A/N: This is my first time writing a long scene that isn't in the show. I think I got Season 2 Sam kind of in the right ballpark of accurate. I hope so.

Chapter 3: Grief

With the paramedics on their way, the Winchester boys had to haul ass. Dad said he'd make up some story about Meg. I never did know what it was, or how he explained the devil's trap. I walked Sam and Dean to their car and showed them the back way out of the yard so they wouldn't pass the ambulance. They each hugged me before getting in the car and then I watched them drive off. Didn't figure I'd be seeing them again for a long while.

I shouldn't have gone looking for Rumsfeld, but I did. That old mutt had been my best friend for well over half my life. Sure he was getting on in years, but he was still spry. He had plenty more morning jogs in him. I don't wanna talk about what I found or the way I cried when I found it. I only vaguely heard the sounds of the paramedics leaving with that poor girl's body. Dad came out and found me, bawling over Rumsfeld's remains. We buried him in the yard. I ain't embarrassed. There's no shame in grieving for a friend.

Sheriff Mills had to question Dad, but he lied and said I hadn't been home. I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit there and tell some story about Meg and how she'd shown up at our place battered and bruised. I don't even know why. I seen death and pain plenty of times and a lot of it my own handiwork. But I never seen anything like that poor girl, forced to keep living with a broken body, locked in her mind, not even able to scream.

I wish I could say it was all worth it, that everything went well. The boys rescued their daddy, sure enough. But he didn't live another week. Next night, all three of them was in a car accident. Hit by a truck. Driver said he didn't remember a thing, so stands to reason he was possessed when it happened. That beautiful Impala was totalled, but that ain't the worst of it. I answered the phone when Sam called, begging for my father to come to Missouri. Dean was dying.

Dad went down right away, to tow back what was left of the car and… just to be there, I guess. I was left on my own, without even Rumsfeld to keep me company. Damn, that house was sparkling like a diamond by the time Dad got back. He said it wasn't looking good for Dean. I ain't religious or nothing, but I said a sorta prayer to myself up in my room.

We figured Sam and John would come collect the car some day, but there wasn't no rush. People can linger in comas for a long time.

I was reading when they finally came. Must have been two days, maybe three. I was still reeling from everything that happened with Meg, and poor Rumsfeld. And now I was expecting to hear any day that Dean had passed. So I was reading some novel or other. Trash, an easy escape. I didn't want to have to think about how much loss there'd been. I didn't want to think about that poor girl's family, never knowing what happened to her. Or about how quiet it was without Rumsfeld growling as he chased rabbits in his sleep. The way his legs used to twitch like he was running. I didn't want to think about Sam Winchester, losing the big brother he'd always looked up to. I just wanted to read about martians that ate people and wore their faces.

When Dad called me downstairs, it took me a minute to find a bookmark, and get my ass off the bed and into gear. Figuring he just wanted me to go to the store or something, I didn't exactly hurry down the stairs. I heard voices. Male voices, both familiar, but neither of them Dad's.

I saw Dean first. He was standing by the door, turned slightly away from me, but I recognised him right away. Without noticing anything else about him, I flew down the last six steps, and straight across the hall, to grip him in an awkward and probably over-familiar hug. He stumbled, caught off guard, but straightened himself up and squeezed back.

I could feel tears in my eyes as I clung onto him.

"I thought… Dad said…"

I felt his hand in my hair for a moment, before he pulled out of the hug, and I remembered I barely even knew him anymore.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I just… I'm so glad you're okay."

"Thanks, kid," he said, with only half a smile.

I got a hug from Sam too, but I was looking at Dean the whole time. He had a cut on his head, but it was starting to heal up already. He stood up straight and tall and he didn't look like he was in any pain at all. Sam was more bruised than he was. He didn't look like a man who'd been in a coma.

"What's wrong?" asked Sam, as he let me go.

"He don't even look sore," I whispered. "What kind of coma has you walkin' round right after?"

Sam frowned. "Yeah… about that…"

John was dead. That weren't right. Nothing was right about the whole thing. Dean had spent a couple days comatose and the doctors told John and Sam there wasn't much hope. Then John gives Sam a list of stuff he needs my Dad to get for him. Claiming it's for some protection spell since Dean's so vulnerable. Stuff like Oil of Abramelin and that ain't no protection. It was obvious he was planning on summoning a demon.

Next thing they know, Dean wakes up all of a sudden, right as rain, John starts getting oddly sentimental and Bam! He drops dead. It don't take a genius to guess John did some kinda deal. Traded his life for his sons. Nothing else makes sense.

Dad told the boys to stay a few weeks. They needed time to recuperate, fix their car. And to grieve, but he knew better than to say that. We put Dean in the spare room, and Sam's an early riser, so he took the couch.

That's how it was for near a week. Dean spent hour after hour working on that car, staying under it until it got so dark he couldn't see anymore. It got so I had to take him out beers just to get him to take fluids in. He'd always say thanks, but not much more. He offered to cook twice, but wouldn't let me help him. Dad and I got booted out of our own kitchen. I can't even imagine losing my daddy, but to know he traded his life for yours… That's gotta mess your head up.

Sam was a little better. He spent a lot of time looking through the books, catching up on a little light occult reading. His head was in that hunting journal of his daddy's nearly 24/7. He ate and drank of his own accord and could even hold a conversation. We had time to catch up properly. We talked about college. He had a free ride to Stanford and John disowned him for it. What do you even say when someone tells you that? My dad was thrilled I got into college at all. He was pre-law. Made my linguistics major look pretty weak, but Sam was polite enough not to say it. We can't all be geniuses, and Wisconsin is a good school, I don't care what anyone says. Don't know how hunting's gonna pay off my student loans, though. I was pretty jealous of that scholarship, I gotta tell ya.

He told me about a girlfriend the yellow-eyed demon killed, and though it was a year ago, I could tell he still thought about her all the time. He'd ended giving up on law school and getting back into the life. That's what happens. It'll suck you back in every darn time. Hunter can't quit.

Maybe a week in, Sam came upstairs looking for me. I was in my room, just emailing my friend Jo. He knocked on the door frame and I looked up, closing up my laptop out of habit. Used to do that as a teen. Didn't want my dad to see my IMs.

"Hey," he said.

I smiled. His toes were perfectly in line with the door frame and his hand stopped short of reaching around the edge. "It's okay, Sam. You can come in."

"I don't know, Ellie. Your Dad has guns."

"We'll keep the door open," I said, gesturing to the bed. "And leave room for Jesus."

Sam always smiled with his whole face. He had adorable little dimples and his eyes sparkled. Outrageously good genes, those Winchesters. Kinda annoying, really.

"You still collect postcards," he said, lowering himself a fair distance to sit on my bed.

"Yep."

My postcards covered every wall of my room. At first, I just had a little space for them, then a whole wall and by that time, they pretty much took over every surface. Around the mirror, on the wardrobe doors, inside and out. Even a couple on the ceiling above the bed.

"Bobby still bring you new ones?" he asked.

I nodded. "Some I bring home myself. But not enough. I want to go everywhere."

"Everywhere?" asked Sam.

"I've got cards from all over the lower 48, but I ain't been further than Cincinnati. Or Wichita, I guess. Had a hunt in Idaho last year."

Sam leaned back to see the postcards on the ceiling. They were mostly just blurry blobs of colour at that distance, but they were still something pretty to look at.

"So why don't you?" he asked.

"Go everywhere? I dunno."

I totally knew. Because of my Dad. He needed me. Even during college I'd be back every month or so, drive all night on a Friday and be there for the weekend. It wasn't that he needed me to do anything in particular. He never said anything, and if I missed a visit back then, he never complained. But I knew. He missed me when I was away or he was. He never used to hunt during summer holidays. It was one thing to go away a few days when I was at school anyway, but summers were for me. He taught me to shoot and to fight. He taught me how to drive and how to take a car apart. He didn't just do that to protect me, or teach me a skill for life. He wanted to spend that time with me, cos I was all he had.

Sam was now watching me as I put my feet up on the bed. I got first class posture, always sitting on tables, or slouching at my desk. When I was sixteen and freaking out about the size of my ass, Dad told me I was "built for comfort". I live for comfort. Always gotta have a place to park my ass and put up my feet.

"This room has barely changed," said Sam. "Little less pink, lot more postcards, but… uh… it's pretty much the same room we used to hang out in. On the floor, drawing with crayons."

I hadn't remembered until he said it. It wasn't that John objected particularly to his son getting arty. But they were on the road a lot, and there was only so much you could fit in a car. I had a bucket of crayons the size of my head, and Sam always wanted to use them. We'd spread across the hard wooden boards of the bedroom floor, drawing whatever popped into our heads. I went through a fairies and butterflies phase and Sam was all about dogs. He drew green ones and brown ones and big ones with floppy ears and little ones with waggy tails.

Remembering that made me think of Rumsfeld and I frowned. But then I remembered I wasn't the only one hurting.

"How you doing, anyway?" I asked.

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. I keep thinking about all the times we fought, how often I just wanted him out of my life. I hated him half the time. Do I even have a right to be upset?"

"Of course you do," I assured him. "You're not supposed to just love your family and that's that. Emotions are more complicated than that."

"I spent so long pushing him out. And there's a part of me that… It could have been Dean, you know? It doesn't feel right. I'm so wrong for feeling this way."

Sam was normally pretty articulate, but I had to read between the lines a little. I never had a brother, or any family at all really, except my daddy. We always got along great. Even when I was bratty and he was crotchety. Since the day my mamma died it'd just been him and me, Team Singer. It sounded like Sam had mixed and confused feelings about his father. And on top of that, John's death was obviously a trade-off for Dean's. Sam couldn't be entirely sorry his father was dead, because it had meant his brother lived. I got why he'd feel guilty about that.

But feelings are feelings and we can't help them.

"I don't think anything you feel is ever wrong, Sam. You can do the wrong thing or say it, but feelings just are what they are. Best thing you can do is let yourself feel, and be supportive of Dean. Do whatever he needs."

"I don't know what he needs," Sam sighed. "He won't talk about it. About anything."

The Impala was outside in the yard. I could see it out the window, and sometimes I could see Dean, working furiously at that car so he didn't have to think or feel. I grabbed Sam's arm and pulled him up and towards the window.

"I been watching him a lot," I said, pointing down at the heavy boots and denim-clad calves sticking out from under the black car.

"I know," Sam said. "You bring him beer or a sandwich. Thanks."

"Sometimes he talks about the car," I told him. "But never about your dad. But, you know… you guys aren't the same. Never were. If he wants to talk about it, you'll know."

"I feel like he should at least be angry or something. I'm angry," said Sam. "So angry. I'm reading that damn journal all day, trying to find something we can go on. Anything. I just want to get back out there and hunt this thing, not sit around waiting for Dean to fix his car!"

His breath had gotten heavier as he became agitated. I put a hand on his shoulder and I could feel the tension in his muscles.

"Maybe you and me should go on a hunt," I said. "Find something to kill."

Sam turned away from the window and looked at me. He smiled. "Pretty sure your dad would kill me."

I laughed. Probably. Dad was happy for me to go off hunting on my own, but with a boy? Horror of horrors!

"So there's nothing in your dad's journal?" I asked, throwing myself back down on the bed.

"Nothing," he said again. "Whatever he knew about Yellow Eyes, he didn't write it down."

If John had new information about this demon, he had to be getting that information from somebody. He might have been asking the right questions in the right places, but he wasn't a patient man. I didn't picture him sitting around doing hour after hour of research the way Sam or I did. More likely, he'd have someone do the work for him while he went out and hunted something.

So… how would that person get the information to him?

"Have you tried his cell phone?" I asked.

"What?"

"His cell phone," I repeated. "He had one. Who were his contacts? He have any voicemails saved?"

Sam smiled, whole face thrown into it, yet again.

"Ellie, you're a genius."


Sam took about a day to crack his father's voicemail code. There was a message there from Aunt Ellen. Apparently she'd called John months earlier, urging him to call back. Sam and Dean didn't know who Ellen was, but I could fill them in well enough. Aunt Ellen wasn't my real aunt. But she acted like she was. Ellen had a roadhouse down in Nebraska. I didn't know what her history was with John. Dad said it wasn't great, but when did Johnny Winchester ever leave a good impression? Still, if she said she knew something, she knew something. She wouldn't call John for nothing.

Hunters from all over came to the roadhouse. Dad started taking me when I was still pretty young. When he took me camping anywhere down that way, we always stopped by Harvelle's. Some people would question taking a little girl to that kind of place, but it was a great time. Ellen had a daughter, few years younger than me, and we played together. Jo was way cooler than any of the other girls at my school. She played Hunter with me, and we'd go tracking imaginary vampires all over the building, getting in everybody's way. Can you picture it? Her blonde pigtails and my grubby brown braid, empty water pistols at the ready and a plastic safety knife each for cutting off heads.

I used to have this fantasy that my Dad and Ellen would get married and we would all be a big family. Jo would be my sister, and we'd do sister things together. I didn't know for sure what sister things were, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with baking cookies and going shopping and having the perfect bridesmaid for your wedding. I asked my father if he'd ever marry Aunt Ellen so we could be a family and he said he didn't have to marry someone for them to count as my family. I could pick anyone I liked to be family, and Jo and I could be sisters if we wanted to. We wanted to.

Jo and I still emailed all the time, and I still stopped by the roadhouse if I was nearby. I thought about going down to see them with the boys, but thought better of it. Maybe a few days together would do them some good, give them a chance to talk it through, or yell at one another, or do whatever they needed to do. Plus, Jo said Ash was still living there and I was avoiding him. That's a long story. Totally dull. Anyway, I told Sam to give my love to Jo and Aunt Ellen. Dean didn't seem like the guy to carry that kind of message. He was pretty irritated before they even left. The squeaky old minivan I found for them to drive was cramping his style.

I waved them off, wincing at the sound that damn van made. It was at least a five hour drive to Aunt Ellen. Maybe they would take that time to talk about what they were going through. But, I thought, probably not.