(no subject)
Anabiosis
by whereupon
Supernatural: Gen, post 2.13, PG-13, 25,800 words.
Nightmares move more quickly in the dark, but they do not require the dark in order to move.
Beneath the cloud-heavy sky, the shifting sea is bleak and cold as obsidian; the waves look snow-crested when they break against the hull and Sam tightens his grip on the railing as the ferry rocks beneath him. He closes his eyes and tells himself resolutely that the tremors are merely the reverberations of the Impala's engine and that if he opens his eyes, he'll find himself in the car, on dry land, somewhere warm and miles from the ocean.
"If you're gonna puke, you should probably get closer to the edge," Dean says. Sam grits his teeth and opens his eyes; Dean smirks. His hands are shoved into his pockets against the chill, but the wind's stung color into his cheeks. "And if you're not, you should wait inside like everybody else instead of freezing your ass off out here."
"I'm not gonna puke, and it's too crowded in there," Sam says. The heat that came from the press of bodies in such close quarters hadn't helped with the sense of nausea that had risen as the ferry departed from the dock. The briny cut of wind helps with that, at least, slipping through the holes in his jeans and beneath his jacket, though the shirts he's layered against the season, to leave him shivering, pared down to bone.
"Right." Dean gives him a look of disgust. "Man, I can't believe you get seasick."
"I don't get seasick." The denial's piteously weak; he can tell by the fact that Dean only raises an eyebrow. "It's probably food poisoning, which makes it your fault. I told you we should've found somewhere else to eat."
"Hey, you're the one who kept bitching about how hungry you were," Dean says. "Don't blame me for that."
Sam sighs. "Look, I don't make fun of you for being scared of planes."
"I'm not scared of planes," Dean says. "I don't like flying. Totally different, and yeah, you do."
"I thought you said you were gonna wait inside where it was warm."
Dean shrugs. "Got tired of people elbowing me."
"You could wait in the car," Sam says.
"And stare at the back of somebody else's car for the next half an hour? Why the hell would I wanna pretend to be stuck in traffic? Besides, somebody's gotta keep you from falling off the boat."
Sam grimaces as the deck shifts beneath them and his stomach protests the motion. "I'm not gonna fall off the boat, Dean."
"Yeah, if they'd made that railing outta anything else, I'm pretty sure you'd've broken it in half by now," Dean says. Sam looks down and deliberately loosens his grasp on the metal. "Seriously, you don't look so good."
"Thanks for the insight," Sam says raggedly. He tells himself to think about why they're doing this, about the missing child and the ghost who might be responsible for her disappearance; whatever misery he feels now will pass as soon as they disembark, and it's nothing compared to the misery of the child, or her family, or the ghost itself.
Of course, knowing as much intellectually does nothing to convince his stomach to settle, nor does it make it any easier to deal with the fact that that's the ocean down there, fathoms upon fathoms of dark water in which to founder, and it's funny how many shipwreck statistics he can recall when he's trying his damndest not to.
Dean looks at him, forehead furrowed faintly with worry, and then leans against the railing, dangerously casual and fooling no one. Sam swallows and tries to keep his eyes fixed on the clouded sky, tries not to think about the threat of water swirling below.
It's almost nightfall by the time the ferry docks and the vehicles onboard are allowed to drive one by one down the ramp. As the Impala inches out into fresh air, Sam glances out of the window at the deep red of sunset; the color's dimmed slightly by the clouds, the promise of frost and further chill, but that only makes the danger seem muted, and more ominous for it.
"You wanna get something to eat before we get a room?" Dean asks, solicitous enough that Sam regrets not having told him to wait inside, after all. "It might make you feel better." The heaters rattle, pushing warm air out at them, and Sam knows that if he's still cold, so is Dean. He bites his lip and looks away, wishing he'd spent the ride over locked in the men's room, though he knows Dean would have found him there, too.
"I'm good. Unless you're hungry."
"Coffee," Dean says. "You want coffee, at least? Something warm?"
"Dean, I'm fine, okay." The annoyance in his voice isn't directed at Dean, and he winces when he hears it; he's merely exhausted in the wake of the ride over. The chill, the wind shear, the nausea, what he refuses to acknowledge might have been fear -- in receding, they've taken with them something crucial of himself. He's not going to think about having to go back across when they're finished here; nobody ever said anything about bringing coin enough for the return passage.
He rubs his eyes, unsure of how that thought came about and not really caring to find out. Dean's probably right about the benefits of food, but Sam's not going to ask that of him now. It's such a small thing compared to what he's asked of late, but he's not going to ask anything more of his brother than is absolutely necessary.
He's not going to spend the rest of his life watching his brother wear away just because Dean still doesn't know how to say no.
Dean's expression hardens almost imperceptibly, turns a shade more remote. "Fine. But it's gonna be too late to get anywhere tonight with research."
"So we'll find a motel," Sam says. "Get started first thing in the morning."
"Who the hell put you in charge," Dean says, but it's muttered and half-hearted and he's already looking back at the windshield when he says it. Sam slumps down in his seat; he knows he probably looks ridiculous, like an overgrown petulant teenager, but he doesn't care, and he knows that Dean's used to it. He remembers being fifteen, Dean picking him up from school and telling him that they were going to be moving again, but hey, maybe this next place would be better, maybe it'd get HBO, and the look he'd given Sam when Sam had said in that flat, dead tone, fuck off.
That had been Sam's intent, of course; he'd wanted to make Dean understand exactly how much he'd despised everything about their life, but even though he'd gotten what he'd wanted, the look on Dean's face had made him think that whatever he'd just won, he didn't want it, after all.
The neon orange-red of the motel vacancy sign illuminates the weft of latticed crystals sifting slowly through the air, and Sam shivers when he gets out of the car.
That the snow shouldn't feel like an omen doesn't make it seem like any less of one.
--
Even in the motel room, the air smells of salt, and Sam wonders if he'll get used to that, if when they return to the mainland, he'll think that something's been left behind. The springs of his bed cry shrilly when he lowers himself onto the mattress, the faded blue quilt smells like cheap fabric softener, and the curtains have been drawn across the window; if not for the persistence of brine, he could imagine they were anywhere, somewhere safe on the roads tracing across the country.
No longer being grounded by those highways and nameless dirt roads shouldn't feel this strange; they're only separated from the mainland by a small stretch of water, but it seems almost a different country. The sensation will pass, he knows; it's the dizzying result of the post-ferry flatline and the late hour.
"I'm gonna take a shower," Dean says, addressing the room at large instead of looking at Sam.
"Knock yourself out," Sam says anyway and Dean turns to glower at him.
"You'd better still be here when I get out," he says, like he thinks Sam's likely to pack a bag, steal a car, and be gone as soon as he can. Which is fair, though it stings to admit as much; Dean has good reason to think that it's a possibility, even though Sam said he wouldn't do it again.
Still, even if he'd been lying about that, he'd be stuck on the island; the ferry won't run again until morning.
"Uh, where else would I be?" he asks.
"Who knows with you," Dean says. "One of these days I'm gonna get you microchipped, I swear," and Sam rolls his eyes.
"Yeah, I'll be here." His tone is patronizing enough that Dean should glare, but Dean only looks at him and then disappears into the bathroom. The latch clicks into the mortise and a moment later Sam hears the dull thrash of water, the white noise of the shower. He should really get up, he knows, and unpack; he should take off his boots, at least, but now that there's no need for pretense, sleep pulls at him like a riptide, dragging him down deep.
He opens his eyes sometime later with the sense of time lost and for a moment he doesn't know where he is; the room is dark and quiet and steeped cold with night. The lack of knowledge, of anything grounding, is terrifying, paralyzing, and then out of the silence Dean asks, "Nightmare?" and he can breathe again. Dean flicks on the lights and Sam throws a defensive hand over his eyes.
"Why'd you let me fall asleep here?" he asks, ignoring the question because he's not sure that he wouldn't be lying if he said no; he doesn't recall what woke him.
He rolls over and blinks at his brother. Dean's standing just inside the door and he's holding a paper bag and a cardboard tray of drinks; Sam realizes that it wasn't a nightmare that woke him, but the noise of Dean returning, and he's surprised to find that the realization is accompanied by a sense of relief. He wonders what he was so afraid of dreaming, but only for a moment; he doesn't want to know the answer any sooner than he has to.
He knows that he'll remember soon enough.
"It's not like you haven't slept worse places," Dean says. The shoulders of his jacket glisten with melted snow as he unloads their dinner onto the table. "I tried to wake you up. You coulda passed for dead, except for how you were snoring."
"Ha," Sam says mirthlessly, sitting up. He unties his boots, toes them off. "How long was I out?"
"An hour?" Dean says as Sam gets to his feet. "Figured I'd take advantage of the peace and quiet and you not telling me to slow the fuck down."
"It's not like you ever listen, anyway." Sam slumps into one of the dinette chairs and reaches for the paper bag. He's hungrier than he'd thought; the smell of salt and grease is enticing instead of merely tolerable.
"Yeah, you'd think you'd get the hint," Dean says, pulling out the chair across from him.
The burgers and fries are lukewarm, but good all the same; it's been a long time since lunch. They eat mostly in silence since Sam's still muzzy with sleep and there's nothing they can do about the hunt at this time of night, not without having done any research. The blog post Sam had found had mentioned Lacey Brady's disappearance in conjunction with a female ghost who had been glimpsed several times on the island, but it was woefully lacking in details, and the source was anonymous.
Sam crumples the thin paper in which his cheeseburger had been wrapped. "My turn for the shower."
Dean takes a swallow of soda and says, "About time," but only out of habit, Sam thinks; there's no heat to it at all.
In the bathroom Sam takes care to avoid catching his reflection in the mirror; he's afraid, with the remnants of dream-logic and the true dread it allows, of glimpsing for an instant brass-colored irises before the color fades to that with which he was born.
When he comes back out, he's surprised to find that the table's been cleared, the lights are off, and Dean's asleep, but it makes sense, he tells himself; he'd taken a nap, and Dean hadn't, and neither of them had slept well the night before. We're both fine, he tells himself.
We're both fine.
Dean's breathing is something steady and familiar as Sam makes his way back to bed, hoping that he'll be able to fall asleep quickly, that he won't lie awake for hours listening to the snow-tamped world grow ever more still and thinking about the unquiet things that might be the only movement within it. Most of all, he hopes that he won't dream -- of hot blood, of things lost to decay, of the scrape of wind like iron, of anything at all.
He doesn't bury his face in the pillow for fear of leaving his back exposed, but he pulls the blankets up to his neck, and eventually, he sleeps.
--
In the morning the carpet is cold and vaguely gritty against his bare feet. He shudders, thinking of bodily fluids and vectors of contagion, and reaches into his duffel for socks. His back is to Dean, but he hears the bedsprings creak as his brother rolls over, sits up. "Why the hell are you awake already," Dean says, and when Sam turns around, he's squinting in the grey light that seeps through the half-open curtains. The sky had been the color of ash when Sam went to the window upon waking, and it had done nothing to smooth away the sense of panic left behind by whatever he'd dreamed.
Every day it seems like he's -- like they're, he reminds himself; he's not alone in this -- running out of time, but he knows that's not true. Every day is merely hell, disguised with words like special and destiny, averted for a few more hours. Sooner or later, they'll break, or fall, or fail for just a moment, and that will be all it takes.
Really, it might be a minor miracle that he's able to sleep at all.
"I thought we wanted to get an early start." It's part of the truth, and easier than telling Dean everything.
"The crack of dawn's not early, it's uncivilized," Dean says, but he pushes the blankets back and gets out of bed anyway. "How long you been up?"
Sam shrugs defensively, his shoulders going rigid, and immediately hopes that Dean will misinterpret the gesture. "A little while," he says. "I didn't look at the clock."
"Even when you were a kid, you could never sleep through the night," Dean says.
"What's your point?"
Dean blinks. "Nothing." He scrubs a hand through his hair. "I was just -- forget it. Hurry up and get dressed, I want breakfast."
The snow in the parking lot has melted away to slush; by the time they get to the diner around the corner, the dragging hems of Sam's jeans are soaked. The diner's warmth is welcome, as is the cup of coffee Sam holds between his palms a few moments later. The air doesn't seem to be quite as heavy with salt today as it was last night; either he's getting used to it or the storm washed the air clean, and it's much easier to believe in adaptation than inexplicable meteorological occurrences.
"By the time we finish eating, it might be late enough that we can talk to the parents," he says.
Dean raises his eyebrows. "Not that I'm complaining, but any particular reason you're so gung-ho about this one?"
"Lacey's missing," Sam says. "She might still be alive."
"Sam," Dean says, his voice pitched low against the background noise, people chattering too brightly for the hour about their kids, their jobs, the diurnal dramas that compose their lives.
Sam speaks over him, not wanting to hear what he's going to say. "And if she's not, her parents need closure."
"Telling 'em a ghost took their kid's not gonna bring much closure. You know that. It might get them to call the cops on us, or ask if we're insane, but closure? Not so much."
"And if the ghost is the reason she's missing, I don't think it's gonna stop with her," Sam counters. "The longer we take to put it to rest, the more time it's gonna have to hurt somebody else."
"Can't argue with that," Dean says. "But, man, whatever this is, whatever happens? It's not, you know. It's just what happens and that's all we can do, okay?"
Sam swallows and takes a sip of coffee instead of answering. It's an obvious stalling tactic, but he knows that Dean won't like his answer, and it's too early in the day for them to fight about this; there's still too much work to do. It occurs to him that not answering might be answer enough, but Dean only looks at him, and though it hurts to see the slump of Dean's shoulders and the worry he never manages to hide, Sam's not going to let himself take the easy way out. He's not going to let himself believe his brother, much as he wants to, because he knows that Dean's wrong.
If they lose here, if they lose again, it's because they weren't good enough. Because he wasn't good enough. It's not Dean who has to weigh his best intentions against all of the people he didn't save, not Dean whose soul's been marked since birth, and it's not Dean's responsibility to try to make Sam believe otherwise.
If they lose here, that's one more step in the direction of whatever might be planned for him, one more step towards hell, and it can never be taken back.
The waitress arrives, bearing their food and saving him from answering further and making the situation worse. When he looks up, Dean doesn't meet his eyes, apparently intent on cutting his pancakes into neat little squares with a ferocity Sam associates with somebody's life being at stake.
Sam watches his brother massacre the number three special instead of punching Sam in the face or whatever it is he really wants to do, and he wants to laugh at what their lives have become. Instead, he drinks his orange juice and savors the way it stings his throat like swallowing past heartbreak.
--
Sam's suit is wrinkled and there's a red stain on his favorite tie. He's narrowed the source down to either ink or ketchup, which is a relief, as he's not sure he could stomach the blood-stained noose metaphor at the moment. He stares at the tie, trying to remember when he last wore it.
"Wash it in the sink," Dean says, adjusting his collar in front of the mirror that hangs over the dresser. He sounds bored, and slightly disgusted, like he can't believe he has to give Sam laundry advice. Which he probably is, though that doesn't change the fact that he's also been watching Sam for the past two minutes with a worried crease between his eyes as though he's trying to figure out what Sam's apparent enthrallment with a necktie has to do with what he thinks Sam isn't telling him.
"It's silk, Dean," Sam says patiently.
"So?"
Sam opens his mouth to explain and decides against it. "Never mind."
"It's just a goddamn tie, Sam, it's not like you're running for homecoming queen. And hey, this way you'll look more like a real cop and less like you're playing dress-up."
Real cops don't have to ask about ghosts, Sam thinks. Are you familiar with the legend of La Llorona, he'll have to ask, and Dean will add, the ghost who's meant to take kids, and the mother or maybe the father will gasp, and they will be asked to leave. He's not sure he wouldn't be undone by that right now, undone by his own weakness in the face of somebody else's loss, his own inability to compartmentalize and distance himself these days. Sometimes he's able to convince himself that it's a good thing, that it's human, that caring about people will keep him human.
Other times, it just makes him tired, and makes it a whole hell of a lot easier to understand the nights their father passed out on the couch with an empty bottle beside him. Lately, on the really bad days, he's taken to thinking once more that he wants to have turned Dean down, when Dean came to him at Stanford; he should have stayed behind in the apartment with Jessica. Smiling, or at least gritting his teeth, and carrying on in the face of a countless, endless, really fucking powerful enemy is hard enough on the good days; adding to that the fact that the enemy was able to convince his own father that he's going to fail is more than depressing, it's almost enough to make him want to give up while he'll still be able to make the choice for himself.
Almost, but never enough.
He hasn't told that to Dean, of course, but he thinks that Dean knows, or at least suspects as much. Dean looks at him differently these days, and Sam would rather believe it's out of concern than out of fear.
"Maybe we should go to the library first," he says, and Dean's reflection stares at him, hearing the question and waiting for an explanation. "Before we bother them, we should find out more about the ghost. Maybe it's not even real. This has gotta be hard enough for them without us showing up and making it worse."
Dean turns around to look at him directly. He looks tired, Sam thinks; the skin beneath his eyes is the color of dusk and he looks like he's going to say no, he looks like he's going to say you rushed me through breakfast for this?, and then he nods. "Yeah, okay."
Sam swallows in relief; he should thank Dean, probably, but that would be new, and weird, and awkward. He's never before thanked Dean for these things, and there would be something terrible about starting to do so now. It would feel kind of like acceptance, like the prelude to goodbye, and he's not going to do that to Dean, not yet. Not ever, if he can help it.
Besides, Dean probably already knows.
He crumples up his tie and lets it fall into the trash can. It would have been stupid to pretend he's someone he's not, anyway. Who, and what, he is would have been visible in his eyes, in the lines of his face, in every movement he made.
Maybe that's why Dean so often turns away; maybe he's afraid that one of these times, he'll look at Sam and see that something's changed.
Sam discards the Oxford in favor of the flannel he tossed onto the bed a few minutes ago. Behind him, voice muffled, Dean says, "Like you even had to ask. You know I hate wearing a suit."
"You hate doing research, too," Sam says without turning around. "You hate every part of the hunt that doesn't involve shooting something or setting it on fire."
"You forgot the credit card fraud," Dean says.
"You're not helping your case."
"Dude, the number of warrants out on us, I'm already screwed."
Sam laughs despite himself because there's nothing else he can do. "Yeah, that's cheery."
"Nah, cheery's the part where I'm already damned, so it's not like I gotta worry about the rules," Dean says, and if Sam tries, he can ignore the edge to Dean's voice that betrays the levity. "I mean, the worst's already happened, right?"
The question has nothing to do with what he's really asking, and there's only one answer; it doesn't matter if it's true. What matters is that Sam will say it, and Dean will hear it, and maybe neither of them will believe it, but they'll be able to pretend. "Right," he says, tugging his shirt into place as he turns back.
Dean nods, once. "C'mon, let's go dig up some dirt on your ghost."
"Since when is she mine?"
"She's a weepy dead chick," Dean says, keys to the Impala in hand. "That's pretty much the definition of yours."
"I hate you," Sam says dispassionately, stepping past him into the parking lot. The clouds hang deadly still, torn lace against the scraping, ancient blue, and he draws his hands up into his sleeves against the temperature.
"Yeah, I know you do," Dean says. The door clicks shut behind them and the Impala is glossy with snowmelt; the seats will be frozen, unyielding. Sam checks the urge to hunch his shoulders; Dean is watching.
--
The road to the library curves along the edge of the island, taking them out past the water. One side of the road is lined with shops, battered storefronts with weathered clapboard signs, and the other is separated from a rocky dropoff by a scarred metal guardrail.
Beyond it, in the distance, the sea is a splintered mirror of the sky. It looks very deep, and very cold. Ahead the road glints with melting ice and Sam imagines for an instant that the tires will lose their grip on the road, Dean will turn the wheel too sharply; the car will slide doomed into the guardrail, which, worn by having saved so many over the years, will finally crumple and give way and they will fall, a flash of metal like burning wings of wax, to be extinguished like a match upon submersion.
The moment passes. The road winds inland. Sam's knuckles ache with the force of having remained still.
"So we're gonna be looking for a scorned woman," Dean says. He's not looking at Sam; that could be deliberate. Sam swallows.
He'd thought he was getting used to this. He'd thought that he had gotten used to this, he doesn't even sleep with a knife or a gun or sometimes both under his pillow the way Dean does, but then there was Dad, then there was Dad and the thing he'd told Dean about Sam, the weight of that secret like claws on Sam's shoulder these days, this constant paranoia at the back of his mind, examining each spark of synapses seconds too late and wondering if he'll notice, if it happens.
Most people don't notice when they go crazy; they think they're being completely rational, reacting to the world in the only way that makes sense. Maybe one day he'll wake up and it will seem perfectly logical to shoot Dean in the head while he's still asleep in the other bed, breathing deeply and trusting that Sam will have his back.
The thing is, Sam knows he wouldn't do that. He knows himself well enough, knows well enough what he's capable of, to know that if it happened, he wouldn't give Dean that mercy.
Dean would die only when he couldn't scream anymore, and he would die looking at Sam. He would die knowing that he'd failed the ones who trusted him the most. Sam would do that to him, and it would seem right. To both of them, because Dean would probably convince himself that it was what he deserved for letting that happen to Sam.
Dean needs to know that's a risk. He needs to know, for both of them, and he needs to believe it. He only made that promise to get Sam to shut up, and while it will break Sam's heart to make him promise for real, it will kill both of them if he doesn't. One of these days, maybe Sam will run out of time and he can only hope that Dean will be paying attention when that happens; he can only hope that Dean will draw first and pull the trigger and end it before it begins, even though Sam's fairly certain he knows what his brother will do after that.
He might force Dean into killing them both because even as Sam knows the risks he's taking, he's still too stubborn, too scared, and maybe too stupidly optimistic to do anything about it. Instead he hopes, and he prays, and he tells himself that it's okay to believe that that might be enough.
But prayers are so small, compared to everything they're fighting against, and hope can so easily be born of denial. Dean's version of faith is a gun and a silver flask of whiskey, and on days like this, Sam's seems so fragile in comparison, so desperate and unreal.
"Sam," Dean says, and from his tone Sam thinks it's not the first time he's said it. "Am I working this by myself or what? 'Cause I can, you know, but if you're gonna get to ride around in my car, you can at least do something to make yourself useful."
"What?" Sam says, and closes his eyes, though only for a second, against the razor of sea. If he's lucky, the gesture will look like recollection. "Uh. Yeah, a scorned woman. With kids."
Dean raises his eyebrows. "So I was thinking, maybe we should have a code word or something, you know, so that way you'll know when I'm actually asking you a question and you won't have to interrupt your staring out the window for anything that might not be relevant to whatever the hell you're worrying about this time."
"Sure," Sam says. "How about 'shut the hell up'? I think that would be a good one."
"Jesus, you're pissy when you're brooding. What is it?"
"It's nothing." He wonders how many more times he'll have to say that before Dean gives in and agrees to pretend to believe him. "Like you said, I didn't sleep well."
"Okay, just for the hell of it, let's pretend we just went through the whole routine where you make up some bullshit excuse, and I see right through it and you say 'seriously, Dean, I'm fine,' and I say 'okay' and don't mention the fact that you haven't slept for like a week now and when you do, you wake up screaming, and thirty seconds ago you had a freakin' panic attack, and now we're at the part where you tell me what the hell's going on." Dean pauses for breath. "Is it about Ava again?"
Sam's deep breath is an echo of Dean's own. "First, my voice doesn't sound like that. Second, I am fine. Third, remember that thing I was yesterday when you got back from getting dinner? Yeah, that was called 'asleep,' and you remember how I didn't wake up screaming? Fourth, I only panicked because I know how you drive. And no, it isn't, because it's nothing."
"If that's what you call 'convincing,' you'd'a made a lousy lawyer," Dean says. "But hey, at least you can count up to four. I'm real proud of you, Sammy, maybe next week you'll be up to ten."
"Way to completely miss the point," Sam says.
"Look who's talking," Dean says.
"Dude, you sound like a ten year old. I'm not justifying that with a response."
"You just did."
Sam blinks at him and Dean smirks victoriously. "You didn't win," Sam says. "You just proved that you really are mentally ten years old. I refuse to continue this conversation on the grounds that you are literally incapable of reason."
"You're just a sore loser. And you can't refuse to continue a conversation because of that. I mean, what the hell kind of lame excuse is that?"
"I'm gonna stop talking now," Sam says.
"Thank fucking Christ," Dean says. Sam rolls his eyes and tells himself that he's not amused at all and he's certainly not going to give Dean the satisfaction of showing any kind of reaction. When he looks back out the window, both sides of the road are tangled and dense with pine. He's never been afraid of the ocean like this before, but today he breathes easier with it out of sight.
--
The buzzing fluorescence of the library lights hurts Sam's eyes and someone has carved the initials ELS into the wooden table. Across the table, his knees bumping Sam's whenever either one of them moves, Dean is glaring at a newspaper article from -- Sam squints to make out the date on the masthead -- 1954. Judging from the headline, it's about a child who wandered away during a storm, and it's probably not relevant to the ghost they're looking for. Dean probably knows that, too, but Sam knows that won't make it any easier for him to overlook the child's disappearance.
Hunts involving missing or stolen children, lost childhood, are the ones Dean takes the hardest, the same way Sam is worn thin by hunts involving people who were only trying to make a life for themselves, when through poor luck or coincidence or some forgotten bloodline, the supernatural intervened.
It's far too late for either of them to save themselves, but maybe they can still save the ones who might otherwise end up like them.
Sam recalls how hard Dean fought to keep the reality of their father's work, now their own, from him, and the look Dean had given him at the diner when he'd interrupted before Dean could say something like you know the odds, you know we're probably too late. If Dean can deal with this hunt, Sam should be able to, too; he certainly shouldn't be making it even harder for Dean. He remembers his vow to not ask anything more of Dean than he has to, and he wonders how many more times he'll break it before they get back to the mainland.
He remembers Dean on his deathbed, making jokes as weak as his heart had become, and he remembers Dean bloody and broken in the backseat.
Dean presses his thumb against the pressure point on the side of his skull like he's trying to push away a headache and Sam makes a decision. "Finding anything?" he asks.
"No," Dean says, and sighs like someone who's seen much more than he wants to and knows the worst is always yet to come, like the old man neither of them will ever be. "You?"
Sam shrugs. "There're mothers who were divorced or whose husbands cheated on them, and mothers who drowned, but none who fall into both categories. If we're gonna track down the ghost, we're gonna need to find somebody who's heard the ghost story."
"Or seen the ghost," Dean says. He stands, pushing back his chair. He looks better, brighter, already and Sam wishes he'd thought to say something sooner, that he'd noticed sooner. "The librarian looks like she knows somebody who knows things."
"That's the lamest excuse you've made up to hit on somebody this month." Sam pauses. "Or least this week. Since the blonde in Tulsa, anyway."
"Hey, you saw the way she looked at us when we came in. You telling me you don't think she knows everything about everybody who lives here?"
Dean has a point. "Just don't give her your number."
"Why, you planning to give her yours?" Dean glances back to wink at him. "Don't worry, I won't steal your girlfriend. I know you got a thing for older women."
"Remember, librarians do it by the book," Sam mutters, pitched low enough for Dean alone to hear, and Dean whips his head around to look at Sam in equal parts delight and disbelief, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. Sam smirks and pretends to be checking something on his phone. It's a pretty bad cover, considering that reception's been poor when present at all ever since they boarded the ferry, but that's not the point.
"So, I was right," Dean says a few minutes later, sliding back into his chair.
"You got something?"
"I told her you thought she was hot, but she wasn't interested. Sorry, man." Sam stares at him unblinkingly and he shrugs. "She said we might wanna talk to somebody called Denise. She's a waitress at some bar in what passes for downtown and a couple years ago she was going around telling everybody the ghost almost killed her. The librarian says she's crazy, but . . ."
"People say that about us, too." Sam nods. "You get an address?"
"I know how to do my job," Dean says, and Sam thinks that most of the offense is feigned. "C'mon, it's past time for lunch, anyway. I'll buy you a beer."
"I'm twenty-three, Dean," Sam says mildly. "I can buy my own damn beer." Dean looks at him as though waiting for Sam to say something else, and when Sam doesn't, he only shrugs.
"Whatever. Your loss." He turns away, towards the door, and it's not until Sam's following him down the stoneworked stairs to the asphalt where the Impala waits that he realizes that Dean was probably waiting for him to add and it's only lunchtime, the way he would have a year or six months ago.
Acting normal is so much damned work; it would be really nice if Dean could just take his word that things are okay, since they clearly aren't.
Dean's only had four more years than he has to master this, to get so good at it that Sam only catches the edges of his grief, and only ever when Dean's too tired or too badly hurt to care or to notice that for one awful moment, Sam understands everything he's not saying, everything he's hiding, everything he's trying to keep to himself.
That Sam forgets it during the times between is something for which he's not sure he's able to forgive himself. Not that that keeps him from doing it almost every single time.
When he was sixteen, his hands had been slippery with Dean's blood, Dean's eyes half-closed as Sam tried to keep pressure on his chest and shouted at their father to drive faster, faster, faster. At the hospital, waiting to find out whether his brother would make it through surgery, Sam had told himself that if Dean lived, Sam was going to get the hell out of this life the first chance he got. Dean could stay if he wanted, but Sam wasn't going to stick around to watch him die.
Seven years later and it's going to be Sam who gets Dean killed. Even Dean goes willingly, even if Dean goes out smiling, even if he grins as he carves out his own heart for Sam, it still counts as getting his brother killed.
It doesn't matter how many people Sam saves if he loses Dean in the process.
The sky is silver and unmappable, one great dull expanse; against it the branches of the trees are silhouettes snarled with thorns. Sam's four years and a lifetime behind and he wonders if he'll ever catch up before it's too late, if he'll get this right while there's still time enough for it to matter.
They're pulling out of the parking lot when the first drops of rain hit the windshield.
--
It turns out that the bar in which Denise works is called Harry's Place and has the same cigarette smoke miasma, wood-panelled walls, and dim corners illuminated by grimy neon signs advertising brands of liquor and beer as all of the other bars in which they've ended up over the last year and a half. Though it couldn't have opened more than an hour ago, there are already at least a few patrons hunched over drinks at the bar. It feels familiar, dangerously so, and for a moment Sam thinks wistfully of the first time he'd dined out with Jessica; each of the entrees had cost at least double what he'd been able to afford and he'd wondered what Jess had seen on his face that had caused her to say this one was on her, because that way he'd feel like they had to go out at least one more time so that they'd be even.
He hadn't met her parents until her funeral, and they'd stared at him there like they couldn't hate him for getting their daughter killed merely because they couldn't fathom what their daughter would have been doing with this rough-handed man in a badly-fitting suit. After that, he'd gone back to the motel room, taken off his jacket and tie, and he doesn't remember much of the rest of the day, except for Dean pushing his hair back from his forehead as he was sick and the way the linoleum of the bathroom floor was cold against his knees even through the wool of his pants.
Any day now he could be responsible for some of the worst things possible, humanly and otherwise, and in the meantime they're trying to find out what happened to the nine year old girl who disappeared from her front yard last week, and he's thinking not about that but about how tired he is of cheap drinks and the same deep-fried food the whole country over and the fact that he was meant to get out of this life and it turns out that he was born with it knit inescapable and deep into his bones.
They get a booth in one of the corners, with a good view of the door, and Dean toys with the salt and pepper shakers while Sam pretends to study the menu without actually seeing it.
"You don't have to memorize the damn thing," Dean says eventually and Sam shrugs. He wants soup and a salad. He wants to be a thousand miles from here, even though he's the one who found the case.
"Get me whatever," he says, sliding the menu aside. It'll all taste the same, anyway.
"Do I look like a freakin' waitress," Dean mutters, but he pushes out of the booth and slouches off towards the bar. Sam rests his elbows on the table and listens to the clack of pool balls and the scratchy blur of guitar from the jukebox.
The waitress brings their food and drinks a couple of songs after he returns; she sets bottles of beer damp with condensation alongside Dean's sandwich and Sam's bowl of soup and says, leaning in towards Dean, "Denise says to tell you she'll be over in a few."
"Thanks, sweetheart," Dean says and she nods, grins.
"You got me clam chowder," Sam says a little wonderingly, once she's gone.
"It's New England, Sam, these people practically breathe it. I'd'a gotten you fish, but it probably woulda turned out to be somebody's relative."
"Thanks, that's incredibly disturbing." Sam pokes gingerly at his soup.
"Hey, you're the one with the Lovecraft obsession."
"I was thirteen," Sam says.
Dean takes a bite of his sandwich and says without swallowing, "What's your point?"
Sam shrugs. "You used to love the Spice Girls."
"I did not," Dean says, low and scandalized as though he thinks someone might have overheard; he emphasizes his outrage by kicking Sam just below the knee. "There's a difference between thinking somebody's hot and liking them, Jesus."
"Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself," Sam says, moving his leg out of the way before Dean can kick him again.
"You guys the grad students?" Sam glances over at the blonde woman standing beside their table; she appears to be in her mid-thirties and her nametag reads, predictably, Denise.
"Uh, yeah?" he says, and winces at the question in his voice. It would have been too much for Dean to tell him what cover story they were going with, of course.
"He means yes," Dean says. "We are. Sorry, he's shy."
Sam glares at him and doesn't quite manage to turn the expression into something friendly by the time Denise looks in his direction again. Denise gives him a strange, and completely justifiable, look and says, "Lise said you wanted to hear about ghosts."
"Angeline over at the library said you might be willing to talk with us," Dean says. "We're looking for, uh, stories. About ghosts."
Sam rolls his eyes. "We're interested in the folklore of New England. Specifically, stories in, or deriving from, the gothic tradition."
"Look, I don't know about stories," Denise says. "What I saw wasn't any story."
"Of course," Sam says. "We just meant -- narratives. We'd really appreciate it if you could tell us what happened to you."
"You gonna use my name?" Denise asks.
"Only with your permission," Dean says.
Denise stares at them for a moment and says, "'Just 'Denise' will be fine. Do you need to take notes?"
Sam glances at Dean; after all, it was Dean's idea to go with the grad student story, and Dean blinks. "No," he says. "I, uh, I have a really good memory."
She raises her eyebrows. "Okay." Sam catches Dean's eye, tilts his head, and Dean frowns. He gets it a few seconds later and gets up out of the booth, shoves in next to Sam. Denise takes his seat. "It was a few years ago," she says. "September, Christ, musta been oh-three. I got off work pretty late, and my car was in the shop, so I was walking home. I live out past Tillman Road, and there's that place where you get real close to the beach? And I hear this noise, like, somebody crying, but I don't see anybody, so I keep walking. And when I get to the place where you can see down to the water, I look over and there's this woman out there, and she's wearing this dress, like this long, white dress, and I thought she had to be, you know, drunk or something, there's no reason anybody in their right mind would be out there, that time of year, dressed like that. So I call to her, but she doesn't turn around, and I thought about going home and calling the cops from there, but I thought, what if she's gone by the time I get back? What if she, she wanders away or freezes or something, you know?"
"So what did you do?" Sam asks.
She shrugs. "I go down the hill, and it's icy as fucking hell, pardon my language, and this whole time I'm calling to her, like, 'miss, miss, do you need help,' and when I get to the bottom of the hill, I realize she's not crying anymore. And she's still got her back to me. And I got the sense that something was really wrong, you know, like I couldn't hear anything other than the water? And I shouldn't've been able to, 'cause like I said I was heading out of town, but all of a sudden it just seemed real weird, like there shoulda been something else, but I was, I told myself it was nothing, and I kept walking, and I musta been ten feet away from her when she turned around."
Denise takes a breath, crosses her arms over her chest. Her hands are shaking. "She looked at me and I saw her eyes, and I swear to God, she was not human. She wasn't right. And she opened her mouth, and that's when I turned around, 'cause I knew anything she coulda said was gonna be worse even than the way she was looking at me." She swallows. "I turned around, and I ran, and I didn't stop 'til I was home with the lights on and the door locked behind me."
Sam licks his lips. "And you never saw her again?"
Denise smiles thinly. "Oh, honey, I see her every damn night when I close my eyes. That's not something you forget."
"Yeah," Sam says. "I know. I mean, I know what you mean. I can imagine," he amends clumsily. Dean gives him a look, but Denise doesn't seem to have noticed.
"You got any idea who she coulda been?" Dean asks. "Angeline said you thought she was a ghost."
"I don't know what else she . . . it, I can't think of anything else it coulda been," Denise says. "I didn't look back the whole way home 'cause I knew if I did, she'd be there." She pauses. "That sounds stupid, I know."
"No," Sam says. "No, it doesn't."
"Anybody else ever see her, or anything like her?" Dean asks.
"Not that I know of," Denise says. "Not that they'll say, anyway. Not that I can blame them. I only told a couple of people and, well, Angeline told you where to find me, didn't she?"
"Well, for what it's worth, we believe you," Dean says.
"Thank you for talking to us," Sam says. "Really. You've been a big help."
Denise shrugs again. "I hope you got a good story out of it, anyway." Her smile is as tired as her eyes are haunted, and her back when she gets out of the booth is rigid, her shoulders held tight and straight as she disappears back into the kitchen.
"Did you mean it?" Sam asks quietly as the sounds of the bar begin to filter back in. "Do you believe her?"
"She saw something," Dean says. "That's for damn sure. Whether or not it's gonna help us at all, I got no idea." He tips his head back against the naugahyde, eyes closed, for a second and then pushes to his feet. "Why the hell'd I have to be the one to move, anyway," he says, settling in across from Sam once more.
Sam tastes a spoonful of his soup. It's gone cold, which isn't surprising, but whatever appetite he'd had has faded, anyway. He pushes the bowl away and works his bottle of beer back and forth between his palms, waiting for Dean to finish eating. "We should head over to the Bradys' house," he says. He's not looking forward to it any more than he was a few hours before, but he's not sure there's anything he can do to delay it further.
Even if there is, he knows he can't justify it. Whatever's out there, delaying will only give it more time to hunt.
"You sure?" Dean asks.
"Yeah," he says. "It'll be good to get it over with, anyway. And if there is something out there, if we can find it before night, or at least get some idea of what we're looking for . . ."
"Maybe we can save somebody else," Dean says, sounding more resigned than he should. "Yeah." He pulls cash out of his wallet to cover the bill. Sam drains the last of his beer and gets to his feet, follows Dean back out to the street.
The rain's intensified since they entered the bar; it's only midafternoon, but the streetlights are already on, small pools of light against the gloaming, the gathering dusk. The air smells no longer of salt, but of iron. Sam ducks his head, hunches his shoulders against the storm; Dean turns up the collar of his jacket and they hurry down the wet street, past the rippling puddles reflecting the streetlight glow, towards the black gleam of the Impala half a block away.
Part Two
Part Three
by whereupon
Supernatural: Gen, post 2.13, PG-13, 25,800 words.
Nightmares move more quickly in the dark, but they do not require the dark in order to move.
Beneath the cloud-heavy sky, the shifting sea is bleak and cold as obsidian; the waves look snow-crested when they break against the hull and Sam tightens his grip on the railing as the ferry rocks beneath him. He closes his eyes and tells himself resolutely that the tremors are merely the reverberations of the Impala's engine and that if he opens his eyes, he'll find himself in the car, on dry land, somewhere warm and miles from the ocean.
"If you're gonna puke, you should probably get closer to the edge," Dean says. Sam grits his teeth and opens his eyes; Dean smirks. His hands are shoved into his pockets against the chill, but the wind's stung color into his cheeks. "And if you're not, you should wait inside like everybody else instead of freezing your ass off out here."
"I'm not gonna puke, and it's too crowded in there," Sam says. The heat that came from the press of bodies in such close quarters hadn't helped with the sense of nausea that had risen as the ferry departed from the dock. The briny cut of wind helps with that, at least, slipping through the holes in his jeans and beneath his jacket, though the shirts he's layered against the season, to leave him shivering, pared down to bone.
"Right." Dean gives him a look of disgust. "Man, I can't believe you get seasick."
"I don't get seasick." The denial's piteously weak; he can tell by the fact that Dean only raises an eyebrow. "It's probably food poisoning, which makes it your fault. I told you we should've found somewhere else to eat."
"Hey, you're the one who kept bitching about how hungry you were," Dean says. "Don't blame me for that."
Sam sighs. "Look, I don't make fun of you for being scared of planes."
"I'm not scared of planes," Dean says. "I don't like flying. Totally different, and yeah, you do."
"I thought you said you were gonna wait inside where it was warm."
Dean shrugs. "Got tired of people elbowing me."
"You could wait in the car," Sam says.
"And stare at the back of somebody else's car for the next half an hour? Why the hell would I wanna pretend to be stuck in traffic? Besides, somebody's gotta keep you from falling off the boat."
Sam grimaces as the deck shifts beneath them and his stomach protests the motion. "I'm not gonna fall off the boat, Dean."
"Yeah, if they'd made that railing outta anything else, I'm pretty sure you'd've broken it in half by now," Dean says. Sam looks down and deliberately loosens his grasp on the metal. "Seriously, you don't look so good."
"Thanks for the insight," Sam says raggedly. He tells himself to think about why they're doing this, about the missing child and the ghost who might be responsible for her disappearance; whatever misery he feels now will pass as soon as they disembark, and it's nothing compared to the misery of the child, or her family, or the ghost itself.
Of course, knowing as much intellectually does nothing to convince his stomach to settle, nor does it make it any easier to deal with the fact that that's the ocean down there, fathoms upon fathoms of dark water in which to founder, and it's funny how many shipwreck statistics he can recall when he's trying his damndest not to.
Dean looks at him, forehead furrowed faintly with worry, and then leans against the railing, dangerously casual and fooling no one. Sam swallows and tries to keep his eyes fixed on the clouded sky, tries not to think about the threat of water swirling below.
It's almost nightfall by the time the ferry docks and the vehicles onboard are allowed to drive one by one down the ramp. As the Impala inches out into fresh air, Sam glances out of the window at the deep red of sunset; the color's dimmed slightly by the clouds, the promise of frost and further chill, but that only makes the danger seem muted, and more ominous for it.
"You wanna get something to eat before we get a room?" Dean asks, solicitous enough that Sam regrets not having told him to wait inside, after all. "It might make you feel better." The heaters rattle, pushing warm air out at them, and Sam knows that if he's still cold, so is Dean. He bites his lip and looks away, wishing he'd spent the ride over locked in the men's room, though he knows Dean would have found him there, too.
"I'm good. Unless you're hungry."
"Coffee," Dean says. "You want coffee, at least? Something warm?"
"Dean, I'm fine, okay." The annoyance in his voice isn't directed at Dean, and he winces when he hears it; he's merely exhausted in the wake of the ride over. The chill, the wind shear, the nausea, what he refuses to acknowledge might have been fear -- in receding, they've taken with them something crucial of himself. He's not going to think about having to go back across when they're finished here; nobody ever said anything about bringing coin enough for the return passage.
He rubs his eyes, unsure of how that thought came about and not really caring to find out. Dean's probably right about the benefits of food, but Sam's not going to ask that of him now. It's such a small thing compared to what he's asked of late, but he's not going to ask anything more of his brother than is absolutely necessary.
He's not going to spend the rest of his life watching his brother wear away just because Dean still doesn't know how to say no.
Dean's expression hardens almost imperceptibly, turns a shade more remote. "Fine. But it's gonna be too late to get anywhere tonight with research."
"So we'll find a motel," Sam says. "Get started first thing in the morning."
"Who the hell put you in charge," Dean says, but it's muttered and half-hearted and he's already looking back at the windshield when he says it. Sam slumps down in his seat; he knows he probably looks ridiculous, like an overgrown petulant teenager, but he doesn't care, and he knows that Dean's used to it. He remembers being fifteen, Dean picking him up from school and telling him that they were going to be moving again, but hey, maybe this next place would be better, maybe it'd get HBO, and the look he'd given Sam when Sam had said in that flat, dead tone, fuck off.
That had been Sam's intent, of course; he'd wanted to make Dean understand exactly how much he'd despised everything about their life, but even though he'd gotten what he'd wanted, the look on Dean's face had made him think that whatever he'd just won, he didn't want it, after all.
The neon orange-red of the motel vacancy sign illuminates the weft of latticed crystals sifting slowly through the air, and Sam shivers when he gets out of the car.
That the snow shouldn't feel like an omen doesn't make it seem like any less of one.
--
Even in the motel room, the air smells of salt, and Sam wonders if he'll get used to that, if when they return to the mainland, he'll think that something's been left behind. The springs of his bed cry shrilly when he lowers himself onto the mattress, the faded blue quilt smells like cheap fabric softener, and the curtains have been drawn across the window; if not for the persistence of brine, he could imagine they were anywhere, somewhere safe on the roads tracing across the country.
No longer being grounded by those highways and nameless dirt roads shouldn't feel this strange; they're only separated from the mainland by a small stretch of water, but it seems almost a different country. The sensation will pass, he knows; it's the dizzying result of the post-ferry flatline and the late hour.
"I'm gonna take a shower," Dean says, addressing the room at large instead of looking at Sam.
"Knock yourself out," Sam says anyway and Dean turns to glower at him.
"You'd better still be here when I get out," he says, like he thinks Sam's likely to pack a bag, steal a car, and be gone as soon as he can. Which is fair, though it stings to admit as much; Dean has good reason to think that it's a possibility, even though Sam said he wouldn't do it again.
Still, even if he'd been lying about that, he'd be stuck on the island; the ferry won't run again until morning.
"Uh, where else would I be?" he asks.
"Who knows with you," Dean says. "One of these days I'm gonna get you microchipped, I swear," and Sam rolls his eyes.
"Yeah, I'll be here." His tone is patronizing enough that Dean should glare, but Dean only looks at him and then disappears into the bathroom. The latch clicks into the mortise and a moment later Sam hears the dull thrash of water, the white noise of the shower. He should really get up, he knows, and unpack; he should take off his boots, at least, but now that there's no need for pretense, sleep pulls at him like a riptide, dragging him down deep.
He opens his eyes sometime later with the sense of time lost and for a moment he doesn't know where he is; the room is dark and quiet and steeped cold with night. The lack of knowledge, of anything grounding, is terrifying, paralyzing, and then out of the silence Dean asks, "Nightmare?" and he can breathe again. Dean flicks on the lights and Sam throws a defensive hand over his eyes.
"Why'd you let me fall asleep here?" he asks, ignoring the question because he's not sure that he wouldn't be lying if he said no; he doesn't recall what woke him.
He rolls over and blinks at his brother. Dean's standing just inside the door and he's holding a paper bag and a cardboard tray of drinks; Sam realizes that it wasn't a nightmare that woke him, but the noise of Dean returning, and he's surprised to find that the realization is accompanied by a sense of relief. He wonders what he was so afraid of dreaming, but only for a moment; he doesn't want to know the answer any sooner than he has to.
He knows that he'll remember soon enough.
"It's not like you haven't slept worse places," Dean says. The shoulders of his jacket glisten with melted snow as he unloads their dinner onto the table. "I tried to wake you up. You coulda passed for dead, except for how you were snoring."
"Ha," Sam says mirthlessly, sitting up. He unties his boots, toes them off. "How long was I out?"
"An hour?" Dean says as Sam gets to his feet. "Figured I'd take advantage of the peace and quiet and you not telling me to slow the fuck down."
"It's not like you ever listen, anyway." Sam slumps into one of the dinette chairs and reaches for the paper bag. He's hungrier than he'd thought; the smell of salt and grease is enticing instead of merely tolerable.
"Yeah, you'd think you'd get the hint," Dean says, pulling out the chair across from him.
The burgers and fries are lukewarm, but good all the same; it's been a long time since lunch. They eat mostly in silence since Sam's still muzzy with sleep and there's nothing they can do about the hunt at this time of night, not without having done any research. The blog post Sam had found had mentioned Lacey Brady's disappearance in conjunction with a female ghost who had been glimpsed several times on the island, but it was woefully lacking in details, and the source was anonymous.
Sam crumples the thin paper in which his cheeseburger had been wrapped. "My turn for the shower."
Dean takes a swallow of soda and says, "About time," but only out of habit, Sam thinks; there's no heat to it at all.
In the bathroom Sam takes care to avoid catching his reflection in the mirror; he's afraid, with the remnants of dream-logic and the true dread it allows, of glimpsing for an instant brass-colored irises before the color fades to that with which he was born.
When he comes back out, he's surprised to find that the table's been cleared, the lights are off, and Dean's asleep, but it makes sense, he tells himself; he'd taken a nap, and Dean hadn't, and neither of them had slept well the night before. We're both fine, he tells himself.
We're both fine.
Dean's breathing is something steady and familiar as Sam makes his way back to bed, hoping that he'll be able to fall asleep quickly, that he won't lie awake for hours listening to the snow-tamped world grow ever more still and thinking about the unquiet things that might be the only movement within it. Most of all, he hopes that he won't dream -- of hot blood, of things lost to decay, of the scrape of wind like iron, of anything at all.
He doesn't bury his face in the pillow for fear of leaving his back exposed, but he pulls the blankets up to his neck, and eventually, he sleeps.
--
In the morning the carpet is cold and vaguely gritty against his bare feet. He shudders, thinking of bodily fluids and vectors of contagion, and reaches into his duffel for socks. His back is to Dean, but he hears the bedsprings creak as his brother rolls over, sits up. "Why the hell are you awake already," Dean says, and when Sam turns around, he's squinting in the grey light that seeps through the half-open curtains. The sky had been the color of ash when Sam went to the window upon waking, and it had done nothing to smooth away the sense of panic left behind by whatever he'd dreamed.
Every day it seems like he's -- like they're, he reminds himself; he's not alone in this -- running out of time, but he knows that's not true. Every day is merely hell, disguised with words like special and destiny, averted for a few more hours. Sooner or later, they'll break, or fall, or fail for just a moment, and that will be all it takes.
Really, it might be a minor miracle that he's able to sleep at all.
"I thought we wanted to get an early start." It's part of the truth, and easier than telling Dean everything.
"The crack of dawn's not early, it's uncivilized," Dean says, but he pushes the blankets back and gets out of bed anyway. "How long you been up?"
Sam shrugs defensively, his shoulders going rigid, and immediately hopes that Dean will misinterpret the gesture. "A little while," he says. "I didn't look at the clock."
"Even when you were a kid, you could never sleep through the night," Dean says.
"What's your point?"
Dean blinks. "Nothing." He scrubs a hand through his hair. "I was just -- forget it. Hurry up and get dressed, I want breakfast."
The snow in the parking lot has melted away to slush; by the time they get to the diner around the corner, the dragging hems of Sam's jeans are soaked. The diner's warmth is welcome, as is the cup of coffee Sam holds between his palms a few moments later. The air doesn't seem to be quite as heavy with salt today as it was last night; either he's getting used to it or the storm washed the air clean, and it's much easier to believe in adaptation than inexplicable meteorological occurrences.
"By the time we finish eating, it might be late enough that we can talk to the parents," he says.
Dean raises his eyebrows. "Not that I'm complaining, but any particular reason you're so gung-ho about this one?"
"Lacey's missing," Sam says. "She might still be alive."
"Sam," Dean says, his voice pitched low against the background noise, people chattering too brightly for the hour about their kids, their jobs, the diurnal dramas that compose their lives.
Sam speaks over him, not wanting to hear what he's going to say. "And if she's not, her parents need closure."
"Telling 'em a ghost took their kid's not gonna bring much closure. You know that. It might get them to call the cops on us, or ask if we're insane, but closure? Not so much."
"And if the ghost is the reason she's missing, I don't think it's gonna stop with her," Sam counters. "The longer we take to put it to rest, the more time it's gonna have to hurt somebody else."
"Can't argue with that," Dean says. "But, man, whatever this is, whatever happens? It's not, you know. It's just what happens and that's all we can do, okay?"
Sam swallows and takes a sip of coffee instead of answering. It's an obvious stalling tactic, but he knows that Dean won't like his answer, and it's too early in the day for them to fight about this; there's still too much work to do. It occurs to him that not answering might be answer enough, but Dean only looks at him, and though it hurts to see the slump of Dean's shoulders and the worry he never manages to hide, Sam's not going to let himself take the easy way out. He's not going to let himself believe his brother, much as he wants to, because he knows that Dean's wrong.
If they lose here, if they lose again, it's because they weren't good enough. Because he wasn't good enough. It's not Dean who has to weigh his best intentions against all of the people he didn't save, not Dean whose soul's been marked since birth, and it's not Dean's responsibility to try to make Sam believe otherwise.
If they lose here, that's one more step in the direction of whatever might be planned for him, one more step towards hell, and it can never be taken back.
The waitress arrives, bearing their food and saving him from answering further and making the situation worse. When he looks up, Dean doesn't meet his eyes, apparently intent on cutting his pancakes into neat little squares with a ferocity Sam associates with somebody's life being at stake.
Sam watches his brother massacre the number three special instead of punching Sam in the face or whatever it is he really wants to do, and he wants to laugh at what their lives have become. Instead, he drinks his orange juice and savors the way it stings his throat like swallowing past heartbreak.
--
Sam's suit is wrinkled and there's a red stain on his favorite tie. He's narrowed the source down to either ink or ketchup, which is a relief, as he's not sure he could stomach the blood-stained noose metaphor at the moment. He stares at the tie, trying to remember when he last wore it.
"Wash it in the sink," Dean says, adjusting his collar in front of the mirror that hangs over the dresser. He sounds bored, and slightly disgusted, like he can't believe he has to give Sam laundry advice. Which he probably is, though that doesn't change the fact that he's also been watching Sam for the past two minutes with a worried crease between his eyes as though he's trying to figure out what Sam's apparent enthrallment with a necktie has to do with what he thinks Sam isn't telling him.
"It's silk, Dean," Sam says patiently.
"So?"
Sam opens his mouth to explain and decides against it. "Never mind."
"It's just a goddamn tie, Sam, it's not like you're running for homecoming queen. And hey, this way you'll look more like a real cop and less like you're playing dress-up."
Real cops don't have to ask about ghosts, Sam thinks. Are you familiar with the legend of La Llorona, he'll have to ask, and Dean will add, the ghost who's meant to take kids, and the mother or maybe the father will gasp, and they will be asked to leave. He's not sure he wouldn't be undone by that right now, undone by his own weakness in the face of somebody else's loss, his own inability to compartmentalize and distance himself these days. Sometimes he's able to convince himself that it's a good thing, that it's human, that caring about people will keep him human.
Other times, it just makes him tired, and makes it a whole hell of a lot easier to understand the nights their father passed out on the couch with an empty bottle beside him. Lately, on the really bad days, he's taken to thinking once more that he wants to have turned Dean down, when Dean came to him at Stanford; he should have stayed behind in the apartment with Jessica. Smiling, or at least gritting his teeth, and carrying on in the face of a countless, endless, really fucking powerful enemy is hard enough on the good days; adding to that the fact that the enemy was able to convince his own father that he's going to fail is more than depressing, it's almost enough to make him want to give up while he'll still be able to make the choice for himself.
Almost, but never enough.
He hasn't told that to Dean, of course, but he thinks that Dean knows, or at least suspects as much. Dean looks at him differently these days, and Sam would rather believe it's out of concern than out of fear.
"Maybe we should go to the library first," he says, and Dean's reflection stares at him, hearing the question and waiting for an explanation. "Before we bother them, we should find out more about the ghost. Maybe it's not even real. This has gotta be hard enough for them without us showing up and making it worse."
Dean turns around to look at him directly. He looks tired, Sam thinks; the skin beneath his eyes is the color of dusk and he looks like he's going to say no, he looks like he's going to say you rushed me through breakfast for this?, and then he nods. "Yeah, okay."
Sam swallows in relief; he should thank Dean, probably, but that would be new, and weird, and awkward. He's never before thanked Dean for these things, and there would be something terrible about starting to do so now. It would feel kind of like acceptance, like the prelude to goodbye, and he's not going to do that to Dean, not yet. Not ever, if he can help it.
Besides, Dean probably already knows.
He crumples up his tie and lets it fall into the trash can. It would have been stupid to pretend he's someone he's not, anyway. Who, and what, he is would have been visible in his eyes, in the lines of his face, in every movement he made.
Maybe that's why Dean so often turns away; maybe he's afraid that one of these times, he'll look at Sam and see that something's changed.
Sam discards the Oxford in favor of the flannel he tossed onto the bed a few minutes ago. Behind him, voice muffled, Dean says, "Like you even had to ask. You know I hate wearing a suit."
"You hate doing research, too," Sam says without turning around. "You hate every part of the hunt that doesn't involve shooting something or setting it on fire."
"You forgot the credit card fraud," Dean says.
"You're not helping your case."
"Dude, the number of warrants out on us, I'm already screwed."
Sam laughs despite himself because there's nothing else he can do. "Yeah, that's cheery."
"Nah, cheery's the part where I'm already damned, so it's not like I gotta worry about the rules," Dean says, and if Sam tries, he can ignore the edge to Dean's voice that betrays the levity. "I mean, the worst's already happened, right?"
The question has nothing to do with what he's really asking, and there's only one answer; it doesn't matter if it's true. What matters is that Sam will say it, and Dean will hear it, and maybe neither of them will believe it, but they'll be able to pretend. "Right," he says, tugging his shirt into place as he turns back.
Dean nods, once. "C'mon, let's go dig up some dirt on your ghost."
"Since when is she mine?"
"She's a weepy dead chick," Dean says, keys to the Impala in hand. "That's pretty much the definition of yours."
"I hate you," Sam says dispassionately, stepping past him into the parking lot. The clouds hang deadly still, torn lace against the scraping, ancient blue, and he draws his hands up into his sleeves against the temperature.
"Yeah, I know you do," Dean says. The door clicks shut behind them and the Impala is glossy with snowmelt; the seats will be frozen, unyielding. Sam checks the urge to hunch his shoulders; Dean is watching.
--
The road to the library curves along the edge of the island, taking them out past the water. One side of the road is lined with shops, battered storefronts with weathered clapboard signs, and the other is separated from a rocky dropoff by a scarred metal guardrail.
Beyond it, in the distance, the sea is a splintered mirror of the sky. It looks very deep, and very cold. Ahead the road glints with melting ice and Sam imagines for an instant that the tires will lose their grip on the road, Dean will turn the wheel too sharply; the car will slide doomed into the guardrail, which, worn by having saved so many over the years, will finally crumple and give way and they will fall, a flash of metal like burning wings of wax, to be extinguished like a match upon submersion.
The moment passes. The road winds inland. Sam's knuckles ache with the force of having remained still.
"So we're gonna be looking for a scorned woman," Dean says. He's not looking at Sam; that could be deliberate. Sam swallows.
He'd thought he was getting used to this. He'd thought that he had gotten used to this, he doesn't even sleep with a knife or a gun or sometimes both under his pillow the way Dean does, but then there was Dad, then there was Dad and the thing he'd told Dean about Sam, the weight of that secret like claws on Sam's shoulder these days, this constant paranoia at the back of his mind, examining each spark of synapses seconds too late and wondering if he'll notice, if it happens.
Most people don't notice when they go crazy; they think they're being completely rational, reacting to the world in the only way that makes sense. Maybe one day he'll wake up and it will seem perfectly logical to shoot Dean in the head while he's still asleep in the other bed, breathing deeply and trusting that Sam will have his back.
The thing is, Sam knows he wouldn't do that. He knows himself well enough, knows well enough what he's capable of, to know that if it happened, he wouldn't give Dean that mercy.
Dean would die only when he couldn't scream anymore, and he would die looking at Sam. He would die knowing that he'd failed the ones who trusted him the most. Sam would do that to him, and it would seem right. To both of them, because Dean would probably convince himself that it was what he deserved for letting that happen to Sam.
Dean needs to know that's a risk. He needs to know, for both of them, and he needs to believe it. He only made that promise to get Sam to shut up, and while it will break Sam's heart to make him promise for real, it will kill both of them if he doesn't. One of these days, maybe Sam will run out of time and he can only hope that Dean will be paying attention when that happens; he can only hope that Dean will draw first and pull the trigger and end it before it begins, even though Sam's fairly certain he knows what his brother will do after that.
He might force Dean into killing them both because even as Sam knows the risks he's taking, he's still too stubborn, too scared, and maybe too stupidly optimistic to do anything about it. Instead he hopes, and he prays, and he tells himself that it's okay to believe that that might be enough.
But prayers are so small, compared to everything they're fighting against, and hope can so easily be born of denial. Dean's version of faith is a gun and a silver flask of whiskey, and on days like this, Sam's seems so fragile in comparison, so desperate and unreal.
"Sam," Dean says, and from his tone Sam thinks it's not the first time he's said it. "Am I working this by myself or what? 'Cause I can, you know, but if you're gonna get to ride around in my car, you can at least do something to make yourself useful."
"What?" Sam says, and closes his eyes, though only for a second, against the razor of sea. If he's lucky, the gesture will look like recollection. "Uh. Yeah, a scorned woman. With kids."
Dean raises his eyebrows. "So I was thinking, maybe we should have a code word or something, you know, so that way you'll know when I'm actually asking you a question and you won't have to interrupt your staring out the window for anything that might not be relevant to whatever the hell you're worrying about this time."
"Sure," Sam says. "How about 'shut the hell up'? I think that would be a good one."
"Jesus, you're pissy when you're brooding. What is it?"
"It's nothing." He wonders how many more times he'll have to say that before Dean gives in and agrees to pretend to believe him. "Like you said, I didn't sleep well."
"Okay, just for the hell of it, let's pretend we just went through the whole routine where you make up some bullshit excuse, and I see right through it and you say 'seriously, Dean, I'm fine,' and I say 'okay' and don't mention the fact that you haven't slept for like a week now and when you do, you wake up screaming, and thirty seconds ago you had a freakin' panic attack, and now we're at the part where you tell me what the hell's going on." Dean pauses for breath. "Is it about Ava again?"
Sam's deep breath is an echo of Dean's own. "First, my voice doesn't sound like that. Second, I am fine. Third, remember that thing I was yesterday when you got back from getting dinner? Yeah, that was called 'asleep,' and you remember how I didn't wake up screaming? Fourth, I only panicked because I know how you drive. And no, it isn't, because it's nothing."
"If that's what you call 'convincing,' you'd'a made a lousy lawyer," Dean says. "But hey, at least you can count up to four. I'm real proud of you, Sammy, maybe next week you'll be up to ten."
"Way to completely miss the point," Sam says.
"Look who's talking," Dean says.
"Dude, you sound like a ten year old. I'm not justifying that with a response."
"You just did."
Sam blinks at him and Dean smirks victoriously. "You didn't win," Sam says. "You just proved that you really are mentally ten years old. I refuse to continue this conversation on the grounds that you are literally incapable of reason."
"You're just a sore loser. And you can't refuse to continue a conversation because of that. I mean, what the hell kind of lame excuse is that?"
"I'm gonna stop talking now," Sam says.
"Thank fucking Christ," Dean says. Sam rolls his eyes and tells himself that he's not amused at all and he's certainly not going to give Dean the satisfaction of showing any kind of reaction. When he looks back out the window, both sides of the road are tangled and dense with pine. He's never been afraid of the ocean like this before, but today he breathes easier with it out of sight.
--
The buzzing fluorescence of the library lights hurts Sam's eyes and someone has carved the initials ELS into the wooden table. Across the table, his knees bumping Sam's whenever either one of them moves, Dean is glaring at a newspaper article from -- Sam squints to make out the date on the masthead -- 1954. Judging from the headline, it's about a child who wandered away during a storm, and it's probably not relevant to the ghost they're looking for. Dean probably knows that, too, but Sam knows that won't make it any easier for him to overlook the child's disappearance.
Hunts involving missing or stolen children, lost childhood, are the ones Dean takes the hardest, the same way Sam is worn thin by hunts involving people who were only trying to make a life for themselves, when through poor luck or coincidence or some forgotten bloodline, the supernatural intervened.
It's far too late for either of them to save themselves, but maybe they can still save the ones who might otherwise end up like them.
Sam recalls how hard Dean fought to keep the reality of their father's work, now their own, from him, and the look Dean had given him at the diner when he'd interrupted before Dean could say something like you know the odds, you know we're probably too late. If Dean can deal with this hunt, Sam should be able to, too; he certainly shouldn't be making it even harder for Dean. He remembers his vow to not ask anything more of Dean than he has to, and he wonders how many more times he'll break it before they get back to the mainland.
He remembers Dean on his deathbed, making jokes as weak as his heart had become, and he remembers Dean bloody and broken in the backseat.
Dean presses his thumb against the pressure point on the side of his skull like he's trying to push away a headache and Sam makes a decision. "Finding anything?" he asks.
"No," Dean says, and sighs like someone who's seen much more than he wants to and knows the worst is always yet to come, like the old man neither of them will ever be. "You?"
Sam shrugs. "There're mothers who were divorced or whose husbands cheated on them, and mothers who drowned, but none who fall into both categories. If we're gonna track down the ghost, we're gonna need to find somebody who's heard the ghost story."
"Or seen the ghost," Dean says. He stands, pushing back his chair. He looks better, brighter, already and Sam wishes he'd thought to say something sooner, that he'd noticed sooner. "The librarian looks like she knows somebody who knows things."
"That's the lamest excuse you've made up to hit on somebody this month." Sam pauses. "Or least this week. Since the blonde in Tulsa, anyway."
"Hey, you saw the way she looked at us when we came in. You telling me you don't think she knows everything about everybody who lives here?"
Dean has a point. "Just don't give her your number."
"Why, you planning to give her yours?" Dean glances back to wink at him. "Don't worry, I won't steal your girlfriend. I know you got a thing for older women."
"Remember, librarians do it by the book," Sam mutters, pitched low enough for Dean alone to hear, and Dean whips his head around to look at Sam in equal parts delight and disbelief, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. Sam smirks and pretends to be checking something on his phone. It's a pretty bad cover, considering that reception's been poor when present at all ever since they boarded the ferry, but that's not the point.
"So, I was right," Dean says a few minutes later, sliding back into his chair.
"You got something?"
"I told her you thought she was hot, but she wasn't interested. Sorry, man." Sam stares at him unblinkingly and he shrugs. "She said we might wanna talk to somebody called Denise. She's a waitress at some bar in what passes for downtown and a couple years ago she was going around telling everybody the ghost almost killed her. The librarian says she's crazy, but . . ."
"People say that about us, too." Sam nods. "You get an address?"
"I know how to do my job," Dean says, and Sam thinks that most of the offense is feigned. "C'mon, it's past time for lunch, anyway. I'll buy you a beer."
"I'm twenty-three, Dean," Sam says mildly. "I can buy my own damn beer." Dean looks at him as though waiting for Sam to say something else, and when Sam doesn't, he only shrugs.
"Whatever. Your loss." He turns away, towards the door, and it's not until Sam's following him down the stoneworked stairs to the asphalt where the Impala waits that he realizes that Dean was probably waiting for him to add and it's only lunchtime, the way he would have a year or six months ago.
Acting normal is so much damned work; it would be really nice if Dean could just take his word that things are okay, since they clearly aren't.
Dean's only had four more years than he has to master this, to get so good at it that Sam only catches the edges of his grief, and only ever when Dean's too tired or too badly hurt to care or to notice that for one awful moment, Sam understands everything he's not saying, everything he's hiding, everything he's trying to keep to himself.
That Sam forgets it during the times between is something for which he's not sure he's able to forgive himself. Not that that keeps him from doing it almost every single time.
When he was sixteen, his hands had been slippery with Dean's blood, Dean's eyes half-closed as Sam tried to keep pressure on his chest and shouted at their father to drive faster, faster, faster. At the hospital, waiting to find out whether his brother would make it through surgery, Sam had told himself that if Dean lived, Sam was going to get the hell out of this life the first chance he got. Dean could stay if he wanted, but Sam wasn't going to stick around to watch him die.
Seven years later and it's going to be Sam who gets Dean killed. Even Dean goes willingly, even if Dean goes out smiling, even if he grins as he carves out his own heart for Sam, it still counts as getting his brother killed.
It doesn't matter how many people Sam saves if he loses Dean in the process.
The sky is silver and unmappable, one great dull expanse; against it the branches of the trees are silhouettes snarled with thorns. Sam's four years and a lifetime behind and he wonders if he'll ever catch up before it's too late, if he'll get this right while there's still time enough for it to matter.
They're pulling out of the parking lot when the first drops of rain hit the windshield.
--
It turns out that the bar in which Denise works is called Harry's Place and has the same cigarette smoke miasma, wood-panelled walls, and dim corners illuminated by grimy neon signs advertising brands of liquor and beer as all of the other bars in which they've ended up over the last year and a half. Though it couldn't have opened more than an hour ago, there are already at least a few patrons hunched over drinks at the bar. It feels familiar, dangerously so, and for a moment Sam thinks wistfully of the first time he'd dined out with Jessica; each of the entrees had cost at least double what he'd been able to afford and he'd wondered what Jess had seen on his face that had caused her to say this one was on her, because that way he'd feel like they had to go out at least one more time so that they'd be even.
He hadn't met her parents until her funeral, and they'd stared at him there like they couldn't hate him for getting their daughter killed merely because they couldn't fathom what their daughter would have been doing with this rough-handed man in a badly-fitting suit. After that, he'd gone back to the motel room, taken off his jacket and tie, and he doesn't remember much of the rest of the day, except for Dean pushing his hair back from his forehead as he was sick and the way the linoleum of the bathroom floor was cold against his knees even through the wool of his pants.
Any day now he could be responsible for some of the worst things possible, humanly and otherwise, and in the meantime they're trying to find out what happened to the nine year old girl who disappeared from her front yard last week, and he's thinking not about that but about how tired he is of cheap drinks and the same deep-fried food the whole country over and the fact that he was meant to get out of this life and it turns out that he was born with it knit inescapable and deep into his bones.
They get a booth in one of the corners, with a good view of the door, and Dean toys with the salt and pepper shakers while Sam pretends to study the menu without actually seeing it.
"You don't have to memorize the damn thing," Dean says eventually and Sam shrugs. He wants soup and a salad. He wants to be a thousand miles from here, even though he's the one who found the case.
"Get me whatever," he says, sliding the menu aside. It'll all taste the same, anyway.
"Do I look like a freakin' waitress," Dean mutters, but he pushes out of the booth and slouches off towards the bar. Sam rests his elbows on the table and listens to the clack of pool balls and the scratchy blur of guitar from the jukebox.
The waitress brings their food and drinks a couple of songs after he returns; she sets bottles of beer damp with condensation alongside Dean's sandwich and Sam's bowl of soup and says, leaning in towards Dean, "Denise says to tell you she'll be over in a few."
"Thanks, sweetheart," Dean says and she nods, grins.
"You got me clam chowder," Sam says a little wonderingly, once she's gone.
"It's New England, Sam, these people practically breathe it. I'd'a gotten you fish, but it probably woulda turned out to be somebody's relative."
"Thanks, that's incredibly disturbing." Sam pokes gingerly at his soup.
"Hey, you're the one with the Lovecraft obsession."
"I was thirteen," Sam says.
Dean takes a bite of his sandwich and says without swallowing, "What's your point?"
Sam shrugs. "You used to love the Spice Girls."
"I did not," Dean says, low and scandalized as though he thinks someone might have overheard; he emphasizes his outrage by kicking Sam just below the knee. "There's a difference between thinking somebody's hot and liking them, Jesus."
"Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself," Sam says, moving his leg out of the way before Dean can kick him again.
"You guys the grad students?" Sam glances over at the blonde woman standing beside their table; she appears to be in her mid-thirties and her nametag reads, predictably, Denise.
"Uh, yeah?" he says, and winces at the question in his voice. It would have been too much for Dean to tell him what cover story they were going with, of course.
"He means yes," Dean says. "We are. Sorry, he's shy."
Sam glares at him and doesn't quite manage to turn the expression into something friendly by the time Denise looks in his direction again. Denise gives him a strange, and completely justifiable, look and says, "Lise said you wanted to hear about ghosts."
"Angeline over at the library said you might be willing to talk with us," Dean says. "We're looking for, uh, stories. About ghosts."
Sam rolls his eyes. "We're interested in the folklore of New England. Specifically, stories in, or deriving from, the gothic tradition."
"Look, I don't know about stories," Denise says. "What I saw wasn't any story."
"Of course," Sam says. "We just meant -- narratives. We'd really appreciate it if you could tell us what happened to you."
"You gonna use my name?" Denise asks.
"Only with your permission," Dean says.
Denise stares at them for a moment and says, "'Just 'Denise' will be fine. Do you need to take notes?"
Sam glances at Dean; after all, it was Dean's idea to go with the grad student story, and Dean blinks. "No," he says. "I, uh, I have a really good memory."
She raises her eyebrows. "Okay." Sam catches Dean's eye, tilts his head, and Dean frowns. He gets it a few seconds later and gets up out of the booth, shoves in next to Sam. Denise takes his seat. "It was a few years ago," she says. "September, Christ, musta been oh-three. I got off work pretty late, and my car was in the shop, so I was walking home. I live out past Tillman Road, and there's that place where you get real close to the beach? And I hear this noise, like, somebody crying, but I don't see anybody, so I keep walking. And when I get to the place where you can see down to the water, I look over and there's this woman out there, and she's wearing this dress, like this long, white dress, and I thought she had to be, you know, drunk or something, there's no reason anybody in their right mind would be out there, that time of year, dressed like that. So I call to her, but she doesn't turn around, and I thought about going home and calling the cops from there, but I thought, what if she's gone by the time I get back? What if she, she wanders away or freezes or something, you know?"
"So what did you do?" Sam asks.
She shrugs. "I go down the hill, and it's icy as fucking hell, pardon my language, and this whole time I'm calling to her, like, 'miss, miss, do you need help,' and when I get to the bottom of the hill, I realize she's not crying anymore. And she's still got her back to me. And I got the sense that something was really wrong, you know, like I couldn't hear anything other than the water? And I shouldn't've been able to, 'cause like I said I was heading out of town, but all of a sudden it just seemed real weird, like there shoulda been something else, but I was, I told myself it was nothing, and I kept walking, and I musta been ten feet away from her when she turned around."
Denise takes a breath, crosses her arms over her chest. Her hands are shaking. "She looked at me and I saw her eyes, and I swear to God, she was not human. She wasn't right. And she opened her mouth, and that's when I turned around, 'cause I knew anything she coulda said was gonna be worse even than the way she was looking at me." She swallows. "I turned around, and I ran, and I didn't stop 'til I was home with the lights on and the door locked behind me."
Sam licks his lips. "And you never saw her again?"
Denise smiles thinly. "Oh, honey, I see her every damn night when I close my eyes. That's not something you forget."
"Yeah," Sam says. "I know. I mean, I know what you mean. I can imagine," he amends clumsily. Dean gives him a look, but Denise doesn't seem to have noticed.
"You got any idea who she coulda been?" Dean asks. "Angeline said you thought she was a ghost."
"I don't know what else she . . . it, I can't think of anything else it coulda been," Denise says. "I didn't look back the whole way home 'cause I knew if I did, she'd be there." She pauses. "That sounds stupid, I know."
"No," Sam says. "No, it doesn't."
"Anybody else ever see her, or anything like her?" Dean asks.
"Not that I know of," Denise says. "Not that they'll say, anyway. Not that I can blame them. I only told a couple of people and, well, Angeline told you where to find me, didn't she?"
"Well, for what it's worth, we believe you," Dean says.
"Thank you for talking to us," Sam says. "Really. You've been a big help."
Denise shrugs again. "I hope you got a good story out of it, anyway." Her smile is as tired as her eyes are haunted, and her back when she gets out of the booth is rigid, her shoulders held tight and straight as she disappears back into the kitchen.
"Did you mean it?" Sam asks quietly as the sounds of the bar begin to filter back in. "Do you believe her?"
"She saw something," Dean says. "That's for damn sure. Whether or not it's gonna help us at all, I got no idea." He tips his head back against the naugahyde, eyes closed, for a second and then pushes to his feet. "Why the hell'd I have to be the one to move, anyway," he says, settling in across from Sam once more.
Sam tastes a spoonful of his soup. It's gone cold, which isn't surprising, but whatever appetite he'd had has faded, anyway. He pushes the bowl away and works his bottle of beer back and forth between his palms, waiting for Dean to finish eating. "We should head over to the Bradys' house," he says. He's not looking forward to it any more than he was a few hours before, but he's not sure there's anything he can do to delay it further.
Even if there is, he knows he can't justify it. Whatever's out there, delaying will only give it more time to hunt.
"You sure?" Dean asks.
"Yeah," he says. "It'll be good to get it over with, anyway. And if there is something out there, if we can find it before night, or at least get some idea of what we're looking for . . ."
"Maybe we can save somebody else," Dean says, sounding more resigned than he should. "Yeah." He pulls cash out of his wallet to cover the bill. Sam drains the last of his beer and gets to his feet, follows Dean back out to the street.
The rain's intensified since they entered the bar; it's only midafternoon, but the streetlights are already on, small pools of light against the gloaming, the gathering dusk. The air smells no longer of salt, but of iron. Sam ducks his head, hunches his shoulders against the storm; Dean turns up the collar of his jacket and they hurry down the wet street, past the rippling puddles reflecting the streetlight glow, towards the black gleam of the Impala half a block away.
Part Two
Part Three