The Game of God: Day 157 - part 7

Faraday cage, bondage…

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Warnings at the end.

— Day 157, continued —

Alison waits, then finally, grudgingly, “Get on with it.”

“In 1836, Michael Faraday—one of the foremost minds in the study of electricity and electromagnetism—performed an experiment called ‘the ice pail experiment’,” he answers. “It was in relation to the examination of electromagnetic fields in the very new and exciting field of electricity. In 1920, ninety years later, the United States passed the Federal Power Act, which coordinated the development of hydroelectric power throughout the United States; by the end of World War II, most homes in this country were wired for electricity.”

Alison’s expression says she isn’t going to pretend to be interested much longer.

“The availability of electricity in the private homes of the average citizen is in itself miraculous—you truly have no idea, it’s only exceeded by the invention of the flush toilet, truly a wonder of the world—but it also made possible something entirely new in all of history,” he continues. “Until I can discover if Missouri’s house is still standing, I can’t be sure of how it was accomplished, but I’m certain that she and Pamela both discovered something no other psychic in history had the ability to do—live on a remote mountain free of other minds within their own homes.” Alison’s eyes narrow. “They could—for a short time—lose the use of their abilities.”

Alison straightens. “What?”

“Michael Faraday’s experiment was a demonstration of the principles that govern electromagnetism,” he continues. “It is also the basis of the creation of the Faraday cage. Effectively, using a mesh of conductive materials, it shields what is within from electromagnetic and electrostatic fields without, and vice-versa. Within that space, you would be unable to sense anyone outside of it as well as the reverse.”

“Psychic powers are electricity?” Alison asks blankly, and yes, that. Human curiosity can be very inconvenient.

“For the purposes of this conversation,” Castiel answers carefully, “and only this conversation, why not?”

“That’s… was that supposed to be an answer?”

“It’s more that you’re asking the wrong question, so who knows?” he explains. “The right question won’t be asked for roughly seven hundred years, and possibly two thousand more will pass before a partial answer is available that is also somewhat right. The Apocalypse has much to answer for when it comes to unconscionable delay of the progress of the sciences.”

“I’m guessing,” she says, “the answer requires watching several channels as well. Using the infinite cable TV method of explanation.”

“All the channels,” he tells her regretfully. “Suffice to say, the underlying principles that govern physics as they exist in this universe state that this should work. The reason I know they do is because of those two psychics.”

“Missouri and Pamela,” she says, nodding.

“Yes. Both were telepathic—both active and passive, send and receive, and read-write, as you are, though you’re far stronger. Missouri had both second sight and far stronger clairvoyance, though hers was more general, than either you or Pamela, while Pamela could view without harm a small portion of the infinite dimensions of infinity—though not more than that—and I think had the potential for necromancy, though—”

“Necromancy?” she asks in alarm. “That’s real?”

“Potential,” he assures her. “And yes. In any case: they were both very strong, unusually so, but also functional, which as I have said, is rather rare. They also used their abilities regularly, consistently, and without undue stress, and it must be said, were sane.”

“Right,” Alison says, nodding earnestly to show she doesn’t trust his judgement on ‘sanity.’

“I didn’t think about it at the time,” he continues, annoyed all over again how much he missed during his time with Dean on earth after his resurrection until he Fell: teleportation, infinite knowledge, and Dean as a reference on human behavior, and what did he do with it? Traumatized innocent sex workers, learned about garage sales, and didn’t smite Zachariah on spec. He was an idiot. “I should have; it’s very rare psychics live and work and interact with the world as easily as they did, much less regularly use their abilities in a professional capacity without some degradation in mental health. I suspect that both discovered—probably by accident—that there were places their abilities were dulled or even null. Faraday cages are ridiculously common, but size and quality would be factors; they’d need to have tried to use their abilities while inside a place that happened to be lined with a conductive material on all sides. A closed bank vault, for example, or an industrial walk-in refrigerator if they shut the door. It’s more likely, however, that they first discovered this in an elevator.”

“An elevator?” Alison says incredulously. “That’s it?”

“They would have noticed a reduction in background noise as well as experienced difficulty in reading anyone outside it, though how much would depend on the quality of the elevator,” he answers. “They were both very strong, however; anything that could do that would be a source of interest. They were highly intelligent as well as motivated; it wouldn’t have taken either of them very long to discover what caused it and to discover a way to use it.”

“Missouri’s house,” she says, nodding. “You think it was a Faraday cage?”

“Probably at most a few rooms,” he answers. “I would guess the bedroom, a closet, and perhaps the bathroom; who wouldn’t desire privacy when forced to commit unspeakable acts of elimination? Missouri’s house had two floors, so it’s probable she also had one on the ground floor for easy access in case she needed to rest between clients.”

“Why only a few rooms and not the whole house?”

“For one, both worked regularly with hunters as consultants, so they’d want to be able to sense things occurring nearby without leaving their home and its protective salt lines.” Alison nods, understanding. “Also, both ran very profitable businesses in psychic readings, séances, fortune-telling, and various other activities, and they worked from home as well. Considering the price of leasing commercial space…” He shakes his head. “A wise decision. The prices are ridiculous, and working from home has many tax benefits, in case you’re curious.”

Alison stares at him. “And you’ve—dealt with that?”

“Charles Emerson Winchester III’s business manager and accountant explained it,” he explains and Alison’s face lights up; she, at least, recognizes the reference. “Apparently, my commercial holdings have required a fifty-nine percent increase in price per square foot from three years ago, though I ordered that residential leasing rates remain locked into perpetuity. I think the leasing agency may be overcharging the tenants on the commercial properties: I should find someone who knows how to check for that.” He realizes Alison’s still staring at him. “What?”

“You’re second on the FBI Most Wanted,” she says, “and you have… real estate?”

“It’s perfectly legal,” he assures her. “Daphne incorporated a shell company for me—whatever that is—in the Virgin Islands, which now holds all my assets, including what I must admit is a truly impressive stock portfolio. Though it did help to be able to regularly verify my hunches with a glimpse into the future, especially with futures. Under a name other than that I used during my career as a stockbroker, of course; I understand that this is common when creating off-shore accounts, for some reason.”

She rests her chin on her hand. “Stocks I get, but why the real estate?”

Yes, that. “The apartment I was living in while I was in New York was being converted to private residences and I hadn’t yet completed the mission. I didn’t want to move, so…”

“You bought your apartment.”

“The building,” he says reluctantly, and Alison’s mouth drops open. “It was a very nice building and had a great deal of historical value; it was an example of something called a ‘brownstone’—or ‘flagstone,’ perhaps? I’m certain, however, that this was part of a major revolution in architectural design and shouldn’t be lost to posterity. You may not be aware of this, it’s also a superlative investment when one is focused on the long term.” Alison’s eyebrows inch upward. “Also, a safe base in New York City would be extremely useful to our plans. Honestly, acquiring a legally owned dwelling with paid utilities in every major city was only practical. Sometimes, you want to have an identity with established residency and safe houses with beds that don’t smell of blood, myrrh, and wet dog. And working electricity, which suffice to say was less a given than you might think when regrouping from evil.”

Alison eyebrows reach maximum height. “Okay, now the real reason.”

“Have you ever heard of a concept known as ‘rent-controlled’?” Alison bites her lip, nodding. “The residents were elderly, and after discussing the situation with Daphne, she thought it would be—less complicated—to simply purchase the building myself so nothing would change.”

“That’s what I thought,” she says after a moment, sounding inexplicably strangled as her cheeks gain color. “So everything worked out?”

“Everyone was very pleased,” he answers, encouraged by her interest. “I received baskets of homemade baked goods for several weeks, and Mrs. Sheppard, Mrs. Rodriguez, and Mrs. Kowalski were determined to have me meet their unmarried daughters at the next opportunity. Mrs. Panson introduced me to her unmarried son, Jamal, an architect with a bright future in post-modernism who also had a secondary skill in interior design and remodeled my residence. I wish I’d appreciated food then,” he muses. “I suspect they were delicious.”

“And the women?” she asks. “And Jamal?”

“I have no idea if they were delicious,” he says, not without regret, and Alison’s cheeks grow pinker still. “Nor would I ever describe any person with whom I had sexual relations thus, for that is an excellent way to learn what ‘cut off’ means, as more than one person learned in Chitaqua. Some,” he adds in distant horror, “didn’t even have working showers.”

Alison bursts into laughter, burying her face in her arms on the desk. Biting back a smile, Castiel waits for her to recover, and when she lifts her head, he’s pleased to see some of the tiredness has receded.

“Does Daphne—who was Daphne again?”

“My lawyer.”

Briefly, Alison looks as if she might need another pause, but after taking a deep breath, she settles again (though much pinker). “Right, of course. So does she know… I’m not sure what goes here,” she confesses. “Anything about you?”

“She knows I’m off the grid for the foreseeable future due to an interest in the exciting field of alpaca husbandry, currently located in rural Greece.” Alison makes a sound like a squeezed kitten. “I’m eccentric, you see, which is the word for people who are both crazy and very wealthy, or so I was told.”

“That sounds right,” she says, hazel eyes sharp as they study him for a long moment. “I’m remembering that talk about you discovering the meaning of humor.”

“I’ve been told it’s the best medicine.” He considers for a moment. “No one can think clearly when they’re afraid or in pain; this much of the human condition I’ve learned intimately. I would not offer you false hope, but—in your position I’d tell me to take my clever ideas and fuck myself with them. I need you to believe what I’m telling you, because it’s true. We can do this.”

Alison’s expression doesn’t change, then abruptly, she says, “Missouri and Pamela—they weren’t crazy and ran businesses. Lived in towns. Hung out with people and weren’t crazy, that’s what you’re telling me?”

“Yes. They also had very active social and personal lives,” he confirms, watching her carefully. “They were extraordinary, as you are, but their gifts were the least of what made them what they were; they could simply be people as well. They were able to have normal lives, and you can have that as well.”

“This Faraday cage—when I’m in it, I won’t hear anyone?”

“The first version will only reduce the noise,” he says honestly, but for some reason, that makes her relax. “Eliminating it entirely will take more time; we’ll need to find the right materials and adjust it to you specifically, and every time your abilities increase, we’ll need to adjust it again. It’s not a single solution; it will be a work in progress, perhaps one that will continue all your life. I know that doesn’t sound—”

“It sounds real,” she interrupts, and he sees tears hovering in her eyes. “It sounds like something we could do. So go back: initial version, tell me the results, use numbers. Five, ten percent, maybe fifteen? I can—I can really use that.”

“You will experience, at minimum, a fifty percent drop in noise.”

Alison’s mouth drops open before she covers it, eyes wide. “Fifty?”

“Using the most easily accessible materials and the crudest and most quickly constructed version, yes, which is first on the list. However, what we need for the long term is something that can be designed and installed permanently—your bedroom, the hall bathroom—in fact, that half of the first floor of your building, depending if we can get the original floorplan of your building. Initially, however, with the very first, if you accept Teresa’s assistance without argument, you will be able to drop your shields entirely and rest with only minimal interruption for at least six hours and if I’m in Ichabod, I may be able to assist and extend that, though I’m not sure how long.”

Alison lets out a breath, closing her eyes. “I would really…really like that.”

“This will help with your instruction as well.” She opens her eyes, looking interested. “You are tired, and while your progress is excellent, it’s also a source of additional stress with all you have to do to control your abilities. Your fear is also a problem—not that I blame you—and this will assist with that as well.” Now comes the difficult part. “The problem is—”

“How to get one of those yesterday?”

“No, though that’s also a problem for more than time-related reasons,” he says. “I can’t build one myself—theory isn’t the same as knowing how to do something—and this can’t be as simple as the suits worn by people who work on power lines.”

“I can get a suit?” Alison exclaims.

He feels as if she’s missing the point. “Yes, but—and please accept this as a given—even if there were any in Ichabod—and there aren’t or Tony and his teams would be using them and not the substandard replacements they created to work with massive amounts of electricity—it won’t help you. As—for the purposes of this conversation right now only—your abilities are not electricity anymore.”

“Light is a wave,” she intones solemnly, “and a particle.”

Sometimes, yes. “Given this: we need someone who knows electrical engineering or at least can learn very quickly the technical aspects of how to build the room.”

“Walter,” she says, nodding. “God, he’s gonna love this, and Tony will love me for giving him a project. And I don’t go crazy: everything’s coming up Alison.”

He smiles at her. “So sayeth Millhouse.”

“Simpsons fan,” she says in satisfaction. “I knew it.”

“To return to a much less enjoyable topic,” he says regretfully. “If Missouri’s house is still standing, that might give us guidance on the design aspects, but that still requires some minimal knowledge of one, how to build things, and two, how to make the thing built a Faraday cage specific to you, one that can be regularly upgraded without requiring major construction on a regular basis. The correct materials must be found, a location chosen, the room has to be designed, built, and tested, it must be placed somewhere you would normally spend time, and no one—except you, me, Teresa, and Dean—can know about it or even guess what it is, why it’s there, or even that it exists.”

Alison checks her nod. “What?”

---

After what feels like days, he realizes he’s been quiet too long, but he can’t bring himself to care. All he feels is tired: more than he was after running miles outside the Ichabod’s walls, even more than right after he woke up from that goddamn fever. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this tired in his life.

“Why did you come to the two month thing after the second class was done?”

Startled, she looks at him.

“Thought that would be the last place you’d go,” he explains, not sure why he’s asking, but at least it breaks the silence. “Get away from Micah now that you and Erica weren’t hanging out?”

“No—I mean, yeah, but that’s not why.” She slumps back against the wall. “I was just going to watch, but I needed the practice. It wasn’t like it’d make a difference if I worked out or not; not like anyone would notice. I mean,” she says quickly, “so many people from the first class, things going on, just—”

“I know what you mean.” Dean grew up learning how to hide in plain sight, he’s good at it, but those first weeks after he arrived in Chitaqua taught him what it really meant to be invisible. Alicia didn’t even need sigils tattooed on her to be stuck there: the only people who even knew or cared she existed were… yeah.

“I hated them,” she says in a sudden rush, like she’s confessing to something worse than murder.

When he looks at her, she’s staring at the floor. “Uh, yeah,” he agrees, wondering if he’s supposed to reassure her that’s okay or something. He can do that. “I mean, Erica tried to kill you and Micah—”

“Not them,” she interrupts, then wrinkles her nose. “I mean, not just them. The second class.” She peers up at him warily when he doesn’t respond. “You—aren’t as horrified as I expected.”

“I can try,” he offers. “Can’t promise to be convincing, though. All of them?”

“All of them,” she agrees, making herself comfortable. “I can even tell you why on an individual as well as collective basis.”

He nods; why not? “Go for it.”

“Amanda, for being good at everything and I mean everything,” she starts with the obvious gimme. “She walked by, people noticed and were justifiably terrified; she was on the field, everyone stopped to watch, or hide if you were the enemy, of course.”

“Of course,” he agrees, wondering where that quiver in his voice is coming from.

“Like, how do you hate someone just for being themselves?” she continues resentfully. “And being hot the whole time, that’s bullshit. And James—God, I hated him. He’d make terrible jokes, but everyone thought he was hysterical—why? He always laughed before he could finish the punchline!”

Dean flashes back to that day he came home to his living room filled with stoned people and the way Cas looked at James. “I always hated guys like that.”

“Lena—not as witty as she thinks she is,” Alicia continues venomously. “And if Mark could learn the difference between ‘explaining something’ and ‘so condescending he’s lucky I didn’t rack him,’ that’d be great. Penn and her—”

“Whistling,” Dean says, nodding. Cas mentioned that, too. That’s gotta be annoying, now that he thinks about it.

“Joe’s ‘totally everyone’s buddy’ shtick, Zack’s ‘woe is me, hot guys are fighting over me,’ Sean actually falling for it, and Mira…” It takes him a moment to realize that sound is Alicia grinding her teeth as she glares at the floor.

He’s so glad he’s not the floor right now. “Mira?” he prompts, surreptitiously checking the tile for Alicia-glare-based cracks; there aren’t any (yet) and that’s a genuine goddamn surprise.

“Mira,” she agrees, eyes narrowing, and Dean’s aware of a weird tickle starting in his throat. “I loathed her. She’d show off her routines and everyone thought she was small and adorable and so fucking talented, ooh, however do you do those things, must be magic. It was worse watching her, sometimes; we had the same classes as kids, so it was like a tinier, prettier, more talented, more well-adjusted, more flexible, more awesome me who could still nail a round off, three backflips, and a double layout at eleven at night on bare dirt; what was that shit? Salt in the wound?”

Before he realizes what’s happening, he bursts into laughter. Horrified, he tries to choke it back, but it’s a lost cause: salt in the wound, Christ. Alicia jerks her head up to glare at him, mouth working silently before she makes a sound like a squeezed kitten and collapses against his shoulder, giggling so hard it’s just on the edge of hysterical. Fair enough: he’s there, too.

“You wouldn’t think,” she says between helpless giggles, “I could think less of myself. But silently hoping Mira landed on her face—just once, was that so much to ask?—proved how very wrong I was. Educational, am I right?”

“Story of my life.” He doesn’t need Dean the former for this one; he’s just the latest and most dramatic on a list that started with Dad. “My brother—he went to college,” he hears himself say. “I was so pissed, could have killed him for leaving me and Dad. His senior year, I went to see him, and…”

“Hot girlfriend, awesome apartment, bright future?” Alicia asks in the voice of depressed personal experience. “’Look upon all the ways my life is awesome while I count them for you? Can you count that high?’”

“Shitty student housing.” An apartment, a place he lived, a home. A girlfriend, someone who he’d never have to lie to or leave. Friends, a history he was writing himself, a future he’d decided for himself, a life. “A full ride to Stanford: he was going to be a lawyer. Did I mention that? Salt—”

“—in the fucking wound,” she finishes for him. “Tell me you at least lurked in the shadows and jumped him, got some feelings out. I’ve found ambush does wonders for my mood, fact.”

“Caught me at it and put me on my ass in, like, a minute.” Alicia’s arm slides around him for a comforting hug, which he appreciates. “It wasn’t then… no, it was then,” he corrects himself impatiently. “I just didn’t want to admit it.”

“You see what you could have been.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Who you could have been. And you wonder why you didn’t even try.”

It occurs to him that in no world should anyone not be drinking heavily during a conversation like this. Christ, there isn’t even alcohol in the goddamn room.

“Brother? I can beat you there,” she says. “You know who I hated most of all?”

That’s an easy one. “Vera.”

She lifts her head, eyes tear bright. “Shittiest thing in the world, am I right? I was one of the people who tried to kill her, and I hated her for that, too.”

He tightens the arm around her shoulder.

“She had everything. My husband beat me up for fun; her girlfriend thought Vera stumbling was a world-stopping event and fuck everyone’s lives if she got so much as bruised during training. My best friend—” Her voice breaks, and beneath his arm, he feels her tense. “My best friend fucked me over; hers is in love with her and thinks everything she does is wonderful. Debra and Micah were both out with Erica and Heath that day on patrol,” she interrupts herself. “I resented her for that, too; crazy, am I right? If Debra had just shoved Micah at the Croat or whatever happened… like, what the fuck, Vera, your girlfriend could have made my life a thousand percent better if she just…”

Alicia shakes herself.

“Yeah, I hated Vera. Vera was sad—justifiably, Debra was dead, it was awful, I said this was shitty, right? Consider that a blanket disclaimer—and three people plus Cas to comfort and hover and make her feel better. Vera has problems in class? Special midnight tutorials just for her by the other woman in love with her.”

“To be fair, it was for her, Joe, and a couple of others.” She looks up at him despairingly. “Sorry. I mean, what the fuck?”

“Boom,” she says, but now she just sounds tired. “She was late, one day. After training ended, I mean, during first week of the two month thing. I was—I don’t even remember, there was a dummy involved and I was having feelings? Ten minutes late, maybe, but everything stopped; Cas, Amanda, and, like, six people went looking for her. I get why,” she adds, like she’s offering what she knows is a terrible defense. “I mean, paranoia as survival trait, it works; they watched out for each other. I got that, but—Cas actually brought her physically back and deposited her by Joe. She was glaring the whole time, like, what a burden it is that people care about me enough to worry when my bathroom break takes too long. Baby, let me tell you about two weeks in that fucking cabin and no one even dropping by to see if I was alive.” She stiffens, wrapping her arms around herself. “Or say hi. That would have been nice, too.”

“Alicia—”

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “I didn’t know I was still kinda cranky about that.” Before Dean can say ‘are you fucking with me?,’ she adds, “I’m over it, really, even the part where I recently found out Vera’s also a hotter, better, smarter, practitioner-goddamn-nurse shaped me, who also single-handedly saved our leader’s life. I brought many books, though.” She looks at him solemnly. “And sterilized many things, also super useful. It helped. Cas told me so.”

“Thank you,” he says, nodding. “Should have said that before; sorry about that.”

She smiles, not quite convincing but damned if she doesn’t try. “You’re welcome.”

“So gotta know,” he starts, not sure why he’s even asking except that he wants to know. “Why did you say yes when Cas asked you if you wanted to try the knife dancing thing?”

“Because he asked.” She ducks her head, but not before he catches the flush spreading across her cheeks. “It was so weird. The guy I tried to kill, he knew who I was from a glance at me hiding in some very concealing bushes like—no idea, something weirder than a flasher. Creepier, too: doing it while silently resenting everyone, come on. He even knew my name—didn’t expect that at all.” He nods, throat tight. “If Cas had asked me to throw myself on the wooden blade he was holding, I might have actually done it. Instead, he asked me if I wanted to try, so I did that instead.”

Cas left something out when he told Dean about this, but it probably didn’t even occur to him. “You didn’t know it was supposed to be hard.”

“I thought Amanda was just fucking off because she didn’t like knives and Cas was making her,” she admits. “Cas’s expression when I was done, though—that was a clue.”

“And then you did what, thirteen other dances to be sure?” She giggles. “Come on, you were just showing off, admit it.”

“Damn straight,” she retorts. “You watch Amanda being fucking awesome at everything with what looked like minimal effort and adorable Mira second in goddamn Nationals being super impressive for a week straight—you know she missed Olympic qualification by one bad balance beam routine? Such bullshit—you get a little competitive.” She sighs dejectedly. “Fourth intermediate. Couldn’t keep on beat, pissed me off so much, but I knew how to deal with it: work and a lot of it. I didn’t even realize I was that out of shape, do you believe it?”

Dean reviews Chitaqua’s residents for the concept of ‘out of shape’ and finds nothing. “You’re kidding.”

“Please,” she says, and actually rolls her eyes. “Even the three month training, that was nothing compared to my schedule growing up,” she scoffs. “My parents put me in everything—possibly to minimize interaction with me, who knows: dance, gymnastics, figure skating, you name it, I was doing it. When I decided to try competitive cheerleading, that’s when things got interesting. Sixteen hour days starting an hour before dawn in the weight room before warm-ups, dance, choreography—that was kind of almost a break—then off to the gym, my coach riding my ass and then me riding my squad’s ass until I went to bed—more like ‘fall helplessly onto relatively flat surface not even picky because fuck showers I can’t feel my legs,’ but you get the idea. School year—not better, but class added variety.”

“Cheerleading has coaches?”

“My parents hired me my own,” she tells him. “You don’t make head at fifteen and lead your squad to first in state three years in a row on your can-do attitude. Only practice, a strong work ethic, utter misery, and physical pain on a daily basis can get those kind of admittedly very impressive results. Also, ice packs: never leave home without ‘em, I always say.” She heaves a sigh. “I was so out of shape, Dean—that intermediate was nothing. Easy to fix: apply work ethic to practice and go.”

Dean wonders if you can become exhausted by proxy just listening to someone describe what sounds like a creative way to make someone torture themselves and like it. “So you came back the next night to keep going.”

“I did,” she agrees. “I mean, I would have anyway—this was fun, which I didn’t even know things could be anymore, and Cas was, like, five thousand times nicer than Coach—”

“Was your coach a literal demon?” he demands, horrified.

“In retrospect,” she answers, frowning, “yeah, he probably was; can’t knock his method, though. But—I also came back because Cas—he asked me to. Amanda offered bribes—really good ones, fuck sexuality, I’d heard stories about her and no lie, a great time would have been had by all—but Cas just asked. But like it was important that I said yes.” She looks at him. “You know?”

She wasn’t invisible anymore. “Yeah.” Clearing his throat, he decides to just ask. “Micah and Erica didn’t—uh, try to stop you?”

She snorts. “Oh yeah. They talked to me—separately, of course—and they threatened me, like I cared. They couldn’t kill me, not after what happened at the cabin, so what was left?” She laughs quietly, shaking her head. “There was nothing they could do to me that came close to what I’d done to myself. And it wasn’t like they did anything but talk. Eventually, it hit me why; they couldn’t do anything. I was at the training field every night, right under Cas’s eye—I was expected there.”

Her voice changes into something that hurts to hear: wonder. “Cas would wait for me to arrive, and if I was late, he’d ask why and wait for me to answer. Before we started, he’d ask about my day, what happened, if I was injured on duty. If I didn’t tell him—I did that once,” she interrupts herself. “Only once, though. I—my side, just a bruised rib, but it hadn’t happened on duty and I didn’t think… anyway, I missed a step, and Cas saw—I don’t know, but he stopped me and asked who I’d rather have examine me in the future before and after each session, him or Amanda. And I should know he checked Amanda daily and it was always professional or something like that, he used a lot of words. Also, I got a lecture on disappointment and losing fingers: I was weeks getting over that.”

Dean doesn’t smile, but he’s gotta wonder if Cas borrowed one of the other Dean’s speeches. “You don’t say.”

“I said he could do it. It was nice,” she says, a smile in her voice. “He’d ask about a bruise from weeks before, or about my ankle because I’d mentioned I’d stumbled, or—it was nice. He remembered everything I told him—which after the name thing, I should have seen coming—and…” She pauses for a quick breath. “Sometimes, after, Amanda would ask me to hang out with her and Risa and Vera for a couple of hours. Kamal and Jody would walk me home so they could tell me more about rollerblading—it was really cool, like figure skating with wheels, I had no idea—or Mira and I would spend hours talking about our respective coaches and showing off, as you do…” She trails off, curling more tightly into herself. “That was—that was nice, too.”

He remembers Christmas Eve with Cas, Amanda, and Joe. “Yeah, I bet.” Clearing his throat (again, what’s with that?), he asks, “And when the two months were done?”

“I’d finished the master series with two knives,” she says, eyes distant. “I’d graduated to live steel two weeks earlier, Amanda spent the first three days watching between her fingers, for one can easily lose a finger. I was missing something, though,” she adds, forehead creasing in thought. “It’s not enough to be fast and know all the moves like you breathe; it has to be like you’re breathing them. Does that make sense?” He nods; he can guess, at least. “Nothing can teach you that but practice, and I wasn’t there, not yet. I needed more time. And I was out of it.”

She’s quiet for a moment before continuing. “The last day, I said thank you, and Cas gave me the practice blade I’d used in training and my first two real blades: perfect size, perfect weight, perfect everything, and had never been used before. No idea where he got them. Then he drew the circle, told Amanda to call the time, and invited me inside for one dance. The point…” She swallows. “I had to blood each knife, but the cuts had to be shallow, only enough to draw blood, nothing else. Not easy. He made two hits—and so did I. He probably threw it, but even Amanda wasn’t sure, though granted, looking through her fingers obscured the view.”

He would, too.

“It’s easy to kill,” she says. “Really easy. That’s the funny thing; it’s easy, you need skill, yeah but it’s nothing compared to avoiding it, that’s the real test. He told me it was ritual—the first time you use your blade, you blood it on your greatest enemy, your most trusted friend, or yourself, who, because this is Cas, explained could be both or either, but never neither: that’s a quote, by the way.” She takes a deep breath. “I went home, life went on, duty was duty, Micah regained the ability to unexpectedly lose his temper—but not as often, because ‘private’ wasn’t easy, with people coming by to see if I wanted to hang out and me not always being there—and I would stay awake at night thinking how not only was I a murderer and an attempted murderer and how no one would probably like me all that much if they found out about either of those, I still didn’t know what I was missing in the master series. Self-pity and a lot of it, is what I’m saying. One night, it occurred to me at least one of those I could try and fix, so I got up, got my blades, and started out the door—and Micah tried to stop me.”

Tried. “And you stabbed him?” Christ, he didn’t realize how much he was looking forward to this part.

“First we talked—at least, I said ‘move’ and he said ‘no,’ but more words and some physical persuasion—and believe it or not, that might have convinced me. Then he grabbed my right wrist, and as it turns out, I was holding a knife in that hand; who saw that coming?” Slowly, she starts to smile. “Didn’t even think about it: kicked his feet out from under him, put my first knife in his thigh and held the second one at his throat. It was me, though; that was the weird part. It was the me that for two months, I kept leaving on the training field every night; why did I do that? I told Micah he had until dusk to leave Chitaqua, or I’d find his femoral two inches above his dick and watch him bleed out. And I meant it.”

“Good,” he says, meeting her eyes and sharing her satisfaction.

“Then I left. Went to the practice field and worked on the first of the master series again until a couple of hours before dawn,” she says. “Went home—no Micah—and went to bed, slept like a baby. Spent the next day on the training field for more practice, went home, no Micah, but I was tired, so I just went to bed.” She shrugs. “When I reported to the infirmary for duty at dawn, Darryl told me Micah limped out of camp—well, in a jeep, I guess—at dusk the day before. The way he looked at me…”

“He knew how Micah got that limp.”

“Yeah,” she says, voice edged with pleased malice. “Micah told him while he fixed him up. His face, Dean—it didn’t make up for that medical report and two weeks in that cabin, but it was a nice down payment, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” he says, grinning at her. “I do.”

“When I went to the mess for lunch, I found out everyone knew. And it hit me—Micah was gone, and Stephanie—she went with him.” She wets her lips. “She stayed with a man who unexpectedly lost his temper like a lot, went to the salon every six weeks because he liked blondes—God, I actually went along with that for almost nine years, do you believe it?—and killed babies, and then tried to kill more people, and—and she was gone. Alicia, though—Alicia was something of a mystery; I hadn’t had a lot of time getting to know her. But, I did know she was very good with knives and people liked her, both awesome things, and I wanted to find out what else she was.

“Amber didn’t like who she was living with; I said she could move in with me,” she continues. “Then Brenda had a fight with her boyfriend, and I had two roommates to hang out with. Amanda and I sparred twice a week; once in her specialty, once in mine. I learned surgery from Darryl and how to sew from Vera and how to drink from Ana and how to conspire against my team leader with Joe. I practiced every day I was in the camp, and after a month, I knew I had the master dances down. Cas came out on the training field every night for a week to help me build my dance, the one that was all of them, first with wood, then with live steel. Then I seduced him the last night because he was hot, I’d heard from many reliable sources it would be incredibly fun, and—I could do that now. I could do anything or everything, whatever I wanted. So that’s what I did.” She looks at him ruefully. “You probably won’t believe this, but—by then, I’d forgotten all about Stephanie. It wasn’t that hard; we were nothing alike. She was afraid all the time, and tired, and weak—”

“She wasn’t weak,” Dean interrupts, holding her eyes. “You weren’t weak. You couldn’t have done anything you did after what happened at Cas’s cabin if you were weak.”

He looks at her, trying to see blonde hair, a lawyer’s gorgeous wife whose friends were sleeping with the husband that beat her and whose parents didn’t care, who dressed up for lawyer parties (a circle of Hell all on its own) and pretended this was supposed to be a happy life—and can’t. He can see the teenage cheerleader who worked to be the best at what she did, though, the EMT whose shifts included patching up guys on the sidewalk while under fire who gave no fucks about her manicure, and the woman who went to the hospital nursery because those kids didn’t have anyone else to give them mercy. She wasn’t weak, not by a longshot, and he hates everyone who made her believe such an obvious lie.

“When I saw Micah outside Ichabod… I didn’t even think about it, just reached for my knife and waited for him to get in range,” she whispers. “Five feet, Dean: I keep thinking about that. Five. Fucking. Feet.” She pauses. “Not to hide anything, I didn’t even think about that. I just…”

“You wanted to kill him,” Dean says. “And Stephanie, once and for all.”

“Yeah,” she breathes. “That’d be it.”

Dean tries to think of what to say, but his mind’s blank. “Kyle,” he blurts out, relieved. “I forgot to tell you.”

“I heard you talking to Joe and Amanda.” She frowns at the floor. “I was almost out the door and then realized I forgot the notebook and—anyway, heard it. Thank you.”

“You didn’t think I’d do it.” It’d be a goddamn miracle to even get benefit of the doubt there.

“I believed you,” she answers, oblivious to her extempore performance of a miracle in three words. “That’s why I went back to get the notebook in the first place, so I could check something before I talked to you. It was nice to hear, though.”

Right, that. “So what did you lie about?”

Alicia straightens, composing herself, and he doesn’t wonder anymore how she does it. She’s been doing that shit for a long time. “So what I lied about—Erica’s plan, such as it is, is still unknown but—but I think she might accept a counteroffer, or at least think about it. So not a lie so much as a very big omission to my assessment earlier.”

He honestly doesn’t need to even ask, but why not? “A counteroffer.”

She nods. “Me.”

---

He thinks how to put this tactfully, then realizes that in this case, even if he could, he shouldn’t.

“This room would be a miracle, yes,” he says. “It could also be called a prison. Which means it will also need manual controls for you to adjust the strength as well as an override that will shut it down entirely.”

“What? Why—”

“And the shutdown mechanism must be both well-hidden and easy for you to access so you can easily do it yourself, even if bound.”

“Bound?” she asks in alarm, voice rising. “Why would I want to—”

“Non-recreationally.”

Alison reddens. “Uh, I didn’t mean that I, uh—” Castiel raises an eyebrow, and she laughs, shaking her head. “Sorry, forgot who I was talking to. Bucket list?”

“More a hobby, I think,” he answers, matching her smile and attempting (with very little success) not to imagine Dean thus on display in their bed. He takes a moment to ponder the libido’s inexplicable inability to understand appropriate time and context; this is ridiculous.

“You were saying?” Alison says innocently, chin in her hands and grinning mockingly. “Faraday cage, bondage…”

That, yes. “I’ll also need to teach you how to break a Faraday cage with the power of your mind alone.” He tries not to slump, but really, his to-do list is far too long already (and these jeans are becoming uncomfortable). “Which means I have to work out how that can be done.”

Alison frowns, settling back in her chair. “In case someone locked me in there. You think anyone would?”

“It doesn’t matter if anyone would,” he says evasively. “It only matters that they could. But yes, it’s inevitable; it will happen, so best plan for it. You’re a psychic, and your abilities make you an asset—and that means to someone, somewhere, you are also a liability. Eventually, someone—from intentions good to terrible—will want to imprison you. That Missouri and Pamela—if I’m correct, and I am—discovered this, and I was able to extrapolate it from simply knowing they were psychics who had normal lives, then someone else will. Especially those motivated to find out, for whatever reason.”

“Not kill me?”

“I’m certain some will want to, yes, but far more worrying will be those who want to use you,” he tells her. “And before you state nothing could make you, I can think of several things that would make me if I had your abilities.”

“Dean,” she says, nodding. “Well, for me, Teresa.”

“Manuel and his family, Tony and his, Sudha and hers, Neeraja, Dolores… the list goes on. For that matter, this town.”

She looks down. “Not a people person, remember?”

“It’s different when they’re your own.” She gives him a sour look but doesn’t deny it. “However, it’s equally likely that fear would be the motivator. Someone who is afraid but thinks imprisoning you for the safety of the world would absolve them of having to commit murder.”

She makes a face. “I see it, though right now, that doesn’t seem too bad.”

“Suicide by ex-angel sounds like a good idea right now,” he retorts. “At this moment, I’m skeptical you are capable of having a good idea, and I mean that in the most sympathetic way possible.”

She rolls her eyes, which he takes as agreement.

“And in case you’re still not sure, how much do you want to be a very useful item of clothing for a very inspired demon?” She winces. “This also gives a measure of safety to whoever works on this; Teresa’s bond with you will protect her mind, I can’t be read and because of that, neither can Dean. It’s everyone else’s mind who will be a problem. In this much, we’re fortunate this can’t be implemented immediately, since I’m as unsure as you are about the ethics of removing memories in a case like this, with or without permission.”

“There’s that, yeah.” She sighs. “So yeah, I get this isn’t a now thing. We’re talking what, a few weeks—”

“As soon as the barrier is up, depending on travel conditions, Wichita should have something we can use temporarily,” he interrupts, and Alison straightens in her chair. “A team from Chitaqua and one from Ichabod can accompany you and search while you rest. It’s effectively abandoned, so at your current range—and for at least two more expansions—you shouldn’t be able to hear anyone. I’ll leave orders to let you sleep for as long as you wish and a warning you have my permission to give them nightmares for the rest of their lives if they wake you up.”

Alison nods shakily. “Three days? Three days?”

“At most,” he says, mentally reviewing the teams: Sean, Christina, James, or Damiel would be best; Teresa and Manuel will select the Ichabod team, and it’s probable Teresa will accompany them, which assures that Chitaqua’s and Ichabod’s teams will answer to a competent commander. Perhaps more should go, now that he considers it; though it’s likely many of the refugees will wish to stay, experience with humans suggests most will want to return to their own homes, and it would be recommended to assure adequate supplies are available for both the town and those who wish to leave (and vehicles, he remembers uneasily; most of those driven here are now part of the wall). “Assuming we all survive—”

“Oh, we’re surviving,” she says flatly. “I’m not dying before I get at least one good night’s sleep and thirty recreational minutes with my fiancée; that’s bullshit right there.” He starts to ask why the second is urgent when he remembers Alison is an excellent projector and would probably feel—awkward—if she accidentally did that during sexual relations. Humans feel—that, he reflects, baffled yet again by the ways of humanity. “Three days,” she says in a different voice, and he can almost see her drawing up strength from stores already unacceptably depleted. “I can do this.”

“It doesn’t matter if you can or can’t,” he says. “Christina’s and Sean’s teams will be assigned to you for the next forty-eight hours in alternating shifts until the barrier is up again. Their orders are to remove you from Ichabod by any means necessary should you indicate you’re losing control, place a minimum of thirty miles between you and the nearest town, and stay with you until either Teresa, Manuel, Dean, or I come to get you. Which,” he reflects, “could actually be Wichita, which, come to think, would be highly convenient. We’ll send them in that direction.”

“But—Cas, if I lose control too fast, they have to…” She hesitates. “Take care of the problem.”

“You’ll call for me,” he says. “And I’ll come to you.”

She wets her lips. “Cas, you were right. There are some things you don’t ask—”

“To protect you.”

Her eyebrows draw together. “From what?”

“From everything and everyone that might threaten your life,” he answers. “Including yourself, should the worst occur.”

She stares at him, lips parted on an untaken breath.

“Whatever you do, you are and will always be Alison,” he says. “If you forget that, I’ll be there to remind you until you remember it for yourself.”

“If I—” It’s barely a whisper. “Why?”

“You’re my friend,” he answers. “Whatever you do, you are and will remain that. If you forget, I’ll remind you of that as well.”

The knock on the door is a welcome distraction; Castiel gets to his feet to answer it, smiling at Walter. “You have the cameras?”

“I do,” he agrees with a wide smile. “And the TV. Got ‘em in the conference room downstairs. You need me to install them?”

“I would appreciate it,” he agrees, turning to see Alison staring at him. “If you’ll excuse me, duty calls. Have a good evening.”

She blinks before saying, knee-jerk, “You, too.”

---

“No.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d say that,” she says and he realizes belatedly this is like Cas: too fucking much thinking. Leave her alone, she might think them into a solution no one saw coming to epic problems (that they also didn’t see coming), or straight to goddamn hell, you just don’t know. “Okay, hear me out.”

“What was I doing before?”

She makes a face. “Right. Look—I didn’t know about the Crossroads, she never even mentioned it, never took me there. She took all her team—including my husband—but not me. She used everything she could to make me say yes, but she didn’t put a gun to my head. You see where I’m going with this?”

“That she was crazy?” Alicia looks disappointed, and he relents. “She cared about you.”

She did care, as much as she could for anyone, and that’s the worst part; Alicia was someone like her, trapped just as much as Erica was with first a shitty SO and then in that goddamn basement; responsible for deaths, Erica blaming herself for her family’s death and Alicia giving mercy to those kids; unlike her family, unlike herself, she could protect Alicia. She could watch out for her, get her on her team and away from Micah, drop in when off-duty and make it impossible for him to unexpectedly lose his temper, scare him to fucking death. Erica cared, and it probably surprised her how much… and that still wasn’t enough.

“Yeah,” Alicia agrees, bringing him back to the present. “Dean, if I could distract her that much in the middle of her epic Croat attack, I can do it now.”

“Distract her, that part I get,” Dean explains. “I’m falling down on your plans after that.”

“After what?” she asks in confusion.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he says. “Is there an ‘after’ here for you?”

“Dean, I didn’t say yes to attempted murder, have sex with the almost victim like a lot—and you, for that matter—and continue to hide it for two and a half years without what one might call a super-flexible conscience,” she says, and gotta give her credit, he can’t exactly work out the location of the lie without some quiet time and maybe a drink. “Obviously, I am not racked with guilt, you know what I mean?”

“Oh yeah,” he agrees, just to see what she comes up with next. “You rolled with it.”

The blue eyes narrow in suspicion before they clear. “I have a proven, very lively interest in continuing to live, you get what I mean? I’m not going out there to die for my sins.”

“You planned your own execution.”

“Yeah that.” She makes a face, but this is Alicia and she doesn’t disappoint. “I had a bad day, much stress, almost despair does that. I’m over it; exile works for me, very progressive of you in our brand new world. Full, public confession, a trial, judgement of guilty, you’re merciful and commute the sentence to—”

“Ten day ration pack and the border,” he finishes, impressed despite himself. “Not bad. Here’s the thing—”

“Then you don’t have to make yourself shoot me,” she adds, and he forgets to breathe. “Some things—I wasn’t thinking before, it was kind of a dick move, am I right? Execution isn’t murder, but the person who pulls the trigger is the only one who can say how much that distinction matters. Sorry about that.”

Dean breathes again, but it’s just reflex.

“Anyway,” she continues. “I really don’t want to die—as my actions up to now illustrate—and in any case, me dying would miss the point of this exercise considerably.”

“The point,” he says blankly, then finds where this left off. “Distraction, right. Okay, distract her. Why?”

“The question is ‘from what’,” she answers confidently. “’From what,’ you would ask now if I gave you time, but we don’t have much and we need to start soon—”

“Start what?”

“I’ll distract Erica while you go outside the ward line,” she answers. “Drive to the first Crossroad—by my calculations, about a mile and change from the Eastern Gate—summon Crowley, and tell him to come pack up his misbehaving minions and take them home.”

Dean looks at her, not even sure where to start with that one. “What?”

Before she can answer, there’s a knock at the door. Glancing at Alicia, he waits for her nod. “What?”

Jeremy pokes his head in. “Joe said to tell you fifteen minute warning; Micah’s on his way.”

“I’ll be right down.” He waits to close the door before standing up and looks down to see Alicia take a deep breath. “You’re kidding, right?”

“It’ll work,” she says. “If nothing else—”

“You get yourself killed,” he interrupts. “And how the hell am I supposed to get Crowley to help us? The operative word here is ‘help’; for all we know—”

“It’s not authorized, he won’t like her fucking around, and you’ll think of something to do with those two things,” Alicia says quickly. “So, you ready for Micah’s perp walk? I am.”

“You don’t have to be there.”

She nods. “I know. I still gotta do it.”

“Then you know you’re not doing it alone.” He extends a hand, and Alicia hesitates, looking up at him. “Not weak,” he says quietly, and she puts her hand in his, calluses rough against his palm as he pulls her up. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.” She tips her head as she looks into his eyes. “I need to tell Cas. Now, before—before I lose my nerve.”

“Alicia—”

“I get you’re trying to think how not to and still get this plan by him,” she says. “You could, maybe—”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“—because he trusts you,” she finishes brutally, and Dean shuts his mouth. “You shouldn’t have had to keep this from him in the first place.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“That was true before,” she answers, voice barely a whisper. “But not now. You can’t hide this, not from Cas; you don’t deserve to have to live with that. He doesn’t deserve any of this, but all the options are shitty. It always chases you, Dean, your past, and I’ve had a good run, but that’s all it was. It caught me, and I’m not running anymore; time to get this done.”

“What happened to you—”

“So? There’s been worse; I saw it. I was in Ichabod after that attack, and I didn’t see any of them give the fuck up and decide to throw in with murder because of their goddamn feelings. I won’t go back to that, I’m not—I won’t be that person. I’m not Micah and I won’t be fucking Erica; there is no excuse. I have to tell him.”

“You’re not telling him,” Dean says quietly. “I am.”

“Dean—”

“It was my decision,” he says. “I ordered you not to. I’ll tell him.”

Her mouth works silently. “Dean…”

He doesn’t think about it, easing her into his arms as she starts to shake. “Breathe,” he says hoarsely. “It’ll be okay.”

“Then say that I couldn’t, that—that you had to because I wouldn’t,” she whispers against his shoulder. “Okay? Don’t take the blame for it. It was me, and—it was all me. Promise?”

“I will,” he lies, tightening his arms. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

---

To his surprise, the lobby’s clear of everyone but Jeremy and Joelle, both standing near Joe by the door and looking hopeful. Pausing on the first floor balcony, he calls down, “Cas back yet?”

“Downstairs with Walter,” Joe answers. “They’re just finishing up with the cameras. Said it’ll be about a minute”

They not only interrogate people, they record it now. Okay, then. “Awesome.” He looks on Jeremy and Joelle. “You two,” he says, jerking his head toward the mess, and looking disgruntled, they reluctantly leave, feet almost visibly dragging. “Everyone else?”

“Gave the order to stay away,” Joe says, looking amused. “I blamed you.”

Cas and Walter emerge from the hall leading to the basement, talking quietly, before Walter nods, slapping Cas’s shoulder, and Dean grins at the look on his face. As Walter starts toward the door, he glances up and sees Dean. “Everything’s up and running,” he says. “Call me if you have any problems.”

“Will do, and thanks,” he answers, and with a wave, Walter leaves as Cas takes the steps two at a time. “Good job,” he says when Cas joins them.

“The television is located in the unnecessarily large coat closet next door.” He gives Dean a baffled look. “Why is there a coat closet by a former file room in the basement?”

“Probably so you can hang up your coat before going to the dungeon I hope to God we don’t find down there,” he retorts, distracted by wondering what the hell is up with this building.

At a knock on the door—loud enough that it’s obvious that it’s a warning—Joe waits for his nod before opening it. Amanda comes in first, coolly impassive, but even from here, he picks up the low grade anger and from the way her hands rub against her thighs and stroke lovingly over her gun… yeah. Micah has that effect on people.

Ana and Evelyn come next, with Micah behind them—hands zip tied behind his back, oh, he owes Naresh here—and a disgruntled look on his face, followed by Natalie and Rachel. Dean takes him in; shoulders slightly hunched, a lot of the smug is gone, which he approves of very much, and he looks a little more rumpled than an easy two street walk would justify. Also—

“Still has a limp,” Alicia murmurs in satisfaction.

As they come to a stop in the middle of the lobby, Micah throws resentful looks at Evelyn and Natalie when they come up on either side of them. He checks them quickly, and there’s definitely a ‘done with this shit’ going on with them, but this being Micah, the only surprise is they’re not (openly) displaying a desire for immediate homicide.

“Oh God,” Alicia breathes, and despite the strain, he sees a faint smile curing her mouth. “You sent a team of women? No wonder he’s pissed.”

He glances down at the lobby and then at Alicia; right, that shit goes hand in hand with beating up their wives. “Wish I’d done it on purpose now.”

“You didn’t?” She cocks her head. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she answers, and Dean turns his attention back to the lobby, where Joe’s just closed the door. Glancing at him (Dean shakes his head, let Micah stew for a few seconds) he goes to Amanda. They move away a few feet to talk, leaving Micah surrounded by a team (of women) who give no shits about him. He half-hopes Micah takes it into his head to be really stupid and try to pull something; Ana has perfected the ‘bored while throwing someone to the ground’ expression, which he’s beginning to think is a special class you take when you join the Marines (Dad could do that, too).

Micah shifts impatiently, then takes a step forward and meets Ana’s hand and looks like he’s not sure whether to be insulted she did it or horrified to realize he’s actually been pushed back an entire step. “Joe, what’s the hold up?”

Joe ignores him so thoroughly even Dean’s impressed, grinning at something Amanda says; he wonders if Amanda’s sharing her store of seriously filthy jokes that she usually saves for when she’s drunk and breaks into giggles before the punchline. Her and James.

“Dean,” Cas says quietly, “what are we doing right now?”

“He thinks he’s important,” Dean answers, leaning his elbows on the balcony. “If he knows what Erica’s doing, he also knows we’re on a deadline. Bet he thinks that makes him the most important person in the world, because he has all the answers.”

Alicia nods, eyes fixed on Micah as he looks between his guards angrily. “Not a good way to start an interrogation.”

“Exactly.” Micah glares at Ana’s back, then at Joe and Amanda. Joe’s eyes flicker to Dean, and he nods, pushing off the balcony. “Be right back.”

Micah’s too involved in glaring at Joe and Amanda to even notice until he’s halfway down the stairs, head jerking around. “Dean, what—”

He waves a hand at Micah, going to Joe and Amanda. “Give you any trouble?” he asks softly, and Amanda rolls her eyes. “Who’d Cas assign to guard him?”

“Mark and Gary,” Joe answers.

Dean slaps his shoulder. “Good man. Amanda, any reason not to leave him in the room alone to think about his sins?”

She shrugs. “Table, four chairs: he can’t do much, and I did a strip search before we left; he’s got nothing and I do mean nothing. Naresh kept his belt.”

Which would explain why Micah’s rumpled. “Give him fifteen minutes, and you two start with him,” he decides in a moment of inspiration; Joe sighs and Amanda slumps, perfect. “When do you want me to check in?”

“Give us at least thirty minutes, so about an hour or so?” Joe checks for Amanda’s nod. “Tell Gary or Mark to call us out of the room. May want to replace us both, actually, make Micah wonder what we’re doing.”

“Got it.” Nodding at them both, he starts for the stairs again, pacing himself for casual and give Micah all the time he needs to—

“Dean!” Micah snaps, and Dean pauses on the first step, turning around. “What’s going on?”

“They’ll explain,” he says, and turning back around, continues up the stairs.

“Ana, this way,” Amanda says, and Dean reaches the top just in time to see Rachel giving Micah a not at all gentle push. He stumbles a step, eyes fixed on Alicia almost leaning over the balcony.

“Wait,” he says, taking a step toward the balcony and Evelyn neatly pushes him back. “Stop it! Alicia!”

“You ready?” he asks Alicia and Cas, jerking his head; they’ll use the back stairs. From the lobby comes the sound of shuffling, and Micah shouts Alicia’s name as she turns away.

“Sure.”

“Alicia!” Micah yells, and then there’s the faint sound of a grunt. Trying not to smile, he leads Alicia and Cas a little down the hall before turning to face them.

“Alicia, where’s your team?” he asks.

“Volunteer Services,” she says with a ghost of her usual smile. “We’re still running short, so…” She trails off, the echo of grief she’s barely had time to feel, much less deal with in her voice: Andy, yeah.

“Be available for the next couple of hours,” he says, nodding a dismissal before turning to Cas. “I need to talk to you. Meet me in our room, okay? I’m going to leave word with Jeremy in case we’re needed.”

Cas nods easily, starting down the hall to the back stairs, and Dean doesn’t pretend even to himself that’s not a short reprieve as he starts for the front stairs.

---

When he opens the door, Cas is—fuck his life—just finished straightening the bed. Smoothing down the quilt, he looks up at Dean with a smile that fades immediately, and Dean wonders what’s showing on his face right now. “Dean?”

“Sit down.” Looking around their room, Dean takes a deep breath as Cas gingerly sits down on the edge of the bed. “Alicia’s got a plan.”

Cas nods, waiting.

“It might work,” he adds, because he thinks it just might. “She’s going to try and distract Erica while I summon Crowley.”

“That sounds rather suicidal,” Cas comments, shifting back against the headboard as Dean perches on the foot of the bed, feeling lost. “Erica’s reaction to Alicia two days ago was unusual, yes, but—”

“That part’ll work,” Dean interrupts. Two days ago—it was two days ago he found out; it feels like forever. “Cas, there’s something—I found out something. I didn’t tell you, and that’s on me. I didn’t know how.”

“All right.” Dean makes himself look at him, feeling sick at the worry on his face. “Are you okay?”

No, he’s not. “After—after we got inside the walls after the attack,” Dean starts, holding Cas’s eyes, “Alicia told me something.” Just get this out. “It’s about what happened at your cabin two years ago. She was part of it.”

---

It doesn’t get easier; if anything, every word gets harder, and the worst part is, Cas doesn’t say a goddamn thing. From the talk inside Ichabod’s walls two days ago to the one today, Dean barrels through on sheer desperation; if he stops talking, he may not be able to start again, not with the searing memory of Cas’s expression when he told him Alicia was one of the assassins. He thinks he’s going to see that until the day he dies.

When he’s done, he doesn’t have any time to be relieved; like the professional he is, Cas starts putting together the relevant portions and ruthlessly exploring the connection between Alicia’s past with Erica and now, the obsession of a demon for the humanity they left behind in the people they once knew. Dean answers each question without hesitation, exploring territory he’s avoided for years; his memories of Hell may be limited, but like knows like and Erica’s actions are as familiar as sliding into a well-worn suit.

Sitting back against the headboard, Cas frowns, eyes distant. “I didn’t realize that was common among demons when confronted with their past on earth.”

“It’s not,” Dean says, flexing his right hand restlessly, trying to get rid of the phantom pressure against his palm. “The rack uses all you are; everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve done, everything you felt, and it twists it all until you break. Nine times out of ten, it burns it out of you, but the tenth time… it loves that, did you know that? That piece—it’s like an open wound, just begging to be ripped apart, and it does it until it’s all you are. That’s the best part; when you get up, you gotta take it with you. It is the you it makes on the rack.” Annoyed, he makes a fist before flattening his palm against his knee. “Erica died wanting Lucifer destroyed; everything she did at Chitaqua was for that.”

“And Alicia?” Cas’s voice expresses nothing more than cool interest. “They were friends, I understand that, but—”

“They weren’t just friends,” Dean interrupts, wondering how to explain. “You don’t sell your soul for anyone or anything but yourself; killing Lucifer was probably supposed to be how she made up for what happened to her family. She didn’t just sacrifice a friend to get that ‘yes’; she betrayed someone she was protecting, someone who trusted her. She used that trust against her.”

“Like her lover did to her,” Cas says, nodding. “Assuming Alicia was fully accurate, of course.”

“Cas—”

“I’m simply making an observation,” he interrupts, with an edge to his voice that almost makes Dean flinch. “When Alicia came to Chitaqua, we did a background check, of course. That she had anything other than a driver’s license or passport was suspicious in itself; many didn’t even have that.”

“Best forgeries money can buy?”

“You can’t buy forgeries this good,” he answers. “They were meant to stand up to investigation, that much was obvious.”

“She said she was working on them for a while.” And he can guess why.

“Chuck’s search found roughly five years’ worth of information: job history, credit rating, rental history, utility bills; you can’t buy a forgery this well done. Mostly in the south and southwest: I suppose whatever state she was living in wasn’t anywhere near there. You said Alicia knew the state hospital well?” He nods. “That fits.”

“Why?”

“Her identification traced back to a child that was in foster care in Texas when she disappeared from the public record. For roughly sixteen years, that is, until that social security number was used in east Texas roughly five years ago.” Dean tries to look like he’s following. “A state hospital is funded by public funds; it would be where people without insurance would be taken. Depending on the size, it may have even had at least one state employee and perhaps even a unit who could determine Medicaid eligibility for patients that came there for emergency services, such as children or pregnant women. A caseworker would have at minimum read access to everyone who had ever applied Medicaid in that state or who moved there while receiving Medicaid from another state, including those who received foster care. Alicia must have had a friend looking for her to find a record she could use, and since doubtless Texas is not her actual state of origin, that friend contacted someone in Texas.

“The social security number matched two types of Medicaid cases for the same person, one recent—at the time, opened eleven months before, and one opened twenty-two years ago; the older one was for foster care. That case was closed unable to locate after she disappeared from the group home she was living in, a presumed runaway.”

“And you’re sure that it’s—not really her?” Dean asks slowly.

“You seem to be, since you took her disclosures at face value,” Cas answers, and Dean stops himself from wincing. “However, yes, I’m certain; that first case was far too old.”

“Uh…” Dean tries and fails to work that out. “Okay, I give up; it should be old, that was what, twenty one years ago now?”

“Exactly,” Cas agrees, and he just picks up the sense of satisfaction. “The original case was created in 1987, when the child entered foster care at age eight, on a serviceable but uninspiring DOS computer system, and was closed eight years later, in 1995. Starting in 2003, the state upgraded the system in stages to a Windows-based web application. Only currently active cases, those closed in the previous seven years, and closed cases for children who were still under the age eighteen at the time were flagged for importation; the rest were archived, which makes sense; why bother with historical cases with no relevance since they were no longer children?”

“Missed by a year,” Dean says, nodding. “So it wasn’t on the system.”

“It shouldn’t have been; not only was it over the seven year retention limit, by 2003, the child would have been twenty-four years old; it would have failed on all import criteria. It could have been an import irregularity, yes; no system is perfect, of course,” Cas muses, and Dean is reminded Cas named all the laptops in Chitaqua and Dean still hasn’t taken his Microsoft Office course. “However, this particular archived record was imported exactly two weeks before a petition for a change of name was filed in Dallas, Texas, and a driver’s license applied for in Corpus Christi. The coincidence was rather striking.”

“You win,” Dean says with a grin, impressed. “Not bad.”

Cas tilts his head with a ghost of a smile that vanishes, and Dean remembers right, they’re not-fighting. “If you’re wondering if there’s any way to verify what Alicia told you, no. She was meticulous and very, very thorough, and most importantly, she deliberately left a paper trail to further establish this identity. As I said, you can’t buy forgeries this good; real people with real lives do not have such a meticulously organized paper trail and history.”

“Was she a blonde when she got here?”

“Dark brown, but very short. Why?” Abruptly, he stills, blue eyes dark. “She was going to escape her husband.”

“Real people aren’t married to a partner in a law firm and have shitty parents with a lot of disposable income.” That’s not a guess: the classes she took as a kid don’t come cheap, especially when you have a fucking private cheerleader coach. He wonders how it started; one shitty night after Micah unexpectedly lost his temper, and she thought about having a different life (in Texas, but it takes all kinds). On a guess, it started as a what-if; something to get her through the day, never thinking it would work. And it did, actually, but Micah found her anyway. How?

“What you know now is far more than Chuck and I could discover,” Cas says. “That would include her first name.”

“And nothing about anyone named ‘Stephanie’ and the mass murder of seven kids on the news about three years ago?”

“No,” Cas answers, and in it, Dean hears a lot of things he doesn’t want to think about. He hid Alicia’s complicity from Cas, because he couldn’t believe she’d do it and there had to be a reason, and maybe she gave him exactly what he wanted. He’d be hiding it still if she hadn’t told him to tell Cas: to protect her. From one of her victims, from Cas, after telling him that he didn’t always have to take care of himself, that he’d protect him. That he didn’t have to be afraid everyone was after him, that he wasn’t alone, because Dean had his back. Sure, Dean will protect him from everyone, except the people he likes, of course; that’s different. Cas not telling the other Dean about the team leaders makes a lot of sense, come to think; Dean really liked them, too.

“If it was pre-epidemic Croat,” Cas says abruptly, “it would be suspicious if there were evidence available.”

“How do you figure?”

“If she set off the fire alarm to clear the hospital, the authorities might have used an actual fire as the cover. The building was burned, and it would be given out that it killed those children as well as a convenient method of disposing of Croat-infested bodies without moving them.”

“You’re saying you wouldn’t have noticed a mysterious hospital fire on the news?”

“A perfectly mundane hospital fire in an old building? Take as a given, if it were a state hospital, it was probably old,” Cas answers caustically, and it belatedly occurs to Dean that sounded like he thought Cas was sleeping on the job. “Dean, think of the national news and how many tragedies would occur daily in your world; a hospital fire, even with casualties, wouldn’t have made the front page of CNN. This world was the same then: we searched for the unusual and patterns of incidents, but even then, only a small percentage were we able to investigate. Three years ago, the authorities were experts at concealing outbreaks; even if any of us had noticed it, it certainly wouldn’t have gained our attention.” He looks briefly amused. “A female mass murder of infants, however, would have been front page news, and I promise you, that would have gained our undivided attention.”

He can see it, and not just because of the convenience of ‘because fire’; Micah was partner in a law firm, and in Dean’s experience that meant ‘money, lots of it’ and almost as many lawyer friends. He can’t imagine how it wouldn’t be a nightmare, especially considering how long it usually took shit like that to get to trial. Years: years during which they might have to cover dozens of mini-outbreaks and that unbelievable story would become more and more believable.

“So they’d just—ignore what Alicia did?”

“Assuming they even knew who did it; the nurse seems to have been the only witness, and if she had any sense, she disappeared before someone did that for her. Unless there were security cameras present—and in an older hospital, even in the maternity wing or the nursery, that’s something of a question—they may not have even been aware of who did it.” Then, with a flicker of something almost approving, “Alicia said she knew that hospital. She’d also know if there were cameras present and where, and very likely how to turn them off.”

So a Croat outbreak that never happened, in a hospital that burned down, identification they have no way to trace to a real person, and no way to verify Alicia’s story other than taking her at her word or ask Micah, and hey, she covered why they can’t believe him, either. Except the fact that there’s a warrant for her arrest, and if Erica got that from the border guard, that’s something they can actually check (maybe, Joe would know). But assuming everything Alicia said was true and Cas is right about a cover-up, for what?

I could hear my footsteps all the way up the steps and down the hall, like there was an echo or something. She pulled the fire alarm; that thing is loud, and the older systems require a manual override to turn it off (or shoot it like a lot). The halls were empty; there’s no way all the medical staff could have been out that fast, much less the patients. The women she saw outside the nursery were already dead; she didn’t mention hearing gunshots. The blood was already coagulated and that takes time; that sound when you move one that’s stuck from that isn’t something you ever forget. Even given years and what trauma does to memory, the timeline is off.

Dean isn’t sure if it’s a relief or not when Cas says, “Tell me the plan again, as you refer to it.”

“I’ll drive to the East Gate,” Dean starts, feeling less than encouraged by Cas’s phrasing. “When I get there, Alicia will go out the West Gate and up to the ward line; her team will follow out of sight. That should get Erica’s attention.”

Cas nods politely. “And if it doesn’t?”

Yeah, he doesn’t like this part. “I was thinking about that. If she doesn’t show, there’s a Crossroad past the ward line—”

“At the bottom of the hill, about a mile from Ichabod,” Cas interrupts smoothly. “There’s a farm road that crosses IH-Ichabod; I think we called it Point Zero, where the buses would let off their passengers for the walk to Ichabod. A shelter was erected there.”

He’s already committed, so might as well go for it. “Yeah.”

“And there, I assume, she’ll try and summon Erica,” Cas muses. “And hope she doesn’t get another Crossroads demon, or Crowley himself. Perhaps she can politely ask for Erica in that case?”

“Okay, yeah—”

“But assuming she does get Erica: her team will radio you with the hand units and you will go out the East Gate, proceed to the first Crossroad—roughly a mile and a half from Ichabod—in full sight of everyone with eyes—and summon Crowley,” Cas continues. “Or a demon—hopefully not one of Erica’s companions or even Erica herself if Alicia bores her—who will agree to kindly go and fetch Crowley for you. Then you will discuss your concerns with Crowley in a reasonable manner, and he’ll helpfully take Erica and the others away. Yes, this is indeed a plan which cannot fail.”

He’s committed to a shitty plan. “Fine, it’s a bad plan, but it’s pretty much all we got right now. Unless you have a better idea?”

“You can’t go alone,” says the guy who ambled out to the Crossroad for a one-on-one chat with Crowley. I’ll go with you—”

“No.”

“Then you’ll need two people for your escort: Amanda and Joseph.” Dean—who was bracing himself for an argument—is left blinking in surprise. “Amanda because she’s our best hunter, Joseph because he’s already proven he can easily pick you up and restrain you without very little effort no matter how much you struggle.”

“Who told you—” Right. “I told you.”

“I received several colorful descriptions of events while I was—otherwise occupied,” Cas says (read: screaming in agony). “It’s nearly time for your planned interruption of Amanda and Joe’s interrogation of Micah. Take Kamal with you to take their place, and bring them to the Situation Room so you can brief them.” There’s a brief pause. “And Alicia, of course. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes. I need to do—something.”

“What—” Cas is already off the bed before Dean realizes that, apparently, they’re done. “Cas, wait. That’s it?”

Cas turns to look at him in polite inquiry. “Is there something else?”

Yeah, a lot, actually. “Yeah. I mean—” Fuck. “I know I should have told you about Alicia before and not just dropped it on you like this.” Cas nods, waiting, and okay, what goes next? He wishes Cas would give him something here: be pissed, ask why, maybe tell him about how you don’t hide shit like this, but—nothing. “I’m sorry about that.”

“You had reasons to conceal it,” Cas says, and he nods (it’s true). “I assumed as much.”

“Yeah, I did,” he agrees. “So—I’m sorry.”

“I understand.” Then turns toward the door again.

Going after Cas would have gotten me a bullet to the head on sight, do not pass go and talk about our feelings.

“Cas!” His shoulders stiffen before he turns back around, and Dean can see his grip on the doorknob may end badly any second now. “You’re not gonna—” He wonders what’s wrong with him; it’s not like he wanted Cas to be pissed at him. “The escort thing. It’s not that I don’t want you there, but—”

“It’s dangerous,” he finishes for him. “To preserve our command structure, both of us shouldn’t be at risk. That’s only prudent. I’ll stay here, in our Headquarters, where it’s safe.”

Dean does, in fact, hear the irony loud and clear. “Yeah.”

“It’s sensible,” Cas agrees. “I should have thought of that myself. Is there anything else?”

I wouldn’t have risked this if it was him here, but you… you’re reasonable.

“Look, you have the right to be pissed—”

“Thank you.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Dean snaps, getting to his feet. “I fucked up! I know that!”

“Exactly what do you want from me?” The cool curiosity in Cas’s voice is worse than anger could ever be. “You had reasons, presumably good ones, for your decision not to inform me that one of your lieutenants was involved in the assassination attempt on me and Vera.”

“My lieutenants?” Dean echoes incredulously.

“Chitaqua’s lieutenants, then,” Cas corrects himself. “I told you I would accept your decisions, even if I didn’t agree with them, provided you listened to my objections. The latter doesn’t apply in this case, but the former does and always will. Alicia is a superlative hunter and a very good team leader, both of which are very valuable to Chitaqua. You said she’s shown regret for her past actions, and she’s certainly not a threat to anyone in the camp. We don’t have enough hunters as it is—”

“You think this is about Chitaqua?” Dean is on his feet before he realizes he’s moved. “I didn’t tell you because end game is Lucifer and what’s a little attempted murder, gotta keep my eye on the ball?”

Cas looks away, and to Dean’s horror, his shoulders slump tiredly. “No, I don’t think that. I apologize.”

Sheer horror holds Dean immobile; Cas just apologized for him being an asshole. “Cas, don’t fucking apologize to me for my fuck up. I should have told you.”

“Yes, you should have, but this isn’t the time to discuss it,” Cas answers. “If you want to attempt this, we must begin preparations immediately.”

He wants to say no, but one glance at the doorknob tells him keeping him here won’t help. And fuck everything, he’s right about the timing. “Right,” he says, swallowing hard at Cas’s obvious relief. “Later, okay?”

“As you wish,” Cas agrees, opening the door, and like that, he’s gone.

---

---

Warnings: description of events surrounding the death of kids under the age of three due to Croatoan. It's in the first section after discussion of Carol's condition and referred to explicitly in the second section.