The fire in her mind burned far hotter than the one in the red brick fireplace before her. Adeline St. Claire had done this every night for the past six weeks—stare endlessly into the dancing flames, that is.

Six weeks ago her father had told her to lay low at the family cabin in the Colorado mountains. He left her. He left her and didn't give a reason why, but Jakob St. Claire's word was the law. So here she was, sitting in the old cabin and trying to warm the living room in order to escape the 10 degrees wind chill outside.

As a child, her family would spend weeks here at a time. Her memories were faint though, because when her mom died, the cabin visits stopped.

He had father built it for her.

A lot of things stopped when her mom died. She never got to play the part of being a little girl in a big world. Since the age of seven, she was a grown killer in a dangerous world. Dolls were traded for pocket knives (only useful things could take some of the limited space in the car.) She loved her father, but the resentment ran deep. He took things from her.

Her childhood.

Her ignorance.

Him.

She didn't think she could ever forgive her father for taking him away from her. Her fingers absentmindedly touched the sliver heart-shaped locket around her neck. She tore her eyes from the fire to glance over the dim room. She needed to re-salt the doors, she thought. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were all connected in one, big, wall-less space. There was one bathroom and one bedroom down the small hallway, and that completed the extents that the wooden structure went to.

Twitching, claw-like shadows settled on the walls from the fire being the singular light source at the moment. She learned to fear the shadows at a young age, nevertheless, she pushed her self off the couch and braved the dark to reach the light switch in the kitchen.

Her jeans, dark-washed and tight in her hips, still adorned her legs after a long day of supply running at the bottom of the mountain and wood chopping. Her long, hickory hair held its usual loose wave as it fell over her fitted, long sleeve.

She reached for the light switch and stilled. The dead silence was engulfed by the sound of knuckles on wood. Someone knocked on her door. No one knocks on her door, especially not at night. She grabbed her beretta pistol from the dining table and cocked it mid-stride to the door. She placed the barrel dead center against the wood and prayed she wouldn't have to put a hole through her mother's cedar door.

Slowly, she opened the door and her beautifully structured soldier face softened immediately. Breathing was now a stranger to her lungs. Her eyes glossed over as she ran her gaze down the all too familiar figure.

"Dean?"

"In the flesh." his words held a joking undertone, but the voice that carried them sounded shaken.

It was the first time seeing each other in almost four years and he tells a joke. She alone wanted to shoot him because of that. She also wanted to shoot him for doing this to her, for showing up and breaking her heart again with just the sight of him.

He was all tanned skin and boyish charm as he ever was. From his hair to his same old leather jacket, she could tell that he was still her Dean. His 6'1 frame, rippled with muscle and arrogance, had the same relaxed posture that allured so many eyes when he walked into a room. But that was just Dean, all puppy love habits and a tendency to lead conversations with his fists. What struck Adeline the most, though, were his eyes. His long, brown lashes held the same slight curl to them and his devastating green irises had streakings of opal highlights as the moon gestured to his face.

Memory stained her cherry lips as the stars looked down on the couple they had authored. There was no escaping the dizzying collision of wrong intentions and rightful mistakes, seeing as his enchantment of ember kissed ashes and midnight appeal had once again put a spell on her. The need to feel him again was sinking into her bones by the second.

That's what Dean did to her. Every time. It didn't matter that she wanted to scream at him till her throat bled, she would never be unhappy to see him alive and breathing.

Adeline St. Claire  unloaded her gun and slowly sidestepped the door, wordlessly inviting the destructive Dean Winchester back into her life. When he stepped over the cabin's threshold it was almost like he physically couldn't carry himself to move past her. He stopped in front of her with his face mere inches from hers. Being so close, she could smell the beer, leather, and pine on him the same as he could smell the tea, cinnamon, and firewood on her.

Familiarity. It flashed like a deep sorrow in both of their connecting eyes.

Without tearing her baby blues away from his mossy greens, Adeline pushed the door shut behind him, and as it clicked so did the reality of their positions. She turned her face away, unable to hold his scorching gaze any longer. "What are you doing here, Dean?"

"We need to talk."

[...]

Dean knew she wouldn't have beer in her fridge, not if her dad wasn't around. "You got any of that tea of yours?" Are the words he said when she flipped a light switch and led him to her kitchen, the same kitchen he'd been in a couple years ago. Alone. With her. He eyed the counter as images of her sitting on it with her legs wrapped around his waist and her mouth on his neck intruded on his mind like hot flashes. He cleared the memories with a disgruntling deep breath and leaned his back against the wooden counters.

Dean watched her reach up into a cupboard, making the hem of her v-cut shirt rise ever so slightly to expose the smooth curves of her toned hips. Adeline poured him a cup of whatever she brewed and as she did, Dean couldn't help but compare the vision that's been seared into his brain versus the girl before him. Her hair was longer and her body had filled out a little more with muscle and curve, but damn did she look good.

With slow but confident movements, she stepped up to him and held out the mug. 'So close but so far' was the term Dean would use when he described how it felt to brush against her skin for a split second when he took that mug from her. "You look good, Adeline."

"So I've been told."

"Oh really?" Dean's brow quirked and the question sat on the tip of his tongue. Does she have a someone?

She moved a step closer. "Oh yeah, I've got loads of boyfriends here in Colorado who sweet talk me."

"I bet they're all unreliable assholes."

"What makes you say that?"

"You have a type." His low voice filled the room, while his eyes pinned her with a gaze so intense that if the sun and moon were in the same position, the moon would've shied from her star.

"Duh." She didn't shy though, "But I did have a favorite unreliable asshole."

Dean leaned off the counter and dangerously close to her face. "Did?"

"Haven't seen him for a while."

"What if he came around?"

"I'd tell him to stay around this time." Her voice lost its playful tone and it turned into something more of a plea. Why would she plea to him? It only took a matter of minutes for her to become that foolish nineteen-year old girl again. She knew why she was like this, because in her mind, the split wasn't his fault. Her father did that to them. But, Dean was the one who stopped calling/answering calls out of the blue.

"I can't stay." her heart dropped at his words, "But neither can you."

Her body stilled and she dropped her eyes to the floor briefly before looking up again. "Why can't we stay, Dean?"

If the next words never left Dean's mouth she could have lived in the ignorant bliss that it was his wanting for her that brought him back.

But no.

"Our dads are missing."

Dammit.

Adeline's alarmed features seared Dean like a pinprick. "Missing." she stated to herself with a tilt of her head, before dominos haphazardly fell in her mind, "Our dads don't—wait, are they missing...together?"

Dean sighed and placed his mug on the counter before answering her, "Yes, uh...they met up again just over a month ago."

They met up he said.

The statements fells from Dean's mouth so casually that Adeline thought she might be sick.

Her father's vendetta against his is what tore them apart. Well, and the fact that Dean had stopped answering her calls. But none of that mattered because the two men had simply met up.

Over a month ago.

And not a single person had thought to tell her this.

She tried to keep the harsh tone of betrayal out of her words, "Have you known this whole time?"

"In the beginning," Dean confirmed, "But Dad kicked me out of the club very soon after your pops showed up. Said things would run smoother without me there."

She couldn't imagine why.

Her thoughts hadn't yet settled on her missing father, but kept running back to the what ifs. What if nothing had happened to bring Dean to her doorstep? What if he simply decided to come because he missed her?

"I don't know what they were hunting." Dean answered the question before she could ask it.

Her eyes, pondering and muddled, seemed to crack something in Dean's expression. He wanted to reach out and touch her, feel her—just something. The twenty four-inch canyon between them was becoming more dangerous by the second.

"And yes, I would've ended up on this doorstep one way or another."

Adeline rolled her lips and nodded, slightly disbelieving that statement.

"Look, Adeli—"

"No, Dean, it's fine. Just um, what's the plan?" Her vibrato was resigned as it sputtered from her lips and her face was tired as she ran anxious fingers down the side of it.

"Hold the fuckin' horses, Adeline." His words weren't harsh. They were heavy and laced with desperation, but they weren't harsh. "We are about to haul ass across the country tomorrow to get Sam and we are not gonna do that after sweeping our shit under the rug."

He has momentarily stunned her. Dean Winchester does not speak about his feelings, much less force others to. She blinked once, then twice before the floodgates burst and she couldn't stop the words from spilling out."You want homemade couples' therapy, Dean? Right here in this kitchen? What do you want me to say? Cause if I recall correctly, you're the reason we need it. It's been four years. You did this by losing my number after that night. Hear me? You broke this just like everything else in this world that just wanted to fucking love you."

Adeline's eyes glossed over with angry saturation. Dean had ripped the flimsy band-aid off of her heart—the only thing keeping the wounded muscle from bleeding dry. But now, she stood there empty, all the while he stood there covered in red. How Carrie of him.

"I know I fucked everything up. Believe me, I know. I thought—I thought I was doing you a solid. Obviously, I'm a shit guy. I was only gonna get you killed or hurt you again, and again, and again, and again. You know why? Cause you never would have left. I'm a sinking ship, Adeline, and you know it." He was pleading his case like a man sent to the gallows.

Adeline could read in between the lines. He didn't think he deserved her. Dean's words translated in her mind as: I just don't know how to be loved. She took a distancing step away from him. "And whether or not I stayed on the ship should have been my choice."

She screwed her eyes shut as a war waged in her mind. She kind of hoped this would happen one day. She hoped he'd come back to her, apology in hand and she was going accept it. But she's so scared. She would physically die if Dean dropped her heart again. She would never turn him away. She blamed him, sure, but the true culprits were their fathers. She would allow him back into her life, but her emotions had sobered up by that point and her heart was decidedly off limits. She would barricade the organ from him and keep her sanity. In that moment, she made the decision to never let Dean Winchester be the deciding factor in her quality of life ever again.

Adeline released a breath.

"I would have followed you anywhere, Dean." her voice, thick with sadness, punched the air out of him. "Then you became a ghost overnight."

Shamefully, Dean dropped his head. "I know."

"What we had is behind us now, and we keep it behind us for the sake of the mission, okay?"

"Okay."

The scene was utter annihilation. She stood there—shredded from his mistakes, but still tethered to him by the glittering noose that hung from both of their necks. Something in her mind just wouldn't let go. Petals of fire-light stained her hair as she turned and glanced over her shoulder towards the living room.

"I'll get you a blanket and pillow for the couch."