"SO THAT'S it? You just... woke up? Buried alive? With the damn Earth crumbling all around you?"
Makayla had her forefingers pressed against her forehead, as if soothing herself from a headache. She was seated in the passenger seat of the Impala, her twin behind the wheel and her younger brother in the back.
"And the gas station? Just like at Pamela's house, huh?"
Dean offered a shrug in return to his sister's curiosity, who sighed in response.
"Jesus. And the only clue we have as to what the hell pulled you out is that its name is Castiel and it burns out your eyeballs if you look at it. Just another Winchester Thursday, huh?"
Sam chuckled from the backseat and Dean's lips turned upwards.
"Do you... do you remember it? Hell, I mean...?"
Dean shook his head too quickly, and Makayla pursed her lips; however, she figured it was not the time nor place to pry.
"And what about you, Sammy? What's kept you busy these past four months?"
Dean wiggled his brows at the boy in the backseat, who offered a hesitant smile.
"Just... hunting, I guess."
"Hunting... you guess?"
The girl questioned, turning to face him.
He was shifting rather uncomfortably, and she shot a look over at her twin, who returned the same suspicious gaze.
"Yeah, I mean... I just- kept at it. It's what you wanted, Dean. I didn't want to let you down."
At that, Dean's face softened, but Makayla's apprehension barely faltered. She could still sense the reluctance.
She would've, perhaps, dwelled on it longer, if it had not been for the fact that the attention had, begrudgingly, drifted elsewhere.
From the stagnant tension that not filled the air with discomfort, Makayla knew that both pairs of eyes were on her.
She refused to talk without a direct request.
Her gaze was directed straight forward towards the gravel road they were driving on, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth.
"How about you, Mak?"
Dean's voice was softer now, gentler. Seeming to say 'you don't have to talk if you don't want to.'
But choosing to not talk about it would make her boys worry. And she couldn't have that.
"Dean, I'm fine, I swear. Same thing as Sammy. Hell, I had this one hunt at a museum that had artifacts from an ancient Egyptian burial chamber. Did you guys know that pharaohs had their servants killed and buried in their tombs so they could serve them in the afterlife too? It's fucking gruesome. A slave was attached to one of the canopic jars that hold damn organs and the spirit was lashing out at anyone that seemed like an asshole dictator or something. A CEO of this huge company got murdered because of it, but I was able to catch on pretty quick-"
"Mak."
Dean interrupted, giving her a knowing stare. She looked back only to find Sam staring at her with furrowed brows.
She let out a groan.
"Just-"
"Look, I just want to know what the hell you were talking about last night. I mean, you sounded pretty spooked-"
"Yeah, De, of course I was spooked, my dead brother had just knocked on my door-"
"Okay, let me rephrase that, you sounded pretty not spooked last night, even though your dead brother had just knocked on your door."
"I told you, I thought it was a dream."
She snapped.
"I hadn't been getting much sleep, so I just assumed that I had fallen asleep while doing research and then was having another nightmare."
"How often did you have nightmares?"
Sam queried from the backseat, and Makayla swallowed but forced a grim smile.
"Every time I slept, I guess."
"Yeah, and how often was that?"
Dean's voice was no longer quiet, but rather accusatory.
She opened her mouth to speak, but when nothing came out, she closed it.
"Look, it- it doesn't matter, okay? It's over now."
"Not so fast!"
Dean countered.
"You had some guy visiting you in your sleep? And you heard voices? Makayla, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think you were certifiably insane last night."
It was silent for a few beats.
"It's nothing, Dean."
This time, her words were soft-spoken and uncertain.
Dean could feel her closing herself off to him again, although he'd only be back with her for twelve hours. She'd have her emotions sealed away completely soon enough, and he didn't want that to happen. He couldn't let that happen.
"Alright, just stop bullshitting me, please?"
He spoke hastily and impatiently.
"Look, like I said, there was that guy in the trench-coat that would sometimes appear in my dreams and talk to me about you. I'm sure it was nothing, guys. Probably just my conscience taking the form of my dream sugar daddy- just a sorry reminder of how pathetically single I am."
Sam laughed hard at this, his eyes crinkling in the way that had always been so adorable to Makayla. She was glad to have shifted the topic slightly, the mood in the car brightening drastically.
However, when she glanced at Dean, he was still reluctantly trepidatious to let the matter drop.
She raised her brows at him.
'We can talk about this later,' her green eyes pleaded with him.
With a heavy sigh, he nodded his head and turned the radio louder.
__________
"Order me a snack or something, will you? I gotta pee."
Dean snorted at his sister's proclamation as Sam shook his head with a smile.
"Yeah, I'll alert the media."
Dean muttered.
"You want coffee?"
"Sure."
She nodded as she walked to the back corner of the small diner, entering the ladies' room.
"Hey, Dean, I'm going to go call Bobby to check up on Pamela, I'll be right back."
Dean held his head in hands as his elbows rested upon the table of the booth that he had claimed as his own. He saw a waitress approaching from the corner of his eye, a notepad in her hands.
"What can I get for you?"
She hummed, and Dean smiled cocksurely at her.
"An order of fries, two slices of apple pie, and a cup of coffee that's half cream with two spoons of sugar."
The words rolled off his tongue unambiguously, as he knew his sister's preferred coffee order by heart, but the woman turned up her nose.
"Well, that's less a cup of coffee with cream and more a cup of cream with coffee."
She joked, and Dean sniggered.
"Believe me, I know. It ain't for me, though."
The waitress smiled warmly at him as she finished jotting down the order.
"It'll be out in a jiff."
Dean's attention drifted elsewhere as Sam trudged back towards the table to inform his older brother of Bobby's news.
...
Meanwhile, Makayla was stooped over the sink in the bathroom, cold water dripping down her face as she splashed it up onto her cheeks.
Her entire body was trembling as it convulsed and writhed, her head swimming; she coughed towards the sink before launching herself on the filthy bathroom floor towards the toilet, emptying the contents of her stomach in the bowl as she wretched in pain.
She sputtered, three small tears trickling from her glossy green eyes and down into her vomit. She grabbed the lever and flushed it with her shaky fingers, using the back of her hand to wipe at her mouth as she pulled herself back up to the sink.
More cold water met with febrile, dappled skin. She sucked in desperate breaths of dank air, running a clammy hand through her hair, damp with perspiration.
Several seconds passed, and then it started all over again.
The room began to quake. Her entire world began to reel as the high-pitched ringing ricocheted through her skull and permeated her entire world with unbearable pain.
Over the noise, however, came the voices.
Hundreds of them, beginning in hushed whispers, repeating the same heteroclite, unknown word over and over again until it completely overrode her senses and devastated everything inside of her.
"Solpetha."
She looked up into the mirror, bleary-eyed, and she choked on the lump in her throat when she saw his reflection in the mirror behind her; his blue eyes piercing, his thick lips set into a straight light, his trench-coat unkept and crumpled.
Makayla breathed heavily as the voices continued to scream in her ears, and she whipped around impossibly fast, only to find her mystery man was nowhere to be found.
And suddenly, silence.
...
Dean's eyes only raised from his apple pie to watch as his sister made her way back to the booth, her hands buried in her pockets and a few strands of hair falling lightly in her face.
He should have immediately known something was wrong; but they had been apart for months.
And if he could go back in time and change it, he would've slapped his past self for not seeing what was right in front of him.
She scooted into the booth beside him, immediately picking up a few of the french fries he had ordered her and shoved them into her mouth.
She refused to make eye contact with him.
"Hey, Mak, we're gonna be meeting up with Bobby in a few hours. I have a room in a hotel not far from here that you can go get cleaned up in, if you want."
Sam spoke gently, and the girl raised a brow at him sarcastically.
"'Clean up?' What, do I smell or somethin'?"
Sam's mouth went flaccid.
"Wha- no! No, that's not what I meant-"
"Relax, Sammy, I was jokin'. Thank you."
She picked up her cup of coffee as she smirked, pressing her lips to the rim and sipping it carefully.
Perfect.
"So, I've been thinking."
Dean cut in abruptly, his thoughts elsewhere.
"Well ain't that dangerous."
Makayla mumbled under her breath, chomping on a few more fries. Her twin ignored her.
"We know this thing's name or whatever, right? Castiel? With the right hoodoo-voodoo mumbo-jumbo, we could call the son of a bitch right to us."
Makayla choked on her coffee, stiffening immediately.
"What are you, suicidal? You ready to jump right back into the pit?"
The girl asked incredulously, and Sam seemed to agree.
"Pam took a peek at him and her eyes burned out of her skull, and you want to have a face-to-face?"
"What, do either of you got a better idea?"
Makayla pursed her lips before smiling sheepishly.
"Well, uh..."
"As a matter of fact, we do."
Sam announced, and she raised a brow.
"We do? I mean- yeah, Deano, of course we do."
Both of the boys glared at her, and she shrank back into her seat at their teasing.
"I followed some demons into town. So we find 'em and grill 'em. I mean, someone's bound to know something about something."
Dean let his suspicion blatantly show.
"And how the fuck are we supposed to find 'em?"
"Well, Dean, perhaps they'll find you instead."
A sinister feminine voice called from behind them, and Makayla jumped as she yanked a pistol from her boot, aiming it in the direction of the sound.
To her surprise, her gun was now pointing at the face of their waitress, the woman's eyes flicking black as she smirked at the sight of the weapon in front of her.
"Awe, how cute. You're so out of practice you think your gun can kill me."
Makayla glanced at the rest of the workers in the restaurant as her fingers trembled on the trigger, only to find her and her family surrounded by demons.
Great.
"Well, shit."
She muttered rather sarcastically under her breath, keeping her cool as she glanced back down at her cup of coffee. She was suddenly queasy as she lowered the gun, too nervous to react as legs of a chair scraped the tile as the demon lady pulled a seat up to sit in.
"It's damn hard to believe that the band's back together. One of the twins has been to hell, the other has been through hell, and the younger brother has become best friends with hell- yet, you always find your way back to each other."
The waitress chuckled darkly, and Makayla sent an uneasy glance to her younger brother sitting across from her, who had his jaw clenched tightly.
"I'd almost call it sweet, if I actually cared."
"Go fuck yourself."
Makayla growled, her fists clenched white, and Dean rested a hand on her leg underneath the table. His warmth didn't relax her nerves as it should've.
The demon actually laughed at her outburst.
"My darling Winchester, for someone who's heart is pumping with fear, you sure like to run your mouth."
Dean put an arm around his sister's shoulders.
"What do you kids want?"
For the first time, the demon's eyes flick to look at Dean, and her lips contort into a cheeky snarl.
"Dean. A free ride out of the pit. Aren't you one lucky duck."
The man laughed.
"Yeah. That's me."
Dean's calm manner helped calm Makayla down, and she shifted into him just slightly, hoping that the demon would not take notice.
Luckily, the monster was too focused on her brother.
"What makes you so special then, Mister Winchester, huh?"
"I like to think it's because of my perky nipples."
Dean smirked, and Makayla rolled her eyes at his childish retort.
She felt him sigh beside her, his face turning serious.
"Look, I don't know. It wasn't my doing."
"Right."
The woman clicked her tongue, before her eyes shifted over to Makayla.
"But it was hers."