A/N: Spoilers for No Rest For The Wicked.
This be my first fanfic, of absolutely any kind. That's right, no longer a fanfic virgin. There are original characters, though I try my best to keep it about the boys. As much as I can. So this is just, like, weird, because I always told myself I wouldn't write fanfic, but here I am. Wrote one. Part one of three. Hope you enjoy!
Let Me Die In My Footsteps
Part One
There's been rumors of war and wars that have been
The meaning of the life has been lost in the wind
And some people thinkin' that the end is close by
'Stead of learnin' to live they are learning to die.
Bob Dylan "Let Me Die In My Footsteps"
Dean has been in Hell for eighteen months and Lilith dead for two when Sam picks up his first hitchhiker. He's on his way to Savannah from Nashville and the constant purr of the engine is vibrating the air into a thick, suffocating silence when he sees the hitcher from half a mile off. Before his logic stops him he's slowing down and pulling off, stopping just in front of the man, who runs to the Impala and hops in.
The rocking of the car and the weight of the hitcher as he sits down feels like betrayal, but only for a minute, because then the man is talking and Sam has to focus on responding and driving at the same time again for the first time in a year and a half.
"Thanks for stopping, man," says the hitcher. He's tall and scruffy and has a crazy flare in his eyes, though it is a grateful crazy flare. Sam can still remember Dean's voice, and only has to refresh it in his memory by dialing Dean's voice mail every once in a while, and in his head Dean's voice is saying, What, so the job's not crazy enough you gotta add freakin' psychos to the mix?
Demons I get….
Sam asks, "Where're you headed?"
"Far south as ya can take me," says the hitcher.
Sam almost regrets stopping for the guy when he starts talking about, well, everything. The hitcher, Tom, or Tommy, or Tommy-Boy like his great aunt Helen used to call him, was fresh out of rehab and on his way to starting over, and Sam can remember a similar conversation back when he hitchhiked to Palo Alto and the normal life that ended about the same as his old life, in a tower of flames and a decade worth of nightmares.
He hasn't been home in a few days.
Early on in life Sam found that the cheapest rides for hitchers cost only the conversation and your own story.
And the more the hitcher talks, the less they're likely to have to pay a steeper price.
Sam's price isn't anything, but Tom talks a mile a minute and in the end Sam considers picking him up a win. Sam brings him all the way to Atlanta before Tom gets a ride to Miami with a trucker at a rest stop and the silence of the car when he's gone burns in Sam's ears.
Savannah turn out to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions, says his inner Dean. Sam doesn't quite end up in the hospital or unconscious but he's dazed and unfocused as he sews thirty stitches into his side where an angry homeowner swiped him with a broken lamp after he clears the angry spirit out of the house, and his head is oozing blood into his eyes from the bookshelf that fell on him.
He bolts as soon as he's good to drive, heading north to Greensboro, where there's been evidence of a werewolf, and he picks up a thin, busty woman a few years his senior on 77 outside Charlotte. She buys him lunch at a diner and when they part ways she's surprised that he never makes a pass at her.
Sam starts to associate names and faces of hitchers with the jobs he works. After the werewolf, that turns out to be a feral dog with rabies, there is Jordan. Jordan's a schoolteacher in Kentucky on his way to a funeral in Chicago. Sam takes him as far as Indianapolis before he catches word of a black dog in Missouri and heads west.
After the black dog and on the way to a haunted post office in Oklahoma there's Humphrey, the Carney. Humphrey comes from a Romani family who crisscrossed the country in a caravan, and he's reuniting with them in San Diego for some festival.
In Texas he has a scare that starts with him picking up a man even bigger than he is wearing sunglasses, which makes him uneasy for reasons that he can't understand.
The guy's at least as old as Dad was, with the same military stiffness and an unkempt mustache. He's the first person Sam hesitates to stop for, but he does.
The guy says he's "just making my way around the country, y'know, seein' the sights and shit like that."
"Hm," says Sam.
Sam can see the guy eyeing him, and it makes him uncomfortable, but not enough to pull over. The guy talks nearly nonstop. He talks about his sister in Fort Lauderdale and the six years he did with the Navy, and the three dogs he's had in the last ten years that have all died suddenly and unexpectedly.
The guy says his name is Gary but the police that arrest him at the next gas station for the rape and murder of a young man in Dallas call him Eustace Malone, and though Sam was sure he could beat the guy in a fight he's also sure he doesn't ever want to have to.
He sets rules for himself.
1. No one after dark.
2. No one wearing sunglasses.
3. No one I can't take on. Easily.
4. Only more than one if it's a man and a woman, not two men, and only more than two if at least one is a child, and never more than three.
5. Trust my gut.
The logical, Dean-voiced part of his brain tells him to just stop altogether. It says, are you that eager to see me again? and what if the next's a woman in white, retard? The police gonna arrest her for ya, too? and you've taken dumb to a whole knew level, Sammy.
In New Mexico, where a poltergeist is infesting a ranch he picks up Eli, a ranch hand, whose car broke down, and in the same state there's a family of four with a flat tire.
He begins to dread the silence between passengers.
There's a hole in the world where Dean used to fit. Sam tried to patch it first with killing Lilith, and now she's dead. She's not in Hell where she can crawl out again but wherever Azazel went. She left him with a scar across his stomach that looked like knotted licorice and every month or so he dreams of fire and children and babies with abilities.
There's a hole in the world that he tried to fix next with saving people, hunting things, the family business, but that tears the hole open when he sews his own stitches and the bed closest the door remains empty.
He recalls the six months he'd lived without Dean the first time Dean died, when the human left him and all that remained was the killing and the structure and the cold, and now he can hardly tell himself apart from what he kills sometimes and he knows it's not just the apathy.
If it's supernatural, we kill it.
He thinks of getting hotel rooms with just one bed, and organizing the trunk, or selling the Impala because as hard as he tries he can't think of it as a she and he never looks at it beyond locating it in parking lots, but when he does he feels the hole get bigger, not smaller.
He thinks, in the empty stretches along I-40 between Albuquerque and Flagstaff, about getting a dog, one of the strays he sees or the signs of 'Free Puppies' outside farms, but that, like the bed, feels like betrayal, like substitution, like an acceptance that Dean would never sleep in the same anonymous hotel or be his one constant companion in their quest around the continent. The detached logic of his brain says he isn't to that stage yet and the side of him that still expects to see Dean, six-pack in hand, stumble into the motel room at midnight says he'll still get Dean back, somehow, anyhow, as long as he tries and wishes and prays hard enough.
There's a hole in the world that can't be filled or patched or fixed, but it can be covered by strangers and their stories that could carry him away from his own for at least a few more miles, miles that then, at least, he wouldn't just be thinking of the times he'd driven that same road with Dean, or the million roads just like it.
Dean's been gone for two years when Sam picks up Emanuel the wandering priest in Mammoth Lakes, California. By now Bobby has stopped calling, though every now and again Sam gets a letter at his P.O. Box in Wichita.
Emanuel is forty-seven and wears khaki pants and a plaid flannel shirt.
"I ditched the robes way back. People are much less likely to pick up a guy who looks like a psycho cultist that drinks the blood of infants," says Emanuel. "Although it could just as easily be that no one wants to be preached at, nevermind that all I want is a ride so I won't have to walk through Death Valley."
"You walked through Death Valley?" asks Sam.
"Only metaphorically. Faithfully. 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.'"
Dean's voice says, been there, done that.
Emanuel says, "I was actually only a pastor for a few years before I hit the road."
"Oh yeah?" Sam says, and tries not to think of Jim.
"It was the denial. Of what's going on all around us," says Emanuel.
"Of what?"
"You know, demons. Hellspawn. The supernatural. You know, there's a sigil of protection on the trunk and you're wearing an amulet around your neck," says the priest. "You are a hunter, aren't you?"
And it's only a lifetime of training that keeps Sam from slamming on the brakes.
"Oh don't be so surprised," says Emanuel. "It's obvious, but only if you know what to look for. And you scream it. 'Lone Wolf.'"
Sam keeps his eyes on the road.
"Tell you what," says Emanuel. "I'm on my way to bless the water of a town in Washington. They've been having problems with a vengeful spirit that's taken up residence in a public swimming pool. But I've gotten word of a demonic possession in Denver that could be right up your alley."
Sam has an inner alarm blaring. It was the alarm he wishes he'd had when he first met Meg. But there was also something familiar about Emanuel, like Jim, like he knows what the world is hiding.
Like he knows there was something the world is hiding from.
But he doesn't get that feeling that Emanuel is hiding, not anything, so he asks, "What signs have there been?"
"Eyewitness," says Emanuel. "I've got a contact out there, retired hunter by the name of Gaines who saw a guy with black eyes. You know the black. The pitch of Hell."
"I know the black."
"Well, Gaines isn't exactly ready and able to take care of it himself. His was a forced retirement, you know? So he called me, asked me to come take care of it. I was going to head that way after taking care of this spirit, but if you can go there now, it would take a good deal of worrying off of me."
"Have there been killings?"
"Not yet," says Emanuel, "but who wants to wait and see? It's a good day when we killers of evil are prevention and not clean-up, you know?"
Sam barely nods. He can only think of everything he's never been able to prevent. His hands are slick on the steering wheel with sweat. He grips it tighter and tries (fails) to not think of Jess and Max and Meg and Ava and Andy and Jake and Caleb and Jim and Dad and Dean and Dean's been gone (dead) for more than three years (three years, three months, six days and twelve hours, not that he's counting, not that there's a clock in his head ticking the seconds and minutes and hours that turned too soon to days and weeks and months. Three years) and he thinks, yeah, it would be nice to for once, for once, preempt instead of avenge. To not have to talk to the families of victims.
Emanuel asks, "so do you have a job lined up or can you help me out?"
"I can do it," says Sam.
He and Emanuel trade contact info and Emanuel gives Sam Gaines' address in Westminster, a suburb between Denver and Boulder. They part ways at a rest stop outside Sacramento where Sam veers East on I-80 and Emanuel gets a ride towards Washington on 5.
The road waves into the sky in the heat, and the sight is hypnotizing on the long stretches of nothing through Nevada and Utah. In the heat of summer the sky looks as orange as the earth. Sam takes I-80 through to Cheyenne before heading south on I-25.
From where Gaines lives Sam can see the skyline of Denver in the distance through a thick haze. It takes some doing to find Gaines' house. It's on a hill near a small airport, squished into that tight kind of suburbia that gives Sam twinges of jealousy like an ulcer burning in his stomach.
He parks the Impala along the curb and tucks his gun into the back of his pants as he climbs out of the car.
The house looks normal. It's white and the lawn is well trimmed, if a bit brown. There is a wooden ramp leading up to the front door over the stairs and it creaks and sinks as Sam walks up it. The doorbell echoes softly inside. Mounted on the door Sam recognizes a protective seal that keeps out harmful entities. Think you'll even be able to go inside, Sammy?
He hears the creaking of floorboards inside and a blur through the mottled glass around the door. A peephole has been installed about three feet above the ground. There is a pause, but then the door opens.
Gaines is in a wheelchair, is around Bobby's age, and his left hand is hidden behind the door where Sam's sure the man's got a weapon ready to use.
"Mister, uh, Gaines?"
"Uh-huh, that's me. You Sam?"
"Yes."
"Sam Winchester, right? You and your brother let loose Hell a few years back?"
"That's, um, that's me, yes."
"Emanuel called from Oregon somewhere," says Gaines. "Said you might show up."
They stare at each other in silence. A dog barks down the street.
"Well," says Gaines, "I suppose you should come in."
He opens the door all the way and rolls backwards to let Sam inside. Sam glances at the seal before stepping through the entryway. Gaines doesn't let go of the shotgun he's got, but he's holding it more out of habit than threat.
"I saw the demon just a few blocks from here on the street," says Gaines. "On Aspen Lane. It's possessing the body of a woman, short redhead with two kids. Husband's working all the time, so I'm not sure if anyone else's noticed."
"You staked it out?"
Gaines snorts. "That's 'bout all I can do, now." He taps his leg with the shotgun.
"How did—?"
"How did I get paralyzed?"
"If you don't mind me—"
Gaines shrugs. "Not even close. Was a stupid thing, totally my fault, you see? I went in blind. Up in the mountains, 'round Rocky Mountain National Park, a bunch of hikers and cross-country skiers were going missing and never found. Not too uncommon, really, but it always happened at the same time—the full moon. I thought it was a werewolf, see, but it wasn't. A man had been killed up there a while back and he was getting revenge for something, you know, the usual dumbass sort of spirit thing where they've misplaced all their rage and blah blah blah. Anyway, I was prepared for a werewolf, not a spirit. It got the drop on me, shoved me off a trail into a little ravine. It was only luck someone else came along and found me."
Gaines harrumphs.
"The shit thing of it is," the man says, "the spirit killed another fellow while I was recovering, before I could salt and burn the guy's bones. Emanuel helped me with that one.
"It just goes to show, eh? The full moon was just a coincidence, not even the time of month the guy was originally killed. This job, it's crazy. As soon as something makes sense, run."
Sam frowns. "How do you mean?"
"Well, way I see it, once you think you know anything the world will up and show you that you know jack shit."
Fuckin' story of my life, says Dean in Sam's head.
"Do you know why this demon is here? Is it doing anything?"
Gaines shakes his head. "Not really doing much of anything. She takes the kids to school, makes food, takes out the trash. She works as a nurse at St. Anthony's, over on 84th, and as far as I can tell she hasn't missed a shift. I know the doctors there."
"And you're sure she's possessed?"
Gaines looks at Sam like he's a moron, and Sam drops it.
"Her shifts are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, eight to eight. Best to wait until tomorrow to do anything, since Tuesdays she stays home. On Tuesdays she doesn't leave the house once she takes the kids to school, and the husband leaves for work at eight-thirty. So that's a window from nine A.M. to three-thirty, when the kids are dropped off by the bus."
Sam nods. He knows getting inside probably wont be too hard. Demons haven't scared him since Lilith.
"Tomorrow it is," he says.
"Now, if you don't mind me asking, what happened?"
"What happened when?"
"At the gate. Word's gotten round, boy. But it hasn't been the good kind of word, you know? Just word from demons here and there. Word no hunter can really trust, though some morons do."
Sam sighs. His chest feels like it's melting like plastic in a fire, and phantom pain stabs through his back.
"It's a long—"
"Kid, everything's a long story in this line of work. I showed you mine, you show me yours. And besides, you're here helping me. I'm not going to shoot you or anything if I don't like what I hear."
Yeah, he says that now, Sam hears Dean's voice. Just wait till he finds out you're a freak, Sammy.
"There was this demon," Sam says, "who wanted this gun we had, and it turned out to be a key to this door and the demon possessed this guy to open the door for him and we failed to stop them."
"The brevity of that story leaves me thinking you're hiding a lot, kid, and the only place to hide is in the dark," says Gaines.
Sam looks at him, bemused. "Did that even make sense?"
Gaines slaps his unmoving leg and laughs.
"From the stories I heard about you I'd been thinking you were some sort of sociopathic psycho, Winchester, but you're not half bad. We've all got secrets, I guess."
Sam shrugged.
"Anyway, it's getting late. I've got a guest room if you want it. And a couple of exorcisms I have marked in my library, if you need them."
"I don't need the exorcisms, but I would appreciate the room," says Sam.
He ends up cooking dinner for Gaines, after he finds out the guy lives on microwave dinners. "Cooking in a wheelchair is a major pain in the ass," says Gaines, "which is impressive since I can't even feel mine."
Gaines shows him the house in the gray light of twilight. They stroll—or, at least, Sam strolls and Gaines wheels himself along in some semblance of strolling—through the neighborhood. The house to the demon's left is painted yellow, with a "For Sale" sign in the yard and a post with brochures. A car is in the driveway but all the blinds are shut. On the other side toddler toys are strewn across the driveway and yard, a red tricycle, a pogo stick, chalk. Gaines tries to help Sam come up with some sort of plan of attack and Sam doesn't tell him it isn't necessary.
The bed in the guest room is lumpy but feels like heaven after all the motels, and Sam sleeps as soundly as he ever has, which isn't very much, but in the morning he feels rested.
He leaves at nine, just walks over to the house on Aspen Lane and rings the doorbell. The kids and the husband are gone, and when the wife answers the door he knows she's a demon only because he is exactly the freak Dean used to say he was.
He says, "Step inside," and she does. He enters after her, and when she shuts the door behind them her eyes are black and furious.
"Well, if it isn't Sammy Winchester," she says. "What a surprise meeting you here. It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"Meg."
"In the flesh." She stands with one hand on her hip, tilted to one side. "Although, for your information, my name is not Meg. Never has been—that belonged to the meat-suit I was so rudely evicted from."
Sam waves one hand and pins Meg to the wall of the front hallway.
"Picked up some fun knew skills, did we?" Meg hisses, "Good to know Father did some things right."
Sam sneers. "He didn't."
Meg grins, a demonic grin incongruous with the possessee's body. She laughs.
"That's what you think, Sammy-boy! You're right on the path Father had hoped. You're just a few years slower than anticipated."
Sam rolls his eyes. He says, "So when did you escape Hell? Through the Gate?"
Meg smiles a Cheshire-Cat smile. "You'd be surprised how easily escapable Hell truly is. I just happen to know all the cracks."
There is silence in the room. Then Sam says, "What are you doing here, Meg?"
"I told you, my name isn't Meg." She strains her arms to free herself from the invisible force (Sam) but in vain.
"And I told you to tell me what you're doing here." His voice takes on a reverberating, intenseness. It doesn't change, but the power it presented did.
Meg looks strained. She grits the woman's teeth and clenches shut her eyes. But she loses her battle. Her black eyes glaze and her whole body relaxes as she opens her mouth to speak.
"I am looking for someone," she says.
"Who?"
"A chosen child."
"Chosen?"
"Like you. Chosen by father."
Sam pauses. He crosses his arms, pensive. "There's more of us?"
"Yes."
"I thought they were all killed at Cold Oak?"
"No. Only those who were ready to compete."
Sam narrows his eyes.
"How many more are there?"
"Only Father knew," says Meg. "He made as many as he thought necessary. Genetic diversity."
She sneers the last sentence as though it's gasoline in her mouth.
"And there's one of them here?"
Meg doesn't answer.
"Tell me where the child is," says Sam. He doesn't feel powerful. Usually he just feels dirty.
"He's anywhere within ten miles of here! I can't find him! You think I'd be prancing around in this flowery, nursing, human puppet if I knew where he was?"
Sam arches an eyebrow. He smiles at her frustration, unable to quench the vindictive pleasure he feels from her pain.
"So it's male, then? And why do you want to find him so badly?"
"To kill you!" Meg snarls. "To train him to maim and torture a kill and destroy you, Sammy!"
She wrenches an arm from the wall and makes a mad swipe at his head. Sam takes a step backwards but keeps an impassive face.
"Why can't you find him?"
Meg peels her other arm from the wall.
"He keeps—aargh! —He keeps moving around! I can't pin him down! There's too much interference! Gurargh! How are you doing this!"
Sam stands like a lion, poised and ready to hunt, and says, "Haven't you heard?" He smiles a jackal's grin. "I'm your King."
She breaks free. She lunges at him.
Sam sighs and says, "Go to Hell."
And she does.
Only briefly Sam wonders what her name really is. He figures he'll find out next time he sees her.
He calms the woman who was possessed, and she's so freaked he figures she'll chalk the whole experience up to too much coffee and stress within a week.
He only goes back to Gaines' house to grab his stuff and the car. Gaines wants to know, blow by blow, how it went, but Sam just tells him it was nothing. He gets a room at the nearest hotel, and researches fires in the area between the present and twenty-five years ago, but he finds nothing of suspicion in Denver or the surrounding area, and any trail that ever could have been is long gone. Without Ash he really can't track the Special Children, and with Azazel gone he doesn't see the point in trying. Maybe this child can live the normal life Sam used to crave.
He heads east.
He gives more rides, gains more scars. He picks up a man who only speaks in movie quotes.
"So where are you trying to get to?"
"Somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert."
"…That's the opposite direction…."
"We can't stop here! This is bat country!"
Another hitcher tallies road kill. There are runaways and castaways, people on quests and freaks looking for vindication. There are too many wayfarers to count and they all make Sam feel normal.
He sees Jo once, from afar, and doesn't approach her even after he knows she's seen him. He disappears—it's what he's good at—and if she ever looks for him he doesn't stick around to find out.
He visits Rufus Turner in Canaan, Vermont. He brings a handle of Johnny Walker Blue and while Rufus isn't the best of company, in next to no time Sam's drunk like a freshman's first shot and barely together.
The man tells him to, "fuckin' pull yourself together, this is ridiculous," and Dean's voice in Sam's head agrees.
"Bobby called a month ago," says Rufus. "He asked if I'd seen you."
"Unca' Bobby?"
"Mmm-Hmm. Seemed to think you'd eventually find your way here."
"Wha?"
"That's what I said. Before I told him if you were stupid enough to come here for help I'd boot you out on your ass and send you his way."
"But I brought tha booze!"
Rufus takes a generous swig of the alcohol. "Which is why I'm letting you sleep it off on my couch tonight before I send you on your way."
Sam and his brain, whenever he is intoxicated, refuse to see eye-to-eye. He knows there is a reason he came all the way to Vermont, which is only one step above Maine and below Florida on Sam's list of places he never wants to visit twice. He knows there's a reason he came to Rufus. Rufus deals in things. He has connections. Like Bela.
Sam knows he needs something.
Which is what he tries to tell Rufus.
"I need something," he says. Rufus has already tossed a ratty old afghan at his head (Dude, Afghan? What the Hell's an afghan and why do you think it's a blanket?), and Sam's buried into the couch.
"No shit," says Rufus.
When Sam wakes up in the morning his head is splitting and there's a book next to the table. A note on the cover, in a messy cursive scrawl that Sam assumes is Rufus's, says, "You might find something you need in here. Now get out of my house before I wake up and kick your ass all the way to Bobby's."
Sam takes the book and leaves. He doesn't go to Bobby's. He tosses the book over to the passenger side where it slides beneath the seat.
The roads are endless, and even when Sam's sure he's driven every road in the country, been coast to coast twice in a week, there's a new road and a new ghost and a new problem, and death, and even though it's different every road and ghost and problem and death feels exactly the same.
A year passes in a day, a rush of people and places and in the haze of days Sam lost Dean's voice. He could listen to Dean's old voicemail for hours but there were only those words, and Sam couldn't hear Dean talking, actually saying anything anymore. Even in Sam's memories whatever Dean said had a warped sound that was mostly Sam's voice.
He can't hear what the sound of Dean's voice was, anymore, but he can sometimes hear the words. Dean saying, "You should know how to fix it," and "You're not acting like yourself anymore," and "What you're doing is not going to save me" and "Keep fighting."
Now he only calls Dean's voicemail when he can't sleep in the dark morning hours and he turns over to see the empty bed nearest the door.
The whole in the world where Dean used to be gets bigger, like a canyon being carved out by the pouring torrent of time and the weight of new memories and a life Sam never wanted.
Sam isn't quite sure what drives anymore, during those cross-country treks. He often emerges from a daze with a hundred miles gone and a glaze over his eyes, when a hundred miles before he let the passing white lines of the interstate hypnotize him.
He avoids South Dakota and the last he heard from Bobby was six months ago when he got a letter in his P.O. Box that just said, "Moron."
He picks up Emanuel again just outside Prophetstown, Illinois and doesn't realize until later the irony of it.
"Gaines was impressed by you," says the priest. He's on his way to Bozeman, and Sam's on his way anywhere.
"He was?"
"Sure," says Emanuel. "He said you've got a good head on your shoulders, and if you're a bit weird, it's no more so than the rest of us freaks in the night. That's what he said, verbatim, I think."
Sam is silent, like always. Emanuel doesn't notice. No one really does.
"He's good people."
"Yeah, he is," says Sam.
Emanuel taps his fingers on his knee. "So you got a job going?"
"No."
"Do you want one?"
"Sure."
"Great. Just yesterday I found evidence of a haunting on a road just outside Grand Junction. It's right on your way, I think. You're just headed west, right?"
Sam nods.
"No destination or reason in mind," says Emanuel. "I like it."
Sam shrugs.
"Or maybe you've got the reason part, it's just the destination that's a mystery. That's okay; I'm just talking, anyway. We all just do what we do."
Emanuel laughs.
"So it's been, what, a year since we last met? Weird that we meet up again, eh? Fate, maybe, not that that really makes a difference one way or another. Whether by free will or fate things happen. I don't much care to think about if it's one over the other that gets it done. So what have you been up to this last year? Just the same? Me too. Spreadin' the good word and the good will."
Emanuel sighs.
"Trying to make a dent in the world. Nothing really ever changes though, does it? No matter what we do people will still sin and hold ill will towards their fellow man, and no matter how many demons we exorcize or spirits we destroy more are always popping up."
Sam doesn't know what he could add to the conversation besides, "well no shit," and that doesn't seem like the thing to say at the moment.
So he shrugs.
Iowa passes by like a never-ending occurrence of deja vu. Nebraska is huge. Every time Sam drives across it he thinks it gets bigger, like it's adding area to support the girths of its population.
Emanuel leaves him at North Platte. The priest will head north at Cheyenne and Sam heads southwest on I-76. He gets to Grand Junction just in time to save a local woman from the ghost, which blows out tires and crashes trees into its victims, and even though they're the spindly, weak looking pines of the western slope they're more than enough to crush someone.
He sleeps with her, and in the morning when he wakes up next to her in her home, in her bed, and he can't remember her name or why he was attracted to her the night before he sneaks out and drives away. She was gorgeous, but that was about it, and Sam wishes he could be more like Dean and not have to justify a one-night-stand to himself, because fuck he's lonely. And maybe just for a few minutes (well, more than a few) he likes not feeling like he's the only one on the planet.
Like he's got the whole world balanced between his shoulder blades, pushing down on him, taking for granted that he'd always be there to hold it.
He wonders who, exactly, would notice if he were gone.
Dean's been dead for four years and Lilith for two years and eight months when Sam picks up Calvin outside of Denver on I-76.
Sam's as old as Dean ever was.
Four years have passed since Dean died and Sam thinks he should know better than to get attached to anyone else, but the kid's got the one thing that could fix everything. There's a hole in the world where Dean used to fit, and Sam finds a way to fix it on an interstate in Colorado.