Chapter 1: The Girl in the Photograph

"Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect." - The Order of the Phoenix

22 years later - Lawrence, Kansas

A small black trunk sat in the backseat of the 1967 Chevy Impala as a young man flipped through some old photographs. He came to one of three little kids - a boy holding a baby in his arms while a girl sat next to him - and, giving a slight, fond smile, looked up. "Thanks for these," he said to the young woman in front of him.

"Don't thank me, they're yours," the young woman - a single mother named Jenny - replied with a smile. The man - Dean Winchester - nodded, then tossed the pictures he'd been studying into the trunk and closed the car door. He looked across the street where the pale blue house sat unobtrusively on the manicured lawn. The front door was missing - parts of it were in a pile next to the staircase -, but that was the only sign that there had been anything strange happening here. Dean knew differently, though.

The house he was gazing at was the house he'd grown up in, the house where his mother had died in a mysterious fire. It was also home to Jenny and her two kids, Sari and Ritchie, all of whom had just survived a poltergeist attack. To anyone else, though, it was just an ordinary house that seemed to have an unfortunate string of accidents attached to it. But Dean and his brother Sam were not ordinary people. They were hunters, trained to seek and destroy any evil supernatural being since they were kids - like the poltergeist that had just tried to kill Jenny, Sari, and Ritchie. In their time, they'd seen and battled so many evil things, all in search of the creature that had started it all by murdering their mother. True, they'd committed some not-quite-legal acts and they were nowhere close to finding the bastard, but they had saved a lot of lives along the way. Even if they never got paid or thanked.

Dean took another glance at the young woman beside him. Hunting may be a thankless job, but in the end, as long as he could save some lives and kill some evil sons of bitches, that was good enough for him.

Across the street, Sam looked up from his perch on the steps to see Missouri Moseley - a local psychic who'd helped their dad after the fire - coming out of the house, purse in hand. She was a portly but motherly black woman with a fiery temper and a sassy attitude. Missouri had helped them to identify the poltergeist in their old house and helped get rid of it. "Well, there are no spirits in there anymore, this time for sure," she said as she sat down next to Sam.

"Not even my mom?" Sam asked.

Missouri paused, then shook her head sadly. "No."

The answer hit Sam like a ton of bricks. The poltergeist hadn't been the only spirit inside the old house. Upon further investigation, the brothers had discovered that the spirit of Mary Winchester still haunted the place where she had died, manifesting as a fiery figure until she'd been able to take form. To have seen his own mother in front of him for the first time in his memory, then have her ripped away from him again . . . He didn't think there were any words to justify the feelings that accompanied that thought. "What happened?" came the question. He'd been trying to make sense of the events from last night, and he still couldn't seem to wrap his head around it.

"Your mom's spirit and the poltergeist's energy, they cancelled each other out," she answered. "Your mom destroyed herself goin' after the thing."

"Why would she do something like that?" Sam asked again, still confused.

Missouri gave him a kind look. "Well, to protect her boys, of course."

Her answer made Sam look away, tears filling his eyes. His mother had died not just once, but twice, to save him. He couldn't even bring himself to say anything else. However, Missouri's voice came before he could even think of doing so. "Sam, I'm sorry," she said.

He looked over at her. "For what?"

"You sensed it was here, didn't you? Even when I couldn't."

Sam thought about how to answer that question, but nothing came to mind. "What's happening to me?" he asked, his voice small and pathetically child-like.

Missouri's face showed sadness when she looked at him again. "I know I should have all the answers, but I don't know," she replied.

"Sam, you ready?" came Dean's voice, ending the moment between the psychic and the hunter. Sam nodded to his brother, then took another glance at Missouri before walking over to the Impala. Jenny quickly thanked him as she passed by, to which he gave a quick nod as he prepared to get in the car.

"Don't you boys be strangers!" Missouri called to them.

"We won't," Dean replied.

She nodded knowingly and straightened her sweater. "See you 'round."

Jenny gave them a quick wave, then the boys got in the car and closed the doors with a solid BANG. The two brothers glanced at each other before Dean started up the ignition, causing the engine of the muscle car to growl as they pulled away from the curb and started down the street, away from the house that held so much pain.

In an older house not too far from the Winchesters' old place, Missouri Moseley closed her front door and walked through the hall, stopping before she got to the living room. Her breathing slightly labored, she set down her purse on the table and put one hand on her hip, thinking hard about what had happened. "That boy . . ." she said softly, seemingly to herself, ". . . he has such powerful abilities." Shaking her head, she set down her keys next to her purse and started into the living room. "But why he couldn't sense his own father, I have no idea."

There, on the living room sofa, sat a figure for whom the Winchester brothers had been searching for - John Winchester. Time and grief had aged him so that he was slightly more grizzled and careworn than before, but he was still the same man who had lost his wife all those years ago. Now he sat hunched over on the couch, elbows propped up on his knees, hands rubbing up and down his face until they came to rest over his nose and mouth for a second until they let go and came to a prayer position in front of him. He rubbed them together before he answered. "Mary's spirit -" he started, "- do you really think she saved the boys?"

Missouri paused for a moment before answering "I do." John nodded sadly in reply, then looked down at his left hand. The wedding band - still on his finger even twenty years after losing his wife - seemed to gleam in the dim light of the psychic's living room, and he twisted it thoughtfully, remembering Mary's beautiful face. "John Winchester, I could just slap you," Missouri said suddenly, sounding exasperated. "Why don't you go talk to your children?"

John shook his head slightly, feeling tears come to his eyes. "I want to. You have no idea how much I wanna see 'em." He paused for a moment as he thought about his boys. He felt awful leaving them alone to battle those monsters, but there was something so much bigger going on, something that they weren't even prepared for. "But I can't. Not yet." He looked over at her, and he could see in her eyes that she knew exactly what he was thinking of. "Not until I know the truth."

Sam flipped through the photographs as his brother drove the Impala through the tiny town. His father never talked about his mother, and Sam really had no idea what she looked like apart from pictures in his dad's hunting journal. After last night, though . . . he felt the need to see her face again, to take a good long look at it and really commit it to memory. He came to one of his parents hugging, both of them smiling at the camera, and he studied every last feature. His finger gently traced the outline of her head as his mind raced back to last night . . .

Dean raised the shotgun filled with rock salt at the advancing fiery figure, preparing to shoot. "No, don't! Don't!" Sam cried desperately.

"What, why?" Dean asked in confusion.

"Because I know who it is," Sam explained, staring at the figure before them. "I can see her now."

After another few seconds, the fire cleared away, leaving the figure of Mary Winchester in its wake - whole and untouched, exactly as she had been the night of her death. The gun shook in Dean's hand and he lowered it slowly, his expression softening at the apparition before him. The spirit smiled serenely at him as he struggled to find the right words. ". . . Mom," he whispered, staring in disbelief at her.

Mary walked closer to him, her smile widening. "Dean," she said, her voice echoing in the manner that spirits tended to speak. He looked close to crying as her blue eyes studied him proudly for a moment, then skipped past him to a spot just between the two boys. For the briefest of seconds, her expression changed from confusion to sadness as she seemed to search for a person who simply wasn't there, then it became serene again. She walked past her oldest, her eyes now fixed on her youngest, the boy currently pinned by the poltergeist to the cabinet wall. Sam struggled not to cry as he looked at his mother for the first time in his memory. "Sam," she said, also giving him a smile.

He smiled and closed his eyes, allowing a tear to sneak out before opening them again. His mother was here before him for quite possibly the first and last time. He didn't want to miss a moment of this. She studied him for a few seconds before her expression turned sad. "I'm sorry," she added.

Sam shook his head, confused. "For what?" he asked gently.

She didn't answer, instead choosing to give him one last meaningful look before taking a step back and turning, her movements blurring in the normal spirit way for the briefest of moments, then taking another few steps forward. Her eyes fixed on the ceiling at something the brothers couldn't see. "You get out of my house," she said, her tone authoritative. "And let go of my son." With that said, she burst into flames again, the heat forcing the brothers to turn their faces slightly, and she burned up for a few seconds until her figure disappeared. The fire spread up to the ceiling, striking the invisible thing before vanishing. With a gasp, Sam was released as the poltergeist died.

Sam took a few shaky steps forward, his breath coming in pants as he tried to determine what had just happened. Dean looked around, his eyes wide, searching for his mother's apparition. However, Sam knew that she was gone. She wouldn't be coming back again. "Now it's over," he said quietly, tears glistening in the dim light.

Sam released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in, trying his hardest not to cry again. Sniffling, he moved the picture to the back of the pile then stopped as he came to another. In the photograph was the entire Winchester family - Mary holding Baby Sam, standing next to John and Little Dean in front of their old house. He'd seen this picture before in his dad's journal. However, there was something different about this one, apart from the fact that his dad's version was more weathered. In the bottom, next to where Dean was standing, was a little girl around the same age as his brother, cuddling a stuffed tiger to her chest and smiling shyly at the camera. Looking carefully, Sam realized that she was like a miniature version of his mom - blonde curls, blueish-gray eyes, oval face, defined cheekbones. He had a feeling that if this girl was older, she'd practically be his mother's twin. But there was something that didn't make sense. This was the first time he was seeing this girl. In his dad's picture, the spot where she was standing now was burned away. Frowning, he flipped the picture over and found neat cursive writing penciled in on the back: The Winchesters. John, Mary, Dean, Alex, and Little Sammy.

"Hey Dean?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Does the name 'Alex' mean anything to you?"

There was silence for a few seconds from his brother's end. "Where'd you hear that?" he asked, his emotion unreadable from his tone.

"Nowhere. I, uh, I was just lookin' through some pictures. You know that picture in Dad's journal of us in front of the house when we were little?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Well, I just found another copy of it in here. Except where the burn mark on Dad's is, there's a little girl. Looks about the same age as you in this one. And on the back, there's a name - Alex."

The silence from Dean prompted Sam to look up at him, but what he saw concerned him. His normally unflappable brother, the one who could kill just about anything evil that he found and still sleep at night, was staring straight in front of him, his knuckles white from how hard he was gripping the steering wheel. His eyes glimmered with unshed tears as he swallowed hard, his face taking on the same expression it had when Sam had told him they needed to go back to Lawrence. "Dean?" he asked, worried now for his big brother. If he was showing any emotion other than cocky, then something was seriously wrong. "What is it?"

He stayed silent for another few seconds before he answered. "Nothing. Forget about it, okay?"

"What? No, why would I do that?"

"Because it's not important, Sam. I said forget about it."

"No, I think that it is. You just don't want to talk about it."

"Yeah? Then why do you keep bringing it up?"

"Because I want to know what's going on, Dean! That girl definitely wasn't in the picture that Dad had, and now that she is, you're getting all defensive all of a sudden? This isn't like you, man! Something about this girl is bothering you big time, not to mention the fact that she's pictured with our family and I don't remember seeing her when we were kids."

"You don -" he started, then abruptly stopped himself, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously along the lines of 'too young.' "Look, we're done talking about this, okay?"

"I'm not!"

"Well, I am!"

Sam managed to refrain from saying anything else. His brother had that tone, the one that said he wasn't going to budge on the subject, and Sam knew that arguing with him wouldn't do any good. Resigned, he released a long sigh as he looked down at the picture again, studying the face of the mysterious young girl. One question kept running through his head; who was she that she could get his brother into this state?

The car slowed as they pulled up to the motel they'd been staying in while they had been working on the case, and the brothers got out of the car, Sam carrying the little black trunk. He unlocked the door and they went inside, setting down their things on the bed. They barely had any time to relax before Dean's phone began to ring. Cursing, he began searching his pockets for his phone, pulling out instead a piece of paper which he tossed aside without so much as a glance. Not finding it, he began searching the duffel bag for the annoying device, at last locating and answering it. As he paced and talked to whoever was on the phone, Sam walked over to the bed and picked up the paper, studying it curiously. There it was again: the name Alex with a set of coordinates and an address, written in the same handwriting as was on the back of the picture.

"Friggin' telemarketers," Dean growled in annoyance as he hung up the phone and tossed it back on the bed. It took a couple of seconds before he realized his brother was completely absorbed in the paper. "What? What is it?" he asked.

"Dean, I think you should come see this," Sam replied, still staring at the scrap in his hands. Curious now, Dean walked over and caught sight of what his brother was holding, stopping when he was close enough to read it. "It's that name again, in the same handwriting that was on the back of the picture," Sam explained. "And there's coordinates. Whoever this Alex is, I think someone wants us to try and find her."

Dean stared at the scrap in his brother's hands, his expression blank. "No," he said, his voice no more than a whisper.

Sam looked up at him, shocked by his response. "What?"

"I said no, Sam. We're not gonna go looking for her."

"Why not? If someone's gone to the trouble of leaving us coordinates, that must mean she's important enough to try to find, right?"

"Forget it. I already told you, we're not talking about this. Get your bag packed. Check-out's in half an hour."

Sam stared at his brother in disbelief as he paced the room, pulling their stuff together. "What is with you, man?" he asked.

"Nothing. I'm just peachy. Bag packed, now."

"Not until you tell me what's going on. Look, someone leaves us coordinates in the same style that Dad does, and you just want to blatantly disregard it because of some girl who was in a picture with us when we were kids?"

"It's not like that."

"Then what is it like? Why are you so hesitant to find this girl?"

"Because she's dead, that's why!"

That statement caught Sam off-guard, and he physically stopped and stared at his brother until Dean sat down heavily on the bed, his whole expression reading 'tired.' Sam waited for him to start talking; if there was one thing he'd learned while hunting with his brother, it was that sometimes he couldn't be pushed to reveal what was bothering him. He would discuss it when he was ready. Sure enough, Dean took a deep breath and started talking. "When we were little," he began, sounding hesitant, "we had this sister. Alex. She was . . ." He gave a brief chuckle. "Well, to tell you the truth, she was the closest thing I ever had to a friend. Closest thing you ever had to a mom, too."

"How did she die?" Sam asked softly.

Dean paused, his face taking on a blank expression again. "There was an accident."

"An accident?"

Dean nodded. "Dad took us with him on a hunting trip. She got in the way."

"Why would she do that?"

Dean gave a soft but broken smile. "To protect him. He was in over his head, and she knew it. So she got him out. Put herself in."

Sam released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in, feeling tears well up in his eyes. "Why don't I remember her?" he asked.

"You were pretty little when she died - around four, I think."

"And you never once told me about her, even after all these years."

"I couldn't. Dad didn't want me to mention her anymore. I think it was too painful for him." He shook his head. "I dunno, Sammy, he changed after her death. We all did. In a way . . . it was almost like losing Mom all over again."

His brother's admission hit him like a punch in the gut. All Sam could do was stare as tears started rolling down Dean's face. Dean never cried. Whatever had happened to their sister, it must still be haunting him. Quickly, Dean wiped away the tears and sniffed, trying to maintain a shred of dignity despite the fact that he'd let his vulnerable side show. "So we stopped talking about her," he continued. "Tried to forget that she even existed. Or at least, Dad did. I never could. It was the one time I questioned Dad's orders."

Sam tried not to show his surprise at that statement. Dean never questioned Dad's orders, either. It was like he was looking at a whole different person. Not quite sure how to respond to that statement, he waited to see if his brother would say anything else, but he stayed silent, lost in his own thoughts. At last, Sam could no longer keep quiet. "Dean," he started, "you know we have to check this out. Finding the picture with her in it and now this note, these can't be coincidences."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. I know we do."

"Alright, so I found where the coordinates point to," Dean said as they sat in a cafe in town. Sam looked away from his computer screen for a few seconds to see that his brother had circled a name on the map. "This town called Berwyn in Pennsylvania, about forty minutes north of Philly."

"Checks out with the address," Sam agreed, taking a sip of his latte.

"And the people who own it?"

"The McCabe family - couple Jonathan and Elise with their four kids, Jamie, Michael, Bridget, and Alexa. All four were adopted. And get this. The year that Alexa was adopted? 1987."

"That was the year Alex died."

"Exactly."

"What else does it say on the family?"

"Not much," Sam continued, scrolling through whatever page he was currently on. "Dad Jonathan was studying to be a doctor, completed his residency from '84 to '87 at Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, then got a job in Berwyn at the local hospital and moved his family to Pennsylvania. Mom Elise worked as a temp right out of college in Joliet, then as a secretary in the same hospital as her husband when they moved to Berwyn."

"Is there any way you can access the hospital's files?" Dean asked, leaning towards the screen.

"Give me a minute." He clicked away on his laptop, his eyes glued to the screen. Dean returned to the beer in his hand and took a long swig from the bottle, knowing that he would need the alcohol before this day was done. He was about to go in for a second swig when - "Holy crap," came Sam's shocked voice.

"What? What is it?" Dean asked quickly.

"Jonathan was preparing to go into pediatrics. During his residency, it says he worked under a Dr. Sekellek and that he was 'highly motivated, very dedicated to his work.'"

"So the guy liked sticking kids with needles. Don't see what's so special about that."

"Right, but listen to this. In his reports, Dr. Sekellek noticed that Jonathan had a special talent for pediatric surgery, and a lot of times he had him sit in on the procedures. One of those was a case in '87, just before he got the new job in Berwyn. After that, there's a note that he 'changed radically' and that he was caught trying to break into the filing system. The hospital was actually thinking about firing him when he got the new job and moved."

Dean's brow furrowed. "Can you pull up a picture of him?"

Sam complied and clicked a few more buttons, pulling up a dated image on the screen. It showed a young man in his late twenties or early thirties with pristine black hair, glasses, and a doctor's coat. He was attempting what looked like a smile at the camera. "That's him."

"I recognize him," he said. "That's the guy who operated on Alex."

Sam looked up at him in surprise. "You're sure?"

"Positive." Moving quickly now, he chugged the rest of his beer before setting the empty bottle on the table, retrieving his coat and his keys. "Come on, Sammy, we need to leave."

"Where are we going?"

"To go get Alex back. If your crazy theory is right and she's somehow still alive, we need to find her right now."

Moving slower, he closed his laptop and put it back in the bag, giving his brother a suspicious look. "Ooookay, but why the sudden rush?"

Dean paused and turned to Sam. "Because I think she's in danger. And if we don't get her out of there . . ." He couldn't even continue, his sentence trailing off as his expression became softer, more wounded and vulnerable. Sam immediately understood. "So, you comin' or what?" he asked, finding his voice again.

Sam took a breath and nodded. "Alright," he said. "Looks like we're going to Berwyn."