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Jody’s mustard-colored upholstery scratched at Claire’s skin through the rips in her jeans. She kicked her legs impatiently; she hadn’t even bothered unlacing her boots.
All Jody had told her was to hurry up and get back to Sioux Falls. As fast as possible. ASAP with Jody meant ASAP, so Claire had kicked the rougarou she’d been tracking the Winchesters’ way - she’d done them enough favors, they could do one for her for a change - and driven back to Sioux Falls as fast as her Bessie, her cherry-colored Loyale, could take her. More than fast enough for a ‘93. Jody’s truck was conspicuously absent by the time she pulled up, but Alex had been home to let her in. She had professed to be as clueless as Claire was about was so urgent, but she had hugged her, patched up a scratch she’d picked up pushing her way through undergrowth, and given her half of her Panera wrap before she left for her night shift.
That had been almost two hours ago, and dusk was beginning to sink down over the little town. Claire was so bored it felt like she had an ice pick boring away between her eyes, chipping away at her focus, but she refused to relax, pick up one of Jody’s old-lady magazines from the coffee table, or turn on the TV. Jody hadn’t deleted Claire’s recorded NCIS episodes, at least not since the last time she’d swung in for a few days, but she couldn’t get into that now. She had to be ready in case she was here for a hunt, or Jody came back with a vamp nest on her trail, or…anything. There could always be something.
The garage door rumbled; Jody. Claire jumped to her feet at once, flicked open her pocket silver blade just in case, and ran to the door. She reached the screen just in time to watch Jody clamber out of her truck. She looked tired; her shoulders were slumped, and her face seemed to pick up new stress lines every time Claire came to town. For once, though, something was different; she was smiling.
She noticed Claire for the first time; the smile only grew wider. “Claire, honey…” She sped up, took the three porch steps in one jump and pulled her into a crushingly tight hug. For once, she didn’t fight it, just leaned into it and let her face fall into the crook of Jody’s shoulder. She smelled like wood smoke and the musty interior of her truck; she’d been roughing it. Jody pulled back and held Claire by the shoulders, looking her up and down. “All in one piece?”
“Just this.” Claire pointed to the scratch over her eyebrow. “Alex already fussed over me, no need to double dip.”
“I’ll fuss over you however I please, missy.” Jody finally let her go with a heavy sigh. Claire suddenly noticed for the first time that her eyes were wet.
“Who is it?” she said immediately. Her stomach dropped like a rock; she braced herself for the worst. Donna? Sam? Dean? Castiel, even? Grief hit her differently these days. “Just tell me.”
“Claire,” Jody said gently, taking her by the shoulders and steering her gently towards the truck. “There’s someone you should see.”
For the first time Claire noticed a silhouette through Jody’s tinted windows. She turned back to Jody, one eyebrow quirking up in question, but she just turned her back around, just in time to catch her first glimpse of Kaia walking around from the passenger side. Her hands were in her pockets, her shoulders slumped and she looked down at the cracked concrete driveway.
Claire gasped and then swore, loudly. Because that wasn’t Kaia. That was someone wearing Kaia’s face, a demon joyriding around in her corpse maybe, or some kind of cruel illusion coming to fuck with her-
Because Kaia was dead. She should know. She’d had a total of five nights since Kaia died where she hadn’t seen it all play out again in heartbreaking, minute detail. The rift coming into view, the whip of the spear through the air, the grunt that escaped her as the ground knocked the wind out of her. Kaia on the ground, Kaia bleeding out, Kaia grabbing her hand, Kaia going limp, Kaia breathing her last. Claire had watched the light leave her eyes.
“Jody-” she said warningly, bringing up the silver knife still clenched in her hand, but Jody shook her head, pushed her wrist back down.
“It’s really her, Claire. I promise.” The tears in her eyes were spilling over now, joy trickling down her cheeks. “It’s really her.”
Claire spun back and faced her again. Real-alive-living-breathing Kaia held out her arms slightly, a shy little “here-I-am” gesture that made Claire’s heart want to explode.
“Kaia,” she said finally, her voice a strangled, broken little creature that cut into her throat like broken glass. “Kaia.”
She dropped the knife with a clatter and left it on the driveway. She closed the gap between them in a step and crushed Kaia in a hug. Kaia melted into it at once, her delicate fingers curled into loose fists around the lapels of Claire’s leather jacket, her head leaned into Claire’s shoulder the same way she had into Jody’s. She smelled like sweat and dirt and blood and life. She was warm, wonderfully, comfortingly so. She was skin and bone; even through her sweatshirt her shoulder blades dug sharply into Claire’s arms.
“Kaia,” Claire whispered into the soft mess of her loose curls. She didn’t even realize she was crying until she felt the wetness on her cheeks. “God, Kaia…”
She could have said her name and nothing else for a year. Never had something tasted so sweet on her tongue. She could have held her in that driveway too for an hour or a month or a year or forever. The only thing that stopped her was when Kaia suddenly staggered, only saved by Claire’s arms around her and her grip on the leather jacket.
“Maybe we should get you two inside,” Jody said gently, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. “Hot showers, hot meals you didn’t buy in a Gas ‘n Sip. Come on, before the neighbors start to think you’re feral.”
Claire reluctantly nodded. A warm meal and a shower did sound good; she’d been living off vending machine fare and gas station hot dogs and her last shower had been at least three days ago. She’d been living out of Bessie tracking the rougarou. She wrapped an arm around Kaia’s waist and helped her up the steps and back into the sanctuary that was Jody’s house.
“Get cleaned up, both of you,” Jody insisted. “I’ll have something on the table for you by the time you’re done.”
Claire helped Kaia to the master bedroom; Jody had had a bathtub installed in the master bath last year when she’d gotten a raise. With a promise to get her some extra clothes from the car and one more squeeze that she forced herself to keep short, she peeled away to clean herself up.
She stole Alex’s rose-scented body wash and fancy shampoo; on the road she made do with whatever she could get hold of, usually some off-brand stuff that dulled out the gold in her hair. At least she wasn’t as bad as Dean; he would spout off about the time-saving virtues of 3-in-1 shampoo/conditioner/body wash to anyone who would listen.
Claire cranked up the water until it was steaming and stepped inside, throwing her head back to let it stream through the greasy roots of her hair. The motel showers and gas station bathrooms she was used to were lukewarm at best; the hot water felt like heaven.
She let it course over her and gazed up at the water-dotted plaster ceiling. What the fuck?
The relief was giving way to shock and confusion. She had watched Kaia die. She had agonized over it every day for two years. She had dragged herself to the ends of the earth looking for the bastard who had done it. Kaia was dead.
Kaia should still be dead. It wasn’t fair. But life wasn’t fair. Claire knew that better than anyone.
It wasn’t fair that her dad had died, but he did. It wasn’t fair that her mom had abandoned her, but she did. It wasn’t fair that her grandmother died, but she did. It wasn’t fair that Castiel had taken her as a vessel, lifted her tiny twelve-year-old hands and fueled the power of God through them, but he had. It wasn’t fair that he used her as a nuke at twelve, but he had. It wasn’t fair that she still…
She pushed her sopping hair aside, looked down at the glistening mark that had appeared in the dip of her collarbone the day she’d said yes to Castiel. It gleamed faintly like moonsilver. Nothing could cover it. And it took the shape of an Enochian eye.
She called it her angel mark. Her Jesus tat, when she was feeling irreverent, which was often. Her souvenir. The visible stain of the little bit of grace that Castiel had left inside her, in exchange for the chunk of her soul he’d taken away.
Claire was already starting to feel it. It happened whenever she was away from the hunt too long. The emptiness. The unsettling. It was like a snake squirming through her guts, twisting and writhing and making her nerves tingle. It wasn’t bad yet; nothing worse than she’d get if there was a lag between hunts. But she’d lived with it from the day after Castiel flew the roost right up until her first hunt with the Grigori, Tamiel. The emptiness would turn into an ache; the unsettling into a nagging discomfort that never went away, never let her rest. Her sleep would be light, unsatisfying, and broken constantly through the night. Her stomach would reject most food; what she could get down would only add to the unbearable writhing. She’d flinch on a hairtrigger, startle at shadows, take stupid risks; anything to get the adrenaline pumping.
Jody never understood why she needed to hunt so bad. Why sitting in the car with a monster out there was torture to her. Claire couldn’t tell her, because how do you explain that? You didn’t. It was psych-ward worthy. Crazy talk. And Jody worried about her enough as it was. But that was why she’d gone off on her own in the first place, as much as it scared her. The only thing that made it better was to hunt. To find bad things and kill them. If she spilled enough evil blood she could almost rest easy for a few days, before the itch came back. It always came back.
She startled; realized her fingers were pruning up. With a muffled curse, she scrubbed down quickly and jumped out of the shower. She raked a comb through her hair, swiped an old T-shirt and pajama shorts of Alex’s, and ran out to the car to grab a couple of sets of clean clothes. She dropped one set off outside the door of Jody’s bathroom; the water was still running, and then went to her own room to change.
Technically it was Patience’s room now, but Patience had left for Stanford last year and was living out in California with her friends. She’d had the good grace not to mess it up too bad, at least: her lore books still on the back wall, her corkboard she used to track her hunts still in place, even her journals seemingly untouched in their stack at the foot of the bed. She’d taken it up recently; Sam and Dean got a lot of mileage out of their dad’s old journal and she figured she’d seen enough nasty that her experiences on paper could do someone a lot of good someday. She kept the one she was working on in Bessie’s glovebox; the rest she left here at Jody’s place. They’d be safe here. She figured she’d leave the stack to some kid someday; get them set up the way she wished she had been.
She shimmied into her jeans and stuck the knife in her back pocket. Having a weapon on her helped. If she got lucky enough that a shifter or vamp fell right on the doorstep, she’d be ready.
Kaia wasn’t out yet by the time she came down the stairs; she plastered on a smile for Jody to mask the hollowness scooping her out inside. As soon as she stepped into the warm, cozy kitchen, Jody set a plate down in front of Claire’s place at the table - the one that let her keep an eye on both the front and back doors and the stairs at the same time. She dropped into her seat and attacked Jody’s Sioux Falls-famous chicken parm with vigor.
“Easy!” Jody laughed, dishing up three more plates and setting one in the oven to stay warm - for Alex, Claire guessed. “Could you eat that any faster?”
“No,” Claire replied through a mouthful of pasta and tomato sauce, deadly serious. “I cannot get this into my mouth any faster than I already am. If I could, I would.”
Jody sighed. “You’d think you’d been raised by wolves.”
“Winchesters,” Claire corrected, coming up for air.
Jody shrugged. “Is there really a difference?”
“Listen, Jody…” Claire pushed a noodle around her plate, her appetite suddenly vanishing. “I am - I am so happy that Kaia’s back. But-”
“How?” Jody guessed.
“...yeah.” Claire swallowed hard. Even now the lump in her throat still refused to go away when she thought about Kaia and the Bad Place. “Jody, I saw her die. I watched her stop breathing, I felt her go limp. She was dead. ”
“Kaia says she didn’t die. She’s a little hazy herself on what happened, but as best as we can figure…” Jody laughed without humor. “Two Kaias. Ours, and a Bad Place version. Bad Place Kaia patched her up, taught her how to survive until Jack opened another rift. It was all a mistake, really…a lucky one.” Jody reached over, pushed Claire’s wet hair out of her face as if she were a child. It was oddly comforting, and Claire didn’t duck away from it. “Honey, we tested her. Silver, holy water, salt, blood, all of it. She ran the gauntlet of every test the Winchester boys have ever taught me and a few more I looked up on the web. She’s human. She knew things only Kaia would know. She remembered you.”
“You asked her about me?”
“No,” Jody corrected gently. “She asked about you. When I offered to bring her here. She wanted to go wherever you were. She didn’t care where.”
Claire hid a smile, a sudden heat rushing to her cheeks. Sam’s voice suddenly echoed in her head. In this line of work, death doesn’t always mean goodbye.
Except for her it had. Her dad, her grandma, her mom, everyone. Everyone that had died stayed dead, and a whole lot of people had died. Maybe she was due for a win. One good thing to balance out all the shit the universe had heaped on her.
She opened her mouth to ask something; what she wasn’t exactly sure. Something was digging at the back of her mind, something to do with the flush still coloring her cheeks, but before she could start to string the right words together, Kaia came down the stairs, her head bowed shyly. She was wearing the jeans and Pretty Reckless T-shirt Claire had left for her, a red-checkered flannel over her shoulders. Her damp hair hung loose behind her and after a moment Claire realized she was staring. She wrenched her gaze away and busied herself with her chicken parm, even though her stomach suddenly felt like it had shrunk to the size of a pea.
If Claire thought she’d dug into her plate voraciously, she had nothing on Kaia. She wolfed it down like someone would snatch it away, which Claire realized with a wince had probably happened more often than not with whatever she’d lived off in the Bad Place.
“So.” Jody cleared her throat a little stiffly. “Claire. What, uh…what are your plans? You’re more than welcome to stay for a while, I have the space-”
The emptiness inside her reared its ugly head at once, screeching in protest at the very thought of staying in this quiet little patch of normalcy another minute. Claire dug an elbow into her own side and ignored it. “I’m going to stay for a little bit,” she said finally, trying not to make it clear just how much it pained her to say that. “With Kaia. And you. Sam and Dean took my case, so…I’m off the hunter grid for a little while. At least the night.”
Kaia gave her one of those tiny, shy smiles, showing just a hint of her teeth. Jody laughed, shaking her head at Claire and pointing at her with her fork. “You really thought there was any chance I would let you out of here without at least one night in a warm bed? Think again, missy.”
Claire laughed too, and it only echoed a little through the hollowness in her chest.
She sat on the edge of her bed that night - that was one of the few things Patience had taken liberty with, Claire’s warm, worn flannel-patterned sheets were nowhere to be found, replaced with a perfectly-Patience turquoise set. She leaned back against Patience’s high-backed study pillow - God, what a nerdy thing to own, but she had to admit it was comfortable - and opened her journal, chewing the cap of her pen.
The blank page stared back up at her like a challenge. How do you even start to journal about something like this? Dear Diary, the girl I had a crush on two years ago is back from the dead and living in my foster mom’s house.
She sighed; started to scribble regardless of having no idea where she was going.
Today something crazy happened. Kaia Nieves showed up with Jody in Sioux Falls. We checked her for everything, and she came up clean. It’s really her. I’ve heard of people coming back from the dead before - in this line of work it’s practically common, especially when you’re friends with Sam and Dean, but Kaia…I never thought I’d see her again. So I could feel about her however I wanted, because I didn’t have to worry about the worst happening. The worst had already happened. But now she’s back, she’s alive and she’s almost happy. What do I do with that? I mean, I break everything I touch-
Someone knocked at the door and Claire jumped so badly she almost dropped the pen. She slammed the journal shut. “It’s open!”
The door creaked open, and there stood Kaia in the threshold, hugging a pillow to her chest. She looked exhausted. “Hey, Claire.”
“Kaia, hey.” Claire set the journal to the side, the pen resting on top of the worn leather binding. “What’s up? You okay?”
Kaia stood frozen like a statue in the doorway, and then shook her head. Claire sighed and sat up, patting the spot next to her on the bed. “Come on in. I don’t bite. Hard.”
That got her another flash of a smile and Kaia shuffled in, sinking onto the bed next to Claire. “I’m sorry, if you’re busy…”
“I’m not,” Claire said immediately, rapping the cover of the journal with her knuckles. “This is just hunter shit, and not the fun kind. I can catch up anytime.”
Kaia pointed to the foot of the bed, where Claire’s journals were slowly but steadily accumulating. “I didn’t know you…”
“I do,” Claire said, with attempted nonchalance. “Kind of a hunter tradition. Sam and Dean learned from their dad’s when he died. They gave it to me when I got started. Now I’m making my own. Keeping records, writing about all the shit we see everyday…it’s how we learn. Get better. Pass things down.”
“Like a history book,” Kaia said slowly.
“Exactly.” Claire grabbed her pen, rolled it between her fingers. “It’s not like too many hunters live long enough to tell stories to their grandkids. This is the only way to make sure we don’t go through this shit for nothing. That someone else one day can learn from it.”
“So everything…?” Kaia asked, trailing off slowly.
“Everything,” Claire confirmed. “Starting with my first hunt. My eighteenth birthday.”
“Tell me about it?”
The pen slipped from Claire’s fingers. “Uh, what?”
“Your first hunt.” Kaia gazed at her with those penetrating brown eyes, almost pleading. “Will you tell me about it?”
“Uh, sure,” Claire said awkwardly, looking down at Patience’s blue sheets. “Sure, yeah. Just, um…it was a rough one.”
“I’m sorry.” Kaia withdrew immediately, back into her shell like a hermit crab. “You don’t have to.”
“No. No, I will.” Claire nodded towards the foot of the bed. “I already wrote it out, I might as well. I, um…I wasn’t trying to hunt. That wasn’t the plan. I was looking for my mom.”
“Your mom?” Kaia questioned.
“Yeah. She was all I had left at that point, my grandma died when I was fourteen and my dad…” Claire winced. “That’s a story that puts the fun in dysfunctional. But he was gone. Never-coming-back-gone. And Mom left me with my grandma when I was twelve and took off. So as soon as I ditched the group home, I went out after her. I wanted to yell at her. Give her a piece of my mind for what she did to me. Sam, Dean, and Cas were with me. They were helping me. Well…’helping.’”
She made air quotes around the word. “Getting in my way, more like. But…yeah. Mom hadn’t come back because she couldn’t. Someone - something had grabbed her. A Grigori angel.”
Kaia’s eyebrow raised in question. “Part of an elite angel hit squad created to protect humans,” Claire continued. “They went bad. Started feeding off of us instead of saving us. They keep humans like pets, eat their souls over decades. He was drinking my mom like it was Free Slurpee Day, keeping her just strong enough to stay a good meal.”
Kaia’s hand slowly crept over, then jumped and grabbed Claire’s in one quick motion. Her stomach rolled with shock and her heart did a quick flip in her chest that she forced herself not to think too much about, and she forced herself onwards. “There was already no coming back from it. He’d used her too long. But the angel took a stab at me, and Mom…took the hit instead. She died where she stood. I grabbed his angel sword, ran him through…that was my first hunt. My first kill.”
She already had that look on her face, the look Claire’d been getting her entire life. The same look people gave roadkill that was still weakly twitching around in the street. “Don’t,” she said, more sharply than she meant to. “Don’t look at me like that. Like you feel sorry for me. It happened. I learned from it. I won’t let it happen again. That’s all that matters.”
Kaia nodded silently, her hand still in Claire’s. A sudden wave of exhaustion washed over her, and with it, guilt for snapping. “I’m sorry,” she added, softly. “That wasn’t fair. I, uh…did you need something, or…?”
For a second Kaia looked like she was going to choke on her words rather than say them, but she managed to spit it out. “Oh. Can I, um…can I sleep here?”
Claire’s tongue suddenly felt too thick for her mouth. “Here. Like…here? With me?”
Kaia barely dipped her head in an awkward, stilted nod.
“Uh…sure. Yeah. Of course.” Claire could feel her face flushing and she ducked her head to try and hide it. “Fair warning, I, um…kick around a lot, in my sleep, and apparently I sleeptalk too…”
Kaia actually laughed a little. “Claire, I walk between worlds in my sleep. I can handle it.”
Evening set in and then night, the full moon shining luminously through the bedroom window and bathing them both in moonlight, and Claire still stayed awake. Her eyes wouldn’t close. She just stared down at Kaia, asleep in the bed by her side, her breath warm on the pillow and a few strands of her dark hair dancing every time she exhaled. She watched Kaia, and she made a silent promise to her.
I’m going to make this work. I’m going to stay here, with you. I’m going to make it work.
The next morning over pancakes and bacon, Claire cleared her throat, staring down at her plate of bacon because it was easier to meet than Jody’s eyes. “I, uh…I think I’m going to stay in Sioux Falls for a bit.”
Jody almost dropped her fork. “...what?”
“Take a break from hunting. There’s…” Claire bit her lip. It was surprisingly hard to say. “The high school. It’s a couple of weeks long, it’ll be a good amount of work, but…I can get my GED. Just in time for…community college, this fall?”
Kaia gazed at her in surprised delight. Jody stared for a moment, then got up and hugged her. “Do you know how long-” her voice was choked. She stopped, her face hidden in Claire’s hair and started again. “Do you know how long I’ve been praying you would say something like that?”
“Since I showed up on your doorstep like a lost puppy?” Claire guessed jokingly. Giving up hunting didn’t make her happy but it made them happy, Jody and Kaia, and even Alex would probably breathe a sigh of relief that Claire was returning to the civilian life. It made her feel good to make them happy. That would have to be enough for now.
“What are you going to do?” Kaia asked, her face all lit up like a Christmas tree. Claire didn’t thinks she’d ever seen her look so carefree and that made her feel good, too.
She shrugged, modestly. “I mean…school. Studying for the test. But I thought I might apply to the diner in town, make some honest money instead of hustling pool with Dean-”
Jody gave a watery laugh.
“And be with you,” Claire finished, looking over Jody’s shoulder into Kaia’s eyes. Her cheeks suddenly felt warm. “No monsters. No angels. No apocalypse. Just us. Being normal.”
“You really think we can be normal?” Kaia asked.
“Alex did it.” Claire took a deep breath and resolved herself to this. “I already cleaned out my car this morning before everyone woke up. My hunting stuff’s in the basement. I’m gonna leave it there.”
She’d never seen either of them look so happy and that doubled her commitment.
For a little while it was okay. Claire took a job waiting tables and spent her mornings pouring coffee and carrying armfuls of steaming hot plates and it was incredibly boring and deliciously normal. She called herself Claire Winchester on the forged documents - her last set ever, she hoped - and told everyone who asked that she was Jody’s niece, that she lived with Jody’s two weird relatives that rode into town every now and then in a ‘67 Impala, but was staying in Sioux Falls for college. Then every afternoon she stuffed her apron in Bessie’s glovebox where her old hunting journal used to ride and drove down to the local high school to practice for the GED exam.
God, it was hard. Claire had come off of ghoul battles that took less out of her than studying for that GED exam. But she needed it for the community college, and she’d promised Jody and Kaia that she would try to be normal. And college was her first step in being normal. So she dragged herself down there every day, sat in a classroom the likes of which she’d thought she’d never see again, and practiced Algebra 2 until it felt like her eyes were bleeding.
The morning of the test came soon - too soon. She’d had a bad night; her stomach and her head had both refused to settle and she’d simply laid there and stared up at the ceiling while Kaia slumbered beside her, too nauseated to close her eyes and brain writhing too much to relax. Kaia could make anything better and even that wasn’t enough. They slept together every night now; it was easier that way. Better. Kaia didn’t dreamwalk when she slept at Claire’s side. And not much could lull Claire to sleep these days, but she could make up a white lie about nightmares and Kaia would bring her close to use her chest as a pillow and comb her fingers through Claire’s hair and hold her steady, hold her in place, hold her anchored. She still couldn’t sleep but she could at least get close to it like that.
The night before the test it hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked. Her palms sweated like gym socks and she practically shook with nerves. Even Kaia hadn’t been able to soothe her; she’d finally dozed off somewhere around four in the morning only to wake up two hours later for her alarm feeling like she might as well not have slept at all.
“You should eat something,” Kaia said in the kitchen, as Claire laced up her boots and tried not to puke.
“Can’t,” Claire mumbled. She winced, tried to remember the Pythagorean theorem again. It had been too long since she’d touched any of this shit. Over the last weeks she’d kicked herself constantly for not just sucking it up and finishing high school through the group home. “Too nervous.”
“You need something,” Kaia insisted, dropping down to crouch by Claire’s side. A plastic wrapper crinkled in her hands; one of Jody’s protein bars. “Come on, Claire.”
Claire shook her head, focused her attention on the laces. Kaia reached out suddenly and grabbed her face; gentle, but firm enough to get her attention. “Claire. You’re going to be in there for seven hours and you haven’t eaten since last night. Eat the damn granola bar.”
She hesitated for another second, but Kaia showed no sign of backing down. Her fingers were cool on Claire’s chin; her grip was gentle but her face was unyielding. Claire reluctantly took the bar and managed to nibble a bit off the end. It did make her feel better. “...thanks.”
“Someone’s got to keep an eye on you.” Kaia offered her a hand, pulled her to her feet. “I’ll drive you.”
Claire almost smiled. “Kaia, you don’t have your license.”
“I have my permit. You’re old enough, I can drive with you.”
Claire still wanted to say no but her palms were still sweating and she was so nervous she was afraid she might drive off the road, so she digs into her pocket and tosses Kaia her key ring. “Careful with my baby, Nieves.”
“I’ll treat her like she’s my own, Novak.”
The familiar warmth of Bessie’s interior, the soft, worn-down upholstery, the tired pine air freshener hanging from the rearview all helped to dampen the edge of the racking anxiety, and Claire could almost breathe normally when Kaia parked in the high school parking lot, where a small but steady stream of fellow test-takers were making their way inside. Claire mustered up a shaky smile, mostly for Kaia’s benefit, and reached for her bag, opening the door to clamber out. “Wish me luck.”
“Hey. Claire, wait.” Kaia reached out, caught Claire by the wrist. She stopped, looked up from where she had one foot on the asphalt already to meet her solemn brown eyes.
“You’re gonna do good,” Kaia said simply. Her long fingers rubbed a gentle circle over Claire’s wrist. Claire was more determined than ever to do good.
She got her GED in the mail a month later just in time to register for a round of classes at the community college. Jody got all teary again and insisted on taking a dozen pictures of Claire holding it like a first prize ribbon. Claire rolled her eyes and blushed with embarrassment but posed for Jody anyway because that was part of the promise. She was going to try and trying meant doing normal daughter things like posing for embarrassing, pointless pictures. That went hand in hand with trying. Alex even stepped into one, wrapped her arms around Claire’s shoulders from behind and ruffled her hair like she was a grubby nine-year-old. “That’s my little sister!” she crowed, and Claire shoved her to cover up her grin. She’d been an only child her whole life. Being someone’s little sister felt like a gift.
She pulled Kaia in for a few of them, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gripped Kaia with one hand and the GED with the other, trapped between the two good things that had ever happened to her. Kaia shuffled her feet and made excuses but finally smiled shyly for Jody and leaned into Claire’s gruff - hunter’s - embrace, and for a second she didn’t feel entirely scooped out inside.
College was hard. Claire had run headfirst into vamp nests that had scared her less than College Algebra. She was exhausted from working and class and coming back to Jody’s every night for homework, but she was managing. Maybe even thriving. She was a solid B-student, which was more than she ever could have hoped for.
More importantly, Jody was happy. Alex was happy. Kaia was happy. Claire was safe and reliably in one piece and Kaia threw caution to the wind. “I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about you anymore,” she whispered one night, leaning over Claire’s shoulder to proofread an essay for her English 101 class. “I like this.”
“I like it too,” Claire said, adding a period to the end of a sentence and lying through her teeth.
It was more like she wanted to like it, but she just couldn’t. Her stomach hurt constantly. Her nerves were shot, and the smile on her face was practically plastered on, because it wouldn’t come out on its own anymore. That doesn’t matter, she told herself firmly, converting her “Ethos, Pathos, Logos” essay into a PDF to turn it in on the college website. She was trying. And from the beginning she’d never tried to claim she was trying for herself. This wasn’t about her. One thing she’d done that wouldn’t be selfish.
Even saying yes to Castiel had been selfish. She hadn’t done it because it would be better for the world or the Winchesters or even her father. She said yes because she was scared and because Castiel had promised she wouldn’t be scared anymore if she let him in. So she did. Selfish. She barely even resented him for taking so much of her away with him. Part of what was left felt like she deserved it. Penance had a price.
That night in bed, Kaia sleeping next to her and Claire laying still and staring up at the ceiling, the emptiness writhing inside her like a snake, she remembered. And for once it wasn’t the bad. Seeing the bad was nothing noteworthy. Claire saw the faces of the people she couldn’t save every time she closed her eyes, every time she was alone. They never fell off her trail. This time, though, she saw the good.
Amanda Fitzmartin. Small and innocent and blonde. Claire had looked into those wide blue eyes and seen herself reflected back. Except Amanda, she saved. No one had been there to save Claire. So she’d saved herself, again and again, and drowned in a pile of ashes that she clawed her way out of like a phoenix, something new, something different, something broken, something reborn. Sometimes she still saw flashes of the holy light burning out the demon’s eyes, of the dizzying torrent of millennia of memories that Castiel had funneled through her twelve-year-old eyes. Of course she’d turned into this. It was that or perish. Sink or swim. But she’d been there for Amanda. She’d swooped her up, killed the bad guys, flown in in a cape and mask and made everything okay again. Handled it all effortlessly and put Amanda back in the arms of her mother. It wasn’t sink or swim anymore, not for her. Claire had put her in a life vest.
She wiped at the wetness on her cheeks that had trickled down; she’d barely noticed she was crying. Her stomach roiled. Her heart pounded in her ears, sending red-hot blood thrumming to her brain. Her eyes burned. And deep inside her, in the core of what made her who she was, the gaping hole left by Castiel’s presence dug its claws in deep and demanded to no longer be ignored. She couldn’t drown out the screams anymore.
“What are you looking at?” Kaia asked, peering over her shoulder at the laptop.
Claire tried to close the window but wasn’t fast enough. Kaia had already seen too much, and what her roving eyes hadn’t gathered was practically confirmed by her shiftiness.
Kaia’s face was unreadable. Claire looked at the space between her eyes; the idea of meeting her gaze made her curdle inside with guilt for lying, for keeping secrets, for breaking her promise. For not trying hard enough.
“What are you thinking?” Kaia asked finally, impassive, stony.
“I…have a few theories,” Claire said weakly, reopening the computer window. She grimly accepted that her cover was blown. “In-state. Few hours out. Got a thing for kids.”
“Okay. So throw it to Sam and Dean. Or Donna.” Kaia stared at her, pleading. Claire looked away.
“They’re busy.”
“Too busy for a hunt?” Kaia’s voice was rising, and Claire bit down her flinch. She flinched on a hair trigger these days. Nothing real to be scared of, so her overwired nervous system was substituting with anything, everything it could grab. Consuming everything twice as loud and twice as hard to keep up that overdrive that served her so well on the hunt and so terribly in Sioux Falls.
“Sam and Dean are on a shifter and Donna’s niece is getting married,” Claire almost whispered. Her cheeks were red with shame. “Kaia, I - I tried. I kicked it everywhere I could, and I got it kicked right back. They all want to know why I can’t take care of it, since I’m right up on it-”
“So wait. Someone will be free in a few days, you have school-”
“Kaia,” Claire said quietly, her heart thudding fast and hard in her chest. “I think it’s a Grigori.”
Kaia’s mouth curdled like she’d bitten into a lemon. She knew about Claire and Grigori. She looked at the headline and then the map and then Claire and then back again. “You need this, don’t you?” she said finally, and her voice was remarkably even.
Claire managed a nod. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud.
“Okay.”
“What?” Shock and confusion tasted bitter together.
“Okay.” Kaia tapped the screen. “It’s only a few hours. Go, clean it up, and get back in time for class on Monday.”
“Kaia.” It’s the hardest word Claire’s ever said. “Kaia, I - are you sure? You - we’re happy, you don’t have to worry about me-”
“I’ll always worry about you,” Kaia said with a sigh. Her fingers picked up the end of one of Claire’s braids and twirled it absentmindedly. “It’s close. It’s there. And this is bigger than me and what I want. People are dying, innocent people.”
She dropped the braid and took Claire’s hands in her own, squeezed them gently. “If you go, I’ll go with you.”
“Absolutely not.” Claire drew the words faster than she could draw a dagger. She remembered the last time Kaia said that to her, the last time that promise was made, and she remembered exactly where it got her. Kaia’s hands in hers, warm and real and alive, were suddenly too much and she jerked hers away. Guilt immediately crushed her at the hurt look on Kaia’s face. “No. You stay here where it’s safe, with Jody. I’ll take care of it.”
“No,” Kaia said stubbornly, and Claire immediately regretted all the times she told Kaia not to be a walkover, to stand up for herself, because this wasn’t how that lesson was supposed to be applied. “You’re not leaving me here so you can turn your phone off and charge into battle and stitch yourself up by candlelight in a dingy motel room while I sit here in our bed and kill myself wondering if you’re alive or not. If you’re going to hunt, Claire, you’re going to take me with you, because you need something to make you be careful. God knows you don’t give enough of a damn about yourself to do it on your own.”
Claire bristled immediately at that, wanting to jump to her own defense, but she had a body covered in scars to prove her wrong. “Kaia, if anything happened to you-”
“Now you know how you make me feel,” Kaia said stiffly.
That stung even worse because it was even truer, and Claire suddenly wanted to grab a knife and carve out the angel mark herself if it gave her any shot at being able to stay here and be normal with Kaia instead of putting her through all that pain and worry. Instead she gave Kaia all she could; a slight nod.
“Okay,” she said. Saying it was like swallowing a broken beer bottle. “Okay. Pack a bag. We’re going tonight.”
In the middle of the woods, the moon high overhead, Claire navigated the undergrowth with a flashlight in hand, Kaia trailing after her like a duckling. She hadn’t wasted time screwing around in a fed suit; she was as sure as hunting got that it was a Grigori and the ominous, creepy-looking woods hedging around the town were the best bet for a soul-sucker to be hiding out. The angel sword with which she’d slain Tamiel hung from her right hand. The angel mark pulsed with a warm heat. It almost seemed to whisper to her so close, so close, so close.
“What happens after this?” Kaia asked suddenly. Claire had stuffed an angel blade into her hand and ordered her to under no circumstances get close enough to the Grigori to use it. It hung limply from her hand now, jagged edge trailing through the undergrowth. “For you?”
“I don’t know,” Claire said, and she didn’t. She’d never felt more torn. Deciding to hunt in the first place, that had been easy. She’d been lonely, orphaned, drowning in her mother’s blood. She would have done anything to make the pain stop. Deciding to stop had been easy too. Because she knew it would make Kaia happy. But now here she was dancing on the border between one-last-hunt and first-hunt-back, and everything that was left of her was in all-out war over to which side the cards should fall.
“You don’t know,” Kaia repeated. She hacked off the tip of a dangling plant with the angel blade. Her voice was dull, tired. Too exhausted to care. “Were you ever really going to stop? Or was that just wishful thinking?”
I hate that I’m hurting you. Claire stopped dead and turned around; biting tears were suddenly welling in her eyes and she struggled to blink them back. “Kaia,” she said, and her voice sounded tired too. “I’m trying.”
“You’re trying,” Kaia repeated again, a void into which every weak defense Claire threw echoed and flung itself back as an assault. “How much longer am I going to have to sit around and watch you bleed until you stop trying?”
“You don’t get it,” Claire said limply, and then turned around and plunged her way back into the undergrowth because if she looked at that broken, miserable look on Kaia’s face any longer she really would see her cry. “I only ever tried at all for you.”
She heard Kaia suck in a soft breath; mulling that over, maybe. But before either of them could speak up again, the brush finally broke into a tiny clearing in the woods that sheltered a small, rickety structure; more a shed than a house, really. A bright yellow Condemned sign hung over the door. Claire let out a low whistle of warning, one arm swinging out on instinct to keep Kaia back, protect her, shield her. “There’s Waldo.”
Kaia didn’t smile or laugh. “What’s the plan?”
“Stab it with the pointy end.” Claire lifted the angel sword, stepped out of the shelter of the trees into the clearing. “Stay here. Keep a low cover. Here-” she plunged a hand into her jacket pocket, retrieved a scrap of notebook paper covered in scribbled Enochian. “Take this.”
“What is it?” Kaia asked suspiciously.
“It’s Cas’s - I guess you could call it his personal number.” Claire smoothed her fingers over the worn ink. Cas had given it to her the last time she’d seen him, which was God knows how long ago - he was busy helping the Winchesters with another apocalypse. She missed him, more than she cared to admit. When he wrapped up in her father’s arms on the rare occasion they embraced, her angel mark tingled with warmth and she could almost feel that missing piece fluttering from his grace. “Hold it in your hand, skin-to-paper, and pray to him. It taps straight into angel radio and goes directly into the old noggin. If anything happens to me and the thing comes after you-”
“You’re going in by yourself?” Kaia demanded, her eyes wide with shock. “No. Claire, no. This isn’t what we agreed to-”
“I agreed to bring you to the hunt,” Claire insisted. “Not to walk you headfirst into a fight.” Kaia still looked mutinous, and Claire was half-sure it would only make things worse, but she gently took Kaia’s hand and placed the Enochian scrap inside before closing Kaia’s fingers with her own. “Kaia, please. I can’t do what I need to in there if I’m worrying about you, and this is something that I need to do. Please. Do this for me.”
Kaia sighed; she didn’t like it. And Claire knew without a doubt this wasn’t nearly over, but she nodded. Flipped Claire’s hand over in hers and brought it to her mouth, pressing a tiny kiss to her knuckles. It was chaste, innocent, probably borne out of desperation, but it made Claire’s stomach flutter nervously and something new kindled in her chest. A new flame. Something new to fight for. This.
Whatever it was.
“I’m still mad at you,” Kaia mumbled feebly, reluctantly letting Claire’s hand slip out of hers.
Claire mustered up a faint smile for Kaia’s sake. “I know.”
Then she turned away from the last good thing in her life and stepped out into the openness of the clearing, ready for blood.
She didn’t bother trying to stealth it. The Grigori would detect her as soon as her boot touched the threshold anyway. She stepped onto the rickety porch - the wood groaned beneath her feet - and shoved the door open.
The Grigori stood in the back of the room over one of its human pets, a skinny, pale young man who looked to be on death’s door; he was barely breathing. The angel himself was tall, at least six feet, but slender and willowy. It stood in the body of a dark-skinned man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, his head nearly shaved and a faint outline of dark hair on his jaw. He turned to face her, a teasing smile dancing on the edge of his lips that didn’t quite seem to belong there. His oaky brown eyes fixated on her, and at once lit up silver. “Oh, I’ve heard of you. Your reputation precedes you, Claire Novak.”
“Really? Is it for making Grigori into kebabs?” Claire raised Tamiel’s sword. The hilt warmed in her hand as did the angel mark under her shirt; her pulse was racing. Taking down creatures imbued with angelic grace fueled the fire within her like no other hunt. Whatever the angels thought they knew about her, they were wrong. She wasn’t just a vessel anymore.
“You hosted Castiel.” He barely, imperceptibly licked his lips. “I can smell his grace on you. And the sword…”
His eyes drifted to it. He almost, for a second, looked nervous. “Tamiel was slain by your hand.”
“And now you will be, too.” Claire’s pulse throbbed as her heartbeat picked up. “Come on, big boy. Let’s do this.”
“You’re confident,” the Grigori said, raising his hand. A tiny swirl of silver grace whirled in the center of his palm. “It is in some cases a virtue. But not this time, Claire. I do not plan to die today.”
Claire swung a second too late and a wall of force slammed into her, throwing her hard against the opposite wall. She fell with a thump, her head ringing and dull pain radiating from her left wrist. Broken, most likely. She swore and dragged herself to her feet. The hilt of the sword was hot now, warming her fingers as she clung to it, and the angel mark burned under her shirt. The Grigori stared her down, crisp and clean without a wrinkle in his well-fitted t-shirt. “This was not wise of you,” he said grimly. “This brings me no pleasure. But Tamiel’s death must be avenged.”
He raised both palms this time, matching whorls of grace hovering just out of his grasp. “I am Naverel, captain of the Grigori elite. I respect you, Claire. It is not many who can bring down one of our numbers. As a sign of my respect I will do this quickly.”
Two bolts of lethal grace fire shot from his palms. The angel mark seared with sudden pain that nearly blinded her and Claire reacted on instinct rather than sense, just dropped and rolled across the filthy wooden floorboards. The heat singed the edge of her hair, but left no lasting mark. The wave of agony faded from her shoulder and Claire staggered back up, striking with the angel sword. Naverel jumped back at the last second but she nicked his chest and a tiny leak of silver light shone out from the cut, and the clean, unbothered, “above-it-all” look angels so often wore flickered for a second, leaving something else that Claire couldn’t quite identify. It was suspiciously similar to fear.
“Eat me, featherhead,” Claire spat, cradling her broken wrist to her chest, and she lunged again.
Naverel threw up a shield at the last second, a stunning, rock-hard shell of angelic protection, and Claire’s momentum slammed her right into it, and where it touched her it burned. She shrieked and staggered back, but the burning didn’t stop, and trails of silver clung to her flesh, and where it hung on stubbornly, wounds opened up as it burned away that of her which was mortal. Castiel’s grace wasn’t strong enough to protect her from it, only enough to guard the single core of that which was angelic deep within her soul, and all the frail, weak human parts melted away in the face of the wrath of heaven.
He threw her down again, hard, and she groaned and spat up a mouthful of bile as her ribs broke under her. The pain sapped away at her strength; even the burning from the angel mark hurt more than it helped through the haze. Naverel stood over her, his face set in a grim line, bleeding silver as he raised his palms again, summoning another wave of grace fire. Claire wouldn’t be able to dodge another hit.
Desperate and aching, she closed her eyes and reached into the depths of her own soul. She grasped for it, blind, and then finally closed her hand around something warm and vibrant and powerful ; the size of a quarter, maybe, but its strength dwarfed her in power. Claire reached out and touched Castiel’s grace.
No, not Castiel’s grace. Not anymore. Her grace. It was her grace now.
The angel mark lit up with blinding pain; the whole shack was bathed in silvery light that made Claire’s human eyes burn. Warmth washed over her, warmth that boosted her, comforted her, numbed the pain of the open wounds seeping blood into the earth. She stood, painlessly, even though she could still sense the breaks in her ribs. She could sense everything. The last fading thoughts of Naverel’s human pet, the Grigori’s own fear and confusion, Kaia’s surge of anxiety from outside the shack, even the nose-twitching curiosity of a rabbit somewhere out there in the trees. She raised the sword, and something fluttered behind her. The massive, unfurling shadow of angelic wings.
She raised Tamiel’s sword and swung high. It pierced Naverel true and holy light shone from every orifice as he let out a death screech. She wrenched the angel sword free and he crumpled like a rag doll. He was remarkably small in death.
In the corner, his human banquet breathed his last and was finally free. His soul, a swirling, ethereal thread of white light, danced slightly through the air still bathed in Claire’s glow and then ascended upwards into heaven. Claire exhaled and lowered the sword.
The door creaked suddenly, and Claire spun to see Kaia - oh, Kaia - in the threshold, her eyes wide with fright.
“Kaia,” Claire said, taking a step towards her. “It’s okay. He’s dead.” She took a step towards her and Kaia took a step back and then it struck her that it wasn’t Naverel that Kaia was afraid of.
The rush faded suddenly and sank back into dormancy. It wasn’t gone - she could still feel it, swirling and living on within her, as much a part of her as her own blood and veins and soul - but it was weakened, spent for the moment, and Claire was too. The silvery glow of angelic grace faded back into grimy shadows, and Claire fell to her knees and then to all fours, crouching on the filthy floor of the shack. Her muscles ached like she’d run a marathon with no water, and exhaustion lapped at the corners of her vision. Her broken wrist screamed in protest at every twitch, and burning emanated from her ribs where her fall had cracked them. Claire gritted her teeth and groaned; the hunt had put her back together and yet she still felt so painfully empty. So limited. So human. She could only see as far as her human eyes could. The overwhelming torrent that had poured through her, so much to see and hear and feel, was gone, and humanity squirmed uncomfortably in her stomach.
“Claire,” Kaia gasped, and ran to kneel by her side. One of her gentle hands threaded awkwardly through Claire’s hair and stayed there, cradling her ringing head. “Claire, what happened?”
“I angeled up,” Claire said hoarsely. Her forehead pressed against the grimy floorboards and she tried to paste their steadiness onto herself. “He was going to kill me. And I just…I didn’t know I could do that.”
“You can’t ever do it again,” Kaia said urgently.
“Kaia, I - for just a second, I was-” Words failed her, and she was too tired to attempt to string together words that could maybe explain the joyous new reality into which she’d barely dipped her toes. “Kaia, for a minute…I was an angel. What I could do as a hunter-”
“You’re not supposed to be hunting anymore,” Kaia said wearily, her hand tightening in Claire’s hair. “And Claire, you - you’re burning up. Whatever you did, whatever power you tapped into, it’s almost killing you. This fever-”
“I’ve had worse,” Claire managed. She had. Holding Castiel had been ten times this bad. She’d done things her tiny twelve-year-old body could never dream of with him at the wheel, and when he’d flown the coop, she had been left to deal with the aftermath. The pain and the exhaustion and the physical toll it took on a human to hold a creature of such power as an angel. “And Kaia…I’m so sorry. I can’t.”
“But you are, ” Kaia insisted. “You’ve been doing it. You’ve been having a life, with Jody and Alex and me-”
Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, Claire’s phone went off with a loud ding. Kaia rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh of worried exasperation but Claire forced herself to find enough dregs of strength to reach into her pocket and check it; it could be Jody or Alex on the other end, and they could be in trouble.
It wasn’t. It was Dean.
Old Man: What’s shakin’, Buffy Summers? Heard you were back in the game. Got a hit on a minor god carving out hearts down in Dallas. You want in? Got a lot to fill you in on. Congrats on the GED, by the way.
“It’s Dean,” Claire said shakily, pocketing her phone again. “He…he and Sam need help with a hunt.”
“So tell them you’re retired!” Kaia snapped. Under a thin veneer of anger all Claire could detect was fear. “Tell them you’re in school, you have a job, you have a life! A real life, not just blood and knives and death- ”
“I can’t!” Claire almost shrieked, her voice shrill with desperation. In her empty chest, something cracked like a broken vase.
Kaia froze, one eyebrow cocked and her mouth half-open, awaiting an explanation. An explanation that she was more than entitled to after Claire just shattered everything they’d built since she came back. She shattered everything, it felt like. Sacrificed it all at the altar of angels.
“I can’t,” Claire said again, her voice thick with the salty lump of tears sitting heavy in the back of her throat. “Kaia, I can’t. I tried, I tried so hard, I promise, for Alex and Jody and for you , I tried so hard for you-”
She was sobbing now, her chest aching and throat burning, tears dripping down and leaving wet spots like quarters on her shirt. “I wanted to be better, but I can’t. I’m not enough. I’m not strong enough, I’m not brave enough, I’m not good enough.”
Her angel mark burned like it was being branded into her all over again. She took Kaia’s hand, gentle - Kaia tensed up but didn’t jerk it away like Claire was half-afraid she was going to - and pressed it to the silvery lines. It was actually warm to the touch now; it reacted when Claire got agitated.
“I’m marked for life, Kaia,” she choked out through her raw throat, holding Kaia’s cool hand in her burning one. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”
She drowned on the crest of another ragged sob and collapsed back onto the creaking wooden floorboards and cried. Her forehead to the wood, she knelt and wept and prayed, feeling so small and fragile and utterly broken. She knocked her head against the wood and the pain felt good so she did it again. It felt right to hurt for this. As her heart tore itself into shreds and she suffocated on her own self-hatred, it only felt right to hurt her body too.
Warm breath tickled her face suddenly, and Claire sensed Kaia’s lithe form on the wooden floor next to her, laying on the ground and praying with her. Kaia’s fingers pushed her cheek and she turned blindly like a child seeking its mother only for Kaia to press her forehead to hers, her cool hands cradling her face. She held her there on the floor in the middle of the woods and wiped away her tears.
Claire cried herself out and finally, collapsed on the ground, aching and body broken, she felt better. The agonizing emptiness within her that she had hidden from Kaia for so long had been filled; Naverel’s body lying where it had fallen on the other side of the room had, however briefly, fixed her. Kaia lay with her patiently. When the last sob tore its way out of her scraped raw throat, Kaia nodded, passed her thumb one last time over Claire’s cheek. “Okay.”
Exhausted and hazy and hating herself, Claire must have looked lost, because Kaia said it again. “Okay. All right. This is what you need. To hunt. So we’ll hunt.”
“Kaia,” Claire said weakly. “You can’t-”
“What? Leave my diner job? Leave Sioux Falls?” Kaia shook her head. “I can. You and me and Bessie, we’ll hunt together. I’ll help you find cases and look up the lore for you and maybe you can teach me how to fight with you too. We’ll do it together.”
Claire opened her mouth again to protest, but Kaia shushed her softly. “You tried for me, Claire. Now let me try for you.”
She leaned in, sweet and slow, and pressed her lips to Claire’s bloody mouth. She was bone tired and dark circles were biting at the edge of her vision but somehow she managed to kiss back in Kaia’s arms.
Leaning on Kaia, clutching her broken wrist to her chest, she limped back to where they’d left Bessie at the edge of the treeline. Kaia wrapped her arm up in a spare jacket to keep the wrist steady and kissed Claire’s forehead as she lay down in the backseat and that was the last thing she remembered.
When she woke up, she was in Jody’s living room, curled up on the couch. Her wrist had been splinted and her arms were covered in itchy bandages; Alex’s work, most likely. Having a nurse for a sort-of sister had its perks.
She looked up and saw Jody asleep in the armchair across from her, her head tipped back uncomfortably. “Jody,” she whispered.
As if on a hairtrigger, Jody leapt to her feet, a relieved smile washing over her face when she saw Claire’s eyes open. “Oh, thank God-” She rushed over, pressed the back of her hand to Claire’s forehead. The angel fever must have persisted through the night. “Almost back to normal. God, Claire, honey, what happened?”
“Long story,” Claire mumbled. Her tongue felt like cotton in her mouth and her throat rasped like sandpaper. “How long have I been out?”
“Going on two days,” Jody answered, kneeling by Claire and gently resting a hand on her bandaged arm. “Kaia showed up at two am the night before last with you unconscious with a fever of a hundred-and-four in the backseat. She said something about a Grigori, but she’s barely been making sense. She’s worried sick about you. We’ve all been.”
“Yeah. I killed the captain of the Grigori, but not before he got his hits in first.” Claire slowly sat up; her head spun, but she managed to stay upright. “Water…?”
Jody immediately pressed a water bottle into her good hand and Claire drank deeply from it, cooling her parched tongue at long last. She looked over at Jody; the woman who was the closest thing in the world she had to her mother. Her brow was furrowed with worry, and in that moment Claire decided not to tell her about the grace. Kaia wouldn’t have; she didn’t understand it herself and she didn’t talk about things she didn’t understand. Jody didn’t need to carry that burden.
There was something else that Jody could maybe help with, though, something that would distract her from the fever and something that was weighing on Claire like a sandbag. “Jody,” she whispered, clenching her good hand around the water bottle. “Kaia kissed me.”
Jody’s mouth fell open slightly, but then she smiled, a real, genuine, proud smile. “About time.”
Claire must have been gaping, because Jody chuckled, her eyes a little misty. “Anyone with eyes could have spotted the crushes you two have on each other. Even back to the first time you met.”
She still remembered the first time she’d met Kaia’s eyes through the window blinds. How she’d been skinny, and pale, and exhausted, and coming off two days unconscious on the side of the road, and how she’d still been so beautiful anyway. She blushed bright red. “That obvious, huh?”
“Glaringly.” Jody laughed. “And Alex is cooking tonight. She had her bet on at least another year before one of you got brave enough to make a move.”
“You bet on this?” Claire asked incredulously.
Jody waved a hand dismissively. “All in good fun.” Her face turned serious, and Claire knew what was coming a second before it did. “Kaia said you’re leaving again. And she’s going with you. She’s already packed her bags.”
Claire opened her mouth but there was nothing she could say to fix the look on Jody’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said limply at last, looking down at the upholstery of the couch rather than Jody’s eyes.
“Don’t apologize.” Jody shook her head; her eyes were definitely damp now. “I can support you and be there for you and advise till I’m blue in the face. But at the end of the day, as much as I wish I could…I can’t make you something you’re not.”
She cupped Claire’s chin in her hand and forced her to look her in the eyes. “Just…promise me you’ll be careful.”
Claire smiled and leaned forward and hugged her. “I solemnly swear not to hunt like a dumbass.”
The next morning, she was loading her duffel bag into Bessie’s trunk. Everything else was loaded already; her clothes, Kaia’s suitcase, their backpacks, her weapons. The angel sword gleamed from the backseat.
She turned back to Jody and Alex and Kaia all watching the last bag go in. “That’s the last of it.”
Jody stepped forward and crushed her in another hug. She held her for a long moment and Claire let it happen. God knew how long it’d be until she’d get another one. Finally, Jody gave her a gentle swat and pushed her away. “Go on, get.”
Claire stepped back only to immediately get pulled in again by Alex. Her hands were shaking softly, and Claire reached behind her back to steady them as she leaned into her big sister’s hug. “Bet you thought I was gonna be a normie, huh?” she teased.
“Nah, I always knew you were feral,” Alex joked back, finally letting go of Claire. “Call me once in a blue moon, okay? I miss your annoying voice.”
“I will,” Claire promised, and she meant it.
Jody and Alex stepped back and then it was just her and Kaia on the front lawn, smiling nervously at each other. “You ready?” Claire asked.
“Not even a little.”
“Yeah. Me either.” Claire bit her lip, sent a silent prayer up into the emptiness above her head between here and heaven for courage, and then, before she could change her mind, she cupped Kaia’s face in her hands and kissed her.
It was perfect. There was a hint of her morning coffee on Kaia’s lips and she was warm and real and alive. She was something steady, something constant. Claire hadn’t in years stood on truly solid ground, and she still didn’t - she could already feel the ache, the need to hunt squirming inside her - but with Kaia’s lips on hers, it was better. Not as all-consuming. It was manageable.
Maybe one day she could even retire like this. Step back and delve into the lore, maybe run a base for hunters like Jody or the Winchesters. For the first time ever, it seemed like there was a possibility that lay ahead that wasn’t just hunting until something bigger and meaner cut her down.
It felt good to be back behind Bessie’s wheel. She leaned back and closed her eyes; breathed in the pine air freshener. “All right, old girl.” She fished in her pocket for her phone and shot off a quick text to Dean.
Hey, old man. Sorry for the delay, things have been busy here. Kaia and I are on our way down. See ya in the Lone Star State, Hasselhoff.
She put her phone down and turned the key in the ignition. Bessie’s engine purred to life; the radio crackled on. “Take It Easy” by The Eagles ground from the old stereo. It was more of a Dean song than one of hers, but she left it. It felt right. Good.
Claire opened up the glovebox and pulled her hunter’s journal from inside her jacket. She shoved her diner apron into the backseat and put the leather-bound book in its pride of place at her side.
She looked in the rearview mirror one last time, back at Jody and Alex. Then she shifted Bessie into drive and pulled out of the driveway and out onto the street, leaving Sioux Falls and her old life behind. There was only her and her car and Kaia at her side, and that was good enough that her soul almost felt like it was back in place.