I live in Doubery, a town where nothing interesting happens. I've lived here for nearly all my life, and now I'm going to college only a few miles away. It seems like I can never escape the safety this town offers, so I watched t.v. shows and read books to flee from my dull reality. I absorbed the lives of extraordinary people who solved crimes, battled against demons, and traveled through time. My one and only dream was to go on an adventure like they all had. I learned everything I could ranging from martial arts to operating a telescope, so I could learn the night sky. I went for years never finding an adventure to partake in, and I began to wonder if I ever would. Perhaps the world wasn't meant for adventures. When I first read about the murder of Ally Johnson, a girl who went to the local high school, I thought it was a tragedy and threw the newspaper into the recycling bin. However, I quickly realized that this girl's murder was far more interesting, as strange happenings began to occur in the town. After all this time, I finally was going to have my adventure.
I was re-reading one of my many books on mythological creatures when a knock on the door broke the silence of my house. I glanced up from my book surprised, and closed it quickly. The fact that someone actually came to my door was unusual enough, so I swiftly got out of my chair. I looked through one of the upper level windows to see two men standing outside. One was shifting fromfoot to foot, and the other was whispering something in his ear. The two of them struck me as familiar and trustworthy. I barely contained a squeal when I realized who they were.
I ran down the stairs quickly, pausing in front of the door, suddenly uncertain if these two men were who I thought they might be. I eyed the vase standing next to the door. Most people put glass beads in their vases to make their flowers look nicer. Me? I put salt into the container. (One can never be too cautious.) I took hold of the vase, sprinkling some of the salt near the entrance of the door, far enough away that it could be opened and closed without disturbing the line. A spray bottle filled with holy water was sitting next to the vase, ready for action as usual. I held my breath and turned the brass knob. The two men instantly ceased their conversation, focusing on me instead.
"Hi. I'm agent Alfred Berkley, and this my partner, Agent Fred Stevenson. We're investigating the murder of Ally Johnson. We heard that you knew her, and we would like to ask you a few questions." The man and his partner both flashed their badges in my face before tucking them away quickly. The man, who had introduced his partner and himself was the one I had seen fidgeting beforehand. I hadn't been able to see much of his face from the window, and I nearly swooned at the sight of his jaw line only a foot away from my eyes. His partner was taller and younger, closer to my age, equally as attractive. However, my first thought was that he looked overdue for a haircut.
"Yes, of course. You're US Marshalls, did you say?" I leaned casually against the door frame watching the two of them. They couldn't possibly be who I thought they were, but strange things had been happening all week… maybe it really was them.
"Uh , yes ma'am"
"Funny though… your badges say FBI."
The tall one's eyes widened slightly, and he looked down at his partner as if asking what to do. I could barely hold in a smirk.
"Sam. Dean. No more lying, okay?" I opened the door wider to let them in.
"You must be mistaking us for someone else. I'm Agent Berkley and this is Agent Stevenson," Dean said smoothly, keeping in character. Sam followed along, but I could see the gears in his head turning, trying to figure out how I knew. He may be smart in his own right, but I had the upper head here.
"I know you're not US Marshalls or FBI agents. You're Sam and Dean Winchester, and you're both hunters." I stared at them evenly, waiting for a response.
"How the hell do you know who we are?!" Dean demanded. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at me. I would be lying through the skin of my teeth if I said I wasn't scared. Heck, if I had been wearing boots, I would have been shaking in them. I mean, I was Dean Winchester plus a gun. I doubt there was a single soul who wouldn't be afraid. I locked eyes with Sam, the more level headed one of the duo, and quickly looked toward his brother, and then back to the tall hunter.
"Dean," he said slowly," I don't think you should shoot her."
"Why the hell not?" His gun was still pointed at me. I reached behind the door for the vase, taking a handful of salt just in case.
"Because there's salt around her door," Sam replied. Dean looked down.
"It's a common superstition, Sam."
"I don't think she's a common person, Dean."
"Look, I'd love to help, actually I plan to help, but if somehow I'm not helpful I know someone who is." I interjected. Dean lowered his gun slightly.
"Plus," I said smirking (no use trying to contain it anymore), "I've got pie."
Dean lowered the gun instantly. "Pie? What kind?" Typical Dean, he was more interested in the identity of the pie than the identity of the person standing in front of him.
"Blueberry. Plus some information that you'll want to know, so please come inside."
"Thanks," Sam said with a genuine smile. "We didn't catch your name before."
"Lucy."
"Like the cartoon character from Peanuts?"
"Exactly like the cartoon character from Peanuts."
Sam walked through the doorway and over the salt line. I hadn't been too concerned about him being a demon, but it was nice to have that verified. Dean was following right behind, but I held my hand out to stop him.
"Wait a moment Dean."
"What?"
"How do I know you're you?"
"What? What are you talking about? Of course I'm me."
"I just need to check okay?"
"You didn't need to check Sam!"
"No I didn't. Sam complimented me, though. He said I was an uncommon person."
"Then what do I have to-" Dean sputtered mid-sentence as I threw the handful of salt at his face, followed by a squirt of holy water from the spray bottle.
"That's for pointing the gun at me." I spun around, gesturing for Sam to follow. "Make sure to lock and close the door behind you and try not to disturb the salt line. If you two are here on a gig, I may actually need it."
Once Dean had made it into the kitchen, I had already cut three slices of pie and was placing them onto plates. Sam was sitting at the kitchen table looking out the window, chewing on a thought. Grabbing three forks, I carried over the plates and set one of them in front of Sam. I handed a plate to Dean as he sat down beside his brother. He tucked into the piece before I had even sat down myself.
"This is some damn good pie," he praised.
"Thanks." I smiled eating my own slice. It was good pie if I did say so myself.
"Now, Lucy, what exactly is going on?" Sam asked, eating his pie at a more normal pace. Dean was choking his down as if it was the last piece of pie he'd ever have.
"With the murders you mean?"
"Murders?" Dean asked with his mouth full. Sam's fork stopped mid-air.
"There was only one when we were researching this morning. Has there been another one?" Sam asked anxiously
"Not exactly," I started. "There's been a string of murders going back nearly three hundred years. Sherlock noticed the pattern. He's brilliant, a genius actually. He was looking through some of the cold cases in the area to find any similarities. It turns out there's been eighteen other murders exactly like Ally Johnson's. In each case the victim's cause of death was a puncture wound to the chest, supposedly to the heart."
"Supposedly?" Sam asked, having completely forgotten about his pie.
"The heart is missing in every single one of the bodies. It's completely gone."
"It could be a werewolf. Sometimes they have a taste for that particular organ."
"I doubt it was a werewolf, Dean." I replied looking at the older of the Winchester brothers. "Werewolves are messy. The bodies we've found and the bodies in the autopsy reports aren't ripped up like an animal attacked them."
"What do you think it was then?" he tested.
"There were traces of sulfur at the crime scene."
"So it's a demon?" Sam questioned, cutting off Dean's next sentence.
"That's what it looks like, but it has to be one heck of a demon to keep this game up for so long." I mused
"If the demon keeps switching bodies, it could go on for as long as it likes." Sam responded.
"Until someone kills the evil bastard," Dean added. He was on his second piece of pie, which he had served himself.
"I have a question, though."
"Shoot." Sam encouraged.
"Is that how demons normally kill people?" I asked rhetorically. I knew that it wasn't a demon's typical style.
Sam pursed his lips, and Dean stopped eating his pie. They looked at each other and shook their heads. "Not any demons we've ever faced."
I nodded. "We should go see Sherlock and John. I think they're at the town's hospital examining the body. I figure you'll want a look too. You should meet them anyway. Sherlock's working on the murder as a case, and he isn't likely to let anyone else in. I'll convince them that you two will be beneficial to the case." I paused for a moment, debating over to warn them about Sherlock. "He… isn't the easiest person to work with, but John will keep him in line."
"That would be great," Sam said sincerely.
"One more minute, I need to finish this pie."
"That's fine. I have to grabsome stuff from upstairs." Pushing back my chair, I left the table to head up the staircase. I was only alone for a minute before I heard heavy foot steps behind me.
"Sam?" I asked without turning around.
"Yea."
"Why are you following me?"
"I uhh," he stuttered. "If there is a demon around, then someone should protect you."
"Ahh." I strode evenly up the last few steps on the staircase and into my room. I left the door open for Sam to come in. There was no use leaving him out, and it wasn't like I was going to change. It was sort of sweet of him actually, but I didn't need protection. I could hold my own against a demon any day.
He hesitated for a moment at the doorframe before coming in to join me.
"Whoa."
"Mhmm," I hummed. I lived in the second largest bedroom in the house. I could have moved into the master bedroom when my parents left me in charge of the house while they lived in a lake house a few hours away, but I liked my own room far too much. I had spent hours upon hours decorating the walls and ceiling with traps and symbols from nearly every culture I could find. Other areas were covered in quotes written in circular Gallifreyan. Colors shone through the dark lines of the symbols and words like stained glass. There were jars of salt lining the windowsill, and a TARDIS replica on the nightstand beside the bed. Books and loose leaf paper littered every available surface and at the center of the storm, sat my laptop.
"This is…" Sam's hazel eyes roamed the walls at a loss for words, as he sat heavily on the mattress.
"Impressive? Intimidating? Wonderful?" I suggested, grabbing my brown leather jacket. It was well worn in with an asymmetric zipper, and I'd never loved a piece of clothing more in my life.
"Insane. I was going to say insane." Sam continued his eyes resumed their wandering path over the walls.
"I'll take that as a compliment." I replied. I grabbed a few of the jars filled with salt from the window and put them into my backpack along with a notebook where I had written every chant pertaining to demons I could find. I also put a general book of mythological creatures, an etched flask of holy water, and my laptop into my bag. Finally I slid an iron ring onto my right index finger. Turning to Sam, I asked, "Ready to return downstairs?"
"Yea. Yes of course, lead the way."
Dean was waiting for us at the front door. He winked at Sam as soon as we reached the bottom of the staircase.
"Dean, don't look at him like that. I'm not interested in either one of you, so stop pretending you've got a chance with me. Now," Ignoring their shocked faces and frozen smiles, I paused for a second to control my inner fangirl. "Can I ride in the Impala or not?"
"Wait," Sam turned around in his seat to face me. I was sitting in the backseat of the Impala, completely content to be driving to a morgue with two characters that had been fictional until they showed up at my door half an hour earlier. I wondered if I should be more concerned with this situation than I was. First off, how were they, along with John and Sherlock, even real?
"What was the name of the detective working on this case, again?" Sam asked, interrupting my thoughts.
"Sherlock," I answered turning my gaze from the window to Sam. His hair wasn't as long as I first took it to be. He wasn't pushing it behind his ears yet. What season were they in?
"Sherlock Holmes?"
"A version of him, yes." Sam gaped at me.
"But how can that be? He's fictional!"
"In my world, you're fictional too." I waited for the statement to sink in.
"We're not fictional," Sam laughed. "Look at us! We're real."
"Just as Sherlock is real. Look in my world, you two star in a show called Supernatural. That's why I recognized you when you came to my door."
"So all the symbols on your walls, did you get those from us too?"
"Most of them, but a few of the symbols I found in my own research. I know nearly everything there is to know about you two."
"Sure you do," Dean taunted. "You know nothing about us."
"Where's Cas?" There was no point in beating around the bush. I needed to know what point of time they were in, and how much they knew.
"Cas? I had a girlfriend named Cassie, but I figure she's still back home."
"No. That's not the Cas I'm talking about," I responded. That narrowed it down their time frame considerably, since Cas appeared in season four. At least there weren't any angels to worry about or Sam's demon problems.
"Can I see you anti-possession tattoos?"
"Neither of us have tattoos…That's not a bad idea, though." Sam responded, looking at Dean.
"No it isn't," I had it narrowed down to the beginning of season two, because Sam didn't have the fringe haircut. I missed that one. He used to look so innocent with it. "Now the most important question, do you have the colt?" The car swerved slightly, causing Dean to tighten his grip on the wheel. He was clearly repressing his violent streak.
"How the hell could you possibly know about the colt?" Dean exclaimed after pausing in surprise.
"I told you already. I know nearly everything I could know about you two. I've seen all the episodes. There isn't much you guys could say or do that would really surprise me." I stated matter of fact-ly. "So do you or don't you have the colt?"
"Nope," Dean replied shaking his head. "We don't have it."
"You're lying, Dean. I know you have the colt."
"Fine we have it, but we ain't using it on some minor demon. We need it to kill yellow eyes."
"I know you do, but it would be handy to have just in case." That answer put the brothers squarely in the beginning of season two just as I had suspected. Now that I knew their timeline, I could watch my conversations with them, so I didn't say any spoilers. It was a bit strange, having to be careful not to tell someone their own life's spoilers. I had a new appreciation for Chuck Shurley's character for it.
"This is the place," I pointed at the hospital coming up on our right.
Dean turned into the parking lot without saying a word, and I got the distinct feeling that he didn't trust me one bit. I let out a long breath. How could I get him to trust me? He's going to need to, heck, both of them will need to trust me with whatever we're getting up against. I don't think it's anything they've ever dealt with.
We walked through the front doors where the receptionist, a pleasantly round woman with her hair pulled into a tight bun, asked for some identification. Sam and Dean pulled their badges out instantly. I realized that my ID card was still in my backpack, and I stepped behind the two taller men to retrieve it.
"Hi, I'm Agent Alfred Berkley and this is Agent Fred Stevenson, my partner. We're with the FBI investigating the death of Ally Johnson," I was fairly certain that Dean was correcting the mistake he made with me earlier this morning. I felt the card in the front pocket of my bag and grabbed it just as the receptionist turned her gaze on me.
"Who's that behind you?" The receptionist asked.
"Nancy Stein," I supplied immediately, holding out a college ID card from the nearby university. "I'm working on some research in the labs here."
"I haven't seen you before," the nurse questioned suspiciously, looking intently at my ID card.
"This is the first time I've come to the hospital to do the research. Until now I could do everything on campus, but I wanted to see what being a mortician was like. It's one of the possible career paths I was thinking about. I've examined nearly every cadaver in our labs, but all of those people died of natural causes. I wanted to look into what a murdered body would be like."
"Oh I got you! You're the curious type, aren't you?" I was slightly taken aback by her sudden enthusiasm, but I played along. "I was just like that in college too. A mortician is a good career path. You'll never be out of work, because people just keep dying," she handed my ID back with a laugh. "I'm afraid you might get in the way of the agents, though."
I let my face drop. Turning to Dean, I looked up at him with begging eyes, "I won't be disruptive, I promise. I just really want to see what it's like to work with a different kind of death."
"You should be fine, as long as you don't touch anything." He replied straightening his back.
"Well if that's all settled, go ahead gentlemen and lady. I hope you figure out that poor woman's death."
"Thank you ma'am, we'll do our best," Dean replied, tucking his badge back into his suit pocket.
We walked down the hallway towards the elevator. I've never liked hospitals. They're too white and too clean. I always felt like I was contaminating the sterile walls with my mere presence. I waited impatiently for the elevator doors to open, and the three of us stepped in.
"That was unexpected," Sam noted as soon as the doors shut. "Can I see that ID?" I handed it to him, and he inspected it closely. Dean looked over his brother's shoulder to examine the card as well.
"I can't see a single fault with this ID," Sam marveled as he handed it back to me. "You're just as good as Dean."
"Thank you!" I grinned broadly, resisting the urge to jump up and down in excitement. It wouldn't do well to fangirl in front of two of my favorite characters and scare them away.
"That story wasn't even half bad either." I looked at Dean astounded. I hadn't actually known that he was paying attention to the lie I told the receptionist.
"People think they're compassionate when they help out poor college kids find their passions. It makes them feel good about themselves, and it gets me into places I couldn't have been otherwise."
"So you've done this before?" Sam questioned, raising his eyebrows.
"Well… no. I actually haven't. Most of my adventures take place in fictional worlds. I've been too scared to make my own… that's why I got in on this one as soon as it started."
"It may get dangerous." Sam warned. He put his hand on my shoulder protectively, as if to console me. "We don't want you to get hurt."
"Like I said, I haven't been on an adventure. That doesn't mean I haven't prepared for one. I've been waiting for this my whole life for something like this." I beamed at the two hunters.
"You need to go kid-" started Dean.
"Lucy, my name is Lucy, and I'm not a kid. I'm twenty-one years old. I'm barely any younger than Sam. " I interjected.
"Okay. Whatever. Look Lucy, you don't know what you're getting into, and you could get seriously hurt. We aren't having you die on our watch, and we aren't going to babysit you."
I closed my eyes in an attempt to stop the wave of rage I was about to unleash on Dean. Taking a deep breath to compose myself, I opened my eyes and stared straight at the shorter hunter. "I know more about what we're getting into more than you do, Dean. Who told you all that information in the first place? Oh right, I did. Like it or not, you need me. I'm the only one who understands this town, and I know the lives of all of the fictional people that keep randomly showing up. I'm as intertwined in this are you are. I am staying, and that's all that needs to be said. Understood?" I took a step back away from Dean and stared him down.
Dean looked to Sam for support, but only got a pair of raised eyebrows and a shrug in response. He eyed me again, stepping closer. "Well if you're so prepared, sweet heart, what have you got in the backpack?"
"Salt, holy water, notebooks with incantations, a mythology book, and some other stuff to help with research, and don't call me sweetheart," I replied my voice dripping with disdain.
"No weapon then? See? You're unprepared. You shouldn't be here." His eyes were almost deadly serious. Every inch of his stance radiated tension. He jabbed my chest with his index finger saying, "What if someone attacked you right now? What would you do without a weapon? You'd get KILLED! And I'm not going to be the one left accountable for your life. I've got enough trouble looking out for my own brother as it is. I won't add another person to the mix."
"First off," I said grabbing his hand by the palm of his thumb and twisting it, catching him off balance. I took that opportunity to sweep the leg that was supporting most of his weight out from under him. He fell to the elevator floor, and I followed him, still holding his hand in a wrist lock. I redirected his arm a bit, making him roll over to keep it from dislocating. Pushing his wrist up his back toward the same shoulder, I put him into a shoulder lock so he couldn't move without hurting himself even more. Quickly replacing my hands with a knee to hold his arm in place, I based my other leg out to the side. Dean aimed a kick at my head, but I was out of its range already. His other arm lay useless trapped under his body weight and mine. I hadn't meant for that to happen, but I'd take what I could get. All of this took only a few seconds, and I finished my sentence saying, "I don't need a weapon to fight. But if I did, I certainly wouldn't reach it in time if I kept it in my backpack. No. I'd keep my weapon on my person." I slid my silver knife out from one of the unnoticeable slits in my jacket, and pointed it at his throat. "That way I could access it within a moment's notice."
At that moment the doors of the elevator glided opened in front ofJohn Watson and Sherlock Holmes, who seemed to be in the middle of some heated discussion. John was probably trying to convince Sherlock to eat something. However, he ceased talking as he took in the scene before him. The army doctor's eyes rose so high in astonishment that they were almost concealed by his receding hairline. Sherlock's expression was much subtler, changing from bored to mildly amused. I stood up and slid the knife back into its hiding place, and offered Dean a hand. He took it and hauled himself back into a standing position, saying with his usual cheekiness "I let you do that." Sam was suppressing a laugh from the corner of the elevator at seeing his brother get bested by a girl half his size. I noted that he hadn't done anything to aid Dean during our scuffle. He was probably too shocked or thought Dean deserved it. In either case, I'm glad he hadn't interfered. I wanted Dean to know that I was extremely capable of handling myself.
Refocusing on my surroundings, I smiled at John, whose jaw had dropped as he processed the scene in front of him. Sherlock, on the other hand, took one look at Dean and rhetorically asked, "You didn't make the foolish mistake of underestimating your opponent, did you Mr. Winchester?"