[h3] Dean Winchester [/h3]

Dean let the images play over in his head, staring out over the crowd after he opened his eyes.  Seeing Esme shoving the door open, flashbacks ran through his mind in vivid color.  They were flashbacks of the night she left.  In passing, he had mentioned that they should get a place together, a conversation that he had no idea would be so heavy.

Yet.  It was heavy.  He could still see the letter she left, while he was out picking up supplies.  He could still see her spaces in the motel room, where her shoes and belongings had normally been kept, empty.  He could still feel the stabbing pain of someone you love…gone.  

It was a feeling that he had dealt with when he had done the same exact thing to Mika, only under slightly angrier circumstances.  He and Esme hadn’t even had a massive blow up.  There hadn’t been betrayal, or perceived betrayal.  It was just…a misunderstanding.

Snapping out of his thoughts, just as the door was closing gently behind her, Dean bolted off the stage, running down the small set of steps and through the parting sea of people.  He never looked at Nat or Mika as he ran with tunnel vision, straight for the door.

Bursting through it, he looked around the parking lot frantically, determined that regardless of her feelings toward him, and what this force was making him do, he wasn’t letting her leave him, with no closure, again.  As he stopped and looked around the lot, his chest rose and fell heavily.  Regardless of what would happen between them, or the fact that he absolutely belonged to Mika, at this point in his life, he felt that familiar helplessness boiling up in the tears that burned his tired eyes, and then his eyes fell on her retreating form.

“Esme, wait!”, he called out to her, his pace picking up against the gravel.  He closed the distance between them carefully, and reached a hand out to grab her left bicep, spinning her around to him, “Don’t…Don’t leave.  I didn’t know that was going to happen.  I don’t even know what’s happening to me right now.  But you can’t just leave…again.  Please.”

As he stood there, holding her arm, he blinked the tears away, realizing that this was deeper than just their relationship.  This was, yet again, going to throw a trust wrench in his relationship with Mika.  The couple was used to wrenches, at this point in their lives, and could usually brush them off.  But this…

This was baggage that he and Mika hadn’t discussed.  It was a time of their lives that they rarely wanted to revisit together, because both had made decisions, and had circumstances bring them back together, that were too hard to talk about.  But he knew, the communication would need to happen, for the same reason that he and Esme NEEDED to have a conversation about their relationship, and whether they could keep one at all, with each other, at this point.

He reached forward, releasing her arm, and placed a hand gently on her shoulder, turning her to him, “Talk to me…”