Chasing Shadows
Chapter 1: Wide Awake
Author's Notes:
Please note that the first chapter of Chasing Shadows is actually the final chapter of the novel Carved in Flesh by Tim Waggoner. The novel takes place between 7.12 Time After Time and 7.13 The Slice Girls. Chasing Shadows takes place immediately after Carved in Flesh, but after that it diverges from the canon.
Eric Kripke created the world of Supernatural, while Tim and I just get to "play in his sandbox". Hopefully Tim won't mind me playing in his!
The title of this story comes from the song Chasing Shadows by Kansas. The title of this chapter comes from the song "Wide Awake" by Audioslave, echoing one of Sam's lines in this chapter.
"I'm getting tired of digging graves," Dean said.
"Me, too."
The crapmobile cruised through the night on I-70, heading west, Dean behind the wheel, Sam riding shotgun.
After they'd "disassembled" Bekah's body, they'd burned the parts and buried them separately in the Luss's back yard. When that chore was finished, they buried Marshall's remains as well. The sun had long dropped below the horizon by that point, and Catherine invited them in for a drink. They accepted, feeling more than a little awkward. As they stood in her kitchen and drank tap water, she thanked them for their help.
"What am I going to do now?" Catherine had asked. "I've done terrible things. I never asked where Conrad found the limbs and organs I needed, but I knew where they came from - especially the freshest ones. And the experiment that got loose, the dog... it killed people. Those deaths are on my hands, too. I may not have taken any lives directly, but I'm just as responsible as if I had. I don't even have Dippel's excuse of being manipulated by a dark goddess. I was just a sad, lonely woman who missed her family. I'd go to the police and turn myself in, but what good would it do? No one would believe my story."
The only physical evidence left was her homemade lab in the basement. She could lead the cops to the remains of Marshall and Bekah, but there was a chance that, like Frankenmutt and the Double-Header, they'd decay to nothing soon. Besides, she didn't want anyone disturbing Bekah's various graves, just in case doing so somehow freed Hel. They had no idea if the goddess's spirit had returned to the realm it had come from - Sniffleham or something like that; Dean couldn't remember - but none of them wanted to take any chances.
"Start your practice back up," Sam had suggested. "Return to helping people. Isn't that why you became a doctor in the first place? Besides, what better way to fight death than by preserving life?"
Catherine had thought for a moment. "I think... I think maybe Marshall and Bekah would like that. But should I? Is redemption even possible?"
Dean had taken that one. "Doc, if we didn't believe it is, we wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning."
"Too bad the Lapis Occultus was destroyed," Sam said. "I think it might have been another name for the Philosopher's Stone, in which case it could've made a powerful weapon to use against Dick Roman."
Dean shrugged. "No use crying over shattered mystical artifacts. I'm glad to see you're feeling better, though. You finally manage to fight off that infection?"
Sam smiled. "Looks like it." He crossed his leg and pulled up the cuff of his pants. "See? No more weird black veins."
"That's a relief. We'll save a ton of money on coffee." Dean paused before asking his next question. "You... seeing things?"
Sam tugged his pants cuff back down. "You mean like a strange shadow man? Don't worry. I don't think I'm going to see him anymore."
Something about Sam's tone made Dean think he was missing something, but he decided to let it go. "You think the doc is going to be okay?"
"I don't know. We were raised in this life, and the stuff we go through still messes us up. I can't imagine how much worse it is for a normal person. But if she starts seeing patients again, surrounds herself with life instead of brooding on death, I think she stands a chance."
"In our business, sometimes a chance is all you need."
They drove in silence for a while. Dean almost turned on the radio, but he decided against it. He didn't feel like music just then.
After a time, Sam said, "I've been thinking."
"There's a shocker," Dean said.
"Remember those dreams I had about Trish?"
"Yeah."
"It occurred to me that we never did anything about the Rifleman."
Dean did some quick mental calculating. "It'll only take thirty-five or forty hours to get to Washington State from here, assuming we drive straight through."
"I'm wide awake," Sam said, smiling.
Dean sniffed the air and caught a whiff of stink coming from the trunk. "Maybe we should stop at a Laundromat and wash our funkified clothes first."
"Let's find a Dumpster to toss them into, and buy more when we get to Washington."
"Sounds like a plan."
The brothers continued traveling through the darkness.
