FIC: Metaphysical (Supernatural AU, Gen, R, 2/8)
Previous Part | Master Post
Margaret held the lantern for them as Sam and Dean cleared the debris and grass away from the grave marker and the ground around it, but the inscription was clear moments after they began their task.
Constance Welch
1838 - 1861
Wife and Mother
"I didn't think she would be real," said Margaret. "Even after she captured me on the train, I didn't think she would be a real person."
"Well, that's where ghosts come from," said Dean. "They all used to be people, at one time or another. Sammy, you know what we need to do."
Sam sighed, his face pinching at the thought, but he knew. Dean nodded at him, then at Margaret, then hiked back up over the hill to where he'd left the second lantern burning by Tessa.
"Where's he going?" she said, turning to watch him, looking uncertain as to why Sam wasn't following him.
"He needs to get some things," said Sam, awkward with the explanation. He took a moment to tuck in his shirt and roll up his sleeves, to avoid having to make it. "We need to... take care of her."
"I don't know what that means," she said. "I don't know if I want to know what that means."
No, she probably didn't, but she was going to before the night was over and there wasn't anything Sam could really do about that.
"You know how I asked you those questions back at the station, the day we met?"
"Of course," she said. "You wanted... you wanted to know the stories about the ghost." Some sort of realization seemed to be dawning, but hadn't entirely arrived yet. "You were... looking for her?"
"We're looking for my father, who was looking for her," Sam clarified, though really it wasn't a pertinent point, from her point of view. "My family... this is sort of what we do."
"You tell ghost stories?"
"We hunt ghosts," he said. "Among other things. There really are ghosts and they really do hurt people and someone needs to do something about that."
And doing something about that sometimes meant doing things that looked, to outsiders, more horrific than the spirit itself. Something Margaret was soon going to realize, as Sam could see Dean coming back over the hill towards them.
"What are you?" she said, her eyes widening with surprise and dismay as Dean returned with shovels.
"You might want to wait by the automobile," said Sam. "You don't need to watch this."
"You're going to desecrate the grave!"
"We're going to do what needs to be done," said Dean, "and if you don't want to watch us do that, sweetheart, then I suggest you take your ribbons and your skirts back to the other side of that hill."
At first she didn't look like she was going anywhere. Then she backed up a few halting steps, her expression unchanging, before turning, hiking up her skirts and following the barely discernable path back to the automobile.
"Dean...."
"Come on, Sam, let's get this done," said Dean shortly. "She'd just be in the way."
"She's scared!"
"Of course she's scared. She's just been trapped by an angry spirit on a hurtling locomotive. And since we actually plan to do something about the spirit, we don't need her here to complain about it."
"I just think you could've been nicer about it," said Sam, turning up shovelfuls of earth. "I remember you being nicer about that sort of thing."
"Yes, well, she's your little friend," said Dean, digging alongside him. "You could have dealt with it yourself if you were that worried about her feelings."
"She's just a girl I met at the station, Dean," said Sam. "You're not only insulting me when you suggest otherwise, but insulting Jessica as well."
"All I know is what I see," said Dean, his shovel breaking through rotten wood very early in their digging. "Not exactly six feet deep."
"It's an unconsecrated grave, Dean," said Sam. "They probably dug only as far as they needed to in order to cover her up again."
There was a grave marker, though, which meant some care had gone into the burial. It was easier to believe they were digging up a grave that had been shoddily thrown together in the first place. It made the whole process harder if he imagined the grave was shallow because that was all her mourners, who may or may not have been her children, had been able to manage by themselves.
"All the better for us," said Dean. "If you've got the matches, I've got the salt."
"You say the sweetest things," said Sam, and dug out a few more shovelfuls of dirt and shards of wood to expose the rotten body for Dean. "At least she's a few years past ripe."
Dean wasted no time dumping salt on the body, a little cloud of white dust rising up from it. "All right, Sam, you remember how to light it up, don't you?"
Some things you never forgot.
As Sam got the matches out he saw a flickering white form at the corner of his vision, dim in the morning light, but she didn't approach, just lingered at the edge of his vision. Her modus operandi was to abduct passengers onto a train; this was outside of her parameters. If anything, her hovering seemed almost expectant.
Maybe even hopeful.
As Sam light a match and dropped it into the shallow grave, the form flickered a few more times then winked out of existence.
: : :
"So what do you think?" said Dean as they finished packing their things back into the vehicle. "Suicide?" Morning had brought enough light to work by, and enough light to work by meant Dean had Tessa back up in running condition in under an hour.
More light also meant that Margaret had wandered off on her own while they finished their work. She'd seemed horrified the night before at what she'd witnessed, but as morning dawned and she contemplated her own narrow escape, she drew closer to Sam again. He couldn't imagine she'd forgotten what she'd seen, but maybe she understood it a little better.
"Probably," said Sam, looking up at the tracks, then down over the hill at Constance's grave, reburied and tidy. They could offer her that much, at least. "Unconsecrated ground near the tracks. She probably lived near here."
"Now that we know who and where she is, we could probably find out," said Dean. "If you wanted to know."
"You know, there are probably more bodies around here," said Sam, shaking his head. They'd taken care of her now; they didn't need to dig up more dirt on the poor girl. However she'd died, it wasn't important anymore. "Those people who disappeared, they're going to have to turn up somewhere eventually."
"We can leave an anonymous tip with the police force," said Dean, looking down at her grave like he might spot them laying out on the ground nearby. "It's someone else's problem now."
Sam nodded, but he didn't feel good about it. And that was a problem he'd always had with this job, ever since he was old enough to understand it. Even a happy ending wasn't a happy ending, and even being heroes meant being monsters sometimes.
"I'd appreciate it if we did that," he said, "for closure." For her, and for them too. The fewer loose ends, the better Sam could feel about what they'd done here.
"We can take care of it before we leave town," said Dean. "Are you ready to go?"
"Any time," said Sam, stowing the last of their camping gear. They hadn't gotten much use out of it, but at least Margaret had been able to enjoy a little more comfort and privacy than she would have had otherwise. "Margaret?" He walked over the hill, closer to where he'd last seen her. "Margaret?"
She looked up from where she'd been picking a few flowers at the edge of the trees, paused a moment then nodded at him. She didn't return right away, though. Instead she continued picking flowers until she had a fair-sized bunch in her hands. Sam waited at the top of the hill, breeze catching the tails of his jacket and flapping them against his knees, watching her and making sure she stayed safe.
And so he saw her lay the flowers on the grave of Constance Welch.
The drive back to Jericho station was much quieter and less eventful than the mad midnight ride that had gotten them so distant in the first place. The automobile was not designed for more than two passengers - there was space, but neither bench nor cushion - but they managed with a little creative rearranging, even if Sam feared for Margaret's modesty.
Dean parked them a short distance from the station, where perfectly ordinary people milled about completely unaware of what had transpired all those miles up the tracks. Just as it always was.
"Maybe if you're lucky your brother will already be here waiting for you," said Sam.
"Maybe if you're lucky, he won't be," she said as Sam walked her back up to the station, Dean making another examination of his car for further damage. "Spending the night in the woods with two strange men is not a story I want him to hear while said strange men are still in the vicinity."
"You may have a point," said Sam. They walked the length of the station, but no one came running to greet her. It was possible her brother had gone to the hotel, but Sam knew if it were his sister he wouldn't have taken the chance of missing her.
"Well, even under the circumstances, I'm glad I met you, Miss... you know, I'm afraid I never even got your last name," said Sam apologetically. "Apparently the excitement of a locomotive chase makes me lose all sense of manners."
"Masters," she told him. "Margaret Masters, but I think after everything you've earned the right call me Meg, Sam. And I can't say I'm sorry you had your mind on other things, if it meant I stayed alive to apologize to."
"Well, Miss Masters, since your brother seems not to have arrived yet, can I escort you anywhere?"
"Thank you, but I think I'd prefer to retire to my room until the next train is due," she said. "Perhaps my brother will at last be on that one."
"Are you sure you'll be all right on your own?"
"I'll be fine, Sam," she insisted. "Thank your brother for me, would you? I'll likely not see him again."
"I will," he said, and gave a weak wave as she stepped down the station steps and around the back, heading for the hotel.
Dean seemed pretty anxious to be on the road again for someone whose idea this hunt had been in the first place so Sam waited only long enough to see her off. It was likely Dean was making an effort to avoid a run-in with the men he'd been playing cards with the night before last, and Sam was certainly willing to aid him in that endeavor. Fairly or not - and Sam would not speculate which it was - people rarely cared to lose their hard-earned cash.
When Meg Masters disappeared from sight Sam headed in the other direction, back to Dean and Tessa and back to a long trip home.
Palo Alto, California
"You could leave all this behind, Sam," said Dean, parking the automobile just outside Sam's boarding house but laying a hand on his arm to keep Sam from leaving just yet. "What's this college education getting you, anyway? Is this really the life you want to live? Forever?"
"What's so bad about that?" said Sam. "It's better than racing locomotives in the middle of the night and digging graves at dawn."
"We saved someone's life today, Sam," said Dean. "What else do you do that can compare to that? And Dad might not've been in Jericho but he's out there somewhere, we just don't know where."
"That's right, we don't know," said Sam. "He could be anywhere. Dean, I think you need to accept that this isn't different than any other time Dad's been missing. He's done it before and he'll probably do it again."
"He missed a rendezvous."
"Is it really the first time?" said Sam, knowing the answer to his own question before he asked it. "That's the nature of hunting, Dean."
"Don't you tell me about the nature of hunting," said Dean. "Don't you dare, Sammy."
"He chose to leave, Dean," said Sam. "And if he wanted us - if he wanted you to know where, he would've told you."
"Choosing to leave doesn't mean he doesn't want us to follow," said Dean, clinging tenaciously to the 'us'. "We make a good team, Sam."
"I know we do." The time apart had changed them both, but not so much that they didn't fit back together again, like timeworn pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, their edges worn smooth against one another. "But I'm where I need to be right now, Dean."
Dean sighed heavily, but he'd already brought out his big guns, and Sam had faced them down.
"Then go."
Sam got out of the vehicle but Dean stayed where he was, steadfastly behind the wheel, prepared for another night-long drive. "Just go, Sammy. Do what you need to do. But I'm going after Dad."
Sam couldn't stop him, and wouldn't have wanted to even if he could. He couldn't deny that there was a part of him that wanted to get right back in that automobile and go with him, rediscovering the brotherhood they'd once shared. But inside the door to that boarding house was a life he'd worked hard for, and a woman he loved more deeply than he'd ever confessed, and those things compelled him too.
"Write me, Dean," he said. "Don't lose touch again."
"Sure, Sam, whatever you say," said Dean, and drove away even before Sam had fully turned to go inside. But he didn't go far, instead lingering inside the running vehicle a short distance away, even if neither of them made any further gesture to acknowledge the other.
The gaslight flickered as Sam stepped inside, an open window fluttering a curtain even though he hadn't felt a breeze outside. He closed it, though not before looking outside, just in case Dean was still lingering. He couldn't tell, though; even open, the window didn't offer him the range of vision he'd need.
He could have sworn, as he headed for the bedroom, that the curtains fluttered again though the window was firmly closed.
There was a small part of him that expected Jessica to be there waiting for him, even though it was late, even though she surely had an early class and no reason to believe he'd be home tonight, but he was still disappointed that there was no sign of her. The bedroom window too was not just unlatched, as it nearly always was, but open, and he told himself to remember to speak with her about that tomorrow. She was welcome in his home any time, but that didn't mean he invited the rest of the university along with any passers-by as well.
The lamp in here too flickered as Sam stretched out across his bed, suddenly feeling the exhaustion from the trip finally settle in. It was a well-remembered exhaustion, though, the remnant of a job as well done as could be expected. He could have fallen asleep right at that moment, fully clothed, but he knew he would regret it come morning if he didn't at least wash up a little, so he yawned and stretched out as long as he would go and opened his eyes again.
To see he wasn't alone in the room after all.
"Holy Sweet Jesus," he said, scrambling backwards over the bed, unable to take his eyes off the horrific sight of his Jessica pinned to the ceiling overhead, as lifeless as a department store mannequin. He would never forget the sight, nor what her eyes looked like with all light gone from them, even though he only stared into them for a moment before fire erupted from her belly and engulfed the whole ceiling.
"Sam!"
Sam scuttled back onto the floor, still staring, unable to look away even though the light and the heat burned his eyes.
"Sam!"
A glimpse of his brother emerging from the smoke and reaching for him was the last clear memory Sam retained before he found himself outside of the boarding house and a safe distance away, straining to get back inside again.
Dean held him tight in his arms as the fire brigade arrived, aiming the hydraulic arms of their wagons to fly bladders of water up atop the building to spill them over the worst of the flames, their pressure hoses tapping into the water main to keep the flames from consuming the nearby buildings.
"We could've gotten her out, Dean."
"Sam, she was already dead." Sam squirmed violently in his arms again, every part of him telling him to get back inside, to try again. "She was dead, Sam. She was dead just like Mom."
"What?" said Sam, given one last token fight against Dean's tight grasp. "Dean?"
"I saw it, Sam. I might've been just four years old but I know what I saw, and when Mom died it looked exactly like that. Whatever got Mom got Jess too."
"Then where the hell is Dad when we need him?" said Sam. "Where the hell is he?"
"I wish I knew, Sam," said Dean, and held him even tighter as, one by one, the flames were slowly extinguished.
: : :
Sam let Dean take care of everything for the first few hours, hours he spent staring at the dying fire, first when it was still burning in front of him and later replaying that scene over and over again in his head. Dean found them a place to stay, which had to have burned through a fair amount of his poker money, and spoke with the fire brigade and police department on his behalf, not to mention his increasingly irate landlady.
She probably thought he'd been responsible for the fire. Sam couldn't even look her in the eye, since he worried she might be right.
It was as though he was wandering through a nightmare that first night, going where Dean told him, sleeping when Dean told him, watching things happen around him that he didn't seem to be able to control. Then when the next day arrived he bypassed sadness entirely and went straight to anger. Dean took the brunt of all of it, Sam's shouts, his accusations, even catching his fist once when it went flying towards the mirror of their rented room.
After that, Sam began to actually cope. And Plan.
They were barred from the wreckage, a shell of a house, but Sam sneaked in nonetheless through a charred window frame that had once been the window Jess used. There was little left of his things, and little worth salvaging save a single coat with minimal damage from the ash. Of Jess's things he saved only the pieces of her latest device that she'd never managed to finish creating. Sam wrapped them in his coat, retrieved his knives and a few long-treasured mementos from an undamaged, secret compartment in his closet, and sneaked back out the window again.
The rest could burn for all he cared now. None of it mattered anymore.
He'd left the hunting life, and that life had come back looking for him anyway, with a vengeance. If the supernatural was going to hunt him, then Sam was going to hunt it right back.
He bought himself a used carpet bag with Dean's poker money - as little of it as he could manage - and put all of his things inside in preparation for what he knew was coming. Everything he owned in the world filled only half.
"We don't have to wait for the funeral," said Dean, eyeing the bag as he set another wad of cash down on top of their dresser. No matter where he was or what he was doing, Dean could always find a card game.
"I do," said Sam, even though the very idea had been eating at him ever since Jess's father had arrived in town from Los Angeles. He'd been so kind, and Sam's guilt over Jessica's death only grew. He hadn't been the one to kill her, yet.... "I need to attend. And then after that it's finally done."
"No one would blame you if you didn't--"
"I need to go," said Sam again. There was no room for argument on this point. Little else mattered anymore but going out and doing all those things he'd rejected for the past three years, but being there for Jessica's final moments on this earth was not negotiable.
"All right, then we'll go," said Dean, his words also sounding non-negotiable. If Sam was doing this, he wasn't doing it alone. "What else do you need, Sam?"
"I don't need anything."
"You keep saying that," said Dean, "and somehow I don't believe you. Is it that you don't want anything from me?"
"It's that I don't know how to answer, Dean! Dad's missing, Jessica's dead, and I don't even know...." There was no way to adequately finish that sentence. Sometimes Sam wasn't sure he knew anything about anything anymore.
"Well, there's one sure way to pick up his trail," said Dean, "and that's to pick up where he left off."
"Where the monsters go, so do we."
: : :
The letter arrived the day after the funeral, delivered to Sam's hotel room by a tight-lipped landlady who also presented him with an eviction notice. Evicted from what, Sam wasn't even sure.
"What's the matter with her?" said Dean. "You didn't start the fire."
"No," said Sam, who on some level had been expecting this to happen, "but I did have Jessica in my rooms after curfew, which was a blatant violation of my contract. She always did think Jess was too brazen, but now she thinks it appropriate to imply I stole her virtue as well." He crumpled the notice in his hand. "They can't just let her rest in peace."
"Well you did, didn't you?"
"There was no stealing involved," said Sam, tight-lipped. "You wouldn't understand." The eviction notice given the attention it deserved, he turned his to the letter, turning it over in his hands and looking for evidence of who it had come from. "Dean, this is addressed to both of us."
"What the devil?" said Dean, snatching it out of his hands and staring at the address. Sam could see his expression transform as he looked. "Don't you know this handwriting, Sam?"
"It's been a long time," said Sam, but in saying that betrayed that he did. He knew before he handed it over. "Why would Dad be writing to you here? Why would Dad be writing to you at all?"
"Because he knows me," said Dean, "and so he knew that when he missed the rendezvous, this is the first place I would come." Thankfully he avoided the 'I told you so' that could rightfully have accompanied that. He made to break the seal himself, then at the last minute handed it back. "Open it, Sammy."
"My name is Sam," he said, and broke the seal.
Boys, I'm sorry to do things this way but I didn't feel I had a choice. Over twenty years ago your mother was taken from us, and only now do I believe that I know how and who. Dean, you've been my right hand man for years, but this is something I have to do alone. Sam, for all that we've had our differences, I'm sure this is one decision you understand.
I'll contact you through Bobby Singer when I've succeeded. Don't come after me and don't try to find me, for your own sakes as well as mine.
JW
"Like hell we're not coming after him," said Dean, turning his back on both Sam and the letter and stalking to the window. "This is our fight, too." But both of them knew that other than the past two weeks, there had been no 'us' or 'we' or 'our' in years, except for how the Winchesters would always be an 'us'.
"So we're agreed that Dad is full of shit?"
Dean smiled grimly; Sam could see the expression reflected in the window, in all its bitter glory. "For once, yes, we're agreed," he said. "Dad is full of shit and we're going after him. Besides, if he had a real lead on this thing, he would've been here."
"Exactly," said Sam, reading the letter one more time before folding it back up again and clutching it tightly, wrinkling the paper. "Maybe if he'd been here, we could have saved her."
"Sam, I didn't say that," said Dean, his voice tight with what Sam thought was defensiveness. Maybe regret. "It's not his fault any more than it's yours."
Sam just wanted it to be somebody's fault, something he could name, since even after all these years they'd never been able to identify the thing that had haunted them all their lives.
"Can you make out this postmark?" said Sam, stalking over to the window and pushing the letter in Dean's face.
"Nebraska," said Dean after a moment. "The top half is smudged, but that's definitely Nebraska."
"Then we're going to Nebraska," said Sam. "Get your things."
"What things?" said Dean. "I'm ready to go whenever you are, Sam."
"Then get that monstrosity you call a coat," said Sam, "and we'll be on our way."
With Sam's home truly gone and Jess in the ground, there was nothing keeping them in Palo Alto - or, indeed, anywhere - anymore.
Elko, Nevada
"I will never understand why you felt the need to live on the other side of a damn mountain range."
Dean didn't actually need Sam to explain the symbolism of putting a whole lot of mountains between himself and his real life, though. Even if, in the end, the mountains hadn't been high enough, the town not distant enough. Dean was sorry for Jessica, but he wasn't sorry that Sam was back.
"And I will never understand your aversion to normal modes of transportation," Sam returned, sitting on the ground with his back to the automobile as Dean dug out a fire pit for their dinner.
"Hey, now, there's nothing better on land, sea or air than my Tessa," said Dean. "Didn't she get us through the mountains safe and sound?"
"You drove through a train tunnel, Dean," said Sam. "By what definition of 'safe and sound' does that count?"
"It was that or detour by two whole days!" said Dean. "And since you're here to whine and complain about it, we clearly did make it through to the other side, safe and sound."
"I think when I go back again, I'll take an airship if it's all the same to you."
Dean poked his stick at the ground a little harder, letting out a soft grunt as he did. The words didn't come out of the blue, but they still hit him like a fist to the gut.
"So you think you're going back?"
"That's not what I...." started Sam, frowning at him and fussing with the untucked ends of his shirt. "That's not the point, Dean."
"Maybe it's not the point to you," he said, piling on tinder as soon as the circle was cleared and pulling a match out of his pocket to light it up. He watched the fledgling fire for a long time without saying anything more, letting Sam sit with that until he got what Dean was saying.
"I don't know what's going to happen when we get this thing," he said finally.
"You mean, when we find Dad."
"I'm counting on finding Dad first," said Sam. "And when we do, we're all going after this thing together."
"And after that?"
Sam fell silent again, as did Dean, jabbing the fire with his stick until a trail of sparks shot off into the air. The last of the daylight had vanished, the small fire and a single lantern by the car the only light remaining. Still, Dean had no trouble making out the expression on Sam's face, even if he was filling in some of the shadowed blank spaces from extensive memory.
He threw a tin of beans on the fire once it had built up a few coals and sat back to wait for the familiar pop of it.
"You remember the last time we were here?" he said, breaking the long silence. Sam looked around, at the scrub and the fire and up at the sky, like any one of them could remind him. "Vampires. You were... twelve?"
Anywhere the transcontinental railroad ran, they'd passed by a dozen or more times over the years, sometimes stopping, sometimes just on their way from one point to the next. But here, just outside Elko, they'd been here before. Dean could see the moment Sam finally placed it.
"Whole country's infested with vampires," he said. "How did you even remember that?"
Dean shrugged and didn't answer till the hot beans popped in the can, picking it off again with his stick.
"They almost got you," he said, motioning for Sam to join him, finally, at the fire. "You really don't remember that?"
"There wasn't just one time they almost got me," said Sam, folding himself down onto the ground. Dean could hear his stomach rumble. "Dad liked to use me as bait."
"He knew you could take care of yourself," said Dean, passing him the can, metal fork already jabbed inside. "But this nest, we almost didn't get there in time. That's the last time we ever stopped here."
"That's a great story, Dean," said Sam. "Maybe we should sleep with one eye open."
Dean pinched his mouth closed and refused to say he remembered because of how worried he'd been, that he remembered because he'd almost lost him, lost him more permanently than any school could ever take him. At some point all the vampires began to blend into one another, especially when you kept running across the same nest, regrown and reformed, time and time again. But this had been different.
"Nah, me and Dad finally cleaned them out last year," he said when he felt he could keep his voice light again. "They'd set up south of here, this little mining town. It wasn't pretty."
"Never is," said Sam.
Maybe the vampires weren't familiar, maybe they'd never given Sam nightmares like they had Dean, but this kind of moment, passing a can of beans back and forth, Dad gone off on a hunt and Sam and Dean left to their own devices, he hoped this kind of moment was something Sam remembered.
If it wasn't, Dean didn't want to know about it.
"We shouldn't have stopped here," Dean said when they were almost done eating, just a few left in the bottom that Dean had always saved for Sam. This time, Sam gave them back. "I keep thinking about how I almost lost you."
"I was twelve."
"You were my responsibility," said Dean. "You could've been five or twenty-two, it wouldn't have made any difference."
"No, not twenty-two. I'm not your responsibility anymore."
"You're always be my responsibility, Sammy," said Dean, leaving no room for argument. Sam could try till he was blue in the face, but the fact that Sam was his responsibility was an incontrovertible truth. It always would be.
Rock Springs, Wyoming
Tessa broke down for the first time when they were cutting through a field towards a stone tractor bridge that Dean insisted would be strong enough to hold them, otherwise they were going to detour into town to find the next bridge that wasn't for foot traffic and neither one of them wanted that.
"God damn," said Dean, giving her retractable roof a little pound with his fist, just a tap really. Not enough to hurt his baby when she was obviously already hurting. "I'm going to need a hand with this, Sammy."
"That's a terrible idea," he said. "I don't know anything about mechanics. You'd be better off asking those cattle for help than asking me."
"If they had opposable thumbs I would," said Dean, "but apparently you're all I've got, Sam, and the whole process is going to go a lot faster if you can hold the lantern for me."
"Okay," said Sam, as Tessa rolled to a gentle stop about thirty feet from the stream. "Jess always has me hold her light when she's working. She says mounting it doesn't give her enough flexibility, but I think she just likes to tell me what to do."
"That sounds like something I'd see in a seedy kinetoscope parlor," said Dean. "Actually, that sounds like something I have see--" Sam didn't have to stop him with a look; Dean had the good sense to stop himself. "What did she do?"
Sam hmm'd and got out of the steamer, looking it over as if he was capable of telling anything beyond what color it was. Sam had always been clever, but mechanical ability was a lot more in Dean's wheelhouse than his.
"She makes mathematical and astronomical devices," he said finally. "They're amazing, like art. The last thing she was working on, I... I kept--"
"I know," said Dean. "I saw it. No idea what it is, but I saw it."
"Well, if you have no idea what it is, it's a safe bet I won't," said Sam. "She always works in my rooms instead of hers, says it keeps her nosy neighbors out of her business."
"She sounds like she was pretty amazing," said Dean as he flung open a hatch over the boiler.
"Yeah, she's-- she was just about the smartest person I know," said Sam, swallowing hard over the words. "It's weird to think she'll never finish it."
Dean fell silent then, pushing his hand into the guts of his beauty and pulling at a few things with a soft grunt. Bolts were tight where they should have been and that valve looked just right, but the hose over on the left... yep, that was their problem right there. His road steamer was a lot more straightforward to fix than his brother.
"Get the lantern out, Sammy," he said, pulling out a grease-stained hand and wiping it on his denim waist coveralls. "I think the accident jarred a few things loose that didn't work their way apart till now."
"Can you fix it?"
"Can I fix it, he says," Dean muttered to himself as Sam opened up the hatch to the storage compartment. "Tessa could fall in half right here and I could still fix her. Not that she's going to do that, are you, baby?"
"Your love for your automobile is unnatural," said Sam, taking his sweet time bringing up the light.
"Dean?"
"What's the hold-up, Sammy?"
"Where did this come from?" said Sam, hefting a silver candlestick in his hand.
Well, he was bound to spot them sooner or later.
"What, did you think I wouldn't lift your landlady's silver before we left town?" said Dean. "She was an old bat, Sam. It's not like you were ever going back anyway."
"You stole Mrs. Harrison's silver?"
"Every scrap of it I could get my hands on," said Dean proudly. "Those candlesticks were ugly as sin anyway. We'll be doing her a favor, melting them down."
"I doubt she'd see it that way," said Sam, but Mrs. Harrison was hundreds of miles behind them now, and frankly Sam didn't look particularly remorseful anyway. "Any of it worth saving to sell?"
"Nah," said Dean. "I'm low on silver bullets and you could use a new silver knife, just in case. We're bound to pass through werewolf territory sooner or later."
Sam nodded, just at the corner of Dean's vision as the light streamed into the inner workings of the automobile and he reattached a stray hose, tightening a few other things on his way through his thorough inspection.
"That should do it," he said finally, wiping his hands on his trousers again in lieu of a good rag. "Might as well stay here the night, though, as long as we're stopped. Seems like as good a place as any. I'll give her one more look-over in the morning."
"Sure," said Sam, extinguishing the lantern now that Dean wasn't exploring the depths of his prize creation. Dean closed the hatch but Sam was still standing there, staring at the top of the automobile but looking as though he wasn't even seeing it.
"What is it?" he said.
Sam didn't say anything, but a moment later he did, from the inside pocket of his frock coat, pull out an iron button, a pentacle and a ladies' silver hatpin.
"Just in case," he said.
Dean didn't question the sudden lump he felt in his throat, but he didn't own up to it either. Maybe Sam didn't walk the halls of Stanford armed, but neither was he so far from his roots that he was unprotected.
"Good," said Dean after a long pause. "I... good."
Sam nodded and put all three items back where they'd come from, and Dean wondered without ever asking whether or not the hatpin had belonged to Jess.
"Your turn to set up the tent," he added after another few moments had passed. Awkward, silent moments. "I'm going to go check out that bridge."
When he returned the tent had been erected and Sam was hunched over the letter from their father, having managed to pilfer a magnifying lens among Dean's scattered things. He scrawled a few things down in a notebook in his lap, and when Dean got close enough to look over his shoulder he saw that Sam had managed to decipher most of the rest of the postmark. With just a few letters missing, surely between the two of them and Dean's trusty map they could figure out just where they were headed.
The night passed more comfortably after that, Dean telling Sam about a couple of girls he met out in Boston and Sam telling Dean a little bit about his life at Stanford, before they hit the sack sometime before the middle of the night in order to get an early start the next day.
At dawn, before Sam woke up, Dean crawled out of the tent and made doubly sure that Tessa was in flawless working order. There were still a couple of scratches from the incident with the railway sign, but he could live with those until he had a proper workshop to fix them in.
After that he filled a couple of water bottles from the stream and then stood with his back against his car as he watched a hot air balloon pass overhead. He couldn't see it well enough to clearly make out the occupants, but at one point he was sure he saw one of them lean over the basket and wave down to him. He waved back anyway, even if they hadn't. No harm in that.
"Come on, sleepyhead," he said when Sam finally emerged from the tent, shirt and underpants rumpled and hair standing every which way. "Put your trousers on and let's get on the road. We've still got a hell of a drive ahead of us."
Broken Bow, Nebraska
"Well, this is it," said Dean. "This is where his letter came from."
As Dean surveyed the dusty town, it surveyed him right back, so much like so many others he'd been in over the years he could almost recognize the faces staring in his direction.
"We should start with the post office, then," said Sam, as heads turned towards them.
Dean was used to people looking at him. He could blend in when he wanted to, but for all he grew up riding through these very towns, when he strapped on his coat and stood next to Tessa, he really did look like an airship captain come down from the sky. And Sam... he might've gone back to his familiar mining trousers and linen shirts, but the frock coat he refused to part with was pure city.
And people always stared at the magnificence of Tessa.
"If he was working this town, the post office is somewhere he only went once. The saloon, however...."
"If he was in town," said Sam. "The only thing we know for certain that he did from here was mail a letter, and even that could've been done by somebody else."
"The letter came from here," said Dean, his eyes moving slowly from one side of the main street to the other, getting the lay of the land. "That means somebody knows something."
"Well, we have to start somewhere." Placing his hat on his head and buttoning his coat Sam started on ahead, long strides eating up the distance between one side of the road and the other in no time. Dean refused to scurry along behind, and his swagger was one thing people didn't think was notable about a stranger in town.
John Winchester looked sufficiently like a whole lot of other men roaming the continent that the post office attendant couldn't be sure whether he'd ever been in or not, even after he perched his rectangular glasses on his nose and took a closer look at the photograph. It was ten years old anyway, and John Winchester was beginning to show his years in the gray in his beard, the lines around his eyes.
The barkeep at the saloon was at least able to tell them that he thought there might've been someone who looked a little like that in town a while back, but he couldn't confirm it to anyone's satisfaction but his own.
"If anyone ever came looking for us, people would remember we'd been in town," muttered Dean, getting them both a beer and sitting down in a back corner.
"Didn't that almost get you arrested once?"
"What do you mean once?" said Dean, trading Sam his beer for the newspaper he'd acquired on their way up the street. "All right, let's check the usual sources."
"If he was here, he was here over a month ago," said Sam. "This week's newspaper isn't going to do us any good. We don't even know if he was here for a hunt."
"When does Dad ever do anything that's not for a hunt?" said Dean, opening the paper and scanning the headlines. "You never know what you might find. If it was something recurring, there might still be some sign of it. If not... well, we know how to talk to people."
"Wow, a two-headed cow," said Sam, taking the paper back right out of his hands. "Now there's something you don't see every day."
"And thank God for that," said Dean, "but I'm pretty sure that's not what Dad was here about, unless there's been a rash of mutant animals. Uh, there hasn't, has there?"
"We could ask, I suppose," said Sam, flipping the page and crackling the paper to get it to stand up straight. "Oh look, you could get your guns cleaned for half price."
"What self-respecting man doesn't clean his own guns?" scoffed Dean. "They wouldn't even know what to do with mine if I gave them a diagram and step-by-step instructions. Give me the paper back, Sam. Do you even remember what you're looking for?"
"Hey, hey wait," said Sam. "Wait, I think I might have something. A missing person."
"Unless it's Dad, I'm not interested," said Dean. "Probably just an obligatory piece about some rich man's son who wandered off to seek his fortune. Those are the only ones the papers ever write about. Nothing weird about it."
"No, hey, listen to me, Dean. He's the fourth person to go missing on the same piece of land in the past four months. All of them were expected back."
"Wild animals, probably," said Dean, but that definitely sounded like something more in their territory, and he peered at the paper over Sam's thumb. "What else does it say?"
"That no one could find any traces of any kind of attack in the general area," said Sam. "You think this might've been what Dad was hunting?"
"Couldn't hurt to find out," said Dean. "It's the best lead we've got, unless the last couple pages of the paper give us a detailed map to the nearest ghost."
More likely the back of the paper gave directions to the nearest brothel, but while in another time and place Dean might've checked it out, they had business to look into.
"Well, then let's hit the newspaper office next and find out everything we can."
The publisher of the local paper, an older gentleman by the name of Blythe, was forthcoming with the name of the latest missing man's next of kin, though he had little else to offer. Certainly he hadn't held back any morsels of information from the story he'd published in his paper.
"Mrs. Mary Collins, widow," said Dean, studying the scrap of paper in his hands.
"Well, he's not necessarily dead," said Sam.
"No, not his widow, his brother-in-law's widow. His sister. I do well with widows."
"I'll just bet you do," said Sam. "Is that a subtle hint to let you handle this one?"
"I didn't think I was being subtle," said Dean. "Do I look all right?"
"You look like you might whip out a revolver at any moment and hold her up," said Sam. "Don't you have any respectable clothes?"
"Sorry, my laundress is on vacation," said Dean, taking off his easily identifiable leather coat and straightening his shirt. "Better?"
"Informal, but acceptable," said Sam, fixing his collar for him. If he tried to suggest a bowtie, Dean was going to tell him just where he could tie it. "Remember you're not trying to woo her, Dean."
"When you're dealing with widows, the technique is the same," said Dean. "All widows want to feel desirable." Then he fixed his hair and headed straight for her house.
Mrs. Mary Collins was a battleaxe of a woman, looking both of them up and down with overt skepticism.
"And how do I know the two of you aren't the ones responsible for his disappearance in the first place?" she said. "Strangers don't usually show an interest."
"We’re not exactly strangers, ma'am," said Sam, taking over when Dean was firmly shut down. "Well, we are strangers to the area, but we do have a personal interest in the situation. We had a family member go missing recently and the last place he was seen was here. Any help you could give us...."
Even battleaxes softened, under the right pressure.
"Matthew was a careful man," she said. "He knew this area, he wouldn't have gone out there unarmed, and he wouldn't have walked away from his home. Something happened to him."
"With your help, we'd like to find out what that was," said Sam, "before anyone else goes missing."
"I don't know what you expect I can do to help you," she said. "I can't tell you where he was any better than Mr. Blythe. Following game takes you all over."
"He was hunting?" said Dean.
Apparently Mary Collins' attitude towards him hadn't softened quite so much. "What else would anybody be doing up there?" she said. "Bird watching?"
Well, it wasn't completely unheard of that someone would be bird watching, but Dean bit back the response anyway. "Is there anyone we could talk to that would know that land well enough to tell us where hunters would mostly likely go?"
"Anyone who hunts up there," she said, addressing her answer to Sam. "You could talk to Mazanahoton. His family's been here longer than any of ours."
"Do you happen to know where we could find him?"
She shrugged. "Playing cards?" she said. "It's that time of day, and that time of year."
"Okay," said Dean, "this is definitely my show now. Thank you for your time, ma'am."
At least she wasn't outright glaring at him anymore, even if her own good-bye was directed towards only Sam as well.
: : :
Dean was itching to get in on the game, getting a sense of the players within five minutes of sitting down with his whiskey. But as easy as it would've been to clean them out - all of them, probably; these were no professionals - he needed these people to be friendly with him for at least the next couple of days. He could wait that long, maybe sit down at the table before the left town and get a bundle of cash to carry them through to wherever this trail took them next.
He caught one of the names of the men playing as Oyatetawa, and another as Thomas, which left two possibilities at the card table. Considering one of the remaining men was a red-haired, burly Scot, Dean considered it a fairly safe bet that the remaining man was the one they were looking for.
While Sam chatted with the barmaid - now there was a sight Dean wasn't at all accustomed to - he bided his time at the bar and waited for the game to amiably break up. Though it still killed him to think how much he could've made off with at the table.
He gave the man a nod as he leaned on the bar and got a fresh drink. "You wouldn't happen to be, uh, Mazanahoton, would you?"
His eyebrow twitched, but he gave no more sign of recognition than that. "Who's asking," he said, wrapping his hand around his beer and drinking half of it in one pull.
"Mary Collins sent us in your direction," he said, nodding towards Sam and his lady friend. "I'm Dean and that over there is my brother Sam."
He gave Sam a long look, then nodded his head. "The widow Collins sent you, did she?" he said. "Well then I'd better give you the time of day." He looked back at the dispersed card game, then at the grimy window, and chose to lead Dean closer to the sunlight. "People in town call me Mac."
"She said you could give us an idea where her brother might have been before he went missing."
"You knew Matty?"
"Well, no," said Dean, "but we have a vested interest in the case."
He narrowed his eyes and seemed to be looking through Dean for a moment before nodding his head again. "Seems like a lot of people have a vested interest in the area lately. You're the second fellow to ask about it."
Dean's attention was definitely caught. "Do you happen to remember anything about the other fellow?" Mac's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "We lost touch with a colleague of ours a while back. It'd be good to catch up."
"Doubt this was him," said Mac. "This was a young fellow. Couldn't have been older than fifteen if you ask me. Name of Joe."
"Nah, you're right, couldn’t be him," said Dean quickly, though he filed the name away for future reference. "Too bad, though. So Mary--"
"Mrs. Collins, if you don't mind."
"--Mrs. Collins told us no one is more familiar with that land than you are."
"Except my ancestors, and you're not in a position to call on them for assistance."
Technically Dean could probably find a way, but that was a whole can of worms he did not want to open. "All we need is a place to start. We can take it from there."
"There's an old scouting trail that runs through that piece of land," he said, drawing a meandering line on the table with his fingertip. "Older than you or I. Older than my grandparents' grandparents. Some folks like to hunt there, but my people don't follow that trail anymore. It has a bad reputation."
"What does that mean, a bad reputation?"
"It means exactly what it sounds like it means," he said. "Something went wrong there, and we leave it to everyone else now. If they want to take land, they can have that piece."
"That might be just what we're looking for."
"Yes, I thought it might be," he said. "If you and your brother meet me here tomorrow at first light I'll take you up to the trail. From there you'll be on your own."
"Thank you," said Dean, offering his hand. "We just want to know what's happening up there."
"I think you want more than that," he said, "but that's your own business. I wish you luck and safe travel, whatever it is."
They shook on that, and Dean thought that luck and safe travel were two of the things that Winchesters needed most in life. As he turned back to Sam and his lady friend, though, he saw that Sam was now on the floor with a couple of patrons looking down at him in either pity or contempt.
Dean was across the room before he even had to think about it, squatting down next to his brother. "What did you do to him?"
"Nothing! I didn't do anything!" said the barmaid, looking faintly panicked as she hovered over the two of them. "Is he sick?"
"No, he's not sick," said Dean. He reached for Sam's shoulder but Sam flinched away. "What, did somebody hit him?"
"No!" she insisted. "We were just talking and then suddenly he grabbed his head and he was on the floor. What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know," muttered Dean, as they began to attract unwanted attention. "Sam. Sam. Sammy!" He managed to grab his shoulders this time without Sam shaking him off, and gradually Sam let go of his head and became pliant in Dean's hands. "What the hell, Sammy?"
"Headache," muttered Sam. "Just a sudden headache. I'm all right now."
Dean didn't buy it, but he turned towards the small gathered crowd and repeated his brother's words. "He's got a headache," he told him. "Probably got knocked around too much when I wasn't there to look out for him."
When Sam punched his shoulder for that one, Dean became more convinced he was going to be fine. As, apparently, did the patrons, who slowly began to drift back to their own business.
"You want to tell me what that was really about?" he said when he was reasonably certain they were alone.
"It was just a headache, Dean," he insisted, letting Dean help him to his feet again. "Sometimes they come on like that."
"And then just go away? Just like that?"
"I probably just got a sunbeam in the eye," said Sam. "You don't need to worry."
Dean looked all the way up to the front of the saloon, where light was just barely reaching through those windows, let alone as far away as where Sam had been flirting with the barmaid. A sunbeam. Right.
"Well, while you were busy with your lady friend," he said, sitting Sam down at a table with him, "I got some actual work done."
"My lady friend, as you put it, remembers Dad," said Sam, "so watch where you point that tongue, if you don't mind."
"Wait, really?" said Dean. "What did she tell you? What was he doing here?"
"She didn't know what he was up to, but she said he was only in town for a day, doing some asking around about something or other, before he got word from someone and took off."
"And she really remembers this? She's not just pulling your leg because you're Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome Stranger?"
"She remembers him, Dean," said Sam. "Look at her, you know she's just his type. He probably spent more time with her than all his contacts combined."
"Well, does she know where he went from here?"
"East, she thinks," said Sam, "but he didn't tell her and she didn't ask, she just saw him take off out that way. It's not much, but at least we know he was doing something here."
"Yeah, and that what he's doing has nothing to do with this goddamn hunt," said Dean, banging his fist lightly on the table, just enough to bounce his half-empty glass. "Who knows if he even knew there was a hunt in town."
"Is it a hunt?"
"Sounds like it could be," said Dean. "Mac says to meet him here tomorrow morning and he'll take us out there. Goddammit, now we have to follow this through instead of heading east after Dad."
"Why?" said Sam. "Why can't we just leave it, Dean? We came to town to try to find Dad, not to track down a hunt."
"Leave it, Sam? How can we leave it when people are going missing?"
"Someone else can take care of it," said Sam. "You have contacts all over the country, Dean, I know you do. Send one of them a message about this place and let's head east after Dad."
"There might already be someone on it," admitted Dean, "but it's some kid named Joe. He's been asking around about the disappearances too. Seems a little too interested, if you know what I mean."
"Like us," said Sam.
"Uh, right, like us," said Dean. "I can track this kid down and check him out, and you can try to find us a direction that's a little less vague than 'east'."
"Do you have any suggestions as to how I do that?" said Sam.
"I don't know, find another barmaid?" said Dean. "Maybe if you have another one of your little fits, someone will come running to nurse you back to health."
"I told you, Dean, it was just a headache," said Sam. "Look at me, am I anything but completely healthy? It's nothing to worry about."
"Whatever you say, Sam," he said dubiously, but in the absence of any other evidence, Dean had to take him at his word. After three years of separation, there really was a lot he needed to relearn about his brother.
Next Part | Master Post
Margaret held the lantern for them as Sam and Dean cleared the debris and grass away from the grave marker and the ground around it, but the inscription was clear moments after they began their task.
Constance Welch
1838 - 1861
Wife and Mother
"I didn't think she would be real," said Margaret. "Even after she captured me on the train, I didn't think she would be a real person."
"Well, that's where ghosts come from," said Dean. "They all used to be people, at one time or another. Sammy, you know what we need to do."
Sam sighed, his face pinching at the thought, but he knew. Dean nodded at him, then at Margaret, then hiked back up over the hill to where he'd left the second lantern burning by Tessa.
"Where's he going?" she said, turning to watch him, looking uncertain as to why Sam wasn't following him.
"He needs to get some things," said Sam, awkward with the explanation. He took a moment to tuck in his shirt and roll up his sleeves, to avoid having to make it. "We need to... take care of her."
"I don't know what that means," she said. "I don't know if I want to know what that means."
No, she probably didn't, but she was going to before the night was over and there wasn't anything Sam could really do about that.
"You know how I asked you those questions back at the station, the day we met?"
"Of course," she said. "You wanted... you wanted to know the stories about the ghost." Some sort of realization seemed to be dawning, but hadn't entirely arrived yet. "You were... looking for her?"
"We're looking for my father, who was looking for her," Sam clarified, though really it wasn't a pertinent point, from her point of view. "My family... this is sort of what we do."
"You tell ghost stories?"
"We hunt ghosts," he said. "Among other things. There really are ghosts and they really do hurt people and someone needs to do something about that."
And doing something about that sometimes meant doing things that looked, to outsiders, more horrific than the spirit itself. Something Margaret was soon going to realize, as Sam could see Dean coming back over the hill towards them.
"What are you?" she said, her eyes widening with surprise and dismay as Dean returned with shovels.
"You might want to wait by the automobile," said Sam. "You don't need to watch this."
"You're going to desecrate the grave!"
"We're going to do what needs to be done," said Dean, "and if you don't want to watch us do that, sweetheart, then I suggest you take your ribbons and your skirts back to the other side of that hill."
At first she didn't look like she was going anywhere. Then she backed up a few halting steps, her expression unchanging, before turning, hiking up her skirts and following the barely discernable path back to the automobile.
"Dean...."
"Come on, Sam, let's get this done," said Dean shortly. "She'd just be in the way."
"She's scared!"
"Of course she's scared. She's just been trapped by an angry spirit on a hurtling locomotive. And since we actually plan to do something about the spirit, we don't need her here to complain about it."
"I just think you could've been nicer about it," said Sam, turning up shovelfuls of earth. "I remember you being nicer about that sort of thing."
"Yes, well, she's your little friend," said Dean, digging alongside him. "You could have dealt with it yourself if you were that worried about her feelings."
"She's just a girl I met at the station, Dean," said Sam. "You're not only insulting me when you suggest otherwise, but insulting Jessica as well."
"All I know is what I see," said Dean, his shovel breaking through rotten wood very early in their digging. "Not exactly six feet deep."
"It's an unconsecrated grave, Dean," said Sam. "They probably dug only as far as they needed to in order to cover her up again."
There was a grave marker, though, which meant some care had gone into the burial. It was easier to believe they were digging up a grave that had been shoddily thrown together in the first place. It made the whole process harder if he imagined the grave was shallow because that was all her mourners, who may or may not have been her children, had been able to manage by themselves.
"All the better for us," said Dean. "If you've got the matches, I've got the salt."
"You say the sweetest things," said Sam, and dug out a few more shovelfuls of dirt and shards of wood to expose the rotten body for Dean. "At least she's a few years past ripe."
Dean wasted no time dumping salt on the body, a little cloud of white dust rising up from it. "All right, Sam, you remember how to light it up, don't you?"
Some things you never forgot.
As Sam got the matches out he saw a flickering white form at the corner of his vision, dim in the morning light, but she didn't approach, just lingered at the edge of his vision. Her modus operandi was to abduct passengers onto a train; this was outside of her parameters. If anything, her hovering seemed almost expectant.
Maybe even hopeful.
As Sam light a match and dropped it into the shallow grave, the form flickered a few more times then winked out of existence.
: : :
"So what do you think?" said Dean as they finished packing their things back into the vehicle. "Suicide?" Morning had brought enough light to work by, and enough light to work by meant Dean had Tessa back up in running condition in under an hour.
More light also meant that Margaret had wandered off on her own while they finished their work. She'd seemed horrified the night before at what she'd witnessed, but as morning dawned and she contemplated her own narrow escape, she drew closer to Sam again. He couldn't imagine she'd forgotten what she'd seen, but maybe she understood it a little better.
"Probably," said Sam, looking up at the tracks, then down over the hill at Constance's grave, reburied and tidy. They could offer her that much, at least. "Unconsecrated ground near the tracks. She probably lived near here."
"Now that we know who and where she is, we could probably find out," said Dean. "If you wanted to know."
"You know, there are probably more bodies around here," said Sam, shaking his head. They'd taken care of her now; they didn't need to dig up more dirt on the poor girl. However she'd died, it wasn't important anymore. "Those people who disappeared, they're going to have to turn up somewhere eventually."
"We can leave an anonymous tip with the police force," said Dean, looking down at her grave like he might spot them laying out on the ground nearby. "It's someone else's problem now."
Sam nodded, but he didn't feel good about it. And that was a problem he'd always had with this job, ever since he was old enough to understand it. Even a happy ending wasn't a happy ending, and even being heroes meant being monsters sometimes.
"I'd appreciate it if we did that," he said, "for closure." For her, and for them too. The fewer loose ends, the better Sam could feel about what they'd done here.
"We can take care of it before we leave town," said Dean. "Are you ready to go?"
"Any time," said Sam, stowing the last of their camping gear. They hadn't gotten much use out of it, but at least Margaret had been able to enjoy a little more comfort and privacy than she would have had otherwise. "Margaret?" He walked over the hill, closer to where he'd last seen her. "Margaret?"
She looked up from where she'd been picking a few flowers at the edge of the trees, paused a moment then nodded at him. She didn't return right away, though. Instead she continued picking flowers until she had a fair-sized bunch in her hands. Sam waited at the top of the hill, breeze catching the tails of his jacket and flapping them against his knees, watching her and making sure she stayed safe.
And so he saw her lay the flowers on the grave of Constance Welch.
The drive back to Jericho station was much quieter and less eventful than the mad midnight ride that had gotten them so distant in the first place. The automobile was not designed for more than two passengers - there was space, but neither bench nor cushion - but they managed with a little creative rearranging, even if Sam feared for Margaret's modesty.
Dean parked them a short distance from the station, where perfectly ordinary people milled about completely unaware of what had transpired all those miles up the tracks. Just as it always was.
"Maybe if you're lucky your brother will already be here waiting for you," said Sam.
"Maybe if you're lucky, he won't be," she said as Sam walked her back up to the station, Dean making another examination of his car for further damage. "Spending the night in the woods with two strange men is not a story I want him to hear while said strange men are still in the vicinity."
"You may have a point," said Sam. They walked the length of the station, but no one came running to greet her. It was possible her brother had gone to the hotel, but Sam knew if it were his sister he wouldn't have taken the chance of missing her.
"Well, even under the circumstances, I'm glad I met you, Miss... you know, I'm afraid I never even got your last name," said Sam apologetically. "Apparently the excitement of a locomotive chase makes me lose all sense of manners."
"Masters," she told him. "Margaret Masters, but I think after everything you've earned the right call me Meg, Sam. And I can't say I'm sorry you had your mind on other things, if it meant I stayed alive to apologize to."
"Well, Miss Masters, since your brother seems not to have arrived yet, can I escort you anywhere?"
"Thank you, but I think I'd prefer to retire to my room until the next train is due," she said. "Perhaps my brother will at last be on that one."
"Are you sure you'll be all right on your own?"
"I'll be fine, Sam," she insisted. "Thank your brother for me, would you? I'll likely not see him again."
"I will," he said, and gave a weak wave as she stepped down the station steps and around the back, heading for the hotel.
Dean seemed pretty anxious to be on the road again for someone whose idea this hunt had been in the first place so Sam waited only long enough to see her off. It was likely Dean was making an effort to avoid a run-in with the men he'd been playing cards with the night before last, and Sam was certainly willing to aid him in that endeavor. Fairly or not - and Sam would not speculate which it was - people rarely cared to lose their hard-earned cash.
When Meg Masters disappeared from sight Sam headed in the other direction, back to Dean and Tessa and back to a long trip home.
Palo Alto, California
"You could leave all this behind, Sam," said Dean, parking the automobile just outside Sam's boarding house but laying a hand on his arm to keep Sam from leaving just yet. "What's this college education getting you, anyway? Is this really the life you want to live? Forever?"
"What's so bad about that?" said Sam. "It's better than racing locomotives in the middle of the night and digging graves at dawn."
"We saved someone's life today, Sam," said Dean. "What else do you do that can compare to that? And Dad might not've been in Jericho but he's out there somewhere, we just don't know where."
"That's right, we don't know," said Sam. "He could be anywhere. Dean, I think you need to accept that this isn't different than any other time Dad's been missing. He's done it before and he'll probably do it again."
"He missed a rendezvous."
"Is it really the first time?" said Sam, knowing the answer to his own question before he asked it. "That's the nature of hunting, Dean."
"Don't you tell me about the nature of hunting," said Dean. "Don't you dare, Sammy."
"He chose to leave, Dean," said Sam. "And if he wanted us - if he wanted you to know where, he would've told you."
"Choosing to leave doesn't mean he doesn't want us to follow," said Dean, clinging tenaciously to the 'us'. "We make a good team, Sam."
"I know we do." The time apart had changed them both, but not so much that they didn't fit back together again, like timeworn pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, their edges worn smooth against one another. "But I'm where I need to be right now, Dean."
Dean sighed heavily, but he'd already brought out his big guns, and Sam had faced them down.
"Then go."
Sam got out of the vehicle but Dean stayed where he was, steadfastly behind the wheel, prepared for another night-long drive. "Just go, Sammy. Do what you need to do. But I'm going after Dad."
Sam couldn't stop him, and wouldn't have wanted to even if he could. He couldn't deny that there was a part of him that wanted to get right back in that automobile and go with him, rediscovering the brotherhood they'd once shared. But inside the door to that boarding house was a life he'd worked hard for, and a woman he loved more deeply than he'd ever confessed, and those things compelled him too.
"Write me, Dean," he said. "Don't lose touch again."
"Sure, Sam, whatever you say," said Dean, and drove away even before Sam had fully turned to go inside. But he didn't go far, instead lingering inside the running vehicle a short distance away, even if neither of them made any further gesture to acknowledge the other.
The gaslight flickered as Sam stepped inside, an open window fluttering a curtain even though he hadn't felt a breeze outside. He closed it, though not before looking outside, just in case Dean was still lingering. He couldn't tell, though; even open, the window didn't offer him the range of vision he'd need.
He could have sworn, as he headed for the bedroom, that the curtains fluttered again though the window was firmly closed.
There was a small part of him that expected Jessica to be there waiting for him, even though it was late, even though she surely had an early class and no reason to believe he'd be home tonight, but he was still disappointed that there was no sign of her. The bedroom window too was not just unlatched, as it nearly always was, but open, and he told himself to remember to speak with her about that tomorrow. She was welcome in his home any time, but that didn't mean he invited the rest of the university along with any passers-by as well.
The lamp in here too flickered as Sam stretched out across his bed, suddenly feeling the exhaustion from the trip finally settle in. It was a well-remembered exhaustion, though, the remnant of a job as well done as could be expected. He could have fallen asleep right at that moment, fully clothed, but he knew he would regret it come morning if he didn't at least wash up a little, so he yawned and stretched out as long as he would go and opened his eyes again.
To see he wasn't alone in the room after all.
"Holy Sweet Jesus," he said, scrambling backwards over the bed, unable to take his eyes off the horrific sight of his Jessica pinned to the ceiling overhead, as lifeless as a department store mannequin. He would never forget the sight, nor what her eyes looked like with all light gone from them, even though he only stared into them for a moment before fire erupted from her belly and engulfed the whole ceiling.
"Sam!"
Sam scuttled back onto the floor, still staring, unable to look away even though the light and the heat burned his eyes.
"Sam!"
A glimpse of his brother emerging from the smoke and reaching for him was the last clear memory Sam retained before he found himself outside of the boarding house and a safe distance away, straining to get back inside again.
Dean held him tight in his arms as the fire brigade arrived, aiming the hydraulic arms of their wagons to fly bladders of water up atop the building to spill them over the worst of the flames, their pressure hoses tapping into the water main to keep the flames from consuming the nearby buildings.
"We could've gotten her out, Dean."
"Sam, she was already dead." Sam squirmed violently in his arms again, every part of him telling him to get back inside, to try again. "She was dead, Sam. She was dead just like Mom."
"What?" said Sam, given one last token fight against Dean's tight grasp. "Dean?"
"I saw it, Sam. I might've been just four years old but I know what I saw, and when Mom died it looked exactly like that. Whatever got Mom got Jess too."
"Then where the hell is Dad when we need him?" said Sam. "Where the hell is he?"
"I wish I knew, Sam," said Dean, and held him even tighter as, one by one, the flames were slowly extinguished.
: : :
Sam let Dean take care of everything for the first few hours, hours he spent staring at the dying fire, first when it was still burning in front of him and later replaying that scene over and over again in his head. Dean found them a place to stay, which had to have burned through a fair amount of his poker money, and spoke with the fire brigade and police department on his behalf, not to mention his increasingly irate landlady.
She probably thought he'd been responsible for the fire. Sam couldn't even look her in the eye, since he worried she might be right.
It was as though he was wandering through a nightmare that first night, going where Dean told him, sleeping when Dean told him, watching things happen around him that he didn't seem to be able to control. Then when the next day arrived he bypassed sadness entirely and went straight to anger. Dean took the brunt of all of it, Sam's shouts, his accusations, even catching his fist once when it went flying towards the mirror of their rented room.
After that, Sam began to actually cope. And Plan.
They were barred from the wreckage, a shell of a house, but Sam sneaked in nonetheless through a charred window frame that had once been the window Jess used. There was little left of his things, and little worth salvaging save a single coat with minimal damage from the ash. Of Jess's things he saved only the pieces of her latest device that she'd never managed to finish creating. Sam wrapped them in his coat, retrieved his knives and a few long-treasured mementos from an undamaged, secret compartment in his closet, and sneaked back out the window again.
The rest could burn for all he cared now. None of it mattered anymore.
He'd left the hunting life, and that life had come back looking for him anyway, with a vengeance. If the supernatural was going to hunt him, then Sam was going to hunt it right back.
He bought himself a used carpet bag with Dean's poker money - as little of it as he could manage - and put all of his things inside in preparation for what he knew was coming. Everything he owned in the world filled only half.
"We don't have to wait for the funeral," said Dean, eyeing the bag as he set another wad of cash down on top of their dresser. No matter where he was or what he was doing, Dean could always find a card game.
"I do," said Sam, even though the very idea had been eating at him ever since Jess's father had arrived in town from Los Angeles. He'd been so kind, and Sam's guilt over Jessica's death only grew. He hadn't been the one to kill her, yet.... "I need to attend. And then after that it's finally done."
"No one would blame you if you didn't--"
"I need to go," said Sam again. There was no room for argument on this point. Little else mattered anymore but going out and doing all those things he'd rejected for the past three years, but being there for Jessica's final moments on this earth was not negotiable.
"All right, then we'll go," said Dean, his words also sounding non-negotiable. If Sam was doing this, he wasn't doing it alone. "What else do you need, Sam?"
"I don't need anything."
"You keep saying that," said Dean, "and somehow I don't believe you. Is it that you don't want anything from me?"
"It's that I don't know how to answer, Dean! Dad's missing, Jessica's dead, and I don't even know...." There was no way to adequately finish that sentence. Sometimes Sam wasn't sure he knew anything about anything anymore.
"Well, there's one sure way to pick up his trail," said Dean, "and that's to pick up where he left off."
"Where the monsters go, so do we."
: : :
The letter arrived the day after the funeral, delivered to Sam's hotel room by a tight-lipped landlady who also presented him with an eviction notice. Evicted from what, Sam wasn't even sure.
"What's the matter with her?" said Dean. "You didn't start the fire."
"No," said Sam, who on some level had been expecting this to happen, "but I did have Jessica in my rooms after curfew, which was a blatant violation of my contract. She always did think Jess was too brazen, but now she thinks it appropriate to imply I stole her virtue as well." He crumpled the notice in his hand. "They can't just let her rest in peace."
"Well you did, didn't you?"
"There was no stealing involved," said Sam, tight-lipped. "You wouldn't understand." The eviction notice given the attention it deserved, he turned his to the letter, turning it over in his hands and looking for evidence of who it had come from. "Dean, this is addressed to both of us."
"What the devil?" said Dean, snatching it out of his hands and staring at the address. Sam could see his expression transform as he looked. "Don't you know this handwriting, Sam?"
"It's been a long time," said Sam, but in saying that betrayed that he did. He knew before he handed it over. "Why would Dad be writing to you here? Why would Dad be writing to you at all?"
"Because he knows me," said Dean, "and so he knew that when he missed the rendezvous, this is the first place I would come." Thankfully he avoided the 'I told you so' that could rightfully have accompanied that. He made to break the seal himself, then at the last minute handed it back. "Open it, Sammy."
"My name is Sam," he said, and broke the seal.
Boys, I'm sorry to do things this way but I didn't feel I had a choice. Over twenty years ago your mother was taken from us, and only now do I believe that I know how and who. Dean, you've been my right hand man for years, but this is something I have to do alone. Sam, for all that we've had our differences, I'm sure this is one decision you understand.
I'll contact you through Bobby Singer when I've succeeded. Don't come after me and don't try to find me, for your own sakes as well as mine.
JW
"Like hell we're not coming after him," said Dean, turning his back on both Sam and the letter and stalking to the window. "This is our fight, too." But both of them knew that other than the past two weeks, there had been no 'us' or 'we' or 'our' in years, except for how the Winchesters would always be an 'us'.
"So we're agreed that Dad is full of shit?"
Dean smiled grimly; Sam could see the expression reflected in the window, in all its bitter glory. "For once, yes, we're agreed," he said. "Dad is full of shit and we're going after him. Besides, if he had a real lead on this thing, he would've been here."
"Exactly," said Sam, reading the letter one more time before folding it back up again and clutching it tightly, wrinkling the paper. "Maybe if he'd been here, we could have saved her."
"Sam, I didn't say that," said Dean, his voice tight with what Sam thought was defensiveness. Maybe regret. "It's not his fault any more than it's yours."
Sam just wanted it to be somebody's fault, something he could name, since even after all these years they'd never been able to identify the thing that had haunted them all their lives.
"Can you make out this postmark?" said Sam, stalking over to the window and pushing the letter in Dean's face.
"Nebraska," said Dean after a moment. "The top half is smudged, but that's definitely Nebraska."
"Then we're going to Nebraska," said Sam. "Get your things."
"What things?" said Dean. "I'm ready to go whenever you are, Sam."
"Then get that monstrosity you call a coat," said Sam, "and we'll be on our way."
With Sam's home truly gone and Jess in the ground, there was nothing keeping them in Palo Alto - or, indeed, anywhere - anymore.
Elko, Nevada
"I will never understand why you felt the need to live on the other side of a damn mountain range."
Dean didn't actually need Sam to explain the symbolism of putting a whole lot of mountains between himself and his real life, though. Even if, in the end, the mountains hadn't been high enough, the town not distant enough. Dean was sorry for Jessica, but he wasn't sorry that Sam was back.
"And I will never understand your aversion to normal modes of transportation," Sam returned, sitting on the ground with his back to the automobile as Dean dug out a fire pit for their dinner.
"Hey, now, there's nothing better on land, sea or air than my Tessa," said Dean. "Didn't she get us through the mountains safe and sound?"
"You drove through a train tunnel, Dean," said Sam. "By what definition of 'safe and sound' does that count?"
"It was that or detour by two whole days!" said Dean. "And since you're here to whine and complain about it, we clearly did make it through to the other side, safe and sound."
"I think when I go back again, I'll take an airship if it's all the same to you."
Dean poked his stick at the ground a little harder, letting out a soft grunt as he did. The words didn't come out of the blue, but they still hit him like a fist to the gut.
"So you think you're going back?"
"That's not what I...." started Sam, frowning at him and fussing with the untucked ends of his shirt. "That's not the point, Dean."
"Maybe it's not the point to you," he said, piling on tinder as soon as the circle was cleared and pulling a match out of his pocket to light it up. He watched the fledgling fire for a long time without saying anything more, letting Sam sit with that until he got what Dean was saying.
"I don't know what's going to happen when we get this thing," he said finally.
"You mean, when we find Dad."
"I'm counting on finding Dad first," said Sam. "And when we do, we're all going after this thing together."
"And after that?"
Sam fell silent again, as did Dean, jabbing the fire with his stick until a trail of sparks shot off into the air. The last of the daylight had vanished, the small fire and a single lantern by the car the only light remaining. Still, Dean had no trouble making out the expression on Sam's face, even if he was filling in some of the shadowed blank spaces from extensive memory.
He threw a tin of beans on the fire once it had built up a few coals and sat back to wait for the familiar pop of it.
"You remember the last time we were here?" he said, breaking the long silence. Sam looked around, at the scrub and the fire and up at the sky, like any one of them could remind him. "Vampires. You were... twelve?"
Anywhere the transcontinental railroad ran, they'd passed by a dozen or more times over the years, sometimes stopping, sometimes just on their way from one point to the next. But here, just outside Elko, they'd been here before. Dean could see the moment Sam finally placed it.
"Whole country's infested with vampires," he said. "How did you even remember that?"
Dean shrugged and didn't answer till the hot beans popped in the can, picking it off again with his stick.
"They almost got you," he said, motioning for Sam to join him, finally, at the fire. "You really don't remember that?"
"There wasn't just one time they almost got me," said Sam, folding himself down onto the ground. Dean could hear his stomach rumble. "Dad liked to use me as bait."
"He knew you could take care of yourself," said Dean, passing him the can, metal fork already jabbed inside. "But this nest, we almost didn't get there in time. That's the last time we ever stopped here."
"That's a great story, Dean," said Sam. "Maybe we should sleep with one eye open."
Dean pinched his mouth closed and refused to say he remembered because of how worried he'd been, that he remembered because he'd almost lost him, lost him more permanently than any school could ever take him. At some point all the vampires began to blend into one another, especially when you kept running across the same nest, regrown and reformed, time and time again. But this had been different.
"Nah, me and Dad finally cleaned them out last year," he said when he felt he could keep his voice light again. "They'd set up south of here, this little mining town. It wasn't pretty."
"Never is," said Sam.
Maybe the vampires weren't familiar, maybe they'd never given Sam nightmares like they had Dean, but this kind of moment, passing a can of beans back and forth, Dad gone off on a hunt and Sam and Dean left to their own devices, he hoped this kind of moment was something Sam remembered.
If it wasn't, Dean didn't want to know about it.
"We shouldn't have stopped here," Dean said when they were almost done eating, just a few left in the bottom that Dean had always saved for Sam. This time, Sam gave them back. "I keep thinking about how I almost lost you."
"I was twelve."
"You were my responsibility," said Dean. "You could've been five or twenty-two, it wouldn't have made any difference."
"No, not twenty-two. I'm not your responsibility anymore."
"You're always be my responsibility, Sammy," said Dean, leaving no room for argument. Sam could try till he was blue in the face, but the fact that Sam was his responsibility was an incontrovertible truth. It always would be.
Rock Springs, Wyoming
Tessa broke down for the first time when they were cutting through a field towards a stone tractor bridge that Dean insisted would be strong enough to hold them, otherwise they were going to detour into town to find the next bridge that wasn't for foot traffic and neither one of them wanted that.
"God damn," said Dean, giving her retractable roof a little pound with his fist, just a tap really. Not enough to hurt his baby when she was obviously already hurting. "I'm going to need a hand with this, Sammy."
"That's a terrible idea," he said. "I don't know anything about mechanics. You'd be better off asking those cattle for help than asking me."
"If they had opposable thumbs I would," said Dean, "but apparently you're all I've got, Sam, and the whole process is going to go a lot faster if you can hold the lantern for me."
"Okay," said Sam, as Tessa rolled to a gentle stop about thirty feet from the stream. "Jess always has me hold her light when she's working. She says mounting it doesn't give her enough flexibility, but I think she just likes to tell me what to do."
"That sounds like something I'd see in a seedy kinetoscope parlor," said Dean. "Actually, that sounds like something I have see--" Sam didn't have to stop him with a look; Dean had the good sense to stop himself. "What did she do?"
Sam hmm'd and got out of the steamer, looking it over as if he was capable of telling anything beyond what color it was. Sam had always been clever, but mechanical ability was a lot more in Dean's wheelhouse than his.
"She makes mathematical and astronomical devices," he said finally. "They're amazing, like art. The last thing she was working on, I... I kept--"
"I know," said Dean. "I saw it. No idea what it is, but I saw it."
"Well, if you have no idea what it is, it's a safe bet I won't," said Sam. "She always works in my rooms instead of hers, says it keeps her nosy neighbors out of her business."
"She sounds like she was pretty amazing," said Dean as he flung open a hatch over the boiler.
"Yeah, she's-- she was just about the smartest person I know," said Sam, swallowing hard over the words. "It's weird to think she'll never finish it."
Dean fell silent then, pushing his hand into the guts of his beauty and pulling at a few things with a soft grunt. Bolts were tight where they should have been and that valve looked just right, but the hose over on the left... yep, that was their problem right there. His road steamer was a lot more straightforward to fix than his brother.
"Get the lantern out, Sammy," he said, pulling out a grease-stained hand and wiping it on his denim waist coveralls. "I think the accident jarred a few things loose that didn't work their way apart till now."
"Can you fix it?"
"Can I fix it, he says," Dean muttered to himself as Sam opened up the hatch to the storage compartment. "Tessa could fall in half right here and I could still fix her. Not that she's going to do that, are you, baby?"
"Your love for your automobile is unnatural," said Sam, taking his sweet time bringing up the light.
"Dean?"
"What's the hold-up, Sammy?"
"Where did this come from?" said Sam, hefting a silver candlestick in his hand.
Well, he was bound to spot them sooner or later.
"What, did you think I wouldn't lift your landlady's silver before we left town?" said Dean. "She was an old bat, Sam. It's not like you were ever going back anyway."
"You stole Mrs. Harrison's silver?"
"Every scrap of it I could get my hands on," said Dean proudly. "Those candlesticks were ugly as sin anyway. We'll be doing her a favor, melting them down."
"I doubt she'd see it that way," said Sam, but Mrs. Harrison was hundreds of miles behind them now, and frankly Sam didn't look particularly remorseful anyway. "Any of it worth saving to sell?"
"Nah," said Dean. "I'm low on silver bullets and you could use a new silver knife, just in case. We're bound to pass through werewolf territory sooner or later."
Sam nodded, just at the corner of Dean's vision as the light streamed into the inner workings of the automobile and he reattached a stray hose, tightening a few other things on his way through his thorough inspection.
"That should do it," he said finally, wiping his hands on his trousers again in lieu of a good rag. "Might as well stay here the night, though, as long as we're stopped. Seems like as good a place as any. I'll give her one more look-over in the morning."
"Sure," said Sam, extinguishing the lantern now that Dean wasn't exploring the depths of his prize creation. Dean closed the hatch but Sam was still standing there, staring at the top of the automobile but looking as though he wasn't even seeing it.
"What is it?" he said.
Sam didn't say anything, but a moment later he did, from the inside pocket of his frock coat, pull out an iron button, a pentacle and a ladies' silver hatpin.
"Just in case," he said.
Dean didn't question the sudden lump he felt in his throat, but he didn't own up to it either. Maybe Sam didn't walk the halls of Stanford armed, but neither was he so far from his roots that he was unprotected.
"Good," said Dean after a long pause. "I... good."
Sam nodded and put all three items back where they'd come from, and Dean wondered without ever asking whether or not the hatpin had belonged to Jess.
"Your turn to set up the tent," he added after another few moments had passed. Awkward, silent moments. "I'm going to go check out that bridge."
When he returned the tent had been erected and Sam was hunched over the letter from their father, having managed to pilfer a magnifying lens among Dean's scattered things. He scrawled a few things down in a notebook in his lap, and when Dean got close enough to look over his shoulder he saw that Sam had managed to decipher most of the rest of the postmark. With just a few letters missing, surely between the two of them and Dean's trusty map they could figure out just where they were headed.
The night passed more comfortably after that, Dean telling Sam about a couple of girls he met out in Boston and Sam telling Dean a little bit about his life at Stanford, before they hit the sack sometime before the middle of the night in order to get an early start the next day.
At dawn, before Sam woke up, Dean crawled out of the tent and made doubly sure that Tessa was in flawless working order. There were still a couple of scratches from the incident with the railway sign, but he could live with those until he had a proper workshop to fix them in.
After that he filled a couple of water bottles from the stream and then stood with his back against his car as he watched a hot air balloon pass overhead. He couldn't see it well enough to clearly make out the occupants, but at one point he was sure he saw one of them lean over the basket and wave down to him. He waved back anyway, even if they hadn't. No harm in that.
"Come on, sleepyhead," he said when Sam finally emerged from the tent, shirt and underpants rumpled and hair standing every which way. "Put your trousers on and let's get on the road. We've still got a hell of a drive ahead of us."
Broken Bow, Nebraska
"Well, this is it," said Dean. "This is where his letter came from."
As Dean surveyed the dusty town, it surveyed him right back, so much like so many others he'd been in over the years he could almost recognize the faces staring in his direction.
"We should start with the post office, then," said Sam, as heads turned towards them.
Dean was used to people looking at him. He could blend in when he wanted to, but for all he grew up riding through these very towns, when he strapped on his coat and stood next to Tessa, he really did look like an airship captain come down from the sky. And Sam... he might've gone back to his familiar mining trousers and linen shirts, but the frock coat he refused to part with was pure city.
And people always stared at the magnificence of Tessa.
"If he was working this town, the post office is somewhere he only went once. The saloon, however...."
"If he was in town," said Sam. "The only thing we know for certain that he did from here was mail a letter, and even that could've been done by somebody else."
"The letter came from here," said Dean, his eyes moving slowly from one side of the main street to the other, getting the lay of the land. "That means somebody knows something."
"Well, we have to start somewhere." Placing his hat on his head and buttoning his coat Sam started on ahead, long strides eating up the distance between one side of the road and the other in no time. Dean refused to scurry along behind, and his swagger was one thing people didn't think was notable about a stranger in town.
John Winchester looked sufficiently like a whole lot of other men roaming the continent that the post office attendant couldn't be sure whether he'd ever been in or not, even after he perched his rectangular glasses on his nose and took a closer look at the photograph. It was ten years old anyway, and John Winchester was beginning to show his years in the gray in his beard, the lines around his eyes.
The barkeep at the saloon was at least able to tell them that he thought there might've been someone who looked a little like that in town a while back, but he couldn't confirm it to anyone's satisfaction but his own.
"If anyone ever came looking for us, people would remember we'd been in town," muttered Dean, getting them both a beer and sitting down in a back corner.
"Didn't that almost get you arrested once?"
"What do you mean once?" said Dean, trading Sam his beer for the newspaper he'd acquired on their way up the street. "All right, let's check the usual sources."
"If he was here, he was here over a month ago," said Sam. "This week's newspaper isn't going to do us any good. We don't even know if he was here for a hunt."
"When does Dad ever do anything that's not for a hunt?" said Dean, opening the paper and scanning the headlines. "You never know what you might find. If it was something recurring, there might still be some sign of it. If not... well, we know how to talk to people."
"Wow, a two-headed cow," said Sam, taking the paper back right out of his hands. "Now there's something you don't see every day."
"And thank God for that," said Dean, "but I'm pretty sure that's not what Dad was here about, unless there's been a rash of mutant animals. Uh, there hasn't, has there?"
"We could ask, I suppose," said Sam, flipping the page and crackling the paper to get it to stand up straight. "Oh look, you could get your guns cleaned for half price."
"What self-respecting man doesn't clean his own guns?" scoffed Dean. "They wouldn't even know what to do with mine if I gave them a diagram and step-by-step instructions. Give me the paper back, Sam. Do you even remember what you're looking for?"
"Hey, hey wait," said Sam. "Wait, I think I might have something. A missing person."
"Unless it's Dad, I'm not interested," said Dean. "Probably just an obligatory piece about some rich man's son who wandered off to seek his fortune. Those are the only ones the papers ever write about. Nothing weird about it."
"No, hey, listen to me, Dean. He's the fourth person to go missing on the same piece of land in the past four months. All of them were expected back."
"Wild animals, probably," said Dean, but that definitely sounded like something more in their territory, and he peered at the paper over Sam's thumb. "What else does it say?"
"That no one could find any traces of any kind of attack in the general area," said Sam. "You think this might've been what Dad was hunting?"
"Couldn't hurt to find out," said Dean. "It's the best lead we've got, unless the last couple pages of the paper give us a detailed map to the nearest ghost."
More likely the back of the paper gave directions to the nearest brothel, but while in another time and place Dean might've checked it out, they had business to look into.
"Well, then let's hit the newspaper office next and find out everything we can."
The publisher of the local paper, an older gentleman by the name of Blythe, was forthcoming with the name of the latest missing man's next of kin, though he had little else to offer. Certainly he hadn't held back any morsels of information from the story he'd published in his paper.
"Mrs. Mary Collins, widow," said Dean, studying the scrap of paper in his hands.
"Well, he's not necessarily dead," said Sam.
"No, not his widow, his brother-in-law's widow. His sister. I do well with widows."
"I'll just bet you do," said Sam. "Is that a subtle hint to let you handle this one?"
"I didn't think I was being subtle," said Dean. "Do I look all right?"
"You look like you might whip out a revolver at any moment and hold her up," said Sam. "Don't you have any respectable clothes?"
"Sorry, my laundress is on vacation," said Dean, taking off his easily identifiable leather coat and straightening his shirt. "Better?"
"Informal, but acceptable," said Sam, fixing his collar for him. If he tried to suggest a bowtie, Dean was going to tell him just where he could tie it. "Remember you're not trying to woo her, Dean."
"When you're dealing with widows, the technique is the same," said Dean. "All widows want to feel desirable." Then he fixed his hair and headed straight for her house.
Mrs. Mary Collins was a battleaxe of a woman, looking both of them up and down with overt skepticism.
"And how do I know the two of you aren't the ones responsible for his disappearance in the first place?" she said. "Strangers don't usually show an interest."
"We’re not exactly strangers, ma'am," said Sam, taking over when Dean was firmly shut down. "Well, we are strangers to the area, but we do have a personal interest in the situation. We had a family member go missing recently and the last place he was seen was here. Any help you could give us...."
Even battleaxes softened, under the right pressure.
"Matthew was a careful man," she said. "He knew this area, he wouldn't have gone out there unarmed, and he wouldn't have walked away from his home. Something happened to him."
"With your help, we'd like to find out what that was," said Sam, "before anyone else goes missing."
"I don't know what you expect I can do to help you," she said. "I can't tell you where he was any better than Mr. Blythe. Following game takes you all over."
"He was hunting?" said Dean.
Apparently Mary Collins' attitude towards him hadn't softened quite so much. "What else would anybody be doing up there?" she said. "Bird watching?"
Well, it wasn't completely unheard of that someone would be bird watching, but Dean bit back the response anyway. "Is there anyone we could talk to that would know that land well enough to tell us where hunters would mostly likely go?"
"Anyone who hunts up there," she said, addressing her answer to Sam. "You could talk to Mazanahoton. His family's been here longer than any of ours."
"Do you happen to know where we could find him?"
She shrugged. "Playing cards?" she said. "It's that time of day, and that time of year."
"Okay," said Dean, "this is definitely my show now. Thank you for your time, ma'am."
At least she wasn't outright glaring at him anymore, even if her own good-bye was directed towards only Sam as well.
: : :
Dean was itching to get in on the game, getting a sense of the players within five minutes of sitting down with his whiskey. But as easy as it would've been to clean them out - all of them, probably; these were no professionals - he needed these people to be friendly with him for at least the next couple of days. He could wait that long, maybe sit down at the table before the left town and get a bundle of cash to carry them through to wherever this trail took them next.
He caught one of the names of the men playing as Oyatetawa, and another as Thomas, which left two possibilities at the card table. Considering one of the remaining men was a red-haired, burly Scot, Dean considered it a fairly safe bet that the remaining man was the one they were looking for.
While Sam chatted with the barmaid - now there was a sight Dean wasn't at all accustomed to - he bided his time at the bar and waited for the game to amiably break up. Though it still killed him to think how much he could've made off with at the table.
He gave the man a nod as he leaned on the bar and got a fresh drink. "You wouldn't happen to be, uh, Mazanahoton, would you?"
His eyebrow twitched, but he gave no more sign of recognition than that. "Who's asking," he said, wrapping his hand around his beer and drinking half of it in one pull.
"Mary Collins sent us in your direction," he said, nodding towards Sam and his lady friend. "I'm Dean and that over there is my brother Sam."
He gave Sam a long look, then nodded his head. "The widow Collins sent you, did she?" he said. "Well then I'd better give you the time of day." He looked back at the dispersed card game, then at the grimy window, and chose to lead Dean closer to the sunlight. "People in town call me Mac."
"She said you could give us an idea where her brother might have been before he went missing."
"You knew Matty?"
"Well, no," said Dean, "but we have a vested interest in the case."
He narrowed his eyes and seemed to be looking through Dean for a moment before nodding his head again. "Seems like a lot of people have a vested interest in the area lately. You're the second fellow to ask about it."
Dean's attention was definitely caught. "Do you happen to remember anything about the other fellow?" Mac's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "We lost touch with a colleague of ours a while back. It'd be good to catch up."
"Doubt this was him," said Mac. "This was a young fellow. Couldn't have been older than fifteen if you ask me. Name of Joe."
"Nah, you're right, couldn’t be him," said Dean quickly, though he filed the name away for future reference. "Too bad, though. So Mary--"
"Mrs. Collins, if you don't mind."
"--Mrs. Collins told us no one is more familiar with that land than you are."
"Except my ancestors, and you're not in a position to call on them for assistance."
Technically Dean could probably find a way, but that was a whole can of worms he did not want to open. "All we need is a place to start. We can take it from there."
"There's an old scouting trail that runs through that piece of land," he said, drawing a meandering line on the table with his fingertip. "Older than you or I. Older than my grandparents' grandparents. Some folks like to hunt there, but my people don't follow that trail anymore. It has a bad reputation."
"What does that mean, a bad reputation?"
"It means exactly what it sounds like it means," he said. "Something went wrong there, and we leave it to everyone else now. If they want to take land, they can have that piece."
"That might be just what we're looking for."
"Yes, I thought it might be," he said. "If you and your brother meet me here tomorrow at first light I'll take you up to the trail. From there you'll be on your own."
"Thank you," said Dean, offering his hand. "We just want to know what's happening up there."
"I think you want more than that," he said, "but that's your own business. I wish you luck and safe travel, whatever it is."
They shook on that, and Dean thought that luck and safe travel were two of the things that Winchesters needed most in life. As he turned back to Sam and his lady friend, though, he saw that Sam was now on the floor with a couple of patrons looking down at him in either pity or contempt.
Dean was across the room before he even had to think about it, squatting down next to his brother. "What did you do to him?"
"Nothing! I didn't do anything!" said the barmaid, looking faintly panicked as she hovered over the two of them. "Is he sick?"
"No, he's not sick," said Dean. He reached for Sam's shoulder but Sam flinched away. "What, did somebody hit him?"
"No!" she insisted. "We were just talking and then suddenly he grabbed his head and he was on the floor. What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know," muttered Dean, as they began to attract unwanted attention. "Sam. Sam. Sammy!" He managed to grab his shoulders this time without Sam shaking him off, and gradually Sam let go of his head and became pliant in Dean's hands. "What the hell, Sammy?"
"Headache," muttered Sam. "Just a sudden headache. I'm all right now."
Dean didn't buy it, but he turned towards the small gathered crowd and repeated his brother's words. "He's got a headache," he told him. "Probably got knocked around too much when I wasn't there to look out for him."
When Sam punched his shoulder for that one, Dean became more convinced he was going to be fine. As, apparently, did the patrons, who slowly began to drift back to their own business.
"You want to tell me what that was really about?" he said when he was reasonably certain they were alone.
"It was just a headache, Dean," he insisted, letting Dean help him to his feet again. "Sometimes they come on like that."
"And then just go away? Just like that?"
"I probably just got a sunbeam in the eye," said Sam. "You don't need to worry."
Dean looked all the way up to the front of the saloon, where light was just barely reaching through those windows, let alone as far away as where Sam had been flirting with the barmaid. A sunbeam. Right.
"Well, while you were busy with your lady friend," he said, sitting Sam down at a table with him, "I got some actual work done."
"My lady friend, as you put it, remembers Dad," said Sam, "so watch where you point that tongue, if you don't mind."
"Wait, really?" said Dean. "What did she tell you? What was he doing here?"
"She didn't know what he was up to, but she said he was only in town for a day, doing some asking around about something or other, before he got word from someone and took off."
"And she really remembers this? She's not just pulling your leg because you're Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome Stranger?"
"She remembers him, Dean," said Sam. "Look at her, you know she's just his type. He probably spent more time with her than all his contacts combined."
"Well, does she know where he went from here?"
"East, she thinks," said Sam, "but he didn't tell her and she didn't ask, she just saw him take off out that way. It's not much, but at least we know he was doing something here."
"Yeah, and that what he's doing has nothing to do with this goddamn hunt," said Dean, banging his fist lightly on the table, just enough to bounce his half-empty glass. "Who knows if he even knew there was a hunt in town."
"Is it a hunt?"
"Sounds like it could be," said Dean. "Mac says to meet him here tomorrow morning and he'll take us out there. Goddammit, now we have to follow this through instead of heading east after Dad."
"Why?" said Sam. "Why can't we just leave it, Dean? We came to town to try to find Dad, not to track down a hunt."
"Leave it, Sam? How can we leave it when people are going missing?"
"Someone else can take care of it," said Sam. "You have contacts all over the country, Dean, I know you do. Send one of them a message about this place and let's head east after Dad."
"There might already be someone on it," admitted Dean, "but it's some kid named Joe. He's been asking around about the disappearances too. Seems a little too interested, if you know what I mean."
"Like us," said Sam.
"Uh, right, like us," said Dean. "I can track this kid down and check him out, and you can try to find us a direction that's a little less vague than 'east'."
"Do you have any suggestions as to how I do that?" said Sam.
"I don't know, find another barmaid?" said Dean. "Maybe if you have another one of your little fits, someone will come running to nurse you back to health."
"I told you, Dean, it was just a headache," said Sam. "Look at me, am I anything but completely healthy? It's nothing to worry about."
"Whatever you say, Sam," he said dubiously, but in the absence of any other evidence, Dean had to take him at his word. After three years of separation, there really was a lot he needed to relearn about his brother.
Next Part | Master Post