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,
Thank you so much for all the love you've been tossing my way for this fic; I truly appreciate it, especially since I haven't been able to give replies and return that time you've been sharing with me. Rest assured though that your reviews are being read (they give me an indication of whether or not I'm headed the right way) and are certainly taken in and cherished. I have to leave in a couple of days so I'm going nuts trying to finish this fic before the year ends so you wouldn't have to wait so long... wish me luck, and I hope you stick around because we are definitely nearing completion of this WIP. Chapter 10 is almost done, and I am working on the Epilogue and Afterword, which should conclude the fic. As always, your c & c 's are enriching and enlightening and ever-welcome if you can spare them, and without further ado, Chapter 9 of Less Traveled By:
Less Traveled By
9: Toward the Light
1997
I'm really taking a beating on this, John thought morosely over his makeshift dinner of milk and generic cereal (or shredded pieces of its cardboard box for all that it sure as hell tasted like it).
A bad dinner alone, with one of his kids sputtering-pissed at him and the other killing him with quiet tolerance, and temporarily out of the center of a hunt that could have saved him from everything by distraction...
The groceries reminded him of Sam and that humbling trip to the supermarket, and of Dean who usually took on the task. It took many things to run a home, he reflected, and he had to concede that sometimes he just wasn't man enough to do it.
Sometimes? he scoffed at himself, Who was he kidding?
He heard a car pull over just outside the door of the motel room, heard Dean and Sam's shuffling footsteps, noisy and unabashedly carelessly teenage in casual circumstances outside of a hunt. John rose from his seat almost excitedly to open the door for them, eager to be out of the immediate sphere of his awful meal.
"Hey, dad," Dean greeted, heading straight for the table his father had just abandoned and sinking to a chair with a breathy sigh.
"Hey dad," Sam greeted him too, without steam (as opposed to their recent bruising encounters), distracted by his older brother's weariness. He shoved a paper bag his father's way, "L-O's. Dean and I brought you food from Annie's."
John blinked at the package, smelled the damned glorious food, neatly packed, still warm."Thanks boys," he said, getting right down to business and sitting on the table in front of Dean, tearing into the new meal.
"Dean, I told you," Sam snapped, "Change and go to bed already, you're wiped."
"Nagnagnag," Dean snapped back, straightening in his seat, "So dad, lemme give you the low-down."
Sam rolled back his eyes, but sat next to Dean at the table. His older brother briefed their father about what they had just told Annie as John ate, and Sam picked at and nibbled some of the sticks of vegetables on the side of John's plate.
He blows hot and cold, this one, John reflected. Sam's move was very casually intimate, an imperceptible action with weighty meanings that John knew they both unspokenly recognized. The Winchesters, after all, were never really into things like admitting mistakes or for apologizing, but they had their own ways of making peace with each other.
"Sounds about right," John said when Dean finished, "I know you'd rather not be doing this," he looked at Sam specifically, "But this is good, boys. Good job."
"We'll get into more stuff in the next few days," Sam said, "Other stuff she can ask, things like that. And from our end, we just have to make sure she's safe."
"I'd give her a time limit," John mused aloud, "We pull her out after five minutes max, even if there are no signs of distress."
"Five - is that just arbitrary?" Sam asked, but didn't wait for a response when he noticed Dean's eyes were slipping to half-open, "Dean!"
"What?" the older teen mumbled irritably, blinking himself to finer awareness, "Five minutes. See? I was listening; and no, it's not just arbitrary, squirt. If the ghost decides to hurt her, she runs out of air, whatever... longer than five minutes and brain cells start to die. Or something like that."
"You're wiped," Sam told him emphatically, noting the response but feeling more worried about him than enlightened, "Go to bed already."
Dean took a deep breath and ran a hand over his face wearily. He looked first at Sam, and then his father, "Is anyone gonna be killing anyone the moment I stop watching?"
"Dean," John growled at him, "Go to bed - that's an order."
Dean got up and bid them good night with a half-hearted wave. He didn't even bother changing for bed, he just face-planted his way into dreamland.
"I wish I could do that," Sam said, awed, "That's an order."
"I wish I could do that with you," John told him pointedly.
Sam's dimples winked at him, but the kid suppressed a grin, or maybe a derisive laugh. The sheer nerve and impunity!, John thought helplessly, and damned if it wasn't endearing when neither of them were being antagonistic about it.
The reporters left a few days into the return of Sam and Dean Winchester and Annie Huntington in school, off to chase new leads somewhere else or some other story. Sam had wondered with mixed feelings if the warm attention he and his brother were receiving from classmates in school were subject to the same finiteness, but this was promptly answered (in the negative) during the lunch hour.
He takes his usual spot of semi-obscurity; he would never be bold enough to assume he'd be welcome at the 'cool' table. As he started peacefully digging into his food, Dean spots him and slides into the seat across. Sam wasn't quite sure what the point was though, because he barely even gave Sam a cocky grin to acknowledge him, already occupied by Cherry and her friends who had trailed him there. Annie spots them too, and takes over another seat, dragging along a couple other people. The clique grew on from there.
It was kinetic and noisy, but it was also strangely nice. Being surrounded by people like this was like wearing a really fancy disguise; Sam was still inalienably apart from everyone else, was still unforgettably different inside. But he felt less like a sore thumb sticking out and more like the sun, surrounded by colorful rotating planets.
The three teenagers relocate to the Winchester base of operations to continue their briefing and planning. It was in the spirit of fairness, and also to give Annie a few minutes with John.
They walked to the nearby motel together, although they were trailed by one of the Huntington's cars, driven by the family chauffeur.
"It's kind of creepy," Dean told her wryly. The three of them waved as several vehicles honked at them before passing them by. It was a couple of their lunch buddies heading home.
"Mom and dad have no plans of letting me out of their sights anytime soon," Annie said, "I don't mind, it's kind of reassuring. And Daniel too, I guess. He's been with the family a long time. I think he also feels bad that I was kidnapped so he's been really vigilant. When he drops me off for school he waits until I'm inside before leaving, and when he picks me up he's always early so that by the time I step out he's already there."
"Kind of like you with me," Sam teased his older brother.
"Shut up," Dean growled at him. They walked over to the door of the Winchesters' room, Dean running a hand across the Impala's side like a small 'hello' as he passed her by.
"Speaking of creepy," Sam said under his breath, an aside to Annie who had laughed.
"Dad should be back from work in a little bit," Dean told her, sliding the key into the lock, "And you gotta know; it's not much, but it's home."
While Sam was certain that Dean cared what she thought, Dean certainly didn't watch her face as she looked around the small space, probably expecting that he would not be pleased with what he would find there. Sam did though, and closely.
Her pleasant face registered shock before anything else – Oh... - the moment of recognition of the profound discrepancy between their lives. That yes, these boys really were really categorically poor. The look turned to curiosity, because her gaze moved from wide to piercing; how do you live, where are you from, who are you... and then her eyes warmed, because in her search for answers, she found three sets of boots lined up against a wall, bags neatly alongside each other. There were three bowls, three plates, three mugs... She caught Sam's eagle-eye, and she smiled at him brightly. He blinked at the sheer warmth and generosity of it, and could only return it clumsily, caught by surprise.
As the night wore on, Sam liked to think that Annie grew to admire them more. She had watched Dean cook a mean mac n' cheese with fond skepticism, before she tasted it and then ate every piece of it she could get her hands on. She looked over Sam's report card posted on the fridge, saying maybe she should have asked him about calculus instead of Dean.
"No need to be mean," Dean told her wryly, though his eyes shone with pride for his younger brother; it was he, after all, who had put the thing there on display, "I gave you the right answers the last time, didn't I?"
She had listened to John in rapt attention as he told her more about the hunt and what to expect, eyes sharp as she took things in. Sam had to admit that in many ways, their father was one hell of a teacher. He was precise, perceptive, reassuring and most of all, he expected the best from his students.
She went home that day bearing vials of salt, and a small silver knife with an iron detail at the hilt, all for practice and possible use when she finally gets a chance to return to the trunk she had been imprisoned in to speak with Linda Carin. She went home looking hardy and prepared, gaze steely and sure, except toward the end, when the three men walked her out to her car and she seemed hesitant to leave. Daniel was waiting for her behind the wheel, the motor running.
"Thank you, Mr. Winchester," she told the oldest hunter earnestly, "Really. I can't say this enough, but this feels right. I think I can do this."
"I think you can too, Annie," he told her gruffly, patting her shoulder before leaving the kids alone and walking back inside.
She watched him go, saying, "Your dad's real awesome, guys. You have a wonderful family." She laughed nervously and admitted, "I'm almost sad to leave, like I'm missing out on part of the story when the door closes."
"This one's just headed to sleep so nothing to see," Sam pointed his thumb at his older brother, attempting for levity because they all had a sense of where this was going.
"How do you..." she hesitated, "I mean I've asked before, but, how do you know - you know what? Nevermind. Long story, different d-"
"Our mom," Dean told her, surprising all of them by his candidness. But Sam looked at his brother's face and knew that along the course of the evening, he too had seen how this girl – this stranger – had warmed to them and admired their family exactly for who they were. And no one gets on Dean's good side sooner than those who gave a care about the Winchesters.
"Our mom was killed by something," Dean admitted, and the words sounded like a confession, solemn and true and sorely regretted, "That's how we got into this. We've been trying to hunt it down and along the way, you find there's more craziness out there and you just gotta keep everyone else from losing theirs, or whomever."
She pressed her lips together and nodded. Sam could tell she was sorry she asked, was sorry she had pried. But that was done already, and the situation deserved more than a mere apology for intrusion, so she didn't bother.
"Thank you," she said instead, "Thanks for telling me. And thanks too... for doing what you do."
The big news in school centered around who were or were not invited to the upcoming sixteenth birthday party of twins Mick and Mal Tannery, two of Annie's – and Sam and Dean's too now, Sam supposed – friends.
"It's gonna be off the chain, Sammy," Mal told Sam excitedly as she handed him an invitation. It came in the form of a customized jack-in-the-box, and it was so horribly conspicuous that anyone in school could tell right away if someone was invited or not. Sam wanted to shove it into his backpack but the damn thing wouldn't fit.
"It's Sam," he muttered, even though he's long past expecting to be heard or heeded. His extremely virulent older brother was managing to infect everyone in school with calling him by the childish nickname.
"There's gonna be a deejay," Mick continued for his sister, "And old-school stuff like clowns and sexy circus freaks and fire-breathers. What did the planner say about the Bengali tiger, Mal?"
She rolled her eyes and just summarized economically, "It's gonna be fantastic. Be there."
Sam was the only freshman invited he was told, which was apparently a big deal, and his classmates kept asking to look at the stupid box and girls were asking him if he was allowed to bring a plus-one as a date.
Date, he thought disdainfully, because he wasn't even sure if he was going. His older brother, on the other hand, had been more open-minded; "Sounds like fun, I mean, it's free food."
"Where's your invitation?" Sam had asked him, and Dean flippantly said that he couldn't remember, and couldn't be bothered to keep track of these things.
The other big piece of news going around was about an informal poll that the less discrete classmates of Sam were not kind enough to keep him ignorant of.
This girl he barely knew popped out of the girls' bathroom right as he passed it by and grabbed him by the arm. She was lucky he was not so off-guard that he decked her by instinct; he got to check the impulse and focused instead on why the hell he was being pulled into the girls' bathroom and thank god it was empty.
"Sammy, look!" she exclaimed, giggling as she flipped open one of the stall doors in his face to show him some writing on the back.
"It's Sam-" he muttered, before he cut himself off at the sight of a question about what song you'd want to be playing while making out with Dean Winchester in the back of his bad-ass car.
His eyes raked through the words – all in squiggly girl-writing - before he could stop himself. The popular picks were Crash Into Me by the Dave Matthews Band and You Were Meant for Me by Jewel. Sam didn't know any of these songs or even most of the others that have been written and he doubted Dean did; the only person who probably had a shot in hell of fulfilling this stupid wish list was the 'anonymous' girl who wrote down Cherry Pie by Warrant at the bottom, and everyone knew who that was. She even left a cocky lipstick mark on, and god knows what sorts of germs and bacteria she had picked up from doing something like that.
"Gross!" Sam exclaimed, shaking his head and speed-walking out the door, running right into the path of Mrs. Medina. They hit each other with an Ooof!, and she backed away, looking first at him and then to the door of the ladies' room that he'd just come from.
"Samuel Winchester," she began, voice rising a little, "Did you just come from-"
"No," he said right away.
She frowned, considering, before she just let it go, "Forget it. I was going to seek you out but since we are both here, I have good news for you: You, your brother and Annie have the go-ahead to see the car in evidence. The DA okayed it, the detectives agreed, and so did a couple of my colleagues. It will be tomorrow during school hours, so some arrangements would have to be finalized with your teachers, but with Principal Strauss' support, we should have no problems whatsoever."
Before he and Sam intersected in high school, Dean was usually the first one out of the classroom the moment the bell rings to signal the end of the school day. This was so for a number of reasons; sheer desire for escape from academic pursuits, the need to pick his kid brother up from his own school, and to hurry off and do his real job. Ever since Sam became a freshman, though, Dean found he could take his time. Hurrying out usually meant he had to wait for Sam, who was one of those classroom-lingerers.
Sam had the tendency to wait until the bell and the teacher's official dismissal before shoving his books and notebooks into his backpack; Sam found it impolite to start packing before the teacher said goodbye, and he didn't want to miss jotting down the teacher's last-minute reminders. Dean is sure that the anal compulsions implied by this is something the kid picked up from their task-oriented father. The politeness... well god knows where that came from.
Dean was pretty sure he raised the kid, but he wondered if Sam ever picked anything up from him because Sam certainly seemed like such a different animal sometimes.
He walked down the halls to his locker, greeting the random person who passed him by. Few of them truly registered in his world: there was of course the hot chicks, the people who had been decent to him even before he and Sam categorically got into 'the in-crowd,' and Annie's jock friends who used to bully him and who were now friendly with him. Annie herself he found standing by his locker, looking agitated again.
"Hey," he greeted her; she stepped aside to give him room to shove his things and shut the door.
"Dean," she said, before going quiet and working her lip. Strangely enough, Dean wasn't unused to her awkwardness. He's been in the business long enough to recognize how normal people – no matter their age, gender or profession - had the tendency to cling to him and his family in the midst of their uncertainties about the supernatural. Getting shoved into the life like she had recently been was like getting tossed into the water without knowing how to swim; you just hung onto the nearest guy who could.
"What's up?" he asked her.
"You know we've been allowed access to the trunk," she said.
"Yeah I was told about it," Dean said coolly, trying to convey to her a sense that everything was going as expected, and that things were in control, "Exactly according to plan, right?"
She nodded shortly; he suspected she rightfully had acquired some new neuroses since her kidnapping, but then again who wouldn't? It was horrifying enough to be the victim of any crime, even more to be shoved into an enclosed space with a ghost.
"You have any concerns or questions?" he asked her.
"Not... really," she admitted after a moment of thought, confirming his suspicions that this was just her, feeling like she was drowning and just hanging onto them again.
"You know," Dean told her, "One of the things you really have to understand is that you're supposed to be scared. I mean, geez, who the hell do you think you are not to be? This stuff is freaky."
She chuckled nervously, "Well you sure don't seem scared."
It wasn't true, he was always scared and he wondered if she should know that. He was scared of failing and getting someone killed, or of disappointing his father. Worse, he was scared he'd physically lose his family if they should get hurt or killed. He was scared how he and Sam would live without their dad if anything bad happened to him while he was on his own. He was scared of his father losing his mind to this obsession. He was scared of Sam losing his mind over their father losing his mind to this obsession, and then he himself being driven over the edge by the two crazies. It was like a death-spiral, how fucking terrified he was about so many things, each one feeding into the other.
"I guess I'm just cool like that," he told her instead with a twisted smirk, deciding he would treat her like Sam, because most of the time it worked.
She smiled at him, saying, "I'll see you tomorrow, Dean."
If the preparations had been done right, there is not much to do just before a hunt but get dressed, get your game face on. In the Winchester household, the preparations were almost always done right and this case was no different.
The sun rose, and one by one the three men took turns in the shower. Today though, instead of dressing for school the two teenagers dressed as they would on a job; the bulkier clothes with all the functional pockets, already lined by capped plastic test tubes of salt in lieu of salt rounds and shotguns (they were not bringing their illegal guns to the police station), and their smaller silver knives.
"Oh Dean," Sam said as he slipped on a jacket, "I told you, right? I'm gonna need a lift to that thing next week."
Dean was munching on his oatmeal, "Did dad say 'okay?'"
"Who's going where?" John asked, patting himself over and checking if any of the weapons stuck out conspicuously, "And Dean, for god's sakes, chew with your mouth cl-"
"Julius Caesar at the community center," Sam said, "It's for English class, I have to write a report afterwards and everything."
"What am I?" Dean sighed, "The family chauffeur? Bring me here, bring me there-"
"Well I have to go," Sam pointed out simply, "You wanna sit with me and watch?"
"What time do you want me to drop you off again?"
The three men soon took John's truck and drove over to the police station. They were led to a conference room where Vaughn, Diamond, the Huntingtons, Mrs. Medina, and a couple of other people they didn't know were already waiting.
"It looks like a party," Dean said under his breath to Sam, who elbowed him to keep silent. They both nodded at Annie, who looked like she was ready to explode. Her eyes were wide, and she was shifting her weight from foot to foot. In many ways, Sam now recognized that in the end, despite the danger to her, this simply had to be done. If not for Linda Carin's peace, then at least for Annie's.
"Mr. Winchester," Vaughn greeted them, "Boys."
"You know the Huntingtons," Diamond said, "And Mrs. Medina from your school. For today's trip we are joined by District Attorney Tam for the government and Attorney Edison representing the defendant, observing. And we also have officers Cannon and Arnott from the crime lab to keep the integrity of the evidence."
"Just to set a couple of ground rules," Vaughn explained, "The only person of all of us allowed to go near the car and to touch it are the crime lab and Annie, all of whom will be in regulation protective gear to ensure that the evidence will not be contaminated. Our only access is to the trunk, when Annie steps inside. The rest of the car is off limits to today's inspection. Are there any -"
"No questions," Annie said quickly, "I'm ready, I'm ready, let's please just get this over with."
The group walked out of the conference room and past neat but intricate ways of halls and offices, down to the basement, where there was a large storage warehouse / workroom. Annie had magnetized toward John Winchester as they walked, painstakingly matching his pace, sidling closer, seeking some wordless reassurance that she could find only in his purposeful strides. This was usually Dean's spot, because it was usually Dean's need, but he understood the feeling profoundly and gave her the room.
They turned a corner and then suddenly - just like that! - the car was there, grimed from her dip in the lake, but still distinct and white and strangely menacing.
The room was dimly illuminated by flat white lights overhead, but the car was the star of this demented showroom, practically glowing from the focus of industrial-sized spotlights on standees around it. These were apparently there to help the CSIs work, but with the car just idly sitting there, the lights now made the whole scene look like a macabre still-life.
The observers were led to one end of the room, near the wall and about ten feet away from the trunk of the car. Annie was taken in hand by the crime scene investigators, who gave her a plastic jumpsuit to wear over her street clothes, a hairnet and a shower cap for her head, a mask, and gloves. Everything was several sizes too big, and Dean thought she looked like a little girl borrowing big-person-clothes (something Sammy had said to him long, long ago, when he first slipped into his father's leather jacket as a kid). They also wired her up with a hands-free radio, and instructed her to tell them right away if she wanted to be pulled out or if she needed anything else.
Everyone was silent as she finally made her way to the trunk. She paused before it, taking a deep breath that she couldn't seem to be able to exhale as her body froze and trembled.
"Annie...?" her father called out from behind her, "Honey if you don't want to do this, you don't have to."
"No one's gonna say that you didn't try," Dean told her quietly, echoing his father's own words, just days ago. He knew the statement caught his father's ear, but more importantly, it caught Annie's.
She turned to face him, and her shoulders squared, before she turned her back on them again and she lowered herself into the trunk, carefully. She sat down, and then swung her legs in. She was shaking a little as she laid down on her side and curled a little, back to the deeper interior of the trunk. Her eyes – stormy, fearful, determined – were set on Dean's when the officer closed the trunk and cut them off with a thick, final thud.
John looked at his watch; it was 10:05 in the morning, and all protocol be damned, if something didn't feel right he was pulling that girl out of there in five. He noticed that Sam, standing to his left, had done the same thing and marked the time. Dean, on his other side, lowered his stance like he was ready to spring forward at a signal from his father.
For a long moment all was quiet, just before they heard a loud thunk! from the trunk, and the car shook a little. Jed shot forward first, his daughter's name already on his lips. He was held back by Diamond, who'd strategically stood beside him.
"Let me go!" he growled at the detective.
Diamond didn't, and just looked at his partner expectantly. Vaughn pressed a radio to his mouth, calling out to Annie - "Annie? This is Detective Vaughn, you doing okay over there?" Silence, and the cackling of the radio, "Annie? If you don't respond we'd have to pull you out-"
"I'm fine," came the terse, shaky reply. The reception was bad, and this was something expected with the spirit activity wrecking havoc on the signal, "Just... got startled there for a s-."
"Who are you talking t-" a smaller, and even shakier voice cut her statement in from the background, and that was the most John could make out before the line broke off completely, with a loud wail that had Vaughn tearing the piece away from his face.
"What the hell was that...?" he murmured before he could think, eyes shooting up to Diamond.
John's heart started to beat faster. The ghost was in there with Annie; the voice on the radio and the disrupted signal assured it. This was, of course, the expected part. What would happen now was the larger, more important question.
"Comm link's cut," Vaughn said after trying the radio again, several times. "We can't know if she's in trouble. Get her out."
"Get her out," Margie echoed, hand gripping her husband's arm.
One of the gloved crime scene investigators headed for the trunk, tried to gently pop it open out of deference to the evidence. He touched the lever and stepped back, inexplicably startled.
"Damn thing is cold," he muttered before trying it it once, twice, and in failing, neatly sidestepped away from the car and having the other investigator try it. This one tried opening the trunk with more force, but the thing just would. not. budge.
"Getherout, getherout, getherout," Margie started chanting.
"I can do it!" Jed growled, jerking in Diamond's determined hold.
"Dad?" Sam looked up at his father, and John could feel both his stare as well as Dean's. "Dad?" he pressed.
John weighed his options; there was an ax mounted on the wall along with a fire extinguisher a couple of feet away from them, though he doubted it would be much use if the trunk was on supernatural lockdown.
"The crack in the taillights," John barked at the cops, "Check on her."
One of the officers kept trying to pop the trunk, while the other one leaned over and yelled into the small hole, "Annie? Annie? You all right in there? You gotta give us a sign here-"
Gloved, shaking fingers wiggled out of the hole, and the CSI officer gripped them tightly in reassurance.
"We're getting you out, all right?" the man told her, "Just give us a sec and we'll get you out. Something's up with the latch, maybe some corrosion, maybe something else, but we're getting you out. Just calm down, all right? Squeeze my hand once if you understand."
The fingers gripped his tightly in the affirmative, before releasing.
"Okay," the man said, exhaling a breath, letting her go too and looking up at everyone else, "She seems okay, we're still good."
The two CSIs stepped away from the car, tried to weigh their options. How were they supposed to get her out without damaging the car to the extent that it could not be used in court?
Suddenly, they heard a low-register click, followed by a squeak as Annie herself pulled the trunk open from inside the car, just as she had the first time she was stuck in there. She pulled it wide open, gasping as if coming from underwater, leaping out of the trunk and onto the ground, on all fours.
The moment she was out, all hell broke loose with her. Her parents shot forward to catch her. For the Winchesters – who knew to look – a translucent gust of energy emerged from the trunk behind her, taking to the air. The overhead lights and the spotlights burned intensely bright for one long second before the bulbs exploded and the lights fizzled out, leaving the basement warehouse in pitch black that was also suddenly eerily and unnaturally cold.
And then just like that, all was quiet, save for the muffled rasping breaths of Annie, held by Jed and Margie. When the emergency lights came on, bathing the room in muted blue light, John found the Huntingtons holding onto each other on the ground, the cops and lawyers wide-eyed and confused, and his two sons crouched low, eyes alert, fearless and ready for anything.
No one could (or in the case of the Winchesters, would) explain what had happened, but the electricity had shorted in the evidence storage room, all of their charged electronic equipment - particularly cellular phones - had been sapped completely of power, and the room had been plunged into a freezing temperature for a few minutes after Annie freed herself from the car.
She was shaky but unhurt, allowed to go home after a brief statement saying that even after reliving the experience, she could recall nothing but what she had already told the cops in her initial statement.
As they all walked to their respective cars to head home, she pulled herself from her parents' side and stopped before the Winchesters as they were about to board their truck.
"It was Linda Carin," she told them, voice low, eyes watering, "And... and she never tried to hurt me. I never had to use the stuff you gave. She really was just a scared girl."
"You did good, Annie," Sam encouraged her.
"I couldn't find out anything else," she went on, "She didn't know anything, she never knew what hit her before waking in the trunk. She never knew. She was so scared, and I couldn't do anything else for her. I just... I just told her we'd get out. I told her I knew how. I told her I'd open the trunk, and she'd see a brilliant light, and all she had to do was jump out with me.
She stared at John's face, searching, "You think she did, don't you, Mr. Winchester? That's what all the lights and the cold meant? She jumped out into the light with me?"
John pressed his lips together and nodded, "Yeah. I think she did."
Her eyes released the tears weighed by them, and her face crumbled into a relieved, laughing sob. She pressed her hands to her face.
"You're both out now," John told her soothingly, "You did what you had to for her. Now you leave solving her murder to the cops and move on. You got the rest of your life ahead of you."
TO BE CONTINUED...
... where maybe the rest of her life isn't that much ahead of her after all, and the Winchester luck rears its ugly head yet again as we find out why Dean never got to finish high shcool.
'Til the next post!