Heroes

By: Maygin

Summary: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Note: Thank you guys so much for all the reviews so far! They have been awesome; and really, the whole reason why I post- to bring happiness to others. So keep em coming :)

Chapter 4

Dean stepped quietly along the tiled floor, and kneeled beside one of the beds. "Myers," he whispered in the man's face with no response. "Myers," he tried a little louder. He glanced around the room making sure the others were still asleep. He reached over and poked the man hard in the ribs.

"I don't like mushrooms," Myers mumbled. Dean paused and stared at him.

"Okay," he whispered, "no mushrooms… but how about the password to the computer."

"They're evil… evil mushrooms."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face and groaned.

"You know," Dean startled onto his butt as a tired voice spoke up behind him, "he put that password on there for a reason."

Dean turned to the neighboring bed with a hand over his heart. "For cryin out loud Marris, do you enjoy torturing me?" he whispered harshly.

Marris opened sleepy eyes to focus on him in the dark room, "Myers doesn't know the password," she said in a flat whisper.

"What? Myers always knows the password."

"Not anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because P.B. found out he was the one telling you the password."

"So?"

Marris let out a growling sigh and shifted in the bed, clearly annoyed. "So he put the password on there for a reason; so you couldn't use it because he thinks you're obsessed and so you'd get some sleep which is what I'm trying to do and all I've wanted to do all day is just sleep and you're ruining it, you're ruining it Dean," her voice went distinctly into a high-pitched whiney mode and Dean held up his hands in supplication trying to quiet her down.

"Okay, okay that's fine… just- that's fine. Go back to sleep." Dean rose and walked away.

"Thank you." Marris barely whispered as her eyes slipped closed. She felt the warm blanket of sleep envelope her once more.

"Hey Marris?"

She didn't even bother opening her eyes. "Dean…I swear to the unholy realm if you even ask me for the password I will kill you."

Dean watched her; licked his lips and considered the consequences. "Sweet dreams," he conceded and left the room. He quietly closed the door and picked the laptop up from the stairwell where he'd laid it and quietly made his way down.

He pushed through the door into the garage, past the trucks and laid the computer on top of the left desk. He swiveled the chair around and practically fell into it with a defeated sigh. He leaned back and stared at the ceiling, hands behind his head. If he wasn't on the job he'd be in his own apartment using his own computer. He knew he was supposed to be sleeping and he even knew he needed it… but he just couldn't get that necklace out of his minds eye.

Dean Winchester was not a believer of coincidences and his mind had been turning over possible explanations for the past twenty-six years after his mother and baby brother died in a house fire. Everyone was a suspect until proven innocent and the littlest things became leads. Was he foolish enough to think this kid had something to do with the arsonist? No; that would've been a leap, even for him. But he needed something, anything to distract him from his current obsession. And the necklaces had intrigued him; why did only a few of the children have them and why did this random kid on the street have one? Maybe the kid was one of the Church's orphans? Curiosity was definitely Dean's worst enemy; he could never just let anything go.

"Baklava."

Dean's head whipped around. Marris loomed across from him in a pair of sweats and a tank, her hair completely disheveled and looking quite grumpy.

"Wha?" Dean asked, a little thrown.

"The password."

His eyebrows lifted, "The password is baklava?"

Marris blinked at him, her expression unchanging. "Do you want me to spell it out for you?"

Dean sat forward and leaned his arms on the desk, "I know how to spell baklava. Why woul-"

"He didn't think you could spell it." Dean simply blinked at her so she tried again. "He didn't think you could spell baklava and that you'd be too stubborn to actually ask so he made that the new password."

"Oh." Dean's fingers picked up a pen and started toying with it as he chewed on his lip, his eyes roaming around the room. Marris dully watched him without moving. She waited another minute as he squirmed before she sighed, leaned forward and picked up a pad of sticky notes and a pen and started scribbling on it. She tossed the notepad to him and the pen back into the mug; turned and left without another word.

Dean picked up the sticky note and tilted his head. "B-a-…K," he said, as if he'd just found the final puzzle piece. He glanced at the door the grumpy woman had exited through. "I knew it was K," he mumbled to himself.

He leaned forward and pulled the laptop towards him, lifting the lid and booting it up. When the welcome screen popped up, he smiled victoriously and started typing in the password on the keyboard. The computer accepted the password and proceeded to load the desktop. "What the heck is baklava anyways?" he muttered as he waited.

An hour later Dean was still no closer to finding anything even remotely looking like the charm he'd seen earlier. He'd perused more jewelry websites than he'd ever care to admit. He sighed and rested his head on his steepled fingers. "Okay… gotta look at this from a different angle." He chewed on his lip as he stared at the screen, hands poised over the keyboard. "Why would someone put a necklace over a kid's bed?" His hands turned upwards as if waiting for the computer to verbally respond. He blinked, "Maybe like a… dream catcher type thing? …for protection," he blurted out, his gut instinct suddenly typing the words 'protection charms' into the keyboard. Several million results popped up with the ten most popular ones showing. Dean smiled. "Google honey… if you were a woman I'd marry you."

He clicked on the first few promising sites and scrolled around for about twenty minutes before one particular search result caught his eye. "Symbols dot com. Alright, let's see what you have to offer."

Dean leaned back in his chair as he started scrolling through the hundreds of symbols on the page. He paused on one symbol, immediately recognizing it, and clicked on it, opening up its very own page with a brief description.

He picked up the pad of paper and started sketching the symbol on a blank sheet. It looked like three triangles made out of metal all meeting in a central point, with the flat sides facing out. He looked at his sketching trying to compare what he remembered with what he was looking at. He scrolled down and read the description.

'A plaited sign to denote success and protection against evil forces. It is found on a Sumerian sea. It is an interesting fact that plaited signs are often considered having magic qualities.'

Dean's forehead crinkled and he read it again. "Magical qualities… what kind of church is this?"

His head whipped up as a loud, wailing siren suddenly filled the building. He reached forward and slapped the computer closed, hurrying across the garage towards the side wall. He grabbed his yellow pants and started sliding them on as the stairwell door suddenly slammed open and the rest of his co-workers came pouring out. They all made familiar, quick work of getting their gear on and into the waiting trucks. Dean grabbed onto a bar next to his head as the truck tore out of the garage and into the dark streets, the red, yellow and blue lights of the siren flashing across his grim face.

"Where's it at?" He called loudly to Myers who was sitting across from him.

"Schmitty said somewhere on Delmar."

Dean gave a short nod. He didn't know why, but something in his gut was screaming at him; they were already too late.

--S--

"Winchester, tighten the line!"

Dean moved to quickly tighten the bolt against the wash, ensuring no water was leaking through and the water pressure on the hose was steady. He stood then and pulled his helmet from his head wiping a hand across his sweaty forehead. He watched the flames lick at the walls in starvation as the fire hose did its job; the water slowly eating away at the flames. Black smoke poured out of the charred windows. It was under control… but the damage had already been done.

Dean forcefully threw his hat into the truck, needing some kind of release for his anger. He cursed loudly and leaned against the truck wearily. Across the yard, sitting in an ambulance sat a man covered in soot with red eyes and in an obvious state of shock. The man just stared at the ground, not really seeing anything. Dean recognized that look; he'd seen it on his father's face countless times late at night or in the early mornings. It was the look of a man who'd lost everything he loved, a look of numb acceptance. Dean had resented that look for the longest time. It had taken a few years on the job, seeing the same look on others faces before he realized the very real pain of losing not just a wife, but a child.

"You alright?" Marris tossed her own helmet into the truck, albeit with less anger, and joined him against the truck, watching the fire slowly die out.

Dean watched the scarred house dully reflect the flashing lights of the fire trucks and police cars. "We were too late…" he shifted onto his other leg, "we're always too late."

Marris sighed and quietly stood by. "Not everyone dies Dean."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She didn't look at him; she just slowly shook her head. "We get calls every day. We put out fires every day. We save a lot of people… you're not failing at your job." She paused as the doors to the ambulance were shut and it slowly made its way through the crowds of people and news vans aligning the neighborhood road. "Not everyone dies."

"Marris, give me a hand on this line." One of the men called from the other truck. She gave one last squeeze to her friend's arm before leaving him alone.

Dean sighed and pushed off from the truck. He went around towards the back and started loading up the spare tanks into their rightful places, his eyes glancing at the surrounding crowds as he worked.

He froze, tank in hands, when his eyes caught a familiar face. He carefully set the tank back on the ground without taking his eyes off the kid and slowly raised to his full height, trying to get a better look. The kid… Matt was it? He had a hand on his jacket, pulling it across his chest… obviously hiding something underneath. The guy was watching the fire from the back of the crowd, his eyes reflecting the last of the dying flames, a forlorn expression on his face. He seemed to suddenly sense he was being watched though as his dark eyes found Dean's.

They just stared at one another for a few moments; communicating silently… what, Dean had no idea. But as the light from the police car nearby illuminated his face, Dean could clearly see black soot smeared across his cheek. Dean's brow quirked; no one else in the surrounding crowd had any smoke or black ash on them. He drew in a deep breath ready to call out to him when a loud snapping sound followed by an enormous crash erupted into the air. Dean's head whirled around in time to see the top floor of the once quaint, two-story house suddenly collapse in on itself.

Dean looked back to the crowd. The kid had disappeared, again.

--S--

Dean jumped down from the truck as it slowed to a stop in the garage. He noticed a cop car trailing behind them into the driveway. "You got that?" Dean pointed to one of the extra tanks that P.B. was currently lifting to put it in their 'refill' stock. The man nodded and waved him on.

Dean grabbed a clean rag from one of the many compartments on the truck and walked up to the police car. "Jameson," he held out his hand to the uniformed man that wearily climbed out and extended his own hand. He started wiping at his face with the rag, covering it with black smears.

"So… do I even need to ask?" Jameson inquired tiredly.

Dean shook his head as he ran the rag over the back of neck. "Same thing. Started on the ceiling." He tossed the rag onto the hood of the other man's car and then leaned against it. "I'm sure you'll get the inspectors report sometime tomorrow morning."

"It is tomorrow morning."

"Really?"

"Five-forty."

"Huh… so what'd the dad say?"

"Same thing… working late, came home, house was already on fire." Jameson's brow furrowed. "He did say something kinda weird though." Dean tilted his head towards him, waiting as the other man shifted and rested his hands on his belt, looking a little perplexed. "He said he actually made it into the room… the wife he didn't see anywhere, but the crib was still somewhat in one piece… covered in flames, but still in one piece."

Dean gave a small nod, not quite sure if he really wanted to hear the rest of the story.

"I don't know if he was just in denial or what, but he was pretty adamant that the baby wasn't in the crib."

Dean kicked at a small pebble on the concrete, "The room was probably full of smoke at that point… it's probably why he didn't see his wife either."

"Yeah that's what I figured… but he was pretty sure of himself."

"They always are until they see the lab results."

The other man drew in a quick breath, "Actually we haven't had any lab results on most of the baby victims in the last… two years I'd say."

Dean frowned at that and looked at the man beside him. "What are you talking about?"

Jameson shrugged, "The techs haven't been able to find any remains of the babies in the ashes. The mothers we always get at least some kind of either dental or bone testing. The experts are sayin it's cuz the kids bodies are still developing and with the heat index of those fires… they think the flames just…"

Dean nodded, not needing further imagery. "You said most of the babies."

"Yeah well there have been about two that we've actually found results on."

"Two confirmations in the last two years?" Dean started adding up in his head, "And we've had about what… eight of these in that time?"

"Yeah, sounds about right."

Dean pushed off from the car and turned to face the other man. "How sure are they that these kids actually died in those fires?"

Jameson blinked; this obviously being the first objection he'd heard on the subject. "Dean… this case goes back like fifty years. In all that time it's always been a mother and her six month old child. Why would he suddenly decide to change his M/O?"

Dean held a hand up, mid-shrug, "He's a psycho! I thought the whole reason we called them psychos was because they do stupid things for no reason!"

"Yeah I get that, but come on man… what could he possibly want with those kids?"

"How should I know? But you of all people should know that there are messed up people out there doin all kinds of sick things to kids these days."

"Yeah I know," Jameson conceded. "Look… if it makes you feel any better I'll look into it." Dean gave him an obvious nod. "But it's not gonna make much of a difference if we can't even find the guy."

Dean looked down and sighed. "Yeah alright. You headed home?"

The other man pushed off from his car rolling his eyes. "I wish. I've got a mountain of papers to go through, not to mention that inspector who'll be stopping by later. What about you?"

"I'm headed to church." Dean spouted off casually.

Jameson froze; his car door half open. "Come again?"

Dean sent him an impatient look, "Do you have a problem with God?"

The other man held up his hands in surrender, a grin on his face. "You're a braver man than I Winchester."

"Whatever, give Marci my condolences."

"For what?" the other man asked, perplexed.

"For wakin up next to your ugly mug all these years."

Jameson flipped him off before dropping into his car and starting it up.

"Hey Jameson!" Dean called out. The other man rolled his passenger window down. "Do you know how to spell Baklava?"

Jameson made a face, "B-a-k-l-a-v-a."

Dean sucked in his bottom lip with a slow nod. "Huh," he said, turned around and went back inside the garage.

TBC…