The long drive to Lisa's house gave me a lot of time to think. I knew that Sam's jump into the pit had wounded Dean deeply. I could see it in his tight grip on the steering wheel (that kept his hands from shaking), his stoic expression (to keep his sadness from showing through), and his stiff shoulders (a sign he was going to "stay strong", whatever that meant). Losing Sam loomed over both of us, for me a loss too big to cry over. I wanted to, just in case it would make me hurt a little less, but I was also afraid to because what if once I started crying, I never stopped? The hole inside me was deep enough that I could get lost in it, so I tried not to think about it at all.

And then there was Lisa. I still kinda thought Dean was a little crazy for thinking she'd just let us live in her house and be her new family. First off, she knew him, but she didn't know me at all and who'd want a kid with anger issues and who started fires living with them. Not that I'd ever started a major fire on purpose, but you know what I mean. If I ever lost control, who knows what I could do on accident, and I knew what I'd already done on accident… knew it by heart.

I'd promised Dean that I would try as hard as I could to make our new life work, a normal, apple-pie life as he and Sam had called it. I didn't want to. I wanted Sam back and I wanted to hunt but Dean had practically forbidden me from trying either, all but saying it outright. He was worried about my jealousy and my temper, and who wouldn't be with the shit I'd pulled in Alliance with Jesse the anti-Christ and then again in Blue Earth when I ran off on my skateboard, not to mention the thousands of other times I'd fucked up. I'd promised, though, and I meant to do my best. It didn't matter how I felt, I wouldn't react. I swore it to myself, linking my pinkies in a self-pinky swear.

Sometime during the drive, I lay down on the front seat with my head on Dean's thigh, the middle seatbelt wrapped around my waist, still thinking and lost in the cadence of Dean's classic rock and the gentle vibrations of the Impala as it ate up the miles. Through the windshield, the stars shone above me in the Milky Way, only blocked out by trees and clouds. I slept.

Dean gently shook me awake hours later. The moon was high in the sky but suburban street lights blocked out the stars.

"Are we there?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.

"Yeah, sweetheart. We're here," he replied. I stumbled out of the car with him, without shoes, and followed him up the walkway, my stomach beginning to flutter with nerves. What if they didn't like me, what if they wouldn't talk Dean because I was there. I didn't want to wreck his promise to Sam. Was I strong enough to leave him and go back to Bobby's?

And then Dean was knocking on the front door. I slid behind him and hooked my fingers through his belt loops.

The door opened.

"Hey, Lisa," Dean said, his voice breaking a little.

"Oh, thank god," Lisa responded breathlessly. "Are you all right?"

Dean nodded and answered unevenly, "Yeah." He paused and dropped his head before raising it up again to say "If it's not too late, I think I'd like to take you up on that beer."

"It's never too late," Lisa replied. Then Dean stepped forward and my fingers slipped from his belt loops as they embraced each other.

"Shh, " Lisa said to Dean. "It's ok. It's going to be ok."

They hugged for a long time, and I stood uncertainly, rubbing one foot against the opposite calf, feeling lost and alone. But I'd promised, no reaction, so I just waited, picking at my fingernails.

Finally, Dean broke away from Lisa and stepped to the side a little. "Uh, Lisa, this is Jessie, my daughter."

It was my first look at her, and she was beautiful. Taller than me, but still shorter than Dean, she had long dark brown hair, a straight nose, and freckles. Her brown eyes were gentle. Swallowing hard, I stepped forward and extended my hand to her. "Adopted," I added, trying to avoid the inevitable 'but you're too young to have a daughter that age' or a comment on the implied virility of him fathering someone when he was fifteen.

Surprised, Lisa paused before taking my hand and shaking it. "Lisa," she said.

"Nice to meet you," I replied stiffly and took my hand back. Then I looked up at Dean who was looking at me like I'd grown two heads. He shook his head and turned back to Lisa.

"Come in," she said and stepped back away from the door. We went into the house and Lisa led us into the dining room, which was to the right of the door. "Sit down and I'll get you that beer." She turned to go into the kitchen, which was right behind the dining room. The two rooms were separated by a little half-wall.

"Actually," Dean said, stepping away from me, toward her. "Do you mind if Jessie gets some more sleep on your sofa before that?"

"Dad," I started to object, but still looking at her, he pointed at me. I shut up.

"Of course," Lisa replied, and I thought I heard a little relief in her voice. It stung and my lip crept in between my teeth without my noticing. She led us into the living room, which was on the left side of the front door, and plumped up a pillow that was already there. "Let me get a blanket…" she said.

"I have my shawl," I said, sliding it off my shoulders and showing her. "I'm ok."

Dean waited until I'd laid down and then took my shawl from me to spread it over me and tuck me in. Lisa watched him pull the shawl up around my chin and kiss my forehead. "I love you. Sleep well, sweetheart," he said quietly.

"Ok," I said, and giving me a sad smile, he turned away from me and followed Lisa into the dining room. I fought tears. Why did it feel like I'd lost something?

I woke up the next morning to a boy's voice demanding loudly, "Who's that girl sleeping in the living room?", then a rushed shushing sound that followed. Still hurting, I rolled over and faced the back of the sofa, hugging the shawl to me, missing Bree's warm comfort even after her death. Oh god, she'd died a second time for me, rushing to save my from my own foolishness, getting between me and Lucifer's attack, taking the blow for me, giving me just enough time to hide again. My breath caught in my throat and I sobbed quietly into the shawl, loving her, missing her, wishing I could thank her for both times she'd saved me, until guilt over her deaths rose up again. I pushed away the tears, rolling over to grab a tissue from the box on the coffee table. I didn't deserve her. I should've done better. I could've done better.

Once I'd cleaned up, I pulled Bree's shawl around my shoulders and crept to the kitchen, hoping to overhear something, but all I heard was the boy's voice… Ben?… talking to Dean about his baseball team. Had Lisa and Dean been up all night? Or had they gone to bed and gotten up before me? Had he slept in her room or was it too soon for that? I didn't see a sleeping roll on the floor in the living room.

Those thoughts jumbled through my head while I turned the corner so everyone could see me. Lisa, Ben, and Dean sat around a table in a small breakfast nook. Ben, a short, kind-looking kid with dark hair and eyes, stopped mid-sentence when he saw me, and that made Lisa and Dean look my way.

"Hi," I whispered, crossing my arms over my chest, the shawl pulling around me closer. "You're Ben, right?"

"Yeah," he said. "And you're Jessie."

"Yeah."

We stared at each other until he glanced uncertainly at his mom.

"Come in and sit down, sweetheart," Dean said, catching the glance. "I'll get you some breakfast."

The talk around the table was stilted at first. No one seemed to know what to say with me there. Eventually though, Dean asked Ben a question about his baseball team. Ben's eyes lit up and he started rambling happily again, which took the focus off me and made it easier to eat. Not a lot easier, though. I choked down an egg, all the while noticing that Lisa kept giving me little looks when she thought I wasn't looking, like she was trying to study me. Any other kid may not have noticed, but I was on high alert in a new place, automatically using some of the hunter training Sam and Dean had given me so I could fight Gabby.

With her eyes on me, I couldn't eat any more, so I pushed my plate away, leaving the pancakes and sausage untouched, and started to get up. While still responding to Ben's jabbering, Dean put a hand on my arm and I slumped back down in the seat. When Ben paused to take a breath, Dean looked at me.

"You need to finish at least one pancake and the sausage," he said, taking his hand off my arm. Immediately all the attention was back on me and I flushed.

"I'm not hungry," I whispered, glancing first at Ben and then at Lisa. Dean seemed to get it.

"And if I let you go eat that in the living room?" Dean asked.

"We're not allowed to eat in the living room," Ben piped up immediately.

"Shush, honey," Lisa said to him, not taking her eyes from me.

"I… guess?" I replied, and Dean picked up my plate and led me out of the kitchen. He set the plate on the coffee table. I sat down on the couch and looked up at him.

"You've got ten minutes," Dean said. "One pancake and both sausages."

"Okay," I replied, dropping my eyes and picking up the fork. I heard him sigh above me.

"You know what I want to hear, sweetheart."

I sighed too. "Yes, Dad."

"Good girl." He ruffled my hair and I watched his legs walk out of the living room. With the weight of all those eyes off me, I let out a huge breath, abandoned the fork, and picked up the pancake. When Dean came back ten minutes later, my plate was clean. He smiled at me and gestured for me to follow him.

"We've got some stuff to tell you two," he said, dropping his arm around my shoulders while I tried to balance the silverware on the empty plate as we walked. Once I was settled back at the table, Lisa spoke up.

"Dean and I have been talking," she said and then focused on Ben. "And Dean and Jessie are going to move in with us."

Ben and I exchanged looks, his confused and mine concerned. "Aren't you supposed to date a while first?" Ben asked.

"We did date a while," Dean said. "It was just a long time ago."

"I thought that was just one night," I started.

"We dated," Lisa broke in, blushing. "And now you and your dad are going to move in with us." She looked from Ben to me and back, quickly regaining her composure. "But that means that there are going to be some changes."

"First, this house is too small," Dean said. "So we're going to have to move to a new house. Until then, you two are going to have to share a room."

Ben's eyes popped. "Share? But she's a girl!"

"Really? That's news to me," I responded. Dean shot me a look but I ignored him. Ben didn't seem to notice.

"We're going to split your room down the middle with bookcases," Lisa explained to him. "And hang curtains over the entrances. That will give you both some privacy."

"And it's only temporary," Dean said. "As soon as we can find a house, we'll move."

Ben had a hundred more questions, all of which had to do with things like whether or not I'd be able to look through the cracks between the bookcases (as if I'd do that) and did it really have to be half the room (according to Lisa, yes). I leaned back in the chair and watched Dean and Lisa satisfy his curiosity. I didn't care what they did. As far as I was concerned, they could put me on the couch until they found a new house. I even suggested that at one point, but Lisa was adamant about their solution despite the fact that Ben didn't seem too happy with it.

Dean, Lisa, and Ben spent the rest of the morning tearing apart and reconfiguring his room, leaving me on my own to explore the house. They were right, it was a smallish house. When you came in the front door, the living room was on the left and the dining room was on the right. If you walked straight from the front door, you hit the kitchen, which had the breakfast nook, and behind the kitchen was the door into Ben's room on the left. Past that was a short hall with a door into Lisa's yoga studio on the right, a bathroom on the left, and the back door to the porch at the end. If you turned left at the front door and walked through the living room, there was a little hallway that led to the master suite. From what I could tell, Ben's room and the master suite shared a wall, which meant that if they were in there, they'd be able to hear any noise we made in Ben's room after light's out. Although, with the way he was acting at having to share his room with me, even short-term, we probably wouldn't be having any late night conversations.

I sighed and dropped onto the couch. He was going to hate me.

They didn't finish moving things around until about an hour after lunch. Dean had told me to stay out of the way while they were working, and I'd spent some of the time doing the breakfast dishes, hoping to make it easier for them to accept me there, and the rest of it reading on the couch. Dean called me in when they were done and stood with his thumbs hooked into his pockets while I looked.

They had literally split the room in half about a foot inside the doorway. There were sheets pinned and hung over cord at each entrance. Ben's was pulled back and I could see him busily putting his stuff away, a frown on his face. I pulled back the curtain on my side and found a dresser and a roll-away bed made up with miscellaneous bedclothes pressed up against the wall on the left. There was about two feet of space between the bed and the three bookcases that split the room. Two had been turned to face Ben's side and one faced mine. At the top was a make-shift closet where shelves had been removed and a bar had been installed. At the bottom were three shelves for me to put things on.

It was more storage than I'd had in literally years. I stared, unsure how to react. Excitement warred with tears. I didn't have enough stuff to fill the amount of space I'd been given, but I had my own bed, but the walls were so bare, but look at all the shelves for even more books, but the bed was covered with cast-offs. In the end, I realized it didn't matter how I felt. I knew how they wanted me to react. I shoved down the sadness and turned to Dean.

"Thank you! I love it!" I half-lied, hugging him and then Lisa. "Can we get my stuff out of the Impala?"

Dean went for me and after he dropped my two bags on my bed, he paused on his way out of my half of the room. "I'm proud of you, little girl." But after the curtain closed, I sank down onto the roll-away bed and buried my face in my hands to cry.