OH-EM-GEE, DOUBLE POSTING, WUT?

Yeah, that's right. I'm so badass that I have TWO chapters for you today, my chickadees! Whose your favorite author? Oh, what? MoonDrop is? Awwww yeeeeeah.

Ha ha. All joking aside, I really really like how this chapter turned out. I winged it with the fight scene because in the show it kept cutting away to show Dean chopping away at the front door with an axe, and really, I'm all for caring!Dean, but it made my job a little harder. Also, I made Sam's injuries in this poltergeist showdown a little worse than what Sam actually gets in the show. Which is to say, he gets pretty much nothing in the show.

Where's the gore, man? Where's the pain? WHERE'S THE HUMANITY?

...I'm a little sleep-deprived today. Grand total of three hours total, and these two chapter pooped out of my brain at like, six in the morning. So please 'scuse my rambling and incoherence, I'm just kind of crashing.

ANYHOO, I'll stop this useless drivel and let y'all get to reading!

Please tell me what you think! Review, review, review!

Kisses,

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!

In case you had any doubts, no, Dean wasn't kidding when he'd said the kitchen was a fucking disaster, he was just understating the situation. It wasn't simply a fucking disaster, it was a god damn catastrophe. The fridge had been completely gutted, and food and condiments covered the cabinets and counters surrounding it. The dining table had been turned on its side and used as a shield, with knives cutting clean through the wood right to the hilt. Drawers were ripped open and their contents strewn all over to the floor. It was nearly impossible to take a step without stepping in some pile of food or puddle of something or tripping over a broken utensil. Sam was actually kind of impressed when she looked up and saw some frozen hamburger stuck on the ceiling.

The siblings had ignored the kitchen at first, though, and ran down the stairs to the basement to check on Missouri. They found her pinned against a wall with an old, heavy desk of some kind pressing her into the concrete foundations. It had taken all three of them to shove it out of the way. The older woman said she was fine, just a little sore. Nothing that wouldn't go away in a few days, and was Sam okay because it looked like her neck was starting to bruise. Dean helped Missouri upstairs, and then Sam got them all a glass of water. She figured since the kitchen was already gone to shit, what were three more glasses?

Ignoring the problem didn't make it go away, however, and when all three of them walked back in to the ravished kitchen, it looked exactly the same. Dean walked over to some drawers close to where Ritchie's play pen used to be to fiddle with some silverware while Missouri leaned with her elbow against one of the legs of the table. Sam was just taking stock of the floors when she felt something cold almost brush hair away from her face. She jumped and turned around, but there wasn't anything her hair could have caught on, and Missouri wasn't even facing her. Sam chewed on her lip.

"You sure this is over?" she asked nervously. Dean looked over at her, watching her face for any cause for alarm. Sam watched the back of Missouri's head as the woman inspected the damage in front of them.

"I'm sure. Why?" She turned around and faced Sam with a quizzical expression on her face. "Why do you ask?"

Sam looked from Missouri to her brother and back again before releasing her lip and shaking her head. She tucked that stray piece of hair behind her ear and looked out the window over the sink. She could make out the neighbor's pale gray house in the clear light of the half-moon.

"Oh, never mind," she sighed. "It's nothing, I guess." Missouri narrowed her eyes at Sam, and she had the distinct (uncomfortable) feeling that the woman was trying to find answers out of Sam's head. She really wished Missouri would quit it, it was unsettling to not have thoughts to herself.

Thankfully, attention was drawn off of Sam by the lock on the front door clicking and the door swinging open. All three of them tensed as they heard Jenny usher her kids back into the house. Guess she hadn't been comfortable enough to leave them alone for more than half an hour, which was fine considering how quickly they'd wrapped up this whole thing, but seriously, if they'd still been in the middle of cleansing the house and Jenny just waltzed through the front door?

Oi vey… civilians.

"Hello?" Jenny called. "We're home!" Sam grimaced in preparation for the blonde mother witnessing the mess they hadn't had a chance to clean up yet. And, as if right on cue, she appeared in the entryway. It was almost comical the way Jenny's jaw dropped and the size that her eyes widened to. Sam glanced around the kitchen and winced guilty. No, they hadn't really caused this mess, but they were the ones to blame. "What happened?"

"Hi. Sorry. Um," Sam said with a half-smile, "we'll – we'll pay for all of this." Sam swept her arm around the room, ignoring the look on her brother's face that spoke all too well about what he thought of that idea. Well… looked like a good chunk of the cash Sam had was gone now. No food for her the next few times they stopped somewhere to eat. Ugh, she could already hear her stomach growling in protest.

"Don't worry," Missouri cooed, "Dean's gonna clean up this mess." Sam quirked an eyebrow at the psychic and flicked her eyes over to her brother. His face was saying just how much he was not going to clean up this mess, and had she really been talking about him? Missouri looked at him over her shoulder. "Well, what are you waitin' for, boy? Get the mop." Dean raised his eyebrows at the older woman, and Sam could tell by the dark glint in his eyes all the colorful expressions he was grumbling in his head. He rolled his eyes and turned to do as instructed but then stopped when Missouri snapped, "And don't cuss at me!"

Dean stared at her for a long moment, his eyes wide with surprise before he scowled and started muttering under his breath. He stomped off(presumably to go look for a mop), and Sam snickered. It may have been throwing Sam off to have this strange woman so in tune with her emotions (Dean was usually the only one that knew what she was feeling at any given time, for obvious reasons), but it was fucking hilarious to see that turned on her brother. Call it sibling rivalry or whatever, but it made her laugh. It was nice to find things that could still make her laugh… especially at her brother's expense.

It had taken Dean a good chunk of time to get the kitchen set to rights again. Long enough for Jenny to put both of her kids down to sleep for the night, and long enough that Sam was starting to feel her eyelids droop. She'd helped him out, eventually, if only to speed up the process and get herself to a bed sooner than later. It wasn't a late night for Sam, her watch told her it was only a quarter until one in the morning, but she'd almost been choked to death, so excuse her if she felt a little wiped.

Jenny stayed up with them, trying to find out what they'd done to make everything stop, but Sam and Dean (masters of deflection and evasion that they were) kept her going in circles without getting any real answers. It was done, they said, and that was all she really needed to worry about. Well… actually, Dean said. Sam still had that slithering feeling over her neck every now and then and wasn't entirely sold on the idea just yet. Still, Missouri seemed convinced, and if the poltergeist was still around, wouldn't it have taken care of them by now? Unless, of course, it recognized them as bigger threats and was just biding time until they left so it could continue terrorizing Jenny and her family.

Well…

Shit.

They left just a little after one, with Dean helping Missouri down the stairs on account of her legs still being a might sore. The three of them paused on their way to the Impala to give Jenny one last look. She smiled happily, if a little tiredly, and thanked them before retreating back in to her house and shutting the door.

They made a stop at Missouri's house with a promise to stop by before they left town in the morning to say goodbye and then drove over to their motel room. Sam had this feeling in her gut, this sinking feeling. She really wanted to go make sure Jenny was okay. Like, she really, really wanted to go make sure, because she had the worst feeling that Jenny wasn't okay, and it was freaking her the fuck out. Dean didn't seem to notice on their trip back to their room, though. He looked too buried in his own thoughts. Sam wondered for a moment if he felt a sense of closure after dealing with those spirits and saving that family.

She doubted it.

When they pulled in front of the room, Dean whipped out the room key and slipped through the door, but Sam was a little hesitant. She frowned and bit her lip, rubbing distractedly at her stomach where the dread was turning to an almost physical ache. She stared at the ground as she stepped over the threshold and shut the door. Maybe she could slip away when Dean went to sleep… just to make sure. She just… she just needed to see with her own eyes that Jenny was okay, and that she wouldn't appear in front of her window, crying and screaming for help like the blonde woman had in Sam's vision. She sighed. Please, oh please let Dean fall asleep soon.

It was too quiet for Sam's liking. It was the kind of silence that muted all sounds, made everything seem hushed and far away. There wasn't a single light on in any of the houses on the whole block, but it was closing in on three in the morning, so Sam wasn't surprised. Still, this silence was making her skin crawl. Like the quiet before a storm.

Sam prayed silently in her head that Jenny and her family would be protected while she leaned over to look through her brother's open window and up at Jenny's house. The windows on the second floor where the mother's room was were completely dark. Not a sign of life. Sam tensed and waited. She didn't know what she was waiting for, but she knew that she just had to wait. The uncomfortable pull in her gut had lessened once they'd started out towards Jenny's house, but it hadn't completely gone away yet.

"All right," Dean grumbled, "so, tell me again, what are we still doin' here?" Sam shifted in her seat to a more comfortable position that didn't strain her neck in such a way before answering. It had taken some serious convincing for him to join her, especially after he'd taken a sip of his whiskey (priceless, by the way), and it had come down to her telling him she was going with or without him, and if he wanted to make sure nothing happened, he better drag his ass along with. He hadn't been real happy with her tonight. She had the bruises to prove it.

"I don't know. I just… I still have a bad feeling." Dean looked away from the quiet house and turned his attention to his sister.

"Why? Missouri did her whole Zelda Rubenstein thing, the house should be clean, this should be over." Sam shrugged, keeping her eyes trained on the second story.

"Yeah, well, probably. But I just wanna make sure, that's all." Dean stared at her a moment longer before exhaling and reclining back as much as he could in the cramped space of the Impala.

"Yeah, well, problem is, I could be sleeping in a bed right now," he grumbled. Sam looked away from the house for a moment to stare at her brother. She silently smiled as she recalled his expression when he'd spit out her repulsive mixture. Boy, was he going to make his retaliation nasty (hopefully less nasty with the peace-offering of an Ozzy concert. She hadn't told him about it just yet.), but, oh, to see his face. Ah, if she'd only had a camera.

She wiped the smile away and returned to her task of looking up at where Jenny's room should be, and hello, the blonde woman was standing in front the glass, pounding her fists on it and screaming. She whipped her head around, much as she had in Sam's vision, staring back into her room before looking out towards the car again and soundlessly screaming for help.

Well…

Shit.

Again.

"Dean!" Sam wacked her brother's arm for his attention. He opened his eyes to glare balefully at his sister. She threw open her door without looking for the handle with one hand and jabbed up at the house with another. "Dean!" He finally caught on and curse when he caught sight of Jenny's terrified expression. Just as Sam was slipping out of the car, Dean threw open his own door and followed suit.

"You grab the kids," he said as Sam ran around the front of the Impala, "I'll get Jenny!" Sam didn't even nod, just flew over to the front door and wrenched it open. Dean immediately took off for the stairs as he headed for Jenny, and Sam followed him up as she headed for Ritchie's room. She had to slip down a second hallway, and it took her two tries to get it right, but when she found the little boy's bedroom, she didn't hesitate to rush in and yank him out of his bed. He was still asleep, so Ritchie didn't do more than wrap his arms around her shoulders and snuffle into her neck sleepily. Sam wasted no time running back down the hall and bursting in to Sari's room.

The small girl was wide awake, sitting up in bed and shaking in fear, and rightfully so. There was a figure in the vague outline of a human, on fire, and walking towards her bed. Sam gasped as the heat rolled over her like a wave when she opened Sari's door. The fire crackled and snapped, and for a moment, Sam completely froze. The soft glow from the orange flames sparked memories that flashed in front of her eyes and the wave of pain she'd first felt in Palo Alto reared its head again. She blinked, however, and shoved all that away, dashing inside and reaching for the little girl. Sari was small for her age, and didn't weigh too much more than her brother, so Sam could manage to carry them to the front door before her arms started burning too bad.

"Don't look, Sari!" Sam called as she scooped the sobbing girl in to her arms. "Don't look!"

Sam made it to the bottom of the stairs just fine before something… happened. The back of her neck felt like it was pressed against ice, and she felt more than heard something growl next to her ear. The vibration rolled through her whole skull and rattled her brain, and the pulling feeling in her gut wrenched painfully. Sam stopped running, filling with dread, and set the two children gently down on the ground. She knelt in front of Sari as Ritchie rubbed sleep out of his eyes.

"All right, Sari," Sam panted, "take your brother outside as fast as you can, and don't look back!" Sari nodded, gripping her little brother's hand. Sam felt something clench painfully around her ankle, and with a sharp yank, she was being dragged back through the house, away from Sari's screams, and towards the kitchen. Sam tried desperately to grab on to something to stop herself, but she was going too fast and anything she could have used just slipped out of her fingers. She slid along the floor until the poltergeist pulled her under the table, knocking over the chairs and the table, and shoving her into the cupboard under the sink. Sam instinctively covered her head as the hard wood from a chair fell towards her face.

Huffing in annoyance, Sam shoved the chairs out of the way and crawled away, heading for the door, but a supernatural force picked her up and threw her towards the doorway, smashing her into the wall instead. She was able to twist her body so that she landed more on her left shoulder more than her head, and with a sickening pop and a white-hot stab of pain, her shoulder dislocated. Better than breaking her neck anyway. Sam fell to the floor, landing awkwardly (and painfully) on her injured arm, and yelped in pain. She took a gasp of breath before using her good arm to work her way to her feet. In hindsight, that was probably a bad idea because it pinned her to the wall as soon as she was standing straight. Sam hoped that was the end of it, but she knew that it was futile. She was a Winchester. Nothing ever went the way she wanted. As if to prove her point, the poltergeist(geists?) picked her up effortlessly and tossed her across the room and straight into the cabinets housing Jenny's plates and bowls. Sam barely had enough time to get her right hand in front of her face before her body was smashing through the glass panels. She fell out of the air, hitting the granite counter tops on her way down, and landing right on her left elbow.

"Fuck!" she yelled, as her dislocated arm jarred and the pain redoubled. She let her head fall back to the floor with a pained groan. She felt something cold touch her face, and flinched. The coolness slid over her cheeks and down to her neck where it wrapped around the bruises she had from the chord and yanked her up to her feet. Sam gasped, just barely getting enough air, as the spirit shoved her across the room and against Jenny's largest cupboards, holding her off her feet. Sam had tucked her injured arm in to her jacket as soon as she'd started standing, so it was pressed hard against her body, but the rest of her was restrained against the wood. The ice released her neck, and Sam took gasping breaths, her head dizzy and spinning. She struggled against the unnatural force keeping her arms and legs down, but she was only able to manage to wrench her good hand away from the wood by a couple inches before the force doubled in strength and her had slapped back into place.

Sam panted, sore all over, and her shoulder throbbed painfully. She heard some banging from the front door that she hoped was her brother, and was about to call out and see but something stopped her. The figure on fire from Sari's room walked slowly into the kitchen, from the other side of the room. There were the flames reaching up towards the ceiling and the empty space around, and then inside the fire itself, there was this… almost empty space where the fire didn't dance like normal so much as it did coil around the spirit's shape. The form flickered and contorted with the shape of the flames on the outside, but if Sam squinted hard enough, she could look past the orange and peer at the almost emptiness and see… curves? Wai - wha? What the hell? No, really, this spirit had curves like, like… womanly curves. A full-on hourglass figure and everything. It was hard to know for sure, her brain was kind of frazzled and the spirit was on the other side of the room, but Sam guessed it was about as tall as she was, maybe an inch or two taller.

Sam dimly heard someone call her name and recognized it as her brother, but she was so busy focusing on the fire figure that she didn't notice until later. She squinted as the spirit took a couple small steps towards her, and now that it was closer, she could see the fire wrapping around actual facial features. Straight nose, lips, round face and curves. Sam's eyes widened. A female spirit. Fire. In this house?

No.

Fucking.

Way.

"Sam? Sam!" She tore her eyes away from the figure for a moment to watch her brother storm into the kitchen, an axe in one hand and his favorite sawed-off in another. He was staring at Sam, eyes dark with concern, but as soon as he walked in as saw the figure, he paused and then stood protectively in front of his sister and raised his gun. Sam panicked.

"No!" she yelled, startling her brother though his aim never wavered. "No! Don't! Don't shoot!"

"What? Why not?" he demanded. Sam lowered her voice until it was just barely louder than the crackling of the fire in front of them.

"Because I know who it is… I can see her now." As if those words were magic, the fire cooled from the feet slowly up her legs until it reached the hem of a white nightgown. The siblings watched, entranced, as more and more of a definite female person was revealed, and Sam couldn't help the tears she felt welling in her eyes even before it reached the face of their mother, Mary Winchester.

She was even more beautiful than Sam had seen in any pictures. She was slender, pale, and tall for a woman. Her light blonde hair fell in soft curls past her shoulders, framing her thin face. She had high cheek bones, a small mouth, straight nose (Dean's nose, now that she noticed, though his had a bump from past injuries), slender, arching eyebrows, and her face was not yet wrinkled with age. When she opened her eyes, Sam almost gasped. Her eyes were the same hazel blue that Sam saw every day in the mirror, but in the low light of the dark kitchen, they glowed with an icy cool, blue fire. She knew that she'd gotten her mother's eye color from photos she'd seen in the past, but she had no idea that her mom's eyes could be so… intense and captivating. If Sam wasn't restrained against the cupboard, she'd probably try and hug the woman, ghost or no ghost.

"Mom?" Dean croaked weakly, his gun lowering in shaking hands. Mary took three steps until she was standing in front of her son and looked up into his eye for a few seconds, her face neutral and calm. But then her lips twitched and she broke out into a soft smile. It was a beautiful smile. Full of warmth and love and everything that Sam had never had in her life growing up, and this spot inside her soul she hadn't known was empty cried out in pain.

"Dean," she sighed, like she'd been waiting all this time just to say his name. His breath hitched and Mary's smile widened before she tucked it away and turned to Sam. Sam felt a tear spill over onto her cheeks as Mary walked past her son to stand in front of Sam. Dean didn't even blink, his eyes following their mother and staring at her like he'd never see her again.

Oh wait…

"Sam," she said in that same sighing voice, like her name had been the only word she'd been waiting to say. Now that their mom was so close, Sam could see just how long and dark her eyelashes were. She smiled weakly down at her mother from where the poltergeist kept her pressed against the wall. Mary smiled up at her daughter much like she had at Dean, and she felt the full impact of the warmth and love their mom put behind her smile. It washed over Sam like a balm, sealing up all her wounds and wrapping her in happiness and peace. She couldn't help the way her breath sounded broken and watery and didn't even bother trying to stop her tears. If there was only one time where Sam felt she deserved to cry in her life, this was it.

Mary's smile slowly died and her mouth set in a grim line. Her slender eyebrows pulled towards each other and something flashed deep in her blue-gold eyes. Was it guilt? Regret? Sorrow? Anger? A mixture of those? Sam couldn't tell.

"I'm sorry." Sam tried to shake her head in confusion, but she couldn't budge. She blinked a tear out of her eyes and felt the warm trail it made down her cheeks. She frowned down at her mom, thoroughly puzzled. What the hell did her mom have to apologize for? It's not like it was her fault she died, how the hell was she supposed to have known there was something waiting in her nursery all those years ago?

"F-For what?" Excuse the stutter, Sam's kind of talking with the undead spirit of her brutally murdered mother. She deserves a little weakness right now.

Mary didn't answer, however. She just gave Sam one last grave look before turning around and walking away. Her movement were too jerky sometimes, like those Sam had only ever seen from ghosts. Like a part of her body was moving before she meant it to and the rest of her involuntarily twitched as it tried to catch up. Sam grimaced whenever that happened. It was extremely disturbing to see a movement she'd associated with the paranormal coming from her mother. Well, her mother's ghost, but you get the idea.

"You get out of my house," Mary growled, looking up at the ceiling. "And let go of my daughter." The fire erupted out from the soles of her feet, traveling up her body much faster than it had dissipated. It was even brighter than before, and Dean had trouble looking at it for more than a few seconds before he glanced down for a break and looked back over at the flaming spirit of their mother. It was hard for Sam to look for very long, too, but she dealt with it, determined not to miss a moment. She'd heard her mother's voice. Heard the inflections and lilting notes that were specific to her mother. She'd never dreamed she'd have a chance to her the way her name sounded when it was said by her mother, and one of her most secret prayers to God had just been answered. She didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

When Mary was entirely engulfed, the flames reached up to the ceiling and left the floor, spreading out over the white paint before disappearing. Not a single scorch mark marred the perfect paint job. As soon as the flames flickered out, the pressure against Sam's body vanished, and she dropped quite suddenly the few inches to the ground. Her brother must have still been dazed because he didn't reach out to catch her, and Sam's legs crumpled under her sudden weight. She fell forward, and thrust her right hand out to break her fall, but the weight distribution was weird because she was only using one hand and she wobbled before she fell on her bad shoulder.

"Ow! Son of a bitch!" The curse made her brother jump and snap back to himself because soon he was reaching down and gingerly helping Sam to her feet. She swayed for a second, her muscles in her arms sore and abused, and her shoulder throbbing dangerously, but she hardly noticed. She just stared at the spot on the ceiling where her mother had evaporated, willing the blonde woman to return. What had she been sorry for? Sorry she'd died? Sorry that her death had driven her life to end up like this? But if that was the case, why hadn't she apologize to Dean too? Was she sorry Sam never got a chance to know her? Sam shook her head, finally noticing for the first time that the hairs on the back of her neck weren't on end, she had no goosebumps, and the pulling in her stomach had stopped.

Sam looked up at her brother with sad eyes. He was blinking away (not) tears, his face still a little unfocused and stunned. She sighed, the balm she'd felt earlier dissolving faster than she would have liked.

"Now it's over," Sam whispered. She pushed away from her brother and trudged towards the front door, refusing to look back in towards the kitchen. It was a few seconds before she heard her brother follow.

Sam wasn't one of drinking her problems away after an especially taxing case, but man... she really wished she hadn't gotten rid of her brother's whiskey right about now.

Please please pleeeeeeeease review!

Seriously!

Please?

I gave y'all a double posting! Return the favor with some loooooooove.

Peace.