Colorado

The shabby motel room was exactly like hundreds of others. The paint on the door was chipped and cracked, the room number was crooked, the door handle sticky with black plaque. Dean flipped on the light to reveal a carpet speckled with stains, faded wall paper, and a bed covered in threadbare sheets. It was a familiar sight, and it was the only version of home he knew. There was nothing wrong with the accommodations.

Except that he entered alone.

Dean swept his eyes over the single bed and felt his shoulders slump. There was no little brother at his elbow, asking what was for dinner or if he could go find the vending machine yet. There was no father marching behind, telling him to pick up his feet or lay out tasks for the evening. There was no one but him, the TV, and a stack of lore books to help him track down the spirit haunting the town square.

Dean had never hated the job until he had to do it alone. Somehow, Sam leaving had meant that Dean graduated John Winchester's school of hunting. He was allowed to hunt alone now. Ordered to hunt alone. Sometimes, Dad traveled with him, and sometimes he sent Dean in a different direction. Like today.

It wasn't so bad. He was still hunting, still saving people, still following orders and making his father happy. But he couldn't stop the the sick, sinking feeling that twisted his guts every time he opened the door to another single occupant motel room.

The phone in his pocket began to vibrate with the sweet strains of Metallica. Right on time. Dad had spent enough years on the road, he knew exactly how long it took to get anywhere. He had given Dean his marching orders exactly seven hours ago, when they had parted ways after lunch.

Dean was old enough to be comfortable traveling on his own. He didn't need a babysitter, and he didn't need his father to make sure he got in safely. But he wasn't going to tell the old man to stop. Not now, not ever. "Hi, Dad."

"Dean, how was the drive?"

"Fine. Just fine."

"Make it to the bar yet?"

Dean grinned. His father knew him too well. Of all the orders John gave, staying away from girls and booze had never been among them. "I just walked in the door."

"Yeah, well. Don't get too distracted. There was another death while you were driving, it was on the news."

Dean sighed. His exploration of the local nightlife would have to wait until after he ganked this ghost. Dean fished into his pocket to make sure the FBI badge was in its spot. "I'm on my way."

Almost as soon as Dean had closed the phone, it began to vibrate again. A glance at the screen told him it was not John Winchester calling again. The area code was from Arizona, but that didn't mean much. Hunters changed phone numbers as often as they changed socks.

"This is Dean."

"Dean? Dean Winchester?" The voice on the other end of the line was not what he expected. It was soft, feminine. Dean knew better than to let a one-night-stand get a hold of his phone number. Who could this be?

"Yes. Who are you and how did you get this number?"

The woman drew in a deep breath. "This is Millie Winchester."

Something cold churned in Dean's gut. He knew that name.

Was this a revenant? A shifter? A bored kid with access to an internet search engine and a taste for tasteless jokes? It didn't matter.

"Millie Winchester is dead. I don't know who you are or what you want, but don't call me again. I have a job to do." He had a dead body in the middle of town square growing cold on the cement, and he had to get it the crime scene before the police ruined all the evidence. Dean shut the phone with a snap.

But a nagging voice in the back of his head told him he had heard that voice before. The phone buzzed again, but Dean ignored it. He had said all he needed to say. He had a job to do.

o0o

Millie pursed her lips and glared at the phone in her hand. Sam she knew could not recognize her, but she had hoped for something from Dean. He had clung to her very tightly in the weeks after Mary died, the weeks before John vanished. She had assumed she would babysit the boys whenever John was at work, and fill the role of their mother as best she could. John certainly wasn't paying much attention to them. He had been obsessed with finding a reason why his wife died.

Had been convinced she was pinned to the ceiling when the fire started.

That was when Millie knew it was time for John to see Henry's old books, the ones he had kept locked up tight away from prying eyes. The ones he took to his secret midnight meetings. John might find the answers he wanted in there.

But when Millie arrived at the house with the books in hand, she had found the place empty. There was no note, no explanation. One day they were simply gone, and the deed to all of John's property was left sitting out on the table. Signed over to her.

"He wasn't likely to remember you. He was awfully young." A glass of water hovered in front of her nose, accompanied by a hand offering two Advil.

Millie sighed and took the pain killers. She hadn't said a word, but somehow Hartley knew her hip was acting up again. He settled on the bed next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Dressed in tweed, with wire-rimmed spectacles and the clinging smell of tobacco, Hartley always knew what she needed. Millie leaned into his shoulder. "I know. But I hoped." Hoped for a miracle. After meeting Sam, it had seemed possible.

"So, where are we off to next?"

"I don't know yet." Millie held up the phone. "These things can be tracked, can't they?"

Hartley considered the phone and nodded. "Yes, but I can only work magic with numbers on paper. This-"

"You did taxes for that group with NASA last year, didn't you?" Millie had expected a quiet life when she married an accountant. Numbers and ledgers rarely got one murdered in the middle of the night. It had worked out, for the most part. But the life of an accountant was very different from the life of his clients.

Hartley smiled. "Yes, yes I did. I found five different ways they could have landed in jail. I'll wager they could spare a few moments of satellite time for us."

o0o

Dirt. Dean had see enough dirt to last a lifetime. Salt and burn made things sound so simple, but usually it was dig, salt, burn, and then bury again. Dirt, dirt, and more dirt. Dean could already feel the grit working its way through his boots, up his sleeves, and down his waistband.

Dean heaved his shovel high, emptied it over the edge of the grave, then dropped it down into the dirt again with a grunt. He paused, a sound caught in his ear. There were voices nearby. That was never a good thing. He tapped the dirt and checked his height against the edge of the pit. It was nearly level with his shoulder. Which meant he was nearly there.

The voices might pass him by, but they might be here to stop him. Every graveyard had its keeper, someone who took offense when Hunters came to dig up the dead. He leaned into the shovel harder.

"Millie, this is a graveyard!" The voice belonged to a man.

"Yes, I can see that," a woman replied. "The map says its not too far off now."

Ha! Probably a pair of teenagers looking for a good hook-up spot.

"I told you we can try the GPS again in the morning. Maybe he'll be somewhere else by then."

"Hartley, I am not waiting any longer. I have been waiting for twenty years, and I finally know where he is. I am finding the little dot on this phone. I don't care where it is."

Dean frowned. That didn't sound like a couple out to make hickies. It sounded like they were looking for someone specific.

"Millie, he's digging a grave. We need to leave now."

Yes, leave now.

"After we've come all this way? I don't think so." The relentless crunch of footsteps did not retreat. Instead, they settled just above Dean's head. Somehow, though, he didn't think this couple sounded like the graveyard patrol come to roust him from his work.

Thunk! His shovel hit wood instead of dirt. Would the nosy midnight strollers be scared away at the sight of a corpse? Would they call the police as they ran the other direction?

It didn't matter. He had enough time to salt, burn, and run. Dean lifted the shovel high and battered at the wooden coffin lid.

"Dean?" The firm voice insisted on making itself heard above the racket. "Dean Winchester?"

Dean shifted the shovel to one hand and moved the other toward his back where his gun was tucked into his belt.

An elderly man and woman stood at the edge of the gravesite, looking as if they had come straight out of a black-and-white movie. The man had a round face and a round belly covered by a tweed jacket, and was holding a flashlight in one hand. The woman wore a belted trench coat, with a scarf over her gray hair and a cane in her hand which she used to poke at the hole Dean had dug.

"What is the purpose of this?"

Dean stared. He had only been four, but there were some things he would never forget. His mother's face. His home in Lawrence. The memories were fuzzy, but he kept them fresh by thinking of them often. He needed to remember home. Remember the family that he had lost. He knew her voice, he knew her face. "Grandma?"

Her smile was warm and broad and lit up her entire face. "Yes, Dean. You do remember!"

Dean's gun hand hung limply at his side. "I thought you were dead."

"No. Did John tell you I was?"

Dad wouldn't lie to me. No, Dean couldn't believe that. Gone like Mom. Never going to see her again. That's what Dad had said. Not dead. He had never said 'dead.'

Dean lifted himself out of the hole and came to face her. He put a hand on her shoulder. It was solid, real. "How do I know it's you?"

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a star-mint, which he offered to Dean. "You would always be after me for this. I caught your fingers in my pockets more times than I could count."

Dean grasped the mint and stared at the red-and-white swirled candy. In his memory, this man was much taller, but that was only because Dean had been so small. But he remembered the candy. It was always the first thing he asked for. "Hartley. Grandma's friend Hartley."

Millie patted Hartley's hand. "Husband. We're married now."

"Married?" Dean blinked. "But grandpa-but you-" The very idea felt odd. Millie had already been married once.

"Just because your father never managed to move on after he lost Mary doesn't mean that's the way it has to be for everyone. You can miss the dead and still build a new life."

Strange words. Stranger still coming from a Winchester.

"I'll gladly give up some spit for a DNA test, if you like. But I thought this might help." Millie held forward a brightly wrapped gift box. The paper was faded and brittle with age, and boasted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wearing Santa hats. "This was for you, but John left before I could give it to you."

Dean ripped the paper from the package to reveal a stuffed turtle with a purple eye-mask and holding a fighting staff. "Donatello!" Dean could picture a turtle just like this one, three of them lined up in a row above his bed. "I had all the rest. I just needed Donny to finish the set."

"I don't suppose to care for Ninja Turtles anymore, but-"

Dean stared at the woman in front of him. "You kept this."

"Yes."

"For twenty years."

"Yes. Do you believe it's me yet?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I do. Grandma-" The rest of her words were choked out of him as Millie wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. He could feel moisture leak through his shirt. Was she crying?

He could feel moisture on his cheeks, too, and it wasn't raining.

After a moment Millie stepped back, dabbing at her eyes with a hanky. She gestured to the open grave. "But I can see I've interrupted something. Will this take much longer?"

Dean looked down at the cracked coffin lid and shook his head. No need to re-cover the grave. He was going to leave town by morning anyway. "No. Five minutes, tops. But-um-you might not want to watch."

Millie raised her eyebrows. "Are you going to open that coffin?"

Dean nodded.

"Good gracious why?" Hartley stammered.

Usually, Dean wouldn't have any trouble supplying an answer. Usually, he didn't care what people thought of him.

Millie tapped the gas can with her cane, eliciting a hollow clang. "I think he plans to burn it. The question remains. Why?"

"He's got it coming."

Millie squinted at the headstone. "He's been dead fifty years."

"Yeah, and it's been a busy fifty years."

Millie's lips pressed together in a thin line. Dean waited for her face to twist in disgust, for a scream, for a threat. But none came. Her tone, when she spoke again, was calm and cool. "Hm. And the salt?"

"I have a sodium deficiency. Have to keep it on hand, just in case."

Hartley raised both eyebrows. "Five pounds?"

Dean nodded without missing a beat. "Better safe than sorry." He looked down at the turtle in his hands. This was his grandma. She had waited for twenty years to give him his Christmas present.

She'd picked her way through the graveyard to find him when she could have waited for morning.

No. She probably wasn't going to run away from what Dean had to do next.

What kind of woman as his grandmother, anyway? Dean realized he had no idea.

He jumped back into the grave and finished prying the coffin open. Millie didn't make a peep when he exposed the remains, and handed him the bag of salt before he could ask for it.

As if she knew what it was for.

But she couldn't. Could she?

"Fire and salt." Hartley had taken a step back, and turned away from the scene, his face pale.

"Purification." Millie held out the gas can next. "Isn't that right?"

"Yeah." Dean doused the corpse in the gasoline and pulled out his lighter. "How'd you know that?"

"I've done my research. Your father was talking about the monster who killed your mother before he left. It gave me a good place to start."

Dean stared, the harsh light of the flames making strange shadows dance between them. "What are you doing here? Why show up now, after all these years?"

"Believe me, Dean, I would have been here years ago if I knew where you find you. Your father disappeared and took you with him. The police don't call it kidnapping when a parents moves with their own child. They can't look for a missing person when that person is an adult and allowed to come and go as they please. No one would help me find you. And your father, well, he learned a few tricks in the Marines."

"Dad hid from you on purpose?"

"Yes. I suspect he thought I would object." Millie gestured to the burning corpse. "And at the time, I probably would have. Tonight, well. I've waited to see you again for twenty years. I'm not here to judge what you do on your night off."

Night off? Ha!

"I wish I could have been there, Dean. I know it must have been hard without a mother. I know I couldn't replace her, but I wanted to be there for you. Your father had different plans. But I wanted to watch you grow up, Dean. I wanted to take care of you. It's important to me that you know that."

Dean felt his world tilt a little. What would life have been like, with a grandmother to help babysit? Someone else to help look after Sammy.

Someone to look after him.

"It's ok, Grandma. I know." Dean bent down to pick up the turtle again. "You know, I still love these guys."

Millie snorted. "I never understood the appeal. I prefer my soap operas. Yes, you heard me. I'm addicted and I'm not ashamed to admit it. But you look thirsty. There's a diner down the road. Last time I took you out, we had milkshakes. I suppose you'll want a beer now?"

"Actually, a milkshake sounds great." Dean shouldered his shovel and held out his arm. Millie tucked her cane under her arm and wrapped her hands around his elbow.

Hartley settled into step on Dean's other side, and murmured, "Whatever you do, don't get her started on Dr. Sexy, MD."

Dean couldn't stop the grin spreading across his face. "You like Dr. Sexy?"

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