01- Introduction
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Nurse Milligan impatiently checked the clock hung on the waiting hall, wishing for the umpteenth time she had remembered to charge her phone that afternoon before she had to leave her home in a hurry for the double-shift at the hospital. There were only a handful of minutes left until she could go and her mind was already firmly locked on the bed that was waiting for him at home; hopefully her son had found the dinner she had left out, but she was so tired that not even the thought of food was appealing.
The hands of the clock reached twelve and the blonde quickly changed, exchanging a quick goodbye with her colleagues milling around and she had just reached the exit when chance had her cast one last look behind. Unable to pinpoint the source of her sudden unease, she had already begun turning towards the door again when something shifted just out of the corner of eyes.
She turned once again, more sharply this time around. The hall looked undisturbed, and neither the staff nor the very few visitors loitering around the room seemed to have noticed anything strange, all of them continuing with what they were doing a moment ago: a couple was whispering softly near the hallway; the young nurse whose shift overlapped with hers was tipping on the computer disinterestedly; a woman was dozing in the corner… Kate frowned.
The woman was uncomfortably slumped on one of the chairs there, head resting against the wall and long legs blocking the shortest path to the vendor machine. Kate would have thought she was trying to obstruct the way on purpose if she wasn't so clearly unconscious. She wore wholesale jeans and a faded brown jacket that no one would look at twice, her hair was unevenly cut just below her shoulder blades, and there was a certain gauntness to her features that spoke of either stress or a poor diet, but neither seemed bad enough to warrant a trip to the hospital.
She also hadn't been in that chair a second ago.
Even then, the nurse might have chosen to ignore her and let someone on shift deal with the problem, if there was indeed one (the stranger might actually have been there all along, and didn't seem in dire need of help) but something about the woman, about her clothes and her posture, too rigid even in sleep, reminded her painfully of John, John with his rock salt guns and crosses and Chevy Impala, John who had missed two of their son's birthdays in a row, John who could be dead or dying nameless and thankless in a graveyard and no one would ever know.
Kate moved forward and prodded the woman gently on the shoulder, and then a little bit more insistently until she felt her shift and slowly come back to awareness. She took a step back.
"Are you alright, Miss?" The mother kept her voice steady and barely above a whisper, having had enough experience with her on-and-off lover to know that this type of person could be very easily startled after having been caught with their guard down.
The woman turned unfocused hazel-green eyes on her and blinked sluggishly, as if she was trying to make sense of a difficult riddle in her head. After a few seconds she seemed to regain enough of her senses and straightened on her seat, her gaze roaming quickly around the room before turning towards Kate again.
"Loki?"
"Ah, no, I'm... Kate, Kate Milligan. We are in St Theresa Windom Hospital."
"Oh." There was an unnatural inflection on that sound, a detachment to the revelation that made the nurse's training stir. The brunette looked around again, faintly bemused but mostly uncaring, "I don't remember this one. Did he bring me to the hospital after...?"
Kate waited, but apparently that was all the woman had to say about her sudden appearance in the hospital hall. She was debating what to do, since her interlocutor seemed to be at the very least disoriented and maybe even in shock, when the woman spoke again.
"I knew there was something wrong with me. Cas said there wasn't."
"How do you mean?"
The woman hummed under her breath, her eyes fluttering close again and Kate felt an irrational panic that she would vanish if the nurse tried to move away. "This isn't happy," She concluded resignedly, "Dean came, and I was happy, but then… Or maybe is not my memory? I bet Adam is happy here with you. I'm glad."
Without warning she straightened in her seat, pressing the back of her hands against her eyes in what seemed like a battle to keep a hold of her consciousness but the nurse's surprise at hearing her son's name in this stranger's lips disappeared when she registered a flash of rusty red. With a gasp, Kate took the woman's left hand with hers, but as soon as the vision came it disappeared, and the woman was giving her a bemused, if slightly more focused look, not bothering to pull her calloused but otherwise unblemished hand away.
"I'm fine."
The non-sequitur slipped out so easily than Kate had trouble not immediately believing it, in spite of the woman's as-of-yet unknown frame of mind. The silence hung around them, and as awareness returned to the younger woman the tension around them began to mount, her shoulders growing more and more rigid until she finally jerked away from the nurse and unsteadily got to her feet.
"Are you sure? We are already at the hospital, after all…" Kate found herself saying, her worry refusing to abate.
The silence lasted less than a second, and then the woman smiled self-deprecatingly, the expression so similar to Adam's when he was about to try and misdirect her attention than Kate nearly missed her next words.
"I'm sure, but thanks Miss Milligan. Anyway, it's about time I got back before someone worries."
She minutely furrowed her eyebrows as she forced her legs into action, barely staggering at all though Kate wondered if it wasn't a matter of willpower rather than a testament of her health. She opened her mouth, probably to offer further justification, but Kate had learned long ago how to choose her battles and she already knew that she wasn't letting this go.
"I can drive you somewhere, if you need."
There was a brief flash of panic that was eventually replaced with wariness, and once again the nurse was transported back to fifteen years ago, barely out of school and begging for the handsome stranger to trust her before he bled out on the ground. Like then the expression it wasn't outright rejection and that was enough for her to press on, "It's really no trouble, and it's rather late to walk. Where were you meeting with, um...?"
"He'll show sooner or later, look, I should get going."
"I insist. It would make me feel better to make sure you are alright, or have someone nearby in case there is a problem, at least."
The woman seemed to resist the idea for a moment, then her shoulders shagged minutely with defeat and she agreed. As they left the building, she remained half a step after Kate, not bothering to even keep the pretense of not scanning their surroundings as they reached the parking lot.
When they reached the car, the woman stopped and Kate walked around the driver's door; she opened it but stood outside, looking the woman in the eyes.
"Do you have somewhere to be?"
"… No."
"I'll take you home, then. Just for tonight, at least."
The woman followed her movements and finally slumped into the passenger seat, unable to keep hiding her exhaustion. In fact, she looked not only tired but resigned, like she had given up on her last remnants of fight the moment she entered the car.
"So, I don't think you gave me your name?"
"... It's... Sam. Sam Campbell."
Silence descended in the car, but a side glance told Kate that her passenger had not fallen asleep again; Sam's gaze kept flickering towards the dashboard with something between confusion and dread or else turned out of the window, observing the town, the cars and the few people milling near the bars with yet another puzzling emotion, kind of like a farm girl from a small town would look when arriving to a big city. Except that Windom, Minnesota had less than five thousand habitants in all and certainly most of them weren't up and about at that late hour.
"Can I ask you a question?" The woman –Sam– turned to look at her, sitting straighter. Her hand, perhaps subconsciously, came to rest on the door handle but she nodded, and Kate finally asked what had been in her mind for a while,"… Are you a hunter?"
Sam flinched slightly but nodded and Kate gripped the steering wheel tighter, her next question rushing out without a conscious thought as a shiver ran down her spine.
"Is there something here?"
"No... Not now, there isn't."
"It's okay to tell me… I know some things… I mean, we had some trouble a few years ago, until a hunter took care of it—"
"John Winchester," Sam interrupted matter-of-factly.
Kate gasped, her previous train of thought all but forgotten, and she could not even question how the huntress knew about that, or how she knew John because there was a look of pity on Sam's face, as if she already knew the depth of Kate's relationship with the man and was readying herself for being the bearer of bad news. The blonde felt her eyes begin to sting as she tried to ignore the painful sense of foreboding.
"Do you know him?"
"Yes, I—" Sam swallowed, and once again fixed her gaze on the digital clock, like she was reading her answer on the orange numbers. "I did know him. I'm sorry. I— He, he died six— in 2006. I'm sorry."
"Two years…"
Sam winced and closed her eyes, but Kate didn't notice through the sudden pain in her chest. She had dreaded it for so long, that she had thought if the time came she would be prepared to hear even this worst-case scenario but it still hurt more than she could have imagined. The brunette observed her in silence.
"I'm sorry."
"It wasn't your fault." Kate choked out.
"…No, it wasn't." Sam fixed her gaze on the road, giving Kate the time to compose herself. "He was saving his son, you know. Not sure if it helps, but we ganked the thing that got him, some… it won't destroy any more families, at least."
Kate made a sound that could have been a snort or a sob. It didn't help.
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It had been hours since they left New Harmony, and he couldn't stop his hands for shaking so hard it was a miracle he hadn't yet driven the Impala out of the road.
Just in front of him, Sam could easily follow Bobby's truck and if he looked had enough he could just make out the hunter's head through the window. At first the older man had wanted to ride with him, and it had taken some very fast talking to dissuade him of the idea. Even now, Sam suspected that Bobby had only allowed it to give him some time to mourn away from prying eyes, and while that was part of the reason, the truth was that ever since the reality of the matter sank in Sam had not been able to hold back a flinch whenever Bobby got too close.
Sam was honestly trying to overcome his unease, of course. He knew where this road led. He had been through it once already, the solo hunts, the walls filled with info on Dean's killer and even if the brief respite had dulled his memories enough that it felt like a raw wound all over again, at the moment Sam was only too aware of the echo of the desolation taking hold and driving every other thought away. He knew how dangerous it was to surrender to it, how unstable it made him, how much he needed an anchor in his life and he knew that Bobby was the only one left who could fulfill that role; he owed it to his brother to at least try.
Yet, it was because of those six months that he knew that he was going to leave Sioux Falls within days. It wasn't only that the scrap yard had been one of the few places he could remember his brother being relaxed and happy; every damn non-descript motel room would be enough of a trigger, he knew that from experience. But with the memories brought to the forefront of his mind, buried just under the hurt for his brother he could remember with painful clarity the feeling of wood, rough against his palm and blood flowing out so quickly…
He felt a wave of nausea hit and the Impala swerved dangerously to the left before he managed to recover enough self-control to steer it back into place.
He had found the Trickster then; he could find Lilith now.
And then…Well, one way or the other, he would be by his brother's side, for good.