SPN Fic: The Open Invitation
Chapter Five
Genre: futurefic
Characters: Kate Doolittle, Ben Braeden, Sam, Dean, OFCs
Rated: R for language
Summary: It's December of 2021, and the children of Cicero once taken by the changeling have come a long way down a strange road since then. Ben Braeden brings his childhood friend the worst Christmas present in the history of Christmas or presents.
[Chapter One] [Two] [Three] [Four]
Pale sunshine caught in the frosted windows and glittered there, leaving dim, lingering shadows in my borrowed room. Ben briefly disappeared downstairs to bring me a cup of strong coffee with too much cream, spiced with vanilla and cinnamon. He pushed it into my hands wordlessly.
“I tried,” I said halfheartedly. Morning had dulled the searing edges of my nightmare, and now I just felt pathetic. It was my own head, wasn’t it? I should have been master of all I surveyed. “I didn’t just give up.”
“I know that,” he said, but he was looking at a point over my shoulder.
I tried to catch his eye, because I needed to explain. “Everything got all fuzzy and mixed up.”
“It’s okay, Katie.” He frowned, leaning forward. “There’s blood in your hair.”
I set aside the coffee and reached up to feel. In my generalized ache, I hadn’t noticed the dull throb of the old scar at the back of my neck. I touched it gently, and my hand came away red.
“She hurt you?” Ben said.
“Bit me.” I looked up, and the shadows behind him darkened and roiled. “What is-“
They went still.
“Kate?”
“I thought I saw… but it’s gone.”
His shoulders just barely slumped, and his tired face went even paler. But all he said was, “Come to the bathroom, and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
I used him as a crutch, and it took an embarrassingly long time to hobble out into the hall and one room over. I nearly tripped on the plush bath mat in front of the claw foot tub. Ben put the toilet lid down, and I fell more than sat down. I shivered patiently while he pulled a first aid kit from the mirror cabinet above the sink.
“Bend your head over for me?”
The bite wound was oozing, and I focused intently on the pattern of the hardwood floor to ignore the blood seeping into my borrowed T-shirt. Ben gathered my hair up, gave it to me to hold, and only hesitated for a moment when he recognized the bite mark. Then he pressed something wet against my skin, and I hissed at the sting.
“Sorry,” he said automatically. He didn’t even tease me. It was like all the color, the bravado, and the snark had drained out of him together.
Fear spiked through me - a prey animal’s fear, bone-deep and primal. I was suddenly terrified the monster would get me.
The walls shimmered, and their sky blue paint ran down into a spreading puddle on the floor, leaving bare wooden walls with contorted, agonized faces screaming in every pine knot. I gasped and lurched back against the toilet tank.
“Katie, what?” Ben demanded, eyes darting around the room.
“The walls just - “
But they were just as before.
“You didn’t see?”
He shook his head. I was deeply uncomfortable with how unsurprised he looked. “She’s getting stronger,” he said gently, smoothing on a band-aid. “Just treat it like any other trip. It’s weird and all, but it can’t hurt you. Now lean over so I can rinse your hair out.”
I rested my head on the sink and trembled until the water ran clear.
Ben turned off the tap. Rested his hand on my shoulder. Brushed his thumb across the base of my too-quick pulse.
“What if I can’t kill her?” I whispered, pressing my burning forehead harder against the cold porcelain.
“We are nowhere near out of tricks yet.”
“But what if - “
He crouched down to look me in the eyes. “You’re going to be fine.” Plainly, and with no drama whatsoever: “I swear to you, you’ll be just fine.”
We put fresh bandages on my other problem areas, went through the undignified and uncomfortable process of changing my pajamas, and he carried me down to the living room sofa where I could nestle into the blankets. Sam and Dean were hunched over the coffee table again, but instead of a chess board, a list of names lay between them. Half were crossed out.
Tension buzzed between them, but it seemed to dissipate when they turned to me, businesslike.
Dean said, “So let’s talk options.”
Ben breathed in deep, then went to the window and glared out at the light snowfall.
“It would be best if you tried again,” Sam told me, looking me right in the eyes.
Shame and terror twisted my insides up. “I don’t think I can,” I whispered. “If there’s any other way…”
His shadow shook its head in disgust behind him, though he did no such thing. Instead he nodded at the coffee table, moving right along. “We started trying to track down African dream root the day you got here. It would allow one of us to go with you into the dream, and we’d be able to confront her directly.”
I demanded to know, “Why the hell didn’t we do that in the first place?” at the same time Ben snapped, “I thought you said we’d never find it in time.”
“Let’s not hold our breath,” Dean said, casting an irritable glance at Sam. “Bobby’s doing his best, but we haven’t had a decent supplier since Rudy died. One asshole FedExed a bunch of shrooms instead, like we wouldn’t know the difference. But hey, party’s on after the bitch is dead.”
I waved that away. Someone had mentioned what seemed like a crucial detail. “In time?” I said sharply. “How much time are we talking about?”
“We’ve seen people hold out for a week,” Sam said, and his eyes projected so much optimistic sympathy that I deducted two days from his estimate on principle.
“Dream root is our Hail Mary,” Dean said. “Until we find some, we focus on the things we can do.”
“We can weaken her,” Ben jumped in. “I’ve been doing some research, found some things that might work.”
“That could help,” Sam said. He looked me in the eyes again, and I wanted to squirm out from under his gaze. “You’ve had one shot at her. You know what to look for, and you know what you’re up against. Will you consider trying again?”
Damn it. I had hoped they’d given up on that. There was a long, terrible silence in which I wished to disappear into a wormhole or to be eaten by a four-dimensional space whale. The Winchesters were both giving me their full attention, which could probably exert as many kilopascals as your average twin turbo.
Ben broke the silence. “I called Rosie.”
Sam shot him a look that, directed at me, would have triggered an acute anxiety attack. “I told you to leave her out of it.”
Dean sighed: Here we go.
“She thinks she can get me in,” said Ben, and there was an edge of defiance in his voice that I considered unwise. “I talked to Monica too. She’s not crazy about it, but we’ve got permission. If things get dangerous in there, all Rosie has to do is-“
“We don’t even know if that would work,” Sam said flatly. “That is our Hail Mary.”
“Rosie’s here,” Dean pointed out. “Dream root isn’t.”
“We weaken her, Kate tries again-“
“We don’t have time to try the same thing over and over,” Ben said, again at a volume that seemed likely to get his head bitten off. “Rosie will be pretty damn safe, Kate will be a hell of a lot safer than doing it your way-“
“What are we talking about?” I asked very quietly.
All three of them looked over as if surprised to find me still here. Dean recovered first. “We’ve got a friend with a, ah, very particular set of skills. She’s been known to dreamwalk by accident, so she could probably stroll into your dreams pretty easy if she were actually trying.”
“To kill the mora?” I asked hopefully. “She’s a hunter?”
“She’s a kid,” Sam snapped, though not at me.
“The idea is for her to take one of us in there with her,” Dean said. “Whoever you don’t mind stomping through your brain.”
“Rosie said I’d be the easiest,” Ben said with an uncomfortable shrug. To me, he added, “Since we know each other best.”
Sam got up and left.
Dean rolled his eyes in exactly the same long-suffering way that Ben did when he thought his mother was being unreasonable. Then he followed Sam out the living room’s pretty double doors and down the hall.
It suddenly occurred to me why Lisa Braeden’s old flame might welcome her son into his house, trust him with secrets, and teach him all he knew. I felt stupid for being so slow on the uptake. After all, it must have been difficult for Ben to track down a pair of legally dead fugitives living under aliases. Did he really go to such lengths just to learn from the best?
Sam and Dean seemed to be having a decidedly unfriendly conversation in the kitchen, but I couldn’t make out the words. Ben came to sit next to me on the sofa, and, as if to confirm my suspicions, scrubbed his hand down his face in a gesture I’d seen on Dean. I thought of how seamlessly my dream had blended them together into one gruff, leather-jacketed composite.
Before I could stop myself, the words poured out: “You used to talk sometimes about looking for your dad.”
He looked up, brow furrowed. This is what you want to talk about right now? This?
I tried to wait patiently for him to decide what to do with the question I’d dropped clumsily in his lap, but within a few seconds I found myself clawing even harder for this distraction. The shadows stayed put if I had something to focus on. “It’s just that you’re so similar, and it’s like you’re part of the family, and I couldn’t help but wonder-“
“I went looking,” he said, still frowning , “right after my seventeenth birthday. I was hoping…” He leaned his elbows on his knees and blew air through his teeth. “Well, I ended up here. If Dean was freaked about me showing up, he never let on. It was a week before we got the results back from the DNA Diagnostics people.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “No relation.”
“I’m sorry,” I guessed, because I couldn’t think of a more appropriate response.
“No, it’s fine,” he said, and meant it. “Better, maybe. Maria calls me ti-bé now, you know?” He smiled into his lap, and there was a chuckle under the words. “I don’t think she ever could have done that if those results had come back different.”
I put a hand on his knee, not for needless comfort, but to thank him for telling me these things. “Did you keep looking?”
He looked up in surprise. “No, I didn’t.”
“Benjamin Isaac Braeden!” Dean yelled from the kitchen.
Ben shook his head in annoyance, but he went where he was summoned.
I was left to surmise that he’d found exactly what he was looking for.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
The girl who arrived at the house forty-five minutes later looked about thirteen or fourteen years old. She had pale skin and a boyish figure, and her bright blue pixie cut made her heart-shaped face look even more elfin.
“Hey, Rose,” Sam said as he let her in, and nothing about his smile indicated that he hated this idea, didn’t want her here, or otherwise disapproved. But as she passed close to him, she gave a surprised little, “Oh!”
She craned her head back to look up at him with wide, innocent eyes. “If you really feel that strongly about it, I won’t do it.”
He did not regard this greeting as the least bit weird. Instead he gave her a smile equal parts pride and resignation. He took her coat and scarf, hung them on the elegant brass hooks next to the door, and led the way into the living room.
“Hey, Rosie,” Dean and Ben chorused from the armchairs, where they were both deep in what I could only assume were tomes of eldritch lore.
The girl didn’t answer them. In fact, she barely glanced their way before coming straight over to me on the sofa. “Hi. I’m Rose Holt.” Awkwardly she held out a hand half-covered by the sleeve of her hoodie. I shook it, trying hard to mask my disappointment that the cavalry had arrived and it stood five-nothing.
“Kate Doolittle,” I said. “I like your hair.”
“Thanks. I’m older than I look. And I’m very sorry about the mora.”
Her disjointed reply and big, solemn eyes were a little unsettling, but all I said was, “Oh, you know. These things happen. Thanks for coming to help.”
She smiled, which made her look even younger. “You’re welcome. Most people get used to me eventually. You sure you don’t mind me in your head?”
I blinked at her. It took me a second to formulate a reply. “You’re sure you’re okay being in my head?”
Suddenly her solemn green eyes sparkled in a way that made me want very badly to ask whether things at the North Pole had calmed down now that Christmas was over. All she needed was a pointy hat and a wooden train to paint. “I bet it’s a nice head,” she said politely. “I’m not worried.”
Dean twitched a curtain aside to glance out the front window. “Rosie, honey, can you move your car? Maria’s going to need to get in that gate.”
“Of course.” She flashed me a shy smile, retrieved a set of keys from her coat pocket, and slipped outside again.
“She’s old enough to drive?” I asked.
Dean grinned. “Got her license in September.”
But something a lot like guilt was tugging at me now. The fresh bite wound on the back of my neck was throbbing, and I was replaying what the Winchesters had told me about the mechanics of dream demons. I turned to Sam, whose objections made much more sense now. “How dangerous will this be for her?”
Dean jumped in to answer me. “There’s some risk, for sure. The mora made you bleed, right? You know she’s got real power within the dream.”
“So she could hurt Rosie too. Rose. Rosie? What do I-?”
“She’s trying to get Rose to stick,” he admitted.
“Rose could get hurt.”
“Rose could get killed,” Sam said, looking right at me. “The mora will only do so much to you; she’s not going to burn down her own apartment. But anyone else in your head is fair game.”
“Come on,” Ben scoffed. “That is not going to happen.”
“She asked what was possible,” Sam said icily.
“Yeah, and it’s possible the mora will knit us sweaters and teach us to dance while we’re in there.”
Dean rolled his eyes and grimaced at me. Evidently they were going to treat me to a reenactment of their kitchen argument.
“You still think you’re invincible,” Sam accused. “You think the worst case scenario can never happen to you.”
“I’ll be with her the whole time, and I will not let her get hurt. And you know she can be out of there in a second. She’s been lucid dreaming since she was seven; she knows how to wake herself up. Hell, she’ll be safer than in that tree house you built. Can’t break an arm falling out of a dream, can she?”
“And what happens when she wakes up? You get dragged out of the dream too, and Kate’s alone with the mora again, which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.”
That was about when blood started dripping from the ceiling. It came down in hot, fat droplets, splashing into my hair and pattering quietly on the floor. In the moment before I screamed, I remembered Ben’s words: like any other trip, it can’t hurt you, it can’t hurt you, it cannot hurt you. I covered my head and sank deeper into the cushions.
“You’re scaring Kate,” a small voice said.
Sam and Ben went silent, and the blood disappeared. Rose had come back in so quietly that Ben, Sam, and I had not noticed. Dean apparently had, because he was offering her his coffee cup to warm her hands.
“I wasn’t scared,” I said, keeping careful control of my voice. “I was hallucinating. It’s different.”
Sam and Ben only looked mildly ashamed of themselves.
“If I wake up, I might yank Ben out of the dream with me,” Rose admitted, hands wrapped tight around Dean’s mug. “I’ve never dreamwalked on purpose before. I don’t know how it will work, exactly.”
“Why don’t you sit down, sweetheart?” Dean said, and she settled next to me on the sofa.
“I can connect with two people at once. That’s easy enough. I haven’t managed a conference call, but I think it’ll be much easier with everybody asleep. Dreams are… porous. You might not even need me anymore once the connection is established.”
“Okay, sounds good. Tell us what you need.”
“Just both of them asleep,” she said, nodding at me and Ben. “And maybe some chamomile tea. After that, it’s pretty simple. Ben, I think I should start in your dreams, and then we’ll take a field trip to hers. What do you think?”
He spread his hands. “However you want to do it.”
“It’s easiest to find you in a shared memory. Remember Nebraska last year? When you took me to meet the Harvelles?” They exchanged brief smiles at what was probably a hilarious anecdote, and somehow it stung. In-jokes, road trips, names I’d never heard before? I wasn’t jealous, precisely. But I thought of me and Ben as close, even after we both went off to school. Just how much of his life had absolutely nothing to do with me?
“You and I don’t have any shared memories,” I said to Rose.
“No, but you and Ben have plenty. More than I have with him, for sure,” she said, which gave me the unpleasant suspicion that she was placating me. “That’s why I’m finding you by way of him.”
He mustered up a lopsided smile for me. “Where do you want to meet up?”
It must have been the smile. Some part of me recognized where I’d last seen it. “Last Christmas Eve, you came over after the party.” He’d given me precisely that smile, trying to explain about honest-to-God, ain’t-shittin’-you evil, about the people who were alive because of him, and about the men in whose footsteps he’d chosen to follow. “You helped me with the dishes.”
His lips parted just barely. He remembered that conversation as well as I did.
Dean shook his head at us. “I hope that’s a euphemism. Otherwise, you are both hopelessly boring.”
Rose giggled. Sam rolled his eyes. “On the upside,” he said, “the dream-kitchen will have a wide selection of dream-knives and other dream-pointy-things.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I lied.
“Okay, then. Time for everybody to get comfy,” said Dean. “Sammy can make tea.”
“Ben can make tea,” Sam said promptly.
“Ben can make tea,” Ben mimicked, sour-faced, even as he got up to do it.
“I will make the tea,” Rose said sympathetically, waving Ben back into his chair. “I’m the one who wanted it anyway.” On her way down the hall, she called back, “Where would I find chamomile?”
No one opened their mouths to answer her. Sam just closed his eyes briefly.
“Oh, okay, thanks,” she said. Little Becky’s discomfort with this girl was becoming less and less mysterious.
“Are you ready?” Ben asked me, just as Sam had asked only the night before.
“No,” I confessed. “But let’s go.”
This time it was Dean's turn to carry me upstairs. He set me down on top of the covers on the far side of the double bed, propped up by pillows. As on the previous night, the Winchesters pulled chairs up to the footboard and laid machetes across their laps. But this afternoon, Ben climbed on top of the covers next to me and sat up against the headboard.
“Do we both get knock-out drugs this time?” I asked. “A Percocet party could be fun.”
“How about a tea party?” Sam said. “The more natural your sleep, the easier it will be for someone to wake up if they need to.”
“I may need something more heavy-duty than chamomile.”
“You’re still recovering, and your body wants rest. It’ll be easier than you think.”
Rose appeared with three steaming mugs balanced on a plate, each trailing the string of a tea bag. Ben and I accepted ours silently, and I scalded my tongue on the first sip. Of course you did, I sighed inwardly. Let’s just have the worst possible experience with this, shall we?
Rose smiled as if she’d heard me. “There’s no hurry. Ben, can I borrow your bed in the guest room?”
“Course you can.”
“So we’re all set then,” said Sam.
“Everybody understands the plan, right?" said Dean. He pointed at me. “You: stay close to Ben, help him find the mora. Keep control of the dream as best you can.” He turned to Rose. “You: stay close to Kate, and bail if things get ugly. I mean it. If you let yourself get hurt, I’m revoking horseback riding privileges. For a year.” Finally he pointed at Ben. “You: shove something pointy in her shriveled black heart.”
“You express yourself very clearly,” Rose said sincerely.
I laid my hand over Ben's. "Shall we?"
Rose disappeared to the guest room, and Ben and I sipped our tea. When I’d drained mine, I laid back, relaxed into the pillows, and very deliberately called up the memory of last Christmas Eve. The dish soap was orange-scented, competing with the apple-cinnamon and the evergreen that permeated the house. Sam was right about my physical exhaustion; it was easy to slip down into drowsiness. I floated comfortably on the little details, sank into them luxuriously. Down and down until they closed over my head.
Genre: futurefic
Characters: Kate Doolittle, Ben Braeden, Sam, Dean, OFCs
Rated: R for language
Summary: It's December of 2021, and the children of Cicero once taken by the changeling have come a long way down a strange road since then. Ben Braeden brings his childhood friend the worst Christmas present in the history of Christmas or presents.
[Chapter One] [Two] [Three] [Four]
Pale sunshine caught in the frosted windows and glittered there, leaving dim, lingering shadows in my borrowed room. Ben briefly disappeared downstairs to bring me a cup of strong coffee with too much cream, spiced with vanilla and cinnamon. He pushed it into my hands wordlessly.
“I tried,” I said halfheartedly. Morning had dulled the searing edges of my nightmare, and now I just felt pathetic. It was my own head, wasn’t it? I should have been master of all I surveyed. “I didn’t just give up.”
“I know that,” he said, but he was looking at a point over my shoulder.
I tried to catch his eye, because I needed to explain. “Everything got all fuzzy and mixed up.”
“It’s okay, Katie.” He frowned, leaning forward. “There’s blood in your hair.”
I set aside the coffee and reached up to feel. In my generalized ache, I hadn’t noticed the dull throb of the old scar at the back of my neck. I touched it gently, and my hand came away red.
“She hurt you?” Ben said.
“Bit me.” I looked up, and the shadows behind him darkened and roiled. “What is-“
They went still.
“Kate?”
“I thought I saw… but it’s gone.”
His shoulders just barely slumped, and his tired face went even paler. But all he said was, “Come to the bathroom, and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
I used him as a crutch, and it took an embarrassingly long time to hobble out into the hall and one room over. I nearly tripped on the plush bath mat in front of the claw foot tub. Ben put the toilet lid down, and I fell more than sat down. I shivered patiently while he pulled a first aid kit from the mirror cabinet above the sink.
“Bend your head over for me?”
The bite wound was oozing, and I focused intently on the pattern of the hardwood floor to ignore the blood seeping into my borrowed T-shirt. Ben gathered my hair up, gave it to me to hold, and only hesitated for a moment when he recognized the bite mark. Then he pressed something wet against my skin, and I hissed at the sting.
“Sorry,” he said automatically. He didn’t even tease me. It was like all the color, the bravado, and the snark had drained out of him together.
Fear spiked through me - a prey animal’s fear, bone-deep and primal. I was suddenly terrified the monster would get me.
The walls shimmered, and their sky blue paint ran down into a spreading puddle on the floor, leaving bare wooden walls with contorted, agonized faces screaming in every pine knot. I gasped and lurched back against the toilet tank.
“Katie, what?” Ben demanded, eyes darting around the room.
“The walls just - “
But they were just as before.
“You didn’t see?”
He shook his head. I was deeply uncomfortable with how unsurprised he looked. “She’s getting stronger,” he said gently, smoothing on a band-aid. “Just treat it like any other trip. It’s weird and all, but it can’t hurt you. Now lean over so I can rinse your hair out.”
I rested my head on the sink and trembled until the water ran clear.
Ben turned off the tap. Rested his hand on my shoulder. Brushed his thumb across the base of my too-quick pulse.
“What if I can’t kill her?” I whispered, pressing my burning forehead harder against the cold porcelain.
“We are nowhere near out of tricks yet.”
“But what if - “
He crouched down to look me in the eyes. “You’re going to be fine.” Plainly, and with no drama whatsoever: “I swear to you, you’ll be just fine.”
We put fresh bandages on my other problem areas, went through the undignified and uncomfortable process of changing my pajamas, and he carried me down to the living room sofa where I could nestle into the blankets. Sam and Dean were hunched over the coffee table again, but instead of a chess board, a list of names lay between them. Half were crossed out.
Tension buzzed between them, but it seemed to dissipate when they turned to me, businesslike.
Dean said, “So let’s talk options.”
Ben breathed in deep, then went to the window and glared out at the light snowfall.
“It would be best if you tried again,” Sam told me, looking me right in the eyes.
Shame and terror twisted my insides up. “I don’t think I can,” I whispered. “If there’s any other way…”
His shadow shook its head in disgust behind him, though he did no such thing. Instead he nodded at the coffee table, moving right along. “We started trying to track down African dream root the day you got here. It would allow one of us to go with you into the dream, and we’d be able to confront her directly.”
I demanded to know, “Why the hell didn’t we do that in the first place?” at the same time Ben snapped, “I thought you said we’d never find it in time.”
“Let’s not hold our breath,” Dean said, casting an irritable glance at Sam. “Bobby’s doing his best, but we haven’t had a decent supplier since Rudy died. One asshole FedExed a bunch of shrooms instead, like we wouldn’t know the difference. But hey, party’s on after the bitch is dead.”
I waved that away. Someone had mentioned what seemed like a crucial detail. “In time?” I said sharply. “How much time are we talking about?”
“We’ve seen people hold out for a week,” Sam said, and his eyes projected so much optimistic sympathy that I deducted two days from his estimate on principle.
“Dream root is our Hail Mary,” Dean said. “Until we find some, we focus on the things we can do.”
“We can weaken her,” Ben jumped in. “I’ve been doing some research, found some things that might work.”
“That could help,” Sam said. He looked me in the eyes again, and I wanted to squirm out from under his gaze. “You’ve had one shot at her. You know what to look for, and you know what you’re up against. Will you consider trying again?”
Damn it. I had hoped they’d given up on that. There was a long, terrible silence in which I wished to disappear into a wormhole or to be eaten by a four-dimensional space whale. The Winchesters were both giving me their full attention, which could probably exert as many kilopascals as your average twin turbo.
Ben broke the silence. “I called Rosie.”
Sam shot him a look that, directed at me, would have triggered an acute anxiety attack. “I told you to leave her out of it.”
Dean sighed: Here we go.
“She thinks she can get me in,” said Ben, and there was an edge of defiance in his voice that I considered unwise. “I talked to Monica too. She’s not crazy about it, but we’ve got permission. If things get dangerous in there, all Rosie has to do is-“
“We don’t even know if that would work,” Sam said flatly. “That is our Hail Mary.”
“Rosie’s here,” Dean pointed out. “Dream root isn’t.”
“We weaken her, Kate tries again-“
“We don’t have time to try the same thing over and over,” Ben said, again at a volume that seemed likely to get his head bitten off. “Rosie will be pretty damn safe, Kate will be a hell of a lot safer than doing it your way-“
“What are we talking about?” I asked very quietly.
All three of them looked over as if surprised to find me still here. Dean recovered first. “We’ve got a friend with a, ah, very particular set of skills. She’s been known to dreamwalk by accident, so she could probably stroll into your dreams pretty easy if she were actually trying.”
“To kill the mora?” I asked hopefully. “She’s a hunter?”
“She’s a kid,” Sam snapped, though not at me.
“The idea is for her to take one of us in there with her,” Dean said. “Whoever you don’t mind stomping through your brain.”
“Rosie said I’d be the easiest,” Ben said with an uncomfortable shrug. To me, he added, “Since we know each other best.”
Sam got up and left.
Dean rolled his eyes in exactly the same long-suffering way that Ben did when he thought his mother was being unreasonable. Then he followed Sam out the living room’s pretty double doors and down the hall.
It suddenly occurred to me why Lisa Braeden’s old flame might welcome her son into his house, trust him with secrets, and teach him all he knew. I felt stupid for being so slow on the uptake. After all, it must have been difficult for Ben to track down a pair of legally dead fugitives living under aliases. Did he really go to such lengths just to learn from the best?
Sam and Dean seemed to be having a decidedly unfriendly conversation in the kitchen, but I couldn’t make out the words. Ben came to sit next to me on the sofa, and, as if to confirm my suspicions, scrubbed his hand down his face in a gesture I’d seen on Dean. I thought of how seamlessly my dream had blended them together into one gruff, leather-jacketed composite.
Before I could stop myself, the words poured out: “You used to talk sometimes about looking for your dad.”
He looked up, brow furrowed. This is what you want to talk about right now? This?
I tried to wait patiently for him to decide what to do with the question I’d dropped clumsily in his lap, but within a few seconds I found myself clawing even harder for this distraction. The shadows stayed put if I had something to focus on. “It’s just that you’re so similar, and it’s like you’re part of the family, and I couldn’t help but wonder-“
“I went looking,” he said, still frowning , “right after my seventeenth birthday. I was hoping…” He leaned his elbows on his knees and blew air through his teeth. “Well, I ended up here. If Dean was freaked about me showing up, he never let on. It was a week before we got the results back from the DNA Diagnostics people.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “No relation.”
“I’m sorry,” I guessed, because I couldn’t think of a more appropriate response.
“No, it’s fine,” he said, and meant it. “Better, maybe. Maria calls me ti-bé now, you know?” He smiled into his lap, and there was a chuckle under the words. “I don’t think she ever could have done that if those results had come back different.”
I put a hand on his knee, not for needless comfort, but to thank him for telling me these things. “Did you keep looking?”
He looked up in surprise. “No, I didn’t.”
“Benjamin Isaac Braeden!” Dean yelled from the kitchen.
Ben shook his head in annoyance, but he went where he was summoned.
I was left to surmise that he’d found exactly what he was looking for.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
The girl who arrived at the house forty-five minutes later looked about thirteen or fourteen years old. She had pale skin and a boyish figure, and her bright blue pixie cut made her heart-shaped face look even more elfin.
“Hey, Rose,” Sam said as he let her in, and nothing about his smile indicated that he hated this idea, didn’t want her here, or otherwise disapproved. But as she passed close to him, she gave a surprised little, “Oh!”
She craned her head back to look up at him with wide, innocent eyes. “If you really feel that strongly about it, I won’t do it.”
He did not regard this greeting as the least bit weird. Instead he gave her a smile equal parts pride and resignation. He took her coat and scarf, hung them on the elegant brass hooks next to the door, and led the way into the living room.
“Hey, Rosie,” Dean and Ben chorused from the armchairs, where they were both deep in what I could only assume were tomes of eldritch lore.
The girl didn’t answer them. In fact, she barely glanced their way before coming straight over to me on the sofa. “Hi. I’m Rose Holt.” Awkwardly she held out a hand half-covered by the sleeve of her hoodie. I shook it, trying hard to mask my disappointment that the cavalry had arrived and it stood five-nothing.
“Kate Doolittle,” I said. “I like your hair.”
“Thanks. I’m older than I look. And I’m very sorry about the mora.”
Her disjointed reply and big, solemn eyes were a little unsettling, but all I said was, “Oh, you know. These things happen. Thanks for coming to help.”
She smiled, which made her look even younger. “You’re welcome. Most people get used to me eventually. You sure you don’t mind me in your head?”
I blinked at her. It took me a second to formulate a reply. “You’re sure you’re okay being in my head?”
Suddenly her solemn green eyes sparkled in a way that made me want very badly to ask whether things at the North Pole had calmed down now that Christmas was over. All she needed was a pointy hat and a wooden train to paint. “I bet it’s a nice head,” she said politely. “I’m not worried.”
Dean twitched a curtain aside to glance out the front window. “Rosie, honey, can you move your car? Maria’s going to need to get in that gate.”
“Of course.” She flashed me a shy smile, retrieved a set of keys from her coat pocket, and slipped outside again.
“She’s old enough to drive?” I asked.
Dean grinned. “Got her license in September.”
But something a lot like guilt was tugging at me now. The fresh bite wound on the back of my neck was throbbing, and I was replaying what the Winchesters had told me about the mechanics of dream demons. I turned to Sam, whose objections made much more sense now. “How dangerous will this be for her?”
Dean jumped in to answer me. “There’s some risk, for sure. The mora made you bleed, right? You know she’s got real power within the dream.”
“So she could hurt Rosie too. Rose. Rosie? What do I-?”
“She’s trying to get Rose to stick,” he admitted.
“Rose could get hurt.”
“Rose could get killed,” Sam said, looking right at me. “The mora will only do so much to you; she’s not going to burn down her own apartment. But anyone else in your head is fair game.”
“Come on,” Ben scoffed. “That is not going to happen.”
“She asked what was possible,” Sam said icily.
“Yeah, and it’s possible the mora will knit us sweaters and teach us to dance while we’re in there.”
Dean rolled his eyes and grimaced at me. Evidently they were going to treat me to a reenactment of their kitchen argument.
“You still think you’re invincible,” Sam accused. “You think the worst case scenario can never happen to you.”
“I’ll be with her the whole time, and I will not let her get hurt. And you know she can be out of there in a second. She’s been lucid dreaming since she was seven; she knows how to wake herself up. Hell, she’ll be safer than in that tree house you built. Can’t break an arm falling out of a dream, can she?”
“And what happens when she wakes up? You get dragged out of the dream too, and Kate’s alone with the mora again, which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.”
That was about when blood started dripping from the ceiling. It came down in hot, fat droplets, splashing into my hair and pattering quietly on the floor. In the moment before I screamed, I remembered Ben’s words: like any other trip, it can’t hurt you, it can’t hurt you, it cannot hurt you. I covered my head and sank deeper into the cushions.
“You’re scaring Kate,” a small voice said.
Sam and Ben went silent, and the blood disappeared. Rose had come back in so quietly that Ben, Sam, and I had not noticed. Dean apparently had, because he was offering her his coffee cup to warm her hands.
“I wasn’t scared,” I said, keeping careful control of my voice. “I was hallucinating. It’s different.”
Sam and Ben only looked mildly ashamed of themselves.
“If I wake up, I might yank Ben out of the dream with me,” Rose admitted, hands wrapped tight around Dean’s mug. “I’ve never dreamwalked on purpose before. I don’t know how it will work, exactly.”
“Why don’t you sit down, sweetheart?” Dean said, and she settled next to me on the sofa.
“I can connect with two people at once. That’s easy enough. I haven’t managed a conference call, but I think it’ll be much easier with everybody asleep. Dreams are… porous. You might not even need me anymore once the connection is established.”
“Okay, sounds good. Tell us what you need.”
“Just both of them asleep,” she said, nodding at me and Ben. “And maybe some chamomile tea. After that, it’s pretty simple. Ben, I think I should start in your dreams, and then we’ll take a field trip to hers. What do you think?”
He spread his hands. “However you want to do it.”
“It’s easiest to find you in a shared memory. Remember Nebraska last year? When you took me to meet the Harvelles?” They exchanged brief smiles at what was probably a hilarious anecdote, and somehow it stung. In-jokes, road trips, names I’d never heard before? I wasn’t jealous, precisely. But I thought of me and Ben as close, even after we both went off to school. Just how much of his life had absolutely nothing to do with me?
“You and I don’t have any shared memories,” I said to Rose.
“No, but you and Ben have plenty. More than I have with him, for sure,” she said, which gave me the unpleasant suspicion that she was placating me. “That’s why I’m finding you by way of him.”
He mustered up a lopsided smile for me. “Where do you want to meet up?”
It must have been the smile. Some part of me recognized where I’d last seen it. “Last Christmas Eve, you came over after the party.” He’d given me precisely that smile, trying to explain about honest-to-God, ain’t-shittin’-you evil, about the people who were alive because of him, and about the men in whose footsteps he’d chosen to follow. “You helped me with the dishes.”
His lips parted just barely. He remembered that conversation as well as I did.
Dean shook his head at us. “I hope that’s a euphemism. Otherwise, you are both hopelessly boring.”
Rose giggled. Sam rolled his eyes. “On the upside,” he said, “the dream-kitchen will have a wide selection of dream-knives and other dream-pointy-things.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I lied.
“Okay, then. Time for everybody to get comfy,” said Dean. “Sammy can make tea.”
“Ben can make tea,” Sam said promptly.
“Ben can make tea,” Ben mimicked, sour-faced, even as he got up to do it.
“I will make the tea,” Rose said sympathetically, waving Ben back into his chair. “I’m the one who wanted it anyway.” On her way down the hall, she called back, “Where would I find chamomile?”
No one opened their mouths to answer her. Sam just closed his eyes briefly.
“Oh, okay, thanks,” she said. Little Becky’s discomfort with this girl was becoming less and less mysterious.
“Are you ready?” Ben asked me, just as Sam had asked only the night before.
“No,” I confessed. “But let’s go.”
This time it was Dean's turn to carry me upstairs. He set me down on top of the covers on the far side of the double bed, propped up by pillows. As on the previous night, the Winchesters pulled chairs up to the footboard and laid machetes across their laps. But this afternoon, Ben climbed on top of the covers next to me and sat up against the headboard.
“Do we both get knock-out drugs this time?” I asked. “A Percocet party could be fun.”
“How about a tea party?” Sam said. “The more natural your sleep, the easier it will be for someone to wake up if they need to.”
“I may need something more heavy-duty than chamomile.”
“You’re still recovering, and your body wants rest. It’ll be easier than you think.”
Rose appeared with three steaming mugs balanced on a plate, each trailing the string of a tea bag. Ben and I accepted ours silently, and I scalded my tongue on the first sip. Of course you did, I sighed inwardly. Let’s just have the worst possible experience with this, shall we?
Rose smiled as if she’d heard me. “There’s no hurry. Ben, can I borrow your bed in the guest room?”
“Course you can.”
“So we’re all set then,” said Sam.
“Everybody understands the plan, right?" said Dean. He pointed at me. “You: stay close to Ben, help him find the mora. Keep control of the dream as best you can.” He turned to Rose. “You: stay close to Kate, and bail if things get ugly. I mean it. If you let yourself get hurt, I’m revoking horseback riding privileges. For a year.” Finally he pointed at Ben. “You: shove something pointy in her shriveled black heart.”
“You express yourself very clearly,” Rose said sincerely.
I laid my hand over Ben's. "Shall we?"
Rose disappeared to the guest room, and Ben and I sipped our tea. When I’d drained mine, I laid back, relaxed into the pillows, and very deliberately called up the memory of last Christmas Eve. The dish soap was orange-scented, competing with the apple-cinnamon and the evergreen that permeated the house. Sam was right about my physical exhaustion; it was easy to slip down into drowsiness. I floated comfortably on the little details, sank into them luxuriously. Down and down until they closed over my head.