Title: That Which Was Lost... [10/?]
Author: alakewood
Warnings: AU. Spoilers for Faith and Shadow.
Rating: PG-13.
Word Count: ~2200
Summary: Sam gets on a bus to Chicago and meets a girl named Meg. Dean gets a call from John, who needs his help. Everything comes together and falls apart in Chicago.
Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing.
oxoxo
When Sam got to the bus station in Hibbing, he didn't get on a bus headed back to Nebraska. Instead, he bought a ticket on the earliest bus out – which happened to be going in the opposite direction of home and Dean.
He settled into his seat beside the window, backpack in his lap, wishing for a book to read, and waited for the bus to start moving. He was completely tuned out to his surroundings, not noticing when another passenger took the seat next to his. It wasn't until the corner of something pressed against his arm that he regained his focus on the view beyond his window, only seeing a blur of green fields. He turned around to see who was prodding him with what.
"I thought you were catatonic or something," the girl beside him said. "You okay?"
Sam relaxed back into his seat, sighing. "I'm okay. Yeah."
Her eyebrows arched high and she nodded, clearly not believing him. "I'm Meg," she said, holding up a book. "I think you might need this more than me."
Sam glanced at the heavily-used paperback. Crime and Punishment. "I don't think I can focus enough to read Dostoevsky."
Meg nodded and returned the book to her bag, pulling out another. "What about Dilbert?"
Sam laughed, somewhat surprised by her diversity in literature. "Thanks, but no."
"Okay." She slid that book into her bag as well and dropped it onto the floor between her feet. "So. You're headed to Chicago?"
"If that's where the bus is going."
"I hope so, otherwise I'm on the wrong one. What's in Chicago? I mean, why're you going there?"
Sam sighed again, not really wanting to make small talk with anybody, let alone a random stranger. "I don't know. It was the first bus out."
"Ah," she said knowingly. "What are you running away from?"
"Who said I was running away?"
"I just...assumed. That's kind of what I'm doing. My family...I just. At some point, you just have to go, you know? I can only take so much. They're overprotective and have these absurd expectations." She shook her head. "They were smothering me. So I decided to leave. I'm gonna visit a friend in Chicago, then I'm headed for California."
Sam nodded, his thoughts involuntarily shifting to Jess. "California's...nice."
oxo
Dean was just crossing the Minnesota/South Dakota border when his cell phone rang. His heartbeat started racing as he dug the phone out from beneath a map on the passenger seat. Sam, he hoped. But his heartbeat faltered when he read the display. He thumbed the 'send' button and pressed the phone to his ear. "Dad." His other hand shot to the volume knob on the radio and turned down the Metallica. "You're – you're...you're okay."
"Yeah, Dean."
"I was looking for you."
"I know."
"Why'd you-"
"It's not important. I'm in Chicago on a job and..." John sighed as if whatever was coming next was something he was being forced into saying. "And I need your help."
"Yes, sir. Of course."
oxo
The trip to Chicago seemed endless and, at some point, Sam had fallen asleep. Dreamt of Dean and the car accident. He startled awake.
"Hey." Meg nudged him with her elbow. "You all right?"
"Yeah. Bad dream."
"You wanna talk about it?"
"Not really."
"I'm not gonna judge you, Sam," she said, her expression hurt as she leaned back in her seat.
That struck Sam as odd – he hadn't told her his name.
oxo
Dean met up with John at his father's motel room, and John filled him in on the hunt. "I didn't want to bring you into this, Dean. I really didn't. But I don't think I had a choice because, if for some reason I don't make it through this, I want you to know what you're facing."
"Dad?" Dean wasn't following.
"The murders I'm investigating appear to be werewolf attacks, but everything's wrong. Hearts not missing, wrong time of the lunar cycle." He shook his head. "The victims have all been from Lawrence. It's not a coincidence. I think... The thing that killed Mary – the demon that killed your mother, Dean – I think it's here."
Dean's breath caught in his throat. The bastard was there. His whole life had been leading up to this moment. "What are we waiting for?"
oxo
There was something suspicious about Meg, so Sam let her talk him into having a drink with her at a local bar and leaving the following morning.
The stools at the counter, as well as the booths and small tables scattered throughout the bar, were full, so they stood with their drinks as they talked, as Sam waited for her to slip up again. "I just wanted to apologize for my attitude," he said. "I didn't mean to be so...short."
"It's fine," she said, smiling coyly.
"I've just been going through some stuff."
She nodded.
"Kind of the same thing you were talking about earlier, about your family. I'm kind of going through the same kind of thing."
They talked for a while longer, had a few more drinks, then Sam said he should probably head back to the station and told Meg goodnight. He waited across the street in an alley for her to leave the bar, then followed her.
oxo
Dean and John were retracing the steps of the last victim as they were detailed in the police report, hoping that there would be something that tied the murders together. Some little piece of overlooked evidence, or a place. Or a person that connected them. "Her," John said suddenly, nodding at a slight young blonde across the street leaving the bar Meredith, the last victim, had worked at. "She worked with the first victim."
"Let's follow her then."
John waited until she rounded the corner before starting his truck and following after. They knew they had something when she headed into an abandoned warehouse. No sane, normal girl would, by herself, be walking around Chicago at such a late hour, let alone go into abandoned buildings.
After a couple of minutes, a window on the third floor lit dimly. John went in the front, following the girl, while Dean headed around back to find another entrance. Dean silently navigated through the darkness, staying close to the building, barely able to see anything but finally found a boarded-up door. He pried back one of the plywood panels and headed inside.
oxo
Sam followed Meg to an old, deserted warehouse. He watched her go inside, then snuck around the back to find another way in.
He climbed the stairs just inside the back entrance and stopped at the third floor when he heard Meg's voice. But she definitely wasn't speaking English. He quietly headed towards the sound of her voice, the whole floor seemingly a wide-open space, separated by pillars and heavy sheets of canvas and plastic, apparently abandoned in the midst of a remodel.
A faint light filtered from beneath and between the canvas sheets and Meg's voice sounded as though it was just on the other side of the fabric. Sam stopped and peered through a gap in the material.
Meg was kneeling on an altar, head bowed over a cup.
oxo
Dean paused just inside the doorway – he could hear footsteps on the stairs. But they were getting fainter and finally faded into silence. Dean quietly ascended the stairs, pausing again at the third floor landing. Almost as faint as the footsteps had been, Dean heard a voice – a female voice. He followed the voice, staying along the east wall of the open third story, and found himself standing just outside the doorway of a makeshift room separated from the rest of the floor by heavy tarps. From where he stood, he could barely see the far end of the room, where the girl he and John had followed kneeled at some kind of altar. Across from him, in the front stairwell, he saw his father.
It said something about John Winchester that he could give orders without saying a word. With only a look and a gesture, Dean knew what his father wanted him to do. But as he started along the canvas, he saw that he wasn't alone. He had to improvise. He wasn't going to let the girl get away, wasn't going to let his father get hurt, not tonight. Not when they were so close to the demon that killed Mary. He wasn't going to screw this up.
The figure – a man, Dean guessed by the height – stood outside an opening in the tarps. Dean put his shoulder down, kept his head up, and charged. His shoulder connected with the man's lower back and they both went sprawling into the improvised room, startling the girl on the altar. He was vaguely aware of John as he rushed into the room from the left, and acutely aware of the familiar body beneath his. He turned the man over. "Sam."
"Dean!" John shouted, heading for the girl who had righted herself and had begun chanting something over a goblet. That was when the shadows started to move.
Dean had never fought anything like it before – wasn't prepared to fight what he couldn't quite see.
"The altar, Dean! Destroy the altar!"
Torn between obeying his father and an unconscious Sam, Dean hesitated. In that brief moment, the girl – more than just a girl, with solid black eyes – advanced on John, held up a hand and John screamed. Not like this, was all Dean could think as he started for the altar, shadows swarming Sam's prone body.
As soon as the altar crashed to the floor, the shadows stopped, turned, and attacked the girl. Dean rushed back to Sam's side, watching with horrified curiosity as the shadows forced her out the window.
Groaning, Sam started to come to.
"What's going on, Dean? Who is he?"
Dean couldn't meet his father's eyes. Not yet. "Nobody, sir."
John held a hand to his stomach, wiped at a gash across his forehead with the other. "Not what it looks like from here."
He could hear the disgust in John's voice, couldn't bear to see it on his face, in his eyes, too. But, beside him, Sam wheezed and opened his eyes, stared up at him in confusion, then awe.
"Dean?" he questioned in disbelief.
He kept his face blank. "What are you doing here?"
"I..." It took him a moment to remember. "I followed Meg. There was something off about her. I never told her my name, but she knew it anyway."
"I thought you were going home?"
"I got on the first bus I could, and this is where I ended up."
"Dean." John's voice held a warning.
Sam sat up and glanced at the man glaring at them from across the room. He turned back to Dean. "Is that – is he...?"
"Yeah," Dean replied, climbing to his feet and waiting for Sam to do the same.
They arrived outside, immediately noticing something wasn't right. John cursed. All that was left on the pavement was glass and blood – the body was gone. He pulled Dean aside. "After all this, you let your boyfriend fuck it up." John shook his head, the muscle in his jaw twitching. "You get him cleaned up and then he's getting the hell out of here."
"Dad, I-"
"I don't want to hear it, Dean."
Dean led Sam over to John's truck and pulled a first-aid kit out from behind the passenger's seat. He didn't say a word as he cleaned Sam's wounds and bandaged the worst.
"Dean," Sam said quietly, keeping his eyes downcast. "I'm sorry."
Dean didn't acknowledge him. "We'll drop you off at the bus station." And that was it.
oxo
Nihilistic behavior was not a newly developed trait in Dean Winchester. As a matter of fact, it was probably one of the few things that defined him that he also had in common with nearly every hunter he'd ever met. To varying degrees, anyway.
But he'd never been quite as reckless as he was in the weeks after he'd wordlessly left Sam at the bus station in the middle of the night. His new approach to hunting was stupid and dangerous and proved to be nearly fatal: the moment he fired the taser, he realized his mistake.
Reckless, stupid, dangerous; and he couldn't care less. John called once a week with updates; kept it short and to the point, all business, obviously disappointed and still disgusted. And with the way he'd left Sam, he doubted he'd ever be able to salvage what they had.
So it wasn't like he had anything to live for anyhow.
He heard the electricity crackle, felt it seize his body in painful convulsions, his muscles tensing, body curling in on itself as he collapsed to the floor.
He thought he heard Sam call his name, thought he saw him, knew he must be dead or dying.
Then...nothing.
oxoxo
A/N: This chapter didn't go quite the way I'd intended it to: things I'd planned on having happen later on just kind of popped in (like John's return) or changed completely (the way in which Sam and Dean were reunited). So, hopefully, this still worked for you, and you're still reading. I know this story's been a work-in-progress for a long time (ten months!), so thanks for sticking with it (and me) for this long! Your reviews are so greatly appreciated whether they're praise or concrit - it's just nice to hear back from you guys. So, again, thank you!