Chapter Text
11 MONTHS LATER
Nearly a year goes by with only two more visions. Claire, Dean, and Sam don’t talk, so she has no idea what is going on. All she knows from the visions is that they’re hunting the Seven Deadly Sins and a demon named Lilith who’s trying to bring on the Apocalypse.
Most importantly, she doesn’t know about Dean’s deal. That fact alone is perhaps the reason why she’s able to maintain a sense of normalcy in her life in Seattle.
Sam, on the other hand, is falling apart at the seams. He’s been subjected to a whole manner of torture this past year, including but not limited to having to watch his brother die every day for over six months. He is getting desperate. Desperate enough to call Claire and ask for her help.
He’s spent a lot of time trying to understand his brother’s mindset, and why he seems to care so little about his own life. Even once he’s literally inside his head, he still can’t make sense of it. He tries to ask him about what he saw when they were using African Dreamroot – him and Claire in a house together, cuddled up on a sofa watching TV. Something so normal and domestic it makes his mind reel. He knows Dean would never admit that this is what he wanted, but seeing with it his own two eyes confirms his suspicions.
Maybe that’s part of why he calls her, too.
When the call comes in, she’s working at her desk. Her office has an open floor plan, so she isn’t able to answer him right away. He almost loses hope before she’s able to duck into an empty conference room and pick up.
“Sam?”
“Hey, Claire.”
There’s a heavy pause, and she can almost sense him second guessing himself.
“What’s up?”
“I, uh, we need your help. This is a Hail Mary, but, well… Dean did something stupid. Really stupid. Last year.”
She sinks into a seat at the conference table, steeling herself for what’s going to come next.
“After Cold Oak, he made a deal with a demon to… to bring me back from the dead,” he continues, voice breaking. “His deal. It’s about to come due.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he’s going to die. He’s going to die, and his soul is going to be dragged to Hell. Not only will he be gone, but he’ll be suffering for all of eternity. All because of me.”
Claire doesn’t realize she’s crying until she sees a dribble of water fall on the table. She quickly runs the edge of her thumb underneath her eyes to try to prevent her mascara from streaking.
“What-what can I do?” she manages.
“We need you to try what you did last time. Try praying again.”
“Okay,” she says slowly. That’s easy enough. “But what if that doesn’t work?”
“We’re running out of options. I’ll try anything at this point.”
“When exactly are they coming to collect?”
“One week.”
“Should I… should I try to meet you?”
“No,” he answers quickly. “It’s too dangerous.”
She is silent for another moment.
Sam goes on, “Is there… is there anything you want me to tell him?”
She feels physically ill at the thought. What is there to say? I’m sorry? No. A sharp pang of rage rises in her throat like acid. How could he be stupid enough to do something like this? How could he be so selfish?
“He shouldn’t have done it,” she says bitterly. She quickly corrects, “Not that-not that I’m not glad he brought you back. But the cost-”
“I know,” he interrupts, saving her the trouble of explaining what she means. And he does. He feels the exact same way.
“Keep me… keep me updated,” she says.
“I will. Goodbye, Claire.”
She hangs up the phone and stands, smoothing out her top and running a hand through her hair. She tries to grab a quick glimpse of herself in the window to make sure she’s presentable enough to face her coworkers.
On the way home, Claire stops at St. Joseph’s church. She figures if she wants to make her prayers count, this is the best way to do it.
She slides into a middle pew, setting her backpack down on the seat beside her. She kneels and folds her hands in front of her, like she used to do when she was a little girl. She stares up at the large, round, stained glass window where the crucifix would usually be, searching for something.
“Please,” she begs, her voice barely a whisper. “If you can hear me, please. Don’t let him die. Not like this.”
She bites back another surge of tears stabbing her eyes. Her throat feels hot, like she swallowed embers. She clears it and stands, wiping her nose. She’s supposed to go out to dinner with Fletcher tonight. If she leaves now, she’ll still be able to change first.
A few days later, the vision hits. Dean being torn to ribbons by some unseen force. A blood-soaked, violent death. The force of it causes bile to rise in her esophagus and she retches into her trash can. As she writes it out, she suddenly feels glad that she only sees words and not images. It’s a horrible way to die. Worse than what she saw of Sam’s death, by a mile. And he’s scared and screaming and-
Whatever Dean was to her once, he isn’t anymore, not after all this time. She hasn’t seen him in person since she left Bobby’s house the summer after her junior year of college. That seems like a decade ago, even though it was only a couple of years.
She has a boyfriend now, and the residual memory of what she once felt for Dean is flaring and causing confusion to resurface in her brain.
She still prays for him, though. Every night.
She calls Sam and relays the horror of what she’s seen to him. He takes the information in calmly, pensively. Then he says, “Do you think this could mean that the prayers aren’t working?”
“I-I don’t know,” she stammers.
But she keeps trying.
One more whole week goes by before she hears from Sam again. The day it was supposed to happen, Claire called him nonstop. She probably called over a hundred times. Nothing.
She doesn’t take the overdue silence as a good sign, but tries to hold onto a shred of hope. God saved him once. She has to have faith that he’ll do it again.
When Sam finally does call, it’s a Sunday evening and she’s at Fletcher’s apartment. A high-rise downtown that he lives in by himself with a wall of windows overlooking the city. Mercifully, they just finished a run and he’s in the shower.
“He’s gone. I couldn’t stop it,” is all Sam can get out. He sounds shattered, delirious.
An errant sob claws up her throat and she scrambles to figure out a way to leave before Fletcher tries to ask her what’s wrong. She pads into the fogged-up bathroom. Through the steam, he can’t see her.
“I’m not feeling great,” she says, modulating her tone carefully. “I think I’m gonna head home.”
“Is it from the run?” he calls to her.
“No, I feel like I’m coming down with a cold.”
“Are you sure you don't wanna stay? I could go get you some ramen and meds, if you need.”
“That’s sweet, but no – I’d rather just be in my own bed.”
“Okay, well just wait a minute so I can say goodbye.”
She hears him turn the faucet off and begins to panic.
“I don’t want to get you sick,” she lies, backing out of the room in a hurry.
She jogs out of the unit and into the elevator, shifting her weight from one foot to the other nervously as she descends to the lobby. By the time she’s out of the front door of the high-rise, she’s sprinting. She’s afraid that if she stops moving, she’ll completely break down. So, she runs the whole four miles back to her house without stopping.
By the time she gets there, she’s panting, sweating, and absolutely exhausted. Her heart is hammering in her chest like it’s going to explode. Each beat pounds in her throat, making her feel dizzy and out of control.
By some miracle, she makes it up to her room without encountering any of her roommates. Once the door is closed, the sobs come crashing over her, so powerful that she can hardly breathe. She feels like she’s drowning.
Her first instinct is to curse God. Curse him for letting this happen, for not heeding her prayers. She can’t think of anything else to do. Why give her these visions if there’s nothing she can do to stop them? Just to torture her?
Eventually, she’s able to catch her breath and the sobs ebb from thundering waves to gentler ripples. And then, she just cries softly until she drifts off into a fitful sleep.
Her alarm wakes her up the next morning to a damp, tearstained pillowcase and several texts from Fletcher asking her how she’s feeling. Right now, she mainly feels dehydrated, like a dried-out sponge. She looks in the mirror to see that her eyes are nearly swollen shut from all the weeping, and she wonders how she’s going to explain it to her coworkers. Allergies, maybe.
She beelines it to the bathroom to take a much-needed shower and get a cold compress to attempt to reduce the puffiness.
As she stands under the hot jet of water, she thinks about what she’s going to tell Fletcher. Nothing, she eventually decides. What would she even tell him? That the guy she lost her virginity to died? That her friend died? But then, he’ll start to ask questions about the friend. Better not to say anything at all.
She and Fletcher have been dating for around six months, and things are starting to get more serious. They met at a Stanford alumni mixer in downtown Seattle, and she was drawn in by his curly mop of chestnut hair and warm brown eyes. Even though he’s thirty, he still has a boyish charm about him, but without the immaturity of guys her own age. He works for a VC firm and is all and all very kind and respectable.
So, of course he’s going to be worried about her if he sees her like this. Which is why she has to hide it. Fake it till you make it.
The main challenge is going to be not thinking about Dean. Every time she does, every time the thought of how he died crosses her mind, her eyes go misty and a searing lump begins to form in her throat. Even now, as she’s trying to get ready for work, it’s a struggle. She briefly entertains the idea that maybe she should take the day off, but ultimately decides that it’s better to have the distraction.
The silent moments are the ones in which self-destructive thoughts breach her mind. Not just about how Dean died, but about what they could have been to one another, but never had the chance to be. Thoughts of what might have been, if she’d acted differently. If she hadn’t stormed out of Bobby’s that summer. Or maybe, if the timing had just been different. She has to mourn what was and could have been, too.
She’ll never know what could have been. And she has to accept that she’ll never know, or else it’s going to ruin what she already has.