Chapter 3: California Dreaming
October 31, 2005
Palo Alto, California
The deal with Sam is on, and Ellie and Dean hold their positions while he evaporates into his apartment complex like the raindrops on Baby's hood. Even after he is gone, Ellie swears she can still sees his elongated, gray shadow on the pavement, hear the specific octave of his voice, and smell the completely Sam aroma his presence carries. The young girl shakes it off because sometimes she swears she sees Sam in the trees while they're out on the road, or catches a faint rumble of him in a crowded diner; but it is never actually her brother. When she mentioned it to John he said it was part of missing people, after they're gone, or something; he has a long list of them, apparently.
Yet Sam was never really lost, just lost exclusively when it came to the Winchesters, and Ellie has been secretly wanting to find him for the past two years. She leans back on the Impala, stretching out her legs and crossing her arms. She notices Dean gaze remains in the direction Sammy went; he's trying to gather up the pieces of their brother as well.
Dean sniffles, sliding his hands into his coat pockets and straightening out his arms. "Sammy has a girlfriend in there," he breaks the eerie silence that is present for the early morning – yet still considered the late night – of an estimated 2 AM. "Can you believe that?" He chuckles, dryly; sniffles some more in its aftermath. It's cold out, always seems to be on Halloween, and Ellie does not really see the point in dressing up if you're just going to be freezing and unhappy the whole time. Then again, she knows monsters are real, even if she has seen only a handful of them because she always is forced to stay beyond a closed door in a motel room, or the car, or any other place where she will not even be near what is happening, so everyone can pretend it never existed in the first place. But the girl knows, she knows. Ellie figures being cold and sad is an accurate representation of what goes bump in the night.
When Ellie doesn't have much of a reaction to her older brother's comment, she feels him nudge her, "Hey, kiddo . . . you okay?" The nine-year-old stares up at a fake skeleton hanging from a fire escape and the illumination of orange lights that are draped across the railing of one of the apartment balcony's. There is a lot she wants to say about Sam, like how she hopes California actually did make him happy, and hopes his girlfriend is nice, and hopes that he sleeps at night because she has been having trouble since he left. Ellie struggles with speaking, though, because suddenly she feels really tired and might fall over from the intensity of it. This feeling happens on occasion, such as reading words backwards, and she chalks it up as being who she is.
"Tired." she manages to get out in a harsh breath, faintly aware of Dean removing an arm from his jacket pocket to coil around her shoulders, and pull her in so she doesn't fall over. Ellie leans on her brother, resting her head on his shoulder, and slowly breathes in the familiar leather, fresh soil, sour alcohol, grease but the warm-food kind, and any other fragrances that come rolled up to make Dean Winchester.
He taps his fingers to the beat of whatever song is running through his head on Ellie's arm, she knows it's how he stays alert and awake. "It's okay, we've been up for a while. Sam'll be back soon and then we can go."
Ellie grunts to acknowledge Dean's words, she closes her eyes. Sam is only packing for a few days trip and one hunt. He's coming back this time, and they'll find Dad, and then things can be good again. They will be.
But then there's Monday, and law school, and Sam's girlfriend . . .
The nine-year-old shifts, gripping Dean for support, "He's just gonna leave again, De."
Dean's finger movements on the surface of her jacket stop. He sighs, long and hard: a thinking sigh. "If he does, he does; nothing we can really do to stop him." Ellie feels everything rush back into her head once Dean moves her and sets her spine straight again. She becomes aware that her fingers have curled themselves around the frame of the Impala. Her legs swing slowly, bumping against one of the front tires. The young girl's eyes remain closed, but it's the same as before: dark and unknown. "Hey, El; can you look at me, please."
The words are soft for the speaker, like the tired-dizzy-light way the inside of Ellie's head feels because she's been awake for too long. She feels like she doesn't have much of a choice, so she enters the Halloween world again, and the brown of her eyes meet the green waves of her oldest brother.
"Even if Sam does decide to live some friggin' apple-pie life where the sun is always shining, it doesn't change what we're doing." Traveling with Dad, making the monsters go away, being strangers' heroes – "Okay? We've put on a brave-face before, we can do it again."
Ellie cannot see how someone could withstand being happy all of the time. She thinks they'd at least get sad sometimes, or mad, or scared. Maybe they'll just absorb so much of the sun they'll explode. That sounds gross. "Okay." Her head bobs, understanding. She remembers that brochures. "It was raining before, but the sun was in those pictures you gave me. Dean, I – I think I like the rain."
Dean brushes back the light brown – borderline blonde – hair lingering in Ellie's eyes. "You and me both."
"The sun gets in your eyes,"
"Yeah, honey."
Ellie's bangs are thick and creeping past her eyebrows; they are due for a good trim. Lately, she has been having to push them back constantly so she can see the details of the things she takes comfort in. Even if monsters are real, the child still thinks the world is pretty, and she enjoys traveling to see it. She has been wanting to get her hair cut but she hasn't mentioned it to Dean; he just wants to find Dad, and so does Ellie.
Ellie thinks her brother is done with whatever talking there needs to be so the darkness of the back alley they're wading in can be a good memory in her brain. She's about to hop down off of Baby's hood to go lie down in the back seat while they wait for Sam, but Dean continues, "We'll find Dad, with or without Sam; I'm not going anywhere."
Ellie nods. "I know." And of course she does. Dean and Dad are hunters, superheroes, even – that's what Dean told her, at least – and they're always fine, always come back, eventually. They get rid of the evil and make people happy, and if she were not so afraid, maybe she could do what they do some day.
She holds up her fist, the last shred of reassurance. "You promise?"
Dean smiles, pressing his fist into Ellie's. "I promise."
The apartment building's door whines open, then, and Sam walks out into the dark to join his siblings.
November 1, 2005
Just outside of Jericho, California
The Winchesters drive through the night to get to where they need to be by early morning. Ellie ends up dozing off in the backseat of Baby somewhere between Sam telling Dean about his newly founded "domesticated life" and the murmurs of Led Zeppelin through the car's speaker. Lying down during late night driving always seems to have the same outcome for the girl: being rocked to sleep by the slight bumps and turns in the road, the only light coming from passing streetlights and other car's headlights.
When she woke up, Sam was staring out of his window at some local, early morning joggers, and Dean was drumming on the steering wheel out of nervous energy and the need for another cup of coffee. She assumed Sam grabbed a couple of hours of sleep here and there, but Dean was still yesterday's Dean because he refuses to let anyone drive Baby other than himself. He didn't sleep at all, but Ellie is not entirely sure if adults have to; she's seen Dean chase down ghosts without any shut eye too many times to count. Superheroes don't need sleep.
Ellie sits up when they pull into a run-down-yet-still-functional gas station. Her hair is sticking out in odd angles, the right side of the girl's face is red and has a clear imprint of the Impala's leather seat. She wipes her wet mouth with her sleeve and rolls her eyes when she realizes Dean is eyeing her through the rearview mirror, smirking, "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty. Why don't you do us all a favor and run a brush through your hair?"
Ellie pushes her eldest brother's shoulder while she leans down to unzip her bag. "I've been up for hours," she grumbles. Sam tells Ellie good morning as well and from her crouched position, she grins at one of the people that is finally no longer labeled missing.
Dean tilts the rearview mirror to get a better view of his sister. "Yeah? And I've been up for even longer and my hair still doesn't look like – " He pauses while Ellie straightens, hair brush in hand. Dean draws an air, make-believe circle in the outline of her face, "that."
Taking the purple hair brush, Ellie bops Dean on the head with it. "Shuttup, jerk." She purposely slurs her words together because she knows Dean hates when she tells him to shut up; it's "back-talking", or whatever. She does not see how it could be that unless she repeats the same phrase her brother said back to him. Anyways, he had it coming to him.
"Ow!" Dean grabs at his hair, aiming for the brush but missing. "You brat!" he yells, half-heartedly, before swiveling around to look back at the nine-year-old who is now glued to the window, acting like the interaction never happened. Ellie suspects that he is about to say something, but he doesn't once Sam states that they're in public, and this place is already weird enough.
Ellie is working a knot out of her shoulder-length hair when Dean pushes his car door open, grumbling about how they've been pushing E for the past hour, and to not get a bunch of hair in Baby's backseat.
"Does Dean have any music from this century?" Sam's question causes Ellie to look up from her notepad that she doodles in on occasion. She climbed up into the front bench seat once Dean went inside to pay for gas and find whatever kind of breakfast that he possibly could at a rural gas station in California. Her feet are up on the dash, notepad braced on her knees, and she knows that her oldest brother would freak if he saw, but she did take her shoes off. Besides, Sammy didn't yell at her; he has been engrossed in the cassette tapes he found stored in the glove box eight minutes prior. Ellie watches him huff and start at the beginning again, his long legs spilling out of the open passenger door of the vehicle while he rifles through the tapes for about the third time.
She clicks her pen that she took from the last diner Dean and her were in. "Uh, I don't know . . ." She wants to talk about Stanford, about his girlfriend, about a lot of things since it is just the two of them for the first time in two years, but she is not sure how. Ellie is afraid Sam might disappear right in front of her eyes; one wrong move – it could happen.
Sam leaves the cassettes alone for a minute, lets them rest. Ellie watches him notice the blue lines on her paper. "Whatcha drawing there?"
She angles the paper better so he can see it, the drawing looks like a bunch of squiggles. "Hair." He tilts his head, not judging, but interested. "It helps sometimes; I like drawing hair and eyes."
"What does it help with?" asks Sam, turning his body more towards his younger sister. Outside of the 1967 Impala a power tool starts up from someone working on their car about twenty yards away, the bell on the gas station's front door chimes loudly, either from someone entering or exiting the building. Ellie clicks the end of her pen on her chin, thinking. She closes her notebook and drops her feet clad in black socks from Baby's dash. Shoving her bangs aside, Ellie crosses her legs and finally faces Sam.
"Everything, I – I think, maybe – " she stutters, wiping her eyes when nothing is there because when she is nervous her hands get fidgety. She thumbs the closed notebook pages and they make a whooshing/thumping sound as she filters through. "I see it. It's better to be away."
Sam swallows, stiffening and puffing his chest out. "Ellie – "
"You could have told me." And he could have, and, yeah, she probably would have been mad for a little, but not forever. Now the temporary madness has stretched to a two year madness, and it had the potential to be forever if Sam had not gotten in the car. Ellie balls her hands into fists because college can have Sam for all she cares, as long as she gets him back, as long as he tells her why.
But he didn't.
"Hey!" someone shouts. Moving around, the both of them search for the owner of the voice because something in their brains claims that they know who it belongs to without having to think about it. Dean. "You want breakfast?" He holds up two bottles of different kinds of soda and a bag of chips. Ellie leans over Sam and the cassette tapes to see better before nodding at Dean, who smiles.
Sam scrunches his face up like a sponge, wrinkling his nose in once he sees what Dean bought. "No, thanks." He goes back to poking through the small cassette tape collection, and Ellie almost face plants while trying to climb into the backseat without using any doors, her socks easily slipping on the leather. Sam glances over his shoulder at her when she yanks her leg around, trying to get sneakers back on her feet – stupid high tops – and he has the same look on his face that he gave Dean. If he is trying to be a sponge, or whatever, the only stuff Ellie can think of him possibly absorbing are oxygen and germs; however, she won't mention the last part since Sam is some kind of health-freak. These variables come free, anyways, so she doesn't see the point in the extra face work.
"So, how'd you pay for that stuff?" Sam asks as Ellie is in the middle of making a loop in one of her shoelaces to tie them. She thinks he may be talking to her at first, but when her head flicks up, she sees Sam angled out of his open car door and faced towards Dean, who is fiddling with the gas nozzle he left in Baby while he shopped. Sighing, she goes back to tying her shoes, restarting the knot since she lost her place. "You and Dad still running credit card scams?"
Finishing with her shoes, Ellie leans back into her seat, crossing her arms and resting her head on a part of the Impala's interior the three of them carved their initials into forever ago. She blows a piece of hair out of her face. Ellie is left in the dark a lot with the whole money situation, but it seems boring and a fairly simple concept overall. When Dean explained it he said that they borrow money from people who don't need it, but they can give it back if they really want to. She doesn't see a problem with it, so why does Sam?
"Yeah. Well, hunting ain't exactly a pro-ball career." remarks Dean, placing the nozzle back into the gas pump. "Besides, all we do is apply; it's not our fault they send us the cards." Ellie cannot recall ever really seeing her brothers or Dad get paid after a hunt for saving people. She also never really thought about where the money came from, it was just there; not a whole lot, but enough to get by on. One night during a case in North Carolina, Dean came home with a broken nose, face gushing blood into his hands, and ugly, angry purple bruises under his eye. He eased Ellie's worries by telling her that he slipped and fell; however, she figured out that he lied when she sort-of-eavesdropped while John was patching her brother up, mumbling about how stupid he was for "getting caught hustling" – whatever that means. It sounded like a dance move.
Sam swings the rest of his body back into his seat, pulling the passenger side door closed while Dean enters the car, sinking into the Impala's leather. The two of them are talking about who they are borrowing money from this time, but Ellie is only half listening. She thinks she hears them say something about a Bert and Hector – can't be sure – but just then a rusted and faded green truck with a squealing engine pulls up to the gas pump adjacent to them. An older man gets out and the Chocolate Labrador in the bed of the truck instantly perks up, wagging her tail lazily. Ellie smiles at the pair. She's always wanted a dog, but they move around too much and one of Dean's rules is no dogs in the car, so it wouldn't really work out.
"El, here," Ellie rips her eyes away from the outside world that never quite stops moving when she feels a nudge on her leg. "Since you missed out last night on the whole candy frenzy, I got you something." Dean holds out a bag of Swedish Fish – her favorite – and a one liter bottle of Sprite.
Ellie takes the candy and drink from her brother, grinning wide as she sloshes the clear liquid in the green bottle around. Outside the dog barks. "Thanks, Dean."
"Yeah, don't mention it . . ." He crinkles a bag sitting up front, stating he also bought chips, before he snaps his fingers back at Ellie. "Oh, and I didn't forget about your orange juice; the ones in there were looking like they were from freak-ville, so,"
Sam asks, suddenly, "Does the candy have any nuts in it?" Ellie pauses halfway through opening the Swedish Fish bag. Dean whips his head Sam's way, pushing his eyebrows in.
"What?"
Rolling his eyes, Sam sets down the cassette tape he had been reading. He sighs. "The candy, did you check – "
"It's freakin' gummies, Sam. There's none of that crap she's allergic to in it."
"Yeah, but it could have been made in a factory that also manufactures nuts. It should say so on the packaging."
Ellie carefully places the candy bag next to her as if it were a bomb ready to detonate at any given moment. She only found out she was allergic during her old life when she was three-years-old and tried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at her neighbor's house. Her parents had never let her before, and Ellie quickly discovered why when her face blew up like a cheery red balloon, and her throat began closing. Turns out, she wasn't just allergic to peanuts, but all sorts; tree nuts and such. Sam tried to give her some trail mix once and John almost crashed the car trying to stop him.
Dean says something about Ellie's allergy not being "that bad" and how she "doesn't have to be stabbed with an EpiPen every time she thinks about what she's allergic to". Using the steering wheel and his seat for leverage, Dean slants his body to view the nine-year-old in the back bench seat. "Right?"
Ellie shrugs. She guesses so. But she does not really want to take chances because she hates her EpiPen due to the needle, most of the time keeping it out of sight and stuffed in the back of a drawer in their motel room, even though she is not supposed to.
Grouching out a: "Let me see it,", Dean swipes the Swedish Fish and reads over the information on the back of the bag. He thrusts it at Sam dramatically, showing that it is safe, before tossing it back to his little sister.
Ellie pops the first Swedish Fish into her mouth, closing her eyes for a moment to savor the flavor, and chewing slowly since the gummies easily get stuck in her teeth. Sam grips the cassette tape box that is still in his lap after all of this time, his fingers dancing over the tapes either because he is searching for a specific one, or for emphasis. "I swear, man, you got to update your cassette tape collection."
"Why?" The chocolate lab in the green pickup is sitting up and sun bathing. Her pink tongue hangs out of the side of her mouth while the soft breeze combs over her wirier hair. Ellie wants to go pet the dog but she knows she can't. She munches harder on her food, takes a swig of Sprite.
"Well, for one – they're cassette tapes. And, two," There's the scratchy sound of plastic while Sam picks through the box. He surfaces with three tapes, holding them up to Dean. "Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica? Ellie is a nine-year-old girl. She should be listening to the Jonas Brothers or something, not the greatest hits of mullet rock."
"Who?" Dean asks, snatching a tape from Sam – Ellie thinks it is Metallica. She saw the Jonas Brothers on TV once when their motel room actually got Disney Channel. They seemed nice. "El doesn't mind my music, and, besides . . . house rules, Sammy – " He inserts the tape. "Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole."
Dean smiles at Sam, but with no teeth, more so a crap-eating grin. He shoves the key in the ignition, turning, and Baby roars to life with Metallica blaring through the speakers. Reaching back to buckle up, Ellie thinks she hears Sam tell Dean about Sammy being the name of a chubby twelve-year-old, and his name is Sam. She hopes that his words don't apply to her because she calls him Sammy all of the time.
Dean points to his ear. "Sorry, I can't hear you!" he yells over the music, checking his mirrors to see if he is clear to pull out of the gas station. "The music's too loud!"
He winks at Sam who glares at him, Ellie washes another Swedish Fish down with Sprite, and they leave the little gas station on the outskirts of Jericho, California in the dust.