Dean and Sam don't stray very far. How can they with no car and no adult? They sneak out of the police station and walk just a few miles until they find the right motel. A run-down, barely open, pay-by-the-hour kind of place. Perfect for their needs.
Dean flashes a substantial amount of cash at the bored, teenage desk clerk and he waves them in barely looking them in the face, let alone questioning their ages.
Once inside, the first thing Dean does, after getting Sammy settled, is shower.
Nearly three days they were stuck in that tiny little sheriff's station, sleeping on old, creaky cots with stiff mattresses, brushing their teeth in the men's room sinks and not a shower in sight. They couldn't even change their clothes since their duffels had been seized as evidence along with everything else in the Impala.
After that, even the cramped, too-hot then too-cold then too-hot again shower in the skeezy motel room bathroom feels like heaven.
Dean stands in the tiny stall, feeling the burning waters scorch his exposed skin, blazing down his face, his arms, his chest. He loves the heat. And he hates it. It feels like home in the very worst way.
He breathes deep, inhales the fiery steam, feels the beads of sweat slide down his forehead, mingling with the water droplets gently pelting his face, running into his eyes.
The water temperature changes again to a cooling stream, shaking Dean from his reprieve.
He washes up, rinses off and steps into the tiny cubicle-like washroom. He wipes the fog from the mirror and takes a brief moment to examine his own reflection.
His dark hair hangs in damp strings on his forehead, contrasting the paleness of his skin except where his cheeks are flushed from the heat. His eyes are bright green but the circles underneath them have grown darker every day with worry and lack of sleep.
His eyes drop to the red mark on his bare shoulder. The "tattoo." Part of him wonders if he should have told Castiel the truth. But surely there are limits to what even he could understand. Hell, Dean's the one wearing the mark and even he hardly understands it.
Dean exits the bathroom and gets dressed while Sammy stares at some mindless show on the motel's ancient television. It's some cartoon about superheroes. Dean's never cared much for cartoons. He finds all the violence and lewd humor to be off-putting. He has enough of that in his real life.
Dean sits down with Sam and goes over, for what feels like the thousandth time, all the details of the coming few days. Sam rolls his eyes through most of it with the occasional, "I know, Dean!"
Finally, when Dean's satisfied Sammy really does know, he lets it go and settles in next to his little brother, staring at the endless chases and birdie-inducing sledgehammers that never seem to leave any scars.
Nearby Are Yellow Eyes
Diana stares at the text for the umpteenth time and shakes her head. They've traced the number to a burner phone purchased six weeks ago, out of state. A dead-end. For them, at least. The FBI may have more luck. But for now they're stuck with nothing except the headaches induced by the obscure yet strangely ominous phrasing of the text itself. Diana's been studying the wording, but with only four to work with she doesn't have much to go on.
Still, it's four more than nothing which is all they had before.
Diana researches all the possible connotations of "Yellow Eyes" in street culture, mythology, legal jargon, and everything else she can think of but comes up with nothing. Whatever "Yellow Eyes" is it's a secret known only to the the Winchesters and their mysterious correspondent.
That leaves her with "Nearby." A very worrying term when taken in context. Diana shudders when she realizes the text reads very much like a warning. But a warning about what? And who would be warning the teenage son of a wanted (possible) murderer? What did he have to fear?
Diana half considers just sending out every resource at her disposal and then some. Simply searching "nearby" as thoroughly as humanly possible for anything at all that could constitute "Yellow Eyes." But, of course, that's ridiculous. Grasping at straws with strangers' fingers. Especially, when she's not even certain there's a needle to be found among them.
So, instead, she calls Agent Milton and delivers the news of their miserable incompetence in regards to tracing the message's origin. And waits.
Coming to work is starting to feel like stepping onto the set of an afternoon melodrama. Everyday some new disaster or twist seems to strike and shatter the tenuous status quo that was so painstakingly established the day before. And today is proving to be no exception.
Castiel arrives at the office to the news of the young Winchesters' disappearance. Apparently, they evaporated through the sheriff station's walls even more fluidly than their father, leaving no clues as to their current whereabouts. The security footages shows the boys leaving the station around midnight and heading west. But the boys have a six hour head start and "west" is a rather large area to canvas.
With their suspect and his children in the wind, the FBI is more or less back to square one on the Winchester front. Whatever insights John (or even his kids) might have provided into the Tiger Lily cartel and its secrets has dissipated like so much smoke into the open air just as he and they have. The manhunt is on but no one is particularly optimistic, the Winchesters having proved more like smoke themselves than corporeal things to be hunted and locked up.
Nevertheless Cas feels something tug close to his heart when he hears that Dean has again slipped into the ether, the boy with the amazing green eyes tumbling off his radar once more. He feels a sort of choking emptiness at the realization he will likely never get the chance to see Dean again, let alone talk to him about all the questions that had been burning the tip of his tongue the entire time they were together, but had never quite risen to the surface.
Cas finds himself struggling under a surprisingly strong sense of unease, like he'd stumbled across a long-lost piece of himself, something he hadn't even known he was missing, only to turn his back on it for two seconds and have it disappear once again. Almost as if it was never there to begin with.
It's a strange, almost frightening emotion, that he can feel so attached to a boy he scarcely knows. He marvels at how such a profound bond could have been be formed in the space of just a few days...
Or ten years.
Depending on how you looked at it.
He feels weighted down as he trudges to his desk and collapses unceremoniously into his chair. The biggest question weighing on his mind, aside from where the Winchester boys have gone, is why. Why did they feel the need to split in the first place? True, the boys were set to be placed into care, but Cas would have figured that to be a reason to stay. Lord only knows the last time those boys had a decent place to sleep or a solid meal and Karen had promised the boys would be kept together. The obvious answer, the one most folks are running with, is, of course, that the boys had escaped to go join their father and get back to doing...whatever it is John does.
But something about that doesn't fit in Cas's mind. He can't explain it, but he knows there is more to it than that. Those boys are terrified of their father on some level. Cas could see it carved into their expressions and their marred flesh. They had every reason to want to be as far away from the man as possible. Running back into his arms, when they'd finally landed themselves in a position to escape him, doesn't make sense.
But, then again, Cas muses, maybe it doesn't have to. Many abuse victims return to their abuser again and again, against all reason, either believing they'll change or because they simply don't know how to exist without them. He is their father, even after everything that he's done. And what child could truly feel whole without their only parent? Especially at such young ages.
The local PD hit a dead end tracing the strange text to Dean's phone, so Anna sent word to the FBI office in Kansas where the phone had been purchased. They are still waiting on the results of the investigation. On top of everything else, the wait is especially frustrating to Castiel who feels strongly that, given enough time, there was a very good chance Dean would have just told him what it meant, if not who sent it.
He stares broodingly at his computer screen, watching the generic screensaver's logo bounce lazily from one corner to the next in a completely futile motion. Spinning its wheels in a long, laborious trek to nowhere.
A hand slams down on his desk.
Cas jumps a little and glances up to see a slick, forced-looking grin staring back at him.
"Hello, Agent," Detective Sheridan says, "Can we talk?"
Dean gets a text.
He doesn't recognize the number, but based on its content it could only be from one person.
~Meet me yesterday. Yellow.~
It's code. A rather simple one, admittedly, but one that's served their family well in many a sticky situation.
Dean packs up himself and Sammy and slips them out of the motel without bothering to check out. The feds'll track them to this place eventually and Dean would rather they not know the exact time he and Sammy decided to split.
They walk a few miles in the wrong direction, far enough that nobody is really bothering to look for them, and slip into an arcade. Possibly the one place in the world that two kids on their own won't be seen as out of the ordinary. They have about five hours to kill before the meet-time. And since they had to leave the motel anyway, Dean would just as soon spend that time someplace fun.
Fun is more than a rarity for him and his brother. It's a freak occurrence. A forbidden fruit, once in a blue-moon kind of commodity that their dad has no interest in trading in. Dean's few "fun" memories are precious and small. Invaluable jewels kept a dear, dark secret, held tightly to his chest. A clandestine fireworks display, tossing a baseball on a fall afternoon, a special Christmas spent alone with Sam where he received his most precious possession that has yet to leave its home near his heart. Nearly all of them take place at Uncle Bobby's or Pastor Jim's. All of them involve Sammy. None of them involve his dad.
And here, in the midst of the very worst times, and on the brink of something major, something life-changing, Dean is squeezing out one more perfect moment with Sammy.
He's going to need it.
Pete is on a mission.
He's got to find those boys but, apart from a shitty lead about a text to the older boy's phone, they've got jack-squat. He couldn't be more pissed if he were a urinal. When he finds those kids he's going to wring their little necks for putting him through this.
First, their father gets the drop on him and leaves him hog-tied and bleeding on the side of the road, and now his two children have given the PD the slip, effectively making them all look like a bunch of incompetent idiots. Which might not be that far off, considering.
But he does have one more Hail Mary up his sleeve; something everyone else seems to have their heads way too far up their asses to consider. Agent Novak.
Pete watched in a kind of morbid fascination as Agent Castiel Novak and the young Dean Winchester spoke in interrogation. Saw the connection that formed, a sort of deep, barely repressed kind of kinship between them that had no business being there. If there is any chance in hell that anyone at all knows where Dean and his brother have taken off to, Pete'd bet his life it's the young fed (which is lucky since, thanks to recent developments, that's more or less what he's doing.)
But apparently no one else has the balls to call Novak out on it.
It's just as well. If you want something done right...
"Coffee?" Pete offers sweetly through his teeth.
Novak shakes his head.
"No? Well, I'm going to have some," he flags the waitress and she takes his order.
He tries to ignore the way Novak's eyes follow him, glued to his every move, like he's some sort of intricate puzzle the man's been tasked to figure out. It's unnerving. But Pete doesn't lose his nerve. Not ever.
"Sure you don't want anything?" he asks, forcing another smile.
"What do you want?" Novak asks bluntly.
Pete puts on his most innocent face. "Just wanted to chat," he says lightly, "Maybe pick your brain about the case."
"Why?"
Novak is still staring at him. Pete fights the urge to squirm. He refuses to be intimidated by this soft-hearted fool.
"Well, we're a little light on leads, don't you agree?"
"Yes," says Novak, still looking baffled.
"So, I'd say it's time to go fishing," Pete says cheerily, not intimating he intends Novak to be the bait, "And what better place to start than those kids' last conversation before they pulled a Houdini?"
"The transcript of their interviews is all on record," Novak answers stiffly.
Pere shrugs easily. "Yeah," he drawls, "but if the answer was in the transcripts we'd've found 'em by now. Records can't tell you everything. In my opinion they leave out all the important parts. The human element."
For the first time since they've sat down, Novak looks intrigued.
"You think the Winchester children might have hinted where they were going?"
"Naturally," Pete says, thrilled to have finally struck a chord with the unresponsive fed, "They're kids, right? Kids are hardly the most dependable liars." He goes on to throw out a few made-up theories and leading questions for a few minutes before Pete realizes Novak isn't even listening. His eyes are unfocused, staring off to some distant point over Pete's shoulder, frown lines deeply etched into his forehead.
"Agent?"
"I'm sorry, " says Novak, snapping back to reality, "I have to go."
"What?"
The man tosses a few bills on the table and stands, "Thank you for...your invitation."
"Wait," Pete tries, but Novak's already gone. Disappeared. Like every other fucking hope Pete had had of keeping this whole thing underwraps.
Pete knows if he can't get Novak to share whatever brilliant epiphany he had unwittingly helped him stumble upon just now, he'll have no choice but to run this up the ladder.
Alistair is gunna be pissed.