Supernatural isn't mine at all. Ever.

Many thanks to FairyElle, Anora, Ghostwriter, JuliaAtHeart, Mystiksnake, JJaneru, JazzyIrish , carocali, wcfan, Nana56, sasha2002, friendly, XNicolaX, Shinigami061, MistyEyes, StarlitEyes17, roxy071288, Silwyna and fanficmistress18 for their kind reviews.

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The Crow on the Cradle, Chapter Ten

They use the gas-leak excuse again, but this time she's in on it, she and John standing looking serious at the door while Dean, Sam and Missouri hang back out of sight. She doesn't want to at first – maybe she has a credit card under a name that isn't hers, maybe she's stood back and watched more times than she cares to remember while John and Dean have committed some crime or other, but this is different, this standing here face to face with a woman who's barely older than her and claiming to be something she's not. The woman could be one of her college friends, could be her. But Missouri says she can't tall without getting inside the house, and Sam won't let Dean go anywhere without him, so she has to do it. John grunted and said it was good, that she would be more convincing anyway. She doesn't want to be convincing, she wants to be honest.

Convincing, though, is apparently what she is, because the woman (she doesn't even know the woman's name, the one whose house she's planning to invade) takes her kids and leaves, a worried look on her face that doesn't need to be there. They troop inside, and it's ridiculous, five of them, grown adults, such a motley crew that she laughs before she can stop herself. Missouri and John are ahead and don't seem to hear; Dean frowns at her like he's trying to work out what could possibly be funny (and the answer is nothing, nothing about this is funny); but Sam – Sam turns and gives her a blinding smile, the one that's always made her weak at the knees, and says, "There you are."

Dean's full attention is on Sam immediately, and before she can open her mouth he says, "What do you mean?"

"Look," says Sam, still smiling beatifically, and it's so confusing, so difficult, but it's Sam's smile, the way he can look at her like she's the only person in the world, the way he smiles with his whole face, his whole body, and she can't help but smile back. "Look, Dean," says Sam. "There she is."

Dean is quiet for a long moment, and she wonders if he's thinking it too, wondering if Sam is really seeing her. She wants it so hard, but at the same time she'll take anything, she doesn't care if he thinks she's his mother or Marilyn Monroe or the Queen of England, as long as he keeps smiling at her like that. And then Sam reaches out like he's going to touch her and says, "I missed you, baby," and she knows, and she thinks it's all been worth it, all the heartache and the frustration, for this moment. She reaches for his hand, takes a step forward, but suddenly he drops it and steps back, hunching his shoulders and looking around, his head moving in quick jerks like a bird.

"Dean," he says. "Dean, why are we here? There's nothing here any more. It's gone. It all burned up."

Dean stared at Sam and says something about double-checking, but she's not listening, because the burn of disappointment is back in her throat, in her gut, but there's something else there too, now, and she doesn't want to call it hope, because she's afraid if she does it will be gone, its delicate bones crushed under the weight of the word. But there's something, now, and something is better, something is enough, for now.

Missouri and John come back, and John's frowning, but that doesn't mean much, John is always frowning. Missouri opens her mouth, but Sam takes a sidestep towards the door and says, "It's time to go, OK? It all burned up. Mom burned up, there's nothing left."

The silence that follows that remark is heavier than lead, and she sees their faces, John, Dean, even Missouri, blank with shock, and she thinks maybe she should be shocked too, but she isn't, and maybe it's because she hasn't lived with the story all her life, maybe it's because it isn't real to her like it is to them, but she thinks maybe (maybe) it's because she's got nothing left, that she's spent the last six months being shocked and terrified over and over again and now she has nothing left to give.

"That was twenty-two years ago, Sam," Dean says finally, and she notices how precise he is, how he doesn't just say twenty years. "Something else is going on here. Something happened yesterday. Can you tell us? Can you tell me?"

John's face has closed down, and Dean looks worried and frightened. Sam rolls his eyes, and she's wrong, she can still be shocked, because she's never seen him make that expression before but it looks like it belongs on his face. "Mom burned up," he says again, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Aren't you listening? There's nothing here."

John's jaw is clenched, and she knows that Dean's aware of it, Dean's always aware of what his father's feeling, which is strange because when she's seen him talk to strangers he seems completely unable to sense their moods. He grabs Sam's arm and says, "OK, buddy, if that's what you want. Let's make like a tree." He shepherds Sam out the door, casting a worried glance back at his father.

Missouri sighs. "He's right, you know," she says. "I'm not sensing anything. If anything was here, it's gone now."

"You said you sensed something when you called," John says, and voice is tight.

Missouri nods. "It was him," she says, gesturing towards the door. "Sam. He's like a beacon, so much power."

John shakes his head, but she's already speaking. "Sam's not psychic," she says, looking at Missouri, like if she's convincing enough (oh yes, she's so convincing) it will be true. "He's not. I would know." Even as she says the words she knows she sounds ridiculous. Sam knows how to shoot a gun and perform an exorcism, Sam's been mauled by a werewolf and committed more crimes than she can count. She didn't know that; she doesn't know Sam.

"Jessica's right," says John, and she's momentarily taken aback by his approval. "Sam's never shown any signs."

Missouri shakes her head. "I can't tell you what you've seen and what you ain't, but he's showing them now. He's practically humming. I'm sorry honey," she adds, and she's not talking to John any more. "But it don't change how he feels about you."

"This is ridiculous," John says, scowling now, and Missouri raises her eyebrows.

"John Winchester, sometimes I think you don't have the sense God gave a mule, nor no manners neither. There ain't no shame in the kind of gift your boy's got. It ain't something he can change. None of us can."

John frowns, but he doesn't snap back. Missouri sighs. "I can't tell you what happened here," she says. "There's nothing to sense. I'm sorry, John."

Missouri leaves, and John stands in the hallway and just stares. She wonders if he even knows she's there any more, or if he's seeing another time in this house. She wonders if, when he looks at her, he'll see his dead wife.

----

Sam kicked at the pavement with the toe of his sneaker and frowned. "Why are we just standing here?" he asked.

"Dude, I gotta go through everything a hundred times?" Dean asked, and Sam looked up, surprised. Dean closed his eyes, because he did, he did have to go through everything over and over again, Sam just didn't seem to be able to hold some things in his head, and it wasn't Sam's fault, of course it wasn't, but it was just so frustrating. "Dad and Jessica are still inside," he said, trying to erase the edge from his voice. "We're waiting for them."

"Oh," said Sam, like he was thinking about the. "Is Dad mad?"

Dean thought of Dad's tense face when Sam talked about Mom. "No, he's not mad. He's just tired, is all. We're all pretty tired."

Sam nodded. "With the nightmares," he said. "I know, I know."

Dean frowned, but Missouri came out of the house before he could ask what Sam meant.

"What'd you find out?" he asked, and she sighed.

"I don't know what happened to your brother, sweetie."

Dean glanced at Sam, who was examining something on the back of his hand. "Can't you just..." he lowered his voice, "pull it out of his head?"

Missouri's eyes flicked sideways for a moment, and then Sam's head jerked up sharply and Missouri gasped and took a step back.

"Don't," said Sam. "I told you not to do that."

Missouri blinked and whispered "I'm just trying to help you, Sam, honey."

"Sam," said Dean, "let her help you, OK? She's just trying to help."

"No," said Sam, shaking his head slowly. His face scrunched up, and he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "I don't want her in there. Get out."

Missouri suddenly stumbled, putting out her hand to grab Dean's arm. "Stop, please stop," she said, and Dean stared at Sam, whose face was screwed up in pain.

"Sam, stop," he said. "Jesus Christ, stop." He grabbed Sam's shoulders and shook them, and Sam seemed to snap back into himself, his whole body jerking, and then his eyes flew open, rolling wildly, and he crumpled, Dean barely catching him before he hit the sidewalk. Missouri steadied herself against a tree and closed her eyes, rubbing her hand over her face. Dean sat down on the ground, keeping one hand on Sam to make sure he wasn't going to topple over from his sitting position, and said what the fuck was that, and he wasn't even sure who he was asking.

Then Dad and Jessica came out of the house and stopped on the porch, staring at the scene before them.

"Dean?" said Dad, and Dean shook his head.

"I don't know, Dad. I have no freakin idea."

Sam looked around at him, face still set in lines of pain. "I need my stuff," he said. "If we're leaving, I need my stuff."

----

The motel was on the other side of town from where they were staying, and even more rundown, too, which was saying something. Sam fumbled with the key, and it grated in the lock, setting Dean's teeth on edge. That was nothing, though, compared with how on edge he felt when he followed Sam into the room.

It wasn't that there were maps and clippings on the walls, or that there were papers strewn about like confetti. That was normal, that was how hunters lived. It was the sheer quantity that was the first thing that smacked Dean in the face, every single inch of wall and floor space covered, coloured pins and string and endless pages of print annotated with Sam's neat copperplate. And when Dean looked closer, when he saw that almost all the clippings concerned house fires in which young mothers had died, he felt his gut twist again.

"Jesus," he muttered. "Jesus, Sam."

"I've been looking," said Sam earnestly, and Dean was suddenly glad Dad and Jessica had stayed in the car. "I've got a system, but... stuff keeps happening."

"Stuff?" asked Dean, unable to take his eyes off the scene before him, evidence of an obsession even their father might be taken aback by.

Sam shrugged. "It hurts. They tell me things. I can't not. I'm sorry, I know I promised, but I'm still... It's OK, right? You said it was OK."

"Yeah, it's OK," Dean said, the response coming automatically now, even though this was far from OK, this was fucked up six ways to Sunday. "Sam, what are you looking for?"

"The demon," Sam said, like it should have been obvious. "See?" he said, walking over to one wall and tapping on an article. "Electrical storms," he said, and grinned like he'd just come up with the cure for cancer.

Dean looked at him and then around at the room. "Yeah, OK, Sam," he said. "OK."

----

It takes them week and a half to sift through all the paper Sam's collected, and when they're done they still have no idea what half of it means. The articles, printed from the internet and clipped from newspapers, are clear enough, but half of Sam's annotations are apparently written in code, and the other half form coherent sentences that seem to have no connection to each other or to the articles they're written on. Dean asks Sam to explain, and Sam does, but the explanations leave all of them confused and sometimes terrified.

One thing's clear, though – Sam's been looking for the thing that killed his mother. He insists it's a demon (the demon, always the demon, like they should all know what he's talking about), but John just shrugs and says he doesn't know, that he had a lead, or thought maybe he had, way back in September, but then Sam went missing and that had been that. His face is tight again, and Dean looks worried and surprised, like he didn't even know about it in the first place. At any rate, John's been looking for the thing for twenty years (twenty-two year), but he doesn't know if it's a demon (the demon) or not, has no idea what it is even after all this time. There's no reason it shouldn't be a demon, he says. No reason except that Sam's crazy and his notes make no sense.

It's been a week and a half, and Sam isn't getting better. He won't go near Missouri any more, and Missouri makes this face that's like a mixture of sadness and fear and says she can't help him anyway, all she knows is that the house is clean now and that Sam is psychic, she doesn't even know what kind of power he has, just that there's a lot of it. They go back to the house a couple of times, trying to find clues as to what happened, but there's nothing to find, and all Sam will say is that his mother burned up there, he says it and says it, like he's trying to make them understand something, until Dean drags him away or John stalks out, white-faced, lips pressed in a thin line.

That's not all Sam says, of course. Sam talks constantly, muttering to himself, speaking to people none of them can see, talking to Dean. Sometimes he directs a remark at her or John, but mostly he barely even acknowledges their presence – all he sees is Dean, Dean, Dean, and sometimes she has to clench her fists until the knuckles go white to stop herself from screaming in jealousy and frustration. Sam paces, too, and every now and then he'll ask Dean why they aren't leaving yet. Dean's given up explaining that they're investigating the house, because that always leads to another round of Mom burned up, and they can all do without that. Now he just tells Sam it's OK, and that they'll be leaving soon, and that seems to be enough for Sam.

Sometimes, the pacing and muttering gets too much for her, and she has to leave. One day she's sitting outside when Dean comes to find her, and it's spring now, spring in the Midwest, and last April she was in California where spring meant wearing Sam's jacket because she overestimated how warm it would be again, studying in the library and Sam's hand warm against hers as the walked across the campus, and now she's sitting outside a motel in Kansas and her biggest problem is whether or not her crazy psychic boyfriend is right that a demon killed his mother.

"Are you OK?" Dean asks, and it's too much, it's all too much, she can't deal with his sympathy and his worry right now (and she wonders how the hell he does it, worries for all of them all the time, when she barely has enough energy to even think about anyone except Sam) and she covers her face with her hands and says don't.

Dean sits down beside her and waits. After a while, she gets herself together, and when she lifts her head he says "Maybe you should try talking to him."

She leans her head back and closes her eyes. "How can I?" she asks. "He won't even look at me."

Dean taps his fingers against the bench. "He looks at you all the time," he says. "He misses you."

She opens her eyes at that, stares at him incredulously. "He misses me?" she asks. "I'm not the one who's..." she can't even say it.

Dean frowns. "It's not like he's gone," he says. "Yeah, he's messed up, but he's still Sam. He's still the same, and we're gonna fix it."

She bites her lip. It's not like he's gone. Except he is. He's gone (Sam's been gone a hundred and ninety-six days), and the words stick in her throat, but she's been thinking them, thinking them for the last two weeks, no matter how hard she tries not too. "Sam's not a little messed up. He's mentally ill, Dean. He needs help."

Dean's face snaps into a scowl. "Bullshit. Some freaky spirit or something's messing with his head. All we gotta do is burn the fucker and he'll be fine."

She swallows, because she wants it to be true, wants it so hard, but some of those clippings are from before Christmas, long before Sam can have arrived in Lawrence and encountered whatever was in the old Winchester house. "We haven't found any evidence of a spirit--" she says, her voice hoarse, but Dean cuts her off.

"You saw the fire," he says. "The door was being held shut by something."

"Dean," she tries again, because now she's started this, said the words out loud, she needs him to be on her side, needs him to see that what they're doing isn't helping Sam, can't help Sam, needs not to feel so alone. But Dean stands up, chocking over a broom with a clatter.

"No, Jessica," he says, and she thinks it's a harsher tone than he's ever used with her, and remembers back when they first met how she saw him as a thug, thought maybe he was responsible for Sam's scars, and wonders when her view of him changed, when she realised that he's the one responsible for all the parts of Sam that aren't scarred. He holds up his hand now and looks away, and she knows she's lost the only ally she's had in the last six months.

"I'm not doing this with you," he says, and then he walks away, and all she can think is that that means she has to do it alone.

----

The winter chill hadn't quite left the air, even though May was fast approaching, when Dean got out of the shower one morning to find Sam throwing his stuff into a bag.

"Hey," Dean said, heart rate speeding up, because Sam hadn't tried to leave again since that first morning, but he was so unpredictable, God knew what he might do if it popped into his freaky brain. Sam didn't even seem to hear him, and Dean grabbed his arm, panic rising in his chest now. "What are you doing?"

"Time to go," said Sam, and now that he was close, Dean could see Sam's face was weirdly creased and tight around the eyes, like he had a migraine or something.

"Jesus, Sam," said Dean, because he'd had enough of this crap, Sam's constant insistence that they go somewhere but refusal to tell Dean where, and more than that, the whole thing, Sam not getting any better, the dead ends with the house and Sam's notes, and what Jessica had said, which was stupid and short-sighted and just exactly what a civilian would say, except that Dean was terrified that maybe, just maybe, she might be right. It was all fucked up, and Dean was sick of it.

"Fine," he said. "Fine, we're going. But you know what? We can't go anywhere until till you tell me where, Sam. You've gotta freakin tell me where we're supposed to go."

Sam gave him a look like he'd just asked what colour the sky was and handed him piece of paper with a map scrawled on it.

"Rockford," he said. "Rockford, Illinois. There's something I need to take care of."

And Dean was so stunned to actually have his question answered that all he could do was stare at the map and say "OK, Sam. OK."