We sat down to cold sandwiches. I made them. Dean wasn't back yet. Cas didn't know what kind of human food he liked, yet—or rather, that Jimmy had liked—so I made him stand with me while I sliced cheese and peeled deli meat, and sniff or sample the various components of a potential sandwich, and made him one out of the things that didn't seem to put him off.

He thanked me for his sandwich, and we all sat out in the garage, talking about the various half-built, half-repaired, and half-wrecked cars scattered and slumped around the place. I had blood on my shirt that wasn't mine, and between bites cleaned the blood off the outside of my rifle, then did a routine cleaning too while I was at it. I had to scrape a few pieces of solid matter off the stock, but Bobby had a nice polish to seal any invisible scratches I'd made, and I made generous use of that as well.

Didn't bother changing my T-shirt. None of us were squeamish, it was all dry, and it wasn't caked on.

Cas, standing at the mouth of the garage, was the first to notice the car coming down the long road. "The Impala is coming back," he said.

"Is Dean in it?" Sam asked, hurrying to his side. I capped my polish and set it aside, propping my rifle up so the stock could dry.

"I can't see yet."

I heard in the gush of Sam's breath that he'd recognized something about him, the way you simply recognize the ones you love, no matter which way they face or how little you see. With the people you know that well, they just become a part of you, like some uncanny form of impossible osmosis, and you recognize their proximity in ways that cannot be observed.

Dean pulled up behind the van, and got out. He was rubbing his face already, and distracted. "I got it," he said as he passed us.

"I left you a sandwich on the worktable," I said as he went, and began gathering the empty plates left of the ones that had already been eaten.

I rinsed the plates and left them in the rack.

I drank a glass of water.

I stood with the heels of my hands spread against the stainless steel sink for a while.

I wondered if I should play Karen's violin again before I went. I wanted to. But that would draw attention, and I didn't want to draw any attention, for any reason whatsoever, anymore. Not from them.

We were going to lose Sam when we found Lucifer, and that would likely be soon.

I did not intend to be here to watch. There was no reason for me to put myself through that. And afterward the dream wouldn't be any fun anymore.

I slipped out a creaking side door with a torn screen—if I were staying I could stitch it back together. An ugly but functional repair—and off toward where the scrappier cars lay heaped and abandoned, forgotten and sagging skeletons. Most had been the victims of car accidents. Though, as one of my high school teachers used to say, there were no car 'accidents', only seemingly minor mistakes with devastating results.

Once I deemed myself far enough away from the house, obscured by so many falling-apart-things, I took my Swiss army knife out of my hip pocket and opened the shorter blade. It wasn't like I needed much depth.

But Sam had given me this knife. The dream would end when I left it—I was the host, so to speak—but the metaphor still seemed cruel. And Dean had given me the dagger I hadn't taken off yet.

Piece of whatever sharp bit I could find, it was. In a junkyard like this, it didn't take long. I wrenched off a piece of shredded fender.

Relentless dedication. I placed the point precisely—for the purposes of identifying and if possible preventing serious injury, we all knew where the major arteries were, or at least the ones that complained the most when disturbed. Then, with a decisive press and draw, I managed the cut.

I hissed, and switched hands with my sharp instrument, but I knew in a hurried heartbeat I didn't have the coordination in that hand to hold it. Besides, my palm and fingers were already coated with blood. I did try though. Be nice to see my family again. And this hurt. I didn't want to hurt for any longer than I had to.

I didn't expect Cas.

He appeared before me and gripped me tightly by the bloody arm. "You can't!"

He was supposed to be out of juice. How had he managed this?

I yanked on said arm, though fighting his grip grated my torn skin against itself and made the pain worse. Tears sprang to my eyes. "I have to! I'm not staying here to watch him die!"

"So you will make him watch you perish instead?"

"When I die all of this ends! He won't have to see anything!"

Cas was trying to stop my arm from bleeding. Blood spattered over the ground, over my shoes and his. His coat sleeves were already braceleted in red. "This world is not the dream, Tess."

I put the torn metal in my right hand again and swung at him with it.

He caught me by that arm and released my left to disarm me, throwing the torn piece away. "If you die here you will never wake up!"

"I have to try! Cas, I'm not going to wager losing everything I love for a life of killing people!"

He had me in his grip again. I tried shoving him off, and was doing a decent job of it, all things considered. He wasn't used to living in a body limited to human means. "Tessa!" he growled, hands slick with my blood, unable to hold onto me. "Why would the djinn give you dreams of me? Why would it allow you to know you're in its thrall?"

Oh, but here it came: blood loss symptoms. One of my knees buckled then waveringly straightened, and the edges around Cas, the distance and tattered shapes behind him, they were chattering together.

"I don't know because it scares the shit out of me!" I screamed back at him. "I have a better life than this! What kind of person would I be to make them wait for me to wake up?"

"We're already waiting, Tess!"

I had one hand fisted into the collar of his beige coat, and he had both wrapped around my left forearm, applying pressure along the whole length of the jagged incision. My knee went again, and then the other one. Cas came down with me, knowing I could no longer fight him away.

I wasn't crying with desperation or frustration now. Now it was fear. "Because you're an angel," I cried, my voice diminishing as fast as I was. "And you can't help me, and that terrifies me."

My head tipped against his shoulder and I managed to pull it up again. Cas released me just long enough to work his coat off, then began wrapping it around and around my arm. I closed my eyes, but I wasn't sure when I'd done it. Had they been closed the entire time? In a manner of speaking, I suppose they had been.

I could barely stay upright, sagging gradually forward, as though losing pieces of my spine and ribcage one by one. My right hand lay dimly, far away in my lap. "I'm sorry, Cas," I whispered, hoping he would fail, because I didn't want to be the one to lose this fight. I wanted to go home, and if the path there was paved with potholes and thorns and barbed wire, then so be it. No one could ever say I didn't do everything I could, that I didn't try, that I just gave up.

So be it.

Still hastily wrapping and tying and doing the best he could, though I knew he'd not done this before, Cas said, "I have helped you, Tessa. I've done everything I could."

My head fell back against his shoulder, and I lost the rest of what bones I still had left. My breath dragged in and out, rapid, useless.

"I'm only sorry I couldn't wake you sooner."

~

Castiel lifted Tess awkwardly in his arms, surprised at how sore he was from the day's activities, and the little sleep he'd gotten the night before. His stained coat was wrapped and bunched around her arm, and blood soaked the cuffs of his shirt, and had even gotten smeared on his tie and collar from where Tessa's hands had clenched.

She seemed to have walked an awfully long way to find a suitable place to dispose of herself.

At last he heard a shout, and saw Dean run out of the garage, Bobby right behind him. "Tess!"

Sam heard the shouting and was soon after them.

Dean reached them first, and worked Tessa out of Cas's arms, and began hurrying back to the house, Bobby at his side and Cas jogging behind them. "What happened?"

"Tessa tried to wake up."

Sam reached them just in time to hear, and laid a hand on Tess's frayed hair, her braid falling apart. "But she's okay?"

Dean cursed. "She's breathing."

"She is not fatally injured if she doesn't lose any more blood," Cas replied.

"I'll get the med kit." Bobby ran ahead to the house.

"This is where you went when you disappeared," Sam realized. "How did you manage it?"

"I don't know."

"But you knew she was in trouble—how?"

"I don't know."

Dean laid Tess out on the dining room table as Bobby ran back in with a box of medical supplies. "I need a can of beer, some rolled up socks—something to apply pressure."

Sam opened the fridge and retrieved the can, tossing it to him.

Dean wedged it under Tess's upper arm and called Cas around to the other side of the table. "Hold her shoulder and arm, here, applying pressure. Only a little—between the location and the cold, it doesn't take much."

Sam was already unwrapping Cas's twisted coat from her arm, keeping the last layer pressed down until Dean had bandages ready.

He peeled up the last layer so they could assess the damage.

"That needs stitches," Bobby said, already finding and threading a needle. "Who's up?"

"Too bad Tess was always best at it," Sam muttered.

"I'll do it." Dean took the needle. "This knotted?"

"Yup."

"Sam."

Sam held the bandages over Tess's wrist and held her skin together so Dean could get started at her inner elbow. Dean bent over the gouge, wiped sweat out of his eyes, and started hastily stitching and tugging the ghastly wound closed. He worked as quickly as he could, since the wound was still seeping, and judging by the state of Cas's coat, she'd managed to rid herself of a terrifying quantity of blood already. Sam moved his hands and adjusted the bandage as Dean progressed. Bobby fetched a pair of rolled up blankets and propped her legs up to keep the blood in her organs.

"Let's clean it quick and get it wrapped up," Dean said as he was nearing her wrist. "Bobby, can you cut and tie this?"

Bobby hurried to do so as Dean put the needle in a dish by the sink to be cleaned, and hurried back around to their supplies, finding the iodine.

Once Tessa's arm was shining and orange, Sam held Tess's arm up by the hand to help Dean pass the roll of bandaging around and around her forearm, firmly.

"You can take that can out now, Cas," Sam said, noticing that Cas was still doing as Dean had asked him to nearly a quarter hour earlier. "We don't want her to lose the hand."

Dean cut the end of the bandage and felt up and down her arm, squeezing the edges down and checking for anything he might have missed. He wiped his brow on his shoulder as Sam laid her arm back down. "We should keep it cool for the next hour or two."

Bobby threw him a bag of frozen peas from the fridge, and Dean arranged it over her upturned arm. Bobby also retrieved an epi pen from his box, and uncapped it.

"What's that for?" Dean asked, voice hoarse with exhaustion.

"It's adrenalin. Constricts blood vessels to increase blood pressure, and increases the heart rate."

"Won't that make her bleed worse?" Sam asked.

"Not if she's patched up tight. It'll make sure her organs and brain are getting enough oxygen, though. She should also get a round of antibiotics, since blood loss is hell on the immune system." He handed the epi pen to Dean. "That end down in her middle thigh, press and hold for ten seconds. That's it."

Dean did as instructed.

"The antibiotics I have are only in pills," Bobby continued. "So those'll have to wait."

They stared down at where Tess lay unevenly stretched across the blood-spattered wood, her skin horridly pale. Her temples, eyelids, and the insides of her elbows were gray.

"Sorry about your table, Bobby," Dean muttered.

"It's seen worse, kid."

Sam walked slowly around to the sink, and washed his hands. Cas followed his example, then finally Dean.

"Cas, I've got spare shirts in my bag upstairs," Sam said. "You might as well go grab one."

"Thank you." He left.

Dean dragged out a chair at Tess's side, and dropped heavily into it, putting his head on his hands.

Sam sank down to sit against the wall, forearms on knees as he stared up at the bottoms of Tessa's shoes. "How are we even going to keep her alive now that she's awake? If she's determined to save herself from the wrong thing. We can't watch her forever."

Bobby leaned into the humming refrigerator, arms crossed, head bowed.

"But we will, Sammy," Dean said, voice low, uneven. "You know we will." He sniffed, cleared his throat, swallowed.

"You know we can't leave her alone after this," Bobby muttered. "Not until we're sure...."

"Yeah," Dean agreed.

"Your panic room's a good spot," Sam suggested, bleak. "If one of us can't be with her."

"God, I hated doing that to you, Sammy," Dean moaned. "I'm not gonna do it to her, too."

"Then we won't. She's tough and she'll be furious, to boot. She'll be on her feet in no time."

Sam and Bobby were outside that evening, Dean upstairs with Tess, and Cas off somewhere when they heard a livid scream out of a second-floor window.

"Tess's awake," Sam said, despondent, and took another sip of his beer.

"Least you know the kid's not one to take things lying down," Bobby replied, having gone through a few himself. They listened to a muffled thud, and a crash. Dean was shouting, and Tess started to cry.

"This another one of your spins, Bobby?"

"I'm turnin' over a new leaf."

"Gotcha."

They took a few more sips. Dean and Tess bellowed at each other upstairs.

"Think she'll try to kill your angel for saving her damn life?" Bobby wanted to know.

Sam snorted, and rubbed his face. "God, on any other day I'd want to see them try. With Cas human she could definitely take him."

"Anybody can take human Cas," Bobby agreed.

~

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