Family is Where the Heart is
Chapter 29
Sarah leaned against her left hand as she stared at her uncle's laptop screen while her father talked to her grandfather's friend, Caleb on the phone about the symbol on Meredith's floor. Dean had Sarah look up Sam's friend, Meg while he took care of the symbol research.
"Thanks, Caleb," she heard him say before he closed his phone and walked over to lean over her on the table.
"Find anything?" he asked.
"Yeah, found her in the phone book. I even found her MySpace page," Sarah told him. "She hasn't been on for quite a few months though."
"MySpace? What the hell is that?"
"Some web site everyone's on," she shrugged. "Mom had one, too. Anyway, Meg seems normal. She even went to college."
"Thanks, baby girl." Dean opened his cell phone again and dialed Sam's number. "Let me guess," he told Sam. "You're lurking outside that poor girl's apartment, aren't you?"
"No," Sam replied, lying. There was an awkward pause before he changed his answer.
"You got a funny way of showing your affection."
"You find anything on her or what?" Sam asked, annoyed.
"Sorry man, she checks out," he told him. "Sarah found a Meg Masters in the Andover phonebook and on some web site. Now, look, why don't you go knock on her door and, uh, invite her to a poetry reading or whatever it is you do. Huh?"
Sam just shook his head. At least Dean cared enough to try. Sam just wasn't ready to move on yet on the whole dating thing. He could never find someone who could take Jessica's place and it felt Meg wasn't the right girl to fill that hole. "What about the symbol? Any luck?"
"Yeah, that I did have some luck with," Dean said. "It's, uh…" he looked through his notes he took when he was talking with Caleb. "Turns out its Zoroastrian. Very, very old school, like two thousand years before Christ. It's a sigil for a Daeva."
"What's a Daeva?" Sam asked.
"Translate to demon of darkness. Zoroastrian demons and they're savage, animalistic. You know, nasty attitudes. Kind of like, uh, demonic pit bulls."
"So, Sarah figured that out, too?"
"No, I did. Come on, give me some credit, man," Dean told him. "I can chase paper, too."
"Oh yeah," Sam asked. "Name the last book you read."
Dean tried to think up an answer but came up blank. "Uh, I called Dad's friend, Caleb. He told me, all right?"
Sam scoffed, "Yeah."
"Anyway, here's the thing. These Daevas have to be summoned, conjured," Dean continued to explain.
"So, someone's controlling it," Sam guessed.
"Yeah, it's what I'm saying," he told him. "And from what I gather, it's pretty risky business too. These suckers tend to bite the hand that feeds them. And the, uh, arms and the torsos."
"So what do they look like?"
"No one knows," Dean shrugged. "Nobody's seen them for a couple of millennia. I mean, summoning a demon that ancient, someone really knows their stuff. I think we got a major player in town. Now, why don't you go give that girl a private strip-o-gram."
"Bite me," Sam told him.
"No, bite her," he replied. "Don't leave teeth marks though. Just enough to…" The line went dead. "Sam? You…" Dean looked at his cellphone and saw his brother had hung up. So, he closed it and set his phone on the table.
"It's not nice to bite people, you know, Dad," Sarah looked up from some paperwork Dean's friend, Amy had dropped off a moment ago.
"Not this kind," he assured her. "That reminds me. Did you have any more questions about our talk we had about sex? Don't be afraid to ask me, if something doesn't make sense. We got some time before Sam gets here."
"Actually I do, but not about sex. You and Uncle Sam are from Lawrence, Kansas, right?" she asked.
He nodded, "Yeah, why?"
Sarah pushed the paperwork towards him and pointed at the victims' date of births, and listed underneath as their birthplace was Lawrence, Kansas. Dean stared in shock at it. How did they miss this before?
"Is that another random co-win-si-dense?" she asked, trying to repeat what her father said earlier.
Dean picked up the death certificates and got a closer look. He shook his head and said, "No, this is something else entirely."
Several minutes later, Sam came bounding through the door towards Dean as Dean went up to him as they both said, "Dude, I gotta talk to you."
"That was weird," Sarah said the exact same thing the brothers were thinking.
Sam went first, explaining about what he had just witnessed with Meg.
"So, hot little Meg is summoning the Daeva," Dean said, afterwards.
"Looks like she was using that black alter thing," Sam continued to explain as Dean walked over and sat back at the table.
"So Sammy's got a thing for the bad girl?" he chuckled to himself. "And what's the deal with that bowl again?"
"She was talking into it, the way witches used to scry into crystal balls or animal entrails. She was communicating with it."
"So, Meg's a witch?" Sarah asked, looking up from an online, Cartoon Network game she was playing on her uncle's laptop.
Sam shrugged, "Could be. I don't know."
"Was she talking to the Daeva?"
"No, your dad said those things were savages. This is someone different. Like someone who's coming to that warehouse."
"Like that demon Grandpa's after?"
Sam looked her. "What makes you say that, peanut?"
Sarah looked over at her father, then back at her uncle. She was about to speak when Dean beat her to it, "Holy crap" in realization.
"What?" he asked.
"What I was gonna tell you earlier," said Dean. "I, uh, pulled a favor with my, ahem, friend Amy with the police department. The complete records of the two victims. We missed something the first time and Sarah caught it."
Sam moved closer to his brother, "What?"
"The, uh, first victim, the old man? Spent his whole life in Chicago but he wasn't born here. Look." He showed Sam the death certificates of both victims.
Sam sat down in utter disbelief and sighed. "Holy crap. I mean, it is where the demon killed Mom. It's where everything started. So you think Meg could be tied up with it, somehow?" he shrugged.
"It's a definite possibility," said Dean.
Sarah closed the laptop. "I haven't heard from the demon for a while. So far, it hasn't popped into my dreams."
"I don't understand, then," said Sam. "What's the significance of Lawrence? And how does these Daeva things fit in?"
Dean shook his head, leaning on his folded arms, "Beats me. But I say we trash that black alter, grab Meg and have ourselves an interrogation."
Sam shook his head, too. "No, we can't. We shouldn't tip her off. We gotta stake out that warehouse. We gotta see who…or what…is showing up to meet her."
"I'll tell you one thing," said Dean. "I don't think we should do this alone."
Sam understood who his brother meant but Sarah did not. She looked between the brothers, back and forth until she asked, "Who's gonna help us?"
"Dad," Sam said, quietly.
"You think he'll come this time?"
Dean looked over at his daughter. "Hopefully," he said.
Sarah went out to Impala with Sam to load up on every weapon Sam could think to grab, including a few books of exorcism rituals. He had Sarah carry the smaller, lighter bag as he took the heavier one up to their motel room. When they returned, Dean was leaving John a voicemail before they got the weapons prepared.
"Big night," Dean stated, loading a shotgun.
Sam agreed, "Yeah. Nervous?"
"No. No. Are you?" he asked in return.
"No. No way."
Dean nodded before returning to the gun in his hand.
"Is it okay to be nervous?" Sarah asked next, loading her own shotgun.
Her father looked at her and reached over to touch her left shoulder. "Yeah, but it'll be okay. The three of us are in this together. Okay?"
She nodded at him.
After a moment where no one said anything and all was heard was the sounds of guns being loaded, Sam spoke, smiling as he shook his head, "Could you imagine if we actually found that damn thing? That demon?"
Dean chuckled at him, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, all right?"
"I know. I'm just saying…what if we did? What if this whole thing was over tonight? Man, I'd sleep for a month." Sam started packing everything back inside the duffel bags. "Go back to school. Just…be a person again."
Dean looked up when Sam mentioned going back to school. "You want to go back to school?"
"Yeah, once we're done hunting the thing," Sam told him.
"Huh."
"Why? Is there something wrong with that?" he asked his brother.
Dean shook his head, fixing his wrist strap. "No. No. It's great. Good for you," he said, sadly.
Sarah watched her father and knew already, he was a little bit disappointed. Sarah watched how her father handled things since she met him and started basically idolizing him.
Her uncle asked him what Dean was going to do when it was over and Dean stated that it was never going to be over. That there would always be something to hunt.
"But there's gotta be something you want for yourself. I mean…don't you want a better life for your…"
Dean cut his brother off in mid-sentence. "Yeah, I don't want you to leave the second this thing's over, Sam" He stormed away from the bed and leaned on the dresser. Sarah went over and reached up to place her hand on his lower back, the highest she could reach just standing.
"It's okay, Dad. Uncle Sam's not leaving yet," she assured him.
Dean looked down at his daughter under his left arm. He placed his hand on top of her head and looked back at Sam. "Why do you think I drag you everywhere, Sam? Huh? I mean, why do you think I came and got you at Stanford in the first place?"
"'Cause Dad was in trouble," said Sam, "'Cause you wanted to find the thing that killed Mom."
"Yes, that," he said, pushing Sarah, gently towards his leg to hug her against it. She hugged his leg to her. Dean threw his head away from his brother, "But it's more than that, man."
"It's okay, Dad," Sarah kept telling her father when Dean didn't say anything else. "Even if Uncle Sam decides to leave, you will always have me. I won't ever leave you." She looked up at him, sincerely.
He looked down and forced a smile for her. "I know, baby girl but it's not just that." Dean closed his eyes.
"What is it then?" she asked him.
"You Sarah, and Sam, and your grandfather. I want us to be a family, together. The four of us."
Sam watched his brother. He loved him and knew that they would always be a family but families don't always stick around together, forever. Sometimes, they have to stray apart so they could do other things. It didn't mean they did not care about their family. It was a part of life and Sarah needed to learn stuff like that. "Dean, we will always be a family," he told him and Sarah even though he addressed Dean. "I'll do anything for you, and Sarah, too. But things will never be the way they were before."
Dean continued to stare at his little girl, sadly. He tried to say something but all he could muster was, "Could be."
Sam nodded, slightly. "I don't want them to be."
Sarah quickly looked over at her uncle, surprised to hear him say something like that. "Why not?"
He turned to look at his niece. "Because I'm not gonna live this life forever." Sam looked back at his brother. "Dean, when this is all over…you're gonna have to let me go my own way."
Dean finally snuck a look at him again. Now that Sam said he was going to leave after the demon was killed, he hoped now the demon would never be found. He didn't want his family torn apart again. Now that he had Sarah, Dean wanted both his father and brother with him. He wanted them to stay together as a family.
As the Winchesters got ready to leave, Sam picked up a duffel bag and headed out to the Impala again. Sarah followed when she noticed Dean was still standing at the bed, his right hand clamped around the other duffel bag's handles as it still lied on the bed.
She stepped towards him. "Dad? You doing okay?" Sarah asked.
Dean broke from his thoughts and looked over at her. He slung the duffel bag on his shoulder but did not move yet.
Sarah continued to watch him. "I meant it, Dad. Even if Uncle Sam goes away, I will still be here." She paused for a few seconds before continuing. "I don't want him to leave either, though."
Dean finally turned and walked over to stand beside her. Father and daughter exchanged looks between them before Sarah turned and the two of them followed after Sam.
