Chapter Text
***Ember POV***
September 24, Day
(One Year Later)
It had been over a year since Sam had fallen into the pit.
Ember’s life was no longer dominated by her powers. She had run into two demons in the past year, and both of them had been exorcised – the normal way, with words. She still maintained her invisibility, and her “party tricks”, but once more she could no longer move people or animals.
Dean and Ember had settled down in Lafayette, Indiana. Ember’s job as a therapist was hard work, and it was stressful, but in a completely non-fatal way. Dean worked construction during the day, and often spent time with one of the neighbors, who also worked construction, in the evenings.
Sometimes, it was as though they had never had another life. They didn’t fear for their lives anymore, and the most exciting thing that had happened since Lucifer falling back into the pit had been the two demons that had come to call. Ember hadn’t seen Castiel since the downfall of Lucifer, either. She had tried praying to him, but it was as though he had never existed.
Ember had only seen Bobby a handful of times in the last year, though they talked often on the phone. Sometimes, when Dean would become particularly sad, Ember would make up an excuse to visit Bobby. She knew that sometimes Dean needed to talk to someone who had known him and Sam for a very long time, and he always seemed to leave Bobby’s feeling slightly better.
Ember had looked for a way to pull Sam out of Hell, in the beginning, but she had reached only dead ends. With Castiel not answering prayers and Crowley being less than helpful, neither she nor Dean could think of anything further that could be done. They knew that Bobby was constantly searching through his contacts with other hunters for new leads, as well. Still, though they never completely gave up, both of them were forced to admit that it was unlikely they would ever get Sam back. It was as though a giant hole had been blown through their lives, but they filled it the best they could – with work, sex, and the perfect apple pie life.
And then one day, Sam returned.
***Dean POV***
September 24, Day
Dean was happy.
As happy as he could be without Sam, he was. He had good friends, a good paying job, and an apple pie life.
He was even lucky enough to have a woman who understood and supported him. She knew he had a jar of holy water and a sawed-off under his bed (she kept her revolver under her pillow). She understood that sometimes he needed to drink too much and talk about Sam (even though she didn’t like the drinking). She even encouraged him to look for Sam, as though he needed encouraging.
In the beginning, they would often spend weekends driving to some other corner of the US to chase a lead, though nothing ever showed any promise. More recently, however, leads had been fewer and farther between, and then eventually they had become nonexistent. Dean missed hunting, but he supposed that this was safer. He’d taken up golf lately, and it at least filled the time. He was bored, but he also knew that he was lucky – lucky to have Ember, lucky to have a “normal” life, and lucky to be away from the danger that used to plague his existence.
It was a shock, therefore, when he somehow ended up face to face with Azazel in his garage. “You can’t outrun your past,” Azazel told him viciously. It happened so quickly. Now, after a year of nothing… and just as Dean’s eyes closed, he could’ve sworn he saw Sam again.
---SPN---SPN---SPN---SPN---SPN---
When Dean woke up, he saw Sam immediately. He was still in the garage he shared with Ember. This must be Heaven, he thought. That would be his Heaven – the house he shared with Ember, and Sammy was there, too, and his beloved Impala.
So why did his chest hurt so much?
Just as he was contemplating this, Sam stood. “Hey, Dean. So, I was expecting… I don’t know… a hug? Some holy water in the face? Something.”
“So I’m dead?” Dean asked, still confused. “This is Heaven?”
For some reason, this made Sam laugh.
“Yellow eyes killed me, and now-…”
“Yellow eyes?” Sam asked. “That’s what you saw?”
“Saw?” Dean asked. He was very confused.
“You were poisoned,” Sam explained. “So whatever kind of crazy crap you think you’ve been seeing, it’s not real.”
Now Dean was really confused. Was this his subconscious attempting to warn him that he’d been poisoned? “So, then, are you… real? Or am I still-…”
“I’m real,” Sam said. “Here, let me save you the trouble.” Sam got out his silver knife and sliced a mark on his arm. Then he took a jug of water and dipped a cross in it along with some salt, and drank it. “That’s nasty,” he said.
Dean wasn’t sure if he believed it. It was too good to be true. “Sammy?” he said hesitantly.
“Yeah,” said his brother. “It’s me.”
Dean approached him, slowly, carefully… and hugged him, with everything he had. For one shining moment, life was perfect. He had Ember, and the house, and Baby, and now he had Sam, too. He had missed him so much since he fell… Wait a minute.. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you were gone, man. I mean that – that was it. How the hell are you-…”
“I don’t know,” Sam said.
And there it was. Because nothing, nothing could ever be perfect. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean no idea,” Sam said. “I’m – I’m just back.”
“Well was it God, or Cas? I mean, does Cas know anything about it?”
“You tell me,” Sam answered. “I’ve been calling. Cas hasn’t answered my prayers. I don’t even know where he is. I mean, I was down there, and the next minute, it was raining, and I’m lying in that field, alone. It’s kind of hard to go looking for whatever saved you when you’ve got no leads,” Sam said. “I looked. I mean, believe me… I looked. For weeks.”
Something in Dean’s head came to a screeching halt. Weeks. He’d been looking for weeks. “Wait, weeks? How long have you been back?”
Sam didn’t answer.
“How long have you been back, Sam?” Dean said sharply.
“About a year.”
“About a year?”
“Dean…” Sam started.
“You’ve been back practically this whole time?” Dean shouted at his brother. “What, did you lose the ability to send a friggin’ text message?!”
“You finally had what you wanted, Dean,” Sam said.
“I wanted my brother!” Dean yelled. “Alive!” He was furious. How many hours, days, weeks had he spent looking for Sam?
“You wanted a family,” Sam countered. “You have for a long time, maybe the whole time. I know you. You only gave it up because of the way we lived. But you had something, and you were building something. Had I shown up, Dean, you would’ve just run off.”
He had been right, Dean would reflect later, but at that moment he wanted to send Sam back to Hell. What was he supposed to tell Ember? What was he supposed to tell Sam? It was too much to take in.
“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam said. “But it felt like after everything, you deserved some regular life.”
Slowly, still not fully comprehending everything, Dean asked, “What have you been doing?”
“Hunting,” Sam answered.
Dean immediately felt an unexpected pang of jealousy. “You left me alone and you were flying solo?”
“Not solo,” Sam clarified.
This was even more surprising. “What?”
“I hooked up with some other people.” said Sam.
“You?” Dean asked. “Working with strangers?”
“They’re more like family,” Sam said, “and they’re here.”
This surprised Dean even more.
Half an hour later, Sam introduced Dean to three of his cousins… and his grandfather, risen from the dead! He was shocked to see his grandfather, Samuel again. Nothing added up. Something was very fishy. Dean was unable to focus on that at the moment, however, because the problem at hand was so much more pressing: apparently, a djinn was after him.
“I got hit a few days before you did,” Sam told him. “Dosed up with poison... After they came after me, we were pretty certain that they were gonna go gunning for you next.”
Dean’s heart dropped. “Ember,” he said. “She’ll be getting home from work any minute. She’s never fought a djinn before, and it’ll be able to see her, even if she goes invisible. We gotta go, now!”
---SPN---SPN---SPN---SPN---SPN---
Dean had forgotten how it felt to worry about Ember. Perhaps back when he did worry about her, worrying about Ember and Sammy was so second-nature to him that he was never even conscious of it. Now, however, he felt himself drowning in it. Fortunately, Ember was fine.
She turned white as a ghost when she saw Sam, though. She disappeared immediately, and Dean knew she was running for her revolver. “Ember! Wait!” he yelled. “It’s really him!” And he threw himself in front of his brother, unable to track his invisible girlfriend.
Ember appeared in the room again a second later, revolver, salt, and holy water in hand “Prove it!” she screamed, and sent the salt and holy water through the air toward Sam.
When Sam was finished going through the motions with the salt, holy water, and his silver knife, Ember stood still for exactly six seconds. Then she launched herself at Sam, flinging her arms around him and squeezing him.
“Whoa, Ember, not so hard-…”
But just as Ember let go, a vase of fake roses went soaring through the air at Sam’s head, and he ducked just in time. “Sam Winchester, what the enormous fuck did you think you were doing?” Ember screeched at him. “You couldn’t have called first, or texted? It’s been a damn year!?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, his anger flaring again now that his worry had abated. “And guess what? He’s been back the whole time.”
“What?” Ember cried, and for a second Dean remembered the look in her eyes when she had thrown Castiel across the room the previous year. “Sam, do you have any idea the lengths we went to to look for you!?”
“Exactly!” said Dean. “I looked everywhere. We collected hundreds of books trying to find anything to bust you out.”
“You promised you’d leave it alone,” Sam said.
“I didn’t promise shit!” Ember yelled.
“Of course I didn’t leave it alone!” yelled Dean. “Sue me!” He sighed. “A damn year? You couldn’t put me out of my misery?”
“Well I’m sorry,” said Sam sarcastically. “You know now, anyway.”
---SPN---SPN---SPN---SPN---SPN---
On the way back to Samuel’s, Dean and Ember decided to call Bobby.
“Bobby, we have the best news!” Ember told him. “You’re never going to believe this… but Sam’s alive!”
There was silence on the other end of the line. After several seconds, Bobby said in a very unconvincing voice, “Yeah, that’s great!”
Dean and Ember looked at each other, and Dean knew that Ember was thinking the same thing he was. “You knew?” Dean asked. “You knew Sam was alive?”
Bobby was silent for a few seconds. Finally, he admitted, “Yeah.”
“How long?” Ember asked sharply.
Bobby didn’t answer.
“How long?” yelled Dean into the receiver.
“All year,” Bobby admitted.
“Bobby, what the hell!?” Ember exploded.
“And I’d do it again!” Bobby yelled back into the receiver.
“Why?” Dean asked sharply.
“Because you two got out,” said Bobby. “My daughter got out. You walked away from the life. And I was so damn grateful, you’ve got no idea!” Neither of them could see Bobby, but Dean could imagine his stubborn face on the other end of the phone line.
“Do you have any clue what walking away meant for me?” Dean screamed into the phone.
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “A woman – my daughter – and neither of you getting your guts ripped out at age 30! That’s what it meant!”
“You had no right-…” screamed Ember into the phone.
“I had every right!” Bobby screamed back. Dean had only ever heard him this upset twice – when he had found out he might not be Ember’s father, and before Lucifer had risen, when Dean had almost given up on Sam. “And I don’t know how the hell you found out, but I wish to God you hadn’t!”
Ember let out a long scream of anger, just as Dean rolled into a gas station. “I’ll go pay for gas,” Ember said huffily. Dean knew that this was Ember’s way of getting away from the argument before she said something she would regret. He allowed her to go through the motions of fueling up the truck and then grabbing some food for both of them, hoping she would calm down before she climbed back inside. He could tell that Ember, too, suspected that Bobby had orchestrated this grand scheme. He also suspected that Ember’s mother might have had something to do with it, if indirectly.
Meanwhile, Dean continued talking to Bobby. “How could you do this to us?” he said, lowering his voice. “When Sammy fell into the pit, Ember and I were both half out of our minds with grief, especially me! I don’t know why she’s kept me around. I drank too much. We both had nightmares!”
“Look, I get it wasn’t easy,” said Bobby. “But that’s life! And it’s as close to happiness as I’ve ever seen a hunter get! And you’ve got to remember, that’s my daughter you’re dating.” Bobby lowered his voice, and Dean could imagine him on the other end, shaking his head. “It ain’t like I wanted to lie to you, either of you. But you were out.”
“Do we sound out to you?” Dean spat at Bobby.
***Ember POV***
September 24, Night
After discussing the djinn with Dean’s grandfather Samuel, it was decided that everyone would head back to Ember and Dean’s home to serve as bait to draw them out. While they waited, they talked with Samuel. “Did your brother tell you what we’ve been dealing with the past few months?” Samuel asked Dean.
“No, not really,” said Dean.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” said Samuel. “Been working ‘round the clock.”
“What’s going on?” asked Ember.
“We don’t know,” Samuel said. “But whatever it is, it goes way past a couple of djinn acting off. We’ve got nocturnals attacking in broad daylight, werewolves out on the half-moon, and creatures that we’ve never even seen before. We don’t even know what they are! I’m knee-deep in half-eaten human hearts and exsanguinated 10-year-olds, and it’s all making me… uneasy.”
Ember looked at Dean, horrified and concerned. Dean said, “So what’s your theory?”
“You tell me,” Samuel said. “All we really know is, it’s all hands on deck. We’re counting on each other right now. That’s how it is with Campbells. We need you, Dean. And you too, Ember.”
Ember looked at Dean, unsure of his answer. She knew he liked their life, and how happy they were, but she also knew that with Sam back, things had changed.
Plus, if she was restless, she knew he was practically chomping at the bit to start hunting again. To her surprise, however, he said, “Look, I hear you, but-…”
“You don’t know what you’re a part of, Dean,” Samuel said. “You know, you had ancestors hacking the heads off vamps on the Mayflower. What I’m saying is that we’re your blood. And we’re out there dying, trying to get in front of whatever this is.”
Dean made eye contact with Ember then, just for a second, and Ember saw it, plainer than ever in his eyes – the yearning to go hunting again.
***Ember POV***
October 1, Evening
The djinn were dead. Ember had managed to kill one of the djinn that had been about to kill the neighbors, including Dean’s close friend. Dean had rushed to help her. Sam had taken out a second djinn, and Samuel had taken out a third.
Dean had turned down Samuel’s offer to hunt with them, but he had been silent and broody ever since. It had been a week since Dean had last seen Sam, but instead of seeming happier that Sam was alive, Dean appeared more irritable than ever. Then, at the beginning of October, Dean had called to let her know that Sam had called him needing his help with an “emergency case involving a baby.”
Ember knew what she needed to do. If she admitted it to herself, she had always known this day would come. She loved Dean, but he would never be happy living an “apple pie life.” There were days when she wasn’t sure if she was happy living an “apple pie life”, so how he had made it through the last year without spontaneously combusting was a mystery to her.
Therefore, after Dean returned from the “emergency with the baby,” Ember finally broached the conversation with him that she had been dreading since she had first seen Sam again.
“Dean… about what Samuel said yesterday…”
Dean stopped, turning to face her. “I told you, I’m happy here. Plus, I need to be here in case something attacks.” Then he turned away from her again, and she knew he was avoiding the real issue.
“Dean,” she said, crossing her arms over the dinner table.
Dean took his time pulling a pizza out of the oven, before finally facing her, guiltily. “Yeah?”
Ember took a seat at the table. “Dean, I’ve been restless over the past few months, ever since the leads dried up about Sam.”
“Gee, I wonder why that happened,” Dean said sarcastically.
“Yeah, I know,” said Ember, rolling her eyes. “But anyway, I’ve lived a normal life, away from danger, for the most part. Now, I’ve got more addiction to adrenaline than your average person – anyone who dates you would need to. I like hunting, it’s just… not what I want to do on the regular.”
Dean nodded at her, as though this decided it. She continued. “But Dean, you’ve hunted all your life. You’re good at it. And you miss it, I know you do.”
Dean looked down at the floor. It was out in the open now.
Finally, Dean spoke, raising his head to look at her. “Are you kicking me out?”
Ember was shocked. She walked over to him quickly and put her arms around him. “Dean, you’re an idiot.”
He looked up at her. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not kicking you out,” she said, taking his hand and leading him over to the sofa. “But I also know you’re not happy. So… I don’t know what to do.”
Dean sighed. He held out his arm, pulling her to him. It was a long time before he spoke. “Ember… I don’t know what to do here.” He sighed again. “I mean, I forgot what it’s like to worry about you. And I was so scared…” he shook his head. “I mean, if I knew for sure what the safest thing was, then I’d do it. Should I stay here and look after you… or get as far away as I possibly can?.... I don’t know.”
“Dean, I’m happy here. You know that. But… you’re not. I know that, too.” She turned around to look at him. “Dean, maybe I’m safer with you here… maybe gone. I don’t know. But the one thing I do know is that you’re not a construction worker.” He looked at her carefully, resigned. “And now that you know Sam’s out there, things are different! You’re meant to hunt. I hate to say it, but Zachariah, and Samuel… both of them were right. It’s in your blood.”
He held her close. “Ember, I wanted so badly for you to have a normal life. For us to have a normal life. But my past… I can never escape it.”
“Dean… I’m never going to have a normal life. We can try to make an “apple pie” go of it all we want, but at the end of the day, you’re a born and bred hunter, and I attract demons. You’ve taught me everything – everything you know – how to defend myself, how to fight, and how to shoot. We even laced all the walls at my job with salt last year when it was under construction!” They smiled at the memory.
Dean still seemed unsure, so Ember took a different tact. “You don’t want to be here, Dean.”
“Yes, I do,” he said firmly.
“Okay,” Ember said. “But… you also want to be there. I get it.” She paused, then took both of his hands. “Dean, you’re white-knuckling it, living like this, like what you are is some bad, awful thing. But it’s not.”
Dean looked downward again. He had never been good at taking compliments. “Dean, way back in the beginning, before Lucifer, before Lilith, before Anna, even – I wanted you. As you were. And I had a great time traveling with you and Sam during the Apocalypse – or, well, as good a time as was possible. But this life was never really for me. I like joining you every once in awhile, you know? And don’t think that I won’t, because I will. But… my place is here. So… go save the world, Dean.”
“I can’t just lose you,” Dean protested, interlacing his fingers with Ember’s.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
He looked at her curiously.
She smiled. “What I’m saying is… don’t forget to call me every day, Dean Winchester.”