SN Fic: Since They've Been Gone (2/4)

[thatgirlsix]

Supernatural Fic: Since They've Been Gone

Summary: John Winchester wasn't the only soldier they lost that week. Sometimes being a good son and doing your duty really sucks.

Disclaimer:  Maybe when the student loan sharks have stopped calling me forty years from now, there might be something left in my pockets besides lint to buy myself the copyright. Until then, this is just for fun, folks!

Author's Note: This piece is too long to post in one entry, so it's getting four (silly word limits). / The writing in this story is a little more experimental for me than usual. Hopefully it worked out. / As always, this is a MarySue-free zone. If you are less than mad at Al by the end of this, I didn't do it right.  / Rated PG13 for implied violence and language (because I've been married to the military too long not to have a mouth).

This story takes place between "No Exit" and "The Usual Suspects".

Thanks for reading, kiddos!



Since They've Been Gone

Love lost, such a cost
Give me things that don't get lost.

The half an hour that it took to drive to Blue Earth the next morning was damn painful. Dean was feeling guilty and he wasn't even there yet. They drank and talked well into the night trying to decide exactly how they were going to deal with all of this. The plan was fairly straightforward. Pastor Jim's would be more like a quiet pit stop; Caleb's would be the over-nighter. Depending on how things went with Caleb's widow, they may be stopping by Pastor Jim's again on the way to Wherever, too. The guilt in Dean's gut told him that it wasn't a 'depending' situation already. He was going to need to stop by. He just wasn't about to tell his brother that quite yet.

Sam drove the car around the block that was home to the church a few times, looking for all the world like a criminal casing the joint. The nosy little old lady in the white house across the street probably ticked off the number of times he'd circled around, ready to call 911 the instant she heard communion chalices being thrown in a thief's duffel bag. After living her entire life with only her cats, she had quite the imagination. Jim had always found her funny, even when she would call in to emergency services when she'd see one of the Winchesters' vehicles pull into the parking lot in the middle of the night. He had usually found the humor in just about anything.

That was why he was one of the good guys, thought Dean wryly. God, I miss him already.

As if he was reading his brother's mind, Sam asked, "Think good ol' Mrs. Hanson called the plates in yet?"

"Nah. She loves us," Dean said, and as they drove by her house one more time, he offered a short, sarcastic wave in the direction of her windows. The curtains suddenly fell back into place. Turning back to his brother, he said, "Let's get in there. The sooner we get this over with the better."

The echoes of their footfalls in the church's hallway never failed to bother Dean. He couldn't help it. His entire life, he'd been taught to not announce his presence to anyone but his father and brother (and others if they were involved in the hunt). It went against everything he knew. Still, the clompy-clomp wasn't such a bad sound today. It was something familiar, something that didn't make this place feel so not theirs. This place had been a sanctuary for so long for them that without Pastor Jim it felt like they were trespassing somehow. It wasn't theirs anymore. A lot of things weren't.

It had been six months since the last time they'd been there, but now that renovations had begun, all of the scaffolding and hanging plastic had turned the building into a maze. Dean was grateful for all of the time that he and Sam had entertained themselves with hide-and-seek in the hallways or they never would have found their way to the set of offices that ran the everyday operations of the church.

Sam was the one to make the first move, hesitating only with a shaky breath before knocking on the doorjamb to call the attention of the sweet, sweet woman separated from the doorway by a room-length counter area. Without looking up at her guests, the woman held up the index finger of her right hand, indicating for them to wait. She finished typing up whatever she was working on, wrote something on a bright yellow Post-It, and stuck it on the monitor of her computer before peering over the rims of her glasses to see who had interrupted her. She startled a moment as if she wasn't sure what she was seeing. She took off her glasses, folded the bows, and let them fall to her chest on their chain. With a yelp of happiness that trimmed ten years off her seventy, she pushed her chair back and came around to the front, lifting the panel that allowed her escape from what was otherwise Cubical Land.

She stood before them, smiling at them both. She reached for their outside hands and held them tightly, swallowing hard. Tearfully she greeted them, "My boys."

"Hey, Kay," said Sam with a sheepish smile, bending over enough to plant a kiss on her cheek.

Dean stood back a little further, free hand stuffed in his jacket pocket, and charmed her as if he were still twelve years old. "Lookin' good, Lady."

Again she said joyously, "My boys. God, oh God, my boys!"

"Sorry we didn't call ahead," said Sam.

"Nonsense. You've never called ahead a day in your lives. If you did, I think I might die of shock." The kind older woman's face fell as she looked the two men over, obviously seeing something that they didn't know about. She looked over her shoulder at the only other secretary in the office to make sure she was occupied then said in a low, sad whisper, "You're here about Jim."

"You," Sam said quickly, trying to smile. "We're here for you."

Kay crinkled her eyebrows at Sam. She obviously knew better. "Don't you lie to me, young man. I know why you're here. You are your father's sons, enough said. But it isn't something that we should be discussing here. Even these walls have ears that shouldn't be privy to the kinds of things we know, even in the daylight."

"We don't have to do anything right now," offered Dean. He knew springing their arrival on her was going to be the best way to get things started, but he also hadn't been prepared for how much it was going to hit him being in the church knowing that Pastor Jim wasn't anywhere in the building that had kept them safe so many times in his life. He wasn't ready to tell her that either. "Why don't we-"

"I've got some cookies in the office that I made just last night. I didn't know why, but I felt like I needed to bake. I guess now I know why." Almost distractedly the woman said, "You boys need to eat. I know life on the road is a little tight, but you kids still need to eat better than you do."

"We're okay," said Sam immediately.

"Nonsense. You don't come all this way to see this old woman and then break her heart not letting her cook for you. At the very least, you're going to let me fix you up some sandwiches downstairs. You aren't walking out of here without something. You stay right here." She made her way back to her computer, shoved the mouse around in a few directions, then waved over her shoulder at the woman at the printer and said, "Jenny, I'm in the building, but I'm taking the rest of the day. Don't worry about locking up. See you tomorrow."

"You betcha, Kay. Have fun."

They made their way back through the labyrinth that had become of the church, making small talk all along the way until they reached Fellowship Hall down in the basement. Dean flinched at the sight of it when Kay flipped on the lights, immediately remembering an ill-conceived water pistol war that had ravaged the hall when they were supposed to be making up sandwiches for everyone doing the research. About the only thing that hadn't been drenched in water were the two of them since they had been taught at a very young age to never ever point guns at each other if they wanted to be able to sit for a week. Guns were for spooks and only spooks. Apparently all of the draperies had been evil and needed to be doused with holy water. Pastor Jim had laughed and sent out for pizza instead.

Dean shook himself out of the memory and double-timed it to catch up to where Kay and Sam had disappeared into the kitchen. Sam gave him a questioning look of concern which Dean returned with a bright grin. "I have two words for you: Super. Soaker."

Sam glanced back through the catering window into the room and saw the same overturned tables and dripping curtains in his mind that he knew his brother had seen. His shoulders shrugged with his chuckles. "Yeah."

Kay smiled at them, sad to see what she knew to be a happy memory for the two men now turned into something so bittersweet. She was a smart woman; she knew why they were here. Rather than let things get too difficult for any of them, she busied herself making them sandwiches so that they could all get to the business of saying 'Goodbye'. "So we pretty much discussed everything there is to know about me. My life hasn't exactly changed much in forty-seven years. Tell me what you've been up to. We haven't heard from you in months. Did you find your father yet?"

Dean caught that 'we' the same way Sam did. She was still saying 'we'. It was killing Dean to hear her talking to them so calmly, falling into the same old Kay that they had known her to be their entire lives. Granted, she hadn't had a family of her own. She had created one with Pastor Jim and all of their little strays (as she called them). Jim was the closest thing she would have had to a husband. Dean had never doubted that the day he was gone would feel devastating to her, but he didn't expect her to be like this. He didn't know exactly what he had expected, but it wasn't cookies and sandwiches. She was trying so hard, and here he was going to have to crush that anyway. He and Sam glanced at each other, and as had been the habit lately, Sam took the sword to the gut.

"Yeah, we found him. I take it no one told you yet?"

"Oh, I'm so glad. It broke my heart the last time you kids were here. Every time you called or stopped by on your way wherever, I hated seeing you drive away without any answers. It was hard for Jim, too. The three of you were in our prayers every morning," the woman said. With a smirk in Dean's direction, she added, "Even though we knew your father would hate knowing that. He's a stubborn one, that father of yours. But a few prayers he doesn't know about aren't going to kill him."

"Kay," started Sam with his eyes dead locked on his brother's for a moment. He needed the reminder that they were doing this for a reason, for her. He hung his head, bracing himself even though he knew she couldn't see him while she continued to dig things out of the cupboards. He looked back up at her back, hard and damned near broken so that Dean couldn't even look at him while his kid brother said, "Um, Dad didn't make it."

The sound of the still-sealed Miracle Whip jar hitting the floor stunned them all as if the devil himself had knocked on their door.

She didn't turn to look at them as she asked, "When?"

"A couple of days after Jim, we think. We aren't entirely sure how everything played out ourselves," Sam explained, seeing that Dean was bouncing his leg nervously. He hadn't been so good with the talking about Dad stuff yet. Sam was the one who had words, not him. "Dad went to deal with the demons after they killed Caleb and-"

"Caleb, too?"

"Nobody's called you at all?" Dean bugged his eyes in anger and disbelief, flickering them between Sam and Kay. What the hell was going on here? When did their group fall so apart that no one had thought to call Kay and let her at least know what was going on? Where was Joshua? Jefferson? Anybody? Bobby at least had an excuse; he'd been busy tending to them both during and after everything went down. But the rest of them had no excuses. None. "Kay?"

The woman didn't turn around, but from the spot she was suddenly frozen to she said, "I thought something might have happened when I didn't hear from any of you after Caleb left. He's the one who found Jim, you know. He came to get me so that we could remove all of the weaponry from the room before calling the police. We didn't want questions, you see. Caleb wanted to take Jim with him so that he could do things properly, but Jim couldn't just disappear, not in this town. As much as I think we all would have wanted it that way, he couldn't disappear without questions. So we cleaned everything up, he called his wife, and then he left to get back to Lincoln. He was going to stay with me, but something your father said made him want to get out of here as fast as possible. He said that I should be all right but to find someplace to hide out until he called anyway. That was the last I heard from anyone."

Sam turned to Dean, slowly piecing together the timeline in comparison to everything that they had gone through. "By the time he called us, he must have been pretty close to home then. We weren't at the motel more than half an hour before splitting up."

"And you came back to the motel probably four hours in," Dean worked out. "So she must have been waiting for him at the house." He blocked out the remembered look of horror on his father's face as he'd listened to their friend die over the phone and instead breathed out with something that sounded like relief. "It must have been pretty quick then. From the time he called us to the time she called, it couldn't have been more than six hours. It was quick."

The idea that his brother was searching for some kind of comfort right now was not in the least bit encouraging to Sam. As soon as he'd heard what Dean's plans were for the next few days, Sam's stomach had been in knots. He knew he wasn't ready to do this. If he wasn't ready, Dean certainly wasn't. They hadn't said anything since Dean's confession on the roadside, but that didn't mean he couldn't still see his brother struggling with an inordinate amount of guilt. This was the last thing he needed. Needing his brother to stop talking and quickly, Sam called for his attention with disgusted force. "Dean?"

"Right. Sorry."

Sam blinked at that one. Sorry? Wasn't that his line? Dean was never sorry-well, except that one time a few weeks ago, but that was a special circumstance. It had been a full five weeks in coming on that one. This was different.

Dean could feel his brother staring at him like he was trying to read his mind. He hated it when Sam looked at him like that. He was the only one allowed to do that, damn it. Big brother prerogative. To get that look off his kid brother's face, Dean suddenly launched himself from his position atop the counter and went to where he knew the mops and such were hiding in the kitchen. Lord knows he and Sam had played enough hide and seek games in this place to know where everything was. Things didn't exactly change much in a small town church like this. He hefted the rolling bucket over the lip of the cleaning cabinet and dragged it over to the sink, lowered the hose into it, and started filling. No one said anything while he busied himself, for which he was kind of grateful. Better to let him get himself back on track. This trip wasn't about his guilt; it was about Kay and Al's comfort. He was going to have to do a better job keeping his trap shut from now on was all.

He gave his brother a look, commanding Sam to get his ass off the counter and get their dear old friend away from the mess on the floor. She had yet to make a move since the news of their father's death had hit her. The sight of the grandest woman he knew standing there stunned in a mess of mayonnaise was not something he could stomach for very long at all. Besides, the smell was making him nauseous. He'd be lucky to make it through the next few days without finally developing an ulcer. It wasn't like that one wasn't a long time in coming.

Thankfully, Sam did as told. He hopped off the counter and went over to the closest thing either of them knew to what a grandmother would be like. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her back a ways so that Dean could get in there with the mop. She seemed to resist his pull for a half a second until she finally let him hug her from behind. From where he was standing, Dean could see her face buried under a sheen of tears. God, how he hated to see her cry.

"I always knew I'd live to see Jim buried," Kay told them in the voice of a grieving widow. "As much as I wished it weren't true for you boys, I thought I'd live to bury your father as well. Caleb, too. I think they depended on me for it, you see. They knew they would need someone who could do it for them who wasn't you or little Miss Alice. You boys especially, I was worried for. Children are supposed to bury their parents, but I knew it was going to come too soon for you. I was prepared for it. I wasn't prepared for it to be all in one week."

Sam helped her to sit down on one of the stools that rounded the island counter in the middle of the industrial kitchen. He gave her a gentle smile to let her know that she was far from alone, which was, after all, their entire reason for being there in the first place. Even though he knew he should be thinking about Pastor Jim at the moment, he couldn't allow himself to think of anything other than Kay's sadness. They would have to try to fix that first. His voice was remarkably steady as he told her, "None of us were prepared. Our entire lives had been leading us to that one week and we still weren't prepared. I don't think any of us realized until we were there that there was nothing we could have done to prepare ourselves for that."

"I took care of everything myself," said Kay strongly, as if she'd rehearsed how she would say this to them the day that they were able to come to her. "Jim's orders were specific, which I'm sure you can imagine. The mortuary was a little confused why I asked them to cover him in salt before he was cremated, but eventually I got them to agree. God help me, I stayed to make sure they did it correctly. I had the ground consecrated before his ashes could be buried. He's safe, boys. He'll always be safe."

Sam reached a hand over to the woman's knee and squeezed, his casual way with people a trick he had learned long ago starting with her. "I'm sorry we weren't here to do it for you. We wanted to be here. If we had had a choice, we would have been here with you."

"Nonsense," Kay said. "Jim was my responsibility, not yours. I agreed to burying him long before either of you was born. I always knew it would be a demon that would get to him. I didn't expect it to happen quite yet, but I expected it. We both knew I'd outlive him. We planned for that." She covered Sam's hand with hers and added, "It's yours I'm afraid to have missed. I'm so sorry about your father. He was a good man."

From behind them, Dean accepted the condolences with a flinch, as had been the custom so far. Sam was the one who was good at doing that sort of thing. Dean was good at letting his little brother be good at it. Sam hadn't exactly fought the undiscussed system yet, so it must be working. Dean went right on mopping harder and harder, not trusting himself to say anything anyway. Right on cue, Sam said for them both, "Thanks. Dad always liked you, you know."

"And I him, hard as he was to like," the woman said kindly. "Let's face facts here, boys. Your dad wasn't going to win any congeniality contests, but he sure knew how to melt this ice queen's heart." A secret grin spread over her once-pretty features, giving her a look like she was the tough young broad they knew she must have been. "No matter what you might hear about him, that man was a charm-mer. Uff-dah. Of all the things he drilled into you boys, that was the best part of him he gave to you."

Needing to end this moment and fast, Dean let his face light up as much as he could and teased her, "Ice queen? I would go more with 'Dragon Lady' or 'Battle Axe' I think."

Kay didn't bother even looking in Dean's direction. She didn't bother to slap him or kick his shins. Instead, her eyebrow popped up, warning of conspiracy. "Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Your brother doesn't get any cookies."

"Ouch!" Dean grumped, actually feeling the sting of punishment in that one. Kay had always made the best cookies he'd ever had, excepting his mother's, of course.

"Let the punishment fit the crime," Kay singsonged, obviously recovered and willing to move on. Her grief had had two months to fester. Her boys were what was important now.

"Yes, ma'am," said Sam with a childlike grin plastered all over his face.

Dean rolled his eyes and quietly excused himself, leaving Sam to empty the chunky water from the bucket. He needed a minute. He wandered around the back of the banquet room and up the brick staircase. He knew the place so well, but it somehow felt foreign to him. He wondered oddly if the church knew Jim was gone, too.

He found himself sitting in a pew in the back of the main sanctuary. He had liked sitting in there as a teenager watching Pastor Jim instruct his confirmation classes. He could almost picture his friend sitting on the marble steps that led up to the altar and pulpit chatting away. Pastor Jim had never been one for formality when it came to teaching. He was much more comfortable on the stairs, sitting just as lazily as his parishioners. He would look back at Dean sometimes as if he wondered what the kid thought about what he was saying. They would talk about it sometimes after. Those weren't the talks that Dean missed, though. He missed Pastor Jim for the real talks, the ones that mattered to him. Whether it worked or not, Pastor Jim had always tried to help things make sense. He really missed that. He could use some sense right about now.

When Dean was eight, Sam had asked him if God hated him. Not Dean him, Sam him. After getting his brother safely to bed, the question answered the only way he knew how to answer it-Don't be stupid, Sammy, nobody hates you-Dean had gone in search of Pastor Jim.

Does God hate my brother?

Why would he ask something like that?

He wasn't. Sam was. Dean couldn't care less what God thought of him, but it mattered to Sam, and since Pastor Jim obviously got along better with God than he did, he wanted an answer.

Pastor Jim had always been a better listener than God anyway.

When Dad and Sam had really started going at it on a weekly basis, it was Pastor Jim who kept Dean together. Not that Dean needed keeping together. They were his family and he'd take care of it. But if Pastor Jim had the time to explain a few things, that would be okay, too.

Why didn't he ever get mad at them when they were kids?

Why didn't he ever really get mad at them now that they were almost adults?

Why does God hate my brother, Pastor Jim? Why was it so wrong for him to be in love that this had to happen? Give me a good reason why this god seems to think my brother doesn't deserve to be happy. Shouldn't at least one of us get the chance to be happy?

Shouldn't you still be here to give me answers, you sonofabitch? You really suck for leaving us like this.

The guy who was standing in the pulpit fiddling with index cards didn't seem to notice Dean until he'd shifted too quickly and rammed his knee into the hymnal rack on the back of the pew ahead of him. The question had come immediately.

"Can I help you?"

"That's okay. Thanks."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, thanks."

The pastor's attention dipped back to his index cards, but his voice dropped quite a bit so that Dean couldn't hear him mumbling out the details of his sermon anymore. Every few minutes, though, his eyes would look up for Dean, waiting for the younger man to demand some attention. He almost looked disappointed when he was done and ready to leave that Dean had not asked him for anything.

Newbie.

Not Jim.

Never could be.

He left Dean sitting there alone, much to Dean's relief. Pastor Jim was irreplaceable. For this guy to even look at him right now felt like an invasion. He wasn't going to let that happen, not ever. His stare followed the pastor through a door at the back of the altar near the baptismal fountain, cold and hard and in no way unmistakable. He wanted to be left alone.

He wasn't sure how long he got to himself before Sam came looking, but it didn't feel like it had been long enough. Then again, Goodbye never really seemed to go the way you wanted. Sam sat next to him without saying anything at all. It was kind of nice, actually, to have Sam be at least a little patient with him. He'd been doing that a lot lately. Dean hoped Sam knew that he appreciated it. They both knew what he needed to do and that Sam would be right by his side to do it, but it didn't feel like it was time yet. He needed more time.

Sam did eventually break the silence, but not in a pressuring kind of way for once. "Kay went home to change the sheets. She's not letting us out of town tonight. Dinner will be ready at six."

"Bossy old broad," said Dean fondly.

"I'm telling her you said that," chuckled Sam. "You've already lost cookie privileges. Are you sure you want to push it?"

Dean's response was to shove himself out of the pew and take very deliberate, heavy steps toward where he knew the staircase was. No one went down there, no one but Jim and his strays. The three associate pastors had known that. They all had offices down the hall off the right of the narthex, but his was the only one that was not ever open. No one questioned it either. Pastor Jim was one tough bastard when he wanted things a certain way. He ran a tight ship, no questions asked.

Sam followed closely behind, thinking pretty much the same things as they descended the stairs they had both fallen down on a few occasions as children. It usually meant they were dragging their hurt father along with them, but still. At the bottom of the stairs, he nearly ran into Dean, who had come to a very sudden stop.

"Aw, Jim," came the low groan.

The door had been pretty much blown off its hinges. The church staff had simply thrown two large sheets of plywood over the entrance to keep it closed from prying eyes. The congregation had all, naturally, been curious about the murder of the local man of god. It wasn't something that happened in a town like theirs, ever. The church had done their best to keep things quiet, give respect to Pastor Murphy's private business, but there was only so much that they could do.

A heat spread over Dean's cheeks, along with the rest of him. He grabbed the makeshift door that was just laying at an angle braced at the top of the doorframe and flipped it around with a bang. He took a deep breath and stalked into the chamber that Pastor Jim had used both as an office and as a sanctuary. The wall that had housed all of his weapons had been pillaged, although he was pretty sure that was by Caleb, so he was more upset by the emptiness of it than the idea that they were missing. Papers were strewn over the floor, some of them stuck together with what was obviously blood. There were demure boot prints dotting the floor, an ugly red stain of Meg's defiling of so many things in the room. One chair was lying legs up while the other sat ominously empty. Everything else about the room was the same way. All of the books save six different copies of the Bible in six different languages were gone. There was no evidence of anyone having made the room a place of safety. There was no evidence of the childhood Dean and Sam had spent in that room with their friend and father quietly playing while the adults either argued, worked, or both.

"You'd never know this was his," said Sam as if he could read his brother's thoughts.

Dean nodded, not really trusting himself to say anything in return. Instead he walked through the room, a hand running tenderly over the empty shelves as he went along. When he thought he'd be able to talk without losing command of his voice, he said, "I doubt Caleb missed anything, but we should check anyway."

"You take the desk. I'll get the cubbies."

Caleb had done a thorough job considering how quickly he must have done it. That, or he'd set Kay to the job to keep her occupied. Either way, there was nothing in that room that could have given any indication to the uninitiated of the life that Jim Murphy led. There was no trace of Jim in there anyway. At least, not their Pastor Jim. The room felt really cold knowing that.

"Do you think they cleaned out the bibles?" asked Sam after awhile.

A ghost of a smile curled Dean's mouth. He'd nearly forgotten Jim's 'safes'. "Probably not."

When the job was done, there was probably a good three thousand dollars hidden away between the pages of the multiple bibles that remained on the splintered shelves. Dean let out a low whistle. "Wow."

"That'll pay a few bills."

"How much was in ours?" asked Dean, nodding toward the Latin translation that generally only Pastor Jim and Sam would read for reasons beyond necessity.

"Another two grand," said Sam. "He must have been worried about us."

"He was always worried," said Dean quietly. That was something he had always understood about Pastor Jim better than everyone, maybe even a little better than their father. But then, that's why he and Pastor Jim had gotten along so well. They both were big brothers of a sort. They had to understand each other. Pastor Jim took care of Dad the way Dean took care of Sam. It was their respective jobs to worry. That's all there was to it. "Even when you were gone, he was worried. He and Dad had some pretty big fights about you that first year."

"They did?"

Dean watched Sam's eyes grow sentimental, kind of like the time they were in Lawrence and he'd heard about their escape from the fire for what had apparently been the first time. For a guy smart enough to get a full ride to a school like Stanford, Sam could be awfully ignorant sometimes. It was like he didn't think anyone gave a damn about him enough to talk about him when he wasn't in the room. It struck Dean as weird, considering how touchy-feely Sam could be sometimes. He figured the kid knew he was everyone's favorite. It was hard not to notice sometimes. He was the baby of the entire surrogate family, so to speak. Of course people worried about him. What did he think they were? Heartless?

He shrugged, not really wanting to get into it too much. He had already said too much. Hoping that it would be enough to satisfy his brother's curiosity for a while, he shrugged it off casually. "They always worked it out. And when they couldn't, Dad would cool off for a week before he called back up here. They'd talk and they'd be fine. It's not like they could ever really stay mad at each other. It was okay."

Not letting go of the idea, Sam said quietly, "I knew you and Dad fought about it, but I didn't think . . . I guess never imagined anyone else bothered you guys about it. Nobody called to yell at me."

"Of course not. They called to yell at me and Dad."

"What?"

Dean sighed. "What did you think was going to happen? That you'd go off and no one would give it a second thought? Of course everyone was worried. You weren't answering your phone, and you couldn't be bothered to let anyone know that you were okay. Yeah, we were worried. Everybody respected your decision to go. They did. I think even Dad did when he really thought about it. But the way you did it, the way Dad did it, it ticked a lot of people off. The way it looked to them, Dad screwed up in the worst way possible. The way it looked to us, you turned your back on your family. I'm not saying that's how I think of it now, but back then? Pastor Jim, Caleb, Bobby, they were all mad. But they were mad because they were worried. You're the baby, Sam. They're always going to worry, no matter what you do."

"But I screwed it up. Me and Dad, we screwed it up. Why would they blame you?"

Fixing his brother with a You've Gotta Be Kidding Me stare, Dean said to the contrary, "If you can't figure that one out, you need to go back to that college of yours and get smart again." Quickly changing the subject, he asked, "So two grand, huh? I sense many, many rainy days ahead." He slammed shut the cover of the bible in his hands, put it back on the shelf relatively reverently-only because Pastor Jim had always made sure they had handled the books with utmost care, whether they believed in them or not-and tipped his chin toward the makeshift doors. "We should get the rest of it to Kay. She'll know what Jim would want to do with it."

Dean didn't wait for an answer and damned near sprinted to get out of Pastor Jim's sanctuary for the last time. There was nothing left there for him but memories that he didn't necessarily want to deal with anyway. The sounds of his and Sam's boots echoing on the floors was even louder than it had been coming into the church now, if only because it was magnified by the pounding in his chest. He knew he was doing the right thing. This was duty. That didn't mean that this entire excursion into Amnesia Lane didn't completely suck.

They didn't stop at the cemetery. That place, as Dean put it, wasn't for them. It was for Kay and for people who didn't know the things they knew. Pastor Jim would understand.

The rest of the drive over to Kay's was incredibly quiet as they both took in the town for what was most likely going to be the last time for a long, long time. Dean had always liked Blue Earth. Not that he ever really thought about it seriously, but if he did ever think about actually settling down and having a life away from hunting full time, he liked it here. The town was nice and quiet with a lot of post World War II style houses, just small enough for the price but big enough for starting a life. Kids could actually play out in the street in the summer. Kids didn't meet in playgroups. They met because they found each other yelling in the streets. People were nice and generally left you to your own business. He liked that. He was going to miss this place. All of it.

Dinner was just as fabulous as they both remembered. Kay mothered them like nobody's business for a few hours, making things seem almost normal. The only things missed were John and Pastor Jim. The conversation was carefully steered away from even remotely touching the subject of That Week even though now and then one of their missing men's names would come up in relation to one thing or another.

It wasn't until Kay was too tired to keep herself awake any longer that the uneasiness settled over the room. The older woman sounded rather sad when she asked, "Will you still be here in the morning, or do you have to get on the road?"

"We'll make an early start, but not until you head back to work," volunteered Sam without even glancing at Dean. He knew his brother would agree. And if he didn't, well . . .

Kay fixed both of her boys with a motherly stare, so incredibly vulnerable. "When the time comes, I won't say goodbye. As far as I'm concerned, you will come back here one of these days. Tomorrow morning will not be any different than any other time you boys have been here. You understand me? No goodbyes."

"Yes, ma'am," said Dean quietly. His tone said his goodbye for him. The look she gave him told him she knew that that was exactly what he'd intended.

"Same here," said Sam, subsequently receiving the same sad look.

A resigned smile came over the woman's face. Dean wasn't sure if the light in her eyes was from the lamp itself or the light reflecting off her tears. In a blink, they were clear again, nodding off toward the stairs. "You boys get on upstairs now. Sam, you take your father's usual room. Dean, yours is the same. You know where the towels are."

"What about you?" asked Sam.

"I'll be up in a while. I should lock up."

"I can do that for you," offered Dean gently.

"I know how to salt a doorway, young man. Now get yourselves upstairs."

"Yes, ma'am," grinned Dean, this time meaning it. He loved that woman. They didn't make them like her anymore. He was definitely going to miss her.

In the morning, The Brothers Winchester kept their promise not to say Goodbye . . . as least to their dear old friend's face. What they said with their hearts was more than goodbye. As Sam purred the car's engine in her driveway then pulled off down the street without looking back, they both guessed she knew the same thing.

They'd never been able to lie to Kay. Not really.

This was what goodbye for real with people you loved felt like. They'd never done it with people who weren't dead. So far, neither of them liked it too much.

 Follow the White Rabbit to Part Three