To Those We Left Behind for Wandersfound
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spn_summergenTitle: To Those We Left Behind
Author: annie_46fic
Recipient: Wandersfound
Rating: PG15 to be safe – some curse words and dark subjects
Warnings: Vague spoilers for Seasons 6 & 7 – character deaths ‘off screen’ but not the main characters
Author's Notes: The most difficult thing I have ever had to write – ever! I always either write about Sam and Dean or J2 – I haven’t really explored the
other characters in depth before and the spectre of Dean and Sam hovered over this whole story!
Summary: There were two prompts that caught my eye and they were Sarah Blake hunting. Would love to see her end up at the Roadhouse at some point, but mostly I just want her learning how to take on the supernatural. Lisa Braeden doesn't remember when she learned to use a gun or why there are lines of salt across all of her doors, but she's going to find out.
This story is a result of merging both these prompts. The best summary I can offer is Sarah Blake kills the thing that kills her father. She becomes a hunter, trains with Bobby and befriends Ellen, she never forgets Sam Winchester. One day Lisa Braeden calls her up to ask her help. She seems to know weird things and wants to know why. The Black Impala that stops outside her house on regular intervals doesn’t help but even though the Winchesters are forever rumoured dead or killers Sarah doesn’t believe that they really are dangerous…
Sometimes, in the coldness that night brings, she dreams.
His mouth is soft on hers, a gentle kiss that is nowhere near, what she wants or needs, big hands on her face exploring, slanting eyes as exotic as any fox staring down at her from that great height.
She dreams of razors and a child in a white dress corrupt and rotting. She knows what he did and she knows he is driven by revenge and need. She was young and innocent and wondered if he would come back and in her dreams, she hears the rumble of that big, black car, the slam of the doors and the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside her house.
Seven years and there is no more innocence; seven years and she is as worn and as driven as him.
****
His picture was on the news one night not long after her father had passed.
They said he was a murderer wanted in several different states; they said he was dangerous, not to approach him. He looked bigger and, impossibly, taller, hair longer and wilder, eyes still exotic but more desperate, indelibly sad.
She sat on the window seat, carving out a stake from fresh sawn wood. She had no reason to fear the dark anymore, hardened as she was to what lurked there, so she just sat and stared into the inky blackness, wondered where the stars were, if there was a full moon lurking beneath the clouds. Life had changed her almost beyond recognition and she wondered if she were to see him again would he know her.
****
She knew her dad hadn’t died naturally; hell she was convinced of the fact. A locked room, a slashed throat, eyes wide with fear. At the time, she had been scared witless, her hands seeking her cell phone, fingers pressing digits almost unconsciously; the number he had once given her long since dead and gone.
Like hunters before her, she had been compelled to kill; revenge thick in her throat like mud. She had wanted to learn everything all at once but she needed training, needed help. She knew that Sam and his brother weren’t the only hunters in the world and she knew that someone, somewhere would know something. A few calls later, she was on a bus on the way to South Dakota, and her childhood home was behind her and she never, ever looked back.
****
Robert (call me Bobby) Singer wasn’t what she expected. He was old, more grizzled, all dirty caps and grime beneath his fingernails. He treated her as if she were a delicate flower until she slapped him around the head and demanded he teach her everything. That night he brought her down with a scissor kick to her legs, her back and ass bruising as she fell hard. The whiskey he gave her was cheap and sour but it was her baptism wine, her ‘unholy’ communion and she laughed with him over hot chili and burnt bread, her life as a hunter beginning right that moment.
She knew he knew Sam and Dean but she never spoke about them, never let on. She wanted to know, she wondered but she never asked. She wondered if they found and killed the demon that murdered their mother, wondered if they ever reunited with their father. She knew she could ask Bobby but she never did.
****
When she killed the thing that killed her father, she thought she would find peace, go back to her old life, and settle down. Instead, she stared at herself in the mirror at the hard face with no make-up, hair tugged back into an untidy ponytail, hands no longer delicate but callused, torn and bitten nails, bruises and scars. There was nothing of the elegant art dealer’s daughter left and she knew that she would never return to her old life and that this new, dangerous life, would be the way forward for her.
****
She found the roadhouse in her second year of hunting. Rebuilt from old timbers, the first one burning down the year before, demons someone whispered and many hunters killed.
Ellen owns the roadhouse; she is sharp tongued and taciturn, her own daughter long gone, wanting to hunt, wanting independence. Sarah hears the name Winchester for the first time in a while but she doesn’t want to react, it was a long time ago, ancient history now. She shares a bottle of whiskey with Ellen and listens to her extol the virtues of someone called Ash. Ellen asks her to stay when drunk and confirms it when sober. Sarah doesn’t want to be a substitute for Ellen’s daughter but the temptation is too much. She is a hunter now and this is the best place for her to be. She can learn so much, do so much so she agrees and Ellen smiles, genuine, for the first time.
****
The hunters that pass through are hardened and focused and Sarah learns so much. She hears the odd piece of news here and there about the Winchesters, about how Dean has vanished from sight and Sam is alone. She feels an odd stab of something but there is little connection between the mooning girl of the past with the toughened hunter of the present and she puts any thoughts of Sam Winchester to the back of her mind until, months later, the Apocalypse happens when Lucifer rises and the blame is laid firmly at Sam Winchester’s door.
****
Ellen dies with her daughter in an explosion in Carthage, Missouri. Sarah is serving beer to one of the regulars when she hears and she cries for the first time in a long, long time. The roadhouse, it seems, is hers now and she makes it her home, content, at least, amongst the beer fumes and the sawdust, hunting, still, when time allows.
Bobby keeps in touch; she heard he was crippled, an accident he tells her and he isn’t saying more. She learns all about omens and the appearance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Bobby talks about Death and Pestilence and she shudders as she stares out into the foggy darkness wondering what lurks there now.
She wonders, often, if the Winchesters ever hear about her, a roughened hard nut of a woman, mixing with hunters and taking bad asses down. She guesses even if they did no one would ever connect her with sweet and innocent Sarah Blake. Hell it has been years since she even used her own name, months since she put on lip balm, weeks since she had done anything to her untidy hair.
It is late May when she learns Sam Winchester is dead; seems like she hears rumors like that all the time and doesn’t put much store by it. She is hunting a Were in the forests of Canada. It is freezing despite the lateness of the season and her leg hurts from a particularly hard slash of claw. She has washed it out in holy water and stitched it herself but it is stiff and, possibly, infected and she fears a hospital visit if things don’t improve.
The creature is dead; she’s covered in blood and her cell is ringing. She wipes her face to find it is Bobby calling.
He sounds wrecked as if he has been drinking for hours. The Apocalypse is over he says, Sam is dead he adds and she hears the tears in his voice and, for the first time, she believes it.
****
“I need some help.”
The voice is female and calm but there is an edge of panic to it and it makes Sarah wonder. In the background, she can hear beeps and whistles; a computer game she thinks.
“Yeah.” Sarah bites the pen and pulls out a scrap of paper. She puts her boots up on the bar and crosses her ankles. One of the hunters whistles and she flicks him the finger.
“I salt my doors and windows every night,” the woman’s voice is shaking a little now and it is obvious she is trying to maintain an air of calm. “There are symbols painted on the inside of my doors and one on my boy’s ceiling.”
Sarah frowned. “And?” She asked, finally, at a loss to think of anything else.
“I can load a shotgun and hit targets,” the woman sounds spooked. “And I – there is no reason why all these things are connected . . . and I don’t know why I’m doing it but – but I think I need help.”
“How did you get my number?”
“Guy called Bobby gave it to me.”
Sarah grunted and took down the address. It was somewhere in the suburbs; a place she might have once known but now seemed alien to her. The woman, Lisa, was doing everything she should do to protect her house and her child and Sarah was sure that a hunter had taught her all those tricks but Lisa swore up and down she didn’t know any hunters (she was opposed to blood sports) and that she wasn’t even a bit scared of the supernatural.
When she turned up on Lisa’s doorstep Sarah saw the look of curiosity and mild shock in the woman’s dark eyes. She was attractive, subtle makeup, smart clothing and shiny shoes. Her son, Ben, stood beside her, tall and gangly, a typical adolescent Sarah thought with a smirk - always on the verge of a mood or a tantrum. She had been like that herself once, in her ‘other’ life and now, she could always spot the signs.
“Come on in.” Lisa smiled, warm and genuine. “I have beer in the ice box – you look like you could use one.”
Sarah smiled back and thought, maybe, she would get on with this woman after all.
“Yeah,” she said, “I sure could.”
She was at Lisa’s when she saw the news report and she sat speechless on the couch unable to think of anything to say.
She had been investigating Lisa’s ‘problem’ for a month and, to her surprise, she and the other woman had become firm friends. Lisa was tougher than she looked, guarded her home and her son like a lioness and seemed to know all the rituals of protection that only toughened and seasoned hunters like herself adhered to. Ben claimed it all started after a car accident a year before but Lisa wasn’t sure. She was scared of her knowledge and what it meant, what it might mean. Sarah was certain that Lisa had been involved with a hunter but she had no real clues and Ben didn’t know much either.
Now they sat on the couch watching the Winchesters – the fucking Winchesters – on America’s most wanted, a film of them killing a diner full of people, playing over, and over on repeat.
“Do you know them?” Lisa asked, softly.
“Once upon a time,” she answered and she wondered where those two young people, that had once been Sam and Sarah, had gone.
“They’re lunatics,” there is the vague sound of panic in Lisa’s voice and Sarah shook her head.
“Perhaps,” is all she can really say.
Two weeks later and the Winchesters are dead – again. Sarah doesn’t even react to it now, just locks her weapons in the trunk of her old car and drives up to the burbs to visit Lisa.
****
She is too drunk to go home so she takes the spare room. It is long after midnight, late enough to be early, the night sky turning from purple to red, curtains fluttering in the cold breeze of dawn. She hears it distantly, a low rumble, familiar in that way that will never alter. For a moment, she freezes and clambers out of the soft bed, hand on the curtain, twitching fingers as she pulls it back.
She has a knife taped to her ankle, even in sleep, and a gun under her pillow. She could use one or even both but she doesn’t make a move to touch them as she sees the big black car parked under the shade of a massive oak tree. Even in the semi darkness she can see the two occupants through the dirty glass, knows instinctively it is Dean in the driver’s seat, and Sam riding shotgun. Her breath catches and her heart thunders hard in her chest as she stares, watches with some fascination as the door opens and she sees Sam Winchester, really sees him, for the first time in seven long years.
He is taller, so much broader, and muscular under the thick layers he is wearing. His hair is longer than she remembers, shaggy and curled around his neck and shoulders, the slight darkness of stubble on his cleft chin. The person she knew back then was a boy but this is a man and she shudders, unable to help herself, when she sees how haunted and worn he looks, how he virtually leans against the metal of the car, his eyes on the house, shadowed and haunted.
Sarah remembers what she saw on the news and she reaches down for the knife at her ankle. Behind her a door creaks open and she is aware of Lisa creeping in, aware that Lisa is holding a huge container of rock salt in her shaking hand.
“It’s ok,” she says even though she isn’t sure if it is. “It’s gonna’ be ok.”
Outside Dean is out of the car as well; Sarah remembered him less, remembered him being cocky and mouthy, wanting his brother to get laid. Like Sam, Dean appears bigger, broader, hair a little longer, mouth turned down and almost bitter. Sarah has enough instinct to know that these men are not the monsters from the nine o’clock news, that these are the men she remembers, who set her on this path. Beside her, she hears Lisa draw a startled breath and she feels her shudder when she says, “That guy – he visited me in hospital. He apologized for hitting me with his car. That guy – he – he is the one from the reports.”
“Yeah.” Sarah’s hand tightens on her knife but she doesn’t think she will have to use it. Dean is staring up at the window and she is sure they are hidden behind the drapes, and certain they can’t be seen. Sam stands next to his brother, hand on his shoulder, gentle and offering almost unconscious support. The two of them look at the house for the longest of time and then Sam pulls Dean back and into the black car, the doors squeaking as they climb in, the low rumble of the engine as they pull away, Dean glancing one last time at the house before he revs up, gravel kicking up beneath the wheels.
“That was weird,” Lisa still sounds scared. “Maybe I should call the cops.”
Sarah shakes her head. “No,” she is sure now. “No – don’t do that. You’re safe – you are so, so safe.”
****
She helps Lisa paint over the devil’s trap and watches as Ben turns the protective sigils in the sitting room into cartoon characters. She feels somewhat loose, oddly free and even takes Lisa up on her offer of a makeover.
That night she feels less like a hunter and more like the Sarah of old. It is an odd feeling but a good one and, when she leaves the next day, she promises she will be back and she means it.
****
She rings Bobby.
She is convinced that, somehow, Lisa knew Dean Winchester and that Dean taught Lisa about sigils, shotguns and rock salt. Sarah is a hunter not a philosopher so she has no conception of what has happened and she needs to know, needs to know with a desperation she hasn’t felt in years.
The cell rings and rings. When someone finally answers, it isn’t Bobby and, despite her toughened interior, Sarah’s heart stutters as she recognizes the voice, lower than she recalls, harsh and thick, years of pain dragging it down.
“Can I help?”
Sarah swallows. “I need to speak to Bobby.”
There is a long pause and Sarah knows without even having to ask, without hearing another word, she just knows.
“Bobby’s dead, isn’t he,” she says and she hears the audible swallow on the other end of the phone, the slight hitch of breath.
“Three months ago now,” that familiar voice sounds closer to tears than ever. “Maybe I can help. My name’s Sam.”
Sarah feels her stomach roll and she clears her throat. She mumbles something about the roadhouse and meeting there. Sam takes down her ‘name’ and talks gently about how good it would be to see the roadhouse again, how they haven’t been since – well since Ellen. At the end of the conversation, she makes some platitude about Bobby but it isn’t enough. She hasn’t cried since her father but now the tears come easily and she wonders if she is as hard and as tough as she thought she was.
****
Lisa gets a sitter for Ben. She jokes that she doesn’t want to be fixed up and Sarah goes along with it.
Lisa doesn’t look phased by the Roadhouse; it is a quiet night and there aren’t many of her usual clientele around. A few hardened men give Lisa the eye as she wanders through the bar but she doesn’t react other than to grin at them with some mischief and Sarah can’t help but think that Lisa would make an awesome hunter.
She spent a long time trying to decide what to wear and then realized that it didn’t matter. Sam had changed and so had she and she didn’t imagine, for a second that he would guess who she really was. In the end she settled on her ‘uniform’ of patched jeans, t-shirt and metal toed boots. She scraped her hair back into its usual ponytail and sighed as she saw how much grey streaked through it, silver threads stretching from root to tip.
She was halfway through a beer when the doors swung open; one or two heads swiveled round and a toughened nut at the bar mumbled something under his breath. Sarah lifted her head and saw the two men, felt them almost, as they walked closer, tall, rugged, world weary, the weight of so much on their broad shoulders. These were not the boys she met in her dad’s gallery, these were men, men who had seen and done too much.
Lisa, who was leaning against the bar with her third bottle, drew in a deep breath.
“The guys from the TV, the ones who were outside my house.” She frowned, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Sarah put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “They are hunters like me and I don’t think either of us is any danger from them.”
Lisa nodded; the bar seemed almost silent with anticipation as the Winchesters walked across the sticky floor. Dean leaned with his back to Lisa and smiled at Sarah, his cocky grin the one thing she recognized, even though it was strained.
“Never knew anyone had taken this place over after Ellen . . . it’s looking good – made a nice job of it –erm – Rosie, was it?”
“Rose.” Her eyes flickered over to Sam and, to her relief, saw no recognition there, just curiosity, a small frown denting his forehead. “I’m an old friend of Bobby’s.”
“Yeah.” Dean’s expression softened for a moment and the green eyes that met hers were sparkling with something she knew must be tears. “He was a good man.”
“Beer?” She put two tankards on the table with a grin. “You look like you need it.”
“Thanks.” Dean threw back the beer and wandered over to the jukebox. Sam leaned against the bar, all long limbs and bulging biceps, not the innocent boy she had kissed, but a sleek and solid looking killing machine.
“Why did you call Bobby?” he asked, curious. “Are you on a case?”
“She’s my case.” Sarah gestured to Lisa and she watched the color literally leech from Sam’s face, eyes almost comically wide.
Sarah knew then that she had been right; she didn’t know what had occurred and, by the look on Sam’s face, she might not ever know. She put her hand in her back pocket and squeezed the wooden end of her knife comforting even though she knew she was in no danger.
“She knew about salt, sigils and shotguns. She understood the rudiments of hunting and the supernatural but she didn’t know why. I saw you . . . . ” She smiled tightly. “You were outside of her house. I saw the car, so did Lisa. What’s going on, Winchester?”
Sam’s chin came up and with that one gesture, she saw the boy she had known all those years ago and she bit her own mouth to stop from reacting. She leaned over the counter, hand still on the knife, her own expression defiant.
“It’s a long story,” Sam conceded, eyes still on her face. She locked her emotions down, face expressionless. She had been hardened over the years and wouldn’t hesitate to take him down if she had to.
“You gonna’ tell me it?” She said and pushed another beer his way. In the background, the jukebox burst into life and the sound of Led Zeppelin pounded through the roadhouse causing most of the older hunters to mutter disapprovingly and make their moves.
Sam was silent for a moment and then he smiled, head nodding, eyes lowered.
“Join me in a bottle of whiskey,” he said and she nodded, gesturing to Lisa that she might want to wait around the back. “But whatever I tell you . . . .” Sam continued, “You can’t ever tell her. Understand?”
She nodded and let go of the knife.
“Yeah,” she said, lifting her best Johnny Walker from the rickety old shelves. “I understand.”
****
When he had finished she felt light-headed and blamed it on the whiskey. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have no soul. Or to understand why someone would jump into hell to save people he barely knew, to save the world. She realized that she had to come up with some story for Lisa and wished, deep down, she had never gotten involved. Her heart had ruled her head for the first time in a long, long time and she knew she had to get back to being whiskey soured and bitter. There were still lots of things out there in the dark, plenty of bastards she wanted to kill.
“Thanks.” She watched as Sam took a last slug of whiskey and got to his feet. Despite the amount of alcohol they had both consumed he was steady and his eyes remained focused.
“I better get back to Dean.” He gestured to where his brother was engaged in a deadeye game of darts with one of her more grizzled clientele. “Before he gets up to any more mischief.”
She nodded and slanting eyes met hers, assessing and curious.
“What happened to you Sarah?” The use of her name, the suddenness of it astounded her and she had no reply for him. He didn’t react, no hug, no pat on the shoulder, nothing but those eyes, deep and penetrating, as if he could read her very soul.
“Life happened,” she replied, finally, he nodded a smile dimpling his cheeks fast, and sudden, gone before she could even process it had been there at all.
****
She took Lisa home in her truck.
Neither of them spoke and she waited whilst Lisa went through her nighttime routine of salting, drawing sigils on the windows, and loading up the shotgun. Sarah doubted that any of this was necessary, she knew the big black car would pass by on a regular basis, knew that Lisa would come back to the roadhouse. She hoped that neither Lisa nor Ben took up the hunting life but she had a sneaking suspicion that they would and it made her sad on some levels, but proud and pleased on others.
She closed the roadhouse and turned off the neon signs. There were two jobs on her desk and her laptop was open in research mode. In two days time she would go back to New York and lay flowers on her dad’s grave and on the way, she had time to dig up a grave and salt and burn an angry spirit.
She sat on the window seat; there were stars tonight and the moon was just a sliver of silver in the sky. Her weapons were clean and packed away and the road stretched ahead of her clear and ready.
She lets her mind wander for a moment. His mouth is soft on hers, a gentle kiss that is nowhere near what she wants or needs, big hands on her face exploring, slanting eyes as exotic as any fox staring down at her from that great height. . She shakes her head, clearing it, her memories tainted by knowing eyes and the scent of whiskey. The soft question echoing in her ears over, and over again.
“What happened to you Sarah?”
She doesn’t know. She may never know, but she is a hunter now and the past is irrelevant.
Yet she knows she will see him again and it should scare her but it doesn’t because their lives are irreparably entwined.
End
Author: annie_46fic
Recipient: Wandersfound
Rating: PG15 to be safe – some curse words and dark subjects
Warnings: Vague spoilers for Seasons 6 & 7 – character deaths ‘off screen’ but not the main characters
Author's Notes: The most difficult thing I have ever had to write – ever! I always either write about Sam and Dean or J2 – I haven’t really explored the
other characters in depth before and the spectre of Dean and Sam hovered over this whole story!
Summary: There were two prompts that caught my eye and they were Sarah Blake hunting. Would love to see her end up at the Roadhouse at some point, but mostly I just want her learning how to take on the supernatural. Lisa Braeden doesn't remember when she learned to use a gun or why there are lines of salt across all of her doors, but she's going to find out.
This story is a result of merging both these prompts. The best summary I can offer is Sarah Blake kills the thing that kills her father. She becomes a hunter, trains with Bobby and befriends Ellen, she never forgets Sam Winchester. One day Lisa Braeden calls her up to ask her help. She seems to know weird things and wants to know why. The Black Impala that stops outside her house on regular intervals doesn’t help but even though the Winchesters are forever rumoured dead or killers Sarah doesn’t believe that they really are dangerous…
Sometimes, in the coldness that night brings, she dreams.
His mouth is soft on hers, a gentle kiss that is nowhere near, what she wants or needs, big hands on her face exploring, slanting eyes as exotic as any fox staring down at her from that great height.
She dreams of razors and a child in a white dress corrupt and rotting. She knows what he did and she knows he is driven by revenge and need. She was young and innocent and wondered if he would come back and in her dreams, she hears the rumble of that big, black car, the slam of the doors and the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside her house.
Seven years and there is no more innocence; seven years and she is as worn and as driven as him.
****
His picture was on the news one night not long after her father had passed.
They said he was a murderer wanted in several different states; they said he was dangerous, not to approach him. He looked bigger and, impossibly, taller, hair longer and wilder, eyes still exotic but more desperate, indelibly sad.
She sat on the window seat, carving out a stake from fresh sawn wood. She had no reason to fear the dark anymore, hardened as she was to what lurked there, so she just sat and stared into the inky blackness, wondered where the stars were, if there was a full moon lurking beneath the clouds. Life had changed her almost beyond recognition and she wondered if she were to see him again would he know her.
****
She knew her dad hadn’t died naturally; hell she was convinced of the fact. A locked room, a slashed throat, eyes wide with fear. At the time, she had been scared witless, her hands seeking her cell phone, fingers pressing digits almost unconsciously; the number he had once given her long since dead and gone.
Like hunters before her, she had been compelled to kill; revenge thick in her throat like mud. She had wanted to learn everything all at once but she needed training, needed help. She knew that Sam and his brother weren’t the only hunters in the world and she knew that someone, somewhere would know something. A few calls later, she was on a bus on the way to South Dakota, and her childhood home was behind her and she never, ever looked back.
****
Robert (call me Bobby) Singer wasn’t what she expected. He was old, more grizzled, all dirty caps and grime beneath his fingernails. He treated her as if she were a delicate flower until she slapped him around the head and demanded he teach her everything. That night he brought her down with a scissor kick to her legs, her back and ass bruising as she fell hard. The whiskey he gave her was cheap and sour but it was her baptism wine, her ‘unholy’ communion and she laughed with him over hot chili and burnt bread, her life as a hunter beginning right that moment.
She knew he knew Sam and Dean but she never spoke about them, never let on. She wanted to know, she wondered but she never asked. She wondered if they found and killed the demon that murdered their mother, wondered if they ever reunited with their father. She knew she could ask Bobby but she never did.
****
When she killed the thing that killed her father, she thought she would find peace, go back to her old life, and settle down. Instead, she stared at herself in the mirror at the hard face with no make-up, hair tugged back into an untidy ponytail, hands no longer delicate but callused, torn and bitten nails, bruises and scars. There was nothing of the elegant art dealer’s daughter left and she knew that she would never return to her old life and that this new, dangerous life, would be the way forward for her.
****
She found the roadhouse in her second year of hunting. Rebuilt from old timbers, the first one burning down the year before, demons someone whispered and many hunters killed.
Ellen owns the roadhouse; she is sharp tongued and taciturn, her own daughter long gone, wanting to hunt, wanting independence. Sarah hears the name Winchester for the first time in a while but she doesn’t want to react, it was a long time ago, ancient history now. She shares a bottle of whiskey with Ellen and listens to her extol the virtues of someone called Ash. Ellen asks her to stay when drunk and confirms it when sober. Sarah doesn’t want to be a substitute for Ellen’s daughter but the temptation is too much. She is a hunter now and this is the best place for her to be. She can learn so much, do so much so she agrees and Ellen smiles, genuine, for the first time.
****
The hunters that pass through are hardened and focused and Sarah learns so much. She hears the odd piece of news here and there about the Winchesters, about how Dean has vanished from sight and Sam is alone. She feels an odd stab of something but there is little connection between the mooning girl of the past with the toughened hunter of the present and she puts any thoughts of Sam Winchester to the back of her mind until, months later, the Apocalypse happens when Lucifer rises and the blame is laid firmly at Sam Winchester’s door.
****
Ellen dies with her daughter in an explosion in Carthage, Missouri. Sarah is serving beer to one of the regulars when she hears and she cries for the first time in a long, long time. The roadhouse, it seems, is hers now and she makes it her home, content, at least, amongst the beer fumes and the sawdust, hunting, still, when time allows.
Bobby keeps in touch; she heard he was crippled, an accident he tells her and he isn’t saying more. She learns all about omens and the appearance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Bobby talks about Death and Pestilence and she shudders as she stares out into the foggy darkness wondering what lurks there now.
She wonders, often, if the Winchesters ever hear about her, a roughened hard nut of a woman, mixing with hunters and taking bad asses down. She guesses even if they did no one would ever connect her with sweet and innocent Sarah Blake. Hell it has been years since she even used her own name, months since she put on lip balm, weeks since she had done anything to her untidy hair.
It is late May when she learns Sam Winchester is dead; seems like she hears rumors like that all the time and doesn’t put much store by it. She is hunting a Were in the forests of Canada. It is freezing despite the lateness of the season and her leg hurts from a particularly hard slash of claw. She has washed it out in holy water and stitched it herself but it is stiff and, possibly, infected and she fears a hospital visit if things don’t improve.
The creature is dead; she’s covered in blood and her cell is ringing. She wipes her face to find it is Bobby calling.
He sounds wrecked as if he has been drinking for hours. The Apocalypse is over he says, Sam is dead he adds and she hears the tears in his voice and, for the first time, she believes it.
****
“I need some help.”
The voice is female and calm but there is an edge of panic to it and it makes Sarah wonder. In the background, she can hear beeps and whistles; a computer game she thinks.
“Yeah.” Sarah bites the pen and pulls out a scrap of paper. She puts her boots up on the bar and crosses her ankles. One of the hunters whistles and she flicks him the finger.
“I salt my doors and windows every night,” the woman’s voice is shaking a little now and it is obvious she is trying to maintain an air of calm. “There are symbols painted on the inside of my doors and one on my boy’s ceiling.”
Sarah frowned. “And?” She asked, finally, at a loss to think of anything else.
“I can load a shotgun and hit targets,” the woman sounds spooked. “And I – there is no reason why all these things are connected . . . and I don’t know why I’m doing it but – but I think I need help.”
“How did you get my number?”
“Guy called Bobby gave it to me.”
Sarah grunted and took down the address. It was somewhere in the suburbs; a place she might have once known but now seemed alien to her. The woman, Lisa, was doing everything she should do to protect her house and her child and Sarah was sure that a hunter had taught her all those tricks but Lisa swore up and down she didn’t know any hunters (she was opposed to blood sports) and that she wasn’t even a bit scared of the supernatural.
When she turned up on Lisa’s doorstep Sarah saw the look of curiosity and mild shock in the woman’s dark eyes. She was attractive, subtle makeup, smart clothing and shiny shoes. Her son, Ben, stood beside her, tall and gangly, a typical adolescent Sarah thought with a smirk - always on the verge of a mood or a tantrum. She had been like that herself once, in her ‘other’ life and now, she could always spot the signs.
“Come on in.” Lisa smiled, warm and genuine. “I have beer in the ice box – you look like you could use one.”
Sarah smiled back and thought, maybe, she would get on with this woman after all.
“Yeah,” she said, “I sure could.”
She was at Lisa’s when she saw the news report and she sat speechless on the couch unable to think of anything to say.
She had been investigating Lisa’s ‘problem’ for a month and, to her surprise, she and the other woman had become firm friends. Lisa was tougher than she looked, guarded her home and her son like a lioness and seemed to know all the rituals of protection that only toughened and seasoned hunters like herself adhered to. Ben claimed it all started after a car accident a year before but Lisa wasn’t sure. She was scared of her knowledge and what it meant, what it might mean. Sarah was certain that Lisa had been involved with a hunter but she had no real clues and Ben didn’t know much either.
Now they sat on the couch watching the Winchesters – the fucking Winchesters – on America’s most wanted, a film of them killing a diner full of people, playing over, and over on repeat.
“Do you know them?” Lisa asked, softly.
“Once upon a time,” she answered and she wondered where those two young people, that had once been Sam and Sarah, had gone.
“They’re lunatics,” there is the vague sound of panic in Lisa’s voice and Sarah shook her head.
“Perhaps,” is all she can really say.
Two weeks later and the Winchesters are dead – again. Sarah doesn’t even react to it now, just locks her weapons in the trunk of her old car and drives up to the burbs to visit Lisa.
****
She is too drunk to go home so she takes the spare room. It is long after midnight, late enough to be early, the night sky turning from purple to red, curtains fluttering in the cold breeze of dawn. She hears it distantly, a low rumble, familiar in that way that will never alter. For a moment, she freezes and clambers out of the soft bed, hand on the curtain, twitching fingers as she pulls it back.
She has a knife taped to her ankle, even in sleep, and a gun under her pillow. She could use one or even both but she doesn’t make a move to touch them as she sees the big black car parked under the shade of a massive oak tree. Even in the semi darkness she can see the two occupants through the dirty glass, knows instinctively it is Dean in the driver’s seat, and Sam riding shotgun. Her breath catches and her heart thunders hard in her chest as she stares, watches with some fascination as the door opens and she sees Sam Winchester, really sees him, for the first time in seven long years.
He is taller, so much broader, and muscular under the thick layers he is wearing. His hair is longer than she remembers, shaggy and curled around his neck and shoulders, the slight darkness of stubble on his cleft chin. The person she knew back then was a boy but this is a man and she shudders, unable to help herself, when she sees how haunted and worn he looks, how he virtually leans against the metal of the car, his eyes on the house, shadowed and haunted.
Sarah remembers what she saw on the news and she reaches down for the knife at her ankle. Behind her a door creaks open and she is aware of Lisa creeping in, aware that Lisa is holding a huge container of rock salt in her shaking hand.
“It’s ok,” she says even though she isn’t sure if it is. “It’s gonna’ be ok.”
Outside Dean is out of the car as well; Sarah remembered him less, remembered him being cocky and mouthy, wanting his brother to get laid. Like Sam, Dean appears bigger, broader, hair a little longer, mouth turned down and almost bitter. Sarah has enough instinct to know that these men are not the monsters from the nine o’clock news, that these are the men she remembers, who set her on this path. Beside her, she hears Lisa draw a startled breath and she feels her shudder when she says, “That guy – he visited me in hospital. He apologized for hitting me with his car. That guy – he – he is the one from the reports.”
“Yeah.” Sarah’s hand tightens on her knife but she doesn’t think she will have to use it. Dean is staring up at the window and she is sure they are hidden behind the drapes, and certain they can’t be seen. Sam stands next to his brother, hand on his shoulder, gentle and offering almost unconscious support. The two of them look at the house for the longest of time and then Sam pulls Dean back and into the black car, the doors squeaking as they climb in, the low rumble of the engine as they pull away, Dean glancing one last time at the house before he revs up, gravel kicking up beneath the wheels.
“That was weird,” Lisa still sounds scared. “Maybe I should call the cops.”
Sarah shakes her head. “No,” she is sure now. “No – don’t do that. You’re safe – you are so, so safe.”
****
She helps Lisa paint over the devil’s trap and watches as Ben turns the protective sigils in the sitting room into cartoon characters. She feels somewhat loose, oddly free and even takes Lisa up on her offer of a makeover.
That night she feels less like a hunter and more like the Sarah of old. It is an odd feeling but a good one and, when she leaves the next day, she promises she will be back and she means it.
****
She rings Bobby.
She is convinced that, somehow, Lisa knew Dean Winchester and that Dean taught Lisa about sigils, shotguns and rock salt. Sarah is a hunter not a philosopher so she has no conception of what has happened and she needs to know, needs to know with a desperation she hasn’t felt in years.
The cell rings and rings. When someone finally answers, it isn’t Bobby and, despite her toughened interior, Sarah’s heart stutters as she recognizes the voice, lower than she recalls, harsh and thick, years of pain dragging it down.
“Can I help?”
Sarah swallows. “I need to speak to Bobby.”
There is a long pause and Sarah knows without even having to ask, without hearing another word, she just knows.
“Bobby’s dead, isn’t he,” she says and she hears the audible swallow on the other end of the phone, the slight hitch of breath.
“Three months ago now,” that familiar voice sounds closer to tears than ever. “Maybe I can help. My name’s Sam.”
Sarah feels her stomach roll and she clears her throat. She mumbles something about the roadhouse and meeting there. Sam takes down her ‘name’ and talks gently about how good it would be to see the roadhouse again, how they haven’t been since – well since Ellen. At the end of the conversation, she makes some platitude about Bobby but it isn’t enough. She hasn’t cried since her father but now the tears come easily and she wonders if she is as hard and as tough as she thought she was.
****
Lisa gets a sitter for Ben. She jokes that she doesn’t want to be fixed up and Sarah goes along with it.
Lisa doesn’t look phased by the Roadhouse; it is a quiet night and there aren’t many of her usual clientele around. A few hardened men give Lisa the eye as she wanders through the bar but she doesn’t react other than to grin at them with some mischief and Sarah can’t help but think that Lisa would make an awesome hunter.
She spent a long time trying to decide what to wear and then realized that it didn’t matter. Sam had changed and so had she and she didn’t imagine, for a second that he would guess who she really was. In the end she settled on her ‘uniform’ of patched jeans, t-shirt and metal toed boots. She scraped her hair back into its usual ponytail and sighed as she saw how much grey streaked through it, silver threads stretching from root to tip.
She was halfway through a beer when the doors swung open; one or two heads swiveled round and a toughened nut at the bar mumbled something under his breath. Sarah lifted her head and saw the two men, felt them almost, as they walked closer, tall, rugged, world weary, the weight of so much on their broad shoulders. These were not the boys she met in her dad’s gallery, these were men, men who had seen and done too much.
Lisa, who was leaning against the bar with her third bottle, drew in a deep breath.
“The guys from the TV, the ones who were outside my house.” She frowned, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Sarah put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “They are hunters like me and I don’t think either of us is any danger from them.”
Lisa nodded; the bar seemed almost silent with anticipation as the Winchesters walked across the sticky floor. Dean leaned with his back to Lisa and smiled at Sarah, his cocky grin the one thing she recognized, even though it was strained.
“Never knew anyone had taken this place over after Ellen . . . it’s looking good – made a nice job of it –erm – Rosie, was it?”
“Rose.” Her eyes flickered over to Sam and, to her relief, saw no recognition there, just curiosity, a small frown denting his forehead. “I’m an old friend of Bobby’s.”
“Yeah.” Dean’s expression softened for a moment and the green eyes that met hers were sparkling with something she knew must be tears. “He was a good man.”
“Beer?” She put two tankards on the table with a grin. “You look like you need it.”
“Thanks.” Dean threw back the beer and wandered over to the jukebox. Sam leaned against the bar, all long limbs and bulging biceps, not the innocent boy she had kissed, but a sleek and solid looking killing machine.
“Why did you call Bobby?” he asked, curious. “Are you on a case?”
“She’s my case.” Sarah gestured to Lisa and she watched the color literally leech from Sam’s face, eyes almost comically wide.
Sarah knew then that she had been right; she didn’t know what had occurred and, by the look on Sam’s face, she might not ever know. She put her hand in her back pocket and squeezed the wooden end of her knife comforting even though she knew she was in no danger.
“She knew about salt, sigils and shotguns. She understood the rudiments of hunting and the supernatural but she didn’t know why. I saw you . . . . ” She smiled tightly. “You were outside of her house. I saw the car, so did Lisa. What’s going on, Winchester?”
Sam’s chin came up and with that one gesture, she saw the boy she had known all those years ago and she bit her own mouth to stop from reacting. She leaned over the counter, hand still on the knife, her own expression defiant.
“It’s a long story,” Sam conceded, eyes still on her face. She locked her emotions down, face expressionless. She had been hardened over the years and wouldn’t hesitate to take him down if she had to.
“You gonna’ tell me it?” She said and pushed another beer his way. In the background, the jukebox burst into life and the sound of Led Zeppelin pounded through the roadhouse causing most of the older hunters to mutter disapprovingly and make their moves.
Sam was silent for a moment and then he smiled, head nodding, eyes lowered.
“Join me in a bottle of whiskey,” he said and she nodded, gesturing to Lisa that she might want to wait around the back. “But whatever I tell you . . . .” Sam continued, “You can’t ever tell her. Understand?”
She nodded and let go of the knife.
“Yeah,” she said, lifting her best Johnny Walker from the rickety old shelves. “I understand.”
****
When he had finished she felt light-headed and blamed it on the whiskey. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have no soul. Or to understand why someone would jump into hell to save people he barely knew, to save the world. She realized that she had to come up with some story for Lisa and wished, deep down, she had never gotten involved. Her heart had ruled her head for the first time in a long, long time and she knew she had to get back to being whiskey soured and bitter. There were still lots of things out there in the dark, plenty of bastards she wanted to kill.
“Thanks.” She watched as Sam took a last slug of whiskey and got to his feet. Despite the amount of alcohol they had both consumed he was steady and his eyes remained focused.
“I better get back to Dean.” He gestured to where his brother was engaged in a deadeye game of darts with one of her more grizzled clientele. “Before he gets up to any more mischief.”
She nodded and slanting eyes met hers, assessing and curious.
“What happened to you Sarah?” The use of her name, the suddenness of it astounded her and she had no reply for him. He didn’t react, no hug, no pat on the shoulder, nothing but those eyes, deep and penetrating, as if he could read her very soul.
“Life happened,” she replied, finally, he nodded a smile dimpling his cheeks fast, and sudden, gone before she could even process it had been there at all.
****
She took Lisa home in her truck.
Neither of them spoke and she waited whilst Lisa went through her nighttime routine of salting, drawing sigils on the windows, and loading up the shotgun. Sarah doubted that any of this was necessary, she knew the big black car would pass by on a regular basis, knew that Lisa would come back to the roadhouse. She hoped that neither Lisa nor Ben took up the hunting life but she had a sneaking suspicion that they would and it made her sad on some levels, but proud and pleased on others.
She closed the roadhouse and turned off the neon signs. There were two jobs on her desk and her laptop was open in research mode. In two days time she would go back to New York and lay flowers on her dad’s grave and on the way, she had time to dig up a grave and salt and burn an angry spirit.
She sat on the window seat; there were stars tonight and the moon was just a sliver of silver in the sky. Her weapons were clean and packed away and the road stretched ahead of her clear and ready.
She lets her mind wander for a moment. His mouth is soft on hers, a gentle kiss that is nowhere near what she wants or needs, big hands on her face exploring, slanting eyes as exotic as any fox staring down at her from that great height. . She shakes her head, clearing it, her memories tainted by knowing eyes and the scent of whiskey. The soft question echoing in her ears over, and over again.
“What happened to you Sarah?”
She doesn’t know. She may never know, but she is a hunter now and the past is irrelevant.
Yet she knows she will see him again and it should scare her but it doesn’t because their lives are irreparably entwined.
End
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