Summary: When John sends Dean to investigate a seemingly random string of disappearances, an idyllic village is only the start of his problems.
This story involves Sara Lucian, a character from most of my other Supernatural stories. Sara is a friend (and nothing more) of Dean who specialises in exorcisms and was trained by her mother, just as Dean was trained by John. Reading the other stories is probably not essential to understand this one.
The next chapter should be up in about five days. Reviews are hugely appreciated.
xxx
Lincoln, Nebraska,
25th May, 2005
Dean had to admit that there were worse ways to end a hunt, especially one that had gotten so dangerously close to being totally FUBAR. This wasn't the first time Dean had run into unexpected humans on a hunt, but this was the first time the human had turned out to be there on purpose.
Freakin' rookie hunters. They were all going to get themselves killed. Or get someone else killed, which was even worse. But all Dean's disapproval couldn't stop him grinning at the sight of Ritchie trying – and failing – to chat up one of the prettier bartenders. Guy was a moron, but as Sara said, he was a nice moron.
Sara herself was trading stories with the bar owner, a woman called Elsie who knew exactly what Sara did through some complex situation involving a ghost obsessed with brunettes. Elsie, on the one and only time Dean had spoken to her, had called him 'a damn fool of a boy' and spent ten minutes telling Sara why men of any description were totally useless, but Dean still liked the woman.
He liked the bar as well. It wasn't often that he got to visit the same place more than once, and Dean was enjoying that novelty as well. Admittedly, he'd last stepped in here four days ago to pull Sara away from a date with Caleb to go and kill a succubus and this visit was definitely better.
The damn bouncer was still giving him the evil eye, Dean realised, and he gave the huge man a sardonic smile just on principle. For once, he was firmly resolved to avoid violence. At least, for the next few hours or so, if only because he knew that Sara needed some time to herself. Or with Caleb, her not-a-boyfriend-what-so-ever, but still. A need for personal time was to be expected after tangling with the same sort of monster that had killed your mother, and Dean was perfectly willing to hang around for another day or two.
"Hey, Winchester," Caleb said, sitting down opposite him.
Dean didn't start; he hadn't heard the man come in, but he had been expecting him to turn up at some point. "Don't worry, Cal. The succubus is toast."
"Who's the new guy?"
"Ritchie…" Dean tried to remember if the guy's second name had ever been mentioned. "Something or other. Just another new recruit who had no idea what he was walking into."
"Damn. I was kinda hoping he was your new partner."
"Oh, don't be like that. If you get rid of me, you get rid of all the glorious business I bring to you."
"And maybe you'd stop interrupting my limited social life," Caleb replied.
"Man, Sara's the only girl who I knew could handle that. Guys cannot fight succubuses. Even Amelia knew that."
Which was totally the wrong thing to say, although Caleb didn't do much beyond frown at him. Dean didn't know when Sara and Caleb had shifted from ships passing in the night to something oddly resembling a relationship, but he knew that Caleb just wanted Sara to be alive and happy. Taking her to hunt a succubus when one had killed her mother wasn't the way to either goal.
"Besides," Dean added. "Do you want to try and tell her to get out of this life? 'Cause I already have, and she didn't take it particularly well."
"I know." Caleb dumped a slim file on the table. "Your dad asked me to pass this along to you. No idea what it is, but he said it's not an absolute ASAP sort of deal, so…"
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Pull Sara away again before you've had your wicked way with her and I'll be hung, drawn and quartered."
"Damn straight." Caleb stood up, grinning. "Oh, and she'll bring you your bullets tomorrow morning. Or afternoon. Evening at the very latest."
"Noted," Dean said with a grin of his own. "By the way, I've got no plans to move till Sunday at the earliest." That was three days in the future and Caleb looked pleased as he nodded.
"I'll tell her," he promised and headed over to where Sara was sitting.
The two of them were gone a few minutes later, Sara giving Dean a thankful smile as she left, and Dean was left to keep an eye on Ritchie. Hopefully, he'd be able to talk the guy out of his plans of a hunting career in the next day or so. If not, he could kill time till Sunday making sure Ritchie knew enough to stay alive, as opposed to knowing enough to get yourself killed.
xxx
It was Sunday afternoon before Sara came back to the motel room.
"Well, that was worth the detour," she said, grinning.
Dean grinned back and shook his head, not bothering to get up from the table where he was assembling notes. "Please. Don't elaborate."
Thankfully, she didn't. "Where's Ritchie?"
"On his way to Minnesota. I told him to talk to Pastor Jim. Who knows? The guy might be a competent Hunter one day."
Sara snorted as she sorted through her bag.
"Yeah, alright," Dean agreed. "But if we're lucky, he won't get anyone killed."
"That would be nice." She pulled a box out of her bag and threw it at him. "The special iron rounds you wanted. And Cal said you might have a job?"
"Yeah. Dad asked us to look into this place in…" Dean pulled the map back towards him. "Wyoming. People going missing-"
"And no apparent pattern," Sara finished for him. "Why can't John handle it?"
"God knows."
"Dean…"
Dean shrugged. He'd been hoping to avoid that particular answer, but he'd tell the truth. If he had to, which apparently he did. "He's trying to track down Li."
It was still very strictly Li or Linus on the rare occasions that they talked about Sara's father. Which was very rarely, but that was sort of acceptable. The guy had bailed after meeting Sara just once, for crying out loud, and not even Will Atwood and his weirdo super-computer thing had been able to track the man down.
And for all of Sara's protests that she didn't want or care about her family, Dean wasn't exactly surprised by her next question.
"Oh. Where does he think Linus is?"
"Florida. At least, that's what he said."
Sara nodded, forced a smile. They both knew that John was only looking for Linus because the guy might have information the Winchesters wanted. "Alright. We'll go to Wyoming."
"Sure?"
"I'll just burn in Florida," she replied easily enough. "So what's the word on our MIA muppets?"
"It's only two, but they were both in this place called Jamestown. Dad said this place is weird somehow. Like, gave him the creeps."
"And a man like Papa Winchester isn't easily creeped out."
"Exactly. So while you were… occupied," Dean said, ignoring Sara's smirk. "I've been looking into this place, and there's no real reason that I can spot for that. No mass murders, no atrocities, no slaughters. Mind you, there wasn't even a local newspaper to look at."
"You know, normal people don't sound disappointed about a lack of bloodstains. So what did the local cops say about some of their own going missing?"
"Nothing. They don't exist."
Sara frowned, glancing up from the print-outs she nabbed from under Dean's nose. "You what?"
"No local cops. Jamestown has a population of less than a hundred. Only about seventy people, apparently. And the missing folk weren't locals."
"A conspiracy?"
"Maybe. Or it could just be coincidence."
"Coincidences only exist for the intellectually challenged," Sara replied absently. "Did John say why he wanted us to check this out now? I mean, whatever drew his attention to it at this time?"
"No. Why?"
"The first victim, Charlene Martson, she went missing over forty-five years ago. The second disappeared over twenty years ago. There's no reason for a hunter to spot this now."
"Divine inspiration?" Dean offered, shrugging.
"More like the other guy." Sara idly started to bite her fingers, pulling a face at Dean when he reached over to stop her. "I don't like this. Sending us off like this, without all the facts… Last time he ordered us around, it didn't end well for any of us."
And that was putting it mildly.
"He doesn't actually order us," Dean said. "More… requests. Emphatically."
"You do know that you're meant to be able refuse a request?"
"Come on, aren't you a little bit interested? Just a little bit?"
"You said it yourself, there's nothing there."
"Yeah, well… that's odd, right? Something bad has happened everywhere, so there must be something going on here."
Sara looked interested despite herself for all of half a minute. "Are you making this up?"
"Yeah. Did it work?"
She smiled, shaking her head. "I am so going to regret this."
xxx
Jamestown, Wyoming,
"Like I said, Will, there's nothing. Just this pair of missing people, no apparent connection, and a town normal enough to make Dean thoroughly twitchy."
Dean took one hand off the steering wheel to flick Sara's ear is revenge. She just grinned at him and kept the phone well out of his reach as he slowly navigated the few streets of Jamestown. This place was small enough not to even show up on Dean's maps, but it was roughly in the place where the people might have gone missing from.
"Nah, Adrian can stay where he is. Hell, I'm not even sure there's a hunt here," Sara continued. "You'll call if you find anything? Thanks."
"So Will's got nothing?" Dean asked when she tucked the phone away again.
"Nothing yet, anyway," Sara said. "Give him a bit of time and he'll know everything. Just like always."
"Have to love the Hub," he agreed, referring to the bizarre computer system Will had rigged up back in Wisconsin. "Alright. There's a diner across the street. Might as well get a meal out of this wild-goose chase."
Sara nodded and pulled out the EMF detector, switching it off and dropping it back into the glove compartment. Jamestown was a tiny place and there hadn't been a single blip on the EMF detector anywhere. Of course, that wasn't a guarantee for a freak-free day, but it did rule out most ghosts or curses.
"You know, I didn't think that places like this actually existed anymore," Sara said as they exited the Impala and started walking to the diner. "If this was England, I'd be expecting the Famous Five to come round the corner."
"The what?"
"Literary reference, sorry."
Dean gave her a good-natured shove, but he could guess what she meant. This place was… not normal, but what everyone wanted to believe was normal. Clean streets and a 'real sense of community' and friendly neighbours. Even the little school, red roof and all. It was enough to make Dean uncomfortable just on principle, but he supposed that stories of 'the perfect little town' had to start somewhere. What made the whole thing even more surreal, however, was that John Winchester had sent them here.
The meal in the diner was awesome, but uneventful, even if the sweet old lady who was running it did offer Dean free pie. She retreated while he was happily munching away, and Dean had no problems speaking with his mouth full.
"You picking anything up?"
Sara shook her head. "But that doesn't really mean anything, Dean. I'm only part-psychic. And I didn't find the hotspot for that haunting last month."
"Most likely because we didn't even know where to start looking," Dean said firmly. "You found that possessed football player easily enough."
"Yeah, whatever. But… Seriously, I think this is some sort of joke on your dad's part. There's nothing weird going on here. In a town this small, we would've heard of it already, even being strangers. And there's no realistic way to ask about people who went missing in the eighties without getting a really bad reputation."
"There's not even a motel in this place," he replied. "Alright, looks like we'll have to back off, at least until one of us comes up with something. Find a place to stay in the next town or something, 'cause I refuse to sleep in the Impala, and do more research."
Sara nodded. "Hey, did you spot a church anywhere on the way in?"
"Uh… no. Why? I though we still had plenty of the old holy water,"
"You know, if you'd just learn the damn prayer, you wouldn't have to steal holy water in the first place."
"No point. I've got you for that. So what's with the sudden piety?"
She didn't bother to comment on the word 'piety', because Sara seemed to have figured out that Dean wasn't quite the idiot he liked to pretend to be. "Not sure. Just… they have their own school, but not a church or chapel?"
"Maybe they just go to the next town?"
"Maybe. Ah, just forget I mentioned it. I'll just go grab us some snacks for that place down the road and then let's get out of here."
"Don't be long. I wanna be out of here long before dark."
"Won't take more than a few minutes, I promise."
Dean shrugged in reluctant agreement, although he wasn't sure where the reluctance was coming from. Sara seemed to be right about the whole wild-goose-chase thing, but they'd look a little deeper into this place just in case. And also because they had nothing else to do. Dean liked to keep busy. Besides, his dad wasn't often wrong. Yeah, it happened, but it might not have happened this time.
He was leaning against the Impala, idly humming AC/DC under his breath, when Sara entered the tiny shop down the road and even though this place was miniscule and entirely peaceable, Dean found he couldn't sit still. Glancing around, eyes tracking the movements of the few people around, he focused on one man, who was hurrying in the opposite direction to the shop.
Dean slid off the Impala, frowning. From this angle, he couldn't see much of the man, but he had a very good memory for people. The red hair, the height, even the way he was moving was setting off all kinds of warning bells in his head, and Dean really didn't give a damn if that wasn't an appropriate way to react to someone who could possibly be his best friend's father.
But then again, Linus was trouble. The whole absentee-father thing was completely overshadowed by the can-walk-into-hell-at-will thing, and Dean was more than pissed off just about the former.
It took his all of two seconds to make a decision and Dean set off after the man. Moving quickly without looking like you were was an art form that Dean had never quite mastered, but he managed to catch up just as his suspect turned into a narrow gap between two buildings. It was perfectly easy for Dean to grab him and slam him up against the wall.
"Li!" he said, his cheerfulness more due to the fact that he had been right than out of any real desire to see this guy again. "Long time, no see."
"Winchester," Li replied. "Shame. I was sort of hoping you'd been eaten by something."
Dean tutted. "Might want to be nicer to the guy who's keeping your daughter alive. Since you seem so unwilling to do that yourself."
"She can take care of herself."
"Agreed. Of course, she doesn't want to be left alone, but that doesn't concern you, does it? Now, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Trying to sort out whatever's going on in this place. And tell your father to leave me the hell alone. I'm not helping him again."
"So there is something weird going on here."
The cocky smile Linus was giving him made Dean slam the man back against the wall just out of principle.
"Jesus, Winchester. Might want to work on controlling that temper."
"Listen to me, you son of a bitch. I don't really care who sorts out the situation here, whatever the hell that might be, but my dad told me that you didn't even need Sara there for that pointless ritual of yours, so I want to know what the hell you were playing at back in New York right now."
"I needed to see her."
"Why?"
"Why do you care? You're not even hunting with her anymore."
Dean scoffed. "Shows how much you know."
And suddenly Linus looked very, very scared.
"She's here? Sara's here? Now?"
"Yeah." Dean let go of Linus, backing away slightly. This was… not good. "Why?"
"Dean, both of you have to get out of here right now."
"Why?" he repeated.
"Because you – and quite possibly Sara as well - fit the victim profile."
Dean turned and dashed out of the alley. That was not good. That was so not good. They had no idea of when or from where the people had been snatched, and they'd split up and-
Sara was walking out of the shop, a bag in her arms, and Dean skidded to a halt. She was frowning slightly, obviously wondering what the hell was up with her best friend. Dean gestured in a way which he hoped conveyed the message we need to leave right the fuck now and it seemed that Sara got the message.
She was at the corner, just about to cross the road, when Dean blinked.
That's all he did. Just blinked.
And when he opened his eyes again, Sara was gone.
xxx
The next chapter will be up in a few days. Please review, guys!
