The ferryman now paddled so slowly, Dean thought that was actually what Hell was all about: that very.slow.ferry.boat…
"Do you wanna hear something funny?" asked the ferryman.
No— that was Hell. "Not really, I'm good."
"Your father would've never given me that necklace…"
Yes, Dean was sure of it. It had belonged to his mother, and John, flawed as he was, would never let go of any part of her. But he couldn't think about that.
"Maybe if you focused, we could go faster? Just a thought."
The creature continued, ignoring Dean trying to ignore him. "… but he gave you and your brother up quicker than I care to cross this river!" and the ferryman cracked a stupid smile with a hint of more to come, waiting for Dean to react.
"What do you mean he gave us up...?" Then again...
But that was the ferryman's cue to start laughing like a maniac, so loudly he could probably wake up some of those souls from the dead. Dean waited impatiently for him to finish with that, but the laughter never ceased. Hell.
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The shy inn almost outside of Lawrence, KS was just outside enough to be a perfectly cheap find. It had once been a family home, it seems, but now Ma and Pa were open for business... well, if the eventual company every now and again classifies as such.
"What's the name?"
Castiel struggled with that still.
"Mike. You can put Mike"
He remembered but the past month or so. Waking up in bad shape, lost, confused... he had no idea who he was or how he showed up bloody and broken on that university campus, but he remembered the name "Michael". It felt foreign to him, but he took it after she suggested it. Ah, yes, his guardian angel...
Joanna worked as a psychiatrist at the university hospital he was immediatelly sent to. And they fell in love — so quickly he thought for sure they'd met in another life.
"I would remember" she smiled when she said that.
"I suppose I'd have too" and even more when he said that.
But something brought him to Lawrence. The sinister murder of a town's man, Mike Gunther — was he the Michael he remembered? — and that face in the drawing...
"Mike, dear?"
He snapped out of it.
"Here are your keys, room 1"
"Thank you"
He texted her from the room. Good luck :) she replied.
The name Joanna meant "God is gracious" she had told him. And yes, she made it feel like that was true.
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"Are we there yet..."
"Are you trying to make me laugh again?" The ferryman seemed amused by Dean's reaction to that... and started laughing again. There went another eternity.
"Dear God why!!!" Dean seemed to have forgotten where he was, and at the mention of God, the boat rocked violently.
"Are you trying to erase us both you little piece of—" the ferryman went on with a series of the most creative and inappropriate insults. There was no winning.
—————————
"Come again!" said the nice old clerk from behind his dusty counter.
The dust, in fact, happened to be the least old out of all the things around that dark hardware store, the clerk included.
With expected difficulties, typical of his age, he went over to the door and turned the Closed sign. Patiently, he drew the blinds close, humming through the banal process. He walked through a blink-and-you-miss-it door, that could've been shelves in another life.
"I believe this was our last customer" he declared.
A fiery red turns her chair around "They were asking for directions..."
"Should've let me shot her when I had the chance" he tells his granddaughter, whose focus was not on either of them.
"Charlie will make herself useful yet. If she was able to find me, she's our best bet at finding Castiel."
"Yes! Trust me, G, with this state of the art equipment, we'll find him!"
"I don't need to trust you, you can't leave."
It had become evident that the family duo had no interest in letting her go anywhere anytime soon. Reasonably, they couldn't draw any attention. Hanna's face was plastered everywhere, every able law enforcement body were all eyes and ears, one wrong move and she'd need a lot more than a computer nerd and an old trigger-happy family member to dig her out. She'd need Dean-levels of crazy.
Charlie didn't mind. She too wanted to rescue the brothers. She wasn't sure how to hack into the underworld yet, but... "all this tech has got to do the trick, right? How did you get these anyway?"
"Grandpa used to work at the Roswell government research labs..."
Impressive, so he built these?
"I borrowed most of it when they fired me"
Ah... Wait "I see where Hanna takes after you..."
The computer started serving them with a list of names and addresses.
"What are these?"
"You mentioned that if Castiel were in Heaven, you'd have heard from him, and that if not..."
"He'd likely have been fallen..."
"Exactly."
"So you have a list of fallen angels there, do you?"
"Almost... this is a list of John Does in every hospital in the country."
"Brilliant."
"It's still a long list" noted her grandfather.
"He'll have sustained severe injuries, possible memory loss"
"Now we just have to try... every last one."
"Yes... if that's what it takes."
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That place gave him an instant headache.
Castiel had tried information on Mike Gunther, but came up empty. His wife had never met Castiel, and was sorry she couldn't be of more help. She did however point him in the direction of an old, abandoned neighboring house.
"It's the curse of that place, I'm sure. He found the girl there..."
Castiel could almost hear it... a faint prayer of a mother "protect him from evil... amen" a baby laughing... and looking straight at him? Smiling... What was that memory?
He fell to his knees and cried as he entered a bedroom with a dark burn on the ceiling. Painful... but he had to remember, even if that's what it takes.
He could still hear the baby's laughter. It brought him comfort.
