Chapter One.
The day her mother died, her father appeared.
Life's funny that way.
Though, the second she saw the person that belonged in the sole photograph of her parents, she slammed the door in his face. She remembered thinking he could be a stalker – how else would he know where she was staying? Through the door, he told her how he found her – asked around, went to all the local hotels, motels, and inns, how her mother listed him as a last resort emergency contact, how he didn't even know he had a daughter until he got that call, how he drove all the way from Illinois, and how he was not above picking the lock to get in the room.
She had ignored him, but his threat rang true and he had ended up sitting in the loveseat he had dragged next to the bed, where she sat amongst a sea of used tissues. Even in her misery, she remembered admiring his buttery leather jacket, even with all the wear and tear. It looked comfortable.
They sat in silence for ten minutes before he cleared his throat and asked her her name.
Perhaps it was because she'd lost everything in one fell swoop and subconsciously needed someone to hold on to, or perhaps it was due to the fact that she needed to say something – anything – to anyone, that she answered.
It occurred to her just how strange the conversation was, meeting her goddamned father for the first time, and him saying he was sorry about what had happened to her mother – though he couldn't even remember the name of the woman he'd had a child with. It had been all very surreal, and after she'd come to her senses, she had kicked him out.
He was persistent though, much to her surprise. Though she'd known it was her mother's fault for keeping her a secret, she was still angry enough about the fire to take it out on everyone around her. And he was it.
John Winchester.
Scruffy-faced, tall, and safe, but closed-off and aloof.
She didn't look like him. Where he was tall, she was short, his hair dark brown, hers black. The only resemblance was in the eyes. And perhaps the bushy eyebrows, but she'd plucked them down the second she learned it was possible.
She remembered John – no, her father – had tried to get her to relocate to some Pastor's place, but she refused. Vehemently. He had frowned, as if he wasn't used to people disobeying his orders, and started half-yelling that she couldn't stay by herself – she was only sixteen, goddamnit, and how did she manage to rent out a room for herself, being only goddamned sixteen and all.
That was when he made his decision. He'd stay in New York, rent a place for them, and then they'd decide what to do. After all, she was too young to live by herself, and she apparently had no friends she could stay with, so the only option left was for him to stay. He hadn't looked very happy about it, but he was a good actor.
Two weeks in – two weeks spent barely speaking to each other, because after all, they were still strangers – he left on a "business trip," and returned three days later, bruised and bloodied. That was the night he told her about the thing that killed her mother, about everything out there in the dark, and about what he did for a living.
She thought it was the drugs talking. He had refused to go to the hospital, resorting to giving her step-by-step directions on how to patch him back up. She was pretty bad at it at first, and had to give him a few more pain pills than directed.
She was surprised at her own composure – though much, much more surprised at his.
The next day, he started lining the windows and doors with salt, and instructed her to check on the lines every few hours or so.
She continued thinking he was crazy, a crazy man who stole other people's credit cards, until she saw an evil spirit with her own eyes. In the days following that eye-opener, she pestered John to teach her all the odds and ends of his "job." He had adamantly refused, cursing the fact that she'd been exposed to it, but was left with nothing to say when she pointed out that something came for her mother, and how was he to know it wasn't going to come for her?
John had looked at her strangely, shook his head and muttered something about his offspring, but complied, albeit reluctantly.
Three months later, she knew a little bit about everything, and found that she was partial to knives and all things sharp. There was nothing like father-daughter bonding over guns, weapons, and how-tos regarding all things supernatural.
She had felt like a whole different person. She was feeling less and less her mother's daughter, and more and more her father's. And she hated it. But, it needed to happen, and even at the tender age of sixteen, she understood.
During the entire time, John came and went, leaving her to lay down her own salt lines, to practice her Latin, to practice shooting cans in the back alley, and, of course, to go to school. She skipped classes sometimes, when he wasn't around to make sure she was learning her calculus, and burned the notes from the attendance office before he could see them.
Then a month after her seventeenth birthday, he left without saying a word. The only things he left behind were a few guns and ammo, her favorite knife, some money, his car – he took the truck – and a note that read I'm going after it. Call this number in case of emergencies.
During that last year, he had allowed her to tag along on his hunts – on weekends or holidays only, whenever he was around – and was very surprised to see just how fast a learner she really was. Little did he know, she'd been driving up and down the coast working her own jobs. But then again, he had been oddly preoccupied about something. What, he never did say, even after all her pestering.
So after it was clear he wasn't returning, she packed her bags and drove off. There was no reason for her to stay – her mother was ashes, her father had disappeared, and thanks to her aversion of social lives and thus a lack of friends, there was nothing holding her back.
Everything went fine, her on the road, salting and burning her way across the country several times, until now. Eleven months, three days, and five hours – give or take a five hours – after she peeled out of the driveway, she finally met something she couldn't handle on her own.
They say when you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. Well, that adage would only be true if her life before her mother's death was nothing but an illusion. Sprawled flat on her face, all that flashed before her eyes were spirits, poltergeists, not-so-urban-legends, and everything else that lived in the dark.
She could almost feel the blood pouring out of her stomach and legs, where that goddamned creature had not-so-ceremoniously ripped at, trying to drag her into its lair. Though, she couldn't really tell where the blood ended and where the mud began.
At least the sun was coming up. From what she'd found out from her research, the thing preferred to hunt during the night, and that gave her about ten to twelve hours maximum to get out of this hellhole. Unless she passed out before she could develop a plan. And what plan would she come up with anyway? Hell, she was hungry, cold, and fucking exhausted. All she wanted to do was put her head down into the mud and sleep, and the fact that mud was soft didn't help either. If she had been lying on concrete, her bruised ribs would have made sure that she stayed awake, but she wasn't.
Then, cursing her slow mind, she reached into her pockets and slowly pulled out her cell phone. Call this number in case of emergencies. She had programmed the number into her phone, set at speed dial #1, because it would have been sad to have no numbers in her phone at all. Plus, it made dialing it all the more easier. Yeah, she definitely prided herself on her thinking, especially now.
The phone was muddied and slightly battered, but it still worked, as evidenced by the dial tone.
"This is Dean, leave a message."
She groaned, and pressed redial. Again, and again, so many times she'd lost count – or, rather, her wavering state of consciousness refused to count past six.
"What?" a voice barked. "This better be good."
"Hi," she said drowsily, unsure if anyone had actually picked up.
"Not interested in whatever you're selling," he snapped before hanging up.
Her fingers were now familiar with the redial button, and pressed it again automatically.
"Listen –" he started, and even in her state of mind, she could tell he was pissed.
"Help," she managed, dropping the phone into the mud by her head. She moved her head slightly to the left, resting her ear on the phone.
"Who is this?"
"Help me," she pleaded. If she weren't bleeding half to death, face down in fucking mud, she would have kicked herself into unconsciousness for sounding so needy, so pleading, so not herself.
A pause. Then, in a completely different tone of voice, "Where are you?"
"Fuck," Dean cursed, throwing a few bills on the table as he rose.
So much for spending some time at the casinos, he thought, glancing towards the strip. And the decision that took him days to make? Gone out the door, just like that. So much for checking in on Sammy, and so much for attempting to patch things over between them.
He knew he should have ignored the call – all seventeen of them – but his phone was the only connection he had to his father, and the unfamiliar number could very well have been from his dad. But, unless his father had inhaled some helium since the last time they've spoken, or had a sex-change, that was highly unlikely. Plus, it'd been months since the last time Dean had heard from him, and he wasn't going to be calling out of the blue. Hell, if it weren't for Dean's persistence, they probably wouldn't have spoken at all since a few months after the college debacle. Okay, so he wouldn't have picked up, if not for the dirty looks the other customers were giving him. Apparently they didn't appreciate his taste in music as much as they should have.
And now, he was driving straight out of Nevada – he was several hours from Stanford, but judging from the girl's tone of voice, she didn't have the time to wait for him to stalk his brother – to fucking Bitterroot Valley, Montana.
He floored it down the empty interstate, music turned up high. Traveling the country by himself was lonely, which was probably why he preferred the company of beautiful women. Or so he liked to reason. Women and music. And his car. That's all he needed. Right.
All he wanted to do was look at his brother and see for himself that Sam was all right. It had been nearly two years since he last spoke with his brother – of course, he'd occasionally send Sam a few postcards from wherever in the country he was, not detailing his activities, but just keeping the connection open. It wasn't enough.
Driving along deserted highways by himself, he'd pretty much mastered the art of self-psychoanalysis. He just wasn't too good at offering up advice. So when it got to that part, he relied on his other talent – that of ignoring whatever was going on in his head. It was a tough job, but, like hunting, had to be done.
After the guy on the phone seemed to get the message, she had laid there, feeling completely useless. Out of complete boredom – and as a result of the numbness that caused her to feel nothing at all – she had attempted to slither out of the mud, turned over – slowly, and propped her head on a rock. Not the most comfortable position or placement, but better than nothing.
She'd passed out right there for god knows how long, and came to thinking about her mother's cooking and Chinese food in general. What she wouldn't give for even a MSG-laden meal at the moment…
Instead, she resorted to counting the seconds that ticked by.
Five hundred forty nine, five hundred fifty, five fifty one, five fifty two, five fifty…fuck.
She realized, watching a hook-shaped cloud float on by above the ponderosa pines, that she probably should have stuck it out and graduated from high school. Her grades were always top of the class, but she didn't care about much after the fire except killing whatever deserved to die – or stay dead. And now, she couldn't even count up to a thousand without losing her place. Awesome.
She knew she should have just given in and passed out yet again, but paranoia about the unseen and un-human trumped everything. Well, that, and the bugs. She pressed down on her wounds, because that was her father's number two rule to medical emergencies. Always apply pressure, and you'll thank yourself later.
Even after living with him for about a year – though the days he was actually there only added up to a few months – she didn't know much about him. All she knew was that he was a Marine and a hunter, that he hated the fact that he had to teach her almost everything he knew, and that he was a pretty rotten cook and loved her pot roast.
Even though he wasn't around much, it seemed as though he wanted her to remain an innocent eight year old girl, which she thought was ironic, considering the fact that he didn't even know she existed until she was sixteen.
The time they spent together mainly consisted of shooting practice, hunting, Latin lessons, and sitting around the dining room table, eating the meals she cooked up and watching Jeopardy.
Perhaps it was a bad idea, but she was bored out of her mind and she stopped feeling her injuries and pain hours ago, and tried to get up – with the ultimate goal of walking her way out of the forest.
"Motherfucker," she bit out before catching herself on the trunk of a tree, several feet from her rock of a pillow. Apparently, her movements had awoken her nerve endings, completely bypassing pins and needles.
She figured she looked like any other treehugger, so she stayed in that position. She was convinced she was delirious – or somewhat insane – when she thought she heard the tinny strains of Final Countdown coming from the tree.
And then she heard it again. The strange snarling and heavy breathing that indicated the presence of the Wendigo, Windigo, Witiko, Wihtikow, or however the hell people wanted to call it these days. Then she saw it. Gaunt, emaciated, paper thin skin stretched tight across its extremely visible bones, and deathly grey. It was a walking skeleton reeking of guts and death, and it was looking straight into her eyes.
She knew, from all her readings, that Wendigos' strengths and skills – it made her sick to think in terms of their "skills" – varied, depending on age and ability, and was thankful this one wasn't fast as lightning as most were these days. It also wasn't as strong as the average creature, which made her think the Wendigo had once been a woman cannibal. She almost laughed at the thought that she was stereotyping women as the weaker gender, but the look in those sunken eyes cut that short.
It even fought like a woman, digging its nails into her skin like they were engaging in a terribly violent one-sided catfight.
She screamed as she held onto the trunk with all her might, even as the thing grabbed her legs and attempted to rip her apart. In her moment of panic, she thought of nothing but how she'd have to once again buy new clothes, and how it'd probably be better if she just did the job naked. Though, clothes did offer a layer of protection. But the thought of replacing them after every single damn hunt pissed her off.
There really was nothing like feeling a papery skeleton grab hold on your legs like they were buckets of gold.
It was getting angry. Baring its teeth, it yanked one last time, and her arms finally gave away. She almost cried out as her chest hit the exposed roots with a loud thump, something her ribs surely appreciated. God, she hated nature. So much so that she didn't think twice about reaching into her pocket for her almost-forgotten flare gun and using it on the thing in such close proximity to dry, brittle trees. Wildfires can suck it. Hell, the whole place could burn up for all she cared.
The Wendigo shrieked until it fell to the forest floor in ashes. It was almost too easy, but she learned to take what was given, and let her head fall to the ground with a sigh, trying to ignore the white-hot burning sensation from her new and reopened gashes.
War wounds. She'd been proud of her first scar, just above her knee, but these injuries were becoming far too repetitive and frequent.
She realized, as she closed her eyes, that Europe was still singing along in the background like a soundtrack to a bad movie.