light with daring.

Oh, no, thought Sam grimly. He had a sickening feeling that there was no way that this was going to be good.

". . . you see Kennedy lately?" finished the Slayer, her formerly conspiratorial grin having shifted into something a bit more predatory.

"I came out to drive you back to Daniel's ranch, and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now," replied the witch. "Kennedy and I have been over for years. You know that, Faith. And if we're gonna talk about dating," she continued, with a sneaky sideways glance into the rear view mirror, "what about you?"

"What about me?" asked Faith innocently, her hand still resting on top of Dean's. Sam watched as she moved it away, leaving five perfectly matched semi-circular red marks etched deep into the skin.

Willow changed lanes on the interstate and fired back, "You and Dean have been dating for years. Everyone knows it but you two."

"We are?" gasped Faith, bringing her other hand to her chest in shock.

Dean's jaw dropped open comically, his chin nearly reaching the notch in his sternum. "We have?"

"Don't you owe me flowers or something?" the Slayer asked, turning a pair of anime-wide brown eyes on the man sitting next to her, but there was a bite of anger beneath her overly-flirty tone.

"Or something," agreed Dean in his best gravel-crunching voice, somehow managing to turn those two innocuous words into a come-on.

As everyone except for Illyria groaned, Sam reflected that this – this here – was why his brother and the Slayer were so. damn. annoying.

The wizard's place was too gigantic by half. It covered at least a hundred acres, and amongst the glorious manicured gardens, there sat a giant house of glistening white stucco with a row of tall elms leading up the gravel drive and stately Greek columns lining the wide front veranda. Down the hill a little ways was a large red barn, three stories tall if it was an inch. Willow called the building a barn, but it was roughly half the size of a big box store, and its garage doors were large and wide enough to fit the private plane that they had flown in on.

Buffy and her new beau met them inside the garage, and Daniel was the very picture of California Tech Bro graciousness. He welcomed all of them in their varying states of disarray and showed them to the large rooms ringed with bunk beds where they would be staying.

In spite of the early afternoon light filtering through the enspelled windows, the humans expressed a need for showers and sleep. Faith expressed hers a little more forcefully than the others, and so she was in and out of the Hilton-sized shower and wrapped up tight in a fluffy white robe before the Winchester brothers had finished awkwardly negotiating who would be taking which bed.

Passing by the open door of the men's dormitory, Faith caught an earful of stilted conversation and rolled her eyes. Those boys. They were too damn dysfunctional.

And, speaking of dysfunction, now that Sam was safe and sound and entering his post-jailbird dysfunctional phase, once the Slayer had got all nice and caught up on her resting, she and Winchester older version were going to have a little talk. One that mainly consisted of her fists hitting his guts and his ass hitting the ground. Over, and over, and over again.

Selecting the bed in the darkest corner of the empty women's dorm, the Slayer made herself a nest of blankets. Buffy had wordlessly handed her a lethally pointed stake and a new dagger in a brown leather sheath upon her arrival, and Faith tucked these against her body, letting them dangle loosely in her relaxed grip. She inhaled and exhaled, allowing herself to feel more secure than she had since leaving for Iowa a few days ago. Finally, Faith slept.

But not for long.

3:48 p.m.

"Hey."

"Wha -" a heavy exhale of frustration, and the duvet was pulled down to expose an angry brown eye, the tip of a nose, and four inches of jagged, serrated steel. "B, I came this close to murdering you." The duvet slipped down further, revealing the matching eye, the rest of the nose, and a peevish frown as the dagger was reluctantly lowered and slipped back beneath a pillow. "No interrupting sleepy time, remember?"

Perched on the edge of Faith's bed, Buffy smiled tightly and ignored this injunction. Instead, she pursued a line of questioning that had been on her mind for the last solid hour. "Will said you had an interesting car ride."

Faith paused, pondering over the underlying meaning of that sentence, but she was too exhausted to play brain games. "Something like that." She sat up in the bunk, careful not to bonk her skull on the wooden slats overhead. "I owe your guy like, all the flowers or thank you notes or something. Something huge. We wouldn't've – we couldn't've made it out of there without his help."

"Don't worry," said Buffy. "I thanked him." Something in the way she smirked told Faith exactly how those thanks had been delivered.

"Wow," the brunette raised her eyebrows and grinned. "Guess Spike was right all those years ago about you no longer being Little Miss Tightly Wound."

"And you're not Miss Anger Management anymore, are you?"

Once upon a time, those words might have stung. Now, Faith only laughed, "Always. Just better at it these days."

"Yeah." Buffy smiled back at her, and for a moment the Slayers could sit in peace, content to be as they were in the present, and the ghosts of the past were quiet. But then Buffy had to go and clear her throat and ruin things. "About that . . . the anger management thing . . ."

"What?" Faith could feel her hackles rising and the old habit to become defensive was more than a little tempting. She thought that she had been doing a pretty spectacular job of managing her anger lately, all things considered.

"Is something going on with you and Dean? I mean, like more than whatever's usually going on between you and him? 'Cause, to be honest, we all had bets going about whether the two of you would camp out in your bed or his. And now Dawn's winning, and I just had to pay her twenty bucks."

The younger Slayer shook her head. Nope, she was a hundred and ten percent not doing this right now. Whatever she was going to do about Dean, whatever ass-kicking was going to ensue, it was entirely Faith's decision to make. She was not going to allow any pot stirring, no matter who it was attempting to grab a spatula. Things with Buffy might be going better lately, but that did not mean that they were besties who gossiped about their relationships. For one, Faith would actually have to have a relationship, which she clearly did not.

To change the subject, she remarked, "I know you said it's cool, but look, I massively owe you and your boy for all the resources and Hail Mary's you've been throwing my way. What can I do? I feel like I need to do something."

"So stay," said Buffy with a shrug and another smile, choosing to let her question drop for the moment. "Hang out here for a few weeks. Help me and Daniel do some fall cleaning."

"And by fall-cleaning, you mean . . . " Faith's voice trailed away. She had a fairly good idea, but she still liked to make Buffy use specifics. Specifics were good. Clear expectations in advance helped keep everything from going pear-shaped later.

"Clean out some vampire nests, take down demon gangs, the usual." Buffy's smile was like liquid sunshine. Somewhere in the depths of her exhausted brain, Faith wondered how the blonde managed it.

She pointed out slowly, "I've got half a place in Cleveland."

"I know."

"And another half place in London," she added.

"And whatever room there in whatever muscle car your boy's driving, huh?"

"Sometimes," answered Faith, her mouth twisting uncomfortably at the corners. Dang it, but she really did need to sort things out with Dean. Which she would. When she woke up. Which hopefully would be in about three days from now, if people ever shut up and let her pass out and stay passed out.

Thankfully, Buffy took the hint for space. "Okay," she allowed. "Well, how about a month? We could really settle Hell in a month."

"You mean raise Hell, don't you?" Faith was grinning again. It never got old, getting along with B. It was always such a . . . pleasant surprise.

"Yeah," said Buffy, returning the smile, "I think I do."

Finally, Buffy left, and Faith was allowed to sleep.

The Slayer drifted back into consciousness six hours later to a dark, empty room, and the demanding rumble of her stomach. Throwing the covers back, she peeled herself out of the bunk bed and padded barefoot along the gallery until she came to the stairs that led to the ground floor, where the kitchen, full-sized basketball court, and combination boxing arena/ballet studio were located. A faint light was on in the kitchen, and the person that she had been hoping most to avoid was sitting at the yellow pine table, staring at a full bottle of Kentucky's finest of wild turkeys.

Faith paused in the doorway and cleared her throat. Dean's head jerked around so quickly that the woman wondered if he would give himself whiplash. A series of emotions raced across his face in quick succession: confusion, relief, embarrassment, and frustration, finally settling on something that was more or less neutral. Not entirely sure of her own feelings, Faith returned the mostly emotionless gaze. The hunter turned back around, and she watched the back of his head for a long stretch of awkward silence.

At length, the man spoke, "I haven't had any." He nodded towards the bourbon. "If that's what you're wondering."

Easing her way around the table, Faith let that volley slide. After pulling out one of the chairs, the woman sat. "How's Sam?"

"Sleeping," was the terse reply.

"You want to talk?" she probed.

"I got a choice?" he fired back.

The Slayer considered this briefly, then decided, "No. Not really."

For another endless moment, they stared at one another across the polished surface of the wooden table, faces grim, expressions shuttered. Out of habit, Faith chewed on the inside of her cheek. Maybe it was fatigue, or the magical death juice, or just the utterly bizarro world of staying with rich people, but her insides felt raw. Watching Dean's closed-off, eerily empty eyes, she could guess that he was feeling raw, too. That muscle pulsing in his cheek was not doing so out of an overabundance of joy, after all.

"I think we -" she started at the same time that he said, "I need a break."

"Oh." Faith's scrambled thoughts had explored along similar lines in the last few days, but it rather hurt to hear him say it. Foolishly, she had grown used to not being rejected by him.

Dean went on, "You and me, we're not good for each other right now."

The Slayer gave him a hard, sharp look, then said in a quiet voice, "Go on."

Glancing away, the man addressed his next words to the bourbon. "I keep screwing up," he admitted. "Ever since the Leviathans showed up, ever since . . ."

Since Castiel died, Faith's Winchester-mind-reading superpowers manifested themselves, but she let him continue to fumble.

"Ever since . . . well, ever since then, things have just been going from bad to worse. I didn't want to drag you into this - into any of it. Bobby pulled you in when Sam an' me got holed up in Whitefish, and then I insisted we go up to Bozeman, and then Sam and I got you into this thing with the Leviathans -"

Truth required that she interrupt him here. "The Leviathans dragged me into this thing with the Leviathans, Dean. Not you."

"Yeah," he was willing to agree to that much, at least, "but they wouldn't have known who you were or how to find you if you hadn't come to Montana."

Much to her frustration, she had to allow that the man had a point.

"And I keep asking myself," Dean continued, "is it my fault that you got caught up in this, or is it your fault for getting carried away?"

The Slayer inhaled with a sharp hiss. "Bozeman."

"If you hadn't been with me, I think I would've still gone after that kitsune, but . . . I don't know. And maybe, maybe Sam wouldn't have taken off, and this whole FBI thing could have been avoided, and -"

"And maybe you could have skipped your whole little bender, too, or do you not remember that part?" she snarled through half-gritted teeth.

"See?" said Dean miserably. "It's all screwed up."

Still angry, the woman ran a hand through her rumpled brown hair and pointed out, "I'm not the one who's been drugging other people."

"No," he sighed, "but you were the one who killed that kitsune kid."

Faith's expression went utterly, painfully blank. It felt as though she had just been kicked in the chest by a rampaging buffalo. "I did what had to be done," she said after a moment. Her damn voice threatened to wobble and betray her, but she whipped it back into line.

"And that's what I thought I was doing with the drugs and stuff. 'Course, I might have been a little drunk at the time," the hunter admitted in an undertone.

"A little?" Faith snapped.

"Okay," he conceded. "A lot."

They glared at one another. Finally, the Slayer looked away for a few seconds while she thought, her mind slow and heavy as lead, and then she looked up and said in a tone laden with restraint, "I can't tell if I want to frak you or kill you."

"Huh." Dean exhaled, and his green eyes glinted with something that might have been lust, might have been murderous rage. Ever since his little Rip Van Winkle summer vacation in Hell, that could sometimes be a tricky distinction to make. "It's funny," the man went on. "You walked in here, and I started thinking the same thing." He exhaled again. "Trouble is, tempting though both those options might be, I got a feeling that neither is the right answer."

She wanted to beg, she wanted to plead, but Faith Lehane was not a girl who begged or pleaded. It simply was not written into her DNA. "Okay." She pursed her lips. "I'll call Lily in the morning, see if she can slip westwards and pick up the stuff we left behind. She's in between shows at the moment."

The hunter nodded. "Sam and I'll be on our way first thing. I'd like to rendezvous back with Bobby, make sure he's doing okay."

"Right." Faith stood up from her chair, resisting the urge to wrap an arm around her stomach to keep her internal organs from leaking out onto the floor. Metaphorically speaking, of course. As she passed by the hunter, she turned her head to the side. If she looked him full in the face again, Faith was going to either clobber him or kiss him, and she did not want to be responsible for what might happen next.

Half-rising out of his seat, the man said, "Hey."

She hesitated in the doorway, hands curling into fists at her side. "Yeah?"

"I'm real sorry. That this is how it is."

The Slayer sucked air in through her teeth. "Me, too." Her words carried a heavy air of finality. "Trouble is, Dean, saying sorry just ain't good enough."

Without turning around, she stepped into the darkness and fled.

Unfortunately for Faith, that could not be the end of all things. She tumbled back into bed, angry and restless, and then tossed and turned for hours until finally succumbing to exhaustion. She woke not long after, only a half hour or so shy of the dawn.

After hitting the head with its gleaming marble sink, the Slayer wandered back down to the kitchen, following the sound of familiar voices. She turned the corner to find Spike and Angel glaring each other down over mugs of blood from opposite ends of the generous space, having resurrected their ancient argument of caveman versus astronaut for the ten gazillionth time.

"Wonder Woman," interjected Faith, speaking over top of both of them. She pushed past Angel and began rifling through the fridge and cabinets in search of something to munch on. At length, her canvassing turned up a bag of lime Tostitos and a jar of salsa. She poured the salsa from the narrow-necked jar into a wide-mouthed bowl, ripped open the tortilla chips, and went to town.

The vampires joined her at the table, apparently willing to forego their endless debate in favor of staring at her while she gave a demonstration of cavewoman table manners.

"Interesting talk you had earlier," Spike commented as the Slayer shoveled her fifth chip into her mouth. "With your lumberjack."

She chewed once, twice, then swallowed, too exhausted for any more outrage beyond an incredulous, "What?"

Angel had the good sense to look embarrassed. Spike, never a retiring blossom, did not.

"I was outside, havin' a smoke," he explained. "The window was open. Voices carry, and you birds aren't the only ones with special hearing."

"Great," grumbled Faith caustically. She considered drowning herself in the bowl of salsa before her. It would be preferable to having this conversation.

"We think -" the blond vampire started.

"I don't want to hear it."

"We think you should come back with us," Angel finished for him. "To London."

"London?" Oh. Faith had not been expecting that. She needed a break, and crossing the pond would certainly help create a sense of distanced, but she had already promised . . . "I told Buffy I'd stay here and help her."

The vampires exchanged a significant look. Faith took advantage of the momentary reprieve to scarf down another chip laden with chunks of tomatoes and peppers.

"Think of it this way," ventured Spike, his tone bordering on wheedling. "Who's more fun? Us or Buffy?"

"You," the brunette admitted. Her relationship with Buffy might have been growing easier these last few years, but the answer to that particular question had always been and continued to always be a no brainer.

"Then it's easy," he continued. "Come spend three weeks with us and the Bluebird, and then you can come back and help out the Buff."

Faith surrendered. "Okay."

"Okay?" Angel pressed, wanting to confirm this.

"Okay," the Slayer repeated. "I'll come back with you. It's been too long since I went home."

September 17th, 2012, Somewhere Over Western Pennsylvania, 9:17 a.m. EST

"So where are they?"

"I'm sorry?" Aaron Hotchner glanced up the large puddle of papers spread all across the small lap desk in front of him. Their plane was still two hours out from home, and he was using the familiar monotony of paperwork to organize his thoughts. How was he going to explain any of this to the Section Chief?

It was Spencer who had interrupted his thoughts this time, sliding into the empty seat across from Hotch. He buckled his seatbelt with the air of the perpetually safety-conscious and then leaned forward, waving his hands expressively. "The Winchesters and Faith Lehane. Where do you think they are?"

Hotch's dark eyebrows furrowed. "You think they're all alive, still?" he said mildly, herding the mess of documents into a stack and then tapping them on the lap desk to even out the edges.

"Oh, everyone thinks that," answered Spencer quickly, as if it were obvious. "The question is - who was helping them?"

"Take a look at these." The supervisory agent passed his stack of papers over to the younger man. "Garcia finished putting this list together and faxed it to me at the hotel."

Spencer flicked through the documents at lightning speed, committing the names and faces contained therein to memory. "So . . . known associates . . . Liam, no last name - oh, that was one of her so-called lawyers! Who else?" He continued ripping pages and reading aloud, "Elizabeth Summers . . . Robert Singer . . . Rupert Giles - wait, no, he appears to be dead. Wesley Wyndham Pryce - oh, also dead. We starting with Elizabeth Summers and Robert Singer?"

"Yes," Hotch nodded, glad that Reid was thinking along the same lines as he was. "Exactly. We start with them. And until we have the Winchesters and Lehane back in custody, we do not stop."

September 17th, 2012, San Francisco, California, 10:00 a.m. PT

Taking her sweet time, the Slayer meandered up from the basement movie theater and outside to the garage. Andrew had stuck his head in, intent on borrowing Daniel's PS4, and informed her that the Winchesters were packing up and getting ready to go. Faith knew that he had ulterior motives (Andrew always had ulterior motives where the Winchesters were concerned), but she thanked him for the heads up and headed outside anyway. The garage doors were opened, and she walked through the cool darkness to the warm heat of the driveway, where a non-Jolly, non-Green Giant was tying his bootlaces.

Faith waited until she was two feet away from him to call out, "Hey, Sam."

Startled, the man glanced up. "Hi, Faith." He finished whipping a lace around a bunny ear and pulled it tight. Sam rose to his feet. "Thank you for coming to get me," he said sincerely.

Before he could get any strange ideas about hugging into his head, the Slayer blurted, "I'm glad you're okay. And I wanted to say I'm sorry." The morning sun was behind his back, and she had to squint a little to make out the hunter's face. "Sorry that what I did drove a wedge between you and your brother. I'm, uh, I'm stepping out for a bit."

"Me, too." He did not pause address the apology business. "Dean's dropping me in Salt Lake on his way to Whitefish."

Faith snorted. "Enjoy the Mormons."

"They're not so bad."

"Tsk. Tsk." The Slayer shook her head. "Such a teetotaler, Sammy."

"Don't call me Sammy." But he smiled at her as he said it, removing any possible sting from his words. "See you around?"

"Yeah, I think so." Faith shifted her weight from foot to foot, glancing around but trying not to look as if she were glancing around.

"He's over there." Sam gestured with one thumb towards the right side of the garage.

She wanted to cringe. "That obvious, huh?"

"Nah." It was Sam's turn to shake his head, making her instantly reflect on the man's need for a haircut. Maybe Daniel had a pair of gardening shears lying around somewhere . . . "He was looking for you earlier, too."

Faith meandered her slow way around the corner of the building and over to find Dean Winchester. It was not as if she was in a hurry. Not at all. She found him half-in, half-out of the backseat of the Dodge Charger that Daniel was loaning the brothers, fiddling with an ice chest. The hunter looked up and slid out of the car as she approached.

"Mornin'," he said easily, all the strain from the night before gone from his voice.

"Mornin'," she replied, once again having to squint against the bright California sun. Faith scratched at the bridge of her nose awkwardly.

"You get breakfast?" asked Dean.

"Yeah." Faith joined him full speed ahead on the 'Pretend Everything's Normal' train. "You?"

The hunter bent over to lift Illyria's black bag, now emptied of controlled substances and filled with a toothbrush and a spare change of clothes. "Nah. Just coffee. Not really hungry."

"Oh," said the Slayer, idly checking out his rear end out of habit.

Noticing her gaze, the man allowed himself a hint of a smirk before sobering again and saying, "About last night -"

"You don't need to -" Faith rushed hurriedly.

He dropped the bag into the Charger's trunk and waved a hand, cutting her off. "I said a lot of crap last night - and I meant most of it - but what I didn't say and should have was thank you." Dean closed the trunk with a thud and turned to face her. He spoke quietly so that no one on the front side of the garage could hear them. "Thank you for keeping me from getting us killed." He looked down towards his new boots and then back up at Faith. "I should never have done what I did."

For the first time since waking up disoriented in the back seat of that damn Acadian, the brunette was considering that she might actually believe his apology.

Dean continued, "And thank you for saving Sam. I , uh, I don't think I could have figured out a way to do it without you."

Faith gave him a few seconds to wriggle uncomfortably and then commented, "You're big on the speeches lately, aren't you?"

"Sorry," he apologized.

The Slayer rolled her eyes. "It's okay." Racing to backtrack, she said, "I mean, not everything's okay. The speeches, maybe. But not everything." She leaned on the Dodge, her own new shoes brushing up against the rear wheel well. "I don't want you not to feel bad, because what you did to me sucked, but I also don't want you to add this to that turtle shell of guilt and martyrdom that you carry around on your back."

When he shot her a strange look, Faith added, "Don't give me that nonverbal scowly crap. You carry around a ton of crap. And you shouldn't, 'cause it doesn't make you better." It was the woman's turn to look away. "All it does it make you self-destructive as hell."

"Faith -"

"Look, Dean, you're like my best friend - but don't you dare tell Angel that. I gotta protect his precious feelings."

Tension broke, and the hunter chuckled.

"This-" she made a nonspecific gesture in the air, referring to the absolute clusterfrak that had been the last few days, "this isn't gonna change that, not in the long run. But before I kick your ass outta this place, I just kinda need to know that this didn't - doesn't - change things for you, either. In the long run."

"I don't think it will," he replied slowly. "Look, I just need a long drive, clear my head, see Bobby, have him chew my ass out and hand it back to me on a platter - that kind of thing."

Faith enjoyed the picture her imagination constructed of the ass-chewing that awaited Dean when he reached Bobby Singer. Particularly if a little bird dropped Bobby a line beforehand about what certain people had been up to lately. "Mmm. Don't forget to - "

"Meet up with Becka and Lily next week to get what we left in the cache," he finished for her. "I got it. They taking your stuff back to Cleveland or mailing it here?"

"Here."

"Right."

They hesitated between the Dodge Charger and the ginormous red barn, the air surprisingly comfortable despite the warm autumn sunlight. Faith pushed off the side of the car. They had done this half a hundred times, and still she felt a certain reluctance, even given her current quietly persistent desire to punch him in the face. It had not gotten easier: saying goodbye, stepping back, walking away, giving him up to the care of his brother and the watchful eyes of whatever guardian spirits the universe had dedicated to supervising Dean Winchester. Especially now that the guardian spirits were down one with the loss of Castiel.

"Well," she began, not quite certain how to finish her sentence. It had been a hell of a week.

For the second time, Dean finished it for her. "Take care of yourself."

"Yep. You, too." They began walking back towards the front of the garage and the others. "Think they believe we're dead?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. Probably not, though. Too bad we threw the heads down the river. They could have been useful."

"It was the only thing to do, if we didn't want 'em to regenerate, or whatever it is that Leviathans do."

"Hope you're right. Try to keep your hair out of hotel drains?"

"I always try."

"I'm thinking about not shaving for a while," he offered.

She smiled. "That's one way to go incognito."

And, a tentative peace restored, they strode on to rejoin his brother.

Fin.