AN: If anyone is interested, my beta disappeared. So I'm looking for someone to give my chapters a once over.
There was black smoke everywhere. Dean was surrounded by Amara and yet she was also standing before him. She walked up to him slowly. The wind sounded like her voice whispering. As she kissed him, two phrases echoed in his brain. "You and I are bound, Dean... You gave me what I needed. I'm going to give you what you need." Amara pulled away and as she did so, flashed of a vision filled Dean's mind. A car with two people inside. Dean watched as the car swerved on the road suddenly and fell down into a steep embankment. Another flash, the couple were obviously dead as the car radio continued to play.
Amara cupped his face tenderly. "This is my gift to you."
Dean's brow wrinkled in confusion. "But Mom..."
Amara began to vanish.
"Wait!" Dean shouted into the surrounding darkness.
"My brother was grateful as well." The surrounding whispers answered.
Dean shot up in bed suddenly. He hadn't had a dream about Amara in months. It felt... weird. Almost surreal. If one thing was clear in Dean's mind though, it was that Chuck and Amara had booked it and wouldn't be back or answering calls in the near future. Dean ran a hand over his face as he got up to make coffee.
MEANWHILE:
After connecting with her lawyer, Ana finally gained access to her parent's house after three days. It turns out that in addition to legally having a right to pick up her things that were left in the house, her lawyer worked out an arrangement so that she could search her parent's records for clues.
The last thing Jack wanted was to be in and out of court again and agreed to let her search for, "whatever she needs to get out of his hair" as long as she didn't take anything from the house that didn't belong to her…
Ana was less concerned about boxing up the remnants of her childhood than searching her parents' library. So after an hour and a half, she found herself searching through the books. She figured that anything from around the time she was born and before could hold the answer. It was easy to disregard the newer titles and sort out the older books. None of them seemed particularly remarkable, but her father in particular had a habit of writing in books as well as storing slips of paper with information.
The most Ana found was a grocery list from the early 90's, some unintelligible notes in the margins of a book about urban legends, and a few wallet sized photographs of her parents. One of the photos was of them holding her as an infant and grinning ear to ear. Ana decided that these photos wouldn't be missed. None of them included Jack and the photos of just her parents had larger duplicates hanging upstairs.
Ana moved on to the cabinets underneath the shelving. The only time she visited these cabinets was to search for board games as a child or quickly hide something as a teenager. As she expected, board games took up the majority of space in the cabinets, with old bottles of alcohol and other items she and Jack had scattered between them to hide.
Ana removed her items and decided to search the cabinets from left to right. Of course it wasn't until the last cabinet that she found something with meaning. The others contained odd receipts and random pieces of their family history. This one contained a dusty folder among other things. Inside was Ana's fake birth certificate, immunization records, and snippets from her mysterious first year of life. She added it to her things and continued her search. Ana thought it would be better to gather as many pieces of the puzzle as possible and work on putting the together away from prying eyes.
The library turned up nothing else. The only other place that could turn up something was her parents' room. Ana hadn't entered it since they passed and felt uneasy doing so. It was like trespassing on holy ground. Nothing stuck out to her. Everything was neat as always. Almost as if they were just on vacation.
Ana swallowed and searched the closet first, finding nothing. That left the nightstands and dresser as likely hiding spots. Her mother's nightstand revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Ana checked her father's nightstand and she was about to give up until her fingers brushed a slim book sitting flush with the side of the drawer.
As she thumbed through the book, she realized it was an address book. The ink had that faded look to it that indicated that these contacts were added to the book quite some time ago. Ana slid it into her back pocket. All that remained was the dresser.
Her father's drawers were on the bottom and revealed only clothes and a few keepsakes. As much as she wanted to take home just one thing from her parents, she knew that without justifying that it would help her search, Jack would not show kindness and she would most likely end up back in court. Ana knew this was the last place in the house for her to search and went through her mother's things slowly and carefully. Underneath a stack of folded blouses, Ana found a journal with a clasp. Trembling, she unclasped it and thumbed the pages, quickly searching for dates. The journal began in 1987 and seemed to trail off in the early 1990's.
"Oh my God." This could be it. This could have the information Ana was searching for. Ana slipped it into her purse and went about searching the rest of the dresser despite having a feeling that nothing else would turn up.
Ana was searching her mother's keepsake and jewelry boxes for photos or possibly letters when Jack entered the room. "Going through Mom's jewelry?"
Ana was speechless. How dare he accuse her of stealing? She hid the rage and sadness from her face. Jack took everything. He wasn't going to get anything from her ever again. Jack sauntered over and traced his fingers over a few boxes.
"I wanted to see if she saved anything." Ana didn't want to admit that she had been hoping to find a note for her. In her mind she imagined her parents writing a note just in case and explaining everything. Everything would make sense after she found that note. Only, there was no note.
Jack's fingers dipped into one of the open boxes. He suddenly paused and looked lost in thought.
"Jack?" Ana thought perhaps she had missed something.
Jack held one of their mother's bracelets in his hand and touched it almost affectionately before turning away and changing his attitude. "Mom had good tastes. Mostly." He feigned disgust at the silver charm bracelet. Ana remembered her mother wearing that bracelet every day for most of her childhood. It was almost a part of her.
Jack sniffed and looked away, "It's a piece of junk really. I doubt I could even sell it at a yard sale."
Ana felt outraged. "Jack! How—"
She was cut off. "You should keep it." Jack held the bracelet out towards her.
The unexpected gesture left her stunned.
After she took the bracelet, Jack dropped all politeness. "So are you about done snooping around in here?"
Ana sighed. "Yes Jack. I'll be leaving shortly. My lawyer will let you know if anything else comes up."
"Right." Jack left Ana alone in the room once more.
MEANWHILE:
Sam walked into the kitchen where Dean was having a beer. "Any word on Mom?"
"She's working on another case in Oklahoma." Dean took the last swig before setting the bottle down. "Some kids went missing. Mom's pretty sure that it's a rawhead."
"Let me guess, she doesn't need our help." Sam poured a glass of water.
"Bingo." Dean let out a frustrated sigh. "And we still have nothing on Lucifer or Rosemary's Baby."
"Hey, I've been thinking lately. I know she's a hunter, but has Mom been taking on a lot of hunts lately? This is the fourth one this month. She must be working more than one at a time." Sam sat down concerned.
"I was kinda thinking that too Sammy. But what are we going to do about it?" Dean let out a chuckle. It held no joy though. "That seems to be her reason for getting up in the morning."
Sam caught the sadness in his brother's voice. "Dean—"
"I'm gonna see what Cass is up to." Dean left the room.
