Disclaimer : I own nothing, I earn nothing. Huh. Why do I do this? ;p
Loosing Hope
Dean recognises the township's serial killer for what
he is, a werewolf. Easy peezy lemon squeezy! Sam's
not too happy, but Dean's already taken the case so it's
back into Hunter mode for the brothers Winchester.
There's a whole town and a kinda cool hotel that need saving.
-oOo-
Prologue
Hope was a runner. Not the sprinter or marathon type of runner, she was the worrying kind, the kind that repeatedly ran away, the kind that the authorities so far had failed to keep hold of, to keep safe. Her most recent foster care placement had been her 'last chance', and she had blown it. So she had finally been placed with a 'special' foster carer where she was to remain until a vacancy within a secure young people's unit became available. Hope, however, hadn't felt like going along with the child services' plans for her and so she was now running again, after discovering that the special foster carer's locked front door was just as easy to open from the inside as your average foster carers' locked front doors had been.
Hope was just fifteen. She had only entered the care system fourteen months previous, after both her parents were killed in a five car smash. Hope knew what it was like to have and to live with her own family, to be cared about and loved, and she desperately wanted that family back. She had no interest in what she viewed as some poor facsimile made up of do good strangers. She resented having to get herself into trouble, just to gain some one on one time with the over stretched foster carer. She tried compliance on her first placement, but quickly learnt that behaving and abiding by the rules just got you ignored while the carers focused their time, energy and attention onto the 'trouble causers'. If you were quiet, case workers and carers assumed you were Ok andleft you to get on with things. On Hope's second foster placement she was there with two other kids. One was a girl a few months older than Hope had been. The girl was so quiet and reserved, she made Hope feel nervous. Hope raised her concerns with the foster carers, who brushed her off. And when the girl had been found hanging in her bedroom a couple of days later all the adults, including the foster carer, were shocked. They had all agreed that no way they could've known there was anything wrong, 'Because she was so quiet.'No trouble at all.' Hope had run before the girl's funeral. She had managed a whole two days of freedom before she was spotted and transported off to a third placement.
Hope always got picked up again when she ran. The problem was that, without fail, she kept on attempting to reach the same destination. Hope firmly believed that she had a relative who lived there, her only living relative. She based her belief in the relative on the memory of a conversation with her mom when she was around five years old. She had asked why almost all her friends had aunties and uncles and cousins, but she didn't? And how could she get an aunt and uncle for herself? The part of her mom's answer that had interested her most was the news that her dad had an older brother.
When Hope herself was older and able to comprehend, she was given further information. Although there was twelve years between her father and Joel, his brother, theirs was a good relationship. When he was twenty two, the older brother had joined the navy. At first he was in regular contact, but then it became less and less, until it was just a card each Christmas. He'd stopped spending any of his leave at home and then, finally, there was silence. The last contact was an official letter to say he was missing in action, presumed dead. The news broke his parents. Within three years of the MIA letter, both Hope's paternal grandparents had passed away. First to go had been her grandmother with a heart attack, her grandfather died later after suffering a major stroke. Hope never knew them.
After the death of her own parents, Hope became fixated on the idea that Joel hadn't died, that he'd actually gone AWOL. and had, since then, been too afraid of being caught to risk making contact with any of his family. Hope only knew of one place that her uncle had a connection to, and that was his home town, so it's to there that she persistently tried to make her way. More often than not she didn't manage to journey far before being picked up and returned to various foster carers. On the three more recent occasions when she'd actually made it to the town, she had sat herself outside the home of a different Mr Pebblestone in the hope of seeing someone who looked a bit like her dad. It was only while watching out for Mr Pebblestone number three it occurred to her that her relative might be using a pseudonym? It didn't matter, she was determined to keep searching.
Hope had got better at avoiding being spotted by sharp eyed cops or recognised by chatty store keepers. She always knew that every time she climbed into a stranger's vehicle she was taking a huge risk and, on more than one occasion she had needed to make a rapid, cursing, exit to escape some over-friendly driver's lewd intentions towards her. There had also been two instances when she'd found herself physically fighting with her aggressors in order to get away. The first time, she had got lucky and one of her booted feet landed a solid kick to the male driver's little treasures. The second time she'd had to fight was the one which led to her most recent placement. Her supposed 'Good Samaritan' had suddenly thrust his hand up her skirt and between her legs, she had instinctively bitten into the guy's upper arm. Swearing and hollering, he had scrabbled around with his hand until he found the handle of the truck's passenger side door. He had yanked his arm out of Hope's mouth, elbowed her in the face, then pushed her out the door while the truck was still moving.
That event had merited her four days in a hospital bed where her case worker had pointed out to her that someone stopping to pick her up because she was wearing an ultra short skirt was unlikely to be a nice person. Hope hadn't actually needed telling, didn't the stupid cow realise she'd purposefully worn the skirt? She'd needed to catch a ride quick, no questions asked. More angry at being back where she started from than at her treatment at the hands of the truck driver, Hope had refused to speak to the cops and, on discharge from the hospital she was 'dumped' with the specialist foster carer.
Hope had escaped the specialist carers home while the morning was still dark. She'd been lucky, only having to travel on foot for a couple of hours before hitting the hitch-hiker's jackpot, being offered a lift by someone who was going all the way to her destination. Her sympathetic driver for today had been chatty and friendly, even buying her a coffee when they stopped briefly. Having been dropped off in the town centre, Hope smiled and waved to him as he pulled away.
-oOo-
Chapter 1
Dodging traffic, Hope crossed the road and headed for the town's pretty central park. After freshening up in the public toilets she wandered over to an empty bench. Sitting down she undid her duffel and rooted around, finally pulling out a small plastic juice bottle she had filled with tap water and a paper bag containing two cookies. The sight of the cookies had her stomach rumbling and she had to force herself to eat them steadily, rather than simply devouring them as she would like to have done. Her small and unsatisfactory meal finished, she remained seated while focusing her thoughts on how she should progress from here? |It seemed so obvious to her now that with Joel having gone AWOL from the navy, as she so firmly believed, there was no way he would be using his real name. It was only a small mid-west township but, as Hope gazed around at the people using the park, it finally began to occur to her that those previous times she had run to this place, and being here now, was most probably nothing but a fool's errand, a ladder out of the darkness of her grief, the result of her own desperate need to have a family again, a chance to belong. 'In other words Hope Pebblestone, you're a total loser! What am I doing here? The guy's dead. And even if he weren't, why would he be here? With the whole world to go at?' Hope groaned out loud, knowing the sensible thing to do would be to introduce herself to the first cop she saw and let herself be dumped back at the specialist foster carers or locked up in whichever kid's loony bin they'd already got her lined up for.
Angrily blinking back her tears, Hope noticed she was being watched by a man stood on the opposite side of the children's adventure play area that was sited between him and where she was sat. Hope dismissed him with a high tilt of her nose as she pointedly turned away from his stare. She pretended to be looking for something in her duffel. Sneaking a peek through her long fringe, she saw he was still standing in the same spot, and still gazing across in her direction, a vaguely thoughtful expression on his face. Hope questioned whether it was actually her the guy's eyes were fixed on? Maybe he was actually staring at something or someone behind her? That would just be too embarrassing. As casually as she could, Hope turned to check, her action revealing one straggly looking fir tree that Hope didn't think could hold much fascination for anyone. Turning back, she flinched and let out a squeal of surprise, the man was stood directly in front of her, one hand held out to her and a friendly smile on his face.
"Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to make you jump, I just came over to say hello."
Hope stared at the outstretched hand but didn't shake it, instead she shuffled further back on the bench.
"How the Hell did you get over here so fast? And for your information, I don't talk to strangers...Go away."
Letting his offered hand fall to his side, the man gazed at Hope's indignant scowl with amusement.
"|How about I introduce myself, then I won't be a stranger, will I?"
Shouldering her duffel, Hope put on her game face, the one she wore when she arrived at each new foster placement, the one that said 'I'm tough, I'm not afraid, don't try pushing me around.'
"Listen creep. Back off or I start yelling. Gottit?"
The man lost his amused expression and took a couple of steps back, giving Hope room to get to her feet.
"Pebblestone."
Hope unintentionally sat down again with a thump.
"My name's Joel Pebblestone, and I'm pretty certain you and I are related."
Hope's mouth opened and closed again a couple of times though she said nothing, her mind however was racing. 'Did he just say...? Did I hear...? How, how? Crap, shit. He can't have...Crap...Crap...Must've heard wrong...shit!'
"Aren't you going to say something? You did understand what I said, yes?...Ok, how about I try this? Your dad, his name is Ross Pebblestone. Am I right?"
Hope was only half aware of the tears streaming down her face, her voice came out a whisper.
"Was...His name was Ross Pebblestone. He died. Him and my mom. They both died. They died and left me. They just left me, I haven't got anybody. Mom and dad died. Oh, shit! They're dead! They're both really, really dead!"
The man calling himself Joel Pebblestone quickly sat down next to Hope and wrapped his arms around her while the teenager sobbed heart brokenly into his shoulder. His own thoughts had fractured, shattered by the awful knowledge that his brother had died. He was desperate for answers, how could his baby brother be dead? How long ago was it? What happened? Although shocked to his core, Joel knew now wasn't the time to demand answers from the girl, his niece. First he needed to get her back to his place, do whatever he could to make sure she felt safe, cared for, wanted. There would be time for talking, and for decisions, later.
-oOo-
Sam and Dean make their appearance in the next chapter, honest!
Chick xxxx
