Journey

Somethin' to Hide

Here's the next one. I didn't quite know what I was doing when I sat down to write this one, but it's done and I'm moving on to the last one-shot I have planned for this collection. After that one's posted (probably on Thursday, truth be told), we will finally move on to the next story. Thanks for reading and keep hangin' in there!

This is a retelling of 2.19 "Folsom Prison Blues" and vaguely mentions 2.17 "Heart".


Sam Winchester sat on a hard, metal chair, hands cuffed to the metal table before him. He calmly eyed the man sitting across from him and ignored the other who stood in the corner of the small room.

No one said anything for several moments.

"You know," Special Agent Victor Henricksen finally spoke, "I've been told your brother likes to wisecrack a lot."

Sam smiled slightly, but otherwise kept his mouth shut.

"I'm just trying to understand," Henricksen told him, leaning forward, "why a smart guy like you puts up with him."

"He's my brother," Sam replied. The agent eyed him.

"Is killing innocent people a part of what it means to be a Winchester?"

Sam snorted. "No, Agent," he said. "I wasn't raised by homicidal maniacs, either."

"You mind tellin' me what happened back in Milwaukee, then?"

Sam pursed his lips. "Would you believe a man-droid did it?"

Henricksen stared at him. "I take it back," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Dean's not the only wise-ass in the family. Your daddy teach you that, too?"

"My dad was gone a lot," Sam answered. "Dean pretty much raised me."

"Yes, I've read your file," the agent said, picking up a folder and opening it. "We know that your dad sold his half of the car shop he and another man owned a few months after your mom died, and then he disappeared off the map for a long time before you and your brother started attending dozens of school across the country, rarely staying longer than three or four months in any one location until you graduated and got a full-ride scholarship to Stanford University."

Sam stared at the agent, unwilling to make any further comments.

"You know," Henricksen continued, "I actually tracked down a few of your teachers over your years of traveling, and only a few remember ever meeting your father."

"He worked a lot," Sam said. "Traveling salesman."

"Selling what?"

"Stuff."

Sam had to hide a smile as he sensed the man's frustration mounting. "You ever kill anyone, Sam?"

"Are we talking about living, breathing, everyday normal humans?"

Henricksen nodded with a slightly perturbed look on his dark face.

"Then no," Sam said, resolutely reminding himself that when he'd pulled the trigger last month, it had been a mercy killing of a monster who didn't want to be one.

"And your brother?"

"Not living, breathing, everyday normal humans," Sam said.

"So then you've both killed."

"We hunt."

"Animals?"

"Sure."

Henricksen stared at Sam. "You're not being very helpful."

"And you want my brother on death row for crimes he didn't commit," Sam replied in kind. "Forgive me if I don't want that to happen."

"Why are you defending Dean?" Henricksen asked.

"Why do you care?" Sam retorted. "I'm pretty sure you already think we're both nutcases."

"I can say that Dean is for sure," Henricksen told him. "I mean, he convinced everyone that he was dead and buried. I've seen that corpse, you know, and I gotta say, it was weird how much it looked like your brother. Did you know that corpse was shot with bullets made of silver?"

"Is that a fact?" Sam said.

"It is," Henricksen replied. "Sounds kinda psychotic to me."

"No more psychotic than someone being in two places at once," Sam said with a shrug.

"You're not helping yourself, Sam," Henricksen sighed, finally dropping Sam's file and leaning forward again. "We can easily put Dean away for life, but you still have a chance. I know you got somethin' to hide, but I'm tellin' you, you don't have to."

Sam smiled as he inwardly cursed the situation. He wasn't even supposed to be here, but then how were they to know that the lady at the check-in desk of their chosen motel had been in Milwaukee and seen Dean's face on the TV back in January? Being stormed by the local Arkansas SWAT team the day before Sam was supposed to go and conduct his interviews was only going to make the entire situation harder. He was just lucky that Dean had been out getting food at the time.

"Really?" he said. "Just 'cause I have somethin' to hide doesn't mean I believe for a second that I uh… 'have a chance'. I woulda thought I'd be a suspect in a murder investigation after Milwaukee, I mean, you must've known I was there for that."

"I'm aware," Henricksen said. "I can't help but think that a lot of what's going on is out of your control."

"You have no idea," Sam said dryly.

"Then why protect your brother?"

"Because he's just as in control of everything as I am."

Henricksen frowned. "I don't understand."

Sam smiled once more. "I'm sure you don't."

Henricksen narrowed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "We checked the alias you and your brother used when you arrived here in Little Rock," he said.

"Sounds like the kind of thing you guys do," Sam said.

"That same alias was used over at a motel in Provo, Utah for almost a full month back in November."

"Was it?" How in the hell had that happened? They had thrown out all their old alias' after January… right?

"It was," Henricksen confirmed. "Tell me, Sam, am I gonna find more dead bodies in Utah if I look?"

Sam shook his head and considered putting Danielle on alert once he got out of here.

"Then why were you two in one spot for such a long period of time?"

"The weather was too lovely to pass up," Sam replied lightly. "Why aren't you talking to Dean?"

Henricksen glared at Sam. "It seems we are unable to find him. You wouldn't happen to know where he is, would you?"

Sam shook his head. "Probably with a girl and a six-pack of beer."

"Does he do that often?"

"Well, not as often as he used to, but yeah."

"And you?"

Sam frowned. "Excuse me?"

"Don't you like to find some lady friends?"

Sam rolled his eyes as he tried not to think of Madison. "I lost my girlfriend in a fire just over a year ago," he said. "I'm not exactly looking for action right now." Especially not after the last full moon…

"So I wouldn't find any lady friends you had contact with in Utah?"

"What makes you so sure you could find that out?"

Henricksen leaned forward. "We're very thorough with our searches," he said softly.

Sam raised his eyebrows. "I'm sure you are," he said.

There was a moment of silence.

"You ever been involved in credit card fraud?" Henricksen asked.

"Have you looked at my wallet?"

"I think we can take that as a 'yes'," Henricksen murmured to his partner, who nodded his agreement. "Grave desecration?"

Sam stared at the agent before saying, "What d'you think?"

Before Henricksen could say anything, however, the door to the interrogation room opened and a woman stepped inside. "Sam Winchester?"

Sam nodded. "Lawyer?"

"Mara Daniels from the Public Defender's Office," the blonde woman said with a warm smile at Sam.

"Awesome," Sam said before looking at Henricksen. "Think we could talk in private?"

"I'm not done," Henricksen snarled.

"Yes," Mara Daniels said, "you are."

Henricksen glared at Sam before leaving the room, his partner, Agent Reidy following him. Sam sighed and leaned back in his chair.

"So," he said after Mara sat down, "just how screwed am I right now?"


Dean whistled to himself as he drove down the street to the motel he and Sam were currently staying. Times had been a little tough after the events of the most recent full moon, but Sam wasn't quite as broody about the whole thing as Dean had feared he'd be, so he had soldiered onward, taking a case in Hollywood and another over on Highway 41 up in Michigan. Now they were going to hunt down a ghost at the request of their father's army friend, Deacon.

This current case probably wasn't going to be very hard. Sam already had a plan to use his abilities so he could pretty much walk into the location, conduct the necessary interviews and solve the case before moving on to whatever they found next.

Just then, about two blocks away from the motel, Dean suddenly had the urge to stop going any further and get himself out of sight. He followed the urges without thinking, but once he had parked the car on a small side-street, he started to wonder just what the hell was going on.

That's when a SWAT van drove in the opposite direction of the motel he and Sam had been staying in, quickly followed by several police cars, one of which held —

"Sam," Dean breathed, eyes going wide as he watched the car drive by. "What the hell?"

The urge to avoid the motel like the plague was too strong to ignore (Stupid Jedi powers, Dean thought to himself), so Dean ended up relocating himself to another motel several blocks away for the next twelve hours before carefully slipping back to the first motel on foot and trying to figure out what had happened.

There were two cop cars stationed in the parking lot, so Dean found a payphone and called Deacon to let him know what was going on.

"I'm aware," Deacon said over the line. "Sam was part of this morning's busload of new prisoners."

"He's there?" Dean couldn't help but feel a tiny bit of relief. "Is there anyway you can get in contact with him, find out everything that's goin' on?"

"Too risky," Deacon said at once. "It's more than likely someone would notice. D'you think he'd still try to figure out what's goin' on in my prison?"

Dean couldn't stop a grin. "Without a doubt," he answered. "Listen, the best thing to do is wait for Sam to contact you once he's got everything worked out. Once he's ready, call me using the number Dad gave you and I'll coordinate the escape location from there, got it?"

"I hear ya," Deacon sighed, "but be careful, okay? The last thing I want is you in even more trouble than your brother's in right now."

"Don't worry," Dean said. "I'll be fine." He hung up and retreated to his current motel to try and plan out his next move. This whole situation was gonna be tricky.


The only good thing, Sam thought as he stepped off the bus, was that he had at least ended up in the place he'd wanted to go to. Of course, he hadn't planned on being a prisoner at the Green River County Detention Center. Hell, he'd only been held by the authorities once before, and that had been nothing compared to this. Still, an opportunity had presented itself and he'd be a fool to waste it.

Sam's cellmate had a good three inches of height on him, as well as at least fifty pounds. Sam kept his empathy tightly under control but made sure to mentally ward anyone away who might get any… wrong ideas about him, especially with the way his cellmate just kept staring at him.

Suffice it to say, Sam didn't like jail. And if he knew anything about Dean, then he didn't much like Sam being in jail, either.

Since he had no interest in fighter or bargaining with cigarettes, Sam relied on his 'psychic mojo' to help him locate the main witness he and Dean had been relying on with this particular case. Like most of the other inmates, Randall was a smoker. If he didn't have his abilities, then Sam would definitely required at least two packs of smokes to get this guy to talk, but a gentle, mental shove and Sam learned that Randall had been in the old cell block the night the man they thought might be killing prisoners and guards alike, one Mark Moody, had died of a heart attack.

Or not.

"How much blood was there?" Sam asked Randall, feeling perturbed by the idea of that much violence.

Randall frowned. "It took me three mop heads to get it all," he said, "but the guy's pallet was pretty soaked, too."

It would be a good idea to head over to Moody's old cell and see if the pallet was still there, but there was something that was bothering Sam about the situation. He frowned, suddenly feeling like he was back to square one. "So, he was beaten and nobody reported it?"

Randall shook his head and took a drag from his cigarette as they sat on a set of bleachers in a far corner of the recreation space just outside the main building. "You didn't say nothin' unless you wanted to die of the same heart attack," he answered.

"How many heart attacks were there back then?" Sam asked.

Randall looked up at Sam. "There were a lot of heart attacks back then," he said, "whole rash o'them, but only a few were like Moody's."

"And the others?"

Randall shrugged. "It was weird," he said. "Happened to guys of all ages, usually after they got sick. No one wanted to get sick back then."

"How come?"

Randall raised his eyebrows. "There was this crazy, fucked-up nurse named Glockner. I had to get a tetanus shot once, and she damn near stabbed me clear through my arm with the stupid needle."

Sam sat up a little straighter. "Do you know what happened to her?" he asked.

The look Randall gave him was a little weird, but he answered, "No idea. I finished my time and left. Next time I landed back here, she was gone and the old block was sealed up. But there were these stories that she had it out for cons and was responsible for the other heart attacks that the guards didn't cause."

And Sam knew what he had to do.

"You're a weird guy," Randall remarked after a moment.

Sam shrugged. "College drop-out," he said by way of explanation.

"A smart guy?" Randall snorted. "What the hell you doin' in here, then?"

Sam sighed. "I got an idiot for a brother," he said.

Randall chuckled. "Where's this idiot brother?"

"Evading the FBI, I should think."

Randall's eyebrows rose. "What the hell'd your brother do?"

Sam smiled humorlessly. "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and now everyone thinks he's a homicidal maniac and I'm the Bonnie to his Clyde."

Randall guffawed at that and slapped his knee. "I wouldn't go repeating that last part to anyone else, Sam."

Sam laughed. "I'm aware. Don't need anyone thinkin' I'm their bitch."

"Very true," Randall said with a nod. "Very true."


"Tomorrow night? That soon?"

"Yep," Deacon said over the phone. "Said he already took care of the Moody possibility, but that you need to research this Nurse Glockner who worked here back in the 70s. He said there were rumors back then that this nurse had it out for the prisoners and liked to medically induce heart attacks. If there's any chance that it's this woman killing my people, well…"

Dean sighed. "I hear ya," he said. "Next time you see Sam, tell him not to work so fast, yeah?"

Deacon laughed. "I thought he was supposed to be awesomely smart, son."

"He's too smart sometimes," Dean grumbled. "Anyway, tomorrow night after sunset, east side, right?"

"That's right," Deacon said. "And Dean? Thanks for this, I know I musta put you two in a tough situation."

"Hey," Dean said, "you saved Dad's life. We pay our debts, no matter what."

"Your dad taught you well," Deacon said. "Take care."


Mara Daniels came to visit Sam during his visiting hours the next day. "Your brother's still evading capture," she said by way of preamble.

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Okay."

Mara gave him a decidedly annoyed look. "He's still in town, isn't he? Your brother. He's still here, probably waiting for a chance to break you out."

"I wouldn't know, would I?" Sam said. "I'm the one behind bars right now."

Mara stared at Sam for a very long moment, wondering what it was he was hiding from her. "You know," she finally said, "there's a lot about you two that just doesn't add up."

Sam smiled. "I'm aware," he said.

The young blonde narrowed her eyes. "You're not gonna tell me anything, are you?"

Sam snorted softly and looked down before shaking his head. "Your world is normal," he said softly. "Mine never has been."

That made so little sense, but Mara couldn't help but feel that this was the most honest Sam had been with her since she'd first met him two days earlier. "Stanford was your shot at normal, wasn't it?" she asked softly.

Sam met her eyes and held them for a long moment before nodding. "It was more about being safe," he said. "I almost knew better than to think I could have normal."

Mara narrowed her eyes. "It wasn't an accident that caused your girlfriend's death," she stated, and Sam shook his head after another long moment had passed. "Was your mother's death not an accident, then?"

Sam swallowed and looked away, blinking hard a few times, and Mara was struck by the honesty of his emotions. She had studied psychology as part of being a public defender, and Sam… The mask was off for now. "I guess I'm not ever gonna see you again," she sighed.

"What makes you say that?" Sam asked quietly, and Mara couldn't help but smile at him.

"The less I know…"

Sam nodded and smiled just enough that she could see his dimples. "Right," he said. "Take care, Mara."

"You, too," Mara replied. Minutes later, she left the prison, filled with a mixture of emotions. Mostly, though, she knew she was glad. Sam had been adamant from the get-go that his brother wasn't a psycho, but he had none of the traumatized brain-washing she had thought might be associated with such a strong belief. Whoever Dean Winchester really was, she knew above all else that he was an older brother who took family seriously. She wasn't getting in the way of such a strong bond.

It was later that evening when she learned that Sam had escaped from Green River County Detention Center, and all she could do when Agent Henricksen confronted her about her visit to Sam was smile.

Henricksen didn't seem to like that very much, but the fact was that she knew nothing about how Sam escaped, let alone where he might have gone. "Wherever he is, I bet Dean's right beside him," she told the two men from the FBI as she rose to leave the office they had taken over upon arriving in Little Rock. "I wish you the best of luck in finding them both." And with that, she strode from the office, feeling an odd sense of justice.

When Mara reached her car, she spotted a small envelope tucked under one of the windshield wiper blades. She opened it and pulled out a small, ivory-colored card.

It only said two words.

Thank you.