The stairway creaked underneath her feet as she silently crept down onto the old oak flooring of the living room, her bare feet padded along the flooring until she came to a stop in front of the back door, here she was, so close to her freedom she could almost taste it, but she was too chicken to reach out and grip the knob and give it that small nudge, the nudge that would release her into the outside world. She shook her head and moved away from the door, and where would she go?
She couldn't go home, she'd burned that bridge the night she ended her sisters life, although by her sisters request, her father had quite plainly told her not to step foot near him or his family anymore. She scoffed and rolled her eyes, her father, no, Liam, he'd been such a fraud all these years. While she was growing up, Willow had heard such great stories about her father from other people and from her father herself, he'd claimed to be a great hunter, even greater than John Winchester, claiming to hunt Vampires, Demons, Werewolf's, and Djinn's.
And he up and left his brother when he needed him most, Willow had never met her fathers dead brother, and from the way her father rarely spoke of his younger brother, it was like she didn't even have an uncle in the first place. Her fathers ex bestfriend had spoken to her one day, it was a chance meeting actually, Willow had only been twelve years old when the dusty and haggard looking man had stepped out of the old pickup truck that had obviously seen better days and took her out for ice cream and asked her questions she didn't know how to answer, and Willow was anything but stupid at twelve years old. He'd asked her what she knew about her uncle. She answered truthfully, nothing, because she had no idea what her uncles name was even, she'd never even seen a picture of him before.
And this strange man with the old dusty pickup truck had done the strangest thing in this situation, he'd laughed at her, twelve year old Willow knew when someone was having a go at her and she didn't much like being laughed at, she she'd shrugged into her worn cloth backpack with buttons from various bands, and was half way across the road before he called out to her. He raised a hand, and motioned with his middle and index finger for her to come back and sit by him once more. "If you're just going to laugh at me then I'm going home." He nodded his head and used his right hand to rub the stubble the was spreading across his chin and cheeks, oddly enough the hair on his face was a completely different color than that which was on his head, while his beard was full of vibrant reds and auburn's, the hair on his head was a more dull color, telling signs that his hair was graying, he seemed to be taking it in strides. So as Willow swung her legs, which were still too short to touch the ground even though Lilian's feet touched the ground and she was only four years older than Willow, he began to explain the story of her uncle and how he met his end, by the cowardice of her own father.
"You're father was never a very brave man, Willow, he was always too timid and scared of the smallest things, and to be timid and scared in our line of work will get a man killed quickly, do you understand?" She nodded at him, her blonde ponytail bouncing as she listened to the story. "Your uncle was a different story, he was four years younger than your father, and he was the best hunter I'd even seen before, he was a sharp shooter, a skilled fighter, and he was smart as a whip, could exercise a demon faster than you could say 'mama'." He nodded and reached into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out a soft pack of Marlboro Reds, Willow wrinkled her nose when he inhaled and exhaled the first large puff of smoke, and the wind blew it straight into her face, she'd been around smokers her whole life, but they'd had the decency to not smoke in front of her or her siblings while she was growing up. "Now where was I? Ah, yes, Lucas, now your your father, Lucas and I were on a hunt, Vampires a whole nest of them, ripping apart this small town in North Dakota, nothing I've ever seen before." He shook his head and took another puff, blowing more smoke into her face as he continued with his story. "Lucas was the one who found the case and invited me along, your father was against having me there since I was still a bit inexperienced, but Lucas said, 'No Liam, let's see what the newbie can do.' I was just honored enough that he let me come along until we actually got to the town and saw what those monsters had down to this small town." Another long drag, more smoke in her face. "It was like a ghost town, and the few people that were left had either fled the town or were too scared to speak to us."
He shook his head as he flicked ashes, thankfully in the other direction. "That night, we prepared to die, all three of us, we were just three men, against an army of bloodsuckers that didn't care if we had wives and families back home that we wanted to see again before we died, but Lucas wasn't scared, not one bit, hell, he lived for this shit. He felt like he was doing some good in the world, ridding it of one evil son of a bitch at a time. Your dad was a different story, he was shaking like a leaf, glancing at every corner like something was going to jump out at him at any second." The stranger curled his upper lip in disgust at the memory. "Your father left Lucas and I to die that night, and Lucas ended up paying for it. We were surrounded before we even reached the center of their nest, your fathers fear had drawn them to us, their like animals, they could smell it, they followed and ambushed use from all sides, but he managed to escape, with not even a glance backwards." He shook his head as he took another puff and exhaled the smoke, and flicked the butt away into the green grass in front of them. "Lucas, they dived on him before I could even get a shot out, and I couldn't, not when they had just piled on top of him and ripped him apart, he told me to run, said I wasn't leaving without him that night, he forced me out, then blew the place to hell."
He glanced back at Willow, who was staring up at him, eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she listened to his story and shook her head. "Your lying, my dad would never ever, leave someone behind, he told me Uncle Lucas died when they were young!" He smirked and dug into his back pocket and pulled out an old worn photo of three men, she could identify her father as one of them men, he was a big burly man, with a head full of dark hair and light eyes, she saw the stranger, his shock of red hair clearly visible from the flash on the camera they were all posing for, the third and maybe the man who would become her main focus of the picture for years to come, had blonde hair, much like her own, it was curly and unruly, sticking up in every direction, his gem stone green eyes sparkled with life as he leaned against her fathers shoulder with a huge grin on his face for the camera, unlike the other two who just posed without a smile, and in this instant she knew that what the stranger had told her was true.
Willow snapped herself from the small flashback, looking back to the knob that only needed a small nudge, she took a deep breath as she reached forward and turned the medal object in her hand, and the door creaked open and she stepped out into the night, her bare feet touched the grass in front of her, wet from the morning dew, she stopped short and looked down and she wept at the feeling she'd felt since she was old enough to walk and dropped to her knees in the grass.