FIC: Metaphysical (Supernatural AU, Gen, R, 5/8)
Previous Part | Master Post
Chicago, Illinois
The message at the front desk was addressed to Frank Merriwell, which Dean got on his second try, even though he was pretty sure he was no longer wanted under his real name in Chicago anyway. That had all been a misunderstanding, and surely forgotten by now.
"He's rented a house," said Dean, reading the note with some amusement, not to mention curiosity. "Apparently he intends to get comfortable and stay a while."
"If he's comfortable, that means we're going to be comfortable," said Sam, plucking the address from Dean's fingers so he could read it himself. "I'm less sold on the idea of staying."
"Well, let's see what he's got before we decide anything," said Dean, taking the note back and tucking it away with all the others he'd collected over the past weeks. "He said we'd be interested in what's going on here. Maybe we will be."
"Even if we are, nothing comes before our goal, Dean. Not even an interesting hunt for Uncle Bobby."
"Let's just find out, Sam," said Dean. Bobby was pretty sharp, after all. If he thought they'd be interested, odds were they would.
It was Chicago, so Dean's automobile wasn't the novelty it had been in a lot of the other towns they'd passed through, but Tessa was still unlike anything else on the road so she got her share of stares, parked out on the street in front of the hotel. Dean just gave a cocky wave as he started her up.
They found the address Bobby left them on a quiet, tree-lined street, the very last sort place the average person would ever expect to find any unusual goings-on. The house was just on the shabby side of the others on the street, but not notable in any other way.
"Home sweet home," said Dean, pulling Tessa around behind so she wouldn't be quite so conspicuous. There were times when a man wanted to be remembered, and there were times when he did not.
Bobby met them at the back door, at the top of a set of narrow, rickety stairs that obviously hadn't seen maintenance in years.
"Bout time you got here," he said, snatching the hat right off Sam's head as soon as he got close enough and ruffling his hair like he was twelve years old again. "You're looking good, Sam."
"Hey, what about me?" said Dean. "Aren't I looking good, too?"
"I wasn't worried about how you were looking, Dean," he said gruffly. "You look the same as the last time I saw you. Sam here doesn't."
"Been a while," said Sam, and let Bobby ruffle his hair some more before starting up the steps to the house.
"Well, y'all better get on inside so I can catch up on just what you were coming up to see me about," he said, moving aside so they could pass. He did rest a hand on Sam's shoulder for a moment, though. "I was sorry to hear about your girl, Sam."
Sam paused in the doorway. "You know about that?"
"Word gets around," said Bobby, and followed them through the back porch into the homey kitchen. Bobby had the woodstove burning and had spread out his day's research on what a reasonable person would expect to be the dining room table.
"Well, I'll skip all of the details and get right to the point," said Dean, lingering by the stove to warm his hands. "For the past month, month and a half, Sam and I have been trying to catch up with Dad. Our path finally led us to you."
"You boys don't have the good sense the Lord gave an ass," said Bobby, shaking his head at them. "You didn't think to come to me first when your daddy took off on his own?"
"Would you have had anything to tell us? Do you have anything to tell us?"
"Do I know where he is? No," said Bobby. "Do I know what he's doing? Yes, I do. I'm the one who sent that no-good daddy of yours on the trail of the demon in the first place." Then he sighed and reached for Sam's coat so that he could hang it on a hook by the door. "The two of you'd better take a seat. It looks like we have even more to talk about than I thought we did."
"I think there's a beginning we missed there somewhere," said Dean, unstrapping his own coat but leaving it on for the moment, until he felt warm again. "Dad? Demon? What?"
Bobby nodded and put the kettle on. "It started right around the middle of October," he said. "That's when I got a message through to your daddy that we finally spotted some signs of the demon that killed your mother."
"It's a demon?" said Dean. "You know for sure?"
"We know for sure," Bobby confirmed. "Or we do now, anyway. He didn't want the two of you in the line of fire, and I can't say I blame him. He's put the two of you through enough over the years."
"But that's not why he did it, is it?" said Dean. "He left us behind because he thought we'd get in the way."
"He went on his own because he wanted to end this," said Bobby. "For all of you."
"Well, I guess the omens weren't too accurate, because I know where the demon was at the end of October and it wasn't out east," said Sam.
Bobby winced and nodded his head. "That was unanticipated," he said, "but it didn't make the information we got wrong. This demon's got a plan, and the omens pointed east for a reason. We don't know what he was doing, but he was doing something."
"You're not going to keep us off his tail now, are you?" said Dean.
"Would I have called you here if I was?" said Bobby, but Dean had been around the block enough times to notice he hadn't exactly answered the question. "We've had some pretty big omens over Chicago for the past few weeks, and I'm betting it has something to do with you."
"Omens like the omens Dad is chasing?" said Dean. "You think it's coming here?"
"Well, the omens don't come equipped with a demon's name in lights, but the signs match up," said Bobby.
"So that means Dad might be coming here," Sam summed up, "if he's following the same omens that you are."
"I think that's a distinct possibility," said Bobby. "Nothing's happened here yet that would indicate the specific presence of the demon he's hunting but, well, I suspect that's only a matter of time."
"All right," said Sam, lacing his fingers together and leaning forward on the table. "Where do we start?"
: : :
There were rooms upstairs for them to settle themselves into, furnished in Spartan fashion but still more than enough for their needs. Bobby'd already set himself up in the largest, debris scattered from end to end, and Sam was quick enough to grab the one with the largest bed. It was a luxury he hadn't enjoyed since Stanford, and everything he'd lost there.
While Dean was unpacking his things, settling in for the long haul they all suspected, Sam left what little he had on the floor of his room and went back downstairs to the kitchen for tea.
"Sam," said Bobby, pushing his magnifying spectacles up onto his forehead, a pair nearly identical to the ones Jessica had owned. Whatever he was working on, fussing with tiny gears and levers, Sam could no more identify it than most things that Jess worked on in his presence. "Have a seat."
"I just came down for something to warm me up," he said, but Bobby's invitation seemed insistent, and there was already a pot of tea on the table. "What's that?"
"With any luck," said Bobby, consulting the ancient book that he'd apparently gotten the design from, "it will help us track this bastard. I've made some improvements."
"You sound just like Dean," said Sam, with all the fondness due someone you though of as extended family.
"More likely that Dean sounds like me," said Bobby, moving his things aside so he could pour the steeped tea, two teacups already waiting on the table. "He still upstairs?"
"Last I checked," said Sam. "If we're lucky, he's taking a bath."
"If he is, it's only because he wants to get in there before you have the chance," said Bobby. "Sam... I've known your family for a long time. Nearly as long as you've been alive."
"I was so small when we met you," agreed Sam. "I barely remember it. I couldn't have been more than three."
"So I've known your daddy a long time," Bobby went on. "I've watched him over these many years, and watched how this quest consumed everything in his life. Even the things it should never have touched."
"I'm not sure I understand," said Sam, sipping his tea and letting it warm him. "What are you getting at, Bobby?"
Bobby sighed, obviously awkward with either the topic of conversation, or the fact that he was attempting to have it with Sam. "I am truly sorry about Jessica, Sam," he said finally, "and I know how you must feel--"
"I'm sure you don't."
"--because I lost my wife a very long time ago," Bobby finished, as though Sam had never interrupted. Sam nodded, and though he was still in a place where he felt that nobody could ever have felt what he's feeling, he didn't belittle Bobby's loss. "And I know how much you want revenge for that, especially now that you know what did it. But...."
"But what, Bobby?" said Sam. "We're already closing on this demon, or at least Dad is. It's a hunt like any other hunt. Revenge is what we do."
"Not the way your Daddy did it," said Bobby. "He loves you boys something fierce, but he didn't always do right by you. I don't want to see you become the man he was."
"I could do worse," said Sam defensively. He could criticize his father all he wanted, but when someone else did it, the Winchester loyalty kicked in. Even when that someone else was as close to family as you got without being blood.
"You could do much worse," agreed Bobby, "and your daddy does have a number of admirable traits, Sam. But his obsession with revenge against the demon who killed your mother isn't one of them. I admire a man with the drive to succeed at what he does, and I admire a man even more whose vocation involves protection of innocents, but you and Dean were innocents, too."
Sam sipped his tea and couldn't find the right words to argue with that, even though it didn't sit right with him.
"I'm sorry about your wife," he said finally. "I didn't know."
"I didn't tell you," said Bobby, "and I mightn't have told you now if not for the fact that I recognize that look in your eyes, Sam. I know this won't help right now, but it does get better. You'll never forget her, and you might never entirely lose that anger against the thing that did this to you, but it'll get better."
"Now you sound like a preacher," said Sam tightly, sipping his hot tea again. "I'm sure Pastor Jim could come up with some nice words of comfort for me."
"Jim Murphy's a good man," said Bobby, "but I'm not telling you these things because the Good Book tells us so. I'm telling you because I've been where you are and felt what you're feeling. It's good you've hooked up with Dean again. You need your brother right now, Sam."
"I don't think Dean would have given me any choice, if I'd tried to refuse." He'd hardly had a choice even before the demon had taken his Jess. Saying good-bye that time had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done.
"You and Dean, you were always different," said Bobby, "for all that you were raised the same. But Dean's a good man. Trust him whenever you need anything, Sam."
"I always have," said Sam, "and I always will."
: : :
It took a couple of days for all of Sam's belongings to migrate from Tessa into the bedroom he'd claimed as his own, moving just a few things at a time here and there as he needed them. One of the last to come - and what maybe should have been the first - was the only real memento he had left of Jess.
He knew Dean was lingering in the doorway as he unwrapped it, but he didn't say anything until all the pieces were laid out on the bed.
Dean cleared his throat. "Do you mind if I take a look?" he said. "I have to admit, I've been a bit curious about it."
"By all means," said Sam. What he had left with Jess was a tiny, private world, but if he wanted anyone else to be invited, it was Dean. "She was so clever, Dean. She would have done amazing things."
"I have no doubt about that," said Dean. "After all, she was clever enough to fall in love with my little brother, wasn't she?"
His hands were gentle on the device, but Sam still held his breath as Dean explored it, examining all the bits and pieces. He didn't say anything, but just having Dean call up the memory of the way Jess looked at him sometimes, the way he knew she loved him, was enough to momentarily overwhelm him.
"This goes here," said Dean finally, twisting a screw with his fingertips and attaching an oddly shaped mirror to the edge of the long, cylindrical center. "There should be a matching one for the other side."
"You know what it is?" said Sam, searching for a piece identical to the one Dean had just placed.
"I don't think anybody but Jessica knows what this is," said Dean, "but I can see how some of it's put together. I won't be able to do much without my tools, though."
"Just... don't break it," said Sam after a moment, tacit permission that he barely dared to give. "It's all I have."
Dean nodded, waiting a few moments before lifting his eyes to Sam's. "You know this isn't her, right?" he said, taking the piece from Sam's fingers and finding the tiny screw that was meant to hold it. "She lives inside your head now. Even if anything ever happens to this, nothing's going to change that."
"Still," said Sam. "Please, Dean."
"I'll be careful," Dean promised him. "You know I'll be careful, Sammy. I know what she was to you."
"Do you?" said Sam. "Because the last time we talked--"
"Of course I do," said Dean. "I don't have to have been in love to know what it means, Sam. You think I wouldn't do nearly anything to get her back for you? Even if it meant never seeing you again?"
"Dean...."
"It would've killed me, but I would've done it," said Dean, looking down at his hands as his fingers swiftly turned the screw, well practiced at the motion. "I always wanted you to be happy. I just wished you could've been happy without leaving us behind, too."
"I didn't know how," said Sam. "Maybe eventually I would have figured that out."
Now, weeks distant from the fire and back in his brother's orbit again, Sam could only hope he was the kind of person who might have one day found a compromise between the two worlds. It made him ache, even with all the things he'd be facing that he once hoped never to face again, to think about life without his brother again.
"You must have watched Jess work a lot," said Dean, not quite changing the subject but not quite not, either, "if she always sneaked over to your rooms to do it."
"I liked to watch," admitted Sam. "She would be working on building something and I would be studying my books next to her, and my attention would always be drawn to her. It never mattered that I didn't understand it." And if watching someone work like that was something familiar from his childhood, he hoped Dean knew that without Sam having to spell it out. "I like it when things work, but I never spent a lot of time wondering how they did."
"That is something I never did understand about you," said Dean, shaking his head sadly and then rubbing his hand, his fingertips sore and reddened from the pressure of the tiny, sharp screws.
"Well, it's entirely your fault, of course," insisted Sam. "You always gave me everything I needed, since I was a baby."
"I'm pretty sure Dad did most of the caring for you when you were an infant."
His father might've taken care of his basic needs, but Sam didn't need to remember all of it to know who'd taken care of him.
A moment later, a moment of watching Dean continue to work with the tiny bits and pieces, he got up and rummaged through his things until he found a small wooden box, his small treasury of keepsakes. From it he pulled an old tin automaton, dinted with chipping paint but treasured all the same.
"My first toy," he said, holding it out to Dean. "You were caring for me even then."
Dean touched it wonderingly, scrubbing away a bit of dirt with the pad of his thumb. "I can't believe you still have this Sammy," he said. "I thought you lost it years ago."
"No, never," said Sam. "It's the only thing I've had my whole life."
"Mine, too," said Dean, touching the worn features of his face gently. "It used to be mine, before... before I gave it to you. I never thought I'd see it again."
"Dad tried to throw it away a couple of times, but I always rescued it," said Sam. "I never had to make anything or figure out how it worked because you always did it for me."
"That's exactly what I told Dad when he asked my why my Latin was so rusty," said Dean. "I told him that was Sammy's job. He didn't... I'm a lot better at it than I used to be, now."
Sam didn't need to be told why and silently nodded his head, putting the toy back where it had come from, safe and sound.
"Let's go get your tools," he said when he returned. "It would mean a lot to know what she was working on."
"I'll do whatever I can," Dean promised him.
: : :
Sam insisted they take the elevated train into the city, despite Dean's protests that Tessa could get them there faster and more comfortably. Sam wanted, just for a little while, to travel like a normal person, to walk where they could and take the streetcar where they couldn't.
Everything was decorated for Christmas, wreaths on doors and candles in windows and cheery tunes drifting out onto the street from shop fronts. It was only a matter of time before carolers showed up at their front door.
"You've got some money on you, don't you?" said Sam, tucking his gloveless hands into the pockets of his coat.
"Of course I do," said Dean. "You need something?"
"I was just thinking I could do some Christmas shopping while we're here," said Sam. "There aren't a lot of days left."
"Who are you going to buy Christmas presents for, Sam? Me? Bobby?"
"Yes, you and Bobby," said Sam, and tried not to think about who he would have been buying for not so long ago. Not just Jessica, but the other friends he'd made at Stanford, people he hadn't even thought about in weeks.
"So you want me to give you money so that you can buy me a present," said Dean, raising an eyebrow at him. "Is that what you're saying?"
"Well, if you don't want a Christmas present," said Sam, "then far be it from me to insist."
Dean handed over a couple of dollars. "Make it something nice," he said, stuffing the rest back into an inside pocket of his coat before anybody saw. Sam hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to get, but if they were going to be sitting tight in Chicago waiting for either his father or the demon, whichever came first, then Sam was going to do what he could to make the holiday as ordinary a one as he could.
He hoped it would make him forget, but more likely it would just make him remember.
"This is a little bit like San Francisco," he said, glancing up at the sky as they walked, watching the path of the airships as they approached the twin docking spires that marked Central Station. "But only if you look up."
"Looking up I'm fine with," said Dean, gazing up at the sky alongside him. "It's looking down I'm not as fond of."
"You never used to be afraid."
"I'm not afraid," insisted Dean, "I just think there are more natural ways to travel than up in the air with the birds. If we'd been intended to fly, we'd have been born with wings."
"And if we'd been meant to ride around in a motor vehicle, we'd have been born with wheels," refuted Sam. One day, though, one day he would convince Dean to tell him just what happened.
"At least automobiles stay on the ground. Most of the time," said Dean, pausing against the brick of a storefront and looking up at the sky again. "I'm not in cities often."
"Jess would have been able to tell you where most of them come from, just from the shape of the gondola and the color of the envelope," said Sam. "San Francisco got a lot of traffic from across the Pacific."
"What about you?" said Dean. "You any good at it?"
Sam shielded his eyes from the weak December sunlight and looked at the airships slowly moving overhead. "That one came from Constantinople," said Sam, pointing almost straight up above them. "Passenger traffic, not trade. They're very distinctive."
"Impressive," said Dean as it floated overhead, making steady careful progress to the docking spire. "What about that one?"
Sam squinted, trying to identify it. "I think it might be Europ--" he managed to get out before the shattering pain hit, bringing him to his knees on the street.
Images of a violent encounter flashed in front of his eyes, each one of them bringing a new wave of pain. A knife flying through the air, aeroautomata diving from the sky, a fire, a skinny boy with angry eyes, and again, Dean, falling.
He didn't know how long it was before he heard Dean calling his name, felt him holding his shoulders, but he would bet good money that it wasn't the first time Dean called.
He tried to say something, anything, just to let Dean know he was okay, but the pain was still too overwhelming. It wasn't until the flashes stopped, until the pain faded to a sharp ache, that Sam was able to even open his eyes.
"I think our plan to go incognito today just failed," he said as soon as Sam met his eyes. "Another one?"
Sam nodded, and immediately decided he wasn't going to be doing that again until the ache subsided. "More of the same," he said. "Fighting, fire, and...."
"And me dying," finished Dean. "Charming."
"I only see you fall, Dean, I don't see you land."
"That doesn't exactly make me feel any better," said Dean. "Do you think you might be able to stand up, Sammy, because we're attracting a little more attention here that I like."
It was a struggle, but Sam said, "As long as you give me a hand," and willed the pain to go away.
"Now are you sorry we didn't bring Tessa?" said Dean, helping Sam to his feet again and leaning him against the brick storefront. "Come on, let's get you home. We need to tell Bobby about this. No arguments."
: : :
"This would be easier if you told us exactly what we were looking for," said Dean, curled up in front of the blazing fire with a book and a whiskey and resenting every moment of it. Well, maybe not the whiskey. "'Something I don't know' is a little non-specific."
"Something we haven't tried already," Bobby clarified, which was at least a little more helpful. "The latest omens still point straight at Chicago but that doesn't narrow it down enough for us to do anything about it."
"Yes, I noticed that," said Dean. "Well, at least this isn't pawing through more national weather reports, so it's got that going for it. I think my fingers are permanently stained from the newsprint ink."
"There's more when you've finished with that one," said Bobby, nodding at a pile on the end table that Dean had somehow managed not to notice when he sat down. "And I want to go over the Lesser Key of Solomon with you boys one more time."
"How can you possibly have brought this many books with you?" said Dean. "Did you pack your entire household into steamer trunks?"
"If these had been my books, don't you think I would already know what's in them?" said Bobby. "I went to see an old friend of mine yesterday. She loaned me all of those."
"Remind me to thank her for that," muttered Dean. "What are you doing, anyway? How come I'm combing through all these books by myself?"
"I'm hanging the holly," said Bobby, in a tone that suggested his task should have been self-evident.
"You're hanging the holly," said Dean incredulously. "Really, Bobby?"
"It has plenty of protective and ritualistic uses," insisted Bobby. "It's not entirely for decoration."
"I'm pretty sure that's not why you're hanging it a few days before Christmas," said Dean, one eye on the book and one eye on the holly. "I don't remember you being this invested in the holidays."
"You haven't spent the holidays with me since you were little," said Bobby, "and I usually don't spend them shut up at home, I make someone else do the decorating and the cooking and just show up with a few gifts and a good bottle of alcohol."
"That's the way to do it," said Dean, flipping the page. "Looks nice, though."
"Well, this year I've not only got you boys, but Pamela ought to be back here in the next couple of days too," said Bobby. "Is there anything you think we should be doing for the holiday, Dean? Maybe something you boys did with your daddy?"
"There isn't much we did with Dad at Christmas that can be called any kind of tradition," said Dean with a shake of his head. "Or at least not any tradition either one of us wants to repeat. Just... make it nice for Sammy, okay, Bobby? That's all I want."
"That I can do," said Bobby, "just as soon as I get this holly hung and bring the tree in."
"You got a Christmas tree, too?" said Dean. "I don't even know where you'd find a Christmas tree around here."
"You can find just about anything if you know where to look," said Bobby. "And speaking of finding things, how's your search going."
"It's going," grumbled Dean, burying his nose in the book again and counting the minutes till Sam came home and he could foist the task off onto him. Maybe before that happened, though, he could help Bobby bring the tree in.
It was only when major holidays rolled around that Dean was able to place where he'd been a year earlier, the rest of the dates running together into seasons. Dean remembered the weather better than he remembered the date. A year ago, give or take a few days, he'd been somewhere in Texas, riding alongside his father in search of a chupacabra. He hadn't even realized it was Christmas until late in the day when they'd stopped at a saloon for something to drink.
He hadn't thought much about Christmas after Sam left. This was the first time he'd bought any Christmas presents since.
Still, though, for all his grumbling, if having a family Christmas was something that would put a smile on Sam's face, it was all worth it.
: : :
It was Dean who insisted they go out on New Year's Eve, though he was unspecific about where he wanted to go. Somewhere there were people, that was his only insistence. He'd tried to convince Pamela to stay long enough to go with them but she had business elsewhere, which always seemed to be the case with her.
It was not hard, however, to find a New Year's celebration in the streets of Chicago. From the moment they found themselves in the thick of the city, in fact, Dean was never without a friendly face to cheer with, or a pretty girl to make eyes at.
Sam didn't stray far from his brother's side, lest they get separated, but he also didn't get in the way of his sport for the night. Sam wasn't interested in meeting anyone for a brief liaison to ring in the new year, but that didn't mean he wasn't happy to have something to celebrate.
The streets of Chicago on New Year's Eve were damn cold, though, and Sam was buttoned right to the collar, hat on his head and fingers gloved with the new pair he'd received for Christmas. Everyone else on the street was similarly attired, but for the few already inebriated enough to not feel the full effects of the cold. Sam suspected those few - those more than few by the end of the night, likely - would be regretting that choice come morning.
It was because of this conservative state of dress, he suspected, that he didn't recognize her sooner.
"Sam? Sam Winchester?"
Sam was startled to hear his name from someone other than his brother, and whirled around immediately to see who was calling on him.
"Miss Masters?"
"Well, fancy meeting you here," she said, "all the way across the country. What are you doing in Chicago?"
"Dean and I are spending the holidays with our uncle," he said smoothly, though after what they had done for her at Jericho station, the lie probably wasn't necessary. Not that it was a lie of anything more than omission. "What are you doing in Chicago?"
"This is where my brother and I ended up," she said, "once he finally arrived at the station. That's him right over there." She pointed out a young man just a few feet away, who looked over and tipped his hat at them. "Don't worry, he's not as protective as he looks."
"I wasn't worried," said Sam, giving her a tiny smile. "Should I have been?"
"Well, I don't know, do you need to be?" she said. "I guess that depends entirely on what your intentions are, Sam Winchester."
Just the thought of that, though, made his expression cloud over immediately, and it was clear from her own that she noticed. "My intentions are entirely honorable," he insisted. "I've recently lost someone."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said instantly, though Sam could see something in her eyes when he looked. Something that suggested she might somehow have already known that. "I hadn't any idea. Is there anything I can do?" She took his gloved hand between her own just for a moment, a traditional gesture of concern.
"Thank you, but my brother's taken good care of me," he assured her, gently pulling his hand away. "As I'm sure yours is taking care of you."
"And your sister?" said Meg. "Or was she just a fiction to draw the story of the train station spirit out of me?"
Sam wondered if she already knew that too. He wondered if she'd known that all along.
"A harmless fiction," he said finally. "People are seldom forthcoming with tales when you tell them your true intentions are to... well, you're already well aware of what we do."
"Thank you for that," she said, solemn and demure. "It's a debt that I can never repay."
"We'd never think of asking," insisted Sam. "It's what we do."
"Still," she said, "my brother and I are still ever so grateful. Let me give you the address of the hotel we're staying in here in Chicago. You can call on us, you and your brother, and we can treat you to a night on the town."
"Well, that's certainly generous," said Sam, barely loud enough to be heard of the sound of the crowd spontaneously breaking into song somewhere nearby. When she handed over a calling card, he tucked it away safely in his coat pocket. "Perhaps we'll do just that."
"I hope you do," she said. "It would be nice to get acquainted under better circumstances."
"The circumstances last time certainly were not ideal," he agreed.
"My brother's calling me, I should rejoin him," said Meg, "but I'm oh so glad I ran into you, Sam. I do hope I'll see you soon."
"I'm sure you will," said Sam, patting the pocket where he stowed the card and watching as she drifted away to the young man's side, taking his arm and letting him chaperone her up the street.
A moment later he, too, rejoined his brother, whose latest lady friend had also vanished. "No luck?" he said, pressing his own scarf up closer to his throat.
"Keeping my options open," said Dean. "The night is young, as am I."
"I do hope you're not using those words to try to find yourself some loose female company for the night," said Sam. "I'm willing to bet the success rate is something lower than you're aiming for."
"Hey, no need for that," said Dean. "I just want a pretty thing on my arm at midnight, that's all. What's the matter with you? Didn't I see you with some company of your own a moment ago?"
"That was nothing," said Sam, and resolved to discuss the situation with Dean the following day and not here and now in the middle of what was perhaps the last celebration they'd enjoy for a while. "I'm not looking for company."
"No, I guess you're not," said Dean. "But come on, let's have a good time nonetheless. What do you say?"
"That's what I'm here for," agreed Sam, and let Dean pull him into the crowds.
Sam passed Dean a glass of water and waited for him to fully return to himself before beginning the discussion he'd put off the night before.
"There's something we need to discuss," he said, taking the other seat in front of the fire, warming his hands and feet by it.
"I swear, I didn't touch that girl," insisted Dean. "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is my cheek bruising badly?"
"You can hardly tell," Sam promised him, which he wasn't actually sure was the right or the wrong answer. "That's not what we need to discuss."
Dean held a finger up to stall him while he finished the glass of water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat back. "All right, Sam, what do we need to discuss?"
"Do you remember that girl we rescued back at Jericho station?"
"Of course I do," said Dean. "What was her name? Margaret?"
"Right, Margaret Masters," said Sam, nodding slowly as he put his words together. "Meg. I saw her last night, Dean, in the street."
"You saw her here?" said Dean. "In Chicago? What was she doing?"
"The same thing we were," said Sam, "to all appearances, anyway. But what are the odds of that, Dean, running into her accidentally half a country away?"
"They're not very good, Sam," said Dean, "they're not very good at all. What are you thinking? Demon?"
"I don't know," said Sam. "I didn't scent sulfur on her, but if she's been riding that body across the country, there's no reason I would have. I can't imagine it's a coincidence that we'd end up in the same place at the same time once again."
"And you didn't think to tell me this last night?"
Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out the calling card, handing it over to Dean. "I doubt she knows I suspect anything," he said. "She said she and her brother would like to thank us for our daring rescue from the train."
"I was really hoping she wasn't going to tell her brother about that," said Dean, whistling low. "I'm not keen on another fist to the face so soon after the first."
"She'd never have given me the address if she knew I suspected," said Sam.
"Unless it's a fake address," offered Dean, handing the card back. Sam knew that meant he already had every detail of it memorized. "Only one way to find out."
"I'm ready to go whenever you are," said Sam. "I had a suspicion you'd be skipping breakfast."
Dean looked faintly nauseated at the thought. "We can get lunch later," he said. "Right now we have a hotel to check out."
They didn't take Meg up on the invitation of course, not yet, but with not only an address but a room number it was easy to find the hotel, and nearly as easy to find the room within it. Finding a stakeout location nearby was a little harder, but they managed to do it without resorting to a serviceman's costume or hiding behind a potted plant. The lobby was ornate and expansive, and dressed as they were, in clothes appropriate for the city, Sam and Dean didn't stand out at all.
Well, perhaps Dean's coat stood out, but with all the airship traffic to the city they probably just mistook him for a pilot. Pilots occasionally required hotel rooms as well.
The wait was tedious, but just over two hours after their arrival according to the central clock in the lobby that sounded every quarter hour, Margaret Masters and her brother - and a third young man who seemed to be a familiar acquaintance - left the hotel together without so much as glancing in Sam and Dean's direction.
"Well, that's that, then," said Sam as Dean smoothly got to his feet to follow them outside.
Ordinarily it wouldn't have been an effort to trail them out of the hotel, but an incident with a loud tourist, a luggage cart, and a porter blocked their way for just long enough that when they reached the lobby door, Meg and her brother were nowhere to be seen.
"Well, at least we've confirmed that the address she gave you was legitimate, if nothing else," said Dean. "Shall we head upstairs?"
"Let me guess," said Sam. "You've brought your lock picks with you?"
"When have you ever known me to forget my lock picks on a surveillance mission?" said Dean, pulling them just far enough out of his pocket for Sam to see. "Though I could probably sweet talk the maid into letting us in anyway."
"Let's stick with the break and enter," said Sam, hustling him along to the stairs. "I'd prefer not to be remembered here."
"Your call," said Dean, leading the way to the room.
When they got inside, though, there wasn't a single thing amongst the very sparse and very neat belongings that suggested Meg and her brother were anything other than who she said they were. In fact, there was nothing at all that even told them more about the girl than they already knew. There were no papers, no journal hidden beneath her pillow, and even their clothing was unremarkable.
They were careful not to leave any signs of their invasion, but it was not an even moderately difficult task. The maid probably left more evidence of her presence than they had.
"Something's not quite right here," insisted Dean, but whatever it was, it was nothing visible and nothing either of them could quite put their finger on.
"Something's not quite right about any of this," agreed Sam. "It's time to tell Bobby."
: : :
"So you met this girl back in California, is that what you're telling me?" said Bobby. "Did she say anything about heading here?"
"No," said Sam. "In fact, if I recall correctly her destination was Oregon, the last I spoke with her. We're a long way from Oregon."
"In more ways than one," agreed Bobby. "I don't like this one bit, boys, and I won't lie. The omens say something's in Chicago and so's she?"
"That's what we thought too," said Dean. "Our advantage here is that she doesn't know we know anything. She knows what we do, thanks to a certain train-haunting spirit, but not why we're here. Sam told her we're spending Christmas with family."
"We need to figure out what she's doing," said Bobby. "You boys need to keep an eye on her best you can. I'm going to see if I can get Pamela back into town on this. If there's anyone who can get a bead on what's going on in the spirit world around these parts, it's her."
"I think that's likely the best plan," agreed Dean. The part about keeping an eye on her, at least, and he couldn't object to seeing a little more of Pamela Barnes either. "We know where she's staying, so we can tail her again if she comes out this afternoon."
"Just keep me informed, boys," said Bobby. "Don't pull a Daddy and take off after her yourselves if something happens."
"We won't unless we're forced to," said Dean reluctantly, the caveat being the only thing that allowed him to make the promise.
"That's all I can ask," said Bobby, standing up from the table. "I need to consult a few books now, boys, if you'll excuse me."
They didn't see Meg at all that day, though. Or the next. A quick consultation with the registration desk confirmed that Margaret and Peter Masters were still guests, however, so either they had somehow missed them, or they hadn't left the hotel at all during regular hours over the past two days.
"There could be a back entrance."
"There must be," said Sam, "but why would they be using it?"
"Still," said Dean. "This waiting is getting tedious. I think I preferred it when Bobby had me scouring old books for some secret arcane ritual that somehow he didn't already know."
"There must be some," said Sam, but he, too, obviously saw the futility of such a search, especially under these conditions and without a full library of arcane books at their disposal. "Very well, tomorrow we'll split our efforts, though I suspect the hotel staff is getting suspicious of our presence here."
"I would be too if I were them," said Sam. "I'll take the lobby and you can take the back alley." He didn't specify that was because he felt he fit in better in the hotel lobby; as far is he was concerned, that went without saying.
Apparently the third time was, indeed, the lucky one. In the late afternoon - just in time for an early dinner, in fact - Dean heard Sam's distinctive whistle come up the alley and rejoined him at the street corner just in time to see Meg and her brother crossing.
"First we see where they're going," said Dean, "then we tell Bobby."
It was a good plan, a solid plan. However, those were the plans that so often fell apart the fastest.
The hotel was not far from Central Station and that very quickly proved to be their destination. Of course it did. The one place in all of Chicago that Dean wanted to go the least was naturally their destination. He could only hope that Meg and her brother were merely going to meet someone, or perhaps that they simply preferred the train to airship travel.
Dean only looked away for a moment, just a single moment as someone crossed the street in front of him, but when he looked back they were gone.
"Uh, Sam?" he said. "Sam, did you see where they went?"
"I swear, they were right there," said Sam, which unfortunately meant that no, he hadn't seen any more than Dean had, perhaps distracted by the same pedestrian. "They can't have gone far, Dean. They're probably in the station."
A few moments later they turned a corner into the station themselves and sure enough there Meg was, standing against an ornate pillar and oh, so obviously waiting for them.
"Hello, Sam," she said, blinking her eyes to show an endless depth of black there. "I'm so disappointed you didn't call on us sooner."
: : :
"Dean, go get Uncle Bobby," said Sam without taking his eyes off her, but he knew there was very little chance Dean was going to do as he asked, not with this demon right in front of them, smirking like she'd been waiting for them all along.
"Oh, you're no fun at all," said Meg, tilting her head to the side and wrapping an arm around the pillar so she could lean away from it, almost playfully. "Aren't you wondering where my brother went?"
"Go back to hell," growled Dean, still, as Sam expected, right at his side. "Who is he really? Whose body is he riding?"
"Oh, he's my brother all right," she said. "Not the body, though. Actually, I have no idea whose body that is. That's funny, I just never thought to ask."
"Yeah, that's real funny," said Dean. "Sam, I hope your Latin isn't rusty."
"Look at the time," Meg said, grinning at them and letting go of the pillar. "I really must be going. If you want to exorcise me, you're going to have to be faster than that. I have a flight to catch."
"Of course you do," said Dean, and reached to grab a fistful of her coat but she'd already melted back into the crowds of the station, out of their reach but still in sight. "No time to go get Bobby, Sam, you know we need to go after her."
Sam did know that, and felt a sudden shot of sympathy for Dean, for what they were about to do. It was no accident they were here, he was sure. In fact, he thought he might've even been the one to tell Meg that Dean wasn't fond of heights.
Dean wasn't hesitating though, grabbing hold of Sam's lapel and tugging him into the sea of people, never once letting go. It was probably easier that way, not giving himself an opportunity to think about it as they headed straight for the elevators up to the docking platform, right behind Meg. They weren't swift enough to catch the one she'd slipped onto, but they squeezed into the next, alongside what was obviously the crew of one of the airships, attired in matching uniforms and speaking a language Sam wasn't sure he'd ever even heard before, let alone was able to understand.
"You're armed, right?" he said, softly but also hoping that the language barrier was mutual. They were squeezed into the back, far enough from the elevator operator to be unheard, but other bodies were squeezed nearby.
"Of course," said Dean. "Aren't you?"
"Of course," said Sam in return, and while it was true now it mightn't have been a couple of months ago, which was certainly a sobering thought. The ride was a long one, the spire tall enough to keep the air traffic from disrupting the flow of the city, and while Dean seemed to be quite calm during it, Sam didn't miss the tap of his foot. The real test could come when he was able to look down from the top.
At least the crowds were thinner here, people intent on their destinations. There were corridors in four directions, each leading out to one of the docked airships, and Sam desperately hoped that his height gave him the advantage of finding Meg before she disappeared down one of them.
"Sam, this way," said Dean, beating him to it. The steel frame creaked below them, and for a moment, just a fleeting second, Sam saw Dean close his eyes against the creak and sway. Dean had to know, as someone fascinated by the construction of things, that the way was perfectly safe and supported, but what he knew and what his gut was telling him weren't necessarily the same thing. At least the fear did not slow him down, though he didn't once look anywhere but straight ahead.
Keeping his eyes on their target was, in this case at least, more of a benefit than usual.
"How are we going to get past the identification checker?" Sam asked him as Meg made her smooth way through, a benefit of her actual form.
"Just leave that to me," said Dean and when they reached the automaton stationed to block their way, Dean reached out and tweaked something under his arm, something Sam couldn't see, and it let them pass without incident.
"How did you--?"
"Haven't paid to travel in years," said Dean flippantly, though he looked around as though expecting a further obstacle. Sam, too, would have expected more than one inanimate device securing the way into the airship. "Have I mentioned yet how much I hate this?"
"You didn't need to," said Sam, moving in behind him single file as they reached the enclosed ramp to the gondola, empty of crew. "Thank goodness this is a freighter. They usually don't dock at the spires."
"You think that's going to make this easier?" said Dean, closing his eyes once again as they swiftly boarded, the riveted wooden ramp swaying slightly under his feet.
"No, I think that means there will be fewer civilians to concern ourselves with," said Sam. "Try to look like you belong here."
"That's not going to be a problem for me," said Dean, "you're the one who should worry about fitting in, Sammy. Which way do we go?"
"She wanted us to follow her here," said Sam. "She's going to take advantage of the height."
"Right," said Dean, visibly wincing. "Where's the best view?"
"On a merchant ship?" said Sam. "The pilothouse, most likely."
Dean jerked his head to the left. "This way, then," he said, hand on the long brass rail of the corridor, steadying himself. "Unless you know of a way to flush them out."
"I watched airships, I didn't ride them," said Sam. He'd been in the gondola of a passenger ship a time or two, but that was the extent of his experience.
The point turned out to be moot, however, as they turned a corner and were suddenly face to face with a surprised and suspicious crew member.
"We were just--"
"Stowing away on a merchant vessel bound for the Republic of India," he said, reaching behind him for something that couldn't be good. "The captain will want to see the pair of you."
"Yes!" said Dean immediately. "That is, of course, we understand, you need to take us before the Captain. Absolutely. We won't put up a fight."
That didn't make him any less suspicious, or any less rough as he took them each by the arm and headed in the completely opposite direction. Sam tried to take note of everything they passed, expecting that at some point in the near future they were going to have to get off the ship again.
The pilothouse was a long room bordered on each side by thick glass windows that allowed a view of the clouds and city from all directions. In the center of the room was the steering implementation and sprouting from it, heading up to the ceiling and spreading out in all directions, were the pipes that regulated the gas flow in the bladder of the ship.
"Captain," said the man, drawing the attention of the woman standing by the rotariscope, uniformed from neck to toe. "I found these men skulking in the corridor."
She said nothing, but then she didn't need to. Her posture and expression said everything.
"Gentlemen," he said, "if you can indeed be called gentlemen, if you cower before Captain Jaipal Kaur she may choose to grant you leniency."
"Christo," said Dean, which was by any definition pretty far from cowering, but neither the captain nor the officer who'd brought them in reacted.
"Give me one good reason I shouldn't have you arrested," she said.
"We just lost our way," insisted Dean. "I should've known this wasn't the Victoria's Pride when the automaton didn't recognize our tickets."
She looked completely unimpressed. "You're going to have to try harder than that. What is this, espionage? Thievery?"
"Neither, I swear," said Dean. Well, it was a little espionage, but not the kind she was thinking of. "Okay, we're just visiting the city and we just wanted to take a look around. We meant no harm."
This time she clicked her tongue, still disbelieving. "If you don't wish to tell me what you're doing, I'll be forced to draw my own conclusions."
"I swear to you," said Dean, "that we mean no harm to yourselves or your cargo. Our presence here is unrelated to your business."
"Nothing that happens on my ship is unrelated to my business," she said, and might have gone on to berate them further but at that moment they were interrupted by another uniformed man.
"Captain, the shipping relay has stopped moving. We've lost contact with the cargo hold."
"Friends of yours?"
When Sam and Dean looked at one another, she took it as the confirmation they'd refused to voice. "Have these men arrested and I'll see to it."
"No, wait!" said Dean. "All right, here it is, the absolute and honest truth. We tracked a demon on board. All right? And now she's probably in your cargo hold doing God only knows what. You can doubt us if you must, and have us arrested and taken off the ship, or you can believe us and let us help you."
"What kind of demon?"
"The kind that killed our mother."
She narrowed her eyes at both of them, but whatever she saw this time somehow satisfied her.
"No one would come up with that outrageous a story and present it as truth unless they wholly believed it," she said finally. That, and nothing made Dean spine snap straighter than when he mentioned that night. "Sandeep, man the pilothouse. Harsharan, we'll join you at the cargo doors in a moment."
Both men obeyed her orders immediately, and with a last long look at the Winchester brothers, the captain stalked over to a locked brass cabinet and opened it with a key that hung around her neck. Inside was a vast and unexpected array of weaponry.
"You're remarkably well armed," said Dean, sounding as surprised as Sam felt.
"There's a pirate problem over the Pacific," she said succinctly, hauling out a pair of narrow, pre-loaded projectile devices and handing them over.
"Thanks," said Dean, "but we're already armed."
"Unless you want to ignite the entire ship, I would suggest you don't fire those," she said, her tone calm but her words terrifying.
Dean visibly gulped. "This is a hydrogen ship?"
"Most of the Indian merchant fleet is lifted by hydrogen," she said. "If you have anything else on your person that might spark, may I suggest you remove it? Theft and espionage are not the only reasons that trespassers are discouraged aboard the Gahina."
Sam was carrying nothing, but Dean handed over a box of matches with an only slightly shaky hand.
After stowing them safely in an airtight lockbox, she armed herself as well as them with the arrow-like projectile weapons and led the way out of the pilothouse. As they headed down the dim, enclosed corridor, Sam had to wonder, while they were once again facing down a demon, where the hell was their father?
Next Part | Master Post
Chicago, Illinois
The message at the front desk was addressed to Frank Merriwell, which Dean got on his second try, even though he was pretty sure he was no longer wanted under his real name in Chicago anyway. That had all been a misunderstanding, and surely forgotten by now.
"He's rented a house," said Dean, reading the note with some amusement, not to mention curiosity. "Apparently he intends to get comfortable and stay a while."
"If he's comfortable, that means we're going to be comfortable," said Sam, plucking the address from Dean's fingers so he could read it himself. "I'm less sold on the idea of staying."
"Well, let's see what he's got before we decide anything," said Dean, taking the note back and tucking it away with all the others he'd collected over the past weeks. "He said we'd be interested in what's going on here. Maybe we will be."
"Even if we are, nothing comes before our goal, Dean. Not even an interesting hunt for Uncle Bobby."
"Let's just find out, Sam," said Dean. Bobby was pretty sharp, after all. If he thought they'd be interested, odds were they would.
It was Chicago, so Dean's automobile wasn't the novelty it had been in a lot of the other towns they'd passed through, but Tessa was still unlike anything else on the road so she got her share of stares, parked out on the street in front of the hotel. Dean just gave a cocky wave as he started her up.
They found the address Bobby left them on a quiet, tree-lined street, the very last sort place the average person would ever expect to find any unusual goings-on. The house was just on the shabby side of the others on the street, but not notable in any other way.
"Home sweet home," said Dean, pulling Tessa around behind so she wouldn't be quite so conspicuous. There were times when a man wanted to be remembered, and there were times when he did not.
Bobby met them at the back door, at the top of a set of narrow, rickety stairs that obviously hadn't seen maintenance in years.
"Bout time you got here," he said, snatching the hat right off Sam's head as soon as he got close enough and ruffling his hair like he was twelve years old again. "You're looking good, Sam."
"Hey, what about me?" said Dean. "Aren't I looking good, too?"
"I wasn't worried about how you were looking, Dean," he said gruffly. "You look the same as the last time I saw you. Sam here doesn't."
"Been a while," said Sam, and let Bobby ruffle his hair some more before starting up the steps to the house.
"Well, y'all better get on inside so I can catch up on just what you were coming up to see me about," he said, moving aside so they could pass. He did rest a hand on Sam's shoulder for a moment, though. "I was sorry to hear about your girl, Sam."
Sam paused in the doorway. "You know about that?"
"Word gets around," said Bobby, and followed them through the back porch into the homey kitchen. Bobby had the woodstove burning and had spread out his day's research on what a reasonable person would expect to be the dining room table.
"Well, I'll skip all of the details and get right to the point," said Dean, lingering by the stove to warm his hands. "For the past month, month and a half, Sam and I have been trying to catch up with Dad. Our path finally led us to you."
"You boys don't have the good sense the Lord gave an ass," said Bobby, shaking his head at them. "You didn't think to come to me first when your daddy took off on his own?"
"Would you have had anything to tell us? Do you have anything to tell us?"
"Do I know where he is? No," said Bobby. "Do I know what he's doing? Yes, I do. I'm the one who sent that no-good daddy of yours on the trail of the demon in the first place." Then he sighed and reached for Sam's coat so that he could hang it on a hook by the door. "The two of you'd better take a seat. It looks like we have even more to talk about than I thought we did."
"I think there's a beginning we missed there somewhere," said Dean, unstrapping his own coat but leaving it on for the moment, until he felt warm again. "Dad? Demon? What?"
Bobby nodded and put the kettle on. "It started right around the middle of October," he said. "That's when I got a message through to your daddy that we finally spotted some signs of the demon that killed your mother."
"It's a demon?" said Dean. "You know for sure?"
"We know for sure," Bobby confirmed. "Or we do now, anyway. He didn't want the two of you in the line of fire, and I can't say I blame him. He's put the two of you through enough over the years."
"But that's not why he did it, is it?" said Dean. "He left us behind because he thought we'd get in the way."
"He went on his own because he wanted to end this," said Bobby. "For all of you."
"Well, I guess the omens weren't too accurate, because I know where the demon was at the end of October and it wasn't out east," said Sam.
Bobby winced and nodded his head. "That was unanticipated," he said, "but it didn't make the information we got wrong. This demon's got a plan, and the omens pointed east for a reason. We don't know what he was doing, but he was doing something."
"You're not going to keep us off his tail now, are you?" said Dean.
"Would I have called you here if I was?" said Bobby, but Dean had been around the block enough times to notice he hadn't exactly answered the question. "We've had some pretty big omens over Chicago for the past few weeks, and I'm betting it has something to do with you."
"Omens like the omens Dad is chasing?" said Dean. "You think it's coming here?"
"Well, the omens don't come equipped with a demon's name in lights, but the signs match up," said Bobby.
"So that means Dad might be coming here," Sam summed up, "if he's following the same omens that you are."
"I think that's a distinct possibility," said Bobby. "Nothing's happened here yet that would indicate the specific presence of the demon he's hunting but, well, I suspect that's only a matter of time."
"All right," said Sam, lacing his fingers together and leaning forward on the table. "Where do we start?"
: : :
There were rooms upstairs for them to settle themselves into, furnished in Spartan fashion but still more than enough for their needs. Bobby'd already set himself up in the largest, debris scattered from end to end, and Sam was quick enough to grab the one with the largest bed. It was a luxury he hadn't enjoyed since Stanford, and everything he'd lost there.
While Dean was unpacking his things, settling in for the long haul they all suspected, Sam left what little he had on the floor of his room and went back downstairs to the kitchen for tea.
"Sam," said Bobby, pushing his magnifying spectacles up onto his forehead, a pair nearly identical to the ones Jessica had owned. Whatever he was working on, fussing with tiny gears and levers, Sam could no more identify it than most things that Jess worked on in his presence. "Have a seat."
"I just came down for something to warm me up," he said, but Bobby's invitation seemed insistent, and there was already a pot of tea on the table. "What's that?"
"With any luck," said Bobby, consulting the ancient book that he'd apparently gotten the design from, "it will help us track this bastard. I've made some improvements."
"You sound just like Dean," said Sam, with all the fondness due someone you though of as extended family.
"More likely that Dean sounds like me," said Bobby, moving his things aside so he could pour the steeped tea, two teacups already waiting on the table. "He still upstairs?"
"Last I checked," said Sam. "If we're lucky, he's taking a bath."
"If he is, it's only because he wants to get in there before you have the chance," said Bobby. "Sam... I've known your family for a long time. Nearly as long as you've been alive."
"I was so small when we met you," agreed Sam. "I barely remember it. I couldn't have been more than three."
"So I've known your daddy a long time," Bobby went on. "I've watched him over these many years, and watched how this quest consumed everything in his life. Even the things it should never have touched."
"I'm not sure I understand," said Sam, sipping his tea and letting it warm him. "What are you getting at, Bobby?"
Bobby sighed, obviously awkward with either the topic of conversation, or the fact that he was attempting to have it with Sam. "I am truly sorry about Jessica, Sam," he said finally, "and I know how you must feel--"
"I'm sure you don't."
"--because I lost my wife a very long time ago," Bobby finished, as though Sam had never interrupted. Sam nodded, and though he was still in a place where he felt that nobody could ever have felt what he's feeling, he didn't belittle Bobby's loss. "And I know how much you want revenge for that, especially now that you know what did it. But...."
"But what, Bobby?" said Sam. "We're already closing on this demon, or at least Dad is. It's a hunt like any other hunt. Revenge is what we do."
"Not the way your Daddy did it," said Bobby. "He loves you boys something fierce, but he didn't always do right by you. I don't want to see you become the man he was."
"I could do worse," said Sam defensively. He could criticize his father all he wanted, but when someone else did it, the Winchester loyalty kicked in. Even when that someone else was as close to family as you got without being blood.
"You could do much worse," agreed Bobby, "and your daddy does have a number of admirable traits, Sam. But his obsession with revenge against the demon who killed your mother isn't one of them. I admire a man with the drive to succeed at what he does, and I admire a man even more whose vocation involves protection of innocents, but you and Dean were innocents, too."
Sam sipped his tea and couldn't find the right words to argue with that, even though it didn't sit right with him.
"I'm sorry about your wife," he said finally. "I didn't know."
"I didn't tell you," said Bobby, "and I mightn't have told you now if not for the fact that I recognize that look in your eyes, Sam. I know this won't help right now, but it does get better. You'll never forget her, and you might never entirely lose that anger against the thing that did this to you, but it'll get better."
"Now you sound like a preacher," said Sam tightly, sipping his hot tea again. "I'm sure Pastor Jim could come up with some nice words of comfort for me."
"Jim Murphy's a good man," said Bobby, "but I'm not telling you these things because the Good Book tells us so. I'm telling you because I've been where you are and felt what you're feeling. It's good you've hooked up with Dean again. You need your brother right now, Sam."
"I don't think Dean would have given me any choice, if I'd tried to refuse." He'd hardly had a choice even before the demon had taken his Jess. Saying good-bye that time had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done.
"You and Dean, you were always different," said Bobby, "for all that you were raised the same. But Dean's a good man. Trust him whenever you need anything, Sam."
"I always have," said Sam, "and I always will."
: : :
It took a couple of days for all of Sam's belongings to migrate from Tessa into the bedroom he'd claimed as his own, moving just a few things at a time here and there as he needed them. One of the last to come - and what maybe should have been the first - was the only real memento he had left of Jess.
He knew Dean was lingering in the doorway as he unwrapped it, but he didn't say anything until all the pieces were laid out on the bed.
Dean cleared his throat. "Do you mind if I take a look?" he said. "I have to admit, I've been a bit curious about it."
"By all means," said Sam. What he had left with Jess was a tiny, private world, but if he wanted anyone else to be invited, it was Dean. "She was so clever, Dean. She would have done amazing things."
"I have no doubt about that," said Dean. "After all, she was clever enough to fall in love with my little brother, wasn't she?"
His hands were gentle on the device, but Sam still held his breath as Dean explored it, examining all the bits and pieces. He didn't say anything, but just having Dean call up the memory of the way Jess looked at him sometimes, the way he knew she loved him, was enough to momentarily overwhelm him.
"This goes here," said Dean finally, twisting a screw with his fingertips and attaching an oddly shaped mirror to the edge of the long, cylindrical center. "There should be a matching one for the other side."
"You know what it is?" said Sam, searching for a piece identical to the one Dean had just placed.
"I don't think anybody but Jessica knows what this is," said Dean, "but I can see how some of it's put together. I won't be able to do much without my tools, though."
"Just... don't break it," said Sam after a moment, tacit permission that he barely dared to give. "It's all I have."
Dean nodded, waiting a few moments before lifting his eyes to Sam's. "You know this isn't her, right?" he said, taking the piece from Sam's fingers and finding the tiny screw that was meant to hold it. "She lives inside your head now. Even if anything ever happens to this, nothing's going to change that."
"Still," said Sam. "Please, Dean."
"I'll be careful," Dean promised him. "You know I'll be careful, Sammy. I know what she was to you."
"Do you?" said Sam. "Because the last time we talked--"
"Of course I do," said Dean. "I don't have to have been in love to know what it means, Sam. You think I wouldn't do nearly anything to get her back for you? Even if it meant never seeing you again?"
"Dean...."
"It would've killed me, but I would've done it," said Dean, looking down at his hands as his fingers swiftly turned the screw, well practiced at the motion. "I always wanted you to be happy. I just wished you could've been happy without leaving us behind, too."
"I didn't know how," said Sam. "Maybe eventually I would have figured that out."
Now, weeks distant from the fire and back in his brother's orbit again, Sam could only hope he was the kind of person who might have one day found a compromise between the two worlds. It made him ache, even with all the things he'd be facing that he once hoped never to face again, to think about life without his brother again.
"You must have watched Jess work a lot," said Dean, not quite changing the subject but not quite not, either, "if she always sneaked over to your rooms to do it."
"I liked to watch," admitted Sam. "She would be working on building something and I would be studying my books next to her, and my attention would always be drawn to her. It never mattered that I didn't understand it." And if watching someone work like that was something familiar from his childhood, he hoped Dean knew that without Sam having to spell it out. "I like it when things work, but I never spent a lot of time wondering how they did."
"That is something I never did understand about you," said Dean, shaking his head sadly and then rubbing his hand, his fingertips sore and reddened from the pressure of the tiny, sharp screws.
"Well, it's entirely your fault, of course," insisted Sam. "You always gave me everything I needed, since I was a baby."
"I'm pretty sure Dad did most of the caring for you when you were an infant."
His father might've taken care of his basic needs, but Sam didn't need to remember all of it to know who'd taken care of him.
A moment later, a moment of watching Dean continue to work with the tiny bits and pieces, he got up and rummaged through his things until he found a small wooden box, his small treasury of keepsakes. From it he pulled an old tin automaton, dinted with chipping paint but treasured all the same.
"My first toy," he said, holding it out to Dean. "You were caring for me even then."
Dean touched it wonderingly, scrubbing away a bit of dirt with the pad of his thumb. "I can't believe you still have this Sammy," he said. "I thought you lost it years ago."
"No, never," said Sam. "It's the only thing I've had my whole life."
"Mine, too," said Dean, touching the worn features of his face gently. "It used to be mine, before... before I gave it to you. I never thought I'd see it again."
"Dad tried to throw it away a couple of times, but I always rescued it," said Sam. "I never had to make anything or figure out how it worked because you always did it for me."
"That's exactly what I told Dad when he asked my why my Latin was so rusty," said Dean. "I told him that was Sammy's job. He didn't... I'm a lot better at it than I used to be, now."
Sam didn't need to be told why and silently nodded his head, putting the toy back where it had come from, safe and sound.
"Let's go get your tools," he said when he returned. "It would mean a lot to know what she was working on."
"I'll do whatever I can," Dean promised him.
: : :
Sam insisted they take the elevated train into the city, despite Dean's protests that Tessa could get them there faster and more comfortably. Sam wanted, just for a little while, to travel like a normal person, to walk where they could and take the streetcar where they couldn't.
Everything was decorated for Christmas, wreaths on doors and candles in windows and cheery tunes drifting out onto the street from shop fronts. It was only a matter of time before carolers showed up at their front door.
"You've got some money on you, don't you?" said Sam, tucking his gloveless hands into the pockets of his coat.
"Of course I do," said Dean. "You need something?"
"I was just thinking I could do some Christmas shopping while we're here," said Sam. "There aren't a lot of days left."
"Who are you going to buy Christmas presents for, Sam? Me? Bobby?"
"Yes, you and Bobby," said Sam, and tried not to think about who he would have been buying for not so long ago. Not just Jessica, but the other friends he'd made at Stanford, people he hadn't even thought about in weeks.
"So you want me to give you money so that you can buy me a present," said Dean, raising an eyebrow at him. "Is that what you're saying?"
"Well, if you don't want a Christmas present," said Sam, "then far be it from me to insist."
Dean handed over a couple of dollars. "Make it something nice," he said, stuffing the rest back into an inside pocket of his coat before anybody saw. Sam hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to get, but if they were going to be sitting tight in Chicago waiting for either his father or the demon, whichever came first, then Sam was going to do what he could to make the holiday as ordinary a one as he could.
He hoped it would make him forget, but more likely it would just make him remember.
"This is a little bit like San Francisco," he said, glancing up at the sky as they walked, watching the path of the airships as they approached the twin docking spires that marked Central Station. "But only if you look up."
"Looking up I'm fine with," said Dean, gazing up at the sky alongside him. "It's looking down I'm not as fond of."
"You never used to be afraid."
"I'm not afraid," insisted Dean, "I just think there are more natural ways to travel than up in the air with the birds. If we'd been intended to fly, we'd have been born with wings."
"And if we'd been meant to ride around in a motor vehicle, we'd have been born with wheels," refuted Sam. One day, though, one day he would convince Dean to tell him just what happened.
"At least automobiles stay on the ground. Most of the time," said Dean, pausing against the brick of a storefront and looking up at the sky again. "I'm not in cities often."
"Jess would have been able to tell you where most of them come from, just from the shape of the gondola and the color of the envelope," said Sam. "San Francisco got a lot of traffic from across the Pacific."
"What about you?" said Dean. "You any good at it?"
Sam shielded his eyes from the weak December sunlight and looked at the airships slowly moving overhead. "That one came from Constantinople," said Sam, pointing almost straight up above them. "Passenger traffic, not trade. They're very distinctive."
"Impressive," said Dean as it floated overhead, making steady careful progress to the docking spire. "What about that one?"
Sam squinted, trying to identify it. "I think it might be Europ--" he managed to get out before the shattering pain hit, bringing him to his knees on the street.
Images of a violent encounter flashed in front of his eyes, each one of them bringing a new wave of pain. A knife flying through the air, aeroautomata diving from the sky, a fire, a skinny boy with angry eyes, and again, Dean, falling.
He didn't know how long it was before he heard Dean calling his name, felt him holding his shoulders, but he would bet good money that it wasn't the first time Dean called.
He tried to say something, anything, just to let Dean know he was okay, but the pain was still too overwhelming. It wasn't until the flashes stopped, until the pain faded to a sharp ache, that Sam was able to even open his eyes.
"I think our plan to go incognito today just failed," he said as soon as Sam met his eyes. "Another one?"
Sam nodded, and immediately decided he wasn't going to be doing that again until the ache subsided. "More of the same," he said. "Fighting, fire, and...."
"And me dying," finished Dean. "Charming."
"I only see you fall, Dean, I don't see you land."
"That doesn't exactly make me feel any better," said Dean. "Do you think you might be able to stand up, Sammy, because we're attracting a little more attention here that I like."
It was a struggle, but Sam said, "As long as you give me a hand," and willed the pain to go away.
"Now are you sorry we didn't bring Tessa?" said Dean, helping Sam to his feet again and leaning him against the brick storefront. "Come on, let's get you home. We need to tell Bobby about this. No arguments."
: : :
"This would be easier if you told us exactly what we were looking for," said Dean, curled up in front of the blazing fire with a book and a whiskey and resenting every moment of it. Well, maybe not the whiskey. "'Something I don't know' is a little non-specific."
"Something we haven't tried already," Bobby clarified, which was at least a little more helpful. "The latest omens still point straight at Chicago but that doesn't narrow it down enough for us to do anything about it."
"Yes, I noticed that," said Dean. "Well, at least this isn't pawing through more national weather reports, so it's got that going for it. I think my fingers are permanently stained from the newsprint ink."
"There's more when you've finished with that one," said Bobby, nodding at a pile on the end table that Dean had somehow managed not to notice when he sat down. "And I want to go over the Lesser Key of Solomon with you boys one more time."
"How can you possibly have brought this many books with you?" said Dean. "Did you pack your entire household into steamer trunks?"
"If these had been my books, don't you think I would already know what's in them?" said Bobby. "I went to see an old friend of mine yesterday. She loaned me all of those."
"Remind me to thank her for that," muttered Dean. "What are you doing, anyway? How come I'm combing through all these books by myself?"
"I'm hanging the holly," said Bobby, in a tone that suggested his task should have been self-evident.
"You're hanging the holly," said Dean incredulously. "Really, Bobby?"
"It has plenty of protective and ritualistic uses," insisted Bobby. "It's not entirely for decoration."
"I'm pretty sure that's not why you're hanging it a few days before Christmas," said Dean, one eye on the book and one eye on the holly. "I don't remember you being this invested in the holidays."
"You haven't spent the holidays with me since you were little," said Bobby, "and I usually don't spend them shut up at home, I make someone else do the decorating and the cooking and just show up with a few gifts and a good bottle of alcohol."
"That's the way to do it," said Dean, flipping the page. "Looks nice, though."
"Well, this year I've not only got you boys, but Pamela ought to be back here in the next couple of days too," said Bobby. "Is there anything you think we should be doing for the holiday, Dean? Maybe something you boys did with your daddy?"
"There isn't much we did with Dad at Christmas that can be called any kind of tradition," said Dean with a shake of his head. "Or at least not any tradition either one of us wants to repeat. Just... make it nice for Sammy, okay, Bobby? That's all I want."
"That I can do," said Bobby, "just as soon as I get this holly hung and bring the tree in."
"You got a Christmas tree, too?" said Dean. "I don't even know where you'd find a Christmas tree around here."
"You can find just about anything if you know where to look," said Bobby. "And speaking of finding things, how's your search going."
"It's going," grumbled Dean, burying his nose in the book again and counting the minutes till Sam came home and he could foist the task off onto him. Maybe before that happened, though, he could help Bobby bring the tree in.
It was only when major holidays rolled around that Dean was able to place where he'd been a year earlier, the rest of the dates running together into seasons. Dean remembered the weather better than he remembered the date. A year ago, give or take a few days, he'd been somewhere in Texas, riding alongside his father in search of a chupacabra. He hadn't even realized it was Christmas until late in the day when they'd stopped at a saloon for something to drink.
He hadn't thought much about Christmas after Sam left. This was the first time he'd bought any Christmas presents since.
Still, though, for all his grumbling, if having a family Christmas was something that would put a smile on Sam's face, it was all worth it.
: : :
It was Dean who insisted they go out on New Year's Eve, though he was unspecific about where he wanted to go. Somewhere there were people, that was his only insistence. He'd tried to convince Pamela to stay long enough to go with them but she had business elsewhere, which always seemed to be the case with her.
It was not hard, however, to find a New Year's celebration in the streets of Chicago. From the moment they found themselves in the thick of the city, in fact, Dean was never without a friendly face to cheer with, or a pretty girl to make eyes at.
Sam didn't stray far from his brother's side, lest they get separated, but he also didn't get in the way of his sport for the night. Sam wasn't interested in meeting anyone for a brief liaison to ring in the new year, but that didn't mean he wasn't happy to have something to celebrate.
The streets of Chicago on New Year's Eve were damn cold, though, and Sam was buttoned right to the collar, hat on his head and fingers gloved with the new pair he'd received for Christmas. Everyone else on the street was similarly attired, but for the few already inebriated enough to not feel the full effects of the cold. Sam suspected those few - those more than few by the end of the night, likely - would be regretting that choice come morning.
It was because of this conservative state of dress, he suspected, that he didn't recognize her sooner.
"Sam? Sam Winchester?"
Sam was startled to hear his name from someone other than his brother, and whirled around immediately to see who was calling on him.
"Miss Masters?"
"Well, fancy meeting you here," she said, "all the way across the country. What are you doing in Chicago?"
"Dean and I are spending the holidays with our uncle," he said smoothly, though after what they had done for her at Jericho station, the lie probably wasn't necessary. Not that it was a lie of anything more than omission. "What are you doing in Chicago?"
"This is where my brother and I ended up," she said, "once he finally arrived at the station. That's him right over there." She pointed out a young man just a few feet away, who looked over and tipped his hat at them. "Don't worry, he's not as protective as he looks."
"I wasn't worried," said Sam, giving her a tiny smile. "Should I have been?"
"Well, I don't know, do you need to be?" she said. "I guess that depends entirely on what your intentions are, Sam Winchester."
Just the thought of that, though, made his expression cloud over immediately, and it was clear from her own that she noticed. "My intentions are entirely honorable," he insisted. "I've recently lost someone."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said instantly, though Sam could see something in her eyes when he looked. Something that suggested she might somehow have already known that. "I hadn't any idea. Is there anything I can do?" She took his gloved hand between her own just for a moment, a traditional gesture of concern.
"Thank you, but my brother's taken good care of me," he assured her, gently pulling his hand away. "As I'm sure yours is taking care of you."
"And your sister?" said Meg. "Or was she just a fiction to draw the story of the train station spirit out of me?"
Sam wondered if she already knew that too. He wondered if she'd known that all along.
"A harmless fiction," he said finally. "People are seldom forthcoming with tales when you tell them your true intentions are to... well, you're already well aware of what we do."
"Thank you for that," she said, solemn and demure. "It's a debt that I can never repay."
"We'd never think of asking," insisted Sam. "It's what we do."
"Still," she said, "my brother and I are still ever so grateful. Let me give you the address of the hotel we're staying in here in Chicago. You can call on us, you and your brother, and we can treat you to a night on the town."
"Well, that's certainly generous," said Sam, barely loud enough to be heard of the sound of the crowd spontaneously breaking into song somewhere nearby. When she handed over a calling card, he tucked it away safely in his coat pocket. "Perhaps we'll do just that."
"I hope you do," she said. "It would be nice to get acquainted under better circumstances."
"The circumstances last time certainly were not ideal," he agreed.
"My brother's calling me, I should rejoin him," said Meg, "but I'm oh so glad I ran into you, Sam. I do hope I'll see you soon."
"I'm sure you will," said Sam, patting the pocket where he stowed the card and watching as she drifted away to the young man's side, taking his arm and letting him chaperone her up the street.
A moment later he, too, rejoined his brother, whose latest lady friend had also vanished. "No luck?" he said, pressing his own scarf up closer to his throat.
"Keeping my options open," said Dean. "The night is young, as am I."
"I do hope you're not using those words to try to find yourself some loose female company for the night," said Sam. "I'm willing to bet the success rate is something lower than you're aiming for."
"Hey, no need for that," said Dean. "I just want a pretty thing on my arm at midnight, that's all. What's the matter with you? Didn't I see you with some company of your own a moment ago?"
"That was nothing," said Sam, and resolved to discuss the situation with Dean the following day and not here and now in the middle of what was perhaps the last celebration they'd enjoy for a while. "I'm not looking for company."
"No, I guess you're not," said Dean. "But come on, let's have a good time nonetheless. What do you say?"
"That's what I'm here for," agreed Sam, and let Dean pull him into the crowds.
Sam passed Dean a glass of water and waited for him to fully return to himself before beginning the discussion he'd put off the night before.
"There's something we need to discuss," he said, taking the other seat in front of the fire, warming his hands and feet by it.
"I swear, I didn't touch that girl," insisted Dean. "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is my cheek bruising badly?"
"You can hardly tell," Sam promised him, which he wasn't actually sure was the right or the wrong answer. "That's not what we need to discuss."
Dean held a finger up to stall him while he finished the glass of water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat back. "All right, Sam, what do we need to discuss?"
"Do you remember that girl we rescued back at Jericho station?"
"Of course I do," said Dean. "What was her name? Margaret?"
"Right, Margaret Masters," said Sam, nodding slowly as he put his words together. "Meg. I saw her last night, Dean, in the street."
"You saw her here?" said Dean. "In Chicago? What was she doing?"
"The same thing we were," said Sam, "to all appearances, anyway. But what are the odds of that, Dean, running into her accidentally half a country away?"
"They're not very good, Sam," said Dean, "they're not very good at all. What are you thinking? Demon?"
"I don't know," said Sam. "I didn't scent sulfur on her, but if she's been riding that body across the country, there's no reason I would have. I can't imagine it's a coincidence that we'd end up in the same place at the same time once again."
"And you didn't think to tell me this last night?"
Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out the calling card, handing it over to Dean. "I doubt she knows I suspect anything," he said. "She said she and her brother would like to thank us for our daring rescue from the train."
"I was really hoping she wasn't going to tell her brother about that," said Dean, whistling low. "I'm not keen on another fist to the face so soon after the first."
"She'd never have given me the address if she knew I suspected," said Sam.
"Unless it's a fake address," offered Dean, handing the card back. Sam knew that meant he already had every detail of it memorized. "Only one way to find out."
"I'm ready to go whenever you are," said Sam. "I had a suspicion you'd be skipping breakfast."
Dean looked faintly nauseated at the thought. "We can get lunch later," he said. "Right now we have a hotel to check out."
They didn't take Meg up on the invitation of course, not yet, but with not only an address but a room number it was easy to find the hotel, and nearly as easy to find the room within it. Finding a stakeout location nearby was a little harder, but they managed to do it without resorting to a serviceman's costume or hiding behind a potted plant. The lobby was ornate and expansive, and dressed as they were, in clothes appropriate for the city, Sam and Dean didn't stand out at all.
Well, perhaps Dean's coat stood out, but with all the airship traffic to the city they probably just mistook him for a pilot. Pilots occasionally required hotel rooms as well.
The wait was tedious, but just over two hours after their arrival according to the central clock in the lobby that sounded every quarter hour, Margaret Masters and her brother - and a third young man who seemed to be a familiar acquaintance - left the hotel together without so much as glancing in Sam and Dean's direction.
"Well, that's that, then," said Sam as Dean smoothly got to his feet to follow them outside.
Ordinarily it wouldn't have been an effort to trail them out of the hotel, but an incident with a loud tourist, a luggage cart, and a porter blocked their way for just long enough that when they reached the lobby door, Meg and her brother were nowhere to be seen.
"Well, at least we've confirmed that the address she gave you was legitimate, if nothing else," said Dean. "Shall we head upstairs?"
"Let me guess," said Sam. "You've brought your lock picks with you?"
"When have you ever known me to forget my lock picks on a surveillance mission?" said Dean, pulling them just far enough out of his pocket for Sam to see. "Though I could probably sweet talk the maid into letting us in anyway."
"Let's stick with the break and enter," said Sam, hustling him along to the stairs. "I'd prefer not to be remembered here."
"Your call," said Dean, leading the way to the room.
When they got inside, though, there wasn't a single thing amongst the very sparse and very neat belongings that suggested Meg and her brother were anything other than who she said they were. In fact, there was nothing at all that even told them more about the girl than they already knew. There were no papers, no journal hidden beneath her pillow, and even their clothing was unremarkable.
They were careful not to leave any signs of their invasion, but it was not an even moderately difficult task. The maid probably left more evidence of her presence than they had.
"Something's not quite right here," insisted Dean, but whatever it was, it was nothing visible and nothing either of them could quite put their finger on.
"Something's not quite right about any of this," agreed Sam. "It's time to tell Bobby."
: : :
"So you met this girl back in California, is that what you're telling me?" said Bobby. "Did she say anything about heading here?"
"No," said Sam. "In fact, if I recall correctly her destination was Oregon, the last I spoke with her. We're a long way from Oregon."
"In more ways than one," agreed Bobby. "I don't like this one bit, boys, and I won't lie. The omens say something's in Chicago and so's she?"
"That's what we thought too," said Dean. "Our advantage here is that she doesn't know we know anything. She knows what we do, thanks to a certain train-haunting spirit, but not why we're here. Sam told her we're spending Christmas with family."
"We need to figure out what she's doing," said Bobby. "You boys need to keep an eye on her best you can. I'm going to see if I can get Pamela back into town on this. If there's anyone who can get a bead on what's going on in the spirit world around these parts, it's her."
"I think that's likely the best plan," agreed Dean. The part about keeping an eye on her, at least, and he couldn't object to seeing a little more of Pamela Barnes either. "We know where she's staying, so we can tail her again if she comes out this afternoon."
"Just keep me informed, boys," said Bobby. "Don't pull a Daddy and take off after her yourselves if something happens."
"We won't unless we're forced to," said Dean reluctantly, the caveat being the only thing that allowed him to make the promise.
"That's all I can ask," said Bobby, standing up from the table. "I need to consult a few books now, boys, if you'll excuse me."
They didn't see Meg at all that day, though. Or the next. A quick consultation with the registration desk confirmed that Margaret and Peter Masters were still guests, however, so either they had somehow missed them, or they hadn't left the hotel at all during regular hours over the past two days.
"There could be a back entrance."
"There must be," said Sam, "but why would they be using it?"
"Still," said Dean. "This waiting is getting tedious. I think I preferred it when Bobby had me scouring old books for some secret arcane ritual that somehow he didn't already know."
"There must be some," said Sam, but he, too, obviously saw the futility of such a search, especially under these conditions and without a full library of arcane books at their disposal. "Very well, tomorrow we'll split our efforts, though I suspect the hotel staff is getting suspicious of our presence here."
"I would be too if I were them," said Sam. "I'll take the lobby and you can take the back alley." He didn't specify that was because he felt he fit in better in the hotel lobby; as far is he was concerned, that went without saying.
Apparently the third time was, indeed, the lucky one. In the late afternoon - just in time for an early dinner, in fact - Dean heard Sam's distinctive whistle come up the alley and rejoined him at the street corner just in time to see Meg and her brother crossing.
"First we see where they're going," said Dean, "then we tell Bobby."
It was a good plan, a solid plan. However, those were the plans that so often fell apart the fastest.
The hotel was not far from Central Station and that very quickly proved to be their destination. Of course it did. The one place in all of Chicago that Dean wanted to go the least was naturally their destination. He could only hope that Meg and her brother were merely going to meet someone, or perhaps that they simply preferred the train to airship travel.
Dean only looked away for a moment, just a single moment as someone crossed the street in front of him, but when he looked back they were gone.
"Uh, Sam?" he said. "Sam, did you see where they went?"
"I swear, they were right there," said Sam, which unfortunately meant that no, he hadn't seen any more than Dean had, perhaps distracted by the same pedestrian. "They can't have gone far, Dean. They're probably in the station."
A few moments later they turned a corner into the station themselves and sure enough there Meg was, standing against an ornate pillar and oh, so obviously waiting for them.
"Hello, Sam," she said, blinking her eyes to show an endless depth of black there. "I'm so disappointed you didn't call on us sooner."
: : :
"Dean, go get Uncle Bobby," said Sam without taking his eyes off her, but he knew there was very little chance Dean was going to do as he asked, not with this demon right in front of them, smirking like she'd been waiting for them all along.
"Oh, you're no fun at all," said Meg, tilting her head to the side and wrapping an arm around the pillar so she could lean away from it, almost playfully. "Aren't you wondering where my brother went?"
"Go back to hell," growled Dean, still, as Sam expected, right at his side. "Who is he really? Whose body is he riding?"
"Oh, he's my brother all right," she said. "Not the body, though. Actually, I have no idea whose body that is. That's funny, I just never thought to ask."
"Yeah, that's real funny," said Dean. "Sam, I hope your Latin isn't rusty."
"Look at the time," Meg said, grinning at them and letting go of the pillar. "I really must be going. If you want to exorcise me, you're going to have to be faster than that. I have a flight to catch."
"Of course you do," said Dean, and reached to grab a fistful of her coat but she'd already melted back into the crowds of the station, out of their reach but still in sight. "No time to go get Bobby, Sam, you know we need to go after her."
Sam did know that, and felt a sudden shot of sympathy for Dean, for what they were about to do. It was no accident they were here, he was sure. In fact, he thought he might've even been the one to tell Meg that Dean wasn't fond of heights.
Dean wasn't hesitating though, grabbing hold of Sam's lapel and tugging him into the sea of people, never once letting go. It was probably easier that way, not giving himself an opportunity to think about it as they headed straight for the elevators up to the docking platform, right behind Meg. They weren't swift enough to catch the one she'd slipped onto, but they squeezed into the next, alongside what was obviously the crew of one of the airships, attired in matching uniforms and speaking a language Sam wasn't sure he'd ever even heard before, let alone was able to understand.
"You're armed, right?" he said, softly but also hoping that the language barrier was mutual. They were squeezed into the back, far enough from the elevator operator to be unheard, but other bodies were squeezed nearby.
"Of course," said Dean. "Aren't you?"
"Of course," said Sam in return, and while it was true now it mightn't have been a couple of months ago, which was certainly a sobering thought. The ride was a long one, the spire tall enough to keep the air traffic from disrupting the flow of the city, and while Dean seemed to be quite calm during it, Sam didn't miss the tap of his foot. The real test could come when he was able to look down from the top.
At least the crowds were thinner here, people intent on their destinations. There were corridors in four directions, each leading out to one of the docked airships, and Sam desperately hoped that his height gave him the advantage of finding Meg before she disappeared down one of them.
"Sam, this way," said Dean, beating him to it. The steel frame creaked below them, and for a moment, just a fleeting second, Sam saw Dean close his eyes against the creak and sway. Dean had to know, as someone fascinated by the construction of things, that the way was perfectly safe and supported, but what he knew and what his gut was telling him weren't necessarily the same thing. At least the fear did not slow him down, though he didn't once look anywhere but straight ahead.
Keeping his eyes on their target was, in this case at least, more of a benefit than usual.
"How are we going to get past the identification checker?" Sam asked him as Meg made her smooth way through, a benefit of her actual form.
"Just leave that to me," said Dean and when they reached the automaton stationed to block their way, Dean reached out and tweaked something under his arm, something Sam couldn't see, and it let them pass without incident.
"How did you--?"
"Haven't paid to travel in years," said Dean flippantly, though he looked around as though expecting a further obstacle. Sam, too, would have expected more than one inanimate device securing the way into the airship. "Have I mentioned yet how much I hate this?"
"You didn't need to," said Sam, moving in behind him single file as they reached the enclosed ramp to the gondola, empty of crew. "Thank goodness this is a freighter. They usually don't dock at the spires."
"You think that's going to make this easier?" said Dean, closing his eyes once again as they swiftly boarded, the riveted wooden ramp swaying slightly under his feet.
"No, I think that means there will be fewer civilians to concern ourselves with," said Sam. "Try to look like you belong here."
"That's not going to be a problem for me," said Dean, "you're the one who should worry about fitting in, Sammy. Which way do we go?"
"She wanted us to follow her here," said Sam. "She's going to take advantage of the height."
"Right," said Dean, visibly wincing. "Where's the best view?"
"On a merchant ship?" said Sam. "The pilothouse, most likely."
Dean jerked his head to the left. "This way, then," he said, hand on the long brass rail of the corridor, steadying himself. "Unless you know of a way to flush them out."
"I watched airships, I didn't ride them," said Sam. He'd been in the gondola of a passenger ship a time or two, but that was the extent of his experience.
The point turned out to be moot, however, as they turned a corner and were suddenly face to face with a surprised and suspicious crew member.
"We were just--"
"Stowing away on a merchant vessel bound for the Republic of India," he said, reaching behind him for something that couldn't be good. "The captain will want to see the pair of you."
"Yes!" said Dean immediately. "That is, of course, we understand, you need to take us before the Captain. Absolutely. We won't put up a fight."
That didn't make him any less suspicious, or any less rough as he took them each by the arm and headed in the completely opposite direction. Sam tried to take note of everything they passed, expecting that at some point in the near future they were going to have to get off the ship again.
The pilothouse was a long room bordered on each side by thick glass windows that allowed a view of the clouds and city from all directions. In the center of the room was the steering implementation and sprouting from it, heading up to the ceiling and spreading out in all directions, were the pipes that regulated the gas flow in the bladder of the ship.
"Captain," said the man, drawing the attention of the woman standing by the rotariscope, uniformed from neck to toe. "I found these men skulking in the corridor."
She said nothing, but then she didn't need to. Her posture and expression said everything.
"Gentlemen," he said, "if you can indeed be called gentlemen, if you cower before Captain Jaipal Kaur she may choose to grant you leniency."
"Christo," said Dean, which was by any definition pretty far from cowering, but neither the captain nor the officer who'd brought them in reacted.
"Give me one good reason I shouldn't have you arrested," she said.
"We just lost our way," insisted Dean. "I should've known this wasn't the Victoria's Pride when the automaton didn't recognize our tickets."
She looked completely unimpressed. "You're going to have to try harder than that. What is this, espionage? Thievery?"
"Neither, I swear," said Dean. Well, it was a little espionage, but not the kind she was thinking of. "Okay, we're just visiting the city and we just wanted to take a look around. We meant no harm."
This time she clicked her tongue, still disbelieving. "If you don't wish to tell me what you're doing, I'll be forced to draw my own conclusions."
"I swear to you," said Dean, "that we mean no harm to yourselves or your cargo. Our presence here is unrelated to your business."
"Nothing that happens on my ship is unrelated to my business," she said, and might have gone on to berate them further but at that moment they were interrupted by another uniformed man.
"Captain, the shipping relay has stopped moving. We've lost contact with the cargo hold."
"Friends of yours?"
When Sam and Dean looked at one another, she took it as the confirmation they'd refused to voice. "Have these men arrested and I'll see to it."
"No, wait!" said Dean. "All right, here it is, the absolute and honest truth. We tracked a demon on board. All right? And now she's probably in your cargo hold doing God only knows what. You can doubt us if you must, and have us arrested and taken off the ship, or you can believe us and let us help you."
"What kind of demon?"
"The kind that killed our mother."
She narrowed her eyes at both of them, but whatever she saw this time somehow satisfied her.
"No one would come up with that outrageous a story and present it as truth unless they wholly believed it," she said finally. That, and nothing made Dean spine snap straighter than when he mentioned that night. "Sandeep, man the pilothouse. Harsharan, we'll join you at the cargo doors in a moment."
Both men obeyed her orders immediately, and with a last long look at the Winchester brothers, the captain stalked over to a locked brass cabinet and opened it with a key that hung around her neck. Inside was a vast and unexpected array of weaponry.
"You're remarkably well armed," said Dean, sounding as surprised as Sam felt.
"There's a pirate problem over the Pacific," she said succinctly, hauling out a pair of narrow, pre-loaded projectile devices and handing them over.
"Thanks," said Dean, "but we're already armed."
"Unless you want to ignite the entire ship, I would suggest you don't fire those," she said, her tone calm but her words terrifying.
Dean visibly gulped. "This is a hydrogen ship?"
"Most of the Indian merchant fleet is lifted by hydrogen," she said. "If you have anything else on your person that might spark, may I suggest you remove it? Theft and espionage are not the only reasons that trespassers are discouraged aboard the Gahina."
Sam was carrying nothing, but Dean handed over a box of matches with an only slightly shaky hand.
After stowing them safely in an airtight lockbox, she armed herself as well as them with the arrow-like projectile weapons and led the way out of the pilothouse. As they headed down the dim, enclosed corridor, Sam had to wonder, while they were once again facing down a demon, where the hell was their father?
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