Chapter Text
Dean peered out the grimy window, and tried to keep his blood pressure from rising. The alley below was dirty, shitty, and had nothing of interest in it except for doors to abandoned apartment buildings. Which begged the question: why the fuck were young women dressed like fugitives walking down it?
There were three of them. The shortest was in the lead, practically skipping down the trash-littered pavement, her tennis shoes skirting around shattered glass and cigarette butts. She was wearing a hoodie that was entirely too big for her, and a large pair of sunglasses obscured her face. Her dark hair was tied into twin buns. Behind her, she dragged a slightly taller girl in a similar hoodie, though hers fit better. The second girl wasn’t wearing sunglasses, but her hood was pulled up, hiding most of what Dean could see of her face. The third girl was the tallest, and the most conspicuous. Her hair was hot pink, hardly obscured by a Yankees cap, and the way she walked reminded Dean of Black Widow — a dancer trained to be an assassin. Dark sunglasses hid her eyes, but Dean didn’t think anything escaped them.
“They’re definitely stopping at our door,” Sam muttered. “I’m opening the window.”
“What — Sammy, no —”
Sam ducked out of Dean’s reach — tall bastard — and pushed the window open, wide enough so they could hear the conversation on the street below.
“Okay!” the first girl whispered. She checked her phone, glanced at the old, rusted number on — yep, their door, goddammit — then back at her friends. “This is it!”
“You sure?” the pink-haired girl asked. She sounded incredibly unconvinced.
“Don’t worry, Mira, these guys are totally legit.”
“The last guy you said was ‘legit’ gave Rumi grape juice,” the pink-haired girl grumbled, but didn’t protest further as the first went up to the door.
“Shit,” Sam mused, sounding more impressed than worried as he leaned away from the window. “How’d they find us?”
“I dunno, fuckin’ internet,” Dean grumbled. He picked up a baseball bat, glaring out the window.
Sam sighed. “Dean, they’re kids.”
“Kids who know who we are, and how to find us —”
The dark-haired girl pressed the buzzer, and her voice emanated from the tinny speaker next to their apartment door — wreathed in static, but no less bright. “Hello? Misters Winchesters?”
Both of them flinched. Dean sighed, dropped the bat, and crossed to the intercom. There was a small security feed above it, and he eyed the girls through the camera as he pressed the button. “Who are you?”
“Oh! Um!” The girl straightened, smiling at the door. “Hi! My name is Zoey, this is Mira, and the grumpy girl in the hoodie is Rumi. Do you guys take walk-ins?”
Dean blinked, his finger still resting on the button. He coughed. “Excuse me?”
“Well — I couldn’t find a website or anything —” On the fuzzy screen, the girl was wringing her hands anxiously. The pink-haired one leaned back, subtly scanning the alleyway. “ — but if you’d rather have us make an appointment, we can totally do that! Our problem is just a bit — um — time-sensitive —”
“Okay,” Dean groaned. “Who gave you this address? Was it Claire? I swear to God, if she thinks compromising security is funny —”
The girl’s brow furrowed. “I found it on Reddit.”
“Reddit?” He nearly choked on air. “What the hell —”
The girl in the hoodie moved forward, nudging the other aside to speak into the microphone. Her eyes glinted behind a fringe of purple hair.
“We’re hunters.”
The brothers both went still.
The girl lifted her face to the camera, and Dean got the unnerving feeling that she could see him. Her skin — it might’ve just been an effect of the camera, but —
“Let us in.”
Chapter Text
They let the kids in.
The pink-haired one, Mira, went through the door first. She glared at Dean. She was almost as tall as him.
“Uh — hi,” he said.
“Hi.” She kicked off a pair of platform Doc Martens, which only took her down a few inches. She held them up. “Do you guys have a shoe rack?”
Dean glanced down at his own feet. He was still wearing his brown boots. “Uh. No.”
“Americans,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. She slung a duffel bag off her shoulder, and dumped it against the wall. “Don’t even have coat hangers.”
“Uh —” Dean stared. “What’s with the bag?”
“Oh. We kind of ran off.” Mira shrugged, and stalked into the apartment before Dean could ask any follow-up questions.
Zoey came after her, her tennis shoes already off. “Hi!” she chirped, beaming as she bounced through the door. “Thank you so much for seeing us, Mr. Winchester! Where can I put my shoes? And my backpack?”
“Uh —” Dean glanced around. Cas had found them the apartment, an abandoned wreck he'd barely been able to miracle into being livable, and it still didn't look like anything close to nice. Mira had dumped her boots against the cracked wallpaper. “By the wall is fine, I guess —”
“Okay!” She put her shoes and backpack next to Mira’s things and wandered in, glancing around the shabby place with wide eyes. “Wow. This is, um. Cozy!”
“Hi!” Sam leaned out of the kitchen, and — was that a pot in his hands? He actually looked excited. “I’m Sam, this is Dean. Sorry, we haven't had guests in a while — sit down at the table, okay?”
“Oh, hey.” Mira grinned, walking over and glancing into the pot. “Is that damyeon?”
“It’s, uh. Maruchan.”
“Huh.” Her brow furrowed, and she followed him back into the kitchen, rolling up the sleeves of her hoodie. Her pink hair swayed down to her waist. “What kinda vegetables do you guys have?”
“Uh, I think we got some frozen peas in the freezer —”
Dean turned back to the third girl, who was taking off her shoes as well. He pointed to her. “You're Rumi?”
“Yeah.” She slid her high-tops next to Mira’s boots, and dropped a small bag next to Zoey’s backpack. As she straightened, Dean saw the prismatic markings along her skin, like cracks, or tiger stripes. Her dark eyes bored into him, but there was a tightness in her jaw, like she expected him to say something cruel.
“Alright.” Dean nodded, glancing over his shoulder. Mira was helicoptering over Sam’s shoulder in the kitchen, and Zoey was sitting at the shoddy dining room table, beaming as she looked around at the peeling wallpaper, cracked molding on the ceiling, and dim lights. These kids couldn’t have been older than their mid-twenties. He wanted to ask do you have parents, but decided that three girls running off to hunt monsters must’ve had something pretty serious to run from. “So. You’re, uh. Hunters?”
Rumi nodded.
“How long have you been in the game for?”
“A while.” She looked up at the doorframe, which had been scrawled with various Enochian wards. “We’ve never hunted here, though.” Her gaze dropped back down to Dean. “Which is why we need your help.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Dean clapped his hands. “Uh. Talk about it over dinner? I don’t think my brother’s gonna give me a choice.”
The girl’s lips twitched. She brought down her hood, and a long purple braid fell down her back. Dean couldn’t shake the idea that he’d seen her — seen all of them — before. Although, he was sure he’d remember someone with markings like those.
“You sure you’ve never hunted here?” he asked, leading her over to the table. He should at least try to be sociable, probably. Only polite, right? “You guys look a bit familiar. Have we met?”
“Hm? Oh, no.” Zoey, perched happily in one of the mismatched chairs, shook her head. “You probably recognize us from the posters.”
Dean blinked. “The . . . posters?”
“Jeez, what is this?” Mira scoffed from the kitchen. She was eyeing the Maruchan wrapping with utter disgust, and broke her eyes away from it to snort at Sam. “Y’know what? You. Pass me that knife.”
“My name’s Sam,” he said, but did so.
“Okay, Sam.” Mira peered into the pot, which was now simmering. “Where’s your spice cabinet?”
“Our what, now?”
“Sorry,” Dean called, and pulled out one of the mismatched chairs to sit down. “We usually live out of my car. This is the first time we’ve had a stable living situation in, what —?”
“Since Harvard, for me,” Sam said, rifling through the cupboards. “For you, God only knows — ah!” He drew out a dusty little bottle and presented it to Mira. “Pepper!”
She eyed it as though it were bird droppings, and muttered something in Korean.
Dean turned back to Zoey and Rumi. “Posters?”
“Mm, yeah.” Zoey nodded. “We’ve been touring for a few months now.”
“Touring.”
“We’re singers,” Rumi explained, tugging at the sleeves of her hoodie. “We —”
“Wait, you’re a band?” Dean grinned. “Wait, don’t tell me, lemme guess.” He pointed to Zoey. “You’re the drummer, scary girl’s the bassist and —” He turned to Rumi. “You're the lead guitarist.”
Rumi and Zoey just blinked.
Dean held up his hands. “Did I get it right?”
Rumi winced. “Um —”
“I’ve always wanted to learn drums!” Zoey offered.
“We do K-Pop,” Mira said from the kitchen, chopping up green onions with terrifying precision and sliding the pieces into the pot. “We’re a girl group. We had to escape our manager and staff to get here.” She glanced over her shoulder at Sam, her sharp eyeliner making her look like a bird of prey. “Do you guys have soy sauce, at least?”
“Wait.” Dean leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest as he surveyed the girls. “Lemme get this straight.” His eyes flicked between each of them — colored hair, minimal eyebags, purposeful fashion choices. “You’re demon-hunting pop singers?”
“Uh, yeah,” Mira snorted, giving him a look over her shoulder. “Ever heard of the honmoon, sad face?”
“The . . . what?”
“Oh my God.” Zoey’s eyes were wide. “Oh, wow.”
Rumi let out a muffled noise, and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Hold on.” Sam’s brow furrowed, and he took a short break from digging through the cabinets. “I think I’ve heard of that. It’s another word for the barrier between our world and Hell, right?”
“The demon realm,” Rumi said. The prismatic markings on her skin seemed to flash at that. She said something to Zoey in Korean, but the other girl just rolled her eyes and shot back a quick response. Rumi sighed, and looked back up at Dean. She couldn’t have been over twenty-five, but as she spoke, something in her eyes made her look much, much older. “We are hunters, voices strong, slaying demons with our song. Fix the world and make it right, when darkness finally meets the light.” She brought her hands up on the table, and something seemed to flicker between them. Her eyes stayed on Dean, unyielding. “We are part of an ancient tradition, older than your country, older than your concept of Hell. We hunt demons. We kill them. We also inspire the people around us. When their spirits are strong, so is the honmoon. And for thousands of years, we have done that, through singing. We draw power from our fans. The more they connect with our music, the stronger we are.”
“Music.” Dean cleared his throat. “So, you’re basically a Disney princess.”
A single purple eyebrow lifted, curving in an arc.
In the kitchen, something hit the counter with a loud bang. “The fuck did you just say?”
“Woah, woah — he didn’t mean anything by it,” Sam said quickly. “He’s just — trying to understand — ”
Mira’s snarling face appeared around the wall. “Try to understand a little more politely, okay, dipshit?”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry.” Dean held up his hands. “So. You strengthen the barrier between worlds by singing. Wanna explain why the whole world nearly just ended a month ago?”
“Yeah, actually,” Mira snapped. She grabbed a bottle of red powder from Sam and chucked a liberal amount of it into the pot. “Gwi-Ma —”
“That’s the demon king,” Zoey whispered.
“ — sent up a fucking demon boy band to steal our fans, and attack everyone. They almost ate half the population of Seoul. But, y’know, no big deal, if some Disney princesses were able to take care of it —”
For better or worse, Dean was now hooked. “S’cuse me — a demon boy band?”
“Yeah. They tried to counteract us.” Dean couldn’t see Mira’s face as she said that, and he was glad of it. “They failed.”
“Huh.” He glanced at Sam. Sam shrugged. Dean looked back at Rumi. “And why should we believe you?”
Zoey’s lips twitched, and she brought up a hand to cover her mouth. Rumi looked like she was about to say something, when —
“’Cause I just made you dinner, sad face.” A coaster landed in the middle of the table, and then the pot came down on top of it, steaming and smelling like heaven. It was full of noodles bathed in red broth, mixed with green onions and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Mira glared at him over it. “Eat.”
Dean ate. Sam hurried over with bowls, beer, napkins, and mismatched silverware, then they all set about practically inhaling the ramen. For the first minute or so, no one said anything. Dean sure as hell didn’t — this shit was good. Spicy, savory, with the freshness from the green onions — goddammit, he was starting to sound like a fucking Food Network judge. He hardly even cared.
“Mm,” he said, once he bothered to breathe. He pointed at Rumi, who’d balked briefly at the fork, but was using it without complaint. “Still need more.”
“More ramen?” Mira scoffed, tearing her eyes away from studying how Zoey twirled her noodles around her fork. “Screw you —”
“Nah, nah — well, maybe, but — I need proof that you’re legit hunters.”
Mira rolled her eyes. “Is it because we’re girls?”
“No —”
“Is it because we’re Asian girls?”
“No —”
“It’s because Dean doesn’t trust anyone as far as he can throw them,” Sam said, through mouthfuls of ramen. He pointed to his bowl. “This is really good, by the way.”
Mira’s expression didn’t change. “It’s not, actually. You just have a shit kitchen.”
Sam nodded, subtly avoiding her gaze. “I am . . . not going to argue with you.”
“You want proof?” Rumi sighed, leaning back in her chair. “Fine. I’ll give you proof.”
Then, she pulled a sword out of fucking thin air.
Dean almost jumped out of his skin. One second, her hands were palm-up over her lap table, the next, she was holding a sword almost as long as Zoey was tall. The blade glowed, its metal opalescent and refracting the light of the shitty chandelier, the engravings along it humming with a strange energy.
“Woah!” Sam leaned forward, his eyes wide and reflecting the blade’s prismatic glow. “What is that?”
“It’s a sword,” Mira answered, completely unfazed. “I’ve got a Gok-do made from the same metal, and Zoey has regenerating shin-kal.”
Zoey grinned, sinking into her hoodie. “I love my knives.”
Dean cleared his throat, and glanced over at the fridge. He’d just made a beer run two days ago. He could comprehend this. “So, if you — clearly know what you’re doing — then what are you doing here?”
“We don’t know this place,” Rumi said. She twirled her sword, and it disappeared just as quickly as it had come. She laid her hands back on the table, and those strange patterns on her skin glinted. “We don’t know the lay of the land. You do.”
“And we need backup,” Zoey added, staring into her bowl. “Like. Pretty badly.”
“Damn,” Dean snorted. “You must be in a real bind if you think we’d be good backup for whatever the hell it is you’re planning.”
“Which is — what, exactly?” Sam asked, glancing between the three girls. “’Cause we’re always down to help out other hunters, but we gotta know what we’re getting ourselves into.”
Zoey brightened like a star going into a supernova. “So, you’ll help us?”
“Hey, woah.” Dean waggled his fork at her. “Cool your jets, Rainbow Dash. I didn’t say anything yet. I just wanna know what the offer is.”
Both Zoey and Mira looked at Rumi.
Rumi was looking down at her bowl, but her eyes were distant with a faint, lingering pain. She lifted her chin, and that pain jumped forth in a sharp burst.
“We need your help to rescue someone.”
Normally, Dean would be all for rescuing someone. He rescued people all the time. He was a charitable guy, all things considered.
But, this.
This was balls-to-the-walls batshit fucking insane.
“Hold on.” Dean braced his hands over his temples. Over the course of the girls’ story, he’d gone through two beers, and now he desperately needed a third. “Let me get this straight. Your boyfriend — his soul is trapped in He— the demon realm.”
Rumi’s cheeks flushed. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Is too,” Mira said. She’d finished her ramen, and what ice cream they had left for dessert, and now her eyes were on her phone.
“Because he’s a demon.”
Rumi nodded.
Dean cleared his throat. “Right, okay. But he was able to come back to our world. In his own body?”
He must’ve looked really hopeless, because Zoey gave him a double-thumbs up and nodded encouragingly. He glanced at Sam — who was taking notes .
“So — but —” Dean sighed. “His essence got dissolved. Or, you think it did. But it didn’t?” Dean turned to stare at Rumi. “Because you’ve been having dreams?”
She held his gaze. “They got clearer as we got closer to here. We — Jinu and I —” Rumi glanced down at her empty ramen bowl. “He gave me his soul, as he dissolved. I — I don’t know what that means, entirely, but part of him is with me. I think. More specifically, in my sword.”
Dean nodded, pretending that made sense. “Okay.”
“But — not all of him is with me. Gwi-Ma still has part of his essence, which is why he can’t — why he can’t manifest. His soul is trapped down there, and Gwi-Ma’s torturing him.” Rumi tucked a strand of purple hair behind her ear, her eyes tight with emotion. “At least, I think that’s what’s going on.”
“Oh . . . kay.”
“My dreams have been getting more vivid as we’ve gotten closer to here,” she repeated. “We think there might be a tear in the honmoon just outside of town.” Her eyes flicked across the table. “Do you know where that might be?”
“Denny’s,” both Sam and Dean said in unison.
“Fuckin’ Denny’s,” Dean added, rubbing his forehead. That place had given him enough headaches to last a lifetime. “There’s a spot about an hour away, absolutely infested. If there’s a tear anywhere around here, it’ll be there. But — can you even rescue him? I mean, he’s a demon. He’s down in Hell for a reason, he —”
“News flash, white boy,” Mira said, sounding bored out of her mind as her thumbs flew over her phone screen. “Not everything falls into your precious Judeo-Christian mindset. He’s a demon, yeah. He made a deal. He paid the price. Now, he’s getting tortured for eternity, despite helping us save the world. Sound evil to you?”
“I mean — don’t get me wrong.” Dean pointed to Sam. “My little brother’s got demon blood in him. But still, you gotta consider —”
Rumi perked up immediately, her eyes wide as she looked at Sam. “You — really?”
“An experiment,” he explained, and wiggled his fingers. “I’m a freak of nature. Wooo, scary.”
“Look — okay.” Dean sighed. “Demon thing regardless. Let’s pretend this is possible. You want to go down there?”
Rumi swallowed, but nodded.
“Do you know anyone who’s been to this — demon realm? Any of you?”
“I — I mean.” Zoey shrugged, smiling halfheartedly. “We know Jinu.”
“He doesn’t count — oh, God.” Dean rubbed his forehead. He needed another drink. He needed a smoke. He needed —
Suddenly, his eyes stung.
Goddammit. God damn it, because he needed —
“That’s why we need your help,” Rumi said. “We don’t know what could be down there, especially with the hole in the honmoon being here . We’re used to hunting in Korea, not in America. We don’t know what kind of stuff might be crawling in and out, and I’d rather not go in completely blind.”
Silence.
“Dean,” Sam muttered. “She’s got a point.”
Dean squeezed his eyes shut. Hell. The idea of going back made his skin crawl.
“This is crazy,” he said, glaring at the three of them. “You know that, right? You know this is like, the easiest way to die an incredibly painful death?”
Rumi’s jaw stayed a firm line. She stared him down, unyielding, with the dark glint of knife-sharp determination in her eyes. Her friends looked slightly less dedicated, but they both nodded, glancing at Rumi. It was clear they’d do anything for her. It was as if the three of them had strings connecting all their hearts, and sorrow felt by one girl was felt by the whole.
Dean sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look. We can’t bring you down there.”
All three erupted into protest at once. Sam looked half-ready to join them, giving him a sharp look —
“Listen — listen.” Dean held up a hand. “Because we’re nice, we’ll let you guys stay the night in the living room if you want. Sam can walk you through the usual suspects of the area. You guys can get the lay of the land, plot your entrance, whatever. But we are not going with you. Capiche?”
Rumi’s face cycled through the various stages of grief, ending in confusion; but Sam looked satisfied, which was all Dean really cared about.
Finally, Rumi asked, “‘Capiche?’”
Dean nodded. “Say it back to me, so I know you understand.”
“Capiche,” she repeated, but still didn’t look convinced. Her eyes flickered. “Are you sure? I thought you guys did this kind of stuff.”
“We do,” Sam cut in, glancing at Dean. “Just not . . . rappelling into Hell kind of stuff. Well —” He snorted. “There was that one time —”
“Yes, but we don’t have Cas with us,” Dean said shortly.
“Ooh?” Zoey glanced between them. “‘Cas’? Who’s Cas?”
“Castiel,” Sam explained. “He’s an angel.”
Mira looked up from her phone. “What.”
“He’s an angel?” Zoey gasped, her eyes lighting up. “Wait! Does he have wings? And a halo? Does he, like —”
Dean stood, collecting his dishes. “I’m gonna clean up. Sam, walk them through the area?”
“Uh — sure.” Sam nodded, but his attention lingered on Dean. There was a furrow in his brow that wouldn’t go away, and his eyes carried a sharp, familiar keenness to them that made Dean nervous. He knew the look well: a descent into stir-craziness. He saw it every day when he looked in the cloudy bathroom mirror.
As Sam got the girls a map of the area, and walked them through the more common nasties they’d run into, Dean scrubbed the entire kitchen like a housewife. Once that was done, he dug spare pillows and blankets out of the closet in the hall and arranged them on the living room floor. When that was done, he went down to the garage and rifled through their assortment of supplies. He was a nice guy. He figured the girls had more gear in their bags, but he wasn’t about to send them into Hell with that little. They needed holy water, salt, knives . . . .
When he got back up, the girls were all crammed into the single bathroom, singing along to muffled music as they did some cryptic skincare routine. Sam was at the kitchen table, looking down at the copious amount of notes he’d taken and chewing on his lip. Dean was skirting around the table on his way back to the kitchen, ready to clean the whole thing again, when Sam spoke.
“Dean.”
He froze, gritting his teeth. He knew that tone. It was the tone always accompanied by puppy eyes. “Yeah?”
“We can’t let them go down there on their own.”
Dean heaved a sigh, and risked a glance over his shoulder — yep, dammit, Sam’s puppy eyes were back. Fuck.
"They're kids, Dean,” Sam chided. “You love kids."
"They're twenty-somethings,” Dean huffed. “Completely different thing.”
“They need our help.”
“They’re superpowered pop stars, they’ll be fine.”
Sam gave him a look. “Cas would want us to help them.”
Dean gripped the back of the nearest chair, closing his eyes. Even the sound of Cas’s name made him feel like he had something sharp stuck in his throat. “Cas isn’t here.”
He’s off cleaning up after demons. Taking care of whatever the fuck Heaven wants him to. Playing janitor. Jail guard. Staying away.
Dean swallowed. His throat was dry. “Besides. We can’t know what Castiel would want, because he hasn’t deigned to talk to us.”
“And you don’t find that suspicious?” Sam asked. His voice was rising. “Like, even a little bit?”
Dean squeezed his eyes shut. “Sam, I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about —”
“We haven’t heard from him since he got this place for us. You don’t think that’s weird? He hasn’t checked on us at all, despite what we went through —”
“Maybe he has a reason, okay?”
Dean blinked. His voice had come out sharper than he’d intended. He took a breath, trying to clear that last conversation from his mind.
What if — you stayed? We could use your help. And hey, easier to follow Heaven’s mandate to protect me, right?
But, the response. Low-voiced, with eyes fixed on the floor.
There are things angels like me aren’t supposed to have.
Dean’s eyes stung just remembering it.
Like what?
What, Cas?
“Dean?”
Finally, Dean looked up. His little brother’s eyes were flickering with concern, his brow furrowed with it.
Sam’s voice had gone soft. “Did something —?”
“Nothing happened.” Dean shoved the chair in, clearing his throat. Nothing. Nothing happened, and that’s the worst of it. He needed a drink. He needed a smoke. He needed —
Cas.
Dean’s eyes watered.
He needed Cas.
“Look, Sammy,” Dean said. “I know you’re getting stir-crazy. Me too. But you gotta remember what Cas said — we need to take breaks sometimes, we’ve been running ourselves raw —”
One of Sam’s eyebrows was raised. “Uh-huh.”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but it’s in your face, I can see you thinking —”
“ — ‘who are you and what have you done with my brother’?” Sam leaned across the table. His eyes were sharp, unyielding. “Dean. I know you. And you’ve been freaking me out.”
Dean looked back down at the wood.
“I don’t know what’s been going on between you and Cas, and to be honest, I don’t need to. What I do know is that you need to stop waiting. Get off your ass.”
Dean continued to stare at the table.
“Fine,” Sam sighed. He leaned back, running a hand through his hair. “I’m gonna go get some sleep. Just — think about it, okay?”
“Fine,” Dean echoed, as Sam got up. “I’ll think about it.”
Rumi had the dream again that night.
She saw a dark, barren landscape punctured by rock spires, all of them dwarfed by an enormous podium. At the top of its black stairs, ringed by pillars, purple and magenta flames blazed.
Suspended in their light, reduced to a dark silhouette lit only by scorching patterns, was Jinu.
Rumi tried to scream, but nothing came out. She could feel her own patterns growing hot, searing ribbons across her skin as horror and guilt clawed at her.
You couldn’t save him, that voice whispered, low and rumbling like an earthquake. ‘Giving his soul to you’ . . . what a sweet thought. Of course — impossible.
Jinu’s patterns flared with violet fire, and his scream of pain ripped through Rumi’s heart. His eyes were squeezed shut, his body contorted with it.
No! Rumi tried to move, but her limbs were frozen. All she could do was watch and strain against invisible bonds, her eyes welling with tears. No, no, no —!
She woke, gasping, on the Winchesters’ couch. She reached desperately for her sword, cold sweat trickling down her face, Jinu’s name on her lips —
“Rumi!”
Someone was grabbing her shoulders. Rumi thrashed for a moment before catching a flash of familiar pink, and stilled.
“Hey,” Mira said, her voice low. Her hair hung about her face in messy strands, and her headphones dangled around her neck. “It was a dream. It was a dream, okay?”
“He’s down there,” Rumi choked out, and tears began to flow. She trembled. “He’s t-trapped down there, and Gwi-Ma’s torturing him, and I c-can’t do anything —”
“Rumi.” Mira’s eyes flashed in the dim city light from the window. Her grip on Rumi’s shoulders was strong — steadying. “We are going to get him back. Do you hear me?”
Rumi drew in a shaky breath.
“We’re going to storm down to the underworld and force Gwi-Ma to free him. All of him. And we are going to get these flannel-wearing fucks to help us.”
Rumi let out a raw, soft laugh, smiling faintly. On Mira’s other side, Zoey was passed out in her burrito of blankets, sleep mask over her eyes, sleeping like a baby. The sight helped her breathe easier, along with the grounding strength of Mira’s gaze.
“You gonna be alright?”
“I think so,” Rumi sniffled. “Thanks, Mira.”
“Hey, whatever.” Mira smiled faintly, and reached to pull her headphones back up over her ears. “I’ll keep it half-volume. Nudge me if you need anything.”
Rumi smiled back, feeling her eyes well with tears as Mira flopped back down on the cushions and yanked the Chiefs blanket over her shoulders. Her eyes fluttered shut, and with her music, she was out like a light within seconds. Rumi turned, drawing in a shuddering breath as she prepared herself to try to sleep again, but she froze as her eyes caught on the man in the hallway.
Dean Winchester stood like a deer caught in headlights, wearing a ratty t-shirt and a pair of flannel sweatpants — even his pajamas , what the hell — and a toothbrush in one hand. Rumi could tell from his face that he hadn’t understood every word of their conversation. But, despite the fact that it had all been in Korean, some part of it seemed to resonate deep in the man’s eyes.
Rumi swallowed, and spoke in English: a single, soft word in the silence of the room.
“Please.”
Dean stared at her for a moment. He was one of the fiercest hunters in America, if Zoey’s research was right, but here he was in sweatpants with toothpaste around his mouth. Though, as Rumi held his gaze, that fabled fire began to spark again.
Dean leaned over and spat toothpaste into the kitchen sink. He glanced back at Rumi, his throat bobbing in a swallow, his voice a gruff whisper that rang surprisingly soft.
“This better be good, kid.”