Chapter 16: Other Things, I'm starting to understand

When Pamela met up with at Bobby's place, she was just as I remembered her. She's just as flirty and spunky as I remember her, except she has glass eyes now. That's new. She performs hypnosis on Anna; I guess she's a jack-of-all-trades, but I won't doubt her again. The last time I thought she was full of it she got her eyes burned out so she's gained some credibility, even if I think hypnosis is a load of crap. It doesn't take long for me to be proven wrong again because Anna starts to spaz out in a way that I doubt she would have if she were completely conscious. When Anna finally comes to, she says that she's an angel. That's all I need to know that she isn't our problem anymore. I feel so relieved that we can turn her back over to the angels and move on that I fist pump the air.

"Yes!" I say

"Don't worry, I'm not like the others." She says to the stunned faces around the room

"I don't find that very reassuring" Ruby says

"Neither do I" Pam says

I'm still smiling as I move closer to the group "It doesn't matter guys"

"What are you smiling about?" Sam asks apprehensively

"She's an angel, Sam. That means she's not our problem anymore. We don't have to run from Castiel and that other guy, Uriel, anymore"

"Wait, but why do they want to kill you?" Pam interjects

"I disobeyed, which for us, is the worst thing you can do. I fell"

Anna Milton, or whatever her real angel name was, cut out her grace and implanted herself into some unsuspecting lady trying to conceive a child, and inadvertently caused the poor lady and her husband's death. For that, I don't like her. If she had given that family a chance maybe they could have adopted a baby and have been just as happy, but instead she had to go on and drag them into her story as a shield. I think she's a coward. Now she wants us to help her find her grace. She wants to drag us in this as well so she can be an angel again. Because after everything she put her parents through and any other innocent people who died, she wants to take us along for the ride to undo a stupid decision that she made without any thought about putting my brother's and my life at risk. If I could, I would kill her before anyone had a chance to stop me, but since there's no chance of that happening without Sam or Dean stepping in and kicking my ass, I just nod and go along with my group who are eager as always to help any cute girl in distress. I won't be winning any arguments with them about this so I keep my mouth shut. I hope she dies before she becomes an angel again.

Her grace is already gone by the time we track it down. She says someone took it.

Sam disappears into the barn with Ruby when night falls and Dean and Anna are both nowhere to be found. I almost start to worry until I check outside and see the Impala windows all fogged up. Great, I have to sit in that backseat tomorrow. I guess everyone is just getting laid tonight but me.

The final showdown happens early in the morning. I came late to the party because I had been sleeping inside the house and nobody came to wake me up for it. After all these years, they still try to protect me like I'm a child. I heard something slamming from outside and I knew that it was time. I ran out to the barn just in time to hear a man's voice saying "Dean, Dean, Dean, I am so disappointed. You had such promise". I take out my gun and head in.

"Shut your eyes!" Anna screams and the barn is washed over in a white light. I duck my head and close my eyes. When I open them again, Anna and the other guy are gone. Castiel and Uriel vanish soon after.

"Dean, who was that guy?" I ask running over to him

"Alastair." He says

It's such a nice day, the sun is so warm on my face as we drive and the breeze so soft. Dean pulls over to the side of the road so we can enjoy it. After everything that's happened this morning, I feel so good in this moment. I climb on the hood of the car with Sam and Dean brings us both beers.

"I can't believe we made it out of there" Dean says and leans back on the car

"Again" Sam smiles triumphantly. We all clink our bottles and I take a sip of the warm fizzy drink.

"You heard him, didn't you?" Dean says into the distance

"Who?"

"Alastair. About me having promise?"

"What about it?" I shrug

"You're not curious?"

"Of course we're curious, damn curious-" Sam says

"I'm not" I say and take another sip

"-But you're not talking about hell, and we're not going to push"

Dean takes a few moments before speaking again "It wasn't four months you know"

"What?"

"Pretty sure it was four, Dean" I say and take another sip

"It was four months up here, but down there... I don't know. Time's different. It was more like 40 years."

"My God" Sam breathes

"They, uh... They sliced and carved and tore at me in ways that you... Until there was nothing left. And then suddenly… I would be whole again- like magic... just so they could start in all over." Dean's voice was shaking. I sat up and looked over at Sam. Should we be doing something? Should we tell him it's okay not to talk about it? Sam answered my silent question with his eyes as he looked sadly but intently back at Dean.

"And Alastair" Dean continued ".. at the end of every day... every one... he would come over. And he would make me an offer. To take me off the rack if I put souls on. If I started the torturing. And every day, I told him to stick it where the sun shines. For 30 years, I told him. But then I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't."

Dean sniffled. I stared at him stunned.

"And I got off that rack. God help me, I got right off it, and I started ripping them apart. I lost count of how many souls…" He's crying

Dean tortured souls in hell.

"The -the things that I did to them"

"Dean" Sam croaks trying to hold back tears "Dean, look, you held out for 30 years. That's longer than anyone would have"

"It's longer than I would've" I agree, "Dean, I probably wouldn't lasted a day. Don't feel bad" I say and touch a hand to his shoulder. He's still crying and I can't help him. I've never seen him like this before. Sobbing so openly. It's scary.

"How I feel. This, inside me... I wish I couldn't feel anything"

I lay back on the hood and start to drink again. I don't know what to do for him.

"I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing"

Sam is crying too now. I guess I should feel like crying but I don't. Dean did what he had to do and that's all there is to it. Who could ask for more than that? I'm actually upset that we had one day to enjoy, just the three of us, and now it's ruined. Dean is crying, Sam is crying, and I'm all alone again because I really don't feel a damn thing. If it had been me and I tortured all of those souls, I know I still wouldn't feel so bad about it because we do the best we can and that's all we can ever do, and yet they cry. They feel guilt and they feel remorse about things they can't control. They think that there's something wrong with me? They tell me that the way I think is wrong but they're the ones who beat themselves up and torture themselves every chance they get for no reason. Maybe there isn't anything wrong with me; maybe I'm the only one without a problem. I reach a hand out and pat Dean absently on the back and down the rest of my beer.

"Can I get another beer?" I ask and break the quiet sobbing of the somewhat silence. Dean wipes his face on his sleeve and clears his throat loudly.

"Yeah, sure" He tosses me the keys over his shoulder and I slide off the hood of the car. I grab a beer from the trunk and finish it in record time. Maybe if I drink enough of these things I'll be too drunk for them to notice how little I feel about Dean's confession. I climb into the backseat and shut the door behind me but I hear a sniffle from Dean outside so I put the key in the ignition and turn up the windows before settling back down. I don't want to hear them crying.

For the next few weeks, Dean has us moving around from place to place non-stop. Sam and I are exhausted from working case after case but I don't complain because I don't want Dean to throw me back into school. Plus, I'm glad to be busy all the time; it helps me keep my mind occupied. Ever since that night Castiel told me to research my mom on my own, it's been bugging me. I keep seeing my mother on the floor, lying in a pool of blood. Whenever I flick on the television and see a scary movie, or when we have to use a knife on a monster in the gut, I see her there. It's so realistic. I can see every detail so perfectly. I'm beginning to think that maybe I was there when it happened and as curious as I am to know what happened, I find myself avoiding it. A lot of hunters would consider the job stressful but I find it soothing. Dean must think so too.

"Stratton, Nebraska. Farm town. A man gets hacked to death in a locked room inside a locked house. No signs of forced entry." He says

A ghost case! We haven't had one of those in a while. Sam sighs from the back seat and lies back down. Guess I'm riding shotgun tonight. I smile up at Dean as he turns the key in the ignition.

"You're not tired?" He asks sounding faintly impressed

"Nope. Pumped up and ready to go, Dean"

"Atta boy" He grins. I'm happy that Sam's sleeping so he can't keep asking how Dean is feeling. He's been asking since that day Dean told us about hell but Dean doesn't want to talk about it. It's better this way. Why choose to be sad when we can keep moving and be happy. We're all alive and together. That's all that matters.

Turns out the "ghosts" were actually a bunch of inbred little kids hiding in the walls and killing people. The first guy they killed deserved to die but the family who just tried to move in didn't so we had to help them out. Sam and Dean told me to keep everyone in the shed while they found the kid who went missing but that meant taking the boy's uncle and father, civilians inside while I waited here babysitting.

"Dean! Let me help you! These guys are going to get themselves killed!"

"There's no way I'm sitting around while my kid is in there" The missing boy's father protested, so Dean ended up taking all of us inside to find the kid. It's a good thing that I came along too because the kid's uncle almost got stabbed in the face by that little crazy girl who seemed to come out of nowhere. I snapped her neck before she had the chance to reach him and she fell to the ground with the knife still in her hand. Dean ended up shooting the girl's brother during a scuffle. That was the first time I had ever seen my big brother kill a human being, and a child, no less. There was something so relieving about that moment. It was as though a weight had been lifted that I didn't know I was carrying around. In that moment I witnessed more than just my brother saving a family from monsters, I witnessed my brother acknowledging that humans can be monsters too and that it's okay to put them down if you need to. He gave me more than the comfort of his approval; he gave me permission.

Chuck, the prophet is not an impressive man. A writer. He's slovenly and unkempt, and everything in his home screamed recluse and musk. His books were an interesting read, however. I learned so much about my brothers from their hunts without me and about Dad, Dean's first love, Sam's possession by the demon Meg, and everything else they never talk about. I was in the books too but as a minor character who only appeared on hunts that I actually went on with them. There was nothing in there about my summer without Sam or Dean, or my high school experiences, or Haydn, or even my Mom. When he's freaking out about us being real and about him being God, I decide to ask him about it.

"So, what am I? The reject?"

"What? No, I just write what I see"

"What do you mean what you see? You mean like visions?" Dean probes and Chuck tells him that his visions come to him in dreams

"And in your dreams, I'm the sidekick?" I press

"No, you're just… Look, I don't know" Chuck pleads, "I don't control what pops into my head, it just happens."

"You said you killed Sam's girl for literary symmetry, there has to be a better reason than that"

"Evan, chill" Dean says to me, "we're losing sight of what's important"

What was important was that Lilith was going to make a guest appearance in town and Sam was going to face off with her alone. It was written in the manuscript and everything. Of course Dean and I both were up to the challenge of proving it all wrong seeing as the book provided a good guide of what not to do, except in the end he and I trying to do the opposite of what Chuck wrote was the very thing that made it all happen. In retrospect we should have thought of that. Sam did alright on his own, he didn't kill Lilith but he didn't die either so I'll chalk that up as a win. He says he'll kill her one of these days. That would be cool if he could, of course it would be even cooler if I were the one to do it. Maybe if I'm the one who kills the demon and stops the apocalypse I'll get my own damn story with me as a central character instead of just the other brother. Still I'm curious to know how much Chuck really does know about me so when we stop by his place one last time before we leave I ask him.

"Do you know what happened? What really happened, I mean…"

"To your mom?" He asks gravely

"Yeah. I have to know. Sometimes, sometimes I feel like... I just have to know the truth. You know what happened, don't you?"

He nodded and sighed, "Are you sure you want to open that door? You spent so much of your life blocking it out"

"I didn't block it out, I just don't know what happened. Nobody told me what happened to her." I say defensively

"Evan, you were there. You're the one who called for help." He says

And in that moment it clicked. I've heard of out of body experiences before but I never knew that they existed for real until that moment when I was taken back.

My mother runs into my bedroom, shuts the door behind her, and locks it. I watch from the corner as she runs to my bed and awakens a small child. She takes the child by the hand and starts for the window but there's a loud banging on the bedroom door and it sounds like it's about to burst open. She frantically tells the little boy to hide which he immediately does, in the closet. I watch from the closet as the door breaks down and a man with a ski mask grabs my mother by the hair and holds a knife to her throat. She's crying and begging for him to take what he wants and leave. I want to run over and help her but I can't move from my spot now that I've merged into the child's body. I don't close my eyes but I still can't see anything anymore. It's as though I've gone blind and all I see is a blur. Soon, I can't even hear her screaming. I don't move an inch. Not one inch. Suddenly I hear her cry "Reggie?" And I feel a clap on my shoulder. I jump and it's Dean. I'm back at Chuck's house.

"You okay?"

"What?" I feel so hazy.

"I've been calling you but you were on another planet. Are you okay?" He asks me and turns to Chuck, "What'd you do to him"

"Nothing" He says defensively

"Evan"

"Wh- yeah. I'm fine" I shake my head and look at Chuck who's frowning back at me with a concerned look on his face. Dean puts a hand on my back and guides me from Chuck's house toward the car. Dean and Sam make idle chatter about Lilith and Chuck.

I feel like I'm going to vomit but I hold it in even though the nausea has me breaking out in a cold sweat. Reggie? Was that the guy's name? Was the thing that killed her just a human man? Someone she knew? Someone she trusted? I could feel my body start to shiver and my fist clenched down so tight that I could feel the fresh scars on my knuckles tearing at my skin. A human killed her. My mother was killed by a human, and I was going to find him.