Spoilers:Buffy comics, Season 1 and 2
Warnings: Coarse Language
Disclaimer: I did not invent Sam and Faith, Kripke and Whedon did, all hail. Annabel and company were created by Stephen Carpenter and are borrowed from the movie Soul Survivors.
Gary, Indiana, January, 2006
In a bustling café, two men in their twenties sat opposite one another drinking their java. With a customary loom Sam rose to place his lap top in front of his shorter but better looking brother.
"Still getting e-mails from your college buddies? Salem, Massachusetts." Dean shot Sam a quirk of an eyebrow and a smirk of the lips. "Witches gone wild?"
"It looks like a skin walker, ghost or demonic possession. It's odd, weird and freaky so that's us." Sam was falling back into hunting like a duck to water - it was as if college and normalcy were a distant dream brought back into his consciousness by blasts from the past like this letter from Sean Wilberforce, a lab tutor from Sanford.
Meg, the girl he met on his aborted trip to California, caused a disruption in Sam's revenge driven return to the hunting life.
Thank God Sam did turn back from trying to find Dad, or else Dean would be dead by now.
"Odd weird and freaky - that's you, dude, not me. The case? Yeah, sounds right up our alley," Dean's face broke into a lecherous smile, "And we should check up on Emily Jorgeson in Boston, see if she's recovered yet from nearly being sacrificed to a pagan god by her folks."
"It's only been two days, she's not you, I'd say she wouldn't be over it." Sam wasn't over Jess, half a year could pass and you could still hurt every day with grief.
"She might need to talk about it to someone who understands, might need a shoulder to cry on." Lust was one of the seven deadly sins that Dean most frequently indulged in.
Solo gratification was all Sam could deal with right now, anything else would feel like the final nail in Jessica's coffin.
Salem, Massachusetts, January, 2006
The ethereal blonde who greeted Dean and Sam at her front door caused Dean's flirtatious charm to kick into high gear. He managed to con a sandwich out of her straight away.
The blonde, a swimming instructor for disabled children was called Cassie Winters, she used to date Sean when they were both attending high school in Salem.
"Sean and I broke up three years ago, he was in California, I was in Mass, it was too hard once he was in college. I dropped out of college…" Cassie passed Dean the sandwich she fixed for him in her family's kitchen. "Enough mayo?"
"Awesome," A thumbs up signal was given by Dean to reinforce that mouthful statement.
"But we'll always be friends; he saved my life, even if he does shoot off his mouth about me to his co-workers these days." Using her hands and strong swimmer's arms Cassie swung herself up to sit on the kitchen island. "Crap, this is going to sound insane. Sean's lab assistant said you helped her brother in Florida? But I don't know how you can help me, I mean it's not like I'm being haunted… I saw a ghost I think… But she couldn't be a ghost and if she is I think she might be worse than a ghost, because I think she went to Hell..."
"Start from the beginning," Sam advised the stressed woman.
"The very beginning?" Cassie put her head in her hands and trembled. "It sounds nuts. Okay, in my freshman year of high school I met this new transfer - Annabel Lehane who had moved with her family from Boston to Salem. We were both in the swim team and we became best friends, we hung out together all the time, painting each other's toenails sleeping over at each others house, tying up the phone lines when we were apart and generally driving our parents crazy, the whole teenage gal pal hog."
Sam and Dean politely waited as Cassie paused for breath.
"So anyway, in sophomore year her mom passed - car accident. Annabel's mom drank and drove once too often. Ironic, I should have learned huh?" Cassie's hands shook. "Annabel went kind of crazy afterwards, did dumb teen cry for help stunts, shoplifting, sleeping around, dropped out of swim team, would have dropped out of school if me and her dad hadn't persuaded her not to but I stuck by her. And this dark place Annabel went to, she clawed her way back out of it. And in senior year our lives were so on track, hell we knew everything, we were fricking perfect little princesses on prom night. See that collection of photographs hanging on the wall? Bottom left."
Four two-dimensional fading teenagers in formal attire beamed self consciously at the camera Cassie's dad held back in 1999. One blonde and one brunette wearing similar clinging black dresses, two tuxedo clad guys with their arms around their best girls' waists and a dab of zit cover up on their chins. Smiles frozen in time, forever young, forever in love.
The girls' prom gowns were cut low. Cassie and Annabel were bangable little babes back then, weren't they just? Sam blinked, his heart and groin were in the grave, he refocused back on Cassie's words.
"That's me and Sean and Annabel and Matt. I used to date Matt before Sean. Annabel always wanted him. Matt was a great guy, won a scholarship to Harvard. I murdered him and I murdered Annabel when they were both only eighteen." Cassie grabbed a tissue out of a box beside the fruit bowl. She dragged the tissue across her eyes with a violent jerk.
Feeling confident that Cassie would elaborate on that last statement Sam made a soothing murmur from the back of his throat.
An expression of compassionate concern played over Dean's features, Sam noticed him eye up the fruit bowl appraisingly at the same time.
"It was the week Annabel and I started Middleton College in Illinois." Cassie sped up her words so fast she verged on gabbling. "We were so excited we both got accepted to the same college. Sean and Matt's colleges started the week after ours did. They were spending the night with us after driving us to Middleton. We all went to a freshers' party at a Sorority house and it sucked, Annabel found out about a rave being held in an abandoned church on the outskirts of town."
Tears were running down Cassie's face. "Annabel and I were dancing together all night and I kept having shots from this hipflask of vodka Matt brought along to the rave - it was hot inside. And when it came time to leave I made out with Matt in the car while Sean was inside the church looking for Annabel. Sean saw, he was pissed at me.
So… yeah, it was raining, I was driving back to college alongside the lake and trying to convince Sean me kissing Matt had been nothing, while at the same time attempting not to let Annabel in the back seat know what I did with her boyfriend. A car in front of us on the highway spun around in the wet." Cassie's words were almost intelligible by this stage. "And because I wasn't concentrating - because I'd been drinking and cheating on my boyfriend - I ploughed into it and pushed it and us over a bank into Lake Michigan and all three occupants of that other car died and so did Matt and Annabel."
"I'm sorry." Sam and Dean both said it together on the same beat. Jesus, imagine having that on your conscience.
It made perfect sense for Annabel to be an unquiet spirit.
"And you've seen the ghost of Annabel?" Dean was the picture of helpful non shocked understanding.
Slowly, Cassie nodded. "Yeah, and so did Annabel's dad on Christmas Eve, we both did. That's why I know I'm not crazy."
Boston, Massachusetts, January 2006
Being reformed and all, Faith never meant to screw with her old man's double's mind.
Faith's father died in an armed hold up of a liquor store gone wrong when Faith was five and then everything in her young life truly went to shit.
Ma turned into a mega bitch, they moved out of their three bedroom house into a cheaper apartment in a worse part of Southie than they lived in before. Ma started to hit both the bottle and Faith.
So it was too tempting not to glimpse the life Faith's double once led in Salem in this Earth dimension… what stinking luck that at the same time a squatting Faith brushed away the snow from Annabel Faith Lehane's plaque in a Salem lawn cemetery, to read what verse from the Good Book got chosen to sum up Annabel's brief life - Annabel's father and her best friend arrived carrying white roses to lay down on Annabel's grave on Christmas Eve morning.
Awkward.
How dumb of Faith to think that wearing shades would disguise her sufficiently during her tourist jaunt around Salem. Faith was constantly dumb, she verged on being retarded.
Fortunately Faith's boyfriend was waiting in his van for her so she could beat a hasty retreat leaving a stunned Cassie Winters and Colin Lehane in her wake.
Tonight in January as snow fell on the streets outside, she walked down the stairs from her third floor apartment in the urban renewal area she grew up in, she deserved to live in shit surroundings - that was why she ended up back here wasn't it?
Faith resolved to dump Kenny again this evening albeit less violently than she had at seventeen. Being a guitarist instead of a drummer on this Earth, and with an added seven years of maturity still did not alter the fact that although a gifted musician, a stud in bed and funny, Kenny was fundamentally a cheating asshole.
She wouldn't go to California again, no, she always intended to go to the Caribbean and fight evil by night, she was a worthless piece of trash who had so much to make up for, and laze on the beach by day. She didn't deserve a normal life like Buffy, Vi and Kennedy intended to have once they made magic leave their world, because Faith gutted like a squealing pig…
"Hey, Jake," Faith walked quickly up to the doorman at the bar Kenny was playing in tonight. "Left the navy, huh?"
"Sorry, do I know you?" Jake who popped Faith's cherry in his parent's bedroom one summer night at a party when she was fourteen and wasted, stared down at her puzzled.
Faith never lost her virginity to this world's Jake. Fucking with her own head was the one thing she was good at. "No. Got you mixed with someone else."
With a swish of her hips Faith headed towards the bar once she left her jacket and scarf with the hat check chick. What the hell made her come back to South Boston? It wasn't like the Artic hellhole held pleasant memories for her. And that was because she…
"Who's next?" The bartender dithered between Faith and an escaped NBA player standing in front of him at the bar.
It took two seconds for Faith to give NBA and the pallid bartender the automatic test she gave every male with a pulse and some vampires that didn't. Would she bang NBA or the bar tender if she got stranded with them on a desert island? Hell yeah to NBA, and probably the bartender if NBA got killed by a cocoanut falling out of a palm tree.
"The lady was first." NBA must be an MIT hobbit slumming it. His eyes were kind and he looked kinda sad, not like he was going to start hitting on her.
She rewarded him with a sultry raise of her eyelashes. He could hit on her if he wanted, no problems
"A pitcher of beer," she tossed a greenback in front of the bartender.
"Freezing night, huh?" NBA was smiling across at her.
"Winter." Faith rolled her eyes. Lame. Talking about the weather? Lame.
"Yeah, guess it is, but it's still freezing." NBA moved aside for the bartender to pass Faith her pitcher of beer.
Faith narrowed her eyes but not at NBA, she spotted Kenny approaching at two o'clock on her right.
"Hey, baby." Kenny slid his hands around her waist and kissed her bare shoulder.
No violence, she was newly twenty five, she could do this.
"Hey Kenny," Faith twirled around and dimpled up at him. She thought they could work out in this dimension, dumb, dumb, dumb,"You know how you screwed yah room mate's sister last Friday afternoon after I left your apartment?"
"I don't know what trouble makin' bitch lied to you, Faith." Kenny glared at the tall guy standing beside them hanging onto every word spoken. "Hey, bud? Fuck off."
NBA backed away with an apologetic hand gesture.
Tilting her chin up mulishly Faith turned her attentions back to Kenny. "Don't bullshit me, Kenny, I'm quicker than that." She twisted her mouth. "Real quick."
The pitcher of beer was overturned on Kenny's head with lightning speed. Oops. Déjà vu.
Seven years ago her world's Kenny used amphetamines too much and backhanded Faith across the face when she pulled the same trick. She used her newly discovered slayer strength to snap his forearm in return.
Today Kenny clenched his fist, unclenched it and said. "I'm sorry, Faith. It wasn't you it was me." He slunk off damply.
This world rocked even if Faith still hadn't discovered where all the cool vampires hung out or even the geek ones.
There might be something supernaturally weird happening in Maine next week, who would guess Faith had been driven to studying fatality reports in newspapers to try and find evil to vanquish?
A passing guy nearly spilled a glass of water all over her, she dodged with nimble grace.
"Aiming to host your own little wet t-shirt competition?" Faith snapped with frustrated displacement of hurt. Kenny, Robin, it never worked because she wasn't good enough for anyone. Slut, tramp, worthless whore.
The apologizing unco turned out to be NBA's brother. Dean was the unco one and Sam was the giant.
The Winchester brothers were both frigging hot.
She'd screw Dean the moment they swam ashore on her imaginary Gilligan's Island. Judging from the flicker of movement on Dean's brow he was running through a similar scenario with her.
Sam Winchester asked if he could buy her a drink.
Nothing like getting back in the saddle after being bucked from a horse, not that Faith would honestly know - she'd never even touched a horse in her whole mostly misspent and entirely urban or in prison life.
Should she be good or should she be bad? And with which brother?