February, 2008

A couple feet behind him, Sam could hear Dean yelling taunts at the Lamia they had finally tracked to the outskirts of a small town in Nebraska. They'd been hunting her for nearly two weeks now, trying to keep up as she left a path of mutilated bodies in her wake across the state. With no small amount of effort, he and Dean had cornered her in an abandoned warehouse, armed to the teeth with silver bullets and knives. The hunt had gone downhill breathtakingly fast from there.

Sam heard a splintery crash behind him and Dean's barrage of insults took on a pained tone. If Sam had to guess, he would say that the Lamia had thrown his brother onto the stack of wooden pallets in the corner of the room. With renewed urgency, Sam hunted the filthy floor of the warehouse for his missing handgun.

"Any time now would be great, Sam!" Dean called. Dean stood, wincing, and swung a two-by-four into the side of the Lamia's head. The monstrous woman shrieked and stumbled. Hissing furiously, she batted the plank of wood out of Dean's hands and picked him up by the collar of his coat. Dean kicked, but failed to dislodge himself from her grasp. The monster grunted and threw Dean across the room again. The air rushed out of Dean's lungs and he gasped, straining to breathe. In his periphery, he could see the Lamia striding towards him, acid-green blood trickled from her forehead. Her long, sickled claws caught the faint light from the streetlamps outside and Dean really didn't want to know what they felt like digging into his gut.

"Sam!" Dean wheezed. Suddenly, the distinctive snick of a gun's safety being clicked off filled the warehouse. Sam rose from the floor, gun trained on the Lamia whose claws froze inches away from Dean's throat. Still on the floor, Dean shuffled backwards out of her reach as Sam fired once, twice, three times into the monster.

The Lamia jerked as the silver bullets hit their mark and the Winchesters waited tensely for her to fall. Dean's stomach twisted when she didn't. The monster grinned, a sickly laugh bubbling up from her chest. Sam emptied his clip into her as she walked towards them but the bullets hardly seemed to faze her. Beside him, Dean released an almost impressive litany of curses as the monster drew closer to them.

"Mortals," She hissed, "always so—" An arrow split the air, burying itself in her throat. The Lamia's eyes widened in shock before she burst into a cloud of golden dust.

There was a beat of silence and then, "What the hell?" Dean said.

"More like, 'thank you'." Sam and Dean spun around to see a young girl standing behind them, a silver bow in her hands and a quiver of matching arrows slung over her back. Sam brought his gun back up to face her, but the girl rolled her eyes.

"We all know you're out of bullets, Sam" She said.

What little of Dean's guard had come down immediately flew back up as his mind flipped through the list of their enemies that could disguise themselves as a fifteen-year-old girl. Sam could almost feel Dean tense up next to him, but Sam's gut told him the girl wasn't a threat. She looked young, dressed in a silver parka with a matching circlet resting in her dark hair. She cut a striking figure, standing there with her weapons and combat boots. But it was her startling blue eyes that held Sam's attention. There was actually something familiar about her.

"Wait. Thalia?" Sam said on disbelief. Thalia smiled.

"Took ya longer than I expected. I don't think I've changed that much." She said. "But you have. Jesus, dude, how tall are you?"

Sam laughed, tucking his gun back into the waistband of his jeans. Glancing over at his brother he could see the moment Dean connected the Thalia of the past to the girl standing in front of them.

"That Thalia?" He asked loudly. "The kid who slept on my couch and then stole my granola bars." Thalia nodded as she walked past Sam to retrieve her arrow. "You look twelve."

"I'm almost twenty, thanks." She said as she brushed gold dust off the arrow. "But, I do admit that I look young for my age."

Dean scoffed at the understatement but didn't press. He began walking around the room, gathering the scattered weapons the Lamia had knocked from their hands. Now that the shock of seeing Thalia again had worn off, dozens of questions bubbled under Sam's tongue. What happened to you? Where have you been? Why did you leave without saying goodbye?

"How did you kill it? What's your arrow made of?" Sam asked instead.

"Silver."

"Sam's entire clip was silver." Dean protested from across the room.

Thalia shot him a smug smile. "My silver is special." Outside the warehouse, the low howl of a wolf filled the night air. Thalia grimaced.

"While this little reunion has been great, I've got to get going." She said, heading for the door.

"Wait, hang on a damn minute." Dean said. "You can't just waltz in here with your 'special silver' and your bow and arrows after ten years, wearing a crown—"

"It's not a crown!"

"—with no explanation, and then leave again!" Thalia's eyes narrowed, like she was waiting for Dean to try and stop her.

"I can't tell you what you want to know."

"But you could say goodbye this time." Dean said, and Thalia's face softened. She crossed the room to Dean and Sam in a few short steps and, sheathing her bow, gave them both quick hugs.

"Goodbye, Winchesters." She said. Dean smiled at her.

"Stay safe, Thalia."

Thalia nodded, and with one last smile and a wave, she left.

"Thalia! Wait a minute!" Thalia turned to see Sam following her out the door. She stopped.

"At least let me give you my number. Call if you ever need help. Dean and I will come." Sam pulled a scrap of paper from his coat pocket and scribbled down two numbers.

"The top number is mine. But I switch numbers a lot, so the bottom one is for a guy named Bobby Singer. He'll always know how to get in contact with Dean or me."

Thalia took the paper dubiously. "I don't really carry a phone."

"Then use a payphone if you need to." Sam said. "I'm pretty sure they still exist in some places."

Looking across the warehouse's parking lot, Sam could see a group of young girls gathered at the tree line, silver wolves sat at their sides. They wore the same parkas as Thalia and carried bows across their backs. Thalia looked back at the group.

"I really do need to go. They put a lot of trust in my word by letting me go into that warehouse alone." She said.

Even from a distance, Sam could see how protective the group felt of Thalia. He wanted to ask about the wolves, and why the group was running around in the woods. He wanted to ask what had happened to Thalia. But he didn't. Sam guessed that there was really only one thing he needed to know.

"Are they your family?" He asked. Thalia smiled warmly as she looked at them.

"Yeah. It took longer than I had hoped to find them. But I have now." She turned back to Sam.

"Thanks." She said. "I mean it, Sam. Thank you. For everything. I never thanked you."

"Yes you did." Sam said, and Thalia laughed.

"A note with one word on it doesn't count." She readjusted the quiver across her back and Sam found himself sad at the prospect of her leaving again.

"Call if you ever need anything."

"I will."

Sam watched as she jogged across the parking lot to reach her family. He felt Dean join him at the doorway of the building as the girls and their wolves slipped away into the trees. Thalia, the last to leave, spared them one last wave as she too disappeared into the forest.

"Do you think we'll see her again some day?" Sam asked, echoing the same question he spoke almost ten years ago exactly.

"Maybe." Dean said. He clapped Sam on the shoulder. "I'm gonna start up the Impala."

Sam nodded, still looking into the woods where Thalia left. He stayed there in the winter chill until Dean gave him the horn impatiently from the car. And then he turned, and left to join his brother.

Sam's cell phone won't stop ringing. It's three in the morning, and his phone won't shut up. In the back of his sleep deprived mind, Sam knows he should pick it up before Dean starts throwing pillows at him, or worse, answers himself. But it's been a long week, or month, hell, a long year. Whatever.

"Sam. Answer your goddam phone." Dean mutters from the other bed as the phone begins a fresh bout of ringing. Groaning, Sam rolls over and fumbles for the phone.

"Whozit?"

"Is this Sam Winchester?" A young girl's voice asks from the other side of the line.

"Yeah. Who's this?" Sam really hopes this isn't a new hunt. He and Dean have other problems of apocalyptic proportions they need to deal with.

"It's Thalia." She says. The name sounds familiar but Sam can't place it at this hour of the morning. "You said I could call if I ever needed help?" Something clicks in Sam's head.

"Yeah. Yeah, I remember." Sam sits up in his bed, wide awake.

"Sam, who that?" Dean mumbles, face still buried in his pillow. Sam ignores him.

"Are you alright?" Sam asks. Thalia pauses.

"Yes…no. I'm fine." Her voice sounds stressed, tired. Sam wonders what she's doing awake at three in the morning. "But I need a favor. It's a friend of mine. He's gone missing. He just… just, gone. We're all looking, but, I thought…" Thalia takes a deep breath, pulling herself together.

"I was hoping you could keep an eye out for him. He's like a little brother to me." Thalia says.

"Of course we will." Sam says. Dean listens, still mostly under the influence of sleep, as his brother speaks in low, reassuring tones on the phone. He really hopes this is another hunt. He needs something to distract him from the demons and angels that currently plague his life.

"You're really worried, huh?" Dean hears Sam ask. Yeah, this definitely sounds like a hunt.

"Dean and I will look for him." Sam promises. He listens for a moment, and then reaches for the nightstand and fumbles around for one of the miscellaneous pens hotels always seem to have rolling around. "Ok, ready."

Dean closes his eyes again as the sound of pen scratching on paper fills the room.

"Don't worry about it. We'll keep our eyes peeled, and let me know if he gets back safe." Sam ends the call and flops back down onto his pillow. Dean waits for Sam to speak, but when the silence stretches past Dean's patience, he rolls over to face his brother and launches his pillow across the two-foot gap between their beds.

"Well?"

Sam bats the pillow aside easily. "Remember Thalia? From a couple years ago?" Dean nods.

"That was her calling. Her friend is missing. Some kid named Percy Jackson."

Well there you have it, Thalia's encore in the Winchesters' lives.