Looks Like Loss

Thanks so much for the added patience. Here's the second half. Hope you like it!

Chapter Seven

Dean heard a near whimper off to his left and turned. "Mrs. Martin!" He'd completely forgotten about her.

She was bent over, backing away from them, one hand protectively wrapped around her stomach, her long dress dragging the ground. Her face suddenly creased with pain and she clutched at her belly.

"Ok… I think this may be the appropriate time for us all to decide what we know about 'birthin' babies'," Dean said, wide-eyed.

"Move away from her!"

All three men turned around to see their very unfriendly neighborhood bandit standing behind them, his ancient looking pistol steadily aimed in their direction.

"Have you found my husband?" the woman asked him, her voice pleading.

"I told the men to watch you! Where are they?" he shouted angrily. "They were supposed to protect you while I was gone!"

Dean instinctively moved toward the woman, placing himself between her and the highwayman until he had a better grasp on the situation. He didn't really know what he could do since he wasn't armed and they were both ghosts anyway, but it was the principle of the thing.

"Please," the woman begged, still clutching at her swollen abdomen. "Did you find my husband? You said you would find him."

The bandit man frowned at Dean's intervention and moved to the side so that he could see her again. "I did. But I'm afraid he was gravely wounded when I found him. It seems he was attacked on the road and I regret to say that he died of his wounds."

The woman sobbed, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth. She crumpled to the ground, her skirts pooling around her.

"He asked me to give you his ring," the man said, starting to move toward her.

"Stay back," Dean ordered. Now that was cold. Killing a man so you could get at the 'widow'? No wonder the guy's real wife had wasted him.

"Stay away from me!" the woman shrieked. "You're lying! He's not dead! He promised me he would be here before the baby comes!"

The man looked stricken, watching her cower away from him, then fury clouded his face. "I have looked after you! I have cared for you, protected you! Why do you not see that?"

"Get away!" the woman screamed. "My husband promised he would be here when the time came. My husband always keeps his promises! How dare you say differently?"

"I have given you proof of his death, woman! You have no one left to turn to, but me," the man shouted. "I have provided for you, loved you… And now you turn on me like this? Betray me like this!"

"Dude, your issues are showing," Dean muttered. "She's not your wife."

The man stepped toward the woman, all his attention and the gun now aimed at her. "You would be so disloyal after all I have done for you?"

"Please," Mrs. Martin said, weeping openly. "Just leave me be! My husband promised he would return."

"He's dead! I have brought his ring as proof!"

"My husband is the Sheriff!" she screamed through her tears. "He will kill you for trying to deceive me like this!"

"What have you done, Joseph?"

All eyes turned as a woman walked out of the trees into the small clearing. She was tiny, barely four and a half feet tall, wearing a rough-sewn skirt and shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a long braid running down her back.

"Agatha," the highwayman said, horrified. "She… this is… not how it looks."

The wife. Crap, crap, crap. They'd completely ignored the highwayman's wife. The woman had slit her own husband's throat to protect her home and they'd ignored her. Too many freaking ghosts. She'd gotten lost in the shuffle of suspects.

Dean thought frantically trying to remember what the Pruetts had told them and that gave him a sum total of… not much. A posse had been closing in, hot on her husband's heels. She had slit his throat, ditched the body. Nothing after that. The land had been seized by the government and no one knew what had happened to her.

The robber baron's wife stepped farther into the clearing, furious eyes glued to her husband. "You bring these people here? Your whore? To our home?"

There was something in her manner, something positively fierce that made Dean move closer to the oblivious woman still kneeling on the ground behind him. He was pretty sure Agatha was pissed at her would-be two-timing husband who'd brought the law down on her again. Dean just wasn't sure that she wasn't going to go after the rest of them next.

"This land is my home, Joseph," she eyed him. The woman began to circle, like a predator toying with its prey, walking around her husband. "You and your idiot friends can do whatever you like. But we had an understanding. You would not bring it to my doorstep. I thought you understood that." Her eyes were narrowed and her voice was low, menacing.

Dean was pretty sure that if he'd been married to that, he'd have made pretty freaking certain to remember it.

Without preamble, she sprang at her husband. Before he could even move, she jabbed a thumb into his eye and he fell to the ground screaming, dropping his pistol to grasp at his face.

His wife turned, her bloodied hand pointing at Dean. "You," she said, ignoring the man who lay behind her sobbing, rocking back and forth, clutching at his mutilated socket. "You have the nerve to come here."

"Come again?" Dean asked warily, forcing himself to drag his eyes away from the downed man.

"I warned you when you brought the papers that I would not leave here," she spat.

"Papers?"

"I don't have the money for the taxes yet!" she said angrily, "but I will. You think you can seize my property? This land is mine. Mine and mine alone."

"She thinks you're the Sheriff," the current Sheriff whispered in horror. "He would have been the only official around here then if the land was to be seized."

"Where would she get that idea?" Dean demanded. "You're the one with the shiny buttons!"

"Probably because you are the one protecting the man's wife like she's yours," the man answered.

"What?" Dean asked no one in particular. "A guy can't protect random pregnant ghost chicks now?"

"I won't let you take my land!" Agatha screamed, still pointing her gore-covered hand at him.

Dean looked at the bandit's wife at a complete loss. She was glaring at him like she could happily rip his head off and feed it to the pigs. "Ma'am, I'm sure we can work something out," he said, "as long as your credit score is decent, I mean."

"Dean!"

He couldn't help a small grin at Sam's dismayed outburst, but quickly sobered as the ugly look on the ghost's face twisted in sheer rage.

"I've taken care of it. I always do," Agatha said furiously. "No one will inherit this land. The trollop you're protecting? I put something in her food. She's already dead and she doesn't know it. There will be no child to inherit. The boy who fell over the gallery railing? The man who was shot at the gates? That was my doing. I even smothered that old woman who had decided to sell this place. It is mine."

She looked behind her to her husband still sobbing where he lay in the dirt. "You… you brought these people here… brought the Sheriff down on us." She pulled a knife from her waistband, slipping it out of its leather sheath. "I will not lose my home because of you."

In only a second, a rough, jagged slash appeared across the highwayman's neck. He began to gurgle and choke, grasping at his throat, his damaged eye forgotten.

"How could you?" he said, blood bubbling through his lips. "I loved you."

"Sam?" Dean said lowly.

"Yeah?"

"Is there a reason you haven't shot her yet?"

The woman turned at the words, her face contorted with anger. "I will kill you all before I let you take my land from me!"

The Sheriff drew his gun and fired to no effect as she barreled toward them, knife in hand.

"Sam, that's your cue!" Dean shouted.

"I don't have a gun, Dean!"

Dean braced himself for the assault and nearly had a heart attack at the booming sound of a shotgun being discharged within only a foot of him.

Geoff Pruett stepped farther around him, firing again, and the ghost disappeared in a flash of rock salt. "We'll see who owns what," he said, breathing heavily as if he'd run a race.

"She… dead?" the highwayman gasped. He was now lying flat on his back, barely aware of his surroundings.

"Yup," Dean said. Whether she could be made to stay that way was another matter all together.

"Good," the man said. He slumped as his non-existent muscles relaxed and then he disappeared, fading into the dirt.

The Sheriff turned to the newest arrival. "Now that is what I call excellent timing, Geoff."

Dean, however, turned on his brother. "What were you thinking coming out here unarmed?" he shouted.

"I thought I had to get you back before they formed a firing squad!" Sam shot back. "I sent Geoff to get the shotguns. He was right behind us!"

"He's a civilian!"

"A civilian who saved your POW ass!" Sam shouted back.

Dean blinked, suddenly realizing something. He turned to face Mr. Pruett and to his everlasting horror saw the unimaginable. Marigold. His Marigold. In Geoff Pruett's hands.

"You're holding M… my shotgun."

Mr. Pruett nodded. "It's a good weapon."

"I know," Dean said frowning. "You're still holding my shotgun."

The woman behind them screamed in agony. Setting aside his apparent separation anxiety, which he really didn't want to get into right now, Dean knelt beside her. He ignored the pain that shot up his leg, more concerned with the woman, completely at a loss as to how to help her. What could you do for a pregnant ghost? The thought of shooting her seemed beyond wrong.

"Get away!" she shouted, scooting until her back was against the tree stump she'd been sitting on. "Leave me alone!"

Dean turned to the others and waved them back. He then moved forward to kneel beside her again.

"Shhhh..." he said gently. "It's all right now. We're not going to hurt you. We're here to help you."

"Why hasn't he come?" she whispered sadly, tears falling in great drops. "I'm so alone here."

"Sometimes..." Dean cleared his throat uncomfortably, "Sometimes... even the people we love... they have to leave us."

Mom. Sam. Dad.

His heart constricted painfully at his own words, words he'd told himself so often. The words were seared into his heart, his brain. He'd ordered himself to believe those words. He was a soldier and he obeyed orders. If he could only help her to believe them too.

The young woman's glistening eyes were locked on him. "He said he had to leave. He had to… It would make it safer for us, for me and for the baby. He's the Sheriff, you know. He works very hard to make it safe for us here."

Dean nodded. "Your husband had things he needed to do... He's trying to protect you..." How can you protect something when you're not there to shoot what's trying to come through the window? What needs to be done that's more important than your family? How does leaving them behind… even for their own good… How was the person left behind supposed to live like that? Dean brushed a stray tear away. He couldn't help it. His heart hurt. It ached for her. For her loss. It ached for his own loss. For the damage done. For things that couldn't be changed.

"But he promised," she said and once again Dean was reminded of how young she was.

"Sometimes, the people we love can't keep their promises, no matter how much they want to," he said gently. "Sometimes, we have to let them go..." Even if it feels like your heart's just been crushed inside your own chest.

"Mrs. Martin?" Sam said.

The girl looked up, her tear-streaked cheeks flickering in the firelight.

"Mrs. Martin, your husband is the Sheriff?" He waited for her to nod. Sam grabbed the current Sheriff by the arm and led him forward. "I found him while I was coming to meet my brother. You weren't at the house and he couldn't find you."

"Andrew?" she frowned looking up at him, confused and troubled. "Is that you?"

"Yes, ma'am," the Sheriff said, finally catching on to what Sam was trying to do. "I was so worried when I couldn't find you at the house."

"Andrew, the baby is coming," she whispered, embarrassed. "I think something is wrong. I don't know what to do."

"Shhh..." he said, soothing her. "It's all right now. I'm here and there's nothing to worry about. Your baby is going to be taken care of... He's going to be a beautiful boy."

The girl began weeping again, this time in relief. "Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for coming back for me. You promise to take care of the baby?"

She was already starting to fade. "Of course, I promise," the Sheriff said. She smiled one last time and in a tiny burst of flame, disappeared.

Dean fell back, his leg giving out. The Sheriff leaned back against the fallen tree and let out a long, slow breath.

"She seemed like a sweet lady," Sam said.

"Of course, she was," the Sheriff smiled. "She was my great-great however many times grandmother."

"You're joking," Dean said.

"You thought I was lying to her?" the Sheriff raised an eyebrow. "She died before the baby was born, but the child lived." He smiled broadly. "I come from a long, long line of Sheriffs."

Dean just looked up at him. "After the day we've had... Frankly, sir, I don't give a damn."

Hope this kept you entertained… An epilogue tomorrow…