Finding Linda Tran, for mako_lies (part 1)
Title: Finding Linda Tran
Recipient: mako_lies
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 21,844
Warnings: language, abuse of scene changes
Author's Notes: I had a lot of fun writing this story, and I really hope it makes more sense than it did to me when I was doing my final edit, because I kinda ran out of time to fix it. I’d like to thank the mods for running this gift exchange, and for the extension, and mako_lies for the prompt-seriously, so much fun writing this, when Kevin was a character I’d never considered writing before. I hope I managed to steer clear of your dislikes and hit at least some of your likes, and that you at least sort of enjoy this humble little (completely massive) offering.
I’m sorry it’s so long?
Summary: A day (or more) in the Un-life of a Prophet of the Lord. At some point, those are actually supposed to get easier, right?
***
Kevin had never given much thought to what would happen to him after he died. Prophets of the Lord went to Heaven, right? The other stuff-how he was going to die, when, with who-really didn’t bear thinking about. He’d done his freaking out. And even if most days he was really pretty sure he’d bite it sooner rather than later, well, everybody died. Right?
*
He hadn’t expected to open his eyes in the Bunker Library, his books and notes swept to the floor, a chair thrown across the room, the lamp in pieces. He hadn’t expected to see Castiel in the doorway, newly arrived and looking worried. And by the table. . . .
“Dean?”
*
When he’d been five, Kevin won his school spelling bee. He had been competing against fifth graders, and before it started, his mom told him: “Stand up straight. Speak clearly. You will not find the spellings on the ceiling, so do not be lollygagging. You are a Tran.” Finished with his tie, she tugged the front of his shirt straight, then smoothed her hands over his shoulders. Expression stern, she studied him critically, then smiled, so small his friends wouldn’t have known it was a smile. But he knew. “Knock ‘em dead, Kevin.”
They went out for ice cream after.
*
Kevin didn’t remember much from when he died. He remembered Dean asking him to trust him. He remembered paging through his notes, looking for something he might have missed. He remembered worrying about Dean, about the way he’d been acting. He remembered Sam coming into the library. He remembered Sam and then-
*
Standing in the veil was a little like living as a radio stuck between stations. Voices filled his ears like static, talking over and over each other. Sometimes one would slip through-
-“Where am I?”-
-“You can’t do this to me, Amelia!”-
-“What is this place?”-
-“You can’t just make me disappear, Brian!”-
-“Can anybody hear me? Please, is anybody there?”-
-and Kevin would try to talk to them, but it never mattered what he said, or how loudly. They never heard him. Or maybe they did and they just couldn’t find him. Like he couldn’t find them.
*
Sam was screaming, voice tucked behind his teeth, head held back by Castiel, neck bared, a needle dug into the flesh under his ear. It looked painful.
“Why?” Castiel demanded.
“We-we-we have to find Gadreel,” Sam said. His eyes were half-lidded, unfocused. But for a moment, Kevin felt certain they saw him.
“Sam,” he breathed, “what are you doing?”
“No. Why must the Winchesters run toward death?”
Run. . . .
Sam stood before him, shoulders back, tall and towering, expression grave. Then he lifted his hand and-
*
Burning.
Kevin sniffed the air, brow furrowing as the smell of smoke intensified. He had ten more minutes for his calculus problem sets, then he had to complete his physics homework before he could proofread his Literature essay, and his mom-
Cursing, Kevin slapped the pencil down on his notebook and scrambled to his feet. His mom had asked him to turn off the oven in fifteen minutes-his gaze darted to his monitor where a reminder flashed accusingly and the clock read 5:00-twenty minutes ago. His mom didn’t allow running in the house, but under the circumstances he believed she would make an exception.
He could see the smoke twisting toward the ceiling by the time he slid to a stop in front of the stove. Quickly, he turned it off and the fan on, then hesitantly cracked the over door.
Smoke billowed out, acrid and biting, but he didn’t see any orange flames in the moment before his eyes teared up under the assault, so that was a plus. Still, smoke was bad so he waved it away before hunting down pot holders. Pulling out the casserole felt a little he imagined handling a bomb would feel, only it wasn’t the casserole he was worried about going off.
Somehow, he was going to have to explain the blackened mess to his mom.
*
He had to find his mom.
*
There was no light in the veil-not that Kevin could see, anyway. But it wasn’t dark, either. It was diffuse, like sunlight through fog, bright with no discernible source. He couldn’t see the ground beneath his feet or a ceiling over his head, no walls beyond the reach of his fingers. If it weren't for the screams, he wouldn’t have been sure he wasn’t alone.
If it weren't for the voices he could sometimes hear talking despite the screams, he would have thought this was hell.
“Hello?” he tried, grimacing when the word came out soft, muffled. Drawing a deeper breath, he tried again: “My name’s Kevin Tran. Can anyone hear me?”
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” a voice said behind him, clear as if she stood right behind him.
When he whirled, there was no one there.
“Try to imagine you’re talking on a telephone. Go ahead. Picture it.”
He patted his pockets, looking for his cell phone, even as he kept trying to see the girl through the fog. Through what had to be fog. “Is that how you do it?”
She laughed. “No, I’m used to it. I’ve been here a long time.”
“Where is here?”
“Don’t you know?” she whispered in his ear. He jerked back instinctively, whirling to face her, but she wasn’t there. “This is where the souls go when they choose not to crossover. Nice, right?”
Like so much else dealing with the supernatural, “nice” wasn’t the word Kevin would use. “I didn’t get to choose,” he told her. At least, he didn’t think he did.
“No one here did. Well.” He got the impression, if he could have seen her, she would have shrugged. “No one who died after the Gates closed, anyway. I got the impression from the woman trying to lead me into the Great Beyond that that kind of thing didn’t usually happen.”
Kevin stared. “You mean that didn’t just affect the Angels?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
How many people did that mean were stuck in the veil? “When the Gates closed. They closed off Heaven completely?”
“I guess,” the girl said. “Look, you’re the first idiot who showed up and didn’t immediately start screaming. I appreciate that. The crazies get a little hard to deal with. There’s no way to shut them up, yanno? But I just live here, so if you’re looking for the Meaning of Life or some shit like that, you’re gonna have to look somewhere else.”
“No! No, no, that’s not-” Angels and Demons, and a lightning bolt from the sky that left him so far from his ten year plan he’d have to dig to China through the middle of the earth to find it pretty much took care of that curiosity for him. “I really just want to find my mom.”
“Huh.” The girl’s voice drifted off to his left, sounding distant and then closer again. “Well, not to sound harsh, but. Did she die?”
If you can’t find one Tran, find another.
Demons lied. How many times had Dean and Sam said so? And it wasn’t like Kevin didn’t have firsthand experience. But Crowley-the lying bastard-hadn’t just told him she was dead. He’d also said she was still alive. Which was the lie?
Let me go, and I’ll give you back your mother.
“I-I don’t know,” he said. If he concentrated, he could see Crowley’s smug, evil face, blood smeared around his nose, his mouth, up in his hairline, cuts peppered across his left cheek, knuckles bloodied. He should have gone after the bastard’s head with the mallet-he was a demon, it wouldn’t have killed him.
But it might have kept him from talking.
How stupid did it make him to think the King of Hell might have been telling the truth about his mom? Part of it, anyway. He pursed his lips. “Is, uh-is there any way to find out if someone’s in Heaven?”
“We can find out who’s not,” the girl said, with the kind of easy, careless confidence Kevin-dammit-associated with Dean. “Probably, anyway. I’ll put some feelers out.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
How he knew she was leaving, he didn’t know, but the thought spiked anxiety through his non-existent body. He’d work on how he could feel anxious later. “Wait!”
She turned around to look at him. Or she felt like she did. “You got something else you want, Kevin Tran?”
“Her name’s Linda. Linda Tran.”
“Got it.”
“What, um.” He pushed a hand through his hair, inanely hoping it wasn’t sticking up funny, or plastered down, and that he wasn’t blushing. God, he didn’t even know if she could see him. It was stupid to still feel so awkward, suddenly, when he hadn’t been awkward at all just a few minutes ago. It wasn’t like he was asking her out on a date. He still had to clear his throat to continue. “What’s your name?”
The slow, wicked smile he thought he sensed had to be all in his head. Right?
“Alexis,” she said. “Don’t forget it.”
*
Someone was crying.
That wasn’t really new or earth-shattering news-multiple someones had been crying since he’d arrived. But this someone sounded close like Alexis had sounded close. More present. He looked around, trying to pin down what direction it was coming from. “Hello?”
Kevin didn’t hear an answer or see another person magically appear. Not that he’d really expected either. The crying also didn’t stop, and it sounded-young. Like, little kid young. Kevin didn’t know anything about little kids.
And, okay, he’d been one once, had the embarrassing baby pictures his mom had saved to prove it and everything, but he hadn’t really been a normal kid. He’d been more interested in books and school than balls and trucks, and-well. What did you say to a dead kid, anyway? If he even could talk to him.
Now really wasn’t the best time for Dean to be in his head saying crap like, “This is what we do, kid. We help people.” Because, first: since when had Dean Winchester become the voice of his conscience? And, second: Castiel had said he only had to be a Prophet until he died, then the Word became someone else’s problem.
Well, he was dead. He didn’t have to do anything.
And what about human decency, Kevin? A voice that sounded suspiciously like his mom’s demanded. Did that become someone else’s problem, too?
“Mom?” He looked around again, saw nothing but foggy white.
The crying continued.
Kevin grimaced, but it didn’t seem like anyone else was going to do anything. “Suck it up, Kevin,” he told himself. “You wanted to be President.” Talking to a kid who’d died and was stuck between worlds had to be easier than running a nation. Right?
*
Walking in the veil was a little like walking on a treadmill: your legs moved, you did the work, but the scenery never changed.
He wasn’t sure how he was going to talk to a kid he couldn’t see if he could even find him, but he figured he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. If he ever came to a bridge, because at this point finding anything seemed unlikely.
Which was, of course, when the white fog tinted-green, like someone had laid down a transparency.
Suddenly, he had the impression of grass underfoot and leaves overhead. The kid sitting, knees drawn up to his chest, in front of the transparent tree trunk was all solid, though. Kevin was so surprised to actually see someone else he stopped walking.
“Hello?”
The kid sniffed and scrubbed a hand from his nose, across his eye, and back through his hair. Gross.
“Are you-are you okay?”
Very wet, very dark brown eyes peered up at him. “I want my mommy.”
“Oh.” Kevin glanced around. The colors and definition faded out the further they moved from the kid at their epicenter, trailing away into featureless white in every direction. “Well-”
“She’s in there.” The kid pointed. When Kevin followed the little, crooked finger, he found a yellow house with blood red trim, a giant bush stretching to the roof at either corner. The driveway disappeared after only a couple of feet. To Kevin, the house looked empty, lifeless, and more than a little unreal.
Moving closer, he crouched in front of the boy. “Why don’t you go see her?”
Tears welled in the dark eyes and the kid’s bottom lip trembled.
No, Kevin thought, slightly panicked. No, not that. “I mean-”
“M-mommy can’t-can’t s-sse-eee me,” the kid said. Teardrops slid down his cheeks. “I went s-swimming and the wa-water went up m-my nose and she c-ca-can’t s-see me.”
“Ok,” Kevin said quickly. “Ok. You’re ok. Um.” He looked around, seeking inspiration, but the yellow house was still the only thing visible besides them. He could work with that. “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Ethan James Cartwright.”
“Ethan. My name’s Kevin. Do you think you could show me your room?”
The kid perked up, his knees coming down and his face brightening. “You wanna see my room?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok!”
Faster than Kevin would have thought possible, Ethan had pushed to his feet and grabbed Kevin’s hand, pulling him along with surprising strength.
*
They passed through the door. Kevin was pretty sure he wasn’t ever going to get used to that, especially since it had looked solid the instant they stepped foot on the porch. Ethan either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared, just put his head down and kept going.
The inside was dark, the lights off, the blinds partially closed. He thought he heard movement behind one of the walls.
“Mommy’s baking cookies,” Ethan declared, and pulled them around a corner, down a hall, and into a room painted in primary colors. The sun shone brightly outside the window. It lit up the room when Ethan pulled the blinds open. Kevin could see another house on the other side of the fence.
“This is Bumblebee.” The kid turned around with a blocky, yellow and black action figure in his hand. “He’s funny. And he protects Sam no matter what because they’re friends.”
-Sam lifted his hand-
“And this is my bed.” Kevin bounced on it on his knees, Bumblebee clutched to his chest. “Mommy and Daddy gave me Bumblebee sheets for my birthday. Aren’t they awesome?”
“Pretty awesome.”
“Do you want to play?”
“Ah-” No, but Kevin couldn’t quite force the word out in the face of Ethan’s pleading puppy eyes.
“I have Opt’mus Prime, too.”
He was so screwed.
*
“I want to go home,” Kevin told the white fog.
It didn’t so much as turn beige.
Closing his eyes, he tried picturing his mother’s face, instead. “I want to see my mother.” She’d be so vexed with him for getting himself dead. He was supposed to be smarter than that.
Smart enough to figure out how to manifest as a ghost, too, but that, apparently, was asking too much because his surroundings stayed stubbornly white. For all he knew about Angels and Demons, and all he’d read on the Tablets, how spirits moved between worlds had never come up.
He was seriously regretting that oversight now.
“Come on, Kevin, think!” he murmured. It couldn’t be that hard if Ethan James Cartwright could do it at six years old and not-long dead. He just had to figure out what he was missing.
*
Alexis introduced him to John. John referred him to Ahmed. Ahmed thought he should talk to George.
George turned out to be Georgia.
None of them knew anything about his mom. He wasn’t sure why she’d thought they would.
*
Kevin had met Channing in seventh grade, but not in class.
He’d known of her since third grade when his mom had moved them to Neighbor, Michigan and enrolled him East Neighbor Elementary. She’d been in his class. She’d been sitting in the second row, third desk back, when his mom walked him to the classroom, introduced him to the teacher, then lead him to the back of the room to help him put away his things. She’d been the only other Asian student in his class.
He’d been intensely aware of every eye on him, and his stomach had churned nauseatingly.
“Relax,” his mom had ordered. “Kevin, you’re going to be fine. Study. Make friends.” He’d been relieved, under the humiliation when his mom leaned forward and lowered her voice to intone: “Maybe even a girlfriend.” But he hadn’t felt it until he’d been sitting down in the fifth row, second desk from the back and wishing he could disappear.
It had been nothing, and exactly, like he’d felt in the high school auditorium, trying out for the youth orchestra.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Channing had announced from beside him, violin clutched in white-knuckled fingers. He’d thought he’d feel better if he was doing this on violin. He’d only been playing cello for a year.
He’d nodded.
“At least there aren’t too many this year.”
There’d been twelve. After the oldest kids had aged out, the orchestra had had twenty-two members. He’d read, before coming that orchestras ranged in size from fifteen members to more than a hundred, depending on the type of music being performed. The conductor had told them before they’d started, that no one who passed the competences would be cut-that they fit the music to the members, rather than the members to the music. But maybe he wasn’t good enough.
“Do you think they grade on a curve?”
The idea had been absurd enough, that Kevin had looked at her askance.
She’d grimaced. “I hate pass/fail. It’s like giving everybody a bow and arrow and telling them to hit the target, but then you don’t know where they’re going to put the target and you just have to hope you can shoot straight enough, far enough, and-”
“Channing,” he’d interrupted. “We know exactly what we have to do. The requirements are posted on their website.”
“Right,” she’d said. “We can do this.”
“Right.”
“So, I know the conventions are different now that we’re no longer in grade school. There’s the hormones to consider, the whole girl/boy dynamic and incursions into dating, and everything but-do you want to be friends?”
*
Alexis showed up-Kevin had no idea how many days later.
“I think I found her,” she announced. She was wearing dark wash jeans with a pink Princess shirt, a crown picked out in shiny rhinestones across the front. Her hair was dark and curly, and it shifted over her shoulders when stretched out a hand to him. “Come on.”
Kevin was a little thrown by the fact he could actually see her.
Alexis quirked her eyebrows. “Are you really going to leave me hanging?”
She waggled her outstretched hand, reminding him for one brief moment of the gymnastics chick from Bring It On-his familiarity with which, the guys were never going to know-doing sarcastic jazz hands. The absurdity of it reminded him he had something to be doing. He shook the thought away quickly, and hurried forward.
“Sorry. Where are we going?”
He couldn’t read the look on her face when she said: “Maybe don’t worry about that too much.”
“What?”
Then her fingers wrapped around his.
They didn’t feel like fingers, more like-electricity, maybe, or energy. He didn’t have time to pull away or demand answers. He didn’t even have time to blink. Just one moment he was standing in the middle of white nothingness with Alexis and the next moment he was-
Standing in the middle of white nothingness with Alexis. She dropped his hand even as Kevin twisted around, trying to see something that would explain why he felt like he was in a different place.
“Are you ready?” Alexis demanded.
“What did you do?”
Alexis smiled at him but didn’t answer. She faced a little past him and called, “Linda?”
“Hello?” a new voice said. It was high and sweet, and lightly accented, the pronunciation precise. And it wasn’t familiar at all. “I am Linda Tran.”
“Hi.” His voice trembled, and Kevin cleared his throat, throwing a glance at Alexis that the girl ignored. “I’m Kevin. Kevin Tran.”
“Hello?” Linda Tran repeated after a beat, her inflection unchanged. “I am Linda Tran.”
“Hi,” Kevin repeated, a little louder, but it didn’t get the woman’s attention, and after a moment he heard: “Hello? I am Linda Tran,” again. He couldn’t decide if it would be more or less creepy if he could actually see the woman. “Why can’t she hear us?” he asked Alexis.
“Some of them can’t.” She shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t know she’s dead, or maybe she does and her brain can’t accept it. I don’t know. There isn’t exactly anyone around to ask.”
He wondered if Dean would have any ideas, or Sam, or Castiel. “Why can’t I see her?” he asked, instead. “Why can I see you?”
“The Veil takes a little getting used to,” she answered, even as the other woman again said: “Hello? I am Linda Tran.” It made Kevin’s skin crawl. Or it would have, if he still had any. “I think part of it is how you perceive your reality, and part of it is how they perceive their reality. Like, you know this isn’t the real world, isn’t really a place in the conventional sense, so your brain doesn’t translate it the same way. Linda does. So because you’re not in the same place, you can’t see each other.”
Kevin thought about it. It made a certain amount of sense he wasn’t ready to attribute to anything presumably touched by God and Angels. But-“That doesn’t explain why I can see you.”
“Maybe I’m just meeting you where you are.” She grinned.
“And it doesn’t explain Ethan.”
Alexis cocked her head, tilting it like a dog trying to hear its master’s voice better. “Who?”
“The-” Kevin opened his mouth before changing his mind. “That doesn’t matter. That woman-” Hello? I am Linda Tran. “-isn’t my mother.”
Slowly, Alexis nodded. A slight smile managed to turn her expression playful, almost sardonic. “Then we’ll keep looking.”
He blinked and she was gone.
*
The veil was louder after Alexis left. He could still hear Linda-Hello? I am-but now he could also hear a guy somewhere further to the right: “What do you mean, the tomatoes are gone? I ordered thirty pounds of tomatoes!”
And a woman: “No, please! Please, stop! I don’t-Please, stop!”
And another: “Is this the bus to Oakland? I really need to get to Oakland.”
Kevin pressed his hands to his ears, squeezing harder as the voices seemed to multiply, speaking louder and louder, clearer and clearer, until he thought his brain would implode, until-
*
Sam had told him about ghosts once. They’d been sitting at some table, in some motel, searching through books for something, and Dean had been passed out on one of the beds.
“So ghosts are real, too?” Kevin had asked.
“Ghosts are real,” Sam had said. “They, uh. Some of them, when they died, they couldn’t move on. Unfinished business, or whatever. Some of them choose not to. All of them, no matter why they stuck around-revenge or love or whatever-if they stick around long enough, they eventually go bad.”
*
Hesitantly, Kevin pulled his hands away from his ears and straightened, looking around, hal-expecting a monster to jump out of the fog and bite him.
But the voices were gone. Or, not gone, but back to staticky-sounding background noise, the individual voices indiscernible. Slowly, Kevin relaxed, tension leeching out of his back and shoulders until he was just-
There.
Kevin could really understand how this place could drive a spirit mad.
*
In the wake of that realization, he might have, maybe, been a little, teeny bit depressed. Maybe.
*
He felt Alexis before he saw her, which was really weird, especially when it felt kind of like she’d put a hand on his back, only without getting that close, or using her hand.
Cool as it might have been three years ago, Kevin was really not prepared to learn ghosts could communicate via some form of telepathy.
“I’m sorry.” She grimaced once he turned to face her. “I should have warned you.”
“Warned me about what?”
“We’re all tied to a particular place,” Alexis explained. “Sometimes that place is where we died, or where we lived, or where we left something important. But it’s always one place, and moving away from that place-” She grimaced, expressively.
Kevin remembered the voices digging into his brain like shards of broken glass and grimaced, too.
“In the real world, places are finite. You’re only ever in one place or another. But the Veil isn’t any particular place. In some ways, it’s all places, and no place. And I thought, since you don’t perceive any particular place, you might have more freedom of movement than the rest of us. I didn’t realize part it was also a function of your protection.”
He frowned. “Protection?”
“The Veil is a peaceful place, Kevin,” Alexis insisted. “Spirits come here to rest. Does this sound peaceful to you?” Her head cocked, listening to the voices around them, voices that Kevin could only vaguely hear, but that had never, as long as he’d been aware of them, sounded peaceful. Her gaze was fierce when it locked back on his. “They don’t belong here. None of them do.”
“Uh-”
“Sorry,” she interrupted, before Kevin could figure out what to say. “I should g-”
“Wait!”
Her lips pinched together, irritation wiping out the sorrow that had reminded him of Sam-of his pinched expression when he said, if they stick around long enough, they eventually go bad-but she waited. He wanted to comfort her, or offer a solution, but the irritation was shades of Dean and he wasn’t sure how she’d take it. So he did the next best thing, and hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.
“Crowley,” he told her, continuing when she cocked her head curiously. “He’s the demon who took my mother. If anyone saw her, she was probably with him.”
Alexis’s lips formed the bastard’s name, then she nodded, her gaze already miles away before she moved an inch. “That should help.”
“I am sorry,” she added, with a dark-eyed glance, before she disappeared.
*
Sorry, he decided, wasn’t quite the word for it.
Back at the Bunker, he’d have been able to get on the laptop, try and track Crowley through omens or credit cards, or hack into the traffic cameras and see if he could get a hit that way. The search he’d run on his mom’s cell phone right after Crowley had told him she was dead had come up empty, but he could run that again. Something might have changed.
And that was before he got to the Men of Letters’ library. He was sure he could’ve found a locator spell, one that could defeat whatever warding Crowley had put up to hide her. Or he could have found one to summon her spirit and at least known if she was somewhere in the veil. Sam could’ve helped him look, and Dean.
But none of that was open to him here. Here, he couldn’t even figure out how to effectively communicate with the locals.
Except Ethan.
He started walking the direction he thought he’d headed the first time he found the kid. He had no way to know if he was right, or if he was headed in the opposite direction, or even what he’d say when he found the kid, but any direction, right now, was better than standing still. So he walked.
There was no physical marker, no change in the colors around him, but between one step and the next, the voices suddenly got louder, closer. He took another step.
The screams ratcheted higher. They pressed against his brain, an almost physical presence that tightened like a vice. Then they started pulling, stretching, and Kevin felt like he was being shredded, like claws had hooked into his flesh and bone and muscle and started pulling in different directions. He’d never felt anything like it and he thought he might have screamed.
Then he didn’t feel anything at all.
*
If he’d been asked, before he died, he’d have said passing out inside the veil was impossible. Syncope was a physical phenomenon, occurring when the brain failed to receive sufficient oxygen. So, no brain, plus no blood, equaled no loss of consciousness.
Maybe he’d write a paper about it, if he ever got his hands on some paper.
*
The knocking caught Kevin by surprise. He twisted, trying to find the source, and ended up looking at the ceiling. The relative ceiling, anyway, since the fog didn’t have walls, or gravity, and by the time he approached the source, it was a wall.
Literally.
Kevin pressed his hands against white that looked no different than what he’d already passed through, and frowned. It felt smooth, but less like the wall of a house and more like the top of his mother’s coffee table.
The knock repeated-one, two-and-three-four, five, six-and Kevin could feel the vibrations under his hands. “Hello?”
Two knocks.
Not a wall, Kevin mused as he slid his hands down, then up, then over. So, maybe a door? Obediently, his brain conjured an imagine of the door at the Bunker-not that that helped him see the one under his hands.
His fingers bumped over a ridge. On the other side, the texture was different, rougher. Brick, he thought, or concrete, but the substance didn’t really matter. He retreated back to the door, tracing just inside the ridge until his hand bumped a protrusion. He twisted and pulled, realizing at the last second that opening a door to a complete stranger probably wasn’t the smartest thing he had ever done.
He opened it, anyway. He was already dead. What was the worst that could happen?
The man standing on the other side was balding, six inches taller than Kevin, and smiling. He wore khaki slacks and a polo shirt, and strongly reminded the Prophet of the Baptist missionaries who’d gone door-to-door when he was six, trying to “save” him and his mother.
“You’re Kevin, right?” the man asked, hand thrust out to shake.
Kevin eyed the hand warily. “Yeah. Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m Paul,” the man said, still grinning. “We’re adjacent.”
“What?”
“I’m your neighbor.” Paul raised his hand, wiggling his fingers slightly, and Kevin took it with the hope it would make the man go away. He couldn’t really remember what he’d been doing, but his head felt vague and distantly achy in a way he recognized, from when he’d last had a migraine. “Pleased to meet you.”
He’d always thought pain disappeared when you died. “Pleased to meet you,” he echoed, rubbing idly at his head. It took a moment to register that he could see the guy, and that that was odd. Maybe the migraine had fixed his perception issue?
Paul kept standing there, grinning.
“Was there something you wanted?” Kevin asked, finally.
“Oh!” The guy bounced up on his toes like he’d been goosed. “Yes. Yes, there was. See, I heard about your mom, how you’re looking for her, don’t know if she’s alive or dead. And I just wanted to know-ya’see, it’s a little hard for us to communicate around here. So I just wanted to know if there was anything I could pass along that might help.”
“Pass along,” Kevin repeated.
“Only way to find out anything is to ask,” Paul informed him cheerfully. “So?”
“Uh.” Kevin really wished his brain didn’t feel like mush. Or that he’d paid more attention to ghosts before he’d become one of them. “My mom’s name is Linda Tran. She’s Asian, has short hair. Crowley’s about my height, maybe a couple inches taller, wears a suit, has a-British accent? I think. He has a lot of people who work for him.”
“Okey-dokey.” Paul clapped his hands. “I’ll just get out of your hair, then. God bless.”
Kevin poked his head out after the guy moved away, trying to get a look around-
And pulled back, fast, hand clamped to his head as his headache spiked. It eased off again, as fast as it had come, leaving only the memory behind.
That didn’t make it any easier to process the sheer press of people he’d glimpsed on the other side.
*
Kevin paced. He didn’t have the handy distraction of the Tablet, or any of the books from the Men of Letter’s library, or the more vexing distraction of Sam and Dean’s various missions and the demands thereof, so he paced. He paced off every dimension he could think of, until he was pretty sure he’d stepped on every square inch available to him.
He was pretty sure-say about eighty percent sure-that the dimensions matched the Bunker’s War Room (named enthusiastically by Dean), minus the staircase, the light-up map table, and the banks of computers.
He didn’t know what to do with that knowledge.
He didn’t know what to do, period.
*
Leaving the faux Bunker wasn’t really an option, but that fact was probably why Paul stopped by every day. Or, what Kevin decided to call a day, anyway. He’d spent the better part of a year alone on a houseboat. He wasn’t prepared to consider the idea that some strange dead guy he’d never met before felt the need to check up on him multiple times a day when even his mother hadn’t (after he’d stopped answering her calls).
That didn’t make it less weird.
“How’re you doing, Kevin?” Paul asked once Kevin opened the door, hands folded neatly over his stomach, cheerful smile omnipresent.
“Ok.” Kevin’s fingers twitched against the door and he curled them into a fist. Purgatory might have been where the monsters went after they died, but he was convinced the veil was what Catholics meant when they spoke of it. Every myth had a kernel of truth, right? “How do you deal with all the free time?”
He’d found himself wishing for the Angel Tablet yesterday-or for a demon to pop in, or an angel, just for something to do.
Paul laughed. “Time doesn’t mean the same here,” he said. He didn’t come in-couldn’t, possibly, Kevin would have to remember to find out-but he did settle comfortably in front of the open door, cross-legged and straight-backed, his expression fond.
Kevin didn’t really understand it, but the man hadn’t been put off by his hostility when he showed up a second time, with no news and no plans aside from conversing.
“We’re all going to Heaven,” he’d sniped.”Pretty sure you can lay off the missionary work now.”
Instead of taking offense, Paul had laughed. “I’m a youth counselor, not a missionary. But there’s more to missionary work than preaching salvation.” Then he’d laughed again. “Of course, once we enter the Lord’s service, we never really stop doing His work. Now, tell me: how are you doing?”
“But those of us who can,” Paul added now, eyebrows lifting meaningfully, “go home.”
“Go home,” he echoed.
“To the place that holds us.” He lifted his hands, laced his fingers together. “The place that binds our spirit, or our heart.”
Unbidden, he imagined his mother, discarded in a ditch, sightless eyes fogged over in death, skin gaping where the demons sliced her open. He dug clenched fists into his legs. “You mean ghosts?” he ground out.
“Ghosts, restless spirits-both refer to souls that can’t move on to their final resting place. Just, whereas traditional spirits can’t let go of their past life, our past life can’t quite let go of us.”
*
Kevin didn’t have any reason to hold on to his past life. His mother was dead, Sam was the reason he was, and trusting Dean had gotten him screwed just like he’d predicted it would. The Bunker had been a prison. His only purpose had been to help fight creatures he didn’t want anything to do with.
And, yeah, he knew Sam wasn’t actually the one who killed him. No matter what psychic abilities Sam Winchester had or did not have, no human had the ability to burn out another’s eyeballs, and considering his last memories, Kevin was ninety-nine percent sure that was what happened. Which meant an Angel, and-judging by Dean’s strange behavior-Sam hadn’t known about it, Dean had gotten in over his head because of it, and had been trying to fix it.
None of that really helped, but-
The Bunker was at least a place, a familiar one, and Sam and Dean offered the possibility of information. Besides which, he was already dead. What was the worst that could happen?
*
Making the decision was the easy part, it turned out.
“What the hell?” Kevin demanded of Paul when he opened the door, flailing his arms a little because there wasn’t enough room to move. He was already in the Bunker. He had been back to the Bunker since he died. He’d seen Dean and Cas there, in the library. He’d seen Cas and Sam-well, he wasn’t sure what room that had been, but it had been in the Bunker. And now that he was trying to do it on purpose, he couldn’t do it? Seriously-“What the hell!”
Paul’s eyebrows quirked toward his hairline, lips carefully not turned into a smile. Kevin glared at him on principle. He could tell when an adult was laughing at him. An older adult. “Perhaps if you shared your trouble?”
“I can’t get back! I tried meditating-” He counted off the points on his fingers. “-I tried pushing. I tried pulling. I tried knocking myself out against the wall. I tried leaving this thrice cursed prison cell. And nothing-nothing!-worked. What the hell!”
Kevin yanked at his hair, but the counselor caught his arm and tugged him square to the doorway, both arms caught in the other man’s grip. “Easy, Kevin,” he soothed. “Breathe.”
He forced air in through his teeth, then out.
“Now,” Paul said, giving Kevin’s wrists a shake, something his mother had done. Obediently, he unclenched his fists. “My opinion-and it is just my opinion, albeit a somewhat experienced one-is that you can’t go back, because you don’t want to go back.”
“Don’t want-”
“Ah!” Paul’s fingers tightened on his wrist in warning, and Kevin closed his mouth with a mutinous glare. “You think you want to. You have decided, in here-” He prodded Kevin’s head with a finger. “-that it’s what you need to do. But the Veil is not a place of reason, Kevin. It is a place of the heart, of emotion.” Pressing his hand over Kevin’s heart, he said, “It will never be enough to decide you want to go back, you have to feel it.”
Dropping his head, Kevin focused on breathing, on the warmth radiating from Paul’s hand. It shouldn’t have been warm, without a body, without a beating heart to circulate the blood, but it was. Slowly, his heartbeat slowed, and his breath evened out. Kevin nodded.
Paul patted his chest before withdrawing. “It doesn’t need to be good emotions, Kevin. The dark emotions have power, too. But it’s a consuming power. If you go too far, you will never regain yourself.”
“Ven-are you talking about vengeful spirits?”
Paul tipped his head in agreement. “Don’t let your hate consume you.”
“I don’t hate anyone,” Kevin said. But he remembered Crowley, bound and helpless, and wasn’t sure.
*
He tried meditating again. He imagined the walls bleeding into existence, the map rising beneath him. He breathed deep, looking for the smell of dust and old paper, gun oil and aftershave.
*
Paul came and went.
*
Continued in Part 2
Recipient: mako_lies
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 21,844
Warnings: language, abuse of scene changes
Author's Notes: I had a lot of fun writing this story, and I really hope it makes more sense than it did to me when I was doing my final edit, because I kinda ran out of time to fix it. I’d like to thank the mods for running this gift exchange, and for the extension, and mako_lies for the prompt-seriously, so much fun writing this, when Kevin was a character I’d never considered writing before. I hope I managed to steer clear of your dislikes and hit at least some of your likes, and that you at least sort of enjoy this humble little (completely massive) offering.
I’m sorry it’s so long?
Summary: A day (or more) in the Un-life of a Prophet of the Lord. At some point, those are actually supposed to get easier, right?
***
Kevin had never given much thought to what would happen to him after he died. Prophets of the Lord went to Heaven, right? The other stuff-how he was going to die, when, with who-really didn’t bear thinking about. He’d done his freaking out. And even if most days he was really pretty sure he’d bite it sooner rather than later, well, everybody died. Right?
*
He hadn’t expected to open his eyes in the Bunker Library, his books and notes swept to the floor, a chair thrown across the room, the lamp in pieces. He hadn’t expected to see Castiel in the doorway, newly arrived and looking worried. And by the table. . . .
“Dean?”
*
When he’d been five, Kevin won his school spelling bee. He had been competing against fifth graders, and before it started, his mom told him: “Stand up straight. Speak clearly. You will not find the spellings on the ceiling, so do not be lollygagging. You are a Tran.” Finished with his tie, she tugged the front of his shirt straight, then smoothed her hands over his shoulders. Expression stern, she studied him critically, then smiled, so small his friends wouldn’t have known it was a smile. But he knew. “Knock ‘em dead, Kevin.”
They went out for ice cream after.
*
Kevin didn’t remember much from when he died. He remembered Dean asking him to trust him. He remembered paging through his notes, looking for something he might have missed. He remembered worrying about Dean, about the way he’d been acting. He remembered Sam coming into the library. He remembered Sam and then-
*
Standing in the veil was a little like living as a radio stuck between stations. Voices filled his ears like static, talking over and over each other. Sometimes one would slip through-
-“Where am I?”-
-“You can’t do this to me, Amelia!”-
-“What is this place?”-
-“You can’t just make me disappear, Brian!”-
-“Can anybody hear me? Please, is anybody there?”-
-and Kevin would try to talk to them, but it never mattered what he said, or how loudly. They never heard him. Or maybe they did and they just couldn’t find him. Like he couldn’t find them.
*
Sam was screaming, voice tucked behind his teeth, head held back by Castiel, neck bared, a needle dug into the flesh under his ear. It looked painful.
“Why?” Castiel demanded.
“We-we-we have to find Gadreel,” Sam said. His eyes were half-lidded, unfocused. But for a moment, Kevin felt certain they saw him.
“Sam,” he breathed, “what are you doing?”
“No. Why must the Winchesters run toward death?”
Run. . . .
Sam stood before him, shoulders back, tall and towering, expression grave. Then he lifted his hand and-
*
Burning.
Kevin sniffed the air, brow furrowing as the smell of smoke intensified. He had ten more minutes for his calculus problem sets, then he had to complete his physics homework before he could proofread his Literature essay, and his mom-
Cursing, Kevin slapped the pencil down on his notebook and scrambled to his feet. His mom had asked him to turn off the oven in fifteen minutes-his gaze darted to his monitor where a reminder flashed accusingly and the clock read 5:00-twenty minutes ago. His mom didn’t allow running in the house, but under the circumstances he believed she would make an exception.
He could see the smoke twisting toward the ceiling by the time he slid to a stop in front of the stove. Quickly, he turned it off and the fan on, then hesitantly cracked the over door.
Smoke billowed out, acrid and biting, but he didn’t see any orange flames in the moment before his eyes teared up under the assault, so that was a plus. Still, smoke was bad so he waved it away before hunting down pot holders. Pulling out the casserole felt a little he imagined handling a bomb would feel, only it wasn’t the casserole he was worried about going off.
Somehow, he was going to have to explain the blackened mess to his mom.
*
He had to find his mom.
*
There was no light in the veil-not that Kevin could see, anyway. But it wasn’t dark, either. It was diffuse, like sunlight through fog, bright with no discernible source. He couldn’t see the ground beneath his feet or a ceiling over his head, no walls beyond the reach of his fingers. If it weren't for the screams, he wouldn’t have been sure he wasn’t alone.
If it weren't for the voices he could sometimes hear talking despite the screams, he would have thought this was hell.
“Hello?” he tried, grimacing when the word came out soft, muffled. Drawing a deeper breath, he tried again: “My name’s Kevin Tran. Can anyone hear me?”
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” a voice said behind him, clear as if she stood right behind him.
When he whirled, there was no one there.
“Try to imagine you’re talking on a telephone. Go ahead. Picture it.”
He patted his pockets, looking for his cell phone, even as he kept trying to see the girl through the fog. Through what had to be fog. “Is that how you do it?”
She laughed. “No, I’m used to it. I’ve been here a long time.”
“Where is here?”
“Don’t you know?” she whispered in his ear. He jerked back instinctively, whirling to face her, but she wasn’t there. “This is where the souls go when they choose not to crossover. Nice, right?”
Like so much else dealing with the supernatural, “nice” wasn’t the word Kevin would use. “I didn’t get to choose,” he told her. At least, he didn’t think he did.
“No one here did. Well.” He got the impression, if he could have seen her, she would have shrugged. “No one who died after the Gates closed, anyway. I got the impression from the woman trying to lead me into the Great Beyond that that kind of thing didn’t usually happen.”
Kevin stared. “You mean that didn’t just affect the Angels?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
How many people did that mean were stuck in the veil? “When the Gates closed. They closed off Heaven completely?”
“I guess,” the girl said. “Look, you’re the first idiot who showed up and didn’t immediately start screaming. I appreciate that. The crazies get a little hard to deal with. There’s no way to shut them up, yanno? But I just live here, so if you’re looking for the Meaning of Life or some shit like that, you’re gonna have to look somewhere else.”
“No! No, no, that’s not-” Angels and Demons, and a lightning bolt from the sky that left him so far from his ten year plan he’d have to dig to China through the middle of the earth to find it pretty much took care of that curiosity for him. “I really just want to find my mom.”
“Huh.” The girl’s voice drifted off to his left, sounding distant and then closer again. “Well, not to sound harsh, but. Did she die?”
If you can’t find one Tran, find another.
Demons lied. How many times had Dean and Sam said so? And it wasn’t like Kevin didn’t have firsthand experience. But Crowley-the lying bastard-hadn’t just told him she was dead. He’d also said she was still alive. Which was the lie?
Let me go, and I’ll give you back your mother.
“I-I don’t know,” he said. If he concentrated, he could see Crowley’s smug, evil face, blood smeared around his nose, his mouth, up in his hairline, cuts peppered across his left cheek, knuckles bloodied. He should have gone after the bastard’s head with the mallet-he was a demon, it wouldn’t have killed him.
But it might have kept him from talking.
How stupid did it make him to think the King of Hell might have been telling the truth about his mom? Part of it, anyway. He pursed his lips. “Is, uh-is there any way to find out if someone’s in Heaven?”
“We can find out who’s not,” the girl said, with the kind of easy, careless confidence Kevin-dammit-associated with Dean. “Probably, anyway. I’ll put some feelers out.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
How he knew she was leaving, he didn’t know, but the thought spiked anxiety through his non-existent body. He’d work on how he could feel anxious later. “Wait!”
She turned around to look at him. Or she felt like she did. “You got something else you want, Kevin Tran?”
“Her name’s Linda. Linda Tran.”
“Got it.”
“What, um.” He pushed a hand through his hair, inanely hoping it wasn’t sticking up funny, or plastered down, and that he wasn’t blushing. God, he didn’t even know if she could see him. It was stupid to still feel so awkward, suddenly, when he hadn’t been awkward at all just a few minutes ago. It wasn’t like he was asking her out on a date. He still had to clear his throat to continue. “What’s your name?”
The slow, wicked smile he thought he sensed had to be all in his head. Right?
“Alexis,” she said. “Don’t forget it.”
*
Someone was crying.
That wasn’t really new or earth-shattering news-multiple someones had been crying since he’d arrived. But this someone sounded close like Alexis had sounded close. More present. He looked around, trying to pin down what direction it was coming from. “Hello?”
Kevin didn’t hear an answer or see another person magically appear. Not that he’d really expected either. The crying also didn’t stop, and it sounded-young. Like, little kid young. Kevin didn’t know anything about little kids.
And, okay, he’d been one once, had the embarrassing baby pictures his mom had saved to prove it and everything, but he hadn’t really been a normal kid. He’d been more interested in books and school than balls and trucks, and-well. What did you say to a dead kid, anyway? If he even could talk to him.
Now really wasn’t the best time for Dean to be in his head saying crap like, “This is what we do, kid. We help people.” Because, first: since when had Dean Winchester become the voice of his conscience? And, second: Castiel had said he only had to be a Prophet until he died, then the Word became someone else’s problem.
Well, he was dead. He didn’t have to do anything.
And what about human decency, Kevin? A voice that sounded suspiciously like his mom’s demanded. Did that become someone else’s problem, too?
“Mom?” He looked around again, saw nothing but foggy white.
The crying continued.
Kevin grimaced, but it didn’t seem like anyone else was going to do anything. “Suck it up, Kevin,” he told himself. “You wanted to be President.” Talking to a kid who’d died and was stuck between worlds had to be easier than running a nation. Right?
*
Walking in the veil was a little like walking on a treadmill: your legs moved, you did the work, but the scenery never changed.
He wasn’t sure how he was going to talk to a kid he couldn’t see if he could even find him, but he figured he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. If he ever came to a bridge, because at this point finding anything seemed unlikely.
Which was, of course, when the white fog tinted-green, like someone had laid down a transparency.
Suddenly, he had the impression of grass underfoot and leaves overhead. The kid sitting, knees drawn up to his chest, in front of the transparent tree trunk was all solid, though. Kevin was so surprised to actually see someone else he stopped walking.
“Hello?”
The kid sniffed and scrubbed a hand from his nose, across his eye, and back through his hair. Gross.
“Are you-are you okay?”
Very wet, very dark brown eyes peered up at him. “I want my mommy.”
“Oh.” Kevin glanced around. The colors and definition faded out the further they moved from the kid at their epicenter, trailing away into featureless white in every direction. “Well-”
“She’s in there.” The kid pointed. When Kevin followed the little, crooked finger, he found a yellow house with blood red trim, a giant bush stretching to the roof at either corner. The driveway disappeared after only a couple of feet. To Kevin, the house looked empty, lifeless, and more than a little unreal.
Moving closer, he crouched in front of the boy. “Why don’t you go see her?”
Tears welled in the dark eyes and the kid’s bottom lip trembled.
No, Kevin thought, slightly panicked. No, not that. “I mean-”
“M-mommy can’t-can’t s-sse-eee me,” the kid said. Teardrops slid down his cheeks. “I went s-swimming and the wa-water went up m-my nose and she c-ca-can’t s-see me.”
“Ok,” Kevin said quickly. “Ok. You’re ok. Um.” He looked around, seeking inspiration, but the yellow house was still the only thing visible besides them. He could work with that. “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Ethan James Cartwright.”
“Ethan. My name’s Kevin. Do you think you could show me your room?”
The kid perked up, his knees coming down and his face brightening. “You wanna see my room?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok!”
Faster than Kevin would have thought possible, Ethan had pushed to his feet and grabbed Kevin’s hand, pulling him along with surprising strength.
*
They passed through the door. Kevin was pretty sure he wasn’t ever going to get used to that, especially since it had looked solid the instant they stepped foot on the porch. Ethan either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared, just put his head down and kept going.
The inside was dark, the lights off, the blinds partially closed. He thought he heard movement behind one of the walls.
“Mommy’s baking cookies,” Ethan declared, and pulled them around a corner, down a hall, and into a room painted in primary colors. The sun shone brightly outside the window. It lit up the room when Ethan pulled the blinds open. Kevin could see another house on the other side of the fence.
“This is Bumblebee.” The kid turned around with a blocky, yellow and black action figure in his hand. “He’s funny. And he protects Sam no matter what because they’re friends.”
-Sam lifted his hand-
“And this is my bed.” Kevin bounced on it on his knees, Bumblebee clutched to his chest. “Mommy and Daddy gave me Bumblebee sheets for my birthday. Aren’t they awesome?”
“Pretty awesome.”
“Do you want to play?”
“Ah-” No, but Kevin couldn’t quite force the word out in the face of Ethan’s pleading puppy eyes.
“I have Opt’mus Prime, too.”
He was so screwed.
*
“I want to go home,” Kevin told the white fog.
It didn’t so much as turn beige.
Closing his eyes, he tried picturing his mother’s face, instead. “I want to see my mother.” She’d be so vexed with him for getting himself dead. He was supposed to be smarter than that.
Smart enough to figure out how to manifest as a ghost, too, but that, apparently, was asking too much because his surroundings stayed stubbornly white. For all he knew about Angels and Demons, and all he’d read on the Tablets, how spirits moved between worlds had never come up.
He was seriously regretting that oversight now.
“Come on, Kevin, think!” he murmured. It couldn’t be that hard if Ethan James Cartwright could do it at six years old and not-long dead. He just had to figure out what he was missing.
*
Alexis introduced him to John. John referred him to Ahmed. Ahmed thought he should talk to George.
George turned out to be Georgia.
None of them knew anything about his mom. He wasn’t sure why she’d thought they would.
*
Kevin had met Channing in seventh grade, but not in class.
He’d known of her since third grade when his mom had moved them to Neighbor, Michigan and enrolled him East Neighbor Elementary. She’d been in his class. She’d been sitting in the second row, third desk back, when his mom walked him to the classroom, introduced him to the teacher, then lead him to the back of the room to help him put away his things. She’d been the only other Asian student in his class.
He’d been intensely aware of every eye on him, and his stomach had churned nauseatingly.
“Relax,” his mom had ordered. “Kevin, you’re going to be fine. Study. Make friends.” He’d been relieved, under the humiliation when his mom leaned forward and lowered her voice to intone: “Maybe even a girlfriend.” But he hadn’t felt it until he’d been sitting down in the fifth row, second desk from the back and wishing he could disappear.
It had been nothing, and exactly, like he’d felt in the high school auditorium, trying out for the youth orchestra.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Channing had announced from beside him, violin clutched in white-knuckled fingers. He’d thought he’d feel better if he was doing this on violin. He’d only been playing cello for a year.
He’d nodded.
“At least there aren’t too many this year.”
There’d been twelve. After the oldest kids had aged out, the orchestra had had twenty-two members. He’d read, before coming that orchestras ranged in size from fifteen members to more than a hundred, depending on the type of music being performed. The conductor had told them before they’d started, that no one who passed the competences would be cut-that they fit the music to the members, rather than the members to the music. But maybe he wasn’t good enough.
“Do you think they grade on a curve?”
The idea had been absurd enough, that Kevin had looked at her askance.
She’d grimaced. “I hate pass/fail. It’s like giving everybody a bow and arrow and telling them to hit the target, but then you don’t know where they’re going to put the target and you just have to hope you can shoot straight enough, far enough, and-”
“Channing,” he’d interrupted. “We know exactly what we have to do. The requirements are posted on their website.”
“Right,” she’d said. “We can do this.”
“Right.”
“So, I know the conventions are different now that we’re no longer in grade school. There’s the hormones to consider, the whole girl/boy dynamic and incursions into dating, and everything but-do you want to be friends?”
*
Alexis showed up-Kevin had no idea how many days later.
“I think I found her,” she announced. She was wearing dark wash jeans with a pink Princess shirt, a crown picked out in shiny rhinestones across the front. Her hair was dark and curly, and it shifted over her shoulders when stretched out a hand to him. “Come on.”
Kevin was a little thrown by the fact he could actually see her.
Alexis quirked her eyebrows. “Are you really going to leave me hanging?”
She waggled her outstretched hand, reminding him for one brief moment of the gymnastics chick from Bring It On-his familiarity with which, the guys were never going to know-doing sarcastic jazz hands. The absurdity of it reminded him he had something to be doing. He shook the thought away quickly, and hurried forward.
“Sorry. Where are we going?”
He couldn’t read the look on her face when she said: “Maybe don’t worry about that too much.”
“What?”
Then her fingers wrapped around his.
They didn’t feel like fingers, more like-electricity, maybe, or energy. He didn’t have time to pull away or demand answers. He didn’t even have time to blink. Just one moment he was standing in the middle of white nothingness with Alexis and the next moment he was-
Standing in the middle of white nothingness with Alexis. She dropped his hand even as Kevin twisted around, trying to see something that would explain why he felt like he was in a different place.
“Are you ready?” Alexis demanded.
“What did you do?”
Alexis smiled at him but didn’t answer. She faced a little past him and called, “Linda?”
“Hello?” a new voice said. It was high and sweet, and lightly accented, the pronunciation precise. And it wasn’t familiar at all. “I am Linda Tran.”
“Hi.” His voice trembled, and Kevin cleared his throat, throwing a glance at Alexis that the girl ignored. “I’m Kevin. Kevin Tran.”
“Hello?” Linda Tran repeated after a beat, her inflection unchanged. “I am Linda Tran.”
“Hi,” Kevin repeated, a little louder, but it didn’t get the woman’s attention, and after a moment he heard: “Hello? I am Linda Tran,” again. He couldn’t decide if it would be more or less creepy if he could actually see the woman. “Why can’t she hear us?” he asked Alexis.
“Some of them can’t.” She shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t know she’s dead, or maybe she does and her brain can’t accept it. I don’t know. There isn’t exactly anyone around to ask.”
He wondered if Dean would have any ideas, or Sam, or Castiel. “Why can’t I see her?” he asked, instead. “Why can I see you?”
“The Veil takes a little getting used to,” she answered, even as the other woman again said: “Hello? I am Linda Tran.” It made Kevin’s skin crawl. Or it would have, if he still had any. “I think part of it is how you perceive your reality, and part of it is how they perceive their reality. Like, you know this isn’t the real world, isn’t really a place in the conventional sense, so your brain doesn’t translate it the same way. Linda does. So because you’re not in the same place, you can’t see each other.”
Kevin thought about it. It made a certain amount of sense he wasn’t ready to attribute to anything presumably touched by God and Angels. But-“That doesn’t explain why I can see you.”
“Maybe I’m just meeting you where you are.” She grinned.
“And it doesn’t explain Ethan.”
Alexis cocked her head, tilting it like a dog trying to hear its master’s voice better. “Who?”
“The-” Kevin opened his mouth before changing his mind. “That doesn’t matter. That woman-” Hello? I am Linda Tran. “-isn’t my mother.”
Slowly, Alexis nodded. A slight smile managed to turn her expression playful, almost sardonic. “Then we’ll keep looking.”
He blinked and she was gone.
*
The veil was louder after Alexis left. He could still hear Linda-Hello? I am-but now he could also hear a guy somewhere further to the right: “What do you mean, the tomatoes are gone? I ordered thirty pounds of tomatoes!”
And a woman: “No, please! Please, stop! I don’t-Please, stop!”
And another: “Is this the bus to Oakland? I really need to get to Oakland.”
Kevin pressed his hands to his ears, squeezing harder as the voices seemed to multiply, speaking louder and louder, clearer and clearer, until he thought his brain would implode, until-
*
Sam had told him about ghosts once. They’d been sitting at some table, in some motel, searching through books for something, and Dean had been passed out on one of the beds.
“So ghosts are real, too?” Kevin had asked.
“Ghosts are real,” Sam had said. “They, uh. Some of them, when they died, they couldn’t move on. Unfinished business, or whatever. Some of them choose not to. All of them, no matter why they stuck around-revenge or love or whatever-if they stick around long enough, they eventually go bad.”
*
Hesitantly, Kevin pulled his hands away from his ears and straightened, looking around, hal-expecting a monster to jump out of the fog and bite him.
But the voices were gone. Or, not gone, but back to staticky-sounding background noise, the individual voices indiscernible. Slowly, Kevin relaxed, tension leeching out of his back and shoulders until he was just-
There.
Kevin could really understand how this place could drive a spirit mad.
*
In the wake of that realization, he might have, maybe, been a little, teeny bit depressed. Maybe.
*
He felt Alexis before he saw her, which was really weird, especially when it felt kind of like she’d put a hand on his back, only without getting that close, or using her hand.
Cool as it might have been three years ago, Kevin was really not prepared to learn ghosts could communicate via some form of telepathy.
“I’m sorry.” She grimaced once he turned to face her. “I should have warned you.”
“Warned me about what?”
“We’re all tied to a particular place,” Alexis explained. “Sometimes that place is where we died, or where we lived, or where we left something important. But it’s always one place, and moving away from that place-” She grimaced, expressively.
Kevin remembered the voices digging into his brain like shards of broken glass and grimaced, too.
“In the real world, places are finite. You’re only ever in one place or another. But the Veil isn’t any particular place. In some ways, it’s all places, and no place. And I thought, since you don’t perceive any particular place, you might have more freedom of movement than the rest of us. I didn’t realize part it was also a function of your protection.”
He frowned. “Protection?”
“The Veil is a peaceful place, Kevin,” Alexis insisted. “Spirits come here to rest. Does this sound peaceful to you?” Her head cocked, listening to the voices around them, voices that Kevin could only vaguely hear, but that had never, as long as he’d been aware of them, sounded peaceful. Her gaze was fierce when it locked back on his. “They don’t belong here. None of them do.”
“Uh-”
“Sorry,” she interrupted, before Kevin could figure out what to say. “I should g-”
“Wait!”
Her lips pinched together, irritation wiping out the sorrow that had reminded him of Sam-of his pinched expression when he said, if they stick around long enough, they eventually go bad-but she waited. He wanted to comfort her, or offer a solution, but the irritation was shades of Dean and he wasn’t sure how she’d take it. So he did the next best thing, and hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.
“Crowley,” he told her, continuing when she cocked her head curiously. “He’s the demon who took my mother. If anyone saw her, she was probably with him.”
Alexis’s lips formed the bastard’s name, then she nodded, her gaze already miles away before she moved an inch. “That should help.”
“I am sorry,” she added, with a dark-eyed glance, before she disappeared.
*
Sorry, he decided, wasn’t quite the word for it.
Back at the Bunker, he’d have been able to get on the laptop, try and track Crowley through omens or credit cards, or hack into the traffic cameras and see if he could get a hit that way. The search he’d run on his mom’s cell phone right after Crowley had told him she was dead had come up empty, but he could run that again. Something might have changed.
And that was before he got to the Men of Letters’ library. He was sure he could’ve found a locator spell, one that could defeat whatever warding Crowley had put up to hide her. Or he could have found one to summon her spirit and at least known if she was somewhere in the veil. Sam could’ve helped him look, and Dean.
But none of that was open to him here. Here, he couldn’t even figure out how to effectively communicate with the locals.
Except Ethan.
He started walking the direction he thought he’d headed the first time he found the kid. He had no way to know if he was right, or if he was headed in the opposite direction, or even what he’d say when he found the kid, but any direction, right now, was better than standing still. So he walked.
There was no physical marker, no change in the colors around him, but between one step and the next, the voices suddenly got louder, closer. He took another step.
The screams ratcheted higher. They pressed against his brain, an almost physical presence that tightened like a vice. Then they started pulling, stretching, and Kevin felt like he was being shredded, like claws had hooked into his flesh and bone and muscle and started pulling in different directions. He’d never felt anything like it and he thought he might have screamed.
Then he didn’t feel anything at all.
*
If he’d been asked, before he died, he’d have said passing out inside the veil was impossible. Syncope was a physical phenomenon, occurring when the brain failed to receive sufficient oxygen. So, no brain, plus no blood, equaled no loss of consciousness.
Maybe he’d write a paper about it, if he ever got his hands on some paper.
*
The knocking caught Kevin by surprise. He twisted, trying to find the source, and ended up looking at the ceiling. The relative ceiling, anyway, since the fog didn’t have walls, or gravity, and by the time he approached the source, it was a wall.
Literally.
Kevin pressed his hands against white that looked no different than what he’d already passed through, and frowned. It felt smooth, but less like the wall of a house and more like the top of his mother’s coffee table.
The knock repeated-one, two-and-three-four, five, six-and Kevin could feel the vibrations under his hands. “Hello?”
Two knocks.
Not a wall, Kevin mused as he slid his hands down, then up, then over. So, maybe a door? Obediently, his brain conjured an imagine of the door at the Bunker-not that that helped him see the one under his hands.
His fingers bumped over a ridge. On the other side, the texture was different, rougher. Brick, he thought, or concrete, but the substance didn’t really matter. He retreated back to the door, tracing just inside the ridge until his hand bumped a protrusion. He twisted and pulled, realizing at the last second that opening a door to a complete stranger probably wasn’t the smartest thing he had ever done.
He opened it, anyway. He was already dead. What was the worst that could happen?
The man standing on the other side was balding, six inches taller than Kevin, and smiling. He wore khaki slacks and a polo shirt, and strongly reminded the Prophet of the Baptist missionaries who’d gone door-to-door when he was six, trying to “save” him and his mother.
“You’re Kevin, right?” the man asked, hand thrust out to shake.
Kevin eyed the hand warily. “Yeah. Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m Paul,” the man said, still grinning. “We’re adjacent.”
“What?”
“I’m your neighbor.” Paul raised his hand, wiggling his fingers slightly, and Kevin took it with the hope it would make the man go away. He couldn’t really remember what he’d been doing, but his head felt vague and distantly achy in a way he recognized, from when he’d last had a migraine. “Pleased to meet you.”
He’d always thought pain disappeared when you died. “Pleased to meet you,” he echoed, rubbing idly at his head. It took a moment to register that he could see the guy, and that that was odd. Maybe the migraine had fixed his perception issue?
Paul kept standing there, grinning.
“Was there something you wanted?” Kevin asked, finally.
“Oh!” The guy bounced up on his toes like he’d been goosed. “Yes. Yes, there was. See, I heard about your mom, how you’re looking for her, don’t know if she’s alive or dead. And I just wanted to know-ya’see, it’s a little hard for us to communicate around here. So I just wanted to know if there was anything I could pass along that might help.”
“Pass along,” Kevin repeated.
“Only way to find out anything is to ask,” Paul informed him cheerfully. “So?”
“Uh.” Kevin really wished his brain didn’t feel like mush. Or that he’d paid more attention to ghosts before he’d become one of them. “My mom’s name is Linda Tran. She’s Asian, has short hair. Crowley’s about my height, maybe a couple inches taller, wears a suit, has a-British accent? I think. He has a lot of people who work for him.”
“Okey-dokey.” Paul clapped his hands. “I’ll just get out of your hair, then. God bless.”
Kevin poked his head out after the guy moved away, trying to get a look around-
And pulled back, fast, hand clamped to his head as his headache spiked. It eased off again, as fast as it had come, leaving only the memory behind.
That didn’t make it any easier to process the sheer press of people he’d glimpsed on the other side.
*
Kevin paced. He didn’t have the handy distraction of the Tablet, or any of the books from the Men of Letter’s library, or the more vexing distraction of Sam and Dean’s various missions and the demands thereof, so he paced. He paced off every dimension he could think of, until he was pretty sure he’d stepped on every square inch available to him.
He was pretty sure-say about eighty percent sure-that the dimensions matched the Bunker’s War Room (named enthusiastically by Dean), minus the staircase, the light-up map table, and the banks of computers.
He didn’t know what to do with that knowledge.
He didn’t know what to do, period.
*
Leaving the faux Bunker wasn’t really an option, but that fact was probably why Paul stopped by every day. Or, what Kevin decided to call a day, anyway. He’d spent the better part of a year alone on a houseboat. He wasn’t prepared to consider the idea that some strange dead guy he’d never met before felt the need to check up on him multiple times a day when even his mother hadn’t (after he’d stopped answering her calls).
That didn’t make it less weird.
“How’re you doing, Kevin?” Paul asked once Kevin opened the door, hands folded neatly over his stomach, cheerful smile omnipresent.
“Ok.” Kevin’s fingers twitched against the door and he curled them into a fist. Purgatory might have been where the monsters went after they died, but he was convinced the veil was what Catholics meant when they spoke of it. Every myth had a kernel of truth, right? “How do you deal with all the free time?”
He’d found himself wishing for the Angel Tablet yesterday-or for a demon to pop in, or an angel, just for something to do.
Paul laughed. “Time doesn’t mean the same here,” he said. He didn’t come in-couldn’t, possibly, Kevin would have to remember to find out-but he did settle comfortably in front of the open door, cross-legged and straight-backed, his expression fond.
Kevin didn’t really understand it, but the man hadn’t been put off by his hostility when he showed up a second time, with no news and no plans aside from conversing.
“We’re all going to Heaven,” he’d sniped.”Pretty sure you can lay off the missionary work now.”
Instead of taking offense, Paul had laughed. “I’m a youth counselor, not a missionary. But there’s more to missionary work than preaching salvation.” Then he’d laughed again. “Of course, once we enter the Lord’s service, we never really stop doing His work. Now, tell me: how are you doing?”
“But those of us who can,” Paul added now, eyebrows lifting meaningfully, “go home.”
“Go home,” he echoed.
“To the place that holds us.” He lifted his hands, laced his fingers together. “The place that binds our spirit, or our heart.”
Unbidden, he imagined his mother, discarded in a ditch, sightless eyes fogged over in death, skin gaping where the demons sliced her open. He dug clenched fists into his legs. “You mean ghosts?” he ground out.
“Ghosts, restless spirits-both refer to souls that can’t move on to their final resting place. Just, whereas traditional spirits can’t let go of their past life, our past life can’t quite let go of us.”
*
Kevin didn’t have any reason to hold on to his past life. His mother was dead, Sam was the reason he was, and trusting Dean had gotten him screwed just like he’d predicted it would. The Bunker had been a prison. His only purpose had been to help fight creatures he didn’t want anything to do with.
And, yeah, he knew Sam wasn’t actually the one who killed him. No matter what psychic abilities Sam Winchester had or did not have, no human had the ability to burn out another’s eyeballs, and considering his last memories, Kevin was ninety-nine percent sure that was what happened. Which meant an Angel, and-judging by Dean’s strange behavior-Sam hadn’t known about it, Dean had gotten in over his head because of it, and had been trying to fix it.
None of that really helped, but-
The Bunker was at least a place, a familiar one, and Sam and Dean offered the possibility of information. Besides which, he was already dead. What was the worst that could happen?
*
Making the decision was the easy part, it turned out.
“What the hell?” Kevin demanded of Paul when he opened the door, flailing his arms a little because there wasn’t enough room to move. He was already in the Bunker. He had been back to the Bunker since he died. He’d seen Dean and Cas there, in the library. He’d seen Cas and Sam-well, he wasn’t sure what room that had been, but it had been in the Bunker. And now that he was trying to do it on purpose, he couldn’t do it? Seriously-“What the hell!”
Paul’s eyebrows quirked toward his hairline, lips carefully not turned into a smile. Kevin glared at him on principle. He could tell when an adult was laughing at him. An older adult. “Perhaps if you shared your trouble?”
“I can’t get back! I tried meditating-” He counted off the points on his fingers. “-I tried pushing. I tried pulling. I tried knocking myself out against the wall. I tried leaving this thrice cursed prison cell. And nothing-nothing!-worked. What the hell!”
Kevin yanked at his hair, but the counselor caught his arm and tugged him square to the doorway, both arms caught in the other man’s grip. “Easy, Kevin,” he soothed. “Breathe.”
He forced air in through his teeth, then out.
“Now,” Paul said, giving Kevin’s wrists a shake, something his mother had done. Obediently, he unclenched his fists. “My opinion-and it is just my opinion, albeit a somewhat experienced one-is that you can’t go back, because you don’t want to go back.”
“Don’t want-”
“Ah!” Paul’s fingers tightened on his wrist in warning, and Kevin closed his mouth with a mutinous glare. “You think you want to. You have decided, in here-” He prodded Kevin’s head with a finger. “-that it’s what you need to do. But the Veil is not a place of reason, Kevin. It is a place of the heart, of emotion.” Pressing his hand over Kevin’s heart, he said, “It will never be enough to decide you want to go back, you have to feel it.”
Dropping his head, Kevin focused on breathing, on the warmth radiating from Paul’s hand. It shouldn’t have been warm, without a body, without a beating heart to circulate the blood, but it was. Slowly, his heartbeat slowed, and his breath evened out. Kevin nodded.
Paul patted his chest before withdrawing. “It doesn’t need to be good emotions, Kevin. The dark emotions have power, too. But it’s a consuming power. If you go too far, you will never regain yourself.”
“Ven-are you talking about vengeful spirits?”
Paul tipped his head in agreement. “Don’t let your hate consume you.”
“I don’t hate anyone,” Kevin said. But he remembered Crowley, bound and helpless, and wasn’t sure.
*
He tried meditating again. He imagined the walls bleeding into existence, the map rising beneath him. He breathed deep, looking for the smell of dust and old paper, gun oil and aftershave.
*
Paul came and went.
*
Continued in Part 2