Song Remains the Same

Chapter 138: The Witching Hour

"If desperate times call for desperate measures,
then I'm free to act as desperately as I wish."
― Suzanne Collins

Thunderbird Motel
Maryville, Kansas
3am

Dean paced outside the motel room door like a caged animal. He could barely think. "Come on, come on, come on..." he muttered anxiously under his breath. He'd knocked all of two seconds ago but he couldn't wait a millisecond longer. He lost patience and hammered his fist on the door again. "It's me!" he almost shouted. "You in there? James? Jamie!"

The door opened abruptly, almost knocking him off balance from the weight he'd been throwing into it. Startled when he saw what was beyond that door, Dean and all his chaotic thoughts went still. Every other thing in the universe ceased to exist. Because there she was. Alive, breathing, bright-eyed and by all appearances totally okay despite the fact that he'd personally buried her body six feet under cold hard ground... Jamie Ward. Like nothing had ever happened to her at all.

"Hey Dean." It was said softly as a relieved smile broke across her cherry-red lips.

Tears were already gathering in his eyes—and all his intentions of various tests to make sure it was really her flew out of his mind completely. "Oh my god," Dean breathed, his heart choking his throat with the most intense rush of relief imaginable. "Jamie." With trembling limbs, he crossed the scant distance separating them and slammed her into a hug he had never thought would happen again. Even more emotion avalanched over him as he felt her warmth against him... the rise and fall of her steady breaths, the shape of her in his arms. His eyes squeezed shut as it all crashed over him with a helpless shudder. Every sleepless night obsessing over a way to bring her back, every ounce of grief he'd lived with and shoved down into the void paled in comparison to the feeling of this. She smelled the same, felt the same, she hugged him back fiercely. And it abruptly wasn't enough to just hold her anymore. He needed to look at her.

"How are you back?" he asked hoarsely, pulling away just enough to hold her face in his hands. It took his breath away—photographs and memory hadn't done her justice. It blew him away all over again. "Are you okay?" he whispered, not even giving her a chance to respond because looking at her face again was so surreal that it was frightening. "How are you back?!" Had one of his ludicrous attempts worked somehow? Was something darker at play?

She shook her head uncertainly, by all appearances just as emotional and overwhelmed to see him as he was to see her. "I don't know how, I just am." One of her hands came to gently rest on his wrist—a light touch that he couldn't take for granted. "I was in Hell, and then I wasn't—I... I don't remember anything else."

That should have been a red flag. But Dean was too caught up in the drug of seeing her face again to think clearly. He'd do detective work on how she broke out of Hades later. Because meantime, the majority of the English language escaped him. He'd rushed over here with every wild hope and relentless fear bursting him apart with sickening anticipation of what he would find. Sometime since losing her, he guessed he'd given up hope that this would actually happen—so now that it had... he was an absolute wreck. More than he would have thought. "I never thought I'd see you again," he managed, not sure if he should smile or cry, hands still on her face. His thumb gently caressed skin that last he had touched was pale and lifelessly cold. Now that skin was warm, healthy, and living. He felt an overwhelmed tear spill down his cheek. For once, he let his emotions openly display.

"I know," Jamie murmured, pressing into his space a little more, studying his eyes, then closing the distance to kiss him softly. Dean melted and received the kiss, but despite the elation he felt, it also brought up trauma he hadn't resolved yet: getting her body from the morgue, burying her, grieving at her graveside, seeing her headstone all the time, shouldering daily guilt over not being able to save her—then his subsequent spiral into near-insanity with ways to try and bring her back. Everything he'd refused to let himself fully feel was all the sudden smothering him. So much so that he couldn't go further into the kiss when she tried to kiss him more deeply with tongue.