(no subject)
Title: Breaking of the Shell 1/2
Author: enochiansigils
Fandom: Supernatural
Main Character(s): Castiel, Sam Winchester, Meg Masters, Molly Campbell (OC).
Rating: R
Warning: None.
Word Count: 15,002.
Disclaimer: Not mine! Don't own, not profiting, just borrowing I swear. Molly, however, IS mine.
Summary: Sam isn't the only one suited to Lucifer's purposes.
Notes: Set in the same 'verse as "Never Just Once".
It wasn't just any girl who could exorcise a demon with her eyes closed -- though not literally, because that was about four kinds of stupid at a conservative minimum. She had learned that one the hard way when she was thirteen, thank you very much. Having to verbally wrestle a demon into a circle that your partner was recreating was an experience you only needed once. And it wasn't just any girl who could go up against most demons and come out unscathed save for a few bruises or cuts.
But thankfully, Molly Campbell wasn't just any girl. Being the daughter of Sam Winchester and Meg Masters had stood her pretty damn well in life. How could it not, really? With her father being Lucifer's true vessel and her mother having been vessel to a demon herself, she could -- and on occasion had -- pull the "Do you know who I am?" card. Because no demon who wanted a chance at surviving in the new world order would touch the daughter of their Lord's true vessel. She'd seen Lucifer himself punish demons for it on occasion.
That was something that nobody in the family could really figure out, actually. Why would he be nice to her of all people? But Molly's privately held opinion was that Lucifer still held out hope of swaying Sam to his side even after almost twenty years. If he allowed Sam's only child to be harmed, it would be the end of any chance he might stand at swaying the man to his side. Which made a certain amount of sense, if you asked Molly. Because of course her father wasn't going to actually go over to Lucifer's side, but letting Lucifer nurture that faint hope served them well and allowed Molly to enjoy a certain level of protection from demonic attack.
Unfortunately, there were still a few demons who seemed to have completely missed the memo. Like the one Molly was currently battling, who seemed to have all the fighting skill of a retarded sea monkey and was wearing a nursery school teacher for a meat suit. Between those two things, Molly was doing more damage to the demon than it was to Molly. She probably should have felt bad about causing such injury, considering that the vessel was going to have to deal with the aftermath, but oh well. Molly had learned in her short yet tumultuous life that sometimes you couldn't stop to worry about the vessel. She could regret it, yes, but she couldn't take the time to express that regret during a fight because doing that would just get her hurt or worse, and she wasn't a big fan of the worse. She'd deal with the regret later.
Maybe.
"Why don't you just fucking stay down?" Molly shouted in frustration. "You keep getting up every time I knock you down, you're like one of those fucking Weeble Wobble punching bag things."
"Weebles wobble but they don't fall down," the demon said cheerfully, brushing strands of long blonde hair back from its eyes.
"Oh, you're just all kinds of wrong." Meg pulled a knife, planning on just stabbing the demon with it and having done with it. And then the demon went and opened its mouth.
"No more than you are, little girl."
Molly bristled at that, tossing her knife deftly from one hand to the other. "How so?" she asked, her voice low and calm and utterly deadly. You didn't want to mess with her when she had that particular tone in her voice. Or at least, you didn't if you were smart. Luckily for her -- and very much unluckily for them -- few demons were ever that smart.
"You're more protected than any demon could ever dream of," the demon said. "You enjoy Lucifer's favor when so few of us do."
"So, what, you're jealous?" Molly asked. "Oh, I've heard some crazy shit from demons, but that takes the cake. None of you boneheads seems to get that I don't want his favor!"
That... wasn't entirely true. She wanted it for the protection it afforded her in a lot of situations that could get her killed otherwise, but she'd be willing to give that up if it meant her family could be free of Lucifer's influence. Her father wouldn't have to be Lucifer's ultimate vessel, her Uncle Dean wouldn't have to be Michael's vessel, her mother could get that eternally haunted look out of her eyes.
But she knew the only way all of that would happen was if they ever got Lucifer back into his cage, because he wouldn't stop until he had Sam Winchester firmly in his grasp.
And so she'd have to suffer his favor a little while longer, at the very least.
"Now, if you don't mind, I've got things to do. Places to go, people to see, all that jazz." Molly lifted a hand and concentrated; the cloud of black smoke leaving the body brought a faint smile to her lips. Her parents told her not to do this unless it was absolutely necessary, told her not to use the abilities that had manifested in her. Abilities that nobody could have predicted, even in a second-generation special child.
The vessel hit the ground with a thud, the nursery school teacher now out cold and likely to stay that way for a while. Just because Molly had gotten the demon out without killing the body didn't mean there wasn't trauma. Demons weren't exactly sunshine and puppies to their hosts, something her mother could tell you firsth3and.
She crouched by the body, searching the pockets quickly and coming up with a handful of bills and some coins. A credit card would've been too much to hope for, she supposed, since there was no purse anywhere in sight and the unconscious teacher didn't strike Molly as the type to keep her wallet on her person. A quick count of the money came up with forty-two dollars and ninety-one cents. "Better than nothing, I guess," she said, shrugging and stuffing the money into her pocket.
Molly stood, looking around quickly before stepping out of the alley. What was it with demons and fights and alleys? Were they just like drawn to them or something? Not that she was complaining, honestly; she'd rather fight a demon in a dark alley than in the middle of a busy street. She'd done both, but logistically speaking, busy streets were a fucking nightmare.
And thankfully it was the middle of the night; she was able to slip out of the alley unseen, which was a good thing considering the bruises starting to form on her face. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain to some well-meaning citizen that no, she really hadn't been abused or attacked (at least by a human) and that no, she didn't really need the police to be called but thank you.
That really tended to get old after a while.
Winchesters were a distressingly busy bunch; it wasn't at all uncommon for Molly to be the only one home for long periods of time. (They didn't speak of those six weeks she'd raised herself when she was eight.) So it wasn't entirely unreasonable an expectation for her to make in thinking the house would be empty.
This would be the one time she was wrong.
"You've been in a fight," came someone's calm observation.
That voice, quiet and gravelly, could only be one person.
"Uncle Cas!" Forgetting the new bruises and her twisted ankle, she threw herself at the mostly human angel for a hug.
Castiel caught her and gave a half-hearted grumble of, "I'm not your uncle." It had the tone of routine, though, like it was something he had said a thousand times before... which it was.
"You're family, so you're my uncle," came the reply as Molly stepped back.
This, too, was routine.
She couldn't be faulted for wanting family connections, Castiel supposed. She knew what life had been like for her father and her Uncle Dean. It was, to no small degree, the same life she was leading now. It was only logical that she do whatever she could to change it even the least little bit. Then again, she was a Winchester and Winchesters weren't exactly well known for their logic and deductive reasoning skills. Even Samuel.
"What did you get in a fight with?" Castiel asked, arching his eyebrows.
"The usual," Molly said with a shrug. "Demon."
He suppressed a groan. The girl was more prone to demonic encounters than anybody he had ever met in his entire life, and that was a long time indeed. Of course, that wasn't exactly her fault. She was the daughter of Lucifer's true vessel and his chosen one in her own right. She drew demons like months to a flame. Her being so chosen had had the dubious benefit of making it infinitely easier for her family to pick off demons. Castiel just couldn't help wondering when the downsides would start outnumbering the good points of it all. If they could really be considered good points in the first place, that was. Because there was little about the whole entire situation that could be called good in any form.
"I trust you took care of the demon, at least."
That earned him a withering stare as a response. "I'm seventeen, Uncle Cas, not seven. I know better than to let a demon wander around in its meat suit."
Which didn't exactly answer him, she knew. And also made her sound oddly like the toddler she hadn't been in well over fifteen years instead of the teenage girl she actually was.
"So you sent the demon back?" Disapproval had crept into his voice now. Well, moreso than it usually tended to.
"I did." Molly did an admirable job of not fidgeting as she shrugged her jacket off and tossed it over a nearby chair, mindless of the forearm sheaths she'd revealed. "And don't even start with me, you know the only really good way to kick a demon out is to use what abilities I've got."
"That is an unwise course, Molly," Castiel said, watching the young woman closely, searching for any sign that she might be feeling more discomfort than she was letting on. "You know the path your father nearly went down."
"Yeah, yeah," Molly said, waving her hand in the air dismissively. "And I know that if not for my mom, he'd have gone all scary dark side on you guys."
It'd been a close enough call as it was, but Castiel didn't feel it prudent to interrupt with that particular fact.
"And I also know that he's used his abilities since then," Molly continued. "He uses them as little as possible, but he still uses them. So don't harp on me about it, Cas. Not unless you're going to turn around and harp on him for it, too."
"I do, actually. Though harping isn't how I would phrase it." He would consider it concerned guidance. But nobody ever asked him, did they?
That took the wind out of Molly's sails a little bit; she grumped under her breath and fixed him with a stare. "I appreciate the concern, I really do, but I've been doing this almost since I could walk. I know what I'm doing by now."
"You are your parents' only child, Molly," Castiel began, trying a different tack. "You cannot blame us all for wanting to keep you safe." Well, she could, technically. She was human and it was his experience that humans often did whatever they wanted to do, whether or not it was what was actually good for them. In fact, it was almost rarely what was actually good for them.
"I know, I know," she replied, running her fingers through her hair. "And you have no idea how glad I am that your idea of protecting me was to teach me how to be a hunter. But you guys have to lighten up on me."
She would never say these words to her parents, Castiel knew, would never let herself seem anything other than grateful to them. She would only speak like this to him, because she knew he did not always understand the full import of her words. She counted on his naivete to keep herself at a distance, to stay remote and isolated and make her feel safe.
Which was why he never told her when he understood more than she thought he did. He would give her that illusion of safety, just as he would tear that illusion apart when the time came. He just hoped it never did.
She'd manged to get away from Castiel after nearly another twenty minutes of questioning. All she wanted to do was collapse on her bed -- kicking the demon out of the teacher's body had taken more out of her than she wanted to admit -- but she had a routine to go through first. Gun from the waistband of her jeans, set down on the desk. Knife from the ankle sheath, next to the gun. Knives from the spring-loaded forearm sheaths, next to the first knife. Sheaths, on the chair at her desk. Dirty clothes, in the vague direction of the hamper in the corner.
Once she'd changed out of her blood-stained clothes and into the t-shirt and pajama bottoms she usually wore to bed, then Molly could safely collapse. And collapse she did, letting out a contented sigh. As much as she loved being out there and doing what it felt like she'd been damn near born to do, as much as she enjoyed the rush she always got from a successful hunt, she was also very much a big fan of a nice comfy bed and being able to burrow down under the covers. It was cool out, too, which meant that tonight the covers consisted of a sheet and a light blanket that she was honestly too lazy to crawl under at the moment.
She could feel her strength regrouping as she lay there, looking up at the ceiling and letting her mind wander. It was eleven at night, early enough that she didn't really have to go to bed -- as tempting as the idea sounded -- but it was also late enough that she couldn't exactly go out and do anything. Well, anything legal, anyway.
Molly pushed herself up into a sitting position and tilted her head, listening for any sounds in the house that would signify someone being home.
Nothing.
Not even any sounds that'd tell her if Castiel was still there. (He tended to come and go as he pleased.)
So, really, she could slip back out if she wanted. But where would she go? She didn't have any leads active at the moment, and she wasn't foolish enough to just turn herself loose and see what she found. Last time she'd done that, she'd been thirteen and trying to prove herself. She'd nearly been thirteen and dead as a result, so no thank you, not repeating that. But that didn't mean she couldn't just go out and have fun, like a normal teenager...
... she was asleep before she managed to finish the thought.
Just because she hadn't heard him didn't mean that he'd left, though. He was just standing quietly by a window, looking out without actually seeing. He was worried about Molly, more worried than he'd let on around her. She was growing increasingly reckless, something he'd noticed over the past six months or so. Yes, it could be explained as a teenage girl growing and trying to assert her own sense of independence, but Molly wasn't just any teenage girl. She was the child of one of the special kids and had powers that continued to astound her parents even after seventeen years of dealing with and trying to understand them. And there was the whole attracting demons thing that added its own special set of problems to be figured out.
What it really all came down to was that Molly was not a normal girl, would never be a normal girl, and trying to figure her out like she was one would never get him anywhere. If he wanted to figure her out, he needed to think more along the lines of what her Uncle Dean would do. Despite her being Sam's daughter, there were a good many similarities between her and the older brother.
It was that thought that had Castiel going upstairs to check on Molly, knocking lightly at her door -- having finally grasped the concept of personal space somewhere along the line about five or six years ago-- before opening it, half expecting to find an empty room -- it wouldn't have surprised him in the least if she had taken off. Instead he saw her weapons laid out on her desk, the sheaths on the chair, and a completely sound asleep Molly on the bed.
He stood there for a few minutes, just silently watching her. It never ceased to amaze him how a young woman such as her had ever come to be in the first place. One chance encounter between her parents years after they'd originally met had sparked something neither of them understood. Twenty years later, they still didn't understand it. They didn't seem particularly inclined towards understanding it, either, something that had always puzzled Castiel. A relationship like that needed to be understood. If it were him, he'd want to know exactly why he'd been brought back together with someone who had seemed to have exited his life so neatly.
But that was him and his never-ending quest to understand humanity.
Molly stirred then, interrupting his reverie. "Dude, Cas, stop being a creeper," she said, lifting her head from the pillow and glaring blearily at him. "Go 'way."
Rather than murmur an apology, as anybody else -- anybody human, that is -- might have done, Castiel just gave a simple slight inclination of his head to acknowledge her before stepping back, closing the door and going back downstairs.
As soon as the door closed, Molly was sitting up, grogginess gone. She'd only been asleep for maybe forty minutes, but she felt refreshed and if not energized, then at least at her normal level of strength. She wasn't going to be falling back to sleep anytime in the next few hours, so she might as well get up. Still in her pajamas, she padded over to the file cabinets that sat against the wall by her desk. Most people had bookcases in their rooms, and yeah, she had those, but she largely had file cabinets. File cabinets full of files and files of the weird and wacky, but also the twisted and depraved. The strangest things piqued Molly's interest and she kept information on all of them. Sometimes nothing more than a few key words scribbled down on a notecard, sometimes a several inches thick file with newspaper articles, magazine articles, internet printouts, and anything else that would tell her what she thought she needed to know.
She opened a drawer at random, as she often did when she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to be doing or where she wanted to be going. She selected a file at random and went to sit down on the bed, sitting the file down in front of her and opening it. It wasn't anything exciting, just a couple articles from a rather disreputable internet site that she'd discovered had the uncanny knack for being right more often than it was wrong. And it wasn't even about anything exciting, just a ghost sighting out in Ohio. Well, it said it was a ghost sighting. To Molly's eye -- and that of whoever it was who'd covered it for the website -- it was a handful of bored kids teaming up to take a genuine paranormal happening and spin it into something more. Because the area did have a reputation for ghost sightings, there'd just never been any in that particular spot. Did the kids care, though? No, not one bit.
It made Molly a little bitter when people misused and abused the paranormal like that. It was hard for her to take them seriously and treat them like actual human beings. They acted like that and to her they were nothing more than scum. Not the healthiest attitude, she knew, and it probably had something to do with the fact that she had a good bit of darkness in her. She used her powers, embraced them, and that couldn't leave her unstained, untainted. But she refused to worry about it. Take it seriously, yes. Be concerned, yes. Worry, no. Worry got you nowhere and often times just got you killed.
She couldn't be any use to the family if she were dead. Sure, they could make a deal to get her back, but none of them would. And if they were stupid enough to do it, she'd never speak to any of them again. Because they knew firsthand what happened when deals were made. They knew what the consequences were. She would make sure they paid them.
Molly shook her head. Where had all of this come from? She didn't usually think like this. It wasn't like she was sunshine and daisies and puppies all the time or anything, but she wasn't usually that dark, either. Chalking it up to the strain of having used one of her abilities combined with having used them so intensively the week before on something -- which was actually the reason Castiel had damn near interrogated her about tonight's situation in the first place -- she closed the file and stood, going to put it away. She moved to select another file, hesitating slightly before grabbing one and crossing back to the bed again.
This file was infinitely more interesting.
This was, after all, the file she kept on her mother.
There were articles about Meg's disappearance, articles about her sudden reappearance a couple years later, and if you dug through the thin sheets of paper long enough, you'd find Molly's birth announcement. With a name she'd never used to parents she didn't have, but still. She knew it was her and her parents knew it was her, and so what else mattered?
Because there was a reason that Molly Campbell was named Molly Campbell and not Molly Masters or Molly Winchester or any of the thousand and one aliases her father had used over the years. Winchester would have been too easy a last name to trace, and it would have sent up all sorts of red flags for each and every demon or other supernatural entity that had it in for the family. Many of them weren't that determined, but they'd seen no reason to test their luck.
But at the same time, they'd wanted her to have some kind of a connection to her family anyway. So they'd gotten a little creative and had named her after her deceased grandmother. Campbell for Mary's maiden name, and Molly because it was a variation of Mary. Close enough to show the connection but different enough that most people wouldn't think about it. Demons, maybe. But it was enough to keep her safe from any humans who might come after her. And that was enough for them.
It was also why they'd trained her relentlessly, so that she would be ready for the day when the deception of her name was no longer enough to keep her hidden and safe. A day that she seemed hellbent on bringing closer and closer before it had to come. Because she took no pains to hide when she kicked a demon loose from its meat suit or used any of the other abilities she had. She was proud of them and while she saw the need to keep them hidden, or at the very least to keep them played down, it was hard. She was a seventeen-year-old girl who was good at what she did. What seventeen-year-old girl in that kind of situation didn't want to be noticed and recognized for it? The big difference was, most girls that age wanted to be noticed for cheerleading or academics or other normal things. Wanting to be recognized for the powers she held within her?
Something was wrong with that picture. Very, very wrong. And Molly wanted to know what it was and why it was. And goddamn it, she was going to find out.
Ten minutes after that decision, dressed in clean clothes and weapons all back on her person where they belonged, Molly was slipping out her window and climbing down a tree, in the time honored tradition of all teenagers who wanted to sneak out of the house.
It was the most normal thing she had ever done.
It didn't take Castiel long to realize that something was wrong with the house. When people spent a good deal of time in a residence, something of them rubbed off on the place. It was easy to tell whose place it was just by the feelings that came along with a place. It also made it easier -- at least for Castiel, who had little of his angelic power left by now -- to know who was home and who wasn't. When they were home, their presence was somehow stronger. When they were gone, it was less.
So ten minutes after she'd finally slipped the leash, Castiel was up the stairs and in her room. "Damn it!"
She was gone without even so much as a note.
Which left him with the interesting dilemma of what exactly he was going to tell her parents. Molly had been coming and going pretty much as she pleased since she was fifteen years old, so the being gone part of it wouldn't bother her parents.
He was distracted from further ruminations by noticing a file open on Molly's bed. Curious, Castiel moved closer, reaching out to gingerly pick up a newspaper article.
It didn't take him long to realize that the article was about Meg, though it didn't call her by name. Which meant that, if Castiel was right and he was almost certain he was, this file was entirely about Meg. Which meant it was about Molly's very existence in an abstract sort of way, judging by the way the only articles or information centered around Meg's disappearance and subsequent reappearance. That was too suspicious to go ignored, though he admittedly wasn't sure what to make of it. He wasn't even sure if he should try to get a hold of her parents and call them back from wherever on earth they'd gotten off to. He wasn't even sure they were in the same state anymore. He so rarely knew where anybody was anymore. They came and went, and he came and went, and they all just went on. Sometimes they saw each other, sometimes they didn't. And Castiel didn't even live there, didn't even live anywhere. He was just as adrift as the rest of them, if not moreso. No, actually, he was the moreso in this equation.
He picked up the file carefully, closing it and taking it back downstairs with him. Maybe if he read through it, he would be able to understand what had driven Molly to -- as near as he could tell, anyway -- leave in the middle of the night and take off via climbing out her window. It was all he had, anyway, at least until Sam and Meg came home or called, or until Dean came by or called.
He was more than half hoping for a brilliant revelation that would tell him exactly where she was so he didn't have to deal with anything bothersome like having to try and call her. Even after so many years, he still didn't get cell phones. He knew how to use them, yes, and he knew what they did, but they still completely mystified him. It was why he avoided anything having to do with them as much as was... well... as much as was humanly possible.
Castiel sat on the couch and opened the file again, sitting it on the table in front of him and carefully spreading out the articles. At first glance, nothing particularly special struck him aside from the fact that Meg's disappearance and reappearance had actually been big enough in her town to merit newspaper coverage. It wasn't that he thought any one life to be less than another, it was just that he knew the mentality of people in large cities. They rarely noticed anything beyond their immediate existence. It was one of the reasons why Castiel enjoyed being more isolated. When he was more isolated, it was easy to pretend that he was still what he had once been. He could ignore his pesky encroaching humanity.
But even with her disappearance having been of note, there wasn't much to go on and certainly nothing to explain why Molly would have taken off because of it. He had to look deeper, that was the only answer. It was an answer he did not like, though. He had no choice, however, and so he went back to the articles, hoping to spot something he had missed. Something that would give him an actual idea.
Because if he had to tell Sam Winchester and Meg Masters that their daughter had taken off and he couldn't give them some kind of idea about where she was going, then there was going to be a problem. A big problem.
Molly had one big obstacle to her plan, the fact that she had to get out of town and several states over if she was going to start this at the source. And as much as she wanted to do that, as tempting as it was, she did have a little common sense left rolling around in her head. This entire plan suddenly seemed a whole lot less logical than it had when she'd been in the middle of climbing out her bedroom window.
She still had a few thoughts on the matter, though, things that she needed to figure out before she could actually make any moves towards resolving her conflict. And so she was sitting at a table in an all-night coffee shop, taking advantage of the free internet -- being Sam Winchester's daughter and sharing his love of all things technological, she had of course taken her laptop with her -- to go over the same articles she had in the folder at home.
"Need a refill?" the lone barista called from where she stood behind the counter.
"Since it's kind of impossible to just snatch the pot away from you and drink directly from it? Yes, Constance. Yes, I do," Molly said with a grin as she stood and made her way over to the counter. The barista was one of the two or three who worked the night shifts, which meant that she was familiar with Molly and Molly was familiar with her.
"What's got you here tonight?" the young woman asked. "Doing the homework thing?" As far as Constance was aware, Molly was just a college student. She'd made that assumption and Molly had never made any effort to dissuade her. It just worked to have Constance think she was nothing more than an insomniac college student. It was a little slice of normal, a slice that Molly really really liked sometimes.
"Yeah, Con," Molly said, digging a dollar out of her pocket to pay for the refill and instead dropping it into the tip jar when Constance waved her off from payment. "Or trying to, anyway. Homework is fucking evil."
"Sing it, sister." Constance grinned as she poured Molly's refill. "I certainly don't miss those days."
"Don't make me slap you," Molly threatened, laughing. "You know I'll do it."
This was why Molly came here, the easy carefree banter. She didn't have a whole lot of friends -- not entirely unexpected, given the life she led. Hell, the closest thing she really had to a friend was her "Aunt" Jo's daughter Willa. And that wasn't a case of friendship so much as it was a case of hunters' children growing up in roughly the same area most of the time. Most of the time it'd been either play with Willa or play with nobody at all. Of course, she'd chosen to play with nobody at all just as often as she'd chosen to play with Willa, but still. When Willa was the only option available, she got tired of the other girl pretty damn quick. (Though to be fair, Willa had probably gotten tired of her, too.)
But when she came here, for a few minutes or a few hours, she could pretend she wasn't a hunter. She could pretend she was just a normal teenage girl. She always knew she'd have to go right back to reality at the end of it, she always knew that it was just pretend, but as long as she knew it, she didn't see the problem. Of course, the same could almost be said for her father. He'd turned his back on the entire hunting lifestyle and look where that'd gotten him. But there was one key difference -- she always knew she was pretending. Sam had tried to fool himself that it was reality.
The chime above the door made its delicate glass noise; both Molly and Constance looked towards it. "Oh, it's just you," Molly said to the young man who'd just come through the door, laptop bag over one shoulder. "Hey, Byron." There was a casual tone to her voice that she didn't entirely feel. And who could blame her? Byron was seriously cute.
"Hey, yourself," Byron said, dropping his laptop bag down on a tabletop. "What're you doing here, Mols? You're not usually here at this time of night."
It was true; she was usually there even later. And she couldn't help being a little gleeful that a hot guy like Byron had noticed her comings and goings, even as the rational hunter part of her brain pointed out that if someone had picked up on her patterns, it was probably a bad thing. No, not probably. It was definitely a bad thing. It meant predictability, and predictability could mean death for a hunter.
But at the same time, Molly was also a seventeen-year-old girl, and what seventeen-year-old girl didn't like the attention from an attractive guy?
"Eh," she said oh so eloquently, shrugging a shoulder. "Just needed to get out for a while."
"Parents driving you crazy again?" he asked with a sympathetic smile.
"No, this time it's my uncle." She rolled her eyes. "He seems to think that just because my parents aren't home at the moment, it gives him permission to start running my life."
"That's family members for you," Constance said with a rueful shake of her head. "They do tend to get like that."
"And as much as I love him to bits, it's annoying as hell sometimes," Molly said, finally making her way back over to her table and settling back down into her seat. "Well, most of the time. But I know he means well. Really, I do."
"You don't exactly sound convinced." Byron studied Molly thoughtfully. "Problems at home?"
"Not really," Molly said honestly, taking a sip of her coffee. "Nerves are just a little frayed. It always happens when Mom and Dad are off traveling. Things will be fine once they're home again, they always are."
"Well, that's good," he said with a nod. "Family's important. You guys should all get along."
"Oh, we do," she said. "We do. It's just that my uncle's not exactly used to babysitting me -- and he doesn't even need to anymore, but that's a whole different story for a whole different time."
Plus honestly, most of the time she didn't even mind Castiel's constant being around while her parents were gone. Mostly because when they were gone, she was gone, too. Which actually meant that the time consisted of Castiel rambling around the house all by his lonesome.
"Do you really need a babysitter, though?" Byron countered.
"You try telling that to my parents," Molly said, rolling her eyes. "I'm a girl and I'm their only child. I think they're genetically obligated to worry about me so damn much."
"Makes sense, I guess." Byron shrugged. "Parents do get kinda overprotective like that, sometimes."
Molly settled back in her seat, taking another sip of her coffee and turning her attention back to the computer. There were a lot of words in the articles, a lot of words that amounted to absolutely nothing that would help her after all. Goddamn it. She'd been so sure that this was going to lead her somewhere.
... and why had she been so sure, anyway? It was almost like something had made her so sure. Something other than her own mind. And how could that be?
Oh, it wasn't that she thought it was impossible. She knew that almost any kind of compulsion was possible, but specifically on her? Not so much with the possible. She had enough protections on her to... well, she had a lot. So for someone -- or something -- to get past all that, it meant...
Oh shit this was a trap, was what it meant.
A low chuckle came from the other side of the room, setting Molly's hackles to rising; in one smooth move, she shoved back from the table, stood, pivoted, and pulled her gun.
"I shoulda known something was wrong with you," she said to Byron. "You were almost too interested in me. And stupid me, I didn't catch it."
"Nope," Byron agreed cheerfully. "You didn't. Sucks to be you right now, huh?"
"Constance, go out the back," Molly said sharply. "Don't talk, don't argue, just fucking do it!"
Constance didn't need any encouragement.
"What do you want with me?" Molly asked, her gun still firmly trained on Byron. "Who's got you up to this stupid little plot, huh?"
"He wants to speak with you, Molly, has wanted to for a while now."
She didn't need to ask who.
"Tell Lucifer that I appreciate the thought, but I have no interest in speaking with him."
"Oh, come now, that's not true." Byron grinned. "You know you're curious about him. You know you want to see how he stacks up against the stories you've been told by your parents all seventeen years of your life. After all, he's been after your father for two decades; he's got to be pretty fearsome, right?"
"He's fearsome because he's the fucking Devil, not because of how long he's been harassing my family." Molly glared, fighting the urge to pull the trigger. She wasn't afraid to shoot him, not by any means, but shooting him when she didn't know just how much of a trap it was would be pretty freakin' stupid in her own admittedly biased opinion.
"Okay, point," Byron conceded. "But either way, you're still intrigued by him and you know it."
"I'm also intrigued by pit vipers, that doesn't mean I want to go rolling around in a bed of them."
Byron laughed, his eyes going a solid color. "Oh, you are a spitfire. That's genetic, I bet. You come from hunters; it's kind of hard not to have spirit. It's a survival mechanism."
Molly knew she looked bored as she said, "Okay, could you just do me a favor and get to the point? Not in the mood to be trading witty banter with anybody right now, much less a demon. So if you're not gonna start getting to the point, I'm gonna start with the shooting."
"I wouldn't do that," came a voice from the doorway. "I'm rather fond of him. He's one of my more useful minions."
Molly looks towards the speaker, doing her best not to stare. "You know, I'm pretty sure you've heard this already, but almost twenty years in that body? He's not looking so hot anymore, Lucifer. I'm pretty sure Nick doesn't appreciate what you've done to him."
"He knew what he was in for," Lucifer replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "And anyway, that's not what I'm here about."
"What are you here about, then?"
His slow, lazy smile was all the answer she needed.
Author: enochiansigils
Fandom: Supernatural
Main Character(s): Castiel, Sam Winchester, Meg Masters, Molly Campbell (OC).
Rating: R
Warning: None.
Word Count: 15,002.
Disclaimer: Not mine! Don't own, not profiting, just borrowing I swear. Molly, however, IS mine.
Summary: Sam isn't the only one suited to Lucifer's purposes.
Notes: Set in the same 'verse as "Never Just Once".
It wasn't just any girl who could exorcise a demon with her eyes closed -- though not literally, because that was about four kinds of stupid at a conservative minimum. She had learned that one the hard way when she was thirteen, thank you very much. Having to verbally wrestle a demon into a circle that your partner was recreating was an experience you only needed once. And it wasn't just any girl who could go up against most demons and come out unscathed save for a few bruises or cuts.
But thankfully, Molly Campbell wasn't just any girl. Being the daughter of Sam Winchester and Meg Masters had stood her pretty damn well in life. How could it not, really? With her father being Lucifer's true vessel and her mother having been vessel to a demon herself, she could -- and on occasion had -- pull the "Do you know who I am?" card. Because no demon who wanted a chance at surviving in the new world order would touch the daughter of their Lord's true vessel. She'd seen Lucifer himself punish demons for it on occasion.
That was something that nobody in the family could really figure out, actually. Why would he be nice to her of all people? But Molly's privately held opinion was that Lucifer still held out hope of swaying Sam to his side even after almost twenty years. If he allowed Sam's only child to be harmed, it would be the end of any chance he might stand at swaying the man to his side. Which made a certain amount of sense, if you asked Molly. Because of course her father wasn't going to actually go over to Lucifer's side, but letting Lucifer nurture that faint hope served them well and allowed Molly to enjoy a certain level of protection from demonic attack.
Unfortunately, there were still a few demons who seemed to have completely missed the memo. Like the one Molly was currently battling, who seemed to have all the fighting skill of a retarded sea monkey and was wearing a nursery school teacher for a meat suit. Between those two things, Molly was doing more damage to the demon than it was to Molly. She probably should have felt bad about causing such injury, considering that the vessel was going to have to deal with the aftermath, but oh well. Molly had learned in her short yet tumultuous life that sometimes you couldn't stop to worry about the vessel. She could regret it, yes, but she couldn't take the time to express that regret during a fight because doing that would just get her hurt or worse, and she wasn't a big fan of the worse. She'd deal with the regret later.
Maybe.
"Why don't you just fucking stay down?" Molly shouted in frustration. "You keep getting up every time I knock you down, you're like one of those fucking Weeble Wobble punching bag things."
"Weebles wobble but they don't fall down," the demon said cheerfully, brushing strands of long blonde hair back from its eyes.
"Oh, you're just all kinds of wrong." Meg pulled a knife, planning on just stabbing the demon with it and having done with it. And then the demon went and opened its mouth.
"No more than you are, little girl."
Molly bristled at that, tossing her knife deftly from one hand to the other. "How so?" she asked, her voice low and calm and utterly deadly. You didn't want to mess with her when she had that particular tone in her voice. Or at least, you didn't if you were smart. Luckily for her -- and very much unluckily for them -- few demons were ever that smart.
"You're more protected than any demon could ever dream of," the demon said. "You enjoy Lucifer's favor when so few of us do."
"So, what, you're jealous?" Molly asked. "Oh, I've heard some crazy shit from demons, but that takes the cake. None of you boneheads seems to get that I don't want his favor!"
That... wasn't entirely true. She wanted it for the protection it afforded her in a lot of situations that could get her killed otherwise, but she'd be willing to give that up if it meant her family could be free of Lucifer's influence. Her father wouldn't have to be Lucifer's ultimate vessel, her Uncle Dean wouldn't have to be Michael's vessel, her mother could get that eternally haunted look out of her eyes.
But she knew the only way all of that would happen was if they ever got Lucifer back into his cage, because he wouldn't stop until he had Sam Winchester firmly in his grasp.
And so she'd have to suffer his favor a little while longer, at the very least.
"Now, if you don't mind, I've got things to do. Places to go, people to see, all that jazz." Molly lifted a hand and concentrated; the cloud of black smoke leaving the body brought a faint smile to her lips. Her parents told her not to do this unless it was absolutely necessary, told her not to use the abilities that had manifested in her. Abilities that nobody could have predicted, even in a second-generation special child.
The vessel hit the ground with a thud, the nursery school teacher now out cold and likely to stay that way for a while. Just because Molly had gotten the demon out without killing the body didn't mean there wasn't trauma. Demons weren't exactly sunshine and puppies to their hosts, something her mother could tell you firsth3and.
She crouched by the body, searching the pockets quickly and coming up with a handful of bills and some coins. A credit card would've been too much to hope for, she supposed, since there was no purse anywhere in sight and the unconscious teacher didn't strike Molly as the type to keep her wallet on her person. A quick count of the money came up with forty-two dollars and ninety-one cents. "Better than nothing, I guess," she said, shrugging and stuffing the money into her pocket.
Molly stood, looking around quickly before stepping out of the alley. What was it with demons and fights and alleys? Were they just like drawn to them or something? Not that she was complaining, honestly; she'd rather fight a demon in a dark alley than in the middle of a busy street. She'd done both, but logistically speaking, busy streets were a fucking nightmare.
And thankfully it was the middle of the night; she was able to slip out of the alley unseen, which was a good thing considering the bruises starting to form on her face. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain to some well-meaning citizen that no, she really hadn't been abused or attacked (at least by a human) and that no, she didn't really need the police to be called but thank you.
That really tended to get old after a while.
Winchesters were a distressingly busy bunch; it wasn't at all uncommon for Molly to be the only one home for long periods of time. (They didn't speak of those six weeks she'd raised herself when she was eight.) So it wasn't entirely unreasonable an expectation for her to make in thinking the house would be empty.
This would be the one time she was wrong.
"You've been in a fight," came someone's calm observation.
That voice, quiet and gravelly, could only be one person.
"Uncle Cas!" Forgetting the new bruises and her twisted ankle, she threw herself at the mostly human angel for a hug.
Castiel caught her and gave a half-hearted grumble of, "I'm not your uncle." It had the tone of routine, though, like it was something he had said a thousand times before... which it was.
"You're family, so you're my uncle," came the reply as Molly stepped back.
This, too, was routine.
She couldn't be faulted for wanting family connections, Castiel supposed. She knew what life had been like for her father and her Uncle Dean. It was, to no small degree, the same life she was leading now. It was only logical that she do whatever she could to change it even the least little bit. Then again, she was a Winchester and Winchesters weren't exactly well known for their logic and deductive reasoning skills. Even Samuel.
"What did you get in a fight with?" Castiel asked, arching his eyebrows.
"The usual," Molly said with a shrug. "Demon."
He suppressed a groan. The girl was more prone to demonic encounters than anybody he had ever met in his entire life, and that was a long time indeed. Of course, that wasn't exactly her fault. She was the daughter of Lucifer's true vessel and his chosen one in her own right. She drew demons like months to a flame. Her being so chosen had had the dubious benefit of making it infinitely easier for her family to pick off demons. Castiel just couldn't help wondering when the downsides would start outnumbering the good points of it all. If they could really be considered good points in the first place, that was. Because there was little about the whole entire situation that could be called good in any form.
"I trust you took care of the demon, at least."
That earned him a withering stare as a response. "I'm seventeen, Uncle Cas, not seven. I know better than to let a demon wander around in its meat suit."
Which didn't exactly answer him, she knew. And also made her sound oddly like the toddler she hadn't been in well over fifteen years instead of the teenage girl she actually was.
"So you sent the demon back?" Disapproval had crept into his voice now. Well, moreso than it usually tended to.
"I did." Molly did an admirable job of not fidgeting as she shrugged her jacket off and tossed it over a nearby chair, mindless of the forearm sheaths she'd revealed. "And don't even start with me, you know the only really good way to kick a demon out is to use what abilities I've got."
"That is an unwise course, Molly," Castiel said, watching the young woman closely, searching for any sign that she might be feeling more discomfort than she was letting on. "You know the path your father nearly went down."
"Yeah, yeah," Molly said, waving her hand in the air dismissively. "And I know that if not for my mom, he'd have gone all scary dark side on you guys."
It'd been a close enough call as it was, but Castiel didn't feel it prudent to interrupt with that particular fact.
"And I also know that he's used his abilities since then," Molly continued. "He uses them as little as possible, but he still uses them. So don't harp on me about it, Cas. Not unless you're going to turn around and harp on him for it, too."
"I do, actually. Though harping isn't how I would phrase it." He would consider it concerned guidance. But nobody ever asked him, did they?
That took the wind out of Molly's sails a little bit; she grumped under her breath and fixed him with a stare. "I appreciate the concern, I really do, but I've been doing this almost since I could walk. I know what I'm doing by now."
"You are your parents' only child, Molly," Castiel began, trying a different tack. "You cannot blame us all for wanting to keep you safe." Well, she could, technically. She was human and it was his experience that humans often did whatever they wanted to do, whether or not it was what was actually good for them. In fact, it was almost rarely what was actually good for them.
"I know, I know," she replied, running her fingers through her hair. "And you have no idea how glad I am that your idea of protecting me was to teach me how to be a hunter. But you guys have to lighten up on me."
She would never say these words to her parents, Castiel knew, would never let herself seem anything other than grateful to them. She would only speak like this to him, because she knew he did not always understand the full import of her words. She counted on his naivete to keep herself at a distance, to stay remote and isolated and make her feel safe.
Which was why he never told her when he understood more than she thought he did. He would give her that illusion of safety, just as he would tear that illusion apart when the time came. He just hoped it never did.
She'd manged to get away from Castiel after nearly another twenty minutes of questioning. All she wanted to do was collapse on her bed -- kicking the demon out of the teacher's body had taken more out of her than she wanted to admit -- but she had a routine to go through first. Gun from the waistband of her jeans, set down on the desk. Knife from the ankle sheath, next to the gun. Knives from the spring-loaded forearm sheaths, next to the first knife. Sheaths, on the chair at her desk. Dirty clothes, in the vague direction of the hamper in the corner.
Once she'd changed out of her blood-stained clothes and into the t-shirt and pajama bottoms she usually wore to bed, then Molly could safely collapse. And collapse she did, letting out a contented sigh. As much as she loved being out there and doing what it felt like she'd been damn near born to do, as much as she enjoyed the rush she always got from a successful hunt, she was also very much a big fan of a nice comfy bed and being able to burrow down under the covers. It was cool out, too, which meant that tonight the covers consisted of a sheet and a light blanket that she was honestly too lazy to crawl under at the moment.
She could feel her strength regrouping as she lay there, looking up at the ceiling and letting her mind wander. It was eleven at night, early enough that she didn't really have to go to bed -- as tempting as the idea sounded -- but it was also late enough that she couldn't exactly go out and do anything. Well, anything legal, anyway.
Molly pushed herself up into a sitting position and tilted her head, listening for any sounds in the house that would signify someone being home.
Nothing.
Not even any sounds that'd tell her if Castiel was still there. (He tended to come and go as he pleased.)
So, really, she could slip back out if she wanted. But where would she go? She didn't have any leads active at the moment, and she wasn't foolish enough to just turn herself loose and see what she found. Last time she'd done that, she'd been thirteen and trying to prove herself. She'd nearly been thirteen and dead as a result, so no thank you, not repeating that. But that didn't mean she couldn't just go out and have fun, like a normal teenager...
... she was asleep before she managed to finish the thought.
Just because she hadn't heard him didn't mean that he'd left, though. He was just standing quietly by a window, looking out without actually seeing. He was worried about Molly, more worried than he'd let on around her. She was growing increasingly reckless, something he'd noticed over the past six months or so. Yes, it could be explained as a teenage girl growing and trying to assert her own sense of independence, but Molly wasn't just any teenage girl. She was the child of one of the special kids and had powers that continued to astound her parents even after seventeen years of dealing with and trying to understand them. And there was the whole attracting demons thing that added its own special set of problems to be figured out.
What it really all came down to was that Molly was not a normal girl, would never be a normal girl, and trying to figure her out like she was one would never get him anywhere. If he wanted to figure her out, he needed to think more along the lines of what her Uncle Dean would do. Despite her being Sam's daughter, there were a good many similarities between her and the older brother.
It was that thought that had Castiel going upstairs to check on Molly, knocking lightly at her door -- having finally grasped the concept of personal space somewhere along the line about five or six years ago-- before opening it, half expecting to find an empty room -- it wouldn't have surprised him in the least if she had taken off. Instead he saw her weapons laid out on her desk, the sheaths on the chair, and a completely sound asleep Molly on the bed.
He stood there for a few minutes, just silently watching her. It never ceased to amaze him how a young woman such as her had ever come to be in the first place. One chance encounter between her parents years after they'd originally met had sparked something neither of them understood. Twenty years later, they still didn't understand it. They didn't seem particularly inclined towards understanding it, either, something that had always puzzled Castiel. A relationship like that needed to be understood. If it were him, he'd want to know exactly why he'd been brought back together with someone who had seemed to have exited his life so neatly.
But that was him and his never-ending quest to understand humanity.
Molly stirred then, interrupting his reverie. "Dude, Cas, stop being a creeper," she said, lifting her head from the pillow and glaring blearily at him. "Go 'way."
Rather than murmur an apology, as anybody else -- anybody human, that is -- might have done, Castiel just gave a simple slight inclination of his head to acknowledge her before stepping back, closing the door and going back downstairs.
As soon as the door closed, Molly was sitting up, grogginess gone. She'd only been asleep for maybe forty minutes, but she felt refreshed and if not energized, then at least at her normal level of strength. She wasn't going to be falling back to sleep anytime in the next few hours, so she might as well get up. Still in her pajamas, she padded over to the file cabinets that sat against the wall by her desk. Most people had bookcases in their rooms, and yeah, she had those, but she largely had file cabinets. File cabinets full of files and files of the weird and wacky, but also the twisted and depraved. The strangest things piqued Molly's interest and she kept information on all of them. Sometimes nothing more than a few key words scribbled down on a notecard, sometimes a several inches thick file with newspaper articles, magazine articles, internet printouts, and anything else that would tell her what she thought she needed to know.
She opened a drawer at random, as she often did when she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to be doing or where she wanted to be going. She selected a file at random and went to sit down on the bed, sitting the file down in front of her and opening it. It wasn't anything exciting, just a couple articles from a rather disreputable internet site that she'd discovered had the uncanny knack for being right more often than it was wrong. And it wasn't even about anything exciting, just a ghost sighting out in Ohio. Well, it said it was a ghost sighting. To Molly's eye -- and that of whoever it was who'd covered it for the website -- it was a handful of bored kids teaming up to take a genuine paranormal happening and spin it into something more. Because the area did have a reputation for ghost sightings, there'd just never been any in that particular spot. Did the kids care, though? No, not one bit.
It made Molly a little bitter when people misused and abused the paranormal like that. It was hard for her to take them seriously and treat them like actual human beings. They acted like that and to her they were nothing more than scum. Not the healthiest attitude, she knew, and it probably had something to do with the fact that she had a good bit of darkness in her. She used her powers, embraced them, and that couldn't leave her unstained, untainted. But she refused to worry about it. Take it seriously, yes. Be concerned, yes. Worry, no. Worry got you nowhere and often times just got you killed.
She couldn't be any use to the family if she were dead. Sure, they could make a deal to get her back, but none of them would. And if they were stupid enough to do it, she'd never speak to any of them again. Because they knew firsthand what happened when deals were made. They knew what the consequences were. She would make sure they paid them.
Molly shook her head. Where had all of this come from? She didn't usually think like this. It wasn't like she was sunshine and daisies and puppies all the time or anything, but she wasn't usually that dark, either. Chalking it up to the strain of having used one of her abilities combined with having used them so intensively the week before on something -- which was actually the reason Castiel had damn near interrogated her about tonight's situation in the first place -- she closed the file and stood, going to put it away. She moved to select another file, hesitating slightly before grabbing one and crossing back to the bed again.
This file was infinitely more interesting.
This was, after all, the file she kept on her mother.
There were articles about Meg's disappearance, articles about her sudden reappearance a couple years later, and if you dug through the thin sheets of paper long enough, you'd find Molly's birth announcement. With a name she'd never used to parents she didn't have, but still. She knew it was her and her parents knew it was her, and so what else mattered?
Because there was a reason that Molly Campbell was named Molly Campbell and not Molly Masters or Molly Winchester or any of the thousand and one aliases her father had used over the years. Winchester would have been too easy a last name to trace, and it would have sent up all sorts of red flags for each and every demon or other supernatural entity that had it in for the family. Many of them weren't that determined, but they'd seen no reason to test their luck.
But at the same time, they'd wanted her to have some kind of a connection to her family anyway. So they'd gotten a little creative and had named her after her deceased grandmother. Campbell for Mary's maiden name, and Molly because it was a variation of Mary. Close enough to show the connection but different enough that most people wouldn't think about it. Demons, maybe. But it was enough to keep her safe from any humans who might come after her. And that was enough for them.
It was also why they'd trained her relentlessly, so that she would be ready for the day when the deception of her name was no longer enough to keep her hidden and safe. A day that she seemed hellbent on bringing closer and closer before it had to come. Because she took no pains to hide when she kicked a demon loose from its meat suit or used any of the other abilities she had. She was proud of them and while she saw the need to keep them hidden, or at the very least to keep them played down, it was hard. She was a seventeen-year-old girl who was good at what she did. What seventeen-year-old girl in that kind of situation didn't want to be noticed and recognized for it? The big difference was, most girls that age wanted to be noticed for cheerleading or academics or other normal things. Wanting to be recognized for the powers she held within her?
Something was wrong with that picture. Very, very wrong. And Molly wanted to know what it was and why it was. And goddamn it, she was going to find out.
Ten minutes after that decision, dressed in clean clothes and weapons all back on her person where they belonged, Molly was slipping out her window and climbing down a tree, in the time honored tradition of all teenagers who wanted to sneak out of the house.
It was the most normal thing she had ever done.
It didn't take Castiel long to realize that something was wrong with the house. When people spent a good deal of time in a residence, something of them rubbed off on the place. It was easy to tell whose place it was just by the feelings that came along with a place. It also made it easier -- at least for Castiel, who had little of his angelic power left by now -- to know who was home and who wasn't. When they were home, their presence was somehow stronger. When they were gone, it was less.
So ten minutes after she'd finally slipped the leash, Castiel was up the stairs and in her room. "Damn it!"
She was gone without even so much as a note.
Which left him with the interesting dilemma of what exactly he was going to tell her parents. Molly had been coming and going pretty much as she pleased since she was fifteen years old, so the being gone part of it wouldn't bother her parents.
He was distracted from further ruminations by noticing a file open on Molly's bed. Curious, Castiel moved closer, reaching out to gingerly pick up a newspaper article.
It didn't take him long to realize that the article was about Meg, though it didn't call her by name. Which meant that, if Castiel was right and he was almost certain he was, this file was entirely about Meg. Which meant it was about Molly's very existence in an abstract sort of way, judging by the way the only articles or information centered around Meg's disappearance and subsequent reappearance. That was too suspicious to go ignored, though he admittedly wasn't sure what to make of it. He wasn't even sure if he should try to get a hold of her parents and call them back from wherever on earth they'd gotten off to. He wasn't even sure they were in the same state anymore. He so rarely knew where anybody was anymore. They came and went, and he came and went, and they all just went on. Sometimes they saw each other, sometimes they didn't. And Castiel didn't even live there, didn't even live anywhere. He was just as adrift as the rest of them, if not moreso. No, actually, he was the moreso in this equation.
He picked up the file carefully, closing it and taking it back downstairs with him. Maybe if he read through it, he would be able to understand what had driven Molly to -- as near as he could tell, anyway -- leave in the middle of the night and take off via climbing out her window. It was all he had, anyway, at least until Sam and Meg came home or called, or until Dean came by or called.
He was more than half hoping for a brilliant revelation that would tell him exactly where she was so he didn't have to deal with anything bothersome like having to try and call her. Even after so many years, he still didn't get cell phones. He knew how to use them, yes, and he knew what they did, but they still completely mystified him. It was why he avoided anything having to do with them as much as was... well... as much as was humanly possible.
Castiel sat on the couch and opened the file again, sitting it on the table in front of him and carefully spreading out the articles. At first glance, nothing particularly special struck him aside from the fact that Meg's disappearance and reappearance had actually been big enough in her town to merit newspaper coverage. It wasn't that he thought any one life to be less than another, it was just that he knew the mentality of people in large cities. They rarely noticed anything beyond their immediate existence. It was one of the reasons why Castiel enjoyed being more isolated. When he was more isolated, it was easy to pretend that he was still what he had once been. He could ignore his pesky encroaching humanity.
But even with her disappearance having been of note, there wasn't much to go on and certainly nothing to explain why Molly would have taken off because of it. He had to look deeper, that was the only answer. It was an answer he did not like, though. He had no choice, however, and so he went back to the articles, hoping to spot something he had missed. Something that would give him an actual idea.
Because if he had to tell Sam Winchester and Meg Masters that their daughter had taken off and he couldn't give them some kind of idea about where she was going, then there was going to be a problem. A big problem.
Molly had one big obstacle to her plan, the fact that she had to get out of town and several states over if she was going to start this at the source. And as much as she wanted to do that, as tempting as it was, she did have a little common sense left rolling around in her head. This entire plan suddenly seemed a whole lot less logical than it had when she'd been in the middle of climbing out her bedroom window.
She still had a few thoughts on the matter, though, things that she needed to figure out before she could actually make any moves towards resolving her conflict. And so she was sitting at a table in an all-night coffee shop, taking advantage of the free internet -- being Sam Winchester's daughter and sharing his love of all things technological, she had of course taken her laptop with her -- to go over the same articles she had in the folder at home.
"Need a refill?" the lone barista called from where she stood behind the counter.
"Since it's kind of impossible to just snatch the pot away from you and drink directly from it? Yes, Constance. Yes, I do," Molly said with a grin as she stood and made her way over to the counter. The barista was one of the two or three who worked the night shifts, which meant that she was familiar with Molly and Molly was familiar with her.
"What's got you here tonight?" the young woman asked. "Doing the homework thing?" As far as Constance was aware, Molly was just a college student. She'd made that assumption and Molly had never made any effort to dissuade her. It just worked to have Constance think she was nothing more than an insomniac college student. It was a little slice of normal, a slice that Molly really really liked sometimes.
"Yeah, Con," Molly said, digging a dollar out of her pocket to pay for the refill and instead dropping it into the tip jar when Constance waved her off from payment. "Or trying to, anyway. Homework is fucking evil."
"Sing it, sister." Constance grinned as she poured Molly's refill. "I certainly don't miss those days."
"Don't make me slap you," Molly threatened, laughing. "You know I'll do it."
This was why Molly came here, the easy carefree banter. She didn't have a whole lot of friends -- not entirely unexpected, given the life she led. Hell, the closest thing she really had to a friend was her "Aunt" Jo's daughter Willa. And that wasn't a case of friendship so much as it was a case of hunters' children growing up in roughly the same area most of the time. Most of the time it'd been either play with Willa or play with nobody at all. Of course, she'd chosen to play with nobody at all just as often as she'd chosen to play with Willa, but still. When Willa was the only option available, she got tired of the other girl pretty damn quick. (Though to be fair, Willa had probably gotten tired of her, too.)
But when she came here, for a few minutes or a few hours, she could pretend she wasn't a hunter. She could pretend she was just a normal teenage girl. She always knew she'd have to go right back to reality at the end of it, she always knew that it was just pretend, but as long as she knew it, she didn't see the problem. Of course, the same could almost be said for her father. He'd turned his back on the entire hunting lifestyle and look where that'd gotten him. But there was one key difference -- she always knew she was pretending. Sam had tried to fool himself that it was reality.
The chime above the door made its delicate glass noise; both Molly and Constance looked towards it. "Oh, it's just you," Molly said to the young man who'd just come through the door, laptop bag over one shoulder. "Hey, Byron." There was a casual tone to her voice that she didn't entirely feel. And who could blame her? Byron was seriously cute.
"Hey, yourself," Byron said, dropping his laptop bag down on a tabletop. "What're you doing here, Mols? You're not usually here at this time of night."
It was true; she was usually there even later. And she couldn't help being a little gleeful that a hot guy like Byron had noticed her comings and goings, even as the rational hunter part of her brain pointed out that if someone had picked up on her patterns, it was probably a bad thing. No, not probably. It was definitely a bad thing. It meant predictability, and predictability could mean death for a hunter.
But at the same time, Molly was also a seventeen-year-old girl, and what seventeen-year-old girl didn't like the attention from an attractive guy?
"Eh," she said oh so eloquently, shrugging a shoulder. "Just needed to get out for a while."
"Parents driving you crazy again?" he asked with a sympathetic smile.
"No, this time it's my uncle." She rolled her eyes. "He seems to think that just because my parents aren't home at the moment, it gives him permission to start running my life."
"That's family members for you," Constance said with a rueful shake of her head. "They do tend to get like that."
"And as much as I love him to bits, it's annoying as hell sometimes," Molly said, finally making her way back over to her table and settling back down into her seat. "Well, most of the time. But I know he means well. Really, I do."
"You don't exactly sound convinced." Byron studied Molly thoughtfully. "Problems at home?"
"Not really," Molly said honestly, taking a sip of her coffee. "Nerves are just a little frayed. It always happens when Mom and Dad are off traveling. Things will be fine once they're home again, they always are."
"Well, that's good," he said with a nod. "Family's important. You guys should all get along."
"Oh, we do," she said. "We do. It's just that my uncle's not exactly used to babysitting me -- and he doesn't even need to anymore, but that's a whole different story for a whole different time."
Plus honestly, most of the time she didn't even mind Castiel's constant being around while her parents were gone. Mostly because when they were gone, she was gone, too. Which actually meant that the time consisted of Castiel rambling around the house all by his lonesome.
"Do you really need a babysitter, though?" Byron countered.
"You try telling that to my parents," Molly said, rolling her eyes. "I'm a girl and I'm their only child. I think they're genetically obligated to worry about me so damn much."
"Makes sense, I guess." Byron shrugged. "Parents do get kinda overprotective like that, sometimes."
Molly settled back in her seat, taking another sip of her coffee and turning her attention back to the computer. There were a lot of words in the articles, a lot of words that amounted to absolutely nothing that would help her after all. Goddamn it. She'd been so sure that this was going to lead her somewhere.
... and why had she been so sure, anyway? It was almost like something had made her so sure. Something other than her own mind. And how could that be?
Oh, it wasn't that she thought it was impossible. She knew that almost any kind of compulsion was possible, but specifically on her? Not so much with the possible. She had enough protections on her to... well, she had a lot. So for someone -- or something -- to get past all that, it meant...
Oh shit this was a trap, was what it meant.
A low chuckle came from the other side of the room, setting Molly's hackles to rising; in one smooth move, she shoved back from the table, stood, pivoted, and pulled her gun.
"I shoulda known something was wrong with you," she said to Byron. "You were almost too interested in me. And stupid me, I didn't catch it."
"Nope," Byron agreed cheerfully. "You didn't. Sucks to be you right now, huh?"
"Constance, go out the back," Molly said sharply. "Don't talk, don't argue, just fucking do it!"
Constance didn't need any encouragement.
"What do you want with me?" Molly asked, her gun still firmly trained on Byron. "Who's got you up to this stupid little plot, huh?"
"He wants to speak with you, Molly, has wanted to for a while now."
She didn't need to ask who.
"Tell Lucifer that I appreciate the thought, but I have no interest in speaking with him."
"Oh, come now, that's not true." Byron grinned. "You know you're curious about him. You know you want to see how he stacks up against the stories you've been told by your parents all seventeen years of your life. After all, he's been after your father for two decades; he's got to be pretty fearsome, right?"
"He's fearsome because he's the fucking Devil, not because of how long he's been harassing my family." Molly glared, fighting the urge to pull the trigger. She wasn't afraid to shoot him, not by any means, but shooting him when she didn't know just how much of a trap it was would be pretty freakin' stupid in her own admittedly biased opinion.
"Okay, point," Byron conceded. "But either way, you're still intrigued by him and you know it."
"I'm also intrigued by pit vipers, that doesn't mean I want to go rolling around in a bed of them."
Byron laughed, his eyes going a solid color. "Oh, you are a spitfire. That's genetic, I bet. You come from hunters; it's kind of hard not to have spirit. It's a survival mechanism."
Molly knew she looked bored as she said, "Okay, could you just do me a favor and get to the point? Not in the mood to be trading witty banter with anybody right now, much less a demon. So if you're not gonna start getting to the point, I'm gonna start with the shooting."
"I wouldn't do that," came a voice from the doorway. "I'm rather fond of him. He's one of my more useful minions."
Molly looks towards the speaker, doing her best not to stare. "You know, I'm pretty sure you've heard this already, but almost twenty years in that body? He's not looking so hot anymore, Lucifer. I'm pretty sure Nick doesn't appreciate what you've done to him."
"He knew what he was in for," Lucifer replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "And anyway, that's not what I'm here about."
"What are you here about, then?"
His slow, lazy smile was all the answer she needed.