[identity profile] summergen-mod.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] spn_summergen
Title: What Chance Have We
Author: [livejournal.com profile] dramaturgy (Liz)
Recipient: [livejournal.com profile] leighleighla
Rating: PG-13. Nothing you wouldn't see on the show.
Warnings: None.
Author's Notes: Ignoring the spoilers for season five that have thus far been divulged, consider it an alternate timeline if you like. Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] thinkatory for the slavedriving and beta read.
Summary: Dean's first born is in on a hunt. When does a lie stop being an artifice and become something everyone tells themselves so they can sleep at night?



-----

The thing about hunting in general and especially for the Winchesters was that you were continually forced to redefine words like 'normal' and 'monster' and 'boring,' but by current definition, things had been boring. Quiet. Even Sam, the Winchester who had once been voted 'Least Likely To Say Boo To A Goose' and tended to sink into contemplation that left characteristic behind and went into eerie territory, leaving Dean to fill the silences that not even Zeppelin could alleviate.

Dean also noted that Sam had not been sleeping well if at all since Lucifer had broken free -- and that was how he was choosing to think of it until he wrapped his brain around what had occurred. What Azazel had done, that yellow-eyed bastard had this all planned from the word go, and that stupid bitch Ruby had played his brother like a fiddle. And now they were holed up in a cheap motel in Virginia, three days after the fact, trying to figure out their next move.

Or at least that's what they should have been doing. What was actually going on was that Sam had finally passed out, and Dean was tearing up the paper napkins that had come with their diner food into tiny little balls and lobbing them at Sam's sleeping form. The ultimate goal would have been to hit his slack, open mouth, but no dice so far.

He threw another one that came to rest in Sam's hair when his phone began to vibrate on the table. Dean picked it up and looked at the number; it wasn't anyone in Sam's contacts and he didn't recognize the number. Approach with caution then. He answered, "Your nickel, stranger."

Whoever was on the other end of the line was caught off guard at the salutation, and for a moment there was nothing but a startled silence. "Hi." It was a woman's voice, which shouldn't have amused Dean as much as it did. "Is Sam there?"

"Sam can't come to the phone right now," Dean said shortly. "Call back later."

There was more silence and Dean wondered for a moment if she'd hung up. "Is that you, Dean?" the voice came again, filled with trepidation, although it was the fact that she called him by name that had him puzzling.

"Who's asking?"

"It's me. Lisa. Braeden," she added to clarify.

Not that Dean needed the clarification. When she identified herself, Dean started kicking himself; he could hear it now and recognized her voice. With that recognition came the memory of everything else about her, from her long dark hair down to her tiny, perfect toes, every last bendy inch of her. "Really," he responded, mostly for something to say. "So, uh. How's Ben?"

"Okay, so far as I can tell," Lisa said in the way that made Dean think he wasn't going to like the full version of that answer. "Sam said if there was anything, I should call -- "

"No, definitely. Glad you did," Dean said, looking over at Sam who was still dead to the world. He was going to have a lot of explaining to do once he woke up. "What's going on?"

There was another long silence, but instead of surprise, this one stemmed from the difficulty of finding the words to articulate the problem. Dean waited while Lisa organized her thoughts. "I'm not really sure," she finally said, quite honestly. "It's mostly Ben who's been seeing, or… experiencing things."

"What kind of things?"

"It's mostly in the afternoons, after he's out of school and before I'm home from work, I think," she said. "He says there's a couple different people who are just… watching the house. Occasionally, they try to talk to him, and he also sees -- he called them Shadowmen."

Yeah, none of that sounded great to Dean. "We can be there in the morning," he said immediately. "Line the windows and doors with salt -- "

"With salt," she interrupted.

"It'll keep most bad things out. Just ordinary table salt," he said. "Sam and I'll come. I promise."

"Okay." She was quiet for a moment, and she added, "Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet, let's see what we can do first," he said. "Just sit tight, okay?"

"Okay," she repeated. "We'll see you in the morning."

"Bright and early. Ish." He probably should have at least added 'bye' to that, but like a little bitch he hung up on Lisa then, and put Sam's phone back down on the table. He then picked up the pillow off the bed that would have been his own, and slammed it down on Sam's face. "SAM."

"Ow." Sam woke with a jolt and for a moment Dean looked down at his brother's confused and still half-asleep expression. Sam blinked heavily -- he looked so damn tired, Dean almost felt bad for waking him up. "What?"

"What's Lisa doing with your number?" He paused. "You look like crap, by the way."

Sam chortled, and began to stretch. "Lisa who?"

"Lisa Braeden. Cicero, Indiana, with the Changelings." And the kid.

"Oh. Right." Sam didn't quite meet his brother's expectant gaze. "Well. I was in the area after you… you know, and I stopped in, left her my number, just in case."

To say Dean was torn would just not be an accurate description. "Yeah," he managed, and then swallowed to clear his throat. He wanted to know what Sam had told her, if he'd seen Ben at all, but none of that just seemed like what he should be asking, so he concentrated on the job. "There's some weird shit going on, I guess. We should check it out. It's not like we have anything better to do," he added, not that they ever needed justification beyond that. "Told her we'd be there in the morning."

Quite suddenly, Sam sat up and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. "Then I guess we better get going," he said, picking up his phone and dropping it in his pocket before he cast a confused glance at the paper bits that were now sticking to his shirt.

It was hard for Dean to not grin at that. "Next stop, Cicero," he said, picking up his jacket and pulling it on.

-----

With Dean behind the wheel, they made good time to Cicero. Sam laid his head back and closed his eyes the second he pulled out from the motel, although whether he actually slept or not, Dean couldn't really say. He hadn't been paying attention, he'd been too busy trying to keep his own brain occupied. This was a job, like any other.

Dean was very good at lying to himself.

The sun was rising just as they crossed into Indiana, and the rest of the ride was smooth. Now they were sitting in the Impala on the street, just a couple of houses down from where Lisa and Ben lived, and he was having a little bit more trouble with the lying. And if he caught Sam giving him that stupid sideways glance out of the corner of his eye one more time, he was going to smack him. "What?" he snapped.

"Nothing," Sam said, and he took a sip of his gas station coffee. "Just. We've been sitting here for almost an hour."

"So? Got a hot date?" he asked in return, and then chuckled. "A date, you. That's funny."

Sam gave him a long-suffering look in return, and Dean just grinned. "No," he said shortly. "But if Lisa called us because something was going on, then shouldn't we, oh, I don't know. Go up and knock on her door?"

"She said Ben'd seen some weird things going on in the neighborhood. We're scoping the neighborhood," he said. Yeah, that sounded good.

"It's ten o'clock on a Sunday, Dean. People are either in church or sleeping in."

"Yeah, because it's people we're looking for here."

"Either way, there's no one on the street." Silence. "You know, if you're nervous -- "

"Hey," Dean said indignantly, cutting him off. "None of that."

"I'm just saying that sitting in the car for an hour would be indicative of -- "

"You and your three dollar words. Why don't you just say 'I double dog dare you' and get it over with?"

"I wasn't going to say that."

"Good." Dean opened the Impala's door and stood up, wasting no time before he began to stride away towards Lisa's front door. There were some lawn sprinklers going in a yard across the street, he could hear a tiny dog yapping at some distance, it was all so… normal. And quiet.

Sooner rather than later, Sam caught up with him and easily kept stride. "Look, I wasn't -- implying anything but saying that or even leaving her my number. If you don't want to -- "

"I said we'd come check it out, and this is better than most jobs we get," Dean answered without looking at his brother. "Most jobs we find by something happening first; someone kicking it or whatever. Then we go in, pretend to be whatever we need to be, and now there's none of that. We're just going in to a friend's house, helping her out, and we'll do the job like it's any other job." They stopped at the front door, and Dean looked at his brother as though to say so there.

"A friend." Sam's eyebrow raised inquisitively, his only other movement was to readjust the duffel bag of specialty equipment.

"Shut up," he said definitively, and pressed the doorbell.

The chimes sounded serenely, oblivious to the nervous occupants of the house and the brothers who had arrived to rescue them. The deadbolt in the door unlocked with a click, and the door opened just a crack. Lisa's brown eyes met Dean's, and it was like a shock to his heart. "Hey," he spoke up quickly before Sam could say something idiotic. "Heard you're having a little pest control problem?"

Lisa gave a small, exasperated laugh as she shook her head and stepped back. "Come in," she offered to them.

Congratulating himself on his smooth choice of an ice breaker, Dean led the way in to the foyer, noting the line of salt that had been broken by the door opening. "Good job with the salt," he said.

Lisa glanced down at the line, and grabbed a broom that rested by the door to push it back into a line. "Yeah, well, simple enough directions," she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes, and she looked up at them. "I felt kind of ridiculous doing it, but…"

"But it works," Sam completed the sentence for her.

There was a second where the three of them stood in the foyer, but Dean tried to save it before it could sink uncomfortably into 'awkward.' "Well, should we get started," he said.

"Right," Lisa said. "Ben!"

"WHAT?"

"They're here now," she called back, and the sound of small, quick footsteps answered her.

Dean tried not to let his surprise show when Ben appeared from the living room settling for only smirking a little. Damn, he was bigger than he was before. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," Ben replied, a bit subdued. Then again, if there was weird shit going on when you weren't used to it, you might be a little nervous. Dean wouldn't know, his perspective on it all was a bit skewed.

That silence was sinking in again. "So, based on what you're seeing… we won't really know anything more until we check it out," Sam started. He motioned to his duffel bag. "Um, mind if I… ?"

"Oh. No, not at all," Lisa said. "You can set up in the living room, there should be space."

"Mom, I was playing Castlevania," Ben protested.

"Ben," she said, a little sharply, "Dean and Sam are guests in our house, and they're helping us out."

"Nah, Castlevania's cool," Dean started. "What's Castlevania?"

"Only the most wicked video game ever." He caught the look that his mother gave him, though, and added, "So… what do we do?"

"Ben -- "

"No, it'll be good to hear what he has to say. Maybe I can take the EMF meter and go with you through the house, and you can stick with Dean?" Sam suggested, looking first to Lisa and then to Ben, but nimbly avoiding the look that Dean was giving him. What a bitch.

"… Whatever you think," Lisa decided.

Sam took Dean's homemade EMF meter from one of the pockets of the duffel, careful to leave it closed on the couch, concealing some of the less savory tools of their trade. He started to climb the stairs with Lisa when Dean called up to them, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, kids!" Sam's jaw tightened, but he said nothing as he continued upwards. The look Lisa gave him was absolutely glacial.

They disappeared up the stairs, and Dean turned back to look at Ben. "So," he started. "These things you've been seeing…"

-----

That evening, the Winchesters regrouped at the Cicero Pines Motel over a dinner of takeout diner food, despite Lisa's invitation to crash there. There were any number of reasons that Dean didn't think that to be a good idea, and about ninety percent of those ended in bed, an awkward conversation he wanted to avoid at all costs, or both.

"Dean?" Sam prompted him, and when he looked up, he realized that Sam had been waiting for some kind of reply.

"Uh," Dean started, and realized he had no idea what the last thing Sam had said was. "Sorry. What?"

Sam's expression was exasperated for a split second before he summarized his findings again. "EMF was clear, there weren't any cold spots, so aside from what Ben's been seeing… probably not a haunting."

"Solid," Dean acknowledged, and swiped some fries through the ketchup before stuffing them in his mouth. "Well," he paused to swallow, "he didn't have much to say about the creepers watching the house. Couldn't say much except there's never more than one or two at a time, and it was the same people -- uh, neighbors, you know. People he kind of recognized."

"Possession?" Sam guessed.

"I'm thinking so." Dean considered it a moment longer, and then said what he was going to anyway. "I guess we should expect to hear more from those bastards, seeing as we're now in round whatever of the Apocalypse, now."

Whatever reaction he was hoping to elicit from Sam, he didn't get it. Sam just stared a bit dully at his cheeseburger, and Dean felt a stab of guilt in his own stomach. Or maybe he was still hungry. He pushed it down. "Eat up, Sammy. Can't hunt evil bitches on an empty stomach," he said with a brightness that he didn't feel at all. He was dismayed but not surprised when that also failed to get a rise from Sam.

"What did he say about Shadowmen?" Sam asked instead, picking at the sesame seeds on the top of the bun.

Dean could take a hint, occasionally. "They're there. Mostly from the corner of his eye, never really full on. Vaguely person-like, no discernable features. And then he kicked my ass at Castlevania." Not even his derailment and story of being brought low by a preteen could get Sam to crack, and he usually loved that sort of thing. Fine, two could play that. "Why, what do the legends say about them?"

He saw Sam perk up a bit at that. Of course, any chance for Professor Winchester to lecture. "Well, it's hard to say what they actually are, because they're so fleeting. Some say they're basically another form that ghosts take, but there are other theories."

"Like…"

"Poltergeist?"

"I thought we decided this wasn't a textbook haunting."

"Maybe. But those things feed off negative energy and a lot of the time they get associated with kids and teens."

"Oh come on, Ben is the picture of a well-adjusted kid."

"You think?"

Dean admittedly probably wouldn't know well-adjusted if it bit him on the ass, but he'd certainly seen worse. "Next bright idea" he dismissed.

"Demon."

"Where are we getting these bright ideas?" Dean demanded. "Demons need a meat suit to do anything useful. Otherwise, they're just smoke."

"Whatever," Same said tiredly. "Tomorrow we can go back to the neighborhood, see if any of these potentially possessed creepies show up, talk to them. If something is going to happen it'll probably happen in front of us."

Dean didn't answer for a long moment. He was busy turning over the idea of a demon who could just take form, even for a moment. How powerful would such a son of a bitch have to be? No one he'd ever met. That did not leave him feeling easy in the least, and he decidedly did not like the idea of something like that near Lisa and Ben. Not that he had any reason to think. Maybe they should have stayed at the house.

"I guess," he conceded finally, and picked up his cheeseburger to devour it.

-----

They stopped in on Lisa and Ben the next morning, done up in their suits and armed with fake badges. Pretending to be law enforcement was the quickest way to get into someone's house, and a damn good one to get their trust when you'd done absolutely nothing. Now, they were hoping to get an idea of who it was that had been watching the house so closely.

But not without a few delays, of course.

"This here's a .45, semi-automatic, seven round mags," Dean told Ben, showing off his pistol, before placing it carefully on the counter.

Ben had all but totally abandoned his bowl of cereal in favor of inspecting the Winchesters' arsenal on the counter. "What're these?" he asked, holding up the box of ammo he'd picked up out of the case.

"Salt rounds," Sam answered from where he was checking his mail on his laptop. "They'll hurt some things worse than regular bullets will, fend off others."

Dean nodded to the knife Ben then picked up out of curiosity. "And that knife will straight up kill just about any evil thing giving you trouble -- "

"BEN, stop bothering Dean. Are you finished with your breakfast?" Lisa called.

Ben barely held back a sigh and Dean had to grin at that. "Yeah, I'm done!"

"Then go upstairs and brush your teeth. We're going to have to leave soon and -- really, Dean?" Lisa interrupted herself when she looked at the specialty equipment laid out on her kitchen counter. She had her hands on her hips and was giving him an exasperated look.

The mockery of domestic normalcy left Dean feeling oddly empty. "He was curious," he told her.

"Mom, check it out -- " Ben started.

"Now, Ben. We'll be late," she cut him off.

Ben huffed a sigh at that but he took off up the stairs. All Dean could do was grin cockily at Lisa. "Kids, huh?"

Her look was indecipherable, but Dean was saved from having to figure it out by a knock on the door. He cast a glance at Sam and asked, "Uh. Expecting someone?"

"This time of the morning? Might be Nessa," Lisa said with a slight sigh as she put Ben's bowl in the sink. "She goes to Ben's school, we give her a ride sometimes. Some of her siblings are still really young, it helps her mom if she doesn't have to pack them all up," she continued to answer over her shoulder, heading towards the door.

"Carpooling. It's so… suburban," Dean mused aloud, and he looked over at Sam to share an amused glance -- but the look on his brother's face was anything but amused. 'Sheer terror' might have been a better fit. "Sam?"

"Stop her," he said.

The tone left no space for asinine questions like 'why?' "LISA." He pushed himself off the counter and made a dash for the door, Sam not far behind him.

They arrived too late. The last thing Dean saw before a blow with the surprisingly heavy handle of an umbrella knocked him out was the black glare Lisa gave him and the snarl on her lips.

-----

When Dean came around, he immediately wished that he hadn't. The entire left side of his face was throbbing and -- was he bleeding? That would have to remain a mystery for the moment, seeing as he was tied to one of the kitchen chairs. "Aw, son of a bitch," he swore. "Sam?" he then called, louder.

"Yeah."

He looked up, squinting against his own desire to pass out again. Sam was tied to a chair of his own several feet away, and Dean very nearly panicked at the amount of blood that was running down his face. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Just a cut," Sam brushed it off.

He seemed alert if a little annoyed, so Dean didn't press it. "Did we just get played?"

"We got played," Sam confirmed dully.

"Son of a bitch." If Dean could have moved his legs, he would have kicked himself.

"Such language. You may have been the night of Lisa's life, but you're not much of a gentleman, are you?" Whatever demon was possessing the petite blonde who stood beside Lisa (Not Lisa, he thought) was already on Dean's nerves.

He looked up at it and spat. "I don't suppose you're Nessa."

"Oh, hardly," it said, tossing her hair and stretching luxuriously, seemingly very pleased with the body she'd taken possession of. "I'm glad you boys finally showed up, I was getting this close to attracting attention to myself by getting rid of a few those damned neighborhood kids. Your race is an annoying one."

"We try. What the hell is it you want?"

"Why, Dean." Lisa -- the demon, he told himself again -- leaned down and took a fistful of his hair to roughly pull his gaze up to meet hers. "We wanted you, and now we have you. Not only that, we have the brother, the whore, and the spawn. It's quite an insurance policy."

This was so confusing. Dean wasn't sure whether he wanted to kiss those lips or rip them off her face. He could almost ignore the pointed designation of Ben as 'spawn.' "If you've hurt either of them, I am going to waste you once I get out of here."

"Believe me, possessing that boy is not worth the trouble it would bring down upon us. I'm surprised I got away with riding this bendy bitch for the last few days," she said, releasing his head to walk around behind him. "We just need to know what the angels are going to be up to, and you're their golden boy -- "

"Screw the angels and screw you." The words lost some of their power once they left his mouth. "I don't know what they're up to, they can take their game plan and shove it up their asses."

She leaned over to whisper in his ear. "We thought you might say that. Mara?"

Mara's grin on the housewife's face defined demonic. She drew one of the larger knives out of the cutlery block on the counter, and brought it up to Sam's cheek. "Oh, must I? This one is so… well-formed," she purred, barely touching the edge of the knife to his skin.

" We haven't heard from angels since -- " Sam took in a sharp breath in a hiss when the knife sliced at his cheek.

"Don't interrupt while we're torturing you to get your brother to talk," Mara replied, and she kissed his injured cheek, her tongue lingering for just a moment. "It's rude."

Dean could feel that demon twist Lisa's face into what must have been a god awful sneer. He couldn't imagine it. "If they're going to come, it's going to be after me. It's not going to be after Sammy or anyone else. They don't have anything to do with that."

"Oh please." Lisa came back around in front of Dean and leaned in. "Men are sentimental, weak things when it comes to their family. It's a spiritual truth that makes your blood cry to one another; brother to brother, father to son. Even though you and she both pretend otherwise, there is something in you that knows that."

For a long moment, Dean didn't say anything, not even to himself. Truth was messy. Sarcasm was too concise to be anything but clean. "Dr. Phil, is that you in there?"

He saw stars when Lisa's hand cracked across his cheek in a backhand. He recovered quickly, but damn. "Interesting. You deflect and she crumbles like a house of cards."

"If you've done anything, I'll -- "

"What? Wiggle at me?" Her eyes darkened again and her lips curled back like a feral animal, and there is no seeing the Lisa in there anymore. "Don't worry, she's still in here, sniveling like the repentant little slut that she is."

"Merax," Mara interrupted the demon in Lisa. "Can we get on with business?" From the way she stroked Sam's hair with one hand and skimmed the knife down the skin of his neck, Dean could only imagine what business was going to look like.

"Yes." She paused for a moment before backhanding Dean again, this time hard enough to knock him and the chair over. He groaned when he hit the floor -- honestly, it wasn't so much that pain was a problem for him, he was just over long and drawn out. "We broke you once, we'll break you again." Merax kneeled down on the floor in front of him. "But unfortunately, this time we're running on the mortal clock rather than ours. So we're going to bleed Sammy here -- I hate to see Azazel's craftsmanship go to waste, but the plan's changed -- until you tell us what you know."

"Great. Can we get this over with?" Sam was having a hard time not sounding bored as well.

"Tsk tsk, Sammy!" Mara tapped him with the flat of the knife. "Slower is better."

They'd wanted to get underway, but why were they wasting time? They had Sam, Merax was comfy in Lisa (a disturbing thought that Dean would rather not be having), and they had Ben. So what were they waiting for?

Unless they didn't have Ben.

The realization probably crossed his face in the worst way. "You're bluffing," he said slowly, and Merax drove Lisa's fist into his face.

"I don't bluff," she said crisply.

He started to laugh -- and his heart soared even more when he finally looked up and saw Ben sneaking up on Mara, knife in his hand. He looked impossibly young, and every nerve and fear written on his face. They made eye contact, and Dean nodded in what he hoped was in imperceptible manner, enough to tell Ben to do what he needed to do. If Merax noticed she certainly didn't stop smacking Dean around long enough to care.

Thankfully, neither was Mara. Dean watched when Ben got close enough, and with only the smallest bit of visible hesitation, raised his arm to take a swing with the knife. The flesh crackled when the knife sliced her skin, plunging into her back. The body jerked and writhed all the way to the floor while the demon tried to vacate the host in a hurry, but the knife worked its magic.

Merax turned on Ben with a snarl, and his eyes went wide with fear. "Do you mind, junior?" she took advantage of the boy's distress, pushing him back into the wall with one sweep of her arm. "Mommy and daddy are talking."

"Leave the kid out of this." Dean strained against the ropes all the harder with no purchase.

She looked back at him. "No." The word was simple but packed with all the malice she could manage.

It put Dean in mind of all of the nasty things she was going to do to Sam, Ben, and finally to Lisa. And he was probably going to have to watch. "Come on, you dumb hellbitch, if you want me, deal with me."

"You are much more useful alive. If not more annoying," she answered in a sneer before she turned back around to tend to Sam -- and met the stony glare of Castiel.

When Dean saw the beat up shoes and the dark slacks he thought he was hallucinating, but when he saw the khaki trench coat he knew he couldn't be imagining things. "Took you long enough," he said, as though he'd been expecting him all along.

Castiel wasn't paying Dean any mind, either. "Merax. Leave."

"I have a question for you, Castiel," she answered him nastily, although his appearance had clearly pulled the rug out from under her. "If an angel is fired from being an angel, what is he?"

If her words threw him, it didn't show; there was not a single crack in the angel's façade. He approached, keeping her gaze, holding her in a thrall that made the air nearly radiate with power. "You won't be around long enough to find out," he promised, lifted a hand to her forehead, and expelled the demon as it gave an unearthly shriek. Lisa's unconscious body dropped like a sack of rocks to the floor, close enough to Dean that he could see the steady rise and fall of her chest. She was okay. Maybe.

"MOM." Ben broke the silence, scrambling over to his mother. Being thrown into the wall didn't seem to have slowed him down any, although once he reached her, he hesitated. "What did you do?"

"Exorcised the demon. Your mother will live," Castiel answered him, and then he looked to Sam and Dean.

The ropes gave way quite suddenly, and Dean sank to the floor. He was sore from the encounter, but he'd had far worse, so he made himself get up, staggering slightly, and he lifted a hand to his head -- only a little blood. "Jesus, Cas," he swore lightly, and ignoring the look the angel gave him for his blasphemy. "Can't get rid of you for months on end and you choose to show up now?"

"You have called on me several times and I have come," he pointed out, and then dismissed it. "Things have… become complicated. I came as soon as soon as I knew it to be safe." He cast a glance pointedly upward.

Dean wasn't going to blame anyone who wanted to avoid Heaven's biggest douches. He looked back at Lisa, and Ben, who seemed to be looking at him for instruction. Shit. "Sam," he said, looking at his brother. "See if we can get her to the couch."

Sam gave him a skeptic look, but picked up Lisa by the legs while Dean lifted her shoulders, and they laid her down on the couch in the living room carefully. Ben followed like a puppy dog, and he began chattering quickly. Dean wasn't listening much, but he did hear the question mark at the end of every statement. "She'll be fine," Sam interrupted the boy, and looked at Dean quickly.

He didn't want to look Sam in the eye, but when his next option was to look at Ben and confront the truth that they'd both heard and that Dean had known since the first visit to Cicero, he looked around. Unexpectedly, Castiel had remained, looking down at the body in the kitchen. "Sit tight," he told them.

Castiel had turned the blonde over onto her back. "Mara was not kind to his host," he said. "She wasn't in there anymore; that blow alone would not have killed her immediately."

"What, like the kid should have hesitated?" Dean wasn't in the mood for the crap that went with dealing with angels, even Cas.

"No. He did well. You should tell him so."

Dean didn't miss the pointed meaning behind the statement. He simply chose to ignore it. "Those names," he said.

"They are familiar to you," Castiel said, "but you don't know why." His silence was answer enough. "Princes of Hell."

Nothing quite made Dean's gorge rise like the h-e-double-hockey-sticks word. "Yeah, never heard of them."

"You were in the Pit, beneath them," he said. "Now that Lucifer's been released, Hell has opened. No one thought…"

"Yeah, that's obvious," Dean snapped. "Thought what? They wouldn't go after what they wanted? They're demons, it's what they do, and they do it with a vengeance."

Castiel remained calm in the face of Dean's ire. "No one thought one of their first moves would be to come for the boy and his mother."

"Why should they," he said flatly, although it was all empty posturing. Cas clearly knew as well as he did what was going on here -- or maybe more rightly, what had gone on. He couldn't quite meet Castiel's intense gaze. "So, look, I'm only going to say this once, so you can take it right up to Chuckles if you have to. If bastards like them are going to be coming after me, they can chase me and Sam. We can take care of ourselves. If every damn thing in the cosmos knows… if you and yours can't handle keeping an eye on them then you give it to me straight up. If you want something else from me for it -- "

"Dean," Castiel stopped him, and he could finally look up at him. Dean had only ever seen the look the angel was giving him the once, that look that both annoyed him and stopped him in his mental tracks. "We have been watching. Haniel could not take a vessel in time to stop it. She called me when the danger was real and immediate."

He felt like he'd been punched in the gut. "Well. Way to go. Bet he feels good about that one." Dean paused. "She?"

"Does it matter?" he asked him rhetorically, and like that, the subject was closed. He lowered himself nearer to the body and brushed some of her hair off her cheek with a surprising amount of tenderness.

For a moment, Dean hesitated in asking the questions on his mind, when Sam interrupted his thoughts. "Dean. Lisa's waking up."

He looked away for just a moment and by the time he looked back, Castiel was gone and he had taken the body with him.

-----

For once, Dean stepped back and let Sam handle the explanations. He should have, by all rights he should have been the one to look Lisa in the face and tell her the real reason she and Ben had been in danger. But the truth was still there between them all, and it was a mess.

Kids were supposed to be resilient, but the fact that Ben had not an hour ago stabbed a demon in the back hadn't seemed to hit him at all. He was deeply involved in his video game and the absurdity struck Dean harder than he would have liked. There was something really screwed up about that, and maybe that was his fault in some way.

"Dean?" Dean glanced up at Sam, reluctantly emerging from his spiral of self-loathing. "Anything you wanted to add?"

He had a lot of things he wanted to add, although he wasn't sure it would have been wise to do so. But like that had ever stopped him. "Yeah. Give us a minute?"

Sam acquiesced, backing away and he headed nearer to Ben, watching the simulated violence of the video game. Lisa sipped at her tea, and Dean said nothing at all. He wanted a drink a little bit stiffer than some tea. "Feeling okay?" he asked her.

"I… I think so," she said. She was holding on to her mug so tightly that it was a wonder it hadn't cracked yet. "So. This is the… sort of thing you're used to dealing with," she said.

"More or less," he answered with a light shrug. Less, definitely, but she didn't need to know that. "So, uh. How long were they riding you?"

"A few days. I wasn't awake for all of it, I guess. That's what Sam said it sounded like." He could feel her looking at him whenever he glanced away quickly. It was an effective way to have a conversation.

"Good," he answered. He would have preferred it not to happen at all, but that was not the way Dean Winchester's life worked. "Listen. This came down on you 'cause of me, and I'm sorry. I'm… really sorry." He couldn't help but pack the words with just that much more meaning.

"Dean," she started, and then hesitated. She lowered her voice to continue. "Last time you were here, I wasn't honest. I told you Ben wasn't yours, but -- "

"Hey, you don't have to explain." The words were almost ready to come out of her mouth, and Dean wasn't sure that he could stand to hear them. "I'm not exactly anyone's idea of a dream dad."

"Dream or not, he's yours." She bit her lip, and looked down into her tea. "I've been carrying that around for his entire life."

"Well. Better out than in," he said finally.

Lisa looked up again. "I'm not looking for anything. Really. I thought you should know, though."

"No, I get it," he said. Even after Castiel's revelation that at least one angel had been watching after them, he was still not willing to put all of the eggs in Heaven's basket, so he grabbed a pen and wrote down his number on an opened envelope laying on the counter. "This is my number. If there's anything, call. I mean it."

She fingered the envelope for a moment and nodded. "Thanks," she said shakily.

"I mean it," he added, and frowned. "Were you around for what it, uh. Said to Ben."

"Dean. I'll handle it," Lisa said, unable to keep the amused note out of her voice. "It can't be any worse than the sex talk."

"Jeez. Kids today," he said. He was still digging around in the hotel couches for quarters to blow on Pac-Man and pinball at Ben's age. "Well, uh. Good. Since the problem's gone, probably, we'll just… get out of your hair, then," he added reluctantly.

She nodded. "That might be best," she said in a similar tone. "Just… answer me one question. You don't have to elaborate… did you really go to Hell?"

The question caught him off guard, but he gave the simplest answer to the question. "Yes."

She nodded, a bit woodenly. "Okay."

It wasn't, not in the least, but he wasn't sure what else she could have said to that. He hesitated for only a moment before kissing her quickly on the mouth. There was a part of him that decidedly could have done that every day for the next forty or so years, but that wasn't his life. Not today, probably not ever. "Sammy, let's haul ass," he called to his brother.

"Dean, I just pulled ahead of the kid," Sam wheedled, swinging the Wii's controller like his life depended on it.

"Today, Sam."

-----

Not ten minutes later they climbed into the Impala and broke the speed limit getting out of Cicero. Dean wasn't really paying attention to what direction, putting the town in their rearview mirror was good enough for him at that point. Sam kept giving him that stupid sidelong glance with those big dopey eyes of his that meant he wanted to say something. "What?" he finally asked.

"What what?" Sam asked in return.

"If you have something to say it, just say it," he returned.

He was silent for a moment, and he said, "We could stick around for a couple of days," he offered.

Dean knew that his brother meant well, but that didn't make him feel any better. "Nothing's going to change in a few days," he said stiffly. "Best if we just go."

Sam didn't answer that, although Dean had to admit that the acknowledgement was appreciated. "Listen," Dean added. "We both screwed the pooch on that one. We should have known something was up sooner, but we have to be ready. It's game time."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. I hear you," he said.

"Okay." They were silent for a moment longer, and before Dean could resist it, he added, "Ben was pretty good, wasn't he?"

Sam shook his head, smiling slightly. "Yeah. He was," he said of his nephew. "He was good."

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