Chapter Two

As he walked into the warm, dry house, Dean considered how he'd handle facing Angela Browning -- Auntie Angie. Not that it should be that big of a deal. But he'd spent the last ten years trying to disconnect himself from the memories of his mother's death, her funeral, his father's sudden shift into alcoholism -- anything that distracted him from the task at hand. From finding whatever set him down this crazy path, darkened whatever happy, tiny memories he had left.

So when she came out of the kitchen, all blond with strands of grey, he found himself wondering if that's what his mother would have looked like had she lived. Aged, but still beautiful, with that spark of something in her eyes that always kept her amused. And wondering brought back all those memories of running around in the backyard pretending they could fly --

-- no. Here. Now. No point in thinking about something you couldn't do anything about.

"To what do we owe this pleasure? Your father's not hiding out in the car, is he? Because I told him years ago I was over that incident with the ice cream." She speaks in hushed tones; she was the older sister, the wiser, protective one.

Dean's silent, so Sam clears his throat. "Uh, no. It's just us."

"Good," Alex scoffs behind them.

Good ol' Alex, the one man who glared at John Winchester at his wife's funeral, the one who never offered his condolences or gave a kind word of any kind. His grudge went far beyond John's occupation or past in the service; it was a clear conflict of character that would never be resolved.

And it seemed it never would.

Angela tosses her husband a look, but doesn't say anything to defend her brother-in-law. Instead, she grabs Sam and pinches his cheeks.

"You were the most adorable baby," she almost pouts. "And the happiest, remember that?"

Dean shifts his feet. They don't talk about life before, when everything was right and normal, and he figures a lot of Sam is missing from himself because Dean's too stubborn to tell him about it. "Yeah."

"Really?" asks Sam.

"Oh, yes. Giggling and smiling all the time." Angela puts an arm around Sam's shoulders and leads him to the couch, where the pair sits down. This conversation's heading straight for embarrassing territory, and when Dean thought up the grand idea of hitting up his relatives for money, it seemed an okay trade.

He hadn't stopped to consider the tirade of comments he'd get from his brother in the days, hell, weeks following.

He almost groans as Angela fixes her gaze on him.

"You were so good with him, always playing. Tell me you're still nice to him."

"Oh, yeah. Totally nice, all the time," Dean smiles, and he can tell Sam's just ready to burst with all the comments he wants to say. Great. Sam can get him in much trouble as Angela teeming with tales from their childhood.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all...

"Don't joke. You dote on your brother, and we all know what."

"Dote?" comes Sam's voice, and he's absolutely beaming. "Really. I never knew." The last part's directed at Dean with a wicked, shit-eating grin practically screaming you're gonna hear about this for the rest of your life.

Well, this just isn't going to stand, and before any more words can fly out of Sam's mouth and drown Dean even more, he smashes his heel down on Sam's toes and gives him a smirk of victory.

But Sam's got Angela all figured out and it's only been ten minutes. "Ouch."

"Dean!" Angela says.

For a moment, anger flashes up inside Dean, but then he remembers what it was like to have someone actually yell at him in that tone of voice, and thinks it mighty pathetic that, for a second, he actually enjoyed getting yelled at.

--

"Wow. She's great."

Sam neatly places his shoes, paired together, at the foot of the bed in the guest room. The room's conservative, an office converted into a spare bedroom by the addition of a single twin bed from the bedroom of one of their cousins, but it still has that dark, serious feel to it, fighting back against the floral patterned comforter.

"Yeah, well, she wasn't always that way," Dean grumbles. In contrast to his brother, he flicks his shoes off and leaves them wherever they land. "People are always nice when they've got guests."

"Did you notice that they never asked why we are here?" he decides to ask instead of giving more fuel to whatever fire Dean's got going in his head. It's a deflection technique that usually works, but Sam's pretty sure Dean wouldn't reply if Sam indulged him one of these times.

Dean shrugs. He probably didn't care less if they noticed or not; their room was free, they didn't have to pay for food, and for once, there wasn't some creature lurking outside waiting to be dealt with.

"Don't you think that's a bit odd?"

"They're not exactly the type of people we run into," Dean counters.

"No, they're actually welcoming."

Soft chuckles fill the room as Dean slips under the blanket draped over the worn-out couch across the room, his feet hanging off over the armrest. "Just part of the job."

"I just have an odd feeling, that's all."

At this, Dean leans up and props his head up on his hand, facing Sam. "Really, now? What's Madam see-into-the-future say now?"

"Shut up."

"Lighten up, dude."

Right. Because Dean was so kind when it came to Sam's newfound abilities, he felt all warm and fuzzy when it came to sharing his strange feelings. Nothing like constant berating and pop-culture references from the only other occupant of a moving vehicle to help you express yourself.

"You're such a jackass, Dean," he mutters angrily.

The sheets under the comforter are also floral print, but they're an improvement over the generic starched white or blue sheets of featureless motel rooms across the country. These have the softness of fresh laundry with fabric softener, something he's only experienced a few times before, back when they actually lived in a house and with Jess.

He snuggles into the bed like he's five years old again, when pulling the covers over his head could shut out all the bad things in life. Tempting fate, Sam pulls them over his head, but is only treated to a canopy of color as the light streams through the flowers and onto his face.

"Turn off the light," he groans. Let the colors disappear so he can pretend that nothing exists.

Click.

In the darkness, it's like every other motel room they've stayed in over the past few months, with Dean shifting next to him until he finds just the right position (that, inevitably, he never awakes in) and his own breathing echoing in the room.

Shift. "What kind of feeling?"

"Like we're not supposed to be here." Sam pulls the covers from over his head. "We are, I mean, but not here."

"Okay."

Okay? That's all he had to say? No quips about being plugged into the Psychic Friends Network or communing with spirits. Just 'okay?'

He turns over, hand under the pillow, to try to make out his brother's shape in the darkness. Dean's sprawled on his back, one leg dangling over the edge of the couch, an arm thrown over his face. No preoccupations, no fear of falling asleep, just there.

Sam pulls the covers over his head again.

--

Like everything else in their life, it was too good to last.

Three days of free room and board, of conversations about long-forgotten events and tale of their mother in her youth, came crashing down around them just as the sun started to set and cast its amber rays across the blue-gray sky characteristic of New England.

Sam's nagging feeling that they were in the wrong place persisted throughout the entire span of their stay, his eyes straying now and again off into the distance, always in the same direction. Into nothingness, it seemed, off towards the central part of the island where there was nothing but the occasional house and a large cranberry farm.

And Dean caught every one of them from his position scowling out on the front porch, most often with a beer in hand to avoid his aunt. Not that he disliked her in any way. It just became a little too painful to watch her interact with Sam, to pat him on the shoulder or laugh at one of his lame-ass jokes.

To remember his mother doing that for Sam, and knowing she'd only been able to do it for as many months as they'd been on the road.

Sure, Dean now appreciated what little time he'd had, but that didn't negate the fact that he craved more in the vacuum created by the absence of his father. Then again, he wasn't a child and shouldn't need a parent around just to feel something.

So he sits out on the porch in the drizzle of spring and does his best impression of his father just to piss everyone off. Get angry at him for acting like a jackass and he can get angry right back and distract himself.

He knew he'd succeeded when Alex came home that night and paused on the porch just after opening the door with a deep frown on his face. It sticks there for a moment, and Dean, committed to this track of self-destruction for the sake of his sanity, doesn't even turn to look at Alex. Just takes a swig and keeps brooding.

"Blessed with your mother's looks and you act like your father," Alex comments sourly. "What a waste."

The comment draws Sam out from the kitchen where he sat toying with his phone checking emails, and Angela follows close behind.

Dean's ready for this, been preparing for this. But what Alex decides to say next comes from far out in left field.

"I'd expect this from him," -- he points to Sam, spitting venom that causes Angela to gasp -- "but that's not saying much."

"Huh?" Sam frowns.

"Excuse me?" Dean gets up from the chair he'd been sitting in and puts the bottle down on the railing with a resounding plunk. Everything he'd done had been to get himself attacked, not Sam.

"At least you had some decent parenting," Alex says.

"Wait a second," Sam interjects, turning to Dean, "is he saying -- "

"Yeah, Sam, he's sayin' you must be messed up because you were raised by dad," Dean finishes for Alex. "Or is it because he looks like him?"

Caught in his own words, Alex just stands there, angry, but embarrassed by what he'd said, or rather, implied. Behind him, Angela reaches out quickly to Sam.

"He doesn't mean it. I swear. It's just...Alex and your father never saw eye to eye, and you do look so much like him," she explains in a muddled rush of words.

"Oh, we saw eye to eye," Alex says gruffly. "Perfectly eye to eye. And I didn't like what I saw."

"Alex! That's their father you're talking about," Angela exclaims.

At least someone here felt their father deserved some level of respect; he never knew if Sam was in a 'I hate my father' mood or not, most often discovering the mood he was in through petty arguments and blame that wasn't his to take.

"What? He deserves respect because he's got one kid brooding into a drink and the other so starved for attention he's latched onto my wife? You think any of our kids would do that?" Alex isn't an old man -- still in the middle of his life -- but when his face turns red, he ages years. The wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead become more defined like the lines around his mouth as his frown deepens.

Self-conscious, Sam takes a step towards his brother -- and away from Angela.

Angela's heard enough, and she turns to her husband. "I can't believe you, Alex. You've fostered this grudge long enough. Don't you think it's time to just let it go?"

The boys stand off to the side, Dean still fuming with anger at Alex for insulting his father and his brother all in one breath. But he's comfortable with arguments, with the glimpses of truth you gain from heated words. His parents never argued -- if they did, he was too small to remember -- and is thankful for the temporary reprieve.

"We aren't supposed to be here," Sam repeats for what has to be the twelfth time since first mentioning it.

"You know, you keep saying that, but you don't say why," Dean says. He's annoyed at this whole thing and it comes out in his voice.

"It's not that...detailed."

Dean throws his hands up in the air as Angela and Alex continue to argue. "Great. Thanks, Sam."

"Hey, it's not like I asked for this. I can't answer your specific questions, just tell you what I feel, okay?"

"The way they're arguing, I could have told you we shouldn't be here," Dean deadpans, motioning to the couple still fighting, oblivious to their side conversation.

"Thanks, Captain Obvious."

Here, Alex's voice swells so loud, neither of them can ignore the argument any longer. He practically booms his final nail in coffin into his wife's face, arms straight at his sides, hands balled into tight fists.

"We should have taken them when we had the chance! Then none of this would have happened."