Author's note: There is just not enough Winchester in this chapter. I'm sorry. Izza insisted I give her full rein with the narrative and no matter how much I tried to tone it down/stop her, she wouldn't allow it any other way. In fact, she threatened to shut the story down. So with the promise of lots of Dean coming up (Stop it, you naughty fangirls with your double entendres. Don't think I can't hear you panting out there), I gave up and gave Izza control.

I think when she does catch up to Dean, he's in trouble, because she is bossy. (You! Over there! I see you over there with the fuzzy handcuffs. Stand down! This might go M but not THAT M. Then again, I couldn't get Izza to let me cut the backstory or the exposition, so who knows what she'll do when she's got Dean all to herself? Aw, hell. Gimme the handcuffs. I'll pass them along...)

We got on the road to Magda's; I was shaking so hard, tears spurted from my eyes. (No, I wasn't crying. I was emotional. There's a difference. Cleaners don't cry. We are strong. We are—oh, the hell with it. I was in tears.)

Can you blame me? The boy/man I'd had fantasy sex with for years suddenly appears in my life again (well, sort of suddenly) and talks to me (which is almost as good as sex, I think) and rescues me from my annoying cousin who punches the wall next to my head. I had so many emotions roiling through me, I couldn't do anything but cry.

"What the hell, Kieran!" I blurted suddenly and kicked the dashboard for good measure.

To his credit, Kieran didn't freak out or yell or do anything you'd expect him to do at that moment. Especially that moment. Instead, he pulled over right there in the breakdown lane, put the van in park and turned on the hazards, then turned to look at me, his blue-green eyes sad. "Izza—I'm sorry."

"Sorry. Sorry? What the hell is wrong with you? I was afraid you were going to hit me! And so was Dean, for that matter! Dean! Winchester!" As if there was any other-still, I felt compelled to add his last name.

Kieran's face did the twitchy-crumply thing. "Yeah. About that."

"What is wrong with you?" I whimpered in a tear-choked voice. (Augh. I know. Wimpy. Stupid, stupid, overemotional girly-girl. I might as well have asked what was wrong with me.) I swiped the traitorous tears away with the heels of my hands.

He took a deep breath. "First of all, I didn't hit you. I hit the wall. And I think I broke my hand." He held up his fist and though it looked pretty swollen and purple and torn, I didn't feel bad.

All I said was, "Well, if you weren't such an asshat, you wouldn't have done that."

His eyes narrowed. "I know, Izza. I don't know what got into me. I was…not myself."

At that very moment, however, all I could say was, "Good then. We're in agreement. You're a dick." I flung myself back into my seat, drew up my knees and glared out the side window. We didn't have anything else to talk about, as far as I was concerned.

Looking back, I'm kind of ashamed I didn't cut him some slack. I mean, he'd admitted he was wrong.

He sighed, and then he said the one thing I didn't expect. "I know about you. And Dean Winchester."

What? My heart sort of exploded—into my throat, down to my stomach, into my knees and I sat up to face him. I felt nauseous. I felt like running away. I felt like…"What?"

"I saw you. That day. On the Ferris wheel." He draped both his hands over the steering wheel and stared straight ahead out the windshield while blood dripped from his knuckles onto his jeans, leaving dark spots.

"What?" Spots swam before my eyes. I was dead. Or going to be, if Kieran told my father.

"No one else did. And I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want you banished."

Note to my readers: Banished is what happens to Cleaners who break the rules. Kind of like what happened back at the diner. If any other Clan member saw us not only having a sort of conversation with the Winchesters but making actual physical contact—like the way Sam had grabbed Kieran's mangled hand, or Dean had touched my face-we'd be banished. Because we're not supposed to mix with Hunters.

I mean, that day my dad didn't say "hello" to John Winchester? Rude by normal civilian standards but displaying incredibly good sense in a bad situation to a Cleaner.

Like a breeze, remember? Breezes don't stop to chat. And they really don't get made, recognized and rescued by the Hunters they clean for. Very bad. And of course, we won't talk about kissing. That's just...well, I think you're getting the idea, here. Kissing went beyond the rules and into a whole other realm. No one could know. But anyhow, back to Kieran-and I was pretty sure he was going to nark on me now, even if he hadn't already.

"What do you mean?" I wrapped my arms around my legs and pulled myself into a tight ball in what I believe was an attempt to stop my heart from beating out of my chest and bouncing across the dashboard. I'm not sure why I continued being obtuse; I think I thought if I ignored what he was saying, played dumb, then it would all go away. Business as usual. Bleached. Cleaned. Vanished. Gone.

"I thought...it was so many years ago. And you're a woman now. I figured it was just a kid thing, so why bring it up again? We were both young, we got immunity sort of...maybe slaps on the wrist. But as adults...you know we're accountable. No contact. At all. And today, the way you acted…" He sighed again and turned to me. "You remember. I mean, you'd do it again. What you did then. Kiss."

My thoughts spun in a panicked swirl of denial, even as I knew it was useless. "You couldn't have seen us. You were sick. You couldn't have seen me kissing him."

"I followed you guys. I mean, c'mon. It was a fair! Do you think I was just gonna lie around the RV when that was going on? I think the only thing that would have stopped me would have been barfing up a lung. And maybe not even then."

True enough. I would have had to be literally on death's doorstep before I would have missed the chance to do something fun and out of the ordinary when I was thirteen. Clearly, Kieran hadn't been dying. Just throwing up, and just bad hotdogs besides, not even any internal organ. "So. So I kissed a guy. Big deal. How do you know it was Dean Winchester, anyway?" Too late, I realized I'd already admitted it by denying the kiss instead of the guy, but hey—lying is stupid. And I suck at it, anyway. But I've mentioned that before.

He just looked at me, and quirked one of his heavy, dark brows. "You know what it was like that summer. We'd been cleaning up after a hunter for weeks. You might not have paid attention to the guy we were following, but I was. I mean Hunters are cool and he was amazing at it…" He sighed again.

"How did you—but I didn't know we were following someone. I didn't even know what Hunters were. Are. Whatever. But-how did you?"

He lowered his gaze and shifted uncomfortably. "I snuck out, followed my dad when I could get away with it. He didn't know."

"You're kidding." Kieran? I hadn't given him the credit. Maybe there was more to my annoying cousin than met the eye. "You spied on him?"

"And them. I mean, you have to admit-the car. It was hard to miss, and we always seemed to be behind it, or near it, or around it. You don't just see a car like that very often. Especially when everyone else is driving a hybrid. It stands out even if you're not paying attention. And I was."

The Impala. Of course. Bad ass-est Huntermobile ever. With all that chrome and shiny black paint and rumbling engine. I'd been pretty sure that Kieran lusted after the thing like I lusted its driver. I couldn't blame him. It was amazing. And in that respect, the only difference between us was that while I'd have sex in a second with Dean, Kieran wouldn't have sex with the Impala.

I didn't think he would, anyway.

Kieran raised his good hand in a supplicating gesture. "Come on, admit it. Cleaners are nerds. If you're a thirteen-year-old boy, what would you rather be? The elephant trainer, or the guy bringing up the rear with the wheelbarrow and the shovel?" He looked embarrassed, but I couldn't I blame him. I was a closer to-thirty-than twenty-year-old woman, and I still would have rather been a cool Hunter than a lame Cleaner. But I didn't have time to consider it anymore, because then Kieran dropped another bombshell. He focused his attention on the blood spots on his knee, staring at them like he'd never seen such a thing. "Then…well. That summer. It wasn't just you breaking the rules, you know. Because...Sam and I sort of hung out for a few months. We were friends."

Whaaaaaat? I unfurled myself. "Huh?"

He looked sheepish. "It was kind of by accident. His dad was on a hunt with...him. You know, Dean. And our dads were on the job, and you were busy with your mom and babysitting the little kids and...well. I didn't have anyone to hang with, and neither did he. And we accidentally met on a playground near where he and his family were staying and our families were camped and we started talking. We were the almost same age." Kieran trailed off, his eyes distant as he remembered. "For once, I didn't have to answer any questions, like why I lived in an RV and why I didn't go to school or whatever. Sam didn't think I was weird, and I didn't think he was weird, either. We kind of compared notes and started putting two and two together. Did some snooping and some listening and…well. We figured stuff out and realized we were two of a kind." He shrugged. "Besides, we liked the same things. Like...um...Harry Potter."

In other words, they bonded in a nerdly way.

But I understood how he felt, because I'd never had a friend who wasn't a Cleaner, either. There had been a few times that we enrolled in regular school systems, and when that happened we'd been treated like oddballs, because we were. Civilians don't understand our nomadic lifestyle to begin with, and when you're a teenager mixed in with other teens, you're just a freak. So I could picture him and Sam playing at just being normal kids that summer. Or as close as they could be, two chubby, nerdy boys probably pretending they could do magic by waving sticks around. Which is, of course, ridiculous. No one can do magic.

Not with plain old sticks, anyway.

Funny how they still managed to work their supernatural lifestyles into their attempt at normalcy, something that occurs to me now, though it didn't at the time. You know, we all have our destinies whether we like them or not, and sometimes destiny's pattern kind of whomps you in the face. But at the time, all I did was nod and wonder what I'd been doing when he was hanging out with Sam and playing wizard. Probably learning how to scrub ghoul guts out of a wool/polyester blend or something. My mom had kept me pretty busy that summer, and I suddenly realized she'd probably known how close the Winchesters were living and had been keeping me busy so I didn't meet them on the playground, too. (Had she and my aunt known that Kieran was? And if they did, why didn't they stop it?)

"Anyhow, I met Dean once, too. We—well, anyway. I knew it was him when I saw him getting on the Ferris wheel that day. And I saw you and him get paired up in the car, and then I saw you ride it again and again and…" He frowned. "But why did you kiss him, Iz?"

"I dunno," was all I could say. Because who wouldn't kiss him? was what went through my mind, but at that moment I figured it wasn't the best answer. And then I had a question of my own. "So if you knew Sam—know Sam—and Dean, and you were friends with them, then how come you hate them so much?"

Kieran didn't answer. He just looked at me with those familiar, blue-green eyes. Eyes had watched me, emulated me, taunted me and annoyed me since he was five and I was six years old. All his emotions were in his eyes at that moment. And what I read there punched me in the gut. Kieran, my shadow, my adopted cousin, my Cleaning partner—was in love with me. That's why he punched the wall. It wasn't because he hated the Winchesters. It was because he was jealous, and he knew I'd never feel about him the way he felt about me.

Because of Dean.

"Oh...oh, Kier…" I sighed. I wanted to cry. Because I knew he'd never see the same emotion in my eyes. Even if our families did arrange a marriage for us, as Cleaner parents are wont to do to keep the bloodlines pure and intact-and to keep the family business in the family-I would never feel the same way for him that he felt about me.

And it was all because of Dean Winchester.

I pulled my gaze from his, reached out and gently lifted his mangled hand from the steering wheel. "Let me get the first aid kit," I said, but nothing else. Because what else could I say?

-oooooOooooo-

We didn't speak any more about it. In fact, Kieran carried on as if it hadn't happened. Call me a wimp (which I was), but I just didn't want to bring it up to him. I can say that I stopped seeing him as annoying and started viewing him with something like pity. Which was worse. Because I saw everything he did through a guilty filter. And then, we were both miserable.

Plus, we were both worried that someone might have seen us talking to the Brothers Winchester and report us. Because it was Christmas and most of the available Cleaner clans were gathering at Magda McConnell's for the Annual Gathering, it was the perfect timing for a Banishing.

Fortunately, our worries appeared to be for naught because we were sent back to work after only a few days of the Gathering. Hunters don't take days off—or very few of them—and Dean and Sam had met up with a few pagan gods while we were eating too much at Magda's. (I'd spent the first few days inhaling sugar cookies by the dozen, the carb-loading consequence of a guilty conscience.) It was almost a relief to get back in the van and back on the road, even though our time with our families was cut short.

Kieran took his usual spot behind the wheel and I settled into the passenger seat with one of my Christmas presents, a book from Magda. (If you're wondering, it was Twilight. She knew how much I appreciated a good romantic comedy.) At any rate, I was glad to have something to do to fill the space between Kieran and me.

As usual, Kieran picked the music, but instead of crappy rap, we listened to Bing Crosby all the way to Ypsilanti, Michigan, where Dean and his brother had ganked some Gods of the Winter Solstice with their own evergreen tree. Kieran's mouth was set in a tight line of disapproval the whole time we were at the scene, in part, I suppose, because of the Winchesters and what I knew (finally) to be jealousy with a little envy mixed in as once again, we were the guys in jump suits cleaning up behind the elephant trainers.

I can assure you, however, most of his sour-lemon face was because of the stench; there were bits and pieces of decaying human flesh all over the basement that needed to be disposed of, as well as the not-so-fresh bodies of the gods themselves. Honestly, I can't say that my expression was much different than his. Pagan gods eat people, and in this case, the traditional scents of gingerbread, cinnamon and sugared-vanilla melded with the sickly sweet stench of death. So not a Yankee Candle holiday exclusive.

In the end, we rolled the whole mess up into "Madge and Edward Carrigan's" plastic couch cover, carried it out to the van in the dark of night and took it to an isolated spot where we burned it all. (Interesting side note: When you burn the Gods of the Winter Solstice, the flames glow red and green. In case you were wondering about where Christmas' colors came from—now you know.)

By the time we were finished making the Carrigan's house as gore-free and lovely as it might have been if they'd been normal Christmas fanatics and not Christmas cannibals, the Gathering was over, and it was business as usual. Magda called me about our next job, cleaning up after the Winchesters and some bitchy witches in Sturbridge Massachusetts.

That site lacked bodies but whoever had made the witches disappear had left odds and ends of spell work and other stuff scattered about. Kieran blamed the Winchesters, as usual, and this time I didn't blame him. Sometimes the brothers very kindly "disappeared" people injured in horrific ways, especially if there were families involved who would discover their loved ones in states of disrepair so heart-wrenching it would hurt them forever. So overall, the scene was fairly clean, and we didn't spend much time there; I didn't do my usual scrying spells to make sure we got everything before we left.

Which is why what happened next, happened at all.

-oooooOooooo-

Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Been there, done that. I'd finished reading my new book by this time and was spending a lot of time staring out the window of the van. I had a lot to think about. Decisions to make.

Mostly about Kieran. And of course, Dean. But now they were all tangled up in some weird knot that made me feel guilty and secretive. And angry. I'd reached what the books like to call "A Crossroads" in my life.

If I had a shovel, I could have summoned a demon and made it all go away.

But I didn't, and I wouldn't. I'd seen the results of what happened to people who made deals with demons. In fact, in one particular instance I'd spent several hours scraping them from the delicate filigrees of an antique Victorian armoire. Meeting up with your hellhound is not pretty, or clean.

"Stop brooding, Isolde," my cousin chided somewhere around Altoona, Pennsylvania. Probably because he couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"I'm not brooding," I brooded. The question was: could I give up my fantasy of heavenly ever after (or at least for a few nights) with Dean Winchester and just settle on doing what was expected of me? Was I really ready to grow up (finally) and accept my lot in life? Or was I going to be like Bella Swan in the book Magda gave me, pining after the love of a guy who was very bad for me?

Tell me that wasn't revolting.

Although the guy I longed for was much better than a dead dude named Edward—obviously—it was still the same sort of a situation. Other than the fact that my guy was alive. And so much hotter, in every sense of the word.

But, I realized, maybe I needed to be a little like Bella. Maybe willing to put life as I knew it behind me. Leave the Life of a Cleaner behind and just start a whole new path for myself.

With what, and how, I had no idea. I didn't know how to do anything but Clean, so that meant I'd end up...cleaning. Only instead of dead monsters and people (and their various bits, pieces and by-products), I'd be scrubbing toilets and stuff.

Not much of a decision. I mean, honestly, I'd rather clean up pieces of dead things than scrub someone's toilets.

It suddenly struck me that I might be able to get a job with one of those disaster clean-up places—I was more than qualified—but how to explain my background?

The answer hit me like a brick: Magda. She was the one you called when some clueless civilian wanted to "speak with your agency"; she had a whole phone bank set up on the wall of her kitchen with different labels, like Merry Maids, FEMA (I'm not kidding), CTS Decon and others. Sometimes it happened-someone decided they don't believe that the people with the buckets, mops, latex gloves and fashionable orange jumpsuits are there to clean up the horrific, bloody mess, and they just have to speak with Someone. Magda is our Someone.

I'd just have to convince her that leaving the life was the right decision for me. Once I did that, then I could leave this whole mess (excuse the pun). I just needed the courage to do it. Because once I left, there would be no coming back. Not to the Clans, or to the Hunters, either. That door would shut behind me. But it was okay. I was ready. It was that easy.

Added bonus—and this was a big one-I wouldn't have to worry that I'd be bonded to my cousin, who I didn't want to hurt but didn't love romantically (or want to have babies with), either. True, there would be no Dean Winchester, but then again, was there ever a real chance of Dean Winchester? I sighed in a way worthy of the insipid Miss Swan, fogging the window.

"There you go, brooding again." Kieran poked me in the leg.

"Am not!" I turned to look at him at the same moment he sang, "Liar liar pants on fire," and a hair elastic snapped against my cheek. He'd gotten a haircut at the Gathering, and now sported a shorter, less pirate-y—though still shaggy—'do. Consequently, all his former hair tamers were being used as weapons. Against me.

"Asshat!" I couldn't help but laugh. I felt lighter than I had since before Christmas. I wasn't completely free of this mess, but suddenly, I had hope. And at that moment, I could look at my cousin without annoyance, or pity, and just laugh and enjoy being with him, something I hadn't done in a long time. If ever.

"Takes one to know one," he grinned, and his eyes twinkled as he looked at me. Then his gaze flickered to the rear-view mirror and his expression changed. His forehead wrinkled and his eyebrows twisted. His lips thinned. "Shit," he muttered.

"What?" I sighed, disappointed, and I steeled myself to hear one of his familiar diatribes against the "fucking Winchesters" again.

Instead, he pulled over. "Get the registration," he said, keeping his hands in sight on the steering wheel.

My heart sank. Great. My dad was going to stroke out. I bent to look in the dash compartment but then the doors squeaked open in a violent way and I turned to find myself staring into the barrel of a Glock 22.

"FBI. Get out with your hands on your heads. Now!" came the demanding, commanding voice at other end of the steadily held gun and I realized we were surrounded. And, apparently, under arrest.

Hm. Not exactly sure what she's got in store for us but...well. Leave a review and we'll see if she continues her story. Here's mine: More Dean!