While Sam explained everything about his encounter with the mysterious Amy Pond, Dean stayed surprisingly quiet as he sat next to Cassie. During some parts of his story she would look over at Dean with wide eyes, expecting him to mirror her disbelief but he never did. He just stayed leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed behind his head as he watched Sam intently. When he finished, an awkward silence fell on the room.
"Is that it?" Dean asked after a few moments.
"Yeah," Sam said hesitantly. There was no way that Dean could be so cool about what he had just heard. "Why?"
"Because I'm trying to make sure I register you at the right level of crazy," Dean replied. "I mean, did you hear yourself? A hot, Scottish, time-traveling, hunter? Are you drunk?"
Sam sighed and instantly regretted not being satisfied with Dean's initial reaction. He knew Dean would be a little hesitant to believe him but he didn't expect him to flat out think he was crazy. "I know how it sounds, but I promise you I'm not making her up." Sam replied. "No one could make that up."
"For argument's sake, let's say she's real," Cassie chimed in.
"Fine," the brothers said in unison, glaring at each other.
"Great," Cassie muttered under her breath, internally wishing the two of them could work a job without arguing just this once.
"Cassie, what do you know about this weeping angel thing?" Dean asked.
"I used to hear about it when I was in college. The angel statue at West State Street Cemetery is supposed to cry and move when you're not looking. Nobody actually believed it, though," she shrugged.
"Yeah, well, no one believed that the old asylum was really haunted until a vengeful spirit started picking off art students," Dean reminded her.
"What asylum?" Sam asked.
"The Ridges. After it closed down, the university started renovating it in to classrooms and that pissed off one of the many spirits that haunts that joint," Dean explained. "That was what brought me to Athens in the first place."
"We met when we was posing as a student in one of my art classes held in that building," Cassie added.
"Are people from that asylum buried at the same cemetery where our homicidal angel resides?" Sam inquired, thinking maybe there could be a connection.
Dean shook his head. "They're buried in unmarked graves at a cemetery on the grounds of the asylum," he told Sam. "Besides, ghosts don't have the power to send people back in time."
"What are you talking about?" Sam asked, awe-struck.
"Cassie's friend wasn't aged forty years," Dean explained. "She got sent back forty years in the past."
"Wait a minute," Sam said in complete disbelief, "You called me crazy when I told you about Amy but someone tells you a stone statue sent them in to the past and it doesn't even phase you?"
"It wasn't the time traveling that made think you were crazy, Sammy. It was the fact that you're claiming that a hot Scottish woman in a mini skirt and combat boots came back in time to tell you about psycho statues then stick her tongue down your throat," Dean countered.
"Alright boys, let's just get to work on figuring out how to get rid of this statue," Cassie said before the argument got too heated.
Dean and Cassie sat on one side of the small table by the window as they shared her computer to skim through local records and newspaper archives. While the two of them looked for incidents similar to what happened to Cassie's friend, Sam sat on his bed with his laptop and tried to dig up more information on the weeping angels. According to the lore on the angel at the cemetery, it was dedicated to the unknown soldiers buried there, but there was no record of where it came from or how it ended up in the cemetery. As Sam went from website to website reading up on the statue, he noticed that none of them actually had pictures of the angel. He and Dean weren't strangers to going after monsters without knowing what it was exactly they were looking for, but at least they knew how to gank them. Sam assumed that it wouldn't be too hard to pick out a crying angel out of a crowd of headstones but not wanting to risk going in to the hunt completely clueless, he spent a solid hour looking for pictures of the statue.
He found his way back to the website where he had first read about the angels and managed to find what he assumed to be the only two pictures of the statue in existence in one of the galleries on the site. The statue stood just inside of the front gate of the cemetery between two trees. At the base of the statue was a two foot high fence that seemed quite worn down and each side of the square the it made leaned in a different direction. The angel itself stood perched high on three tiers of stone and towered above the gravestones beneath it. The angel's shoulders slumped forward and its gaze was downcast at the book she holds in her hands. Her stone wings stretched down most of the length of her body, stopping only a short distance above her bare feet. The entire statue was weathered and details were starting to fade away, but there was something beautiful about it. Sam couldn't help but think it didn't particularly look like something monstrous and evil, but his hunter instincts knew better.
Sam heard someone's phone beep and assumed it was Dean or Cassie's. He hadn't tried to get ahold of anyone for help on this case and the two people that would need to contact him were sitting in the room with him. And it wasn't often someone called his phone just to have a nice chat so he assumed the beep didn't come from his phone and continued to study the photo of the angel statue.
"That wasn't one of ours," Dean said after he and Cassie checked their phones.
"You're sure?" Sam asked.
"Positive," Dean replied. "Why?"
"I'm not really expecting anyone," Sam told him as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Sure enough, there was an unread text from an unfamiliar waiting to be checked in his inbox. He punched in his passcode and opened the message, completely surprised by what he read.
"What's with the face?" Dean asked when he saw his brother's expression change from a worn out blank to one of bewilderment.
"Did you send this?" Sam accused.
"No! I've been reading newspaper articles for the last three hours with Cassie," Dean reminded him. "Who does it say it's from?"
"Amy," Sam said and tossed Dean his phone. Across the screen of the phone read: How's the research coming along? -Amy.
"Did you give her your number or something?" Dean asked.
"Not when I met her at the diner, no," Sam told him. "Maybe I give it to her in the future?"
"I bet you do," Dean replied, giving his brother a wink.
Sam rolled his eyes and tucked his phone back in his pocket before returning his attention back to his computer screen. Looking at the picture of the angel, he noticed that the statue was different. When he had looked at the picture before, the angel had been holding a book in both hands and now one arm was extended as if it was reaching out to him. He tried refreshing the page, thinking that it was a clever trick on the behalf of whoever ran the website to get a rise out of someone reading the article about the angel, but the page was frozen. Nothing he did could get the page to close and it took him cutting off all power to even get the laptop to shut down. As annoyed as he was that the website's joke had frozen his computer, Sam was glad to have an excuse to look up from his laptop for the first time in almost four hours. He didn't realize just how exhausted he was until he had to sit read through pages and pages of poorly written history on a stone statue.
Dean and Cassie continued to quietly flip through newspaper articles and police records for a couple more hours to give Sam a chance to get some rest. They didn't find much, just a few disappearances where the victim was last seen at West State Street Cemetery. As far as they could tell, the victims hadn't been sent back in time then returned home decades older after they disappeared. Then again, it wasn't exactly a scenario most newspapers or police officers would believe. It took a DNA test and dental record comparisions before the cops would believe that Cassie's friend was actually who she said she was and not some random old woman that was out of her mind and off her meds. As the sun crept beneath the horizon, the two gave up their search and decided to go out for some food before taking Cassie home.
"Alright, Sleeping Beauty," Dean said as he tried to shake Sam awake, "I'm not going to kiss you to get you to wake up."
"What do you want?" Sam asked groggily, his voice still heavy with sleep and his eyes still shut.
"Cassie and I are gonna go get some food. You coming?" Dean asked.
"I'm fine. Just bring me something back for later," Sam told him.
"See you in a couple hours then," Dean told him as he slid on his jacket.
Sam waited until he heard the door shut and the sound of the Impala starting and pulling away before he opened his eyes and pushed himself upright. His brief nap left him more worn out than he had been before he had nodded off. He stretched his legs and arms and rubbed the sleep from the corner of his eyes in an attempt to make himself feel more awake. The weight of exhaustion he felt on his eyelids had him hoping that they would get to take some time off after this hunt to rest up, even if it was only a day or two.
Just as the idea of laying back down crossed his mind, someone knocked lightly on the door to their room. Sam pulled his phone out and checked the time and the numbers on screen told him it was just past ten pm. He couldn't imagine why anyone would be knocking on his door so late, but he reluctantly pushed himself up from the bed and went to answer it anyway. As he looked through the peephole, he caught a glimpse of long red hair and shook his head. Who else could it be?, he thought to himself. When he opened the door, the Amy pushed past him and plopped down on the foot of his bed and pulled his computer on to his lap without saying a word.
"What are you doing?" He asked.
"Checking something," she replied without looking up. She stared at the screen intently for a moment before closing the laptop and shoving it under the bed. "Don't use that until you get rid of the angel," she said sternly.
"Should I even bother asking why?" he inquired, raising his eyebrows at her.
"Anything that takes the image of an angel is an angel," Amy told him. "That's one of the reasons why it took you so long to find any pictures of the angel in the cemetery."
"That doesn't make any sense," Sam said.
Amy let out an amused laugh and shook her head. "You're preaching to the choir," she said knowingly. "I travel in time in a bigger-on-the-inside spaceship with a alien who wears a bow-tie and you drive around the country in an '67 Impala fighting monsters with your brother. Sense is relative."
"You have a point," he shrugged.
"I'm sure you're wondering why I'm here," she said before he could ask.
Crossing his arms, Sam replied, "Sort of. And how you knew where I would be."
"I'm from your future. I know because you tell me," she reminded him. "And I'm here to make sure the angel from your computer screen didn't kill you. I was a little worried when you didn't answer my text. And again, before you ask, yes, I gave you my number."
Sam felt a small sense of triumph at the thought of getting Amy's number sometime in the near future. He may have no idea what he was getting in to or what the hell he was going to do about it, but it must be something good. He walked over to where she sat and lowered himself on to the edge of the bed next to her, receiving a small smile from Amy when his knee brushed up against hers.
"There's still something you having told me," Sam pointed out.
"There's a lot I haven't told you," she corrected.
"Well, why don't you start with why you keep coming to find me?" he suggested.
"I just can't stay away from you I guess," she said facetiously. Sam rolled his eyes and waited for her to give him an honest answer. Sensing he was unhappy with her first answer, Amy sighed and added, "And because I want to help as much as I can without having to live through the universe restarting again."
Sam wanted to ask her how it was possible for the universe to restart or how someone could even go about restarting it, but instead he asked, "What do you mean you're from my future?"
"My past self and the Doctor's past self are going to help your future self and your brother's future self take care of a weeping angel," she answered as if it was obvious.
"Yeah, but the way you talk about it, it's more than just that, isn't it?" he said, trying to get her to explain.
"Don't worry, I'm not your girlfriend," she smirked.
"So what are you then?" He asked, unsure if he was relieved or disappointed by what she just said.
Amy looked at him apologetically, knowing that it would irritate him when she didn't give him a straight answer. "Spoilers," she said, hating not being able to tell him anything but that was one of the downsides of time travel. One detail too many and time could start to unravel.
Next to her, Sam let out an aggravated huff and ran his hands through his hair. His mind was racing, trying to process everything about the angels, about Amy, and what to do with them. Thoughts were racing through his head, bouncing off his skull so hard he worried it would explode. Pushing himself off the bed, he walked over to the mini fridge that was tucked away in a cabinet under the TV.
"Do you want a drink?" Sam asked as he opened the door to the motel room's mini fridge and pulled out to bottles of beer.
"I need one after the day I've had," Amy replied, shrugging out of her jacket and tossing it in the direction of a chair. Unlacing her boots, she kicked them off in the same general direction and reclined back on the bed, letting out a content sigh. Sam twisted the caps off the both bottles as he walked back over to his side of the bed and handed one of the bottles to her. Feeling too restless to sit, he stayed standing beside her and took a long swig of his beer hoping it would calm his nerves and his mind. "You really have no idea how hard it is to interact with your own past without it ending in some kind of catastrophe," she told him before taking a sip of hers.
"Interacting with your future has to be a close second," Sam said.
"If I didn't know how frustrating it was for myself, I would have taken that personally," Amy warned.
"Sorry," he mumbled sheepishly, looking down at his feet.
"Don't be. In twenty-four hours, you'll the the future boy and I'll be cross because I have to deal with you being all future-y," she shrugged.
"Looking forward to it," he said with a wink.
"You'll regret saying that tomorrow," Amy chuckled.
Sam couldn't help but laugh along with her; she was infectious. He wasn't sure if it was the way she held herself with unwavering confidence or how she could throw back a feisty response with no effort, but she dominated his attention when she came around. However, if he was honest, it could be how her everything about her seemed to go on forever; her legs, her hair, her smile. Or how she stomped around in her combat boots. She was undoubtably frustrating and headstrong, but she could charm anyone in to forgetting those facts if she wanted to.
"Then again," he said with a smile tugging at his lips, "maybe I won't."