I know I am a bitch, I just don't know if that's been established to the readers of this unfinished story. Please don't expect me to be a reliable updater, for I am nothing but a notorious procrastinator. I don't mean to be, but that's what I am! Sure half the time, I may have a legitimate excuse, but the other half is filled with me enjoying life and basically screwing over the poor people of fan fiction dot net out of a great (HAH!) read. If there is anyone still waiting for me to finish this story (I love you.) please be patient with me. It doesn't even have to be a tolerable patience- but a restrained quality is needed if you wish to deal with the likes of me. I cannot even imagine what my other fans of Kyon The Cat Zodiac and The Clashing of Angels and Demons wish to do to me. Another reason I'm deeply sorry is because I cannot find my original works for any of my stories, so I must rewrite everything from memory. Please don't give up on me just yet!
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THE TELEVISION SHOW SUPERNATURAL AND AM NOT GAINING ANY MONEY FROM THIS STORY. THE ONLY THING I DO OWN IS THE OC, WILLOW.
XxX
One Week Later…
A cold wind blew suddenly and swiftly through the dark motel room, effectively waking the now awake occupant. Sam shut the door loudly and stomped to the corner table ignoring his brother's hazy glare from beneath the thin orange blanket. Dean greatly resembled a turtle, what with his limbs spread out from the bunched up fabric laying on his prone back.
"Come on Dean, wake up!" the giant tossed a foil-wrapped breakfast burrito at the cranky looking man who caught the food with ease. "We gotta leave the room in under an hour."
"Bitch."
"Your welcome."
Sam was barely paying his older brother any attention. He was too busy glaring at an unfamiliar cell phone and simultaneously eating an egg and ham sandwich. Dean freed himself from the scratchy cover and sat up from bed, then started to inhale the dollar menu treat. A minute or two passes in a tension-filled silence before the blond speaks.
"What's up your butt?" small bits of bacon and egg are launched from his mouth.
Sam grimaces at the display of sea-food, then replies, "Just a hunch. I still need to confirm some facts."
Dean shoves the remainder of the burrito into his already crammed hole, then leaves with a shrug to the bathroom, grabbing a random t-shirt that didn't smell too bad from the floor and some already used jeans. Once the shower started to run, Sam tossed his trash away and search through the phone's missed calls. He had already memorized that California area code number by heart, but didn't dare call. The hunter still hadn't listened to all of the messages yet, but the more he listened, the less reassured he became. Sam had initially begun rooting through John's old papers and phones to inform old contacts, make new ones, and see if anyone had called about leads or new cases. He never expected to uproot something far more buried. It had at first confused the brunette as to why there was a sobbing girl calling from such a far-away state nearly whispering about her mother's death. Sam felt bad for the kid, but he couldn't pretend to be the father she was looking for, so he promptly skipped the rest of the message to avoid feeling depressed. Unfortunately, the next call was from the same person, but this time she wasn't crying but had a horribly desperate whine. She kept asking, "Where are you?", "Why haven't you come daddy?", and "Please don't leave me alone."
There were several other messages just like the previous, all in different tones, in between real possible cases, but Sam couldn't pretend not to be interested any longer. The stranger had grabbed at, demanded, and finally stolen the sympathetic hunter's attention. If this had originally been a misdialed mistake, she would have realized her mistake five missed calls ago, but it wasn't. She had called this number at least eight times and at the ninth, Sam had successfully answered. The girl sounded different. Words were slurred and difficult to understand, as well as her thought process.
"Whereare you-Daddy! I-you've… you've left meh all alone. I wai'ed for ya, and wai'ed for ya, bu' you NEVER showed! Ma-mom izdead, and you've jus' left meh all alone with-" a loud hacking noise interrupted her drunken speech, then it continues. "I only got gramma left. Firs' you leave meh, then ma-mom, and gramma isn't gonna las' forever… I need you daddy. Please come home."
Sam didn't know how to respond to that last coherent sentence. It was heart-breakingly similar to their lives, and he just couldn't break her clearly fragile state of mind. What could he say to make everything better. This girl had just bore her soul to a cellular device believing her father to be on the other end, and was obviously intoxicated. The stranger had basically recited what Dean had buried so deeply beneath layers of guilt, self-loathing, and cocky bravado. Sure, Sam was still claiming this girl's frantic calls to a missing father to be a coincidence and nothing more, but he couldn't help but feel a connection to her. The nameless person had lost her mother, her father was gone, and her guardian was an elderly relative. Before Sam could even consider talking, Dean had entered the room making the agitated man hang up abruptly.
At the tenth call, Sam had been too late to answer with his hands full of the mornings breakfast. Now with Dean out of the way, he could listen to the message. He vowed it would be the last time; truthfully the kid was an unneeded distraction. Sam didn't need to listen to this girl's sob-story because even though her situation pulled at his heart-strings, he could not afford that type of time wasting. Dean and Bobby were counting on him to be fully alert and concentrating on the jobs at hand. Azazel and Ava were Sam's top priorities, and should stay that way.
With a determined mind-frame, Sam hit call and brought the phone to his ear. "How DARE you?" What the hell? It wasn't the girl's voice spoke through, but an old woman's. "What kind of bastard leaves his daughter alone on her birthday? On her mother's funeral? I buried Karoline with only Willow and two close friends-it wasn't hard to tell who was missing from the party!" she spit the word out venomously. Sam came to the conclusion that this bitter woman must be 'gramma'. "The minute you walked back into our lives again all those years ago I knew. I knew someone's heart would be broken, I just didn't know it would be Willow's." This asshole deserves her wrath. "It's time to decide, John. Take some responsibility, and come rescue your daughter from this hell. Sadly, you're the only one who can, so hurry up Winchester. Or I'll hunt down your unforgivable ass."
The line went dead, and Sam sat staring at the phone as if it had physically bit him. What kind of sick joke was this?
XxX
Dean had just hopped out of the shower and was pulling up his pants when Sammy burst open the bathroom door (much in the same fashion as he did earlier).
"What the hell, Sam? I'm changing here."
The shorter brother noticed immediately the younger's disheveled appearance, their father's journal clutched tightly in his hand, and beyond that the hotel room was littered with their belongings. Dean quickly transformed his pissed off face to one of concern. "What's going on?"
"When we were younger, and I was still too young to hunt, did dad ever not tell you about certain hunts?"
"All the time. He knew I knew what went on, but he didn't think I was ready for some things. Why?"
Sam hastily started to flip through the book, missing pages in particular and certain dates were sought for. "Was there a specific date he would always leave on? A time of the year he wouldn't explain what was going on?" Dean was beginning to see the pattern in the dates. A chunk of the January pages were torn for it. "Why'd you rip apart dad's journal Sammy?"
"I didn't." Sam glanced back up at his brother's green eye's soulfully. "They were already missing."
"Why?"
"Do you remember, or don't you Dean?"
"Yes, yes! Why are you so interested? What's the point in more puzzles? There are no more secrets to dig up." Dean's voice had taken an acidic edge. "Just get your stupid theories out of the clouds, and let whatever crawled up your ass die."
"I think we have a sister."
XxX
Two Days Later…
Willow laid her head down onto the toilet seat, not caring how unhygienic it was. Gran doubted she could even spell unhygienic at the moment. The old woman brushed away sweaty strands of hair from the girl's forehead and whispered soothing, nonsensical words into her flushed ear. Her grand-daughter had been escorted home at midnight by an equally drunk teenager, thankfully not by car. Gran didn't appreciate the company Willow had been keeping these past few days, but she disapproved even more of her coping methods. Where in the world did Will even get a fake id card? Probably from that horrible little hoodlum that walked her home.
Gran's thought's were cut short by another onslaught of spewing stomach bile. There was nothing really left at this point. Bony fingers combed through damp curls, and another hand rubbed gently circles into the girl's back.
"Sweet-pea, I really wish you wouldn't do this to yourself."
"But it's so much fun." Willow dead-panned.
Gran couldn't even muster a disappointed expression. All that formed on her aged face was sympathy. "You've got to stop Willow. This isn't the way to deal. You could end up in jail-or worse, hurt."
The tired sixteen year-old rubbed her hand across wet lips, then coughed with a hack into the toilet. Spit dribbled down her chin and the air was already filled with a sour smell. "I don-don't see how alcohol is such a bad thing. Te-teachers are always preaching about the horribleness of beer and the 'evil' affects of it, bu'-" Willow's broken speech was cut short by another empty cough.
Isn't this proof enough Sweet-pea?"
"Something that makes me forget, can't be all that bad."
Gran didn't know how to respond to that. Hell, that little sentence probably would've pushed her to drinking, but she knew that wouldn't be of any help to Willow. Slowly, the sad grandmother continued to card her fingers through the adolescent's tangled mane.
"But everything crashes down once morning comes, doesn't it?" Willow turned her face away, hiding her pleading eye's. "Promise me that you won't go drinking with Zachery again Willow."
Once again, there was no response, and it was quiet for some time until her scratched voice asked, "Where's my daddy?"
Gran's slow movements stuttered, but the inebriated girl didn't notice, and she answered her own question. "He's not coming back…"
The oldest Fray said not a word, and she barely noticed that Willow hadn't answered her first question.