Author's Note: This is a coda for the season 7 finale, "There Will Be Blood," so there are huge spoilers here. Just a little something that hit me as a possible direction for Sam to take after that cliffhanger.

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.

Refuge

It was approaching two in the morning on a cold, rainy night when Jody Mills heard a knock at her door. She'd been sitting in the kitchen with a glass of wine that she hoped might help her sleep. For the last couple of days something had felt off, like her skin was too tight and itched in places that she couldn't reach. Sleep had been hard to come by, filled with gunshots, fire, blood, and monsters with piranha-like mouths.

She got up slowly from the table and grabbed her gun from her belt, which was slung over the back of the sofa, and checked the peephole, wondering who could be at her door in the middle of the night. She'd learned to have a healthy respect for the things that only came out in the dark over the last few years. But when she recognized the figure on her porch, Jody quickly put her gun down on the side table and opened the door.

Sam Winchester was a wreck. His hair and clothes were damp from the storm, his posture was far more hunched than usual, and his eyes were haunted. His clothes were rumpled and he had bags under his eyes and a couple days' worth of stubble on his chin.

And he was alone.

"Sam!" Jody greeted in surprise. It had been a few months since she'd last heard from the Winchesters while they'd gone to ground, so while she was happy to see him, he was also the last person she would have expected.

"Sheriff Mills—"

"You know it's Jody," she cut in. "Come in, please." She glanced at the Impala parked in the driveway and frowned. The last time she'd seen the boys, they'd stowed their classic car out of fear of being noticed. Something had changed and by the looks of Sam—and the car—it wasn't good.

"I should have called, I'm sorry," Sam said distantly, standing in the entryway while Jody closed the door behind him. "I just didn't know where else to go." His voice sounded hollow, which made that phantom itch Jody had been feeling worse.

"It's fine. You boys are always welcome here," she said, trying for some cheer and falling short.

Motherly instincts kicking into overdrive, she led him into the living room and sat him down on the couch. He was shivering, so Jody went to the fireplace and started a small fire. It might have been May, but winter still had the last tips of her claws dug into Sioux Falls. Jody then went into the kitchen and made Sam a hot mug of tea—and supplemented it with a healthy dose of bourbon. She grabbed her glass of wine and went back into the living room. Sam had taken off his coat and had his face in his hands. He looked up when Jody handed him the mug and gave her a wan smile of thanks. Jody nodded in return and sat down on the couch next to him.

"He's gone," Sam said at last, voice cracking.

Jody's heart broke at the sound. She wanted to reach over and hug the younger man, but didn't want to spook him. "Dean?" she asked instead.

But who else could it be? She'd been with Sam when Dean had gone missing in time, but he'd been laser-focused then, almost to a fault, which had clearly been a mask to cover up his worry for his brother. This, though, was something completely different.

Sam nodded miserably.

"Is he—" Jody couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence, fearing the answer.

But Sam shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I don't know where he is or if he's even alive. He's just… gone. Vanished."

Oh. Well that explained Sam's freak out. When Chronos had taken Dean, Sam had known where to look to find a way to bring him back. Not having any leads, though? It would be impossible to know where to start; and Sam looked overwhelmed by it all. Jody's heart ached for the boys and those like them who were thrown into impossible circumstances with little to no resources for help. It was no small wonder Bobby Singer had been so surly and drunk.

A wave of sadness washed over her at the thought and she shoved it aside. Whatever she was feeling, Sam must be feeling it exponentially worse right now. Jody was momentarily humbled to be someone Sam trusted enough to come to when he was lost and worried, considering how normally composed and motivated he was.

"What happened?" she asked. Though her own son was dead, something that haunted her nightmares often, her maternal instincts hadn't gotten rusty. And Sam obviously needed support right now. That, Jody could do. Bobby had played surrogate father to these boys; Jody could play mother. She appreciated being needed.

Sam ran a hand through his long hair. "It's a long story."

Jody raised an eyebrow. "I don't have anywhere to be. And there's plenty of alcohol in the kitchen."

Sam studied her face for a moment, searching, and then nodded. He took a long gulp of his tea and started talking. Some of the story she knew—the leviathan, Dick Roman, Bobby's death—but the rest was new and scarier than she could have imagined; she was pretty sure Sam was leaving out a fair amount, too. He told her about an angel named Castiel and a paranoid hacker named Frank. He talked about the leviathan plot to subdue humans like cattle, about SucroCorp (and Jody silently thanked the local farmer's market she'd taken to shopping at), about a young prophet named Kevin and a couple of demons.

"Dean stabbed Roman," Sam said over an hour later, "but then there was a huge shockwave. When I looked back, Dean and Cas were gone and Dick Roman dead." He ran a hand over his face. "Crowley said the bone we used to kill Dick had a side effect, told me I was alone, and took Kevin."

Sam fell silent after that and Jody finished the glass of wine she'd replenished more than once since the younger man started his story.

"I'm sorry to dump this on you," Sam apologized after a bit. His voice had gained some strength. Getting the story off his chest had probably been cathartic. "I show up at your door in the middle of the night and unload all this baggage about things you'd rather forget."

Jody pushed aside thoughts of her dead family as quickly as they popped up. She couldn't afford to go there right now. Sam had saved her life that day, as well as many others'. And she rather liked the kid after spending some time with him, especially after helping him get Dean back from the 1940s—and there was something she never thought she'd say; time travel, who knew? It was true the Winchesters and Bobby Singer had turned her life upside down, but she didn't resent them for it. There was something liberating about knowing the truth, in a strange way.

"I'm glad you came to me," she told him.

Sam blinked in surprise. "What?"

Jody shrugged. "You can't do this alone and I want to help."

"Jody—"

"Here's what's going to happen," she said, cutting off his protest. "You're going to take a hot shower. Then you're going to sleep for about twelve hours on a nice bed. I'm going to cook a huge organic meal, and then we're going to figure this out." Sam opened his mouth but Jody held up a hand to forestall him. "No arguments, young man," she said in her best middle-of-the-night mom voice. "You won't help Dean by running yourself ragged. You get some rest and then we'll put two heads on it."

Sam stared at her like he'd never seen anything quite like her before breaking out into a weak but genuine smile. "Yes ma'am," he said.

After Sam had showered and changed into some fresh clothes Jody retrieved from the Impala's trunk, Sam crashed hard on the guest room bed. He'd been more exhausted than he'd been willing to admit. Jody leaned against the doorframe and watched him sleep, marveling at how young he looked when the weight of the world wasn't on his shoulders, at least for a few hours.

As a kid, Jody had wanted to be Wonder Woman. Becoming a police officer had been the closest she could come to professional hero, wielding a gun and the law instead of super strength and handcuffs instead of a magic lasso. She'd eventually given up on most of her heroic aspirations, happy to keep the peace of her hometown and finding purpose as a wife and mother. After her son had died, she'd lost a lot of that purpose and had in turn lost herself in a dark period.

But it was being pulled into the lives of hunters like the Winchesters, Bobby Singer, and Rufus Turner that steered her back on the path. They were the first real life examples of Big Damn Heroes Jody had ever met. She might not be much use in fighting time gods and zombies and leviathan, but she could damn well look after the ones that did.

Every hero needed a mother, and that, Jody knew with all her heart, she could be for the one sleeping in her guest room. She could be the refuge in the storm.

- fin -