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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐄𝐍

𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘰𝘯

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Delaney sighed as she played with the beer bottle in her hands. She really wasn't one to drink much even though she was legally able to, only drinking if it was with the boys. However, Delaney needed something right now to try and block out the thoughts that raced through her head. Part of her started to believe that Dean couldn't be saved and she was just running on a never ending goose chase. At this rate, she didn't even think Randy would be any help even though he promised that he could save Dean.

"There you are. What are you doing?" Dean asked, approaching Delaney at the bar with Sam at his side.

Delaney glanced up and waved the beer bottle around. "What does it look like I'm doing? Making a pizza?"

Dean furrowed his eyebrows and glanced at the clock above Delaney's head. "It's two in the afternoon."

Delaney shrugged and took a long sip from her beer, placing it back on the bar when it was finished. It was her only beer and didn't feel the effects of it or anything at this point if she were honest. "Five o'clock somewhere."

Sam frowned and took a seat on one side of Delaney while Dean sat on the other. Both boy noticed a slight dip in Delaney's mood and attitude since their witch hunt that Randy saved their asses from. "What's going on with you, Delly? You've been off for days now. You can talk to us."

"I tried, boys, I really did."

"To do what?"

"To save you," Delaney responded, eyes flickering to Dean and he almost keeled over at the brokenness in her eyes. "I mean, where you're going... what you're gonna become. I can't stop it and neither can Sammy. I'm starting to think maybe even Randy can't stop it. The thing is, no one can save you, Dean."

"What I've been telling you," Dean reminded, taking the glass of whiskey the bartender handed to him once Dean finally flagged him down.

Delaney scoffed and shook her head, peeling at the sticker that sat on her bottle. "I mean, no one can save you because don't want to be saved. How can you care so little about yourself? What's wrong with you? It's like you almost don't even care how Sam and I feel about this whole situation."

Dean stared at Delaney for a long moment and his eyes flickered to Sam, exchanging a silent look with him. He knew that Delaney was having a really difficult time with he fact he'd be going to the pit in just a few short months. Hell, he was even worried about it, but he had to keep a strong face for his siblings. If he started to freak out, then which one of them would be strong? Dean promised John that he'd take care of Delaney and he couldn't do that if he was freaking out about going down.

"Della - " Dean was cut off by his phone ringing in his back pocket and he sighed, taking it out and placing the device to his ear. "Hello? ... Yes, this is Mr. Snyderson.... What?... Where?"

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Delaney stood above Bobby's hospital bed, lower lip trembling as she gripped his hand into hers. After Dean had received the phone call at the bar, the trio had rushed into the Impala and over to Pittsburgh where Bobby apparently had been taken to the hospital after he was found unresponsive in his motel room. He looked so peaceful and almost as if he were just asleep.

"What's the diagnosis?" Sam asked the doctor who stood on the other side of the bed from the three siblings.

"We've tested everything we could think to test. He seems perfectly healthy."

"Except he's comatose," Dean remarked, gesturing to the unresponsive male.

"Mr. Snyderson, you're his emergency contact. Anything we should know? Any illnesses?"

Dean shook his head and shrugged. "Uh, no. He never gets sick. I mean, he never even catches a cold."

Sam chewed on his lower lip as his eyes bounced from Bobby and back to the doctor. "Doc, is there anything you can do?"

The doctor looked at the three siblings solemnly and Delaney didn't even want to hear the bad news he was clearly about to tell them. "Look, I'm sorry, but we don't know what's causing it, so we don't know to treat it. He just... went to sleep and didn't wake up."

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The three siblings entered the motel room that Bobby had stayed in when he was found by the maid. It took a lot of convincing from Dean and Sam to get Delaney to leave Bobby's side, reminding her they had to figure out what was keeping Bobby in a comatose state. It was obvious the man had been working a job and the only way to figure out what the job was, they had to go scope out Bobby's motel room.

The boys searched around the room to see if there were any newspaper clippings or research they could on the tables and drawers. There had to be something int he room that could lead them to whatever Bobby had been hunting in Pittsburgh. Delaney walked over to the closet to search through Bobby's clothes when she noticed something behind them. She pushed them out of the way and saw all of Bobby's research taped to the wall of the closet. 

"Boys, how about this?"

Dean and Sam walked over to the closet and stood behind Delaney, both chuckling at the sight of all the research and newspaper clippings Bobby had compiled. There were pictures of roots, mushrooms, seeds and a map where Bobby had written PITTSBURGH in big letters and underlined it, post-its with addresses and numbers and a piece of paper about a plant.

"Good old Bobby - always covering up his tracks."

"You make heads or tails of any of this?" Sam asked Dean, eyes skimming all the research as he tried to put the pieces together of what Bobby had been after.

Dean reached forward and took a piece of paper about one of the plants off the wall. "Silene Capensis, which means absolutely nothing to me."

Delaney walked closer to the wall and noticed an obit hung in the middle, taking the clipping down from the wall so she could read it properly. "Dr. Walter Gregg, sixty-four, university neurologist."

"How'd he bite it?" Dean asked.

"Um, actually, they don't know," Delaney informed, skimming the obit quickly but found nothing. "They say he just went to sleep and didn't wake up. Just like Uncle Bobby."

Sam sighed and ran a hand over his face, suddenly seeming exhausted from everything. "So, let's say Bobby was looking into Doc's death, you know, hunting after something..."

"That started hunting him," Dean finished for Sam. "Alright, Della, stay here. See if you can make heads or tails of this."

"What are you guys gonna do?"

"Sammy and I will looking into the Good Doctor."

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After about an hour of the boys being gone, Dean had called Delaney to inform her that the doctor had been doing some dark experiments on people for sleep. He gave one of the graduate students at the university a yellow tea that made him have dreams that almost matched up to an acid trip. He immediately stopped the experiment afterwards because the whole thing freaked him out. Dean had asked her to look into the experiments and see if they could match up to what Bobby looked into and to meet him and Sam at the hospital once she had everything.

Thankfully, the hospital wasn't all that far from the motel room so Delaney didn't necessarily need the Impala to get there and was able to walk the few blocks to the hospital. She walked into Bobby's room to see the boys sat on either side of the bed, just staring at Bobby as if that would get him to wake up.

"How is he?"

Dean ran a hand over his face and exhaled heavily, pushing himself up from his chair to walk over to Delaney who stood at the table at the foot of Bobby's face. "No change yet. What you got, baby girl?"

Delaney flipped open the file she brought with all the research and clippings that both Bobby found and the recent ones she compiled while the boys interviewed people. "Well, considering what you told me about the doc's experiments, Bobby's wall is starting to make a hell of a lot more sense."

"How so?" Sam asked, walking over to Delaney and peering over her shoulder at the information. 

"This plant, Silene Capensis, also known as African Dream Root, it's been used by Shamen and Medicine Men for centuries."

"Let me guess - they dose up, bust out the didgeridoos, and start kicking around the hacky," Dean guessed, earning a slight laugh from Delaney at his half baked explanation.

"Um, not exactly. If you believe the legends, it's used for dream-walking. I mean, entering another person's dreams, poking around in their heads. Dream-walking is just the tip of the iceberg. This dream root is some serious mojo. You take enough of it, with enough practice, you can become a regular Freddy Krueger. You can control anything. You could turn bad dreams good. You could turn good dreams bad."

Sam was silent for a long moment as his brain slowly began to piece together what Delaney meant. "Like killing someone in their sleep? So let's say this doctor was testing stuff on his patients, Tim Leary style..."

"Somebody gets pissed at him, decides to give him a little dream visit, he goes nighty-night," Dean finished for Sam, finally catching up to both of his siblings' trains of thought. "What about Bobby? I mean, if the killer came after him then how is he still alive?"

"I don't know..." Delaney trailed off, staring at Bobby sadly. She wanted to save him from this nightmare disguised as a daydream more than anything. He was like a father to her and there was no way that Delaney would let him die. Dean may not be able to be saved, but Bobby sure as hell could be and she would be damned if she just let him die.

"So, how do we find our homicidal sandman?" Dean asked, motioning for his siblings to follow him out of the room so they could do more work on stopping this demonic sandman. "Anyone who knew the doctor had access to his dream shrooms."

"Maybe one of his test subjects or something?" Delaney suggested.

"Possible, but his work was real sketchy. I mean... we don't know how many subjects he had, or who all of them were," Sam responded with a huff. 

Delaney scoffed lightly and ran a hand through her hair frustratedly. "Any other time we'd be calling Bobby and asking him for help right now." She was suddenly stopped along with Sam by Dean gripping their wrists and Delaney shot him an odd look. "What, Dean?"

"You're right. Let's go talk to him."

"Uh, sure, but I think we might find the conversation a bit one-sided," Sam quipped, not understanding why Dean would waste his time trying to talk to Bobby when he couldn't even respond to them.

"Not if we're tripping on Dream Shrooms."

Delaney balked at the idea of using the mushrooms that more than likely landed Bobby where he was now. Had Dean seriously lost his mind? Sure, he was going down the drain soon and didn't have to worry about... well... anything, but this was still nuts. "You're joking, right? You wanna go dream walking inside Bobby's head?"

"Why not? Maybe we could help," Dean defended, clearly not seeing anything wrong with his psychotic plan.

"Dean, we have no idea what could be crawling around in there," Sam argued.

"Well, how bad could it be?"

"Bad," Delaney informed him, defiantly shaking her head at the mere thought of putting any of those plants in her mouth. She sighed when Dean gave both Sam and her a look that said he wasn't messing around. It was Bobby after all. "Fine, Dean, but unless you forgot... we have no African Dream Roots. So, unless you know someone can score some..."

Dean rolled his eyes and grunted at the only person who could possibly help them. "Crap."

"What?"

"Bela."

"Bela? Crap," Delaney whined, not wanting to deal with the British woman ever again. She had caused the Winchesters enough problems and she really rather not deal with her again. Who knew what issues she could get them into this time. "Please don't tell me you're actually thinking about asking her for a favor, Dee."

"I'm feeling dirty just thinking about it, but yeah."

Delaney huffed as she watched the two boys walk down the hallway to make their way back towards the Impala in the parking lot. Couldn't they ever just have an easy way to do things? Why did everything they did have to be complicated?

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Once the three siblings got back to the motel room, they started to do a bit more research into the roots and what they'd have to do when they actually had to go into Bobby's dream. Sam had fallen asleep at the desk only a few minutes after they got back. Dean and Delaney allowed him to sleep for a bit because they knew he was just as emotionally and physically drained as they were. Plus, Dean had to call up Bela anyway... which went about as well as Delaney had expected. She wasn't going to help them.

Sam eventually sat up in his place at the desk and wiped the drool from his mouth, the smile that had been on his face instantly disappearing. As if realizing whatever he dreamt about was actually a dream. He made a disgusted sound at the sight of his drool drenched hand and wiped it against his shirt.

"Dude, you were out," Dean chuckled at the sight of Sam's disorientation. "You were making some serious happy noises. Who were you dreaming about? Angelina Jolie?"

"What? No. No one," Sam quickly defended and Delaney rose an eyebrow at Sam's tense shoulders. Who did he dream about that he didn't want Delaney or Dean to know about?

"Brad Pitt?" Delaney tried, biting the end of her pen with a playful smirk.

"No! No. Guys, it doesn't matter."

Dean rose an amused eyebrow at Sam and shrugged, turning back to the research in his hands that he and Delaney had been going over the past half hour. "Whatever, dude. I called Bela while you slept."

"Bela? What'd she, uh... you know, say? She... gonna... help us?"

"Shockingly, no, which puts us back to square one," Delaney explained, leaning more against Dean's arm from her spot on the couch. She ignored Dean who wiggled his arm to try and get her off him, but she was too comfortable. No way in hell was she moving. "Dean and I have been trying to decipher the doctor's notes. Unfortunately, he has worse handwriting than you do. You gonna come help Della and I with this stuff?"

Sam shifted uncomfortably on the chair and leant forward on the desk. "Yeah... just give me a sec."

Delaney's face scrunched up as she realized why Sam didn't want to move and took full advantage to answer the door to allow Sam to fix his situation. She opened the door and groaned when Bela stood on the other side, flashing the Brit a fake smile. "Well, if it isn't the Wicked Bitch of the West."

"Cute," Bela mused and stepped into the motel room with a wink. "Dean called me remember?"

"I remember you turning me down," Dean remarked, standing up from his spot on the couch and walking over to stand next to Delaney.

"Well, I'm just full of surprises," Bela said and turned to Sam who awkwardly waved at her, earning odd glances from the three stood before him. "Anyways, I brought you your African Dream Root. Nasty stuff and not easy to come by."

"Why the sudden change of heart?" Delaney asked, inspecting the glass jar Bela placed in her hand. 

Bela shot Dean and Delaney a look of innocence as she shrugged off her black trench coat. "What? I can't do something nice every once in a while?"

Dean crossed his arms and jerked his head towards the jar in Delaney's hands. "I want to know the strings are before you attach 'em."

"You said this was for Bobby Singer, right? Well, I'm doing it for him, not you."

"Bobby? Why?"

Bela was quiet for a long moment, clearly not wanting to disclose why she was helping out Bobby in the first place. "He saved my life once... in Flagstaff. I screwed up and he saved me, okay? Are you satisfied?"

Dean plucked the glass jar from Delaney's hands and took his time to inspect the contents of the jar, seemingly satisfied with what Bela brought them. "Maybe."

"So, when do we go on this little magical mystery tour?"

"Oh, you're not going anywhere. I don't trust you enough in my car, much less Bobby's head. No offense," Dean replied, placing the jar into the safe inside the closet and locking it shut.

"None taken, but it's two am. Where am I supposed to go?"

Delaney shrugged and flashed Bela a mock sympathetic look. "Get a room, cupcake."

Bela let out a frustrated screech before she grabbed her and stormed out of the room with Sam yelling after her that it was nice to see her.

Delaney and Dean stared at Sam in confusion. Seriously, what was going on with this guy today?

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A bit later, Delaney walked over to the beds where Dean and Sam sat as she tried to balance the three drinks with the Dream Root in her hands. The boys each quickly took one before Delaney could drop all of them and Delaney took a seat on the bed next to Dean. She stared warily into the glass, but knew she had to do this for Bobby.

"Uh, should we dim the lights and synch up Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon?" Dean asked and Sam chuckled at the joke, while Delaney stared at him oddly.

"Why would we do that?"

Dean shot Delaney a disappointed look. "Seriously, what did you do during college?"

Delaney shot her hand out before either of the boys could take a sip of their Dream Root. She fumbled in her back pocket for a small envelope and sprinkled some hair into both of the boys' glasses before she dumped the last few pieces into her own. "Couldn't forget that."

Sam scrunched up his face as he stared down at the floating pieces of hair inside of his drink. "What the hell is that?"

"Bobby's hair. It's how we control whose dream we enter. We need to drink some of their, uh, body," Delaney explained and she was just as disgusted at the boys were. The concoction was already gross as it was, but adding hair to the mix just made it even worse.

"Well, guess the hair of the dog is better than other parts of the body," Dean conceded and the three reluctantly drank their Dream Root. 

Delaney gagged as the disgusting liquid slid down her throat and she had to fight against the urge to go to the bathroom to vomit it back up. She forced the drink to stay down and glanced to Dean and Sam who seemed to have just as hard a time as she did with swallowing the drink. "You feel anything?"

"Nope."

"Nothing."

Dean lifted his glass and inspected the inside of it, even though there was nothing in there for him to look at. "Maybe we got some bad schwag."

The sound of thunder rumbling outside snapped Delaney out of her thoughts and she ran over to the window to see that the rain outside came from the ground instead of the sky. "Uh, when did it start raining upside down?" She turned to face the boys again, stumbling back into the window - or rather, the fireplace - when she saw that her and the boys had somehow landed in someone's house. 

"Okay, I don't know what's weirder - the fact we're in Bobby's head or that he's dreaming of Better Homes and Gardens," Dean retorted, scanning the room around them.

"No, wait a second," Delaney mumbled, scanning the living room she stood in as it seemed familiar to her. It looked like the study in Bobby's house minus the dirt, the room was actually painted a maroon color and there was different furniture inside the room. "Look at this place without the paint job, more cluttered, dusty, books all over the place. We're in Uncle Bobby's house."

"Bobby!" Dean called, slowly walking around the room that was a study in the real world. 

Delaney froze by the archway that lead to the staircase just outside the room and the entryway to the house. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as if someone watched her and she turned to the window, but didn't see anybody outside. Just the dark night and Bobby's backyard area. Once she was sure that no one was outside the window, Delaney slowly turned back around and walked over to the bottom of the stairs. "Uncle Bobby?"

No response came from upstairs which worried Delaney that none of them received a single response from anything. Unless Bobby was the thing that she felt watch her from outside the window.

"Boys, I'm gonna go check outside."

"No, no, no. Stay close," Sam shot down immediately, not wanting to split up from either Dean or Delaney in Bobby's head. Who knew what would happen if they split up and went separate ways in here?

"I'll be fine. You two look around in here. We have to find him somehow," Delaney argued, already starting to back away towards the front door.

"Don't do anything stupid, Della, you hear me?" Dean yelled after her.

Delaney shot Dean and Sam two thumbs up before she turned on her heel and ran out of the house to take a look around outside where she felt the eyes of someone watch her. However, when Delaney stepped outside, everything was super bright and the sun beat down on the world outside. A total contrast to the weather that was outside the window when Delaney was just inside.

Bobby's house is a bright blue, with flowers all around, and sound of birds chirping could be heard in the distance. Delaney walked out onto the porch, a confused look on her face as she noticed the walkway - which is well-manicured and neatly lined with all kinds of bright, beautiful flowers - lead to the street where a shiny new car sat. While Delaney took all this in, the door suddenly slammed shut behind her. She turned around at the sound and tried to open the door again, but it locked itself from the inside somehow.

"Dean? Sam?" Delaney yelled, running over to the window a few feet away from the front door. No matter how many times Delaney banged on the window or yelled for her brothers, they didn't turn around to face her and entered the next room as if she didn't call for them. Odd. "Guess you're on your own, Delaney."

Delaney walked down the porch steps and rounded the side of the house to see an expansive backyard, filled with even more flowers and grass. She walked along a clothes line that hung drying sheets. It was almost as if she were in a freaky, happy-go-lucky movie with all the happy things. 

Suddenly, Delaney was hit in the chest and shoulder with a bat, sending her flying to the ground with a grunt. She squinted up at the man above her that held a bat and he couldn't be much older than her. "Who the hell are you?"

"Who are you? You don't belong here."

"You're one to talk," Delaney groaned, pushing herself up onto her elbows. "You're in my uncle's head."

"Well, your uncle is a psycho, unfortunately," the guy responded, still clutching the bat in his hand. "This is self-defense. He came after me. H-he wanted to hurt me."

Delaney flinched as a hot pain ran dow her shoulder and she gripped onto her shoulder, pushing herself up into a sitting position. "Maybe that's because you're a killer."

"You should be nicer to me. In here, you're just an insect. I'm a god," the guy taunted and raised the bat above his head. "Sweet dreams, princess."

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Delaney shot up in her bed just before the bat could come down on her head, chest heaving as she tried to get air back in her lungs. She glanced to the boys who had shot up along side her and they all looked equally confused. Though, Dean and Sam also had a look of sorrow on their faces mixed in with the confusion.

"What? What did you see?" Delaney asked, worried Bobby maybe had died or worse while the boys were off on their own.

"Bobby's wife. She... she was possessed and he killed her since he didn't know how else to save her," Dean informed, a prominent frown on his face. It was obvious that he had felt awful for Bobby because none of them knew anything about his wife, just that her name was Karen. He never spoke about her and now Delaney understood why. It was rather traumatizing. "Did you see anything?"

"Oh, you mean a psychotic student that tried to kill me?" Delaney scoffed and ran a hand over her face in exasperation. "I'm guessing it was the student you and Sammy went to talk to earlier. I should go see if I can find him at the university. Maybe he's behind this whole thing."

Sam nodded and ran his clammy hands along his jeans to dry them. "Yeah, just meet Dean and I at the hospital.

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Not that Delaney should be necessarily shocked by the fact that she didn't find the kid at his dorm room, but she still did feel a bit of shock and frustration. None of his friends knew where he was either and a few of the professors had even said that he didn't show up for class that day. So, the kid could be just about anywhere at this rate.

"So, uh, stoner boy wasn't in his dorm," Delaney announced, walking into the hospital room and rushing over to Bobby when she saw he was up. "Good to see you up, Uncle Bobby."

"Thanks to you and the boys," Bobby replied, kissing the side of her head before they both pulled away. He picked up a photo and stared down at it. "However, Jeremy Frost's not a stoner kid. Full on genius. Hundred and sixty IQ - which is saying something, considering his dad took a baseball bat to his head. Here's Father of the Year. Died before Jeremy turned ten."

Delaney took the piece of paper Bobby handed over to her and she saw it was a copy of Henry Frost's driver's license. He had the same vacant look in his eyes that Jeremy had when he glared down at Delaney in Bobby's head. It was a bit unsettling if Delaney were honest. "Looks like a real sweetheart."

"Injury gave Jeremy Charcot-Wilbrand. He hasn't dreamt since."

"Till he started dosing the dream drug," Dean recalled from when he and Sam spoke to Jeremy in his dorm. "How did he know how to dig up your worst nightmare and throw it at you?"

"Hey, he was rooting around in my skull. God knows what he saw."

Delaney crossed her arms and exchanged a look with her brothers. "Yeah, how'd he get in there in the first place? Isn't he supposed to have some of your DNA, your hair, or something?"

"Yeah, before I knew it was him, he offered me a beer. I drank it. Dumbest friggin' thing," Bobby chastised himself softly.

"Oh, I don't know. It wasn't that dumb," Dean chuckled awkwardly.

Delaney furrowed her eyebrows when she noticed Sam shoot Dean a worried look and Dean tense up at the mention of Bobby drinking a beer that Jeremy offered him. Her eyes bounced between the two boys while her mind tried to place puzzle pieces together on why Sam looked worried and why Dean seemed tense. "Dean, you didn't..."

"I was thirsty!"

"Well, that's just great, Dean! Now he can come after you or Uncle Bobby," Delaney snapped at Dean, wondering how he could have been so stupid to offer a drink from a stranger. A stranger who he had been investigating as part of their hunt. With Sam there she would have thought he would have stopped Dean, but she guessed not. Then again... Dean didn't really listen to anyone but himself.

"Now we just have to find him first," Dean countered.

Bobby sighed and he seemed to grow a more worried by the second. "We better work fast and coffee up  because the one thing we cannot do is fall asleep."

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The Winchesters spent the next two days searching for Jeremy. No matter what stone they turned over, it was just one dead end after another. Hell, they even had Bela help them out and she was no use because no matter what she did, Bela came up with the same results they did. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack and Delaney just wanted it to end already. Dean was extra on edge because he hadn't slept in two days and Delaney and Sam tried to their best to stay up with him, taking shifts to be a buddy for Dean and make sure he had company and didn't fall asleep. 

"This Jeremy kid isn't a friggin' ghost! Where the hell could he be?" Dean snapped, driving the Impala down the dark, empty road.

"Dee, you sure you don't want me to drive?" Delaney asked, poking her head into the front seat while Sam continued to stare at Dean with the same worry filled expression he had been for the past two days. "You seem a little.... caffeinated."

"Thanks for the news flash, Edison!" Dean barked at Delaney, sighing frustratedly when his cell phone rang on the seat next to him. He fumbled with it for a few seconds before he picked it up and placed it on speaker. "Tell me you guys got something!"

"Strip club was a bust, huh? Damn, that was our last lead."

Dean growled and slammed his fist down on the steering wheel, eliciting a loud honk from it. "What the hell, Bobby?!"

"Don't yell at me, boy. I'm working my ass off here."

"Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just - I'm - I'm tired," Dean relented and took a minute to calm himself down.

"Well, who ain't?"

"What's Bela got?" Delaney asked, propping her chin on the back of the seat so Bobby could hear her properly.

It was quiet for a long moment while Bobby muted the call to ask Bela about her side of the hunt. Delaney crossed everything she possibly could that Bela's spirit board or whatever it was she said she could use next would work.

"She's got nothing."

"Great! Well, I'm just gonna go blow my brains out now!" Dean huffed, hanging up the phone and throwing it down on the seat angrily. "Dammit!" 

Sam sat up in the front as Dean pulled the car over to the side of the road, parking the car in the cover of the trees. "What are you doing, Dean?"

Dean made himself comfortable in his seat and leant his head back against the back of the seat, shutting his eyes. "Alright, that's it. I'm done and am taking a long overdue nap."

Delaney opened Dean's for him and shoved his head back up so he wasn't laid back any longer, glaring at him. "Are you dumb? Jeremy could come after you."

"That's the idea, Della. We can't find him, so let him come to me."

"On his own turf? Where he's like a god?" Sam balked, staring at Dean with wide eyes. "Are you nuts? You can't do that alone."

Delaney caught onto what Sam's plan was and reached for Dean's head with him, both pulling out a bit of Dean's hair, who wined in protest about the two digging around in his head. She and Sam ignored his cries and Sam made the liquid for him and Delaney, handing her the Dream Root when he was finished. Grimacing, Delaney threw back the Dream Root as if it were a shot and forced it to stay down.

Just like last time with Bobby, the Dream Root happened almost instantly and Delaney's eyes snapped open to find herself and the boys still in the Impala. She wiped at her eyes and sat up in the backseat where she laid down. "Boys?" 

Dean and Sam jolted up when Delaney pushed on both of their shoulders and they groaned, sitting up in the front seat. Both clearly not happy about being awake. "What are we still doing here?"

"I don't know," Delaney mumbled just as a sound was heard outside the Impala. "Someone's out there, though." 

The three Winchesters stepped out of the Impala, walking a few feet ahead and halting when they were a few feet from Lisa - the woman who Dean clearly still had feelings for - and music played from the radio that was on the picnic blanket next to Lisa. She would have thought to see Cassie instead of Lisa, but it did make sense to her since Dean had thought Lisa's son was hers. Ultimately crushed when he found out Ben wasn't, in fact, his at all. 

"Hey. You gonna sit down?" Lisa asked Dean, gesturing to the blanket beneath her with her wine glass. "Hurry up because we have to pick up Ben from baseball in an hour."

"I never had this dream before," Dean quickly defended and Delaney could tell that was a lie. "Della, stop looking at me like that!"

Delaney quickly glanced away from Dean, averting her worried and sorrowful gaze away from him. "Sorry."

"Dean, I love you," Lisa said before she flickered away and left behind the dirt ground of the woods and silence.

"Where'd she go?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Delaney noticed movement and turned to see Jeremy hidden in the shadows of the trees to her left. She alerted both of her brothers before she took off after Jeremy into the woods, Sam and Dean directly behind her. Due to his long legs, Jeremy was quicker than Delaney and the boys couldn't even keep up with him even though their legs were just about as long as Jeremy's.

Delaney pushed her way out into a clearing and paused when she noticed Dean wasn't with her or Sam. She glanced around the clearing to see nothing but the trees around her and Sam. "Sammy, where's Dean?"

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A bang from outside snapped Delaney out of her sleep and found herself in the front seat where Sam had been previously. Odd. She turned to see it was just her and Dean in the car and quickly hit Dean's arm a few times. "Dee, we have to go! I don't know where Sammy went or how I ended up in the front seat."

However, when Dean turned around, Delaney saw that it was Jeremy instead and he gave her a dark look. He jammed the baseball bat into her stomach and Delaney groaned, pushing the door open and tried to crawl away from Jeremy while trying to get the air back into her system.

"Sweetheart, you and your brother just don't know when to leave well enough alone, do you?"

Delaney groaned and continued to push herself away from Jeremy who charged after her. "You're a psycho."

"You're wrong."

"Yeah? Tell that to Dr. Gregg."

Jeremy froze in his step and hitched the bat over his shoulder, allowing Delaney to stop crawling away for the moment. "The doc? No, no, the doc's the one who got me hooked on this stuff. Then he took it away, but I needed it, and he wouldn't let me have it."

"So you kill him?"

"I can dream again. You know what that's like - not to be able to dream? Y-you never rest - not really. I-it's like I've been awake for fifteen years."

Delaney's chest heave as she breathed heavily, a throbbing pain in her left side where the bat hit her extra hard. "And let me guess - that makes you go crazy."

"I just want to be left alone," Jeremy said, leaning down towards Delaney and holding the bat out towards her. "I just want to dream."

"Sorry. Can't do that."

"That's the wrong answer."

Delaney was suddenly pulled flat against the ground and found herself tied to railroad spikes, unable to move an inch. Though, that didn't necessarily stop Delaney from struggling to get out of them.

"I'm getting better and better at this. Stronger and stronger all the time," Jeremy stated, twirling the bat in his hand with a sadistic smirk on his face. "You and your brothers... you're not waking up... not this time. I'm not gonna let you."

Delaney cried out in pain when Jeremy swung down on Delaney's legs and knees with the bat repeatedly. No matter how much she tried to pry her tiny wrists out of the bindings, it was no use. Any time she loosened the rope just the tiniest bit, the rope would tighten itself all over again as if Delaney didn't loosen it in the first place. 

"You can't stop me," Jeremy threatened Delaney, poking the bat underneath her chin when he had enough of beating her legs to nothing. "There is nothing I can't do in here."

Delaney panted as she glowered up at Jeremy and if looks could kill, Jeremy would be dead and Delaney, Dean and Sam would be out of this sick mess. "Because of the Dream Root."

"That's right."

"Yeah? Well, you're forgetting something."

Jeremy raised the bat again, preparing to hit Delaney again once they were done with this little back and forth. "Oh yeah? What's that?"

Delaney smirked up at Jeremy and winked. "I took the Dream Root too, sweetheart."

"Jeremy?! Jeremy!"

Jeremy whirled around to see his dad stood behind him, slowly backing away. "No... no..."

The ropes that held Delaney still vanished and Delaney didn't waste time in grabbing the bat and whacked Jeremy around the head, knocking him to the ground. She bashed his head two more times and threw the bat to the side. "Sweet dreams, princess."

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Delaney and the boys had woken up after she bashed Jeremy's head in. Dean seemed shaken up after he woke up and Delaney and Sam both tried to ask him what happened as they both had their own encounters with Jeremy to worry about while in Dean's head. Delaney's just wound up being the one to end the whole thing. Though, Dean shot down any talk about what Jeremy projected for him and Delaney decided to just leave Dean be. Trying to worm something out of him only made him want to keep it hidden away deeper.

They met up with Bobby later on and Delaney offered to show Bobby to where their motel room was while the boys checked into the new room, none of them wanting to sleep in the same room they dream walked in. It was just... unsettling.

"So, you did a little dream-weaving of your own in there, huh?" Bobby asked Delaney who tossed the motel room key up in the air before she caught it and tossed it in the air again.

"Yeah, uh, I just sort of concentrated, and it happened, you know?"

"Didn't have anything to do with... you know, your psychic stuff?"

Delaney froze outside the motel room door and fiddled with the motel room key. She hadn't actually thought about how she managed to turn the dream around on Jeremy the way she had. It was almost like she didn't have to think about to do it - it just happened. "Uh.... no... I don't think so."

"Good. Good," Bobby nodded and took the key from Delaney to make his way into the motel room. 

"You guys seen Bela?" Dean asked, turning to Delaney and Bobby as they entered the room. "She's not answering her phone and she's not in her room."

"Maybe she took off or something," Delaney suggested, not really caring where the British woman went. She was just glad that she wouldn't have to deal with Bela any longer. Two days was long enough for her, thank you very much. "Who cares?"

"Well, if you ask me what's weird, is why she helped us in the first place," Bobby chimed in.

Sam furrowed his eyebrows and leant back against the dresser behind him, crossing his arms. "I thought you saved her life, you know, in Flagstaff?"

"The thing in Flagstaff was an amulet. I gave her a good deal, that's all," Bobby responded and his eyes bounced between the trio. "You three best check pockets and I don't mean your actual ones."

Dean's eyes widened and he cursed to himself, rushing over to the safe in the closet and opening it to see it was empty. "The bitch stole the Colt! Pack your stuff up, Sam and Della."

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to hunt the bitch down."

Once the Winchesters were all packed up and ready to go, they made their way to the Impala outside and dropping their stuff into the trunk of the car. It was now daylight outside and the sun burned Delaney's eyes that already burned from the lack of sleep. 

"Hey, guys, I was wondering - when you were in my head... what did you see?"

"Just Jeremy," Delaney replied, grabbing her phone from the duffle bag and placing it in her back pocket. "He kept me separated from you and Sammy. Easier to beat our brains out that way, I guess. What about you, Dee? You never said."

"Nothing. I was looking for you two the whole time," Dean informed, shutting the trunk closed and motioning for the two to get in the car with him. He sat in the driver's seat and started the ignition, but didn't move from his spot in the lot. "Guys?"

"Yeah, Dee?" Delaney asked, poking her head into the front seat. 

Dean licked his lips as he stared out the windshield, squinting in deep thought. "I've been doing some thinking and... well, the thing is... I don't want to die. I don't want to go to Hell."

Delaney's features softened at Dean's confession, something that clearly took a lot for him to admit to both her and Sam. She was glad that he finally opened up about his fear of going down to the pit. Of course, Delaney already knew she was scared because had been calling Dean out on his bullshit the past few months now. "Alright, yeah. We'll find a way to save you, Dee."

"Together," Sam added, smiling softly at his siblings and patting Dean on the shoulder to let him know he was there for him no matter what. Just like Dean had always been there for Delaney and Sam no matter what.

AUTHORS NOTE

Hi hey hello

Welp, that was a TRIP! It's getting really good up in here and it'll only get crazier in these last few (SIX) chapters of book three, peeps. Buckle up cause this bout to get REAL bumpy

ALSO, YES THE CHAPTER TITLE IS AN AEROSMITH SONG TITLE BECAUSE IT'S A GREAT SONG AND MY BROTHER TOLD ME TO DO IT WOOPS