FIC: Metaphysical (Supernatural AU, Gen, R, 4/8)
Previous Part | Master Post
"You look like you're starting to get some cabin fever," said Dean when Sam joined him out by the automobile, where Dean was busy buffing her to a nice shine. The stop, and Ash's well-equipped workshop, had finally given him a chance to tune her up properly and make sure there wasn't so much as a scratch left on her.
"We've been here a few days now and we haven't got anything yet worth stopping for."
"You don't think it was worth just finding out about this place in the first place?" said Dean. "Not to mention the benefits for Tessa here."
"Maybe those are worth it for you," said Sam, "but I'm in this for one thing only and that's to find Dad, and find the thing that keeps hunting our family."
"Well, you weren't going to do that without our ride," said Dean, "and she needed this breather. You really want to get on the road again without anyplace to go?"
"There are other people we can go to," said Sam. "We can stop by Pastor Jim's church; if anyone would know, it would be him. We always used to stop there so Dad could stock up on holy water and other paraphernalia."
"We stopped there because you liked it there and sometimes it was the only way to shut you up," said Dean. "Dad can get holy water anywhere."
Still, it was something to work with. If Dad needed help, Jim Murphy was one of the few people he trusted without question.
"Well, what would you have us do?" said Sam. "Stay here in Ellen's spare room forever?"
"All right," said Dean, tweaking Tessa's right headlamp just so. "But we should stay for Thanksgiving dinner. I promised I'd help with the turkey, and we could both use a good home-cooked meal before we hit the road."
"I can live with that," agreed Sam. "I just think we've gotten all we can out of this place. Or is there another reason you want to stay?"
"And what kind of reason would that be?" said Dean, moving around back to check the valves on the boiler. He had a suspicion he knew what was coming, though.
"Jo," said Sam after a moment. "I think she'd have you, you know."
"Really?" said Dean dryly. "And here I thought you meant Ellen."
"You could have that, Dean," said Sam. "You're twenty-six years old. Have you never wanted what I had with Jessica?"
"And what did you have with Jessica, exactly?" said Dean. "Because you sure as hell weren't married to her."
"You wouldn't understand," said Sam. "It's not about marriage. You'd know that if you'd ever been in love with anyone."
"Yeah, well maybe I'm not looking for that, Sam."
"Is it that you liked her better with the e on her name?" said Sam, softer, speaking into the air beside Dean instead of right to him. "She did make a nice, fresh-faced boy."
"Jesus Christ, Sam, why would you ask me that?"
Sam shrugged but he didn't back down from his insinuation. "People have said things," he said. "You know people have said things, for a long time. You could tell me if it was true."
"No, I couldn't," said Dean. He himself wasn't even sure if that meant he couldn't talk about it, or if it meant he didn't know how to answer the question when it came to Joe Harvelle. "And I'm not interested in courting Jo either way. We haven't got time for that, Sam, even if she'd want something like that. We have a job to do."
"Is that what you're going to say for the rest of your life?"
"Maybe," said Dean tersely. "Maybe not. Either way, this is not the time or the place to even think about that kind of thing. You're right, we should get on the road again before the trail gets even colder."
"Good," said Sam, using the sleeve of his coat to wipe a fingerprint off the polished metal of Tessa's exterior. "And when this is all over, you can always come back."
"Thanksgiving, Sam," Dean interrupted him. "It's just a couple of days. And then when December rolls around, we'll hit the road."
: : :
The saloon was closed to its regular traffic, travelers and hunters and locals just looking for a watering hole. Most everyone was at home today anyway, or had found a home of some sort to be in. For some, that home was Harvelle's Roadhouse.
By this point Dean knew Ellen and Jo and Ash - well enough to feel like he wasn't intruding on the holiday, at any rate - and Gordon and Travis and Olivia were familiar enough faces from their stay at the Roadhouse. But it was when Caleb walked in the door with his pretty new wife Kate that Dean knew their staying through the holiday was the right choice.
"Dean?" he said, brow furrowing as he stared at one brother and then the other. "Sam?"
"Caleb!" said Dean, standing up so quickly he almost knocked his chair over. "Well I'll be damned."
"Now you boys are just about the last people I'd expect to show up at our little gathering. I didn't even know you were passing through this way."
"Well, business, you know how it is," said Dean. "Hey, how's Misty doing? She being good for you?"
"Your girl's got an appetite that could almost equal yours," said Caleb. "Kate's been taking her out sometimes, says she's a dream to ride."
"She always was," said Dean, and couldn't help the bit of nostalgia he felt, remembering the mare who'd been solid for him all that time. "We'll come by when we have a chance. Once our business is taken care of."
"Always figured you would," said Caleb, already giving Sam a once over. "Boy, you got tall."
Sam grinned a little sheepishly and hung his head, like he always did when someone pointed that out. "All I ever wanted growing up was to be taller than Dean."
"Well, you certainly did that," said Caleb. "Boy, I wasn't sure I was ever going to see you again. How've you been keeping?"
"Well enough," said Sam, his smile fading only a little. Apparently the news of Jessica hadn't reached Caleb yet, or if it had he had the discretion not to bring it up. He always had been the type not to pry. "Good to be with Dean again."
"Brothers like you shouldn't be separated," agreed Caleb, even though that wasn't what Sam had said. Sometimes words like those were so transparent, anyone could see what was beneath them. "Ellen! You need any help back there?"
"Can always use another set of hands," she called back. "Dean, didn't you promise me you'd take care of this turkey?"
"On my way," he said, and clapped Sam on the shoulder on his way by.
Sam didn't seem unhappy to be here. In fact, he seemed pretty pleased to see Caleb, and maybe remember the good times they spent out on his ranch when they were younger. But Dean couldn't help but wonder what Sam would've been doing if he hadn't lost Jess, if he was still in Palo Alto for the holiday. He wondered if Sam was thinking about that too.
It wasn't just for his own sake, and the fact that sometimes holidays were the only meaningful dates for hunters, that he decided they should put off leaving till after the Thanksgiving meal.
But Sam was smiling and not isolating himself from the gathered hunters, and if he was thinking about Jess, he was remembering the good times.
Dean finally let himself relax into his task, and helped Ellen not only with carving the turkey but with putting everything else together as well. The meal was substantial, and enthusiastic, and was the best one Dean could remember having in a long time.
: : :
"I think we're going to be taking off this afternoon," said Dean, enjoying his breakfast on the bar of the empty saloon while Ellen polished glasses behind it. "Thanks for everything, Ellen. We might not have found what we were looking for, but we found something all the same. I think we both really needed this."
Ellen was quiet for a moment, finishing off with her glass and setting it on its proper shelf behind the bar. "About that," she said. "I think we have something to talk about, Dean."
"You found something out?" said Dean, leaning across the bar and right up in Ellen's face. She pushed him back with one hand to his shoulder.
"Something like that," she said, surveying him for a moment before sighing and reaching back behind the bar. What she pulled out was the very last thing Dean expected to see.
"What... Ellen, where did you get this?"
"Your father left it with me about a month ago."
"What?" he said. "Why the hell didn't you say anything?"
"Because your daddy's bad news, Dean Winchester," she said, sighing again as she handed it over into Dean's greedy hands. "But that doesn't mean you don't deserve to find him. His mission is your mission too, but he's too damn stubborn to admit it."
"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, snatching the journal from her. The worn leather felt familiar in his hands, from all the times his father had handed it over into his keeping over the years. "He never would have left this behind."
"Unless he had a damn good reason to," she agreed with him. "Somehow he knew you'd make it here, sooner or later. This was always for you, and your brother."
He wanted to open the journal right then and there, thumb through it, absorb all those things his father had collected over the years. Maybe find a clue why he'd left it behind. But that was something private, something intimate. He wasn't going to do it here in front of Ellen Harvelle.
"What did he say? What did he say when he gave it to you?"
"To keep it safe," she said. "Exactly what you'd expect John Winchester to say. I don't think he liked leaving it with me, but there weren't a lot of options."
"What is it with that?" he said. "What is it with you and my dad? He's never even mentioned you."
"We have a history," she said curtly. "A history he obviously didn't want to involve his boys in. Maybe one day he'll tell it to you."
Or maybe the answer was in the book he held in his hand, but no matter what her history with his father, Dean felt confident that Ellen hadn't gone snooping in the journal, not if she was half the hunter she seemed to be. A hunter's journal was inviolable.
"Anything else you've been keeping from us?" he said. "He give you his address? Maybe he's got a telephone service taking calls for him now?"
"I had to get a feel for what was going on before I told you anything," she said. "You'd have done the same thing." The fact that he would have done exactly that did not temper Dean's impatience. "He didn't give me an address, or even a place. All he said was that he was going home."
"Home?" said Dean. "What does that mean, home?"
"He's your father," said Ellen. "You figure it out."
Dean had the awful feeling he already knew.
: : :
Dean found her outside at the woodpile, fighting with Ash's half-finished rotatory severator. She looked exactly the way she had the first time they met, only this time there was a pronounced scowl on her face.
"Hey Joe," he said, hands in his pockets, feeling inexplicably guilty.
"Hey," she said, letting the wind key drop from her fingertips for a few moments as she ran the back of her hand over her forehead. "My mother didn't send you out here to help, did she? Once I get this blasted device started I'll have the wood chopped in no time."
"No," said Dean, "she didn't send me. I just wanted to let you know that Sam and me, we're leaving. Today."
"Today as in later, or today as in now?"
"Sooner than later," said Dean. "We want to make it as far as we can before dark."
"So where are you going, then?" she said, hands on her hips, hat fallen back and held only by the cord around her neck.
Dean had to swallow a couple of times before answering. "South," he said finally. It didn't really matter where when it came down to it, just that very soon they would be gone. "We got a lead on something."
Jo nodded and squared her shoulders as she looked up and met his eyes. "Well, I guess that's that, then. You think you'll be coming back up this way?"
"We've got a job to do," said Dean, unflinching even though guilt rose up in him again. "But if you think I'm going to stay away after that, you haven't been paying attention."
"Try not to get killed, then," she said. "You wouldn't want to disappoint a lady."
"I don't see any ladies here," said Dean, and only then did Jo smile.
"Come on inside," she said, setting the sawing device back on the ground, half wound. "I'll put some things together for you. Sounds like you might have a pretty long trip ahead."
: : :
"What's the matter with you?" said Sam, sitting on the edge of the bed alongside Dean after packing up the last of their things. "We've got Dad's journal, Dean. I figured you'd be happy about that."
"Yeah, well, I also know where we need to go next," said Dean, holding the book in both hands.
"Did he say something, Dean?" said Sam. "Did he leave us a message in the journal?"
"No," said Dean, "he left us a message with Ellen." Sam waited expectantly, but it was a long time before Dean sighed and finally answered. "We have to go home, Sam."
"Home?"
"Lawrence," Dean clarified, but Sam'd never called it that. Sam'd never called it home. "We need to go back to Lawrence."
Lawrence, Kansas
Jo might have given them the name of a seer whom she promised was the real thing before she let them leave the Roadhouse, but Sam and Dean had other business in Lawrence that came before anything else ever could.
Dean knew the way by instinct, like he wasn't a man but a migratory bird with a compass that always pointed home.
"This is it?" said Sam, standing with his hands in his pockets in front of a quiet barber shop. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," said Dean, hands stuffed in the pockets of his trousers so Sam couldn't see them shaking.
"You were only four--"
"I remember, Sam," said Dean curtly. He knew exactly where he was. "This was just about the edge of town back then. Guess you leave a place for twenty years and it grows when you weren't looking."
"I don't remember any of this," said Sam, the tails of his coat flapping lightly in the breeze. "I don't think I remember Kansas at all."
"Yeah, well, you wouldn't, would you? In all the years we've been on the road, Dad never once brought us back." Not that Dean could blame him. In all the times Dean'd been on his own, he'd never come back either. "But this is where we lived, Sammy. This is where our house stood."
"I guess you really never can go home again," said Sam. Not unless you wanted a shave and a haircut, anyway. "So where do we go from here?"
"Just give me a minute, all right?" said Dean. "Just give me a minute, Sam."
When he tilted his head just right he could still see their house standing there, the yard he used to play in, the window of his old bedroom. Of little Sammy's nursery. He even thought, for a brief, breathless moment, he saw his mother standing there, just at the edge of his vision. But when he looked she wasn't there at all. Just an oak tree, dropping the last of its leaves for winter.
"I have the address that Jo gave us," he said finally. "Unless you want to go inside."
"Do you think Dad came here?"
Dean thought about it for a moment, as he watched the red and white barber pole turn in the wind. "No, I don't think he came here," he said. "I think he already knew what was here. I think he came for something else."
"I wish I remembered it," said Sam after a lengthy silence. "I wish I remembered her. All our lives we've been trying to avenge a wrong that I don't even remember and never really understood." He swallowed hard and looked at the sidewalk. "Until now."
"Hard to miss something you never had," said Dean. He couldn't imagine a life where he didn't ache for what was lost as much as who was lost. Sam might have yearned for what he never had, but Dean yearned for what had slipped through his four-year-old fingers.
"She would have liked this," said Sam. "Jess, I mean. She liked to study me like she would study physics. She wanted to know what made me who I was."
"Would you have ever told her?"
"Does it matter anymore?" said Sam, reaching up to scratch the side of his nose. If it was actually to take care of something else at the corner of his eye, Dean granted him the dignity not to ask.
"Only if it matters to you," said Dean. "Do you think she would have wanted to know?"
Sam hesitated, and scratched his nose again. "Yes," he said finally. "Yes, I think she would have wanted to know. But I didn't realize that until it was too late to tell her."
Dean nodded, and clasped his hands behind his back as he stared at the barber shop that stood where his home used to be. "I hope Mom would have understood what we do," he said. "It'd kill me if I thought she was disappointed in us."
"How could she be disappointed in you, Dean?" said Sam. "You've spent your whole life helping people. She might not have wanted this, but she'd never be disappointed in you for it."
"But you think she might be disappointed in Dad."
It wasn't even a question, not really. Sam had never made it a secret what he thought of their father's parenting skills. Sam didn't answer right away, though, and Dean couldn't say whether that was because he didn't want to, or because he couldn't.
"I think she'd know he tried," he said finally, "even if he made some bad decisions."
It was probably as charitable as he was going to get, but Dean appreciated it. Even if he would never say so.
It was by unspoken agreement when they turned to go back to Tessa, and they were silent for most of the drive to the address that Jo had given them, stopping only once so that Sam could ask for directions to the unfamiliar street.
"Well, let's just hope Joe's right about her," said Dean, bringing Tessa to a stop across the street from her house. "Dad was in town for something, and I want to know what it was."
"You're not the only one," said Sam, striding across the street before Tessa had even stopped shuddering.
The door was opening while Sam's hand was raised but before he had a chance to know, Dean taking the front steps two at a time to catch up with him.
"I would ask you what took you so long," she said, opening the door wider, "but it's clear as day where you've been. Sam. Dean. Come inside, I've been expecting you."
"How did you--?" started Dean, but Sam just grabbed his arm and hauled him in behind him. He didn't need to, though; her invitation had been as much an order as a request, and Dean was conditioned to obey those.
"You must be Miss Mosely," said Sam as she closed the door behind them. "Joe told us about you."
"Little Miss Harvelle," said Missouri, causing Dean's eyebrows to raise. Jo'd been very clear about the fact that Missouri had met her only as Joe. "Oh yes, I know all about her. You can't hide that sort of thing from me. Well, come on in and ask me what you want to ask."
"Thank you," said Sam, more gracious than Dean in accepting her hospitality. Not that Dean was ungracious, but apparently his thoughts were. "We'll try not to impose more than necessary."
"That's what all you Winchester boys say," said Missouri, sitting them down in her parlor and bringing on the tea, already brewed like she'd been expecting them.
Maybe there really was something to the whole psychic thing.
"Wait, you knew Dad?" said Dean. "You know Dad?"
"I've known your Daddy for a long time," she said. "I even met you once before, but you probably don't remember me, you were such a tiny, quiet little thing at the time."
"No, that's impossible," said Dean. "We never came back here. Dad never came back here."
"No, you're right, he didn't," said Missouri. "In all those years, he never came back here, but I never forgot him. No, I met your Daddy before you ever left. And until a few weeks ago, I hadn't seen him since."
"He was here to see you," said Sam. "We were going to ask you--"
"You were going to ask me if I heard anything about him while he was in town," she finished. "And maybe, if I proved to have the Sight that Miss Harvelle claimed I have, to ask me if I knew where he was now."
"So do you?" said Dean. "Know where he is?"
She sighed and shook her head. "He said he was on the trail of something big," she said. "He was hoping there was evidence here in Lawrence that he'd missed for all these years because he'd never known what to look for."
"And did he find anything?"
"If I knew that, I would tell you," she said. "Your daddy's better than just about anybody I know at keeping what's secret secret. But I can tell you this, boys. I kept an eye on things here after you and your daddy left town, and I don't think he missed anything. I don't think there was anything to find."
"That's not the sort of news we were looking for," said Sam, but he could speak for himself, because if Dean had found there was some kind of clue here all along he might've gone mad with the knowing.
"But he was here," said Dean. "When? And where did he go?"
"One question at a time, child," she said. "And drink your tea. You're so jittery I think you're going to bounce right out of that chair."
"I'm never jittery," said Dean, but Missouri Mosely's tone left no room for argument. Dean's knee was, in fact, twitching, though whether that was from the proximity of real, solid information or the fact that he was in Lawrence at all, he couldn't be sure.
"I know it's hard, honey," she said, more kindly this time. Dean had to wonder just how much she could see inside his head, and just how easy he was making it. "He only stayed a couple of days, and if it helps he misses you boys something fierce." Before anyone could say anything, she looked right at Sam and added. "Both of you boys."
"Well, he certainly has a strange way of showing it," said Sam, looking down at his hands.
"I won't argue that John Winchester has made some funny choices," she said, "but I know that everything he does, he does it to protect you."
"Where was he going?" said Dean, because there was just no way that conversation was going to go in a good direction, not with Sam and not right now.
"I don't know that either," she said, "but if I had to guess, I'd say he was heading north. He was right obsessed with hearing about the weather from that way just as quick as he could get it."
"The weather?" said Sam. "He was interested in the weather?"
"He was looking for omens, wasn't he," said Dean. "He's following a trail of omens."
"That sounds like something your daddy would do," she agreed.
"And if that's what he did, then that's what we need to follow up on," said Dean. "We can hit the local paper first thing in the morning."
"Just as soon as we figure out where we're going to stay," said Sam.
"Oh no," said Missouri. "Don't you even start thinking I'm going to make you find a hotel or camp outside of town. I knew you boys when you were barely knee high. I can make up a room for you."
"Oh, we couldn't ask--"
"Did anybody hear anybody else asking? No? Good, then it's settled," she said. "I think I can handle a couple of boys for a few days."
"How do you know it'll be a few days?" said Dean. She just gave him a look, and he asked no more about it.
: : :
When Dean found a few dollars missing from his stash - and yes, he knew exactly how much was in it beforehand - he just figured that Sam needed a few necessities and thought no more about it. Sam had asked him for almost nothing since they'd left Stanford University with everything Sam had left in the world, so Dean figured he was entitled to a few things, even if it was Dean's hard-earned money.
Even if hard-earned, in this case, meant running hard and fast away from a card table. He didn't cheat, he was just that good. Nobody liked a winner who walked away with the pot.
He didn't expect to come back from the newspaper office to find Sam sitting on his bed in their shared room, opening and closing a brand new Kodak Brownie.
"You spent money on that?" said Dean. "If you wanted a camera, Sam, I could've--"
"Made me one?" finished Sam. "Thanks, but this is one case where I'm pretty comfortable going with the commercial version. It's nice and small and simple."
Dean thought that was exactly the problem with it, but then that was probably where he and Sam differed on the subject. Maybe when Sam was sleeping he could make a few small improvements.
"You want to get a picture of me?" said Dean, posing by the door and giving Sam his broadest, fakest smile.
"Not really what I had in mind," said Sam, but once Dean's arms were down again, once he dropped the smile and went over to the dresser to empty his pockets, that was when the room was filled with the flash from Sam's camera. "That's more like it."
"That's really what you did with your day?" said Dean. "While I was busy getting information, you were taking pictures around the house?"
"Not exactly," said Sam, and from the way he placed the folding camera in his lap, the way he looked down at it, Dean guessed that the very first photograph was of a certain barbershop at the other end of town.
"Oh," he said. When the top of the dresser was covered with notes and clippings and the guts of an old pocket watch that Dean had lifted, he went over to the bed to check it out. "You know, I always thought about making myself one of these. Oh, the pictures I could have taken."
"I can only imagine," said Sam dryly. "Would you even have asked their consent?"
"Hey," said Dean, "I'm a gentleman. I never would have taken pictures of that."
"If I'd had one sooner," said Sam, "I'd've had a picture of Jess. I never even thought about it, Dean. I always just thought she would always be with me. I didn't once think about life after she was gone."
And he didn't need to think about it now that he was living it. Dean almost told him so, but somehow he knew it wouldn't be taken in the spirit it was intended. Maybe it couldn't be, not by Sam, not yet.
"I don't think you'll ever forget her anyway," said Dean. "I haven't seen Mom in twenty years but I still know exactly what she looks like. I can just close my eyes and there she is, standing over my bed and kissing me good-night."
Sam smiled a sad smile, his eyes still on his camera. "At least I have one of you now," he said, "in case... just in case."
"I'm not going anywhere," said Dean, even though he wasn't in any position to make that kind of promise. "It's you and me, Sam."
But maybe he would steal that camera and get a picture of Sam. Just in case.
: : :
Sam came with him the next time he pestered the newspaper office for more information, though they had little enough to begin with. Sam, who had practically lived with his nose in a book when they were younger, was good at scanning past issues of the newspaper for references in any sort of story to unusual weather north of Lawrence.
North of Lawrence covered a lot of territory.
"I might have something for you boys," said J.K. Reilly, returning from his business lunch to find Sam and Dean still in his office. "I was talking to a colleague of mine from Des Moines, and she said they covered the launching of a new series of weather balloons. Very first thing they got caught in was an electrical storm that kicked up out of nowhere."
"Des Moines?" said Dean, perking up immediately.
"Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?" he said. "Because if it's all the same to you, I'd like my office back at your earliest convenience."
"Can you tell me when this was?"
"About a month ago, more or less. They were headed west, over Sioux Territory."
"You hear that, Sam?"
"Every word," said Sam, beginning to file things away where he found them. He already had a few possible references to unusual phenomena around that time on hand, clipped and stowed, that would corroborate that.
Dean offered his hand. "You've been most obliging, Mr. Reilly. I hope we can do business together again one day."
His grunt as they shook hands suggested he would be less pleased than Dean, but he didn't voice it. After all, a small amount of money had changed hands, for the inconvenience, and they'd made it a point to leave the office in precisely the condition they'd found it in.
"I don't suppose you could give us your colleague's name?" he said. "On the chance that we ever run into her in Des Moines?"
"I’m not sure I'm doing her any favors," he said, "but it's Mrs. Helen Reilly." Dean raised his eyebrows. "My ex-wife."
Dean managed not to smile. "We'll certainly offer her the same hospitality we offered you," he said, though fundamentally it had been the other way round.
And if he lifted a silver letter opener off his desk - neither fancy nor engraved, so obviously not a keepsake - it was purely out of habit.
"So he probably went up into Sioux Territory," said Sam as they walked the side streets back to Miss Mosely's house, "but if you're right and he's following these omens, that means he'll be long gone."
"What we need to do is figure out where these omens went next," said Dean, "and that's a bigger job than both of us."
"If Dad could do it, we can do it," said Sam. But Dad had known exactly what he was looking for, and Sam and Dean were in a position of having to guess. "Omens usually mean demons."
"That they do," said Dean, but he wasn't going to jump to any conclusions. Not yet.
: : :
"I'll be glad to get out of this town," said Dean, later that night when he had a full belly and a head full of Sam's research. "I feel like we've already overstayed our welcome."
"It's strange to be here," agreed Sam, taking a few moments to care for his things, brushing dirt off his trousers and hanging his frock coat with all the care it deserved. Of all of his things, it was the only thing he had left that reflected the life he'd lived while he was away. "Sometimes it almost seems like something is familiar, even though I know that's impossible. It's as though a part of me knows this is where I come from."
"It's changed a lot," said Dean, "but my gut knows this place and my gut doesn't like it. Sometimes... I can't forget that Mom died here, Sam, I just can't. Every time I go out, I feel like I'm spotting her on every street corner."
"I thought I saw Jess," said Sam quietly. "When we were out at where the house used to be. I... sometimes I see her, out of the corner of my eye, like she's still with me."
"Well, she is," said Dean. "Not with you, but... with you."
"Religious sentiments, Dean? From you?
"That's not a religious sentiment, that's just how we work," said Dean. "Do you think Dad ever forgot Mom, even for a moment?"
"I'd say when he was hacking the heads off vampires she probably wasn't foremost in his mind," said Sam. But that didn't mean that perhaps in the corner of his father's eye, when he went about his business, there wasn't a blonde figure just like Sam's, just like Dean's, watching over him. "I miss her, Dean."
"Of course you do," he said. "Hell, I only knew her for a day and I miss her too. She was something else, Sam. Nobody's asking you not to miss that."
"Do you know it's been a month?" said Sam. "Not today exactly, but a month since... since it happened."
"Yeah, I know," said Dean quietly. He'd never say so, but he'd been counting the days, and wondering if Sam was going to want to observe it in some way. Dean didn't care to celebrate the anniversaries of deaths, but he'd never seen things quite the same way as Sam had. It was a relief when the day passed and he hadn't. "What did she look like, when you saw her?"
"Jess?" said Sam. "She looked like...." For a moment, just a moment, he looked almost content. "We were in love, Dean. She used to... stay with me, when she could. She looked like she did then, hair unbound, in her long, white nightdress. I always thought she never looked more beautiful than she looked when I knew it was just for me."
Dean had never doubted, from the moment he first saw his brother again, from the moment he saw the woman by his side, smart and fierce and exactly what his brother had always needed in his life, that Sam loved her. That she was far beyond friend, far beyond even lady friend. No matter what he said, he knew that. And he wished, for Sam's sake, for his own sake, that he'd gotten a chance to know her better. He would never have the chance to know her now, except through Sam's eyes.
"That's what Mom looks like when I see her," said Dean, which given the context might have been inappropriate, but the words came flying out nonetheless. He hadn't been intending to say them at all. "That's what she looked like the last time I saw her. It happened when she was putting us to bed."
"Oh," said Sam softly, and with unusual discretion for him when the subject of their mother came up, he didn't press.
And Dean didn't offer any more. He didn't offer that he'd seen her earlier too, hovering near the edges of where their home had once stood, silent and watching him. Dean had felt his mother had been watching him his whole life, and he often thought he glimpsed her in a crowd, glimpsed her in passing as they traveled through one town after another, but this was the first time he really felt like she was there.
He never wanted to come back to Lawrence. He still didn't want to be in Lawrence. But coming to Lawrence meant picking up their father's trail again, and that was worth the ache that he felt being back in what had once been his home.
: : :
"You boys have got someone looking for you," said Missouri, once again opening the door for them before they'd had time to knock.
"That's never going to stop getting under my skin," said Dean, shaking his head. "You just know somebody's looking for us?"
"While I do have a telephone," she pointed out to them, "and people do occasionally try to reach me on it, yes, I just know somebody's looking for you. Or rather, I know that you're on somebody's mind, and there's someplace you need to be. Do you have any more business in Lawrence, or can you pack your things an be on your way?"
"That eager to get rid of us?" said Dean. "Unless Dad's hiding out in somebody's basement, I've been ready to leave this town from the moment we arrived."
"Oh, Dean," she said, and didn't explain but Dean could see something like sympathy in her expression. He didn't want sympathy. And besides, they had half a trail now that led north, and Dean was ready to follow it, further research be damned.
"Who, Miss Mosely?" said Sam. "Who do we need to see?"
"Your Uncle Bobby, of course," she said, "but then you already know that, don't you, Sam?"
"I... how would I know that?"
"You know how," she said, lowering her chin and looking up at him with just her eyes. "You know exactly what I'm talking about, Sam Winchester."
Maybe Sam knew what she was talking but, but somebody was leaving Dean in the dark here. Two somebodies. And he found he didn't much like it.
"You knew Uncle Bobby needed us and you didn't say anything?" said Dean. "Did he send you a message?"
"Not exactly," admitted Sam, giving Missouri a nod that he probably thought Dean wouldn't catch. "And I'm not sure that he needs us so much as he knows that we need him."
"We need him? What for?"
"I don't know," said Sam, looking to Missouri for help.
"I think only your Uncle Bobby can tell you that," she said, "but if you want my guess, I'd say that the one thing the two of you need help with is finding your Daddy, and if there's one person who can help you with that, it's someone your Daddy trusts like your Uncle Bobby."
His father and Bobby had something of a volatile relationship, even more so in the years since Sam had left to go to Stanford, but one thing Dean could not deny was that his father trusted Bobby as much as he trusted anyone. Though, deservedly, he wasn't sure that trust went both ways.
"It's a hell of a journey, getting up to Bobby's place," said Dean, letting out a low whistle. And, probably not coincidentally, it was exactly in the direction they'd already been planning to go. "We should get on the road as soon as we can, if that's where we're going. Is that where we're going, Sam?"
There was a challenge in that question, practically a dare for Sam to explain to him just what the hell was going on and what sort of secrets he was sharing with Missouri Mosely.
"I think so, yes," he said finally. "I'm not positive, but I think so."
"One day soon you're going to tell me just how you think so," muttered Dean. "All right, you go start packing our things and I'll hit the telegraph office. It ought to still be open."
Sam pulled out his pocket watch and nodded. "Still plenty of time," he said.
"Well, the two of your aren't going anywhere till morning, so Dean you go and do your thing, and Sam you go and do yours, and I'll make sure you both at least have a decent meal in you before you take off again."
It had been a few days of good meals and soft beds - and those after the luxuries they'd enjoyed at Harvelle's Roadhouse - so Dean definitely wasn't going to turn one last one down. They'd be roughing it again soon enough.
Mary, Missouri
They spent the night outside a little town called Mary, which made Dean a little uneasy for no good reason. He wanted to make good time while they still had good roads to make it on, especially since Sam had seemed pretty edgy ever since they left Lawrence, in contrast to Dean who felt only - or almost only - relief.
"So are we going to talk about this now?"
"Talk about what?" said Sam, taking his turn to build up the fire. "I don't know what that means."
"You don't know what that means," said Dean, nodding his head and tensing his jaw. "It means I want to know what the hell you and Missouri were talking about, Sam. I want to know what secret you told her and not me."
"I didn't tell her anything, Dean," said Sam. "I didn't tell anyone. She just... knew."
"Knew what? I was decent enough not to ask you when you were trapped inside a moving vehicle with me but you're not getting out of it so easily now."
"All right," said Sam, breaking up a branch with his hands and feeding some more wood onto the fire. "Just promise to hear me out, all right?"
"Since I'm practically begging you to talk to me, Sam, I think that's about the only promise I can make. I'm listening. Now tell me something."
Sam broke another stick in two before talking. "I... the thing is... all right, this is going to sound worse than it is."
"At this point, Sam, I don't know how that's possible."
"I have visions, Dean."
The words hung in the night air between them for a long, long time, broken only by the crackle of the fire. For a moment Dean was certain that he heard wrong, but the words made everything else make sense. As much sense as any of their lives made.
"You have... visions," he repeated. "And just how long has that been going on?"
"Shortly before you came for me," Sam quietly admitted. "I don't really understand them, Dean. I wasn't even sure they were visions until we met Missouri."
"So you talked to her about this. You talked to somebody else about this before you talked to me."
"She's a psychic, Dean. I didn't want to tell her about it, she just plucked it right out of my head and confronted me when you were out." He poked at the fire with his stick, sending sparks in the air, then carelessly tossed it on and waited for it to ignite before saying anything else. "That's where the headaches come from."
"Like the one you had back at Ellen's saloon," said Dean. He should have pushed harder, pursued that one till Sam gave in. "So what was that one about?"
"I don't know," said Sam, to Dean's grunt of frustration. "I don't, Dean! They're mostly just images, flashes of things. Most of it doesn't mean anything to me. They might as well be memories for all the good they do me."
"Tell me anyway," said Dean.
"Bobby was there," Sam admitted after another few moments of silence passed. "Something was on fire and... and you were falling."
"So you knew we needed to see Uncle Bobby all along and you didn't say anything to me?" said Dean. "Do you really even want to find Dad, Sam, or is this whole thing just some kind of game to you?"
"I didn't know anything, Dean. I still don't know anything. I saw Bobby, so what? It could be something that happens years from now, or some memory from years ago."
"Yeah, somehow I doubt you believe either one of those," said Dean. "From now on you tell me, Sam. You tell me when you're having one of these visions of yours and you tell me what you see. If you can't figure them out, maybe I can."
"I think you'll be able to tell when I'm having one," said Sam, and Dean couldn't help but remember the sight of his brother wracked with pain on the floor of a saloon in Broken Bow. "All right, Dean, I'll tell you. But don't expect it to do us any good."
"At least I'll be a part of making that decision," said Dean. "Now tell me about me falling."
Sam winced and shook his head. "Can we just eat something?" he said. "It's been a long day and you want to get an early start tomorrow."
"Do I die?" said Dean. "Is that why you don't want to tell me?"
"No!" said Sam quickly, though something crossed his face that made Dean wonder if he was lying. "It's just a long fall. You're hurt, but I don't know how badly."
"Where am I falling from? Are we talking about a fall from Bobby's roof, or the edge of a cliff?"
"I don't know, Dean," said Sam. "I've told you everything I know. The visions aren't like seeing the future. They're like seeing a photograph that moves for only a second, and you're meant to interpret a whole story from one little movement. I could try, but I'd only get it wrong."
"Fine," said Dean, finally digging a couple of tins out of the automobile. "We'll eat something. But quit keeping things from me, Sam."
It was hard enough getting to know his brother again without having to dig through his secrets too.
Southern Sioux Territory
Sam hadn't traveled this trail in a long time, long enough that the landmarks they passed might've been pictures he saw in a book once instead of places he remembered from his childhood. They didn't often hunt here; it was seldom needed or wanted. The last time, in fact, had been just like this, taking the direct route to Uncle Bobby's place, on the small parcel of land known as Dakota.
"I've got a couple of friends out this way," said Dean, steering hard to the left around some debris on the trail. "They're familiar with Tessa."
"I'm sure that's meant to be reassuring," said Sam, watching over the side of the vehicle as they passed through the prairie, never straying from the road. Once Dean got her going it was a pretty quiet ride, quiet enough that Sam caught the occasional glimpse of wildlife completely undisturbed by their passage.
If there had been demonic omens in this area a month ago, there was certainly no sign of them now.
Dean had a habit of singing old sea shanties as they rode, changing the lyrics to suit a life spent on land, and while it might not have been Sam's favorite it was at least something familiar, almost a lullaby. An indecent, raucous lullaby.
"I think we're coming up on something," said Dean as they topped a hill, starting to pick up a little speed as they came down the other side over clear grassland, crisp with frost. "Up ahead, do you see that?"
"It looks like a white buffalo," said Sam. "I didn't know those were a real thing."
"They're rare," said Dean. "Sacred. I've never actually seen one before."
As they drew close, though, and the buffalo moved little from its position by the path, they could see that it wasn't an animal at all, much as it had been designed to look like one.
"I'm pulling over," said Dean, and left the boiler running as he got out of the vehicle. Sam hoped one of the valves didn't choose that moment to pop and hiss and ruin the moment. He, too, pushed open his door and stepped out of the vehicle, leaning against part of the support structure and looking over at the object of Dean's fascination.
The buffalo, large and gleaming white, was almost completely constructed of wheels and gears and cogs meticulously carved from bone and antler, all turning almost silently together to make a majestic, clockwork creature.
"He's beautiful," said Dean, hand lifted as if he expected to be able to touch him and feel real animal hide. "There must be a village near here."
There was a sound from overhead, a rustling, clicking sound, and then a giant bird came into sight, gliding over the treetops. It was the same bone white of the buffalo with rare flashes of metal springs inside, tiny pieces working in perfect synch to allow it to fly over them.
And as Dean stood there, coat strapped on tight against the cold, hands in the pockets of his heavy trousers, he tilted his head back and silently stared at the sky. The shadow of the clockwork thunderbird passed over him as it circled above before heading east again, back towards the village it watched over.
Sam very quietly took a picture.
"Now that's something else," Dean said when it was gone again, when the white buffalo too had begun moving away over the brittle grass.
"They're going to know we're here now."
"They already did," said Dean, his breath leaving little frosty clouds to drift away on the breeze. "All right, let's go. We can be there in a couple of days if the bridge isn't out."
"And here I thought Tessa could float," said Sam, putting the camera away and then smirking at him. "It can do everything else."
"She can, but the steering's a bitch," said Dean.
"Wait, are you being serious?" said Sam. "We can take her on the water?"
Dean just grinned at him as he got back into the car and refused to answer.
: : :
There was a dust cloud ahead of them on the old wagon trail, indistinct at first before resolving itself into a galloping horse and its long trail of dust.
"Wow, he's sure coming on fast," said Dean, pulling Tessa over and driving in the grass to let the rider pass.
Sam looked back over his shoulder, just tall enough to be able to see over all the apparati in the back. "Do you think there's a fire?"
"Probably running from something," said Dean, as the horse came galloping down the hill. But the rider was fussing with something at his side, no her side; they were just near enough now to see both her skirts and her hair flying out behind her. They were heading full bore at one another when she smoothly reached down and unfurled something - a flag - out behind her.
"Stop the car, Dean!"
Dean was already stopping, though, the moment he saw what she was flying. Red background; white pentacle.
"I'm guessing she's here for us," he said. And if she wasn't, they'd get the hell out of her way anyway. Anyone going that speed and flying that emblem to identify herself was a woman on a mission.
When they stopped so did she, slowing to a canter and then a walk to cool her horse down for a few minutes before stowing the flag again and dismounting.
"Bobby Singer sent me," she said, right then and there opening all the right doors with the Winchester boys. Who she obviously knew on sight.
"We're already on our way to see him," said Dean, as Tessa shook a couple times and then sighed to an actual stop. "We wired to tell him we were coming."
"He got it, but he's not there anymore," she said. "I'm to tell the two of you to meet him in Chicago instead. And also to tell Dean that you need to fix your vehicle there up with some wireless telegraph equipment." She gave him a once-over and then a sly smile. "You must be Dean."
"Now what the hell is he doing in Chicago?" said Dean. "Pardon my language."
"I would if you'd said anything worth pardoning," she said. "He got a line on something he thought you boys would be interested in, and didn't figure on you wanting to detour over to Dakota if you didn't have to."
Dean looked back at Sam, wondering if Sam's vision had just meant they were going to meet up with Bobby, or whether it was telling them to go to his home. Sam didn't give him a clue, but he did step forward to identify himself.
"Sam Winchester," he said, offering her his hand.
"Pamela Barnes," she returned. "And I've already met Dean, of course. So are we going to play twenty questions, or are you boys going to trust me and change course?"
"He's already on his way?"
"Left yesterday, by train," she said. "He'll beat you there by at least two days, but that should give him time to set things up."
"Set what things up?" said Sam.
Dean and Pamela both turn their heads to give him a look. It had been a few years, but it hadn't been that long. "It's Bobby," said Dean. "He probably had to take the train because he had a trunk full of books and gadgetry that just had to come with him."
"You do know him fairly well," said Pamela admiringly.
"We've known Uncle Bobby since we were kids," said Dean, "and in all that time he's never changed." Hell, Dean'd build a good chunk of Tessa up at Bobby's place, out of whatever scrap he had around. "Are you heading into Chicago too?"
"I've got some other business to take care of first," she said. "Why, do you want me to be heading into Chicago with you, Mr. Winchester?"
"It would certainly liven up the scenery," said Dean appreciatively. "How long do you think this business of yours is going to take you?"
"Dean," said Sam, quiet and low, from behind him, but Dean ignored him. After all, she started it.
"Not so long that I won't be able to catch up with you there," she said, pulling a notebook from her pocket and tearing a page from it. "Bobby said he'll leave a message at this hotel for you boys. He wasn't sure when he left just where he'd end up staying."
"Thank you," said Dean, glancing at it before folding it in half and tucking it into a coat pocket. "I guess we'll be needing to take a turn for the northeast then."
"Do you need me to dig out the map?" said Sam, but Dean shook his head. He knew the way to Chicago well enough, especially once they got back on a well-traveled road again.
"Well, it's been lovely meeting you," said Pamela, "but I can eat up a lot more miles before sunset if I carry on. Give Bobby a big hug for me, will you?"
"We'll give him one in spirit," Dean promised her. Pamela just laughed and threw herself back in the saddle, stowing the hunters' flag in a saddlebag once again.
"Safe trip!" she said, and started off down the trail again at an only slightly slower pace than before. Dean watched until all he could see of her was a cloud of dust once again.
"Should I have asked her to stay for dinner?" he said finally, starting the automobile up again.
"Bobby sure makes some interesting friends," said Sam, which was a kind of agreement, in a way. "What do you think he's got in Chicago?"
"It's Bobby, so I have no idea," said Dean, "but whatever it is, it's probably important. Or at the very least interesting."
"I think my vision might have taken place in Chicago," admitted Sam a few moments later. "Or at least, I think it might've taken place in a city. Right now Chicago seems the most likely candidate."
"Well, then Chicago it is," said Dean. "It's as good a destination as any."
It was a few seconds after that when Tessa was primed to go once again, and as soon as she was Dean was back on the road.
Next Part | Master Post
"You look like you're starting to get some cabin fever," said Dean when Sam joined him out by the automobile, where Dean was busy buffing her to a nice shine. The stop, and Ash's well-equipped workshop, had finally given him a chance to tune her up properly and make sure there wasn't so much as a scratch left on her.
"We've been here a few days now and we haven't got anything yet worth stopping for."
"You don't think it was worth just finding out about this place in the first place?" said Dean. "Not to mention the benefits for Tessa here."
"Maybe those are worth it for you," said Sam, "but I'm in this for one thing only and that's to find Dad, and find the thing that keeps hunting our family."
"Well, you weren't going to do that without our ride," said Dean, "and she needed this breather. You really want to get on the road again without anyplace to go?"
"There are other people we can go to," said Sam. "We can stop by Pastor Jim's church; if anyone would know, it would be him. We always used to stop there so Dad could stock up on holy water and other paraphernalia."
"We stopped there because you liked it there and sometimes it was the only way to shut you up," said Dean. "Dad can get holy water anywhere."
Still, it was something to work with. If Dad needed help, Jim Murphy was one of the few people he trusted without question.
"Well, what would you have us do?" said Sam. "Stay here in Ellen's spare room forever?"
"All right," said Dean, tweaking Tessa's right headlamp just so. "But we should stay for Thanksgiving dinner. I promised I'd help with the turkey, and we could both use a good home-cooked meal before we hit the road."
"I can live with that," agreed Sam. "I just think we've gotten all we can out of this place. Or is there another reason you want to stay?"
"And what kind of reason would that be?" said Dean, moving around back to check the valves on the boiler. He had a suspicion he knew what was coming, though.
"Jo," said Sam after a moment. "I think she'd have you, you know."
"Really?" said Dean dryly. "And here I thought you meant Ellen."
"You could have that, Dean," said Sam. "You're twenty-six years old. Have you never wanted what I had with Jessica?"
"And what did you have with Jessica, exactly?" said Dean. "Because you sure as hell weren't married to her."
"You wouldn't understand," said Sam. "It's not about marriage. You'd know that if you'd ever been in love with anyone."
"Yeah, well maybe I'm not looking for that, Sam."
"Is it that you liked her better with the e on her name?" said Sam, softer, speaking into the air beside Dean instead of right to him. "She did make a nice, fresh-faced boy."
"Jesus Christ, Sam, why would you ask me that?"
Sam shrugged but he didn't back down from his insinuation. "People have said things," he said. "You know people have said things, for a long time. You could tell me if it was true."
"No, I couldn't," said Dean. He himself wasn't even sure if that meant he couldn't talk about it, or if it meant he didn't know how to answer the question when it came to Joe Harvelle. "And I'm not interested in courting Jo either way. We haven't got time for that, Sam, even if she'd want something like that. We have a job to do."
"Is that what you're going to say for the rest of your life?"
"Maybe," said Dean tersely. "Maybe not. Either way, this is not the time or the place to even think about that kind of thing. You're right, we should get on the road again before the trail gets even colder."
"Good," said Sam, using the sleeve of his coat to wipe a fingerprint off the polished metal of Tessa's exterior. "And when this is all over, you can always come back."
"Thanksgiving, Sam," Dean interrupted him. "It's just a couple of days. And then when December rolls around, we'll hit the road."
: : :
The saloon was closed to its regular traffic, travelers and hunters and locals just looking for a watering hole. Most everyone was at home today anyway, or had found a home of some sort to be in. For some, that home was Harvelle's Roadhouse.
By this point Dean knew Ellen and Jo and Ash - well enough to feel like he wasn't intruding on the holiday, at any rate - and Gordon and Travis and Olivia were familiar enough faces from their stay at the Roadhouse. But it was when Caleb walked in the door with his pretty new wife Kate that Dean knew their staying through the holiday was the right choice.
"Dean?" he said, brow furrowing as he stared at one brother and then the other. "Sam?"
"Caleb!" said Dean, standing up so quickly he almost knocked his chair over. "Well I'll be damned."
"Now you boys are just about the last people I'd expect to show up at our little gathering. I didn't even know you were passing through this way."
"Well, business, you know how it is," said Dean. "Hey, how's Misty doing? She being good for you?"
"Your girl's got an appetite that could almost equal yours," said Caleb. "Kate's been taking her out sometimes, says she's a dream to ride."
"She always was," said Dean, and couldn't help the bit of nostalgia he felt, remembering the mare who'd been solid for him all that time. "We'll come by when we have a chance. Once our business is taken care of."
"Always figured you would," said Caleb, already giving Sam a once over. "Boy, you got tall."
Sam grinned a little sheepishly and hung his head, like he always did when someone pointed that out. "All I ever wanted growing up was to be taller than Dean."
"Well, you certainly did that," said Caleb. "Boy, I wasn't sure I was ever going to see you again. How've you been keeping?"
"Well enough," said Sam, his smile fading only a little. Apparently the news of Jessica hadn't reached Caleb yet, or if it had he had the discretion not to bring it up. He always had been the type not to pry. "Good to be with Dean again."
"Brothers like you shouldn't be separated," agreed Caleb, even though that wasn't what Sam had said. Sometimes words like those were so transparent, anyone could see what was beneath them. "Ellen! You need any help back there?"
"Can always use another set of hands," she called back. "Dean, didn't you promise me you'd take care of this turkey?"
"On my way," he said, and clapped Sam on the shoulder on his way by.
Sam didn't seem unhappy to be here. In fact, he seemed pretty pleased to see Caleb, and maybe remember the good times they spent out on his ranch when they were younger. But Dean couldn't help but wonder what Sam would've been doing if he hadn't lost Jess, if he was still in Palo Alto for the holiday. He wondered if Sam was thinking about that too.
It wasn't just for his own sake, and the fact that sometimes holidays were the only meaningful dates for hunters, that he decided they should put off leaving till after the Thanksgiving meal.
But Sam was smiling and not isolating himself from the gathered hunters, and if he was thinking about Jess, he was remembering the good times.
Dean finally let himself relax into his task, and helped Ellen not only with carving the turkey but with putting everything else together as well. The meal was substantial, and enthusiastic, and was the best one Dean could remember having in a long time.
: : :
"I think we're going to be taking off this afternoon," said Dean, enjoying his breakfast on the bar of the empty saloon while Ellen polished glasses behind it. "Thanks for everything, Ellen. We might not have found what we were looking for, but we found something all the same. I think we both really needed this."
Ellen was quiet for a moment, finishing off with her glass and setting it on its proper shelf behind the bar. "About that," she said. "I think we have something to talk about, Dean."
"You found something out?" said Dean, leaning across the bar and right up in Ellen's face. She pushed him back with one hand to his shoulder.
"Something like that," she said, surveying him for a moment before sighing and reaching back behind the bar. What she pulled out was the very last thing Dean expected to see.
"What... Ellen, where did you get this?"
"Your father left it with me about a month ago."
"What?" he said. "Why the hell didn't you say anything?"
"Because your daddy's bad news, Dean Winchester," she said, sighing again as she handed it over into Dean's greedy hands. "But that doesn't mean you don't deserve to find him. His mission is your mission too, but he's too damn stubborn to admit it."
"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, snatching the journal from her. The worn leather felt familiar in his hands, from all the times his father had handed it over into his keeping over the years. "He never would have left this behind."
"Unless he had a damn good reason to," she agreed with him. "Somehow he knew you'd make it here, sooner or later. This was always for you, and your brother."
He wanted to open the journal right then and there, thumb through it, absorb all those things his father had collected over the years. Maybe find a clue why he'd left it behind. But that was something private, something intimate. He wasn't going to do it here in front of Ellen Harvelle.
"What did he say? What did he say when he gave it to you?"
"To keep it safe," she said. "Exactly what you'd expect John Winchester to say. I don't think he liked leaving it with me, but there weren't a lot of options."
"What is it with that?" he said. "What is it with you and my dad? He's never even mentioned you."
"We have a history," she said curtly. "A history he obviously didn't want to involve his boys in. Maybe one day he'll tell it to you."
Or maybe the answer was in the book he held in his hand, but no matter what her history with his father, Dean felt confident that Ellen hadn't gone snooping in the journal, not if she was half the hunter she seemed to be. A hunter's journal was inviolable.
"Anything else you've been keeping from us?" he said. "He give you his address? Maybe he's got a telephone service taking calls for him now?"
"I had to get a feel for what was going on before I told you anything," she said. "You'd have done the same thing." The fact that he would have done exactly that did not temper Dean's impatience. "He didn't give me an address, or even a place. All he said was that he was going home."
"Home?" said Dean. "What does that mean, home?"
"He's your father," said Ellen. "You figure it out."
Dean had the awful feeling he already knew.
: : :
Dean found her outside at the woodpile, fighting with Ash's half-finished rotatory severator. She looked exactly the way she had the first time they met, only this time there was a pronounced scowl on her face.
"Hey Joe," he said, hands in his pockets, feeling inexplicably guilty.
"Hey," she said, letting the wind key drop from her fingertips for a few moments as she ran the back of her hand over her forehead. "My mother didn't send you out here to help, did she? Once I get this blasted device started I'll have the wood chopped in no time."
"No," said Dean, "she didn't send me. I just wanted to let you know that Sam and me, we're leaving. Today."
"Today as in later, or today as in now?"
"Sooner than later," said Dean. "We want to make it as far as we can before dark."
"So where are you going, then?" she said, hands on her hips, hat fallen back and held only by the cord around her neck.
Dean had to swallow a couple of times before answering. "South," he said finally. It didn't really matter where when it came down to it, just that very soon they would be gone. "We got a lead on something."
Jo nodded and squared her shoulders as she looked up and met his eyes. "Well, I guess that's that, then. You think you'll be coming back up this way?"
"We've got a job to do," said Dean, unflinching even though guilt rose up in him again. "But if you think I'm going to stay away after that, you haven't been paying attention."
"Try not to get killed, then," she said. "You wouldn't want to disappoint a lady."
"I don't see any ladies here," said Dean, and only then did Jo smile.
"Come on inside," she said, setting the sawing device back on the ground, half wound. "I'll put some things together for you. Sounds like you might have a pretty long trip ahead."
: : :
"What's the matter with you?" said Sam, sitting on the edge of the bed alongside Dean after packing up the last of their things. "We've got Dad's journal, Dean. I figured you'd be happy about that."
"Yeah, well, I also know where we need to go next," said Dean, holding the book in both hands.
"Did he say something, Dean?" said Sam. "Did he leave us a message in the journal?"
"No," said Dean, "he left us a message with Ellen." Sam waited expectantly, but it was a long time before Dean sighed and finally answered. "We have to go home, Sam."
"Home?"
"Lawrence," Dean clarified, but Sam'd never called it that. Sam'd never called it home. "We need to go back to Lawrence."
Lawrence, Kansas
Jo might have given them the name of a seer whom she promised was the real thing before she let them leave the Roadhouse, but Sam and Dean had other business in Lawrence that came before anything else ever could.
Dean knew the way by instinct, like he wasn't a man but a migratory bird with a compass that always pointed home.
"This is it?" said Sam, standing with his hands in his pockets in front of a quiet barber shop. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," said Dean, hands stuffed in the pockets of his trousers so Sam couldn't see them shaking.
"You were only four--"
"I remember, Sam," said Dean curtly. He knew exactly where he was. "This was just about the edge of town back then. Guess you leave a place for twenty years and it grows when you weren't looking."
"I don't remember any of this," said Sam, the tails of his coat flapping lightly in the breeze. "I don't think I remember Kansas at all."
"Yeah, well, you wouldn't, would you? In all the years we've been on the road, Dad never once brought us back." Not that Dean could blame him. In all the times Dean'd been on his own, he'd never come back either. "But this is where we lived, Sammy. This is where our house stood."
"I guess you really never can go home again," said Sam. Not unless you wanted a shave and a haircut, anyway. "So where do we go from here?"
"Just give me a minute, all right?" said Dean. "Just give me a minute, Sam."
When he tilted his head just right he could still see their house standing there, the yard he used to play in, the window of his old bedroom. Of little Sammy's nursery. He even thought, for a brief, breathless moment, he saw his mother standing there, just at the edge of his vision. But when he looked she wasn't there at all. Just an oak tree, dropping the last of its leaves for winter.
"I have the address that Jo gave us," he said finally. "Unless you want to go inside."
"Do you think Dad came here?"
Dean thought about it for a moment, as he watched the red and white barber pole turn in the wind. "No, I don't think he came here," he said. "I think he already knew what was here. I think he came for something else."
"I wish I remembered it," said Sam after a lengthy silence. "I wish I remembered her. All our lives we've been trying to avenge a wrong that I don't even remember and never really understood." He swallowed hard and looked at the sidewalk. "Until now."
"Hard to miss something you never had," said Dean. He couldn't imagine a life where he didn't ache for what was lost as much as who was lost. Sam might have yearned for what he never had, but Dean yearned for what had slipped through his four-year-old fingers.
"She would have liked this," said Sam. "Jess, I mean. She liked to study me like she would study physics. She wanted to know what made me who I was."
"Would you have ever told her?"
"Does it matter anymore?" said Sam, reaching up to scratch the side of his nose. If it was actually to take care of something else at the corner of his eye, Dean granted him the dignity not to ask.
"Only if it matters to you," said Dean. "Do you think she would have wanted to know?"
Sam hesitated, and scratched his nose again. "Yes," he said finally. "Yes, I think she would have wanted to know. But I didn't realize that until it was too late to tell her."
Dean nodded, and clasped his hands behind his back as he stared at the barber shop that stood where his home used to be. "I hope Mom would have understood what we do," he said. "It'd kill me if I thought she was disappointed in us."
"How could she be disappointed in you, Dean?" said Sam. "You've spent your whole life helping people. She might not have wanted this, but she'd never be disappointed in you for it."
"But you think she might be disappointed in Dad."
It wasn't even a question, not really. Sam had never made it a secret what he thought of their father's parenting skills. Sam didn't answer right away, though, and Dean couldn't say whether that was because he didn't want to, or because he couldn't.
"I think she'd know he tried," he said finally, "even if he made some bad decisions."
It was probably as charitable as he was going to get, but Dean appreciated it. Even if he would never say so.
It was by unspoken agreement when they turned to go back to Tessa, and they were silent for most of the drive to the address that Jo had given them, stopping only once so that Sam could ask for directions to the unfamiliar street.
"Well, let's just hope Joe's right about her," said Dean, bringing Tessa to a stop across the street from her house. "Dad was in town for something, and I want to know what it was."
"You're not the only one," said Sam, striding across the street before Tessa had even stopped shuddering.
The door was opening while Sam's hand was raised but before he had a chance to know, Dean taking the front steps two at a time to catch up with him.
"I would ask you what took you so long," she said, opening the door wider, "but it's clear as day where you've been. Sam. Dean. Come inside, I've been expecting you."
"How did you--?" started Dean, but Sam just grabbed his arm and hauled him in behind him. He didn't need to, though; her invitation had been as much an order as a request, and Dean was conditioned to obey those.
"You must be Miss Mosely," said Sam as she closed the door behind them. "Joe told us about you."
"Little Miss Harvelle," said Missouri, causing Dean's eyebrows to raise. Jo'd been very clear about the fact that Missouri had met her only as Joe. "Oh yes, I know all about her. You can't hide that sort of thing from me. Well, come on in and ask me what you want to ask."
"Thank you," said Sam, more gracious than Dean in accepting her hospitality. Not that Dean was ungracious, but apparently his thoughts were. "We'll try not to impose more than necessary."
"That's what all you Winchester boys say," said Missouri, sitting them down in her parlor and bringing on the tea, already brewed like she'd been expecting them.
Maybe there really was something to the whole psychic thing.
"Wait, you knew Dad?" said Dean. "You know Dad?"
"I've known your Daddy for a long time," she said. "I even met you once before, but you probably don't remember me, you were such a tiny, quiet little thing at the time."
"No, that's impossible," said Dean. "We never came back here. Dad never came back here."
"No, you're right, he didn't," said Missouri. "In all those years, he never came back here, but I never forgot him. No, I met your Daddy before you ever left. And until a few weeks ago, I hadn't seen him since."
"He was here to see you," said Sam. "We were going to ask you--"
"You were going to ask me if I heard anything about him while he was in town," she finished. "And maybe, if I proved to have the Sight that Miss Harvelle claimed I have, to ask me if I knew where he was now."
"So do you?" said Dean. "Know where he is?"
She sighed and shook her head. "He said he was on the trail of something big," she said. "He was hoping there was evidence here in Lawrence that he'd missed for all these years because he'd never known what to look for."
"And did he find anything?"
"If I knew that, I would tell you," she said. "Your daddy's better than just about anybody I know at keeping what's secret secret. But I can tell you this, boys. I kept an eye on things here after you and your daddy left town, and I don't think he missed anything. I don't think there was anything to find."
"That's not the sort of news we were looking for," said Sam, but he could speak for himself, because if Dean had found there was some kind of clue here all along he might've gone mad with the knowing.
"But he was here," said Dean. "When? And where did he go?"
"One question at a time, child," she said. "And drink your tea. You're so jittery I think you're going to bounce right out of that chair."
"I'm never jittery," said Dean, but Missouri Mosely's tone left no room for argument. Dean's knee was, in fact, twitching, though whether that was from the proximity of real, solid information or the fact that he was in Lawrence at all, he couldn't be sure.
"I know it's hard, honey," she said, more kindly this time. Dean had to wonder just how much she could see inside his head, and just how easy he was making it. "He only stayed a couple of days, and if it helps he misses you boys something fierce." Before anyone could say anything, she looked right at Sam and added. "Both of you boys."
"Well, he certainly has a strange way of showing it," said Sam, looking down at his hands.
"I won't argue that John Winchester has made some funny choices," she said, "but I know that everything he does, he does it to protect you."
"Where was he going?" said Dean, because there was just no way that conversation was going to go in a good direction, not with Sam and not right now.
"I don't know that either," she said, "but if I had to guess, I'd say he was heading north. He was right obsessed with hearing about the weather from that way just as quick as he could get it."
"The weather?" said Sam. "He was interested in the weather?"
"He was looking for omens, wasn't he," said Dean. "He's following a trail of omens."
"That sounds like something your daddy would do," she agreed.
"And if that's what he did, then that's what we need to follow up on," said Dean. "We can hit the local paper first thing in the morning."
"Just as soon as we figure out where we're going to stay," said Sam.
"Oh no," said Missouri. "Don't you even start thinking I'm going to make you find a hotel or camp outside of town. I knew you boys when you were barely knee high. I can make up a room for you."
"Oh, we couldn't ask--"
"Did anybody hear anybody else asking? No? Good, then it's settled," she said. "I think I can handle a couple of boys for a few days."
"How do you know it'll be a few days?" said Dean. She just gave him a look, and he asked no more about it.
: : :
When Dean found a few dollars missing from his stash - and yes, he knew exactly how much was in it beforehand - he just figured that Sam needed a few necessities and thought no more about it. Sam had asked him for almost nothing since they'd left Stanford University with everything Sam had left in the world, so Dean figured he was entitled to a few things, even if it was Dean's hard-earned money.
Even if hard-earned, in this case, meant running hard and fast away from a card table. He didn't cheat, he was just that good. Nobody liked a winner who walked away with the pot.
He didn't expect to come back from the newspaper office to find Sam sitting on his bed in their shared room, opening and closing a brand new Kodak Brownie.
"You spent money on that?" said Dean. "If you wanted a camera, Sam, I could've--"
"Made me one?" finished Sam. "Thanks, but this is one case where I'm pretty comfortable going with the commercial version. It's nice and small and simple."
Dean thought that was exactly the problem with it, but then that was probably where he and Sam differed on the subject. Maybe when Sam was sleeping he could make a few small improvements.
"You want to get a picture of me?" said Dean, posing by the door and giving Sam his broadest, fakest smile.
"Not really what I had in mind," said Sam, but once Dean's arms were down again, once he dropped the smile and went over to the dresser to empty his pockets, that was when the room was filled with the flash from Sam's camera. "That's more like it."
"That's really what you did with your day?" said Dean. "While I was busy getting information, you were taking pictures around the house?"
"Not exactly," said Sam, and from the way he placed the folding camera in his lap, the way he looked down at it, Dean guessed that the very first photograph was of a certain barbershop at the other end of town.
"Oh," he said. When the top of the dresser was covered with notes and clippings and the guts of an old pocket watch that Dean had lifted, he went over to the bed to check it out. "You know, I always thought about making myself one of these. Oh, the pictures I could have taken."
"I can only imagine," said Sam dryly. "Would you even have asked their consent?"
"Hey," said Dean, "I'm a gentleman. I never would have taken pictures of that."
"If I'd had one sooner," said Sam, "I'd've had a picture of Jess. I never even thought about it, Dean. I always just thought she would always be with me. I didn't once think about life after she was gone."
And he didn't need to think about it now that he was living it. Dean almost told him so, but somehow he knew it wouldn't be taken in the spirit it was intended. Maybe it couldn't be, not by Sam, not yet.
"I don't think you'll ever forget her anyway," said Dean. "I haven't seen Mom in twenty years but I still know exactly what she looks like. I can just close my eyes and there she is, standing over my bed and kissing me good-night."
Sam smiled a sad smile, his eyes still on his camera. "At least I have one of you now," he said, "in case... just in case."
"I'm not going anywhere," said Dean, even though he wasn't in any position to make that kind of promise. "It's you and me, Sam."
But maybe he would steal that camera and get a picture of Sam. Just in case.
: : :
Sam came with him the next time he pestered the newspaper office for more information, though they had little enough to begin with. Sam, who had practically lived with his nose in a book when they were younger, was good at scanning past issues of the newspaper for references in any sort of story to unusual weather north of Lawrence.
North of Lawrence covered a lot of territory.
"I might have something for you boys," said J.K. Reilly, returning from his business lunch to find Sam and Dean still in his office. "I was talking to a colleague of mine from Des Moines, and she said they covered the launching of a new series of weather balloons. Very first thing they got caught in was an electrical storm that kicked up out of nowhere."
"Des Moines?" said Dean, perking up immediately.
"Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?" he said. "Because if it's all the same to you, I'd like my office back at your earliest convenience."
"Can you tell me when this was?"
"About a month ago, more or less. They were headed west, over Sioux Territory."
"You hear that, Sam?"
"Every word," said Sam, beginning to file things away where he found them. He already had a few possible references to unusual phenomena around that time on hand, clipped and stowed, that would corroborate that.
Dean offered his hand. "You've been most obliging, Mr. Reilly. I hope we can do business together again one day."
His grunt as they shook hands suggested he would be less pleased than Dean, but he didn't voice it. After all, a small amount of money had changed hands, for the inconvenience, and they'd made it a point to leave the office in precisely the condition they'd found it in.
"I don't suppose you could give us your colleague's name?" he said. "On the chance that we ever run into her in Des Moines?"
"I’m not sure I'm doing her any favors," he said, "but it's Mrs. Helen Reilly." Dean raised his eyebrows. "My ex-wife."
Dean managed not to smile. "We'll certainly offer her the same hospitality we offered you," he said, though fundamentally it had been the other way round.
And if he lifted a silver letter opener off his desk - neither fancy nor engraved, so obviously not a keepsake - it was purely out of habit.
"So he probably went up into Sioux Territory," said Sam as they walked the side streets back to Miss Mosely's house, "but if you're right and he's following these omens, that means he'll be long gone."
"What we need to do is figure out where these omens went next," said Dean, "and that's a bigger job than both of us."
"If Dad could do it, we can do it," said Sam. But Dad had known exactly what he was looking for, and Sam and Dean were in a position of having to guess. "Omens usually mean demons."
"That they do," said Dean, but he wasn't going to jump to any conclusions. Not yet.
: : :
"I'll be glad to get out of this town," said Dean, later that night when he had a full belly and a head full of Sam's research. "I feel like we've already overstayed our welcome."
"It's strange to be here," agreed Sam, taking a few moments to care for his things, brushing dirt off his trousers and hanging his frock coat with all the care it deserved. Of all of his things, it was the only thing he had left that reflected the life he'd lived while he was away. "Sometimes it almost seems like something is familiar, even though I know that's impossible. It's as though a part of me knows this is where I come from."
"It's changed a lot," said Dean, "but my gut knows this place and my gut doesn't like it. Sometimes... I can't forget that Mom died here, Sam, I just can't. Every time I go out, I feel like I'm spotting her on every street corner."
"I thought I saw Jess," said Sam quietly. "When we were out at where the house used to be. I... sometimes I see her, out of the corner of my eye, like she's still with me."
"Well, she is," said Dean. "Not with you, but... with you."
"Religious sentiments, Dean? From you?
"That's not a religious sentiment, that's just how we work," said Dean. "Do you think Dad ever forgot Mom, even for a moment?"
"I'd say when he was hacking the heads off vampires she probably wasn't foremost in his mind," said Sam. But that didn't mean that perhaps in the corner of his father's eye, when he went about his business, there wasn't a blonde figure just like Sam's, just like Dean's, watching over him. "I miss her, Dean."
"Of course you do," he said. "Hell, I only knew her for a day and I miss her too. She was something else, Sam. Nobody's asking you not to miss that."
"Do you know it's been a month?" said Sam. "Not today exactly, but a month since... since it happened."
"Yeah, I know," said Dean quietly. He'd never say so, but he'd been counting the days, and wondering if Sam was going to want to observe it in some way. Dean didn't care to celebrate the anniversaries of deaths, but he'd never seen things quite the same way as Sam had. It was a relief when the day passed and he hadn't. "What did she look like, when you saw her?"
"Jess?" said Sam. "She looked like...." For a moment, just a moment, he looked almost content. "We were in love, Dean. She used to... stay with me, when she could. She looked like she did then, hair unbound, in her long, white nightdress. I always thought she never looked more beautiful than she looked when I knew it was just for me."
Dean had never doubted, from the moment he first saw his brother again, from the moment he saw the woman by his side, smart and fierce and exactly what his brother had always needed in his life, that Sam loved her. That she was far beyond friend, far beyond even lady friend. No matter what he said, he knew that. And he wished, for Sam's sake, for his own sake, that he'd gotten a chance to know her better. He would never have the chance to know her now, except through Sam's eyes.
"That's what Mom looks like when I see her," said Dean, which given the context might have been inappropriate, but the words came flying out nonetheless. He hadn't been intending to say them at all. "That's what she looked like the last time I saw her. It happened when she was putting us to bed."
"Oh," said Sam softly, and with unusual discretion for him when the subject of their mother came up, he didn't press.
And Dean didn't offer any more. He didn't offer that he'd seen her earlier too, hovering near the edges of where their home had once stood, silent and watching him. Dean had felt his mother had been watching him his whole life, and he often thought he glimpsed her in a crowd, glimpsed her in passing as they traveled through one town after another, but this was the first time he really felt like she was there.
He never wanted to come back to Lawrence. He still didn't want to be in Lawrence. But coming to Lawrence meant picking up their father's trail again, and that was worth the ache that he felt being back in what had once been his home.
: : :
"You boys have got someone looking for you," said Missouri, once again opening the door for them before they'd had time to knock.
"That's never going to stop getting under my skin," said Dean, shaking his head. "You just know somebody's looking for us?"
"While I do have a telephone," she pointed out to them, "and people do occasionally try to reach me on it, yes, I just know somebody's looking for you. Or rather, I know that you're on somebody's mind, and there's someplace you need to be. Do you have any more business in Lawrence, or can you pack your things an be on your way?"
"That eager to get rid of us?" said Dean. "Unless Dad's hiding out in somebody's basement, I've been ready to leave this town from the moment we arrived."
"Oh, Dean," she said, and didn't explain but Dean could see something like sympathy in her expression. He didn't want sympathy. And besides, they had half a trail now that led north, and Dean was ready to follow it, further research be damned.
"Who, Miss Mosely?" said Sam. "Who do we need to see?"
"Your Uncle Bobby, of course," she said, "but then you already know that, don't you, Sam?"
"I... how would I know that?"
"You know how," she said, lowering her chin and looking up at him with just her eyes. "You know exactly what I'm talking about, Sam Winchester."
Maybe Sam knew what she was talking but, but somebody was leaving Dean in the dark here. Two somebodies. And he found he didn't much like it.
"You knew Uncle Bobby needed us and you didn't say anything?" said Dean. "Did he send you a message?"
"Not exactly," admitted Sam, giving Missouri a nod that he probably thought Dean wouldn't catch. "And I'm not sure that he needs us so much as he knows that we need him."
"We need him? What for?"
"I don't know," said Sam, looking to Missouri for help.
"I think only your Uncle Bobby can tell you that," she said, "but if you want my guess, I'd say that the one thing the two of you need help with is finding your Daddy, and if there's one person who can help you with that, it's someone your Daddy trusts like your Uncle Bobby."
His father and Bobby had something of a volatile relationship, even more so in the years since Sam had left to go to Stanford, but one thing Dean could not deny was that his father trusted Bobby as much as he trusted anyone. Though, deservedly, he wasn't sure that trust went both ways.
"It's a hell of a journey, getting up to Bobby's place," said Dean, letting out a low whistle. And, probably not coincidentally, it was exactly in the direction they'd already been planning to go. "We should get on the road as soon as we can, if that's where we're going. Is that where we're going, Sam?"
There was a challenge in that question, practically a dare for Sam to explain to him just what the hell was going on and what sort of secrets he was sharing with Missouri Mosely.
"I think so, yes," he said finally. "I'm not positive, but I think so."
"One day soon you're going to tell me just how you think so," muttered Dean. "All right, you go start packing our things and I'll hit the telegraph office. It ought to still be open."
Sam pulled out his pocket watch and nodded. "Still plenty of time," he said.
"Well, the two of your aren't going anywhere till morning, so Dean you go and do your thing, and Sam you go and do yours, and I'll make sure you both at least have a decent meal in you before you take off again."
It had been a few days of good meals and soft beds - and those after the luxuries they'd enjoyed at Harvelle's Roadhouse - so Dean definitely wasn't going to turn one last one down. They'd be roughing it again soon enough.
Mary, Missouri
They spent the night outside a little town called Mary, which made Dean a little uneasy for no good reason. He wanted to make good time while they still had good roads to make it on, especially since Sam had seemed pretty edgy ever since they left Lawrence, in contrast to Dean who felt only - or almost only - relief.
"So are we going to talk about this now?"
"Talk about what?" said Sam, taking his turn to build up the fire. "I don't know what that means."
"You don't know what that means," said Dean, nodding his head and tensing his jaw. "It means I want to know what the hell you and Missouri were talking about, Sam. I want to know what secret you told her and not me."
"I didn't tell her anything, Dean," said Sam. "I didn't tell anyone. She just... knew."
"Knew what? I was decent enough not to ask you when you were trapped inside a moving vehicle with me but you're not getting out of it so easily now."
"All right," said Sam, breaking up a branch with his hands and feeding some more wood onto the fire. "Just promise to hear me out, all right?"
"Since I'm practically begging you to talk to me, Sam, I think that's about the only promise I can make. I'm listening. Now tell me something."
Sam broke another stick in two before talking. "I... the thing is... all right, this is going to sound worse than it is."
"At this point, Sam, I don't know how that's possible."
"I have visions, Dean."
The words hung in the night air between them for a long, long time, broken only by the crackle of the fire. For a moment Dean was certain that he heard wrong, but the words made everything else make sense. As much sense as any of their lives made.
"You have... visions," he repeated. "And just how long has that been going on?"
"Shortly before you came for me," Sam quietly admitted. "I don't really understand them, Dean. I wasn't even sure they were visions until we met Missouri."
"So you talked to her about this. You talked to somebody else about this before you talked to me."
"She's a psychic, Dean. I didn't want to tell her about it, she just plucked it right out of my head and confronted me when you were out." He poked at the fire with his stick, sending sparks in the air, then carelessly tossed it on and waited for it to ignite before saying anything else. "That's where the headaches come from."
"Like the one you had back at Ellen's saloon," said Dean. He should have pushed harder, pursued that one till Sam gave in. "So what was that one about?"
"I don't know," said Sam, to Dean's grunt of frustration. "I don't, Dean! They're mostly just images, flashes of things. Most of it doesn't mean anything to me. They might as well be memories for all the good they do me."
"Tell me anyway," said Dean.
"Bobby was there," Sam admitted after another few moments of silence passed. "Something was on fire and... and you were falling."
"So you knew we needed to see Uncle Bobby all along and you didn't say anything to me?" said Dean. "Do you really even want to find Dad, Sam, or is this whole thing just some kind of game to you?"
"I didn't know anything, Dean. I still don't know anything. I saw Bobby, so what? It could be something that happens years from now, or some memory from years ago."
"Yeah, somehow I doubt you believe either one of those," said Dean. "From now on you tell me, Sam. You tell me when you're having one of these visions of yours and you tell me what you see. If you can't figure them out, maybe I can."
"I think you'll be able to tell when I'm having one," said Sam, and Dean couldn't help but remember the sight of his brother wracked with pain on the floor of a saloon in Broken Bow. "All right, Dean, I'll tell you. But don't expect it to do us any good."
"At least I'll be a part of making that decision," said Dean. "Now tell me about me falling."
Sam winced and shook his head. "Can we just eat something?" he said. "It's been a long day and you want to get an early start tomorrow."
"Do I die?" said Dean. "Is that why you don't want to tell me?"
"No!" said Sam quickly, though something crossed his face that made Dean wonder if he was lying. "It's just a long fall. You're hurt, but I don't know how badly."
"Where am I falling from? Are we talking about a fall from Bobby's roof, or the edge of a cliff?"
"I don't know, Dean," said Sam. "I've told you everything I know. The visions aren't like seeing the future. They're like seeing a photograph that moves for only a second, and you're meant to interpret a whole story from one little movement. I could try, but I'd only get it wrong."
"Fine," said Dean, finally digging a couple of tins out of the automobile. "We'll eat something. But quit keeping things from me, Sam."
It was hard enough getting to know his brother again without having to dig through his secrets too.
Southern Sioux Territory
Sam hadn't traveled this trail in a long time, long enough that the landmarks they passed might've been pictures he saw in a book once instead of places he remembered from his childhood. They didn't often hunt here; it was seldom needed or wanted. The last time, in fact, had been just like this, taking the direct route to Uncle Bobby's place, on the small parcel of land known as Dakota.
"I've got a couple of friends out this way," said Dean, steering hard to the left around some debris on the trail. "They're familiar with Tessa."
"I'm sure that's meant to be reassuring," said Sam, watching over the side of the vehicle as they passed through the prairie, never straying from the road. Once Dean got her going it was a pretty quiet ride, quiet enough that Sam caught the occasional glimpse of wildlife completely undisturbed by their passage.
If there had been demonic omens in this area a month ago, there was certainly no sign of them now.
Dean had a habit of singing old sea shanties as they rode, changing the lyrics to suit a life spent on land, and while it might not have been Sam's favorite it was at least something familiar, almost a lullaby. An indecent, raucous lullaby.
"I think we're coming up on something," said Dean as they topped a hill, starting to pick up a little speed as they came down the other side over clear grassland, crisp with frost. "Up ahead, do you see that?"
"It looks like a white buffalo," said Sam. "I didn't know those were a real thing."
"They're rare," said Dean. "Sacred. I've never actually seen one before."
As they drew close, though, and the buffalo moved little from its position by the path, they could see that it wasn't an animal at all, much as it had been designed to look like one.
"I'm pulling over," said Dean, and left the boiler running as he got out of the vehicle. Sam hoped one of the valves didn't choose that moment to pop and hiss and ruin the moment. He, too, pushed open his door and stepped out of the vehicle, leaning against part of the support structure and looking over at the object of Dean's fascination.
The buffalo, large and gleaming white, was almost completely constructed of wheels and gears and cogs meticulously carved from bone and antler, all turning almost silently together to make a majestic, clockwork creature.
"He's beautiful," said Dean, hand lifted as if he expected to be able to touch him and feel real animal hide. "There must be a village near here."
There was a sound from overhead, a rustling, clicking sound, and then a giant bird came into sight, gliding over the treetops. It was the same bone white of the buffalo with rare flashes of metal springs inside, tiny pieces working in perfect synch to allow it to fly over them.
And as Dean stood there, coat strapped on tight against the cold, hands in the pockets of his heavy trousers, he tilted his head back and silently stared at the sky. The shadow of the clockwork thunderbird passed over him as it circled above before heading east again, back towards the village it watched over.
Sam very quietly took a picture.
"Now that's something else," Dean said when it was gone again, when the white buffalo too had begun moving away over the brittle grass.
"They're going to know we're here now."
"They already did," said Dean, his breath leaving little frosty clouds to drift away on the breeze. "All right, let's go. We can be there in a couple of days if the bridge isn't out."
"And here I thought Tessa could float," said Sam, putting the camera away and then smirking at him. "It can do everything else."
"She can, but the steering's a bitch," said Dean.
"Wait, are you being serious?" said Sam. "We can take her on the water?"
Dean just grinned at him as he got back into the car and refused to answer.
: : :
There was a dust cloud ahead of them on the old wagon trail, indistinct at first before resolving itself into a galloping horse and its long trail of dust.
"Wow, he's sure coming on fast," said Dean, pulling Tessa over and driving in the grass to let the rider pass.
Sam looked back over his shoulder, just tall enough to be able to see over all the apparati in the back. "Do you think there's a fire?"
"Probably running from something," said Dean, as the horse came galloping down the hill. But the rider was fussing with something at his side, no her side; they were just near enough now to see both her skirts and her hair flying out behind her. They were heading full bore at one another when she smoothly reached down and unfurled something - a flag - out behind her.
"Stop the car, Dean!"
Dean was already stopping, though, the moment he saw what she was flying. Red background; white pentacle.
"I'm guessing she's here for us," he said. And if she wasn't, they'd get the hell out of her way anyway. Anyone going that speed and flying that emblem to identify herself was a woman on a mission.
When they stopped so did she, slowing to a canter and then a walk to cool her horse down for a few minutes before stowing the flag again and dismounting.
"Bobby Singer sent me," she said, right then and there opening all the right doors with the Winchester boys. Who she obviously knew on sight.
"We're already on our way to see him," said Dean, as Tessa shook a couple times and then sighed to an actual stop. "We wired to tell him we were coming."
"He got it, but he's not there anymore," she said. "I'm to tell the two of you to meet him in Chicago instead. And also to tell Dean that you need to fix your vehicle there up with some wireless telegraph equipment." She gave him a once-over and then a sly smile. "You must be Dean."
"Now what the hell is he doing in Chicago?" said Dean. "Pardon my language."
"I would if you'd said anything worth pardoning," she said. "He got a line on something he thought you boys would be interested in, and didn't figure on you wanting to detour over to Dakota if you didn't have to."
Dean looked back at Sam, wondering if Sam's vision had just meant they were going to meet up with Bobby, or whether it was telling them to go to his home. Sam didn't give him a clue, but he did step forward to identify himself.
"Sam Winchester," he said, offering her his hand.
"Pamela Barnes," she returned. "And I've already met Dean, of course. So are we going to play twenty questions, or are you boys going to trust me and change course?"
"He's already on his way?"
"Left yesterday, by train," she said. "He'll beat you there by at least two days, but that should give him time to set things up."
"Set what things up?" said Sam.
Dean and Pamela both turn their heads to give him a look. It had been a few years, but it hadn't been that long. "It's Bobby," said Dean. "He probably had to take the train because he had a trunk full of books and gadgetry that just had to come with him."
"You do know him fairly well," said Pamela admiringly.
"We've known Uncle Bobby since we were kids," said Dean, "and in all that time he's never changed." Hell, Dean'd build a good chunk of Tessa up at Bobby's place, out of whatever scrap he had around. "Are you heading into Chicago too?"
"I've got some other business to take care of first," she said. "Why, do you want me to be heading into Chicago with you, Mr. Winchester?"
"It would certainly liven up the scenery," said Dean appreciatively. "How long do you think this business of yours is going to take you?"
"Dean," said Sam, quiet and low, from behind him, but Dean ignored him. After all, she started it.
"Not so long that I won't be able to catch up with you there," she said, pulling a notebook from her pocket and tearing a page from it. "Bobby said he'll leave a message at this hotel for you boys. He wasn't sure when he left just where he'd end up staying."
"Thank you," said Dean, glancing at it before folding it in half and tucking it into a coat pocket. "I guess we'll be needing to take a turn for the northeast then."
"Do you need me to dig out the map?" said Sam, but Dean shook his head. He knew the way to Chicago well enough, especially once they got back on a well-traveled road again.
"Well, it's been lovely meeting you," said Pamela, "but I can eat up a lot more miles before sunset if I carry on. Give Bobby a big hug for me, will you?"
"We'll give him one in spirit," Dean promised her. Pamela just laughed and threw herself back in the saddle, stowing the hunters' flag in a saddlebag once again.
"Safe trip!" she said, and started off down the trail again at an only slightly slower pace than before. Dean watched until all he could see of her was a cloud of dust once again.
"Should I have asked her to stay for dinner?" he said finally, starting the automobile up again.
"Bobby sure makes some interesting friends," said Sam, which was a kind of agreement, in a way. "What do you think he's got in Chicago?"
"It's Bobby, so I have no idea," said Dean, "but whatever it is, it's probably important. Or at the very least interesting."
"I think my vision might have taken place in Chicago," admitted Sam a few moments later. "Or at least, I think it might've taken place in a city. Right now Chicago seems the most likely candidate."
"Well, then Chicago it is," said Dean. "It's as good a destination as any."
It was a few seconds after that when Tessa was primed to go once again, and as soon as she was Dean was back on the road.
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