hello again! i just want to say thank you for all the reviews, they are really great. i thought it was time of a little brotherly bonding, and the answer to at least one mystery. enjoy, let me know what you think. :)

D: still doing this just for fun. :)

SOMETHING LOST

Chapter 13

"What do you mean I should ask Dean?" Sam began, as he and Kerri made their way up the narrow staircase, the young girl before him moving with single minded silence. She had had a life, complete and whole, the kind of life Sam had wanted, and it had all been taken away, been erased by the Demon. Hell, she had even been engaged, something the younger Winchester would never have guessed. But, then again, it wasn't that unreasonable. She was a very pretty girl, and while she was both sarcastic and stubborn, she was also very kind, and very understanding. So, why wouldn't someone want to marry her.

"I mean, there are some things that are family matters and some that aren't."

"So what was the Q and A downstairs?"

"Sam, the Demon is not a family matter, no matter what your dad and brother have told you. A lot of other people have been effected by it, and the only way we are gonna even come close to beating it is if we are all on the same page. But, what happened here, what happened between you and your brother, that's something that I have no place in."

"But, he said he would protect you."

"Like, I said before." Kerri stated firmly as she turned to Sam, both now standing by the doorway to her father's library. "It's something you need to ask your brother. Now, can you go and get the maps I need, third shelf, second row on the right."

"How the hell do you get this stuff when no one's here?"

"I don't."

"Obviously."

"I have my own library downstairs, and I have my computer. Anything else is just back up, stuff for the hunters that come through here to use. If I needed to I could have gotten the maps online, but why waste the time when I know they're up here."

"This isn't healthy."

"I know, I was thinking about buying an air filter."

Sam rolled his eyes at the sarcastic answer. "Not the dust, this, closing off half your life."

"You deal with things your own way, let me deal with them mine."

"I was just trying to help."

"And I appreciate it. But you and your brother are gonna be gone again soon. What am I gonna do when I'm up here with their stuff all alone?"

"I didn't think of it that way."

"Most people don't. You're not the first one that's noticed."

"Aren't you afraid, you know, of being in this big house all alone?"

"I have protection charms and symbols around my land, and around the parts of the house that haven't been sealed with salt. Nothing's getting in."

"Nothing supernatural. What about people?"

"I have my ways." She smiled as they turned from the library, heading down a back staircase on their way to Kerri's room. "You know, Sam." She began after a few minutes. "You don't have to worry. I won't let anyone know about you."

"I know, I trust you. Dean's just, well, he's Dean. He just gets really over protective sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

"All the time."

"He basically raised you, Sam, he's never gonna not be protective of you."

"I know. It's just, with this Demon now, and my powers, everything has just gotten more complicated. And, we've met some people that are so gun-ho about killing things. I don't know, I think it scares him."

"I imagine it does. There's a lot of nuts in the hunting world, Sam. A lot of good people, but a lot of nuts, too. It's right of Dean to be worried."

"Did anyone ever try to hunt your sister?"

"No, she got her powers pretty early on, she was a few months older then you. By the time John and the others really started tracking it, it was already too late for her."

"Can I ask you something, and you promise not to mention it to Dean?"

"Sam, I'm not gonna get between you and your brother."

"It won't. It's just something I have been thinking about, but I don't want to freak him out anymore."

"You can ask me, but I won't promise that I won't tell Dean. If its something he needs to know, then he's gonna know it."

"Ok. It's just. Everyone has been so eager to kill this thing, so sure that that will make everything right. But, what if it doesn't? The Demon chose us because of something that was already there, it didn't give us the power. I met this woman, Monica, we saved her from the Demon, and even before it attacked you could tell there was something different about the baby."

"Different how?"

"Her mom said it was like she could read minds."

"What are you getting at, Sam?"

"This Demon is gathering up kids like me, using us, but it didn't make us. People think that this thing is the threat, but what about us? We're not just gonna change when its killed. I mean, what if the thing is holding back our powers somehow? What if something bigger and badder comes along to take its place? What's gonna happen to us then?"

"I don't know, Sam. To tell you the truth, I never really thought about it. Why don't you want to talk to your brother about this?"

"Because, he's been under so much stress ever since I told him about my powers. The more that's happened the more withdrawn he's gotten. What's gonna happen to him if I'm right?"

"Sam, the fact that you're afraid of it now speaks volumes for you. I mean, I just can't see you waking up one morning as a bad guy."

"What if it happens?"

"What are you asking me?"

"I won't let Dean die for me."

"You won't have to. I don't know what's gonna happen in the future, and I don't know what killing this Demon is going to do to you. But, what I do know, is that you have the strength to beat anything that comes your way. And your brother does to."

"Just promise me one thing."

"What?"

"If something happens to me, ever. You'll find Dean, you won't let him be alone."

"I promise. And, Sam."

"Yeah?"

"I really think you need to talk to your brother." With that Kerri turned and entered her room, leaving the door open as she rummaged around, packing away the few things she would need.

The first thing Sam noticed as he stepped over the threshold was that her room was huge, and, at one point, must have been two separate spaces. One side consisted of a large bed and dresser while the other was filled with books, far more books then the upstairs library. Everything about her room was so much different from the rest of her house, so much more alive, reminding the younger hunter of what the front rooms must have been like before she sealed them off, of what her life must have been like before it all came crumbling down.

And suddenly something else caught his eye. Scattered throughout her room were a number of photographs, all free of the dust that had coated the ones in the parlor. There were pictures of her father and sister, pictures of her mother, and pictures of he, Dean and their father. All of them seemed as though they belong to different lives, Sam not even able to remember the last time he and his brother had had their photo taken together. Sure, they had a new picture done each year to help keep up with their id's but that just wasn't the same. These were taken for the mere sake of taking a picture, and Sam suddenly found himself wanting. She had a piece of his past that Sam had somehow lost out on.

"I have some more in the boxes on the shelves, you can take as many as you want."

"Are you sure you're not physic."

"I'm positive. You may want to work on your poker face, by the way."

"Noted. Who took all these?"

"A lot of them were taken by Evelyn. She wanted to be a photographer."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Well, I have everything I need. We should get back to Dean, before he mounts a search and rescue."

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"It's about freaking time!" Dean reprimanded from the dinning room, which was apparently as for as he had been able to go in his search. While his brother and Kerri hadn't been gone for more then ten minutes, to the restless hunter it felt like an eternity. He was worried for his brother, Kerri bounding back into their lives with such force, such overwhelming strength, that it had the seasoned hunter a little unnerved. The Demon had taken her sister, been inside the young girl's mind, and there was no telling what it had learned about her family, and about his.

"If you two don't mind, I'm getting a little tired of getting my ass kicked over and over again by a demented mother. Let's get this show on the road."

"Ever the patient one, Winchester."

"We're moving, Dean, we're moving." Sam stated tiredly, taking his weak brother under the arm as they made their way down the basement steps.

"Last I checked I can still walk, Sammy."

"Dude, if I let you go you're gonna face plant on the steps."

"No I wont."

"Yes you will."

"Yeah, well, now we're at the bottom of the steps. Let me go, Samantha."

"Fine, but when you fall on your ass don't come crying to me."

Kerri just laughed as she walked on ahead of the brothers, the young girl soaking up everything about them that she had missed so much. Sam and Dean had a relationship that she and her sister had never even dreamed of, the two being so distant, so different, that they weren't always discernible as siblings. Sam and Dean on the other hand, well, there was no doubting that they were brothers.

"Our car's out front." Sam began, having again taken his brother under the arm, calling after Kerri as she turned towards one of the old sheds.

"I know, but my car's out back."

"I'm not leaving my car." Dean stated indignantly, still trying to swat Sam away.

"I didn't ask you to."

"Your gonna drive yourself?"

"Come on, boys, do I look like a passenger to you?"

"I see your still driving the firebird."

"I see your still driving the impala."

"Hey, I will till my dying breath."

"Oh, I'm sure of that. We can keep in contact by phone. And besides, who's a girl to get in the way of a little brotherly bonding."

"Bonding?" Dean looked as though someone had just suggested he eat live snakes, Sam still pulling him around the front of the house, the younger Winchester knowing full well what Kerri meant.

"So." Sam began as he lowered himself into the driver's seat, Kerri's black firebird already out of sight down the road.

"What did you say to her? Why are we bonding?" Dean asked again as his brother started the car, the low growl of the impala an immediate comfort to both its occupants. It was something familiar after the last few hours of unfamiliarity. Yes, they both knew Kerri, had both grown up with her, but that was twelve long years ago. But now, now they were back to what they knew, what they expected, the Winchester brother's and their precious car.

Sam let out a long breath. "There's just some questions I want answered."

"And you didn't ask her?"

"I did, but she told me it was family business and that I should ask you."

"She knows I hate doing this."

"Still doesn't change the fact that she's right."

"No, it just makes it a little more annoying. What wouldn't she tell you?"

"Why you promised to keep her safe."

Sam could see his brother's eyes cloud over, as if the memory had been a switch, shutting of the sarcastic and sly light that had been shinning in the older man's eyes a few moments before. "It's nothing, Sam."

"I'm pretty sure that's a lie."

"Well, I don't want to tell you."

"Well, tough, because you're gonna. What happened, Dean?"

"She got hurt, ok. She got hurt and it was my fault."

"How?"

"Our dads, they went on a hunting trip, pretty big one. They left all four of us alone for two weeks."

"How old were you!?"

"Kerri and I were about eleven."

"And they left you alone?"

"You wanna hear the story or not?"

"Sorry."

"Anyway. There was this thing, a watcher, in the woods on her property. You and Evelyn, you kept telling us that you saw stuff out your windows at night, that you heard a lullaby coming from the trees. I told you to stay out of the forest, but, well, you didn't." Dean's voice grew quieter as he spoke, his eyes fixed firmly on the landscape before him.

"I don't know how I didn't hear you leave, I don't know how I didn't hear Kerri. It must have done something, I just don't know. Evelyn finally broke me out of whatever... I just don't know, Sam. I went to the woods to look for you, I found Kerri standing over you at the edge of the water shielding you from something. You were soaked and so still, I swear I thought you were dead.

"Nothing mattered to me but getting you, everything else just faded away. And then, I heard her scream, and she was just gone. It took me three days to find her, three days. That's when I swore I would never let anything happen again. Whole lot of good that promise did."

"Dean, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For not listening, back then. For making things harder on you."

"You were seven, why the hell would you listen. Nothing that happened that night was your fault."

"Still, you should never have been put in that position. If I could go back and change things I would."

"Dude, if you want a hug then you better catch up the car in front of us."

Sam just smiled and turned his full attention back to the road, the events of that long forgotten summer night creeping slowly back into his mind.