the more unholy things i do (dee 'verse) - 2 of 2
Part 1
Sam waited after school almost an hour before Dee showed up. That had happened before in other towns, but not this one. Sam had plenty of time to think about it, loitering outside until almost all the other kids were gone, until he saw his sister striding up the sidewalk, jacket collar popped up and hands jammed in her jean pockets. He grabbed his bag and hurried down the driveway to meet her.
He was still a half-dozen steps away when she stopped, swinging away to start in the other direction, and he had to jog to catch up. All the complaints and questions he’d had lined up died in his throat; something about the stiffness in her gait and neck (more like Dad than ever, especially after he’d been injured) warned him off.
Instead, as they power-walked down the street, he fumed silently at their father, whose fault this all was anyway. He needed to have gotten back yesterday. More like several yesterdays ago. The whole sucky situation was stressing Dee the hell out, much worse than Sam had seen before. Too many things were adding up to the wrong conclusions: she obviously hadn’t found a job, yet she was paying off Amar and keeping the kitchen stocked, though she wasn’t any happier or more relaxed for it, and Sam didn’t think this could possibly end well. Why did Dad have to take every single damn hunt? Would it absolutely kill him to settle down in one place for the next five years, just until Dee was actually eighteen and Sam could finish school? Did Dad even remember how to have a civilian job and live a normal life, or was he too embarrassed to admit he didn’t?
They came to a halt again at the intersection with the long red light, and beneath the simmering rage, something else prickled the back of Sam’s neck. Glancing around, he spotted a small group of men loitering on the other side of the street, gazing in their direction. Sam frowned and looked back ahead.
They crossed the street, and a block further, Sam checked to see that the same men had crossed the street and were walking behind them. Creepy.
Sam skipped a step forward to reach Dee’s side, nudging her. “Think we got some friends following us home.”
She shot a look over her shoulder, then swore viciously under her breath. Her pace didn’t change - if she were walking any faster, she’d be jogging - but her hand landed hard on Sam’s shoulder, clenching tight and keeping him beside her.
Startled, Sam looked up at her face. Dee’s jaw was clenched, her eyes locked forward, but Sam could read crystal-clear that she was fucking scared. Out-and-out scared like he couldn’t last remember seeing her.
He resisted the urge to look behind them again. “You know them?” he asked in a low tone.
“Shut up,” she ground out, and yes, that was panic in her voice. Sam was still absorbing it and what it meant (trying not to run through scenarios of what she might have done to piss them off), when she spoke again. “Listen to me,” and her voice was dead serious, like Dad’s when he was giving Sam instructions before taking Dee on a hunt. “See this sub shop coming up? You’re going inside and waiting there until we’ve gone past, then another fifteen minutes after that. Go to the motel, get inside and lock the door. Don’t open for anyone but my voice and knock, got it?”
“Like hell I will,” Sam said. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about it -”
“Fuck that,” Sam said, and then saw their means of deliverance. He lunged out from under her hand, toward the street, to flag down a passing police car as though it were a taxi.
He barely heard Dee’s intake of breath behind him, focusing instead on beaming brightly as the policeman rolled down his window. “Hi, officer! Sorry to bother you, but we have a big favor to ask: could you give us a ride just for a few blocks, to the motel we’re staying at?”
“What’s the trouble?”
“We’ve got some creeps following us,” Sam said, jerking his head toward the guys, who hadn’t come any closer since the cop car stopped. “They’ve been going after my sister lately.”
The cop glanced past Sam to Dee, then nodded, beckoning them toward the backseat. “Get on in.”
Sam grabbed Dee’s hand, dragging her in with him. He told the cop where their motel was and launched into their routine story about their traveling-salesman dad, busy hours, wasn’t it great getting to see so much of the USA? The cop warned them not to walk alone around this part of town and to tell their dad so too. Sam promised he would. Then they pulled up in front of the motel, and Sam thanked them earnestly before bounding out.
Dee, who hadn’t said a single word inside the cop car, kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, mouth tight, all the way to their door. On the way there, Sam’s exhilaration at the smooth success of his plan dwindled, replaced by apprehension long before they stepped inside and she swung the door shut.
He was not prepared, however, for Dee to grab him by the shoulders before shoving him with bruising force against the wall.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Sam couldn’t even draw breath, couldn’t begin to process the paleness of her face and glint in her eye before she was shouting again, shaking him as she snarled. “What the fuck were you thinking? Since when are cops our goddamn friends? Have you completely forgotten about all those times they almost took you away from us, put you in a fucking home with a new fucking family? How easy do you think it would have been for them to find out Dad isn’t here, huh? How fucking easy?”
“Shut up!” Sam shoved her back, off of him. He tried to steady his voice, even as his breath hitched. “It was a hell of a lot better than your plan! It got us away from those jerks, didn’t it? And it’s not my damn fault Dad left us!”
For a second, Sam was certain Dee was going to hit him; her hand rose, and he half-flinched back before bracing himself. Then she closed her eyes, staggering back away from him, and her hand moved instead to cover her face.
“Dee?” His voice trembled again, but any time Dee wasn’t ragging on him for it, it didn’t matter. “Who were those guys?”
She shook her head, eyes still closed and palm to her face. Without another word, she turned and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door after her.
Almost an hour later, Sam conceded that his capacity for homework tonight was shot to hell. That had a perfectly ordinary explanation. Every time Dad stopped somewhere long enough to bother enrolling them in local schools, there came a point when Sam would get an inkling that they were about to pick everything up and move a few hundred miles away again, and he could finish the assignment but it was never going to be turned in, or if it were turned in it wouldn’t be graded, or if it were graded he would never see the red letter. He always felt this way at those times: itchy and tired and so damn angry at how helpless he was over his life.
It was a Friday, anyway. He had the weekend to see if the suspicion came true. Sam kicked his notebook over to the wall and got up to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He debated making one for Dee, but no, she’d come out if she wanted dinner.
He pulled out his literature anthology as he ate, flipping through for any stories he hadn’t read yet and would be likeliest to be on the syllabus in his next school - no, screw that, just any stories that looked interesting. Forget school right now.
It would have been nice and peaceful, a rare hour with the TV off, if it weren’t for the noise from the parking lot. There were dull, rhythmic thumps against the outside wall, like someone was bouncing a basketball against it, and someone was caroling a strange, high, warbling song. Drunk, of course, but it was shredding his last nerves.
He slammed shut his book and stood up. Right on cue, the bedroom door opened and Dee came out, frowning, hair mussed and her Walkman headphones around her neck. “The fuck’s that racket about?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, pissily because that’s what was expected of him, and he wasn’t going to let her know how glad he was she came out of the room. It’d make it easier for him to go to bed, anyway. “I was about to go check it out, tell them to pipe down.”
“No,” Dee said shortly, and pulled the Walkman and headphones off to set them on the table. “You stay here.”
~*~
The night was unseasonably humid, the darkness and thick air clogging Dee’s senses after the light and cool air inside. She blinked hard a few times, trying to make sense of the parked cars and few figures loitering between them on the other side of the lot. Noises. Some assholes who needed to fuck off. A man’s voice warbling disjointedly toward the right, on the other side of the building, in the shadows where Amar could now use her fucking hard-earned money to replace the burned-out lights.
She started that way, grateful for one clear simple mission of venting her spleen on someone who wasn’t her little brother. Nothing complicated about it, no need to think or calculate or plan -
Dee never heard them coming behind her. Her first alert was a massive forearm thrown around her neck, pulling her backwards, off her feet, and she never caught her air. Then she was slammed down, cracking her skull against the asphalt. The one remaining light in her vision sparked off dozens of progeny, spinning across her view. Only after they cleared did she see the first face of the men leaning over her.
She lurched for her boot, fingers scrabbling for her knives, but one of them (Buzzcut? He looked familiar, but she couldn’t tell, details still fuzzy) stomped on her hand, grinding the heel down. Dee howled, her splintered fingers flaming a white pain that blinded out the rest, until Buzzcut dropped to one knee, straddling her, and landed the first punch to her cheek. He beat a couple more in, across both sides of her face to even out the jolts, then paused to lean in close.
“Skanky bitch thought she’s gonna cash and dash, huh? Thought she got away, the lucky cunt, after getting triple pay?”
Dee could barely make out the outline of his face, but it was enough to aim as she spat a mix of blood and saliva in his face.
He backhanded her, a blow that momentarily blacked out her sight. Then there were rough hands squeezing her tits, sweeping down her sides and back, searching for the pistol she’d left on her bedside table. Other hands pawed her jeans, yanking out her wallet and cell phone. They felt down to her ankles, then slid the knives out, leaving a hollow unnatural place behind. Dee gave another guttural cry, this time in rage, and someone delivered a kick to her ribs that choked her voice off.
Her knife was in Buzzcut’s hand now, glinting in the feeble light, before he pressed it to her throat. “We didn’t finish the lesson, slut,” he breathed. “You coulda had it nice and easy, we coulda taken our time, but now you pissed us off. You don’t like it easy, do you, bitch? Wanna play rough? Well, I’m gonna start by shoving this little knife up your cunt and carve you open -”
“Get off of her!”
Sam’s furious bellow was the last voice Dee wanted to hear. She closed her eyes in horror (no no no, anything but this) before wrenching them open, so she could see her twelve-year-old brother standing alone on the sidewalk, aiming a shotgun in their direction.
One of the men, who had been pinning her other arm down, got to his feet and raised her second knife. “Scram, kid.”
“Get back inside the fucking room!” Dee shouted, as clearly as she could through the blood in her mouth. “Get back!”
Sam ignored them all, releasing the safety. The gun was steady, even though she could see (of everything, this would be clear) the whiteness of his face. “Let her go or I’ll shoot.” There was a barely detectable quaver now underneath his voice, but he sounded no less sure for it.
Buzzcut straightened up on his knees to sneer. “Put the gun down before you shoot your dick off.”
Sam’s fingers flexed around the trigger. He didn’t look scared anymore, but grim, terribly grim - more so than Dee had ever seen before. He shifted his aim slightly and fired.
One of the men screamed, grabbing his thigh. Buzzcut swore, leaping to his feet.
Sam had staggered back with the recoil, but kept his balance and his grip on the gun, cocking it and aiming again. “Who’s next?”
The other two grabbed their injured friend and hustled off, into the shadows around the building. Buzzcut stayed a moment longer, staring at Sam with a dark hatred, before turning and walking more slowly off after the others.
Sam kept the shotgun trained on him until he was out of sight. Then, with a sharp inhale, he let it drop to his side as he ran forward to her side. “Dee -”
“Shut up,” she said, gasping raggedly, even as she grabbed at his arm with her good hand to pull herself up. Her vision swam again, and she almost threw up on the spot. The fuckers had cracked her ribs.
She kept her hand locked on Sam’s shoulder as they staggered back toward the open door of their room. His fast panting filled her ears, louder than her own breathing or the throbs in her hand and side.
~*~
Sam hauled her back inside, even as someone bellowed from the other side of the lot, “What the fuck is going on over there?”
He slammed the door shut, clicking all the locks into place, before turning to face his sister. She had lurched unsteadily into a kitchen chair, cradling one hand with very broken fingers to her side, her nose and mouth bleeding. Eyes closed, she took shallow, unsteady breaths.
Sam didn’t know what to do, so he fell back on training. He set the shotgun down, went to the bathroom to wet a wash cloth, and as he brought it back, he realized that now, now, his hands were shaking.
Dee didn’t take any notice of him as he stood there, holding the wet cloth out with his trembling hands. Finally he said, “Dee,” and his voice shook just as much. She looked at him with one eye already swelling shut, more blood swelling at the corner of her mouth. “Dee, let’s go. I, I don't want to stay here anymore. Please, please, Dee-Dee."
The old nickname fell out unconsciously, and any other day she would have socked him hard for it, but now she looked at him with her one open eye and bloody mouth and she looked so broken, so far from Dee, that Sam thought he was going to cry.
She nodded, chin moving jerkily.
Sam dropped the cloth to the table, spinning around to grab their things scattered around. "We gonna hotwire a car?"
After a moment, she nodded again.
"I'll do it." Sam headed for the closet to grab a hanger.
At that, Dee got to her feet, one hand braced on the table top. "No, Sam."
“You can’t do it,” Sam said flatly. “Not like that. I can, no one’s gonna expect a kid to break into a car. And I'm better at picking locks."
"You're not going out there by yourself," she said, still so goddamn stubborn with mangled fingers and half her face beaten in.
Sam gritted his teeth. "Fine, watch from the doorway."
“Take the shotgun with you.”
Sam collected the shotgun and a wire coat hanger, and handed Dee’s pistol to her to hold in her good hand, though they waited long minutes at the doorway to make sure it was quiet and clear before he darted forward to the rustiest, most banged-up car in the line in front of them. He crouched down as his hands worked automatically with one end of the wire hanger. He’d done this before a few times under Dad’s watchful eye, just for practice. Sam had hated it at the time, griped about how they were training him to become a criminal, but as the door of the Pinto clicked open now, Sam vowed to thank Dad once a week for those lessons.
He ran back to help Dee with the bags, but tugged her away from the driver’s side. “No,” he hissed. “I’m driving.”
“Sammy -”
“No. There’s no way.” He pulled open the passenger door, throwing their bags into the backseat, then pushed Dee into the seat. She went, which was even more alarming, but at least she wasn’t fighting him now.
The driver’s seat was a little low, so he folded one leg underneath him and adjusted the seat and mirrors. He fished a flashlight out of one of their bags, and Dee held it in place while he dug his lock picks into the keyhole. Once the engine revved, he took a deep breath as he placed his hands on the steering wheel.
Dee was watching him, her posture subdued where she was slumped against the door. “Sure you got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Know where you’re going?”
“North to I-90, then west to Sioux Falls. I looked it up in an atlas at school the other day.” He glanced over nervously as she let out a soft exhale. “What?”
“Nothin’. Fuck, Sammy.”
“Shouldn’t take more than three hours.” He swallowed, placing his damp palm over the automatic gear shift. “Might need to stop for gas along the way.”
Now Dee made an oddly choked sound, nothing like a laugh, even though he couldn’t imagine what else it was supposed to be. She touched her chest. “I got some twenties. They took everything else.”
“Okay.” He swallowed again, his throat as dry as his palms were sweaty, wishing he’d stopped to fill up a water bottle before leaving, but no way was he going back inside now. “Nothing else, we’ll go as far as we can, then stop at the gas station and use the phone to call Bobby. He’ll come get us.”
Dee didn’t answer. She didn’t say another word for the next hundred and fifty miles, not as Sam started his shaky way out of the motel parking lot, nor as he slammed them to a stop at the first stop light. Sam felt better once he got onto the dark and empty country roads, thankful for the tiny N for north lit up on the dashboard. He stayed just under the speed limit, not wanting to give cops any reason to take a closer look at the driver.
Mile marker after mile marker flickered by, and he waited for the adrenaline to fade, waited to get sleepy, but he never did.
~*~
Bobby hadn’t been in bed for more than an hour when the first alarm tripped outside his gates. Growling, he rolled out of bed and snatched up his shotgun in the same motion. The window showed an unfamiliar car stopped outside the fence, with a smaller figure-just a kid-standing next to it. Frowning, he moved to the intercom and depressed the talk button.
“Gimme your best shot at making me open my gate at one in the morning.”
“Bobby, it’s us! Let us in already!”
Sam Winchester’s voice rocked Bobby back. He took a moment to absorb the reality of Winchesters once again outside his doorstep (the kids, at least-was John with them, maybe injured enough to send his youngest out first?), then pressed the button again. “What the hell chased you here, kid? Is your dad with you?”
“He’s in a hospital back in Iowa. It’s a long story. C’mon, open up. Dee needs an ice pack.”
That got Bobby moving, though he didn’t leave his safeguards or shotgun behind. He flicked holy water at Sam’s face through the gate, making the kid scowl, before unlocking it, and Sam ran back to the driver’s seat-the driver’s seat, what the ever-loving hell-to pull the car up to the house.
Bobby got an answer soon enough, as he reached the car again just as the passenger’s door opened and Dee clambered out, moving unsteadily.
“You mind telling me what in seven hells brought you here at this-” Bobby began, but he stopped short as Dee reached the end of the car, one hand outstretched to brace herself on the metal, before doubling over and puking onto the gravel.
“Dee!” Sam yelped, and dropped the bags to run to her side.
“Are you drunk?” Bobby asked, incredulously.
Dee didn’t answer, still doubled over, but Sam turned indignantly. “No-she’s just hurt. C’mon, Dee, let’s go inside.”
Not until they were under the kitchen light did Bobby get the full sorry picture. Half of Dee’s face was swollen and red, one eye half-shut and puffy, some spots already starting to bruise, and the way she held her hand and gingerly carried herself promised more damage to the rest of her. The story could wait; Bobby went for the kit and some icepacks while Sam filled a water glass.
“All right, let’s start with those fingers.” Bobby reached for her hand, but Dee-holding an ice pack to her face, and who still had not said a single word or so much as glanced at his face-snarled and yanked her hand to her.
“Don’t be a baby,” Bobby said impatiently, and made another grab for her wrist.
Dee shoved her chair back, throwing her arm out to hold him off. “Get the fuck off me!”
No one moved as the outburst reverberated around the kitchen. Then Bobby called himself a goddamn fool and stepped back, slowly, out of arm’s reach.
Sam’s wan, anxious face was better illuminated in the kitchen light, and he glanced between them before stepping to her side. “I can splint her fingers.”
Bobby watched, nonplussed, as Sam took Dee’s hand in his own shaking one, then opened the kit to start laying out supplies. Dee hissed as Sam straightened her fingers, and he whispered, “Sorry, sorry,” before reaching for the splints. His hands trembled, but Bobby kept his input to a minimum, delivering a few terse instructions for when the wrappings needed to be tighter.
“Your ribs cracked?” he asked, when Sam had finished.
Dee grimaced, and Sam bit his lip, glancing again at Bobby before dropping to his knees. “Let me check, ‘kay, Dee?”
She shut her eyes and didn’t answer as he lifted her shirt halfway up her chest. Bobby sucked in his breath at the sight of the livid bruises painted over her side. Someone had danced on her with a steel-toed boot, by the looks of it.
Sam spread his small hands over her side, brushing her skin as lightly as possible as he felt for her bones, but Dee stiffened and hissed sharply, her good hand locking onto the edge of the chair. “Sorry,” Sam said again, hastily withdrawing his hands.
“Well, that answers that question,” Bobby said. “You want those wrapped?”
“No,” she grunted.
Bobby shook out two pills from one of the orange bottles and slid it over to her, next to the water glass. “Here’s the good stuff. You earned it. Now you ready to tell me how you got your ass kicked and your baby brother ended up in the driver’s seat of a Pinto that I’m willing to bet my ass your dad didn’t win in no card game?”
Sam looked again to his sister, but she had popped the pills dry and was staring in stony silence into a corner of the kitchen. “We,” he began, but faltered at once. He tapped his fingers nervously on the edge of the table, his eyes focused on Dee instead of Bobby. “We, I don’t know, there was just-these assholes, they were following us home and Dee just stepped outside and -”
His voice rose simultaneously in pitch and speed, until it wobbled and teetered on the verge of breaking, and he cut off completely when Bobby reached and gripped his shoulder. Sam took a deep breath and clenched his hands into fists.
“Dee?” Bobby asked.
Her eyes flickered over, skittering over both of them before away again. She shrugged stiffly, one shoulder rolling back. “Don’t got a goddamn clue who they were,” she said, her voice a low rasp. “We heard something outside, I stepped out and got jumped. End of story.”
“Huh.” Bobby studied her, then asked gruffly, “Were you hurt anywhere else?”
That got her attention. Her head snapped up, her eyes flashing to his. “If you’re asking if I’ve been raped, say the goddamn words.”
Bobby crossed his arms, uncomfortable. “Well?”
“No,” she spat. “I wasn’t, thanks very fucking much.”
Sam looked scared and almost at the point of tears, standing at her side. He made a motion like he was reaching for her, then stopped himself, taking a deep, shaky breath. “Wh-when I came out, they weren’t-I chased them off. With the shotgun.”
“You did what?” Bobby stood up, staring at Sam, from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the table.
Sam gave a funny shrug. “There were four of them, and I nailed one of them in the thigh, then they ran off. The Pinto looked like the easiest one in the lot to break into, so I picked it.”
“Son of a -” Bobby ran a hand down his face. “Hold on just a damn minute. You mean to tell me that a gang of punks whaled Dee outside whatever shithole John left you, and you stepped outside with a 9-gauge and actually shot one of them? And after that, you broke into and hotwired a car to drive two hundred miles here? Without the cops ever on your tail?”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Dee slammed her palm onto the table. “Yes, that’s what he’s goddamn telling you.” She stood up, then grabbed the back of the chair to keep upright, eyes shut and face a tight white mask of pain. Sam made to grab for her, then aborted the motion. After a moment, Dee let go of the chair with a shaky exhale. “I’m done. Fucking done. Bobby, if you got a spare bed, or a couch, otherwise I’ll go sleep in the fucking yard -”
“Hang on, hang on to your horses for half a minute.” Bobby hurried in front of her. “Yeah, I got a bed for you, gimme half a minute to clear some stuff out.”
As soon as he did, she disappeared into the room, Sam following more slowly with their bags. He stopped outside to throw Bobby one last desperate look.
“Call me if you need anything,” Bobby told him. “I won’t be far.”
Sam nodded, then stepped through, shutting the door behind him.
Bobby did not go back to bed for another hour after that. He filled another glass with Jack and sat at the kitchen table, drinking and replaying the scene that had taken place there, wondering just what had gone down in Iowa and where the hell John Winchester was.
~*~
Bobby’s house, and his library most of all, had always been one of Sam’s favorite places, one of his few dependably recurring scenes. He’d been thumbing through Bobby’s books since he first learned to read, and lately Bobby had been giving him solid research assignments, like cross-referencing methods of ganking water spirits through different lore.
Sam was used to working through distractions: ringing gunshots from Dee’s target practice, phones jangling from Bobby’s FBI lines, Bobby and Dad’s gruff conversation growing more and more short-tempered. Now almost all of those were absent, and Sam couldn’t focus.
The phones still rang, though not as often as Sam remembered. Louder still was Bobby pacing from room to room, throwing glances Sam’s way frequently. He, too, was far quieter than usual.
Dee was upstairs in bed, from where she’d barely budged the last two days. Sure, she was recuperating from a couple cracked ribs, broken fingers, and a host of nasty bruises-not exactly in shape to be puttering around Bobby’s cars-but it unnerved the hell out of Sam. Out of Bobby too, by the look of it. At mealtime, instead of shouting for them both as usual, he’d told Sam to get his sister downstairs. She slept through breakfast the first day, but when Sam checked in again at lunchtime and Dee said she wasn’t hungry, Bobby told him to tell her to get her ass down there. She had scowled, and used Sam as a crutch to pull herself out of bed and get down the stairs, but she’d come down. That had almost made up for how silent the meal was, how she barely ate half of her sandwich, though she made a big show of wincing over how sore her jaw was.
One of Bobby’s phones rang, but it was one on his desk instead of those on the wall. Bobby changed directions abruptly, seizing the phone off the desk to look at the ID on the screen, then ducked out to the back porch. Sam abandoned his books to follow, stopping just outside the screen door to lean against the wall and listen.
"Hey Jim, thanks for getting back to me. Have you heard from Winchester? ...Well, his kids pulled into my yard the other night, about two in the morning, in a stolen Ford. They'd been staying alone again in some podunk Iowa town while their daddy went chasing a critter. But somehow it all went south, and Dee got her ass whooped by a bunch of thugs, and Sam had to pull out their shotgun and nail a bastard in the leg to get them off her. Damn nightmare.”
Yeah, that was one way of putting it, Sam thought, as Bobby paused. In his mind’s eye, he could see Dee lying upstairs in bed, far too still.
Then Bobby continued, more testily, “No, they say it wasn't anything like that-though I'm not so sure, to tell the truth. Something's rattled her, her confidence is all shot to hell. I wish they had been closer to your place, to be honest-I don't know what to do with them, besides give Dee her space. ...Yeah, I know. Let me tell you, when their daddy finally turns up, I'm going to be hard pressed not to give him a few injuries of his own. -All right. Yeah, you too."
A few seconds of silence, then Bobby softly said, “Balls.”
Sam stayed where he was, even as he heard the heavy footfalls leading back to the screen door. Bobby stopped short when he saw him, and Sam met his eye defiantly.
Bobby eyed him, then reached out to swat him on the back of the head. “C’mon, idjit. In a few years, I’ll give you a beer. Grab a Coke now as a rain check.”
Cold can in hand, Sam followed him back to the study, dropping into a chair angled toward the desk. Bobby took a long swig of his beer.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he started, “and it ain’t true. Your old man really does care about both of you. He didn’t want this to happen.”
Sam gave a small, incredulous snort. Bobby glowered at him.
“I mean it. Some dads don’t give a crap, and John Winchester ain’t one of those. For all that it looks like he’s got his head screwed on backwards and upside-down, and it would take a shotgun blast to realign it.” That pulled a small smile out of Sam’s mouth. “Your dad’s just got the biggest case of tunnel vision I’ve ever seen, and I think sometimes he forgets Dee ain’t as old as her ID says she is. She’s been through a hell of a lot, the most capable kid I know, but she’s still just a kid.”
Sam said nothing. It wasn’t like he was the one forgetting that.
Bobby looked back at his beer as though he wished it were something stronger. “If anything gives him a wake-up call, this ought to. Bloody hell. He didn’t put you through all that training just to get the cops calling a 503 on his twelve-year-old in the state of Iowa. Though you did the right thing,” he added to Sam.
Sam nodded, though the awful gut-twisting in his stomach was only getting worse. “I wish…”
“You had to do it, son.”
“I know,” Sam said. The words were difficult at first, but then came out in a rush. “I wish-I had shot him in the chest. I wish I had killed him. He was going to hurt Dee. I-I think he did hurt her.” He clenched his teeth, staring out the window and blinking hard.
Bobby swore softly under his breath, and Sam looked back to see him covering his face with his hand. A moment later, Bobby stood up and strode around to the front of the desk, where he could lean forward and grip Sam’s shoulder.
“You did the right thing,” he repeated. “You got you and your sister out of there.”
Sam had already lost the habit of hugging Dad, but this wasn’t Dad. He stood up, setting the soda on the desk with a thunk before wrapping his arms around Bobby’s middle, holding on for dear life.
~*~
Insomnia was part and parcel of the hunter’s life. Most of them dealt with it with the usual hunter’s sleeping aid, commonly found in a flask, but Bobby had never liked knocking himself out that way. It could leave you awfully vulnerable to a lot of threats, and hunters knew better than anyone the number of things that went bump in the night.
It was also probably a good idea when you had taken in scraped-up Winchester refugees. Walls weren’t too thick in his house, so he’d heard the previous nights when Dee was retching up her dinner in the bathroom. He’d also heard the quiet murmur of Sam’s voice with her, so he’d left them alone.
Tonight, though, something was moving downstairs, without any voices, and he didn’t like that so much.
He went down the stairs guardedly, shotgun ready at his side, but found Dee alone, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a small arsenal of weaponry beside her, can of gun oil next to her and rag in hand. She met his eye but didn’t say anything, didn’t hesitate in her movements of wiping down a rifle barrel.
Bobby set his firearm down carefully on a nearby table. “Looks like Sam’s the only one getting any shut-eye here tonight.”
At the mention of her brother’s name, Dee paused, then slowly set down the rag and barrel. "Bobby." She was frowning at the floor, hands folded tightly together. Her tense posture and deadly serious draw of her eyebrows warned Bobby to take a seat on the other side of the room.
"Sam's a good kid."
He blinked. That was not the staggering confession he had expected.
"He's real smart," Dee said, addressing the floor. "He can help you with research. You like him all right, don't you?"
Foreboding filled Bobby's gut, and he leaned forward guardedly with his hands on his knees. "Of course I like Sam. What're you getting at?"
She still wouldn't look up, hands pressed together in an unconscious gesture of prayer. "Maybe...he could stay here. For the school year, and while Dad and I are on hunts."
Bobby counted to five before he let himself answer. "Can't imagine your dad would like that much."
"I think he might go along with it."
Okay, Bobby would address that in a minute, but for now he changed tactics. "What about Sam? Do you think he'll be peachy-keen on the idea of you leaving him behind?"
Dee shrugged one shoulder. "He hates moving. After he gets used to it, he'll be glad to stay in one school."
Bobby had had enough. "Cut out the bullshit, I ain't in the mood for it."
Her eyes snapped up, dark and angry. "I'm serious."
"No, you're being a drama queen because you got jumped by a gang of grown men. It doesn't mean you can't take care of your brother. You've been doing that just fine for years."
Her jaw tightened, and she said in a low voice, "It's not about that. Dammit, Bobby - something really bad could've happened."
"Jesus, Dee, something bad did happen!" He surged to his feet, furious. "Sam didn't get a scratch on him, you're the one who got beat to hell!"
"That's my own damn fault!" she snapped, and immediately stopped, clenching her fists and looking away.
Bobby swore, barely stopping himself from moving forward to grab her shoulders. "Listen to me, Dee." His tone of voice made her look back over, though her truculent expression said it wouldn't be easy to get through. He stabbed his finger toward her. "It is not your fault you got attacked. Not because you're a girl, or because you're sixteen, or because you weren't being careful enough. Get that through your thick melon of a head."
A queer look settled on her face. "No," she agreed, far too quietly. "It's not any of those reasons." She got up and disappeared back upstairs before he could think of another response besides strangling her.
He swore again to the empty room, with a furious gesture that stopped just short of hitting the wall. He should be billing Winchester for adolescent therapy. That shit didn't come cheap.
~*~
The room was too quiet when Dee slipped back inside. Sam wasn’t asleep. Dee didn’t say anything to him as she stiffly lay back down.
“I’m not staying here.”
Stupid eavesdropping little brothers. Dee closed her eyes, tired as hell, though she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to sleep. “We’ll see what Dad says.”
“I’m not staying here,” Sam said, sounding angry now. “Who do you think’s gonna watch out for you, keep you from being stupid?”
“Christ, Sam, just - just shut the fuck up.” Dee wrenched away, onto her side, though she had to grit her teeth to keep from making a noise at the agony that spread through her side, from her fractured ribs.
Sam’s breath hitched, and Dee hated herself even more. Fuck, she couldn’t do this to him, not on top of everything else. She rolled back onto her back, turned her head toward him. “Look. I’m sorry. Just go to sleep, okay?”
He didn’t answer, but shifted closer. Dee moved her good hand up to her shoulder, leaving it open, and Sam’s fingers grasped it in an instant. He pressed closer, pushing his forehead to her shoulder, and Dee swallowed hard.
She didn’t want to sleep. Every night had been a variation of the same fucking thing. Pinned down in the parking lot, they using her own knives to saw off her hands and feet. Tony pressing the barrel of the shotgun to her crotch, harder and harder before cocking it, and the vibration that sent through her had woken her up, gasping, and she could still feel. Every. Fucker’s. Hand. On her.
The night before that, she had dreamed it was Bobby. Bobby catching and trapping her with his body, pushing her face against the rough wall of the back of his house, and she knew she had to be quiet or Sam would hear.
That one had had her running for the bathroom when she woke up, and the waves of agony through her side had her vomiting twice as much, stupid girly tears on her face before she was done, Sam near tears himself as he knelt by her side and held out a washcloth.
He shouldn’t be within a mile of her.
Neither should Dad. Dee didn’t know how to tell him she shouldn’t hunt with him anymore.
Dee had fucked herself up now, worse than anytime before, and there wasn’t any coming back from that. Her head was all fucked up, and she doubted she’d know how to make a single good goddamn decision for the rest of her life. If she did, it would be by accident, and she couldn’t fucking trust herself to be around them.
She didn’t want to be around them. She didn’t want to be anywhere.
There wouldn’t be many more days of this, of listening to her brother breathe, his warmth next to her. Dee squeezed her eyes tightly shut, hot tears spilling out the corners, and she clenched her teeth so she wouldn’t make a sound, but Sam drew in a breath and pushed closer, one arm tentatively reaching across her to touch her opposite shoulder.
~*~
The next day, John Winchester arrived.
The house was quiet, near as quiet as a tomb except for the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, when they heard the rumble of the Impala over the gravel.
Sam was stretched on the rug before the fireplace, using as a pillow an ancient grimoire he may have been supposed to be studying, when he heard it. He looked immediately to his sister, lying on her back on the couch. She hadn’t moved yet, but he saw the tight pull of her mouth.
A moment later, Bobby strode from his study, crossing to the front window to flick aside a curtain. “Well, look who finally showed up to visit.”
Dee inhaled sharply, closing her eyes before rolling off the couch to her feet.
“Hey, Dee,” Bobby said hurriedly, “why dontcha take a seat and let me handle the hellos-” He was cut off by the screen door swinging closed behind her. “Balls,” he muttered, and went after her.
Sam got to his feet, moving to Bobby’s place by the window, watching from behind the curtain as Dee and Bobby faced John, just getting out of the Impala with a face like murder.
*
Dee didn't look at Bobby as he joined her on the porch, her eyes fixed and her back stiff.
John had swung the car in crooked before the house, his glower visible through the windshield, and he started in on her even before he shut the door. "What the hell is wrong with you, Dee? You do not take off from where I left you and your brother, especially without leaving word where you're going. If you ever pull a stunt like that again-"
"Back down, Winchester," Bobby barked. "If she'd stayed where you left her, she'd've been gang-raped and had her throat cut by now."
John swung toward him, favoring his right leg. "Stay out of family business, Singer. I didn't invite you into this."
"You blockheaded jackass," Bobby snapped, losing his temper even faster than expected, "you think I'm exaggerating? Show him your ribs, Dee."
But she backed into the shadows, shaking her head. Out of patience, Bobby lunged forward to grab her left wrist and hold it up, revealing the splinted fingers. "Your son had to fire at them with a shotgun to get them off her!"
Dee snarled, twisting, and jabbed with her free hand into the tender spot of his armpit, forcing him to let go.
It had been enough, though. John stopped with an arrested look, staring at his daughter. When at last he spoke, his tone was unreadable. "Dee, come here."
Bobby knew better than to try inviting them into the house for whatever conversation was to come. With a last warning scowl at John, he returned inside.
Sam was pressed to the wall by the window, watching out of sight. "He's yelling at her, isn't he."
Bobby glanced at him, then back out to where John and Dee stood beside the car. "Not if he don't want a second leg injury."
*
As Dee approached, Dad had one hand on the car's roof, likely for support. He wore a few days’ worth of stubble, and up close, she could see the lines of weariness and pain around the grimness of his mouth. No doubt he checked out of the hospital too soon and not on all his meds, since he had to drive so far so fast.
"Let me see your side.” His tone was flat and to the point, the same as it was with any order.
She closed her eyes for just a moment before obeying, drawing her shirt up to the edge of her sports bra. She kept her eyes on Bobby's yard.
When her father spoke, his voice was still impenetrable. "When was that?"
She wet her lips. It shouldn’t be so hard to remember how many days had passed. "Last Friday night, sir."
"What happened?"
She spoke quietly, without inflection. "I stepped out of the room a little before ten p.m., and they got me by the neck."
“What the hell did you go outside for?” Dad demanded, voice thick with anger.
Dee had to swallow convulsively for a moment, struggling to remember the reason. “Heard something, wanted to check it out.”
“Goddammit, Dee, is it too much to ask-what’s the very first lesson I ever taught you? You’re always safer inside.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, eyes still on the ground.
Dad exhaled. "How many were waiting?"
"Four." She paused before continuing. "I told Sam to stay in the room, but he came out with the shotgun when...they got this hand." She twitched her broken fingers. "I told him to stay in the room. But he nailed one of them in the leg, and they all ran. And he asked to go. It...didn't seem safe to stay. I'm sorry I didn't find a way to tell you before we split." She forced herself to meet his eyes.
The lines in his face, around his mouth, had contorted to something deeper. The twisted knot in Dee’s stomach flipped as she wondered if he were even angrier than she had thought, and then he reached out with one arm to pull her to him.
She stiffened in shock, but Dad didn't let go. Her face was pressed to her father's chest, and for the first time her throat ached, but she choked the emotion back. No, this was all wrong, not how it was supposed to go-he should still be yelling at her. He didn't know what she'd one, how badly she’d fucked up-and she had had plenty of time to think about how she would rather be dead than have him know, but in this moment she wanted to howl out the truth, just so he would push her away and look at her with the disgust and disappointment she deserved. She didn't relax in the embrace.
At last he let her go, though he kept his arm around her shoulders, and touched her chin to pull her gaze to him. His face had a touch of worry now, and she swallowed and looked away.
"You did good, Dee," he said, and she closed her eyes in horror. "You shouldn’t have left the room, but you did good getting out of there, after. I didn't mean-you follow your instincts, Dee, and you'll keep you and your brother safe-"
She wrenched away, out of reach, and tried to keep her voice steady. "We're going now, right, Dad? Can't we just go?"
He stared at her, too many questions rising, and she pushed past, striding quickly back into the house.
Half an hour later, they were clearing out of Bobby’s yard, Sam sulking with crossed arms in the backseat, Dee in the shotgun seat, hand cushioning her forehead against the window. She’d found her sunglasses under the seat and didn’t think she’d ever take them off again.
They were done talking. Now they were on their way to some other town, some other motel or apartment or rundown cabin, and sooner or later Dad would leave them again, his final words to her to watch out for Sammy because he trusted her to be able to do that. All of her half-baked ideas, ways to keep Dad and Sam safe, lay crushed under the Impala’s tires miles back.
Angola was behind them - she’d clock Sam if he ever brought it up again, he should already know that - but it lay ever ahead of them too, behind every road sign, down every highway exit. It would rear up again and again, perhaps when she least expected it or had almost forgotten - then she would find herself on Angola’s streets, Tony waiting in the doorway.
The mile markers sped by with unceasing regularity, the numbers counting down to the state line like the most reliable fortune-teller in Dee’s life, for all they foretold would come.
Sam waited after school almost an hour before Dee showed up. That had happened before in other towns, but not this one. Sam had plenty of time to think about it, loitering outside until almost all the other kids were gone, until he saw his sister striding up the sidewalk, jacket collar popped up and hands jammed in her jean pockets. He grabbed his bag and hurried down the driveway to meet her.
He was still a half-dozen steps away when she stopped, swinging away to start in the other direction, and he had to jog to catch up. All the complaints and questions he’d had lined up died in his throat; something about the stiffness in her gait and neck (more like Dad than ever, especially after he’d been injured) warned him off.
Instead, as they power-walked down the street, he fumed silently at their father, whose fault this all was anyway. He needed to have gotten back yesterday. More like several yesterdays ago. The whole sucky situation was stressing Dee the hell out, much worse than Sam had seen before. Too many things were adding up to the wrong conclusions: she obviously hadn’t found a job, yet she was paying off Amar and keeping the kitchen stocked, though she wasn’t any happier or more relaxed for it, and Sam didn’t think this could possibly end well. Why did Dad have to take every single damn hunt? Would it absolutely kill him to settle down in one place for the next five years, just until Dee was actually eighteen and Sam could finish school? Did Dad even remember how to have a civilian job and live a normal life, or was he too embarrassed to admit he didn’t?
They came to a halt again at the intersection with the long red light, and beneath the simmering rage, something else prickled the back of Sam’s neck. Glancing around, he spotted a small group of men loitering on the other side of the street, gazing in their direction. Sam frowned and looked back ahead.
They crossed the street, and a block further, Sam checked to see that the same men had crossed the street and were walking behind them. Creepy.
Sam skipped a step forward to reach Dee’s side, nudging her. “Think we got some friends following us home.”
She shot a look over her shoulder, then swore viciously under her breath. Her pace didn’t change - if she were walking any faster, she’d be jogging - but her hand landed hard on Sam’s shoulder, clenching tight and keeping him beside her.
Startled, Sam looked up at her face. Dee’s jaw was clenched, her eyes locked forward, but Sam could read crystal-clear that she was fucking scared. Out-and-out scared like he couldn’t last remember seeing her.
He resisted the urge to look behind them again. “You know them?” he asked in a low tone.
“Shut up,” she ground out, and yes, that was panic in her voice. Sam was still absorbing it and what it meant (trying not to run through scenarios of what she might have done to piss them off), when she spoke again. “Listen to me,” and her voice was dead serious, like Dad’s when he was giving Sam instructions before taking Dee on a hunt. “See this sub shop coming up? You’re going inside and waiting there until we’ve gone past, then another fifteen minutes after that. Go to the motel, get inside and lock the door. Don’t open for anyone but my voice and knock, got it?”
“Like hell I will,” Sam said. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about it -”
“Fuck that,” Sam said, and then saw their means of deliverance. He lunged out from under her hand, toward the street, to flag down a passing police car as though it were a taxi.
He barely heard Dee’s intake of breath behind him, focusing instead on beaming brightly as the policeman rolled down his window. “Hi, officer! Sorry to bother you, but we have a big favor to ask: could you give us a ride just for a few blocks, to the motel we’re staying at?”
“What’s the trouble?”
“We’ve got some creeps following us,” Sam said, jerking his head toward the guys, who hadn’t come any closer since the cop car stopped. “They’ve been going after my sister lately.”
The cop glanced past Sam to Dee, then nodded, beckoning them toward the backseat. “Get on in.”
Sam grabbed Dee’s hand, dragging her in with him. He told the cop where their motel was and launched into their routine story about their traveling-salesman dad, busy hours, wasn’t it great getting to see so much of the USA? The cop warned them not to walk alone around this part of town and to tell their dad so too. Sam promised he would. Then they pulled up in front of the motel, and Sam thanked them earnestly before bounding out.
Dee, who hadn’t said a single word inside the cop car, kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, mouth tight, all the way to their door. On the way there, Sam’s exhilaration at the smooth success of his plan dwindled, replaced by apprehension long before they stepped inside and she swung the door shut.
He was not prepared, however, for Dee to grab him by the shoulders before shoving him with bruising force against the wall.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Sam couldn’t even draw breath, couldn’t begin to process the paleness of her face and glint in her eye before she was shouting again, shaking him as she snarled. “What the fuck were you thinking? Since when are cops our goddamn friends? Have you completely forgotten about all those times they almost took you away from us, put you in a fucking home with a new fucking family? How easy do you think it would have been for them to find out Dad isn’t here, huh? How fucking easy?”
“Shut up!” Sam shoved her back, off of him. He tried to steady his voice, even as his breath hitched. “It was a hell of a lot better than your plan! It got us away from those jerks, didn’t it? And it’s not my damn fault Dad left us!”
For a second, Sam was certain Dee was going to hit him; her hand rose, and he half-flinched back before bracing himself. Then she closed her eyes, staggering back away from him, and her hand moved instead to cover her face.
“Dee?” His voice trembled again, but any time Dee wasn’t ragging on him for it, it didn’t matter. “Who were those guys?”
She shook her head, eyes still closed and palm to her face. Without another word, she turned and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door after her.
Almost an hour later, Sam conceded that his capacity for homework tonight was shot to hell. That had a perfectly ordinary explanation. Every time Dad stopped somewhere long enough to bother enrolling them in local schools, there came a point when Sam would get an inkling that they were about to pick everything up and move a few hundred miles away again, and he could finish the assignment but it was never going to be turned in, or if it were turned in it wouldn’t be graded, or if it were graded he would never see the red letter. He always felt this way at those times: itchy and tired and so damn angry at how helpless he was over his life.
It was a Friday, anyway. He had the weekend to see if the suspicion came true. Sam kicked his notebook over to the wall and got up to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He debated making one for Dee, but no, she’d come out if she wanted dinner.
He pulled out his literature anthology as he ate, flipping through for any stories he hadn’t read yet and would be likeliest to be on the syllabus in his next school - no, screw that, just any stories that looked interesting. Forget school right now.
It would have been nice and peaceful, a rare hour with the TV off, if it weren’t for the noise from the parking lot. There were dull, rhythmic thumps against the outside wall, like someone was bouncing a basketball against it, and someone was caroling a strange, high, warbling song. Drunk, of course, but it was shredding his last nerves.
He slammed shut his book and stood up. Right on cue, the bedroom door opened and Dee came out, frowning, hair mussed and her Walkman headphones around her neck. “The fuck’s that racket about?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, pissily because that’s what was expected of him, and he wasn’t going to let her know how glad he was she came out of the room. It’d make it easier for him to go to bed, anyway. “I was about to go check it out, tell them to pipe down.”
“No,” Dee said shortly, and pulled the Walkman and headphones off to set them on the table. “You stay here.”
~*~
The night was unseasonably humid, the darkness and thick air clogging Dee’s senses after the light and cool air inside. She blinked hard a few times, trying to make sense of the parked cars and few figures loitering between them on the other side of the lot. Noises. Some assholes who needed to fuck off. A man’s voice warbling disjointedly toward the right, on the other side of the building, in the shadows where Amar could now use her fucking hard-earned money to replace the burned-out lights.
She started that way, grateful for one clear simple mission of venting her spleen on someone who wasn’t her little brother. Nothing complicated about it, no need to think or calculate or plan -
Dee never heard them coming behind her. Her first alert was a massive forearm thrown around her neck, pulling her backwards, off her feet, and she never caught her air. Then she was slammed down, cracking her skull against the asphalt. The one remaining light in her vision sparked off dozens of progeny, spinning across her view. Only after they cleared did she see the first face of the men leaning over her.
She lurched for her boot, fingers scrabbling for her knives, but one of them (Buzzcut? He looked familiar, but she couldn’t tell, details still fuzzy) stomped on her hand, grinding the heel down. Dee howled, her splintered fingers flaming a white pain that blinded out the rest, until Buzzcut dropped to one knee, straddling her, and landed the first punch to her cheek. He beat a couple more in, across both sides of her face to even out the jolts, then paused to lean in close.
“Skanky bitch thought she’s gonna cash and dash, huh? Thought she got away, the lucky cunt, after getting triple pay?”
Dee could barely make out the outline of his face, but it was enough to aim as she spat a mix of blood and saliva in his face.
He backhanded her, a blow that momentarily blacked out her sight. Then there were rough hands squeezing her tits, sweeping down her sides and back, searching for the pistol she’d left on her bedside table. Other hands pawed her jeans, yanking out her wallet and cell phone. They felt down to her ankles, then slid the knives out, leaving a hollow unnatural place behind. Dee gave another guttural cry, this time in rage, and someone delivered a kick to her ribs that choked her voice off.
Her knife was in Buzzcut’s hand now, glinting in the feeble light, before he pressed it to her throat. “We didn’t finish the lesson, slut,” he breathed. “You coulda had it nice and easy, we coulda taken our time, but now you pissed us off. You don’t like it easy, do you, bitch? Wanna play rough? Well, I’m gonna start by shoving this little knife up your cunt and carve you open -”
“Get off of her!”
Sam’s furious bellow was the last voice Dee wanted to hear. She closed her eyes in horror (no no no, anything but this) before wrenching them open, so she could see her twelve-year-old brother standing alone on the sidewalk, aiming a shotgun in their direction.
One of the men, who had been pinning her other arm down, got to his feet and raised her second knife. “Scram, kid.”
“Get back inside the fucking room!” Dee shouted, as clearly as she could through the blood in her mouth. “Get back!”
Sam ignored them all, releasing the safety. The gun was steady, even though she could see (of everything, this would be clear) the whiteness of his face. “Let her go or I’ll shoot.” There was a barely detectable quaver now underneath his voice, but he sounded no less sure for it.
Buzzcut straightened up on his knees to sneer. “Put the gun down before you shoot your dick off.”
Sam’s fingers flexed around the trigger. He didn’t look scared anymore, but grim, terribly grim - more so than Dee had ever seen before. He shifted his aim slightly and fired.
One of the men screamed, grabbing his thigh. Buzzcut swore, leaping to his feet.
Sam had staggered back with the recoil, but kept his balance and his grip on the gun, cocking it and aiming again. “Who’s next?”
The other two grabbed their injured friend and hustled off, into the shadows around the building. Buzzcut stayed a moment longer, staring at Sam with a dark hatred, before turning and walking more slowly off after the others.
Sam kept the shotgun trained on him until he was out of sight. Then, with a sharp inhale, he let it drop to his side as he ran forward to her side. “Dee -”
“Shut up,” she said, gasping raggedly, even as she grabbed at his arm with her good hand to pull herself up. Her vision swam again, and she almost threw up on the spot. The fuckers had cracked her ribs.
She kept her hand locked on Sam’s shoulder as they staggered back toward the open door of their room. His fast panting filled her ears, louder than her own breathing or the throbs in her hand and side.
~*~
Sam hauled her back inside, even as someone bellowed from the other side of the lot, “What the fuck is going on over there?”
He slammed the door shut, clicking all the locks into place, before turning to face his sister. She had lurched unsteadily into a kitchen chair, cradling one hand with very broken fingers to her side, her nose and mouth bleeding. Eyes closed, she took shallow, unsteady breaths.
Sam didn’t know what to do, so he fell back on training. He set the shotgun down, went to the bathroom to wet a wash cloth, and as he brought it back, he realized that now, now, his hands were shaking.
Dee didn’t take any notice of him as he stood there, holding the wet cloth out with his trembling hands. Finally he said, “Dee,” and his voice shook just as much. She looked at him with one eye already swelling shut, more blood swelling at the corner of her mouth. “Dee, let’s go. I, I don't want to stay here anymore. Please, please, Dee-Dee."
The old nickname fell out unconsciously, and any other day she would have socked him hard for it, but now she looked at him with her one open eye and bloody mouth and she looked so broken, so far from Dee, that Sam thought he was going to cry.
She nodded, chin moving jerkily.
Sam dropped the cloth to the table, spinning around to grab their things scattered around. "We gonna hotwire a car?"
After a moment, she nodded again.
"I'll do it." Sam headed for the closet to grab a hanger.
At that, Dee got to her feet, one hand braced on the table top. "No, Sam."
“You can’t do it,” Sam said flatly. “Not like that. I can, no one’s gonna expect a kid to break into a car. And I'm better at picking locks."
"You're not going out there by yourself," she said, still so goddamn stubborn with mangled fingers and half her face beaten in.
Sam gritted his teeth. "Fine, watch from the doorway."
“Take the shotgun with you.”
Sam collected the shotgun and a wire coat hanger, and handed Dee’s pistol to her to hold in her good hand, though they waited long minutes at the doorway to make sure it was quiet and clear before he darted forward to the rustiest, most banged-up car in the line in front of them. He crouched down as his hands worked automatically with one end of the wire hanger. He’d done this before a few times under Dad’s watchful eye, just for practice. Sam had hated it at the time, griped about how they were training him to become a criminal, but as the door of the Pinto clicked open now, Sam vowed to thank Dad once a week for those lessons.
He ran back to help Dee with the bags, but tugged her away from the driver’s side. “No,” he hissed. “I’m driving.”
“Sammy -”
“No. There’s no way.” He pulled open the passenger door, throwing their bags into the backseat, then pushed Dee into the seat. She went, which was even more alarming, but at least she wasn’t fighting him now.
The driver’s seat was a little low, so he folded one leg underneath him and adjusted the seat and mirrors. He fished a flashlight out of one of their bags, and Dee held it in place while he dug his lock picks into the keyhole. Once the engine revved, he took a deep breath as he placed his hands on the steering wheel.
Dee was watching him, her posture subdued where she was slumped against the door. “Sure you got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Know where you’re going?”
“North to I-90, then west to Sioux Falls. I looked it up in an atlas at school the other day.” He glanced over nervously as she let out a soft exhale. “What?”
“Nothin’. Fuck, Sammy.”
“Shouldn’t take more than three hours.” He swallowed, placing his damp palm over the automatic gear shift. “Might need to stop for gas along the way.”
Now Dee made an oddly choked sound, nothing like a laugh, even though he couldn’t imagine what else it was supposed to be. She touched her chest. “I got some twenties. They took everything else.”
“Okay.” He swallowed again, his throat as dry as his palms were sweaty, wishing he’d stopped to fill up a water bottle before leaving, but no way was he going back inside now. “Nothing else, we’ll go as far as we can, then stop at the gas station and use the phone to call Bobby. He’ll come get us.”
Dee didn’t answer. She didn’t say another word for the next hundred and fifty miles, not as Sam started his shaky way out of the motel parking lot, nor as he slammed them to a stop at the first stop light. Sam felt better once he got onto the dark and empty country roads, thankful for the tiny N for north lit up on the dashboard. He stayed just under the speed limit, not wanting to give cops any reason to take a closer look at the driver.
Mile marker after mile marker flickered by, and he waited for the adrenaline to fade, waited to get sleepy, but he never did.
~*~
Bobby hadn’t been in bed for more than an hour when the first alarm tripped outside his gates. Growling, he rolled out of bed and snatched up his shotgun in the same motion. The window showed an unfamiliar car stopped outside the fence, with a smaller figure-just a kid-standing next to it. Frowning, he moved to the intercom and depressed the talk button.
“Gimme your best shot at making me open my gate at one in the morning.”
“Bobby, it’s us! Let us in already!”
Sam Winchester’s voice rocked Bobby back. He took a moment to absorb the reality of Winchesters once again outside his doorstep (the kids, at least-was John with them, maybe injured enough to send his youngest out first?), then pressed the button again. “What the hell chased you here, kid? Is your dad with you?”
“He’s in a hospital back in Iowa. It’s a long story. C’mon, open up. Dee needs an ice pack.”
That got Bobby moving, though he didn’t leave his safeguards or shotgun behind. He flicked holy water at Sam’s face through the gate, making the kid scowl, before unlocking it, and Sam ran back to the driver’s seat-the driver’s seat, what the ever-loving hell-to pull the car up to the house.
Bobby got an answer soon enough, as he reached the car again just as the passenger’s door opened and Dee clambered out, moving unsteadily.
“You mind telling me what in seven hells brought you here at this-” Bobby began, but he stopped short as Dee reached the end of the car, one hand outstretched to brace herself on the metal, before doubling over and puking onto the gravel.
“Dee!” Sam yelped, and dropped the bags to run to her side.
“Are you drunk?” Bobby asked, incredulously.
Dee didn’t answer, still doubled over, but Sam turned indignantly. “No-she’s just hurt. C’mon, Dee, let’s go inside.”
Not until they were under the kitchen light did Bobby get the full sorry picture. Half of Dee’s face was swollen and red, one eye half-shut and puffy, some spots already starting to bruise, and the way she held her hand and gingerly carried herself promised more damage to the rest of her. The story could wait; Bobby went for the kit and some icepacks while Sam filled a water glass.
“All right, let’s start with those fingers.” Bobby reached for her hand, but Dee-holding an ice pack to her face, and who still had not said a single word or so much as glanced at his face-snarled and yanked her hand to her.
“Don’t be a baby,” Bobby said impatiently, and made another grab for her wrist.
Dee shoved her chair back, throwing her arm out to hold him off. “Get the fuck off me!”
No one moved as the outburst reverberated around the kitchen. Then Bobby called himself a goddamn fool and stepped back, slowly, out of arm’s reach.
Sam’s wan, anxious face was better illuminated in the kitchen light, and he glanced between them before stepping to her side. “I can splint her fingers.”
Bobby watched, nonplussed, as Sam took Dee’s hand in his own shaking one, then opened the kit to start laying out supplies. Dee hissed as Sam straightened her fingers, and he whispered, “Sorry, sorry,” before reaching for the splints. His hands trembled, but Bobby kept his input to a minimum, delivering a few terse instructions for when the wrappings needed to be tighter.
“Your ribs cracked?” he asked, when Sam had finished.
Dee grimaced, and Sam bit his lip, glancing again at Bobby before dropping to his knees. “Let me check, ‘kay, Dee?”
She shut her eyes and didn’t answer as he lifted her shirt halfway up her chest. Bobby sucked in his breath at the sight of the livid bruises painted over her side. Someone had danced on her with a steel-toed boot, by the looks of it.
Sam spread his small hands over her side, brushing her skin as lightly as possible as he felt for her bones, but Dee stiffened and hissed sharply, her good hand locking onto the edge of the chair. “Sorry,” Sam said again, hastily withdrawing his hands.
“Well, that answers that question,” Bobby said. “You want those wrapped?”
“No,” she grunted.
Bobby shook out two pills from one of the orange bottles and slid it over to her, next to the water glass. “Here’s the good stuff. You earned it. Now you ready to tell me how you got your ass kicked and your baby brother ended up in the driver’s seat of a Pinto that I’m willing to bet my ass your dad didn’t win in no card game?”
Sam looked again to his sister, but she had popped the pills dry and was staring in stony silence into a corner of the kitchen. “We,” he began, but faltered at once. He tapped his fingers nervously on the edge of the table, his eyes focused on Dee instead of Bobby. “We, I don’t know, there was just-these assholes, they were following us home and Dee just stepped outside and -”
His voice rose simultaneously in pitch and speed, until it wobbled and teetered on the verge of breaking, and he cut off completely when Bobby reached and gripped his shoulder. Sam took a deep breath and clenched his hands into fists.
“Dee?” Bobby asked.
Her eyes flickered over, skittering over both of them before away again. She shrugged stiffly, one shoulder rolling back. “Don’t got a goddamn clue who they were,” she said, her voice a low rasp. “We heard something outside, I stepped out and got jumped. End of story.”
“Huh.” Bobby studied her, then asked gruffly, “Were you hurt anywhere else?”
That got her attention. Her head snapped up, her eyes flashing to his. “If you’re asking if I’ve been raped, say the goddamn words.”
Bobby crossed his arms, uncomfortable. “Well?”
“No,” she spat. “I wasn’t, thanks very fucking much.”
Sam looked scared and almost at the point of tears, standing at her side. He made a motion like he was reaching for her, then stopped himself, taking a deep, shaky breath. “Wh-when I came out, they weren’t-I chased them off. With the shotgun.”
“You did what?” Bobby stood up, staring at Sam, from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the table.
Sam gave a funny shrug. “There were four of them, and I nailed one of them in the thigh, then they ran off. The Pinto looked like the easiest one in the lot to break into, so I picked it.”
“Son of a -” Bobby ran a hand down his face. “Hold on just a damn minute. You mean to tell me that a gang of punks whaled Dee outside whatever shithole John left you, and you stepped outside with a 9-gauge and actually shot one of them? And after that, you broke into and hotwired a car to drive two hundred miles here? Without the cops ever on your tail?”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Dee slammed her palm onto the table. “Yes, that’s what he’s goddamn telling you.” She stood up, then grabbed the back of the chair to keep upright, eyes shut and face a tight white mask of pain. Sam made to grab for her, then aborted the motion. After a moment, Dee let go of the chair with a shaky exhale. “I’m done. Fucking done. Bobby, if you got a spare bed, or a couch, otherwise I’ll go sleep in the fucking yard -”
“Hang on, hang on to your horses for half a minute.” Bobby hurried in front of her. “Yeah, I got a bed for you, gimme half a minute to clear some stuff out.”
As soon as he did, she disappeared into the room, Sam following more slowly with their bags. He stopped outside to throw Bobby one last desperate look.
“Call me if you need anything,” Bobby told him. “I won’t be far.”
Sam nodded, then stepped through, shutting the door behind him.
Bobby did not go back to bed for another hour after that. He filled another glass with Jack and sat at the kitchen table, drinking and replaying the scene that had taken place there, wondering just what had gone down in Iowa and where the hell John Winchester was.
~*~
Bobby’s house, and his library most of all, had always been one of Sam’s favorite places, one of his few dependably recurring scenes. He’d been thumbing through Bobby’s books since he first learned to read, and lately Bobby had been giving him solid research assignments, like cross-referencing methods of ganking water spirits through different lore.
Sam was used to working through distractions: ringing gunshots from Dee’s target practice, phones jangling from Bobby’s FBI lines, Bobby and Dad’s gruff conversation growing more and more short-tempered. Now almost all of those were absent, and Sam couldn’t focus.
The phones still rang, though not as often as Sam remembered. Louder still was Bobby pacing from room to room, throwing glances Sam’s way frequently. He, too, was far quieter than usual.
Dee was upstairs in bed, from where she’d barely budged the last two days. Sure, she was recuperating from a couple cracked ribs, broken fingers, and a host of nasty bruises-not exactly in shape to be puttering around Bobby’s cars-but it unnerved the hell out of Sam. Out of Bobby too, by the look of it. At mealtime, instead of shouting for them both as usual, he’d told Sam to get his sister downstairs. She slept through breakfast the first day, but when Sam checked in again at lunchtime and Dee said she wasn’t hungry, Bobby told him to tell her to get her ass down there. She had scowled, and used Sam as a crutch to pull herself out of bed and get down the stairs, but she’d come down. That had almost made up for how silent the meal was, how she barely ate half of her sandwich, though she made a big show of wincing over how sore her jaw was.
One of Bobby’s phones rang, but it was one on his desk instead of those on the wall. Bobby changed directions abruptly, seizing the phone off the desk to look at the ID on the screen, then ducked out to the back porch. Sam abandoned his books to follow, stopping just outside the screen door to lean against the wall and listen.
"Hey Jim, thanks for getting back to me. Have you heard from Winchester? ...Well, his kids pulled into my yard the other night, about two in the morning, in a stolen Ford. They'd been staying alone again in some podunk Iowa town while their daddy went chasing a critter. But somehow it all went south, and Dee got her ass whooped by a bunch of thugs, and Sam had to pull out their shotgun and nail a bastard in the leg to get them off her. Damn nightmare.”
Yeah, that was one way of putting it, Sam thought, as Bobby paused. In his mind’s eye, he could see Dee lying upstairs in bed, far too still.
Then Bobby continued, more testily, “No, they say it wasn't anything like that-though I'm not so sure, to tell the truth. Something's rattled her, her confidence is all shot to hell. I wish they had been closer to your place, to be honest-I don't know what to do with them, besides give Dee her space. ...Yeah, I know. Let me tell you, when their daddy finally turns up, I'm going to be hard pressed not to give him a few injuries of his own. -All right. Yeah, you too."
A few seconds of silence, then Bobby softly said, “Balls.”
Sam stayed where he was, even as he heard the heavy footfalls leading back to the screen door. Bobby stopped short when he saw him, and Sam met his eye defiantly.
Bobby eyed him, then reached out to swat him on the back of the head. “C’mon, idjit. In a few years, I’ll give you a beer. Grab a Coke now as a rain check.”
Cold can in hand, Sam followed him back to the study, dropping into a chair angled toward the desk. Bobby took a long swig of his beer.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he started, “and it ain’t true. Your old man really does care about both of you. He didn’t want this to happen.”
Sam gave a small, incredulous snort. Bobby glowered at him.
“I mean it. Some dads don’t give a crap, and John Winchester ain’t one of those. For all that it looks like he’s got his head screwed on backwards and upside-down, and it would take a shotgun blast to realign it.” That pulled a small smile out of Sam’s mouth. “Your dad’s just got the biggest case of tunnel vision I’ve ever seen, and I think sometimes he forgets Dee ain’t as old as her ID says she is. She’s been through a hell of a lot, the most capable kid I know, but she’s still just a kid.”
Sam said nothing. It wasn’t like he was the one forgetting that.
Bobby looked back at his beer as though he wished it were something stronger. “If anything gives him a wake-up call, this ought to. Bloody hell. He didn’t put you through all that training just to get the cops calling a 503 on his twelve-year-old in the state of Iowa. Though you did the right thing,” he added to Sam.
Sam nodded, though the awful gut-twisting in his stomach was only getting worse. “I wish…”
“You had to do it, son.”
“I know,” Sam said. The words were difficult at first, but then came out in a rush. “I wish-I had shot him in the chest. I wish I had killed him. He was going to hurt Dee. I-I think he did hurt her.” He clenched his teeth, staring out the window and blinking hard.
Bobby swore softly under his breath, and Sam looked back to see him covering his face with his hand. A moment later, Bobby stood up and strode around to the front of the desk, where he could lean forward and grip Sam’s shoulder.
“You did the right thing,” he repeated. “You got you and your sister out of there.”
Sam had already lost the habit of hugging Dad, but this wasn’t Dad. He stood up, setting the soda on the desk with a thunk before wrapping his arms around Bobby’s middle, holding on for dear life.
~*~
Insomnia was part and parcel of the hunter’s life. Most of them dealt with it with the usual hunter’s sleeping aid, commonly found in a flask, but Bobby had never liked knocking himself out that way. It could leave you awfully vulnerable to a lot of threats, and hunters knew better than anyone the number of things that went bump in the night.
It was also probably a good idea when you had taken in scraped-up Winchester refugees. Walls weren’t too thick in his house, so he’d heard the previous nights when Dee was retching up her dinner in the bathroom. He’d also heard the quiet murmur of Sam’s voice with her, so he’d left them alone.
Tonight, though, something was moving downstairs, without any voices, and he didn’t like that so much.
He went down the stairs guardedly, shotgun ready at his side, but found Dee alone, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a small arsenal of weaponry beside her, can of gun oil next to her and rag in hand. She met his eye but didn’t say anything, didn’t hesitate in her movements of wiping down a rifle barrel.
Bobby set his firearm down carefully on a nearby table. “Looks like Sam’s the only one getting any shut-eye here tonight.”
At the mention of her brother’s name, Dee paused, then slowly set down the rag and barrel. "Bobby." She was frowning at the floor, hands folded tightly together. Her tense posture and deadly serious draw of her eyebrows warned Bobby to take a seat on the other side of the room.
"Sam's a good kid."
He blinked. That was not the staggering confession he had expected.
"He's real smart," Dee said, addressing the floor. "He can help you with research. You like him all right, don't you?"
Foreboding filled Bobby's gut, and he leaned forward guardedly with his hands on his knees. "Of course I like Sam. What're you getting at?"
She still wouldn't look up, hands pressed together in an unconscious gesture of prayer. "Maybe...he could stay here. For the school year, and while Dad and I are on hunts."
Bobby counted to five before he let himself answer. "Can't imagine your dad would like that much."
"I think he might go along with it."
Okay, Bobby would address that in a minute, but for now he changed tactics. "What about Sam? Do you think he'll be peachy-keen on the idea of you leaving him behind?"
Dee shrugged one shoulder. "He hates moving. After he gets used to it, he'll be glad to stay in one school."
Bobby had had enough. "Cut out the bullshit, I ain't in the mood for it."
Her eyes snapped up, dark and angry. "I'm serious."
"No, you're being a drama queen because you got jumped by a gang of grown men. It doesn't mean you can't take care of your brother. You've been doing that just fine for years."
Her jaw tightened, and she said in a low voice, "It's not about that. Dammit, Bobby - something really bad could've happened."
"Jesus, Dee, something bad did happen!" He surged to his feet, furious. "Sam didn't get a scratch on him, you're the one who got beat to hell!"
"That's my own damn fault!" she snapped, and immediately stopped, clenching her fists and looking away.
Bobby swore, barely stopping himself from moving forward to grab her shoulders. "Listen to me, Dee." His tone of voice made her look back over, though her truculent expression said it wouldn't be easy to get through. He stabbed his finger toward her. "It is not your fault you got attacked. Not because you're a girl, or because you're sixteen, or because you weren't being careful enough. Get that through your thick melon of a head."
A queer look settled on her face. "No," she agreed, far too quietly. "It's not any of those reasons." She got up and disappeared back upstairs before he could think of another response besides strangling her.
He swore again to the empty room, with a furious gesture that stopped just short of hitting the wall. He should be billing Winchester for adolescent therapy. That shit didn't come cheap.
~*~
The room was too quiet when Dee slipped back inside. Sam wasn’t asleep. Dee didn’t say anything to him as she stiffly lay back down.
“I’m not staying here.”
Stupid eavesdropping little brothers. Dee closed her eyes, tired as hell, though she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to sleep. “We’ll see what Dad says.”
“I’m not staying here,” Sam said, sounding angry now. “Who do you think’s gonna watch out for you, keep you from being stupid?”
“Christ, Sam, just - just shut the fuck up.” Dee wrenched away, onto her side, though she had to grit her teeth to keep from making a noise at the agony that spread through her side, from her fractured ribs.
Sam’s breath hitched, and Dee hated herself even more. Fuck, she couldn’t do this to him, not on top of everything else. She rolled back onto her back, turned her head toward him. “Look. I’m sorry. Just go to sleep, okay?”
He didn’t answer, but shifted closer. Dee moved her good hand up to her shoulder, leaving it open, and Sam’s fingers grasped it in an instant. He pressed closer, pushing his forehead to her shoulder, and Dee swallowed hard.
She didn’t want to sleep. Every night had been a variation of the same fucking thing. Pinned down in the parking lot, they using her own knives to saw off her hands and feet. Tony pressing the barrel of the shotgun to her crotch, harder and harder before cocking it, and the vibration that sent through her had woken her up, gasping, and she could still feel. Every. Fucker’s. Hand. On her.
The night before that, she had dreamed it was Bobby. Bobby catching and trapping her with his body, pushing her face against the rough wall of the back of his house, and she knew she had to be quiet or Sam would hear.
That one had had her running for the bathroom when she woke up, and the waves of agony through her side had her vomiting twice as much, stupid girly tears on her face before she was done, Sam near tears himself as he knelt by her side and held out a washcloth.
He shouldn’t be within a mile of her.
Neither should Dad. Dee didn’t know how to tell him she shouldn’t hunt with him anymore.
Dee had fucked herself up now, worse than anytime before, and there wasn’t any coming back from that. Her head was all fucked up, and she doubted she’d know how to make a single good goddamn decision for the rest of her life. If she did, it would be by accident, and she couldn’t fucking trust herself to be around them.
She didn’t want to be around them. She didn’t want to be anywhere.
There wouldn’t be many more days of this, of listening to her brother breathe, his warmth next to her. Dee squeezed her eyes tightly shut, hot tears spilling out the corners, and she clenched her teeth so she wouldn’t make a sound, but Sam drew in a breath and pushed closer, one arm tentatively reaching across her to touch her opposite shoulder.
~*~
The next day, John Winchester arrived.
The house was quiet, near as quiet as a tomb except for the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, when they heard the rumble of the Impala over the gravel.
Sam was stretched on the rug before the fireplace, using as a pillow an ancient grimoire he may have been supposed to be studying, when he heard it. He looked immediately to his sister, lying on her back on the couch. She hadn’t moved yet, but he saw the tight pull of her mouth.
A moment later, Bobby strode from his study, crossing to the front window to flick aside a curtain. “Well, look who finally showed up to visit.”
Dee inhaled sharply, closing her eyes before rolling off the couch to her feet.
“Hey, Dee,” Bobby said hurriedly, “why dontcha take a seat and let me handle the hellos-” He was cut off by the screen door swinging closed behind her. “Balls,” he muttered, and went after her.
Sam got to his feet, moving to Bobby’s place by the window, watching from behind the curtain as Dee and Bobby faced John, just getting out of the Impala with a face like murder.
*
Dee didn't look at Bobby as he joined her on the porch, her eyes fixed and her back stiff.
John had swung the car in crooked before the house, his glower visible through the windshield, and he started in on her even before he shut the door. "What the hell is wrong with you, Dee? You do not take off from where I left you and your brother, especially without leaving word where you're going. If you ever pull a stunt like that again-"
"Back down, Winchester," Bobby barked. "If she'd stayed where you left her, she'd've been gang-raped and had her throat cut by now."
John swung toward him, favoring his right leg. "Stay out of family business, Singer. I didn't invite you into this."
"You blockheaded jackass," Bobby snapped, losing his temper even faster than expected, "you think I'm exaggerating? Show him your ribs, Dee."
But she backed into the shadows, shaking her head. Out of patience, Bobby lunged forward to grab her left wrist and hold it up, revealing the splinted fingers. "Your son had to fire at them with a shotgun to get them off her!"
Dee snarled, twisting, and jabbed with her free hand into the tender spot of his armpit, forcing him to let go.
It had been enough, though. John stopped with an arrested look, staring at his daughter. When at last he spoke, his tone was unreadable. "Dee, come here."
Bobby knew better than to try inviting them into the house for whatever conversation was to come. With a last warning scowl at John, he returned inside.
Sam was pressed to the wall by the window, watching out of sight. "He's yelling at her, isn't he."
Bobby glanced at him, then back out to where John and Dee stood beside the car. "Not if he don't want a second leg injury."
*
As Dee approached, Dad had one hand on the car's roof, likely for support. He wore a few days’ worth of stubble, and up close, she could see the lines of weariness and pain around the grimness of his mouth. No doubt he checked out of the hospital too soon and not on all his meds, since he had to drive so far so fast.
"Let me see your side.” His tone was flat and to the point, the same as it was with any order.
She closed her eyes for just a moment before obeying, drawing her shirt up to the edge of her sports bra. She kept her eyes on Bobby's yard.
When her father spoke, his voice was still impenetrable. "When was that?"
She wet her lips. It shouldn’t be so hard to remember how many days had passed. "Last Friday night, sir."
"What happened?"
She spoke quietly, without inflection. "I stepped out of the room a little before ten p.m., and they got me by the neck."
“What the hell did you go outside for?” Dad demanded, voice thick with anger.
Dee had to swallow convulsively for a moment, struggling to remember the reason. “Heard something, wanted to check it out.”
“Goddammit, Dee, is it too much to ask-what’s the very first lesson I ever taught you? You’re always safer inside.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, eyes still on the ground.
Dad exhaled. "How many were waiting?"
"Four." She paused before continuing. "I told Sam to stay in the room, but he came out with the shotgun when...they got this hand." She twitched her broken fingers. "I told him to stay in the room. But he nailed one of them in the leg, and they all ran. And he asked to go. It...didn't seem safe to stay. I'm sorry I didn't find a way to tell you before we split." She forced herself to meet his eyes.
The lines in his face, around his mouth, had contorted to something deeper. The twisted knot in Dee’s stomach flipped as she wondered if he were even angrier than she had thought, and then he reached out with one arm to pull her to him.
She stiffened in shock, but Dad didn't let go. Her face was pressed to her father's chest, and for the first time her throat ached, but she choked the emotion back. No, this was all wrong, not how it was supposed to go-he should still be yelling at her. He didn't know what she'd one, how badly she’d fucked up-and she had had plenty of time to think about how she would rather be dead than have him know, but in this moment she wanted to howl out the truth, just so he would push her away and look at her with the disgust and disappointment she deserved. She didn't relax in the embrace.
At last he let her go, though he kept his arm around her shoulders, and touched her chin to pull her gaze to him. His face had a touch of worry now, and she swallowed and looked away.
"You did good, Dee," he said, and she closed her eyes in horror. "You shouldn’t have left the room, but you did good getting out of there, after. I didn't mean-you follow your instincts, Dee, and you'll keep you and your brother safe-"
She wrenched away, out of reach, and tried to keep her voice steady. "We're going now, right, Dad? Can't we just go?"
He stared at her, too many questions rising, and she pushed past, striding quickly back into the house.
Half an hour later, they were clearing out of Bobby’s yard, Sam sulking with crossed arms in the backseat, Dee in the shotgun seat, hand cushioning her forehead against the window. She’d found her sunglasses under the seat and didn’t think she’d ever take them off again.
They were done talking. Now they were on their way to some other town, some other motel or apartment or rundown cabin, and sooner or later Dad would leave them again, his final words to her to watch out for Sammy because he trusted her to be able to do that. All of her half-baked ideas, ways to keep Dad and Sam safe, lay crushed under the Impala’s tires miles back.
Angola was behind them - she’d clock Sam if he ever brought it up again, he should already know that - but it lay ever ahead of them too, behind every road sign, down every highway exit. It would rear up again and again, perhaps when she least expected it or had almost forgotten - then she would find herself on Angola’s streets, Tony waiting in the doorway.
The mile markers sped by with unceasing regularity, the numbers counting down to the state line like the most reliable fortune-teller in Dee’s life, for all they foretold would come.