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The sun was peeping over the horizon, clearing both snow-laden clouds and the Rockies, by the time they reached Reno, having shot north. Scarlet was dozing in Dean's arms, looking a lot better, but she had refused to let Sam touch her, even when Dean took his turn at the wheel.
Sam glanced over at her, watching her back move up and down, the blanket slipping lower, revealing pale skin . . . damn, she was thin. No wonder she had been eating so much. He decided to stop at the next town and hit up the closest fast food place and get her a bazillion burgers. Maybe he was just feeling guilty.
She hadn't said anything about what had happened to her, but he just knew that somehow she had shared his vision. Yawning, he rubbed his eyes and peered down the road. The bobbing white light? Was there a mention of that in Dad's journal? He just couldn't remember. Maybe.
Scarlet shifted, and the blanket fell past her underwear. She made a mumbling noise and cracked an eye open. Her eyes snapped wide and she stared about her, looking around, seeming extremely curious and more than a little bit alarmed.
"How're you feeling?" Sam asked.
"Fine," she grunted, and stretched an arm into the backseat, rummaging around until she found a clean shirt. That was one of the things he liked about Scarlet—she wasn't much of a girly girl. She was pretty, but tougher than nails when it counted.
"What did you see in the vision?" he asked as she changed, and pulled on a pair of jeans. Hers, thankfully.
"I almost drowned," she said absently, with a shudder.
"Huh?"
She shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it."
Sam sighed, but decided against pressing her. She had almost drowned? The vision had been graphic and vivid, but he knew that he had been in no danger, just that that old man was going to die. Or wait . . . could she have been the man? How was that even possible? Then again, he had no idea why she had been sucked into his vision and Dean hadn't. Maybe it was because she wasn't completely human.
Dean shrugged awake, rolling his head to look about them, and muttered, "Find a motel and pull over."
"Dude, it's only another ten or fifteen hours of driving," Sam protested. Then again, this could be the last patch of sun they would see for a while. The one and only time he had been to Oregon was because Jess wanted to drive to Seattle, and they had stopped in Portland for the night.
"Go on," Scarlet muttered. "We need to get there." She had wrapped her arms about her knees and looked small and child-like. Sam was struck by how young she seemed, and wondered just how old she was. Certainly not more than twenty. Maybe nineteen? And she had probably killed more men than he had killed monsters.
"Pull over," Dean said, sitting up. "Reno, right? We need to stop here."
"What's up, dude?" Sam asked, keeping his eyes on the road, away from Scarlet.
"There's a good bar," Dean grinned. "And that money isn't going to last long."
Dean's phone rang, and Sam looked at him in surprise. Quickly his brother scrambled for it.
"Hello?"
Silence, broken by a strange static, and Dean handed it wordlessly over to Scarlet. "For you."
She took it, mystified. "Hello? Sh—Where are you? Are you okay? When—" and her face lit up for several seconds before closing completely. "Okay," she murmured, sounding defeated. "Uh-huh. That much? You can't do it? Oh . . . Yeah. Got it covered. When are you coming back?" The last her voice was filled with something that sounded like anguish, and she handed the phone back.
"Did he say when he'd be done?" Dean asked.
"He hung up," Scarlet said. "We need to stop here a while. Get money and all."
Sam stared at her. Ever since that vision she had just seemed . . . broken. Lost. He knew that something was up, but she didn't say a word as they found a diner and ordered. Scarlet barely touched her burger, and Sam stared, but let her pay the guy at the counter, hearing only her asked softly how far it was to Vegas.
Back in the car, Dean turned around and asked her, "What's going on?"
"Huh?" Her face was perfectly blank.
"What did he want?" Sam asked.
"Nothing." She pointed at a bar. "That looks like a good place to start."
"It's nine in the morning. No bar is open at that hour," Sam pointed out.
"Well, when it opens," Scarlet said, sounding a little more like her old self. "I need to leave for a while."
"What?" Dean asked, his voice rising.
"I need to leave for a while. Say eight hours."
"And where are you going?" Dean asked, sounding a little dangerous.
Her face was even blanker. "Out."
"Are you killing anyone?"
She smiled slightly, seeming even more like herself. "And what makes you think I'd do something like that? I'll meet you here, at that bar, in eight hours."
"How do you think we'll just wait for you?" Dean asked, staring at her with narrowed eyes. "I might just take off and leave."
"Just give me eight hours, okay?"
"Fine." Dean looked extremely unhappy. "You've got until three and then we're gone. We have to get to Oregon."
"Very well." She slid out of the car, and was gone. Dean wrapped his blanket tighter about himself, and they stared as she grabbed her backpack from the trunk and did one of her vanishing acts.
"What the hell do you think she's doing?" Sam asked. He already had a pretty good idea, but he thought Dean's input might be worthwhile. "Think she's gone for good?"
"No." Dean's jaw clenched and he stared mulishly at the spot she had disappeared from, as if willing her back. "She'll be back. She'd better be back."
"That was Striker on the phone, wasn't it? And he wanted her to do something."
"Probably kill some poor bastard."
"I can't believe you just her go do that!" Sam snapped, feeling irritated. "She's, well, she's a freaking monster! Killing someone? How can you be so nonchalant about it?"
Dean shrugged, and lowered his eyes. "She's not a bad person," he said.
"She's a murderer." Personally, Sam actually liked Scarlet, but if she was one of the bad guys . . .
"She's fine. We've had this conversation, Sammy. She can be trusted. Now leave me alone—I'm going back to sleep."
"But she's going to kill someone—"
"Sammy, that's what she does, all right? We kill things too—"
"Not people."
"Okay . . . but maybe the people she kills are bad."
"She's still killing someone."
Dean sighed. "Look, just shut up so I can sleep. I don't want to talk about it."
Sam growled with frustration. How could his brother not see that Scarlet wasn't the most moral of creatures? Then again, neither were they, but at least he had never killed another human being. Demonically possessed human beings yes, and he had hurt people, but well, it had always been for the better good. The ridding of evil, right?
So why did he feel like everything was turning a nebulous shade of grey?
"Dude, just chill. I can freaking hear you think," Dean grumbled. "For once in your life, will you just let it go?"
Sam glared at the cocoon of blankets that his brother was buried under, and felt like he was fighting a losing battle. Between visions that felt like he was being pummeled by a hammer to Scarlet to Dean, he was going nuts. Or maybe he had already crossed the line.
It had been so simple when Jess was alive . . .
0000000000
It turned out that the bar was also a strip club. Dean was happier than spit, but his spirits fell when they learned that the dancers only started at five. So they slowly drained their beers and played a couple games of pool. Dean played a game every hour or so, cycling through the customers as stealthily as he could, and by two fifty-eight had made close to four hundred dollars.
Sam had just sat back at the bar and talked to the bartender, who had graduated from Yale, served in the Gulf War as a medic and then squandered a potentially successful career as a surgeon to bartend in Reno. The pay wasn't all that great, but Sam was happy to know that lots of patients were being saved from the shock of being operated on by a man with a naked woman tattooed on his forearm.
Dean ambled up to the bar, his gaze riveted on his watch. Probably counting down the seconds.
Sam wondered just how badly his brother wanted to get rid of Scarlet. They fought an awful lot, although he wasn't sure if Dean was joking or serious, and he had seriously thought that they were going to kill each other the night before.
"I'm leaving in thirty seconds," Dean grumbled, his good mood completely gone.
Sam paid the bartender, and gave the man a smile before following Dean out to the car. Scarlet was nowhere in sight.
"Ten seconds."
Dean leaned against the hood of the Impala, a smirk on his face.
"Dude, you're freaking nuts," Sam sighed.
"Four. Three. Two. O—"
"Looking for me?" Scarlet drawled at his elbow, and Dean jerked back with a yelp. Sam jumped too, his gun half-drawn before he realize who it was. Checking to make sure that no one had seen him, he tucked it away.
"Where the fuck were you?" Dean growled.
Scarlet glanced at her watch. "I've got two minutes to go." A bruise was forming on her jaw, mulishly spreading, and she was even paler than normal. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, as though she had put something bad into them. Or someone had sprayed something nasty in there.
"Not by my watch. Get in the car."
Scarlet tossed her bag in the trunk and almost collapsed into the backseat, and they drove off.
She sat huddled and quiet as they drove straight to Oregon, and didn't seem to sleep at all. At least, she was never sleeping when Sam glanced back. Her eyes had taken on a glazed look, with only the steady movement of her chest showing she was alive.
