"Kid, are you sure you don't have a key for this thing?" Dean was standing at the top of the staircase in the bunker, holding Leila's case in his hands.

"You're right, I was just going to let you break the case when I had the key the entire time. Silly me." Leila's arms were crossed as she looked up at Dean, Sam beside her. "Drop it, Deano."

Dean rolled his eyes. "You have been hanging out with Gabriel," he muttered under his breath.

Sam had made them wait until the next day to try and open the case, Dean and Leila were both exhausted from the trip to Fairfax. Leila was wrapped in a flannel of Dean's he had lent her that morning, along with a pair of Charlie's jeans. They still hung from her frame, but they were the closest size to Leila in the bunker. Leila hadn't taken many clothes from Al's when she left.

"Fore!" Dean said, dropping the case. The crack as the case hit the floor sounded promising. He jogged down the stairs as Sam and Leila knelt by the case.

Leila opened it and immediately began to dig through the contents, without saying a word to Sam or Dean. They all knew she didn't owe them any words, either. From what Sam could tell of the contents inside, it mainly looked like government documents. Birth certificates, passports, old drivers licenses. Sam and Dean both crouched beside her.

"Leila," Sam said, "Can I ask how this managed to survive the fire? I mean, it's a case..."

Leila let out a sad laugh that was basically just a breath through her nose. "My dad was a conspiracy theorist. Always thought about the worst thing that could possibly happen, and planned his life accordingly."

"What does that mean?" Dean asked.

"It means he kept what he considered important," Leila said, holding up a stack of papers. "In a case that could survive anything spare, like, a nuclear bomb. I just... wanted to see what he put in here."

Leila froze when she found a photo album. Not because she hadn't seen the photos, or because it was the only photos she had left from the house. Because on the front it said: In loving memory, 1998-2015 in cursive letters Leila wished she couldn't read.

Leila looked up at both Sam and Dean, who both had pained expressions. Though, she could barely see them through the tears that built up in her eyes. "They..." Leila's voice caught in her throat. "They held a funeral without a body?"

Sam swallowed hard. "It was probably closure."

"Kid," Dean said, "that doesn't mean they didn't love you."

Leila stared at her hands, not wanting to look at either of them. "I thought about going back. To see them."

"This isn't your fault," Sam said.

"It is," Leila said. "And I don't need you to tell me that it wasn't."

"You didn't do any of this," Sam said, "you know that, right? You thought it was the right thing to do."

"Sammy," Dean said, standing up to his full height. "Can I talk to you in the other room?"

"Uh." Sam looked up at his brother, who gave him a look that didn't need any words to be translated. "Sure."

"We'll be right back, kid," Dean said. "Okay?"

Leila nodded, still holding the closed photo album in her hands.

Sam and Dean walked into the next room, far enough away that Leila couldn't hear them. Which was exactly what she needed—time to herself.

Dean crossed his arms when he and Sam had come to a stop. "What do you think we should do?"

Sam stared at the floor before looking at Dean. "I was going to say we shouldn't leave her alone, but apparently that's not what we're doing."

"Man, come on," Dean said. "I can't be the only one who's noticed what this bitch is playing at. I'm not talking about the kid."

"What are you talking about?" Sam asked.

"A fire burns down a family home," Dean said, "she's left with a couple photographs to remember who she lost."

"Dean, this isn't like—"

"It's exactly like back home," Dean said. "Losing mom? In a house fire?"

"Leila just lost her entire family," Sam said.

Dean scoffed. "She lost them a long time ago when they threw a funeral for a kid they didn't even know was dead."

"Dean," Sam said, "We have to find a way to support her. This can't be easy."

"Feeling like it's her fault?" Dean asked. "I know, man. We need to stop Saint Douchebag before she does this to someone else. Before she comes back for the kid. We're lucky she didn't meet us in Fairfax."

"I know that," Sam said, "but she doesn't need that right now. We can deal with that, how do we help her?"

"We help her by getting rid of that batshit crazy Saint once and for all."

"Dean—"

Dean stuffed his hand in his pocket. "Sammy, if I had the chance to get rid of Yellow Eyes as soon as he killed mom, I would've done it. I don't want her to have to sit for twenty freaking years trying to figure out how to get rid of that bitch when we can do it. We're probably lucky she hasn't left to go do it by herself at this point."

"How do we do it?" Sam asked, holding his hands out to his sides. " I mean, have we even figured that out yet?"

Dean sighed. "We're gonna have to."

*****

Leila hadn't seen these photos in ages. Her smiling with her dad, baking with her mom in the kitchen, her sister and her lighting the menorah on the last day of Hanukkah. Moments she'd lost in time because they were before Saint Dymphna.

They were before everything.

In the oldest photo, Leila was barely eleven. Any photos after that, they'd left out of the album. At twelve, Leila had started losing weight. They avoided using any photos that showed her with her eating disorder.

She wasn't even a quarter of the way through the album when she threw it across the room—it hit a nearby bookshelf. They didn't want to remember her as her, they wanted to remember her as she was supposed to be. They wanted to remember her as what they thought normal meant.

Fighting tears hadn't worked, so Leila gave into them. They were because everyone was dead and because she couldn't help them, they were for Dymphna taking over her brain and for her family trying to cure her even in death. Missing people didn't excuse what they had done before they were dead. Leila knew that, now.

Pulling her knees up to her chest, she wrapped her arms around her shins. Forehead resting on her knees, Leila gave into it. Gave into everything. Her emotions didn't always control her, but for once in her goddamn life, she was going to let them. Crying had always felt like a burden—like feeling how she felt was bad because someone else had it worse.

Leila was still certain someone had it worse than she did.

But she was going to cry her damn heart out if it meant she felt better when she was done. Because this was agony. Leila wanted to go back to Alisabeth's house and cry in her arms. They were comforting and mothering and all she needed. But Al was two states over, and Leila couldn't leave the Winchesters again. Not right now.

A small nose nudged into Leila's arm. She threw her arms around McFly, who nuzzled into her shoulder. Leila clamped her eyes shut to keep from watching her tears roll down the fur on McFly's sleek coat. Burying her hands in said coat, Leila held McFly tight enough to make her feel better, but not enough to hurt the German Shepard. And McFly sat there, unwavering, because that's what dogs did. Comforted. Without having to say any words at all.

"Kid," Dean said, heavy boots walking into the room. "How're you doing?"

"Not good." Leila was hoping McFly's fur would muffle her voice. Judging by the fact she heard Dean sit down on the other side of the dog, she'd had no such luck. Leila swiped tears off her cheeks, hoping Dean hadn't noticed.

And he was at least nice enough not to say anything to her if he had. Instead, he said, "There's not a lot that I can say to make things better."

Leila looked at him with teary eyes, still holding onto McFly like she was worried that if she let go, the dog would burn like her family had. "Then don't, Dean. That's not your job."

"I know there's been a lot of shit going on," Dean said, his hand absentmindedly scratching between McFly's ears, "and it's hard to, you know, comprehend what's been going on without driving yourself nuts. But I want to let you know that we're going to fix this. All of it. Somehow."

"This isn't your fight," Leila said. "You don't have to do that."

"Saint Douchebag made it our fight," Dean said. "Taking you away?"

"I agreed to it."

"She convinced you."

"No," Leila said, "Cas and Gabriel did."

"She had everyone fooled," Dean said, "it wasn't just you. That means she's powerful. And we're going to put a bullet in her damn head."

"Does that usually work?" Leila asked. "Bullets?"

"Well," Dean said, tilting his head to the side. "Depends on the bullet. Silver usually works for werewolves, salt for spirits... and, you know, we used to have a gun that killed everything in between."

"The Colt?" Leila asked.

Dean looked at Leila, his eyebrows knitted together. There was something in his eyes that Leila didn't dare ask about. "How do you know about the Colt?" Dean asked.

"I read about it in one of Al's books," Leila said, "over Hanukkah. I read a lot about lore."

"Were you looking for something?" Dean asked.

"I mean," Leila said, looking at McFly so she couldn't meet his eyes. "Not intentionally. But if something came up about Saints..."

"You stopped and read it." Dean nodded his head. "Anything important we should know?"

"There's not a lot of lore on Saints." Leila sniffed back a few more tears that threatened to fall. "Just that they get their power from people believing in them. Which makes them all-powerful because religion is... you know, a super powerful thing."

"So to stop her..." Dean trailed off, his mind racing in a million different directions at once.

"We're going to have to get her weak," Leila said, "by making people not believe in her."

Dean sighed, running a hand over his face. "And how in the hell are we supposed to do that?"

"She's a part of Catholicism," Leila said, "if I read it right. I thought she was Pagan, but... but from what I read I think it was her dad who was? She..." Leila swallowed hard. "Dymphna's from Christianity."

Dean sighed. "That's the biggest religion in the freakin' world. Of course."

"Twenty-nine point eight one percent of the world," Leila said. Dean gave her a questioning look, which Leila shrugged at. "I did a lot of reading at Alisabeth's."

"Anything else?"

"Even though she's Irish," Leila said, "she's buried here."

"Here?"

"Well, not here here." Leila ran her hands through McFly's fur, the dog slurped a kiss up her cheek with her wet tongue. "She's buried in Ohio. St. Mary's Church or something like that."

Dean's eyes widened. "She's in Ohio?"

Leila nodded. "Buried there, yeah. Is that important? Alisabeth wouldn't let me read any books on hunting, just lore. She said the hunting books were journals, and they were too personal to read."

Dean scrambled to his feet fast enough that he startled McFly. "Kid, grab your coat... or, one of my coats. Whatever. Grab a coat."

"Why?" Leila slowly rose to her feet, hands still on McFly. "Dean, what's going on."

"We need to get to Ohio."

*****

[ a.n. ] I did too much research for this chapter to be as short as it is. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed. Let me know what you think in the comments, and vote and fan if you enjoyed.

Until next time,
Jordin