Supernatural - Headlights on Dark Roads (1/4) - Sam/Ava
Title: Headlights on Dark Roads (1/4)
Author: _fullofgrace
Rating: PG/PG-13
Timeline: up to and including episode 2.10 "Hunted"
Word count: 2986
Summary: The search for Ava ends.
A/N: The title comes from an awesome Snow Patrol song.
******
Sam balanced two bags of food and a cardboard tray of drinks as his phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. Managing to turn the doorknob of the motel room with the hand currently holding onto the greasy bags of food, he nudged the door open the rest of the way with his foot.
“Dude, what took you so long?” Dean asked from his spot on his bed.
Sitting up against the headboard, legs crossed lazily at the ankles, he continued his aimless flipping through TV channels. He made no move to help Sam with his load, outside of a vague waving of the remote in the direction of the small table near the window.
Still nursing a slight concussion after being thrown into a brick wall by one pissed off spirit during their latest hunt, Dean had basically ordered Sam to go grab some dinner since he was obviously out of commission. Dean usually didn’t play up his injuries, opting instead to stay stoic and bitchy (“dude, stop mothering me!”) even as he continued to bleed freely from various slashes and scrapes. It was only during those rare occasions where he could guilt Sam into being his man-servant did his brother acknowledge the fact that he was even slightly bruised.
Sam had yet to figure out which version he preferred-- bossy, slightly banged up Dean or bitchy, definitely banged up Dean.
Tonight, as he found himself ordered around, he wished for the latter.
Sam rolled his eyes at his brother. “Yeah, you’re welcome, jerk.”
He tossed a bag of food at Dean as he shut the door with his hip. His phone continued to vibrate annoyingly against his side as he quickly placed the remaining food and drinks on the table his brother had so graciously pointed out. With an agitated sigh, he finally dug the phone from his pocket and began to shrug off his jacket.
“Hello?” he asked, the phone lodged between his shoulder and the side of his face as he tugged the jacket over his arm.
“Sam. Long time, huh?”
Sam stopped mid-tug, his jacket dangling from one arm. He glanced over at Dean, who was currently occupied by an episode of Judge Judy as he tossed two fries into his mouth. “Jo?”
He felt Dean’s full attention turn on him with that single utterance, and when he ventured another glance, Dean was sitting upright, pushing his food aside and tossing his legs over the edge of the bed. Sam finally removed himself from his jacket, tossing it onto the back of the lone chair at the table.
“You okay?” he asked, ignoring his brother‘s outstretched hand motioning for him to turn over the phone.
The last time they had had actual contact with Jo, she had been storming away from them in anger, the truth of her dad’s death and their dad’s part in it too much for her to handle. Ellen had mentioned that she had gone off hunting on her own, sending an occasional postcard from time to time, but the blonde had become one of those topics you just didn’t bring up unless specifically asked. Ellen may have forgiven him and Dean for a lot of things--including her daughter‘s sudden urge to get in on hunts--but it didn’t make the topic any less awkward around the Roadhouse.
“I’m good,” Jo replied. “Just finished a job in Mississippi tonight.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, glancing at Dean again as his brother stood and approached him. He held up a hand to stop Dean in his tracks before he ripped the phone from his ear and demanded that Jo go back to the Roadhouse before she got herself hurt or killed. “Your mom says you’ve been hunting on your own.”
“Yeah, some on my own. Some with other hunters I know from the Roadhouse, but that’s not why I called,” she said. “This last hunt? It ended in an exorcism. Went pretty smoothly, actually. Managed to save the girl who’d been possessed.”
“Good to hear,” Sam replied cautiously, not sure where this conversation was headed.
“She said your name.”
“The demon?” Sam asked, his throat suddenly very dry.
“No, the girl. I was only able to get her first name before she passed out on me. Ava, I think she said. That name mean anything to you?”
Ava.
They had been searching for months with no results. She’d vanished into thin air, leaving no clues--natural or supernatural--to locate her. The local authorities had all but given up, her fiancé’s death and her disappearance setting up to become just another Peoria cold case. Sam, on the other hand, hadn’t given up on finding her, not even as each trail they picked up led to nothing. He’d been the one to tell her to go home, that she’d be safe there. He’d basically placed her directly in the path of the demon, and he wouldn’t give up until he brought her back safe.
His pulse quickening, Sam placed a bracing hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Ava? She’s there with you?”
“So you know her?”
Sam ignored her question as he moved past Dean to grab the stationery pad from the nightstand between their two beds. “Jo, where are you?” He jotted down the address of the motel she was staying at and hung up the phone after telling her to sit tight.
“Ava’s with Jo?” Dean asked, his dinner and Judge Judy long forgotten with this new development. “How the hell did that happen?”
Sam nodded as he gathered all his belongings scattered on his side of the room and shoved them into his duffel bag. “Jo ran into her on a hunt in Mississippi.”
“And we’re going now?” Dean asked, incredulous. “We’re in the middle of a hunt.”
“I know, and we’ll come back and finish the job but….” Sam zipped up his bag, looking up at his brother. “Dean, it’s Ava.”
Dean sighed, and Sam smiled in appreciation. He knew that sigh. The sigh of defeat, the sigh that for once Dean was letting him have his way.
Dean grabbed his own bag out from under his bed. “Fine, but you’re not driving.”
******
The sun peeked over the horizon as the Impala pulled into the parking lot of the Valley Springs Motel. Jo stood outside her room, leaning in the doorway. On guard and waiting for them. She didn’t move from her spot as Dean and Sam approached her.
“Jo,” Dean greeted casually, though Sam knew that the greeting was anything but.
The two of them had gone from hot to cold in ten seconds flat, from being able to work a job together to barely being able to stand in the same room together.
Funny how their fathers’ past continued to affect their present.
Jo nodded in acknowledgment before turning on Sam. “Who is this girl cause she’s sure as hell not talking to me,” she said bluntly, reminding Sam that through it all, this girl was still definitely Ellen’s child.
“Let me talk to her first,” Sam said, moving to open the door.
Jo stood tall, placing herself squarely between them and the door. “So far, she’s killed three hunters that I know.”
“Under the control of a demonic spirit,” Sam countered. “You did the exorcism yourself.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything. I need to know why she…the demon…whatever is targeting hunters.”
“It’s complicated,” Sam replied, ignoring the way Jo’s eyebrows raised in annoyance. “Jo.”
He didn’t mean for his tone to be a warning, to sound so dark, but it came out that way before he could soften it. For a second, Jo stared at him defiantly, and he braced himself for yet another argument; instead, she turned the knob and pushed the door to the room open.
Ava sat at the foot of the bed furthest from the door. Dressed in blood-stained jeans and a black tank, her elbows rested on her thighs and her hands covered her face. Her dark hair was tousled and hung wildly at her shoulders, a sure sign that she had at least slept at some point during the night.
Sam couldn’t help but be reminded of the first time he had met Ava Wilson. The perky secretary from Peoria who claimed to be nothing but a normal woman stuck in a world of weird. She’d been blunt and scared, and yet at the same time, she had embraced the self-proclaimed weird and allowed herself to be pulled along into Sam’s schemes.
Perky, blunt, normal Ava.
“Ava?” he asked, stepping into the room first, followed by Dean and Jo.
She looked up at his voice, and he swallowed hard as her tired blue eyes landed on him. She blinked, slowly getting to her feet. “Sam,” she said, her voice filled with a quiet relief.
She crossed the room between them and hugged him tightly around the waist, her face buried against his chest. Shocked, Sam didn’t know what to do at first, not expecting such a greeting, but once the initial shock wore off, he hugged her back.
They’d both been living in a world where the worst had been feared. As far as she had known, he was dead somewhere in Indiana, blown to pieces trying to save his brother. And as far as he had known, she was being tortured somewhere at the hands of The Demon.
Holding her small frame against his, Sam was very glad that they had both been proven wrong.
Sam finally took a gentle hold of her shoulders, pulling her away so that he could get a better look at her. “You okay?”
Ava nodded. “Yeah. I think. I don’t know,” she stammered. “I don’t know anything anymore. I think I’m doing good just to know my name.” Her eyes frantically searched his for answers he knew he wouldn’t be able to deliver. “What the hell happened to me?”
Sam frowned, throwing a glance over his shoulder at Dean, his brother mimicking his own grimace. He turned back to Ava and forced her to sit down on the bed before kneeling in front of her. “Ava, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“I…” She ran a shaky hand through her hair. “I went home, just like you said.”
“Did you see your fiancé?” Dean interjected from his place near the door.
“No,” Ava said with a shake of her head. “I called out, and he didn’t answer, and I remember going down the hall but…after that? It’s like I was slipped something. I don’t remember anything.”
“Nothing unusual?”
“No, just the hallway and--” She stopped abruptly, a hand grabbing hold to Sam’s wrist. “Eyes.”
“What?” Sam asked, though he already knew the answer.
Ava let go of his wrist, shutting her eyes tightly together and pressing the heels of her hands against her lowered lids. “They were… just these yellow eyes.” She dropped her hands and finally opened her eyes, and Sam could see the fear of realization behind them. “I saw the eyes. Just like that guy who got stabbed.” She grabbed his wrist again. “Am I evil?”
Sam blinked at her, not expecting such a question to leave her mouth. “Wh…what?”
“That guy. The one that got stabbed. He said that some guy with yellow eyes came to him and told him to do horrible things, remember?” Her grip on his wrist tightened as she continued her frantic ramble. “And that girl--” She did a quick nod towards Jo. “--says I killed three people, and I don’t remember killing three people, but look at me!” She waved her hand wildly at her blood-stained jeans. “I’m… I’m evil.”
“Ava,” Sam interjected as she finally took a moment to breathe. “You’re not evil.”
She simply looked at him as if he were trying to convince her the sky was green and the grass was blue.
“I think something possessed you that night. Jo--” He nodded over his shoulder. “--performed the exorcism on you.”
Ava blinked, her eyes growing even wider as she glanced at everyone in the room. “I’m sorry, exorcism? Like head spinning, vomiting pea soup kind of thing?”
Sam smiled a bit despite himself. “Not to that extent, I’m sure.”
She stood with a shaky laugh, running her hands through her hair. Sam sat in her vacated seat as she paced the small room, trying to take in everything that was going on. He hated that she had to be thrown head first into the fire, but at this point, there was just no way to ease her into things. Not with everything she had experienced.
She suddenly stopped mid-stride, looking towards him. Her lower lip trembled as she found her voice. “Brady, my fiancé. He’s alright, isn’t he?”
Sam looked at Dean, suddenly feeling very helpless and in need of his big brother to make things right, but Dean could only give him a small nod to proceed.
The simple gesture said everything Sam already knew. Dean could deal with the kids, relate to them on their level. He could get them to believe and open up and feel calm. Sam, on the other hand, had the better tact for dealing with women. Picking them up or getting their number was one thing, but getting a frightened or upset woman to calm down? That was more Sam’s area. They both knew where the strengths in their people skills lied, and Dean’s nod was simply a “this is all you”.
Clearing his throat, Dean grabbed Jo by the arm, who protested being manhandled and threatened to introduce Dean’s ass to her boot, as they stepped out of the room. Once the door shut behind them with a click that echoed in the newfound silence, Sam turned back to Ava.
“Sam,” she pleaded, looking so much paler than when he had first stepped into the room.
Sam pushed himself from the firm mattress, closing the distance between them. “When you didn’t return my calls, we went to check on you. You were nowhere to be found, and your fiancé….” He hesitated, trying to think of the best way to put the entire situation into words. But in the back of his mind, he already knew there was no way to add eloquence or softness to what he was going to have to tell her. His tongue darted nervously across his lips before he spoke again. “He was dead, Ava.”
For a moment, he wondered if she had even heard him. She continued to stare at him as if expecting an answer, but as he opened his mouth to say her name, a shaky hand went to her chest, bunching the fabric of her shirt between her fingers. Tears crept down the corners of her eyes, and she ducked her head as not to be seen.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, reaching out to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Ava’s gaze remained focused on the pale gray carpet under their feet, the hand that had been holding tightly to her shirt now running through her hair. “Did I…?”
Sam frowned as her voice trailed off. He already knew where her question would lead, and he really didn’t want to look down that path. He and Dean had been wondering the same thing over the months during their search for her. Was Ava the unfortunate killer of her own fiancé, possessed and working on a will not her own, or was the man already dead when she arrived, an expendable in The Demon’s world?
Ava looked up as Sam’s silence lingered between them.
“I don’t know, Ava,” he finally managed.
She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, trying to dry her cheeks even as more tears continued to fall. She backed away from him, taking an unsteady seat at the foot of the bed. “I was just a secretary from Peoria,” she said, pulling stray strands of hair away from her wet cheeks as she looked up at him, “who just happened to have weird ass dreams about people dying that apparently came true. And, sure, it was majorly weird, but…. But being possessed by spirits? Killing people I don’t even remember meeting?” She gave a stunned shake of her head. “What the hell is going on?”
Sam exhaled deeply, taking a seat beside her. “You once asked me who I was,” he said, meeting her confused gaze. “Me and my brother? We’re not exactly new to this whole demon and spirits and possession thing.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So, what are you, like, ghostbusters?”
Sam laughed softly. “Something like that, yeah. We hunt these kind of things. Save people.”
Saving people, hunting things. The family business.
“Wow,” she breathed out in a shaky voice, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“I know it seems a bit insane…”
Ava interrupted him with a nervous laugh. “A bit? I think I’ve dived headfirst into beyond insane.”
Sometimes, he forgot how not normal his world really was. He forgot that people didn’t go around packing vials of holy water at the ready, that they didn’t speak fluent Latin and could recite the proper passages to exorcise a demon. Being back on the road for the past two years with his brother had reverted him back to how it had felt before Stanford, when normal had been abnormal and abnormal had just been his life.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” he offered.
Ava sat quietly, her eyes focused on her lap where her hands wringed until Sam could notice them getting pinker with each rub. The silence engulfed them for what felt like an eternity to Sam, but in reality, had been barely a minute.
She looked up at him, her hands falling into her lap, in a sign of defeat, acceptance. “So what do I do now?”
And, in that moment, Sam knew he had to make a decision.
Author: _fullofgrace
Rating: PG/PG-13
Timeline: up to and including episode 2.10 "Hunted"
Word count: 2986
Summary: The search for Ava ends.
A/N: The title comes from an awesome Snow Patrol song.
******
Sam balanced two bags of food and a cardboard tray of drinks as his phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. Managing to turn the doorknob of the motel room with the hand currently holding onto the greasy bags of food, he nudged the door open the rest of the way with his foot.
“Dude, what took you so long?” Dean asked from his spot on his bed.
Sitting up against the headboard, legs crossed lazily at the ankles, he continued his aimless flipping through TV channels. He made no move to help Sam with his load, outside of a vague waving of the remote in the direction of the small table near the window.
Still nursing a slight concussion after being thrown into a brick wall by one pissed off spirit during their latest hunt, Dean had basically ordered Sam to go grab some dinner since he was obviously out of commission. Dean usually didn’t play up his injuries, opting instead to stay stoic and bitchy (“dude, stop mothering me!”) even as he continued to bleed freely from various slashes and scrapes. It was only during those rare occasions where he could guilt Sam into being his man-servant did his brother acknowledge the fact that he was even slightly bruised.
Sam had yet to figure out which version he preferred-- bossy, slightly banged up Dean or bitchy, definitely banged up Dean.
Tonight, as he found himself ordered around, he wished for the latter.
Sam rolled his eyes at his brother. “Yeah, you’re welcome, jerk.”
He tossed a bag of food at Dean as he shut the door with his hip. His phone continued to vibrate annoyingly against his side as he quickly placed the remaining food and drinks on the table his brother had so graciously pointed out. With an agitated sigh, he finally dug the phone from his pocket and began to shrug off his jacket.
“Hello?” he asked, the phone lodged between his shoulder and the side of his face as he tugged the jacket over his arm.
“Sam. Long time, huh?”
Sam stopped mid-tug, his jacket dangling from one arm. He glanced over at Dean, who was currently occupied by an episode of Judge Judy as he tossed two fries into his mouth. “Jo?”
He felt Dean’s full attention turn on him with that single utterance, and when he ventured another glance, Dean was sitting upright, pushing his food aside and tossing his legs over the edge of the bed. Sam finally removed himself from his jacket, tossing it onto the back of the lone chair at the table.
“You okay?” he asked, ignoring his brother‘s outstretched hand motioning for him to turn over the phone.
The last time they had had actual contact with Jo, she had been storming away from them in anger, the truth of her dad’s death and their dad’s part in it too much for her to handle. Ellen had mentioned that she had gone off hunting on her own, sending an occasional postcard from time to time, but the blonde had become one of those topics you just didn’t bring up unless specifically asked. Ellen may have forgiven him and Dean for a lot of things--including her daughter‘s sudden urge to get in on hunts--but it didn’t make the topic any less awkward around the Roadhouse.
“I’m good,” Jo replied. “Just finished a job in Mississippi tonight.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, glancing at Dean again as his brother stood and approached him. He held up a hand to stop Dean in his tracks before he ripped the phone from his ear and demanded that Jo go back to the Roadhouse before she got herself hurt or killed. “Your mom says you’ve been hunting on your own.”
“Yeah, some on my own. Some with other hunters I know from the Roadhouse, but that’s not why I called,” she said. “This last hunt? It ended in an exorcism. Went pretty smoothly, actually. Managed to save the girl who’d been possessed.”
“Good to hear,” Sam replied cautiously, not sure where this conversation was headed.
“She said your name.”
“The demon?” Sam asked, his throat suddenly very dry.
“No, the girl. I was only able to get her first name before she passed out on me. Ava, I think she said. That name mean anything to you?”
Ava.
They had been searching for months with no results. She’d vanished into thin air, leaving no clues--natural or supernatural--to locate her. The local authorities had all but given up, her fiancé’s death and her disappearance setting up to become just another Peoria cold case. Sam, on the other hand, hadn’t given up on finding her, not even as each trail they picked up led to nothing. He’d been the one to tell her to go home, that she’d be safe there. He’d basically placed her directly in the path of the demon, and he wouldn’t give up until he brought her back safe.
His pulse quickening, Sam placed a bracing hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Ava? She’s there with you?”
“So you know her?”
Sam ignored her question as he moved past Dean to grab the stationery pad from the nightstand between their two beds. “Jo, where are you?” He jotted down the address of the motel she was staying at and hung up the phone after telling her to sit tight.
“Ava’s with Jo?” Dean asked, his dinner and Judge Judy long forgotten with this new development. “How the hell did that happen?”
Sam nodded as he gathered all his belongings scattered on his side of the room and shoved them into his duffel bag. “Jo ran into her on a hunt in Mississippi.”
“And we’re going now?” Dean asked, incredulous. “We’re in the middle of a hunt.”
“I know, and we’ll come back and finish the job but….” Sam zipped up his bag, looking up at his brother. “Dean, it’s Ava.”
Dean sighed, and Sam smiled in appreciation. He knew that sigh. The sigh of defeat, the sigh that for once Dean was letting him have his way.
Dean grabbed his own bag out from under his bed. “Fine, but you’re not driving.”
******
The sun peeked over the horizon as the Impala pulled into the parking lot of the Valley Springs Motel. Jo stood outside her room, leaning in the doorway. On guard and waiting for them. She didn’t move from her spot as Dean and Sam approached her.
“Jo,” Dean greeted casually, though Sam knew that the greeting was anything but.
The two of them had gone from hot to cold in ten seconds flat, from being able to work a job together to barely being able to stand in the same room together.
Funny how their fathers’ past continued to affect their present.
Jo nodded in acknowledgment before turning on Sam. “Who is this girl cause she’s sure as hell not talking to me,” she said bluntly, reminding Sam that through it all, this girl was still definitely Ellen’s child.
“Let me talk to her first,” Sam said, moving to open the door.
Jo stood tall, placing herself squarely between them and the door. “So far, she’s killed three hunters that I know.”
“Under the control of a demonic spirit,” Sam countered. “You did the exorcism yourself.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything. I need to know why she…the demon…whatever is targeting hunters.”
“It’s complicated,” Sam replied, ignoring the way Jo’s eyebrows raised in annoyance. “Jo.”
He didn’t mean for his tone to be a warning, to sound so dark, but it came out that way before he could soften it. For a second, Jo stared at him defiantly, and he braced himself for yet another argument; instead, she turned the knob and pushed the door to the room open.
Ava sat at the foot of the bed furthest from the door. Dressed in blood-stained jeans and a black tank, her elbows rested on her thighs and her hands covered her face. Her dark hair was tousled and hung wildly at her shoulders, a sure sign that she had at least slept at some point during the night.
Sam couldn’t help but be reminded of the first time he had met Ava Wilson. The perky secretary from Peoria who claimed to be nothing but a normal woman stuck in a world of weird. She’d been blunt and scared, and yet at the same time, she had embraced the self-proclaimed weird and allowed herself to be pulled along into Sam’s schemes.
Perky, blunt, normal Ava.
“Ava?” he asked, stepping into the room first, followed by Dean and Jo.
She looked up at his voice, and he swallowed hard as her tired blue eyes landed on him. She blinked, slowly getting to her feet. “Sam,” she said, her voice filled with a quiet relief.
She crossed the room between them and hugged him tightly around the waist, her face buried against his chest. Shocked, Sam didn’t know what to do at first, not expecting such a greeting, but once the initial shock wore off, he hugged her back.
They’d both been living in a world where the worst had been feared. As far as she had known, he was dead somewhere in Indiana, blown to pieces trying to save his brother. And as far as he had known, she was being tortured somewhere at the hands of The Demon.
Holding her small frame against his, Sam was very glad that they had both been proven wrong.
Sam finally took a gentle hold of her shoulders, pulling her away so that he could get a better look at her. “You okay?”
Ava nodded. “Yeah. I think. I don’t know,” she stammered. “I don’t know anything anymore. I think I’m doing good just to know my name.” Her eyes frantically searched his for answers he knew he wouldn’t be able to deliver. “What the hell happened to me?”
Sam frowned, throwing a glance over his shoulder at Dean, his brother mimicking his own grimace. He turned back to Ava and forced her to sit down on the bed before kneeling in front of her. “Ava, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“I…” She ran a shaky hand through her hair. “I went home, just like you said.”
“Did you see your fiancé?” Dean interjected from his place near the door.
“No,” Ava said with a shake of her head. “I called out, and he didn’t answer, and I remember going down the hall but…after that? It’s like I was slipped something. I don’t remember anything.”
“Nothing unusual?”
“No, just the hallway and--” She stopped abruptly, a hand grabbing hold to Sam’s wrist. “Eyes.”
“What?” Sam asked, though he already knew the answer.
Ava let go of his wrist, shutting her eyes tightly together and pressing the heels of her hands against her lowered lids. “They were… just these yellow eyes.” She dropped her hands and finally opened her eyes, and Sam could see the fear of realization behind them. “I saw the eyes. Just like that guy who got stabbed.” She grabbed his wrist again. “Am I evil?”
Sam blinked at her, not expecting such a question to leave her mouth. “Wh…what?”
“That guy. The one that got stabbed. He said that some guy with yellow eyes came to him and told him to do horrible things, remember?” Her grip on his wrist tightened as she continued her frantic ramble. “And that girl--” She did a quick nod towards Jo. “--says I killed three people, and I don’t remember killing three people, but look at me!” She waved her hand wildly at her blood-stained jeans. “I’m… I’m evil.”
“Ava,” Sam interjected as she finally took a moment to breathe. “You’re not evil.”
She simply looked at him as if he were trying to convince her the sky was green and the grass was blue.
“I think something possessed you that night. Jo--” He nodded over his shoulder. “--performed the exorcism on you.”
Ava blinked, her eyes growing even wider as she glanced at everyone in the room. “I’m sorry, exorcism? Like head spinning, vomiting pea soup kind of thing?”
Sam smiled a bit despite himself. “Not to that extent, I’m sure.”
She stood with a shaky laugh, running her hands through her hair. Sam sat in her vacated seat as she paced the small room, trying to take in everything that was going on. He hated that she had to be thrown head first into the fire, but at this point, there was just no way to ease her into things. Not with everything she had experienced.
She suddenly stopped mid-stride, looking towards him. Her lower lip trembled as she found her voice. “Brady, my fiancé. He’s alright, isn’t he?”
Sam looked at Dean, suddenly feeling very helpless and in need of his big brother to make things right, but Dean could only give him a small nod to proceed.
The simple gesture said everything Sam already knew. Dean could deal with the kids, relate to them on their level. He could get them to believe and open up and feel calm. Sam, on the other hand, had the better tact for dealing with women. Picking them up or getting their number was one thing, but getting a frightened or upset woman to calm down? That was more Sam’s area. They both knew where the strengths in their people skills lied, and Dean’s nod was simply a “this is all you”.
Clearing his throat, Dean grabbed Jo by the arm, who protested being manhandled and threatened to introduce Dean’s ass to her boot, as they stepped out of the room. Once the door shut behind them with a click that echoed in the newfound silence, Sam turned back to Ava.
“Sam,” she pleaded, looking so much paler than when he had first stepped into the room.
Sam pushed himself from the firm mattress, closing the distance between them. “When you didn’t return my calls, we went to check on you. You were nowhere to be found, and your fiancé….” He hesitated, trying to think of the best way to put the entire situation into words. But in the back of his mind, he already knew there was no way to add eloquence or softness to what he was going to have to tell her. His tongue darted nervously across his lips before he spoke again. “He was dead, Ava.”
For a moment, he wondered if she had even heard him. She continued to stare at him as if expecting an answer, but as he opened his mouth to say her name, a shaky hand went to her chest, bunching the fabric of her shirt between her fingers. Tears crept down the corners of her eyes, and she ducked her head as not to be seen.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, reaching out to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Ava’s gaze remained focused on the pale gray carpet under their feet, the hand that had been holding tightly to her shirt now running through her hair. “Did I…?”
Sam frowned as her voice trailed off. He already knew where her question would lead, and he really didn’t want to look down that path. He and Dean had been wondering the same thing over the months during their search for her. Was Ava the unfortunate killer of her own fiancé, possessed and working on a will not her own, or was the man already dead when she arrived, an expendable in The Demon’s world?
Ava looked up as Sam’s silence lingered between them.
“I don’t know, Ava,” he finally managed.
She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, trying to dry her cheeks even as more tears continued to fall. She backed away from him, taking an unsteady seat at the foot of the bed. “I was just a secretary from Peoria,” she said, pulling stray strands of hair away from her wet cheeks as she looked up at him, “who just happened to have weird ass dreams about people dying that apparently came true. And, sure, it was majorly weird, but…. But being possessed by spirits? Killing people I don’t even remember meeting?” She gave a stunned shake of her head. “What the hell is going on?”
Sam exhaled deeply, taking a seat beside her. “You once asked me who I was,” he said, meeting her confused gaze. “Me and my brother? We’re not exactly new to this whole demon and spirits and possession thing.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So, what are you, like, ghostbusters?”
Sam laughed softly. “Something like that, yeah. We hunt these kind of things. Save people.”
Saving people, hunting things. The family business.
“Wow,” she breathed out in a shaky voice, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“I know it seems a bit insane…”
Ava interrupted him with a nervous laugh. “A bit? I think I’ve dived headfirst into beyond insane.”
Sometimes, he forgot how not normal his world really was. He forgot that people didn’t go around packing vials of holy water at the ready, that they didn’t speak fluent Latin and could recite the proper passages to exorcise a demon. Being back on the road for the past two years with his brother had reverted him back to how it had felt before Stanford, when normal had been abnormal and abnormal had just been his life.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” he offered.
Ava sat quietly, her eyes focused on her lap where her hands wringed until Sam could notice them getting pinker with each rub. The silence engulfed them for what felt like an eternity to Sam, but in reality, had been barely a minute.
She looked up at him, her hands falling into her lap, in a sign of defeat, acceptance. “So what do I do now?”
And, in that moment, Sam knew he had to make a decision.