My Tears Ricochet

The pizzeria was dimly lit, nearly empty. Just the rattle of rain on the windows, the low hum of a fridge in the corner, and the slow, deliberate scrape of a fork against a plate.

Dean stepped inside, the door creaking shut behind him. The scythe tucked under his coat began to burn — a sudden, searing heat. He hissed, dropped it without thinking. Before it even hit the tile, it vanished. When Dean looked up, it had reappeared — laid gently across the table like it had always belonged there.

Death sat calmly beside it, slicing through a thin slice of pizza with surgical precision.

“Thanks for returning that,” he said without looking up.

Dean didn’t respond right away. His heart was hammering, though he’d be damned before he let it show. He stepped forward and sat, every instinct screaming that this wasn’t a conversation, it was a reckoning.

“Is this the part where you kill me?” he asked, voice tighter than he meant it to be.

Death looked up then — slowly — and smiled like a glacier cracking.

“You have an inflated sense of your importance,” he said. “To a thing like me… you’re a bacterium. An accident of chemistry. A brief flicker of synapses in the dark.”

Dean swallowed thickly.

Death leaned back, voice still calm, still steady.

“One tiny planet in a fledgling system, clinging to life with its nails — and yet here you are, making demands. Fascinating.”

He gestured toward the plate.

“Eat. The pizza’s good.”

Dean reached for it automatically, trying not to feel like a child being indulged. He took a bite. It was good. Not that it mattered.

“I need your ring,” he said.

A beat passed. Death’s eyes didn’t narrow — they dimmed, like the idea bored him.

“It’s not mine anymore.”

Dean froze.

“What do you mean?”

Death set his fork down gently.

“I mean I relinquished it. It belongs to another now.”

Dean’s mind spun.

“Who?” But even as he asked, he already knew.

Death saw the recognition dawn in his eyes.

“Halley,” he said. “Yes. She holds it now.”

Dean sat back, the chair creaking beneath him.

“She told me what she was,” he murmured. “I just… I didn’t think she meant it literally.”

Death’s smile vanished.

“No. Of course you didn’t. You saw power and called it danger. You saw her — truly saw her — and still raised a weapon.”

“I didn’t shoot.”

“But you intended to.”

The words hit harder than Dean expected. He looked away.

Death went on, voice colder now, older somehow — the sound of winter winds over a grave.

“She is not Death as I am. She is its master. She bears the ring not because it was given… but because she earned it. Through pain. Through silence. Through survival.”

He leaned forward, one hand brushing the rim of his plate.

“And yet… somehow, a dying scrap of meat like you managed to hurt her in a way I never could. That,” he added with mild curiosity, “confounds even me.”

Dean didn’t speak. He couldn’t.

Death studied him, eyes like dark glass.

“If you want the ring,” he said, “ask her.”

“Will she give it to me?”

A pause.

“She shouldn’t.”

Dean flinched, barely.

Death rose slowly from his chair, every movement deliberate, exact. The scythe vanished from the table, melting into nothing as if it had never existed.

“She is not a weapon for you to wield. Not a key. Not an artifact to trade for your brother’s soul or your redemption.”

He looked down at Dean like he was still that bacterium — twitching under a microscope.

“She is beyond you now, Dean Winchester.”

He turned, pausing only once at the door.

“And if you dare speak of sacrifice, know this — she already made hers.”

Then Death was gone, the door swinging closed behind him.

Dean sat in silence, the crust of the pizza growing cold on the plate.

—————————-

She opened the door after the third knock.

Her hair was in a messy bun, just like always when she didn’t care to impress anyone — but the bangs still covered the lightning scar, the one she used to hide instinctively. She didn’t bother now.

Only thing different was the way she looked at him.

Cold.

She wore an oversized Gryffindor sweatshirt that hung halfway to her thighs. Biker shorts peeked out beneath the hem, and she was barefoot — feet planted flat on the wood floor like she hadn’t moved all day. A tea mug steamed in her hand.

“Came to finish the job?”

Dean actually flinched at that.

Wasn’t expecting it.

Her eyes flicked over him, unimpressed.

She rolled her eyes. “Like you could.”

She turned and walked back inside, not bothering to look if he followed. She left the door open — not out of warmth, but dismissal.

He stepped in.

The place was… cozy. Surprising, given everything. Firelight painted the floor. There were blankets tossed over the back of the couch, a half-finished book face-down on the coffee table, a kettle humming quietly from the small kitchen.

It felt lived in. Not by her.

By someone who used to be her.

Halley sat down on the armrest of the couch, sipped her tea.

Dean stayed standing.

“How did you find me?”

“Crowley.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Wow. You trust the demon?” She blew across the rim of her mug. “Insulting.”

Dean shifted his weight. “I needed to find you.”

“Congratulations. You did.”

Silence stretched between them, heavy and familiar.

Halley leaned back slightly, watching him like he was some old scar she hadn’t quite decided to cover up or dig out.

“So?” she asked. “Let’s hear it. What’s the world-ending emergency this time?”

Dean cleared his throat. “I talked to Death.”

She didn’t blink.

“Said the ring’s not his anymore.”

“I’m aware.”

“He said I had to ask you for it.”

She hummed into her tea like that was the most satisfying thing she’d heard all day.

“I need it,” he said, quiet now. “Please.”

Her gaze didn’t soften.

“You want my ring.” She set the mug down, slowly. “That’s rich, Dean. Considering how fast you threw me away the second you realized what I really was.”

“I didn’t throw you away.”

“You raised a gun to my chest.”

“I didn’t pull the trigger.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said flatly. “I guess that means it doesn’t count.”

He didn’t answer.

She twisted the ring on her pointing finger, lifting it so he can see it. “Everyone wants the ring.”

He looked at it like he was gonna reach for it. She curled her fingers.

“You know,” she said. “It’s not just magic. It’s not just power. It’s a vow. It’s everything I was willing to share with you — before you made me feel like a freak for carrying it.”

He looked down.

“Like every other bloody muggle.”

Her voice didn’t crack. It didn’t even rise. But something about the way she said it made Dean feel smaller than anything hell had ever thrown at him.

He stared at the floor. The wood grain. The firelight bending over her bare feet.

“You know what hurt the most?” she said after a moment, tilting her head like she was deciding whether to gut him or let him bleed himself dry. “It wasn’t the gun. It wasn’t the silence. It wasn’t even the look in your eyes when you realized I was something you couldn’t control.”

Dean looked up. Slowly.

“It was how fast you decided I wasn’t real.”

She uncurled her fingers, slowly pulling the ring off her hand. The metal made the faintest sound as it left her skin — like it missed her already.

“I was never pretending, Dean. I was never hiding. You just didn’t look hard enough to see what was in front of you.”

She walked toward him, feet soundless on the wood.

Held the ring up between them.

“This could’ve meant something.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” Her voice was quiet, sharp. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t be here now asking for it after everything.”

“I didn’t come for you.”

“Well,” she said, a bitter smile flickering across her lips, “you certainly made that clear.”

Dean didn’t try to explain himself. There was no version of the truth that would make this easier to swallow.

“I came for the ring,” he said. “Because the world’s ending. Because there’s no other way.”

Her expression didn’t change.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I haven’t.”

They stood in silence for a beat.

Then—

“I am not going to give you this.”

His head snapped up so fast, like he was so sure that she was going to give it to him.
“I need it. Lucifer will-“

“Yeah yeah.” She waved a hand, cutting him off. “I don’t care.”

Dean blinked, stunned into silence.

Halley’s eyes narrowed, her voice flat. “You think just because you need something, you get to have it?” She stepped forward — not threatening, just deliberate. “You needed me too, Dean. Didn’t stop you from throwing me in the dirt the second I made you uncomfortable.”

He tried again. “This isn’t about us—”

“Everything is about us,” she snapped. “You don’t get to erase it just because it’s inconvenient now.”

The room fell quiet, heavy with what they weren’t saying.

Then Halley looked down at the ring on her finger, twisting it idly.

“You know what this is?” she asked, voice softer but no less sharp. “It’s not a weapon. It’s not some cheat code to stop the Devil. It’s a piece of me. A part of who I am. The part I let you see. The part you walked away from with a loaded gun and no hesitation.”

Dean looked down.

She stared at him for a long, steady beat. Then finally said:

“If you want it, you’re going to have to take it. I’m not giving it to you. Not after everything.”

Dean looked up at her.

“Do you want me to fight you?”

She didn’t laugh. That might have been easier.

She didn’t scoff either, didn’t roll her eyes or make some sarcastic jab to break the moment. Instead, Halley just stood there — still, straight-backed, mug forgotten on the side table, the fire casting amber across the sharp line of her jaw.

Her fingers closed slowly around the ring.

“No,” she said, and her voice was flat. “I want you to understand that taking something from me isn’t the same as being given it.”

Dean’s throat was tight. “I didn’t come to hurt you.”

“No,” she said again, quieter this time. “You already did that.”

The air in the room shifted, dense and close. Her power wasn’t flaring — she didn’t need it to. There was something far colder in the way she looked at him now: not as a threat, but as someone irrelevant. Like something that had already passed through her life and left wreckage behind.

She stepped closer.

Close enough that he could see the tired under her eyes, the hollowness that no amount of time could fill.

“You think I didn’t know what you were going to do?” she whispered. “That night. When you packed quietly and kissed my forehead like it meant something. Like a man going to war instead of a man running from the truth.”

Dean’s hands were fists. He didn’t even realize it until she glanced down at them.

“You never even gave me the courtesy of a goodbye.” Her voice was razor-sharp now. “Just silence. Just judgment. Like I’d tricked you into loving me.”

He stepped forward before he could stop himself, the words catching in his throat. “Halley—”

She raised the ring.

Held it out, just inches from his chest.

“You want it?”

He nodded once. A breath. That’s all he could give her.

Her fingers tightened.

“Then take it,” she said, low and bitter. “Be who you are. Take what you need. Use me one last time to save a world you never thought I belonged in.”

He reached out. Hesitated.

And then took it.

The second the ring left her fingers, the air in the room seemed to drop in temperature. The bond — whatever trace of her soul had once echoed inside that ring — went with it.

It was his now.

And she felt colder for it.

Dean stood there, ring clenched in his hand.

Halley turned her back.

She didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t ask if it was worth it.

She just walked away. Back toward the hearth. Back into the quiet.

“The door’s behind you,” she said without turning. “Close it on your way out.”

Dean lingered for one second longer.

Just one.

Then he left.

And the sound of the door shutting was soft — but final.