[central indiana] i knew that she was different from the rest

[verymature]

On one hand, Dean knew that he could just let the whole mess drop. The girl who'd known his life story was miles behind him and hadn't shown any signs of following, nor had he been set upon by whatever mooks she probably had under her command when he'd stopped to get gas, so he was probably in the clear. He was an hour and some change away from Lisa and Ben's now, somewhere between towns on the interstate, and he could be at her place faster than that if he pushed it, all the weirdness of the day and his life forgotten in a heartbeat.

On the other hand, though, the weird waitress chick had had a point, as much as he hated to admit it. You didn't just quit this stuff cold turkey, and it was only a matter of time before, whatever she was in reality, Cordelia came after him. Or some other big bad did. It was like he had a friggen bulls-eye tattooed on his back, and while he had promised Sam he wouldn't go back to it, he wanted to make sure he didn't involve Lisa and the kid in all of this. Or, if he did, that he could make a short affair of it -- a one time deal -- rather than the grueling, uphill battle fraught with casualties his life had been for the last few years.

Plus, well, he had to admit a part of him was at least somewhat curious, and between that and the need for information on the situation to keep it from becoming a situation? It probably explained why he pulled over to the side of the road, reached for his phone in the glove compartment and dialed Bobby's number.

The phone rang several times before Bobby bothered to answer. "Hello?"

"Hey, Bobby."

There was a long pause, and then incredulously, "Dean?"

"Yeah, uh, hi." He hesitated, passing the phone from one hand to the other before cutting to the chase. No sense beating around the bush with pleasantries -- he was pretty sure Bobby knew how he was holding up. "Look, I need you look into a couple've things for me."

"Christ, boy, you just disappear off the damn map, and then you call me to look into somethin'?"

Dean huffed out a sigh, a ghost of real anger rising up in his chest, and scrubbed a hand over his face. Regardless of those pinpricks of righteous indignation, however, when he answered, he sounded nothing short of defeated. "It's only been a couple of days, Bobby, and Sam's friggen dead, so excuse me if I wanted to take some time to myself to wrap my head around that."

Another long pause -- Dean presumed that Bobby was trying to decide whether or not to press the issue -- and then he sighed, too. " ... what is it you wanna know?"

"You know anythin' about Cleveland?"

"I know it's in a bad way." There was a shuffling of papers, faint but audible, on the other end of the line. "F'you bothered to check in two days earlier, I wouldn'tve been here. I went down to Dayton to help a friend with a rougarou problem, and ... " Dean could almost hear him shake his head. "Word is the whole damn city's shut down, and that whatever's on the inside's keepin' a lid on things."

"You check it out?"

"The entire town's full've demons, Dean -- Cleveland's on some kinda ley line that attracts 'em on their way outta Hell. Most've the boys are too chicken shit to take a group up there, and that's what you'd need to do a lick of good up there. A group." He paused, as something occurred to him, and then sternly, "You're not thinkin' of doin' somethin' stupid, are you?"

"No." He wasn't sure, but it wasn't a flat out lie, either. "I just -- I stopped to get breakfast and got chased out the door by this crazy waitress chick who said I might find what I'm lookin' for in Cleveland."

"You get a name?"

"Cordelia ... somethin'." Bobby grunted disapproval; Dean made a face. "I was kinda freaked out, okay? Usually when people start spittin' out pieces of my life story, they're not on the level, and considerin' all the crap I've been through lately? I'd like to have five friggen minutes to myself."

Bobby remained silent, and Dean made another face, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose, hoping that one or the other would help jog his memory. To his surprise, it did. "She mentioned somethin' about bein' in LA when somethin' and, uh, Heart nuked it?"

"Wolfram and Hart?"

"That's the one."

"They're a law firm, and they're bad news, Dean. No one really knows the specifics, but ... general opinion is that they're into all kinda nasty stuff -- and I'm not just talkin' occasionally forgettin' to pay their taxes or shopliftin' from the corner store. People they don't like just up and disappear. People they do end up goin' from rags to riches over night. And they've gotten more than one murderer off with a slap on the wrist."

"Yeah, so?" He wasn't so sure about the disappearances and the random good luck, but lawyers got bad people off all the time. It was generally what those schmucks paid them for.

"So, lawyers are good, but they're not that good. This goes beyond just havin' a solid lucky streak."

"Okay ... " He filed that away and then shrugged, leaning back in his seat a bit. "Well, either way ... you think you could find out who my mystery chick is? Find a list of people who survived the whole LA thing or whatever? I mean, it's not like Cordelia's really all that popular a girl's name, right?"

"I might be able to," Bobby agreed, "but it's gonna take time. I'll call you back when I've got somethin'." There was a pause, and then tersely, he added, "And answer your damn phone this time, boy."

"I will." He couldn't really be blamed for putting his phone on silent when he'd hit the road, could he? "Thanks, Bobby."

Bobby made a noncomittal noise at the back of his throat and hung up. Twenty minutes later, Dean was still parked on the side of the road and Bobby had called back. "I found somethin' on your girl, but you're not gonna like it much."

Dean grimaced -- he'd been expecting this. "Tell me anyway."

"She's dead, Dean. Has been for five years, accordin' to the records I dragged up. I couldn't find much else you'd be interested in, but that stuck out like a sore thumb."

"Great." Of course she was. It was the story of his life.

Sighing, he muttered another thank you to Bobby and hung up, shooting a glance over his shoulder at the road he'd traveled to get here. He didn't want to be involved in this, but ... whatever it was that was wearing the crazy chick's skin needed to be dealt with before he went on to Ben and Lisa. If he didn't do something, he'd be forever looking over his shoulder, just as he was now, waiting for something to happen, and when it did -- and it would -- with his luck, his to-be family would end up dead. And he couldn't do that, not to them.

"Damn it," he muttered under his breath. He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head, hoping Sam would forgive him this. Then, without waiting for some kind of biblical response, he put the car in drive and, ignoring sounds of protest from the horns of the other drivers, swung the car around in a wide arc, crossing over the grassy divider and onto the other side of the highway, and started back the way he'd come.

Comments

[verymature]

He spotted her through the glow of the headlights, and angled the car to avoid her and the dumpsters, rolling to a stop beside them. He killed the engine, leaned across the seat to grab his gun out of the glove compartment, grateful that he hadn't thought to move it somewhere Ben couldn't get to it yet, and got out, casually tucking it under the waist of his jeans. Not that he had any problems with her seeing it -- she was a demon or something, and he was so beyond the point of caring -- but he didn't want some Average Joe seeing it and calling the cops before he took care of her. He could talk his way out of it, sure, but he didn't much feel like it; he just wanted this over with.

And that in mind, he wasted no time with small talk as he came within earshot. "You know, you're kinda a shitty liar."

[letsbe_clear]

Okay. Maybe the pep talk didn't work as well as she thought.

Cordelia may have been out of LA for five years, she may have been laying low, she may have been trying the whole zen approach to her life, but she was still Cordelia Chase. And if you came at her swinging, she was going to swing right back. Her shoulders squared and she crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"Excuse me?"

[verymature]

"You heard me, lady -- you're a shitty liar." He came closer slowly -- just in case she decided to drop the act and come at him -- and flashed her a thin, sarcastic smile. "See, I called a buddy of mine and he looked you up, and funny story? Cordelia Chase is dead. Has been for, like, five years."

[letsbe_clear]

She barked a half a laugh. "Really? That's what you're hard up on? I think you know better than anyone that death can be faked."

After that came the very dramatic eye roll, before she uncrossed her arms and gestured with her hands. "Alright, c'mon. Run whatever tests you want. I'm as human as they come."

[verymature]

"Well, there was that ... and name droppin' Wolfram and Hart ... and then tryin' to send me off to a town that dozens of other guys like me won't go within fifty miles of?" He spread his arms wide and shrugged widely, almost theatrically. "Yeah, I'm hung up. So sue me."

He dropped his hands and bent down to untuck a knife from his boot -- another old habit that died hard, but at least it was working for him in this case. "But hey. You wanna play? No sweat off my back." He flipped the knife around to hold it out to her, hilt-first. Probably not the best idea, arming the ... whatever the hell she was, but hey, he still had his gun. "Cut yourself with that."

[letsbe_clear]

"Sorry. Maybe I should have dropped Angel Investigations instead. Because that's who I actually worked for and they fought Wolfram and Hart. And just so you know? There's an army of Slayers in that city. They're the reason why the whole state hasn't become overrun. Just because you boys don't have balls to go in there and deal with the problem doesn't mean someone isn't fighting the fight."

But she did as she was told and took the knife from him, rolling up the sleeve of her jacket. "You know, I used to know a guy who could tell if a person was really them just by listening to them sing. You guys really need to upgrade to something less violent." But she did as she was told, drawing the blade across her arm and wincing as it bled.

[verymature]

"And these Slayers are doin' so much better? I think losin' a town pretty much counts as suckin' at your job just as much as losin' a state would." He held out his hand for the knife, satisfied that she wasn't a shapeshifter, at least. He wasn't done with her just yet, though.

[letsbe_clear]

"Well, aren't you a glass half-full," she glared as she reached into her bag for something to apply pressure to the cut with. "Cleveland's on a hellmouth, so even if you hadn't just hit the world with a cosmic quake that made all of them twice as potent as they normally are, it would still be drawing trouble. And while they may not be winning, they're at least doing something, as oppose to you, who is running off to play house with the girl who got away. Promise to your brother or not? The world's in a pretty shitty state, Dean. Stopping an Apocalypse doesn't magically make it all better."

[verymature]

"You think I don't get that?"

He'd felt only marginal anger when Bobby had forced him to talk about Sam, but Bobby hadn't known the conversation was going to head that way, and he had the sense to drop it. Maybe they'd come back to it later, when the wound wasn't so fresh and Bobby could find a way to approach it without feeling too emasculated, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that this girl -- human, demon, whatever -- barely knew him and was going to town pushing every button he had, just because she could and with no signs of stopping. In spite of being relatively numb, that pissed him off.

He grit his teeth, his hands curling into fists at his side. "I get that this crap doesn't stop -- that there'll always be monsters in the dark lookin' to make life hell -- but my brother's been in the ground for a week. You can't exactly expect me to be Mister Sunshine and Flowers after that. And you can't expect me to decide I want in on another showstopper anytime soon. I deserve a Goddamn break."

Never mind the fact that she wasn't winning any points for her I'm human case by pulling all of his personal details out of her ass.

[letsbe_clear]

"You think I haven't lost people?" She glared right back. "My hometown is a crater. My family? Gone. I had to give up my entire life in order to keep them on the path they were supposed to be on, and they had to die to do it. So I get that you're grieving, really. I get that you're angry. But the world doesn't stop going just because you want it to. You take your time, you try and play normal, but that doesn't stop them from walking right up to your front door. They're monsters. They don't care."

Cordelia can't help that she's a conduit, either, but he was pushing her buttons right back. He was acting like he was the first person to ever lose something, and Cordelia wasn't the type to give sympathy over something like that. "You fight because they don't stop unless you do. Because it's all you can do, even if it sucks."

[verymature]

"Last time I checked, they don't stop even if you do," he snapped back. "This isn't some fairy story. The good guys don't win. They fight and then they die, end of story, and I'm pretty sure I'm at the end of my nine lives, here."

Not that he had any problems with dying -- he'd been there and done that, and without Sam, there wasn't really much worth living for at the moment, anyway. He just figured that arguing back was better than punching her, like he'd decided he wanted to, or worse yet, shooting her.

[letsbe_clear]

"Look. I'm not saying you have to go fight. But don't look down on the ones actually doing the fighting because they haven't completely won the battle. They're doing the best they can. You want your vacation in someone else's world, go -- take it. It's what you've been fighting for all along, isn't it?"

She rolled down the sleeve of her jacket. Cordelia had had worse things done than getting shot, but she was done trying to be his force of guidance. He was acting like a dick, and she was right -- it was his choice. She would deal with him when he had less of a stick up his ass. She smoothed the material down and started to walk away. "Have a nice life, Dean. Hope it works out for you."

[verymature]

He was half-tempted to tell her he wasn't done with her -- he hadn't gone through the rest of his tests, still didn't know if she was human or something else -- but he was tired of hearing her bitch at him. He didn't need this right now, least of all from a stranger, and it was his choice. It was potentially the coward's way out -- he could be out there, helping, doing good, even if it would probably end up costing him his life -- but he was just ... so tired. He had been before this had all ended, and he was doubly so now.

He sighed, his anger ebbing away slowly. "Yeah, thanks for that."

[letsbe_clear]

She turned and gave him a half shrug as she headed to her car. If he wanted to run the rest of the tests he was more than welcome to follow her, but as far as she was concerned, she was going home. To the aforementioned bath and soaking and ... enjoying her lovely long weekend.

[verymature]

Not bothering to tell her he'd see her again, not when those turned out to be famous last words last time, he turned and headed back to the Impala. No sense sticking around here. He had a life to get to.