The murmurs of nearby voices filled the street as they stood together beneath an old awning. Upon re-entering the Winchester lifestyle, Allie found it tough to acclimate. Her room still held no personalization. Frankly, a cockroach could live there. The sight wouldn’t be any different. A gnawing took place at the base of her skull - like something was incomplete. There was a chipper disposition that exuded from her, something alike the facade that she put on in her younger years. The flirtatiousness, the boldness, the charade of the ‘hot girl that didn’t care’. Sure that process was familiar but… within the mask lay an uncomfortable skin - a deep feeling that things were not how they once were and a strange box had formed under her skin, tightening her muscles and flexing a semi-retired personality. People grew - and she had grown over time. She’d aged. Why did… it just didn’t feel right. And so, despite her happiness at being alive and being back on the job with them, she hadn’t yet unpacked her things. Allie could walk off in the middle of the night and the room would appear no different.

“So, maybe we can do something with your room. Dean put stuff up in his.” Sam spoke with wistful punctuation. “We could get you a Britney Spears poster?” His arm gave a slight nudge to hers while they waited for coffee together. His eyes fell upon her short stature. Talking with her felt familiar, yet foreign at the same time. With Mary being gone and Cas away from the bunker.. Sam sort of enjoyed having someone other than Dean to bounce off of. Though, he chose to select his words carefully in fear of her mental state.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting to the age where I should have doilies everywhere instead. What do you think? Should I start wearing a Mumu at night and watch live-bingo?” She smiled up at him, blue eyes glinting in the afternoon sun. “And to think you don’t look a day over thirty. When are you gonna show me the fountain of youth?” “Mmmm, I actually just took a really long beauty nap. Five years long, to be exact.”

The quip came from her but Sam seemed to go silent and Allie glanced around. “So, 1824 days too long.” Sam finally offered back, though his face did not express the sentiment as a joke. His gaze fell to his hands for a moment and he began to pick at the sides of his nails in nervousness. On some level he knew she would joke about it - that was Allie’s way of avoiding difficult topics, but actually moving through that again after so long was… tough. He saw it enough with Dean. He didn’t want to see it with her too.

“We went through a lot while you were gone, Al.” He spoke again to continue their conversation on a path that would not be comedic. “And I missed you everyday.” Not only her, but Bobby too. They’d lost too much in such a short time period. Sam watched for years as Dean lost himself further into a bottle and then the Mark of Cain took hold. In some ways, Sam was thankful that Allie hadn’t been around for that part of their lives, but in others… Well, he just wondered if things may have been different.

“Yeah, your hair is pretty long now, Tree.” She offered with a small smile and grew a bit closer to him in effort for their conversation to be private.

“I won’t let anyone else cut it.”

“Well, it’s not like I was the best hair stylist.”

“You were to me.”

Softened eyes roamed over her and then he gave a short sigh. “I know it must be strange being back - with the bunker and all.” Not to mention that he was now older than her. Their roles had changed. Before her death there were times that Allie offered a comfort that was nearly maternal. She was mother henny with people she liked, the type to perform acts of service. Now he was the one that needed to take care of her and he was acutely aware of that.

“Mom had a tough time with it too. Mom, Mary, I don’t know what to call her most of the time.” Space. She needed space. Did that mean not being their… mom? No, she just needed to figure things out. She was going through a lot in a very short amount of time. “But - It’s a home. We still go to motels. Just not as often. It’s nice to have a place where we can —”

“Feel normal?” Allie interjected, quick to complete his sentence. “Almost.” She supposed that was a highlight of it. Still, the bunker would never feel like her father’s. Despite all of their time on the road - that was her home at heart. And it no longer existed. Nothing really did. At least, nothing that she was used to. Not even the boys. They were different now.

“Yeah, as normal as we can - considering…” His hand waved up in the air as if to emphasize their gritty lifestyle - here they were getting coffee after pretending to be priests. Nothing about their lives was, or had ever been, normal. When he was younger the idea of a normal life consumed him. Coming home to a family felt like a way of giving him the experience that he missed out on as a child. He could offer more, be a more present father, give to those around him - but that plot became lost as he fell further and further into his thirties. All of his dreams took a back burner to the life, like every other hunter he had ever known. “It’s not much but it’s nice to breathe without smelling nicotine everywhere. I make Dean smoke outside.”

“And he actually listened to that? Wait, I thought he quit?”

“Well, he quit for a while.”

“A while?”

“Yeah, he started again.”

The two went back and forth for another minute. In her memory Dean hadn’t smoked cigarettes since… Well, the apocalypse. He just gradually stopped and leaned into drinking more. She always assumed that maybe Lisa hadn’t liked the flaw. Allie chastised him on multiple occasions but Dean was a stubborn bull even at the best of times. Then the next conversation soon started.

“Drinking too.”

“What?”

“Drinking, he started drinking too.”

“He’s always drank…”

“Not like this, Al.”

There was a pause between them and the coffees came but both stood together rather than rejoining Dean by the Impala. “When Bobby… then you…” Sam closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the trials vividly behind his eyes. Dean had betrayed him in allowing Gadreel to take his body. Allie did hold them together like a glue. And why? Probably because when she was around there was someone to judge actions. Dean carried a soft spot for her. Sam couldn’t help but wonder if she would have talked him out of it. Deep down, he knew she would have. Because she cared and believed in choice. “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,”

“And we lost a lot. Too much. Charlie’s gone too.” Sam let his hand roam over his head in pondering. How to express his love, his nostalgia… he didn’t know. “Sometimes I think about how it’s been a long time since we were heroes. I know that you see me as how I was - then. Before.” They’d never go back again and that was a tough spill to swallow. Not just him and Allie, all of them. Team Free Will. He just hoped she’d still want him around. Hopefully she wouldn’t run like his mother had, even though John thought they had so much in common.

“Sam, I know who you are.” Allie pressed her foot into the ground, already knowing where he was going with things. “The person that you were at 27 wasn’t the same person that you were at 22 when we met, right?”

“No, I gue —”

“Yeah. and I still loved you at 27.” A pause and the blonde took a sip of her coffee, allowing the warm liquid to ease her enough to continue on. “Just like how I’ll love you when you’re 40, then 50…” Her fingers brushed through her hair absentmindedly. “You’re different and I’m not going to say that you’re not, but your experiences aren’t the reason we’re friends. I value you as a person.”

Tall limbs moved to wrap a pleasant arm around her small shoulder and Sam leaned down to press a kiss into her hair. She smelled nice. He hadn’t gotten to experience her perfume in sometime but it seemed that Dean’s keepings had returned it to the both of them. “I missed having someone to talk to.” Really, he missed a lot of things.

 

With coffees in hand the two arrived at Dean with wide smiles. Upon their return, Dean spoke of Cas’ outside activities and how Lucifer had possessed Vince Vincente. Of course Sam and Dean did their usual back and forth. Dean's blatant disgust for Vince brought a wry smile to her lips and after Sam defended the 80's musician's music, she piped up. "Vince is a magician..." She spoke with coy sensuality. "Brings waterfalls wherever he goes," Her tongue darted out to press against her top row of teeth and she could hear Sam snicker behind her. "I used to be a groupie when I was a teenager. Played his music at all my parties." Ah yes, the sweet nostalgia of rocking out to Vincente while the clock struck midnight and she sipped on a fresh Vodka Cran.

Dean took on an expression of abject horror. "You did not just say that!" The words came out in a bark while his eyes flickered to Sam who held a hand over his mouth. "He wears fucking hair extensions, Allie! He wears enough guyliner to keep CVS in business!" Green eyes fixated on her as if beyond his imagination.

"I like guyliner. It's hot." Darling eyes slanted in teasing towards him and Allie placed a hand on her hip to accentuate her stance.

"Are you telling me that you would let Vince Vincente rail you right now because he uses makeup?!" Flailing hands rose in the air while Sam seemingly lost it behind them. VINCE VINCENTE?! The dude's music belonged in discount bins collecting dust.

"Oh yeah, Alice Cooper too." Allie let out alengthy snort and tilted her head, eyebrows raised.

"ALICE COOPER?!" Where had that come from? Not once had he heard her listen to Alice fucking Cooper.

"Feeeeed my frankensteiiin!" The theatrical lyrical joy came from her in a swift action of mockery. "Velcro candy, sticky sweet - Make my tattoos melt in the heat!" Everyone had teenage crushes, hers just happened to be an 80's rockstar. Oh! and Tom Welling.

"Get in the damn car. I can't believe this. He's too old for you Allie! They both are!" Dean spoke in a rush. She was thirty! In fact, that was a significant reason why he had settled with his flirting towards her. He was nearing 40. Surely their time in the sun had passed. Once upon a time they had a much smaller age gap but her time in death had exacerbated that and sure, he went for younger women sometimes but Allie could never be a one night stand and therefore it just didn't make sense for her to want someone so much older.

"Oh baby, age is just a number once you hit twenty-five. I'm a woman. I can make my own choices. My brain is developed," a beat and Allie grinned. "And my choice is to park in pound city with a man telling me he's going to drive me like a hammer on a bed of nails."

Sam was taking a drink from his cup of coffee until the last sentence entered the air around them, causing him to choke on the sip and coffee to rush up into his nose and shoot out, forcing him to wipe the reaction onto his priestly sleeve. He caught sight of Dean, who's eyes were wide open.

Without saying a word Dean's eye twitched before his hand pressed down onto the hood of Baby. Something about the way she had said it made his fingertips go numb, as if taken from the world and placed into infinite possibilities. Grounding himself against the warm metal enabled him to think with more clarity. It was a joke. She used to be like that all the time, flirtatious, boundary-grazing. They had toed an inescapable line for much of their adult lives but... Instead of opting into his old ways Dean simply got into the car and tapped his hand on the roof in signal for the two to climb in.

 

 

Worn cushions pressed down beneath her as Gail, the mother, spoke in regards to their family, their affinity toward religion. She watched for a moment as Dean stood and exited with William, the husband, and walked out to perform some assistance with a chore.

That gripping blade at the back of her head began once again, trailing into her nape with uncomfortable prickles. Originally she had settled with a large smile when entering the farmhouse. The day had gone well despite their hardships in regards to Mary (which Allie did not have much to say on, though she watched from the back as Dean and Sam had confided about it to one another). Yet on the mention of God her eyes unfocused and re-entered the conversation.

At first the dialogue seemed geared towards hope. Solace. Peace. Gail yearned for life and ease without pain. She turned to God like many others did when they had unforeseen circumstances. Alice had seen it in her own mother as the cancer took hold. Of course, Allie attended many a mass as a child. She sang in congregation but with each word fell further from grace. All of that time and nothing came of it. The resentment as she held her mother's yellowed hand, nothing could compare. She could hear it in her head - the words that rang out upon her mother's dying minutes.

"The angels are singing while I cry. The church is singing with them while God takes you from me. And you are all I have. God never walked beside me." Perhaps that was why she did not sob at the time. That white-hot anger. In fact, God never did anything. She was hesitant to believe that he even watched. It was just as feasible to believe that he put on the TV and let it run full time without care or concern.

Her desperation to find family had resulted positively considering Allie came across her father after years of searching but that had been completely on her own merit. Nursing took the backseat as she lost herself in the cause of desperately needing something to cling to. It took her years of research to find him. The only thing that kept her afloat during Ryan's beatings. Black eyes sat and stared at a screen on multiple occasions in search of something that resembled a home.

Now this woman perched in front of them and spoke of her dead daughter as though He had an overlapping plan; some sort of divine cause and affection for the ants that he kept in his farm. Rippling anger came, it surfaced below her lungs - like the words were bubbling but unable to form! That base tug at her hairline pulsed and grew and from it a twitch until Allie was back in her regular disposition and soon that anger flowed away like a wave, bringing calm.

Sky irises flickered to Sam as he sat beside her and took on an agitated expression. Their whole reason for attending the farm was to see what was going on in town. Two victims were found with whippings across their backs, hands and feet bearing holes as though they had been crucified. Gail and William selected to let their daughter die rather than allow a doctor to help her. They were farther down the grapevine than her mother had been, at least she tried the drugs and treatments.

 

The gritting of teeth tightened his jaw and in Gail's eyes sat everything that Sam begrudged. She was knee-deep in the crazy, aligned with her cause so far that it harmed someone; heavy in the channel of eating God's bullshit. His gaze seared, flamed from the experience that had left him open and somehow unjust. Funny, religious civilians always thought so high when they fell - without even knowing that they were speaking to people who had a relationship with God himself (albeit a.. strange one). Without thinking of the implications of Allie hearing his lack of impulse control, Sam spoke.

"And God didn't kill your daughter - you did," Frustrated words and with them, William responded with Dean by his side and told them it was time to go.

 

 

Night came and with it, Camouflage. Dean decided to hedge his bets on deaths being the product of a witch but Allie stayed firmly planted with Sam. It was under moonlight when they crouched to the ground with all-seeing eyes to find Gail reading from a book and Magda, their supposedly dead daughter, whipping gashes across her own back.

A slight whimpering noise of shock at the sight came from Allie before she thrusted a hand over her mouth. The girl was young, too young to have experienced what the scars across her flesh implied. Sometimes evil lived in humans. In a way, those were the worst ones. Looking at eyes and seeing them look back at you with a usual surface but painful intent.

Her breath came out in a slight shake and just before Gail turned, Sam pulled her away from the window.

"Go, Go, Go!" Sam said with rushed urgency as they attempted to clamber away. They made it just a few steps before turning to see the son and the father at their backs. They turned and attempted to talk both out of things to no avail, instead being knocked out.

The cold floor awoke them both quickly and Sam rose first first, eyes opening in a daze to witness Magda once again lashing out at herself. That sadness came back in full force as he called out to her, speaking her name with empathy only for her to refuse him - believing herself to be The Devil. He repositioned slightly to see Allie laying on the basement foundation, blood trickling down her forehead. "Al! Allie!" His large frame scooted to her side and attempted to nudge her, brushing his nose over her cheek in an effort to rouse her with his hands tied behind his back. The soft breaths from her nose alerted him that she was alive. 

His boot wiggled under her arm and soon dainty fingers twinged and gripped slightly before a short "mmm?" and Allie eventually crouched up the best that she could while Magda continued her onslaught of self-harm. 

After Sam tried to give comforting words, Allie glanced around the cool basement. The years of worrying over Sam's abilities had long since passed but she watched as Magda rose a cross into the air. In that action - a sudden feeling flashed across her, a truth, even if fleeting.

 

"Magda, How could you be The Devil? You feel sorry, you feel scared. The Devil fears nothing and cares for no one." The blonde let her eyes fall on the young woman in front of her. "If you were The Devil, don't you think you'd want to leave? Don't you think you would have busted out?" Her soft words brought their gazes together and Allie inched closer, careful as to not spook her. "We save people. Sam... He fought Lucifer and won."

 

and won.

 

The words sounded so sweet, so forgiving. Years had passed since the last time he heard that familiar warmth, felt it in his ears. A small smile moved across his cheeks. The pride in her voice... For a moment, Sam gave half an idea to rebutting the statement by verbalizing that, that was years prior. Instead, he nodded. Yeah. He had beaten The Devil. They'd beaten many things that went bump in the night, even if he didn't feel like a hero. Well, he stopped believing before. But the way she said it... "We can help you, Magda..." Sam said.

 

It was hours later when they dropped her off. The trio waved and gave comforting words but Sam couldn't move past it, the way Allie had spoken. The tone of her voice when she used him as a method to soothe Magda. That's when the undeniable truth fell on him. For Allie, being alive meant acclimating to changes. To him, having her alive meant his secret mourning (a method to put Dean's needs above his own when she died) was over and he had a chance for a restart. To be a hero again, both in her eyes and his. They could be closer this time! They could... Through resurrection, Sam would be able to 'fix' a few of his regrets. No more stepping aside. The tides needed to change.