Gallows (SPN,XO,MATURE,UC) 1/26/11 [WIP]

[vaifeal]

Title: Gallows
Author: Vaifeal
Disclaimer: I don't own Roswell or Supernatural nor do I get any sort of monetary compensation for this story (just ask my bank account).
Category: XO/SN
Pairings: UC – I might skip pairings all together, With mentions of CC.
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: All seasons of Supernatural to be safe but it starts at the pilot, All seasons of Roswell.
Summary: Despite over six years of dealing with aliens and hidden identities, she never knew how far away normal really was.

A/N: I am in no way abandoning Rivers and Ravens and am in fact working on the next chapter of that at the moment. However, this is just one of several Supernatural crossovers that have been buzzing around in my head every time I sit down to write. I'm gonna try to stretch this sucker till the end of season 5 (not every episode) but we'll see what happens.

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I'm expecting all hell to break loose
- Things Have Changed, Bob Dylan

When everything fell apart, her hair was red.

Bright, nearly orange wavy locks that fell to her shoulders and into hazel eyes, that could barely be seen through the black frames she hid behind. Max hated it, hated every little shield he had constructed around her. He hated her being called ginger and he hated the glasses that hid her soul and hated his own mousy brown hair and generous freckles that removed any belief in the twenty-seven years he was pretending to have.

Even in his heavily stained jump suit, he couldn't escape the inherently youthfulness of his most recent disguise. There was no escaping that any change would have to wait until they'd finally worn out their welcome and moved on to yet another backwater town.

Liz often wondered how long he'd be able to lay at her side trying to ignore the differences between the woman he married and the one who shared his bed. The changes were only physical but the continuous shifts in identity were wearing down on them.

It wasn't easy on the soul to be someone else all the time.

It was harder to have that person stop you from seeing the one you loved.

She loved Max, deeply and truly but after a ten hour shift at the Walmart it was hard to remember what it felt like to be cherished. Coming home to an empty apartment was one of the hardest things she'd ever do.

Three years of marriage and still the only person she wanted to see when she walked in the door was her husband. But Max needed to work because they needed to survive and even though they had forged new lives out of lies, they were only willing to go so far.

So Liz worked all day at the superstore and Max worked all day at the scrap yard, trading off nights at the bar to make ends meet. Sometimes she wanted to know at what point marriages shifted from functioning relationships to just shadows playing at life.

It was cruel but she was glad that they'd all gone their separate ways. Isabel, Kyle, Michael and Maria. She didn't want to share him with anyone, not those few precious hours that they could be themselves in the quiet dark.

Still, despite the time apart and the strain there in or the constant battle to find a small measure of security, it was the little things that she would always remember and cherish about her marriage; pressed lips on bare shoulders, fresh flowers on her bedside table, kisses in the dark, Sunday morning pancakes, coffee and toast as light streamed through the paisley curtains. There was nothing that would make her surrender those tiny little details that made up Max and Liz.

Waking up wrapped in his arms every morning, made the struggle worth it.

The work day began and ended like so many before it. The alarm sounded at six and Max unwrapped himself from around her, barely coherent in his effort to dress for the day. Even though she was working the afternoon shift Liz dragged herself out of the bed shortly after, partially because the dreams were making it hard to sleep and partially because northern Maine was cold, much colder than any other place they had lived, and their tiny apartment didn't keep the heat very well. Without Max next to her, she shivered too much to rest.

At seven, she kissed her husband goodbye, curled up under the blankets with a cup of tea, and watched the news give way to morning talk shows. By eleven she was dressed for work, blue smock and all. It was just about a half hour drive to the Walmart and one that filled her with dread.

She hated that store. It was big, cheap, and impersonal. Everything that she had always avoided but was stuck in because she knew that none of her coworkers paid much attention to her. When they left, she'd be forgotten easily. The work was routine and her mind drifted easily, reviewing the books she'd read the night before and planning what she'd do with Max the next couple of days.

They were finally scheduled for the same days off and Liz wouldn't pass up the chance for them to relax together. Maybe she'd let him change their coloring back to the way it was supposed to be for a brief time. A picnic would've been nice but unless there was a spike in the temperature it'd be too cold.

The smile on her face when she made it home dropped off quickly. Tired, cold, and in need of a shower, she unlocked the apartment, hung up her jacket, and pulled on the sweater Max had gotten her when they'd first moved up there. Heavy, long, and with a deep hood that hung over her face, it reminded her of a cloak out of a fairy tale but now she wrapped it around herself like a piece of armor against the dark.

He should have been home.

“Max,” she yelled into the quiet stillness, aware that she could be overreacting. That the feel of an unoccupied home was unnerving her and he could be taking a nap waiting for her to join him or could have been given a shift at the bar and there would be a note on the kitchen counter.

She jumped at the sound of their bedroom door closing and laughed against her will. A slightly hysterical sound she pushed away her anxiety, “Max?”

If she had powers, if she could do what the others could, maybe she wouldn't be so terrified but the visions had faded and she needed rage for even a hint of telekinesis. Kyle had been relieved when he hadn't developed the same issues as Liz but she would give anything to have those abilities back.

She didn't turn on the lights as she walked through the living room, her feet muffled by decades old carpeting. The kitchen was dark, darker than it should have been and she found herself surprised at the lack of light coming in through the windows and allowed herself to search out the light switch.

Flicking it on she screamed. A soul crushing, heartbreaking sound that was ripped from the heart of her. Against her will her eyes followed the dark puddle to the figure spread across the linoleum floor that was yellowed with age.

“Max!”

Her sneakers slipped on the liquid, turning it from maroon to crimson, she could feel it soaking into her pants as her knees hit the ground sending painful shocks up her body. Frantic fingers searched for an absent pulse, sobbing when she couldn't find it.

“No, no, no.”

One hand trying to put his stomach back together, the other tried to clear the blood away from his lips so that she could get him breathing again. Pinching his nose shut she blew into his mouth and drew back horrified as his blood bubbled up into hers.

Choking and sobbing she couldn't stop her body from shaking, “Wake up. Max, please. Please.”

Grabbing his hand she held it against her chest willing him to wake. Her fingers bit metal and she pulled the delicate silver chain from his grasp sobbing anew as the star dangled free. He'd given it to her on their first anniversary and she'd worn it everyday until the clasp had broken a month earlier. She'd asked him to fix it but they'd both been so busy that it kept slipping his mind.

“No, Max,” she pulled him against her and held him tight, ignoring the smoke steadily building, the sound of wood crackling, and the house groaning.

It didn't matter how much time passed, how much her eyes burned, or how hard it was to breath. Nothing mattered except keeping him with her so when someone runs into the house, deafening in their search for a survivor she fought. With every thing she had she tried to keep herself with Max.

She bit, scratched, and kicked trying to rip herself away from whoever had grabbed her but she can't get loose and Max got further and further away. The cold bit at her skin and warred with the warmth of the body pulling her away from her heart. She couldn't feel it though. She was still inside.

-=-=-

Omen's brought him to Maine, luck brought him to her.

Red hair singed from the heat, clothing soaked with blood, glasses fogged with tears, she wouldn't let go of the dead man but he wasn't about let the bastard get another life. The kid might not be on the ceiling but John knew the Demon well enough to know it was him. Two innocents in less than a week, it was picking up pace.

First Stanford.

Now Blaine.

It was his own fault he hadn't been in California three days ago to save Sam's girl but he'd be damned if he let someone else die. There hadn't been any omens on that side of the country but that was a sad excuse for not being there for his son. He can't be there now and he didn't think he'd ever be able to face Sammy. She bit him again and he pulled himself to the present.

There's a job to be done and the boys only get in the way.

There weren't any nursery fires in the town but that didn't mean that this girl wasn't from somewhere else and if the demon was going after the kids like Sam, at least he'd have some way to predict where it'd be.

He pulled her outside, using his weight to counter her struggling and turned back to watch the house burn, haunted by memories of twenty-two years before. His grip loosed and the girl swayed in place. Her face was smeared with soot, two tracks clear from tears that she didn't seem to feel. Slowly with absent consideration she looked at him and showed him her red hands.

[vaifeal]

For those of you that don't know, the US Marshals Service is in charge of the Witness Protection Program. This isn't proofed so sorry about the mistakes but I'm gonna be out for the day and I want to get this up. (I'm gonna try and get Rivers and Ravens up tomorrow)

Somewhere along the way, my hopefulness turned to sadness,
Somewhere along the way, my sadness turned to bitterness,
Somewhere along the way, my bitterness turned to anger,
Somewhere along the way, my anger turned to vengeance.
- Out of the Blue, Julian Casablancas

“Did your mother die in a fire?” Liz watched the life she'd built burn to the ground, felt the heat wash over her. Everything was gone. Max. How was she supposed to live without Max? Her head snapped back as the man who'd pulled her out shook her. “Did your mother die in a fire?”

“What? I...” she tried to remember what their cover story had been but it was all jumbled around the feel of blood seeping through her fingers and wide dead eyes. “No. I don't know.”

“Which is it?”

“I don't know! I never knew my mother.”

“Have you noticed anything strange lately? Cold spots, flickering lights, the smell of sulfur.”

“You mean besides coming home to find my husband dead and having my home burst into flames? No,” that didn't seem to be the response he had wanted but she didn't care. The sound of sirens was getting louder and her neighbors had filtered out of their houses to see what was going on.

They all stood back and watched. No one approaching her, no one trying to help.

The man took a step back, his gaze shifting over the seen as if trying to gleam some last minute information from it. Taking in the blackened husk of the houses frame, the yellow flames licking at the remaining kindling. The yellow...

“Wait,” Liz hesitated. It would sound insane, even for someone used to the abnormal like she was. “The last couple of weeks, I've been having these nightmares.”

“What are they about? Tell me everything.”

“They start out normal enough but there's this man, he's... It's like he's absorbing all the light around him and I can't see anything except for his eyes. He's got these horrible yellow eyes. He was there every night, just standing there except for last night,” the man gave her a nod of encouragement. They had thought that she had been worried about the Special Unit. They'd had a close call right before the last move and it had made sense. “Last night he looked right at me and...”

“What?”

“He said 'Gotcha'.”

_+_+_+_

Max hated enclosed spaces.

A remnant of his time with the special unit, he couldn't stand being somewhere he couldn't escape from. They kept their bedroom door open, the window unlocked while they were home and avoided going places that locked you in. He had been happiest in the loft apartment they'd gotten when they'd been living in Detroit. Dark, light, it didn't matter; it was the inability to escape that gave him night terrors.

As they lowered the casket into the ground, Liz hated the thought of even a part of him being trapped there for eternity.

He wasn't, they couldn't. Max wasn't in the small pine box. It was empty except for the several bags of sand meant to make it feel as if a body was truly there. The whole thing was a charade meant to trick the casual observer. People expected a funeral and she had given them one. And if, one day, the special unit managed to track down this place they would find a headstone. Perhaps that, along with the report from the coroner would be enough for them. If it wasn't, there would be nothing for them to steal away.

She wouldn't let him be put on their table again. He was free of them. Now and forever. Max was gone. Spread out into the wind. It was hard but she tried to take comfort in the thought that he would always be with her, in every breeze and caress of the wind. She hadn't been made for such existentialist thoughts, for him though she'd try to make the exception.

The priest droned on. Empty words for empty sentiment. How did people take comfort in this ritual? Liz hadn't understood it when her grandmother had died and she understood it less now. Her mother had told her that her mind was too logical to surrender herself to the comfort of the spiritual. It was beyond her to accept that there was a higher power directing her actions, watching out for her, or deciding fates.

The ceremony finished and Max's coworkers trickled out, words of sympathy and regret loose on their tongues.

Max was gone. Never coming back. There was no mystical presence surrounding her. He wasn't going to be the angel on her shoulder. He was gone. The only thing, the absolutely sole fact that she could try to take some cold comfort in was that Max would have fought. With everything he had he would have tried to give back as much as the person who killed him was taking, especially since he knew she was coming home.

He didn't like danger around her. Even as he was being killed, Liz knew that he would have been thinking of protecting her. It was past the time of being sheltered. She'd never really a very vengeful person, even with Tess she'd stewed rather than confront but staring down at the empty casket, she wanted the thing that had ruined her life dead. The running, the different names and appearances, the lack of roots, had always been worth it as long as Max was with her. Whoever had done this had destroyed all that.

She knew exactly who to go to. The man who had pulled her out, asked all those digging questions when she had been more concerned over the trauma then the recovery, had stayed in a motel just outside town under the name Karl Travers but that wasn't the name his truck was under. Liz didn't care what his name was or why he had left town so quickly – leaving the morning after, all she cared about: all she needed from him was his ability to track the thing that had done this.

-=-=-=-

Elisa Warren nee Gramercy, twenty-six year old product of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families. She'd been put into the system when she was a couple of months old because of parental drug abuse and had stayed in it until she was eighteen. Her file noted several times where she'd been close to being adopted but it had always fallen through. There where no known personality traits explaining why this had happen. At seventeen she'd been placed with Allen and Julia Warren and their eighteen year old grandson, Maximilian.

A year later she had married the grandson and the two of them had started traveling the country.

The whole file was bullshit. All the information appeared to be legitimate and when he'd dug he'd found nothing to prove otherwise but it was. John knew the Demon and he knew its pattern. Whoever this girl was she'd been born May 5 1983 and when she was six months old the Demon came into her room. It may not have killed anyone, he was too sure of his abilities to really believe that he had missed one of those kids in his research, but what it had done to his son and the others it had done to her. He'd stake his life on it.

This girl was dug in deeper than the federal Marshals could place someone. He was going to have to put it aside. It would waste to much time to find out the truth and connect her fully to the Demon. It had come to disrupt her life, like it had with Sammy and there had been no other omens since. He didn't know why the attacks where selective but maybe he'd ask the thing before he killed it.

John didn't jump when a knock sounded at the door. He calmly slid his gun from the table and walked to the door, angling himself so the person or people on the other side couldn't see the weapon nor the state of the room. He was however surprised by who had found him in the cheap roadside motel off of interstate 87.

She looked better than she had earlier but still as had an almost fragile air about her. Of course she did, she had just lost her husband. Before he could ask what she wanted, she spoke for him.

“I'm going with you.”

[vaifeal]

many many apologies, I hadn't realized how long it had been since my last post.

It seems to me that maybe
It pretty much always means no
So don't tell me you might just let it go.
- Flake, Jack Johnson

The door closed and locked with a small click, not nearly loud enough to disturb the girl still lying on the bed nor any of the other inhabitants of the run down motel but loud enough that he paused momentarily. John knew he was making the right choice, the only choice. There wasn't anything left to say between them. She had made her arguments for accompanying him and he had patiently pretended to listen them, all the while knowing that he wouldn't let her anywhere the life that he had thrown himself – and his boys – into years before.

No matter her previous experience or the supernatural target on her back, he wouldn't create another hunter. John had waited till she had finished her speech, calmly told her that she could take the bed and that they would speak further in the morning. Elisa had held his gaze for a moment, her hazel eyes filled with suspicion, before nodding and beginning her night routine.

It was so reminiscent of Mary that he had to bury himself in his research to avoid the sharp ache in his chest. He had had his share of flings in the past but there was something about the soft comfort of non-sexual companionship that had made him wish her far away. When she had finally passed from conscious to unconscious, marked by steady deep breathing, he quietly packed his belongings and left a stack of papers on the bedside table. Anything she needed to know about protecting herself from the supernatural, especially demons.

He left her a bag of rock salt, a pure iron knife, and a pad full of important spells and symbols that where meant to keep them away. Dean would have made a crack about it being a supernatural first aid kit.

It was all he had to give her and he could only hope that she would take it for what it was and go build a life.

-=-=-=-

Bacon fat. Sausage links. Toast. Coffee. Tacky uniforms. Surly waitresses. Cheap vinyl booths.

If she closed her eyes she could pretend that she was back in Roswell working in the Crashdown. When they had been moving around, trying to find a place they could put down roots, Liz and Max had eaten at a lot of cheap diners and at each of them she'd leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and remember what living a real life - rather than the half one they had been condemned to - had felt like.

There wasn't any time for that, not when the reason she had been sitting in the booth sipping sludge that used to be coffee was walking into the place. His beard was more scraggly than normal but given the early hour he probably hadn't felt compelled to polish his appearance. Not that John, she'd gotten that much out of him, was a particularly clean cut man. He lived a hard life and he looked it.

Everything else about his appearance was the same as the previous times that she had seen him, including the cut of his shoulders as he turned and walked back out the door.

Dropping a some spare change on the table as a tip for the woman who had looked so disgusted with her job she more than likely one of those waitress that spit on peoples food for laughs, Liz raced out of the diner. He'd left her twice already. Once in Blaine and once in the crappy little motel, she'd be damned if she let him do it again. Ignoring the danger of approaching a moving truck, she grabbed the top of the open window.

They stared at each other a moment, hope versus annoyance. That's what she was to him, a petulant child that couldn't take instruction. His glare intensified when she wouldn't move away even when he kept inching the truck forward. She could feel the curious stares of the diner patrons burning into her back and slowly stepped away.

“You're wasting your time,” he nearly growled and drove away.

She watched the dust settle with a heavy heart, “You're wasting yours.”

-=-=-=-

John was not amused. Not in the least.

In fact he was so far removed from amusement that he had passed right into pissed off. Not only did he have his own personal shadow who just couldn't accept that being left behind was for her own good but he had no idea how the hell she was tracking him. Every he turned around there she was. Elise Warren was too persistent for her own good and had too little self preservation to realize that aggravating a man like him was probably the worst idea she would have in her short life.

He glared down at her small form sitting cross legged in the archives of some backwater library. The hunt was a small one and if it wouldn't have taken his sons so long to get there he wouldn't be doing it, regardless she shouldn't have been able to guess where he was going to be.

If she had tracked him to the town and picked up on the unusual happenings, it would have been easy for her to settle herself at the library. It common sense that he would be drawn there. Even the most green want-to-be-hunter would know that, unless the information was easily obtainable through another source, it was the most logical place to begin. The problem, one of the problems – there seemed to be no end to the number of issues that centered on Elise Warren, was that she should not have known where to find him.

He had given her the benefit of the doubt the first time she had found him but each time she found him was more worrying than the last. John knew how to lose a tail, he knew how to make sure he was untraceable, he knew how to disappear. Her finding him should not be possible.

Elise looked up with him, eyes dark from a lack of sleep, “How long are we going to do this for?”

-=-=-=-

Despite the fact that they were steadily making their way south, south-west to be more exact, the weather was still cold enough that her breath condensed itself into little white puffs when she breathed. Liz pulled her jacket closer around her body, hands tucked in close, and tried to keep the tremors from wracking her body too badly. She never had been good with the cold.

With Max gone, her chest ached for New Mexico. She missed the heat, the smell, everything but most of all she missed her parents. Her dad would take her in his arms and hold her tight not caring that she was leaving wet spots on his shirt. Her mom would lay in bed with her at night when missing Max got to be too much. She wanted to go home. It was an impossibility but Liz wanted that more than anything else in the world.

She wouldn't ever regret loving Max. It wasn't in her to do that, it was just, she sometimes wished that all the sacrificing hadn't been necessary.

What the hell was she doing?

The hood of the GMC Sierra Grande was just starting to feel a little less like sitting on an ice cube as it absorbed some of her body heat, but it didn't matter. Why was she even here? Liz wanted whatever had killed her husband dead, period. She just had to wonder if she was the person to do it. It obviously wasn't human, if the information that John had left her could be trusted. How was she supposed to fight it?

Aliens, no problem. Human, even less of an issue. Unknown entity bent on ruining her life, no idea.

She wanted to go home.

This was for Max. She just had to remember, this was for Max. And for her, because whatever had done it had made her last memory of her husband one of blood and fire.

A throat cleared and she looked up to see John. He looked annoyed but then, he always looked annoyed when he saw her. Because she couldn't leave him alone. Because he had all the answers she needed. Because, honestly, he was the only human she wasn't petrified of being around.

“I think you should just accept that at this, I'm better than you,” he gave her the shut-up-while-you're-ahead look and held out a cup of what smelt like coffee.

He had gotten her coffee.

Liz pulled in one shuttering breath before dissolving into sobs. It was the first time she'd cried since Max had been murdered.

-=-=-=-

John hated crying women. He was never actually sure of what to do with them. Sometimes they wanted to be comforted, sometimes left alone, and sometimes they would yell no matter what he did. Elise Warren was crying over a cup of weak coffee. It wasn't as if it were some grand gesture, he'd seen her in the parking lot and grabbed the extra cup because it was cold. He was regretting that decision.

With a resigned sigh, he tugged her off his truck – he'd have to talk to her later about how to properly treat a vehicle – and wrapped his arms around her. He hadn't realized how small she actually was. Why couldn't she just take his advice and leave it alone?

She was muttering something against his jacket which took him a minuted to figure out, “I can't do it alone. Please, I can't do it alone.”

The words repeated over and over as he awkwardly patted her back waiting for the tears to subside and resigned himself to a traveling companion for the foreseeable future. John would keep trying to talk her out of following in his footsteps but he couldn't let her start hunting alone. He knew all too well what happened to most of the people who tried to become hunters and to those who went after the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Simply stated, hunting had a very high mortality rate.

Those that survived were the best. The rest were dead.

When the crying finally stopped he helped her into the truck, walked around to the other side, and took his own position. As he turned the key in the ignition he tried not to think that Warren was the same age as Sammy and she was dealing with the same loss he was without any of the knowledge his boys had. The Demon had already taken so much from so many people. John was getting closer. He'd kill it, if it was the last thing he did.

“My name's Liz,” he could tell she could see suspicion in his gaze. If she was riding with him, she'd tell him the truth. “Elizabeth Parker.”

He nodded, “John Winchester.”

[vaifeal]

See the moon
See the stars
From your lonely seat
In your lonely cars
- When The Lights Go Out, The Black Keys

If she were being kind Liz would have to admit that John Winchester was a … difficult man. He had his misery, he had his hunting, and he seemed perfectly content to rot away holding on to the scraps of his plotted revenge. It had only taken her less than two days to realize that she didn't want to become him. She had her own grief and her own need for vengeance but the more time that passed the more she realized that becoming the type of person that he was would destroy anything that was left of the woman that Max had fallen in love with.

Her husband was dead – acknowledging it made even breathing hurt – that didn't mean she had to lose herself. He wouldn't want it that way. Granted, Max also wouldn't want her to run head long into danger like she was but, quite frankly – in this – he didn't get a say.

The problem was, knowing she didn't want to become John, didn't mean she knew how to stop it. Like him, she wanted the Yellow-Eyed Demon dead. Her need for it was so pungent she could taste it. It devoured her. Ate at her as she tried to rest. Scratched its way into her memories so that when she drifted off into remembered days of happy moments, it made itself known: Find it Liz. Kill it.

Dark bags stood out against pale skin, showing her a woman too young to be so old. When was the last time she had slept?

John was doing his best to keep her out of harms way, limiting her to research under the excuse that she needed knowledge before she went out with him. Unfortunately that just gave her too much information on all the monsters hiding in the shadows and too much time to think about all the evil things they could be doing as he went out to hunt and left her alone in the motel.

That was going to change. Because she had changed. With a lot of arm twisting, she'd managed to get John to agree to teach her how to shoot. There were still so many skills she needed to know but shooting was a start. She wouldn't be put off to the side.

What the hell was she doing?

Liz was alone. Her life, in its simplest terms came down to that very real truth. That afforded her a certain flexibility with her desires. She could play the line between now and then, dedicate her life to revenge, and hope she didn't become too much like her mentor because there was no one relying on her to be anyone else. She tried not to think of John at her age entering into this war. She couldn't wrap her head around the fact that he had brought his sons into a life where there was no such thing as safety.

Maybe the fact that she could never subject a child to a life of continuously moving from nightmare to nightmare would be enough to keep her from turning into the half-man she had aligned herself with. What would Mary think of what he had become? What he had done to their sons?

What would Max think of where she was headed?

The bathroom door opened and John Winchester stepped out before collapsing onto the bed without a word. He liked his privacy. She was in his way. Liz looked away from her reflection and closed the notebook she had been writing in. This is why he needed her. The notebook, the scribbles, the answers or at least the educated guesses. He was good, very good, great even at what he did but the fact remained that she was a scientist. Her personality and skills lent themselves to research. It helped that her best friend had been a talented hacker who had shared some of his secrets with her.

Liz had built on Alex's tools, fleshed them out, studied and experimented until she had placed back doors on basically every government server she had come across. She was no Steven Hawking but she was 'smarter than the average bear'. Yellow-Eyed Demon might not have made the FBI's most wanted list but descriptions did arise in theology several times. Most of the mentions were brief but she'd followed one right to an anthropologist based out of Baghdad.

Stuck in the middle of a war torn country the woman hadn't published in almost a decade but the mulch-denominational demonologist was one of the best. If her findings hadn't been in Arabic Liz would have been finished reading them a month previous as it was, it turned out that the one good thing about John keeping her out of the field was that she had had plenty of time to find the obscure.

The time was worth it, so worth it.

“John.”

“Hm,” his head was buried in his arm, a large purple bruise standing out against the pale skin. She crawled on to the bed knowing that even if he wasn't happy about her presence, she had just earned her place.

“John,” he groaned again purposefully ignoring her. Liz leaned over his form, her lips a hair away from his ear. “It's name is Azazel.”

Brown eyes popped open. She finally had his attention.

[vaifeal]

Sorry. Between work and this board giving me trouble this chapter has been doomed.

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
- The Cave, Mumford & Sons

The breath gushed out of her, painful and so close to becoming a choke that her eyes watered. It wasn't the pain. Her body slamming into the ground hurt but she had always been good about disconnecting herself from the physical. In her life, when she was injured there were more important things to worry about than her physical condition. Given time, it'd heal or she'd die. The former was usually the case and the latter an impossibility when the man she'd tied herself to could bring back a person from the brink of death.

Asphyxiation had always terrified her though. The thought of being aware as the world gradually faded, lungs burning, body fighting to get just a little oxygen, blood slipping out from between blue lips. Liz shook her head. Her nightmares had never had blood before Max. It used to be darkness and struggle. Now it was heat and blood.

“Get up,” John gazed was unaffected as she glared at him. She'd asked for this. If she didn't learn she was just excess baggage – a hindrance when on the hunt. All the same, sometimes she hated him, “Evans.”

His snapped through the air like a whip. He always called her Evans. She was almost sure that it was a concession for the marriage that never was. Her and Max had had the church but on no paperwork was she listed as his wife. Elizabeth Evans was just a figment. A hope. A dream. Something always thought of but never achieved.

The more they trained, the more she realized that the whole physical confrontation thing wasn't for her. More often than not she ended up on the floor but John had made her promise to do this. He had drilled it into her that she couldn't rely on weapons.

Painfully aware of how sore she'd be in the morning, Liz pushed herself up.

“Feet further apart, you won't keep your balance standing like that.”

With a roll of her eyes she fixed her stance. Block one. Block two. Lean back. Duck. Take a swing. An overextended limb threw her off balance and allowed him to land the hit on her chest. Once again the breath rushed out of her lungs. She tried to draw more air in but landed with a bone jarring thump that dazed her and filled her mouth with blood.

The coppery taste filled her senses. The tangy metallic smell and taste, choked her as the oxygen failed to come. Nothing existed outside struggle to make her chest rise.

A hand touched her shoulder and she reacted. Rolling away, her hand pulling out her gun with professional ease. Guns were easy. They were defined by logic. Physics. Force. Acceleration. Angle of projection. It hadn't needed to be drilled into her day after day. Guns she got.

“Evans.”

She aimed through the fog. Her finger squeezing down on the trigger.

“Evans!”

John.

She both fired and tried not to at the same time. The shot went wide and she dropped the pistol, hands shaking badly. Without realizing it she'd started to breathe. The taste of blood was still on her lips but she could feel the cut from where her teeth had bit the inside of her cheek.

The panic receded and the sobs came. Nightmares were meant to stay in the subconscious. What a stupid thought. Especially since she'd signed up to hunt nightmares. They were real tangible things that would rip her apart. Her own demons, the ones she'd created, were just as dangerous as the ones that would hunt her.

John settled next to her, close enough that she could feel his bodies warmth. Despite the distance still between them, she felt claustrophobic. It was Max. It was always Max. He had been her soul for so long she couldn't remember how to be without him. How to manage the fear and hang onto the hope. It was all a mess.

She took a deep breath and just felt.

It was easier to feel and drift than to delve into problems. Liz could retreat back to high school, the uncomfortable chairs and stuffy teachers. Mrs Fisher with her massive glasses and her monotone drone that turned even the most riveting works into methods of torture.

Nevermind what she did to Shakespeare.

Poor Shakespeare.

Hamlet had always been her favorite. Maybe that should have been a sign of things to come. What was the line? She'd obsessed over it for a while. At one point Alex had talked her out of a tattoo instead tracing it on her arm in permanent marker until she got tired of it.

I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams.

Max was the bad dream now. It was time for goodbye.