AN: Of course, I own nothing; I'm a mere plebe who worships the genius of others. In this case, Eric Kripke. Oh, and my conspiracy theories are mine alone so forgive me if they don't come to pass and worship me if they do. Also, any discussions on various deities are purely fictional and not a reflection of my beliefs in any way. They are simply further exploration into themes that already exist within the Supernatural universe.

"Far Away"

Chapter One: What's Your Name?

Stepping off the bus in Lincoln I was overwhelmed by a feeling of coming full circle. The last time I'd been this far west had been the night my parents had been killed. And here I was again, on my first case since then, looking for the two men who might make some sense of all of it and dreading it like Anne Boleyn dreaded her own beheading.

I pulled my new cell phone out of my bag. Father Marcus had given it to me before I left that morning along with a bag full of musty demonology books, a new laptop and $500 cash. It became painfully clear to me as he drove me to the bus depot that he'd been planning my "escape" for a long time. And I was pretty sure I knew why. I also knew I had to make the call but the idea scared me more than I wanted to admit. I wasn't sure how Father M had gotten the number but the one thing I'd learned in the twelve years I've lived at Girls and Boys town was to never underestimate a determined exorcist. I let out a deep breath and put the phone away. I would make the call later when I was feeling braver.

I walked around a hulking Husker who was standing indecisively in the middle of the sidewalk. No wonder they're having such an abysmal season. If Brutus can't find his way to his dorm he probably can't find the end zone either. God, I hate football. I swear the Huskers are the only thing you hear about from October through January if you live in Nebraska.

What I really needed to do was look through Dad's journal before I talked to ANYONE. The idea of the gates of Hell being opened didn't sit well with me. I remembered a lot more from my days on the road with my parents than Father Marco or anyone thought I did. But, for as much as I remembered, there was even more that I forgotten and I was going to have to review. It had been fourteen years since the last time I'd been on a hunt and there's only so much a twelve-year-old remembers.

After an afternoon of wandering, which consisted mainly of remembering the times that I'd been to Lincoln with her parents, my stomach asserted it's authority and I decided that it would be wise to listen to it before it did something enormously embarrassing, like growl loud enough to shake the Husker from earlier from his stupor. Luck would have it that I was maybe half a block from Runza and my favorite French fries.

I settled at a table with a chicken sandwich, a pop and fries. Runza has the world's best French Fries. The rest of their menu might be lacking and the smell of the Runzas themselves might be nauseating but the fries were worth it. I took out Dad's journal and my laptop and started studying his notes, adding what I could to the database I was creating, hoping to get myself back into the hunter groove, if there is such a thing.

"Sammy, we can't leave Lincoln without stopping at the first Runza," a voice from the front of the restaurant said.

"Dude, you can't remember which state was colonized first but you know where the first Runza is. That borders on disturbing," I glanced up and had to smile at the two men bickering.

"Shut it and find someplace to sit," the shorter one ordered.

The other one shook his shaggy hair out of his eyes and muttered, "Yes, sir," the sarcasm in his tone was as thick as mud.

I went back to studying Dad's journal. There had to be something in here that I could bring to the Winchester brothers. The last thing I wanted to do was go to them empty handed with everything they've been through the last couple of years.

I remembered John from a couple of jobs he'd worked with Dad, he was a good man and he loved his boys. I smiled thinking about the last time I'd seen him. It must have been about six months before Mom and Dad had been killed and he was working with Dad on a particularly nasty poltergeist case. He'd stopped at the motel before he headed back to Sam and Dean and talked to Mom and Dad for a couple of hours. Sometimes about hunting but mostly about being parents in a world that seemed to be overrun with evil. Not just supernatural evil but garden variety human cruelty as well. He'd smiled at me when he noticed me in the corner with my books and told me that I reminded him of his younger son, Sam. He'd then joked to Dad that he'd bet dollars to doughnuts that one day in the future we'd all be together celebrating the marriage of me and one of his boys. I'd blushed bright red because boys scared me. I could handle a shotgun like a pro and I was a dead aim with throwing knives but I couldn't speak to the opposite sex. Still can't for that matter. I guess some things never change.

"Okay, Dean, those things are noxious," the taller of the two men from earlier said. They had settled at a table not far from me and I could hear him commenting on the other man's food.

"This coming from you?" the other answered around a mouth full of food.

"Seriously they smell dead."

"Probably because they are dead. Hamburger usually is."

"Those things were rank when we were growing up, they aren't any better now."

'You're such a frickin' prima Donna."

I continued pretending to study though I was listening carefully to their conversation. Not because they were saying anything important but because their back and forth insults sounded so comfortable.

After a few minutes of somewhat good-natured ribbing they fell into companionable silence and I went back to reading Dad's journal. There just had to be something useful in here.

Suddenly a long shadow fell over me. It was the taller stranger, who gestured for his companion to come to the table, "Dean take a look at this."

Dean approached us with a French fry hanging out of his mouth, "What is it Sammy?"

Dean. Sammy. Oh. Shit.

"I think that we just found one of our own."

"A Winchester?" he asked.

"No, a hunter. Look at her journal, it's like Dad's."

"Who are you?" Dean asked.

"Libby, Libby Carmichael."

"You're Granddad was Eli Carmichael?" Dean asked.

I nodded.

"It about killed Dad when Meg killed him."

"Meg?" I asked.

"The demon who killed your grandfather possessed a girl named Meg," Sam explained.

"Oh. No one told me much when it happened," I whispered. No one told me much about my grandfather's death because he was one of the primary reasons I was at Girls and Boys Town in the first place.

"I know that feeling," Sam said sincerely.

"Dude, how'd you know that she had a Hunter's journal? You getting' your psychic boy Mojo back?"

"Dean, Mojo is bad voodoo, juju is good voodoo. But anyway, no I thought I saw it when you were eating your third sandwich. So I came over here to check on it."

Sam looked at me again, "What are you doing here?"

"Runza here or Lincoln here?" I asked.

"Lincoln here."

"Looking for you guys actually."

"Why are you looking for us?" Sam asked.

"Partly because Father Marco told me to but mostly because I can sense demons and I thought I could help, maybe."

"How long since you've been on a hunt?" Dean's green-hazel eyes were slightly narrowed, the food obsessed goofball completely gone.

"Fourteen years, I was twelve when my parents were killed on the job."

"Where have you been since?" Sam asked before Dean could say anything.

"Because most people thought Granddad was crazy I was in foster care for a little while but I sent one of my foster brothers to the hospital when he tried to get into my pants and was deemed a troubled case and sent to Girls and Boys Town. I've been there since."

"Doing what?" both brothers asked in unison.

"Ostensibly I've been working as an assistant to Father Marco; in reality I was learning the tricks of the Exorcists trade."

"Then why hasn't the Vatican taken you?" Sam asked.

"Because Father Marco put me on a bus to find a couple of fugitives the day the letter came from the Pope, which happened to be a little over a week after the gates of hell opened up. Coincidence, I think not."

"She's right, Dean. This Father probably thinks that we can protect her as much as we will be able to use her skills."

"Why?" Dean flipped absently through my dad's journal.

"Because, seers are kept in isolation. Treated like an object, a weapon, not a person," Sam answered, "You remember Dad complaining about it to Pastor Jim, don't you?"

"No, I was more interested in Pastor Jim's knife collection. He had some wicked blades."

"There are maybe a handful of Seers born each century and, when the Church can get them, they keep them in complete isolation from the world at the Vatican," Sam continued explaining to his brother, "They're given enough food to survive but little beyond that. When the Exorcists need them they will take them wherever they need to go long enough to do their job but no longer."

"Damn, yeah kid, stay with us."

"This kid is twenty-six thank you," I muttered.

"Same age as Sam."

"I know, your dad told me."

"You knew our Dad?" Sam's voice held a hint of envy.

"I met him a couple of times when he was helping my parents with jobs. The last time was about six months before my parents died."

"So you went with your parents every time?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, it was either that or leave me with Granddad and even by Hunter standards he was nuts. Swore the squirrels were vampires out to get him. Which, at eight I thought was funny. It wasn't so funny when it became the reason to send me to foster care after my parents died."

"Wasn't that dangerous?" Sam asked.

"I don't know, Dean, why don't you tell me? Is it dangerous to be a kid in a scary adult world where you really aren't sure what's happening but you know that most kids' daddies aren't teaching them how to use a shotgun as soon as they're taller than the gun?"

"Yeah," Dean's voice was quiet and even I knew that was odd.

"Was that really what it was like, Dean?" Sam asked his brother.

"Yeah, that's really what it was like. I tried to keep you innocent as long as I could Sammy but I haven't been innocent since I was four."

"Dean…I…"

Dean rolled his eyes, "No, no hugging it out or any of that shit. It's in the past, keep it there."

I almost laughed at the two of them. It was so obvious that they knew each other incredibly well even if they weren't the Bobsey Twins in temperament. But it was funny, they might have seemed to be polar opposites on the surface but I think they were made from the same bedrock. The same bedrock that made John Winchester one of the best, and least insane, Hunters out there. Not to say that John was a pillar of mental heath, because he wasn't. But it seems to me that one must be at least slightly bent to chase after monsters for a living.

"Anyway," I interrupted before things turned into some kind of fistfight (which I assumed happened fairly often), "If you're worried about whether or not I can do it, trust me, I can."

Dean looked me up and down, "Can you handle a shotgun?"

"I already told you I could. I'm proficient with both shotguns and handguns as well as throwing knives though I admit that my lack of height makes me kinda suck at hand to hand. I speak Latin, Greek, Hebrew and some Aramaic. I'm trained by an Exorcist and a hunter. My mother was a medieval scholar. Do you want to check my teeth and look at my pedigree?"

"That isn't necessary," Dean answered a little taken aback.

"You really speak Aramaic?" Sam asked.

"Some, but not much," I told him honestly.

"That's more than most of the rest of the world," I couldn't help but notice when Sam smiled at me that he had dimples. This was bad, really bad; boys with dimples make it difficult for me to speak. But Sam didn't…weird.

"Look, we should probably go back to the motel and finish this," Sam said.

Dean nodded in agreement so I started packing my things up.

"Here, let me help," Sam offered as he slid my laptop into my messenger bag.

"Thanks."

"Whoa, where did you get this text?" he pulled out one of the books Father Marco had added to my bag this morning.

"From Father Marco, the priest who's worked with me for thirteen years."

"I think this is the only copy that exists," he turned to his brother, "This is one of the lost texts of demonology that was thought to be destroyed during the Inquisition."

"How the hell did you or your Priest or whatever end up with it then?" Dean turned to face me.

"Look, a couple of years ago we had to go to Rome because they wanted to test me. Shortly thereafter a bunch of books were discovered to be missing by the archivists at the Vatican. Take what you want from that."

"The good Padre pulled a little breaking and entering."

I chucked, "More like grand larceny but yeah basically."

Dean smiled at me and, for a moment, I felt like a giddy teenager. That smile should have a warning label, "We should really get going," he said as he picked up one of my two backpacks.

Sam still had my messenger bag so I took the other backpack and followed them to the street.

"This is niiiiiice," I said as I dropped my backpack by the rear tire of their car, "We drove around in an old station wagon with fake wood paneling when I was growing up."

Dean visibly winced, "Ouch. Well, climb in."