Set: Post VM series finale by about three years, beginning/middle SPN season 4 with tweaking.

Flames – they licked the walls

Tenderly they turned to dust all that I adore

-Things We Lost in the Fire; Bastille

It's not the waft of cold air on his back from the swing of the door, nor the artificial light that spills across his hand from the parking lot that does it.

It's not the way the bartender before him halts in wiping down the bar and stares over his shoulder

(the whiskey he's been nursing for twenty minutes is more intricate than the pulse of lust in the bearded and plaid clad man's eyes anyway)

and it isn't how voices simply ceased to fill the air as the patronage of the unsavory type all stop whatever it is they are doing in order to get a glimpse at the new body in their hole in the dirt bar.

Pool tables go unnoticed, liquor freezes halfway to lips and raucous laughter of those who have met the bottom of the bottle and than gone past it dies.

It isn't the seemingly thrumming silence, broken only by the quite and angry cords of Metallica drifting in the background from the jukebox that looks just as dilapidated as Ol' Joe, the one eyed war vet with half his face gone, blown to shreds years back, from where he snores drunkenly in the corner.

Someone has already pissed on him once tonight.

Nope.

It's the smell of her.

His nose has been filled with a perfume of alcohol, sweat, piss and vomit that makes up the aroma of this backwoods shithole of a bar somewhere in the middle of god knows Wyoming, but as that cold waft of air drifts about his shoulders, it carries with it an elixir more potent than anything he's ever scented before.

(wildness and leather, cold steel and sugar sweet syrup, wrapped together in a black bow that strikes him hard in the chest)

His body goes still, but he doesn't turn.

The whiskey at the bottom of the glass is cloudy, swirling in motes of dark amber through his medicine of the heart. It burns more than it should, but at this point, all pain is good pain if its not inside the darkest corners of his mind.

The door swings closed as she moves into the room, light vanishing from view and the breeze bringing that tantalizing scent to his nostrils slides into the background, hidden just beneath the overlapping smells of self loathing and violence. Heavy boots thump against the stained wood, marking where she passes and indicating where she is about to go.

Hungry eyes follow her movements.

This oxymoron of a woman doesn't belong in the underbelly, because what the sharks see is a pixie of sweetness and candy, of submission and of weakness.

What she sees is a collections of violence and lust and greed and hunger, all wrapped up in individual human bodies and swirled with alcohol. She sees a dark shadow in the far corner by the jukebox, the reason she is here, but she has no use of it now. She sees a man who believes he should be dead, alive but dead where it counts, sleeping in the corner. And she sees another man, trapped in a battered jacket that holds more stories than can be told, with bits of his soul missing, who doesn't belong here at the same time he does.

She is drawn to him, the man with the hunched shoulders and jacket that doesn't quite hide the weapons he carries from her observant eye.

Something inside her reaches out, reaches out in away that she hasn't felt since she was young and foolish and what she thought was in love.

The tiny blonde – because that's the only word that can really be applied to her, tiny, even in her beaten and scuffed army boots, leather jacket and tight, oh so tight, black jeans – slides onto the stool at his side.

She indicates to the still frozen bartender that she'll take what he's having, and the spell is broken. The sharks in the room return to their activities but they all have an eye on pale softness begging for their sharp attack. Blood was in the water, all they needed now was a source to strike.

A glass that is unsurprisingly much cleaner than the one that sits before him, slides across the bar and settles easily into her hand. The dismissal is clear in her expression when cash appears next to it, quickly gobbled up by the owner before he slinks away.

Half of her whiskey vanishes in a swallow, and Dean finally moves. Turning his head, he watches the way her throat works as it peeks out from the collar of her form fitting leather jacket, the way her short tips of her hair spread like feathers around her ears and how her chips of blue ice seem to watch him even as she studies the ceiling. He is entranced.

But at the same time, he takes her in, all of her, and sees that she has a 9mm at her waist and a blade at some sort on the other hip and knows she's no kitten without claws; rather a tiger with talons.

The glass touches down with a click and those icy eyes finally look at him full in the eye.

A bolt of recognition shoots through both of them, a miniscule nudge from deep within that says only, I know you. It's enough to wipe the sassy little smirk from her lips as she actually looks into him for the first time.

It's enough for him to wish that he could stop time.

But these are wishes hidden in the deep and taken to the grave because wishful thinking is no good when reality as in you doorstep and hell blazing just on the outskirts of what you can so feebly call home.

Wishes don't save your ass when it counts.

Wishes can't pull you out of hell.

(but apparently angels can and that's a can of worms that should only be opened when wearing a biohazard suit and using a ten foot poll. Angels are real and having shaken faith at this point in the game is when you start to run out of lives)

"If you say that a girl like me shouldn't be in a place like this or any of that other shit, I will knock you out," she tells him conversationally and that do-me smirk resurfaces, and those first hints of fire and steel bones show through.

Back home – there is no home for her now – everyone always wondered why Lilly Kane, infamous for her ways of rebellion and hellion, the seductress and wild spirit, ever became friends with the innocent, pastel and soft bellied Veronica Mars.

Lilly Kane always saw that steel and brimstone.

It takes a second for him to recover, but old habits die hard and he slips on the face of the playboy as easily as he does his jacket. His own smirk twists and he replies huskily, "wouldn't dream of it babe."

His voice is gravel and velvet and oh so tempting to follow down the rabbit hole. In retrospect, would it be so bad? The world is already at the teeth of another apocalypse.

"Right," she says, disbelief clear in her tone.

"I was well versed in knowing that a woman can hand my ass to me five times backwards if she feels like it," he tells her.

The politeness that isn't, is a remnant of a time before flames ate away everything, of good ol' hospitality that doesn't count for shit in the real world

It's also a picture of a family comprised of an angel, a cripple, two brothers and two woman who would never hesitate to call him on any of his shit.

The picture that burnt, just like everything else.

She chuckles softly and finishes off her whiskey that burns horrifically on the way down. She knows she supposed to sip, Logan once taught her the workings of fine alcohol, but this stuff is far from fine and she too wants to feel that burn.

Burning on the inside is better than burning in her head.

Already, the dulling warmth is eating through all the pent up emotions, setting them free one by one. Balloons tied to her anger, her pain, her suffering, all drift into the twilight. They will return in the morning, but for now, she feels clearer and it's a blessing.

As she sets down the empty glass, her sleeve shifts and his hunter's eyes catch a glimpse of knotted pink scar tissue that encircles her delicate wrists. She catches him staring and closes off, amusement fading from her eyes and the sleeve slides carefully back into place.

From the way he looks at her then, she knows that he understands partially how she came by them, because there are very few ways to end up with bracelets of scars.

(once upon a time, he held those same markings, a permanent disfigurement the demons of hell felt befitting to keep on his flesh as a reminder that he was there's. they are long gone now, purged and washed clean just like the claws of a hellhound when he was dragged from the bowels of darkness by the ethereal creature brighter than a star. Sometimes, in a twisted sense of mind he cannot even think about going near, he misses the reminders. The slices and lines in flesh that are a road map of where he came from and what he is

He never once tells Sammy this)

She cocks her head at him, but says nothing, just leaves the glass and takes a second longer to take in the planes and angels of his face and the torture behind his eyes. Then she leans in and whispers, "see you later babe," and that smell wraps him up like a blanket and if he were any male who had their head screwed on straight, he would be drooling like a dog.

He grunts in reply, knowing that this is a lie and when she leaves, she'll take her scars and her temptation with her and he'll never see her again.

Oddly, he doesn't want her to go.

She feels like a challenge he'll never solve, a salve that he could put on his own open wounds because she might understand. She feels like something better.

He says nothing and just watches her saunter away, this time toward the backdoor, and he tamps down on regret, because he came here tonight to forget his pain and the betrayal that still stings.

Sam would pipe in right about now and tell him to go after her or something equally as stupid and bloody romantic, cause that's what Sam is.

Was.

Dean doesn't know any more, because Sammy's gone and he's alone again, even though he's really always been alone if he thinks about it. He can't even let the fact that a demon is more important to his little brother, the brother he vowed to protect but ultimately failed, than he is.

(He almost thinks the words a demon is more important than blood, but that just causes the gears in his mind to grind in horrific denial, because in the end, blood did end up being more important. Just not the right kind.)

Two of the guys playing pool move to follow her out the back and Dean can see all their lecherous intents written all across their faces. He lets out one cough and they stumble, surprised anyone here would dare interrupt. Leveling a glare, he puts every ounce of power into the look he can and waits for them to back down.

They do, once they realize he isn't joking.

A handful of not so pleasant comments are directed at him, but he's satisfied everyone in this shit hole has got the message. The blond firecracker is off limits. Even to him.

He goes back to nursing his whiskey, absently playing with the empty glass she had left behind.

He wishes he knew her name.

What was that he was thinking about wishes?

What he doesn't see is the shadow in the far corner, the one every single person has overlooked tonight but for her, rise to its feet and practically float its way out after her. No one sees him leave, just like no one saw him come in.

But the only difference between then and now, is that Dean is a hunter and its been beaten into his head since he was five years old that he had to trust his instincts and right now, they're screaming at him, telling him that something is horribly, horribly wrong.

There is a wrongness turning to ashes on the back of his tongue.

Leaving the unfinished whiskey still swirling on the bar, he trails his fingers about the rim of her glass and drops from the barstool with a quiet thump. Jealous looks are raised his way as he passes, some even attempt to glare after him as he had done mere moments before, but he just lets them wash over his back. He doesn't miss the outright looks of anger that follow him but they simply make them smirk to himself.

Pushing his way through the swinging door that leads into a small and grungy hallway that passes bathrooms he has no doubt house several hostile species, he pads to the end and steps out into the night.

Cold air washes over him once again and if his hunter's instincts weren't screaming for his attention, he may even have taken a moment to take in the stars.

(it was one of the few things in life he had left that he could enjoy. It brought back better times, as hard as they were, when his shard of a family was glued together at the seems by survival and necessity, when sleeping under the stars was how they lived. When he was finally free to do as he pleased, even though that really wasn't freedom.

It was simple release)

One hand slides to his back, where he withdraws his weapon and leads the way with cold steel.

The backdoor emerges into a small alcove formed by two wind breaking walls, but there are fresh footprints leading to the left, so he edges foreword. A small emergency light above the door provides just enough light to see by, but the shadows are long and seem to leer at him.

Creeping closer, a voice suddenly forms and he stiffens.

"A pretty little thing like you shouldn't be out in the dark by yourself," the shadow intones and Dean finally peeks his head around the wall. She is standing against the wall, her face tense, as she looks up into the face of the man, who has his back to Dean.

There is nothing but sickly sweet lies in how the stranger speaks and Dean shifts to act.

"And a fugly bastard like you shouldn't bother trying anything with a woman; it ain't gonna work bucko," she quips right back, eyes alight with fire. The quickness of her response has Dean grinning; he likes her.

Shoving off from the wall, she turns and heads to where Dean is hovering, gun still in hand as he tries to pinpoint the source of his internal hunter warning bell, and her eyes go wide when she catches sight of him. It takes him a second too look to recognize the look of warning, not fear, in her gaze.

At the same instant, the stranger turns, fluidity in his motions that no human would ever possess.

"Who said I was merely trying?" the figure hisses and its face comes into the light just enough for Dean to catch a glimpse of rows of razor teeth and pure hunger in those feral eyes. The vampire starts to lunge, just as Dean rounds the corner fully and raises his gun, intending to blow the bastards head away as a distraction, hopefully to give her time to get away from the vamp.

And damn, if it didn't rankle him that he didn't have a name for her.

Time slows.

Things even out, as they always do on a hunt, and everything snaps into clarity.

But then something unexpected happens.

Distracted by Dean's sudden appearance, the vamp falters in his lunge, blinking at the new arrival. And that's when something incredible happens.

Offering only a quick wink, she whirls on the vamp, pulling a machete from inside her jacket

(and damn, where in the hell had that come from!)

and striking even as she continues to rotate on her heel. The blade sinks deep into flesh, spraying blood and gore, and continues its journey through the spinal cord and neck with relative ease. The vamp stands upright for a moment, brain not having registered its death, before the head topples off like a ball and the whole thing falls like Jenga. Even as the creature topples dead at her feet, spraying its blood onto her boots, she completes the rotation and stops, bowing at the waist with her blade dripping black at her side.

Sparkling eyes meet his stunned ones.

"I'm Veronica," she tells him.

"Dean," he utters. Things just click. Sometimes, wishes do come true.

And that's the end of it.

She follows him back to his ratty motel room on a growling beast of a motorcycle that he simply cannot understand how it is physically possible for her to control. She sits astride it and her boots seem to barely skim ground and the mass of metal and noise surges like a wild horse.

When he tells her as such, she just snorts and says, "thought we already covered the don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover theory."

True, they did, in a roundabout sense.

He shrugs and doesn't miss the appreciative glance she offers the Impala.

The motorcycle is granted a new home in a storage container on the fringes of the town several days later, left behind but not forgotten. She won't forget one of the things that reminded her of before, of beachside brawls and rides to nowhere.

They move from town to town, hunting as they go, slowly testing the seems of this new thing they have together. He teaches her how to make a sawed off shotgun; she shows him how to string a compact bow and shoot it. They teach other what they've learn, but its evident that Dean has been at this longer by how at ease he is with different weapons, but at the same time, Veronica knows so much more about the creatures of the dark that it stuns even him.

It makes him want to ask her how she came into the dark side of the world.

He doesn't.

She wants to ask why there is a small bag of man's clothing that is too large for him in the back of them Impala and why he always gets a dark look in his eyes whenever demons come up.

She doesn't.

Time passes.

They don't know why they've stuck together; both are drifters. Edges of their hearts have been broken off and torn away and they are the type to lick their wounds in solitude. But Veronica

(a phoenix rising from the ashes of deaths and horror, Nancy Drew turned vengeful fallen angel in desperate need to balance the scales – but not really)

likes – she can never say love, she's too battered now – the way Dean is honest and doesn't go out of his way to protect her, because she can protect herself and he knows it. And Dean

(a righteous man who spilled blood in hell and tasted the claws of a hellhound and the hands of an angel, once just a hunter but now so much more since the heavens decided he was the one to be their pawn)

likes – he doesn't know what love is, all he remembers is lullabies and a shadow of his mothers face that is next to gone – how she challenges him in everything, even if it is playful, because she's nothing he's ever seen before and it's fascinating.

At first, it's easy, their companionship. They hunt, they protect, they save and have a semblance of fun neither has felt in years. She falls into the roll of researcher with startling ease, pulling a laptop from the second of her two bags and pulling forth information faster than Dean can even start the theorize.

He tries to ignore the ache that's left behind when he thinks of the other who should be sitting in the room, but at the same time, in the greedy part of his heart, he's almost glad – and isn't that sick, but he can't bring himself to hate that thought because it's the truth – that Sam isn't around.

Veronica is his.

Dean is hers.

Whatever that may mean.

But then things change.

"Confession," she chirps after some time, as she traces roadmaps on his chest. There's a row of gouges where werewolf claw struck flew, just starting on his ribs near his heart and travelling over his bicep. If she hadn't taken the shot at the beast when she did, even though he was at risk, those same claws would have torn his heart to pieces. "I've never met another hunter before."

Dean blinks and flops on his side to look at her intently.

It explains a little of how she is a little rusty around the edges when it comes to their job, but it complete blows his mind how much she knows about different beasties because John hadn't even compiled that much knowledge, even after so many years.

She tells him then of a dirty basement and chains and the screams of friends as they were ripped to shreds by a vampire with a particularly sadistic. She tells of cold metal biting into her wrists as she fought desperately to free herself and save Mac and Parker – and he doesn't quite like how her eyes seem to go dead for a moment when she says her name, but he really is in no place to judge – but she is too late. The vamp saves her for last because, as he said, 'you're the fieriest, so you'll taste the best' and she is forced to watch the bodies of her friends first die and than rot.

The way it sounds, there should be no way she survived.

Than she explains luck, but she never thought of it as luck, because if it was, her and her friends would still be alive and she would never have had to kill anything. Or she would be dead alongside them.

The night the vamp had decided to drain her, she managed to free herself with arms slick with blood. Weak, impossibly tired, starving and dehydrated, she had stood wavering on her feet, and attacked with a broken pipe she found in the basement. Standing at the door, not daring to breathe, she had smashed the vamps head as he rounded the door, distracted in his bloodlust.

And she kept smashing him in a haze of insanity, until long after its head had been scattered in pieces across the floor.

She stops taking for a moment and goes deathly quiet.

But he can fill in the pieces.

Dean doesn't bother trying to comfort her, because he has demons on his back like hers, and simply feathers a hand across her cheek and through her spiky hair.

Then she tells him that after that, she just didn't go home. Couldn't face the people she loved with the black on her soul. Couldn't bring back that amount of pain to the ones she only wanted safe.

So she stayed away. But she made it out and survived. And after that, she found a valid internet connection and spent hours dredging through all the back way sites that contain slivers of true information amongst the hoax and she builds a web of tales and instants and, oddly, names of other who have become like her. She was once Nancy Drew after all.

Dean finds this information absolutely hilarious. He knows without a doubt that she can kick ass and take names, but when he tries to think of her from before, all he can see is a cheerleader uniform. Or perhaps that's just a bit of fantasy from when he thought he had a chance at trying normal.

But it doesn't surprise him. He can see in the way she focuses' in on the task at hand, how she can draw connections between events with stunning ease, that she did have the mind for investigation.

He still thinks that the idea of the bite sized blonde running around with a tazer as her only backup a riot though.

She doesn't try to find any others that are like her, survivors turned revenge seeker and bread from birth protectors of the earth, determined to do this whatever the hell it is she's doing on her own.

Dean learns that she is assumed dead by the state of California.

Dean tells her about hell.

Of screaming and ripping and burning and slicing, day after day after day. At first, he tries to soften the blow, but after a quick jab in the ribs and that look in her eyes that reminds her of when they met, he doesn't bother. She knows what personal hell is like. Reality isn't that different. He stops pretending and let's the words pour like water.

At some point, the subject of Castiel comes up. There isn't much Dean says of him, but for the first time he admits he wishes he had been left to die day after day in the Pit. Veronica punches him, seriousness hovering like a cloud. She doesn't try to change his thinking though, knowing its no use when the hunter thinks of himself as nothing more than dead weight. He scowls at her and makes a show of rubbing his shoulder, but she rolls his eyes at him, smirking when he sighs in exasperation. Then he continues, explaining the seals and how they've been doing slightly out of the ordinary hunts because Cas told him to in dreams.

Oddly, he hasn't seen hide nor hair of other angels for months. He aint complaining though.

She could be furious he didn't mention this before.

She thinks of the times when Lilly appears in her dreams.

She stays carefully quiet.

When he falls silent, her head finds its place on his shoulder and she plays quietly with his knuckles.

Tracing an intricate pattern across the country in the Impala, they move from hunt to hunt aimlessly and slowly, the boundaries of their relationship morph. It has become more than a desire for entertainment and easiness, but rather, they've started to fill the gaping wounds left inside each other's chests. They'll never be put back together completely, nothing in the world could do that but a reversal of time and even than, no one really knows.

Secrets are reduced to nothing. This feeling of trust, born in their abandonments and need for anyone

(because they are human, even in their flawed prowess, all humans are wired the same basic way. They aren't designed to be lone wolves, even though there are some who are built with some faults, Dean and Veronica need each other now, before some walls are broken to pieces irrevocably)

blossoms with fierce intensity and Dean finds himself able to share every hope and dream he could never even admit to himself, especially in the fucked up family that is the Winchesters. Veronica finds herself trying to believe someone's words at face value and realizes that sometimes, there is no need to investigate what that one person you know you belong with is telling you.

They strip themselves to the bone but it doesn't hurt so much. Eventually, Dean tells her about Sam and how they grew up. This is harder, because Sam is still a sore spot with him and Veronica still has the desire to uncover the real meat of any story that she is smart enough to put the pieces together, but after some time and several starts and stops later, she knows about how Dean raised his baby brother by himself without any help from their drill sergeant father. And she knows that Sam isn't dead because of how Dean talks about his little brother; he just isn't around.

And for that, she never receives an explanation. There are some things Dean still cannot say out loud, and anything to do with demon blood and Sammy turning on him because of Ruby is taboo. So, she knows nothing of the recent past between the two and she doesn't know why Dean always appears broken if Sammy comes up.

But that's okay. Veronica never tells him about Shelly Palmroy's party and the rape or Cassidy Cassablancas.

Some boxes shouldn't be touched so soon.

But Veronica does tell him about Logan and Mac and Piz and Wallace and her father. She sees the wistful look that passes through his eyes when the subject of her friends come up along with the stories about all the good times and bad times they had together. Part of her hates it, as if she's throwing the fact that he can never go back and experience what she has, like being in the same school longer than two months, going to college, having a support circle who would be there for her if she fell.

The worst part is how he gets so quiet when she tries to explain her relationship with Keith. The way he looks at her is as if he cannot even wrap his mind around the idea of having a father who loves unconditionally and allowed freedom in her own choices. Who even saw her as an equal in certain respects.

Dean doesn't have to tell her about John Winchester in order for her to form her own dark opinions of the man. If she ever met Dean's father, she knows she would punch him.

Dean knows it too and believes wholeheartedly that John Winchester would've loved Veronica for that fact alone. Well, love is too strong a word when applied to the elder Winchester; he'd forgotten that long ago.

Somewhere along their twisted journey with no end, Dean develops a nickname of sorts for Veronica, unlike the simple V she adopted in high school, calling her Nica whenever he is being serious or deeply entrenched in emotions. When he calls her Nica, she knows that she must hold every word he will soon utter as precious pieces of crystal.

The rest of the time, it's Veronica, each syllable used to its max to convey anything from exasperation to amusement to anger to wonderment.

Finally, they end up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Dean won't tell her why; she knows it's not for a case because eight times out of ten she is the one who finds places for them to go, things to hunt and whenever Dean finds them, he bounces ideas off her first. So, he's driven them to Sioux Falls without a word as a reason why and, frankly, it's driving Veronica up the wall.

Leaning against the window, sock clad feet on the dash, she grumbles under her breath at him, glowering at him as he smirks at her discomfort. The way she chews on her lower lip as her mind whirls frantically makes his insides go warm and it wears and tears at his resolve not to tell her anything. But this is a surprise he's been waiting months to reveal.

"Give me a hint," she finally snaps, doe eyes making an appearance. It makes him chuckle softly, because all he can think of is a puppy deprived of its favorite chew toy and it creates a hilarious picture in his head. She pouts at him, knowing he isn't about to break now, especially now that they've driven into Sioux Falls and, she guesses, nearly at their destination.

Sighing, she turns to look out the window and crosses her arms loosely across her chest. The quaint town roles by, alight with the summer sunset in a golden haze. Finally, they pull to a stop in a dusty and run down looking junk yard with a raggedy sign over the front of the lot proclaiming Singer's Salvage Yard. It's silent but for the general hum of summer.

But it feels like so much more than a salvage yard. There's energy humming here, what feels like old knowledge and it calls to Veronica's heart, just like something did when she first met Dean.

Putting them Impala in park, Dean switches off her engine and turns in her seat to look at Veronica dead on. There's a sparkle in his eyes, looking suspiciously like a trace of tears and she holds her tongue from the instinctive quip.

"This is the closest place I've ever had to a home after the Impala," he tells her quietly, and the quip dies in her mouth. Her face softens and her own eyes grow wet at what is being offered to her. A chance to officially be part of his twisted and broken little family.

Just as she musters the courage to utter words that have started to burn in the back of her mind for some time now, a rough and startlingly close voice shouts, "Goddamnit boy! Are you just going to sit there all damn day or help me out? Hurry up, ya idjit!" Both their hands snap around to look out the windshield and there is Bobby, half in the front of a run down truck, one hand clawing for the tools resting nearby and his nose practically buried in the engine.

Veronica guesses that he could tell it was the Impala by the sound of her growl.

And that's how she meets Bobby.

She's the first one to his side, Dean not having master the art of keeping up with her rapid and nearly bouncing step when she's excited, takes a quick glance at the engine and promptly hands the waiting hand the proper socket wrench.

All she gets is a grumble for thanks and she simply grins from ear to ear.

"There we go," Bobby mutters, tossing the wrench to the side where an enormous bulldog quickly snatches it up and carries it to the front porch.

The sight of tan fur sends a bolt of remorse through her heart as Backup suddenly appears in her mind, but she buries it. The dog noses at her gently as he passes, but continues dutifully on its way. Another second passes before Bobby digs himself out of the heart of the truck and Veronica leans herself against the tire well as Dean stands back, nervousness apparent to her eyes, even as he crosses his arm to maintain control.

Finally, Bobby looks up, a greeting to Dean appearing on his lips quickly dying, and stares at her. Then he turns his head to stare at Dean. All he gets is a quirk of a smile and a shrug.

When he turns back to face her, she sticks out her hand and says, "I'm Veronica. What's your dogs name?"

And that's how Bobby ends up with a new duckling under his wing.

Later that night, after a dinner of hamburgers and beer and stories of how Veronica came to meet up with Dean,

(and more to the point, why they stayed together. For this, they just share a look and say, it felt right at the time. Bobby grimaces and shakes his head at the foolishness of idjits but there's playfulness there)

the three of them end up sitting on the front porch with Rumsfeld on Veronica's feet. His rear wiggles happily as she scratches his ear with a bare toe and it feels as though she's finally felt the calm in the center of the storm.

The old parts of her, the ones longing home, want nothing more than to stay here indefinitely. To finally have a bed of her own to sleep on and a place at the table every morning. But that's a little bit of old Veronica showing through, because she knows that her new instincts would never let her settle when there are still monsters killing people and children in the dark.

Still, it's nice and warm and peaceful, just like when she listens to Dean's heartbeat at night but on a bigger scale.

The stars are shining and no one is really talking and the boys are sipping idly at their beer.

It's Bobby who breaks the silence. "Dean, I need to talk to you," he starts lowly, and Veronica's ears perk up. She knows that tone. She's heard that tone, from Logan and her father and once, her mother. She once made a living off recognizing that tone.

"Then talk," Dean responds roughly, shooting a look at Veronica who sits on the other side of Bobby. He feels a roll in his chest at the sight of soft light from the house behind her as it encases her in yellow and how her face is completely content as she looks up at the stars. He nearly laughs when he sees how she is scratching at Rumsfeld's neck, but chokes it back.

And this, her heart swells because it tells her that Dean trusts her to hear whatever his surrogate father has to say. A smile breaks across her face.

"It's about Sam," Bobby adds meaningfully.

And just like that, the smile vanishes because she knows that this is the line that she will likely never be allowed to cross. At the same instant, she can feel Dean grow still and silent even as he sits several feet away so she sighs and sets her bare feet on worn deck and stands.

Bobby says nothing, but offers a look that almost seems to be apology.

She simply shrugs, showing nothing.

Clicking her tongue, she murmurs "let's go Back-" she stutters and winces, closing her eyes.

She won't slip up now, she can't let herself, because its been years since she's even let herself think of being weak. But damnit if the dog is wearing at her.

(She misses Backup)

She takes a deep breath. Then. She starts again. "Common Rumsfeld. Let's go explore," she murmurs quietly to the dog and he swiftly rises to his feet in anticipation, frankly rolling around her feet in his excitement. She giggles at him, but it doesn't ring quite true. Bobby, distracted by Dean's stillness, misses her reaction, but Dean doesn't and he files it away for future reference.

She pads down the steps and is just stepping onto the cool dirt and wiggling her toes beneath the moonlight, when the unexpected happens.

"It's okay, 'Nica," Dean calls softly. She freezes for a second than spins on her heel to stare at him questioningly. "It's okay," he repeats, "its about time you knew anyway."

So she returns to her seat on the porch, this time with traces of dirt on her feet, an unhappy dog on her heels and butterflies swirling in her stomach. How she can face down a nest of vamps with nothing but a machete and a lighter with a smile on her face and the steadiest of hands when Dean bloody Winchester can summon nervousness by the way he says her name, she'll never know.

And that's how she learns all there is to know about Sam Winchester.

She takes it all in, demon blood, psychic powers,

(wrongness, but not so much. She still sees Lilly from time to time and she can't go near that tidbit even if hellhounds were on her heels),

Ruby, all of it, passively, not letting herself judge. For she really isn't in a position to do so; she knows the fine line that hunters walk when it comes to using the supernatural. Finally Bobby tells him that his brother had called for help with a hunt from any other hunters Bobby might know. Anyone but Dean. Apparently it was something about a vampire nest mixed up with more demons than one blood pumped psychic and a rogue demon could handle. The elder hunter had promised to send someone and that had been the end of the conversation with the wayward Winchester. Bobby stops talking after that.

Then she rises fluidly and moves across the deck, coming to a stop before Dean who has his head in his hands and defeated shoulders. Leaning in, she lifts his chin in her hands and kisses him deeply, well aware of the eyes on her back. But she doesn't care, she simply pours all she can into the kiss to tell him she will stay by his side no matter what he decides.

Breaking away, she watches him while she leans against the railing. He studies her intently as if to divine the right answer from her gaze. She has nothing to give there and simply shrugs.

It's up to you, goes unspoken between them. His eyes close

He breathes deep and hold it in his lungs until the air starts to burn and stars appear before closed eyelids. Letting it out slowly, he rubs his hands over his thighs and finally looks at Bobby, who's waiting patiently for a response.

"Where is he Bobby?" he asks roughly.

But the older man simply grins at Dean, pleased with the answer.

"A city out in California, called Neptune."

Veronica stops breathing.

She doubts she going to start breathing any time in the near future.

This is, bar none, one of my biggest undertakings yet.

And, in all honesty, it exploded before my eyes. My muse thought it was funny. The italicized parts are the fleeting thoughts that come and go as I wrote this.

The characters of Dean and Veronica are so fascinating, I just couldn't resist.