((Follows Just When I Needed You Most.)) ______________________

June, 2012

The cabin was abandoned, a dark hulking structure in the small hours of the morning stark against the lighter darkness of the fields around it. The Impala stood in front of it, a silent witness to the slow approach of the dozens of red-eyed, tattooed enemies walking with slow steady steps through some poor farmer's livelihood. Mist was descending around them, disguising their numbers, chilling the warm summery night until it could pass for an evening in late autumn.

Her phone propped between her ear and her shoulder, her hands busily loading guns, Nim squinted out through a cracked window, trying to make sense of numbers and intent, hoping like hell Apollo was right and whatever these things were would come after her and leave the car alone. She didn't feel happy about leaving Dean's pride and joy out there, directly in the line of attack, but Apollo was adamant that the Impala was in no danger. That she, Nim, was the focus of this attack and they would only come for her.

"C'mon, Brian, c'mon," she muttered to herself, listening to the ringtone on the other end of the line with increasing impatience. The door beside the chimney breast pushed open abruptly, and she spun, aiming down the barrel of a shotgun to find Apollo blinking at her in the gloom. "Hey - you got any mojo that'll work on these guys?"

The god frowned back at her, confused by her vocabulary. She'd already told him not to light up the room with any of his Harry Potter tricks, sending him to check out the root cellar below them for any other exits. "Even in a fight such as this, there are rules, Nim," he told her sternly. "If I take a direct hand in this fight with my abilities, my uncle will do the same."

"Great," she sighed, catching up the Beretta and the Glock, tossing them to him. He caught the handguns awkwardly, holding them as though they were about to explode in his fingers. "Both of those are point and shoot; when you're out of bullets, drop it and move on ....Brian?"

The sleepy voice on the end of the phone was possibly the most beautiful thing she had heard in the hours since Dean had been whisked away. Her adoptive father sounded as though she'd roused him from quite a deep sleep, but he was there, and he was ready to help, if he could. "Brian, I'm three miles south of Nickerson, Nebraska, off County Road 24. I need you to call Bobby and get him to send me anyone in the area who can help me ....No, not in the morning, right now."

As her friend grumbled his way through writing down the details as she gave them to him, Nim watched Apollo delicately taking the safety catch off her Glock. He's going to get one hell of a shock when he fires that thing, she thought to herself, hanging up on Brian's promise to wake up Bobby and see if there was anyone who could get out to her. Loading up the last of the weapons, she took a last look out at the crowded, mist-filled fields around the cabin. Their slow moving but determined enemy was level with the Impala, barely twelve feet from the cabin itself now. Hoisting the weapons duffle onto her shoulder, Nim stepped back from the window, feeling herself settle into that cold, unfeeling place where her long-absent memory lay dormant.

"All right, you bastards," she muttered, backing across the main room to the root cellar door. "You want me" You're gonna have to bleed for me."

A swift nod to Apollo sent the god back down into the darkness of the root cellar, and Nim stepped swiftly after him at the first sound of feet against the aging boards of the wraparound porch. She drew the door shut, barring it behind them, and jogged down into the cool black. The point of no return was right here, and she was meeting it head on, with nothing but a bag full of guns and a god who wasn't allowed to fight dirty.

"C'mon, Dean," she whispered to herself, taking up position with her back to the sturdy dirt wall. "Get your a$$ back here, wherever you are."

*~*~*

January, 2016

One of the strangest things about the uncertain future Dean had been thrust into was the lack of light. It wasn't until the light was taken away that you noticed how much it changed even during the darkest hours of the night. Here, there was nothing. Save for the trickle of light from what few lamps on the street had survived the devastation, this world was pitch black and cold. But in a small bedroom in a small house surrounded by the watchful and malevolent eyes of the enemy, there was warmth and light of a kind that had been sorely lacking for a long while.

Nimue woke to the feeling of arms about her for the first time in months, stretching with a lazy, unguarded smile that needed no explanation as her eyes opened, seeking out Dean's face in the gloom. Her fingers reached up to touch his cheek tenderly. "You stayed."

Dean smiled when she touched his cheek, looking at him as though she was surprised to find him still there. He'd promised her he'd stay by her side all night, and he kept that promise, wanting to hold her close for as long as he could while there was still time. He'd stayed awake most of the night watching her, memorizing every detail of her, every facet and feature - the small sighs she made while she slept, the subtle changes in her expression as she dreamed, though he knew not what about.

He wondered at the small swell at her stomach, vaguely remembering his own mother's pregnancy, though it was too far in his past to remember it clearly. No matter how much he wanted a family, craved to have what everyone else had, he had always thought it impossible - especially after what had happened to Lisa - but maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe Nim was right. Having children of their own was dangerous, but maybe it could be done, after all. If anyone had the knowledge and the resources to protect them, it was them.

This - these rare, quiet moments with the ones he loved - this was what made all the pain and the grief worthwhile, what gave him the impetus to go on, what made life worth living and worth fighting for. Outside the window, there might be darkness, but inside, there was light of a different kind. And if this wasn't how things were meant to be, then life truly wasn't worth living.

"I stayed," he replied quietly, with a soft brush of lips to hers that expressed what he was feeling better than words.

For the first night in many, she had slept through without a single nightmare to disturb her or tears on waking. Though she had only slept perhaps four hours, it was more than she usually managed, and Nimue knew it was because of who was in the bed with her. With Dean so close, even if he wasn't exactly the husband she had lost, she'd settled easily into the comfort of his presence, revelling in the luxury of undisturbed slumber. And now, just woken up, she didn't want to remember the danger of the day ahead of them, drawing back from his soft kiss only to roll closer with a deeper kiss of her own, disregarding for a few precious moments her concerns of the night before.

With the deepening of that kiss, came the rise of desire, slow at first, warm and gentle as a morning sunrise, an agonizingly exquisite ache that started deep inside and grew like an ember catching fire, his body reacting to her kiss, even as his heart and mind warned him not to. In that moment, he would give her anything she asked of him, anything she desired, with one exception. No matter how much she might want him to stay, he couldn't. They both knew it, and they both knew they were running out of time. If Hades found out he was there before he summoned Death, all would be lost.

With that thought in mind, he gently broke the kiss, tenderly stroking her cheek, sadness and regret reflected in eyes more green than brown. "Everything's going to be all right," he promised her quietly, for the umpteenth time. "It has to be."

"You don't," he replied. "You do the best you can and hope it works out, but we've got the advantage now, and I'm not going down without a fight." He shoved his fingers through his hair in a meager attempt at combing the stubborn short locks that stuck out here and there. "I'm gonna make some coffee," he announced, the peace of the moment shattered.

Closing her eyes, Nimue turned away. So much for one last night. Dropping the journal onto the bed, her hands rose to curl protectively over the gentle swell at her waist, regret already spilling out of her for allowing herself to give into the surging emotion that had pushed her to snap at him, to take everything he said so very personally. He didn't know that this was normal for her when she was pregnant; he didn't know, the way her Dean had, that taking offense at her wild reaction only made things worse. "Maybe going down with dignity isn't such a bad idea."

"Dignity has nothing to do with it," he told her, disagreeing as he turned back to face her. "They fight dirty, you fight dirty back, and you never give up. Ever." Maybe it would sound to her like a scolding or a preachy lecture, but what he was trying to do, in his own clumsy way, was give her hope. He'd been where she was, at the very end of his rope, the deepest depths of despair, and still, he had found some way to survive, to go on, to fight back. If nothing else, he was stubborn.

She shook her head, not so much denying what he was saying but more denying that he was even there. It had been so easy, to pretend for a single day that everything was normal, and yet ....if they hadn't had that single day, she wouldn't be rebelling so much against letting him go now. The selfishness that welled up inside her, the wish for something to be hers - it felt wrong, but she couldn't help it. "I can't do this," she said in a quiet voice. "I should never have agreed to spending the day like a normal family. All I've done is make it worse."

He was on a roll now, and he wasn't finished. Maybe his future self had already given her this speech, maybe he hadn't. He had no way of knowing, but it was something he felt she needed to hear. Or maybe he just needed to get it off his chest after all these years of carrying it around, feeling guilty for being merely human. "You know what happened when I was in Hell" Every day, Alastair would start fresh, like it was a new day. Trying to find what new tortures would break me. It was like that for thirty years, Nim. Thirty years, until I finally couldn't take it anymore, until I finally gave up, but I survived. You know what I learned from that' I learned that no matter how bad things get, you never give up. Ever."

The speech did little to calm her down, however. She turned, dark eyes sharp and fuming. "Don't you dare," she warned him in a low tone. "Don't you dare stand there and give me that. You don't know anything about the last four years. You don't know what I've been through. Sure, nothing can compare with Hell, I know that. You've rubbed it in often enough that I can never know how awful that was, that I can't even begin to empathise. But that was my Dean. I've got four years of a different kind of hell on you. I've earned the right not to be chipper and dancing on sunlight all the time. But I never said I was giving up. Ever. So don't you dare talk down to me like that."

He'd thought he'd reached her, but once again she misunderstood, the stubborn streak in her as bad as the one in him. But instead of fighting back, instead of fueling the fire in her, he did exactly that which he said he'd never do: He gave up, wishing he'd never mentioned Hell, wishing he'd never told her anything. It was a mistake. She was right; he could only guess what she'd gone through the last four years and what she was going through right now, and they were back at the beginning again, it seemed. It was his fault, and she had no one to blame but him. He knew she wasn't giving up, but he'd also seen the despair in her.

All he wanted her to know was that he loved her, that he wasn't blaming her, but it all seemed to have fallen to pieces with a few misguided words. "Sorry," he said, unable to hide the regret from his voice. "I better go get ready," he turned and started toward the door again, with a heavy heart.

"Don't you walk away from me. Not again." Her heart thumping painfully in her chest at the thought of him leaving them with this as a goodbye, she lunged after him, hands outstretched to catch at his arm, wanting him to face her once again. "Don't make this our goodbye."

She caught his arm, just as he was reaching for the door, and he turned to face her, struggling but unable to hide the same pain from his face that she was feeling. He didn't want to leave her like this anymore than she wanted him to. "I'm not that Dean," he told her quietly, the realization of it hitting him like a punch in the gut, her words wounding him. "I have no idea what you've been through, what we've said to each other, what we've done together. I only know that I love you and I want to make things right."

Anger fled almost entirely under the quiet realization in his voice, knowing that she had completely dispelled the illusion for him, knowing that her outburst had finally stripped the rose-tint from his eyes. This wasn't the future he wanted; his future would be better, and his Nim would be softer, less apt to cast blame and spite, less likely to feel despair. "I'm sorry," she whispered unhappily. "I don't know what else I can say, but I'm sorry."

He did realize in that moment that she wasn't his Nim, anymore than he was her Dean. Their experiences had made them who they were, and this Nim wasn't the same as the one he'd left behind. This Nim was far more like he used to be. He knew he was changing, had changed, but he thought it was for the better. Whatever had happened between them, whatever his future self had done, it really had nothing to do with him. He wasn't that Dean, and if things went according to plan, he'd never become that Dean. Just like the future Dean he'd met back home, he didn't want to become that Dean. There was little comfort he could give her in that. She was in love with someone he wasn't, but hadn't there been a time four years ago, when she'd been in love with him before he'd become the man who'd decided to sacrifice himself for everything he held dear"

Frowning sadly down at her, he wound his arms around her again, giving her what little comfort he could. "I'm the one who's sorry," he told her quietly.

"None of this is your fault," she insisted softly, curling into his arms more like a sister than any lover might. Understanding, finally, that he wasn't what she wanted - that what she wanted could never be hers again - Nimue let out a slow, shaky sigh, swallowing hard. She tipped her head back to meet his gaze. "We need to get you home."

"Yeah," he agreed with a single word as he met her gaze. There was nothing more to say really. He'd played house long enough. The dream was shattered, reality setting in again. One day to enjoy what wasn't really his, not yet anyway. What might be if they fought hard enough. "Can I ask you something?" he said quietly as he pulled slowly away, the expression on his face teetering on the edge of an emotional breakdown, needing to know one final thing before he could set things right.