WIP Fic: Watermark (1/?)
Title: Watermark
Author: Bella Temple
Category: SPN, Gen with a dash of het, multichaptered WIP, non-linear storytelling
Rating: Adult (nothing explicit just yet, but mature themes are used, and I can't guarantee it won't get ugly)
Warnings: non-linear storytelling, natural disasters, and unpopular fictional opinions
Spoilers: general through season three. Half the story is preseries, the other half takes place in between "Ghostfacers" and "Long Distance Call"
Characters: Sam, Dean, mentions of John, OCs
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of Warner Bros, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction.
Author's note: First started last October, taken back up in January and abandoned, taken back up in March and abandoned, and taken back up again now. Figured instead of abandoning it this time, I'd break my self-imposed rule of not posting-as-I-go on WIPs and offer up the beginning to you all and see whatcha think. This story is unbetaed.
Summary: Sam's got a case in New Orleans that just might get him information on how to get Dean out of his deal. Dean's got a history with the city itself and too much baggage that he's got to lay to rest. And the city? Well. She's got her own problems. . . .
And I'm leaning on this broken fence between past and present tense,
And I'm losing all those stupid games that I swore I'd never play
But it almost feels okay
-- "Aside" by the Weakerthans
French Quarter, New Orleans, LA, August 2007
It was the rain that was giving her the eerie sense of deja vu, she decided. Not just the rain, really, but a storm, a torrential downpour that made it seem as though someone was dumping buckets down over the balconies that lined the buildings on either side of the street, making almost a curtain that blocked her view of anything not under cover with her.
The streets were deserted, unusual even these days, even in the off season. The city was still little more than a shadow of its former self, but the residents refused to let anything, especially not a simple, non-tropical storm, dampen its spirits.
But the block ahead of her was as empty as the block behind, and she quickened her pace riverward, toward Bourbon Street and Jackson Square, where she was sure to find the usual tourists and street merchants who would shake the dread from her bones.
Definitely the rain. And the quiet. She'd gotten out, two years ago, heading back up to Wisconsin to stay with her cousins until some sense of order had been restored to her chosen city. But she'd dreamed of this, the rain and wind and eerie quiet, broken suddenly by rushing flood waters which yanked her ankles and pressed her under, into cold, toxic, rolling darkness.
The French Quarter hadn't even flooded, she knew. It, unlike the Ninth Ward and the Parish, wasn't below sea level, and the banks here were high enough to keep even the storm flooded Mississippi at bay. Which was why it was absolutely ridiculous, the way she kept checking behind her for any creeping wall of water. It was just the rain, and soon she'd be on Bourbon Street, sitting in a bar with her friends, laughing at her paranoia. But she couldn't shake it. Even as she stumbled over a crack in the pavement in her new heels and grabbed for the iron post that held the balcony above her for balance, she kept looking back over her shoulder.
She ran right into it.
A person, she thought at first, and she let out a shaky "Oh god," and pushed herself back, stammering over an apology that never left her throat as she found her hand pressed to cold, solid clay.
". . . The hell?" She tore her eyes off the road behind her, finally, and stared forward, trying to make out what she'd hit.
It was a statue.
A really ugly one, too.
It was maybe seven feet tall or more, vaguely humanoid, black and glistening with the splashing rain. Its arms were too long for its height and its waist too low, separating into stumpy, trunk-like legs without feet. It had no neck, just a dome of clay with half-molded features. Its eyes, one white stone and one black, were wide, round, and unlidded with a look of perpetual surprise, and on its broad forehead, she thought she could make out some sort of scratching, like letters. Probably a store name or a price tag. It took up almost the entire sidewalk.
"Fucking artists," she swore, realizing she'd have to walk through the curtain of water to get around it. "Bet they think you're 'edgy'." She thumped her open palm to its chest in annoyance and listened to the sound of the hit reverberating in its hollow chest.
Then it moved.
She took a breath to scream, but never let it out as its basket-ball-like fists closed around her head, its palm covering her face, smothering her. She struck out wildly and felt her knuckles split and crack against it before she lost consciousness.
* * *
12 Oaks Motor Hotel, Tyler, TX, March 2008
The first time Sam brought up Louisiana, barely a week after Wyoming and the deal, Dean shot him down immediately. Sam wanted to go talk to a voodoo priestess, and Dean apparently knew enough about voodoo to know that she just might have answers.
The second time, Dean ignored him and aimed for Montana.
The third time, it was almost a joke. Dean had admitted by then that he wanted to live, had spoken the words out loud to Sam. But the "no" still came out, as firm as ever, making Sam want to smack him. He could admit he didn't want to die, he said, that he wanted Sam to get him out of the deal, but he couldn't be a part of it. It was his loophole, he said, the thing that'd keep Sam alive. Dean wasn't welching if Dean wasn't helping.
But Sam wasn't taking "no" -- or any amount of ignoring -- for an answer.
He thrust a stack of papers -- web printouts and newspaper clippings -- under Dean's nose.
"Sam, I can't --"
"Shut up." It was hard edged and cold, and Sam held back a wince at his own tone. He'd been speaking to Dean that way a lot, lately. "This isn't about the deal. It's a hunt."
Dean blinked and frowned, scowling at the paperwork Sam handed him, and Sam could tell he wasn't paying attention to anything he might say, any more. "We don't hunt in New Orleans, Sam. You know that."
"Bullshit."
"You know the rules, Sam --"
"You did. Before you came to get me at school." Dean kept his expression blank, but Sam caught the surprise written there, anyway. "You told me, remember?"
The shift was subtle, but Sam could see that Dean did remember. He refocused on the papers, letting the issue of their dad's age-old rules fall to the side. Sam knew what he was reading, he'd read it over enough times himself while he was setting up the argument that would finally get Dean to Louisiana: several deaths over several months, August, October, November, February -- Dean suddenly straightened. "Gimme the laptop."
Sam raised an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at one side of his mouth. Score. "Sure thing." He passed the computer over. Dean started clicking and typing, his expression intent, and then finally looked up.
"Alright." His voice was flat, and his eyes flicked to the newspaper clipping from Sam's research, to the laptop screen, then back to Sam. "We'll go."
Sam nodded, the other side of his mouth quirking up before he could control his reaction. "What made you change your mind?"
Dean looked back at the paper and the laptop and told the most obvious lie of his entire career. "Nothing. It's a hunt, like you said."
"Uh huh." Sam rolled his eyes as he turned to pack. He heard the click of the laptop closing on whatever Dean had been researching, then Dean crossed the room past Sam and headed into the bathroom. Sam counted to five, then went to open the laptop back up and take a look at whatever Dean had found. It was an online article from a local gazette, giving the same basic details on the latest victim -- white male, aged 32 -- that the newspaper clipping Sam had found did. Dean had highlighted two words in particular, a part of the description of where the man had been found:
the Parish
* * *
W. Judge Perez Drive, St. Bernard Parish, LA, October 2005
When he was seventeen and Sam was thirteen, Dean had explained his personal version of "color theory" to his younger brother. It was pretty simple, really. Just a fact he'd come to notice over years of dingy motel rooms and staticky televisions that were never quite in color even when they claimed to be.
Everything is creepier in black and white.
Sam, of course, had wanted to know "why". The habit of a two year old that Sam had never quite grown out of, just gotten better at articulating. So Dean had told him. Had pointed out that nothing in the real, living world, was black and white. There was always some color, shades of yellow or pink or blue, tinting everything, everywhere you looked. The only exceptions were spirits, and even those were usually washed out, you could usually spot a hint of green or blood red in them if you looked closely enough.
Everything living had color. Only the dead, the supernatural, evil things, were black and white.
And at twenty-six, Dean still knew this to be true. Which was why, as he followed N Clairborne onto Judge Perez and took it out through the Ninth Ward and to Chalmette, he couldn't help but to suck in a breath.
The world here was black and white.
The road itself was barely passable -- four lanes reduced to one that wound in and out around heaps of brambles, tree branches, and parts of houses. Cars were stopped, or tipped, or flipped at various points along the street, their paint jobs not so much scratched as shredded or caked in black, cracked mud. The streetlights were dark or missing altogether, the buildings were stripped, beaten, and weathered, and even the sky hung low and overcast, a faint, lighter gray against the off-white and charcoal of houses, gas stations, and billboards.
Even the people, what few he saw, were grayed out, most of them standing by the side of what had to have once been their homes, unmoving, just staring forward.
Dean recognized their expression; they all wore the same one. It was the same look he saw on his father's face in some of his earliest memories, just after the fire. The same look he saw droop his features on those rare occasions when John thought he wasn't looking.
Loss. So absolute that that one word was entirely inadequate. The knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again. Some vital piece was missing and would never return.
"Jesus," Dean mumbled, and, like "loss", that wasn't enough, but it was the only thing he could think of. So he said it again, as he eased the Impala at less than a crawl down the shit-poor excuse for a road. Over and over, until it'd lost its meaning entirely.
He was here on a hunt. Or was supposed to be, anyway.
They didn't hunt in New Orleans, that was a rule. Had been since Dean was at least ten. The culture wouldn't stand for it; New Orleans took care of its own and never asked for anything from anyone else. They were proud of their spirits, worshiped them, in the case of the voodoo practitioners, and no outsider would ever be able to tell them different. The one time John had dragged his boys down here for a hunt, they'd been run right back out of the French Quarter and John had never looked back, ordered his boys to do the same.
But that was before. And this wasn't the French Quarter. And Dean had figured, after watching news broadcast after news broadcast, that maybe this once, these people could use some help. They had lives to put back together; the last thing they needed was some hoodoo priest wannabe raising the casualties to do his bidding.
And with Sam at school, John cleaning up a haunting up in New Hampshire, and Dean's own hunt for a werewolf turning out to be an actual escaped hyena over in Georgia, he'd had nothing better to do.
But this was more than he knew how to handle. This was more than ancestor worship gone wrong, more than a haunted house, or even a ghost town. This was a series of ghost towns, stacked one right after the other.
He had no idea where to even start.
Ironically, the first step was stopping.
He'd spotted her from the side of the road, some miles down from where the barely open bridge crossed over the canal that separated the disaster area from the -- relatively -- pristine downtown. She was the first bit of color he saw, deep-red hair that could only have come from a bottle hanging over her down-turned face as she sat on the curb beside a one story, gray brick house, a naked, hairless Barbie dangling from one hand. He pulled over as much as he could next to a boarded up Winn-Dixie and crossed the median, wading through fallen branches and broken two-by-fours with little more grace than a toddler.
"Hey," he called, and wanted to add "are you alright?" but didn't want to sound like a complete moron. She looked up.
She was about Sam's age, he figured, maybe a little older. Wearing a plain, gray t-shirt smeared with what could be soot but was more likely black mold. Her jeans were just as bad, as were her arms and her face. She stared at him guardedly for a long moment, and he tried offering her a smile.
So much for not seeming like a complete moron.
"Um. Hi," he tried again, taking another step forward. His eyes were too much on her face and not enough on where he was walking: what he'd thought was solid asphalt turned out to be semi-solid mud, over something cylindrical and not nearly stuck enough to bear his weight. He went down in a rush of breath and cracking of branches, his ankle twisting viciously, his palms splattering into the muck at her feet.
"Wow. That really wasn't smooth."
He heard her laugh, then, a soft, melancholy huff of breath that barely qualified, but he counted it as a victory nonetheless. She set aside the Barbie and offered her equally mucked hand to help him up.
"Sorry," he said, letting her tug him up just far enough to slide over onto the curb next to her, carefully rolling his ankle to check the damage. "I'm Dean. And usually way more graceful."
"It's okay." Her accent was odd, Louisiana drawl meets Brooklyn attitude. "None of us are at our best."
"No. I guess not."
"Monica." She twisted her hands together, palming the Barbie off from left to right and back again, then offered the right for a shake. "You're not from around here."
It wasn't a question, but he lifted his chin in acknowledgment anyway, eyebrows raising in a silent "how'd you know?" He expected the usual: she hadn't seen him before, his accent, hell, even out-of-state plates if her eyesight was good. Instead she just dropped one shoulder in a reverse shrug.
"You don't look like you're about to cry," she explained.
And Dean didn't have an answer for that.
* * *
Interstate 10, Louisiana, March, 2008
Sam could tell that Dean wasn't listening. Hadn't been since before he'd even agreed to the hunt, which was weird enough. The fact that the closer they got to New Orleans, the quieter Dean got, was weirder.
Well, not quieter. The words Dean spoke were fewer and spoken lower, but the ambient noise of his brother was louder. Humming, drumming his fingertips on the wheel of the Impala, quiet grunts that Dean probably didn't even know he was making. He was uncomfortable about something, anticipating, and not the way he usually would for just a hunt. This was how he was when they were going to meet up with Cassie. This wasn't just a hunt to Dean. It was something closer to him, more personal, and Sam couldn't work out why.
Yeah, he knew Dean had been here, before. Not any of the details, of course, "details" and "Dean" and "personal" weren't words that worked together well. Just two sentences, "I was working my own gig. This voodoo thing down in New Orleans," a throwaway comment that Sam had taken as just that -- trash, unimportant -- at the time. Now he was wishing he'd asked about more than just it being a solo hunt.
Had there been some hint, then, some sign he should have picked up on that New Orleans meant something more than just a rogue voodoo practitioner?
"Hit me," Dean said finally, as they were reaching the western fringes of the city.
"What?"
"The details, Sam, what are we after?"
"I've told you." Sam sighed and shuffled through the notes he'd kept on his lap the entire drive. "Three times."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't listening."
No kidding. Sam let out a breath that wasn't quite a sigh and started into the spiel again. "People are being murdered. One every couple of months, no pattern that I can work out. Men, women, different ages, social classes, circles of friends, jobs." He continued before Dean could ask the obvious question. "Only thing in common is the way they died. Suffocated. By river mud. None of them anywhere near the river."
"River mud." Dean set a waltzing rhythm on the steering wheel with his index finger, ONE two three, ONE two three, though Sam would be surprised if Dean knew what a waltz was. "Not lake?"
"Different mineral composition."
"Okay." Dean didn't bother to ask how Sam found that out, and Sam didn't offer the information. "River demon. Those usually drown 'em, though."
"Yeah." Sam shuffled the papers again, though he didn't need to look at them to know the details, any more. "Cops figure it's one guy. Driven nuts by Katrina or something, just picking people off the streets."
"You said there was a survivor."
So you were listening. "The first girl. Pauline Lowry, native to Wisconsin, moved to New Orleans back in 2002. She was found on the sidewalk in the French Quarter by a buggy driver." Sam found a print out of a crappy digital picture and held it up for Dean to shoot glances at out of the corner of his eye.
Dean whistled. "Damn. She's cute. That doesn't look like a police photo."
"It's not." Sam put the picture back down, studying it himself. The girl was face down -- no telling what made Dean decide she was "cute", unless it was the skimpy tshirt and low slung shorts. Brown hair matted in the rain, split knuckles showing a hint of bone, bits of mud looking black along her arms and neck. "It was taken by one of the guys on the buggy tour. Some dude from Jersey. He posted it in his blog."
Dean scowled. "Fucking people, man."
Sam's lip twitched into something he knew couldn't be described as a smile. "Yeah."
"Where's she at? We should talk to her."
"Meriter Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. She was moved up there in October by her family. She's, uh. Still in a coma."
"Okay, so we won't talk to her." Dean's focus went from wavering back and forth between Sam and the road to staying solely on the road, finger still marking its waltz. "Listen, uh. Sam."
"Yeah,"
"I know you haven't been down here in awhile."
"That's an understatement,"
"Just -- I don't know how much you remember, but. Things are kinda different. There was a storm."
Sam rolled his eyes. "I kind of noticed, Dean."
Dean's lips curved up. "Yeah, well. Hasn't been a lot of news on it, lately, but it's still. I hear it's still pretty shitty. They're still fixing her up."
Her. New Orleans was female, then, like the Impala was female. Things and places didn't get genders unless they were important.
"When you were here, last. That was right after Katrina, wasn't it?"
Dean almost flinched at the name of the hurricane, a small enough movement that if Sam had been anyone else -- and if he hadn't been watching closely -- he would've missed it.
He thought back to the time, trying to remember what he'd heard about the situation. He hadn't paid much attention, been too busy worrying about the LSATs and law school, Jess and proposals, to pay much attention to a disaster happening half a continent away. He remembered thinking it's okay, Dad and Dean don't hunt there when the death tolls were the top stories, and then putting it out of his mind as something too big and too natural for him to do anything about.
Dean hadn't, though, had he. Hadn't seen it as too big, too far away, or not his jurisdiction. He'd found a hunt and gone to help the way he always did. Even after 9/11, he remembered Dean pestering John to go to New York, saying there might be spirits, or a poltergeist feeding on all that bad energy. John had shot him down, of course, not wanting to get that near that much media attention, and Dean had eventually let it go.
But if he was running solo hunts, if John was off doing something else?
Dean might well have been on the front lines.
"Sort of," was Dean's answer. "About a month after, actually."
"You came to get me on Halloween."
"Yeah."
"The storm was at the end of August."
"Yeah."
"You were here for a month?"
A shrug. "Give or take." Dean started turning his attention from the road in bits and pieces again, looking toward the left this time, away from Sam, at the houses and shopping centers that lined the highway. Sam noticed a sign for Best Buy rising in the distance, and thought that the city didn't look all that bad, from here. "Anyway. My point is, this isn't gonna be easy. People aren't going to want to talk -- most of 'em are gonna have other things on their minds, okay? Don't push it. They've got worse things to think about."
And he wasn't talking about the hunt, anymore. Sam could tell that as easily as he could tell anything about Dean, these days. Don't go asking about demons, he was saying. These people are more important than me and the deal.
And Sam wanted to hit him.
"We have to ask, Dean."
"Whatever."
And with that, the conversation was over. Dean focused entirely into the drive and whatever thoughts were spinning around in his stubborn, idiotic head, his small movements on the wheel and the pedals marking him as manic and subdued in equal measure, a jumbled mix of contradictions that drove Sam crazy, and always had.
For all that he knew Dean better than anyone else alive, Sam felt sometimes that he didn't understand him at all. No, make that all the time.
There were days when Sam wondered if the only person who could ever have really gotten Dean hadn't died in a fire in Kansas almost a quarter of a century ago.
* * *
Violet, Louisiana, October 2005
"I don't have insurance," she said. "Not for this."
Dean swallowed for the fifth time in as many minutes, trying unsuccessfully to rid his mouth of the sour taste of mold and decay. They were standing in what must have once been Monica's living room, and she was back to clutching that naked Barbie.
There were things like that, toys and ornaments, books and other bits of life, of a well-loved home, lying in scattered heaps on the sofa, the chairs, the end tables, the floor. All of it still damp and reeking, smeared with mud and mold and a shimmering sheen of oil. The wallpaper was bulging and peeling from the walls, and he could see bits of blackened insulation poking out where the drywall had crumbled. Nothing worked, no lights or running water, even his cellphone was struggling to find a viable signal. Everything was broken. Useless.
Dead.
He wondered if anyone had insurance, for this.
"Your family, did they --"
"In Huston." There was a pause, then: "My mom, my younger brother. My sister and her kids. I came back, first."
"But they're okay? They all made it out?"
She let out a slow breath, like a leak in an worn tire. "My grandmother. She wouldn't leave. We don't -- we haven't heard, yet."
"I'm sorry," Dean said, and didn't know why. They were empty words and he'd always hated people who said them. "Did she live here?"
"Next street over. I haven't -- I can't go look." She was staring out the window, a gaping, empty space in the wall, the glass long since forced out of its frame by the water. "What are you doing here, Dean?"
He wasn't sure.
"I'm here to help."
She nodded. "You're not National Guard. They're all holed up in City Park. Who are you with?"
He shrugged. "No one. Just me. I --" How could he explain? "I heard the stories. Wanted to do something. So I'm here."
"There's nothing you can do." She said it low and even, stating a fact, but for all that, he could hear the sob hiding just behind her words. "What can anyone do?"
Dean didn't know, so he didn't answer. Just swallowed again and wondered how it could have gotten like this. There was nothing salvageable here, nothing for miles.
He wondered if maybe he should've taken another job, any other job. He worked in people, in small time deals where he could see the faces and know the names of the people he was saving. There were too many here to know them all. Too much damage had already been done. There was no amount of salt or silver or holy water that could undo this, make it better.
What the hell had he been thinking, coming here?
What could one person do in the face of all this?
He half-turned away from the ruin of Monica's living room to the ruin of Monica, herself.
He couldn't do anything about the house. It wasn't his job, or his place.
But she was still alive, and in the end, his job was always about the survivors. He could do something there, maybe.
"I can buy you a cup of coffee."
She stared out the window a moment longer, her fingers clenching on the naked Barbie. She turned her head, and all he could make out of her face was a silhouette, black against the gray sky, and a flash of too-red hair.
"I shouldn't --"
"There's nothing you can do here." He kept his voice even and gentle, the tone he reserved for grieving parents when Sam wasn't around to handle them. "Not yet, anyway. We'll figure something out, but for now. . . . Let me do this. I'll get you something hot to drink, maybe find a shower. Some clean clothes. I can do that."
She said nothing for so long that he thought he was going to be shot down. Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth and her chin shifted, her fingers clenching on that damned Barbie. Then she nodded slowly.
"It'll probably be a bit of a drive."
He grinned then, suddenly and thought he must look like he was insane, smiling in the midst of all this. "Honey, driving is one of the things I do best."
* * *
Marigny, New Orleans, March 2008
"We should split up."
"No."
There was no surprise in either of them at the exchange. Dean had to know that Sam had ulterior motives for bringing them down here; that the hunt was only a distant second in his mind to his own hunt for answers on getting Dean out of his deal. And Sam knew, without a doubt and to his endless frustration, that Dean would not acknowledge that hunt if he could possibly help it. He would, literally, rather die.
Which meant that what little they said to each other was short, terse, and filled with frustration on both sides.
Not exactly brotherly love -- except that it was. It was exactly the way he and Dean loved each other. The only way they knew how.
"I'm serious, Dean."
"So am I."
"We'd cover a lot more ground."
"Not if you're out looking at everything but this damned hunt."
"I'm going to do it anyway, you know,"
Dean's jaw clenched. "Yeah. But -- we gotta do this, first. It's more important."
Sam's fingers clenched and the piles of careful research turned to crumpled scraps in his lap. "Fuck you, Dean."
"You, too, Sammy."
They'd made it to downtown, now, Dean pulling off on an exit for "Elysian Fields". The Greek, heroic afterlife. The multifaceted irony of it made Sam want to start shooting things.
It was here, on the first few blocks from the highway, that Sam got his first look at the real effects of Hurricane Katrina. Rows of shotgun houses lay empty and boarded up, graffitied with an odd, repeating notation: an X with initials, numbers, and dates in all four of its divided quadrants. Sam had done enough research to know what those were -- they were the tags used by the search and rescue teams, listing the date of the search, the team that performed it, and what they'd found in terse, esoteric numbers and letters. Most of the dates that Sam saw were for mid-September, several weeks after the storm and the flooding, long enough that one had to wonder just how much the teams could have found worth rescuing. A two story house had a gaping hole for a roof, the blackened edges long since cooled, and Sam swallowed a flash of blonde and white and blood wrapped in flames and he had to shut his eyes for a moment.
They passed a towering brick building, its doors chained shut and padlocked behind a tall, chain link fence, its windows boarded over with weathered plywood. A school, Sam realized. An elementary school, the sign on the side of the building cheerfully welcoming students back for the fall term. He stared at it in confusion for a moment before realizing that the sign must have remained unchanged since just before Katrina hit.
There was a hopelessness to it, all of it, that made Sam's stomach turn. If people couldn't pull it together to bring back a school after two years, what hope did he have of rescuing his brother in two months? Did he really expect the people he needed to talk to, the ones who might have answers to crossroads deals and demons and souls, to be here? Or should he be looking in Baton Rouge or Huston?
He turned to look at his brother, to apologize, maybe, for bringing them here. To suggest they go somewhere else. He expected to see a blank facade, or lips pressed tight together in consternation, as Dean cruised along the street at low speed. Instead, he saw a glint in Dean's eye, a lifting of his expression and a faint crinkling of the skin just below his temples. Dean was pleased with what he was seeing. The plywood and blackened timber didn't seem to affect him at all.
"Dude."
And like that, crinkles vanished and the expression fell back into barely controlled frustration as Dean shot his eyes back toward Sam. "What?"
"Why the fuck are you smiling?"
"I'm not."
"You were."
Dean's attention turned back to the road. "What, I'm not allowed to be happy, now?"
"That's not what I'm saying!"
"Then what?"
"I just --" Sam swallowed his anger, knowing it would get them nowhere. "This place is a mess. The traffic's moving at a crawl. You hate that shit."
Dean shook his head. "It's back, Sammy."
"What is?"
Dean gestured vaguely around them. "Last time I was here, this was nothing. No people, no cars, nothing. It's back."
Sam turned to look out the window again, trying to see what his brother was seeing. There was a hope, here, somewhere, the kind that only Dean ever seemed to find. People had been coming back, after all, he supposed. And, he thought, maybe the sort of person who knew how to get a man out of the devil's deal might be the sort of person who came back to a dead city.
It wasn't elementary school kids he wanted to talk to, after all.
* * *
Violet, Louisiana, October 2005
Part of him had to wonder what she was thinking, getting into his car with him. She didn't know him from anything, didn't even know his last name (not that he knew hers, yet), but here she was, trusting her life to his hands on the wheel. Trusting that he wasn't some whack-job touristing up the disaster area, or somehow worse.
Was it the storm? Would she have been so quick to trust if her entire life hadn't been washed away in a flood? Or did she think she saw something in him, in his hapless offer to help, somehow, with the unfixable?
He was over thinking this.
He'd barely spoken to anyone for anything that wasn't a job or a quick fuck in nearly two years. Since him and Dad hunting had turned into him hunting and Dad hunting. Before that even, since it had gone from him and Sam and Dad to the three Winchesters speeding away from each other like -- like rogue comets, if comets came in rogues. He'd spent the last two years barreling forward like that, like he might eventually smack into something useful, something like home, maybe. Or something like an end, at the very least.
She was Sam's age. Maybe older. She should have been in college, somewhere, partying and studying and getting trashed and getting laid. Figuring out what her whole future would be, instead of here, in a wasted town, with a wasted house trying to work out what happened to her past.
But she wasn't in college. She was here. In his car.
Because they'd smacked into each other, somehow.
He wondered how long it would be until they ricocheted off again. Like with Cassie.
He'd known her no more than twenty minutes, and he was already relating her to Cassie?
Jesus, he was fucked in the head.
Still, somehow, it was like her climbing into his car was some kind of passport -- some signal to the others, standing by their own houses. Suddenly, Dean wasn't the outsider driving along, sightseeing a tragedy. Monica recognized everyone, it seemed -- they'd gone no more than twenty feet before she was telling him to stop and rolling down her window, calling to a man his father's age who held a rusted crowbar the way she'd held that Barbie.
"Monica."
"Christian."
"Are you --"
"Is it --"
"Your kids --"
"Florida. Your sister?"
"Huston."
It was like some broken code, both of them suddenly talking at once, and before Dean knew it, the man -- Christian, apparently -- was in the backseat, sliding in amongst the candy wrappers and dirty socks Dean had never gotten around to cleaning up. It was ridiculous, being embarrassed by the small, mundane mess when everything these people owned was in far worse shape, but he felt like he should be providing an oasis, not another trash heap.
Maybe he was, a little. There was no mold in the Impala.
Twenty feet further, and Christian and Monica were greeting Jim -- little more than a teenager -- and Helen -- somewhere between Monica and Christian, mid-thirties, maybe. And the Impala was suddenly full, but there was still Bob and another Jim, Nate and Ernest and Katie. Helen pulled out a notebook and took orders -- they all pooled their money and tried to work out what they needed, just for today, just to get through one night. They all agreed they'd worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
Dean should have felt taken advantage of. He should have felt like a chauffeur or a robot. But every new person they met, he was introduced -- "This is Dean, he's here to help" -- and thanked, small talk made less in a "keep him talking" way and more in a "I really want to know you" way. It made his head ache. It made his chest tighten and made him want to call Sam and Dad and just let them know he was still alive.
It made him feel, for the first time in too long, like he wouldn't be half-lying if he did.
And to think, all it had taken was the offer of a cup of coffee.
* * *
The French Quarter, New Orleans, March 2008
Sam stared at the destination Dean had chosen, for the moment. "Dude, you are such a fucking hypocrite."
Dean was several paces in front of him, by now, making his way down a long, flagstone ramp from the raised railroad crossing next to the river. He half-turned and halted when he saw that Sam had stopped moving, his brows flashing up and the edges of his mouth turning down.
"What?"
"What?" Sam dropped his chin, bringing his head back slightly with a huffed breath. "What?! You spent the last ten minutes telling me we couldn't split up because I don't know the town -- don't know how to talk to people around here and might get my ass handed to me, and let's not forget, the lectures on how the hunt is more important than you are -- and you drag me here?"
Dean turned his head to look back at the cafe they were heading for. It was an open air affair, a large patio covered with a green and white striped awning and surrounded by a low, wrought iron fence, packed so thickly with marble topped tables and iron chairs and customers that Sam had to wonder how his brother expected the two of them to even get through the opening in the fence, let alone find a table and get service. The noise of it, of all those people talking and laughing at once, combined with the rattle and tap of passing tour buggies and a nearby Dixie band, was already giving Sam a headache.
Dean, of course, was grinning. "Yeah, so?"
"It's a tourist trap!"
The raised brows and pursed lips were back. "It's Cafe Du Monde, dude."
Sam shook his head slightly and lifted one shoulder. "Yeah, a tourist trap."
Dean snorted. "And that would be why I said you don't know this town. Now, come on." He started walking again, not turning to see if Sam would follow. "I'll getcha a cafe au lait. It's chicory. You'll like it."
Sam let out a soft growl of frustration and caught up with Dean easily. "This is a waste of time."
"Bite your tongue."
"I'm serious, Dean --"
"So am I. This place is open 24/7, everyday except Christmas. Everyone comes here. If something weird is going on, someone here is gonna know about it." He flashed a grin again as he turned sideways to avoid a middle-aged couple in matching Hawaiian shirts and step through to the cafe proper. "'Sides, you totally gotta try the beignets."
Sam side-stepped the couple, careful not to let Dean get too far ahead. The ground was sticky -- a quick glance revealed that it was covered in powdered sugar. As was everything else around them. "You like beignets."
"Sure, man. Fried dough and sugar, what's not to love?"
Sam smirked. "Nothing, just surprised you know how to pronounce it."
Dean turned to shoot him a glare, but the expression was ruined by the grin that seemed to have taken up permanent residence on his features. Sam hadn't seen Dean so consistently happy since -- well, right after the deal, really, though he didn't really think that counted. That had been Dean riding the high of Sam's return to life, before the inevitable crash of realizing exactly what the cost had been. This was . . . this was Dean settled in a way Sam had never seen before. This was somehow Dean in his element.
Dean's element was noisy, garish, and covered in half-melted sugar.
Sam probably should have guessed.
"Yahtzee." Dean swooped around a departing group and into an open chair at a table, waving at Sam to do the same. The table hadn't even been cleared -- the glasses, plates, and cups of the group that had just left sat piled in the middle like some sort of half-assed shrine. Sam scowled and sat a bit more gingerly than Dean had, keeping his hands well away from the gooey-looking table top. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a waitress was leaning in between him and Dean with a tray and a rag, one lock of her brown hair escaping its neat ponytail.
Her hair, like everything else, was dusted with sugar.
"You boys know what you want?" She tapped the napkin dispenser with one finger, and Sam spotted the tiny menu pasted on the side. "Or do you need a minute?"
Dean folded his hands on the table and leaned in, then froze.
"Monica?"
The waitress straightened, blinked at Dean, then smiled broadly.
"Well I'll be. Dean Winchester."
Dean returned the smile, then nodded to Sam. "And his little brother." The waitress -- Monica, apparently -- turned the smile on Sam and Sam made an effort to smile back, even as he hunched his shoulders forward uncomfortably.
This was new. For all that they'd been practically everywhere, Sam and Dean didn't get recognized that often. And when they were, it was never with such cheerful abandon. Even the few friends they'd made usually showed a hint of concern when they cropped back up. They were almost never in town for a happy reason.
"Sam, right?" Monica asked, and Sam nodded. "Your brother told me a bit about you. Stanford-boy."
"Uh, yeah." Sam fidgeted in his seat, shooting a look at Dean. Dean nodded back.
"Sam, this is Monica."
"I guessed."
"Met her last time I was in town."
"Guessed that, too."
Dean's smile faltered slightly, and he looked down. Sam fidgeted a bit more. Monica straightened, her tray now loaded down with dirty dishes.
"What brings you boys to town? Little late for Mardi Gras, this year,"
"Road trip," Dean answered easily, looking back up from the table and resettling into his comfortable lean. "We were in Texas, figured we'd swing on over and check out how things were going around here. Sammy's never been."
"That right?" Monica turned her smile back on Sam again, and Sam did his best to return it. "Well, what do you think?"
It's half-dead and my last hope, he thought. "We only just got here. But it's . . . it's nice."
"It's getting there," Monica offered. A waiter passing nearby shot her a dirty look and she rolled her eyes. "Back to work. I know what Dean wants, what can I get you?"
"Uh," Sam frowned at the menu. "Cafe au lait?"
"Good choice. Beignets?"
"Sure."
"Coming right up." She winked at both of them, settling the hand that held the rag on her hip. "I get off in a couple hours. You boys should swing by the house."
Dean brightened again, his eyes widening slightly as he looked at her. "Same place?"
"Just about fixed up. Got my own now, across the street, but we're still finishing the drywall."
"That's awesome." Dean sounded like he'd never meant anything more in his life. Monica nodded.
"Sure is. I'll be right back with your order."
And she swung away, navigating easily through the crowds, tray held high over her head to make sure it didn't get jostled. Her hips twitched and swayed in a way that Sam was all too familiar with.
She wanted Dean. And from the way Dean was watching her go, she'd have no trouble getting him.
Dean turned back once she was out of sight, his smile more familiar in its lasciviousness. "That was Monica."
"Uh huh."
"She's awesome."
"Uh huh."
Dean licked his lips, looked back over his shoulder, laughed once, then turned back to the table, carefully making his expression more serious. "Right. So. Hunt."
Sam sighed.
This was going to be a long one.
* * *
Part 2
Additional author's note: The people of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish in this story are fictional. However, their situation (the one that isn't supernaturally based) is not. Not being a New Orleans resident, there's no way for me to have represented the city post-Katrina perfectly, but I've done my best, working from first hand accounts of Parish residents and the book 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose for the 2005 storyline, and my own experiences volunteering last October for the 2008 storyline. It's not my intention to preach here, but for those who might be interested, the program I volunteered with was the St. Bernard Project, and there's still plenty to do.
Author: Bella Temple
Category: SPN, Gen with a dash of het, multichaptered WIP, non-linear storytelling
Rating: Adult (nothing explicit just yet, but mature themes are used, and I can't guarantee it won't get ugly)
Warnings: non-linear storytelling, natural disasters, and unpopular fictional opinions
Spoilers: general through season three. Half the story is preseries, the other half takes place in between "Ghostfacers" and "Long Distance Call"
Characters: Sam, Dean, mentions of John, OCs
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of Warner Bros, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction.
Author's note: First started last October, taken back up in January and abandoned, taken back up in March and abandoned, and taken back up again now. Figured instead of abandoning it this time, I'd break my self-imposed rule of not posting-as-I-go on WIPs and offer up the beginning to you all and see whatcha think. This story is unbetaed.
Summary: Sam's got a case in New Orleans that just might get him information on how to get Dean out of his deal. Dean's got a history with the city itself and too much baggage that he's got to lay to rest. And the city? Well. She's got her own problems. . . .
And I'm leaning on this broken fence between past and present tense,
And I'm losing all those stupid games that I swore I'd never play
But it almost feels okay
-- "Aside" by the Weakerthans
French Quarter, New Orleans, LA, August 2007
It was the rain that was giving her the eerie sense of deja vu, she decided. Not just the rain, really, but a storm, a torrential downpour that made it seem as though someone was dumping buckets down over the balconies that lined the buildings on either side of the street, making almost a curtain that blocked her view of anything not under cover with her.
The streets were deserted, unusual even these days, even in the off season. The city was still little more than a shadow of its former self, but the residents refused to let anything, especially not a simple, non-tropical storm, dampen its spirits.
But the block ahead of her was as empty as the block behind, and she quickened her pace riverward, toward Bourbon Street and Jackson Square, where she was sure to find the usual tourists and street merchants who would shake the dread from her bones.
Definitely the rain. And the quiet. She'd gotten out, two years ago, heading back up to Wisconsin to stay with her cousins until some sense of order had been restored to her chosen city. But she'd dreamed of this, the rain and wind and eerie quiet, broken suddenly by rushing flood waters which yanked her ankles and pressed her under, into cold, toxic, rolling darkness.
The French Quarter hadn't even flooded, she knew. It, unlike the Ninth Ward and the Parish, wasn't below sea level, and the banks here were high enough to keep even the storm flooded Mississippi at bay. Which was why it was absolutely ridiculous, the way she kept checking behind her for any creeping wall of water. It was just the rain, and soon she'd be on Bourbon Street, sitting in a bar with her friends, laughing at her paranoia. But she couldn't shake it. Even as she stumbled over a crack in the pavement in her new heels and grabbed for the iron post that held the balcony above her for balance, she kept looking back over her shoulder.
She ran right into it.
A person, she thought at first, and she let out a shaky "Oh god," and pushed herself back, stammering over an apology that never left her throat as she found her hand pressed to cold, solid clay.
". . . The hell?" She tore her eyes off the road behind her, finally, and stared forward, trying to make out what she'd hit.
It was a statue.
A really ugly one, too.
It was maybe seven feet tall or more, vaguely humanoid, black and glistening with the splashing rain. Its arms were too long for its height and its waist too low, separating into stumpy, trunk-like legs without feet. It had no neck, just a dome of clay with half-molded features. Its eyes, one white stone and one black, were wide, round, and unlidded with a look of perpetual surprise, and on its broad forehead, she thought she could make out some sort of scratching, like letters. Probably a store name or a price tag. It took up almost the entire sidewalk.
"Fucking artists," she swore, realizing she'd have to walk through the curtain of water to get around it. "Bet they think you're 'edgy'." She thumped her open palm to its chest in annoyance and listened to the sound of the hit reverberating in its hollow chest.
Then it moved.
She took a breath to scream, but never let it out as its basket-ball-like fists closed around her head, its palm covering her face, smothering her. She struck out wildly and felt her knuckles split and crack against it before she lost consciousness.
* * *
12 Oaks Motor Hotel, Tyler, TX, March 2008
The first time Sam brought up Louisiana, barely a week after Wyoming and the deal, Dean shot him down immediately. Sam wanted to go talk to a voodoo priestess, and Dean apparently knew enough about voodoo to know that she just might have answers.
The second time, Dean ignored him and aimed for Montana.
The third time, it was almost a joke. Dean had admitted by then that he wanted to live, had spoken the words out loud to Sam. But the "no" still came out, as firm as ever, making Sam want to smack him. He could admit he didn't want to die, he said, that he wanted Sam to get him out of the deal, but he couldn't be a part of it. It was his loophole, he said, the thing that'd keep Sam alive. Dean wasn't welching if Dean wasn't helping.
But Sam wasn't taking "no" -- or any amount of ignoring -- for an answer.
He thrust a stack of papers -- web printouts and newspaper clippings -- under Dean's nose.
"Sam, I can't --"
"Shut up." It was hard edged and cold, and Sam held back a wince at his own tone. He'd been speaking to Dean that way a lot, lately. "This isn't about the deal. It's a hunt."
Dean blinked and frowned, scowling at the paperwork Sam handed him, and Sam could tell he wasn't paying attention to anything he might say, any more. "We don't hunt in New Orleans, Sam. You know that."
"Bullshit."
"You know the rules, Sam --"
"You did. Before you came to get me at school." Dean kept his expression blank, but Sam caught the surprise written there, anyway. "You told me, remember?"
The shift was subtle, but Sam could see that Dean did remember. He refocused on the papers, letting the issue of their dad's age-old rules fall to the side. Sam knew what he was reading, he'd read it over enough times himself while he was setting up the argument that would finally get Dean to Louisiana: several deaths over several months, August, October, November, February -- Dean suddenly straightened. "Gimme the laptop."
Sam raised an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at one side of his mouth. Score. "Sure thing." He passed the computer over. Dean started clicking and typing, his expression intent, and then finally looked up.
"Alright." His voice was flat, and his eyes flicked to the newspaper clipping from Sam's research, to the laptop screen, then back to Sam. "We'll go."
Sam nodded, the other side of his mouth quirking up before he could control his reaction. "What made you change your mind?"
Dean looked back at the paper and the laptop and told the most obvious lie of his entire career. "Nothing. It's a hunt, like you said."
"Uh huh." Sam rolled his eyes as he turned to pack. He heard the click of the laptop closing on whatever Dean had been researching, then Dean crossed the room past Sam and headed into the bathroom. Sam counted to five, then went to open the laptop back up and take a look at whatever Dean had found. It was an online article from a local gazette, giving the same basic details on the latest victim -- white male, aged 32 -- that the newspaper clipping Sam had found did. Dean had highlighted two words in particular, a part of the description of where the man had been found:
the Parish
* * *
W. Judge Perez Drive, St. Bernard Parish, LA, October 2005
When he was seventeen and Sam was thirteen, Dean had explained his personal version of "color theory" to his younger brother. It was pretty simple, really. Just a fact he'd come to notice over years of dingy motel rooms and staticky televisions that were never quite in color even when they claimed to be.
Everything is creepier in black and white.
Sam, of course, had wanted to know "why". The habit of a two year old that Sam had never quite grown out of, just gotten better at articulating. So Dean had told him. Had pointed out that nothing in the real, living world, was black and white. There was always some color, shades of yellow or pink or blue, tinting everything, everywhere you looked. The only exceptions were spirits, and even those were usually washed out, you could usually spot a hint of green or blood red in them if you looked closely enough.
Everything living had color. Only the dead, the supernatural, evil things, were black and white.
And at twenty-six, Dean still knew this to be true. Which was why, as he followed N Clairborne onto Judge Perez and took it out through the Ninth Ward and to Chalmette, he couldn't help but to suck in a breath.
The world here was black and white.
The road itself was barely passable -- four lanes reduced to one that wound in and out around heaps of brambles, tree branches, and parts of houses. Cars were stopped, or tipped, or flipped at various points along the street, their paint jobs not so much scratched as shredded or caked in black, cracked mud. The streetlights were dark or missing altogether, the buildings were stripped, beaten, and weathered, and even the sky hung low and overcast, a faint, lighter gray against the off-white and charcoal of houses, gas stations, and billboards.
Even the people, what few he saw, were grayed out, most of them standing by the side of what had to have once been their homes, unmoving, just staring forward.
Dean recognized their expression; they all wore the same one. It was the same look he saw on his father's face in some of his earliest memories, just after the fire. The same look he saw droop his features on those rare occasions when John thought he wasn't looking.
Loss. So absolute that that one word was entirely inadequate. The knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again. Some vital piece was missing and would never return.
"Jesus," Dean mumbled, and, like "loss", that wasn't enough, but it was the only thing he could think of. So he said it again, as he eased the Impala at less than a crawl down the shit-poor excuse for a road. Over and over, until it'd lost its meaning entirely.
He was here on a hunt. Or was supposed to be, anyway.
They didn't hunt in New Orleans, that was a rule. Had been since Dean was at least ten. The culture wouldn't stand for it; New Orleans took care of its own and never asked for anything from anyone else. They were proud of their spirits, worshiped them, in the case of the voodoo practitioners, and no outsider would ever be able to tell them different. The one time John had dragged his boys down here for a hunt, they'd been run right back out of the French Quarter and John had never looked back, ordered his boys to do the same.
But that was before. And this wasn't the French Quarter. And Dean had figured, after watching news broadcast after news broadcast, that maybe this once, these people could use some help. They had lives to put back together; the last thing they needed was some hoodoo priest wannabe raising the casualties to do his bidding.
And with Sam at school, John cleaning up a haunting up in New Hampshire, and Dean's own hunt for a werewolf turning out to be an actual escaped hyena over in Georgia, he'd had nothing better to do.
But this was more than he knew how to handle. This was more than ancestor worship gone wrong, more than a haunted house, or even a ghost town. This was a series of ghost towns, stacked one right after the other.
He had no idea where to even start.
Ironically, the first step was stopping.
He'd spotted her from the side of the road, some miles down from where the barely open bridge crossed over the canal that separated the disaster area from the -- relatively -- pristine downtown. She was the first bit of color he saw, deep-red hair that could only have come from a bottle hanging over her down-turned face as she sat on the curb beside a one story, gray brick house, a naked, hairless Barbie dangling from one hand. He pulled over as much as he could next to a boarded up Winn-Dixie and crossed the median, wading through fallen branches and broken two-by-fours with little more grace than a toddler.
"Hey," he called, and wanted to add "are you alright?" but didn't want to sound like a complete moron. She looked up.
She was about Sam's age, he figured, maybe a little older. Wearing a plain, gray t-shirt smeared with what could be soot but was more likely black mold. Her jeans were just as bad, as were her arms and her face. She stared at him guardedly for a long moment, and he tried offering her a smile.
So much for not seeming like a complete moron.
"Um. Hi," he tried again, taking another step forward. His eyes were too much on her face and not enough on where he was walking: what he'd thought was solid asphalt turned out to be semi-solid mud, over something cylindrical and not nearly stuck enough to bear his weight. He went down in a rush of breath and cracking of branches, his ankle twisting viciously, his palms splattering into the muck at her feet.
"Wow. That really wasn't smooth."
He heard her laugh, then, a soft, melancholy huff of breath that barely qualified, but he counted it as a victory nonetheless. She set aside the Barbie and offered her equally mucked hand to help him up.
"Sorry," he said, letting her tug him up just far enough to slide over onto the curb next to her, carefully rolling his ankle to check the damage. "I'm Dean. And usually way more graceful."
"It's okay." Her accent was odd, Louisiana drawl meets Brooklyn attitude. "None of us are at our best."
"No. I guess not."
"Monica." She twisted her hands together, palming the Barbie off from left to right and back again, then offered the right for a shake. "You're not from around here."
It wasn't a question, but he lifted his chin in acknowledgment anyway, eyebrows raising in a silent "how'd you know?" He expected the usual: she hadn't seen him before, his accent, hell, even out-of-state plates if her eyesight was good. Instead she just dropped one shoulder in a reverse shrug.
"You don't look like you're about to cry," she explained.
And Dean didn't have an answer for that.
* * *
Interstate 10, Louisiana, March, 2008
Sam could tell that Dean wasn't listening. Hadn't been since before he'd even agreed to the hunt, which was weird enough. The fact that the closer they got to New Orleans, the quieter Dean got, was weirder.
Well, not quieter. The words Dean spoke were fewer and spoken lower, but the ambient noise of his brother was louder. Humming, drumming his fingertips on the wheel of the Impala, quiet grunts that Dean probably didn't even know he was making. He was uncomfortable about something, anticipating, and not the way he usually would for just a hunt. This was how he was when they were going to meet up with Cassie. This wasn't just a hunt to Dean. It was something closer to him, more personal, and Sam couldn't work out why.
Yeah, he knew Dean had been here, before. Not any of the details, of course, "details" and "Dean" and "personal" weren't words that worked together well. Just two sentences, "I was working my own gig. This voodoo thing down in New Orleans," a throwaway comment that Sam had taken as just that -- trash, unimportant -- at the time. Now he was wishing he'd asked about more than just it being a solo hunt.
Had there been some hint, then, some sign he should have picked up on that New Orleans meant something more than just a rogue voodoo practitioner?
"Hit me," Dean said finally, as they were reaching the western fringes of the city.
"What?"
"The details, Sam, what are we after?"
"I've told you." Sam sighed and shuffled through the notes he'd kept on his lap the entire drive. "Three times."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't listening."
No kidding. Sam let out a breath that wasn't quite a sigh and started into the spiel again. "People are being murdered. One every couple of months, no pattern that I can work out. Men, women, different ages, social classes, circles of friends, jobs." He continued before Dean could ask the obvious question. "Only thing in common is the way they died. Suffocated. By river mud. None of them anywhere near the river."
"River mud." Dean set a waltzing rhythm on the steering wheel with his index finger, ONE two three, ONE two three, though Sam would be surprised if Dean knew what a waltz was. "Not lake?"
"Different mineral composition."
"Okay." Dean didn't bother to ask how Sam found that out, and Sam didn't offer the information. "River demon. Those usually drown 'em, though."
"Yeah." Sam shuffled the papers again, though he didn't need to look at them to know the details, any more. "Cops figure it's one guy. Driven nuts by Katrina or something, just picking people off the streets."
"You said there was a survivor."
So you were listening. "The first girl. Pauline Lowry, native to Wisconsin, moved to New Orleans back in 2002. She was found on the sidewalk in the French Quarter by a buggy driver." Sam found a print out of a crappy digital picture and held it up for Dean to shoot glances at out of the corner of his eye.
Dean whistled. "Damn. She's cute. That doesn't look like a police photo."
"It's not." Sam put the picture back down, studying it himself. The girl was face down -- no telling what made Dean decide she was "cute", unless it was the skimpy tshirt and low slung shorts. Brown hair matted in the rain, split knuckles showing a hint of bone, bits of mud looking black along her arms and neck. "It was taken by one of the guys on the buggy tour. Some dude from Jersey. He posted it in his blog."
Dean scowled. "Fucking people, man."
Sam's lip twitched into something he knew couldn't be described as a smile. "Yeah."
"Where's she at? We should talk to her."
"Meriter Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. She was moved up there in October by her family. She's, uh. Still in a coma."
"Okay, so we won't talk to her." Dean's focus went from wavering back and forth between Sam and the road to staying solely on the road, finger still marking its waltz. "Listen, uh. Sam."
"Yeah,"
"I know you haven't been down here in awhile."
"That's an understatement,"
"Just -- I don't know how much you remember, but. Things are kinda different. There was a storm."
Sam rolled his eyes. "I kind of noticed, Dean."
Dean's lips curved up. "Yeah, well. Hasn't been a lot of news on it, lately, but it's still. I hear it's still pretty shitty. They're still fixing her up."
Her. New Orleans was female, then, like the Impala was female. Things and places didn't get genders unless they were important.
"When you were here, last. That was right after Katrina, wasn't it?"
Dean almost flinched at the name of the hurricane, a small enough movement that if Sam had been anyone else -- and if he hadn't been watching closely -- he would've missed it.
He thought back to the time, trying to remember what he'd heard about the situation. He hadn't paid much attention, been too busy worrying about the LSATs and law school, Jess and proposals, to pay much attention to a disaster happening half a continent away. He remembered thinking it's okay, Dad and Dean don't hunt there when the death tolls were the top stories, and then putting it out of his mind as something too big and too natural for him to do anything about.
Dean hadn't, though, had he. Hadn't seen it as too big, too far away, or not his jurisdiction. He'd found a hunt and gone to help the way he always did. Even after 9/11, he remembered Dean pestering John to go to New York, saying there might be spirits, or a poltergeist feeding on all that bad energy. John had shot him down, of course, not wanting to get that near that much media attention, and Dean had eventually let it go.
But if he was running solo hunts, if John was off doing something else?
Dean might well have been on the front lines.
"Sort of," was Dean's answer. "About a month after, actually."
"You came to get me on Halloween."
"Yeah."
"The storm was at the end of August."
"Yeah."
"You were here for a month?"
A shrug. "Give or take." Dean started turning his attention from the road in bits and pieces again, looking toward the left this time, away from Sam, at the houses and shopping centers that lined the highway. Sam noticed a sign for Best Buy rising in the distance, and thought that the city didn't look all that bad, from here. "Anyway. My point is, this isn't gonna be easy. People aren't going to want to talk -- most of 'em are gonna have other things on their minds, okay? Don't push it. They've got worse things to think about."
And he wasn't talking about the hunt, anymore. Sam could tell that as easily as he could tell anything about Dean, these days. Don't go asking about demons, he was saying. These people are more important than me and the deal.
And Sam wanted to hit him.
"We have to ask, Dean."
"Whatever."
And with that, the conversation was over. Dean focused entirely into the drive and whatever thoughts were spinning around in his stubborn, idiotic head, his small movements on the wheel and the pedals marking him as manic and subdued in equal measure, a jumbled mix of contradictions that drove Sam crazy, and always had.
For all that he knew Dean better than anyone else alive, Sam felt sometimes that he didn't understand him at all. No, make that all the time.
There were days when Sam wondered if the only person who could ever have really gotten Dean hadn't died in a fire in Kansas almost a quarter of a century ago.
* * *
Violet, Louisiana, October 2005
"I don't have insurance," she said. "Not for this."
Dean swallowed for the fifth time in as many minutes, trying unsuccessfully to rid his mouth of the sour taste of mold and decay. They were standing in what must have once been Monica's living room, and she was back to clutching that naked Barbie.
There were things like that, toys and ornaments, books and other bits of life, of a well-loved home, lying in scattered heaps on the sofa, the chairs, the end tables, the floor. All of it still damp and reeking, smeared with mud and mold and a shimmering sheen of oil. The wallpaper was bulging and peeling from the walls, and he could see bits of blackened insulation poking out where the drywall had crumbled. Nothing worked, no lights or running water, even his cellphone was struggling to find a viable signal. Everything was broken. Useless.
Dead.
He wondered if anyone had insurance, for this.
"Your family, did they --"
"In Huston." There was a pause, then: "My mom, my younger brother. My sister and her kids. I came back, first."
"But they're okay? They all made it out?"
She let out a slow breath, like a leak in an worn tire. "My grandmother. She wouldn't leave. We don't -- we haven't heard, yet."
"I'm sorry," Dean said, and didn't know why. They were empty words and he'd always hated people who said them. "Did she live here?"
"Next street over. I haven't -- I can't go look." She was staring out the window, a gaping, empty space in the wall, the glass long since forced out of its frame by the water. "What are you doing here, Dean?"
He wasn't sure.
"I'm here to help."
She nodded. "You're not National Guard. They're all holed up in City Park. Who are you with?"
He shrugged. "No one. Just me. I --" How could he explain? "I heard the stories. Wanted to do something. So I'm here."
"There's nothing you can do." She said it low and even, stating a fact, but for all that, he could hear the sob hiding just behind her words. "What can anyone do?"
Dean didn't know, so he didn't answer. Just swallowed again and wondered how it could have gotten like this. There was nothing salvageable here, nothing for miles.
He wondered if maybe he should've taken another job, any other job. He worked in people, in small time deals where he could see the faces and know the names of the people he was saving. There were too many here to know them all. Too much damage had already been done. There was no amount of salt or silver or holy water that could undo this, make it better.
What the hell had he been thinking, coming here?
What could one person do in the face of all this?
He half-turned away from the ruin of Monica's living room to the ruin of Monica, herself.
He couldn't do anything about the house. It wasn't his job, or his place.
But she was still alive, and in the end, his job was always about the survivors. He could do something there, maybe.
"I can buy you a cup of coffee."
She stared out the window a moment longer, her fingers clenching on the naked Barbie. She turned her head, and all he could make out of her face was a silhouette, black against the gray sky, and a flash of too-red hair.
"I shouldn't --"
"There's nothing you can do here." He kept his voice even and gentle, the tone he reserved for grieving parents when Sam wasn't around to handle them. "Not yet, anyway. We'll figure something out, but for now. . . . Let me do this. I'll get you something hot to drink, maybe find a shower. Some clean clothes. I can do that."
She said nothing for so long that he thought he was going to be shot down. Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth and her chin shifted, her fingers clenching on that damned Barbie. Then she nodded slowly.
"It'll probably be a bit of a drive."
He grinned then, suddenly and thought he must look like he was insane, smiling in the midst of all this. "Honey, driving is one of the things I do best."
* * *
Marigny, New Orleans, March 2008
"We should split up."
"No."
There was no surprise in either of them at the exchange. Dean had to know that Sam had ulterior motives for bringing them down here; that the hunt was only a distant second in his mind to his own hunt for answers on getting Dean out of his deal. And Sam knew, without a doubt and to his endless frustration, that Dean would not acknowledge that hunt if he could possibly help it. He would, literally, rather die.
Which meant that what little they said to each other was short, terse, and filled with frustration on both sides.
Not exactly brotherly love -- except that it was. It was exactly the way he and Dean loved each other. The only way they knew how.
"I'm serious, Dean."
"So am I."
"We'd cover a lot more ground."
"Not if you're out looking at everything but this damned hunt."
"I'm going to do it anyway, you know,"
Dean's jaw clenched. "Yeah. But -- we gotta do this, first. It's more important."
Sam's fingers clenched and the piles of careful research turned to crumpled scraps in his lap. "Fuck you, Dean."
"You, too, Sammy."
They'd made it to downtown, now, Dean pulling off on an exit for "Elysian Fields". The Greek, heroic afterlife. The multifaceted irony of it made Sam want to start shooting things.
It was here, on the first few blocks from the highway, that Sam got his first look at the real effects of Hurricane Katrina. Rows of shotgun houses lay empty and boarded up, graffitied with an odd, repeating notation: an X with initials, numbers, and dates in all four of its divided quadrants. Sam had done enough research to know what those were -- they were the tags used by the search and rescue teams, listing the date of the search, the team that performed it, and what they'd found in terse, esoteric numbers and letters. Most of the dates that Sam saw were for mid-September, several weeks after the storm and the flooding, long enough that one had to wonder just how much the teams could have found worth rescuing. A two story house had a gaping hole for a roof, the blackened edges long since cooled, and Sam swallowed a flash of blonde and white and blood wrapped in flames and he had to shut his eyes for a moment.
They passed a towering brick building, its doors chained shut and padlocked behind a tall, chain link fence, its windows boarded over with weathered plywood. A school, Sam realized. An elementary school, the sign on the side of the building cheerfully welcoming students back for the fall term. He stared at it in confusion for a moment before realizing that the sign must have remained unchanged since just before Katrina hit.
There was a hopelessness to it, all of it, that made Sam's stomach turn. If people couldn't pull it together to bring back a school after two years, what hope did he have of rescuing his brother in two months? Did he really expect the people he needed to talk to, the ones who might have answers to crossroads deals and demons and souls, to be here? Or should he be looking in Baton Rouge or Huston?
He turned to look at his brother, to apologize, maybe, for bringing them here. To suggest they go somewhere else. He expected to see a blank facade, or lips pressed tight together in consternation, as Dean cruised along the street at low speed. Instead, he saw a glint in Dean's eye, a lifting of his expression and a faint crinkling of the skin just below his temples. Dean was pleased with what he was seeing. The plywood and blackened timber didn't seem to affect him at all.
"Dude."
And like that, crinkles vanished and the expression fell back into barely controlled frustration as Dean shot his eyes back toward Sam. "What?"
"Why the fuck are you smiling?"
"I'm not."
"You were."
Dean's attention turned back to the road. "What, I'm not allowed to be happy, now?"
"That's not what I'm saying!"
"Then what?"
"I just --" Sam swallowed his anger, knowing it would get them nowhere. "This place is a mess. The traffic's moving at a crawl. You hate that shit."
Dean shook his head. "It's back, Sammy."
"What is?"
Dean gestured vaguely around them. "Last time I was here, this was nothing. No people, no cars, nothing. It's back."
Sam turned to look out the window again, trying to see what his brother was seeing. There was a hope, here, somewhere, the kind that only Dean ever seemed to find. People had been coming back, after all, he supposed. And, he thought, maybe the sort of person who knew how to get a man out of the devil's deal might be the sort of person who came back to a dead city.
It wasn't elementary school kids he wanted to talk to, after all.
* * *
Violet, Louisiana, October 2005
Part of him had to wonder what she was thinking, getting into his car with him. She didn't know him from anything, didn't even know his last name (not that he knew hers, yet), but here she was, trusting her life to his hands on the wheel. Trusting that he wasn't some whack-job touristing up the disaster area, or somehow worse.
Was it the storm? Would she have been so quick to trust if her entire life hadn't been washed away in a flood? Or did she think she saw something in him, in his hapless offer to help, somehow, with the unfixable?
He was over thinking this.
He'd barely spoken to anyone for anything that wasn't a job or a quick fuck in nearly two years. Since him and Dad hunting had turned into him hunting and Dad hunting. Before that even, since it had gone from him and Sam and Dad to the three Winchesters speeding away from each other like -- like rogue comets, if comets came in rogues. He'd spent the last two years barreling forward like that, like he might eventually smack into something useful, something like home, maybe. Or something like an end, at the very least.
She was Sam's age. Maybe older. She should have been in college, somewhere, partying and studying and getting trashed and getting laid. Figuring out what her whole future would be, instead of here, in a wasted town, with a wasted house trying to work out what happened to her past.
But she wasn't in college. She was here. In his car.
Because they'd smacked into each other, somehow.
He wondered how long it would be until they ricocheted off again. Like with Cassie.
He'd known her no more than twenty minutes, and he was already relating her to Cassie?
Jesus, he was fucked in the head.
Still, somehow, it was like her climbing into his car was some kind of passport -- some signal to the others, standing by their own houses. Suddenly, Dean wasn't the outsider driving along, sightseeing a tragedy. Monica recognized everyone, it seemed -- they'd gone no more than twenty feet before she was telling him to stop and rolling down her window, calling to a man his father's age who held a rusted crowbar the way she'd held that Barbie.
"Monica."
"Christian."
"Are you --"
"Is it --"
"Your kids --"
"Florida. Your sister?"
"Huston."
It was like some broken code, both of them suddenly talking at once, and before Dean knew it, the man -- Christian, apparently -- was in the backseat, sliding in amongst the candy wrappers and dirty socks Dean had never gotten around to cleaning up. It was ridiculous, being embarrassed by the small, mundane mess when everything these people owned was in far worse shape, but he felt like he should be providing an oasis, not another trash heap.
Maybe he was, a little. There was no mold in the Impala.
Twenty feet further, and Christian and Monica were greeting Jim -- little more than a teenager -- and Helen -- somewhere between Monica and Christian, mid-thirties, maybe. And the Impala was suddenly full, but there was still Bob and another Jim, Nate and Ernest and Katie. Helen pulled out a notebook and took orders -- they all pooled their money and tried to work out what they needed, just for today, just to get through one night. They all agreed they'd worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
Dean should have felt taken advantage of. He should have felt like a chauffeur or a robot. But every new person they met, he was introduced -- "This is Dean, he's here to help" -- and thanked, small talk made less in a "keep him talking" way and more in a "I really want to know you" way. It made his head ache. It made his chest tighten and made him want to call Sam and Dad and just let them know he was still alive.
It made him feel, for the first time in too long, like he wouldn't be half-lying if he did.
And to think, all it had taken was the offer of a cup of coffee.
* * *
The French Quarter, New Orleans, March 2008
Sam stared at the destination Dean had chosen, for the moment. "Dude, you are such a fucking hypocrite."
Dean was several paces in front of him, by now, making his way down a long, flagstone ramp from the raised railroad crossing next to the river. He half-turned and halted when he saw that Sam had stopped moving, his brows flashing up and the edges of his mouth turning down.
"What?"
"What?" Sam dropped his chin, bringing his head back slightly with a huffed breath. "What?! You spent the last ten minutes telling me we couldn't split up because I don't know the town -- don't know how to talk to people around here and might get my ass handed to me, and let's not forget, the lectures on how the hunt is more important than you are -- and you drag me here?"
Dean turned his head to look back at the cafe they were heading for. It was an open air affair, a large patio covered with a green and white striped awning and surrounded by a low, wrought iron fence, packed so thickly with marble topped tables and iron chairs and customers that Sam had to wonder how his brother expected the two of them to even get through the opening in the fence, let alone find a table and get service. The noise of it, of all those people talking and laughing at once, combined with the rattle and tap of passing tour buggies and a nearby Dixie band, was already giving Sam a headache.
Dean, of course, was grinning. "Yeah, so?"
"It's a tourist trap!"
The raised brows and pursed lips were back. "It's Cafe Du Monde, dude."
Sam shook his head slightly and lifted one shoulder. "Yeah, a tourist trap."
Dean snorted. "And that would be why I said you don't know this town. Now, come on." He started walking again, not turning to see if Sam would follow. "I'll getcha a cafe au lait. It's chicory. You'll like it."
Sam let out a soft growl of frustration and caught up with Dean easily. "This is a waste of time."
"Bite your tongue."
"I'm serious, Dean --"
"So am I. This place is open 24/7, everyday except Christmas. Everyone comes here. If something weird is going on, someone here is gonna know about it." He flashed a grin again as he turned sideways to avoid a middle-aged couple in matching Hawaiian shirts and step through to the cafe proper. "'Sides, you totally gotta try the beignets."
Sam side-stepped the couple, careful not to let Dean get too far ahead. The ground was sticky -- a quick glance revealed that it was covered in powdered sugar. As was everything else around them. "You like beignets."
"Sure, man. Fried dough and sugar, what's not to love?"
Sam smirked. "Nothing, just surprised you know how to pronounce it."
Dean turned to shoot him a glare, but the expression was ruined by the grin that seemed to have taken up permanent residence on his features. Sam hadn't seen Dean so consistently happy since -- well, right after the deal, really, though he didn't really think that counted. That had been Dean riding the high of Sam's return to life, before the inevitable crash of realizing exactly what the cost had been. This was . . . this was Dean settled in a way Sam had never seen before. This was somehow Dean in his element.
Dean's element was noisy, garish, and covered in half-melted sugar.
Sam probably should have guessed.
"Yahtzee." Dean swooped around a departing group and into an open chair at a table, waving at Sam to do the same. The table hadn't even been cleared -- the glasses, plates, and cups of the group that had just left sat piled in the middle like some sort of half-assed shrine. Sam scowled and sat a bit more gingerly than Dean had, keeping his hands well away from the gooey-looking table top. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a waitress was leaning in between him and Dean with a tray and a rag, one lock of her brown hair escaping its neat ponytail.
Her hair, like everything else, was dusted with sugar.
"You boys know what you want?" She tapped the napkin dispenser with one finger, and Sam spotted the tiny menu pasted on the side. "Or do you need a minute?"
Dean folded his hands on the table and leaned in, then froze.
"Monica?"
The waitress straightened, blinked at Dean, then smiled broadly.
"Well I'll be. Dean Winchester."
Dean returned the smile, then nodded to Sam. "And his little brother." The waitress -- Monica, apparently -- turned the smile on Sam and Sam made an effort to smile back, even as he hunched his shoulders forward uncomfortably.
This was new. For all that they'd been practically everywhere, Sam and Dean didn't get recognized that often. And when they were, it was never with such cheerful abandon. Even the few friends they'd made usually showed a hint of concern when they cropped back up. They were almost never in town for a happy reason.
"Sam, right?" Monica asked, and Sam nodded. "Your brother told me a bit about you. Stanford-boy."
"Uh, yeah." Sam fidgeted in his seat, shooting a look at Dean. Dean nodded back.
"Sam, this is Monica."
"I guessed."
"Met her last time I was in town."
"Guessed that, too."
Dean's smile faltered slightly, and he looked down. Sam fidgeted a bit more. Monica straightened, her tray now loaded down with dirty dishes.
"What brings you boys to town? Little late for Mardi Gras, this year,"
"Road trip," Dean answered easily, looking back up from the table and resettling into his comfortable lean. "We were in Texas, figured we'd swing on over and check out how things were going around here. Sammy's never been."
"That right?" Monica turned her smile back on Sam again, and Sam did his best to return it. "Well, what do you think?"
It's half-dead and my last hope, he thought. "We only just got here. But it's . . . it's nice."
"It's getting there," Monica offered. A waiter passing nearby shot her a dirty look and she rolled her eyes. "Back to work. I know what Dean wants, what can I get you?"
"Uh," Sam frowned at the menu. "Cafe au lait?"
"Good choice. Beignets?"
"Sure."
"Coming right up." She winked at both of them, settling the hand that held the rag on her hip. "I get off in a couple hours. You boys should swing by the house."
Dean brightened again, his eyes widening slightly as he looked at her. "Same place?"
"Just about fixed up. Got my own now, across the street, but we're still finishing the drywall."
"That's awesome." Dean sounded like he'd never meant anything more in his life. Monica nodded.
"Sure is. I'll be right back with your order."
And she swung away, navigating easily through the crowds, tray held high over her head to make sure it didn't get jostled. Her hips twitched and swayed in a way that Sam was all too familiar with.
She wanted Dean. And from the way Dean was watching her go, she'd have no trouble getting him.
Dean turned back once she was out of sight, his smile more familiar in its lasciviousness. "That was Monica."
"Uh huh."
"She's awesome."
"Uh huh."
Dean licked his lips, looked back over his shoulder, laughed once, then turned back to the table, carefully making his expression more serious. "Right. So. Hunt."
Sam sighed.
This was going to be a long one.
* * *
Part 2
Additional author's note: The people of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish in this story are fictional. However, their situation (the one that isn't supernaturally based) is not. Not being a New Orleans resident, there's no way for me to have represented the city post-Katrina perfectly, but I've done my best, working from first hand accounts of Parish residents and the book 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose for the 2005 storyline, and my own experiences volunteering last October for the 2008 storyline. It's not my intention to preach here, but for those who might be interested, the program I volunteered with was the St. Bernard Project, and there's still plenty to do.