Title: My Brother's Widow Ch. 1/5
Author: alexjanna91
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Jessica, Hinted Future Dean/Jessica
Series: My Brother's Widow
Rating: PG13
Genre: AU, Supernatural AU
Word Count: 1.4k
Warning: Major Character Death, No Apocalypse, Grief/Mourning, Angst, canon divergence pre-canon, hinted future relationship, long lost relatives, family, secrets
Story Summary: After her husband, Sam, is brutally murdered, Jessica struggles with just getting out of bed in the morning. When a mysterious stranger knocks on her door, he makes her question everything she knew about her husband, but he also gives her hope that maybe Sam didn't leave her all alone in the world after all.
A/N: A world where Dean went to Stanford, but didn't break into Sam's apartment and drag away for the weekend.
Sam Winchester is murdered on a Thursday.
He was working late at his law firm. Pro-bono cases deserved the same amount of attention and effort as the million dollar clients, in Sam's opinion. Single mothers with greedy slumlords, juvenile offenders with bad attitudes and worse circumstances, the occasional workplace compensation; it didn't matter who it was, Sam worked just as hard for them as he did for the law firm's paying clients.
So it was that Jessica Moore Winchester wasn't expecting her husband of seven years to come home until late in the evening. Dinner had long since passed and Jessica had curled into bed with a medical journal she'd been meaning to read for weeks now. The medical clinic where she works as a nurse keeps her nearly as busy as Sam's clients do him and she was ready for some time to relax. She didn't even really start to worry about Sam until the clock was ticking past 12:59am and into one o'clock.
They didn't find Sam's body, cold and bloody and torn apart in a dark garbage strewn alley, until 11:47 the next morning.
Three days and four more bodies later, cause of death was declared animal attack. The police released advisories to watch out for wild dogs and once the paperwork was finished, "Ts" crossed and "Is" dotted, the case was closed and the victims' bodies were released to their families.
A week and a half after Sam was killed Jessica began to plan his funeral.
The funeral home was filled with flowers and people. The flowers were generic and the people were generic. Jessica didn't really see either one. The only time she wasn't just floating numbly in her mind was when her family tried to talk to her. Over the past two weeks she'd perfected the art of the "smile and nod". Her smile may have been brittle and her nods may have been jerky, but they were just acceptable enough that her family could justify leaving her to herself.
She couldn't really bring herself to care about anything beyond her own grief. The fleeting moments when she forgot Sam wasn't standing next to her and she turned to comment on someone's social faux pas or inappropriate funeral attire made it all that much more painful.
The funeral director had guided her through the processes of "putting a loved one to rest", metaphorically holding her hand through the entire thing, turning her attention to the preferred format for prayer cards, the preferred bible passages the nondenominational Christian reverend would read out during his sermon, (Sam was agnostic. Jessica didn't bother interrupting the director's spiel to tell him that), the preferred procedure when the deceased requested to be cremated.
Cremated. Sam wanted to be cremated. Jessica hadn't known that until their lawyer contacted her about his will. That hadn't been the most surprising of Sam's last requests. While he was sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee at his elbow, a pile of legal documents spread out between them, the lawyer did a marvelous job of keeping his expression blank as he explained it. Sam wanted to be cremated and he wanted his body to be covered in salt.
Jessica hadn't been able to process the fact that she hadn't known Sam had their lawyer draw up a will separate from their joint will, much less the incomprehensible request for salt.
The funeral director had been happy to accommodate such a unique request, of course, for a fee.
The large framed picture of a smiling Sam was the only thing in the room Jessica didn't see through a haze. She couldn't even remember when the picture had been taken, but Sam was smiling and happy and she just wanted to collapse and curl up in a ball and cry. Her mother was on one side of her and her father was on the other and she was wearing a black dress and black shoes and standing in front of their friends and family and colleagues and she wasn't allowed to break down in public. No matter how much she wanted to.
Apparently it was uncomfortable for the rest of the mourners if the widow expressed her immeasurable grief more than the one perfect tear that rolled down her cheek.
The service was over (Sam wouldn't have liked it) and the mourners lined up to express their sympathies. She took the handshakes and the awkward hugs and the air kisses with a bland smile and unseeing eyes. It was a relief when the solicitous funeral director demanded her attention for something or other that she wasn't paying attention to.
That's when he caught her eye.
He stood apart from the other faceless mourners. With his weathered leather jacket, his faded blue jeans, and his heavy work boots he wasn't dressed for anything even mildly formal, much less a funeral. His clothes weren't what held her attention, though, what cleared the haze and brought the world back into focus. It was his expression.
Painfully neutral, his face was the picture of stoicism. It was completely free of emotion, like he was just standing and watching the world around him without noticing a single detail.
Jessica was staring at him so intently that it was a jolt when his gaze flicked toward her and their eyes met for a split second. His eyes were anything, but emotionless.
"Mrs. Winchester?"
Jessica snapped her attention back to the funeral director watching her with a gratingly sympathetic expression. "I'm sorry. What?"
"Are you ready to leave for the wake?"
She knows she said something in the affirmative, but she stopped listening when she looked back and saw that the man in the leather jacket had disappeared.
Her house was filled with people and Jessica wanted nothing more than to kick them all out. There was food piled two trays high and people milling about talking in hushed voices that didn't conceal the fact that they were all gossiping about Sam. People love nothing more than sensationalism and your husband being brutally killed by a wild animal in the middle of the city was certainly sensational.
Jessica was tempted to grab the closest sharp pointy object and start stabbing people every time they hushed up when she got near. Not enough to really hurt them, just, you know, startle them a little. Maybe make them bleed a bit. Like a paper cut, except with a letter opener.
Blowing out a deep breath, Jessica shook her head to clear her thoughts. Truly, if her mother knew what she was thinking she would be scandalized. Sam would have thought it was funny.
Her breath hitched abruptly and she immediately turned to some faceless mourner for a distraction.
Apart from her coping strategies of mildly violent fantasies, the only other thing keeping Jessica from totally losing it was the compulsion to look for the man in the leather jacket. There was something about him, she couldn't put her finger on it, but something was nagging at her. She didn't know him from Adam. He wasn't a colleague of Sam's or a friend. Sam didn't have any family, that he talked to at least, and he wasn't anyone that Jessica knew from her work or social life.
He was a mystery that she latched onto to avoid thinking about the Sam shaped whole in her home, in her life, in her heart. She was one insincere condolence away from just saying, "Screw it," and disappearing into her room to cry until she passed out. The urge to look toward the door every time it opened kept her occupied enough to keep smile-and-nodding.
When the wake was over and her mother and father were packaging up all of the sympathy food to shove in the fridge, Jessica lost the distraction of putting on a public face and watching for the mystery man. She walked down the hall into her bedroom, locked the door, and shed her mourning clothes like they were on fire.
Hair free, make-up smudged, and wearing nothing, but panties and one of Sam's t-shirts that still smelled like him, Jessica curled up in her bed and let herself cry until she couldn't cry anymore.
TBC…