Destiny ~ Dean Winchester (love story), part two

35

×Justin POV×

I've never liked surprises.
Therefore, I didn't really know what to expect when Lia stepped into my appartment but I suspected that I wasn't going to like it. When she had called to get help from me, I felt the closest to her ever since our break-up when we were only teenagers. I simply couldn't mess this up again.

She looked at me, all doe eyes with deep circles underneath them, and didn't move an inch.
She looked bad. Rough. Ragged. More than a little exhausted. Old instinct gnawed at me, tugging at ancient strings. When we first started working together again I've tried hugging her but she has made perfectly clear that she didn't want that kind of affection from me anymore- or from anyone for that matter. But right now it felt like the right thing to do.

In the worst case scenario, I figured, she'd just push me away if she really wanted to. I took a step forward and put my arms around Lia. She gave in, hugging me back before she cleared her throat. "Well, let's get down to business, shall we?", she quickly asked and I let her to the kitchen.

I loved it most of all rooms. I agonized over the wood for the island and I never forget to oil it weekly, Sundays if I'm not at the office or on mission. I designed the pattern of the floor tiles, the spirals of soft blue-grey glazed terracotta. I built the overhead rack myself, like I did the deck. It was my way of calming down.

Lia sat down on the kitchen counter, twirling one of her long blonde strands.

God, she really did look like the young Lia I knew, decouraged and once again beaten up by her cruel, abusive mother. Truth was, the woman had always terrified me too, even before I knew what she was capable of. If I would've been in Lia's place I might've not survived being Isabels child.

The worst part about it was that I've always known what she had been like, I saw her degrading and screaming at Lia, a few times I caught her physically hurting her daughter and I remember thinking to myself that we had to get to the hospital, that those injuries may be life threatening but half an hour afterwards Lia came and showed me that it wasn't as bad as it looked. It was the only reason to why I never told my parents, the only reason to why I swore Lia that I'd let her handle it by herself.

I couldn't believe that I've been so clueless. If I had trusted my judgement I could've figured out what had been going on, that those injuries had probably been life threatening if it weren't for Lia's angel blood. But at the time I would've never considered such a possibility.

Which now pushed me to think the unthinkable:
What if this really was Isabel's ghost?

This was making me too emotional, I was already loosing my posture.

I had to get my thoughts in order, it wouldn't help us if I started panicking now too. I tried to steady my breathing, to make this a little less scary for Angie. Although I wasn't sure if she even got scared. Not like other people.

"Do you have a plan?", she asked, fiddling with her nails. I would've almost laughed at her.

I was Justin Wilson. Having a strategy was in my DNA, according to my parents it had been my first character trait.

Of course I had a plan.

"I have a few ideas." An understatement, I've been researching since she called me and I haven't stopped until she was here. "Just give me all the details again, even if they don't seem important."

We discussed the frequenzy, the emotional component of the dreams, the kind of injuries, when it had first occured and when it got worse. She stopped when she finished with her last dream, the one from this morning. Lia looked thin and empty- like the story had been inside her, keeping her upright all this time. Now that it was out she was deflating like a balloon.