Charlotte walked down the road, just walking down the same strip of road, clearing her mind. Often times that's all she ever really needed and it was a shame she couldn't do so more often. As she walked down the road, she spotted a lake in the early hours of the morning, a small wooden porch swing in front of the said placid lake. She decided that didn't seem so horrible and sat down, softly swinging herself as she looked on at the lake, the endless life and mystery going on underneath it and above it. She gave a soft smile when she realized this was the first time in years that she felt fine. Sam was with Dean and Dean could protect his little brother, there was no need for worry. Next to her on the bench was her beige canvas backpack; she towed it everywhere, no matter what. She never seemed to be able to leave any place without it.
In the meantime, Dean had awakened and taken the driver's seat next to Sam and started driving him away to Palo Alto. He'd drive back up the same road later to get Princess Bubbles back. While he was driving, he remembered why he calls her by such. Charlotte's handwriting was always so messy and so was Dean's, so when they were tracking down a siren in Miami, Charlotte had to go undercover as a stripper and had quickly scribbled down a fake stripper name to the announcer as all dancers were to do so and had written 'Bubbles', and Dean, who found it hilarious and not seeing the risk at the time considering this was six years ago, wrote in 'Persian' before the 'Bubbles' but his handwriting was so messy that the announcer spoke "Princess Bubbles" instead when she was called to the floor while Dean was getting beaten to a pulp by the siren. Dean couldn't help but smile at the embarrassing memory.
When they finally arrived back to Palo Alto, Sam got out of the car with his duffel, Dean leaned over and said "Hey, we made a hell of a team, you know." as an invitation for Sam to stay.
Sam knew what that meant and he gave his brother a sideways grin, shaking his head as he admitted, "Yeah." They were a pretty damned good team, Charlotte included. But, he had made himself a life here, and was ready to build on it with Jess. She was his escape, so that not only did he have something to keep him from going back to this madness, he also had a person who depended on her. But was that all? Was Jess just an excuse? No, Jess was the love of his life. He had convinced himself that many times before. Sam happily went back inside, flopped on to his bed, hearing Jess in the shower, he closed his eyes and sighed in satisfaction at being where he could call home. As Dean drove back up the road, he listened to the radio, any other cassette bringing back memories, and if he thought the radio would help banish those, then he was wrong. 'Iris' by The Goo Goo Dolls played as he drove down, remembering when it came out back in '98 and Charlotte wouldn't stop singing it in the shower so much that to shut her up, Dean would put the shower water to a cold when she was mid note. As he began to shamelessly sing along, the radio went static and Dean immediately thought back to his little pain in the ass brother Sam.
Charlotte at that moment was looking over the contents of her bag, finding this swinging bench an appropriate place to look over her belongings in the bag. She always carried a snickers bar, a water bottle, some rope for whatever occasion, leather bound booklet she had written with different incantations or rituals, two guns and a few knives and dagger not excluding the one that Sam had given her for her first hunt, his own pocket knife. She tended not to keep that one in the bag but instead in her jacket. Looking through her bag, she found a ring. That ring was the only thing she had pulled out of the ashes that one day.
Sam, as he laid on the bed and listened to Jess take a shower in the next room over, felt a cold, iron smelling, liquid drop on to his cheek, taking him by surprise as his eyes were closed, he moved his head in response, thinking it may just be the building leaking. Instead, another drop plopped on to his forehead, causing him to open his eyes and look up. There, on the ceiling lay a gentle skin, draped in her nightgown, a red gash at her center, eyes dull and unmoving, mouth limply hanging open. Jess burst into flames on the ceiling.
It only took Dean a few seconds after to burst in, yelling out "Sam!" he pulled Sam off the bed, as Sam lay petrified, yelling out for a woman that had long been dead.
"Jess!" Sam yelled out to the corpse now burning to its essential material on the ceiling. Dean, once he had burst in, had heard of the similar incident that had happened 22 years ago that had changed his father forever, when Mary Winchester died the very same way years ago. Dean's father had told him about how Dean's mother had died, but he had never experienced it, he could never imagine that this horrifying image is what had happened to his mother. He pulled Sam out of the fire like he did all those years ago and the fire department came in no time. Sam looked broken, fragmented to irreparable pieces. Dean couldn't do much of anything to get Jess back, but he knew the one thing they could do to make her death worth anything, to make their mother's death worth anything, to avenge every innocent life taken, and Sam knew what to do too. Sam opened the trunk and took Dean's rifle he had taken with him incase and spoke:
"We've got work to do."
