Your The Only Place That Feels Like Home

Chapter One

Just So You Know, You Never Know

Arizona was always so god damn hot, Mara Nicholls noted as she walked out of her high school, backpack behind her. She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes as her pink high heels clicked along the cement.

Mara was a petite girl, at the height of five one, maybe one hundred pounds. Her hair was the brown, interwoven with crimson and honey. Her brilliant green eyes scanned the cement as she walked along. "Step on a crack, and you'll break your mothers back-" She sung to herself as she walked, careful to avoid the crevasses. It was a silly childhood rhyme, she knew, but still a feeling in the pit of her stomach told her to avoid the gauges in the cement. She tucked at strand of her hair behind her ears.

Her home wasn't far away. Only about a mile from the public school that she attended five days a week. Mara was in the eleventh grade, at the top of her class. Both socially and academically. Mara was proud, and she should be, though that came across as standoffish to some people. She worked hard for her grades, and even harder to keep her friends. And she was happy.

By the time she reached her home, a small three bedroom ranch she shared with her parents and older brother, tiny beads of sweat glistened on her forehead. She unlocked the door quietly, stepping in and shutting the door, locking it from behind. She sniffed in the air, almost gagging. She hated the smell of orange clean, which her parents used generously, and every day. Her mother swore that it kept the wood furniture in top shape. Mara laughed every time she heard her mother say this. It was no secret that she was less that a neat freak. She was much more to be considered a slob. Her friends would say that she was adopted. Mara would just smile and say, "I am-"

She walked down the hall, dropping her keys in a bowl on top of the coffee table. She walked into her room and smirked. Her parents were always on her about cleaning her room, and she knew that one of these days, she should. The bedroom was of leangthy size, with pink walls, and a white bed in the corner. A various assortment of things were on the floor. Makeup, clothes, magazines, and Kleenex were just a few of the varieties that covered up the cream colored carpet, but strangely enough, Mara knew where everything was. Every time she cleaned, which was no more than twice a year, she felt disorientated and insecure. Not a feeling that she liked.

She changed out of her school clothes, putting on a pair of torn jeans, and a pink low cut shirt from Hollister. She left on her heals. She needed then for the height, and reapplied her makeup, adding a think layer of lip gloss. She heard the door slam downstairs, her brother coming home. He was sixteen, and a hero to Mara. He was a good kid, and had her back a lot of times. Mara wasn't exactly the good girl that her parents thought she was. She got into her own bit of trouble. Mostly smoking and drinking, but that was enough to send her parents on a trip to the morgue. They expected a lot from her. "Derak, Can you drive me to work?" Mara yelled, as she grabbed a pony tail holder and her purse. She worked at Bullfrogs, the local skeezy bar and restaurant in town. The one that never had clean glasses, and where you always had to have your boobs hang out to make a decent tip. She was only seventeen, but she knew how to make money around a bunch of old men, looking for a cold beer and decent piece of pie at eleven at night.

She didn't get a reply from her brother, which was normal. The kid drove her practically every day. Their family wasn't poor, and there was no reason for her to have to work in such a low quality joint, except for that Mara felt she had to contribute to the house.

She had been put up for adoption when she was five years old. Her mother had finally died after a long battle with pneumonia. When you were poor, there wasn't much money for simple health care. At the time, Mara hadn't known her mother was dead. She had simply thought that mommy was sleeping. And she was a big girl. She could take care of herself while Mommy was napping. Mommy had been sleeping for nearly a week when the police found her.

And her dad? Her dad was an ass. A full time one hundred pre cent ass hole.

What had he done. Came into their lives, gotten her mother pregnant, and then left them.

Her childhood had been less than perfect. The stress of single parenthood was unavoidable on her mother, and had caused her to loose her job. After that, it all went down hill. She hadn't understood it when she was little, but years of growing up had caused her to come to relize that her mother had turned to prostitution to make money. She spent all that money on alcohol, and when she was drunk, really really drunk, she took out all her anger on her daughter in the form of brutal beatings.

Her father was in her mothers life for nearly ten months before she had conceived her, and maybe six months after that. She had vauge memories of a bearded man early on in life, but she could never be sure if that mystery man was her father. All she knew about him was his name. And she hated that name, the one that her mother would mutter in her drunken sleep.

After that, she had been told to put all her things in a garbage bad, and moved around from foster home to foster home. She went to school, where all the kids made fun of her because her clothes smelled like garbage bags. That went on for nearly years, until she was ten. That was when she met the Nicholls.

The Nicholls were a decent family, having their own imperfections.

Maria and Benjimin Nicholls, from what they had told her, had met in collage, their senior year, and it was love at first sight. They had married ten months later, and that was that. They wanted kids, but thought they couldn't have, so they adopted Mara. They always joked that it was meant to be, because a little less than a year later, Maria had conceived Derak. Her parents weren't around much anymore. They were both business representatives of Daimler-Chrysler and were often away on buisness trips to strange places like Japan and China.

But she was happy.

She was a girl who was born with nothing, and now had everything. She stopped. She was happy, wasn't she?

Happy yes, but did she belong?

Her parents had often said that she suffered from adoptive child syndrome. Where the child constantly struggled to find who she was, where she came from. But Mara knew that. She was lucky. She knew her past. But she knew that there was something more.

She walked out of her room, switching off the light. "Derak?" she called questionably again as she walked to the kitchen, and opened the fridge. She stood there for a minute, finding nothing of interest but she knew that she had to eat. Bullfrogs was not known for their fine cuisine. She grabbed an apple, and turned around.

Her apple hit the floor.

Sitting on top of her counter was a blonde man, at the age of twenty six, maybe twenty seven, wearing a painfully ugly Led Zeppelin shirt. Next to him was a younger man, maybe twenty two with longer, brownish hair. He was taller.

"Hey, Sis" The blonde one said, an obnoxious smirk on his face.

"I have to go to work-" was all Mara said as she headed towards the door. Her voice was cold and vicious. "Make sure you lock up-" and she slammed the door.

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Two Days Earlier

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Sam Winchester let out a sigh as he shivered in the Autumn air of Lawrence, Kansas. His brother, Dean walked along side him, clutching his leather jacket close to his skin. "I don't remember it ever being this cold when we lived here-" Dean said in a reminiscent tone.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Suck it up, jackass. Your the one who wanted to drive back here-"

"Bitch-" Dean muttered as he approached a series of wooden steps. He could hear them crack and creek from underneath his feet. Sam was next to him, and he could hear him sulking. He knocked on the door, though he knew that this was unnecessary. He walked in. Sitting on the couch was a heavier set African american woman, with curly dark hair. She was hearing a colorful yellow sweater and black slacks.

"Hi Missouri-" Sam smiled. 'Sure' Dean thought 'He is all hugs and kisses now, but ten seconds ago he was crying-'

"Hi, Sam-" Missouri said warmly, as she got up to give him a hug.

"Oh, please-" Dean spoke.

"Don't you roll your eyes at me, boy-" The woman spoke

Dean sat on the couch, his brother next to him. Sam started to say something, undeniably witty and about their travels, but Missouri silenced him. "We don't have time for this boys-" She spoke.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

The cheery look for Missouri's face had disappeared and was replaced now with one that looked much more grim. "I didn't call you boys down here because we needed to catch up. There is trouble stirring about-"

"How So?"

"You have a sister-" Missouri said, as if this was matter of fact news.

Dean just looked her, stippling a laugh. He looked at his brother. "Sammy, maybe it's time that we put the old woman in a home. She seems to be a bit more far gone than we had expected-"

"Shut your mouth-" Missouri said. She was serious.

"What?" Dean said. Sam just looked at the woman across from them. Apparently this was just as hard for him to wrap his head around.

"A sister-" Missouri said. "She is about, sixteen now, I imagine. Sweet little thing. I took care of her for a while myself, when she was traveling through foster care. Mara, I think is her name." She stopped as if to ponder on this for a while. "Oh, well. The names not important. What is important is that she is in trouble-"

"I don't know if you remember this, but out mother died-" Dean said, a smirk on his face.

"A half sister, Dean-"

"What?" Sam suddenly shouted, as if just absorbing the information. "Why didn't we know about this-"

"Did you really have to?" Missouri said, taking a sip of the tea that had been sitting on her coffee table when they had walked in. The way she was talking was really starting to piss Dean off. She acted as if this was something they shouldn't be suprised about. She could sense Deans frustrations. "You two seemed to have grown up just fine without the knowledge."

"None of this makes sense-" Sam said. "Why wouldn't we have met her. Why wouldn't she of gone on the road with us?"

"You boys should know as well as anyone that hunting is not a thing that children should be involved in. Especially babies. Especially baby girls. Your father was doing her a favor, doing you boys a favor, but now I fear that it may of all gone to waste?"

"Why?" Dean asked. "What's happening-"

"I do not know-" She said, the sultry tone returning to her voice. "But I do sense something wicked astirring-"

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Dean and Sam walked out of the house twenty minutes later, being left with more questions than answers. All Missouri had told them was that they needed to go to Harper Valley, some rinky dink little town in the middle of Arizona.

Sam was all gun ho for the idea, Dean could tell though it hadn't been spoken out loud, but Dean had other ideas.

No way in hell was he traveling half way around the country to rescue a sister that he never knew he had. He hopped in the drivers seat, heading out of Lawrence. Heading out of the town he had once called his home. Now, he had no home.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked him when he saw Dean turn onto route 45, the opposite way that they needed to be going.

"Ortonville, Michigan-" Dean said. "Just like we intended to-"

"No." Sam said cutting him off. "We have to go to Arizona, just like Missouri said-"

Dean kept driving.

"What are you so afraid of?"

He turned around.

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Yeah, that's my story... More to come soon.

This isn't my first Supernatural fic. I also wrote "We are Never Broken" and "Painted Sky-" so there may be some references to those stories in this. This is an old idea, and I am trying to put a new spin on it, so tell me how you like it. Read and Review, please.

Love, Aiden.