Memory is such a capricious thing.

One moment, you are living in the present; your co-worker of two years has made a joke about your boss and you laugh, your routine fortified, and you fax in a case file, a process you have committedly retained so that it is almost mindless.

And then, suddenly, your senses are engaged and you smell something that reminds you of home, 4 thousand miles away. Or you feel an embroidered cloth and you are reminded of a wedding day you keep wanting to forget.

Or you hear a voice, and your heart squeezes, remembering the hurt and the pleasure and tornado of emotion it once endured because of the man behind that voice.  It takes almost nothing, and suddenly you are reliving your past

"Cassie Robinson."

Kita's eyes, as big as balloons behind her glasses, dart between Cassie and the disembodied voice of Dean Winchester at her back.

She breathes, quick and seamless, before her features are schooled into the coolest smile and she turns to face him, "Dean Winchester?", the name does nothing to lessen the grip on her heart or the cotton like thickness in her throat, but she won't let them know that.

There is a moment of unbroken eye contact; he initiates it, and she can't escape all the memory that floods up from the recesses of her mind. She hopes it doesn't last as long as it feels, because the word eternity comes to mind the longer her eyes connect to his, "And Sam Winchester; what a surprise."

"Yeah", Dean swallows thickly and she tries not to muse about how similar their reactions to all this are, "yeah, it is; how are you, Cassie?"

Cassie breathes around all the memories building up in her chest. Her heart is sitting in an iron vice grip that's almost ten years old and burns, "I'm fine, Dean." She doesn't ask him what brings him to town, because the minute she heard about the axe murders with the masks, she thought, absentmindedly, maybe that's one of those things. Every so often, a case will cross her path that reminds her of the strange happenings back in Ohio and that familiar squeeze will come back.

But Cassie has a life now; she has learned to pack up those memories, push them back, to not live in the past.

It's hard to keep a memory in the past when it's standing right in front of you.

"Is there something we can help you two with?", Kita's Indian accent only highlight her no-nonsense tone.

Dean has not lost his brass, staring openly at Cassie. It is Sam who relays that they were looking for obituary articles from the news station from the previous year. Kita flags down one of the resident clerks, and Sam accompanies her.

Dean stays.

"Wow", Dean says, and Cassie can tell he does not know what to do with his hands, "it's really you."

"It's really me", she says, all that cool posturing firmly in place, and she thanks the high heavens that there is a five-foot desk between them.

"It's good to see you", his charming smile, which is the most familiar thing about him in this moment, makes that vice around her heart hurt a little less, "you haven't changed a bit."

"I wear my hair a little different", she shrugs, falling into a step she doesn't mean to, "I'm also married", she lies, because does it count if you are separated? That's none of his business.

She hoped it would help; telling him that she was married, implying that she had moved on, but that vice grip is still clutching her heart and the look that passes his eyes does not make it better. It's something like acceptance, and a number of other things reminiscent of regret. The grip finally cracks her heart, just a little bit, when she says that.

"Lucky guy", he says, and he holds his mouth the way he used to whenever they'd talk about the little brother he'd felt like he let down or the father he could never live up to.

"Yeah", she nods, and she feels her own well sculpted mask begin to fade, "yeah, you working?"

He nods, his smile redolent, "Yeah I am. You left Ohio; is this home, now?"

She shrugs, "traveling journalism; home is where the four-star hotel is". The laugh they share is genuine and related because they both know this life now, and something akin to pride passes through his eyes. "You are still too easy to read, you know."

"Am I?", he shakes his head, shuffling a little closer to the desk and putting his hands on the table top, "that's not what they tell me."

She laughs, the words leaving her lips before she can pass them through the cool mask, "They must not know you very well."

His smile is disarming, but his words are loaded, "No one knows me like you do."

And just like that, it's '04 and they're lying on their backs in a gray pick-up Dean swears he didn't steal, drinking and making love, and naming their imaginary children after constellations, for fun. Suddenly, it's '06 and he's saying goodbye, promising it wont be the last time.

And then those ten years he missed fill themselves in on top of those memories. As strong as they are, nothing can compete with time. "Used to", she smiles, hoping her brick wall doesn't bruise him as she throws it up, "I used to know you. It's been ten years, Dean. Things change."

His eyes, which are the windows to his soul and tell her everything, are inescapable, "not everything."

She doesn't remember when Sam comes back, or when the Winchester's bid she and Kita a farewell, but later that night, when she gets a call from the concierge that she's got a visitor, she thinks that maybe this memory won't be so easy to pack up and leave behind. Maybe this memory wants to be relieved.

Maybe, she'll want to relive it.