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Current Location: cooper farm

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This time when the black Impala tears down the road and into the driveway of the Cooper farm, it only has the one occupant, and he is a very pissed-off looking occupant.

Jo's freaking psychotic friends and their stupid freaking ideas, and Sam and his goddamn family, and goddamn Lawrence and freaking alterna-Dean -- he's had enough.

Dean's looking for something to hunt. And he's heard Oracle's got the best information around.

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"There's a, uh... there's a ghost in it." Sokka shrugs, smile a little hopeless. "Seriously. She can't touch anything, you can barely hear her or see her, but she's there."

"Oh, is that all?"

Ghosts he can deal with. He straightens up.

"She bugging people? I can get rid of it."

Sokka's glare is sharp, cold, and his hand is on the knife at his hip before his mind even registers it.

"What? What do you mean, get rid of?"

"We're talking spirit here, yeah? Dead chick hangin' around where she shouldn't be?" Dean leans back against the Impala, watching Sokka curiously. "Most people'd want it gone. We salt and burn the bones, she'll move on or whatever."

"There aren't any bones and no one wants her gone. How do you know all this?"

This is important.

"It's kinda my job." Dean shrugs. It can't be any crazier than everything else in this crazy world. "All the nightmare stuff, bogeymen and monsters and ghosts -- it's all real. Me and S-- my family, we're hunters."

Sokka frowns, gaze drifting away from Dean. Hunters. Hunters know how to kill but... part of knowing how to kill meant knowing how to save.

"What about bringing her back?"

He looks up again, sharp and desperate, needy.

"Do you know how to bring her back?"

Dean looks at him for several seconds, eyes narrowed, analysing.

"It's y'sister, isn't it." Not really a question, but he wants to hear the answer anyway.

"Yes."

No hesitation, not if it will get Dean to answer him. Sokka's half out of the car already, dark blue eyes imploring.

"Tell me how to do it."

Dean's expression shifts, torn, angry, hurting.

Harshly: "What's dead should stay dead."

"She's not supposed to be dead," Sokka replies, sharp and quick - he's had this argument in his own head over and over again. "She's not even supposed to be here, this isn't even her world."

She's not supposed to die, not while he's still alive.

"You know how to do it, don't you? Tell me."

Dad didn't even have to tell me. It was just always my responsibility, you know? It's like I had one job ... and I screwed it up.

Dean swallows, eyes down, trying not to think.

What is it with you Winchesters, so eager to throw yourselves down the pit!?

"You're not gonna like it."

Sokka laughs, sharp and short and gives Dean an incredulous stare.

"My sister is dead and haunting a kitchen for a lot of reasons and each one of them is basically my fault. I don't like much of anything that has to do with this whole situation."

But he has to take care of it. Better him than the-- the other him, the one who hadn't screwed up yet, who still had a chance.

Dean walks around to the passenger seat of Sokka,s jeep and starts flicking through the stacks of books.

Some of them are crap. They get thrown to the ground. Some of them have useful information, and get tossed into the back seat for keeps.

And while he's going through them, he talks.

"Demons. There's demons at most crossroads. They'll make deals.

"It's not pretty. I -- Sam was --

"Ten years is th'usual deal. Not always. I got one. M'dad, he didn't get ... didn't get anythin'.

"Here." A book with an illustration on the front of a vast spectral hound, red-eyed and slavering and filthy, death in its eyes. "That's what'll come for you. Not fun. Trust me, not fun."

Sokka looks at the illustration with a set jaw, sad, worried eyes. Then up to Dean.

"...I get her for ten years, for one year, for half a second... and then I have to die. That's the bargain."

"That's what usually happens when you sell y'soul, yeah." Sarcasm is much easier than anything else.

"Whatever you ask for. People've asked for talent. Money. Women. Whatever. They'll give it to you. Then they've got you. For ever."

He swallows sharply.

"Hell's not just a word."

Sokka snorts, sharp and unamused - disgusted. People doing so much, giving up everything for something stupid. Talent, money, women.

...women.

He swallows hard and shakes his head, reaching for the book. "That won't work. But... it's a place to start from. Thanks."

"It works," Dean says, misunderstanding. He passes the book over grimly. "It worked. Got m'brother back."

Sokka shakes his head and takes the book, setting it in his lap - but the last sentence gets him to look up, jaw set, and nodding grimly.

He could have guessed that, from the way Dean had talked about the consequences.

"No, I mean... my sister just lost her husband, and my girlfriend, she's got no one but us. And..." He sighs and sets the book in the back with the other ones Dean had picked out, avoiding the older man's eyes. "And my sister - the... the ghost - she asked me not to do this. She didn't want me to.

"I can't die or she'll fuck it up trying to get me back, too."

"Yeah ... Sam wasn't real pleased either," Dean admits, arms folded and eyes on the ground.

"But he was alive."

"If I can get her that way, I want her to stay that way," Sokka replies, eyes on the books.

The hellhound snarls back at him.

"I just... if I give her an excuse to argue it, she'll sell herself right back for me and then I won't have any way to get her back. But if I find the right way, if I find something she can live with, then she won't fight it. She'll let it go and just... live."

Dean is quiet for a while, flicking through a book, the only sound the rustling of paper.

"Trickster gods," he suggests. "Power've life and death. Be careful if y'messing with gods, though."

It doesn't tend to end well.

Sokka nods, sitting up a little to try and see what Dean's looking at in the book. "Okay... do they ever want anything but your life?"

"Tricksters? They don't want anything at all." Dean's expression is dark. "Except to fuck with people."

Sokka makes a face, thoughtful and reaching back in the car for one of the books Dean had decided was useful. "So there's nothing I can do to insure that they won't just take it all back if they think that'd be funnier. Fuck."