Author: Mirrordance

Title: Less Traveled By

Summary: High school is hard enough without an absentee father, restless spirits, haunted cars, a missing classmate and a sexual predator on the loose. Then again, the Winchesters never did anything the easy way. Dean is 17 and Sam is 13.

Hi guys,

First off, I would like to thank all those who read, favorite-d and especially all who reviewed the previous chapter of Less Traveled By, and all who did the same for my other current work in Supernatural, Ever This day :) I truly appreciate your time, patience and insights :) As always, your c & c's are very much welcome and I look forwrad to hearing your thoughts and opinions on this story. It's very much a WIP and I keep getting stuck, unfortunately, so any time I hear from you is a jolt of inspiration (or a kick to move faster haha!). Without further ado:

Less Traveled By

4: Down the Same Road

1997

He'd always dreamed of the day the rifle would be placed in his hands, and his father telling him, You can do it, Dean, I've taught you how, you know this. Go. He remembered that day, fear blended in with pride blended in with sheer determination that churned in his gut. I'll show him. I'll show him I can do this. I'll make him happy.

John had wrapped Dean's small, slim fingers around the rifle, had squeezed warmly and reassuringly before letting go. Dean had nailed his targets like there was no tomorrow, and then looked up at his father expectantly. John Winchester looked like he was going to whoop, and that mouth of his was curling up before he caught himself, and then there was like a cloud that moved in over the sunlight in his eyes. He just nodded at Dean grimly and said, Again.

Dean shot, and again he hit the bullseye. Again, John commands and into the night they went, target after target after target. When they finally went back indoors – Sammy was with Pastor Jim on a field trip - they were both exhausted. Dean went to bed, and John... Dean found him drunk in the living room in the dim light of the dawn hours later.

Did I do anything wrong? he asked his father.

No kid, you were great, John assured him, before his face crumpled like Sammy's did when he was about to cry, and he turned away from his son. In the next breath, he said Just go back to bed like it was nothing.

I don't understand, Dean said quietly. But then again he was just a kid. Maybe it was a grown-up thing...?

I wish you'd have been god-awful, John told him spitefully, acid just dripping at the words, Did you have to be so good? It would have been a helluva good reason to keep you out of this if you mucked it up.

Keep me out of what? Dean asked, and his father did not answer him for a long moment, so he said again, Dad, keep me out of-

It doesn't matter, John said, It doesn't matter, Dean, just go back to bed.

He'd been more involved in hunts after that. Dad had started calling him soldier after that. He always wondered what that night meant. When he got older he realized his father was trying to find a reason to sideline him from the hunt, from the job. But Dean had known for the longest time, as he waited for the responsibility and the honor that came with the hunt, that this was their life. He realized he probably understood that sooner than his father had... his father, who'd go after their mother's killer and say it would all be over after that. It's not going to be over. This is life.

If there was any difference between resignation and understanding one's calling, he couldn't tell and didn't care. This made him a good soldier. Was it Tennyson, that poet? These things seldom resonated with him, but the idea stuck; something about no replies and no reasoning why, just to do and die. He remembered this because Sam was bitching about their life one random day that he usually bitched about their life and Dean told him about the poem. It was fresh in his head a few hours after class and for a second there, little bro actually looked impressed at Dean's grasp of literature before he said, You know how the rest of it goes, right? A third of the Light Brigade was either killed or wounded, Dean. You know what that means? Statistically, that's like, one of three people. He looked at Dean pointedly, and it looked like he wanted to clarify that it meant One of the three of us.

Of course I don't know the rest of it, I just read enough to pass class, he had teased Sam, just to lighten the mood. Geez, kid was a real downer sometimes. Dean didn't let it ruin his perception of himself as a good soldier though, he was very possibly the best. He knew it, Sam knew it, his father's friends knew it, maybe his father knew it too. This meant he was unused to not being trusted to do a job right. He was unused to the sense of incompetence, helplessness, uselessness-

Dean wakes up inexplicably pissed. He stirs, finds his father looking down at him worriedly.

"Dean, you back with me?" John asks, cautiously, "You with me, son?"

He was annoyed with his father and he couldn't remember why. Either way, he just said "No" and went back to sleep.

When it comes to a job, John reflected, Dean tended to be irrepressible. There was always a plan, there was always a way. Finding the other missing girl became the job. Nailing the bastard behind everything became the hunt.

After watching Dean stir awake on and off, in short increments and then longer and longer, in times when he remembered what he was in the hospital for and in times he had to be reminded, the moment he's lucid he comes up with an idea.

"I wanna drive down that same road," he declares, the first thing out his mouth that made sense in hours, "Maybe it'll bring something back."

John stared at his son for a long moment; the imploring green eyes, the irises just busted up, asymmetrical and wrong. But they held fire, they always did, and he had a feeling he would be doing his son more ill by denying this request. He remembered that he'd told the detectives his son would die trying to remember, and even though he knew this was coming, it didn't make things any easier.

"I wanna talk to your doc first," John told him warily.

It's a minor production, and Dean is growling and pissed as hell about it.

"I'll be out of the hospital for like, a half hour!" he protested when his doctor insisted he travel with the IV still hooked up, with a nurse, and with an ambulance behind them. Detective Vaughn would be doing the driving, he was relegated to the passenger seat, and the backseat was to be occupied by his father, the nurse, and Detective Diamond.

"You can barely sit up," Bradley pointed out, learning within a few days that treating Dean like he was about to shatter was not the best way of dealing with him, "I can practically guarantee you you're gonna upchuck all over the nice detective's car, maybe even earlier on when we wheel you to the parking lot. You're far from ready for this, Dean. Any other doctor's gonna just tie you to this bed or knock you over the head again, mark my word. I'm just covering my ass here, you can get me fired, if anything happens to you."

"I'll sign a waiver, whatever you want-" Dean argued.

"Hey Dean, can I come?" Sam piped in.

"You are both out of your-" Bradley began, before a frustrated Dean yelled at his brother.

"You're keeping your ass on that bed and I mean it," he told Sam, "You're barely-"

"What?" Sam asked him triumphantly, "I'm barely recovered? I just woke up? I'm still supposed to be in bed? What?"

Bradley was a fast learner in dealing with Dean, but Sam trumped him and anyone else on experience. Older brother glared at the younger one, but otherwise wordlessly complied with whatever the doctor demanded.

Detective Vaughn was determined to replicate that infamous drive as much as possible, right down to the time. This left them with a couple of hours to prepare, and Dean with some more time to rest. The lights were set low in his room, the mood of the place matching the drugs he knew he was under. Normally he would not have put up with them so much, but his father, Sam and Bradley were in collusion about somethings, and if whatever they gave him helped him do what he had to do later, then he was fine with that. For now... he was calm, and the pain that had been stabbing into his head whenever he was awake was just a distant hum.

His door creaked open, let some light from the corridor into his space. He winced at it, until the entrant closed it behind... her. There was a girl in his room, walking toward him and tugging along an IV pole in one hand, and a vase of flowers in the other. Her steps were quiet, padded by hospital-issue slippers. She had a loosely-tied terry robe over her hospital gown, and in places he spotted the tell-tale bulk of bandages. She was pale, bruised, walked like she was sore. She had straight, dark brown hair in a ponytail that went down along one shoulder. She was about his age, he determined when she stood over his bed, and he realized that he knew who she was. Usually he would see her with more make-up though, more light, more laughter, more of everything. They didn't share classes together, but she was easy on the eyes and he naturally saw her around school.

He licked his dry lips before speaking, "We go to the same school."

She lowered herself to the seat by his bed, nodded in the direction of Sam's empty one. "Where's your brother?"

"Who's askin'?" was his automatic response, because he wasn't quite sure who she was and why she was there.

"My name's Annie," she hesitated, "Dean... Is that all you remember me from? From school?"

He frowned at her, and that distant buzz of the pain in his head was clawing closer and closer to the surface.

"These are for you," she said, putting the vase on his nightstand, "There's plenty more out there, cards and teddies and stuff, from the kids in school, the teachers, the cops, even the mayor's office. But your dad isn't very big on receiving visitors or accepting gifts, and neither are the cops outside your door. Except for me, I guess. This one's from my mom, from our garden."

He glanced at the flowers. "They're nice, thanks."

"She'd give you an arm and a leg for saving my life," she told him, "Not that you remember any of that right now."

He stared at her face, and nothing registered, nothing but her walking around school and laughing with her friends. She was a grade lower than him, but she belonged to this mixed-batch clique, the rich kids with the nice cars and the clothes you never saw twice. Her older gal pals have thrown him these flirty eyes in the middle of class, objectifying him because he was new and they were gorgeous and rich and tended to get whatever they wanted to play with. He didn't mind, but their boyfriends did. Two or three of Annie's jock buddies have tried to bully him, try being the operative word until he set them straight about people messing with Dean Winchester.

"Sam's," he said, his mouth dry and willing to change the subject for now, "Sam's walking around, getting his sea legs back."

"I was told you're planning your own excursion," she said, "Driving down the same road you found me in."

"Yeah..."

"I just wanted to..." she paused, thinking, "I just wanted to go down here and thank you, for saving my life. You and your brother, you're really something else. You're heroes, everyone knows that. And I also wanted to tell you... I know you're still hurting, but... but thanks, you know. For trying so hard."

He felt his cheeks burn. He was used to gratitude, being a hunter. But this was different in a way that he couldn't fully understand. Being a hunter made him feel like he was above a situation, that he could be brave because he knew what was really going on in the dark, while other people didn't. When he received thanks in that capacity, he took it in and let it feed his heart, but he also took it with a grain of salt because saving people and hunting things was his job and his responsibility. Being thanked by Annie and her mother and the kids in school and the fricking mayor though... it was different because he was being thanked as a kid who somehow managed something good, and something that was beyond the scope of his responsibility. The public nature of this whole thing was also making him uneasy; being thanked after a hunt, borrowing an alias and working in the dark was a whole lot of different from his current situation, and he wasn't sure how to handle it because he was shy in his own way.

"What if I still don't remember?" he asked her. The lowering of the guard surprised him, but it was an honest fear.

"I know you will," she said confidently. But her hand was more shy when she placed a palm over his, squeezing reassuringly. The affectionate support felt intimate and honest, deep and precocious, something neither of them fully understood yet because they were just teenagers. She sprang up to her feet nervously, saying, "You're gonna remember 'cos you need to, you look like one of those. I'm gonna go, you need to rest. Good luck, Dean."

"Thanks, Annie," he called out after her.

Bradley was wrong about him upchucking on his wheelchair on his way to Detective Vaughn's car. The massive orderly assigned to him had barely gotten him on the damn chair, his head was already spinning. Bradley's prediction had been ridiculously optimistic after all.

He settled in the seat, grit his teeth and set his jaws, set his elbows on the armrest and covered his eyes with his hands, shielding them from the corridor lights. He tried to control his breathing, inoutinoutinout... he was dizzy enough without hyperventilating after all. He could hear himself muttering some comforting Metallica as he was pushed forward. His head was going to fucking explode and they weren't even outside his room yet.

"You can do it, Dean," he heard his brother's quiet voice on the way out. Sam sounded weary from his earlier walk, voice thin and wavering, but Dean knew full well he had meant what he said. He concentrated on keeping himself from throwing up, or from letting the pain intimidate him into backing out. He did not bother wasting energy acknowledging Sam's parting encouragement; Sam knew he heard, and Sam would know it mattered.

Even with his eyes closed and his face covered by his hands, Dean could hear the commotion around him, let this paint a picture in his head. The orderly was pushing his wheelchair forward. He could hear the quiet shuffle of his father on his right, walking alongside him. He knew by the squeaking Crocs to his left that this must be the nurse assigned to him on this little field trip. In front of him were the snappy clicks of the fancy leather shoes of Detectives Vaughn and Diamond, leading the way.

"We're taking you through the back," Diamond said in a low voice, to no one in particular, "There are still reporters out front."

Dean cringed inwardly. His father wouldn't be happy about that at all, what with the Winchesters generally keeping to themselves about things.

They stopped by an open car door, and Dean breathed in the breezy evening air. It revived him a little, and he looked up as his father squatted in front of him.

"You sure you're up for this, Dean-o?" he asked quietly, "You barely made it through just now. No one's gonna say that you didn't try, you hear?"

"It can't wait," Dean said determinedly, gulping, "It can't."

"You remember what we talked about, right?" John asked him, "This gets too much, you pull the plug. And I'm telling you now, if you don't do it, I will."

"You got my back then," Dean said, giving him a wan smile, which John returned proudly, "So it's all good."

The nurse secured the IV while the burly orderly put Dean's arm over his beefy neck and hauled him up and then lowered him to the passenger seat. Dean huffed through it all, eyes closed tight.

"Good luck, kid," the orderly said, before backing off and making room for the nurse. She put a pillow behind his head, rigged the IV over the rearview mirror, and placed a paper bag in Dean's slack hands.

"What's this...?" he muttered, looking down at the airsickness bag. He actually found himself grinning sickly at the sight. The nurse just winked at him. She was pretty, she was worried, and in a few minutes she's gonna think he's a fucking superhero...

She slid in the backseat, sat between John and Detective Diamond while Vaughn took the wheel. The car lurched forward, and the dizziness hit Dean almost immediately at the sluggish movement.

He closed his eyes, kept swallowing because his mouth just started to water aggressively. His hands and feet were cold, but the back of his neck felt hot, and his lips were numb. He started to shake his leg, pressed his forehead against the cool glass window and tried to bury half his face in the pillow. He thought he was doing a decent job of keeping his discomfort under wraps, until he felt his father's hand clutching his shoulder tightly from behind him, massaging it a little.

"You're all right, Dean," John told him quietly, "You're all right."

He clung to the words, and the soothing touch of his father. He whimpered a little at the turns and the occasional pothole, but otherwise kept quiet. He had a deathgrip on the airsickness bag, assured himself with its presence.

"We're here, Dean," Vaughn eventually said, and Dean could hear the crisp ticking sound of the hazard lights turned on, as they pulled over to the shoulder of Daffy-Ashland Way.

Dean took a deep breath, opened his eyes slowly, and looked out the windshield. Cars passed them by dizzyingly, and his eyes crossed as he tried to follow them, before he decided it was a bad idea.

It was late afternoon, borderline nighttime. Everything looked dully purple-gray, like there were shades over his eyes. There was suddenly an ache in his heart, like it was smarting from some random hurt, something he couldn't remember, but depressed him profoundly.

It takes more than ten minutes to get back to that dump, he heard Sam's voice in his head, so real he looked to his right side because for a moment, he actually expected to see his geek-brother on the passenger seat beside him. The memory and why Sam would say that drifted away, wrenching him back to the present, making him gasp in surprise.

"Dean?" Vaughn prodded.

"Start driving," Dean told him tightly, and the detective complied wordlessly.

Dean stared at the road, imagined he was the one behind the wheel. He felt dizzy, unbalanced and cold, but the memories had shifted from feeling like words on the tip of his tongue – inaccessible but teasing – to all but streaming now, and he felt like something was just being wrenched open in his mind's eye.

Get your nose out of the book, Sammy, I mean it.

Lemme alone! I'm so behind it's not funny, Dean, I gotta finish this.

Would it hurt to wait ten minutes 'til we get home? It's fricking dark! Ruin your eyes, why don't you, see if I care.

It takes more than ten minutes to get back to that dump.

Well at least you got a roof over your head.

He remembered putting on the radio, and it was something lame and poppy, picked up from local frequencies. He remembered being so annoyed with Sam and so worried about their financial situation that he barely even heard it. He had kept his eyes on the road, and that was when he saw it. The fingers, wiggling through the broken taillights.

He tried to freeze the picture in his head, tried to capture it like a photograph, look at the plates on the car. But life didn't quite work out that way, and he gasped in pain and frustration from the failed effort.

"Dean!" he heard his father yell from behind him, just as he heard the Sam of his memories call out his name and ask What are you-

Grab my damn phone and call 911.

The hell is going on? Dean! What do I say?

Dean gasped and shot forward, grabbing for the dashboard in front of him, grabbing at anything he could claw on. The past was dragging at him, and he was growing less and less sure of where he was.

The white sedan in front of us a sec ago? One of the taillights was busted and I saw fucking fingers from the cracked hole, wiggling like there was someone inside the goddamn trunk trying to-

Oh god, Sam had spat out, before telling the 911 operator, I'm driving along Daffy-Ashland Way and I think there's someone trapped inside the trunk on the car in front of me... Dean! Car and plate?

The Impala in his memory was weaving, but Vaughn was driving like a damned granny. The memory was escaping just as quickly as the white sedan, and he couldn't catch up.

"Drive faster," Dean told the detective, displeased that his voice had lowered to a barely audible whisper.

"Are you sure you can-"

"Drive faster!" Dean barked at him, and Vaughn floored the gas. The humming sound of the car, and the vibrations beneath his body brought Dean back to the past. The memories were so vivid that he could have been there all over again.

"White Ford sedan from late 80's," Dean growled now, as he had then.

Everyone in the car was quiet, and he felt weirdly enough like some fake psychic with people paying him not only for a read but also for the show.

"I think he caught a scent of us, 'cos he's moving around..." he murmured, seeing that white car in his head, shifting across lanes and going past other cars. He was getting frustrated, unable to catch up and see what he really wanted to see. He moaned in sheer, anxious frustration, pressed his palm against his aching – maybe bursting? head –

- and then suddenly he saw it.

Numbers and letters clear as day, just before the trunk popped open and the girl rolled to the street. It all happened in the blink of an eye. The girl was on the ground, and Dean recognized Annie.

He realized another thing: his headlights were right on that trunk, right on that damned trunk, and there was no mistaking what he had seen and what he hadn't.

Once Annie jumped from the trunk of the white car, the damn thing was empty.

There was no one else inside with her.

There was no other girl, absolutely no one else inside.

Dean gasped back into the present, chest heaving. He was covered in a cold sweat, breathless, dizzy, shaking. He grabbed Vaughn's arm, barely managed to rattle out the plate numbers before curling over the airsickness bag and turning himself inside-out.

Vaughn pulled over to the side of the road, rubbed circles over Dean's trembling back as the kid lost his lunch into the bag. John and the nurse were already outside the car before it came to a complete stop, wrenching open the passenger's side door and sitting on their haunches, waiting for Dean to settle down. Diamond was already on his phone, babbling about the plate number Dean had reported seeing.

"We have a name and an address on that plate," Diamond reported to Vaughn after a quick exchange with their office.

Dean was hacking and heaving dryly now, but still curled around the bag. John tried to take it from him and lean him back to rest on the seat.

"No, dad..." he croaked, grip tightening.

"You're good, son," John told him quietly, and while he let go with some hesitation, he complied quietly as his father eased him to lean back on the chair.

"He's done in, officers," John told Vaughn and Diamond, looking Dean over worriedly. His son was trembling, and his eyes were set on John in a way that he hadn't seen in years; begging eyes, with all their weight set on John's face.

The ambulance that had been trailing the detective's car had pulled over behind them, and the nurse waved the paramedics over.

"We'll bring him back to the hospital in the ambulance," the nurse declared.

John eased Dean out of the car, held him by the elbow as he slumped against his father with his head hanging low. His eyes slipped close the moment he went horizontal on the stretcher. They rolled him into the back of the ambulance.

"He's a fine boy, John," Vaughn said, standing beside the worried father, "Just like you told us."

John gulped, nodded. "Keep us posted, detectives."

The three men shook hands, and then John jogged over to his son's side.

TO BE CONTINUED... I hope to see you at the next chapter. 'Til the next post!