((Follows on directly from Ghosts(AU).))

Finally, in the early hours of the morning, this little part of Chicago's Uptown quieted. It was never completely silent, of course, but between the hours of 4 and 6, it was quiet. Almost peaceful. The rows of bars and lounges were empty and dark, their owners lying asleep in rooms above the shop front. Even Morgan's Landing, the one bar no one walked into unless they knew where they were going, was still. Salt lined the doorways and windowsills, beneath the a/c vents. Even in this room, devil's traps had been painted on the floor by the door, on the wall beneath the window, on the ceiling, the underside of the bed. And still the terrors came.

The silence was broken by a rasping scream, the sound torn from a reluctant throat in the grip of pure, unadulterated terror. It went on for a long time, rattling windows, ripping through the stillness of the upper level. A thump shuddered the floor, breaking the sound and plunging the building back into silence.

Dean had almost immediately collapsed in the bed belonging to Room 8 on the second floor of Morgan's Landing, just as soon as Jo - no, Nim - had escorted him there. He'd fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep, the kind of sleep that came when someone was too exhausted to fight sleep or to dream. He'd probably have slept for days, if it hadn't been for the scream that shattered the silence of the night. A woman's scream in a familiar voice. Jo!

As soon as that scream registered in his sleep-deadened brain, instincts kicked in, and he rolled out of bed as fully clothed as he'd sank into it. His feet found the floor and he was automatically reaching into his jacket for a gun, frowning when he realized there was none to be found. Alright, a switchblade then. There was always that. He pulled the blade from his jacket and warily opened the door to peer out into the hallway, not realizing she was only having a nightmare, but thinking he'd somehow inadvertently brought some horror along with him when he arrived here.

He was treated to the sound of Brian scrambling to get out of his own bed and getting caught up in the covers. The older man's body slammed into the inside of his own bedroom door even as the scream died away completely. "Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t ..." Brian's door opened and he came stumbling out, his blue-eyed gaze touching on Dean's battle-ready peer in exasperation. "Gonna shoot her dreams, are you, kid?"

Dean frowned as Brian joined him, feeling like an idiot for suspecting the worst. He pushed the blade safely closed and returned it to its hiding place inside his jacket. "Better safe than sorry. Thought I might have brought something along with me." God help us if any Leviathan got through. His frown deepened as he glanced toward the door of Room 10, which Nim-Not-Jo had said was her room. "She have nightmares often?"

Brian scratched the back of his neck as he got himself together. "Guess you didn't see the salt or the traps before you crashed out, huh?" he asked in an impatient tone. Asked about Nim, his gaze flickered to the as-yet-unopened door. "Every time somethin' comes up from the memory she don't have, she gets the terrors." He frowned lightly. "You want to go in there, or am I?"

"Sorry." Dean found himself apologizing yet again, wondering if he was doing her more harm than good by being here, but he wasn't here by choice, and for the moment, he had nowhere else to go. "You should," he admitted after a moment's thought. "She knows you and trusts you." I'm no one and nothing to her, he thought with a heavy heart. "I'm the cause of her nightmares. You're not."

"Ah, for Chrissakes ..." Brian rolled his eyes, shaking his head, wondering briefly if Nim would ever forgive him if he just threw their guest into her room and left them both to it. He wouldn't do that to her, but there was something he wanted to say to Dean for his comment. "You didn't cause anythin'. She's been like this two years already. You might be the savin' of her."

He snorted lightly, squaring his shoulders, and dropped into a crouch, knocking on the door. "Nim' It's me, missy-girl, just Brian." He pushed the door open, and that pure iron knife came flying out, so deadly accurate that if he had been standing, he'd be dead.

Lucky Brian had gone or Dean would probably be dead or close to it. Startled by the knife that came flying out the door, Dean was fortunate enough to be well out of the path of that flying blade. He couldn't help but smile a little, proud of the skills the girl he'd known as Jo had acquired. He'd seen her hunt first hand and knew she was a hunter in her own right, a far cry from when he'd first met her years ago at Harvelle's. He backed into his room, but didn't close the door just yet, perking an ear to hear what he might and debating a drink to calm his nerves.

The sounds that came from Nim's room were quiet. Whimpering sobs could be heard from the furthest corner, beneath the window. She was calmer than Brian had expected, regret touching him as he realised she'd woken up alone after her nightmares for the first time. He was usually already there, but he'd stopped to reassure someone who may or may not be an undead hero. Blaming himself, he moved into the bedroom to reassure his young friend with warm arms and quiet words, wondering just what exactly life was going to be like from here on in, if the Dean next door was real.

Dean heard quick sobs coming from the room next door and silently berated himself, both for eavesdropping on their privacy and for dropping in and shattering what little peace she may have had here with the truth of her past. Assuming he wasn't mistaken and she really was Jo. Dean had learned through past experience that when two plus two usually equalled four, but there were exceptions to every rule. He glanced down the hallway, wondering if he should go fetch them both a drink. Or maybe he should just go back to bed, but sleep was out. There would be no more sleep for him tonight.

He quietly stepped out into the hallway and bent down to retrieve the fallen blade, his thumb tracing the initials engraved upon it. W.A.H. It wasn't the first time Dean wondered what had really happened to her father. Oh, he knew what he'd been told, but he wasn't sure it was the truth.

It didn't take long for the sobs to calm completely, and barely a minute later, Brian came back into view, rubbing his eyes wearily. He was used to abrupt wake up calls like this, so much so that he was ready to go back to sleep already. He eyed Dean crouching there, holding that precious blade, and a faint smirk touched his face. "She'll be out in a bit," he warned the younger man. "Alcohol or coffee seem to help." Then, patting Dean gently on the shoulder, he disappeared back into his own room. Moments later, snores began to reverberate through the door.

Alcohol or coffee" Or both? Dean nodded and moved to his feet, holding Bill Harvelle's knife in his hands and feeling a little like a fish out of water. He glanced at the door across the hall and wondered how the man managed to fall asleep so quickly and so soundly. He couldn't remember when he'd ever slept that well. Not since Hell, anyway. He debated what to do for a moment, then stepped toward the room beside his and rapped his knuckles against the door.

Her palm slid against his, slim fingers curling about his hand as she squeezed instead of shaking, seeing that initial denial of her own name in his eyes before he wiped it away. Her smile returned, lopsided but friendly, as her hand drew back again. "Friends call me Nim," she told him, inviting him unconsciously to do the same. Her dark eyes held his for a long moment, studying herself as much as him.

"Why aren't I afraid of you?" she asked suddenly. "You should terrify me - you appear from nowhere, you insist I'm someone I don't remember, and you're a face in my dream. But I'm not scared of you. If I feel anything with you, it's like being pleased to see a friend I thought was gone for good."

He wrapped his fingers around her tiny hand, the twinge of a dull ache throbbing in his chest when she made contact and gave his hand a gentle squeeze, the smile fading at the seriousness of her question, which overruled her introduction.

"Maybe some part of you remembers me," he answered, the most truthful answer he could think to give. It wasn't just wishful thinking. The truth was she was probably better off not remembering him or anything that had happened back home - wherever home was. "Have you stopped to consider what?s happened" Why are we both here" Why now" Why both of us, here in this same place - the home of a hunter. Who brought us here and for what purpose?"

"If you're part of the big blank spot that is my memory, then yes, part of me does remember you," she promised him through another of those lopsided smiles. "It's that part of me that Brian doesn't like. He isn't comfortable with the things I can do, or the things that I know without knowing how." She held Dean's gaze for a long moment, serious but gentle in her own way. "I'm a hunter. Never gone out of the state yet, but one day I will. I can't ignore what I know."

His questions made her shake her head in confusion. "If I was meant to be here, do you really I would have showed up bleeding out, with no memory' You might be here for a reason. It feels like I was a mistake, and how the hell could I help you with whatever purpose you've got here if I'm not supposed to be here at all?"

He caught her gaze and held it while she answered his questions, holding his tongue until she was through. She was wrong about herself. That much was clear. She didn't get here by accident. If he'd learned one thing during his lifetime, it was that nothing every happened by accident. "I don't know why, but I think someone didn't want you dead yet, and if that's the case, then someone brought you here for a reason. Who that someone is or what that reason is, I don't know. But you're here, and I'm here, and that's too coincidental to be an accident."

"So how do we find out?" Nim surprised herself with that question. When had she decided that she and this man who may or may not be Dean Winchester constituted a 'we'" She couldn't say, only that this 'we' came rather more easily to her in comparison with the 'we' that referred to her friendship with Brian. As though the 'we' that included Dean was more natural to her. She tipped the bottle back, taking another gulp of beer, and moved around to take up a seat on a stool beside him.

He tipped the bottle back and took a long pull off the beer in the short time it took her to ask her question and find a seat. He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not sure, but if someone brought us here for a reason, we're bound to find out what it is sooner or later." He drained the bottle of beer and set it on the counter before continuing. "I haven't been here long enough yet to hazard a guess, but if I died, too..." He trailed off, as that thought struck him for the second time that night. Maybe he'd died, too. Maybe that was why Roman was smirking smugly when Dean shoved the femur into his neck.

"I don't get the dying and still being alive thing," Nim confessed in confusion, shaking her head. She twisted on her perch to face him, one arm resting against the bar as she frowned thoughtfully. "How can I have been dead in your world or whatever for the last two years when I've been alive here" You said you saw my ghost, but I'm pretty sure I don't have one of those."

He frowned, not quite sure of the answers himself, turning on the stool to face her, looking at the bottle of beer as if it held all the answers. "I don't know, but....it wouldn't be the first time I've found myself somewhere I shouldn't be." It wouldn't be the first time I died either, if that's what happened. He wrapped a hand around the bottle, picking absently at the label with his thumb, lost in thought, replaying what had happened just before he'd found himself here in his head again.

"Does that usually turn out okay?" she asked. Perhaps it was a little flippant, but it was pertinent, too. Her eyes lowered to the play of his fingers against the label on the bottle, unconsciously following his line of sight without realizing it. "You know," she said quietly, "Brian's asked someone to come and make sure you're really you. Someone he says won't be wrong when he decides." Her eyes flicked up to Dean's warily; she wasn't supposed to be sharing this information, after all. "He'll be here in a couple of days."

Dean's mouth opened to answer her question, but before he could reply, she continued on, and he jerked his head toward her, away from the beer bottle. Suddenly a dozen possibilities ran through his head and he narrowed his eyes at the realization that Brian - and quite possibly, Jo - didn't believe what he'd told them. Well, hell, he probably wouldn't have believed it either. They needed proof, but proof was going to be hard to come by. He didn't have much proof but his word. There was only one question he needed to ask: "Who?"

She stiffened, leaning back under the narrowed gaze he levelled at her. Nim didn't know why she was sharing this information; Brian hadn't told her not to, but the implication had been there. But she didn't think that there was anything to fear from Dean. That gut feeling that had urged her on to hunt in the first place told her he was who he said he was. "He didn't tell me the name," she admitted softly. "Just that he's a man, obviously, and he's coming from South Dakota."

All the color drained from Dean's face at the mention of two simple words: South Dakota. Dean only knew one person from South Dakota, and that one person was more of a father to him than his own father had been. "Bobby?" he asked, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest, as he leaned forward to reach for her hands, a look of almost hopeful excitement on his face. "Is it Bobby Singer?"

The sudden excitement was startling enough that she didn't react in time to keep herself from having her hands captured by the man who reached for her. "I, I don't know, he didn't tell me the name," she repeated, a little unnerved by the look on Dean's face. Her brows rose as she stared at him intently. "This Bobby guy ....he'd know you? That you're really you, I mean?"

He and Sam were dead, but Jo and Bobby were alive" Who else was still alive in this place" Dean clutched her hands, almost absently as he stared out into space, his mind racing almost as fast as his pulse. Would Bobby know him in this place" Did they still have a history together" If so, he'd think Dean was dead, just as Dean thought Bobby was dead. He'd seen him die, talked to his ghost, burned his flask. How could it be that he and Jo were both still alive"

"Oh, God..." He was feeling woozy again.

Nim couldn't help the snickering snort that erupted from her suddenly laughing expression at his teasing, grinning suggestion. She was smiling so easily with him; no wonder Brian had said they were looking cosy together. Pulling a pan from the cupboard, she gestured with it toward him as she looked him up and down with her own teasing smile. "You know, a man like you really shouldn't sound that enthusiastic about eating sausage."

"First time I met you, you suggested pizza, a six-pack, and side one of Zeppelin Four. Your words, not mine." He snorted at her remark as he took a lean in the doorway, arms crossed against his chest. "The only sausage I eat is made of pork."

"Sounds like a good night in," she chuckled back to him, that crooking finger rising once again. "Get over here, you. Since you're such an expert on sausage, you're on meat duty." Dark eyes sparkled as she gestured a little more wildly with the pan before putting it down on the hob, turning away with a quiet giggle to search out another pan from the cupboard below the sink.

He chuckled. "Meat duty, huh' I guess it could be worse." He pushed off the doorway, shrugging the leather jacket from his shoulders, a green shirt over a plain black t-shirt worn beneath. "Guess I should take my jacket off and stay a while." He laid the jacket against the back of a chair and stepped over to the stove.

Straightening up once again, she giggled at his reply, stepping out of his way to set the second pan on the counter. Muffins came to hand from the bread crock, and she tipped a few under the grill to heat through slowly. "You weren't planning on staying?" she asked sweetly. "What, Brian's homely charms not enough to keep you in one place" He'll be crushed." The sarcasm was an easy shift in conversation for her as she reached past him for the eggs. "Scrambled, fried, or poached?"

He eyed her while she searched for that pan, admiring the view once again, straightening himself and blinking out of his thoughts as she moved past him to set the second pan on the counter. Too close for comfort. There was a frown on his face again for some reason, but he quickly turned his attention to the job he'd been assigned to.

"Anything but poached," he replied, ignoring here first question. No, he wasn't planning on staying. He wasn't planning on anything right now but figuring out what the hell he was doing here. He tore open the bacon and laid several slices out in the pan, followed by the sausages. It wouldn't be long before the kitchen would be smelling like his favorite meal of the day.

"Anything?" Her smirking face was definitely too close for comfort for a moment or two as she lifted the eggs past him, almost unaware of the gentle flush that colored her cheeks as she unconsciously reacted to his nearness in a way that almost transcended any physical attraction. Confused again, she blinked and took a half step away, opening up the egg carton to crack half a dozen into her own pan. "Brian'll be down as soon as he smells food, just to warn you."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." He darted a glance at her, his gaze wandering over her in those pink pjs when she wasn't looking. Good lord, she was just as adorable as ever. After a moment, he averted his gaze and turned back to the meat frying in the pan, picking up a fork to separate the bacon slices and turn the sausages. He had a million questions, about her, about Brian, but he wasn't sure if he should pry. "You two seem pretty close."

She smiled fondly, reaching up on her toes to snag a whisk from the line of utensils on the wall. "We should be," she agreed, her voice warm with recollection and learned affection for the gruff older man currently still upstairs. "He's been looking after me for over two years, ever since I arrived. Came to the hospital, offered me a place to stay and gave me a name. I ended up staying and working here; I've only been going on hunts this last year. But Brian's my first memory, he's always been there." She shrugged, her eyes lowering to the eggs as she beat them over a low heat. "Like I said, without him there'd be no me."

He nodded his head in understanding. He hadn't been here very long, but he had already surmised how much Brian meant to her and her to him. "It's good you have someone like him," he told her, surprised at the small stab of jealousy and envy he felt at knowing the man meant the world to her. Still, it was probably better that way. It was her feelings for him that had gotten her killed in the first place. "Bobby's like a father to me. At least, the Bobby I knew was." Was, not is because in his own world, Bobby was dead.

Nim's eyes lifted slowly to Dean's, her head tipped far back to let her meet his gaze stood so close beside him. She could understand a little of his sense of displacement, though of course without memories of the world she had apparently come from, her own difficulties had been nothing in comparison to what he was feeling right now. "He still might be, here," she said quietly. "You shouldn't make any assumptions, Dean. You might end up cutting off someone who could help you."

"He thinks I'm dead," Dean explained. "That means I'm going to have to prove I am who I say I am....and I don't even know if our history is the same here or not. I don't know anything. I can only tell him what I know from my own experience, but that might be different from his." He turned away from her to poke at the bacon as it sizzled in the pan. As bad as things were, he had to admit they could be and had been a lot worse.

"I just hope he gives me a chance to explain before he realizes I'm not the Dean Winchester he knew. I'm not a hero, J..." He cut himself off, forcing himself to call her by the name she was known by here. "Nim. I'm not a hero, I'm not a legend. I'm just a guy trying to survive and do the right thing. That's all."

His quiet correction of himself before he could call her by a name she didn't recognise was startling, touching her in a way she couldn't have anticipated. She felt her heart thump strangely, confused once again, shaking her head a little as she raised her eyes once again. "Everyone's a hero to someone," she offered up with a faint shrug. "Is it really that bad that here you're a hero to almost every hunter out there?"

He still wouldn't look at her, as if the bacon and sausage needed his utmost attention, which it didn't. It would fry on its own without him constantly poking at it. "It means I have to live up to other people's expectations and I don't even know what those expectations are."

Her chin lowered, removing the intensity of her gaze from his profile as she took the scrambled eggs off the heat, tipping them into a bowl and setting it in the oven to stay warm. Still crouched, now avoiding his eyes herself, she tested the muffins under the grill. "I don't have any expectations of you," she said quietly. It wasn't entirely true, but she didn't have any realistic expectations of him. It wasn't realistic to expect him to feel anything for her, especially not when she wasn't entirely sure what she was feeling for him.

He glanced over at her, still in a state of awe that she was actually there, that he was actually having a conversation with her, that she was alive and well, at least as far as he could tell. I wish you remembered me, he thought to himself, immediately berating himself for the thought, knowing she was far better off this way. "The nightmares....They're memories, aren't they?" he asked, unsure why he was asking, but needing to know. He had nightmares of his own and could understand what she was going through.

"I don't know," she admitted truthfully, rising to stand once again. "It's just the same dream, every time, but the details change. Sometimes it happens here in Chicago, sometimes it's in a backwoods town I don't recognise. There's never anyone else there, except a shadow figure that I always stop to help."

She paused, turning away so he couldn't see the blossoming warmth amid the confusion in her eyes. "Only last night it wasn't a shadow. It was you. And I've never felt so scared for someone else, not that I can remember. I didn't care about the pain or the blood. All I wanted was to keep you safe." Her hand touched the scars hidden beneath her tank for a moment before she reached out, moving to lift plates from the cupboards.