Based on the film/novels The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Special thanks to Kayleigh for all the love and support! :D

Pairings: Dean/Castiel, Jess/Sam, Cassie/Dean, Anna/Dean, Castiel/Rachel
Warnings: Non-con, rape, violence, torture, murder, explicit sexual content.

PROLOUGE

The man stared down at the frame like it was going to bite him. Or maybe like he wanted to bite it. Either way one of them was going to get hurt.

But that wasn't true at all because the man knew that he didn't have it in him to throw it away or burn it or run it over with his car like he imagined doing every time it arrived, every year, right on his birthday. Clockwork. Instead, he picked up the phone and dialed the same number he dialed every year.

"Yeah?"

"Bobby! How are you, sugar?"

A sigh, then, "Gabriel. Another one?"

"What? Can't I call you just to hear your sweet, dulcet voice?"

Gabriel could hear the barely reigned in frustration in Bobby's voice. "Damn it, Gabriel. Every year for the past ten years, you've called me. Same day, every year. Don't yank my chain, you damn fool!" A sorry pause. "What kind is it?"

Bobby's words stung a little more than Gabriel expected, but he tried to put on a brave face. Well, actually, he pouted, but there was no point since no one else around to see and take pity on him. "Yeah, yeah. Another pretty flower all for me." Gabriel tried to sound excited, but it wasn't in him. He wanted to reach out and touch the edges of the frame, as if he could feel the same hands that made it and finally get some answers, but he knew already it would be useless. He'd tried it before.

He sighed deeply, scrubbing a hand over his face wearily, "Dunno what kind it is. I'll make some calls, find out what I can."

Bobby sounded different when he answered, resigned and sad. "Call me when you know."

"Yeah."

Nothing else was said. Gabriel simply hung up and unwrapped a lollipop.

The frame was six by eleven inches and held a single pressed flower on watercolor paper. It was always beautiful and simple. Every year it arrived on the twentieth of January, postmarked from the city usually, but sometimes Paris, Moscow, Los Angeles, and even Black Rock, New York once.

What it was doing in the ass-crack of nowhere, Bobby still didn't know.

Bobby wasn't new at this in any way. When he'd retired just a few years ago, he'd been one of the units' best men. After his wife was murdered, there wasn't anything that held Bobby Singer back from delving into his work. It was easier than dealing with the crippling grief, the unfulfilled revenge. He'd handled hundreds of cases in his lifetime – drunks, domestic abuse, rape, murder – but there was always a few that stuck out in your mind.

There were Dr. Silver's boys, Joe and Ryan, who went missing while their dad was at work and their mom was out getting groceries. The neighbor's dog found them a few days later, dumped in a ditch with too many bruises to count (though the corner gave it a good try). He'd found the man behind it a few weeks later, an out of towner named Chet with a record that could have stretched across the whole U-S-of-A.

Years later there was another gruesome case, another murder, this time of a young man. His name was Corbett Johnson and it was pretty clear from the moment Bobby arrived on the scene that it was a hate crime. The murderers (there were four of them, in the end and they were still serving their time) had drawn and carved 'fag' and other slurs all over that poor boy's skin. He'd been hog tied and sodomized with various objects before a hard blow to the head finally killed him. His partner Ed hasn't been the same since then.

But this case - the one Gabriel called him about once a year - it was the worst of them all. It wasn't gruesome or gory. The girl simply vanished. No one saw her go, no one knew what happened to her, and she was simply gone. After a year of searching, of researching and tracking, Bobby found nothing. After two years her case was labeled a mystery, she was assumed dead and his captain – Rufus - told him to forget about it. He said okay, but he never really followed orders well.

It haunted him all through his career and even now in his retirement. Granted, he hadn't really been ready to retire yet, but all it took was one well-placed shot by some dumbass bank robber to paralyze him from the waist down. But that was another story, another case.

This is the case that keeps him awake at night, wondering what he missed, brooding over a bottle of Jack. But the thought that he stumbled over time and time again, the one that frustrated him damn near to tears, was the thought that there wasn't ever really a crime to be solved at all.

Every year they came and every year Gabriel called him. Every year it was like tearing open an old wound. Bobby already knew they wouldn't find anything. They'd had the damn things tested every year that they arrived, but never found anything. No prints, no DNA, not even a piece of hair. Just nothing.