Author's Note: Long-ass setup, so bear with me for the next few chapters (it'll be worth it, I promise!) Beta'd by LilFayexxx ~Reviews are glorious gifts from on high~
Three days in another shitty motel outside of Birmingham, NY and still nothing. No cattle deaths, or freak electrical storms- not so much as peep that might indicate where Lilith was hiding. Take-out containers were beginning to litter the cramped living space and the air was becoming progressively staler. Sam rubbed his eyes tiredly. They were beginning to water from staring endlessly at a computer screen. No word from Ruby either he thought. Any attempt to contact the demon in recent weeks had been futile. You came when Ruby called, not the other way around.
"Check this out Sammy, I think I found us a case." Sam raised his eyes from his laptop just in time to catch the folded newspaper Dean casually tossed at him. "Dean," Sam began, barely glancing at the headline, "Shouldn't we be doing other things right now? Like trying to find Lilith? I mean, we need to look at our priorities here."
"Oh yeah because we're making so much progress in that area. Tell me Sam, how long have you been on that stupid laptop?" Sam merely glared "and what do we have?! Squat. At least if we pick up a case, we'll be doing SOMETHING. Who knows, maybe we'll get some leads on Lilith" he grumbled, "Anyways, check it out. This one looks big. I'm gonna go. I just remembered I needed to pick something up before we left." Dean stalked out of the room, shutting the cheap pine door a little harder than necessary. Being cooped up in the motel for so long did not sit well with Dean. He'd been climbing the walls since the middle of the second day.
Sam groaned and picked up the newspaper. The disconnection between them seemed to be growing every day. The long hours spent cramped in the impala felt longer when he could sense Dean's disapproval radiating from his posture. The way his hands clenched around the wheel like he was trying to wring someone's throat, the way he sat stiff and straight as a soldier. Freak. More and more Sam wondered if that throat was his own.
No Sign of Missing Children, the headline trumpeted. The article went on to describe that two teenagers, a boy and a girl, had vanished outside of a small town in Michigan on the same day. No one had witnessed the disappearances and there seemed to be no connection between the victims. Nothing about the case screamed "supernatural". Sam was unimpressed until he came across a small article at the bottom of the page, almost an afterthought: Authorities Puzzled Over Sudden Power Outage. Now a power outage could indicate demonic or ghost activity. Even stranger, the outage had occurred at roughly the same time as the disappearances.
Sam sighed and absentmindedly checked his phone, an action that had become a compulsive habit in the past few months. Still nothing. What was she doing? Sam wondered for the hundredth time if he could trust her. His feelings about Ruby were still decidedly mixed, and if Dean ever found out, he'd blow a gasket for sure. It really isn't fair, Sam thought bitterly. I was so alone…
"SAM" Dean's hoarse shout interrupted his musings. "You coming or not?" He stood outside the window, the keys to the Impala dangling from his hand. He was grinning impishly, his anger forgotten for the moment. Sam wondered how much he'd had to drink. "Alright, alright, hold on." Sam swept his laptop off the table, along with a dozen or so papers regarding demonic omens, possessions, anything that might indicate Lilith's whereabouts. Stuffing it all indiscriminately in his duffel bag and giving the room a final once-over to ensure that they didn't leave anything behind, Sam headed for the door. "Ummm you might want to come through the window," Dean called as he reached for the knob, "I think the guy at the front desk got suspicious and decided to check out our credit cards a little more closely." Sam sighed heavily, "just another day on the job" he muttered under his breath as he headed back across the room.
Empty stretches of countryside flashed by as Sam stared out the window, listening to Dean sing along to "Born to be Wild" with his customary off-key enthusiasm. He remembered with a pang the months of empty silence that had accompanied him following Dean's descent into hell. All the loneliness and pain, but most of all the anger. They had mixed together inside him, and emotional Molotov cocktail, eating away at his insides until he couldn't take it anymore. He'd been driven, sleepless and desperate, to Ruby. The guilt of what they'd done together, what he'd done, in the wee, hostile hours of the morning still pricked at Sam's consciousness. It was all necessary, he reminded himself. Now he was powerful, stronger even than Dean, whose stint downstairs seemed to have put some fatal cracks in his once impenetrable armor. Dean still refused to talk about it, and Sam had noticed the change in his brother's face that occurred sometimes when he thought no one was looking. His eyebrows would knit together, like he was squinting at something no one else could see, something that at once confused and saddened him. His whole body would contract, flinching from an invisible threat. But the eyes were certainly worse. Sam could always read his brothers thoughts in those green eyes. Even if Dean thought he could hide his emotions behind a nonchalant grin and a wisecrack, the eyes would give him away. In those quiet moments, they became flat and empty, staring blankly ahead. After a minute he would snap out of it, but that dead look remained always within reach, waiting to resurface. Sam knew Dean was broken. The momentous task of stopping Lilith now fell to him.
A loud buzzing sound interrupted Sam's reverie. His phone was vibrating urgently in his hand. Not now Ruby, he thought desperately as he silenced it as nonchalantly as possible. "Who was that?" Dean asked in a dangerously genial voice. Sam opened his mouth to deliver a lie but he caught sight of Castiel in the rearview mirror. He was sitting calmly in the backseat, arms outstretched to grab the brother's coat collars. Before Sam could shout out, the impala and the world outside had vanished.