Fic: Darker & Wilder (Supernatural) 3/6
Title: Darker & Wilder (pt.3)
Fandom: Supernatural
Character(s): Jess, Dean, Sam
Pairing(s): Gen
Word Count: 4,200
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine. Like at all.
Summary: Jess is worried when Sam leaves in a hurry one Friday afternoon. The only thing he can offer her before he goes is a phone number and promise to be back by Sunday night. When he doesn't show up on time, Jess makes the call.
When they pulled up in front of the apartment, Jess climbed out silent and focused on not calling too much attention to herself. She took the bag that Dean thrust at her and dashed ahead, opening up the apartment and flipping on the lights. She cleared the remains of their dinner into the sink and pulled out a chair for easy access. By then, Dean had staggered to the door with Sam. She help guide them in and get Sam sitting. Dean set to work immediately once Sam was down. He put water on to boil, laying out the supplies he would need from the first aid bag, then nudged Sam into a decent potion to be able to see his injuries.
Jess stayed well back. The last thing she wanted was to be in the way. Dean obviously knew what he was doing. He moved through the motions with practiced ease and Sam was compliant, obviously trusting his brother’s skills. Dean only addressed her once to ask for a bottle of rubbing alcohol. It took her a minute to unearth the dusty bottle that had sat unused under their bathroom sink for months, but she brought it out to him. He poured out a measure into a plate. He lit a match, running his needle through it like it was some Wild West show where they didn’t have modern medicine, then dropped it into the alcohol. A long length of thread was already sitting out on the table.
In under five minutes, Dean had transformed their kitchenette into a field hospital. He took a moment to scrub his hands with the dish soap they left on the counter. When he was ready he turned to Sam with a grim nod. “Alright college boy, you got any good meds you want to take?”
Sam shook his head. In the hard, fluorescent light of the kitchen, he looked pale and gaunt. Jess could see the tight lines of pain around his mouth and eyes. She knew as well as Sam did that the only thing they kept in the cabinet was Tylenol. After a moment of hesitation, Sam gave her a brief sideways glance before adding, “There’s a bottle of Jack in the guest closet, behind the chest.”
Dean nodded and gave Jess a meaningful look. She went to fetch it, wondering when the guest closet had become the hiding place for all Sam’s secrets. She found the whiskey lodged tight behind the chest. She had to lean the entire thing forward to pull it out. When she returned, Sam took the bottle, unscrewed the kid, and took a swig. He smiled at her and gave her a knowing look. “You don’t have to stay. It’s not the kind of thing you want to watch.”
She frowned. There he went making decisions for her again. Instead of retreating to her room like Sam had probably hoped, she sank down into the chair across from them, arms crossed over her chest. She gave Sam a hard look, daring him to argue with her. She wasn’t about to let him out of her sight until she knew he was at least okay enough to go to bed. She knew she was too exhausted to fight them tonight, but she wasn’t going anywhere until she got some answers. Sam didn’t seem surprised. He nodded at her, then turned back to Dean with a grimace.
Dean took a wash cloth he’d produced from somewhere, dipped it in the hot water, and started to clean the area. Jess was mesmerized. It looked painful and abrasive. Dean was doing his best to be gentle, allowing the warm water to soak into the dried blood before he wiped it away, but it still required some scrubbing. Horrible as it was she couldn’t look away. Sam didn’t cry out or flinch. He just studied the bottle in his hands, eyes going even tighter.
Sam did flinch when Dean dowsed the area with the rubbing alcohol, but his passive face barely twitched when Dean’s steady hands began sewing. Jess could almost feel the sting of the needle each time Dean set another stitch.
She forced herself to watch it all. She watched as Sam bantered with Dean over the number of stitches. She watched as Dean set a neat row of small, tight sutures then covered it over with gauze. She watched as Sam drank liquor straight from the bottle - Sam, who barely touched the stuff when they went out with their friends. She watched as Sam tested his range of motion and got smacked in the back of the head for not being careful. She watched as Dean carefully cleaned the gash on Sam’s head, being gentle as he parted the hair there then carefully applying a butterfly bandage over it.
In the end, Jess felt like she was the one who needed the whiskey far more than either of the brothers. As Dean was cleaning up the dirty rags and bloody water, she was starting to see the shape of the thing Sam didn’t want to tell her. It had to be something terrible if the two men in front of her could handle the situation the way they had. There was no panic or crying out, just resignation and firm competence. Whatever had given them the practice at this sort of thing couldn’t have been pleasant.
For the first time that night, Jess felt something aching for both Sam and Dean in her heart.
When Dean was done, Sam grabbed his arm and swung him around to face him, pulling him in between his legs against the edge of the chair. He lifted the edge of Dean’s t-shirt with one hand and held his hip in the other. Jess turned away. She knew they were brothers and that Sam loved her, but it was such an intimate gesture she didn’t feel right watching. After what she’d seen tonight she wouldn’t be ruling anything out.
Sam’s sharp breath had her turning back to him, eyes going wide at the sight of Dean’s midsection. In the back of her mind she noted that he was ripped. In any other circumstances, she’d have been looking for very different reasons. Tonight, instead of admiring the tight muscles, she was gaping at the deep bruising that had cropped up along the top of his stomach. The area had already turned a mottled red and purple with a few scrapes that had obviously bled a little. His dark t-shirt must have hidden the blood.
Sam frowned up at Dean. “I know you slammed into the banister. Anything else?”
Dean grunted but shook his head.
“I’m serious,” Sam snapped. “I’m too tired to do a full check. If you hide something and then die from internal bleeding or an infection or some other dumb shit that you totally could have fessed up to, I’m going to bring you back and kill you myself.”
“I’m fine. Chill, Sam.” Dean’s tone was annoyed but Jess caught the fond look he gave Sam when he thought he wasn’t looking.
Sam grunted, eyes going back to the bruising, but seemed to take him at his word. “Sorry, you know the drill. Anything stiff or hurting?”
“No. It wasn’t that hard.”
Sam began palpitating Dean’s midsection with a practiced motion. Jess looked on unsure what he was doing. Sam must have noticed her confusion. “I’m checking for internal bleeding,” he said. Dean scowled but didn’t back away.
“You landed on the railing from a good six foot up,” Sam added, turning his focus back to Dean. “Don’t tell me it’s nothing. You’re lucky you didn’t tip the other way and take a header over the stairs.”
“Take more than that to get me down.”
“So the groaning was all for show then.”
“Didn’t want you to feel bad for getting your ass handed to you.”
Sam huffed, but collapsed back into the chair. “I don’t feel anything, but you should check again in a few hours.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Sam didn’t bother to reply. Jess could tell he was barely hanging onto consciousness at that point. Dean seemed to know, too. He chuckled. “Alright, time for good damsels to go to bed.”
Sam groaned, but let Dean pull him up. “I’ll crash in the guest bed tonight. No reason for Jess to not get a good night’s sleep because you mother hen me all night.”
“They’re called concussion checks and I’d like to know my brother didn’t slip into a coma or something in the middle of the night so suck it up.”
Jess stood then, waring with herself. She almost told him to come to bed with her. One part of her wanted nothing more than to curl up in the bed against his steady warmth and just know that he was home safe. The bigger part, the one led by the growing pit in her stomach that said she didn’t really know a thing about him, needed some time to think.
Maybe she would regret it in the morning, but she let him go. She needed some space to sort out exactly what she was feeling and the idea of sharing the same bed was claustrophobic with all the thoughts bouncing around in her head. She waited until he was settled and snoring into his pillow, then made her way into her own room leaving Dean to fend for himself. She curled into her blankets. Her thoughts kept spiraling away from her, replaying everything Sam had ever said, even in passing, about himself. Her mind refused to let go of the thought that there was so much to Sam that she didn’t know.
She woke the next morning to the smell of coffee wafting through the apartment. She had dozed off around six or seven that morning and still felt gritty and unrested. The one thing she’d finally decided last night was that it wouldn’t help to hide from Sam or the problem. So, instead of curling back up and trying to drift off to sleep again, she found her robe and shuffled her way into the kitchen, unsure what would be waiting for her.
Sam was draped over the kitchen table, head resting on his outstretched arm. He looked like a zombie. His hair was flat and lank, his face was still pale, and he had dark circles underlining his eyes. Jess could relate. She sank into the chair next to him, watching as his brother practically danced through the kitchen. She glared through narrow eyes when he turned to her with a huge grin and winked. “Morning! I hope you don’t mind me making myself at home. I was in the mood for some bacon.”
He was entirely too happy for Jess’s liking before she’d even had her coffee. She was just trying to come up with a response that didn’t sound like a growl when Sam shifted so that he was looking up at her from his bed on the table. “Sorry about him,” he grumbled. “He’s always like this in the morning. It’s a wonder Dad or I didn’t murder him.”
“You wouldn’t,” Dean said with a grin. “Then who’d make the coffee.”
With a flourish, he produced a steaming mug and set it down in front of Jess. She wrapped her hands around it, enjoying the warmth. She stared down into the dark liquid trying to decide if she cared enough to get up and actually fix it the way she liked it. She didn’t usually take it black, but this morning she was willing to forgo the cream in favor of caffeine. She took a sip off the top and the warmth loosened the annoyance a little. “I’ll withhold judgement as long as the coffee keeps coming,” she said.
Dean gave her a huge grin, then plates of bacon and eggs were being dropped on the table and the smell tempted even her. She glanced up when Dean sat across from her and realized he had served himself a large slice of pie.
“No wonder you’re so hyper,” she said. “How much of that have you had this morning? That’s my grandma’s recipe and her secret ingredient is sugar.”
Dean shrugged. “It’s really good. Besides, there’s fruit in it. Fruit’s a breakfast food.”
Sam rolled his eyes. He had sat up enough to serve himself. “Fruit is just another kind of sugar.”
“Please don’t start,” Jess said, seeing where the conversation was headed. “It’s too early to keep up with your banter.”
Dean snickered as Sam shrugged and started eating his eggs. Once Jess had woken up enough to really process what was going on she asked, “So are you all clear for the not a big deal head injury?”
Dean snorted. “I dunno. Did you ever remember what the square root of 299 is?”
“Fuck off, Dean,” Sam was actually whining. Jess had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. She was still pissed at him, after all. “First of all, why were you asking me math questions at four in the morning? And second of all, the square root of 299 is some god awful decimal between 17 and 18. Why on earth would that be a general knowledge question?”
Dean shrugged. “You seemed bored with who’s the president. Thought I’d mix it up. And you kinda just proved my point.”
“You’re not funny.”
“I’m hilarious. And yes, Jess. He’s in the clear for the concussion. He was probably fine when we got home and he was coherent, but it never hurts to be careful with a head injury.”
Jess nodded at him and took another sip of her coffee. “Good,” she said. Then she turned to Sam. She gave him a long, hard stare. He started squirming the longer she glared at him. Finally, she said, “If you ever do something so stupid and foolhardy again, I’m going to beat you senseless. I was worried to death while you were off being all cryptic and getting injured! I had to call your brother to come rescue you because instead of explaining what was going on you went off halfcocked, forget the consequences. I’m pissed at you Sam Winchester. And I want answers. Now.”
Sam opened his mouth to answer her, eyes wide in surprise when his phone went off. He pulled it out, glanced at the name, then went pale. He looked at Dean. “Tell me you didn’t.”
Dean just shrugged obviously as lost as Jess. Sam answered the phone.
“Hey, Bobby.”
Jess could hear the rough tone from where she sat. The yelling was almost clear enough for her to make out the words. Whoever was on the line was angry. Good. Sam deserved to be in trouble.
Sam cast a sheepish look at his lap as he said, “I’m fine. I promise. Couple of stitches.”
Sam winced as the yelling continued. “Bobby, please. There wasn’t anyone else. Dean came and helped out.” When he paused this time, the voice on the other end of the line had quieted enough that Jess barely heard the mumble of their next question. “The kids are safe. Don’t worry about sending anyone else, it’s finished.... okay, Bobby. I promise. Talk soon.”
Sam hung up and glared at Dean, but Jess wasn’t letting him slip out of this conversation. She had decided last night she could live with knowing Sam wasn’t perfect. She could live with knowing there were some things he’d likely never tell her, but she wasn’t okay with knowing his whole life before they met was a secret.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook, Winchester. You are going to tell me what happened or I’ll walk out that door.”
Sam looked back at her, stricken. “Jess, please. I can’t.”
“You can. After the weekend you put me through, you owe me some answers.”
Sam looked to Dean, who just shrugged. “This is between you lovebirds. For what it’s worth, she’s right. You’re obviously serious about this. You should tell her.”
“But Dean!”
Dean held his hands up. “I’m going for a walk. I left Baby in a no park zone last night and the last thing I need is for her to get towed.” He rose, pulling his keys from his pocket.
Sam frowned. “You’re not...”
Dean rolled his eyes. “I’ll be back in like half an hour.” With that he let himself out, leaving Sam and Jess alone together.
“Well?” Jess said.
Sam sighed. He leaned back in his chair and studied her for a long time. She had just about decided he wasn’t going to talk to her, when he said, “I have never told another person the whole story.”
She just nodded. She could have guessed that much.
Sam slumped back in his chair, fingers absently playing with the hem of his shirt. “My mom died when I was a baby. You know that. But she wasn’t just a victim of a house fire. She was murdered.”
Jess felt her eyes widen in surprise. She had known it must have been something along those lines, but to have it confirmed was something different altogether. She reached out and laid a hand over his. She may have wanted answers, but she knew this must be hard for him.
Sam took a deep breath before continuing. “My dad, he saw the whole thing. He got me out of the nursery when the fire started and handed me to Dean to get the both of us out of the house, then he went back to try and save her.
“Dad was obsessed with finding the thing that killed our mom. He’s spent every spare moment since that day searching. He raised me and Dean to help him. We never stayed in one place for very long, always moving around. There was physical training, weapons drills at four am, late nights of research, and little else.
“Dean took to that life as easy as breathing. I used to want to be just like him, but I never could quite live up to him. Where Dean was a natural with a shot gun, I spent hour after hour practicing. Where Dean had the raw strength and power, I was quick, but pretty weak. Where Dean could follow orders, I asked too many questions. I could research better than a college grad by the time I was ten, but it wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good at the physical part of the job and I didn’t want to be. We took hunt after hunt and it was always more. More training, more drills, more practice. Where most kids skive off homework to play video games, I tried to beg my way out of training to do my homework. Dad just didn’t understand that I wanted more than that.”
Sam glanced up at her, meeting her eye for the first time since he started speaking. “The thing is, I want to be as invested as Dean and Dad. I want to believe that what they’re chasing - what we were chasing - was worth it, but the truth is I never knew her. For them, it was personal, revenge. For me, I couldn’t help but wonder how Dad could justify exposing us to the horrors that he did when I can’t believe Mom would have wanted that for us.”
“Why didn’t he go to the police, tell them what he saw?”
Sam laughed, but it was dark and humorless. “Here’s the part where you’ll think I’m making things up.”
“Why?”
Sam turned to her with those big, sad eyes so earnest and pleading. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course, Sam.”
“No,” he said, leaning forward to grab her hand. “I mean really trust me. Do you think I would lie or make something up just to get you to let it go?”
She stared at him, searching his face. She knew without a doubt that whatever he said next would be the truth. “I trust you.”
“The man who broke into our house and killed my mother, he had yellow eyes. He pinned her to the ceiling over my crib and cut her stomach then set the fire that burned our house down. Whatever he was, he wasn’t human.”
Jess frowned. “What do you mean, wasn’t human?”
“We never got a definitive answer. Dad is still looking. Best we can figure, he’s some kind of demon.”
“Sam,” she said. She knew he was superstitious. She knew he believed all sorts of things that just didn’t make sense in a rational world. Before now, she had thought it was charming or annoying by turns. Never before had she worried that it had crossed a line past rationality into madness.
Sam shook his head. “This is what I didn’t want to tell you. I know you think it’s some weird, backwoods superstition or some hokey pagan nonsense, but it’s not. I didn’t want you to find out about this stuff because once you know, you can’t ever go back. But Dean is right. You deserve the truth. Monsters are real. Ghosts, demons, ghouls, witches. They all exist.
“My father made it his mission to hunt down the thing that killed my mom and take out anything else that preys on innocent people in the meantime. He became a hunter. That’s what they call it. Hunting. He spent most of my childhood teaching me how to fight monsters.”
“Sam,” she said again, cautiously. She knew her reaction could make or break this moment, but she was starting to wonder if maybe Sam needed more help that she could offer. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. I believe that you believe it, but that’s a lot to swallow.”
“I know.”
“Can you prove any of it?”
Sam shrugged, pulling away from her. “There are a handful of spells I suppose. I can show you Dad’s journal. Or Dean’s arsenal.”
She took in a deep breath. This was going to take some time to process. Either way, it didn’t change the fact that she needed to know the rest of what happened that weekend. “Okay,” she said at last. “Okay. Let’s say all that is true, this weekend you were...hunting?...what exactly?”
“A witch.”
Jess made a noise in the back of her throat. It just escaped her. A witch! Was she actually supposed to believe that? “Explain.”
“Witches use magic to their own ends. There are some that are good, but for the most part the power they use corrupts. The ones we hunt are the ones that are out there hurting people. This one was whipping up youth potions using children and runaway teens. She was nearly a hundred and fifty years old. She preyed on the ones who felt like they had nowhere left to go. The bus of kids was a big change in her MO. I think she’d had a harder and harder time luring in runaways. She was desperate. I found her trail because the missing person report mentioned that there had been a long history of kids going missing. I tried to hand it off. I got out of that life for a reason, but there was no one close enough to get there in time. She would have killed those kids tonight when moon was new.”
Jess was waiting for him to grin. To crack up and tell her he was just messing around. But when she met his eye she realized he was deadly serious. A different kind of dread was starting to settle in her bones.
“Sam, did you kill someone?”
“I killed a witch.”
She gasped, choking on something that felt suspiciously like a sob. Her gentle, sweet, kind Sam had murdered someone in cold blood. He was obviously sick. He had pieced together some fantasy about some poor woman then snuck in and killed her to fulfill his twisted thinking.
For the first time, she was beginning to feel afraid of Sam. He had always been so kind with her. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he had just said he’d killed.
Sam sighed. “What if I could show you?”
She froze at that, suddenly afraid. Was he going to hurt her now that she knew? Was he going to try to hurt someone else to prove that he wasn’t lying? “What?”
“Not a witch,” he shuddered. “But maybe a ghost. If I could prove to you that I’m not making this up, that I’m not crazy or hallucinating or something, would you want that? It’s not something you can ever unsee.”
“I....” Jess didn’t know what to say. This was Sam. He was big and powerful, sure, but he wasn’t a killer. He never had been. She wanted desperately to believe him, but she was a little afraid of what he might do, even to her. Still, she had to believe that she knew his heart, and everything in her said Sam wasn’t a killer.
“Okay,” she said, surprising even herself. “Show me.”
Sam looked sad, but nodded. “Okay.”
He pulled out his phone. A moment later he was talking to his brother. Apparently, she was going ghost hunting tonight.
<< Previous Chapter ~~~ Master Post ~~~ Next Chapter >>
Fandom: Supernatural
Character(s): Jess, Dean, Sam
Pairing(s): Gen
Word Count: 4,200
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine. Like at all.
Summary: Jess is worried when Sam leaves in a hurry one Friday afternoon. The only thing he can offer her before he goes is a phone number and promise to be back by Sunday night. When he doesn't show up on time, Jess makes the call.
When they pulled up in front of the apartment, Jess climbed out silent and focused on not calling too much attention to herself. She took the bag that Dean thrust at her and dashed ahead, opening up the apartment and flipping on the lights. She cleared the remains of their dinner into the sink and pulled out a chair for easy access. By then, Dean had staggered to the door with Sam. She help guide them in and get Sam sitting. Dean set to work immediately once Sam was down. He put water on to boil, laying out the supplies he would need from the first aid bag, then nudged Sam into a decent potion to be able to see his injuries.
Jess stayed well back. The last thing she wanted was to be in the way. Dean obviously knew what he was doing. He moved through the motions with practiced ease and Sam was compliant, obviously trusting his brother’s skills. Dean only addressed her once to ask for a bottle of rubbing alcohol. It took her a minute to unearth the dusty bottle that had sat unused under their bathroom sink for months, but she brought it out to him. He poured out a measure into a plate. He lit a match, running his needle through it like it was some Wild West show where they didn’t have modern medicine, then dropped it into the alcohol. A long length of thread was already sitting out on the table.
In under five minutes, Dean had transformed their kitchenette into a field hospital. He took a moment to scrub his hands with the dish soap they left on the counter. When he was ready he turned to Sam with a grim nod. “Alright college boy, you got any good meds you want to take?”
Sam shook his head. In the hard, fluorescent light of the kitchen, he looked pale and gaunt. Jess could see the tight lines of pain around his mouth and eyes. She knew as well as Sam did that the only thing they kept in the cabinet was Tylenol. After a moment of hesitation, Sam gave her a brief sideways glance before adding, “There’s a bottle of Jack in the guest closet, behind the chest.”
Dean nodded and gave Jess a meaningful look. She went to fetch it, wondering when the guest closet had become the hiding place for all Sam’s secrets. She found the whiskey lodged tight behind the chest. She had to lean the entire thing forward to pull it out. When she returned, Sam took the bottle, unscrewed the kid, and took a swig. He smiled at her and gave her a knowing look. “You don’t have to stay. It’s not the kind of thing you want to watch.”
She frowned. There he went making decisions for her again. Instead of retreating to her room like Sam had probably hoped, she sank down into the chair across from them, arms crossed over her chest. She gave Sam a hard look, daring him to argue with her. She wasn’t about to let him out of her sight until she knew he was at least okay enough to go to bed. She knew she was too exhausted to fight them tonight, but she wasn’t going anywhere until she got some answers. Sam didn’t seem surprised. He nodded at her, then turned back to Dean with a grimace.
Dean took a wash cloth he’d produced from somewhere, dipped it in the hot water, and started to clean the area. Jess was mesmerized. It looked painful and abrasive. Dean was doing his best to be gentle, allowing the warm water to soak into the dried blood before he wiped it away, but it still required some scrubbing. Horrible as it was she couldn’t look away. Sam didn’t cry out or flinch. He just studied the bottle in his hands, eyes going even tighter.
Sam did flinch when Dean dowsed the area with the rubbing alcohol, but his passive face barely twitched when Dean’s steady hands began sewing. Jess could almost feel the sting of the needle each time Dean set another stitch.
She forced herself to watch it all. She watched as Sam bantered with Dean over the number of stitches. She watched as Dean set a neat row of small, tight sutures then covered it over with gauze. She watched as Sam drank liquor straight from the bottle - Sam, who barely touched the stuff when they went out with their friends. She watched as Sam tested his range of motion and got smacked in the back of the head for not being careful. She watched as Dean carefully cleaned the gash on Sam’s head, being gentle as he parted the hair there then carefully applying a butterfly bandage over it.
In the end, Jess felt like she was the one who needed the whiskey far more than either of the brothers. As Dean was cleaning up the dirty rags and bloody water, she was starting to see the shape of the thing Sam didn’t want to tell her. It had to be something terrible if the two men in front of her could handle the situation the way they had. There was no panic or crying out, just resignation and firm competence. Whatever had given them the practice at this sort of thing couldn’t have been pleasant.
For the first time that night, Jess felt something aching for both Sam and Dean in her heart.
When Dean was done, Sam grabbed his arm and swung him around to face him, pulling him in between his legs against the edge of the chair. He lifted the edge of Dean’s t-shirt with one hand and held his hip in the other. Jess turned away. She knew they were brothers and that Sam loved her, but it was such an intimate gesture she didn’t feel right watching. After what she’d seen tonight she wouldn’t be ruling anything out.
Sam’s sharp breath had her turning back to him, eyes going wide at the sight of Dean’s midsection. In the back of her mind she noted that he was ripped. In any other circumstances, she’d have been looking for very different reasons. Tonight, instead of admiring the tight muscles, she was gaping at the deep bruising that had cropped up along the top of his stomach. The area had already turned a mottled red and purple with a few scrapes that had obviously bled a little. His dark t-shirt must have hidden the blood.
Sam frowned up at Dean. “I know you slammed into the banister. Anything else?”
Dean grunted but shook his head.
“I’m serious,” Sam snapped. “I’m too tired to do a full check. If you hide something and then die from internal bleeding or an infection or some other dumb shit that you totally could have fessed up to, I’m going to bring you back and kill you myself.”
“I’m fine. Chill, Sam.” Dean’s tone was annoyed but Jess caught the fond look he gave Sam when he thought he wasn’t looking.
Sam grunted, eyes going back to the bruising, but seemed to take him at his word. “Sorry, you know the drill. Anything stiff or hurting?”
“No. It wasn’t that hard.”
Sam began palpitating Dean’s midsection with a practiced motion. Jess looked on unsure what he was doing. Sam must have noticed her confusion. “I’m checking for internal bleeding,” he said. Dean scowled but didn’t back away.
“You landed on the railing from a good six foot up,” Sam added, turning his focus back to Dean. “Don’t tell me it’s nothing. You’re lucky you didn’t tip the other way and take a header over the stairs.”
“Take more than that to get me down.”
“So the groaning was all for show then.”
“Didn’t want you to feel bad for getting your ass handed to you.”
Sam huffed, but collapsed back into the chair. “I don’t feel anything, but you should check again in a few hours.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Sam didn’t bother to reply. Jess could tell he was barely hanging onto consciousness at that point. Dean seemed to know, too. He chuckled. “Alright, time for good damsels to go to bed.”
Sam groaned, but let Dean pull him up. “I’ll crash in the guest bed tonight. No reason for Jess to not get a good night’s sleep because you mother hen me all night.”
“They’re called concussion checks and I’d like to know my brother didn’t slip into a coma or something in the middle of the night so suck it up.”
Jess stood then, waring with herself. She almost told him to come to bed with her. One part of her wanted nothing more than to curl up in the bed against his steady warmth and just know that he was home safe. The bigger part, the one led by the growing pit in her stomach that said she didn’t really know a thing about him, needed some time to think.
Maybe she would regret it in the morning, but she let him go. She needed some space to sort out exactly what she was feeling and the idea of sharing the same bed was claustrophobic with all the thoughts bouncing around in her head. She waited until he was settled and snoring into his pillow, then made her way into her own room leaving Dean to fend for himself. She curled into her blankets. Her thoughts kept spiraling away from her, replaying everything Sam had ever said, even in passing, about himself. Her mind refused to let go of the thought that there was so much to Sam that she didn’t know.
She woke the next morning to the smell of coffee wafting through the apartment. She had dozed off around six or seven that morning and still felt gritty and unrested. The one thing she’d finally decided last night was that it wouldn’t help to hide from Sam or the problem. So, instead of curling back up and trying to drift off to sleep again, she found her robe and shuffled her way into the kitchen, unsure what would be waiting for her.
Sam was draped over the kitchen table, head resting on his outstretched arm. He looked like a zombie. His hair was flat and lank, his face was still pale, and he had dark circles underlining his eyes. Jess could relate. She sank into the chair next to him, watching as his brother practically danced through the kitchen. She glared through narrow eyes when he turned to her with a huge grin and winked. “Morning! I hope you don’t mind me making myself at home. I was in the mood for some bacon.”
He was entirely too happy for Jess’s liking before she’d even had her coffee. She was just trying to come up with a response that didn’t sound like a growl when Sam shifted so that he was looking up at her from his bed on the table. “Sorry about him,” he grumbled. “He’s always like this in the morning. It’s a wonder Dad or I didn’t murder him.”
“You wouldn’t,” Dean said with a grin. “Then who’d make the coffee.”
With a flourish, he produced a steaming mug and set it down in front of Jess. She wrapped her hands around it, enjoying the warmth. She stared down into the dark liquid trying to decide if she cared enough to get up and actually fix it the way she liked it. She didn’t usually take it black, but this morning she was willing to forgo the cream in favor of caffeine. She took a sip off the top and the warmth loosened the annoyance a little. “I’ll withhold judgement as long as the coffee keeps coming,” she said.
Dean gave her a huge grin, then plates of bacon and eggs were being dropped on the table and the smell tempted even her. She glanced up when Dean sat across from her and realized he had served himself a large slice of pie.
“No wonder you’re so hyper,” she said. “How much of that have you had this morning? That’s my grandma’s recipe and her secret ingredient is sugar.”
Dean shrugged. “It’s really good. Besides, there’s fruit in it. Fruit’s a breakfast food.”
Sam rolled his eyes. He had sat up enough to serve himself. “Fruit is just another kind of sugar.”
“Please don’t start,” Jess said, seeing where the conversation was headed. “It’s too early to keep up with your banter.”
Dean snickered as Sam shrugged and started eating his eggs. Once Jess had woken up enough to really process what was going on she asked, “So are you all clear for the not a big deal head injury?”
Dean snorted. “I dunno. Did you ever remember what the square root of 299 is?”
“Fuck off, Dean,” Sam was actually whining. Jess had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. She was still pissed at him, after all. “First of all, why were you asking me math questions at four in the morning? And second of all, the square root of 299 is some god awful decimal between 17 and 18. Why on earth would that be a general knowledge question?”
Dean shrugged. “You seemed bored with who’s the president. Thought I’d mix it up. And you kinda just proved my point.”
“You’re not funny.”
“I’m hilarious. And yes, Jess. He’s in the clear for the concussion. He was probably fine when we got home and he was coherent, but it never hurts to be careful with a head injury.”
Jess nodded at him and took another sip of her coffee. “Good,” she said. Then she turned to Sam. She gave him a long, hard stare. He started squirming the longer she glared at him. Finally, she said, “If you ever do something so stupid and foolhardy again, I’m going to beat you senseless. I was worried to death while you were off being all cryptic and getting injured! I had to call your brother to come rescue you because instead of explaining what was going on you went off halfcocked, forget the consequences. I’m pissed at you Sam Winchester. And I want answers. Now.”
Sam opened his mouth to answer her, eyes wide in surprise when his phone went off. He pulled it out, glanced at the name, then went pale. He looked at Dean. “Tell me you didn’t.”
Dean just shrugged obviously as lost as Jess. Sam answered the phone.
“Hey, Bobby.”
Jess could hear the rough tone from where she sat. The yelling was almost clear enough for her to make out the words. Whoever was on the line was angry. Good. Sam deserved to be in trouble.
Sam cast a sheepish look at his lap as he said, “I’m fine. I promise. Couple of stitches.”
Sam winced as the yelling continued. “Bobby, please. There wasn’t anyone else. Dean came and helped out.” When he paused this time, the voice on the other end of the line had quieted enough that Jess barely heard the mumble of their next question. “The kids are safe. Don’t worry about sending anyone else, it’s finished.... okay, Bobby. I promise. Talk soon.”
Sam hung up and glared at Dean, but Jess wasn’t letting him slip out of this conversation. She had decided last night she could live with knowing Sam wasn’t perfect. She could live with knowing there were some things he’d likely never tell her, but she wasn’t okay with knowing his whole life before they met was a secret.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook, Winchester. You are going to tell me what happened or I’ll walk out that door.”
Sam looked back at her, stricken. “Jess, please. I can’t.”
“You can. After the weekend you put me through, you owe me some answers.”
Sam looked to Dean, who just shrugged. “This is between you lovebirds. For what it’s worth, she’s right. You’re obviously serious about this. You should tell her.”
“But Dean!”
Dean held his hands up. “I’m going for a walk. I left Baby in a no park zone last night and the last thing I need is for her to get towed.” He rose, pulling his keys from his pocket.
Sam frowned. “You’re not...”
Dean rolled his eyes. “I’ll be back in like half an hour.” With that he let himself out, leaving Sam and Jess alone together.
“Well?” Jess said.
Sam sighed. He leaned back in his chair and studied her for a long time. She had just about decided he wasn’t going to talk to her, when he said, “I have never told another person the whole story.”
She just nodded. She could have guessed that much.
Sam slumped back in his chair, fingers absently playing with the hem of his shirt. “My mom died when I was a baby. You know that. But she wasn’t just a victim of a house fire. She was murdered.”
Jess felt her eyes widen in surprise. She had known it must have been something along those lines, but to have it confirmed was something different altogether. She reached out and laid a hand over his. She may have wanted answers, but she knew this must be hard for him.
Sam took a deep breath before continuing. “My dad, he saw the whole thing. He got me out of the nursery when the fire started and handed me to Dean to get the both of us out of the house, then he went back to try and save her.
“Dad was obsessed with finding the thing that killed our mom. He’s spent every spare moment since that day searching. He raised me and Dean to help him. We never stayed in one place for very long, always moving around. There was physical training, weapons drills at four am, late nights of research, and little else.
“Dean took to that life as easy as breathing. I used to want to be just like him, but I never could quite live up to him. Where Dean was a natural with a shot gun, I spent hour after hour practicing. Where Dean had the raw strength and power, I was quick, but pretty weak. Where Dean could follow orders, I asked too many questions. I could research better than a college grad by the time I was ten, but it wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good at the physical part of the job and I didn’t want to be. We took hunt after hunt and it was always more. More training, more drills, more practice. Where most kids skive off homework to play video games, I tried to beg my way out of training to do my homework. Dad just didn’t understand that I wanted more than that.”
Sam glanced up at her, meeting her eye for the first time since he started speaking. “The thing is, I want to be as invested as Dean and Dad. I want to believe that what they’re chasing - what we were chasing - was worth it, but the truth is I never knew her. For them, it was personal, revenge. For me, I couldn’t help but wonder how Dad could justify exposing us to the horrors that he did when I can’t believe Mom would have wanted that for us.”
“Why didn’t he go to the police, tell them what he saw?”
Sam laughed, but it was dark and humorless. “Here’s the part where you’ll think I’m making things up.”
“Why?”
Sam turned to her with those big, sad eyes so earnest and pleading. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course, Sam.”
“No,” he said, leaning forward to grab her hand. “I mean really trust me. Do you think I would lie or make something up just to get you to let it go?”
She stared at him, searching his face. She knew without a doubt that whatever he said next would be the truth. “I trust you.”
“The man who broke into our house and killed my mother, he had yellow eyes. He pinned her to the ceiling over my crib and cut her stomach then set the fire that burned our house down. Whatever he was, he wasn’t human.”
Jess frowned. “What do you mean, wasn’t human?”
“We never got a definitive answer. Dad is still looking. Best we can figure, he’s some kind of demon.”
“Sam,” she said. She knew he was superstitious. She knew he believed all sorts of things that just didn’t make sense in a rational world. Before now, she had thought it was charming or annoying by turns. Never before had she worried that it had crossed a line past rationality into madness.
Sam shook his head. “This is what I didn’t want to tell you. I know you think it’s some weird, backwoods superstition or some hokey pagan nonsense, but it’s not. I didn’t want you to find out about this stuff because once you know, you can’t ever go back. But Dean is right. You deserve the truth. Monsters are real. Ghosts, demons, ghouls, witches. They all exist.
“My father made it his mission to hunt down the thing that killed my mom and take out anything else that preys on innocent people in the meantime. He became a hunter. That’s what they call it. Hunting. He spent most of my childhood teaching me how to fight monsters.”
“Sam,” she said again, cautiously. She knew her reaction could make or break this moment, but she was starting to wonder if maybe Sam needed more help that she could offer. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. I believe that you believe it, but that’s a lot to swallow.”
“I know.”
“Can you prove any of it?”
Sam shrugged, pulling away from her. “There are a handful of spells I suppose. I can show you Dad’s journal. Or Dean’s arsenal.”
She took in a deep breath. This was going to take some time to process. Either way, it didn’t change the fact that she needed to know the rest of what happened that weekend. “Okay,” she said at last. “Okay. Let’s say all that is true, this weekend you were...hunting?...what exactly?”
“A witch.”
Jess made a noise in the back of her throat. It just escaped her. A witch! Was she actually supposed to believe that? “Explain.”
“Witches use magic to their own ends. There are some that are good, but for the most part the power they use corrupts. The ones we hunt are the ones that are out there hurting people. This one was whipping up youth potions using children and runaway teens. She was nearly a hundred and fifty years old. She preyed on the ones who felt like they had nowhere left to go. The bus of kids was a big change in her MO. I think she’d had a harder and harder time luring in runaways. She was desperate. I found her trail because the missing person report mentioned that there had been a long history of kids going missing. I tried to hand it off. I got out of that life for a reason, but there was no one close enough to get there in time. She would have killed those kids tonight when moon was new.”
Jess was waiting for him to grin. To crack up and tell her he was just messing around. But when she met his eye she realized he was deadly serious. A different kind of dread was starting to settle in her bones.
“Sam, did you kill someone?”
“I killed a witch.”
She gasped, choking on something that felt suspiciously like a sob. Her gentle, sweet, kind Sam had murdered someone in cold blood. He was obviously sick. He had pieced together some fantasy about some poor woman then snuck in and killed her to fulfill his twisted thinking.
For the first time, she was beginning to feel afraid of Sam. He had always been so kind with her. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he had just said he’d killed.
Sam sighed. “What if I could show you?”
She froze at that, suddenly afraid. Was he going to hurt her now that she knew? Was he going to try to hurt someone else to prove that he wasn’t lying? “What?”
“Not a witch,” he shuddered. “But maybe a ghost. If I could prove to you that I’m not making this up, that I’m not crazy or hallucinating or something, would you want that? It’s not something you can ever unsee.”
“I....” Jess didn’t know what to say. This was Sam. He was big and powerful, sure, but he wasn’t a killer. He never had been. She wanted desperately to believe him, but she was a little afraid of what he might do, even to her. Still, she had to believe that she knew his heart, and everything in her said Sam wasn’t a killer.
“Okay,” she said, surprising even herself. “Show me.”
Sam looked sad, but nodded. “Okay.”
He pulled out his phone. A moment later he was talking to his brother. Apparently, she was going ghost hunting tonight.
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