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seraphimluxe · 3 years ago

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you're so cute omg

but YES I totally agree, like if there had been a third party with just one (1) braincell, half their conflicts could've been avoided. I can't even express how much I'd love to see you do those classic iconic episodes aaaa

it'd also be super interesting (and kinda heartbreaking) to at some point see conflicts arise between the three of them. There's something so juicy about "I'm really pissed off at you right now, but I'm not gonna let you die". I just love how you've written it all AND DEAN LEARNING TO KNIT lmao it's like you've created this different brand of spn and I'm so in love

Pythia - A Supernatural Rewrite. Wendigo, p1.

read it on ao3. masterlist.

words: 12, 113

notes: I tried to alternate my Sam-focussed episodes and my Dean-focussed episodes, with little moments with the other brother thrown in bc I want to lol. since the pilot is one of my even split chapters, enjoy our first Sam one >:) I have no idea how much i'm going to stick to that, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

also I did NOT want to divide these episodes into parts, but they are so long that it'd be cruel (i was at 18k at 3/4ths of the way thru) to make you sit and read it all in one sitting/wait a century for me to finish one whole ep. or maybe you're all masochists, what do i know? there's just so much I want to indulge in each episode, and i'm assuming you guys would actually enjoy me talking about teen reader and teen Sam shoving frogs down teen Dean's shirt for a paragraph or two... anyhoo.

Wendigo! Enjoy!

P.S - rain and wind sounds are rlllllllllly good for this chapter.

PALO ALTO - NOV. 9th, midday.

Dean had only texted you the address of the Self Storage place, so a woman at the front desk had to point out to which unit they’d rented. Oh, you’re looking for the two supermodels that wandered in here? She’d teased, and you would’ve snarked back something cute, had you not been saving every ounce of your good attitude for Sam.

You found them easily. Among the rows and rows of rattling metal storage units, you could hear Dean’s music bouncing off the asphalt and echoing strangely in the alien place. He was humming without the usual heat. Other than the bustle of the city beyond, it seemed you and the boys were the only ones making noise. The weather was perfect, which was strange after the bone-clinging cold of that night—the cold that none of you could shake. You’d fallen asleep in the bathroom of your motel two times this week, because Sam’s post-nightmare shivers were medical enough to warrant a hot bath in jeans and layers.

And yet today, the sun was white in the sky, blazing enough to urge everyone into the shade but too sudden to spoil. Car tires whisked and motorcycles rumbled over the baking asphalt. If you stayed in one spot long enough you could feel your skin soaking in the sun, and after the week of thunderstorms and chill you’d had… It was too sudden not to be a gift. Jessica had always seemed—sounded like a sunny girl.

The Impala and Sam’s car were facing a storage lockup trunk-first, which was just far enough away from the adjacent buildings to be outside the shade. When you were close enough to make out Sam wiping the ash off a coffee table, you took your own exhaustion and choked it down where no one, not even you, could find it. Only Dean lifted his head when your shoes scuffed closer, squinting against the light.

“Hey.” He deposited a box labeled Kitchen inside the lockup, then dropped his shoulder against the outer wall to pant in his own shade. Sweat was beading under the aviators on his forehead, but the week Dean had spent on autopilot hadn’t ended yet. After a breath, he was up and searching for another box to carry again.

“There’s my boys,” you sighed, and greeted Dean with a cold soda. His smile was tired, but worrying, so you leaned into the rub he gave your arm and wandered over to study what they’d accomplished so far. “Man, you guys got a lot done.”

Once it was out of your mouth, you were unsure if you should’ve said it. Was it better to get all of this pain out of the way? Or did Sam want one last look at what remained of his normal life? Either way, he didn’t react when you appeared, and turned instead to the pile of ash-crusted belongings he still needed to clean. The broad back of his shirt was baking in the sun like a solar panel, so you pressed another cold soda against his neck and hummed a hello.

Sam stopped furiously grinding ash out of the seams of the table to lean into the sudden cold relief, blinking slow. His hands remained floating over his work, but for a moment he stilled, submitting to the knots in his back and the heat and his exhaustion. You were afraid to meet his eye. The disappointment was probably waiting for you there already.

“Anything?” Sam asked.

“...No. I-I’m sorry, Sam. No visions.” The stress in his shoulders expanded again. “But I did call my mom, and not only did she say that she’ll come get your car so you can keep it at the store, but she said she’d glance over the apartment too. She’s a lot better at it than I am. I-I tried, Sam, I really did, I meditated for two hours where it happened, I-I—”

He ran a ragged, ash-streaked palm down his face. You couldn’t see how crushed he looked. “S’ okay. ____. Really.”

All week you’d stared at the hole in Sam’s apartment from the sidewalk below, like if you planted your feet and waited long enough something might occur to you. Maybe the residual energies… or God, or whatever gave you the visions… maybe something would trigger something else and you could help Sam. You waited. You endured odd looks and the weather. You meditated. It wasn’t often that you were able to force a vision—the one time you’d tried to describe it to Dean, the best you could do was “throwing up on purpose.”

Sam accepted the soda, but immediately set it down and to the side. He squeezed his shaking hands together until they were a blistering white, then started back on the table again. You reminded yourself that Jessica’s funeral had been only yesterday, no matter how many muddy, grainy years seemed to loom between then and now. At the same time, it felt like it’d been just minutes since you and Dean had rescued Sam from the fire, even if it’d been an entire week prior.

(Even just seeing his back, taut and broken in, made the grotesque process of shoveling up visions endurable for you. You’d do it over and over and over again, if it meant Sam would have even a minute without his grief).

Unsure what to say, you cleared your throat, kissed the side of Sam’s hair and retreated over to Dean. He seemed to have a system in place. If he was a master of anything, it was the exhaustive ability to throw himself into hours of labor to avoid a single emotional thought, and come out with his smile shipped and assembled. The two cars had come in bearing three-quarters of an apartment’s weight in furniture, up to the windows in kitchen chairs and books from the living room. The fire had spared everything except what was inside the square boundary of the bedroom—and Sam.

In the few hours you’d been gone, the boys had bit a good chunk out of what was in Sam’s car and completely unloaded Baby. The only evidence that remained in the Impala were the towels Dean had laid down, streaked black and chalky gray with ash. The backseat of Sam’s Prius was probably ruined. He didn’t seem to care.

Before you could offer your help, Dean accepted it: “Get those out of the back n’ the trunk, n’ shake them out over the concrete. Or throw them away. I’m guessing Sam doesn’t want those towels.”

Sam didn’t speak up. You glanced back, to find that Sam had finally given up on the coffee table. With his foot he slid it into Dean’s loading pile, then braced his hands on his knees, took in a shuddering breath, and readied his cleaning rag to start on the next thing. It was a picture frame.

He turned it over to view its face, which had picked up and flattened a layer of ash into it like a filled mold. The debris on it was so thick that flat, papery scraps fluttered free as it was moved. A whole cloud whirled to the pavement when Sam fortified himself enough to clean the glass plate on the cover.

Sam caught a single glimpse at the picture of Jess, and that was all it took. The photo clattered onto the pavement, face-down, and Sam sank with it, resuming the oncoming tears he’d been fighting for days. A back-cresting, choking sob punched out of him. You were scooping him up before your mind could catch up with you, before you could even wonder why he was crying, and then your arms were squeezing him against your ribs and letting him weep there.

The first time this happened, you'd been struck dumb by just how young Sam looked. It didn't help how much he closed in when he cried, hiding his head in his knees and covering his face like he would when he was little. The mannerisms were a strange reflection of a younger boy, who cried about broken toys or being on the road too long—not dead loved-ones.

You fell into your old routine. With that deep, rumbling voice of his, Dean spoke quiet reassurances, and together you ran your fingers through Sam's unwashed hair like you had every night this week. Not a single stage direction had changed since you were kids. Just the lines. Dean said things like we'll get this done and we'll stop it together, but the words floated over your head as you comforted Sam. You'd prayed that things would go back to how they'd been when you were kids, but you hadn't meant this—you and Dean on either side of Sam, promising things you didn't know you could keep. When you glanced at Dean, you almost expected to see his younger, greener-eyed self there. A panic pressed down on your chest as Sam's hands fisted in the back of your shirt. Your heart plummeted with the urge to find someone, to call your mom, like you'd run away from home and gotten lost along the journey.

From over his brother's head, you watched Dean scoop up the picture and the rag.

“N-no, no,” Sam jerked up. Under your hand, you could feel his breath catch in his ribs, “I want to… want to… keep it.” His voice found itself again with strained clarity: “I don't want to forget what she looks like.”

You wilted. It was impossible not to hold tighter to him then, so you pushed into his touch and were gratefully received. He choked for breath into your belly, coating the front of your shirt with tears. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Sam's grip was starting to hurt, but your senses were too far away to feel it.

“Alright, Sammy, we will. We will, s’ okay.”

Dean carefully delatched the back of the frame, and as gently as he could, removed the photo. It looked like a picture Sam had taken of her at the beach. You caught a glimpse of it—and Jess with her curls and those bright eyes—for the first time, and realized that you’d never seen her in person before. That you never would. She reminded you of the girls you drove past on hunts, the ones that grouped together on the sidewalk and giggled so freely, being happy without worrying when it would end. You’d always wanted to be one of them.

Something in your gut told you to look away, but you followed the picture as Dean offered it to his brother. Sam’s grip on you was so white-knuckled you worried he’d crumple Jess’s photo, but instead he shook his head.

“Can you—can you put it in the car for me?” Sam asked, his voice hollow and throaty. He sat there shaking, watching the tears on his chin hit the concrete.

It was the first time you'd seen his face all day. Sam had a habit of hiding it when he cried, in his arms or someone else's (he would even pull the fronts of his shirts over his head in middle school), so you knew better than to try and meet his eye. If you thought about it too long you'd start getting ideas about slashing John's tires, and then that rage would bottle for so long that the boys would need a corkscrew to get you to open up again. But Sam's poor face—his red-rimmed eyes were ruddy from the pressure of tears and his hands, while the rest of his skin was uncolored and sickly. He'd been struck so harshly by grief that his body itself was a bruise.

Dean disappeared to find a good place for Jessica’s picture. To compensate, you laid your cheek on top of Sam’s hair and cooed, soaking up every wound in him like you could take them on yourself. The sun’s light was beginning to burn.

“Let's get you into the shade, Sammy,” you murmured, “your tan’s perfect as-is, and neither of you idiots has sunscreen on.”

Sam pitied you with a wet, choked laugh. “…Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”

You wondered if you were being overbearing until he stood, wiped his face with his wrist, and gave you the signature Winchester manly nod of silent gratitude. That was worth more money and time than you’d ever have, so the clamps bearing down on your chest unlatched. He took a break in the Impala’s A/C and obliged your warning about sunscreen. Thank god.

On autopilot, you hauled the ashy towels out of Baby—and sure enough, when you passed Dean, there it was again. Manly nod of silent gratitude.

At the bubbly laugh that burst out of you, Dean frowned. “What?”

“Nothin’, Dean,” you sighed, resigned to being driven crazy, “just…”

You were glad. Blinded by rage, hurt, fear and guilt, but swimming with gladness too. It was clear now that your selfish wish had been granted. Like all gifts, it’d come with a price: you’d prayed for Sam to stay, you’d prayed for the three of you to be together again, but doing so had killed Jessica and brought this… thing to you. Whatever had murdered Mary. If Dean knew, he’d snarl and shake his head and insist that wasn’t a fair trade, and you knew it was awful, but a part of you was just thankful to be here. It was selfish. Unbelievably selfish. But you’d take them over anything.

“…nothin’.”

After the day’s labor, Dean made the executive decision to keep the three of you in Palo Alto for one more night. Every hotel in the city seemed full to bursting, and every room in the one Dean fought to set you up in itched with energy, like the walls would explode into splinters at any second. The people above you were having a noisy, bottle-smashing party with ear bleeding music. Every car took the corner turn on the street with tire-squealing gusto. Your neighbors on either side had their TVs as loud as they could go, in an effort to anger you personally. The boys tuned it out easily, while you tried not to twitch at Sam’s bedside.

He was more numb than neutral, so any comments about wanting to get a headstart on the road—and in turn the mission—were kept to himself. Needless to say, he put a pillow over his head and failed to stay awake past dinner.

You waited for his breathing to even out before you whispered, “He’s asleep. If we’re lucky, he might get more than an hour or two.”

Dean propped himself in the open bathroom doorway, casting a long blue shadow over where you were hunched over Sam and John’s journal. The last entry was splayed open on your lap, so you could keep busy while listening for the telling hitch in Sam’s breath. This week had forced you to find a sixth sense for nightmares. You hoped that Dean slept through his brother’s breakdowns, but most of the time he was hovering in the dark, waiting to see if he was needed. Something about that made your chest tight.

“Alright,” Dean murmured. He plunked his toothbrush back in his bag and floated over to you, voice so soft that he sounded hoarse, and pat your knee. “Whaddya wanna do, then? You need some Zs, a walk, some food?”

You glanced at Sam. He was nothing but a big arm and a bed of messy hair under the blankets, breathing deep. A sigh bowed out of you, and you lifted both wrists to Dean. “Walk, please.”

Dean smiled. With his help, you escaped the bed without waking up Sam (a miracle!), and filled the dark motel room with the soft rustle of beaten fabric. The main jacket you’d taken with you was an ancient one of Dean’s, so it looked stylish in a vintage sort of way. The smell of him in the collar had faded years ago, but studying the curve of his arm as he wrote Sam a note brought it back in full swing, like a gust of wind had bowled you over. You missed Dean. It’d been an eternity since you’d just… talked.

The door shut quietly behind you, but the neighbors weren’t as considerate. A bottle smashed upstairs, followed by uproarious, probably drunken laughter.

“Fuckin’ dicks,” Dean said, just to have something to say.

“I wonder what they’re celebrating,” you hummed. Together, you and Dean left the static-charged bubble of the motel and punctured the parking lot, too exhausted to make anything but idle conversation.

“Bottle Smashing Day?” He guessed, and you snickered. The silence you sunk into was pensive, but you were fine with that. It was easier to think leaning against the Impala with him than alone in front of Sam’s apartment.

You took your spot on the trunk, making a show of patting down your back pockets to avoid scratching the finish. Sam had nicked one of the doors with a jean button once, and now Dean never let either of you forget how pointy and sharp you were. That was what you wanted—to endure Dean’s nagging about the Impala with Sam, like the hundreds of times you had in the past. Why did a wish so simple have to cost so much?

“I’m worried,” you sighed, “that this is going to take longer than either of us thinks it will.”

Dean appeared around the side of the car, beer and bottle opener in hand. He snapped the cap off and sunk onto the trunk next to you, his gaze choosing a car down one end of the street and following it until it was out of view again. The cool fall air fluttered through his hair, compelling you to admire him as he admired the street. Without looking he offered you the first sip of his drink, and knowing Dean’s taste in beer was awful, you tried it anyway.

“Yeah.” Gradually, Dean hiked himself up a little and opened his coat, “I’ve been starting to think that, too.”

“...It’s going to suck. Already, this is…this is…” you swallowed, then met his eye. “But not every part of it has to be bad. You and me and Sam—I keep thinking, at least we’re together again. At least we’ve got each other. Is that… do you think that’s bad?”

Dean was already shaking his head. The trance he’d been wading into all day dragged him out to sea, and for a long breath he stared at you, then through you, deep in thought. “I guess we’ve been having a lot of the same ideas lately.” His brooding turned into a teasing squint, “You readin’ my mind again, girl?”

You stopped worrying the beer’s label with your thumb and passed it back to him. Something rotten crept into your mouth at the thought. “Never. Never without your permission.”

Dean tipped back his head, shook it, and did his best to goad a smile out of you with one of his own. “Oh, c’mon. You know I’m kidding with you. Cheer up, sweetheart—we’ll…” He must’ve realized what a ridiculous request that was at a time like this, because he melted down to a simmer. “Just. Take a breather with me, for a minute.”

“After you give me the gift you’ve been hiding.”

Dean almost looked charmed, if he wasn't pretending to be annoyed. “Maybe if you stop using your cheating powers to cheat. Cheater.”

With a coy, fluttery blink, you hooked your arm through his and prettily laid your head on Dean’s shoulder, because you were a fantastic cheater and you knew it. Dean’s life would only improve once he realized how little he could get past you. The Gift told you plenty, but so did the soft upturn of Dean’s lip.

From the inner pocket of his jacket, Dean shook loose a book. At first glance you would’ve called it a grimoire or a lore archive. The cover was a handsome olive color, with a thready touch and an elaborate gold design that didn’t immediately catch the eye, like any other spine stacked on a coffee table. You realized that must’ve been the point. It showed a queen fairy (the graceful long-legged kind) in the boughs of a tree, offering an olive branch to two tiny fairymen riding a bat. Simple but elegant. Two words that had no correlation to him whatsoever.

“No way!” You gaped. But before you could get your hands on it, Dean jerked it up and out of your reach.

“Don’t get all sappy about this, okay?” Dean groaned, hanging the book over your head, “I-I just saw it, and I knew you need somethin’ to do when me and Sam are off doing whatever, so… yeah. You can write down all your girly stuff n’—”

Years of having tall Dean and taller Sam wiggle your things just out of reach had trained you for this moment. “Ha!”

The second he started to dissolve into his flushed explanation, you lurched for the book and shielded it against your chest, where it was safe under your jacket. Dean seemed too tired to start any wrestling matches over the journal, so the coast was deemed clear and you brought it out to gape. The mental image of Dean slouched in some bookstore aisle was so precious that it must’ve shown in your face, because he immediately defaulted to a glare. Cute.

“You are so good to me, Dean,” you said, knowing full-well it’d crack him. Right on cue, Dean’s collar hiked up to his blushing ears and half his face disappeared behind it. “How’d you even know I needed a new journal?”

“W-we all do,” he replied lamely.

Dean looked like he wanted to be absorbed into the concrete. Among the racing glee of poking at him like this, you felt a touch of pity for your captive, so you moved your glowing grin from his face to the first page of the journal. Losing your attention both relieved him and disappointed him, so he stewed in his confusion there as you started to pace.

“Well…” you flipped through the pages, from start to finish, and breathed in the intoxicating smell of a fresh book. It was a pretty sizable journal. From experience, you knew it’d take more than a year to fill on your own.

The book was in your hands, then it was in Sam’s, then Dean’s, then yours again, exchanged a thousand different times over the next few years. You could almost see the way it would be then: aged, beloved, and filled to the brim with entries and pictures and memories. This journal would transform into any hunter’s journal, its cover dyed lighter by the sun, its spine bent-in and well-used. Images flashed through your mind almost too quick to catch, but the gist was there. Dean’s drawings. Sam’s handwriting. This wasn’t—this wouldn’t belong to you alone.

Words flowed from your mouth like something greater was speaking for you.

“I pretty much never go on my own hunts. I don’t know about Sam, but you and me—maybe we could share this one. Or all three of us.”

Dean’s brows raised to points. “Like how?”

“Here. You gotta pen?” You made your typical grabby-hand gesture, and Dean dug around his pockets for one of the hotel’s monogrammed ballpoints.

Instead of leaning on the Impala, you got comfy on the trunk and propped up your knees. Dean inched in to get a look over your shoulder, maneuvering in a way where he wasn’t blocking the streetlight too much, and curiously pressed his lips together when you cracked open the cover. The face of the first page stared up at you. Already, you knew what would go there.

In spotty ink and bubbly handwriting, you printed your initials on the inside cover. The moment you were done, you turned the journal in your lap, put the pen in Dean’s hand, and prompted him with glittering eyes: “Write your name, then draw me something.”

GRAND JUNCTION, COLORADO - NOV. 10th, day.

The drive to Colorado was spent mostly on your laptop, catching up on work from there. Being constantly dragged on hunts by Dean made online work pretty much your only option. Your mother had dropped hints about you picking up more than just the occasional shift at her antique’s place, but that would mean giving readings, and that would mean… Well. For now, your lame excuse was that Sam and Dean had reserved you, and she was better at the whole psychic thing anyway.

Maybe one day you could convince her to just let you work the counter. Anything that didn’t involve opening up your Gift to some stranger.

You knew you were close to John’s coordinates when houses were replaced by forest. A mailbox would jut out of the trees every once in a while, but those winding path-mouths were the only evidence of life out here. Dean had mentioned something about there being a town on the other side of the dizzying rows of trees. It was so vast and so encompassing that you couldn’t imagine anything else but the pines, the road, and the Impala driving on it—which only made you more anxious for what lay ahead. DEAN. 35-111. That was all John had given you.

“Here’s something to start with,” Dean spoke up. In the front seat, Sam straightened, and all three of you tilted with the car as it crackled into the gravel lot of a ranger station.

After almost a whole day in the car, you hadn’t entirely left your daydream yet and floated around as a result. The woods were dead quiet. While the boys unloaded, you listened, standing on the cusp of the trail like a mite on the back of a massive creature. There was no purr of car motors or traffic. Maybe some sort of rustling, like the whisper of leaves in the wind, but if you listened to it too long you began to feel paranoid. For how quiet everything was, you still felt like you were intruding on something living. Something that was watching.

The Impala’s trunk slammed shut. You startled back to life at the sound, and whipped around at attention. Good timing too, because Dean flashed a ranger ID at you, “Head’s up, sweetie.”

He tossed it into your hands. Dean was fucking with you only a little bit, so it went a little wide—and you were too bogged down by the roadtrip to jump for it. The ID flopped into a skirt of leaves just outside the safe barrier of the ranger’s station, then skittered down the muddy hill and into the undergrowth. You stared pathetically at it. He was definitely getting revenge for you eating the last of the Impala’s M&Ms supply.

“Come on,” you groaned, “Dean.”

Dean winced, but he was smiling a little too much to mean it. “Sorry. Guess I’m a bad shot.”

“You bet your ass you’re a bad shot,” you started to grumble, and resigned yourself to getting your boots dirty. And maybe being murdered in the creepy forest.

“Don’t worry, I got it.”

Right before you’d take the first step inside the invisible portal of the woods, Sam slid past you, the broad warmth of his palm glimpsing your back. Your breath hitched. At ease, he stepped toward the hill’s bottom with twice the mobility your awkward struggle down would’ve had. Sam plucked up your ID and flourished it overhead. At any other time you would’ve giggled at him, but something in your gut pressed you to get him out of there, like the air on the other side of the tree’s divide was poison and he’d breathed too much.

Sam’s next steps back up seemed to drag on. In reality, he probably hadn’t even lifted his leg before you were extending both hands and awkwardly urging, “Thank you, Sam. C’mere. Quickly.”

Knowing full well you couldn’t haul him up on your own, Sam indulged you anyway and took the closest of your hands in his bigger one. He managed not to slip and faceplant on the way back up, and with his boots slick with mud but on solid ground, you let out the breath you were holding.

When you turned back, Dean was staring.

The tension of the woods was suddenly up in the parking lot. Scrambling to explain your strangeness, you gave Sam’s back a good thump. “Brother of the day,” you awarded him, which immediately replaced the concern in Dean’s stare with shock.

“What! Sam picks up a thing for you and suddenly he’s getting brownie points?” Dean whined. He waited until you’d passed him to properly fish for said points, slouching at the shoulders and pouting. “What about me driving your ass around for 20 hours? What about me getting—hey! ____, Sam’s sticking his tongue out at me! ____!”

The temptation to knock him on the back of the head was too sweet to pass up. You gave Dean a good one, then threw a grin at Sam; it was small, but he flashed one back just for you. Something about it made the barbed wire wrapped around your heart squeeze tighter.

Where neither of them could see, you shoved the hand Sam had touched into your pocket, rolling your tingling fingers against each other.

The only people you passed on the way into the ranger station was a single family, probably here for a camping trip. One of the sons, in tandem with his father, shared an impressed look over Dean’s car, and by proxy it made you feel better. All you had to do was pretend this was any other hunt. You’d investigate the thing, catch the thing, and then kill the thing, so sweet families could enter the woods without fear.

The ranger station was a squat, old cabin at the beginning of the trail, with a fat stone chimney and a front room filled to the brim with hiking and hunting (the normal kind) memorabilia. What was familiar about the station was its tourism aspect; though you and Dean rarely stopped to admire the scenery these days, roadside museums and American landmarks were staples of your decade-long road trip.

Sam and Dean walked shoulder-to-shoulder in front of you. You saw the 3D tabletop map on one side of the room and the wall of hunting trophies on the other, and predicted, correctly, where the boys would go to gawk.

“So, Blackwater Ridge is pretty remote,” Sam said. He quirked his head, honed in on the table and leaned over it with glittering interest, because of course he did. “It's cut off by these canyons here—rough terrain, dense forest, abandoned silver and gold mines all over the place.”

“Cool,” you hummed. On the dusty, ancient display, the ridge was about the size of your palm. You traced the mountain-tops with a finger, and the spot was weathered from years of the same touch. “Sounds like a place to really camp… or film a horror movie.”

That felt like something Dean would tack a joke onto, so you turned to him. He was blinking at a colorless photo on the wall, jaw slack, brows furrowed. “Dude. Check out the size of this fuckin’ bear.”

You did, shuffling up behind him. A half-dozen mounted trophies loomed overhead, necks pointed straight, but eyes pointed down, like their bodies couldn’t move but their souls wanted to. If the spirits of men could be attached to their corpses when they died, then what about hunted deer… or wild boar… even cougars? You cooly pretended you weren’t hiding from their watching eyes behind Dean, and glanced over the picture. It was a big ass bear.

“And,” Sam closed in on your other side, arms crossed, “a dozen or more grizzlies in the area. S’ no nature hike, that’s for sure.”

Dean caught your eye with his, then nodded up to the massive buck above your heads. The crown of bone it wore curved elaborately around its face, which was soft and sweet-looking, had it not been for the missing eyes. In unison, you shared a shiver and mouthed to each other: no thanks.

“You boys aren't planning on going out near Blackwater Ridge by any chance?”

Sam and Dean whipped around, hands snapping into fists in their sleeves. Just the flutter of their clothes brought your hand to the dagger grip in your waistband.

A ranger, Ranger Wilkinson (according to his nametag), appeared from the back room. He cocked a fist on his hip and blew the steam off his coffee. “Ah,” he noticed your head poking out over Sam’s shoulder, “boys and lady.”

Dean opened his mouth to respond with a lie, but Sam was already halfway through one, a polite and gentle lilt to his voice. That was what made you relax. “Oh no, sir,” Sam said, and you dropped your dagger back into its sheath, “we're environmental study majors from UC Boulder, just working on a paper.”

You put on your sweetest grin and slid in front of the boys, bumping Dean’s hip on the way. “You bet. Reduce—”

Dean flicked up two happy thumbs, grinning also, “—reuse, recycle.”

Ranger Wilkinson pitied you with a dry stare, and not for the first time in your life, you were seized with panic at the knowing look on his face. His stink eye passed over Dean then you then Sam, and you wondered what he saw there. A couple of college students? Hardly. You could play the part well, but nothing could remove the ease you entered each other’s space with and the precaution you saved for everyone else. Maybe it was just because you’d known the boys so long, but you couldn’t look at them without sucking up every little detail. Hopefully, that was just a you-thing.

He sipped his coffee. “Bull.”

The three of you stiffened all over, a single muscle reacting to stress. You felt Sam peer sideways at you, but like Dean, you strained not to move in case that was what made the trap snap shut.

“You're friends with that Haley girl, right?” Wilkinson asked.

“Um,” Dean said, which put the ranger’s eyes on him.

Your stomach peculiarly dropped. It felt like a sign to go along with it. There was only a split second for any of you to reply and not get caught in an awkward explanation, and no time to explain what was compelling you to the boys. On instinct, you stepped in front of Dean to save him from further blubbering.

You cleared your throat, expression shifting from red-handed to neutral. “...Yes. We are, um, Ranger Wilkinson.”

Maybe reading them so well wasn’t just a you-thing, then. Dean could read you pretty well too.

“Well, I will tell you exactly what we told her.” The ranger moved behind the counter, and in tandem the three of you drew closer to meet him. “Her brother filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn't be back from Blackwater until the twenty-fourth, so it's not exactly a missing persons now, is it?”

Dean shook his head like he had any idea what he was talking about. The ranger filled in, “You tell that girl to quit worrying, I'm sure her brother's just fine.”

And then the lingering strangeness shook itself out of Dean’s frame, replaced instead by the casual authority you were used to. Either sibling conflict was something he knew well, or he’d been clued in enough to respond, because Dean propped himself against the counter and playfully raised his brows. “We will. That Haley girl’s quite a pistol, huh?”

Ranger Wilkinson snorted, which hid your eye-roll from the conversation. “That is putting it mildly.”

“Actually… you know what would help?” Dean straightened like a business-man, that dazzling smile toned with something that could pry anything out of anybody. “If I could show her a copy of that backcountry permit. You know, so she could see her brother's return date…”

The woods were still eerily quiet when you left the station. You could tell that your human perceptions were mixing with your psychic ones, which made for an annoying pot to sort through for the sake of the hunt. The boys were snapping back and forth at each other about this Haley girl, but you were too perturbed to follow it very closely, rattled by the pressure in the air. The whole forest was holding its breath. The taxidermy was watching you. Something was definitely up here.

For every two steps you took, Sam took one, his boots crunching noisily on the gravel. He was making very cutting gestures with his hands and frowning into his dimples as he spoke to Dean, which you took as some of the deep-seated frustration he never showed. He was getting angrier. You wished there was more you could do about it.

“The coordinates point to Blackwater Ridge, so what are we waiting for? Let's just go find Dad,” Sam grit. “I mean, why even talk to this girl?”

When you started to drag behind, an internal ____-sensor went off in Dean’s brain, triggering his proximity alarm. He paused on the gravel until you safely back in his bubble, and before you could dazedly walk right right past them, Dean dropped a hand on your head, stopping you short. You blinked up into his face. It was flat with concern, then covered with humor.

Dean pointed to you. “That’s why.”

A moment later, you were struggling to lift your head in the backseat of the Impala. When you managed to pull your face out of your hands, and your hands away from your knees, two faces swam in your vision. The air felt a dozen times colder. A big, coarse hand was resting on the back of your neck. Baby’s door was open, and two people were crouched down in front of you.

“Are you okay?” A voice asked, and the timbre of it could’ve been Sam’s. Everything was muddy.

“Ughhh,” you groaned in answer. “Bad. Bad. Not good.”

You blearily reached above you for the hand on your neck, found it by the wrist, and dragged it onto your forehead instead. The angle of the touch was strange, but the cold—the numbing, venomous cold—was worse. An icy metal bracelet glimpsed your cheek and made you hiss. Whoever it was bunched the bracelets higher up his wrist, then brushed his thumb against your brow, knowing, after more than ten years of this, how the Gift leeched all the heat out of you. The warm touch melted you all the way down to your toes. Definitely Dean.

“Let er’ breathe,” he ordered Sam, calmly. “You gonna puke again, ___?”

You swung your head back and forth, cursing, “...Th’ was only one damn time, Dean…”

Dean chuckled, and from where he’d migrated to give you more room, Sam went silent. He was probably giving Dean a funny look. “...Since when can you tell when she’s got a vision coming on?”

“You can’t?” Dean said. Had you not been too dizzy to stand, you would’ve frowned at him for the condescension floating in his voice. It wasn’t Sam’s fault he hadn’t been around—well, in a small way it was, but he had every reason to go to school. Still, Dean added, “She gets all dazed n’ everything, then she gets this dorky look on her face… You seriously can’t tell?”

You tilted into Dean’s palm, staring past him to Sam. “C-can I borrow a jacket?”

Sam softened all over, and the change in body language threw an abrupt realization in your face: they were waiting for a vision about John. Both boys exchanged a look. They’d been hinged on bracing legs, like at any moment you were going to spit out some vision of their father dying or being tortured. The hope in Sam’s face was flushed away by disappointment, and you couldn’t help but feel that you’d caused it.

“Of course,” he murmured, tone buttery. While Dean got the heater in the front seat going, Sam unzipped his jacket and helped you get into it. Just getting some extra body heat did wonders on your dizziness, which prompted Sam to ask, “What’d you see, ___?”

As he pulled the collar around your shoulders, you stared into his face in thought, “There was this girl, in some kind of dark place... A cave, maybe? I didn’t see much. She was hanging by her wrists from the ceiling… You were there, and so was this kid. He was calling her Haley.”

From the front seat, Dean’s smirk broadened into a grin.

“Bingo.”

Visions of other people were easy for you to handle. But something about one of the boys—in this case, Sam—getting roped up in one made you anxious. And in your Gift’s case, feverish.

While they interviewed Haley Collins about her missing-not-missing brother, your Gift kept you confined to the car. It could be touchy for hours after episodes like these. Twice you were working on an entry for the journal when the images came over you again, and when you resurfaced from them, ten whole minutes had disappeared. You were grateful the boys had a lead to run off to: when your Gift felt more like a disease than a helpful tool, it was better for you to be alone with it.

You pressed your fingers into your nose bridge until it hurt. The journal stared up at you, open and waiting for you to write something.

Dean had drawn a picture of the Impala with a crappy motel pen. Sam had written about anything but Jess, his sentences short and totally empty of the surgeon-critical details of his old school essays. You wanted to put something meaningful.

When you were little, there was nothing more heroic, more exciting, more fascinating, than being a seer. It was the magical secret your mother kept behind the parlor room curtain. You would sit in the antique shop’s stairwell for hours while she took readings, talking to the portraits of the women in your family like they were your imaginary friends. One day I’ll be just like you. They had to hear you, right? They could see the future and the past, could speak to the other side—so of course they could speak to you, right? Tell you all about the secret? They could do anything. You were one of them, so that meant the same for you. You weren’t just any little girl: you were special and different and brilliant. You could do anything.

But that had been then, before you’d received the Gift. Now, the irony of just what little you were capable of pressed upon you. You could see the future and the past, could even speak to the other side—but only now could you hear them telling you it was too late to escape. You used to stare at the pictures and paintings and the pretty tattoos they had on their palms, counting the days until it was your turn to wear your family symbol. This used to be something you wanted; this used to be a gift, an honor. But the Gift took your health and time and choice away from you.

(When you’d crossed that line between child and adult, between non-seer and seer, you’d laid in the dark with Dean and pretended everything was fine. He’d squeezed your hand against his chest and murmured, You do have a choice. And if you don’t, we’ll run away and drive until nobody’ll find us. It’ll be you and me and the road, n’ everything will be okay. You’d clutched his hand until it’d hurt and said, please. Even if you knew you were lying. Even if you knew that damn symbol on your hand would drag you from him kicking and screaming.)

You passed your pen into your unoccupied hand. Alone, in the backseat of the Impala, you turned over your wrist and stared at the mark there. In the middle of your palm was a simple eye in black ink, stretched and blurred with age. To think, your twelve-year-old self had been squeamish about the pain of the tattoo. The non-physical pain was much worse.

Maybe Dean was right. Maybe there was still a way to run away.

I feel like shit, you wrote, and closed the book.

The uneasy feeling of your Gift and the woods ebbed out by the time Dean drove the three of you into town. Knowing there was something to hunt here settled you some, so the boys’ concerned glances appeared less and less as the night went on. You found yourself in familiar territory: sitting with Sam and Dean at a small town’s only bar, illuminated by neon-lights and anonymous below the clattering talk of strangers.

“...and Haley said that her brother had gone out to the Ridge with a couple’a friends, and kept contact with her with a satellite phone. Emailed them pictures, videos, stuff like that,” Dean explained, leaning across Sam to speak to you. “His last update was three days’ ago, and we’re pretty sure his camera caught something in the background.”

You raised an eyebrow. “What kind of something?”

Sam nodded to John’s journal. “Let’s find out.”

The three of you were squished together on the bar, closed in a circle around Sam and his computer. Dean was laying back with an ankle on his knee, surveying the bar crowd with an idle eye, both relaxed and tense with a job on his mind. Sam had rolled up his sleeves to work, and you watched a scar move on his forearm as he typed. He hadn’t been able to save any of his clothes from the fire, so his flannels, shirts, and jeans had all been bought within the last week—at the very least, he looked freshly minted. But a keen eye could make out the old seams of his stress fractures cracking open again.

“So, Blackwater Ridge doesn't get a lot of traffic. Local campers, mostly. But still, this past April, two hikers went missing out there. They were never found.” Sam starts. He picks up John’s journal like it’s made of glass, and splays it open on the bartop with the same gentleness.

“How about before then?” You asked.

“Yeah, in 1982, eight different people all vanished in the same year. And again in 1959 and again before that in 1936.” Sam raised his brows, enunciating, “Authorities always said it was a grizzly attack.”

Dean snorted. “Sure. Grizzlies with a grudge. Every… what’s that, 23 years?”

“Look at you, Dean,” you cooed, cheeks propped on your hands, “doing big boy math.”

The glare he sent you was positively precious. Dean flipped you off for good measure, but you were protected behind Sam, who would get snappish if any scuffling happened around his million-dollar laptop. You waved back evilly… and suppressed the urge to slam your hand flat to the bar when Dean’s eyes darted for the symbol in the middle of your palm.

Unlike you, Dean was fond of your family sigil. You’d wanted him more than anyone to be there when you’d been marked, but he and Sam were already gone for the weekend. The preceding days were rampant with anxious excitement and fear, so your mom had gone all out, spending the week’s paycheck on your favorite activities, gifts, and dinner out. All you had to do was endure the pain of the needle. The itch grew to a sting which grew to white-hot, excruciating pain, and the only thing that helped was Dean a few days later.

You’d sat on Bobby’s porch swing, just out of the reach of the rain. He’d set your palm on his knee and stared at it in wonder, flattening your fingers with his grime-stained ones. Dean was only two years older than you at fourteen, but his hands had seemed so big in comparison, big enough to bend the tops of his fingers over yours. You could still remember cringing if he pressed too hard—could still vividly recall Dean kissing the iris of the mark.

(There, now you can stop whining. My cooties will cure you. Or maybe you’re immune to em’ now, seein’ as you’re tough enough to take a needle. I’ve never done anything like that before.)

You closed your fist under the bar, which tingled with the phantom kiss from that day. Case. John. Missing hikers. In the messy, untouched attic that made up your life, the trunk you locked the corpse of your Gift in could be buried in the very back for now. Or forever.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Quit it and read this.”

He unfolded an article from the journal, and when it was splayed flat, you read it loud enough for the boys and no one else to hear: “Grizzly Bear Attacks… Up to eight hikers vanish in lost creek area… hikers' disappearance baffle authorities. Well, no surprise there. These poor suckers have no idea what they’re looking at.”

“Then again, neither do we,” Sam said. He switched tabs on his laptop, “I downloaded that guy Tommy's video and—I mean, just look at this.”

Sam opened the video. Tommy’s face was obscured by the night’s darkness, so all you could make out of him was a few touches of lantern light flickering in his eyes and splaying against the wall of the tent. He reminded you of the types you saw heading out of the ranger station. Tommy was just any other adventurous guy enjoying the trails. Your heart ached, and the imaginary sting in your palm faded for good.

With a few taps, Sam jumped through three frames of the video. It appeared to be nothing but a flicker of the lantern light when the video played at normal speed, but on pause you could make out the black shape of something living. Something hunting. You glanced at Sam, impressed—he’d caught something the human eye could barely trace. If Stanford couldn’t make him rusty, then nothing could.

Dean leaned forward, brow furrowed. “Do it again.”

Sam played the three frames over again. It was quick, but the way the shapes beyond the tent moved almost mimicked a wolf shifting from hindlegs to forelegs. Or a human mid-run. Sam went to the frame the creature was the clearest in. “That's three frames. A fraction of a second. Whatever that thing is, it can move.”

You thought about the taxidermied buck, the picture of the downed bear. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t the kind of creature you mounted on a wall—it had room above its mantle for your head, too.

“What do you think, Mean Swing?” Dean lifted his head in your direction, scratching his chin. “This feel familiar? Like what you saw earlier?”

You stared at the image until all you saw was the pixels that made its figure behind Tommy. The watching eyes of the woods felt sticky on your skin, and you twisted your carnelian ring on reflex.

“Somethin’ in the woods has been bothering me all day. Whatever it is that John sent us here for… I get this feeling that it’s there. And when the ranger brought up Haley, there was this push telling me to pursue it. S’ definitely got something to do with her… and this creature.”

Dean waved to you in a there ya go sort of gesture, and between you Sam sighed in defeat. “Yeah. Maybe this is what Dad was leading us to… But why?”

“Well, our woman in white,” you were careful to mention the events of last week, “that was a case he couldn’t finish. Maybe this is another one? Something he found but couldn’t check out himself?”

Dean frowned into his beer. If that was true, then John had a reason for putting this hunt on the boys instead of one of the other hunting connections he had. He kept Dean—and by extension, you—on a short leash these days, employing you both for bigger, more research-intensive hunts and then pointing the two of you toward a smaller fish when he was busy. This felt like a big hunt to you—the kind of three-person job John would keep you around for.

And there was only one thing, one white whale, that could make something like this into a little fish. A white whale that you had your own reasons for hunting, now.

“Maybe,” Sam murmured, talking to fill the sudden gap your suggestion had left. “But, uh, I got one more thing.” He shut the laptop, producing yet another article. Again, that selfish hole burned into your chest gushed with affection—Sam had always loved the research aspect of the job, so of course he’d looked into everything already. “In 'fifty-nine one camper survived this supposed grizzly attack. Just a kid. Barely crawled out of the woods alive.”

Reading the article over his shoulder, you spoke at the same time as Dean: “Is there a name?”

Sam tapped a surname on the page. Shaw. Satisfied, Dean dropped his beer on the bartop, stood, and stretched, purposefully giving half the room a good look at the freckles on his midriff. “I say we check into the area a bit more n’ then go bother the guy,” Dean chuckled. With new-found cheer, he threw the two of you a grin, “See you in a minute. M’ gonna go take a leak.”

“Have fun,” you snorted.

Dean bounced his eyebrows at you over his shoulder, said, “Watch my beer,” and dissolved into the crowd.

Per his request, you spun on your stool to steal sips of his bottle. Sam started unloading his laptop bag between you, dropping maps, articles, and obituaries where they wouldn’t get wet by drink stains. He pat a napkin and a pen down in front of you, and without further prompting you slid the closest obit in front of you to continue the cross-comparisons he’d made between the victims. At least, you were going to, until Sam went stiff.

“Oh god,” he hushed through his teeth.

You started writing. “Yeah, Sammy?”

“Those girls,” he paled, “I think they’re gonna come over here…”

You lifted your head: first, to Sam’s flushed, panicked expression, gluing him to his seat like a buck in headlights, and then the trio of giggling girls throwing looks at him. The most assertive of the three was really fishing for a returned glance across the bar. Given enough time and sips of strawberry daiquiri, she’d definitely slide on over. You envied her confidence, but cursed it in the moment.

Sam ducked his head, hiding behind his bangs. “I can’t—not, n-not yet… God, what should I do?”

This was yet another case of you being discounted as a third Winchester sibling. Not for the first time, you wished the opposite was assumed. You spun your stool so you were between him and his admirers, trying to calculate a way to shoo them off without being rude, or broadcasting that Sam was… That Sam was mourning.

“Here. Can I hold your arm?”

Sam’s face flared with confusion in the most interesting way. Thinking quickly, you put on a mushy smile and spun again in your chair, giggling for the whole bar to hear, and folded both hands in the crook of Sam’s bicep. For additional effect, you squished your cheek into his shoulder and kicked your legs under your stool, girly and pleased. Peculiarly, Sam relaxed.

“Oh,” he said, daring to take a glance at the rowdy women again. They looked disappointed; their token of interest appeared to be taken. “Smart.”

“We can add it to my business card,” you reassured him with a teasing pat. Freeing a hand, you began to count your titles: “Eye-candy, team morale, psychic, and fake girlfriend for hire. This girl does it all.”

A ghost of his dimpley smile flashed in your peripherals, and with arduous effort, Sam unfolded an article about Blackwater Ridge and pretended to read it. After a moment of simmering in your touch as you melted in his, Sam choked from the air the first thing he could think to say.

“...I’m sorry.”

You wanted to tell him that everything would be fine—but nothing was right now, so the only life-raft any of you had was, ironically, the hunt. You’d all fallen victim to its desensitizing routine one way or another. Dean had learned it from his father, and you and Sam had learned it from Dean, because everything in the hunt was generational and cyclical. It would be useless and hypocritical to tell him that he didn’t have to hide his feelings under the pretense of this job. But a part of you had hoped that this transition wouldn’t be so easy for him, because the easier it was the harder it would be to escape again. Sam had been loading shotguns and memorizing hexbag ingredients since he was eight. But compared to psychic powers that didn’t scrub off your skin… shotguns and hexbags were something you could run from.

And god, it killed you, it gutted you, but you want Sam to run. You want him to be happy. You want to kill the white whale, and forget these selfish feelings.

“There’s nothing you’ve got to apologize for, Sammy,” you whispered into his sleeve. “Let’s get to tracking this thing, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sam sighs.

You slide the napkin in front of you. Sam unfolds a map. Together, you lose yourself in the names and dates and locations until it’s 1997. You’re sixteen, John and Dean are off hunting; you’re huddled at the bar, wet from the rain and dizzy from researching; you’re sixteen and duty-bound, but all you have to your name is a fake ID and Sam Winchester. Sam’s leg is bouncing under the table because his Dad won’t pick up the phone, and you’re all he has and he’s all you have and you both want out of the hunt.

But Sam’s the only one with the legs to run, and it’s been a long time since 1997.

“Look, ranger, I don't know why you're asking me about this. It's public record. I was a kid. My parents got mauled by a—”

“Grizzly?” Sam smoothly leads the way into Mr. Shaw’s apartment, casting another long shadow across the dark kitchen with his height. His voice had this base innocence to it, so maybe it was your imagination overlaying it with a note of significance. “That’s what attacked them?”

Shaw’s silhouette paused halfway to the closest lamp. He took a slow draw of his cigarette, ignored the lamp, and padded over to open one of his windows, like he was comfortable in the dark. After what he’d witnessed, he probably felt like he’d seen the worst of what was in it. He was an old man, far older than the boy he’d been in 59’, but something told you that nothing could make him forget that night. Dean had only been four, and you knew he remembered every frame of his mother’s death. Both of Shaw’s parents had died.

Dean dropped his hands into his pockets. “The other people that went missing that year, those bear attacks too?”

Shaw paused. You winced, wishing there was a better way to approach this. Interviewing victims never felt right, but this time it was worse: all of you knew about the threat you were dealing with.

Again, Dean pushed. “What about all the people that went missing this year? Same thing?”

Shaw remained silent, blowing smoke out of his kitchen window.

“Mr. Shaw,” you spoke up, twisting a ring on one finger, “If you can help us understand what it is, we may be able to kill it.”

Shaw pulled his cigarette from his mouth, and despite the roughness of his already coarse voice, the flicker you got of his expression in the moonlight was pained and earnest. “I seriously doubt that.” He sunk down at his kitchen table, one wrist pointed out the window. “Anyways, I don't see what difference it would make.” Shaw cupped the mug waiting on the tabletop for him and stared into it. “You wouldn't believe me. Nobody ever did.”

The little space behind your ribs where you stored that pain—the kind of pain Shaw was talking about—cracked open along a seam, and you almost opened your mouth to utter the forbidden words: I understand. I understand so much it makes it hard to breathe. There was no way to describe it. Knowing the truth about this world was simple on paper, but knowing that you were lying to everyone you ever met was not. It was like you lived in a world where fire was fictional, and yet you knew it was real, had put it in your crosshairs, been charred to the bone by it. But still. You could do nothing to stop the whole world from putting its hand on the stove.

A vision fluttered behind your eyelids, flashing so fast between frames of memory that it barely showed in your face that anything had changed. You saw Shaw standing at the cusp of the trail to the Ridge, hands trembling, begging a family he’d never met to go home go home please go home you haven’t seen it you can’t see it—s’ real, oh god, s’ real, please…

You moved past Dean and Sam to take the other seat at Shaw’s kitchen table. Some of the raw emotion rolling around in your chest must’ve made it to your eyes, because he finally lifted his head. You tried to bolster some honesty into your voice. “I believe you. Just, please—tell me what you saw.”

“...Nothing,” Shaw said. Before you could deflate, he continued: “It moved too fast to see. It hid too well. I heard it, though. A roar. Like… no man or animal I ever heard.”

Sam and Dean hovered closer, and stood behind your chair like twin doberman hounds, so still and soundless that you hadn’t known they’d moved until Sam spoke. “It came at night?”

Shaw nodded. You tried to marry his story to the creature caught in Tommy’s video, and didn’t like the mental image you ended up with. “This thing got into your tent?”

“Our cabin,” Shaw corrected. “I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in. It… It didn't smash a window or break the door.” He leaned forward, struggling to croak around a trembling lip. “It unlocked it. Do you know of a bear that could do something like that? I didn't even wake up till I heard my parents screaming.”

You sat back, an uncomfortable pang clawing into the meat of your legs. Feeling Dean’s stare, you exchanged a silent look with him: this just got a lot harder.

“Your parents,” Sam gently probed, “it killed them?”

Shaw closed his eyes. “Dragged them off into the night.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, shakily, “I know words aren’t worth much, but…”

Shaw shook his head. He seemed to stare right through you, beyond you, to where he’d been in the woods that night. “Why it left me alive… been asking myself that ever since.” Giving the three of you his last skeptical stare, he brought his hand to his t-shirt collar, “Did leave me this, though.”

Shaw opened his shirt collar. The moonlight cut oddly against his collarbone, and then in the shadow of his neck you saw it: four long, shredded scars, raised and gnarled into his flesh. After forty years the mark had softened and healed, but just looking at it told you exactly what it’d looked like the night he’d been given it.

Sam and Dean exhaled slow, in shock or understanding, and your hands pressed flat to your mouth on instinct.

“There’s somethin’ evil in those woods,” Shaw warned. “It was some sort of demon…”

As far as hunting went, the few twenty-four-year-olds that had passed through your mother’s parlor swung one way or the other. Either they were stupid enough to be joining in fresh out of some terrible circumstance, or purebred into it like you and the boys—and the only thing that evolved greenhorns was luck. You hadn’t made it here on luck.

Still, for all the skill that nine years of hunting had possessed you, you hadn’t yet pinned down what Shaw’s “demon” was. On the walk from his apartment back to the Impala, you summoned the list of forest creatures that experience had branded into one wall of your mind. Skinwalkers, black dogs, ozark howlers, even certain forest spirits could act like this. You opened the journal without much thought and started cross-comparing traits to your mystery creature: bear-like, intelligent, dark cold habitat(?), west US forest region, 23 year cycle. But nothing stuck. After staring at it for a little while longer, you got the impression there was a gaping hole in your profile.

A step or two in front of you, Dean and Sam were wearing the same pensive shoulders, performing similar examinations in their own minds. The clouds of their breath floated skyward. Being on the edge of town, the only light on the side-road you walked was from the half-mast eye of the moon. The loud jostle of Dean’s boots was comforting; especially since being the caboose made you all-too aware of the void of dark street behind you, which clung to your back with a sentient silence.

“Maybe one of our points is wrong, or this is an unusual hangout for the thing we’re dealing with… Either way, we have to figure this out soon.” You closed the journal with a snap. “Haley is going out to the woods tomorrow. How are we supposed to protect that poor girl if we have no idea what this thing is?”

“We unload the whole trunk, that’s how,” Dean spoke. “Like Sam said—thing’s corporeal. That means we can kill it,” he dipped his head in your direction with a teasing smile, “likely with something pointy.”

Your eyes jumped to Sam in the dark, tongue in your cheek. “Corporeal? You’ve never failed a vocab test, have you?”

Sam’s growing anxiousness loosened enough to give you a dry half-smile. He didn’t spit back one of his own jokes or give you a teasing push like usual, but anything was better than nothing. He hadn’t spoken much today. He hadn’t spoken much this week.

Either Dean got tired of turning his head or he preferred you next to him, because he lent you some room to walk between him and Sam. It was a small gesture, but one that the boys did often. They could barely fit shoulder-to-shoulder on a sidewalk alone, and yet they made room for you every time, like two halves of a bascule bridge letting a little boat through.

Dean had parked the car further down the road, so Baby was a glossy white highlight against the spider-webbing of tree branches covering the night sky. The night was blue and foggy. You absently laid your hand on the metal when you came close, just to have something to touch that wasn’t groundless air.

Before he opened the trunk, Dean deferred naturally to you for the all clear signal. The separation between your senses and your Gift was thin today, so you drew closer to the Impala, blinking at the shapes your eyes were imagining in the fog. Eventually, you murmured, “We’re good.”

Dean tilted his head with a dangerous readiness, because even a second’s pause was enough to clue him in to your exhaustion. “Are we?”

“Sorry,” you sighed, “We’re good. I’m still a little bogged down from earlier. There’s no one around, don’t worry. My Gift—my thing is just a little tired today.”

“Haven’t slept much,” Sam commented.

Dean yanked open the trunk with its usual friendly creak, punctuating the sound with an unspoken order in his eyes. He quickly made it spoken: “Well, ‘soon as we get back to the motel, you’re going to, girly.”

“We’ve still got to figure out what this thing is,” you reminded. Considering you hadn’t yet found a way around Dean’s elder-sibling authority, it was a little foolish of you to think today would be the day. You put a drop of sweetened nonchalance into your voice anyway. “I’ll be alright, Dean—I’ll sleep on the drive to the ridge tomorrow. A little overnight research won’t kill me.”

Dean’s smile pinched into his cheek. He sucked in a breath like he was about to say something funny—and though Dean wasn’t exactly gentle, he never pierced you. Just prodded. “I think you’re forgetting it’s not just you n’ me anymore.”

That stopped you in your tracks.

You hadn’t forgotten. For two years, a tear in your life had grown into an absence, in the Impala’s backseat, in the empty air guarding your six on hunts. But the worst part was that sometimes the absence called you or mailed you pictures. Sometimes it would write you letters with his half-cursive handwriting, or ramble about Stanford and pre-law until you fell asleep with your head between the pillow and the phone. Sam had left an unfillable space in your life when he’d escaped, and without him in the middle you and Dean had tried everything to close the gap.

From the moment you’d picked up Sam, there was not one breath where you weren’t aware he was back. You could sense him like a limb, without looking, like you were connected to him by a hundred nerves.

But you and Dean had made a life together. For two years, there had been nothing but you and him and the rain-slick road. There were days driving between states where neither of you said a word, because hearing you breathe and feeling him drive was enough for the two of you. You sang your way through whole albums, Dean on drums and you on lead guitar; you fell asleep beside him; you wept over Dean, fingers hot with his blood; you fed him and poked fun at him and lived him, while Dean did the same for you.

“Hey.” Dean’s hands were suddenly there, settling warm on your shoulders. The night was blue but his eyes were still so green. “Sam’s here to help out now, okay? Me n’ him will do our damndest to figure out what this thing is, and you’ll do me a favor, n’ rest up for tomorrow. If we can’t figure it out, I’m not all that worried—”

A pleasant, charming smile gleamed on his face. “...We’ve got our secret weapon right,” he poked your forehead, “here.”

You let indecision play dramatically across your features. Then, with the air of a tradesman, stuck out your hand to him to shake.

“Only…if you hug me.”

“Why?” Dean squawked.

You shot him an evil little smile. “I enjoy watching your fragile masculinity squirm.”

Dean considered, humming. “...You’ll go to bed? As soon as we get back?”

“I’ll even sleep in,” you added loftily, just to sweeten the pot.

He stared at you for a moment longer, the rounded lines of his face briefly drawn hard with conviction. An unspoken clause was added to your contract. I’ll watch out for Sammy, too. That was all that mattered to you.

Promptly, Dean opened his palm, spat into it, and stuck it out to you.

“Fine. Deal.”

Per tradition, you spat as well. With a gross smack, you slapped your hands together, and using his grip you dragged him into a tight hug. Because Dean was a fair player, he squirmed and flustered in the same way that laughed you into stitches as a kid. Sam was witness to all of this, so it surprised you when Dean dropped the act halfway through and squeezed you around the middle; he gave excellent, cozy, leather-scented hugs, which of course were only shared at the grave cost of his masculinity. After the week the three of you’d had, it was high time you fulfilled your role as the mushy one.

(But then again, Dean was the one rubbing your back).

“Aw,” Sam said, being a very loyal minion.

Dean broke out into a hoarse coughing fit, scuttling away to safety and glaring at his brother. You wiped your hand on the sleeve of his jacket, which sent him into further hysterics, and somewhere under the yelling and raving about real leather, ___! Sam covered his mouth and giggled boyishly. Whatever argument he’d been revving up for had lost its power over him awhile ago.

That was all that mattered to you.

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seraphimluxe · 3 years ago

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I got so excited when I saw the notif for this!! Literally love the chemistry and just... Tenderness they all share for each other, it makes reading this like a warm balm on my soul. The descriptions are so vivid and crisp, it's like every one of your senses gets to read along with you. I don't know how far you plan to go with this series, but I love it. You're developing a following that will absolutely eat up anything and everything you put down (myself included obvs)

This is seriously just such a nice escape from reality, thank you for putting so much time into it.