Brown Mountain Lights

Conversations, Confrontations, and the Man I Love

When Dean opened the door, Charlie had fallen asleep with her head in my lap, and I was stroking her hair.

"What happened here?" he whispered, gesturing to the sleeping girl.

"She had a meltdown," I whispered back. "Hardly unexpected."

He frowned. "I'd expect you to be the one having the meltdown."

I shrugged. "Give it time." I slowly edged Charlie's head off my lap and onto the bed, sliding out from under her, and gave a sigh of relief as I stood up and she continued sleeping. "Y'all got Crowley locked up?"

"Yes, but -" Dean began, but I held a finger to my lips and gestured towards the door.

Once we were outside the room, he continued. "I'm not sure it's a good idea for you to see him. This close to – well, you might – look, we need to keep him alive, okay? He still controls Hell, regardless of if we have him locked up or not, and better the devil you know and all that. Not to mention, he can give us names of demons that're on Earth."

Instead of giving into the fury that immediately raced through me at Dean's statement, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Yes, Crowley had tortured me. Yes, he had killed me. Well, essentially. By proxy. And oh, how I wanted to return the favor. But – if it had come down to it, if I had had to sacrifice myself to rid the world of the Darkness, I would have done it. There would have been much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I would have done it willingly. So, really, Crowley hadn't done anything to me I wouldn't have done to myself. Besides, if he was locked up in the bunker, I was pretty sure Sam and Dean wouldn't mind me tossing holy water on him occasionally.

"Okay," I said as I opened my eyes. "I understand your point. I promise I won't do anything fatal to him. I know he's more valuable alive, but I still want to see him. Yell at him, throw things...you got any holy water I can borrow? Maybe a knife?"

Dean blinked at me in shock. "You're just going to agree with me?"

I shrugged. "Well, you're right. You can do more good with him locked up here than if he's dead. I promised Sam I'd quit being so selfish, not to mention – well, I won. He killed me, or had me killed, but I didn't stay dead."

"Well, when you put it that way... hang on. Since when are you into torturing demons?"

"Since they fucking killed me!" I snapped in response.

Dean looked slightly taken aback, then shrugged and took my hand. "Fair enough. I'm not letting you hurt him, though," he said as we walked towards room 7B.

"Why not?" I asked angrily, stopping dead in my tracks.

"Because you're not – you don't -" he sighed and let go of my hand to run his fingers through his hair in sudden agitation. "You're one of the few pure things in my life, all right? I don't want you to do the awful things that me and Sam do. When you torture someone, cause that kind of pain, it changes you. It makes you into someone else. It would make you into someone you wouldn't like, Kat." Dean's voice lowered, until I had to strain to hear him. "It made me into someone I don't like."

If I was honest with myself, I knew that he had a point; I had never caused anyone pain like that before, at least not deliberately. Acknowledging that didn't lessen my desire to hurt Crowley, though, and I spat at Dean, "I don't care! His mother killed me, Dean, and he fucking helped! Rowena may be beyond my revenge, but her son isn't. In fact, you've got him trussed up in there like he's waiting for me. So now you're going to spout some bullshit at me about how torturing someone will change me? I don't give a shit. I think that fact that I've been kidnapped by two guys who wanted me to help them kill a ghost, accepted the fact that demons and angels are real, discovered that the universe's most evil power was unleashed on the world by my boyfriend, killed for a magic spell, then raised from the dead by the fucking archangel Gabriel is a lot of change all by itself, don't you?"