Hullo, my sweets!
I like how this turned out. And I totes got to use something that Chuck mentions in the season five finale, yo! That made me happy like no one's bizz.
I wanted to flesh out another one of Sam's flaws in this chapter. She lets her own arrogance get in the way, and she misjudges how simple getting rid of the poltergeist will be and nearly chokes to death because of it. I tried not to be so obvious about this one because in the show, our lovely Sammy doesn't seem all that arrogant to me. He's all smiles, and soulful stares, and 'Aww, shucks' with his pride underneath. I hope I did a decent job!
Almost done with this 'episode,' y'all! Just a couple more chapters, methinks, and then it's one to the next! Any suggestions for the next episode? I haven't decide which one I wanna do just yet. I'm open to ideas! Just hit me up, lovelies!
As always, please tell me what you think with this lovely tool we have on this website called a review! It's really super, y'all should try it out. As in, do it. As in, leave me a review. Please and thank you!
Much love,
MD
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any part of Supernatural. All credit for the show goes to Eric Kripke and the beautiful writers that thought this up. Bits from the actual episode were taken for accuracy purposes only. Enjoy!
They gathered in the dining room this time. That tiny little room that Sam had only gotten a glimpse of the day before, with sunlight streaming through the windows, and the wooden table and chairs and floor. It's where Missouri said she keeps the stuff she used when someone had a serious problem. Sam didn't really consider poltergeists serious problems; in her experience they were kind of like a thorn stuck in your foot more than a gun at your head. They stung like a bitch, and man did they get annoying, but as long as they were dealt with properly, there wasn't any real damage. Poltergeists could get nasty, for sure, and would totally toss you around and gut you with a kitchen knife if you weren't careful, but Sam had been trained smart. She wasn't some incompetent shithead. She knew how to deal with things this low on the food-chain, and knew what to look out for so she didn't die. Might get a couple bruises (broken bone, worst case scenario), but that was it. So, no, she wasn't intimidated (actually, now that she'd gotten some space and thought rationally about it, she was glad that all Jenny was dealing with was a poltergeist). But apparently, Missouri was.
She'd pulled out vials and glass bottles from her china cabinet, along with some strange liquids, what looked like dirt, some box that had things rattling around inside, dried plants, and an assortment of other things Sam didn't have the care to examine. Dean sat down in front of the windows, facing the door they'd walked through, with some cloth, string, and other such things and was told to put a little bit of everything on a cloth and wrap it into a bag. Sam would have helped, but she was too distracted to do much of anything except stand to the right of her brother, her hand on the back of a chair. She hadn't realized just how hopeful she'd been to get her revenge until Missouri snuffed it out. And no, she didn't really blame the lady, because she was just doing what she promised, but that didn't mean Sam had to like it.
Seriously. Revenge, closure, and done. As in done done. As in, Sam goes back to school kind of done. At least… well… no! No, definitely no, she was going back to school when her and Dean Hunted down this creature.
When she'd first left Palo Alto with her brother all those months ago, she hadn't just fallen off the face of the earth. She contacted her teachers and all the staff officials she needed to so that she could get permission to take a much-needed break and come back at the start of this coming summer term, which was still a good few months away. Her grades had been so outstanding up to this point that her professors had all agreed with smiles and best wishes (did she mention she was a straight A student? Oh she didn't? Well… she was.). Of course, Sam hadn't told her brother this yet. It wasn't that she was scared of his reaction, she was just… scared of what he'd say.
Which are two completely different things.
But yeah. Stanford. That was on hold for now. As soon as she was finished wiping out whatever supernatural pest had killed her mom and Roger, she'd pick up where she left off at school. Go back to her old life (could she even call it her old life, if she'd been Hunting first..?), no problem. Become a lawyer, and if she got restless, she'd pick up some kind of physical activity. Maybe Karate, or something like that. Learn some legit martial arts, with structure and all that shit. Street fighting was more practical for what the Winchesters did, but she thought it'd be nice to know some actual martial arts. Someday. That, and, ya know, she wouldn't need to know street brawling when she went back to school because that really would be the end of it. No more Hunting. Just safe, secure, and simple. None of this would happen, however, until she smote this mother into oblivion, and since she couldn't do it here, she'd have more waiting and more searching.
Sam hated waiting.
"So what is this stuff, anyway?" Dean piped up just as he was sprinkling something brown and gritty onto the maroon cloth. Missouri was behind Sam, fiddling around with hidden things in the china cabinet and brought a few more vials out to the table. She shrugged as she set the strangely colored items down and sat across from Dean. From where Sam stood to their side, she had a perfect view of them both. The psychic woman pointed at clump of dried… something, and spoke.
"Angelica Root, Van Van oil, crossroad dirt, and a few other odds and ends." Sam's eyes roved over the small box of dirt, the circular bottle half full with a clear liquid, and the small pile her brother was building with no real interest. Dean examined the pinch of dried Angelica Root he had curiously and brought it to his mouth, dabbing a little on his tongue. Sam rolled her eyes as he made a sour face and tried to discreetly spit the dry plant out of his mouth. What, had he thought it would taste like mint?
"And what are we supposed to do with all this, exactly?" Sam eyed her brother's growing pile of strange things. If he added just a little more dirt to the top in a point, it'd almost look like a scale model of Mt. Hood over in Oregon.
"We're gonna put them inside the walls in north, south, east, and west corners on each floor of the house."
"We're gonna be punching holes in the dry wall?" Dean grumbled as he started wrapping up his concoction into a bag. "Jenny's gonna love that." Missouri looked up at Dean with hooded eyes and a wry smile.
"She'll live," she whispered slyly. Dean met her gaze for a moment before shrugging and wrapping twine around the cloth to keep it closed. Sam looked over the items they were adding together. Some of this stuff she'd never even heard of before. She'd never used this method to get rid of a poltergeist before; they'd always purified the haunted area by smudging with sage and other cleansing herbs or using Latin. Sam didn't doubt that Missouri knew her stuff, but she didn't have personal experience with it, and that left her a little unsettled and wary.
"This'll destroy the spirits?" she asked. The psychic woman didn't look up from her own pile, but she nodded.
"It should. It should purify the house completely. We'll each take a floor." At this she looked up sharply at the siblings, letting the weight of her words carry over through her dark brown eyes. "But work fast. Once the spirits realize what we're up to, things are gonna get… bad."
"Well that's just lovely," Dean grumbled, working on his third bag. He looked at some smudges of dirt on his hand disdainfully before wiping off the remnants on his pants. He looked incredibly bored just piling things onto a square cloth before wrapping it up and tying it off. Sam sighed, wishing she had something to do, before an idea struck her, and she grinned.
"Hey Missouri?" Sam asked.
"Mm?"
"Do you have wi-fi?" Missouri and Dean stopped what they were doing, giving each other a look before both turning to face Sam. Missouri looked mildly curious, a small smile playing on her lips and one of eyebrows arching, and Dean looked confused, his eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed.
"Sure do, sweetie. What you need it for?" Sam shrugged noncommittally.
"Oh, just need to look something up." Dean rolled his eyes, turning his attention back to his fourth bag.
"C'mon, Sammy, lay off the search for five minutes. You were at it all night last night. Just… chill out." Sam shook her head, tapping her fingers impatiently on the back of the chair she was standing behind.
"No, man, that's not what I'm going after. Well, not this time anyway." Dean glanced at her, quirking an eyebrow. Sam smiled. "You'll find out. So, Missouri, does your internet have a password?" Dean frowned at the obvious dismissal, but tough. Big boy could deal. 'Sides, she was about to become the most fuckawesome sister, so he could make do with not knowing for now.
"Yeah, lemme get that for ya, sweetie." Sam smiled her thanks as Missouri got up from the table and walked off into her house. Before her brother could start drilling her for answers, she skipped off to go get her laptop out of the car. When she got back, the older woman helped her get all set up before returning back to the dining room to finish up with her purification bags. Sam took root in the sitting room with the pretty carpet and couch from yesterday, away from prying green eyes and her brother's unstoppable curiosity.
See, months and months and months ago, Sam had been looking around for concerts to take Lucy and Roger to (she'd been planning to pop their classic rock cherries, so to speak), and she vaguely remembered this one website… where was it… ah yes! She'd had to go way, way, way back into her search history, but there it was. All that time ago, she'd remembered pointing out to Roger many concerts they could plan way in advance for. Wasn't there one next week that… there was! Oh boy. Ozzy Osbourne. That was one Sam and Dean hadn't gone to yet. And if she bought them now, they could get relatively good seats.
Sam was counting on this to win over her brother's forgiveness for whenever he took a drink from his (not) whiskey. She felt it would work. Well, mostly. Sort of. Kinda. Hopefully…
She'd just make sure to get front row seats.
'Course, that meant her card was completely done now, so she'd have to use cash until she could send in another application. Dean wouldn't like that, cash was only supposed to be for food and gas, but she thought he'd make an exception this time. Sam quickly went through the process of buying her tickets online and getting the confirmation number (she grimaced at the price, because really, money was an issue now that her life was uprooted and those figures made her head spin) and shut her computer, letting it drift off to sleep mode. Dean and Missouri should be finishing up pretty soon. She'd just prance off to the dining room to see if there were any last-minute things that she could help with, and then it'd be wham, bam, thank you ma'am. No more nasties in their old house, Sari could sleep safely under the ceiling where her mom died (that still made Sam gag), and Ritchie could drink juice to his heart's content.
Easy.
"You take the top floor, Sammy. I'll take the ground floor, and Missouri, you can take the basement." Sam nodded, her four maroon bags in one hand, and a hammer in the other. It hadn't taken more than a few seconds to figure out which way was north since Sam and Dean were always paying attention to little things like the sunset (John had always taught them that no detail was too small to be noticed), and with their respective floors delegated, they set off. It was just starting to get really dark outside. It was that time where it was on the cusp of being night, but tendrils of daylight were still clinging to the fringes of the sky. The sky was clear tonight, not a cloud in sight. Stars were twinkling down and laughing at the small planet, and for some reason, Sam's hair had been on end. She… she didn't like this. She didn't feel comfortable, and she couldn't fight off the strongest feeling of déjà vu she'd had in a long, long time. But alas, before she'd been able to say anything to her brother, he'd set his jaw and tensed his shoulders and gotten out of the car. And then the moment was gone. Not to say she didn't still feel uncomfortable, because she very much did, but the moment where she felt she could tell her brother without him looking at her like she'd grown a new head had vanished.
Besides… he had enough on his plate. This house was harder for him to be around than it was for her. She didn't need to stress him out. And anyway, who's to say that she wasn't only uncomfortable because they were back at their old house, same as her brother?
Sam's thoughts grumbled to her as she trudged up the stairs, and she frowned, listening to her brother move around in the kitchen below her. She rolled her shoulders when she reached the top and shook her head, dispelling such distractions away. She needed to focus, and get this done lickety-split. Missouri said fast, right?
Sam walked through the door to the right of the staircase and walked into some kind of study. West. Easy enough. Without hesitation, Sam walked over to a wall and went through the process of finding the studs behind the drywall and zoning in on an acceptable spot for a small hole. She took her hammer, swung, and promptly shoved one of her three bags through the hole. Something kind of… slithered on the back of her neck when she finished, but she ignored it and moved over to the wall perpendicular to the left of the one she'd just bashed in. Southern wall. She repeated the same process to shove one of the cleansing bags into the hole, and again ignored the sickening pull in her gut before moving on. Next was Sari's room. The wall with her small, white desk was the eastern wall, and Sam's next destination. This time, when she finished, something pulled sharply on Sam's ponytail. She whipped around, eyes roving over the empty room, but saw nothing. Sam bit her lip nervously and quickly exited Sari's room (she doesn't care what anyone else says, she didn't look at the ceiling).
Okay… so, north was… Sam looked around, getting her bearings. Jenny's room. Kay. Gotcha.
Sam walked down the hallway from the hallway as she had earlier that day, passing Sari's bedroom instead. The fam-damily was out for the next couple hours, thank you, Missouri. Sam didn't know what the psychic woman had told her exactly, but Jenny had grabbed her kids, packed a diaper bag for Ritchie, and they'd driven away in their cute, little minivan. Like a real family (those still existed these days?).
Sam gently shoved open the door, taking quick stock of the room. Flowery wallpaper, queen-sized bed, there were the windows that Sam had seen in her visions (she recognized the way the tops were rounded) on the wall opposite the bed, a couple of nightstands, lamps, and a worn book on top of the dresser. And lots of boxes yet to be unpacked. For the most part, simple. Clean. Sam could respect that. She liked things to be simple, too. It was easier to keep everything organized that way.
Walking over to the wall with the windows, she knelt down and set down her last bag. She heard some kind of noise that she couldn't place coming from downstairs, but her brother hadn't yelled for her help, so she figured that whatever it was, he was handling it. Sam tapped the hammer lightly on the walls, listening to the sounds and the change in pitch that would indicate she'd found a stud. It was really hard for her to focus this time, though.
The hairs on the back of her neck were raising slowly, making her skin prickly and itch like whoa, and she couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching her, definitely a something. This feeling of being cornered prey just waiting for her throat to be ripped out was most definitely not indicative of a human watching her. This is always how she felt on a Hunt when she was about to get the jump on something. She frowned.
"I know you're there, buster," she muttered. She jumped when she heard hissing off to her right. She huffed at herself and her jumpiness and renewed her interest in the walls. She'd just made the beginnings of her hole when she heard something crash behind her. She gasped and whipped her head around to glare at whatever had frightened her, but Sam never got the chance because at that moment a wire wrapped around her neck twice and pulled her on to the floor.
Sam dropped the hammer, her hands flying up to the chord cutting off her airflow. She tried (unsuccessfully) to get a little air, but there was no give. She tilted her head certain way, tried clawing at the chord, taking shallow breaths, but nothing. This poltergeist had her completely cut off from all oxygen. Which left her just a couple minutes to grab the bag and toss it in the hole and finish the purification process before she passed out, and another two before she died.
Fucking peachy.
Sam could feel her cheeks getting hot with the blood that couldn't travel through her arteries, and her eyes felt like they were starting to swell out of their sockets, and she reached blindly down with her right hand by her knee where she thought the bag should be. But no matter where her hand landed, all she got was hard wood. After a few failed tries, Sam's self-preservation won out of her determination to finish the job, and her hand flew up to the chord. Her brain felt a little fuzzy, and things in her vision were swimming around black dots. Her eyelids felt heavy, and the muscles in her arms were twitching every now and then. Her fingers were trembling and starting to lose their grip on the chord around her neck. Her gasps were shorter and less desperate as she started to float off towards something deep, and black, and terrifying. There were whispers calling out her name, and a voice that was trying to tell her something, but it was too much like ice, and she couldn't figure out the language, and why were couldn't she feel her feet? Was that gun oil she smelled?
Some loud sort of banging dimly registered from that place with all the color and Sam was just about to fall over into that darkness and sleep (finally sleep), when the pressure around her neck vanished. She took great gulping gasps of air, trying to suck the world down her throat, and something warm wrapped around her shoulders. She smelled leather, gun oil, Old Spice and something that reminded her very much of home. Home? What home? She didn't have a home.
Sam's breathing slowed and she struggled to open her eyes, which were still kind of heavy. From the slits she was able to manage, though, she saw green. Lots and lots of green. An olive green, and little hairs of fabric that were frayed in several spots.
She blinked once, twice, three times. Oh hey, she knew that color green. That was the color of one of Dean's jackets…
Oh. Oh.
"Dean?" she rasped. She felt the warmth tighten around her shoulder and realized with some sluggish happiness that he was hugging her. She took a deep breath in. Leather, Old Spice, gun oil and something other. Yeah, that was definitely Dean. All of the most important things in his life that he never could was away, no matter how many times he took a shower. There was many a night where Sam had fallen asleep to this smell in the back of the Impala with her head in Dean's lap, her dad's (now her brother's) leather jacket spread over her like a blanket. If she was being completely honest, Sam secretly loved it. The combination of different scents mixing with the natural chemistry of her brother's body so that it all meshed together into one unique scent with different layers had comforted her like nothing else as a child. When Dean had finally started going off with their dad on Hunts and left Sam behind in the motel room (or the Impala on the odd job that Sam couldn't stay on her own for a couple hours), he'd made sure to leave her with his jacket for reassurance, and even then he'd smelled like this. The crisp pine of the Burke's oil, the musky texture of their dad's deodorant that Dean would steal so that he smelled like a grown up (boys were so silly), the richness from the leather in the Impala… every time it had washed over baby Sammy, she'd known her brother was close by, and it had been rule number one for her as a little girl that if Dean was around, she was safe. Over a decade later, she felt no different.
As subtly as she could, Sam turned her head into her brother's jacket and took a deep breath. She smiled lazily and allowed herself one small moment where she felt five again, and was sneaking into her brother's bed because hers was too big for her to fall asleep in and cuddling up against his back and her favorite stuffed panda, Orion.
"You okay, Sammy?" Sam opted to nod against his shoulder instead of speaking. Her throat felt raw and sore whenever she swallowed, and she wasn't entirely sure she could speak just yet. "Jesus, you scared the shit out of me."
If she was sitting up on her own, and not leaning against Dean while he hugged her (did he realize that he still had her wrapped in his arms?), she'd duck her head. Yeah, it was her fault this time. She shouldn't have picked a spot where her back was to the rest of the room. She should have been faster about taking care of the last bag. She should have noticed the chord sneaking up, she should have paid attention to that feeling she'd had ever since they'd pulled up in front of their… in front of Jenny's house. She sighed and took one last calming breath before steadying herself with her hands on the floor and drawing away from her brother.
She smiled sheepishly and shrugged her shoulders when she was sitting up. Dean still had his hands on her shoulders. He had that look on his face that told her he would be angry later when he'd calmed down, but he'd come too close to losing her for him to be upset just yet. He had that wild 'I-almost-lost-Sammy' look, that 'I-should-have-been-looking-out-for-you-better' look, and that… well, that hurt more than anything he could have said.
Sam hated how quick her brother was to blame himself for everything. If something happened to her, or something went wrong on a Hunt, or some other stupid shit that Sam had messed up just as easily, it was all his fault. It all came back to John-fucking-Winchester, she had no doubt about that. All of his demands and unrealistic expectations made her brother constantly feel like a failure unless he was better than perfect, and he shouldered all the blame, even when nothing was his fault. Dean lived with an overly-healthy dose of self-loathing and under all that bullshit ego and arrogance, Sam suspected that he really didn't actually like himself very much.
They were both so fucked up.
"Can you stand up?" Dean asked her tentatively. Sam rolled her eyes good-naturedly and shoved herself to her feet. Her brother watched her nervously, waiting to see if she'd lose her balance because she wasn't ready to be on her feet just yet. He still had a hand on her shoulder. She understood that. Sometimes the only thing that had been able to convince her that Dean hadn't died on a Hunt was by physically touching him and feeling the warmth seep from his body into hers. She decided not to call her brother out on it.
Fortunately, her legs didn't shake, and her brother treating her like some fragile doll about to break was completely pointless. Unfortunately, she stood up too fast and the blood rushed away from her head and left her dizzy, make her brother fret for a few moments like she was a fragile doll about to break.
Really, he was worse than a mother hen.
"Did you…" Sam cleared her throat and swallowed to try and erase the gravely tone in her voice, "did you finish?" He nodded.
"Yeah, but the kitchen's a fucking disaster."
"Missouri?"
"Dunno. She didn't come up. I just finished with mine, nearly got shanked in the process, and then ran up here to make sure you got done okay." Sam nodded and looked over at the hole in the wall. It was considerably bigger than what she'd made with her hammer, and there were a couple cracks around the opening in the wallpaper and drywall, though the hammer was exactly where she'd dropped it. Had Dean kicked it in?
"Well… let's go find Missouri." Dean nodded and followed Sam out of Jenny's room.
Something tickled at the back of her neck. Some voice whispered when she walked by Sari's bedroom. Her arms got goosebumps. Something pulled in her gut. Sam froze and Dean ran in to her back.
"Sam? What? What's wrong?" Dean instantly went into 'Sammy protection' mode, grabbing her arm and turning her around to face him. She stared into Sari's bedroom, her eyes focusing on the closet. She shook her head and bit her lip.
"No, it's nothing…" Dean looked like he wanted to say more, but Sam pulled away from his hands and rushed off towards the stairs. Revenge or no revenge, she would be all too fucking happy to put Lawrence in their rearview mirror.
So! Next chapter we have a special guest star! Still outta internet, but leaving me reviews to see when I mooch of my neighbor will make me uber happy!
So you should do it.
G'head. The button is right down there. It's so pretty and blue. Just press it, make my day!
Peace.
