And Die In Thee - 7/7
And Die In Thee - 7/7
5,136/26,000 R, Het
Right doesn’t ever count the cost. Should it?
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Part 7
Hitting Highway 60 southeast even for a few miles wasn’t guaranteed to make Annie feel any safer. Dean didn’t feel that good about it either, so the huge HRP signs on either side of the turn-off should have made him relax. Unluckily, if anything, they upped his heart rate. Looked like his body was trying to outvote his brain on this decision. Wasn’t that a bitch?
‘The Preserve? Dean?’
He swung off the highway ignoring Annie’s surprisingly mild query. ‘Got to have somewhere off my father’s radar for tonight. We need time to … talk.’
‘Uh, Dean?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s shut,’ Annie said somewhat redundantly as Dean brought the Impala to a stop in front of the gates.
‘A little thing like a closed sign and a padlock isn’t going to stop me.’
Annie shifted restlessly on the seat. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere else? I don’t like it out here in the middle of desert.’
Alone. That thought came through clearly.
Dean gave her a closer look. Apart from the worried protest when he evicted Sammy, she’d been quiet ever since the library. Ever since that last dream. This wasn’t what he’d been prepared for. Screaming, pleading, fighting, or just making a break for freedom? That he’d been ready for. This dazed non-reaction was almost enough to make him doubt his own instincts.
‘We’re all out of choices, Annie. This is it. We’re damned lucky the place is shut Mondays and Tuesdays. And the Conservancy doesn’t have the money to waste on security, so we’ll have the place to ourselves till tomorrow. Peace and quiet. Best of all? No Dad coming after you with a shotgun to defend my honour. Huh! Now, there’s a change of stereotype.’
‘Great, I’ve been kidnapped by a virgin,’ Annie muttered with slightly more animation before lapsing into a bemused silence again.
‘I heard that,’ Dean bitched, already out of the car and busy trying to finesse the gates. Stupid, rusty, lock. No way, that should have taken him more than twenty seconds, and with Annie watching him too. Why did girls always believe everything Sammy said? It was completely unfair. He was still flushed and mentally cursing his little brother’s big mouth when he pulled the Impala up behind one of the Preserve’s utility sheds.
Dean yanked a docile Annie out into the fresh air, faking an exuberant drum roll on the car’s trunk as he pulled her towards the Visitor’s Center. ‘Ta dah! Nature. What more could you want?’
‘My Mom.’
Dean refused to let that whispered comment upset him. You and me both, sweetheart.
~~~
Deliberately not looking back, Dean tugged Annie further from the car. ‘Come on, we might as well stretch our legs before it gets dark.’
He paused at one of the Preserve’s regulations signs. ‘No swimming, no alcohol, no feeding or disturbing wildlife. No. No. No.’ By the time he got up to “no radios” and “no camping, hunting or fishing,” he knew they took the “sensitive wildlife habitat” concept fairly seriously. There wasn’t anything strictly prohibiting succubi, but that might have come under the “no dogs, horses, or other domestic animals” category. And as for “no firearms,” he decided to view that as more of a suggestion than a direct order.
‘They do let you picnic though,’ he pointed out brightly. ‘Even if it is only in designated areas.’
Annie was giving him one of those “I don’t know what you’re on, but it can’t be good for you” looks. She might be out of it, but every now and then a glimpse of the old Annie showed through the confusion.
Despite his inability to work out exactly what was going on with Annie, he still thought it a bit much when even your passenger? … dream girl? … captive? started to critique you. ‘We don’t have a rug, but let’s go find us a designated area.’ What the hell am I going to do now?
~~~
Designated areas were probably all very well for nature lovers, who knew enough to bring their own pillows, blankets, and picnic baskets.
Dean eyed the benches before flopping down on the grass beside the river and gesturing for Annie to join him. He wasn’t sure if prodding Annie with idle questions in a bid to shake her out of her apathy was a good idea. But he needed the diversion too. Coward. ‘You ever been here before?’
‘School trip not long after I got to Wickenburg. It was nice, lush, you know?’ Annie glanced a bit more interestedly around at the desert oasis.
Dean nodded, it certainly was … green. Nature wasn’t really his thing. He preferred his horizons a lot closer. All that open space made him twitchy. Not that his father paid any attention to that when he assigned his squad of two tracking and wilderness survival drills at every fucking opportunity. He’d trust a wall before a tree at his back any day.
‘Hassayampa means river which flows upside down,’ Annie remarked oddly chattily, almost as if they were both safe back in a school classroom. ‘Something to do with the way the granite bedrock changes and forces this stretch of the underground river to the surface.’
‘Uh huh,’ Dean commented vaguely. He was just grateful for the temporary respite the river gave from the crippling summer heat. ‘Cool. And trees,’ he added intelligently.
Annie sighed, successfully distracted. ‘Yeah, Dean. Palm trees, cottonwood-willow forests, mesquite bosques, and wildflowers and birds …’
‘Whatever,’ Dean said. He refused to consider himself a Valley girl, but he had to admit, as a phrase it was endlessly applicable. Usually he accented it with flipping his brother off. He guessed that would only irritate Annie. Dean didn’t want to know what a pissed off teenage succubus was capable of right then, so he ditched that idea.
He leant backwards on his elbows, looking idly up at all the clouds building up with nowhere to go. Huh. He spent a moment wishing it was possible for it to rain in the middle of the desert. That stupid idea wasn’t enough to keep him from imagining, all too clearly, the steps his father would be taking to find them. Dad would have been hotwiring the closest car capable of a sustained chase at the same time he was on the phone to the school to check on Sammy’s whereabouts. There was no way that a hunter, and John Winchester in particular would not put those pieces together. Dean taking the Impala in broad daylight, Sammy truant, and the missing Lilin girl? Dad would know by now that they had a link with Annie. The exact nature of the connection would be something Dad would be ready to deal with, right after he killed Annie.
Annie, luckily unaware of the undercurrents, had, just like a girl, already moved the conversation onto a completely different topic. ‘They say if you look into the clouds long enough you can see anything. Past, future, God, dreams …’
‘I think I see a chicken,’ Dean interrupted facetiously. ‘No, wait. I can see clearly now - it’s a chicken and a rabbit.’
Annie ignored him. Typically, she wasn’t going to let go of a topic when she found a good one. ‘What did you dream of being when you were growing up?’ Annie asked, almost as if she cared.
Dean was about to say that the rabbit was doing his energetic if confused best to hump the chicken, but he thought that might get him slapped. He could tell by the look on Annie’s face that she was going to wait him out. Girls. The only thing his father hadn’t taught him how to handle. Dean totally discounted that one rambling pain-induced conversation two years earlier while he’d been stitching his father’s leg up without anaesthetic, that had started with Dad saying, ‘Keep it zipped, soldier’ and ended with some embarrassingly explicit directions on what to do if you were idiotic enough to catch the clap.
‘Dean?’
Uh. What the heck, who else was he going to tell? ‘When I was a kid I wanted to be a fireman. Dumb huh? And then my mother was killed, and fire was all I could see. After that I learned to stop wanting things.’
‘I wanted to do … everything,’ she whispered with regret. ‘And now there’s no time for anything.’
‘There’s still time,’ Dean said knowing it was a giant miscalculation, but unable to do anything else in the face of her fate. ‘There’s time for … this.’
~~~
In retrospect consciously choosing to make out with a succubus possibly wasn’t the best idea he had ever come up with. Dean blamed the Garden of Eden in the desert thing the Preserve had going on. He blamed the riverbank, the babbling brook; the birds and the fucking flowers. And Annie - for just being Annie. But most of all, Dean blamed that goddamn rabbit.
~~~
Dean realised after only a few minutes, that dreams could only show you so much. Fantasies always had a way of glossing over the more awkward details. Who kissed whom first? Dean - because he was a guy and a Winchester after all. Did you go slow and kind of sneak up to where you wanted to go? Or did you just stick your tongue immediately down her throat the way they went at it in the movies? That technique hadn’t worked that well for him in the past. But the question was instantly answered when Annie proved she’d seen even more movies than he had. Just before he lost all rational thought Dean admitted that maybe movie geeks were a good thing to have around.
He only managed to come up for air the once to ask, in a more surprised tone than he planned, ‘You … ever done … this before?’
‘No,’ Annie breathed as her mouth continued to ghost downwards.
Fuck. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. You’re a freaking … natural!’ Dean couldn’t help his voice rising just then, because holy shit, that was good!
Those good things had just got to the point where Dean totally didn’t care that he was struggling to get their clothes off (a lot trickier in the heat of the moment than in theory) in the middle of the great outdoors where anyone could see …
Well, shit. Right then clarity got up, scrambled down the bank with a bucket and came back to throw what surely was half of a cold river on him, right where he needed it most. Least. Commonsense was a jealous bitch. Also, zips were really dangerously placed if you thought about it.
Happily, or not (depending on one’s point of view), Annie was Dean’s kind of girl, and part of her at least knew precisely what she wanted, and how to get it.
Hello. Now that was a sure-fire way to regain a guy’s complete attention. So much of his attention that he had some trouble even realising she was speaking to him. Talking? She could form words? Entire coherent sentences? Okay, they were short ones, but that was still plain wrong. Chicks were definitely another species.
‘What’s that?’
Huh? Her hands had sadly moved further north to make small inquisitive pats under his left arm.
‘That.’
Hmmm?
‘Dean?’ Annie was giggling as she squirmed even closer.
Dean was used to the giggle thing, after all he’d been spending a lot of time hanging around Melissa, so he’d quickly learned how to filter that irritant out. Annie’s giggles though, blew straight past annoying, through cute, and landed in a hot zone that Dean hadn’t even known existed.
‘Dean?’
‘Gun,’ Dean gasped helplessly battling buttons and zips. He wished Annie was the kind of girl who wore a skirt. Another part of him tried to hiss ‘Name, rank, and serial number!’ but he managed to ignore it.
‘This?’
? Oh. ‘My knife.’ Come on. Think, you idiot!
‘This?’
Mmm? ‘Your knife.’ He vaguely remembered liking the idea of a girl with a knife. Maybe he should give it ba…
‘This?’
Uh. ‘My back-up …’ Shit! Dean tore himself out from underneath Annie and only just stopped from tumbling into the river. ‘Fuck!’
He scrambled back up the slope to where Annie was now sitting up half naked and more than a bit confused. He could tell just by looking at her that even she wasn’t completely sure how they’d gone from talking to trying to rip each other’s clothes off in minutes. Maybe his father was right about his age making him susceptible. Damn it!
Dean knelt down in front of Annie, watching his shaking fingers button her shirt firmly before he let himself collapse back onto the ground (this time sensibly on his side with easy access to the majority of his weapons) next to her once more. It was long past time that he remembered that he was a Winchester.
The clouds were going berserk above, perhaps in sympathy with his roiling emotions, or maybe they had their own agenda, which had nothing at all to do with his teenage problems. With that in mind there was only one thing he could think of to say. ‘I think the chicken just ate the rabbit.’
~~~
‘I just want to wake up.’
Dean kept his eyes focussed on Annie although he was finally thankfully aware of everything going on around them. About time. They’d been sitting there for hours just looking at each other in the growing darkness, and not saying a word. Neither of them had dared drop off to sleep. And he still hadn’t quite got up the courage to do what he had to do. ‘Annie? You are awake.’
Annie blinked, before inching even further away from him. ‘I’m awake?’
Shit. Dean let his voice drop into what Sammy called his con mode; low and soothing, and capable of convincing anyone of anything. ‘Where do you think you are, honey?’
Annie’s head moved slowly from side to side, frowning at the shadowy bush around them. ‘Not at home?’
‘No, we’re at the Preserve, remember?’ Oh, this wasn’t good at all. ‘Don’t hate me for this, then.’
‘Wha … Ow! That hurt!’
‘I meant it to. Are you with me now?’
‘Uh, yes. I’m awake? We’re really here? And I …’ Annie forgot all about the slap and blushed down at her still somewhat twisted clothing before looking up at him in shock. ‘We almost … and I tried to kill you!’ She was up on her feet now screaming at him horror. Trying to deny what she was now remembering all too clearly.
Dean coughed loudly, almost masking the sound of something in the bushes that had been surprised into sudden movement at her scream. ‘Well, that last bit was a dream. But …’ his voice trailed off before continuing on. ‘We kind of have this problem where the dream you is taking over. The whole succubus thing …’ He didn’t say anything more because it was right there with them both. Her mother. His father. Them.
Annie started despite his attempts not to let the noises spook her, trying to look around in the dark. ‘Did you hear that? Is someone out there?’
‘Trust me, if it was my Dad, you’d never have heard him.’ Right. Not the most comforting thing he could have said. Dean took the time to be seen to listen. He triaged the various noises - water swirling around the reeds, wind through the undergrowth, birds, the skitter of those weird white lizard things, and the stealthier sounds of the various predators moving through the scrub. Everything right where it was supposed to be. ‘Mule deer, javelina, coyote, maybe?’
‘Coyotes?’ Annie was back beside him in a flash.
‘Maybe a mountain lion,’ Dean offered casually as he patted Annie soothingly on the back. He couldn’t believe he was trying to calm down a nervous succubus for Christ’s sake. He kind of figured that if - when - Annie fully matured into one, she could take on any number of those protected animals.
‘Perhaps it’s time to get back to the car. We’ll probably both be a lot safer there.’
It just went to show how unsettled Annie was, that she took that comment at face value.
Dean? He was just grateful he was getting better at lying.
~~~
The one problem about the Impala was something Dean hadn’t predicted. Well, he had thought about it, he just hadn’t factored in the intensity of it. Proximity. Being in such close quarters in the front seat was having its own dangerous effect. Shift to the back seat? No. Oh yeah, we’re a hell of a lot safer here. Think, Dean. He had to remember those goddamn books; the notes his father had taken. His plan.
Sammy’s voice saying, ‘I hate your plan.’
Sammy. Left on his own. Trusted. Dad was so going to kill him for this. Dean figured he had it coming.
~~~
‘Annie?’ Dean tapped her on her hand, bringing her attention off the clock on the dashboard and back to him. ‘Somewhere you have to be? I don’t think we need worry about the curfew police. Only my Dad.’ Damn. There he went again, just saying everything that was in his head. Almost everything. Part of him wanted his Dad to find them now, so he could fix everything. Take responsibility. But he’d worked out that he was the only one who could end it right.
‘It’s Tuesday,’ Annie said obscurely, all expression wiped from her face.
‘Yeah, and we’re both out late on a school night. But you’ve been a.w.o.l. for weeks, so what’s special about today?’
‘It’s my birthday,’ Annie said simply. She glanced back at the clock, calculating. ‘Or it will be in about thirty minutes. My mom said it never counted till the exact second. Called me her midnight baby, said she was too and …’
Oh. Oh. Talk about a plan coming down to the wire. Dean hoped he worked better under pressure.
He smirked at her. Use it. ‘So, how do you want to celebrate? ’ Wow, that had come out even dirtier than he’d meant it to. ‘I mean, here we both are. Alone. And you should do something special, to mark the event, what with you having no …’ Family. Smooth, Dean. Real smooth. Remind her why don’t you?
Astonishingly, Annie didn’t laugh at him, try to kill him, or even smack him in the face. All of which he was expecting. She kept that sad new, remote, gaze fixed on him. Measuring. Thinking. Deciding. Strangely, sex clearly wasn’t the issue, or at least not the deciding factor. Dean found the analytical process downright disturbing. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one judging her?
She nodded once, obviously having made up her mind one way or the other.
Dean decided to tip the scales in his favour with persuasion. ‘You’re cute, it’s your birthday, I love a party, and I don’t see any horns, so why shouldn’t we …’ Fuck? Make love? Just …
‘Just do it?’ she asked huskily. Well, that was sexy. Don’t think about it.
Dean decided to knock the scales right over with a kiss. He knew he’d gotten good - apparently all that practice in his dreams counted, so he was annoyed when Annie stopped right in the middle to twist around, trying to look outside into the night.
‘What?’ Nothing. There’s nothing out there to see.
‘I thought I heard something, thought I could feel something close.’ Annie was shivering again.
‘Nothing. Nothing here but the two of us,’ Dean murmured into her lips.
~~~
In the end it came down to that. The two of them. Both motherless and alone; hurting, angry and looking for something, anyone to take it out on. Someone to hold; whatever happened. Whatever the end.
And it wasn’t perfect, or tidy, or pretty, or any of those things. It wasn’t something that could be categorised as nice, or romantic. It was kisses that went from needy to frantic in seconds. It was removing all your weapons, and placing them on the floor, still within reach. It was looking at Annie’s eyes widen with every gun and blade removed. It was watching her close up when her mother’s knife was put on the seat. Not really a knife after all, he knew that now, and he suspected she did too.
It was clothes ripped open in desperation, but not off because that just took too much time. It was sweaty, and messy, with chins, elbows, knees and feet getting in the way. It was trying to get a condom on without ending everything right then. It was breaking out of a cage. It was not enough room to move, but the creativity to adapt, and make the closeness work. It was not being able to ever get close enough. It was unfolding everything that you were, and becoming more. It was pressure, and heat, and feeling like a thunderstorm was about to break inside you. It was muttered swear words, and even laughter for a minute when nothing looked like it was going to damn well fit where it was supposed to. It was regret for the lack of any more choices. It was loss, and something close to love.
It was Annie’s eyes shifting as he thrust inside her with a sob. It was not being able to stop or even want to, and knowing not to.
It was watching her soul fracture with that the irrevocable change. It was the world turning, and having her take control. It was listening to her taunts. It was losing himself in her at the end, and wanting to go.
It was finally understanding that she could now sense everything around her, and knew exactly who stood out there in the darkness, waiting. It was seeing her head turn that way in need and hunger.
It was fear. It was hearing her laugh as he slid her mother’s knife, her essence, to its true home between her ribs at the moment of their shared release. It was keening with her, sharing her pain and unbelievable joy as she died.
It was bearing witness.
It was risking everything, but that which mattered the most.
~~~
Dean collapsed back against the car door.
‘Dean! Are you okay?’ Sammy reached out to grab open the door.
‘No! Stay there, Sammy. Please. Just stay there.’ Guard my back. Dean brought his knees up to his chest, and clenched his arms around them. Shaking. Why couldn’t he stop shaking?
Sammy stood next to the car in the pouring rain, keeping his gun trained on the passenger seat. ‘Dean? Did she hurt you?’
Dean flinched, ‘No, Sammy. Just. No.’ He contorted into a tighter ball, ramming the knuckles of one fist into his mouth. Biting. Bitter. Couldn’t get rid of her taste. No. Her eyes as she’d mocked him. No. Couldn’t tell if the tears on his face were his or hers. ‘Everyone’s a victim, Dean.’
‘Dean,’ Sammy’s voice sounded scared. ‘Is she dead?’ Afraid, but with enough anger in him to finish her off himself if he had to. To kill anyone that threatened his brother, even someone he’d liked.
‘Yes,’ Dean breathed. ‘It’s over.’ He huddled down further, dropping his head back against the door. Welcoming the coldness of the metal doorframe. Wanting it to seep into him. Needing it to flush out the memories. Safe.
He heard his brother move purposefully around to the rear of the car and open the trunk. He didn’t move even when he felt the scratchy warmth of one of their old wool blankets being placed carefully over him. ‘Stay on guard, Sammy,’ he whispered as he closed his eyes and prayed for the tremors to end.
He didn’t know that it took almost two hours for his body to stop its spasms, before his muscles finally unwound and he sagged mercifully into sleep. His brother did. Sammy noted every minute throughout that night, as he crouched against the side of the car keeping vigil. I’m here, Dean. Got your back.
~~~
‘Dean?’ Sammy reached determinedly through the open window to shake his brother’s shoulder. ‘Please, Dean? We have to get out of here. It’s going to be light soon. We have to go before the staff arrive and open up. And we still have to get rid of …’
‘I know,’ Dean replied, reluctantly opening his eyes to the gunmetal sky of the approaching dawn. He pushed aside the blanket and twisted around on the seat, making himself look towards what had only yesterday been Annie. ‘We have to finish the job.’
He forced himself not to think as he zipped up his jeans and adjusted the rest of his clothing. ‘We’d better put her in the back seat, Sammy.’ He climbed out of the car, stretching the kinks and memories out of his body as he walked around to the passenger side. ‘Have to take her … it … away from here, then salt and burn … it.’
‘I know,’ Sammy agreed quietly, opening the right hand doors and standing back to allow Dean to move the body from the front to the back seats. He’d had all night to think things through. ‘There’s that new overpass they’re building. The ramp is only half finished …’
‘Good thought, Sammy,’ Dean said with a grim smile as he draped the blanket across the evidence. ‘Let’s do it.’
~~~
It was long past daylight before they completed a task they were all too familiar with. Destroying the body beyond all hope of return in any form, and burying the remains deep in the slope of the new roadway.
‘So, Dean.’ Sammy asked in a final desperate attempt to get his brother back to his normal joking self. ‘You never told me. What was your secret back-up plan?’
‘Jim Murphy.’
‘Pastor Jim? The same Pastor Jim who said last year that he was quite sure you were capable of making your own way into hell, and didn’t need any help from him?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Pastor Jim blessed my condoms.’
‘No way!’
‘Way. He said that he already had three Winchesters to worry about, and felt God would agree that he didn’t need the burden of any more.’
~~~
When a car pulled into close formation behind them as they left the road works Dean didn’t have to look to know it was his father. He ignored Sammy’s worried ‘Dean!’ and concentrated on driving carefully within the speed limits all the way back to the motel.
He knew enough not to wonder how long their father had been with them, watching, guarding as Sammy had done. Their last line of defence.
~~~
Two hours. Unpacking, cleaning the car to the point that a forensic team would have trouble even knowing someone had breathed in it, let alone died. The removal of blood was something they’d all had too much practice with. Showering, forcing themselves to eat. To act normal. Not talking, everyone moving around each other in total silence. Waiting for his father to just say something. Anything. Needing to be punished. Found and left, wanting. In total silence.
Watching Sammy turn helplessly between them, not knowing which of them to protect from the other, before he finally came and stood side-by-side with him. Decision made, for life. Knowing he’d put his little brother at risk for something he thought he was old enough to deal with. Questioning how long his father had really known about Annie. Wondering if this had been a different kind of a training game, if he’d been used as bait after all.
In the end none of that mattered. He’d put Sammy in danger because he thought he could handle it. Looking at his father sitting there in quiet judgement, he knew he’d failed. Winchesters never usually got a chance to learn from their mistakes.
~~~
He knew his father was waiting for him to do something wild. What Dean didn’t expect was to wake up from a dreamless sleep mid afternoon to the sight of John Winchester sitting on a chair he’d pulled up between their beds, quietly cleaning his guns.
Dean got out of bed; passing his father the rod he put his hand out for, before sliding the top dresser drawer out to get some clean clothes. There was no sign of what he’d been wearing for the past few days. Dad had probably burnt them, which was just fine with Dean.
He was tucking the pistol his father handed him in the back of his belt when Sammy turned over, eyes still shut, making one of those all purpose grunts that meant ‘what?’ without needing to be conscious to do it.
‘Ssh, it’s okay, Sammy,’ Dean said, waiting as his brother - lighter still protectively clenched in one tight fist - did a full body roll back to his former position curled up at the bottom of the bed. Dean pulled the wrinkled sheet up over him, ignoring his father’s aborted move to do the same thing.
He caught the keys tossed at him and was walking towards the door before his father broke his silence.
‘We’re leaving at dusk.’
The job was done; it was time.
Dean looked at Sammy one last time, before answering, ‘Yes.’
~~~
Going back to the dump for Annie’s belongings didn’t take long at all.
Neither did burning her photographs.
The book did. Ripping off the covers, and feeding them, then each page individually into the flames took forever. An age of cursing, wishing he didn’t know what it felt like to be a double vet. Hating himself for what he’d done, and even more for what he’d had to ask his brother to do. For making Sammy grow up too fast, when he should have been protecting him.
When finally everything - all evidence, all memory of her was burnt away, he put his hand in the flames for the last time and made one final vow for his brother’s sake. No doubts, no questions, no rebellion, no mistakes ever again.
~~~
It was cold in the car, a clammy icy chill - all the coldness he’d ever wanted. It wrapped itself around him, seeping down into every spent muscle as he drove back to his family. Towards their leaving.
Annie’s laughter. The scent of jasmine in her hair. Her eyes, pupils blown wide with passion, sombre in judgement. The possibility of love. These things he put aside.
One thing, all the nights of his life - the sound of his brother crying for him over a grave.
I will remember.
In Clearest Night
With Clouds Do Mask In Progress
Nor Yield Me Any Grace In Progress
With Clouds Do Mask In Progress
And Die In Thee
Of Flames Be Born In Progress
5,136/26,000 R, Het
Right doesn’t ever count the cost. Should it?
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Part 7
Hitting Highway 60 southeast even for a few miles wasn’t guaranteed to make Annie feel any safer. Dean didn’t feel that good about it either, so the huge HRP signs on either side of the turn-off should have made him relax. Unluckily, if anything, they upped his heart rate. Looked like his body was trying to outvote his brain on this decision. Wasn’t that a bitch?
‘The Preserve? Dean?’
He swung off the highway ignoring Annie’s surprisingly mild query. ‘Got to have somewhere off my father’s radar for tonight. We need time to … talk.’
‘Uh, Dean?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s shut,’ Annie said somewhat redundantly as Dean brought the Impala to a stop in front of the gates.
‘A little thing like a closed sign and a padlock isn’t going to stop me.’
Annie shifted restlessly on the seat. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere else? I don’t like it out here in the middle of desert.’
Alone. That thought came through clearly.
Dean gave her a closer look. Apart from the worried protest when he evicted Sammy, she’d been quiet ever since the library. Ever since that last dream. This wasn’t what he’d been prepared for. Screaming, pleading, fighting, or just making a break for freedom? That he’d been ready for. This dazed non-reaction was almost enough to make him doubt his own instincts.
‘We’re all out of choices, Annie. This is it. We’re damned lucky the place is shut Mondays and Tuesdays. And the Conservancy doesn’t have the money to waste on security, so we’ll have the place to ourselves till tomorrow. Peace and quiet. Best of all? No Dad coming after you with a shotgun to defend my honour. Huh! Now, there’s a change of stereotype.’
‘Great, I’ve been kidnapped by a virgin,’ Annie muttered with slightly more animation before lapsing into a bemused silence again.
‘I heard that,’ Dean bitched, already out of the car and busy trying to finesse the gates. Stupid, rusty, lock. No way, that should have taken him more than twenty seconds, and with Annie watching him too. Why did girls always believe everything Sammy said? It was completely unfair. He was still flushed and mentally cursing his little brother’s big mouth when he pulled the Impala up behind one of the Preserve’s utility sheds.
Dean yanked a docile Annie out into the fresh air, faking an exuberant drum roll on the car’s trunk as he pulled her towards the Visitor’s Center. ‘Ta dah! Nature. What more could you want?’
‘My Mom.’
Dean refused to let that whispered comment upset him. You and me both, sweetheart.
~~~
Deliberately not looking back, Dean tugged Annie further from the car. ‘Come on, we might as well stretch our legs before it gets dark.’
He paused at one of the Preserve’s regulations signs. ‘No swimming, no alcohol, no feeding or disturbing wildlife. No. No. No.’ By the time he got up to “no radios” and “no camping, hunting or fishing,” he knew they took the “sensitive wildlife habitat” concept fairly seriously. There wasn’t anything strictly prohibiting succubi, but that might have come under the “no dogs, horses, or other domestic animals” category. And as for “no firearms,” he decided to view that as more of a suggestion than a direct order.
‘They do let you picnic though,’ he pointed out brightly. ‘Even if it is only in designated areas.’
Annie was giving him one of those “I don’t know what you’re on, but it can’t be good for you” looks. She might be out of it, but every now and then a glimpse of the old Annie showed through the confusion.
Despite his inability to work out exactly what was going on with Annie, he still thought it a bit much when even your passenger? … dream girl? … captive? started to critique you. ‘We don’t have a rug, but let’s go find us a designated area.’ What the hell am I going to do now?
~~~
Designated areas were probably all very well for nature lovers, who knew enough to bring their own pillows, blankets, and picnic baskets.
Dean eyed the benches before flopping down on the grass beside the river and gesturing for Annie to join him. He wasn’t sure if prodding Annie with idle questions in a bid to shake her out of her apathy was a good idea. But he needed the diversion too. Coward. ‘You ever been here before?’
‘School trip not long after I got to Wickenburg. It was nice, lush, you know?’ Annie glanced a bit more interestedly around at the desert oasis.
Dean nodded, it certainly was … green. Nature wasn’t really his thing. He preferred his horizons a lot closer. All that open space made him twitchy. Not that his father paid any attention to that when he assigned his squad of two tracking and wilderness survival drills at every fucking opportunity. He’d trust a wall before a tree at his back any day.
‘Hassayampa means river which flows upside down,’ Annie remarked oddly chattily, almost as if they were both safe back in a school classroom. ‘Something to do with the way the granite bedrock changes and forces this stretch of the underground river to the surface.’
‘Uh huh,’ Dean commented vaguely. He was just grateful for the temporary respite the river gave from the crippling summer heat. ‘Cool. And trees,’ he added intelligently.
Annie sighed, successfully distracted. ‘Yeah, Dean. Palm trees, cottonwood-willow forests, mesquite bosques, and wildflowers and birds …’
‘Whatever,’ Dean said. He refused to consider himself a Valley girl, but he had to admit, as a phrase it was endlessly applicable. Usually he accented it with flipping his brother off. He guessed that would only irritate Annie. Dean didn’t want to know what a pissed off teenage succubus was capable of right then, so he ditched that idea.
He leant backwards on his elbows, looking idly up at all the clouds building up with nowhere to go. Huh. He spent a moment wishing it was possible for it to rain in the middle of the desert. That stupid idea wasn’t enough to keep him from imagining, all too clearly, the steps his father would be taking to find them. Dad would have been hotwiring the closest car capable of a sustained chase at the same time he was on the phone to the school to check on Sammy’s whereabouts. There was no way that a hunter, and John Winchester in particular would not put those pieces together. Dean taking the Impala in broad daylight, Sammy truant, and the missing Lilin girl? Dad would know by now that they had a link with Annie. The exact nature of the connection would be something Dad would be ready to deal with, right after he killed Annie.
Annie, luckily unaware of the undercurrents, had, just like a girl, already moved the conversation onto a completely different topic. ‘They say if you look into the clouds long enough you can see anything. Past, future, God, dreams …’
‘I think I see a chicken,’ Dean interrupted facetiously. ‘No, wait. I can see clearly now - it’s a chicken and a rabbit.’
Annie ignored him. Typically, she wasn’t going to let go of a topic when she found a good one. ‘What did you dream of being when you were growing up?’ Annie asked, almost as if she cared.
Dean was about to say that the rabbit was doing his energetic if confused best to hump the chicken, but he thought that might get him slapped. He could tell by the look on Annie’s face that she was going to wait him out. Girls. The only thing his father hadn’t taught him how to handle. Dean totally discounted that one rambling pain-induced conversation two years earlier while he’d been stitching his father’s leg up without anaesthetic, that had started with Dad saying, ‘Keep it zipped, soldier’ and ended with some embarrassingly explicit directions on what to do if you were idiotic enough to catch the clap.
‘Dean?’
Uh. What the heck, who else was he going to tell? ‘When I was a kid I wanted to be a fireman. Dumb huh? And then my mother was killed, and fire was all I could see. After that I learned to stop wanting things.’
‘I wanted to do … everything,’ she whispered with regret. ‘And now there’s no time for anything.’
‘There’s still time,’ Dean said knowing it was a giant miscalculation, but unable to do anything else in the face of her fate. ‘There’s time for … this.’
~~~
In retrospect consciously choosing to make out with a succubus possibly wasn’t the best idea he had ever come up with. Dean blamed the Garden of Eden in the desert thing the Preserve had going on. He blamed the riverbank, the babbling brook; the birds and the fucking flowers. And Annie - for just being Annie. But most of all, Dean blamed that goddamn rabbit.
~~~
Dean realised after only a few minutes, that dreams could only show you so much. Fantasies always had a way of glossing over the more awkward details. Who kissed whom first? Dean - because he was a guy and a Winchester after all. Did you go slow and kind of sneak up to where you wanted to go? Or did you just stick your tongue immediately down her throat the way they went at it in the movies? That technique hadn’t worked that well for him in the past. But the question was instantly answered when Annie proved she’d seen even more movies than he had. Just before he lost all rational thought Dean admitted that maybe movie geeks were a good thing to have around.
He only managed to come up for air the once to ask, in a more surprised tone than he planned, ‘You … ever done … this before?’
‘No,’ Annie breathed as her mouth continued to ghost downwards.
Fuck. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. You’re a freaking … natural!’ Dean couldn’t help his voice rising just then, because holy shit, that was good!
Those good things had just got to the point where Dean totally didn’t care that he was struggling to get their clothes off (a lot trickier in the heat of the moment than in theory) in the middle of the great outdoors where anyone could see …
Well, shit. Right then clarity got up, scrambled down the bank with a bucket and came back to throw what surely was half of a cold river on him, right where he needed it most. Least. Commonsense was a jealous bitch. Also, zips were really dangerously placed if you thought about it.
Happily, or not (depending on one’s point of view), Annie was Dean’s kind of girl, and part of her at least knew precisely what she wanted, and how to get it.
Hello. Now that was a sure-fire way to regain a guy’s complete attention. So much of his attention that he had some trouble even realising she was speaking to him. Talking? She could form words? Entire coherent sentences? Okay, they were short ones, but that was still plain wrong. Chicks were definitely another species.
‘What’s that?’
Huh? Her hands had sadly moved further north to make small inquisitive pats under his left arm.
‘That.’
Hmmm?
‘Dean?’ Annie was giggling as she squirmed even closer.
Dean was used to the giggle thing, after all he’d been spending a lot of time hanging around Melissa, so he’d quickly learned how to filter that irritant out. Annie’s giggles though, blew straight past annoying, through cute, and landed in a hot zone that Dean hadn’t even known existed.
‘Dean?’
‘Gun,’ Dean gasped helplessly battling buttons and zips. He wished Annie was the kind of girl who wore a skirt. Another part of him tried to hiss ‘Name, rank, and serial number!’ but he managed to ignore it.
‘This?’
? Oh. ‘My knife.’ Come on. Think, you idiot!
‘This?’
Mmm? ‘Your knife.’ He vaguely remembered liking the idea of a girl with a knife. Maybe he should give it ba…
‘This?’
Uh. ‘My back-up …’ Shit! Dean tore himself out from underneath Annie and only just stopped from tumbling into the river. ‘Fuck!’
He scrambled back up the slope to where Annie was now sitting up half naked and more than a bit confused. He could tell just by looking at her that even she wasn’t completely sure how they’d gone from talking to trying to rip each other’s clothes off in minutes. Maybe his father was right about his age making him susceptible. Damn it!
Dean knelt down in front of Annie, watching his shaking fingers button her shirt firmly before he let himself collapse back onto the ground (this time sensibly on his side with easy access to the majority of his weapons) next to her once more. It was long past time that he remembered that he was a Winchester.
The clouds were going berserk above, perhaps in sympathy with his roiling emotions, or maybe they had their own agenda, which had nothing at all to do with his teenage problems. With that in mind there was only one thing he could think of to say. ‘I think the chicken just ate the rabbit.’
~~~
‘I just want to wake up.’
Dean kept his eyes focussed on Annie although he was finally thankfully aware of everything going on around them. About time. They’d been sitting there for hours just looking at each other in the growing darkness, and not saying a word. Neither of them had dared drop off to sleep. And he still hadn’t quite got up the courage to do what he had to do. ‘Annie? You are awake.’
Annie blinked, before inching even further away from him. ‘I’m awake?’
Shit. Dean let his voice drop into what Sammy called his con mode; low and soothing, and capable of convincing anyone of anything. ‘Where do you think you are, honey?’
Annie’s head moved slowly from side to side, frowning at the shadowy bush around them. ‘Not at home?’
‘No, we’re at the Preserve, remember?’ Oh, this wasn’t good at all. ‘Don’t hate me for this, then.’
‘Wha … Ow! That hurt!’
‘I meant it to. Are you with me now?’
‘Uh, yes. I’m awake? We’re really here? And I …’ Annie forgot all about the slap and blushed down at her still somewhat twisted clothing before looking up at him in shock. ‘We almost … and I tried to kill you!’ She was up on her feet now screaming at him horror. Trying to deny what she was now remembering all too clearly.
Dean coughed loudly, almost masking the sound of something in the bushes that had been surprised into sudden movement at her scream. ‘Well, that last bit was a dream. But …’ his voice trailed off before continuing on. ‘We kind of have this problem where the dream you is taking over. The whole succubus thing …’ He didn’t say anything more because it was right there with them both. Her mother. His father. Them.
Annie started despite his attempts not to let the noises spook her, trying to look around in the dark. ‘Did you hear that? Is someone out there?’
‘Trust me, if it was my Dad, you’d never have heard him.’ Right. Not the most comforting thing he could have said. Dean took the time to be seen to listen. He triaged the various noises - water swirling around the reeds, wind through the undergrowth, birds, the skitter of those weird white lizard things, and the stealthier sounds of the various predators moving through the scrub. Everything right where it was supposed to be. ‘Mule deer, javelina, coyote, maybe?’
‘Coyotes?’ Annie was back beside him in a flash.
‘Maybe a mountain lion,’ Dean offered casually as he patted Annie soothingly on the back. He couldn’t believe he was trying to calm down a nervous succubus for Christ’s sake. He kind of figured that if - when - Annie fully matured into one, she could take on any number of those protected animals.
‘Perhaps it’s time to get back to the car. We’ll probably both be a lot safer there.’
It just went to show how unsettled Annie was, that she took that comment at face value.
Dean? He was just grateful he was getting better at lying.
~~~
The one problem about the Impala was something Dean hadn’t predicted. Well, he had thought about it, he just hadn’t factored in the intensity of it. Proximity. Being in such close quarters in the front seat was having its own dangerous effect. Shift to the back seat? No. Oh yeah, we’re a hell of a lot safer here. Think, Dean. He had to remember those goddamn books; the notes his father had taken. His plan.
Sammy’s voice saying, ‘I hate your plan.’
Sammy. Left on his own. Trusted. Dad was so going to kill him for this. Dean figured he had it coming.
~~~
‘Annie?’ Dean tapped her on her hand, bringing her attention off the clock on the dashboard and back to him. ‘Somewhere you have to be? I don’t think we need worry about the curfew police. Only my Dad.’ Damn. There he went again, just saying everything that was in his head. Almost everything. Part of him wanted his Dad to find them now, so he could fix everything. Take responsibility. But he’d worked out that he was the only one who could end it right.
‘It’s Tuesday,’ Annie said obscurely, all expression wiped from her face.
‘Yeah, and we’re both out late on a school night. But you’ve been a.w.o.l. for weeks, so what’s special about today?’
‘It’s my birthday,’ Annie said simply. She glanced back at the clock, calculating. ‘Or it will be in about thirty minutes. My mom said it never counted till the exact second. Called me her midnight baby, said she was too and …’
Oh. Oh. Talk about a plan coming down to the wire. Dean hoped he worked better under pressure.
He smirked at her. Use it. ‘So, how do you want to celebrate? ’ Wow, that had come out even dirtier than he’d meant it to. ‘I mean, here we both are. Alone. And you should do something special, to mark the event, what with you having no …’ Family. Smooth, Dean. Real smooth. Remind her why don’t you?
Astonishingly, Annie didn’t laugh at him, try to kill him, or even smack him in the face. All of which he was expecting. She kept that sad new, remote, gaze fixed on him. Measuring. Thinking. Deciding. Strangely, sex clearly wasn’t the issue, or at least not the deciding factor. Dean found the analytical process downright disturbing. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one judging her?
She nodded once, obviously having made up her mind one way or the other.
Dean decided to tip the scales in his favour with persuasion. ‘You’re cute, it’s your birthday, I love a party, and I don’t see any horns, so why shouldn’t we …’ Fuck? Make love? Just …
‘Just do it?’ she asked huskily. Well, that was sexy. Don’t think about it.
Dean decided to knock the scales right over with a kiss. He knew he’d gotten good - apparently all that practice in his dreams counted, so he was annoyed when Annie stopped right in the middle to twist around, trying to look outside into the night.
‘What?’ Nothing. There’s nothing out there to see.
‘I thought I heard something, thought I could feel something close.’ Annie was shivering again.
‘Nothing. Nothing here but the two of us,’ Dean murmured into her lips.
~~~
In the end it came down to that. The two of them. Both motherless and alone; hurting, angry and looking for something, anyone to take it out on. Someone to hold; whatever happened. Whatever the end.
And it wasn’t perfect, or tidy, or pretty, or any of those things. It wasn’t something that could be categorised as nice, or romantic. It was kisses that went from needy to frantic in seconds. It was removing all your weapons, and placing them on the floor, still within reach. It was looking at Annie’s eyes widen with every gun and blade removed. It was watching her close up when her mother’s knife was put on the seat. Not really a knife after all, he knew that now, and he suspected she did too.
It was clothes ripped open in desperation, but not off because that just took too much time. It was sweaty, and messy, with chins, elbows, knees and feet getting in the way. It was trying to get a condom on without ending everything right then. It was breaking out of a cage. It was not enough room to move, but the creativity to adapt, and make the closeness work. It was not being able to ever get close enough. It was unfolding everything that you were, and becoming more. It was pressure, and heat, and feeling like a thunderstorm was about to break inside you. It was muttered swear words, and even laughter for a minute when nothing looked like it was going to damn well fit where it was supposed to. It was regret for the lack of any more choices. It was loss, and something close to love.
It was Annie’s eyes shifting as he thrust inside her with a sob. It was not being able to stop or even want to, and knowing not to.
It was watching her soul fracture with that the irrevocable change. It was the world turning, and having her take control. It was listening to her taunts. It was losing himself in her at the end, and wanting to go.
It was finally understanding that she could now sense everything around her, and knew exactly who stood out there in the darkness, waiting. It was seeing her head turn that way in need and hunger.
It was fear. It was hearing her laugh as he slid her mother’s knife, her essence, to its true home between her ribs at the moment of their shared release. It was keening with her, sharing her pain and unbelievable joy as she died.
It was bearing witness.
It was risking everything, but that which mattered the most.
~~~
Dean collapsed back against the car door.
‘Dean! Are you okay?’ Sammy reached out to grab open the door.
‘No! Stay there, Sammy. Please. Just stay there.’ Guard my back. Dean brought his knees up to his chest, and clenched his arms around them. Shaking. Why couldn’t he stop shaking?
Sammy stood next to the car in the pouring rain, keeping his gun trained on the passenger seat. ‘Dean? Did she hurt you?’
Dean flinched, ‘No, Sammy. Just. No.’ He contorted into a tighter ball, ramming the knuckles of one fist into his mouth. Biting. Bitter. Couldn’t get rid of her taste. No. Her eyes as she’d mocked him. No. Couldn’t tell if the tears on his face were his or hers. ‘Everyone’s a victim, Dean.’
‘Dean,’ Sammy’s voice sounded scared. ‘Is she dead?’ Afraid, but with enough anger in him to finish her off himself if he had to. To kill anyone that threatened his brother, even someone he’d liked.
‘Yes,’ Dean breathed. ‘It’s over.’ He huddled down further, dropping his head back against the door. Welcoming the coldness of the metal doorframe. Wanting it to seep into him. Needing it to flush out the memories. Safe.
He heard his brother move purposefully around to the rear of the car and open the trunk. He didn’t move even when he felt the scratchy warmth of one of their old wool blankets being placed carefully over him. ‘Stay on guard, Sammy,’ he whispered as he closed his eyes and prayed for the tremors to end.
He didn’t know that it took almost two hours for his body to stop its spasms, before his muscles finally unwound and he sagged mercifully into sleep. His brother did. Sammy noted every minute throughout that night, as he crouched against the side of the car keeping vigil. I’m here, Dean. Got your back.
~~~
‘Dean?’ Sammy reached determinedly through the open window to shake his brother’s shoulder. ‘Please, Dean? We have to get out of here. It’s going to be light soon. We have to go before the staff arrive and open up. And we still have to get rid of …’
‘I know,’ Dean replied, reluctantly opening his eyes to the gunmetal sky of the approaching dawn. He pushed aside the blanket and twisted around on the seat, making himself look towards what had only yesterday been Annie. ‘We have to finish the job.’
He forced himself not to think as he zipped up his jeans and adjusted the rest of his clothing. ‘We’d better put her in the back seat, Sammy.’ He climbed out of the car, stretching the kinks and memories out of his body as he walked around to the passenger side. ‘Have to take her … it … away from here, then salt and burn … it.’
‘I know,’ Sammy agreed quietly, opening the right hand doors and standing back to allow Dean to move the body from the front to the back seats. He’d had all night to think things through. ‘There’s that new overpass they’re building. The ramp is only half finished …’
‘Good thought, Sammy,’ Dean said with a grim smile as he draped the blanket across the evidence. ‘Let’s do it.’
~~~
It was long past daylight before they completed a task they were all too familiar with. Destroying the body beyond all hope of return in any form, and burying the remains deep in the slope of the new roadway.
‘So, Dean.’ Sammy asked in a final desperate attempt to get his brother back to his normal joking self. ‘You never told me. What was your secret back-up plan?’
‘Jim Murphy.’
‘Pastor Jim? The same Pastor Jim who said last year that he was quite sure you were capable of making your own way into hell, and didn’t need any help from him?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Pastor Jim blessed my condoms.’
‘No way!’
‘Way. He said that he already had three Winchesters to worry about, and felt God would agree that he didn’t need the burden of any more.’
~~~
When a car pulled into close formation behind them as they left the road works Dean didn’t have to look to know it was his father. He ignored Sammy’s worried ‘Dean!’ and concentrated on driving carefully within the speed limits all the way back to the motel.
He knew enough not to wonder how long their father had been with them, watching, guarding as Sammy had done. Their last line of defence.
~~~
Two hours. Unpacking, cleaning the car to the point that a forensic team would have trouble even knowing someone had breathed in it, let alone died. The removal of blood was something they’d all had too much practice with. Showering, forcing themselves to eat. To act normal. Not talking, everyone moving around each other in total silence. Waiting for his father to just say something. Anything. Needing to be punished. Found and left, wanting. In total silence.
Watching Sammy turn helplessly between them, not knowing which of them to protect from the other, before he finally came and stood side-by-side with him. Decision made, for life. Knowing he’d put his little brother at risk for something he thought he was old enough to deal with. Questioning how long his father had really known about Annie. Wondering if this had been a different kind of a training game, if he’d been used as bait after all.
In the end none of that mattered. He’d put Sammy in danger because he thought he could handle it. Looking at his father sitting there in quiet judgement, he knew he’d failed. Winchesters never usually got a chance to learn from their mistakes.
~~~
He knew his father was waiting for him to do something wild. What Dean didn’t expect was to wake up from a dreamless sleep mid afternoon to the sight of John Winchester sitting on a chair he’d pulled up between their beds, quietly cleaning his guns.
Dean got out of bed; passing his father the rod he put his hand out for, before sliding the top dresser drawer out to get some clean clothes. There was no sign of what he’d been wearing for the past few days. Dad had probably burnt them, which was just fine with Dean.
He was tucking the pistol his father handed him in the back of his belt when Sammy turned over, eyes still shut, making one of those all purpose grunts that meant ‘what?’ without needing to be conscious to do it.
‘Ssh, it’s okay, Sammy,’ Dean said, waiting as his brother - lighter still protectively clenched in one tight fist - did a full body roll back to his former position curled up at the bottom of the bed. Dean pulled the wrinkled sheet up over him, ignoring his father’s aborted move to do the same thing.
He caught the keys tossed at him and was walking towards the door before his father broke his silence.
‘We’re leaving at dusk.’
The job was done; it was time.
Dean looked at Sammy one last time, before answering, ‘Yes.’
~~~
Going back to the dump for Annie’s belongings didn’t take long at all.
Neither did burning her photographs.
The book did. Ripping off the covers, and feeding them, then each page individually into the flames took forever. An age of cursing, wishing he didn’t know what it felt like to be a double vet. Hating himself for what he’d done, and even more for what he’d had to ask his brother to do. For making Sammy grow up too fast, when he should have been protecting him.
When finally everything - all evidence, all memory of her was burnt away, he put his hand in the flames for the last time and made one final vow for his brother’s sake. No doubts, no questions, no rebellion, no mistakes ever again.
~~~
It was cold in the car, a clammy icy chill - all the coldness he’d ever wanted. It wrapped itself around him, seeping down into every spent muscle as he drove back to his family. Towards their leaving.
Annie’s laughter. The scent of jasmine in her hair. Her eyes, pupils blown wide with passion, sombre in judgement. The possibility of love. These things he put aside.
One thing, all the nights of his life - the sound of his brother crying for him over a grave.
I will remember.
In Clearest Night
With Clouds Do Mask In Progress
Nor Yield Me Any Grace In Progress
With Clouds Do Mask In Progress
And Die In Thee
Of Flames Be Born In Progress