They're driving on an almost familiar highway, its pavement dusty and isolated among tobacco fields and houses set so far back from the road that the color isn't always easily distinguishable. This, Sam thinks, is more home than any of the other rooms he's known, more, even, than his apartment with Jess, and he wonders just a little why – and when – his mind changed about things like that. Maybe it was kissing Sarah (a memory not so far off, really, though months have passed); maybe it was losing Dad. No matter the impetus (a word he's not sure Dean knows), this dirty road and this familiar car, with his brother snoring against the window, they are home. They are, he thinks, probably what he'll spend the rest of his life doing – and that brings unbidden the dangerous and maddening thought what's left of it, anyway. Whether he dies on a job or is roped into the demon's bullshit army, the last of his life will be spent with Dean and this Impala.
He only thinks these circling thoughts when Dean is asleep or out seducing some new round of women. Even so, Dean sees too much of Sam's head exposing itself in his words, and sometimes Sam wants to kick Dean for knowing him so well, so thoroughly. It's part of being a brother, he guesses.
Soon he cannot think his through his spirals any more, because there is a woman in a dark dress in front of him that he's sure wasn't there before and maybe if he slams on the brakes he won't hit her but she is too close and he braces himself for an impact that doesn't come where he expects it to. He doesn't hit her; she jumps onto the hood, rolls over the top, and lands on her feet just a yard from where the car's back bumper finally comes to a stop. Dean is roughly awake, still disoriented, but even more so when he realizes they're not moving but they're not at a motel yet.
"What the – ?" There is a little snort to accompany the words, and Sam would laugh except right now he's just a little more preoccupied with the girl who evaded the car coming towards her. "Dude, Sammy, where are you going?" The car door slams. "Sam! Sa – oh."
She is much shorter than Sam's gargantuan 6'3" but with none of the sort of terror that usually accompanies people who stare him down. She lifts her eyes resolutely to his and he thinks that for just a moment she gets even taller – and even more intimidating. Which is weird, he thinks to himself, and then he realizes she just jumped over his car without breaking a sweat. And she's in a skirt.
One eyebrow is lifted minutely more than the other, and her startling blue eyes seem to be reading him easily. The sensual curve of her hip would be distracting if his brain wasn't repeating "Sarah, Sarah, Sarah" in an effort to stay focused.
"Hey, are you okay?" he asks, and even though it sounds stupid in his head and even more so in the air, it's kind of okay because she just smiles wryly and inclines her head. "You're not hurt?"
"No." The word is quiet and yet it echoes, rolling over Sam and over the car and over the fields and over the house in the far distance. There is an eerie sort of force behind it, and it is the first time he thinks maybe she's not as normal as he wishes.
Somewhere behind him a gun cocks. Dean is behind him, aiming at the girl. She laughs, a clear, ringing sound, and shakes her head as if he is just a child.
"Dean Winchester, you could no more shoot me than you could shoot your own brother." Sam can sense rather than see the face his brother makes, defiant and defeated at the same time. The woman smirks, and for a moment Sam wonders how she knows their names. "Oh, don't be stupid, Sam. Ellen told me." She smirks. "I just confirmed them by scanning your thoughts." Sam has a sneaking suspicion Dean has lifted the gun even more definitively. The woman who can read minds takes small, deliberate steps towards the Impala and towards Dean, and fixes him with the same unafraid stare she showed to Sam. "Dean, there's been news about Cassie."