Purgatory Line

"i want to die with all my scars."

"i want to die with all my scars." - nights like these - pigeon pit

content warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, mention of death, descriptions of physical/mental/emotional abuse, mentions of parental death, psychological confusion, mention of guns

Jude didn't think too much on Dean's betrayal. She swallowed it down like her Mom's death, and moved on. Desmond wasn't awful, for the first time, and took her to visit Lear. She was able to give him all of the letters she had written since his fifth birthday, but made him promise to keep them sealed and unread until his sixth, which was a few days from their visit. They parted ways in the parking lot of a Denny's and then Desmond took Lear back to wherever the child was squirrelled away.

After that it was back to business. Desmond and Jude went back to searching for cases, the young girl pushing her father as far away from the front of her mind as she could get. The two took care of another vampire nest, a ghost, and then tracked down another Wendigo. Jude thought those were supposed to be rare, but they hadn't exactly taken care of the Wendigo two years prior, so there was always a chance it was the same one. Desmond let her drive the truck, some, when he was too drunk to even pretend to be sober. She liked that. He passed out in the passenger seat and Just could almost pretend she was free.

Almost.

All in all, her life had settled down as much as it possibly could have. Her thirteenth birthday was approaching, and she knew that her first solo hunt would follow. She wanted something with a challenge, like a werewolf or a shifter, but Desmond would probably assign her something simple like a ghost. Jude didn't think about calling Dean, no, not really.

Not until she was calling his number from her cell phone, shivering in the bed of Desmond's truck after he kicked her out again. She didn't know why she called him, why she fished that card out of her wallet, but she did. Jude began to regret dialing the number before the connection sound even echoed in her ears. The phone rang three times before Dean picked up, his voice gruff. She'd woken him. She couldn't speak, letting the dead air hang heavy as he greeted her, a question mark hanging off of every hello. Jude's lungs felt like they were filled with molten lava, burning through her chest as her mind went blank.

Finally, in a small voice fitting for a twelve year old instead of the worn hunter she knew that she was, she spoke. "Dean?" And then it was her turn to bear the weight of dead air, Dean going quiet. Jude sat in silence for nearly a minute, wondering if the connection had been broken. She willed her voice to be strong when she spoke again. "Dean, are you there?" He coughed on the other side. "Okay, you don't have to talk to me. You don't." Jude rushed her words, trying to get them out before he decided to hang up. "You don't even have to listen, Dean. You can... You can put your phone down and walk away from it just please don't end the call." Jude closed her eyes as the rattling of a cell phone being set down on some sort of table echoed in her ears. "I just don't want to feel alone right now."

There was no response on the other end and, even though Jude was prepared for that, it still hurt her somewhere deep down. "I know I could call Castiel - Cas. I know I could pray to him and he'd take me somewhere that isn't here, or give me someone to talk to. I could even just ask him for Sam's number, or whatever. But I want you to have my phone number, just in case. I'm not sure what I'm hoping will happen, because you've already made everything pretty clear." Jude chuckled darkly, and realized that hot tears had begun to roll over her cheeks. She wiped them away, shaking her head. At least it hadn't made it to her voice yet, and she could pretend it didn't affect her. "Everything is pretty clear to me, nowadays. 'Cept Lear. I don't know what to do about Lear, Dean. I just don't know. He's so little, and fragile, and I promised my Mom-" Jude cringed as her voice broke and she held the phone away from her mouth to heave a silent sob. She pressed her wrist to her mouth, before she spoke again.