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FIC: Of Bastard Saints, 10
Title: Of Bastard Saints
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nilchance and beanside
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: We make no claim of ownership on the Brothers and Daddy Winchester. No infringement is intended, no money is made.
Author Notes: Set after the episode "Devil's Trap."
WARNINGS: Character maiming, more angst than you can shake a stick at, WIP.
Three days, and two more of those damned black-eyed things later, Jason pulled into Seattle, parking outside an enormous storage unit. Or at least he assumed it was a storage unit, what with the blank industrial exterior and the total lack of signage.
Hell. Might as well go out and admit to himself that he had no idea what the hell he was doing, or why he remembered going through the building's gray double-doors.
He parked the bike, and headed for the door. How the hell was he going to explain this? 'I think I have stuff here, but I don't know the unit, or my name.' That would go over big.
As he reached the door, a small screen blinked to life. It welcomed him to Secure-store, and invited him to press his left thumb to the scanner below. Fingerprint recognition?
Jason's hand hovered for a moment, almost afraid of what he'd find. If it didn't pan out, there'd be alarms. Guards. Even if it did-
He'd killed three people in the last four days. Things were rolling faster, and if he didn't know enough to get out of the way, he'd be flattened.
"Fuck, just do it, Hammett."
Glancing around, he laid his thumb on the scanner. It chirped, making him jerk guiltily.
The screen cheerfully welcomed 'Mr. John Smith' back, and informed him that it was deactivating the alarm on unit number 550. Creative, Dean-or-Mr.-Dean. Why not call himself 'Pseudonym McAlias' while he was at it?
Or maybe Jason hadn't been the one to set up this account in the first place.
The door opened with a soft whoosh, and Jason stepped in, letting his eyes adjust. An open stairwell rose in front of him, and he started up them. Unit 550 was one of the larger units, a ten by fifteen foot room with a steel sliding door barring the way. The lock picked fairly easily, and Jason paused there, hand on the door as he took a deep breath.
He'd seen enough to know he didn't really want to see more. Police officers, scars, a father who may or may not have been hunting him (at least if Bobby was with the other people who were hunting Jason), a dead brother, the ease with which Jason killed, the wrenching pain every time he tried to remember back before waking in that hospital bed...
Exhaling slowly through his teeth, Jason told himself, "Stop being such a whiny-ass pussy." Then he pushed the door open.
Je-sus Christ. He'd been a weapons dealer? A few seconds too late, Jason glanced down the hallway for signs of surveillance. He didn't see any. Apparently the building's owners had chosen the plausible deniability route, which was good. The walls were bristling over with shotguns, crossbows, pistols, machetes and... was that a flamethrower? Goddamn, it was just like Christmas.
With a last glance over his shoulder, Jason stepped into the room and shut the door. For the first time, up to his knees in weaponry, he felt safe. Grounded. This much, he knew he could trust and control. He ran a reverent hand down the barrel of the blue steel shotgun, feeling himself slowly uncoil.
Aside from the weapons, there was an old duffel bag and a cot shoved in one corner. On top of the cot, neatly made like a kid at summer camp, there was a leather bound book. Jason sat on the edge of the cot, only to get up quickly as something glass clinked against the gun in the small of his back. He reached back and found a full bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Good old liquid courage," he murmured. "Guns plus liquor. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, am I?"
The book fell open in Jason's hand like it had been waiting for him, to a page scrawled full of his own messy handwriting. Jason made a face and leaned closer to read.
A letter to his (dead) brother in the event of his death. Sentimental, in its own screwed up way, but completely unhelpful in that it didn't name names. One thing was clear: a man had to love somebody like hell to set them up a weapons locker and to leave them about $5,000 in cash.
Jason rubbed his thumb across the roughly scrawled 'tell Dad I'm sorry' at the bottom of the dead letter. No incriminating details, in case this place was ever made. With a silent apology to himself, or at least who he had been, Jason pocketed the cash and turned the page. There was a small stack of about ten credit cards, a few fake I.D.s, several badges. None of them had the same name on the front. Jason thumbed through them until he found one that read 'Dean'. A Kansas driver's license issued to Dean Winchester, born 1-24-79. Damned thing had expired months ago.
With a disgusted sigh, he put that one along with the rest in the pocket of his jacket. Kept paging through lists of phone numbers, scribbled names that didn't trigger any memory. Hopefully he didn't need to worry about all these people hunting him down. Because that? Would suck.
When he got bored with it, he put them aside and turned back to the shelves. There were a handful of books with esoteric names on the spine, and one without any name at all. That was the one he picked up, another leather bound one that fairly bulged at the seams. Jason's fingers met metal on one side, and he turned it that way.
Bolted onto the front of the black leather was a golden plate with a simple inscription. "For Dean. Good Hunting, Dad."
He staggered, the pain in his head sharpening as a memory forced its way free of the mire. His birthday, or something. He and... someone had gone out hunting, and he'd bagged... something. The other person had given him this, wrapped clumsily in brown paper with a stupid blue bow on top. Callused hands and a gentle smile, dark regretful eyes.
Fucking ow. Okay, never mind. Not worrying about that. Instead he'd see what the book had to say.
'Cthulu,' said his handwriting. 'Not crazy-making. Kind of nauseous, slightly itchy. False advertisement. Old god, my ass. Old god of fricking ping-pong.'
At least it was interesting reading material.
Fifteen minutes later, Jason sat the book down. He'd only gotten a few pages in. His notes were dense, but a lot of it was short-hand that Jason could only assume had made sense to him at the time. "Great, I'm insane," he muttered. "Why do I want to kill the Snuggles bear? And... there are demons. A lot of them. I mean, it explains why I'm comfortable with the weaponry, but great. I'm delusional. Just fucking great."
He paced around the storage locker, raking his fingers through his hair. "I mean, it makes some sense, with the things that keep chasing me, but then again, maybe those are delusions, too. And now, I'm talking to myself. Good job, Jason- Wait. Dean," he mused. "Dean."
"Okay, Dean. What are we... what am I going to do next?" His eyes slid to the bottle of whiskey. "Yeah. That sounds about right."
He broke the seal and opened the bottle, downing a healthy swallow. It burned like fire, but the warmth that spread through him afterwards was a welcome change from the cold, empty space inside that never filled. Something was missing.
His brother. He'd loved his brother, and now the kid would never see this shelter. Never use these guns.
Maybe he should leave him another letter. He grabbed the pen tucked inside his journal, and taking another gulp of the whiskey.
"How do you start a letter like this?" he mused. "Ah, fuck it."
I think my name is Dean, he wrote.
By the time he was finished, he felt battered, bruised by the things he couldn't remember. Half the whiskey was gone. He dropped onto the cot and closed his eyes, reaching up to rub at his face. His hand didn't make it there before sleep took him.
It was the first good sleep he'd had in a long while. With the scent of gunmetal and liquor around him, the leather journal clutched in his hand, Dean could almost reach the memories that haunted him. He remembered the backseat, stretching out with the seatbelts biting into him, someone's heavy jacket thrown over him. He remembered cheap hotel rooms with single beds, switching off on shifts, curling up and knowing that the other person would be watching out for him. He remember safety, comfort, trust.
"Dad?"
"S'all right, soldier. I've got it. Sleep."
Pain woke him, and the feeling that something wasn't quite right. Dean looked around the small room, dimly lit by the overhead bulb. Nothing. Just shadows and a vicious hangover.
Then a shadow moved. Behind the gunracks, large and fast.
It peeled away from the wall, coming towards him. Dean froze, staring in horrified fascination. This was bad. A very, very bad thing. His face was burning, he remembered blood-
As it neared him, motor control returned. Dean dove from the cot, fast enough that he only felt the slice of the claws on his shoulder. "Goddamnit!" he roared, grabbing a gun.
It didn't hesitate. The shadow (this was insane) slammed him up against the wall, let him fall to the floor, and hit him again. Claws hooked into the meat of his shoulder and tossed him like a fucking ragdoll before he could twist, before he could make sense of what he was seeing.
He landed by one of the shelves and looked wildly at the contents, searching for inspiration. Couldn't shoot a shadow. Had to-
His eyes lit on a pile of flares, and memory sparked. He grabbed one, slamming it into the floor.
Oh, Christ. On the hangover, the wall of light that erupted hurt more than the damn demon had. When his vision cleared, he saw that it worked. The demon had left. Which was damned good, because if it hadn't Dean was half-blind and out of ideas.
It had left something else, too, he realized, looking at the trickles of blood flowing down his arm. He fumbled for the package of sterile gauze beside the flares and started wrapping the gashes as best he could. At least it hadn't gotten a vein.
Proof. The demon had given Dean solid, bloody proof.
He wasn't delusional. There were demons. And he killed them. Him. Dean... Hammett, since he didn't know who knew about that Winchester thing. He'd killed a demon. He could kill more. They'd started this. He could finish it.
It was a start. And a purpose.
Authors:
nilchance and beansideRating: Adult
Disclaimer: We make no claim of ownership on the Brothers and Daddy Winchester. No infringement is intended, no money is made.
Author Notes: Set after the episode "Devil's Trap."
WARNINGS: Character maiming, more angst than you can shake a stick at, WIP.
Three days, and two more of those damned black-eyed things later, Jason pulled into Seattle, parking outside an enormous storage unit. Or at least he assumed it was a storage unit, what with the blank industrial exterior and the total lack of signage.
Hell. Might as well go out and admit to himself that he had no idea what the hell he was doing, or why he remembered going through the building's gray double-doors.
He parked the bike, and headed for the door. How the hell was he going to explain this? 'I think I have stuff here, but I don't know the unit, or my name.' That would go over big.
As he reached the door, a small screen blinked to life. It welcomed him to Secure-store, and invited him to press his left thumb to the scanner below. Fingerprint recognition?
Jason's hand hovered for a moment, almost afraid of what he'd find. If it didn't pan out, there'd be alarms. Guards. Even if it did-
He'd killed three people in the last four days. Things were rolling faster, and if he didn't know enough to get out of the way, he'd be flattened.
"Fuck, just do it, Hammett."
Glancing around, he laid his thumb on the scanner. It chirped, making him jerk guiltily.
The screen cheerfully welcomed 'Mr. John Smith' back, and informed him that it was deactivating the alarm on unit number 550. Creative, Dean-or-Mr.-Dean. Why not call himself 'Pseudonym McAlias' while he was at it?
Or maybe Jason hadn't been the one to set up this account in the first place.
The door opened with a soft whoosh, and Jason stepped in, letting his eyes adjust. An open stairwell rose in front of him, and he started up them. Unit 550 was one of the larger units, a ten by fifteen foot room with a steel sliding door barring the way. The lock picked fairly easily, and Jason paused there, hand on the door as he took a deep breath.
He'd seen enough to know he didn't really want to see more. Police officers, scars, a father who may or may not have been hunting him (at least if Bobby was with the other people who were hunting Jason), a dead brother, the ease with which Jason killed, the wrenching pain every time he tried to remember back before waking in that hospital bed...
Exhaling slowly through his teeth, Jason told himself, "Stop being such a whiny-ass pussy." Then he pushed the door open.
Je-sus Christ. He'd been a weapons dealer? A few seconds too late, Jason glanced down the hallway for signs of surveillance. He didn't see any. Apparently the building's owners had chosen the plausible deniability route, which was good. The walls were bristling over with shotguns, crossbows, pistols, machetes and... was that a flamethrower? Goddamn, it was just like Christmas.
With a last glance over his shoulder, Jason stepped into the room and shut the door. For the first time, up to his knees in weaponry, he felt safe. Grounded. This much, he knew he could trust and control. He ran a reverent hand down the barrel of the blue steel shotgun, feeling himself slowly uncoil.
Aside from the weapons, there was an old duffel bag and a cot shoved in one corner. On top of the cot, neatly made like a kid at summer camp, there was a leather bound book. Jason sat on the edge of the cot, only to get up quickly as something glass clinked against the gun in the small of his back. He reached back and found a full bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Good old liquid courage," he murmured. "Guns plus liquor. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, am I?"
The book fell open in Jason's hand like it had been waiting for him, to a page scrawled full of his own messy handwriting. Jason made a face and leaned closer to read.
A letter to his (dead) brother in the event of his death. Sentimental, in its own screwed up way, but completely unhelpful in that it didn't name names. One thing was clear: a man had to love somebody like hell to set them up a weapons locker and to leave them about $5,000 in cash.
Jason rubbed his thumb across the roughly scrawled 'tell Dad I'm sorry' at the bottom of the dead letter. No incriminating details, in case this place was ever made. With a silent apology to himself, or at least who he had been, Jason pocketed the cash and turned the page. There was a small stack of about ten credit cards, a few fake I.D.s, several badges. None of them had the same name on the front. Jason thumbed through them until he found one that read 'Dean'. A Kansas driver's license issued to Dean Winchester, born 1-24-79. Damned thing had expired months ago.
With a disgusted sigh, he put that one along with the rest in the pocket of his jacket. Kept paging through lists of phone numbers, scribbled names that didn't trigger any memory. Hopefully he didn't need to worry about all these people hunting him down. Because that? Would suck.
When he got bored with it, he put them aside and turned back to the shelves. There were a handful of books with esoteric names on the spine, and one without any name at all. That was the one he picked up, another leather bound one that fairly bulged at the seams. Jason's fingers met metal on one side, and he turned it that way.
Bolted onto the front of the black leather was a golden plate with a simple inscription. "For Dean. Good Hunting, Dad."
He staggered, the pain in his head sharpening as a memory forced its way free of the mire. His birthday, or something. He and... someone had gone out hunting, and he'd bagged... something. The other person had given him this, wrapped clumsily in brown paper with a stupid blue bow on top. Callused hands and a gentle smile, dark regretful eyes.
Fucking ow. Okay, never mind. Not worrying about that. Instead he'd see what the book had to say.
'Cthulu,' said his handwriting. 'Not crazy-making. Kind of nauseous, slightly itchy. False advertisement. Old god, my ass. Old god of fricking ping-pong.'
At least it was interesting reading material.
Fifteen minutes later, Jason sat the book down. He'd only gotten a few pages in. His notes were dense, but a lot of it was short-hand that Jason could only assume had made sense to him at the time. "Great, I'm insane," he muttered. "Why do I want to kill the Snuggles bear? And... there are demons. A lot of them. I mean, it explains why I'm comfortable with the weaponry, but great. I'm delusional. Just fucking great."
He paced around the storage locker, raking his fingers through his hair. "I mean, it makes some sense, with the things that keep chasing me, but then again, maybe those are delusions, too. And now, I'm talking to myself. Good job, Jason- Wait. Dean," he mused. "Dean."
"Okay, Dean. What are we... what am I going to do next?" His eyes slid to the bottle of whiskey. "Yeah. That sounds about right."
He broke the seal and opened the bottle, downing a healthy swallow. It burned like fire, but the warmth that spread through him afterwards was a welcome change from the cold, empty space inside that never filled. Something was missing.
His brother. He'd loved his brother, and now the kid would never see this shelter. Never use these guns.
Maybe he should leave him another letter. He grabbed the pen tucked inside his journal, and taking another gulp of the whiskey.
"How do you start a letter like this?" he mused. "Ah, fuck it."
I think my name is Dean, he wrote.
By the time he was finished, he felt battered, bruised by the things he couldn't remember. Half the whiskey was gone. He dropped onto the cot and closed his eyes, reaching up to rub at his face. His hand didn't make it there before sleep took him.
It was the first good sleep he'd had in a long while. With the scent of gunmetal and liquor around him, the leather journal clutched in his hand, Dean could almost reach the memories that haunted him. He remembered the backseat, stretching out with the seatbelts biting into him, someone's heavy jacket thrown over him. He remembered cheap hotel rooms with single beds, switching off on shifts, curling up and knowing that the other person would be watching out for him. He remember safety, comfort, trust.
"Dad?"
"S'all right, soldier. I've got it. Sleep."
Pain woke him, and the feeling that something wasn't quite right. Dean looked around the small room, dimly lit by the overhead bulb. Nothing. Just shadows and a vicious hangover.
Then a shadow moved. Behind the gunracks, large and fast.
It peeled away from the wall, coming towards him. Dean froze, staring in horrified fascination. This was bad. A very, very bad thing. His face was burning, he remembered blood-
As it neared him, motor control returned. Dean dove from the cot, fast enough that he only felt the slice of the claws on his shoulder. "Goddamnit!" he roared, grabbing a gun.
It didn't hesitate. The shadow (this was insane) slammed him up against the wall, let him fall to the floor, and hit him again. Claws hooked into the meat of his shoulder and tossed him like a fucking ragdoll before he could twist, before he could make sense of what he was seeing.
He landed by one of the shelves and looked wildly at the contents, searching for inspiration. Couldn't shoot a shadow. Had to-
His eyes lit on a pile of flares, and memory sparked. He grabbed one, slamming it into the floor.
Oh, Christ. On the hangover, the wall of light that erupted hurt more than the damn demon had. When his vision cleared, he saw that it worked. The demon had left. Which was damned good, because if it hadn't Dean was half-blind and out of ideas.
It had left something else, too, he realized, looking at the trickles of blood flowing down his arm. He fumbled for the package of sterile gauze beside the flares and started wrapping the gashes as best he could. At least it hadn't gotten a vein.
Proof. The demon had given Dean solid, bloody proof.
He wasn't delusional. There were demons. And he killed them. Him. Dean... Hammett, since he didn't know who knew about that Winchester thing. He'd killed a demon. He could kill more. They'd started this. He could finish it.
It was a start. And a purpose.
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Wait, that's probably a lie. *grin*
And let me second
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I really enjoy reading this story.
Just wow...
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So utterly, amazingly awesome.
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You're welcome!
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Thanks so much for the kind words!
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I'll bring the Jack if you bring the flamethrowers?
Wait, what am I saying? Fic is more than sufficient.
;)
Nice to see Dean regaining some of himself, getting in a much better situation re:weaponry, and good that he's got the demon thing sorted out. I wondered how much he'd remember of how demons work if he wasn't thinking about it, but then - that's probably exactly the sort of thing he *would* lose if it was stress/trauma induced amnesia (talking out my ass, but you know what I mean).
Really excellent. :)
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Uh, to clarify, i.e. salt banishes spirits, names & histories of monsters, latin prayers etc, basically a whole lot of info normal people wouldn't know. He'd be almost as likely to have just lost the fact that other people don't know about demons (huh... that might be kinda interesting), except that it seems he very *specifically* forgot anything about monsters, himself, his family.
It was very good to see Dean remembering how to deal with the shadow demons...
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lol! I love that line. And also, much squealing and flailing ensued at the end when he decided to take up demon hunting. Love how it's so much a part of Dean that even without his memories, he still choses the same path.
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Thanks!
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Oh DEAN.
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(Anonymous) 2006-05-18 07:13 am (UTC)(link)Great story.
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Thanks!
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Now Don't. Stop. Writing. (And posting!) 'Cause you got something really, really good here and I'm hooked. *g*
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Only in this fandom would "maiming" be a good thing. *laugh*
Thanks so much for the kind words, I'm glad you're enjoying it!
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We'll pretty much update every night, but we'll always put the prior chapter into the memories in case you miss one.
Thanks!
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LOL! Duuuuuude. It's great he found the storage place, sucks that the Shadow found him. But he wrote a letter, a letter you did allow us to see, a letter that perhaps Sam will find? *gg*
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Plenty of chapters left to go. Plenty of nasty things to throw at them. *grin*
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Glad you're enjoying it!
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I'm glad you're enjoying it!
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And 30 chapters? And a sequel? OMGYAY! Gratuitous violence is always good especially served atop a heaping helping of angst, sex or no sex.
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We're planning on 30. Of course, until about 3 days ago, we were planning on 28. So, that's pretty flexible. *grin*
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HA! So, thirty chapters, huh? And you'll be posting a chapter a day? Great! That's 20 hiatus days covered. Fic's going to be my only solace for the next 4 months.
So... question. Dean lost his memory of being a hunter. But he thinks (well, thought) he was a spy. Why would he remember what spies are and what spies do, but not remember what hunting is and what hunters do? He's known about this stuff since he was 4, probably before he even learned about spies, assassins, etc. Knowledge of the supernatural should not be tied to his episodic (autobiographical) memory, it should be part of his semantic memory, e.g. his actual knowledge of things as opposed to memories of what he's done (see here for a better explanation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory)). So what's up with Dean's memory? And has his personality also been affected? Because he's seemed to become a pretty ruthless killer... I was really shocked when he shot that guy's face in, demon or no. He didn't seem bothered by it at all. Has he lost his sense of morality as well? If so, that's gonna bite Sam and John in the ass when they find him.
Also... I'm not sure I understand why Dean reacted so badly to Bobby. If you didn't know who you were, and then someone came along acting like they know you and your family, and seemed to share a common enemy (Bobby was pointing the gun at the demon, not Dean, why would Dean perceive him as a threat? The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that), wouldn't you be eager to talk to them, instead of knocking them out and driving off? I understand that Dean was scared, not sure what to make of this guy, but if he wanted to protect himself, wouldn't he tie Bobby up and force him to talk? And then decide whether to believe him or not? I just think it's weird that Dean isn't struggling more to find out who he is. He seems to come upon these clues to his identity almost by accident, not because he's actively seeking them out. And Bobby was such a big clue, I don't understand his actions there.
Anyway... hope you don't mind me nitpicking this fic as much as I do the show. :P :) BTW, I came here from Television Without Pity. This fic is a hit over there. :)
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Beginning with the memory: It's not just the knock on the head that's causing it. I think it's pretty clear in upcoming chapters, but suffice it to say his amnesia has a few components. First, head trauma. Second, his own trauma at what happened, which is all tied into his family. And third, well. Some outside help. The personality is also tied to that to some degree.
And as far as Bobby, we looked at it as pure blind panic. Suddenly, the world he'd started to construct, thinking he was Jason Hammett, spy or something got tossed on his ass. The demon had talked about a family. Bobby talked about his family, and he freaked, suddenly not sure who was after him. We're also taking into account that the last time Dean saw his father, John was possessed and torturing him, which remembered fully or not might make him uneasy about the thought of a father. Also, Bobby did try to knock him out, to take him to John to deal with, which, since Dean doesn't remember that Bobby's style, kind of freaked him out further.
Oh, lord. We've made TWOP?
Well, welcome to our brains. Thanks!
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And Dean finding this place, and finally feeling grounded, and learning things he needs to learn....
Man, loving this.
*bounce*