Hey guys! Looks like Bloody Mary is stretching out into 4 parts. Oh well. I'm doing my best to ensure the story still flows like it should even though Alex is hanging around with them for it. I've also been tossing around an idea in my head for a few hours about a special chapter for Easter, which is upcoming. But don't get your hopes up too high. I'll ask here before I write it. The plot is basically the one time the Winchesters actually met each other when they were younger, although obviously all three of them have forgotten it, in which Bobby tricked John and eventually there's an Easter egg hunt involved. Is that too sappy? It might be. That's why I'm asking if I should write it before I do.
So, as always, review if you're willing. All of you have been so kind in your reviews, so I want to thank some of you again.
snn7b- Thanks for your continued support!
Guest- I can only assume it's still the same one (if not please correct me!), so thanks for continuing to support the story. I'm glad you're excited for more. :)
iluv2read5898-I'm glad to hear you like that I didn't make the boys freak out over a sister. That's exactly why I chose to start at the very beginning. It gave the opportunity to work with the two of them before they become scarred from all that happens to them and world-weary. They have no reason to be so suspicious over it, especially if John Winchester doesn't deny it!
BrySt1- Yes, the boys do know that she was dead, at least once. :) But Bobby and John still think she's just dead. I like to be evil and cause drama.
kimmer kins- :) I'm glad you think my fanfic is the most awesome you've read in a long time. That means a lot to me!
Mayrem- I've been excited to bring the boys back in for a while now. I'm sorry to inform though that after this they may not be in it as often as we'd like. :( At least not for season 01. I've got to work on Alex's plot some, after all.
Again, thanks to everyone who's been reviewing and even those who haven't been! I'm just honored that all of you are reading. :) I'll shut up now so you can enjoy the chapter!
After an agonizingly quiet car ride to the library, the three Winchester children were once again talking to each other.
"All right," Dean spoke up, looking between Sam and Alex, who were walking in front of him. "Say Bloody Mary really is haunting this town. There's gonna be some sort of proof."
"Like a local woman who died nasty?" Alex supplied, smiling when Dean nodded his agreement.
"Yeah," Sam butted in, opening the doors as they walked into the library was relatively dark considering the time of day, but it didn't deter them away from their intended path. "But with a legend this widespread it's hard. I mean, there are like 50 versions of who she actually is. One story says a witch, another says she's a mutilated bride, there's a lot more."
"Alright so what are we supposed to be looking for?" Dean crossed his arms and focused on Sam. After all, Sam was more of the brains and Dean the brawns.
"Something in common in all the stories?" Alex asked, taking Dean's side. She could definitely research things and learn about what she needed to know, but Sam actually seemed to enjoy it.
"Exactly," Sam smiled briefly at her, "It's always a woman named Mary, and she always dies in front of a mirror. So we've gotta search local newspapers-public records as far back as they go. See if we can find a Mary who fits the bill."
"Well that sounds annoying," Dean grumbled, glancing to see if Alex agreed with him. She only shrugged.
"No, it won't be so bad as long as we…" Sam trailed off as he looked at the computers in the library, chuckling wryly as he saw the out of order signs on them. "I take it back. This will be very annoying."
"Wunderbar," Alex groaned, following Sam as they moved on from the computers to a room that held paper copies of everything they were going to look up. Dean was in a similar state of mind to her, and even Sam seemed to be dreading the next few hours.
"Vun-der-bar?" Dean slowly repeated, pulling out a chair at a table and falling into it, throwing his feet up onto the table.
"It's German," she supplied, moving over to where Sam was digging out books and folders and taking a load of them off of his hands before going back over to the table Dean was at and sitting down. "Means wonderful or something. Aren't you going to get any reading material?"
Sam snorted as he sat a couple of seats from Alex, spreading out his own papers and folders. "Yeah, sure, Dean. You gonna read anything today?"
"Nope," Dean gave them both a shit-eating grin as he leaned the chair back on two legs.
Half an hour later they had moved from the library to the boys' motel room, choosing comfort over fluorescent lights and hard chairs. Sam was on one of the beds, slowly starting to doze off. Dean and Alex were sat opposite of each other at a small wooden table nearer to the door.
Alex was still flipping through papers when she heard a light snore from the bed, earning her attention and a raised eyebrow.
"Let him sleep," Dean quietly spoke up, having looked when she did. "He needs it."
"Why?" she asked, also keeping her voice down. "What's been going on with you guys?"
Dean shrugged, pulling over a folder and opening it to begin searching for some kind of a clue to what they were dealing with. "Nothing much. I told you about what happened to his girlfriend."
"Yeah," Alex frowned, returning to the papers she had in front of her. She hadn't actually thought much about that since Dean told her after it happened. But she could sympathize with Sam. It was tough to lose a life you were building, especially when it was a normal one. Actually… She hadn't given her old life much though, either. But now that she was thinking about it she found herself surprised. She wasn't actually that sad about it. Of course, it had been upsetting at the time. But so much had happened in such a short amount of time that she found herself actually prioritizing the craziness. And mourning was further down on her list than trying not to die again. The highest was probably figuring out who Beelzebub and Astaroth actually were, other than demons. And then why they were tormenting her. And then figuring a way out of having to help that other demon, Crowley. And then…
She was broken out of her abstraction by Dean waving a hand over the paper she was blankly staring at, trying to get her attention.
"Hello, earth to Alex," he remarked sarcastically, pulling his hand back when she looked up at him. "Thought you slept with your eyes open there for a minute. That'd be creepy."
She rolled her eyes, pulling another page over the one she had been looking at, considering it had no leads. "Do you ever make good jokes?"
"I think I'm hilarious," Dean scoffed, throwing a folder onto the floor behind him and grabbing another. "So what's been going on with you?"
"Sam's taking Jessica's death pretty hard, isn't he?" Alex asked instead of answering him, trying to reroute the conversation onto their younger brother.
Dean frowned at her, knowing she was avoiding the question, but answered anyway. "Yeah. I think he blames himself for it for some stupid reason."
"Survivor's guilt, probably," she pointed out, switching to a new folder. "He probably thinks it should've been him to die instead of her."
"Well he's stupid and not thinking with his right mind," Dean grumbled, turning the page he was on more forcefully than was necessary. "What about you, then? Any of this 'survivor's guilt' going on with you?"
Alex opened her mouth to make a sarcastic comment about how she couldn't exactly experience survivor's guilt considering she had actually died, but the words died on her tongue before she could speak them. Dean was watching her expectantly, though, so she just shrugged and broke eye contact with him. "I'm just more annoyed that I don't have any of my clothes and stuff anymore."
Dean was giving her a look she couldn't quite understand, but she was relieved when he just shrugged and turned back to the folder in his hands. "Why not get more?"
"I don't exactly have my credit cards or anything, considering they burned too," she pointed out, hoping it was a believable story. They had burned. Just not in Nashville. They had burned along with the clothes she had been wearing back at that rest stop.
"So where'd you get those?" Dean was quick on the draw today, pointing out weaker points in the story she was spinning like it was just a normal conversation.
"Stole them from a laundromat." It wasn't exactly a lie. And it wasn't exactly the truth.
She could tell Dean was still suspicious about what she had said. She had no idea why he would be, though. Had he expected her and Sam to be acting similarly considering what had happened to them? She and Sam were two different people. From the short amount of time the siblings had spent together it was obvious that Alex and Dean were more similar than Alex and Sam. And she had a feeling Dean would rather bottle it up and not speak the truth about it just like she was.
She had expected more questions to be fired at her, but was instead met with silence. Dean apparently knew when to leave a topic alone.
But, in reality, he was carefully thinking over everything she had told them since she showed up.
After another hour of silence, broken only by either Dean's frustrated huffs or the quiet rustle of papers, Sam jolted awake on the bed.
He looked over at Dean and Alex, both of whom were watching him curiously. "Why'd you let me fall asleep?" he asked seriously, although with the tired and semi-out of breath edge in his voice it was hard to take it out he meant it.
"Because I'm an awesome brother," Dean rolled his eyes, glancing to Alex and then back to Sam. "So what did you dream about?"
"Lollipops and candy canes," Sam grumbled, running his hands over his face as he stretched out his long legs.
"Yeah, sure," Dean frowned, but didn't push him any further, like he had with Alex.
"Did you find anything?" Sam questioned them, looking over at them from his position on the bed.
"Oh besides a whole new level of frustration?" Dean huffed again, leaning back in his seat and crossing his legs.
"We've looked at everything," Alex added in, rolling her eyes when Dean let out another overly dramatic sigh. "Some local women, a Laura and a Catherine, committed suicide in front of mirrors."
"A giant mirror fell on a guy named Dave," Dean leaned forward again, his brows furrowed as he thought about how fruitless their research had been. "But uh, no Mary."
Sam groaned, falling back onto the bed not long after he sat up. "Maybe we just haven't found it yet."
"Doubtful," Alex mumbled as Sam's phone rang. She and Dean watched silently as Sam sat back up, concern lining his features as he listened to what was being said on the other side of the call.
Twenty minutes later they were sneaking into the bedroom of the most recent victim. The phone call to Sam had been from Charlie, one of the Shoemaker's friends. She had called in hysterics to tell them that her friend Jill had died. And when they met her at the park the situation had come more into light on how it was related. Apparently Jill had said you-know-what three times in a mirror. And then they found her body with no eyes in it in her bathroom floor.
"What'd you tell Jill's mom?" Sam asked as he tugged something out of the bag around his shoulders, Dean and Alex moving to pull the curtains together in the room to shut out the light.
"Just that I needed some alone time with Jill's pictures and things. I hate lying to her," Charlie had her arms tucked securely around herself, frowning as she watched the siblings working.
"Don't worry," Alex tried to console her, lightly patting her arm as she passed by her, moving to the light switch. "This is for the greater good."
"Hit the lights," Dean ordered and Alex switched them off. Alex then moved to stand by Charlie, figuring the girl needed someone nearer to her considering what all she had been through.
"What are you guys looking for?" Charlie asked with trepidation watching as Sam and Dean played around with a camera.
"We'll let you know as soon as we find it," Dean told her, flipping the night-vision on the camera as Sam pointed it out. Dean then grinned into the camera, because it was pointed at him. "Do I look like Paris Hilton?"
Sam rolled his eyes and took the camera, walking away to the closet door to film around the mirror. Alex was also miffed by Dean's ongoing obsession with making bad jokes. "You look more like a primadonna to me," she murmured, causing Sam to laugh lightly through his nose and Dean to throw his hands up exasperatedly.
"No one gets me like I get me," Dean grumbled as he moved to look through some stuff on the deceased teenager's desk.
"Anyway," Sam began, drawing the attention away from Dean, "I don't get it. The first victim didn't summon Mary, and the second victim did. How's she choosing them?"
"Beats me," Dean shrugged, watching as Sam moved from the closet towards the bathroom. "I want to know why Jill said it in the first place."
"It was just a joke," Charlie spoke up quietly, reminding the trio that she was still in the room.
"Bad joke, then," Alex told her, glancing at her and then back at Sam and Dean.
"Yeah, well somebody's gonna say it again, it's just a matter of time." Dean sounded completely sure of that, adding just a hint of moroseness to the situation.
"Hey," Sam called from the bathroom, getting the attentions of Dean, Alex, and Charlie. "There's a black light in the trunk, right?"
Dean left to get the black light as Alex moved to take the camera from Sam, allowing him two hands free to move the mirror to the bed in the room. He was laying it face down as Dean came back in and tossed the black light to him. Sam peeled the brown paper off of the back of the mirror before shining the black light over it, illuminating a hand print and the words 'Gary Bryman' written on it.
"Gary Bryman?" Charlie asked out loud, prompting Sam to turn to her.
"You know who that is?" he asked her, turning the black light off and standing up straight.
"No," she shook her head, causing Alex to roll her eyes. At least this time Sam would be awake to do the research on the name.
Dean, Alex, and Charlie were once again sat on a bench outside, not really talking to each other as Sam approached them from behind.
"So, Gary Bryman," he began, glancing between the three on the bench before continuing, "He was an 8-year-old boy. Two years ago he was killed in a hit and run. The car was described as a black Toyota Camry. But nobody got the plates or saw the driver."
"Oh my God," Charlie gasped, a hand moving to cover her mouth. "Jill drove that car."
Dean and Alex glanced at each other, nodding only slightly as they both came to the same conclusion. "We need to get back to your friend Donna's house."
Not long later they had discovered another hand print on the back of the mirror from the bathroom of the Shoemaker's house, where the first victim had died. The name Linda Shoemaker had been written beneath it.
Although Donna Shoemaker had denied it, they all felt pretty safe in assuming Steven Shoemaker had killed his wife.
So now Dean was typing on a computer and Sam was looking over a bulletin board back in their room. Alex was watching them both from the bed she had sprawled out over.
"Wait, wait, wait," Sam spoke up, breaking the silence that had begun to lull Alex to sleep. "You're doing a nationwide search?"
"Yep," Dean nodded, continuing his searching, "The NCIC, the FBI database-at this point any Mary who died in front of a mirror is good enough for me."
"But if she's haunting the town then she should have died in this town," Sam frowned, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I'm telling you," Dean frowned, obviously tired of having to go over it again. "There's nothing local. We've checked. So unless you've got a better idea-"
Alex cut him off before the boys could start to argue, rolling onto her side to face them. "Seems like there's a pattern here, in the way she kills."
Dean and Sam both looked at her before back at each other and away again, the former of them shrugging.
"I was thinking the same thing," Dean spoke up, leaning back in his seat. "Both had secrets where people died."
"Right," Sam nodded, idly walking back towards the bulletin board before pacing back towards Dean a little. "I mean, there's a lot of folklore about mirrors-that they reveal all your lies, all your secrets, that they're a true reflection of your soul, which is why it's bad luck to break them."
"Right, right," Dean responded, clicking on the computer again as he listened to Sam. "So maybe if you've got a secret, I mean like a really nasty one where someone died, then Mary sees it, and punishes you for it."
"Whether you're the one who summoned her or not," Sam added in as an afterthought, the MO of the spirit suddenly making more sense to all of them.
"Take a look at this," Dean moved slightly so Sam could lean over and look at what was on the screen. Alex could barely see a few photos of what looked like a crime scene from where she was laying.
"Looks like the same handprint,"Sam pointed out, suddenly becoming much more interested as the case felt like it was coming together at last.
"Her name was Mary Worthington, an unsolved murder in Fort Wayne, Indiana," Dean informed them as he stood from his seat, moving over to where his gun was and placing it back in his belt.
"Looks like we're going to Indiana," Sam had followed Dean's example, also picking up some of his more important items to take with them.
Alex had closed her eyes after failing to get a good look at the pictures on the computer from where she sat, a yawn breaking out of her uncontrollably. She missed the look the boys shared, but definitely did not miss it when she suddenly felt one of her shoes being tugged off. She sat up quickly with an indignant noise, frowning at Dean as he tossed her shoe over his shoulder. "What the hell, Dean?"
"When's the last time you slept?" Sam asked as Dean grabbed the ankle of her other leg before she could pull it away and tugged that shoe off and threw it over with the other one.
Alex's face changed from one of indignation and confusion to thoughtful as she considered that question. When had she slept last? On that bus before the stuff with Beelzebub? That was over a week ago. Did they count being dead as sleep? "I'm fine," she answered instead, throwing her feet over the side of the bed. "I'm going with you two."
"It's pretty obvious you've been running on fumes for the past few hours," Sam pointed out to her, crossing his arms and standing beside of Dean. Together they made an impressive wall of muscle and thickheadedness. "We're just going to Indiana to question the local police. It's a cut and dry job. You can afford to stay behind and sleep."
Alex looked to Dean for help, but when he only shrugged she groaned and turned back to Sam, "I'm fine, Sam. I'm coming with you two."
"Answer the question first," Dean spoke up, glancing at Sam and then back to Alex. "When's the last time you slept?"
Alex groaned again, falling back onto the bed in her exasperation. "Over a week ago. Fine. Whatever. Just go. I'll stay here and do some more research."
Satisfied with that answer Sam moved on to the door, walking out and into the Impala. Dean lingered behind for a few seconds. "Hey," he spoke up, causing her to glare at him from where she was laying. "Get some sleep. I know you said you've been hunting demons or whatever, so you know you can't afford to exhaust yourself. And don't leave the room while we're gone."
Alex sighed as she watched the door shut behind Dean as he left, absentmindedly rubbing a light circle over the mark on her left wrist. He was right. She knew he was. He was a sarcastic ass most of the time, but he was still in the right on this. So she took her brother's advice and fell into a dreamless sleep not long after she heard the roar of the Impala's engine rumble away.