Notes: The events of this chapter tie in to a timeline that may or may not be written. I have messed with ages, otherwise it would never work.

This is the last chapter of this particular story, but not of the Angelface 'verse. You may or may not see more of Claire in the future.

Claire was sixteen when the letters stopped completely.

After her fourteenth birthday the frequency of the letters between them had started to slow. Weekly letters turned into monthly, until one day Claire thought that Dean just forgot to send a reply. Or it might have been her. She couldn't remember, she'd only been keeping his side of the correspondence saved and letting her emails be automatically deleted when they got too old. By that point she didn't mind so much.

The Winchesters had dropped out of the news, featured only on the occasional rerun of True Life Crime or on countdowns of America's Most Wanted.

Claire's own life had moved on. She still posted the occasional letter to her blog, but by and large that part of her life seemed to be over. She had broken up with John the year before when his father transferred to another branch of the company he worked for. She still counted Lauren and Marsha amongst her friends, and was taking supplementary art classes at the local university some nights after school.

Despite that fact she did not plan on being an artist, much to her mother's secret dismay.

By eighteen Claire had almost forgotten that at one point she had written almost daily to a serial killer. She was accepted into three separate colleges, and in the end her decision was based solely on the fact that Lauren would also be going to one of them. She decided to major in psychology, which she considered ironic considering her own reluctance to be examined by anyone with a psychology degree.

She was two years into her bachelor degree when the name Winchester was suddenly national news again. Dean Winchester Caught. The headline blazed out in bold from her computer screen. 38 year old serial killer Dean Winchester was caught last night just outside the town of Lawrence, Kansas and is currently being held in a maximum security facility pending trial.

Claire shut the window without reading any more. She already knew all about Dean Winchester's nationwide killings, about the symbolism behind the supposedly satanic graffiti sometimes left behind. She still had copies of his emails to her in a folder on her laptop. She'd used some of it in a paper last year, had gotten a 97 for it. Claire sat in front of the screen for a few minutes before she thought better of it and found the news article again.

It didn't say where they were holding him. Probably because they didn't want Sam coming after him, which was a very real possibility given how previous arrests had gone.

She started making phone calls without really knowing who exactly she was supposed to talk to or what she should say. It took her over a month to actually get anywhere. Christmas came and went in the meantime, and during her time at home Claire didn't tell her mother what she was trying to do.

It wasn't until January 6th that she had a breakthrough. A week later, after a ridiculous amount of background checks, form signing and ass-kissing, Claire found herself face to face with Dean Winchester for the first time through the glass of a visitor's window.

Dean looked different from how she'd been expecting. Calm, confident. He smiled at her like they were old friends, and even though the phone distorted the sound his voice was smooth and pleasant when he greeted her. "Hello, Clarice."

Claire blinked at him. "It's Claire."

"Silence of the Lambs?" He asked. "Hannibal Lecter? I know you're a Catholic girl, but geez." Dean shook his head. "So what brings you here, Claire-bear? Had to come see for yourself?"

"I don't know," Claire admitted after a moment. "I suppose I came because I can't just email you and expect you to answer."

"Yeah, maximum security sucks," Dean agreed. "Figure these mooks think I'll be dialing straight to Sammy if they let me near any kind of communication."

"But you won't be?"

"If Sam knows best he won't show up. A massacre like that would put us all back on the map. Better," Dean smiled at her, "that I bite the big one and keep my mouth shut about where Sam or Cas might be found."

"So my dad is alright."

"Yeah, he's fine. He'd be madder than hell that I got myself caught..." Dean paused, an odd look crossed his face – there and gone in barely a second.

"You know they'll execute you, don't you?" Claire asked after a moment, and for some reason talking about Dean's inevitable death seemed less depressing than the possibility of seeing that look on his face again. "They'll never let you live, you have no grounds for appeal."

"I'm pleading guilty to all charges. Why lie? I'm not dragging this out."

That struck Claire as just a little odd. "So you're not afraid to die?"

Dean chuckled. He looked very handsome when he laughed. "I know where I'm going when I die, and I know what happens there too. I'll be out in under a century. They love serial killers where I'm headed, Claire-bear."

"You'll go to hell, where they strip you of humanity until there's nothing left but whatever they make you," Claire finished for him, remembering that scrap of information from years ago. "Aren't you sorry for the people you're leaving behind?"

"I'm covered." Dean seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he leaned forward just a little, as if there weren't a pane of inches-thick glass between them. "You know I love him, right? Cas, your dad. I care."

Claire smiled. "I know. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't even be here."

When Claire left she wasn't sure what she'd achieved, if anything. It wasn't a sense of closure. She had been given a small envelope with a few of the things Dean had on him when he was taken in, apparently at his request. It was a small bundle of things, a Zippo, a wallet empty of everything but twenty dollars and an expired drivers' licence, a pendant on a black cord. Everything else had been confiscated as evidence.

She shoved the whole lot into her handbag, not knowing what she was going to do with it. Just a few short minutes later she thought better of it.

Claire put on the pendant.

The End of This Particular Story, But Not The Verse As A Whole.