7 – Insignificance
Jo was pretty sure she was dead about a dozen different times. Once, she missed a bullet in the back only when the mud made her slip. She heard other gunshots, farther off, and hoped Dean was okay. But why worry about him, right? He was a Winchester, and they always seemed fine.
Somehow she escaped them, or maybe they just let her go, but either way, she got clear. Still, she didn't stop to take a breath until she was on the main thoroughfare, and even then, she hid behind a building to do it. She also took that moment to reload.
It was while she was doing this that she noticed a bit of graffiti on the neighboring building. It looked like one of those summoning symbols Dean found in the church, the one that kind of looked like an eye. Huh.
She walked over to have a look, and touched it, smearing the chalk a bit. Except, was it chalk? It seemed drier and more crumbly. She sniffed it, and after a couple of seconds, decided there was ash mixed in to it. She couldn't tell if it was just burnt wood or human ash or some mix of the two, but she didn't really care. She wiped it off on her pant leg, and guessed that must have given it some extra magical mojo. Jo used her sleeve to erase the symbol from the wall, and did it every time she saw one, and it turned out she saw three more by the time she reached the bar.
The cops had cleared out, but she got there in time to see the chubby bartender locking up. Jo looked around, but Dean wasn't obviously anywhere. She made sure she was out in the open, so if Dean was hiding he could see her. But why would he be hiding, except for sheer paranoia?
He didn't make it out of the woods, did he? At first she didn't want to believe it, but the more the seconds ticked past, the more likely that seemed. Was that why she got away? Dean pulled most of the zombie crew after him, and they got him. Shit. How could she be the only one left?
Out of options, she walked up to the bartender. "Oh, hey," he said, with that sort of hopeful look on his face that guys sometimes got when they thought they had a shot at her. "We're closed for today." She knew it was cynical and wrong of her to think all men were pigs, but … that's when Jo noticed his eyes were fixed on her boobs. And, oh yeah, she was wet from being rained on.
God. Compared to most guys, the Winchesters were actually thoughtful. Who would have guessed that? She zipped up her jacket aggressively, and gave him an evil look he probably didn't notice much at all. She wondered if showing him she was armed would make a difference. "I guessed as much. I was wondering if you'd seen the guy I was in here with earlier around?"
He thought about it, looking around on the off chance they were hiding behind a parked car. "Which one? The huge giant-y dude or the pretty boy?"
"The pretty boy," she replied, before she realized what she'd just said. "Although if you'd seen either, I'd like to know."
The bartender shook his head, but Jo noticed a quick glance towards her breasts, which were now covered, and that must have given him a case of the sads. Good. "Not since you guys left. Although … I don't think I saw the giant dude leave …"
"You were saying before that the electricity grid's been screwed up these last few days," Jo said quickly, before he could realize that Sam never actually left the bar, at least not by any door. "Has anything else?"
"What d'ya mean?"
"Well, have there been any new, strange people in town?"
"You mean besides all the crazies killing people?" He grimaced and glanced away as he considered it, pausing a moment to open an umbrella. "Not really. Except that Goth guy the bar back thinks is cute, but I think he looks like a cosplay reject, y'know?"
For the first time since she realized she'd made it out and Dean hadn't, Jo felt a bit of hope. "No, I don't know. Who is this guy?"
The bartender shrugged. "Just some guy, I don't know his name, but he moved into the old McDowell house last week."
"Can you tell me where that is?" And if he was the asshole behind all of this, and Jo figured out how to kill him, maybe she could eek the smallest of victories out of this disaster.
But if her Mom, Sam, and Dean were dead, she didn't know what she was going to do.
Sam was still trying to figure out what Dean might be when he got the weirdest sense they weren't alone.
He turned, sure he was about to come face to face with another monster, but to his surprise, the hallway was empty. "What is it?" Dean asked.
Sam shook his head, but then he realized something. "Someone else is here." It wasn't a monster he was picking up, but another person. How did he know that?
"No shit," Dean scoffed.
"No, not yellow eyes, someone else." Sam followed his strange gut instinct to the fourth door down the corridor. The door wasn't locked, so he opened it up, and found there was a single chair in the center of an empty room, with a woman tied to it. She was slumped forward, her long, dark hair hiding her face, but there was little doubt who it could be. "Ellen," Sam gasped, rushing to her. Dean quickly followed.
While Sam untied her, Dean knelt down in front of her, and took her face in his hand. "Ellen? Can you hear me?" After a second, he reported, "She has a pulse."
He nodded, not adding that she damn well better, although he thought it. Once he got Ellen's ropes undone, Dean caught her as she slumped forward, and Sam started looking around for something he could pick her handcuffs with. He found a loose nail in the floorboard, and decided to do what he could with that.
"Ellen, come on," Dean said, still trying to get through to her. He patted her cheek, because there was no way he was slapping her. Dean knew better than to do that, even if she was unconscious. "Ellen? Don't check out on us now." After a moment, he said, "Your daughter's hot. I mean, really hot. Think I'm gonna take her to Vegas, maybe swing down to Cancun for Spring Break."
Sam had to pause and glare at Dean. "What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to get her Momness to kick in. It should wake her up."
Sam shook his head. If he was a demon possessed meat suit, he knew Dean super well. That was just the kind of bizarre quasi-logic that Dean would pull out of his ass. While he continued to work on the cuffs, Dean kept on going. "She'd do great in a wet t-shirt contest. I bet we'd clean up. Maybe I can take her on the road, give her a new name, maybe get her stripping. What do you think about Starla?"
Sam managed to get the cuffs off Ellen, and much to his surprise, Ellen started muttering, and tried to sit up. "Wh-what? What are you saying?"
"Told ya," Dean said, holding her by the shoulders. "Ellen, you okay? You with us?"
Ellen lifted her head, and asked weakly, "Was somebody saying something about my daughter?"
Son of a bitch. How in the hell did that work? Dean flashed him a small smile. It really did seem like him and not an impostor, but that just made things creepier. Was Dean just dead, or was he still in there somehow, in spite of the fatal gunshot wound? How did any of this make sense?
"Nope," Dean replied, helping her stand up. "Are you okay?"
Ellen stood, and grabbed on to Dean's arm to steady herself before looking around the room in surprise. "Where the hell are we?" She then glanced at Dean, letting him go. "And why are you wet?"
Dean shrugged. "Out in the rain."
"Do you remember how you got here?" Sam asked her.
Ellen looked at him like he was crazy, and then confusion took over as she thought about it. "No. I was … what was I doing?" She took a deep breath, and that seemed to clear her head and wake her up a little. "I went to help Carlos. He was in trouble at his motel. There was this man with bleeding white eyes. I shot him."
"Then what happened?" Dean prompted.
She shook her head. "I don't remember. That's it. How about you two?"
"I was at a sink in a bar, and then I was just here," Sam admitted.
Dean sighed, and ran a hand through his wet hair. "I was shot in the woods."
"Shot?" Ellen looked at him, and saw the hole in his shirt. "Oh my God. Were you shot in the chest?"
She tried to grab his shirt and Dean stepped back before she could. "It looks worse than it is."
"Like hell. All shots in the upper chest are serious," Ellen countered, sounding both like a battlefield medic and a Mom. "You shouldn't even be standing. We need to get you to a hospital like five minutes ago."
"That would be great," Sam said. "But we're not sure where we are, or how to leave."
"And Sam thinks I'm dead already," Dean added, surprising him. "And he may be right. I actually think I remember dying, but here I am." Dean shrugged, as if it was no big deal.
Ellen's look was caught somewhere between horrified and baffled. "What? How is that … how can that be possible?"
Dean shrugged with his hands, gesturing to the empty room. "It isn't, not as far as I know, but here we are. I don't think I'm a monster, but who knows. Take my head off if start acting like something other than me. Fire as a last resort, okay?"
Sam stared at Dean, suspicious as well as caught off guard. "I didn't tell you any of that."
Dean gave him a smirky half-smile and haunted look that signaled this was very much his brother. It was hard to imagine even a dedicated duplicate getting that kind of contradictory detail right. "Kid, the day I can't read you like a book is the day I turn in my gun and fake badge."
Shit. Sam could see some sadness in his eyes too, like he knew this was it, but he was resigned to it, because Dean was nothing if not a fatalist. He liked to think he was being a realist, but Dean's world view got dark fast. Still, he would be a good soldier to the end, because that's what Dad taught him.
Ellen looked between them, and caught the vibe, but wasn't sure what to do about it. So she did the right thing, and stuck to facts. "You say you don't know where we are, but clearly we're in a house of some kind."
Sam shook his head, kind of glad for something else to think about. "It's not right. The proportions are all off. I think the yellow eyed demon is doing something to us, but I'm not sure what."
"The yellow eyed demon is behind this?" Ellen replied. "How the hell did you not lead with that?"
That was a fair point. But before Sam could respond, they heard a noise out in the hallway. It was like a scuff against the floor.
They all turned towards it, and Dean suddenly gave Ellen his chair leg and moved closer to the door, putting himself between the entrance and them.
"What the hell are you doing?" Sam said, pitching his voice to an angry whisper.
Dean looked back at him with a shrug. "I'm already dead. What else can he do to me? As soon as I get him, you two make a break for it."
"Dean –"
"Shut up, Sam," he replied, turning away and squaring his shoulders towards the door. "I'm not going to have died for nothing."
Sam didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything.
