I'll Tell You My Sins so You Can Sharpen Your Knife

Sarah returned home and immediately settled back into her house. She folded up the dust cloths and put them in the basement, figuring she might need them again. She contacted her old clients and started reading cards again, and worked on finishing her encyclopedia. She also began waitressing at the local diner three nights a week.

It was wonderful to leave the house on a regular basis.

Not long after she returned, she was awoken in the middle of the night. She wasn’t sure if it was the sound of rustling feathers, or the touch of a familiar presence that awoke her. She sat up and strained her eyes in the dark to try to see him, but she knew who it was.

“Cass.” She whispered. “You’re back.”

He looked down at himself. “Yes. I’m back.”

She threw off her blankets and crawled to the end of the bed hug him tightly. She closed her eyes tightly against her relief and job as Castiel slowly wrapped his arms around her.

“I’m so glad you’re safe.” She whispered. “I missed you.”

“I know.”

“Can you stay here tonight?” she asked. “Just so I can make sure you’re real in the morning?”

He froze for a moment, then nodded.

“Okay.” He agreed. “Just tonight.”

Castiel sat with his back resting on the headboard, completely upright. Sarah rested her head in his lap. It just seemed like the natural thing to do.
“Will you sleep like that?” she asked.

“I don’t sleep. I can meditate.” He looked down at her. “You seem different.”

She looked up at him. His eyes seemed to glow in the dark. “I killed all the witches.” She confessed. “To make sure I was safe. You couldn’t protect me anymore so I had to do it myself.”

He studied her. “There’s something else. It’s almost as if…you’re on a new path.”

She shrugged.

He frowned, then rested his hand on her head. “You know, I used to sit with you while you slept when you were a child.”

“And now it’s creepy.” She sighed.

“I would sit and watch your nightmares with you. Most of them had to do with your mother. But now you’re older and nothing scares you anymore. Even in the past few years, you’ve grown so much. That’s what always surprises me about humans. They are always changing.”

“I still have nightmares.” Sarah said. “And they’re still about her.”

“Go to sleep.” Castiel said softly. “I will watch your dreams with you.”

“I hope I don’t dream about anything embarrassing.”

“I know everything about you, Sarah.”

“Still. There’s a reason not everyone knows their guardian angel.” She looked up at him. “I suppose it could be worse. I could have had Balthazar. That would have been awful.”

~*~

“Hey, Sarah. How are you?”

“Hey, Sammy. I’m alright. What’s up?”

“We’ve, uh, been working on this thing to shut the gates of hell and…could you do us a favor? You remember Kevin Tran?”

“Prophet boy? Yeah, what about him?”

“He…it’s a long story.” Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. His head was killing him. Dean, luckily, was in the convenience store and wouldn’t see the pain he was in. The trials were wearing him bone-thin.

Sarah, on her end of the phone, looked around the empty parking lot. She had taken the call on her smoke break at work. “Well, I’ve got five minutes.”

“He was in hiding. On a boat. And Dean didn’t want him leaving until he was done so we’d bring him supplies and things – “

“Dean’s an ass.”

“Yeah, well, he’s your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Anyway, Kevin was starting to go stir crazy. He was freaking out about Crowley being after him, and now he’s gone. And we don’t know if he made a run for it or what.”

Sarah sighed and ashed her cigarette. “So you want me to ask Crowley if he took your boy? Crowley hasn’t returned my calls in months. He’s mad at me for some reason.”

Sam rolled his eyes. Crowley was probably upset that she killed half of the witches in the north east, and then celebrated by sleeping with his personal celebrity crush.

“Look, I’ll do what I can.” Sarah sighed. “I’m at work now but when I get home I’ll see what I can do, alright?”

“You have a job now?”

“That Sarah?” Dean asked as he approached.

Sam nodded as Sarah made snippy comments in his ear. Dean held out his hand for the phone and Sam handed it over.

“And no,” Sarah was saying, “I don’t wear a waitress’ uniform from the 50’s.”

“You sure about that, Sarah?” Dean smirked, handing his brother the coffees and cellophane-wrapped danishes.”Bet you’d look real good in one of those getups.”

“Dean.” She said, her face red. “Hi. Swat your brother for me.”

Dean reached over and smacked Sam on the upside of the head, giving Sarah a satisfactory yelp.

“When will we see you again?” Dean asked.

“Whenever you boys want to drop by. I’ve got a beautiful new house, and the kitchen. Dean, top of the line everything. I will make you boys the best dinner you’ve ever had.”

“Oh, yeah, sounds wonderful. You know, we would, if you would tell me where your beautiful new house and kitchen was.”

“Sam knows.”

“Sam won’t tell me either.”

“Smart boy.” She laughed. “Shut up, Winchester. You having a hard time getting laid or something?”

“Maybe I just want to see you.”

“Uh-huh.” She dropped her cigarette and ground it out with her heal. “Gotta go, break’s over. Catch you boys on the flip side.”

~*~

Sarah bit her pen cap as she scrolled down the webpage of a local Texas newspaper. She highlighted a section that seemed promising, and copied it to a word document. Across the street, an Impala pulled into a parking space. But it always seemed like she saw Impalas everywhere.

“Sarah?”

Sarah looked up and smiled at the elderly man standing over her. “Hello, Stewart.”

“I hope you haven’t forgotten about out appointment tomorrow.”

“I’d never forget you, Stewart.”

He patted her on the shoulder. “Sweet girl. Thank you.”

She smiled and sipped her coffee, then switched tabs on her laptop. It was a map with many location tags. Some were blue, others were red. She hummed as she searched for a tab that was close to the story she had found in Texas, and reached for her phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey Jarren. You still riding with Steve?”

“Yeah, he’s here…it’s Sarah…he, ah, well, it doesn’t really matter what he said.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “I can imagine. Well, tell him to pull on the cowboy boots. There’s a job in Kermit, Texas.”

“Isn’t that were Sam Winchester holed up for a year?”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Jesus, you people don’t even need a newsletter. What? You have slumber parties every few months? Gossip and braid hair?”

“Only slumber parties when you’re around Sarah.”

“Shut it, Jarred. I’m sending you the newspaper article now. Get on the road.”

She hung up the phone and took a monstrous bite of her cinnamon toast. Then she changed the color of one of the location tabs. She zoomed out on the map, and frowned at a tab that was very close to where she was.

Charlie Bradshaw was laughing her ass off in the passenger seat of the Impala. “That’s her? That’s the big, scary, wicked witch of the east? What? Did she try to take over toast-town?”

“Is it possible for you to shut up?” Dean snapped at her. “Or is that just not in your programming?”

But Charlie was still giggling. “Come on, I have got to meet this girl. Seeing as she managed to take you down, and all.”

Dean groaned and they got out of the car.

Sarah rolled her mouse over the label on her map that was in her town. A very familiar name and phone number popped up.

“Hey, Sarah.”

“Oh, Christ.” She grumbled, looking up at Dean with a scowl. “You know, you could have called.”

He sat in the chair across from her and the redheaded girl who was with him dragged over a chair from a neighboring table. She had a smile on her face that made it clear she was just bursting with verbal diarrhea.

“Well, you never tell me where you are. So I had to get extra help.” He gestured to the redhead. “This is Charlie.”

“Hi.” Charlie gushed. “I’ve heard so much about you. Sam talks about you all the time. He says you’re the big sister he wishes he had, instead of Dean. And he says you’re like super powerful and crazy smart and a really good person and – “

“I get it.” Sarah said. “Sam loves me.” She raised an eyebrow at Dean. “Trade Sammy in for her or something?”

“Her car broke down. I told her I’d give her a ride to the bus if she helped me find you.”

“So you drove from, Kansas, I’m guessing, to Missouri, to find a bus? How did you find me, anyway?”

“I’m a hacker.” Charlie clarified. “You, like, barely exist, you know.”

“What’s all this?” Dean asked, poking her notebooks and laptops that surrounded her laptop. “And how’d you know where I’ve been?”

“Well, with Garth disappeared.” Sarah sighed. “I don’t know. I got a package in the mail with the access codes to all these files on the dark net. And a note from Garth saying he couldn’t do it anymore and asking if I could take over. I guess Sam told him about me.”

“Don’t you have a job?”

“Well, I did. And I still have clients. But helping a bunch of gun-toting, unwashed idiot hunters seemed a little more important. So, I quit the job. Sides, I can still hustle pool.”

She smiled at Dean as she said it, which made him relieved. Not long ago, if Sarah had said that to him, it would have been with malice.

“Jesus, you’re turning into Bobby in spirit, too.” Dean muttered.

Sarah shut her laptop and stood. “Alright, you found me. Go on, go to the bus and then back to Sammy.”

“I came to see you!”

“He promised me a home cooked meal.” Charlie piped up.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Fine, you can come to my house and I’ll cook and Charlie, you can have his share.”

“Awh, Sarah, come on.”

She snatched her check off the table and went inside to pay.

“I like her.” Charlie whispered to Dean.