Disclaimer: The characters of Supernatural do not belong to me. The original character of Evelyn Winchester does.

A/N: Hi, guys!

So I've been stuck with the dreaded writer's block for a while. I've come up with little snippets here and there, but nothing really substantial. Then I started re-reading over some of my unfinished stories (there's quite a few, I know), and this one stuck out to me. So I decided not just to finish it, but rewrite it.

For those who didn't read the original story, the first version of The Plague of Time and Space is a flashback story. Sam, Dean, and Evy are coming back to Bobby's after a hunt and a strange man is there looking for Evy. Evy recognizes him immediately and tells Sam and Dean he's her son. The story flips back and forth to a time when Evy went missing in 2008 and the time that story takes place in 2010.

This version isn't the flashback story. This is simply Evy going missing and Sam and Dean looking for her. I don't want to give away too much, so I'll keep the clues minimal here, but I may do a sequel to it.

Anyways, I hope everyone is doing well and keeping safe and healthy.

Somewhere Far Away From Sioux Falls

Evy woke to a pounding headache, and the certainty that she was not where she was supposed to be. She pushed herself up and clutched her forehead, trying to rub out the ache. When it didn't work, Evy slowly opened her eyes and looked around.

What felt like just a few seconds earlier, she'd been with Sam and Dean, poring over ways with Sam to save Dean from hell while arguing with Dean over whether or not to do it. She had gotten ticked off with Dean and walked away, telling her brothers she was 'going to take a walk'. She had gotten around a half mile away from Bobby's when she felt it.

Something was coming for her.

The next thing Evy knew, a bright light had surrounded her, and she'd felt herself falling down a deep, dark hole. She had a brief memory of Sam reading her Alice in Wonderland as a small child, and just as she thought it seemed to fit her situation, she was knocked unconscious.

Now, as she tried to take in her surroundings, she thought about her situation. She had no idea where she was. Not a clue. It was cold, much colder than it had been at Bobby's, so her only clue was that she was somewhere far north. Once she was satisfied that there was nothing that was going to come right out and attack her, she started to walk.

She walked for what felt to her like hours, but was probably no more than a half hour or so, when she came to a small town. It reminded Evy of Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. All the houses circled the outer part of town, with some businesses in the middle. Small children played out in the center of town, and from the way the sun looked to be positioned in the sky, it was afternoon going into evening. They're out of school, Evy thought. When she felt her stomach rumble, she knew that trying to keep walking on an empty stomach would be useless at this point, so she put her knife away and walked towards the town.

The people seemed friendly enough. They all nodded and waved hello to her. There was a bank, a toy store, a fire station, a library, a grocery store, a doctor's office, a drug store, and a police station. The biggest building in town was the school. It was divided into three sections, each labeled by grade level-elementary, middle, and high school. Evy's stomach rumbled again, and she made her way to what seemed to be the only place to eat in town, a small pub called Ryan's.

Being the middle of the afternoon, Evy was surprised to find the place so busy. She sought out a spot at the bar, the easiest place she could think of to keep an eye on everyone. When she sat down, she was almost immediately approached by the bartender.

"You don't look like you're from here."

"Um, I'm not." Evy said. "Just passing through."

"We're way out of the way for you to just be passing through."

"This may sound like a weird question, but where exactly am I?"

"A little early on the bottle, are we?"

"Excuse me?" Evy asked.

"You started drinking a little too soon." The bartender explained.

"I haven't been drinking. I'm just a little lost." Evy said irritably. "Could you please just tell me where we are?"

"Place called Jordan Valley. Little bit north of Anchorage."

"Anchorage? Anchorage, Alaska?" Evy asked disbelievingly.

"Aye. One and the same."

"Great. Just great." Evy said. "Do you have a phone I can use?"

"Sure. Right there on the wall. You want something to drink?"

"Um, sure. Coke, please."

"Coming up."

Evy went to the wall to use the payphone, and after thinking who still has payphones anymore, she dialed the number to Bobby's house collect. She was surprised when the number came up as not in service, but not particularly worried. Only once she tried Dean's cell, and Sam's, and Bobby's, and Bobby's other other cell, with none of the numbers working, did she become sick with worry.

She had somehow traveled thousands of miles from Bobby's and was now lost in a remote town in a remote part of the country, with no cell phone, nothing on her but a little cash and her knife, and no personal possessions of any kind.

Don't panic, Evy thought. Eat first, then figure out what to do.

Evy made her way back to the bar, where there was a tall glass waiting for her with a straw sticking out. "Thanks." she said to the bartender.

"No problem. On the house. Did you reach your friends?"

"Um, no. No, I didn't." Evy said. "I guess I'll have to find a place to stay tonight and collect my bearings."

"I've got a room upstairs for you if you need it."

"Oh, no thanks. I couldn't ask you to do that. Is there a motel or something nearby?"

"No. There's not. We're not used to getting visitors. I keep the room for the supply guys that come in and out of town and need a place to crash. It's not much, but it's quiet, private, got air, power, and water."

"Then I guess it'll do. How much?"

"How long you plan on staying in town for?" The bartender asked.

"I honestly don't know." Evy said.

"I'll make you a deal. You look like a smart kid. I'm looking for someone to help me keep the place clean. You do that for me, room's yours, plus three square meals a day, as long as you want it."

"Sounds too good to be true."

The bartender chuckled. "There's one drawback. It gets pretty rowdy in here at night, so it might be hard to sleep until early in the morning."

"All I'd have to do is clean?"

"Scout's honor."

Evy knew the offer was too good to be true, but she didn't plan to be here long. A day or two at the most, hopefully, but she knew that finding a viable option out of here was likely to take a lot longer than that. She knew that if Dean found out, he'd threaten to 'deal with this the way Dad would've', but she really had no other options. She knew how to take care of herself. Stay in the private, free room, or freeze out in the woods with no supplies.

"I'll take it." Evy said, offering her hand to the bartender. "I'm Evelyn. Everyone calls me Evy."

"I'm Ryan."

"As in Ryan's?" Evy asked.

"I'm the owner." Ryan explained. "And this handsome devil coming in now is my son."

"Dad, come on. Really?"

"Hey, you don't seem to have any luck with the ladies around here. So meet our newest tenant. Evelyn…"

"Evy. Evy Winchester."

Ryan's son, who had not had a good luck at his father's guest yet, turned and blushed when he saw Evy. "Hello there, Evy. Nice to meet you. I'm Peter."

Sioux Falls

"Where is she, Dean?"

"Sam, calm down. She's only been gone for forty-five minutes."

"This isn't like her, Dean. Something's wrong."

Dean sighed. The truth was that he was worried too. Evy had been upset and gone for a walk before, but she'd always told them where she was going and come back within a half hour or called first to tell them she'd be gone longer. But he was afraid to feed into Sam's paranoia. With the prospect of losing Dean soon become more than just a possibility, the idea of anything happening to Evy was likely to push Sam over the edge.

"Look, Sam, if she's not back or hasn't called in fifteen minutes, we'll go look for her…"

The front door to Bobby's house opened. Bobby hadn't been home when Sam, Dean, and Evy got into their fight, so the semi-permanent look of annoyance on his face had more to do with the jacket in his hand than worry.

"Where the hell is Baitfish? It's twenty degrees outside, she better not be walking around without her jacket…"

Dean saw it the second it happened. The second that Sam's face fell from a little worried to outright panic. He grabbed the jacket from Bobby and examined it, his and Dean's worst fears confirmed. Dean saw Sam's breath quicken, and he reached a hand out to Sam's arm and tried in vain to calm him down.

"Sam, we can't panic…"

"Then what the hell can we do, Dean?" Sam was nearly shouting now, clutching the jacket in his hand so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. "We have to go out there looking for her..."

"Whoa. Sam, hold on. What happened?" Bobby asked.

Dean recounted the afternoon as best he could while Sam paced the floor. Even after years, one of the few things that could make Sam truly fall apart was Evy. He had been the one to raise her, and Dean knew that he was coming as perilously close to watching someone lose a child as he ever had.

"We need to call the police."

"No, Sam." Dean said.

"This isn't a case, Dean. She's gone."

"And we don't know why. Look, the jacket's still in good condition. We have to assume it's something supernatural that took her."

"And if it's not? We're not qualified to look for a kidnapped kid, Dean. What if someone human took her?" Sam asked.

"Then we will find her, and we will kill them. Sam, we will find her. But we won't if you start panicking now and I have to be worried about whether or not you can do this. Do you want me and Bobby worrying about you or focusing on finding her?"

That seemed to bring Sam's panic down to a manageable level. It wasn't gone, not by a long shot. There was always a miniscule amount of panic when Evy wasn't in his eyesight. But, over the years, he'd learned to keep it under control. Just like he had to do now if he wanted to find her. Sam took a breath, hoping to get his painful beating heart under control so he could do what he had to do.

"Where do we start?"

Dean nodded, satisfied that Sam's anxiety wouldn't get in the way of looking for Evy. "Bobby, where was the jacket found?"

Evy's Room in Anchorage

It had been over a week.

Evy did her job at Ryan's and kept her head down at night. She slept a few hours after the place closed, then would spend three to four hours trying to find something, anything at all, about why she was where she was.

The list of questions was so big that Evy had been forced to write them all down on a legal pad.

How did I get here?

Where are Sam and Dean?

Where is Bobby?

Most importantly, WHY am I here?

There was one question, though, that Evy had written on the second page of the pad. She had written it down one night after a nightmare, then immediately scratched it out and started to walk away to go to work. She had stopped at the door of her room, then turned back and flipped the page on her legal pad and wrote it down.

Is anyone looking for me?

Evy didn't want to consider the possibility that they weren't. Sam and Dean would never leave or abandon her, she knew, but there simply wasn't any evidence that they were so much as wondering about her. Evy had considered leaving Alaska and hitchhiking to Sioux Falls, but thought better of it. She could survive if she had to, but the woods of Alaska were far more dangerous than the woods of Sioux Falls. Evy also knew there were reports of paranormal activity in the woods of Alaska, and she just didn't feel confident enough to take that on herself. So she did what she could from where she was.

She called Sam and Dean's numbers every day. She called Bobby over and over. She went to the local library and tried to find records of her father or brothers. Never before had she fought such paralyzing panic as she did when she realized that there were no records anywhere of a John or Mary Winchester, or Sam or Dean Winchester.

If there was no record of her father or brothers, how in the hell was Evy even alive?

She was shocked to discover that Melissa Collins was alive and well. The thought that she might be able to catch a glimpse of her mother was something powerful enough to almost make Evy not continue looking for Sam and Dean. She'd put the possibility of a trip to Miami, where her mother lived, in the back of her mind for consideration later on.

The alarm clock in the corner of the room blared, and it was time for Evy to go downstairs for her shift. Ryan had proved to be an easygoing boss, and he didn't really care if she showed up late. But Evy had made up her mind to work hard for each shift, to always be on time, to build up brownie points for the inevitable day when she'd need a favor from him to help find her way back home. After switching the alarm clock off, Evy whispered to herself again,

"Sam and Dean, why aren't you coming for me?"