Becoming Human – Unraveling As We Fall
Hello dear ones! Sorry for the delay, but real life is being a bitch to me. Here's the next chapter! There's a hint of Gabriel in it, but he'll show up personally in the next chapter, for those of you who are reading this for the Sabriel and wondering why I've written close to 50k without having brought him in yet. ;D
I'll leave you to go read this. Ta!
~InK
….
One year to the day since they had walked into a bloodied and empty motel room, John and Dean were sitting in a bar.
Dean's eyes were fixed on the grainy surface of the bar, beer in hand. He couldn't believe how badly he'd failed Sammy. A whole year the kid had been out on his own; it would be a miracle if they found him now, but there was no way they could stop looking, not until they found him.
And if they couldn't get Sammy back, at least they could find his body, find out what happened to him - give him a proper hunter's burial, and avenge the kid. But these days and weeks and months and long tedious hours of simply not knowing, were wearing down the two Winchesters.
Because one year after they'd lost Sammy, Dean could no longer deny the strong possibility that Sam wasn't alive anymore. He'd keep looking – fuck, he'd keeping looking until he'd scoured every inch of the Earth ten times over or until he found his brother – but there was a part of him that whispered cruelly in the back of his mind that there might not be all that much left to find.
Dean swallowed the wave of pain that followed that thought with the rest of his beer and slammed it down on the counter. He gestured to the barman to bring over some whiskey – four in the afternoon be damned, he couldn't deal with these thoughts. Not today.
John waved the man away however. Dean glared at his father, who was the more sober of the two by several drinks. He was still nursing his first beer, eyes hollow and resigned.
"We need to talk," John said. "And you're staying sober for it."
Dean just shrugged, scowling.
"You have a brother."
Dean snorted mirthlessly, all cold sarcasm and attitude.
"Fuck yeah I do," he snarled. "And he's out there lost and alone. Or have you forgotten that two shapeshifters tortured him using our faces, and sent him off into the wind?"
John shook his head.
"No, you and Sammy have a brother," he clarified slowly. "A half brother."
"The actual fuck are you talking about?" Dean demanded.
"It was maybe ten years ago," John replied quietly. "It was one night, and I never thought anything of it, but then she gave me a call-"
Dean wasn't going to listen to this. He wasn't going to think about his dad having an affair, or leaving behind some kid –
Nope, he wasn't going to think about that, because he was tired, tired of feeling sad, or desperate or even hopeful, so he slipped into his default – pure anger.
"What, you think he can just replace Sammy?" Dean hissed.
"No, that's not-"
"Because that's sure as hell what this sounds like!"
"Dean."
"Don't do that," Dean growled. "Don't say my name like you can order me around, like you ordered Sam to stay behind, or me to come with you-"
They're words designed to hurt and cut, and they fulfill their purpose spectacularly. John flinched before he looked back at his son, anger and hurt melding into desperation.
"Please Dean, hear me out," John said quietly. "This whole business with Sam, I never protected him the way I should have. I never should have put him on the sidelines or tried to keep him out of the loop, because that made him a target, no matter how far away he was."
John looked down, shame filling his features.
"Kate… she knows a little bit about things," he said, knowing even as he did that it was his poor justification for leaving her on her own. "She patched me up when I nearly got torn apart by ghouls, and well… things just happened."
"Things just happened."
Deans voice was hollow.
"What, did you trip?"
John glared at his son, lips pushed tight together in an expression that couldn't decide between a frown of disapproval and a small smile.
"Don't be a hypocrite, Mr. 'I've got a girl in every port,'" John replied, and for a second, things felt alright, like maybe the world hadn't come crashing around their shoulders.
"Touche," Dean replied, and when he signaled the bartender to pass along another pair of drinks, his dad didn't object.
"Listen, I just thought… well, I thought maybe I need to do a better job of keeping my family safe, and Kate – she isn't your mother, Dean. She can't replace what Mary was to me, do you understand? But I care about her – hell, I think I might love her, just a little, and I don't want her or her son hurt."
Dean took a long swig of alcohol, eyes fixed on the bar.
"We don't stop searching for Sammy," he said quietly. "I'm going to find my brother."
John nodded.
"But that doesn't mean…"
Dean trailed off.
"Look, I don't know if I can deal with this right now."
And then he was gone, probably off to another bar. John shrugged and paid their tab, sliding away from the bar just as easily. He'd head back to their motel room and sleep on it, but his mind was partially made up. He wanted to go to Karen, make sure she was alright, and protect her, protect her son, like he hadn't been able to do for Sammy.
They were his kin, after all.
But he wasn't going to do anything without Dean, because they were together in this. John wasn't going to go off and vanish on his son, not now. Not when their family needed to stick together most.
It was a month later, when they were patching each other up from a hunt in Colorado that Dean finally brought up the subject himself.
"So I've got a half brother," he said quietly, his voice not even wavering in inflection while his dad sewed up a long gash on his side. "What's his name?"
And John smiled tightly, pulling the thread through Dean's skin carefully.
"Adam," he said. "Adam Milligan."
It was a week after that the two of them began angling towards Windom, Minnesota.
They weren't replacing Sammy, or forgetting about him. Dean promised himself that. He didn't even know that he wanted these people to be a part of his life, a part of his family. They were still looking for him, scouring every place a scared sixteen year old would run to hide, and everywhere else besides.
Dean still scoured every face he passed, looking for some sign, some resemblance to his little brother.
John was even letting the hunt for the demon that killed their mom take a backseat to their searching for Sam, sending Caleb out to check on a lead in California while they were in Iowa.
It wasn't a replacement… it was an extension.
Dean wasn't ever going to abandon his brother.
…
Sam came home one afternoon to the sound of tears.
"Janelle, are you okay?" he called, dropping his bags of groceries, and running to the bathroom, where the sound was coming from. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine honey," Janelle said, turning to look at Sam, framed in the doorway. She wiped at her cheeks with her sleeve. She looked younger than Sam had ever seen her, young and vulnerable, despite the muscle tone she'd gained from running Bobby's gauntlet.
But she was smiling.
"I'm fine," she repeated, like she could hardly believe the words herself. She raised a hand up, tracing the line of her cheek in the mirror.
"It wasn't easy," she said quietly. "It was never an easy choice to make. My parents… they told me to get out and never come back. But every day-"
Her voice caught, and more tears spilled over. Instinctively, Sam reached forward, hugging the girl from behind, offering silent comfort and support.
"Every day, I look in the mirror, and it feels right. Do you know what it's like Sam, to look in the mirror and not being able to live with how wrong that reflection is? It was like living in someone else's body, like it wasn't mine, and I didn't want it."
She sniffed, leaning back into the younger boy's arms. "I can't get over how right it feels now. I don't know how they can hate me for it, but I was never the son they wanted. Maybe I could have been the daughter they cared for, but they never wanted to see me again."
And Sam just held on, knowing that what Janelle needed was to be wanted and loved, to have someone who cared for her next to her.
"Is it wrong to be happy, even when my decision hurt them?" Janelle asked quietly into Sam's shoulder.
"No," Sam replied, stroking her hair. "You did what you had to. If they couldn't accept who you are, screw them, because you're magnificent. You're the best person I know."
Janelle chocked on something that was one half laughter, one half a sob.
"I'm here for you," Sam told her. "I always will be."
…
"So what have you got on this demon Azazel?" Sam asked, glancing over at the phone that was on speaker in the middle of the dining room table. Kylie was at work and Gary was in class, and Sam and Janelle were surrounded by books that they had spent their afternoon looking through.
"Well, that's just it," Bobby replied, gruff voice slightly muffled by the low quality phone. "From what I can tell, Azazel isn't exactly a demon?"
"So what is he?" Janelle asked.
"He's an angel," Bobby replied, and Sam's hand tightened on his pencil.
"You mean like wings and halos and divine choruses, that kind of angel?" Janelle asked, glancing over at Sam. "They're actually real?"
"No hunter's ever seen an angel, but that don't mean they aren't real," Bobby told her, and Sam could almost see the frown on the older hunter's face. "Just somebody else's problem, for the time being. Anyway, according to lore, Azazel was an angel, but he Fell, and pretty damn far. He was the first angel to follow Lucifer down into the pit, and Azazel is the Devil's right hand in ruling Hell. This guy, if he's real, is some serious bad shit, Sam. Among other things, he's credited with teaching warfare to mankind."
"So what does Azazel want with a bunch of human psychics?" Sam asked. "The demon we caught confirmed that Azazel fed his blood to all of - to all of the kids he visited. Whether that made them psychic, or they were psychic before, and this was some kind of way to tie their loyalty to him…"
"Feeling any strong desire to sacrifice some virgins and dance naked under the moon?" Bobby interrupted.
"Uh, not that I've noticed. Is that a thing? Should I be worried about sacrificing virgins?"
"We'll worry about it when it's a problem," Bobby said firmly, and Sam felt himself relax just a little. There was a pause.
"This demon say all the kids Azazel visited were psychic?"
"Yeah," Sam said.
"Done anything psychic yet Sam?"
"Nope, and I think I'd have noticed," Sam said, his heart skipping the beat as he thought about the dreams, the ones with the Yellow Eyed Demon, and how the demon had assured Sam that he could teach the teenager how to use his powers to defend himself in exchange for 'being on his side.'
Either Yellow Eyes was working for Azazel, or the demon was telling the truth, and was trying to build up some kind of plan to bring the bastard down.
Sam didn't know if he could take the chance that Azazel really wanted the latter of those two scenarios to play out.
"So basically, Azazel is one big bad son of a bitch," Sam said, summing up what they knew. "If this Colt Caleb was writing about can kill anything, do you think it would work on a fallen angel, Bobby?"
"If we can find it, let's empty a clip into his face and find out," Bobby answered, and Sam grinned, liking that plan.
"Right. So, what's the word on the Colt?"
"Nothing, so far," Bobby replied. "I'm doing some quiet looking around, see if any of the old crowd knows anything."
"Be careful," Janelle said, leaning forward, her eyebrows knitted in concern. "John Winchester sounds like a serious piece of work, and if he's looking for the Colt too, you might run into trouble with him."
"Good," Bobby growled. "Been meaning to introduce my sawed off and John's chest cavity anyway."
"Bobby," Sam said, suddenly tense.
"Don't worry you idjit, I'll stay out of trouble," Bobby said, sounded exasperated, and muttered something about kids who thought they knew everything. "How many times I gotta remind you that I was exorcizing demons back when you were in diapers?"
Sam sniggered through the blush that rose on his cheeks, and Bobby hung up on them.
"Awesome," Sam said, leaning back in his chair. "Lets go find some legendary gun."
Janelle smiled back.
…
They were planning a trip down to Los Angeles, to speak to an antique book dealer that specialized in rare items, when it happened.
Kylie was missing.
For the first time since she'd moved in, Kylie had missed checking in with Janelle, and wasn't in her bed the next morning. The girl would often go missing for a few days at a time, but never without warning one of her roommates, and the atmosphere in the apartment was tense and tightly wound.
"Right, this is stupid," Janelle said around noon, when it became clear that they were all too worried to get anything done properly. "Kylie could be hurt, and I'm not sitting around waiting to see if she's okay. Gary, go check her work and see when she left, and if she got out okay. I'm going to go around to the local mission. If Kylie got hurt or drunk, and was confused, she might be anywhere. Sam, hospitals?"
Sam nodded, already grabbing his jacket.
"On it."
The local free clinic hadn't seen anyone fitting Sam's description of Kylie, or the picture from his wallet. No Kylie Becker had checked into the university hospital.
"I've got nothing," Sam said, calling up Janelle three hours later. "I'm going to go check the red light district, if she got hurt on the job…"
The silence that fell after his half aborted sentence was chilling. If Kylie had been beaten up and left for dead by some client… Well, the odds weren't good. Prostitution wasn't exactly a career given to long and safe life spans.
"Gary's still retracing her steps from that night, her boss said that Kylie left work just fine last night. He's combing the area, but yeah, if you can start looking for her there as well, we can cover more ground."
Sam shut the phone and took off for the red light district. He had avoided it since he'd found real work at the bookstore, but he still knew the area like the back of his hand.
He made quick work of the main streets, checking alleys and the paths between buildings, wondering if he was fearful or hopeful of finding Kylie passed out in the dark.
It goes like that for the rest of the day, with the sun setting quickly and the shadows lengthening, and finally it's too late to keep searching, and the three of them call it quits at four in the morning, weary, exhausted, and worried. They meet back up at the apartment.
Janelle calls Sam sometime on the second day, lets him know that some pastor friend of hers is now officially on "Find Team Kylie." It's empty comfort, when their friend is missing, but having an extra pair of hands empowers them to keep pushing.
By the third day, Janelle had gotten maybe five hours of sleep since Kylie went missing, Gary missed every class he'd had this week, and Sam was quieter than ever, his mouth twisted into a perpetual line of distress. Janelle was frantic, snapping at people nearby for slight disturbances and surrounding herself with maps of the city and lists of shelters.
Gary spends a lot of time playing his violin when not on the streets, taking comfort from the familiar movements and sounds.
Sam meets Pastor Kay, Janelle's friend. She works part time at the local free clinic and part time at the Lady of Grace church ten blocks away. It's upstairs, overlooking a dingy one-way street, but the inside is clean and well cared for.
On the fourth day, Sam started praying, because it has become clear that the three roommates have done everything they possibly can, and he just wanted his friend home and safe.
Sam was combing the back alleys of Chinatown when he got a phone call.
"We found her," Gary breathed into Sam's phone, voice tense and frightened. "Kay recognized her when she was moonlighting at the clinic downtown."
"Thank god," Sam moaned in relief, leaning against the brickwork wall. "Is she okay?"
"She's been unconscious for nearly three days, apparently she wasn't taking her insulin and went into shock. She was out until the doctor figured things out and started her on the right meds."
"Oh shit," Sam whispered. "Will she be alright?"
"Janelle's friend pulls extra time at the free clinic, so probably," Gary said. "We're over there now, if you're nearby."
"Headed there now," Sam said, reversing his direction and heading straight for the tramway. "What exactly happened, do we know?"
"Someone beat her up pretty bad," Gary said, voice tight with anger and worry. "Of course, no cop is gonna listen to an assault case on a prostitute, so we can't find the bastard, but I'd like five minutes alone with him."
Sam grimaced. He knew the feeling, but right now the important thing was to make sure Kylie was safe and okay. Retribution could come tomorrow, when they were certain that things were going to work out.
"So she was unconscious and couldn't give herself an injection?" Sam asked.
"That or…"
"What?"
"Well, have you seen Kylie these last few weeks?"
"What do you mean?"
"She's exhausted, overworked, constantly tired. I know you can Janelle have been working on your own little project or whatever – and by the way, I'll be hearing about this huge hush hush thing eventually, so you might as well just tell me – but I think she's working too hard and not taking care of herself. It could be that she didn't miss her dosage accidentally."
The thought made Sam stop in his tracks for a moment before continuing his stride.
"We'll get her through this, either way," he said confidently. "I'll be over there soon."
It look him almost an hour and a half to get over to the clinic, where he found Gary and Janelle hovering over a semi-conscious Kylie.
"Hey, how are you doing?" Sam asked, concern filling him at the sight of Kylie.
"Fine," Kylie rasped. She looked grey and exhausted, with deep bags under her eyes. Her hair, normally lustrous and curly, hung limp around her shoulders.
"You don't look it," Sam observed dryly, sitting beside her. Janelle and Gary were each occupying one of the girl's hands with their own, assuring themselves that she was fine, that she was there and safe and whatever Kylie had been through, they could help her recover.
The four of them sat together in silence, just glad to have each other back.
"Kylie, I have to ask," Gary said softly after a long silence. "You didn't… your insulin, you didn't mean not to take it, right?"
Kylies' eyes focused down on the thin covers of the cot, face flushed.
"Of course not," she was quick to assure them. Sam, who could identify a lie nearly as well as he could tell them, believed her. This was an accident, brought on by too many late nights, by trying to keep too much going at once.
Janelle tightened her grip on Kylies' hand.
"I understand hon," she said. "You're going to be okay, and we're going to make sure of it. We should have known before now that something was wrong, that you were doing too much."
Kylie nodded, and her eyes were shining with gratitude.
…
Sam and Janelle left for Los Angeles a week later, once Kylie was back on her feet and no longer in need of constant supervision. The girl was exhausted, working three jobs to try and pay for rent and send enough money back home to support her sister and nephew, and though she was chomping at the bit to get back to work, the three of her roommates managed to impress upon the girl the need for rest and taking take of herself.
Janelle's eyebrows were furrowed with worry all the way down to Los Angeles, obviously unhappy with the idea of leaving Kylie on her own – Gary was back to going to class full time and nobody wanted a repeat of the terrible last week. Pastor Kay, Janelles' friend from the clinic was going to be looking in on Kylie from time to time, but it wasn't enough, not when Kylie was family.
And that realization makes Sam's stomach drop out of the bottom of his torso. Something icy clenched his gut in a vice-like grip, violent and terrifying. These people that he loves like his own blood, they can hurt him. Be used to hurt him. He can't catch his breath for a moment, trying to avoid how frightening that realization really is.
Somehow, he reached out to these people, trusted them, cared for them, and forgot to guard himself
"You could have stayed," Sam finally offered. Janelle gave him a dark look.
"And leave you traversing about the state unsupervised? Not likely."
"I'm a big boy I can take care of myself," Sam replied.
"You're just shy of seventeen, and you're making plans to go after some object that has gotten at least one hunter horribly dismembered already," Janelle glared.
"And if this Azazel wanted me dead, I'd be dead already," Sam replied, which was obviously not the right thing to say, because Janelle huffed and turned her gaze out the window.
"That attitude is exactly the reason I'm coming with you," she said, speaking to the window. "Do you have any idea what you can do to a person without killing them?"
And because Sam knows - really, he does, the evidence is carved into his skin, a patchwork of old scars and flashes of horrible memories – he didn't say anything.
He felt much better going on this hunt with Janelle too, even if they didn't have any confirmed monsters that they were going after.
Once they arrived in Los Angeles, the two hunters found a cheap motel and lay low for the night, making plans to visit the rare book dealer in the morning.
"So, do you think he'll know anything?" Janelle asked into the silence of the motel room, as the two of them waited for sleep to come.
"Maybe," Sam said. "I mean, hunters journals can end up in some weird ass places, and I think that's the sort of thing I'd take notes on if I ever came across anyone like Samuel Colt and that amazing gun of his."
"I guess so," Janelle said softy.
…
As it turned out, the antique book dealer didn't actually have anything useful, though Sam ended up picking up some old demonology texts to send to Bobby. They returned to San Francisco mostly empty handed but still determined.
Time flew by.
They cut down a Wndigo up near Santa Cruz – way out of normal hunting grounds, but that's monsters for you – and a handful of ghosts around the state. Sam was hesitant to venture too far out of California, and made sure to keep a low profile.
Gary decided to make it his new mission to convince Sam to take his GED and look at taking some college classes over at the university. Sam refused offhand at first – because what were college classes going to do for a hunter?
It wasn't until he was alone that he had a moment to think over that knee jerk response that his own head had given him, and he felt sick. It was, almost to the letter, the exact same thing John had told him when Sam wanted to join AP classes, or the debate club, or soccer. It was the same reaction Dean had had when Sam confessed that he really wanted to go to college and become a lawyer.
That had been so important to him, once. Sam had been so determined that he was going to get out, that he wasn't going to be a hunter.
And there was a part of him that still wanted that, that still wanted to have a life. And if nothing else, the fact that he'd been living with the same people for several months now and was still alive meant something. These people really cared for him, and they wouldn't turn on him.
So on his seventeenth birthday, he sat the GE exam and passed it with flying colors.
"You might be the only person here who's surprised," Janelle smirked over at Sam, who was looking down at the results in awe a few weeks later. "Gary, how do you feel about taking classes with a seventeen year old?"
"Like an old man," Gary said, taking a swig from a bottle of beer that Sam immediately stole from him.
"Hey!" Gary said, reaching for it, but Sam was taller, and held it away from his roommate with a wide grin.
"Oh come on, why are we even letting him drink?" Gary complained to Janelle, who snorted into her own beer.
"Alright, alright, I'll be fair," Sam conceded, giving the bottle back and leaning back onto the couch next to Kylie, grabbing his own beer faster than Gary could stop him.
Gary toasted Sam.
"Congratulations to our now college bound friend!" he said, and Kylie and Janelle cheered, making Sam go red.
Because not two months ago, Sam was still selling his own body occasionally in order to pay for groceries and his part of the rent. Now, he had a good job, and there might be a life for him beyond hunting, beyond a world of secret demonic plots and monsters.
It was a heady, happy kind of thing to realize that he had something worth surviving for, something beyond survival itself.
"Thanks guys," he said.
"So Sam, any idea what you want to study?" Kylie asked.
"Uh, I was thinking law, actually," Sam said. "I always wanted to be a lawyer, and that's probably not going to happen, but maybe I can get a clerking position or something."
And the look Janelle shoots him tell shim that she understands, that there's almost no way Sam could make it through law school while hunting.
But maybe he could take a hiatus. Maybe he could specialize in defending hunters from legal charges for things like grave desecration Maybe he could help make sure that assholes like the ones that beat up Janelle got the jail time they deserved for preying on an innocent girl. Maybe…
"Well now, that's something," Gary said, looking impressed. "Hear that guys, our Sammy's gonna be a lawyer!"
Sam turned even redder.
"So pre-law," Kylie said. "Anything else you're interested in?"
"I thought maybe languages or something," Sam admitted scratching the back of his head. "Maybe learning an instrument or something would be cool, I don't know, I really haven't given it much thought."
Another round of good natured ribbing followed, and Sam relaxed in the knowledge that he was safe, and allowed himself to let go of that fear he'd felt only a week before, when he'd been driving to Los Angeles with Kylie. These people weren't going to hurt him, literally didn't have it in them to hurt him the way his – the way John and Dean had. The Winchesters weren't family, but these people, they were. This place was his home, and there was no way he could change that now. He didn't even know if he wanted to.
…
Sam walked in on Janelle and Pastor Kay blushing furiously as they scooted away from each other, obviously having broken off what must have been quite a kiss.
"Just wanted to grab my umbrella," Sam said lamely, grabbing the closest object he could reach and leaving the apartment again.
It was ninety and sunny outside.
Janelle's grin when Sam caught up with her later that evening was worth the embarrassment tenfold.
…
Sam and Janelle found a hunter's journal in a collection on display in the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center. It was from the 1800's, and it belonged to a hunter that actually met Samuel Colt. They broke in and stole the journal, pouring over its pages in depth until they found the passage they wanted.
Met S. Colt. Showed me a gun that can kill anything. I thought he was yanking my chain until a demon showed up. The thing killed it, stone cold dead. Not exorcised, actually dead.
"So it was real," Janelle breathed, diving for the phone to call Bobby. Until now, they'd been going on guesswork and conjecture, with only Caleb's word that the Colt was real. Now they knew. Someone had seen it used, and it worked, at least on demons.
It was a weapon they couldn't risk letting the demons get a hold of.
"Yes yes, fantastic, but where did he put it?" Sam demanded of the pages in front of him, as if they would yield their answers to him if he just demanded it harshly enough.
Colt mentioned that he wanted to retire. I asked what he'd be doing with that fancy gun of his. He said he had good plans for it.
"What does that mean, plans?" Sam demanded.
"I don't know, what do you think it means?" Bobby demanded from the speaker of Janelles' phone.
"Maybe he willed it to someone," Janelle suggested.
"Too easy to trace," Bobby answered. "He'd have known any records of a Colt that had would be fair game for whatever demon once he was gone."
"He'd have hidden it," Sam finished, looking down at the page. "Not in his house, it was destroyed not long after he died, probably by demons. A friend maybe?"
"By most accounts, Samuel Colt was about as good at making friends as John Winchester," Bobby noted dryly.
"So what, this is a dead end?" Sam asked, feeling discouraged.
"Well, now we have concrete proof that the legend was actually true," Janelle encouraged him.
"Yeah, which means you know what to do with that journal," Bobby warned them both. "Take notes on anything interesting, and burn it. Don't leave any trace of it, in case the demons come looking. If they don't think it's anything but a convincing story, no need to give them any proof to the contrary."
Sam nodded, glancing down at the weathered pages in his hands.
"Got it," he answered. He felt a wave of impatience rise up inside of him. He wanted to find this gun, and find the son of a bitch demon that ruined his life.
…
"Hello Sammy."
"Took you long enough," Sam glared over at the demon.
"I have things to do too you know," he replied smoothly. "So, ready for another round?"
"Not until you tell me about Azazel," Sam said.
The demon paused.
"The guys a dick, okay?" Yellow-Eyes asked. "I don't want to end up dead, so I'm consolidating my resources."
"He's second in command of hell, what are a handful of psychics going to do against him?"
"Oh Sammy, don' be so pessimistic," the demon grinned. "Now come on, am I going to teach you, or are you going to sulk all night? Or have you changed your mind about unlocking your potential for phenomenal psychic powers?"
Sam grit his teeth, but knuckled back down to learning. For now.
He didn't trust the demon, but he did need to learn this.
…
Sam finished a semester of college. Between classes and on long weekends, he and Janelle would comb obituaries and newspapers to see if there was anything interesting and worth hunting nearby.
Kylie had quit her job at the strip club and was singing at a local club – one that didn't involve stripping – and was making way more in tips than she ever had at her old job. She had a fabulous voice, and Sam privately thought that if Kylie ever made a record, she'd live in comfort for the rest of her life. It couldn't happen to anyone more deserving, as far as Sam was concerned.
Somewhere in the middle of his second semester, Janelle introduced Kay as her girlfriend, to much applause from the flat.
Over Christmas, Janelle had sat down with Sam and Kay, and explained the truth of what was out there.
Kay had smiled and promised that she wasn't going to freak out, and asked Sam to please watch Janelles' back, which he would have done regardless. The Pastor put up a line of salt around each of her doorways with duct tape, and spent an afternoon consecrating every inch of her small church with holy water.
They spent a week hunting a werewolf in southern Oregon. It was as far afield as they had ever gone, but Janelle had been tracking the creature for four months, and no other hunters seemed to have picked up on the hunt. People were dying, so they sucked it up and ditched class and work to handle it.
As it turned out, there were no less than seven werewolves terrorizing Jackson, Oregon.
Sam and Janelle left that hunt exhausted, cut up, and ready to sleep for a week. Sam's boss didn't ask any questions when he turned up at work looking like he'd been put through a meat grinder – Sam had made something up about having been mugged, and called his boss a day into the hunt, when it became clear that this wouldn't end easily.
Anyway, life went on, as it was wont to do, with Sam getting regular lessons in physic powers while he slept, and spending much of his waking time pouring over books of law and justice.
It was near the end of his second semester that Janelle came to Sam with a nervous smile and a small velvet box.
"I'm going to ask her to be my partner," She said with a proud, wide smile. "We can't make it legal in the eyes of uncle Sam, but we can be official in the eyes of god and each other, and that's what really matters, right hon?"
Sam had been speechless for a moment before he let out a whoop of laughter and smiled widely, pulling his best friend into a hug.
"Oh my god Janelle!" Sam exclaimed. "I'm really happy for you!"
"Do you think she'll say yes?" Janelle asked shyly, running a finger over the box.
"Of course she will," Sam replied instantly. "She'd be insane not to, I'd have to be blind not to see how happy you make each other."
And Janelle had giggled, like they were schoolgirls discussing a crush, and they went back to sharpening their knives.
One warm April evening, Sam had been staying late on campus so that he could do some research on a local hunt he thought might be interesting. It had been nearly two years exactly since he'd run away from a bloody motel room, and his life was good. Better, in fact, than Sam had had any right hoping sometimes.
Anyway, the hunt.
There had been strange occurrences all through town for days. Sam had followed the traces – among them, a pair of angels abducting a vocal atheist from his bed, a rash of honest to god fairytales playing themselves out in a local school where the parents had been protesting the use of Cinderella as a teaching tool when their children insisted Prince Charming was real.
Sam was thinking Trickster, after a long talk with Bobby. This really did sound like the work of a malicious demi-god intent on 'teaching people lessons.'
Working from that assumption, Sam had plotted each of the attacks on map of the area. There wasn't any correlation in terms of location, but a bit of prodding indicated that someone involved with each incident had been at the same bar within the last week or so.
Sam checked the bar, and found about a hundred candy wrappers in the bin behind it.
Jackpot.
And this was sure to be an easy hunt too, they just had to track the god down and put an old fashioned wooded stake through it's heart. They might even finish in time for Sam to write his History of American Justice class.
Since they were still having rotten luck tracing the Colt, Sam figured this would make a nice distraction.
He barreled up the steps into their apartment, intent on finding Janelle.
Gary, Kay, and Kylie were sitting in the living room. Each of them was holding a glass of whiskey – the strong, vile kind Janelle kept around to clean wounds and double as a pain reliever when painkillers wouldn't be enough.
The silence was heavy.
"Hey," Sam said, leaning heavily against the doorframe. He read the atmosphere of the room and frowned. "What's happened?"
His only answer was more silence.
"Gary?" Sam asked. The older man shook his head and gestured to the since open seat. Sam crossed the room, careful not to wince or put too much pressure on his injuries.
"Okay, now I'm scared," Sam said, looking around. "Someone please tell me what happened."
Gary passed Sam a beer.
"Drink first," Gary said. "You'll need it."
Uncertainly, Sam took a gulp of the alcohol, watching everyone around him with worried, dark eyes.
"Okay, now tell me," Sam said.
"It's Janelle," Kay sobbed.
"What?" Sam asked. "What's happened?"
"She was coming home from the diner," Gary supplied. His voice was entirely blank, as though he had yet to decide how to react. "Some idiot jumped her."
"But she'll be okay, right?" Sam asked, looking around. His heart was beating too fast, and his stomach was twisting into knots with worry for the woman that was his best friend and partner.
"He bashed her brains in with a crowbar," Gary said, and his voice was level, too calm, and all too frightening. "Right on the back of the head. I don't think she ever even saw him coming. Sam, Janelle's dead."
No.
No fucking way. Janelle couldn't be dead, she couldn't! Hadn't Sam taught her how to fight, given her the tools to defend herself not just from the supernatural, but from humans as well?
Hadn't she lost enough? Hadn't he?
"Who?" Sam asked. His voice wasn't calm, like Gary's. It was rough and raw, and his grip on the neck of his beer was white knuckled and fierce. "Who did it?"
"We don't know," Kylie whispered. "The police won't look for her killer, Sam – they said that she deserved it – fucking bastards!"
A great pit had opened up inside of Sam's heart, and it felt like he was falling. He was so full of rage and grief that he could hardly tell which way was up.
"Right," Sam said quietly, inhaling deeply to try and calm the storm inside of his gut. "Right."
He left the beer on the table, and walked calmly into the room he and Gary shared, grabbing the handgun from under his bed.
He turned to find Gary right behind him.
At five foot eleven, both boys stood at an even height, arms crossed, toes nearly touching. Sam had about three inches of bulk on the gangly musician, but it was to Gary's credit that he stood his ground without faltering.
"Sam, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Gary demanded.
"I think I'm going to find the fucker that killed my best friend and empty a clip in his body," Sam growled. "Now, move."
"You don't want to do this."
"Believe me, I really do," Sam hissed, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans and pushing Gary out of his way.
Gary stepped back in front of him, eyes narrowing.
"I won't let you out of here to go shoot someone."
"As if you could stop me," Sam growled. From the doorway, Kay whimpered.
"Then you're going through me," Gary said, and his eyes flashed with fear even as he stubbornly evened his stance.
Sam looked from his friend to the two girls standing in the doorway, and sat down on his bed. The anger was still there, a howling pit inside of him, but there was nowhere for it to go.
It had been easy, their friendship. Even when things were hard, even when they were hurt and angry and scared, their hands would still find each other's in the dark. It was like being a kid and having a light on a dark and rainy night, keeping bad dreams and monsters at bay.
They'd face anything with the other at their back.
And now Janelle was gone.
Dead.
Killed by some deadbeat drunk that couldn't stand the fact that she was transsexual.
Sam sat down, exhaling deeply.
"God damn it," he whispered hoarsely.
"I know man," Gary said quietly. "I know."
"I miss her," Kay whispered quietly. "I miss her so damn much."
Sam thought of the little black box that was still in Janelle's hunting duffel, under her bed. Janelle would never give Kay that ring, would never blush furiously when people walked in on her and Kay, would never get the chance to live her life with the woman she loved, would never –
Sam's chest heaved in a sob.
The four of them sat together, arms folded around each other, lost in their grief.
Hours later, the sun was just poking through the shades on the window, and Sam woke. All four had fallen asleep wrapped around each other, cuddled together for comfort.
The first rays of the sun's light were bright and clear.
It was wrong, so wrong. How could the sun shine when Janelle was dead? Didn't the sun understand that the world had lost one of its best people last night? Didn't it have the decency to hide its face from their grief?
But he already knew the answer.
Nobody gave a fuck. Nobody except him and Kay and Kylie and Gary, whose worlds had been torn wide open last night. For everyone else, this was just a regular Wednesday, normal in every regard.
Sam pulled himself to his feet. They would need to burn her. A proper hunter's funeral. He needed to call Bobby. And he should hide her weapons before anyone went through her things and found them. The last thing anyone needed was uncomfortable questions about his and Janelle's extracurricular activities.
Son of a bitch.
It was going to be a long day.
