Silent Restraint

"Oh my god," Dex whispered. She swallowed; she was sick to her stomach.

"You okay?" Dean asked.

She looked at him with wide eyes. "Am I okay? You just told me that everything I was glad doesn't exist does, in fact, exist. I'm not fucking okay." She stood. "I need to go for a walk."

Dean watched her go with sad eyes, thinking about how everyone seemed to leave. Dex, meanwhile, started at a fast walk, but soon she was at an all-out run along a lonely stretch of highway. The motel was in the middle of scenic nowhere, so she encountered pretty much no one except the full moon--

Her breath caught. Full moons equal werewolves. Werewolves are monsters.

And suddenly she knew she was going to die. She turned around immediately, her breath coming out in short gasps in the cool night air. She had to slow to a jog. And then, suddenly, she became pissed. It came on her in a wave and she couldn't shake it, even by picking up her pace. You know what she used to tell herself when things were bad? Well at least the monsters from Supernatural aren't real. Yea well fuck that now. And all Jimmy sad in response was 'Sorry'. Sorry what? Sorry for fucking scaring the fucking fuck out of her.

Dex slowed as the motel came back into view. She checked her dusty old watch: it was just after 9:30. She'd been gone for about a half hour, which startled her. It felt like maybe ten minutes. But it also gave her the courage to go inside because she didn't seem so desperate to get back into the warm glow of the cabin.

She stood staring at the Impala, shining under a thin and almost endearing layer of dirt from the drive in. Behind it was the little cabin, it' single window illuminated. Jimm-- Dean's silhouette faded against the blinds. She knocked on the door tentatively. He answered a minute later, eyes hooded as he said, "I didn't think you were coming back."

"Yea and get eaten by a fucking monster? I think not." She pushed past him, portraying false confidence. "Plus, I figure if you're legit Dean Winchester, then my best hope of survival is with you." Dex frowned at the skepticism on his face. "Meanwhile," she continued, "I call bullshit on you."

"Why?"

"You've got the car and the brother and all the facts straight, but not once have I seen you eat pie, and where the fuck are your humorous pop culture references? I need those in my life, straight from the source. Anyways, what I want right now is to take a shower."

Dex grabbed some clothes from her bag and went into the bathroom, leaving Dean to his thoughts. It had become almost a mission, making sure she believed him, and he didn't know why. Usually he was a little slower to the punch about telling people the truth. But, he had been rather distressed about the state of his car and his brother when he'd first dropped the bomb. So, he reasoned, it wasn't truly his problem, nor his complete fault. Now she knows. And what she chooses to do with that knowledge is up to her.

He began thinking about what she said. Humorous pop culture references. He cracked a smile at that. He admitted he didn't really use them much lately. Maybe the accumulation of shit right now had taken it out of him. That made him frown again. And then he got to thinking about pie. He truly hadn't had pie in a long time. And now since she mentioned it, he was craving it. So he wrote her a note and took off to find the nearest seller of pie. It turned out to be in a town about forty minutes away from the motel. He went into a shady-looking Save Mart and couldn't decide on a flavor and didn't know what she would like, so he just bought three of them. Then he got his hands on some beer and bourbon. He put his groceries in the back seat of the Impala and opened the front door when a voice stopped him.

"Dean Winchester?"

That voice. He knew that voice. He turned around. "Bayleigh?" He straightened and lifted his chin, towering over her relatively short stance. She shrunk perceptibly. "Where the hell is my brother." It wasn't a question.

"I'm not Bayleigh. I'm her sister and Sam's fine. But I need your help."

"With what."

"Getting them free. Listen to me." She handed him a folded up piece of paper, regaining some of her confidence. "Eight days from today, if you are not right where that paper specifies, I can't guarantee Sam will be okay any more, got it? I've protected him as long as I can, but I can only do so much."

"What-" She interrupted him, not done with her speech.

"And once my sister and your brother are safe, you need to do everything in your power to keep them together. Sam is convinced everyone close to him dies? Well in this case, if they aren't together, bad stuff will happen to both of them, and even if you don't want to help Amare, i know you want to help your brother. I have to go. Don't let them down. Be there."
"Wait, wait, where the hell-" but she was rushing off across the street already.

<><><><><>

Amare's door swung open and Mason walked in with a sloppy grin on his face that made her somewhat homicidal. He sat down on her bed and she didn't bother to turn away from the picture on her desk. She just picked up her pencil and pretended that she wasn't done with the picture and hadn't just been staring at it for the last five minutes.

"I brought you something." She didn't respond, so a minute later a plastic shopping bag landed in front of her. It had a decent variety of candy in it.

"How did..." She shook her head, not wanting to finish that sentence.

"Ren told me."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to not hate me." Add in thoughts.

"Will you look at me?" He sat to the left of her on the desk. She looked up at him. "I love you. Don't turn away from me, Amare. Just listen. I thought for the longest time that any way I could get you would be good enough, even if that meant letting you use me to go see that human. But now I realize that it's the kind of thing where I just have to let you go. I was an idiot. And so I just want you to know that when the time comes, I will help in every way I possibly can." He stood to leave.

"What time?" she asked.

"Perenna will tell you. Just don't forget. Okay?"

"Yea, sure, fine. What's happening."

He didn't say anything, just left the room. Amare groaned, hating vampires and their passion for this suspenseful bullshit.

She looked at the paper again, two eyes staring at her. Eyes that had haunted her for over a year now. She had never been good at graphite drawings, and so didn't know where this horribly realistic piece of art had come from. She crumpled it up and dropped it on the floor, then threw herself on her bed. She looked at the bag on her desk for an hour before cravings won and she retrieved it.

<><><Five days later><><>

She looked at the array of sharp objects in front of her. A small steak knife, two pairs of scissors, and a razor. Amare touched them each softly. None carried enough power to kill a vampire, but she wasn't a vampire, was she? Her hesitation wasn't because she didn't want to die. She really didn't care, and honestly didn't know if she could. What was staying her hand was Sam. She didn't know what would happen to him if and when she died and he was still in their custody.

The call of metal against skin hurt almost as much as the feel of metal against skin. She reached out and picked up the razor. It was cold in her hands, but it warmed between her fingers. She touched the edge to her skin

and then dropped it back onto the desk. She turned away from the arrangement and stood. She pressed her face to the glass of the window. After a second, she reached down and slid it open, holding on to the bars and inhaling the cold northern air. It didn't take long for her to walk back and sit back down in front of her tools. And when she did, she picked up the razor again without hesitation. And then, before she could talk herself out of it, she was in her bathroom naked in the bath tub with both of her wrists split, just to see what would happen. Fuck Sam, fuck Perenna, fuck the world. She didn't care anymore.

She watched the blood pool and drain with tired and somewhat delusional eyes. There was a knock on her bedroom door and then she heard it open. She knew who it was even before Perenna knocked on the bathroom door.

"Amare Love? Are you in there?" Amare responded with a grunt and Ren opened the door. Her eyes got as wide as dinner plates when she saw her sister. "Amare! Amare, what in the world--" She cut herself off and grabbed two wash cloths and tied them around her wrists. Amare was mildly light-headed from the blood loss, a relatively new sensation, and she really just didn't care what was happening. Meanwhile, Perenna had turned on the bath water and gotten her rinsed off and was now standing her up and putting on a stiflingly fluffy robe that Amare absolutely hated.

"What the heck, Amare. What were you even thinking. My Lord--" and then Ren smiled. Amare couldn't fathom why, so she just went along with it.

Soon, Amare was dressed in a long-sleeved floral thermal top and some of Perenna's jeans with thin white bandages stopping the blood flow from her wrists. Then she was hustled out of the door without Perenna and into Mason's waiting arms. He looped an arm through hers with a smile and next thing she knew they were in the basement.

"Bag him," Mason said gruffly to the guard out side of Sam's door. "Jason wants him." Amare was unsure what was happening, but she just went with it, her body working overtime to reproduce lost blood.

"But Jason's out-" the guard tried to talk but Mason held up a firm hand.

"I know where he's at and he requested the accompaniment of both Perenna and the human." The guard, obviously new and untrusting of Mason, hesitated. Mason drew himself up to an extraordinary height and put on the meanest, most authoritative face he could muster; Amare was impressed to say the least. "Or I could tell him that an incompetent guard wouldn't let me have him and then I could gladly serve your head on a plate to the entire Upper Family."

A moment later the locks slid into place and the brute bound and dragged Sam into the hallway. Amare knew just by the body language displayed underneath the burlap sack over his head that he knew it was her, even when Mason called her Perenna several more times. And then it dawned on her what was going on.

Mason led the way into the fading dusk and Amare wanted to laugh but she refrained. Goddamn Perenna had planned it all for the guard shift change. There was a five-minute window at seven o'clock where there weren't any guards, but that window was constantly changing times and locations and never held a pattern and somehow Perenna, that wonderfully beautiful girl, had gotten them out of that window. Mason rushed them to the edge of the property, a cliff, where he pulled Sam's hood off and clipped the zip ties around his hands.

"What is this," Sam asked gruffly, taking a defensive stance and moving in front of Amare.
"Stop, Sam," she said, but he didn't listen.

"Look, no time. This is the shortest drop into clear water. Jump in. There's a boat down there with a letter from Ren explaining what to do next." A light flicked on in Sam's mind and he relaxed a tiny bit.

"So she did plan this whole thing," Amare said, realizing the same thing. This was Perenna's plan to get them out: She took Amare's place to that she would have a chance to escape with Sam. It made her want to run back inside and hug her sister.

"Go now," Mason said, ignoring her question.

He reached for Amare and gave her one last hug and then pushed her to the edge. There was a moment's hesitation where she looked back at the house, seeking out her window but missing it through the trees. And then she jumped with Sam close behind.