![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: She Is Your Mirror
Wordcount: 7,255
Spoilers: None
Fandom: SPN
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Category: Gen (Win!sister)
Rating/Warning: Adult themes
Summary: How can you miss something you never knew was lost?
“I can’t fucking believe it.”
Sam rolled over and slitted open one eye, a raspy sounding cough wracking his body before he sighed and sat up, fisting his face blearily. “Maybe you’ll stop giving me such a hard time about the Benders now, huh?” Sam prompted, dusting his hands off on his thighs to try and remove some of the grit from the floor.
Dean turned and hunched down, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder and leaning close to look into his eyes. Sam knew that he got knocked on the head pretty hard and Dean was just looking for signs of concussion, but he leant away regardless because neither of them had seen a toothbrush for about three days.
“I’m okay, stop fussing,” Sam grumbled but the wince he let slip when he moved had Dean pushing him back down, shoving his balled jacket under Sam’s head.
“What did I say about moving?”
“That it was fine and I could do what I damn well please?” Sam tried but then let out a long exhalation when he just received a hard stare for his trouble. “Find anything to help with that lock?”
Dean slapped a flat palm against the cell door of their makeshift prison. “Nada,” he grunted and then kicked at the lower half of the bars, his steel-toed boot making a hollow ding. “Let us out of here you bastards!” he called, voice more than a ragged because he’d pretty much yelled himself hoarse the first day.
“We knew this was coming.”
“This in particular? No, we didn’t know this was coming. If we’d known this was coming I wouldn’t have been nine sheets to the wind and you wouldn’t have had the goddamn flu.”
Sam frowned, rolling over carefully. “Are you saying I could’ve avoided getting sick?”
Dean turned around and shrugged. “You picked a pretty inconvenient time to be at half-strength Sammy.”
“I picked?” Sam spluttered incredulously. “You’re unbelievable.” Sam rolled back over so he was facing the wall, the bare brick preferable to having to look at his brother right at that moment. “I wasn’t the one who giggled on the way to the van.”
“I didn’t giggle,” Dean grated. “I was laughing in the face of danger.”
“You were falling on your face in the face of danger,” Sam corrected and heard Dean stride over to him and then a booted toe nudged him in the back. Sam gritted his teeth but he couldn’t help the hiss that escaped. Hands were on his shoulders and he was being turned over before he could protest.
“You stupid son of a bitch, I knew you were hiding something,” Dean snarled, hands probing. When he dug his fingers into the ribs on Sam’s left side, Sam yelped and curled in on himself. “Broken?” he snapped, his tone a demand for an answer.
“Bruised I think,” Sam admitted, trying to uncurl himself but it felt so much better to hunch around the hot misery his abdomen was so he stayed that way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dean prodded.
“Not a lot you could do. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Worry?” Dean looked around the bare cell they were being kept in and let out a harsh bark of laughter, thumbing tears out of his eyes. “Why would I worry?”
“You think they’ll feed us today?” Sam asked. There was a faucet jutting out of the wall that meant they had water, but so far they hadn’t seen anyone since they had been dumped unceremoniously into a converted cellar with dirt floors and a row of bars intersecting the room neatly. There’d been sounds from the floor above, feet moving back and forth and voices but no one had ventured down to see them.
“Don’t know Sammy, but I’m not too keen on chowing down on whatever they might bring us anyway.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Sam nodded, watching Dean rise and start pacing the floor again like a caged tiger. He knew this was Dean’s worst nightmare, dying slow with nothing to fight against. He’d mostly screamed for their captors to hopefully annoy them enough to come downstairs, Sam suspected, rather than any hope of being released.
Sam watched his brother until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.
000
There’d been something put in his beer. Dean was pretty damn sure of that.
He’d only had five, maybe six and he’d driven across country without incident on more than that. It didn’t make sense that he would be falling down drunk on so little, not able to get his wobbly legs under him when strong hands grabbed him and dragged.
He remembered hearing Sam yelling and the sounds of a fight and he’d wanted to help but the mind had been willing, the body less so. He remembered now that while he’d been propped up against the van they would later be tossed into, his brother had been taken down and kicked repeatedly. Anger, bright and hot had knifed through the paralysis that had hit him and Dean had managed to get an elbow into the face of the guy that had been propping him up but that had been it. Someone had kicked his feet out and Dean had gone down.
That had been three days ago, by his closest estimation.
Dean moved back over to Sam and slid down the wall, coming to rest with a thump. He drew his knees up to his chest and clasped his hands, turning his ring around and around on his finger. “C’mon Winchester,” he breathed. “Think of some way out of this.”
He was pretty sure the seven or eight guys who had grabbed them had been hunters. They had that look about them. All beards and hard lines and efficient moves. No showboating for them. They’d put Sam down quick and nasty and only because the kid had been running a fever and hadn’t been able to keep anything solid down in days. They’d picked their moment carefully and it scared Dean to think how long they might have been waiting, biding their time, looking for an in.
Dean smacked his head back against the wall, hoping to jog something loose, some kind of inspiration. It was just so damn annoying that not one of the guys holding them had been down to gloat or so much as have a look-see. There was a camera bolted to the wall on the other side of the room and that was obviously enough.
“What do you think they’re waiting for?”
Dean looked down at Sam who had angled his head back so he could see Dean upside down. There was a bruise that was only just yellowing around the edges on his temple and that had been Dean’s main concern until Dean had discovered the ribs. He supposed they’d had to rough Sam up and hadn’t bothered to drug him because they’d underestimated him. Dean had seen Sam bring down a Black Dog with a broken arm and a busted knee so a little thing like the flu wasn’t going to slow him down much.
“Maybe they don’t think shooting us in the head will be enough,” Dean answered, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. He suspected it was mostly curiosity that had kept them alive this long. Maybe these guys thought keeping Sam would draw others to them like a protective pack of wolves. Dean had his theories but he didn’t dwell on them because he’d learned over time that trying to guess someone’s motives was like trying to hold water in cupped hands. Ultimately frustrating and fruitless.
“You recognise any of them?” Dean asked, mostly for something to say.
“I thought maybe… there was a tall guy with blonde hair that I think I saw at Gardener’s once when we were picking up the new shotguns. Name was Eddie or Edgar or something.”
“So hunters?”
“You already knew that,” Sam huffed, moving to sit up again but Dean put a hand on his head and pushed back down. “I could really go a burger right now,” Sam grumbled, kicking a heel into the floor.
“Really? No sissy salad?”
“Nope. Big hunk of meat with grease that’ll run down my hands and circle my wrists.”
“I hear that,” Dean agreed, grinning in the dim light. “Maybe if we ask nicely they’ll bring us down a menu.”
“We have to get someone down here,” Sam said, voice low.
“Yeah, I had a thought about that,” Dean said, prying one of his boots off. He curled to his feet and crossed to the bars, taking careful aim. He pitched his boot and it hit the camera dead on with a satisfying crunch. Both boot and camera fell to the floor with a shower of sparks and glass. Dean looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow.
Sam’s answering smile was radiant.
000
No one came.
Dean stared sullenly at his boot across the floor. He had Sam’s head on his thigh and he was twisting strands of hair around and around his thumb. By Dean’s closest estimation it was four days and he was feeling fatigued and there was now a constant headache.
Worse was that Sam had gone to sleep hours after the camera thing and Dean hadn’t been able to wake him. Sam’s skin was clammy and his breathing was laboured. He’d been coughing just before he slept and there had been a fine spray of blood on the hand he’d used to cover his mouth.
“Please,” Dean whispered into the dark. “Please.”
000
Dean startled awake on what he thought must be the fifth day to the sounds of shouts and gunfire. After pressing his fingers against Sam’s throat and feeling stark relief to still find a pulse, Dean carefully removed Sam’s head from his lap and moved across to the bars of their cell.
There was a few more shots and then silence.
Dean was a realist. He didn’t believe in the cavalry swooping in to the rescue at the last moment, but he liked to think that even hardened realist’s were allowed a flash of optimism every now and again.
“Hey! Hey, down here!” he shouted, grimacing when his voice tapered off to a reedy whisper at the end. He went over to the faucet and twisted it on, taking a swallow of water and then crossed to the bars to try again. “Hey goddamit! Down in the cellar!”
The silence persisted for a few moments and then there was the squeal of a heavy door swinging open. Dean moved sideways so he was between Sam and the rest of the room and clenched his hands on the bars. What he wasn’t expecting was to see a pair of bare, bloodied feet appear at the top of the stairs.
Small feet.
Girl’s feet.
The legs were clad in some kind of hospital green cotton pants and when the waist appeared, Dean realised they were scrub pants, like nurses and doctors wore. A torso clad in a scrub top followed and then a spill of dark hair. The person halted and then a head appeared, large eyes scanning the room.
“Hey, over here,” Dean said, watching as the eyes skipped to him, narrowing slightly. The girl crouched down at an angle, legs on different steps and cocked her head. Dean saw she had a spray of something dark across her chest and soaking one cuff of her pants and he was pretty sure it was blood.
“You called,” the girl said, voice light and curious and Dean frowned at her. Something in the back of his mind said, you’re dreaming this. You’re going to wake up in a minute and you’ll be back to the tedious job of starving to death in a converted basement.
“Can you get us out of here?” Dean asked, ignoring that little voice because if he had started hallucinating then they were really in trouble.
“Clicky,” the girl said and held up something black. It looked like a TV remote until she pointed it at Dean and pressed a button. Dean flinched backwards when the cell door under his hand clicked and then swung open.
“You’re kidding me,” he breathed, reaching forward to push the door so it swung all the way and hit the other side of the bars with a clang. Dean was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth and he immediately backed up and then spun, getting an arm and then a shoulder under Sam and hoisting carefully. He had a bad moment where he thought maybe he wouldn’t manage but the girl appeared on the other side, smaller frame fitting under Sam’s other shoulder and she smiled at Dean, a sunny expression that lifted her eyes and made Dean blink at her because something in that expression was familiar.
“Who the hell…you know what? I don’t even care right now. Tell me there was a big black car outside?”
The girl reached into her top and brought out a set of keys and Dean recognised them immediately.
000
Dean left the mystery girl curled up asleep in the passenger seat of the Impala as he carefully helped Sam through the emergency room doors. A nurse and an orderly rushed forward to relieve Dean of his burden and he let them help Sam to a gurney, both with concern in their eyes. Dean left Sam’s side only long enough to find a vending machine and raid it of all the M&Ms he could, ignoring the looks he got from the doctor as he tossed packet after packet down his throat while the man explained to him about Sam’s condition.
Dean, assured that Sam would be released in a few days and handing over Malcolm McCallister’s insurance card, made his way back out to the Impala and found the girl still in the passenger seat, flipping through his tapes.
“You should come in and get… checked out,” Dean prompted, opening the passenger door.
“Fine here,” the girl said, reaching out to snag the door handle and snap it closed again. Dean blinked at the car for a few moments, hands on his hips.
“Okay,” he said, wrenching the door open again. “I appreciate…whatever it was you did back there but I think it’s time for you to… go.”
“Fine here,” the girl insisted, reaching out. Dean grabbed her wrist and she squeaked, dropping the tape she had in her other hand. Dean felt something under his fingers and leaned down to look at the wrist he had in his hand. There was a hospital tag around the girl’s wrist and he turned it until he could see the name stamped on it.
Dean dropped her wrist and backed away, only stopping when he hit another car. “Lucy Winchester,” he breathed, disbelief colouring his tone.
“Like the rifle,” she said brightly, grinning.
000
“Who… how… who….?” Dean couldn’t settle on a question, pacing the motel room while Lucy sat on one of the beds, legs crossed under her and one of Dean’s tapes being turned over and over in her hands. He wasn’t sure which one it was because she wouldn’t relinquish her hold on it long enough for him to see.
“You called,” she said, her brows knitted. She was now wearing one of Sam’s t-shirts because the blood spattered scrubs had to go and it came down to her knees. Dean crossed to her and forced her feet back down into the tub of warm water he’d put under her. Although he was pretty sure the blood on her scrubs hadn’t been hers, the blood on her feet had been. He wasn’t sure where she had come from but it had looked like she had walked a hell of a long way in bare feet and her soles were a mess. Dean had patiently picked out stones and glass, Lucy fidgeting and twisting all the while but now he had nothing to occupy him, he was cycling back to the very surreal situation he was finding himself in.
“You said that before. What do you mean I called?”
“Voice in the dark, getting softer all the time. Pleasenotsammynopleaseno. Fainter and fainter until I could hardly hear it.”
“What are you saying? Who the hell are you?” Lucy looked confused and held up her wrist and Dean flapped his hands at her. “Yes, I know what that says. Who are you really?”
“Winchester, like the rifle,” Lucy said, a hurt little dent appearing between her brows and that, along with the smile he’d seen earlier had Dean stumbling back a step because he knew those expressions, saw them every damn day. Now that he really looked Dean could see it. Same moss green eyes tilting up slightly so as to be slightly feline and a dusting of moles. The nose was the same, just a little smaller and the same wide mouth.
Dean might protest, but he knew why people assumed he and Sam were something other than brothers. If you could see John and Mary Winchester, you could see the resemblance. Sam and Dean both had different traits, bits and pieces borrowed from each parent, enough of a variance to make them unique. Looking at Lucy though, Dean saw someone that would stand next to his little brother and have everyone assuming sibling.
Dean sat heavily on the opposite bed, not sure what to make of everything. Lucy was possibly someone’s idea of a joke, a creation or a weird version of a doppelganger. She was a trickster’s prank or a demon’s try at derailing the delicate balance the Winchester boys maintained.
The less sinister option was that Lucy was possibly a cousin, Dean supposed. Mary’s side because John Winchester was an only child. Dean had always thought Sam had more of their father in him though and it wouldn’t make sense for her to resemble Sam so closely. If she looked like anyone, it should be Dean who John had always said looked more like Mary of the two.
The plain and simple fact was that he needed help. He needed answers and fast.
Bobby answered on the second ring and Dean watched Lucy out of the corner of his eye as she pulled her feet back out of the tub and moved off the bed, making a beeline for the duffle with the weapons. Dean skirted the bed and headed her off, turning her around and pointing her in the direction of the TV with a shooing motion. Lucy pouted in a way that reminded him so strongly of Sam that Dean almost snapped his phone squeezing it so hard.
“’llo?”
“Bobby, it’s Dean. I got a small problem.”
“You never have small problems, Dean,” Bobby sighed but there was wry affection in his tone and Dean felt the knot of tension in his back ease a little.
“Sam’s a little banged up and we need a place to crash for a few days.”
“I always have a bed for you boys, you know that,” Bobby said gruffly.
“I also have someone I want you to see. I need your… professional opinion.”
000
“You brought a girl to pick me up at the hospital?” Sam spluttered as soon as he caught sight of the Impala and the pair of feet hanging out of the back window.
“Not exactly,” Dean grunted, pressing Lucy’s hospital tag into Sam’s hand. Sam looked at it and then frowned at Dean.
“What is this, some kind of joke?”
“Don’t I wish,” Dean sighed, scrubbing a hand over the back of his head. “She’s the one that busted us out and she’s convinced she’s Lucy Winchester.”
“Can you explain this in any way that makes sense?” Sam asked, raising an eyebrow and Dean grinned sheepishly.
“I’m not sure I understand what’s going on myself,” Dean allowed. Sam stopped walking and grabbed Dean’s jacket, halting his progress towards the car.
“Dean, what the hell?”
“Look, I know this seems loopy but we were dead man. I don’t know what happened but she came from nowhere and this is odd as hell but I’m willing to humor her for at least a little while. Bobby might be able to help us figure out what’s going on. I’m treating this like a case and worrying about the freak-out later.”
“Like a case?” Sam frowned at the Impala and then back at Dean. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She said she heard me.”
“Heard you? What-?”
“Sam, I swear to god, the next question you ask me is going to be please Dean, can you take your foot out of my ass, if you keep this up.”
Sam’s mouth thinned down to an annoyed little line but he stopped peppering Dean with questions and for that, Dean was supremely grateful. Sam opened the passenger door and slid slowly into his seat, watching the girl sprawled across the back bench with her ankles hooked over the window. She turned her head to Sam and grinned and Sam’s eyes widened.
“Holy crap.”
“Right? Looks just like someone.”
“Dean, she-“
“Yeah, I know.”
000
“Holy crap.”
“Seems to be the general consensus,” Dean said, watching Lucy run around with Bobby’s new puppy, Zeke, nipping at her ankles. Zeke was still at the stage where paws and ears were a little too big for the rest of him and Lucy laughed and spun in place whenever the puppy got caught up in his own feet.
“She looks just like-“
“Sam, right?” Bobby looked at Dean, taking his cap off for a moment to rub a hand over his thinning hair before replacing it. “Too early for a beer?” Dean prompted and Bobby waved a dismissive hand.
“Sun’s up ain’t it?”
Dean had to admit that he felt better sitting at Bobby’s old, scratched kitchen table with a beer in his hand. Sam had sacked out in the living room because the pain medication he was on was making it hard to stay on his feet and Bobby was uncapping his own beer, standing next to his soaped-over windows. Dean took a long pull of his beer and let the cold, sharp taste settle him a little.
Dean had never really noticed how dim Bobby’s place was and how it helped. He felt only truly comfortable in the dark or the half light.
“John would’ve mentioned… he would’a told someone,” Bobby was insisting and Dean watched Bobby pace the kitchen, wrapping knuckles on different surfaces as he went. “Somethin’ like that, especially with what happened to Sam and all…he would’ve mentioned it.” Bobby was going around in circles and Dean could sympathise.
“He might’ve,” he interjected. “Maybe Jim knew or Caleb? Hell, there’s more than a dozen people long in the ground that could’ve been told about this.”
“Maybe she’s John’s but not…” Bobby grimaced, making a gesture that Dean didn’t really understand nor care to.
“I thought about that,” Dean admitted. “I mean, she could be half but the resemblance… I just can’t get over it.”
“Yeah, a little too much like him. How old do you reckon she is?”
Dean let his beer go and it thudded on the table and rocked back and forth, nearly tipping over. “No way,” Dean breathed. “No fucking way. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You mean the why or the how?”
“Unfortunately, the only two people who know what happened for sure are passed on.”
Dean was frowning at the puddle of beer that had sloshed out of his bottle when he’d let it go. “Not necessarily,” Dean said slowly. “Dad always said that he should’ve known Sam would give him a headache because he was like that from the get-go. Mom was sick a lot with Sammy and her cousin Lynette stayed with us the last four months she was pregnant. She went to the hospital with Mom but didn’t come back to the house after.”
“I got some ways we can check Lucy’s a real… person in any case. I can look into ‘em while you look up this Lynette.”
“She’s not too far away. I can be back within a day, assuming she hasn’t moved.”
“Don’t worry about it. You just do what you have to and I will too,” Bobby said, waving a dismissive hand. “Hell, I’m kinda hoping she is a real Winchester. That’d be something.”
“Yeah,” Dean groaned, rubbing his fists into his eyes. “That it would.”
000
Dean remembered Lynette only vaguely, but he recognised the woman as soon as she opened her front door. Lynette was tall, lean and mean-looking to a tiny Dean Winchester and she pretty much looked the same to an older one, except for the tall part.
“Hmmm,” she merely grunted when she saw him and turned back into her house, leaving the door open. Dean knocked his boots on the stoop to get most of the mud off and then followed her inside, skirting garden gnomes that lined the hallway. There were cat’s eye shells strung from the ceiling and inscriptions he could barely make out on the walls. The whole place smelled of musk and herbs.
Dean ducked his head into the living room, seeing books stacked on every available surface and dust coating everything. He thought vaguely that if his father had been a crazy old woman, then this would be what his house would look like.
“You grew up good lookin’.” Dean tracked Lynette’s voice to the kitchen, finding her slicing apples on a counter with cracked linoleum. When she halved one, Dean saw something red and viscous ooze out of the center and Lynette made a face, looking up at Dean with a scowl. “Dammit, been doin’ that for days,” she grumbled and Dean watched her pitch the apple halves at an overflowing trash can, red liquid, blood Dean couldn’t help thinking, in a spray on its way.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Dean asked, suspecting that Lynette did, that she had been waiting for his visit and didn’t really care much for him being there. She looked up, small, flat grey eyes sweeping over him once and then away again.
“Should’a wrung that girl’s neck when I had the chance,” Lynette murmurs, barely loud enough for Dean to hear. “Mary wouldn’t hear of it. Just asked me to take her away.”
Dean clenched his fists, fighting the urge to cross the small kitchen in the three strides it would take and slap Lynette. “Did Dad know?”
Lynette snorted, an ugly sound that almost gave Dean the push he needed to strike her anyway. “He could never deny Mary anything. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t be in the room when she had Sam because he’d been in there with you but he got that it was a difficult pregnancy,” Lynette said, plucking a banana from the bowl the apple had come from. “Difficult because she was hiding the fact that she was having two.”
Dean was lucky there was a chair behind him because his legs folded up beneath him, hard and fast. It was one thing to suspect something but another to find it was true. He’d thought maybe it would turn out that there was a logical explanation to all of this, that despite how Lucy looked she would end up being older than him and a child before he and Sam had come along, too early for his mother and father to care for and therefore given up for adoption. Maybe even the half-sister like he’d hoped.
“Why?” Dean breathed, voice barely above a whisper. His vision was greying at the edges as he realised that his father had died without knowing Lucy had existed.
“Can’t have twins,” Lynette snapped like it was obvious. “Not in our line. Always turns out badly.”
“What?” Dean gripped his knees, balling the denim under his fingers and digging in. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Twins is powerful, too much power and it’s always corrupted. Brings foul things, deep things out of hiding because that power pulses like a beacon. Mary thought separating them would be enough, foolish girl that she was.”
Dean dropped his head into his hands, wanting to cry or scream and the urge for both so strong that they strangled each other and he could let out nothing. He heard Lynette make a disgusted noise and looked up, seeing her fling the banana she’d been peeling aside because it oozed the same thick, red liquid.
Dean lurched towards the sink, losing the burger he’d had on the way as soon as he was bent over. He fumbled a shaky hand up to the faucet and twisted it on full, jamming his head under the freezing spray. When he surfaced for air, Lynette was looking at him with only mild curiosity.
“I paid the doctor to turn a blind eye and made Mary pick one.”
“One what?” Dean asked, already knowing the answer and fighting off the compelling need to dry heave.
“One kid. She could only take one home and I expected her to choose the girl because she already had you but I don’t know,” Lynette sighed, shrugging. “I wanted to drown the other one like a kitten, would have been best.”
“Stop it,” Dean choked out, the very real possibility that he could’ve not had Sam making it hard to breathe. “Stop talking about them like that.” The more Lynette talked, the more rage Dean felt on behalf of Lucy too. The more angry he was at their mother and he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to love her memory, not resent it.
“Sam squalled like I’d ripped an arm off when I took Lucy,” Lynette continued and Dean wondered if she was torturing him on purpose, if it was fun for her. Her words tripped something in his mind though, how Sam had cried that first month home so much that none of them got any sleep. His parents had walked around like zombies and Sam had only quieted when Dean crawled into his crib. He’d quit after those first few weeks though, quiet as anything the rest of the time, like he’d learned that crying didn’t get him what he really wanted.
Dean remembered his dad leaning over the crib at about week three, a stuffed elephant in his hand and real sorrow in his face, saying, “Please Sammy, just what do you want? Please?”
Lynette was looking at Dean with that same curiosity still, eyes narrowed. “She found you, didn’t she?”
“She saved us,” Dean snarled and Lynette raised her brows, looking unimpressed.
“I’m tellin’ you, put one between her eyes. Better now than later.”
000
Dean had walked out, stiff legged and so angry he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He kicked a couple of trash cans over on the curb and screamed at the sky, only dropping into the Impala when he saw he was being peered out from houses on both sides of the street, knowing the police were being called even as he moved. Dean drove, arms straight and eyes scratchy-dry. He only stopped once on the way back to Bobby’s to throw up again, nothing but water and bile, coughing into the dust.
When he came back into Bobby’s living room he stopped dead, seeing Sam still sacked out on the couch, his head in Lucy’s lap. She was twining strands of hair through her fingers like he’d been doing only days ago. There was a half-empty glass of water on the coffee table, a couple of pill bottles and a sandwich with only one bite out of it.
“Hey,” Dean said from the doorway, flinching when Lucy looked up at him, her eyes round and bright.
“He called for me but I was too small. The man came and said I could have him back if I was a good girl and did what he asked.”
Dean felt his heart clench. “What?” he asked slowly, voice cracking on the word.
“The man let me out and I followed his light. I heard you calling but I couldn’t… he led me to you.”
“No,” Dean groaned. “No, no, no!” He jerked forward and grabbed one of Lucy’s arms, hauling her off the couch and dislodging Sam. His brother hit the floor with a groan and rolled over, getting shakily to his hands and knees.
“Dean?” Sam croaked, rolling back to his haunches and trying to stand. He was looking washed out and pale still and Dean only wanted to get Lucy away. “Leave her be, she wasn’t doing anything.”
“Mine,” Lucy hissed. “My Sam, mine!” Lucy kicked at his shins and Dean rolled his eyes and scooped her off her feet, dropping her over his shoulder. She beat small fists into his back. “The man said I could have him. He promised me!”
“Are you listening to this?” Dean demanded as Sam finally got his feet under him. “She’s talking about the yellow-eyed demon, Sam.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sam snapped and Dean blinked at him. “Dean, put her down. She’s messed up but she’s not evil.”
“She’s the reason mom died!” Dean yelled and Sam stilled, everything in his body going tense.
“What?” he breathed, going impossibly paler.
“What’s all the ruckus?” Bobby demanded from the doorway.
000
Dean explained and Sam listened, his face carefully blank, mouth a thin line. The skin around his eyes was pinched as they watched Lucy pick her way through the junkers in Bobby’s yard. They’d tried to give her shoes but she’d kicked them off. Dean had even taped a pair to her feet but she’d managed to work her way out of those too.
Lucy would pause when she was on top of a roof every now and again and wave, not quitting until both Sam and Dean had waved back. It seemed their little skirmish was completely forgotten. She was like the sun, Dean thought. There were clouds and darkness but the clouds passed and it was sunny again.
“Mom didn’t die because of her,” Sam said when Dean was finished. “She died because of us.”
“No, Sammy. That’s not it at all,” Dean tried but Sam shook his head slowly.
“If anything, it just proves that Mom picked wrong,” Sam said and Dean looked at him.
“How do you figure?”
“Because she took me home and the demon still came. Who knows what would have happened if she’d taken Lucy. Maybe nothing.”
“Don’t say shit like that, Sammy. What’s done is done.”
“You were ready to blame Lucy. We don’t know what happened to her to make her this way. Maybe it was the nightmares or that nobody cared. She was alone Dean. Alone.” Sam turned on the back step, eyes serious. “Seeing the things I see, sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“You think she has freak-visions too?”
“Not sure,” Sam said, face clouding and hand going to his chin, rubbing absently. “She heard you from miles away so maybe she’s different.”
“What are we going to do with her? She’s unstable and the yellow-eyed demon seems to be starring nightly in her dreams.”
“I want to take her with us,” Sam said and Dean snorted and dropped his forehead onto his knee.
“Of course you do,” Dean groaned.
000
Lucy had her blankets pulled up to her chin and was watching Dean, eyes tracking his every movement. “You’re spilling,” she intoned gravely as Dean laid a salt-line on her windowsill. Bobby had protective charms all over the house but Dean couldn’t help following the old ways, feeling like overkill maybe wasn’t so dramatic when it came to Lucy.
“It’s to keep you safe,” Dean said, looking back at Lucy who had her head canted and that damn line between her brows that was so like Sam’s it made Dean’s gut twist. Kid sister he thought grimly. She’s my kid sister. I have a kid sister.
“Dean?” she said from behind him and Dean stilled.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t hate me,” she said, matter-of-factly like she was asking for a glass of water.
“I don’t hate you.”
Lucy looked at Dean steadily for a few moments and her expression was one he could read easily because he saw it on Sam’s face all the time. It was his patented don’t try and bullshit me expression.
000
They were back on the road sooner than Dean would have liked. He had protested the inclusion of Lucy in their little travelling show but Sam had dug his heels in. “We’re going to lose her at a truckstop somewhere when she wanders off,” Dean had tried but Sam hadn’t bought it.
They were in a diner in a little nothing town called Pleasant when Lucy snatched the paper Dean had been scanning from his hands. “Hey, give it,” Dean snapped but Lucy was flipping pages furiously like she was looking for something. She finally stopped about three quarters of the way through the paper and folded it.
“There,” she said, pushing the paper across. Dean looked at the story, a tiny insert with a picture of a woman and three kids. According to the story they’d lost their father when a prowler had entered the house and the father had tried to intervene when he’d entered the children’s bedroom.
“Looks like a B and E gone wrong,” Dean dismissed and watched Lucy turn to Sam, shoving the paper under his nose.
“Sam!” she snapped, all the petulant demand of a child in her voice. “There,” she repeated and Sam looked and then frowned.
“What?” Dean prodded.
“I did look at this one. No forced entry and the police couldn’t find anything. The husband’s neck was snapped and that doesn’t happen as often as the movies would like you to believe.”
“Christ, what do you think? She’s a supernatural diving rod or something?” Dean huffed, looking at Lucy who had lost all interest in the paper and was back to shovelling eggs into her face like she was starving.
“We’ve checked out shakier stuff,” Sam said, shrugging. Lucy eased her way out of the booth and then stood, stretching like a cat. Dean caught half a dozen guys in the diner watching her and something sharp and protective flared in him. He reached out and tugged the hem of her shirt down so it was covering the slice of belly showing between her jeans and the shirt. “Calm down Dad,” Sam snorted. “No one’s going to mess with her because they’ve seen us.”
“Shutup,” Dean grumbled, watching Lucy weave her way to the bathroom. He didn’t know why but he was just waiting for her to disappear as quickly as she had appeared and he was worried because he was starting to get attached and he didn’t like it. She still had her bad days but she could be as goofy as Sam when in a good mood and they were so alike that affection came easily.
“Nah, it’s very cute,” Sam said and Dean smacked him in the back of the head.
000
The woman was going to shut the door in their faces. Dean could see it as clear as day but what he hadn’t foreseen was the way Lucy would just push past them and put an arm around the woman and she would collapse, like she’d been waiting to cry.
There was nothing strange about the case though. The prowler had been the old-fashioned human kind who had been watching the woman’s daughters on the playground for weeks before, she told them tearily. A man had been arrested two states over.
Dean raised an eyebrow at Sam as they were leaving and Sam frowned back at him. “So much for Lucy being useful,” Dean grumbled and Sam jabbed him in the side with an elbow.
000
Sam jerked up in his seat just outside of Kentucky, Lucy snoring softly in the backseat.
“Where are we going?” he demanded and Dean hunched his shoulders up because he’d been wanting to get closer before Sam realised.
“I want to know what we’re dragging around with us,” Dean said, taking the exit to a town called Pickering where he and Sam had nearly died. He’d been in too much of a hurry to get Sam to a hospital to worry about checking the place out but he was curious. He’d been half-starved and seeing everything in washes of grey as they’d stumbled out of the farmhouse and it had been bugging him that Lucy had taken out so many hunters.
“No!” Lucy yelped from the backseat and Dean felt small hands close around his neck and haul backwards. Dean lost his grip on the steering wheel as he was yanked up and he let out a strangled cry as the Impala veered left, heading for a field and some very startled-looking horses.
Sam put one hand on the steering wheel to yank the car back straight and the other to grab Lucy by the collar and tug her sideways so she lost her grip on Dean. Dean had never been more thankful of his younger brother’s freakishly long arms. He dropped back into the driver’s seat and jammed a foot on the brake, steering them onto the shoulder.
“What the hell?” he demanded, looking over the seat and seeing Lucy had curled herself against the door.
“I killed. They died. You’ll see,” Lucy said, frantically scrubbing her hands against her jean’s legs like she was trying to get rid of stains. “Blood everywhere but He said it was the only way.”
“Sam,” Dean sighed, rubbing at his neck. “She’s… we can’t do our jobs and…”
“I know,” Sam said, sounding defeated. “I just wanted to try.”
000
Dean opened his eyes to Lucy looking down at him. He figured if she was going to kill him in his sleep she would have done it by then so he wasn’t really worried. She was only looking curious anyway, not particularly blood-thirsty. She was kneeling by his side on the bed, he could feel the little points of her knees resting against his ribs.
“You still don’t like me,” she accused, but she wasn’t pouting, more puzzled.
“I do like you and I don’t lie to family so you have to believe me.”
“You lied to Sam,” Lucy said and Dean scowled, knowing that he was about three coffees short of where he needed to be for this conversation.
“That’s different,” Dean sighed, rolling over and presenting Lucy with his back.
“Okay,” Lucy said and Dean almost asked her if she was really related to Sam because no way would Sam let something go like that. He should’ve known because she was related to Sam, she wouldn’t.
In the morning it was too late to realise this because in the morning Lucy was gone.
000
They searched up and down the highway that led out of the town and the town itself. They broadened their search but were restricted to involving the conventional authorities because of their delicate position in regards to the law. Dean almost marched into a police station anyway but a gentle hand on his shoulder stopped him.
Sam looked sad but resigned.
“She found us before,” Sam said, looking back towards the highway. “She’ll find us again… when she’s ready.”
Dean wondered if maybe she was waiting for them to be ready for her.
Wordcount: 7,255
Spoilers: None
Fandom: SPN
By:
kellifer_ficCategory: Gen (Win!sister)
Rating/Warning: Adult themes
Summary: How can you miss something you never knew was lost?
“I can’t fucking believe it.”
Sam rolled over and slitted open one eye, a raspy sounding cough wracking his body before he sighed and sat up, fisting his face blearily. “Maybe you’ll stop giving me such a hard time about the Benders now, huh?” Sam prompted, dusting his hands off on his thighs to try and remove some of the grit from the floor.
Dean turned and hunched down, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder and leaning close to look into his eyes. Sam knew that he got knocked on the head pretty hard and Dean was just looking for signs of concussion, but he leant away regardless because neither of them had seen a toothbrush for about three days.
“I’m okay, stop fussing,” Sam grumbled but the wince he let slip when he moved had Dean pushing him back down, shoving his balled jacket under Sam’s head.
“What did I say about moving?”
“That it was fine and I could do what I damn well please?” Sam tried but then let out a long exhalation when he just received a hard stare for his trouble. “Find anything to help with that lock?”
Dean slapped a flat palm against the cell door of their makeshift prison. “Nada,” he grunted and then kicked at the lower half of the bars, his steel-toed boot making a hollow ding. “Let us out of here you bastards!” he called, voice more than a ragged because he’d pretty much yelled himself hoarse the first day.
“We knew this was coming.”
“This in particular? No, we didn’t know this was coming. If we’d known this was coming I wouldn’t have been nine sheets to the wind and you wouldn’t have had the goddamn flu.”
Sam frowned, rolling over carefully. “Are you saying I could’ve avoided getting sick?”
Dean turned around and shrugged. “You picked a pretty inconvenient time to be at half-strength Sammy.”
“I picked?” Sam spluttered incredulously. “You’re unbelievable.” Sam rolled back over so he was facing the wall, the bare brick preferable to having to look at his brother right at that moment. “I wasn’t the one who giggled on the way to the van.”
“I didn’t giggle,” Dean grated. “I was laughing in the face of danger.”
“You were falling on your face in the face of danger,” Sam corrected and heard Dean stride over to him and then a booted toe nudged him in the back. Sam gritted his teeth but he couldn’t help the hiss that escaped. Hands were on his shoulders and he was being turned over before he could protest.
“You stupid son of a bitch, I knew you were hiding something,” Dean snarled, hands probing. When he dug his fingers into the ribs on Sam’s left side, Sam yelped and curled in on himself. “Broken?” he snapped, his tone a demand for an answer.
“Bruised I think,” Sam admitted, trying to uncurl himself but it felt so much better to hunch around the hot misery his abdomen was so he stayed that way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dean prodded.
“Not a lot you could do. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Worry?” Dean looked around the bare cell they were being kept in and let out a harsh bark of laughter, thumbing tears out of his eyes. “Why would I worry?”
“You think they’ll feed us today?” Sam asked. There was a faucet jutting out of the wall that meant they had water, but so far they hadn’t seen anyone since they had been dumped unceremoniously into a converted cellar with dirt floors and a row of bars intersecting the room neatly. There’d been sounds from the floor above, feet moving back and forth and voices but no one had ventured down to see them.
“Don’t know Sammy, but I’m not too keen on chowing down on whatever they might bring us anyway.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Sam nodded, watching Dean rise and start pacing the floor again like a caged tiger. He knew this was Dean’s worst nightmare, dying slow with nothing to fight against. He’d mostly screamed for their captors to hopefully annoy them enough to come downstairs, Sam suspected, rather than any hope of being released.
Sam watched his brother until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.
There’d been something put in his beer. Dean was pretty damn sure of that.
He’d only had five, maybe six and he’d driven across country without incident on more than that. It didn’t make sense that he would be falling down drunk on so little, not able to get his wobbly legs under him when strong hands grabbed him and dragged.
He remembered hearing Sam yelling and the sounds of a fight and he’d wanted to help but the mind had been willing, the body less so. He remembered now that while he’d been propped up against the van they would later be tossed into, his brother had been taken down and kicked repeatedly. Anger, bright and hot had knifed through the paralysis that had hit him and Dean had managed to get an elbow into the face of the guy that had been propping him up but that had been it. Someone had kicked his feet out and Dean had gone down.
That had been three days ago, by his closest estimation.
Dean moved back over to Sam and slid down the wall, coming to rest with a thump. He drew his knees up to his chest and clasped his hands, turning his ring around and around on his finger. “C’mon Winchester,” he breathed. “Think of some way out of this.”
He was pretty sure the seven or eight guys who had grabbed them had been hunters. They had that look about them. All beards and hard lines and efficient moves. No showboating for them. They’d put Sam down quick and nasty and only because the kid had been running a fever and hadn’t been able to keep anything solid down in days. They’d picked their moment carefully and it scared Dean to think how long they might have been waiting, biding their time, looking for an in.
Dean smacked his head back against the wall, hoping to jog something loose, some kind of inspiration. It was just so damn annoying that not one of the guys holding them had been down to gloat or so much as have a look-see. There was a camera bolted to the wall on the other side of the room and that was obviously enough.
“What do you think they’re waiting for?”
Dean looked down at Sam who had angled his head back so he could see Dean upside down. There was a bruise that was only just yellowing around the edges on his temple and that had been Dean’s main concern until Dean had discovered the ribs. He supposed they’d had to rough Sam up and hadn’t bothered to drug him because they’d underestimated him. Dean had seen Sam bring down a Black Dog with a broken arm and a busted knee so a little thing like the flu wasn’t going to slow him down much.
“Maybe they don’t think shooting us in the head will be enough,” Dean answered, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. He suspected it was mostly curiosity that had kept them alive this long. Maybe these guys thought keeping Sam would draw others to them like a protective pack of wolves. Dean had his theories but he didn’t dwell on them because he’d learned over time that trying to guess someone’s motives was like trying to hold water in cupped hands. Ultimately frustrating and fruitless.
“You recognise any of them?” Dean asked, mostly for something to say.
“I thought maybe… there was a tall guy with blonde hair that I think I saw at Gardener’s once when we were picking up the new shotguns. Name was Eddie or Edgar or something.”
“So hunters?”
“You already knew that,” Sam huffed, moving to sit up again but Dean put a hand on his head and pushed back down. “I could really go a burger right now,” Sam grumbled, kicking a heel into the floor.
“Really? No sissy salad?”
“Nope. Big hunk of meat with grease that’ll run down my hands and circle my wrists.”
“I hear that,” Dean agreed, grinning in the dim light. “Maybe if we ask nicely they’ll bring us down a menu.”
“We have to get someone down here,” Sam said, voice low.
“Yeah, I had a thought about that,” Dean said, prying one of his boots off. He curled to his feet and crossed to the bars, taking careful aim. He pitched his boot and it hit the camera dead on with a satisfying crunch. Both boot and camera fell to the floor with a shower of sparks and glass. Dean looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow.
Sam’s answering smile was radiant.
No one came.
Dean stared sullenly at his boot across the floor. He had Sam’s head on his thigh and he was twisting strands of hair around and around his thumb. By Dean’s closest estimation it was four days and he was feeling fatigued and there was now a constant headache.
Worse was that Sam had gone to sleep hours after the camera thing and Dean hadn’t been able to wake him. Sam’s skin was clammy and his breathing was laboured. He’d been coughing just before he slept and there had been a fine spray of blood on the hand he’d used to cover his mouth.
“Please,” Dean whispered into the dark. “Please.”
Dean startled awake on what he thought must be the fifth day to the sounds of shouts and gunfire. After pressing his fingers against Sam’s throat and feeling stark relief to still find a pulse, Dean carefully removed Sam’s head from his lap and moved across to the bars of their cell.
There was a few more shots and then silence.
Dean was a realist. He didn’t believe in the cavalry swooping in to the rescue at the last moment, but he liked to think that even hardened realist’s were allowed a flash of optimism every now and again.
“Hey! Hey, down here!” he shouted, grimacing when his voice tapered off to a reedy whisper at the end. He went over to the faucet and twisted it on, taking a swallow of water and then crossed to the bars to try again. “Hey goddamit! Down in the cellar!”
The silence persisted for a few moments and then there was the squeal of a heavy door swinging open. Dean moved sideways so he was between Sam and the rest of the room and clenched his hands on the bars. What he wasn’t expecting was to see a pair of bare, bloodied feet appear at the top of the stairs.
Small feet.
Girl’s feet.
The legs were clad in some kind of hospital green cotton pants and when the waist appeared, Dean realised they were scrub pants, like nurses and doctors wore. A torso clad in a scrub top followed and then a spill of dark hair. The person halted and then a head appeared, large eyes scanning the room.
“Hey, over here,” Dean said, watching as the eyes skipped to him, narrowing slightly. The girl crouched down at an angle, legs on different steps and cocked her head. Dean saw she had a spray of something dark across her chest and soaking one cuff of her pants and he was pretty sure it was blood.
“You called,” the girl said, voice light and curious and Dean frowned at her. Something in the back of his mind said, you’re dreaming this. You’re going to wake up in a minute and you’ll be back to the tedious job of starving to death in a converted basement.
“Can you get us out of here?” Dean asked, ignoring that little voice because if he had started hallucinating then they were really in trouble.
“Clicky,” the girl said and held up something black. It looked like a TV remote until she pointed it at Dean and pressed a button. Dean flinched backwards when the cell door under his hand clicked and then swung open.
“You’re kidding me,” he breathed, reaching forward to push the door so it swung all the way and hit the other side of the bars with a clang. Dean was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth and he immediately backed up and then spun, getting an arm and then a shoulder under Sam and hoisting carefully. He had a bad moment where he thought maybe he wouldn’t manage but the girl appeared on the other side, smaller frame fitting under Sam’s other shoulder and she smiled at Dean, a sunny expression that lifted her eyes and made Dean blink at her because something in that expression was familiar.
“Who the hell…you know what? I don’t even care right now. Tell me there was a big black car outside?”
The girl reached into her top and brought out a set of keys and Dean recognised them immediately.
Dean left the mystery girl curled up asleep in the passenger seat of the Impala as he carefully helped Sam through the emergency room doors. A nurse and an orderly rushed forward to relieve Dean of his burden and he let them help Sam to a gurney, both with concern in their eyes. Dean left Sam’s side only long enough to find a vending machine and raid it of all the M&Ms he could, ignoring the looks he got from the doctor as he tossed packet after packet down his throat while the man explained to him about Sam’s condition.
Dean, assured that Sam would be released in a few days and handing over Malcolm McCallister’s insurance card, made his way back out to the Impala and found the girl still in the passenger seat, flipping through his tapes.
“You should come in and get… checked out,” Dean prompted, opening the passenger door.
“Fine here,” the girl said, reaching out to snag the door handle and snap it closed again. Dean blinked at the car for a few moments, hands on his hips.
“Okay,” he said, wrenching the door open again. “I appreciate…whatever it was you did back there but I think it’s time for you to… go.”
“Fine here,” the girl insisted, reaching out. Dean grabbed her wrist and she squeaked, dropping the tape she had in her other hand. Dean felt something under his fingers and leaned down to look at the wrist he had in his hand. There was a hospital tag around the girl’s wrist and he turned it until he could see the name stamped on it.
Dean dropped her wrist and backed away, only stopping when he hit another car. “Lucy Winchester,” he breathed, disbelief colouring his tone.
“Like the rifle,” she said brightly, grinning.
“Who… how… who….?” Dean couldn’t settle on a question, pacing the motel room while Lucy sat on one of the beds, legs crossed under her and one of Dean’s tapes being turned over and over in her hands. He wasn’t sure which one it was because she wouldn’t relinquish her hold on it long enough for him to see.
“You called,” she said, her brows knitted. She was now wearing one of Sam’s t-shirts because the blood spattered scrubs had to go and it came down to her knees. Dean crossed to her and forced her feet back down into the tub of warm water he’d put under her. Although he was pretty sure the blood on her scrubs hadn’t been hers, the blood on her feet had been. He wasn’t sure where she had come from but it had looked like she had walked a hell of a long way in bare feet and her soles were a mess. Dean had patiently picked out stones and glass, Lucy fidgeting and twisting all the while but now he had nothing to occupy him, he was cycling back to the very surreal situation he was finding himself in.
“You said that before. What do you mean I called?”
“Voice in the dark, getting softer all the time. Pleasenotsammynopleaseno. Fainter and fainter until I could hardly hear it.”
“What are you saying? Who the hell are you?” Lucy looked confused and held up her wrist and Dean flapped his hands at her. “Yes, I know what that says. Who are you really?”
“Winchester, like the rifle,” Lucy said, a hurt little dent appearing between her brows and that, along with the smile he’d seen earlier had Dean stumbling back a step because he knew those expressions, saw them every damn day. Now that he really looked Dean could see it. Same moss green eyes tilting up slightly so as to be slightly feline and a dusting of moles. The nose was the same, just a little smaller and the same wide mouth.
Dean might protest, but he knew why people assumed he and Sam were something other than brothers. If you could see John and Mary Winchester, you could see the resemblance. Sam and Dean both had different traits, bits and pieces borrowed from each parent, enough of a variance to make them unique. Looking at Lucy though, Dean saw someone that would stand next to his little brother and have everyone assuming sibling.
Dean sat heavily on the opposite bed, not sure what to make of everything. Lucy was possibly someone’s idea of a joke, a creation or a weird version of a doppelganger. She was a trickster’s prank or a demon’s try at derailing the delicate balance the Winchester boys maintained.
The less sinister option was that Lucy was possibly a cousin, Dean supposed. Mary’s side because John Winchester was an only child. Dean had always thought Sam had more of their father in him though and it wouldn’t make sense for her to resemble Sam so closely. If she looked like anyone, it should be Dean who John had always said looked more like Mary of the two.
The plain and simple fact was that he needed help. He needed answers and fast.
Bobby answered on the second ring and Dean watched Lucy out of the corner of his eye as she pulled her feet back out of the tub and moved off the bed, making a beeline for the duffle with the weapons. Dean skirted the bed and headed her off, turning her around and pointing her in the direction of the TV with a shooing motion. Lucy pouted in a way that reminded him so strongly of Sam that Dean almost snapped his phone squeezing it so hard.
“’llo?”
“Bobby, it’s Dean. I got a small problem.”
“You never have small problems, Dean,” Bobby sighed but there was wry affection in his tone and Dean felt the knot of tension in his back ease a little.
“Sam’s a little banged up and we need a place to crash for a few days.”
“I always have a bed for you boys, you know that,” Bobby said gruffly.
“I also have someone I want you to see. I need your… professional opinion.”
“You brought a girl to pick me up at the hospital?” Sam spluttered as soon as he caught sight of the Impala and the pair of feet hanging out of the back window.
“Not exactly,” Dean grunted, pressing Lucy’s hospital tag into Sam’s hand. Sam looked at it and then frowned at Dean.
“What is this, some kind of joke?”
“Don’t I wish,” Dean sighed, scrubbing a hand over the back of his head. “She’s the one that busted us out and she’s convinced she’s Lucy Winchester.”
“Can you explain this in any way that makes sense?” Sam asked, raising an eyebrow and Dean grinned sheepishly.
“I’m not sure I understand what’s going on myself,” Dean allowed. Sam stopped walking and grabbed Dean’s jacket, halting his progress towards the car.
“Dean, what the hell?”
“Look, I know this seems loopy but we were dead man. I don’t know what happened but she came from nowhere and this is odd as hell but I’m willing to humor her for at least a little while. Bobby might be able to help us figure out what’s going on. I’m treating this like a case and worrying about the freak-out later.”
“Like a case?” Sam frowned at the Impala and then back at Dean. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She said she heard me.”
“Heard you? What-?”
“Sam, I swear to god, the next question you ask me is going to be please Dean, can you take your foot out of my ass, if you keep this up.”
Sam’s mouth thinned down to an annoyed little line but he stopped peppering Dean with questions and for that, Dean was supremely grateful. Sam opened the passenger door and slid slowly into his seat, watching the girl sprawled across the back bench with her ankles hooked over the window. She turned her head to Sam and grinned and Sam’s eyes widened.
“Holy crap.”
“Right? Looks just like someone.”
“Dean, she-“
“Yeah, I know.”
“Holy crap.”
“Seems to be the general consensus,” Dean said, watching Lucy run around with Bobby’s new puppy, Zeke, nipping at her ankles. Zeke was still at the stage where paws and ears were a little too big for the rest of him and Lucy laughed and spun in place whenever the puppy got caught up in his own feet.
“She looks just like-“
“Sam, right?” Bobby looked at Dean, taking his cap off for a moment to rub a hand over his thinning hair before replacing it. “Too early for a beer?” Dean prompted and Bobby waved a dismissive hand.
“Sun’s up ain’t it?”
Dean had to admit that he felt better sitting at Bobby’s old, scratched kitchen table with a beer in his hand. Sam had sacked out in the living room because the pain medication he was on was making it hard to stay on his feet and Bobby was uncapping his own beer, standing next to his soaped-over windows. Dean took a long pull of his beer and let the cold, sharp taste settle him a little.
Dean had never really noticed how dim Bobby’s place was and how it helped. He felt only truly comfortable in the dark or the half light.
“John would’ve mentioned… he would’a told someone,” Bobby was insisting and Dean watched Bobby pace the kitchen, wrapping knuckles on different surfaces as he went. “Somethin’ like that, especially with what happened to Sam and all…he would’ve mentioned it.” Bobby was going around in circles and Dean could sympathise.
“He might’ve,” he interjected. “Maybe Jim knew or Caleb? Hell, there’s more than a dozen people long in the ground that could’ve been told about this.”
“Maybe she’s John’s but not…” Bobby grimaced, making a gesture that Dean didn’t really understand nor care to.
“I thought about that,” Dean admitted. “I mean, she could be half but the resemblance… I just can’t get over it.”
“Yeah, a little too much like him. How old do you reckon she is?”
Dean let his beer go and it thudded on the table and rocked back and forth, nearly tipping over. “No way,” Dean breathed. “No fucking way. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You mean the why or the how?”
“Unfortunately, the only two people who know what happened for sure are passed on.”
Dean was frowning at the puddle of beer that had sloshed out of his bottle when he’d let it go. “Not necessarily,” Dean said slowly. “Dad always said that he should’ve known Sam would give him a headache because he was like that from the get-go. Mom was sick a lot with Sammy and her cousin Lynette stayed with us the last four months she was pregnant. She went to the hospital with Mom but didn’t come back to the house after.”
“I got some ways we can check Lucy’s a real… person in any case. I can look into ‘em while you look up this Lynette.”
“She’s not too far away. I can be back within a day, assuming she hasn’t moved.”
“Don’t worry about it. You just do what you have to and I will too,” Bobby said, waving a dismissive hand. “Hell, I’m kinda hoping she is a real Winchester. That’d be something.”
“Yeah,” Dean groaned, rubbing his fists into his eyes. “That it would.”
Dean remembered Lynette only vaguely, but he recognised the woman as soon as she opened her front door. Lynette was tall, lean and mean-looking to a tiny Dean Winchester and she pretty much looked the same to an older one, except for the tall part.
“Hmmm,” she merely grunted when she saw him and turned back into her house, leaving the door open. Dean knocked his boots on the stoop to get most of the mud off and then followed her inside, skirting garden gnomes that lined the hallway. There were cat’s eye shells strung from the ceiling and inscriptions he could barely make out on the walls. The whole place smelled of musk and herbs.
Dean ducked his head into the living room, seeing books stacked on every available surface and dust coating everything. He thought vaguely that if his father had been a crazy old woman, then this would be what his house would look like.
“You grew up good lookin’.” Dean tracked Lynette’s voice to the kitchen, finding her slicing apples on a counter with cracked linoleum. When she halved one, Dean saw something red and viscous ooze out of the center and Lynette made a face, looking up at Dean with a scowl. “Dammit, been doin’ that for days,” she grumbled and Dean watched her pitch the apple halves at an overflowing trash can, red liquid, blood Dean couldn’t help thinking, in a spray on its way.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Dean asked, suspecting that Lynette did, that she had been waiting for his visit and didn’t really care much for him being there. She looked up, small, flat grey eyes sweeping over him once and then away again.
“Should’a wrung that girl’s neck when I had the chance,” Lynette murmurs, barely loud enough for Dean to hear. “Mary wouldn’t hear of it. Just asked me to take her away.”
Dean clenched his fists, fighting the urge to cross the small kitchen in the three strides it would take and slap Lynette. “Did Dad know?”
Lynette snorted, an ugly sound that almost gave Dean the push he needed to strike her anyway. “He could never deny Mary anything. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t be in the room when she had Sam because he’d been in there with you but he got that it was a difficult pregnancy,” Lynette said, plucking a banana from the bowl the apple had come from. “Difficult because she was hiding the fact that she was having two.”
Dean was lucky there was a chair behind him because his legs folded up beneath him, hard and fast. It was one thing to suspect something but another to find it was true. He’d thought maybe it would turn out that there was a logical explanation to all of this, that despite how Lucy looked she would end up being older than him and a child before he and Sam had come along, too early for his mother and father to care for and therefore given up for adoption. Maybe even the half-sister like he’d hoped.
“Why?” Dean breathed, voice barely above a whisper. His vision was greying at the edges as he realised that his father had died without knowing Lucy had existed.
“Can’t have twins,” Lynette snapped like it was obvious. “Not in our line. Always turns out badly.”
“What?” Dean gripped his knees, balling the denim under his fingers and digging in. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Twins is powerful, too much power and it’s always corrupted. Brings foul things, deep things out of hiding because that power pulses like a beacon. Mary thought separating them would be enough, foolish girl that she was.”
Dean dropped his head into his hands, wanting to cry or scream and the urge for both so strong that they strangled each other and he could let out nothing. He heard Lynette make a disgusted noise and looked up, seeing her fling the banana she’d been peeling aside because it oozed the same thick, red liquid.
Dean lurched towards the sink, losing the burger he’d had on the way as soon as he was bent over. He fumbled a shaky hand up to the faucet and twisted it on full, jamming his head under the freezing spray. When he surfaced for air, Lynette was looking at him with only mild curiosity.
“I paid the doctor to turn a blind eye and made Mary pick one.”
“One what?” Dean asked, already knowing the answer and fighting off the compelling need to dry heave.
“One kid. She could only take one home and I expected her to choose the girl because she already had you but I don’t know,” Lynette sighed, shrugging. “I wanted to drown the other one like a kitten, would have been best.”
“Stop it,” Dean choked out, the very real possibility that he could’ve not had Sam making it hard to breathe. “Stop talking about them like that.” The more Lynette talked, the more rage Dean felt on behalf of Lucy too. The more angry he was at their mother and he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to love her memory, not resent it.
“Sam squalled like I’d ripped an arm off when I took Lucy,” Lynette continued and Dean wondered if she was torturing him on purpose, if it was fun for her. Her words tripped something in his mind though, how Sam had cried that first month home so much that none of them got any sleep. His parents had walked around like zombies and Sam had only quieted when Dean crawled into his crib. He’d quit after those first few weeks though, quiet as anything the rest of the time, like he’d learned that crying didn’t get him what he really wanted.
Dean remembered his dad leaning over the crib at about week three, a stuffed elephant in his hand and real sorrow in his face, saying, “Please Sammy, just what do you want? Please?”
Lynette was looking at Dean with that same curiosity still, eyes narrowed. “She found you, didn’t she?”
“She saved us,” Dean snarled and Lynette raised her brows, looking unimpressed.
“I’m tellin’ you, put one between her eyes. Better now than later.”
Dean had walked out, stiff legged and so angry he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He kicked a couple of trash cans over on the curb and screamed at the sky, only dropping into the Impala when he saw he was being peered out from houses on both sides of the street, knowing the police were being called even as he moved. Dean drove, arms straight and eyes scratchy-dry. He only stopped once on the way back to Bobby’s to throw up again, nothing but water and bile, coughing into the dust.
When he came back into Bobby’s living room he stopped dead, seeing Sam still sacked out on the couch, his head in Lucy’s lap. She was twining strands of hair through her fingers like he’d been doing only days ago. There was a half-empty glass of water on the coffee table, a couple of pill bottles and a sandwich with only one bite out of it.
“Hey,” Dean said from the doorway, flinching when Lucy looked up at him, her eyes round and bright.
“He called for me but I was too small. The man came and said I could have him back if I was a good girl and did what he asked.”
Dean felt his heart clench. “What?” he asked slowly, voice cracking on the word.
“The man let me out and I followed his light. I heard you calling but I couldn’t… he led me to you.”
“No,” Dean groaned. “No, no, no!” He jerked forward and grabbed one of Lucy’s arms, hauling her off the couch and dislodging Sam. His brother hit the floor with a groan and rolled over, getting shakily to his hands and knees.
“Dean?” Sam croaked, rolling back to his haunches and trying to stand. He was looking washed out and pale still and Dean only wanted to get Lucy away. “Leave her be, she wasn’t doing anything.”
“Mine,” Lucy hissed. “My Sam, mine!” Lucy kicked at his shins and Dean rolled his eyes and scooped her off her feet, dropping her over his shoulder. She beat small fists into his back. “The man said I could have him. He promised me!”
“Are you listening to this?” Dean demanded as Sam finally got his feet under him. “She’s talking about the yellow-eyed demon, Sam.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sam snapped and Dean blinked at him. “Dean, put her down. She’s messed up but she’s not evil.”
“She’s the reason mom died!” Dean yelled and Sam stilled, everything in his body going tense.
“What?” he breathed, going impossibly paler.
“What’s all the ruckus?” Bobby demanded from the doorway.
Dean explained and Sam listened, his face carefully blank, mouth a thin line. The skin around his eyes was pinched as they watched Lucy pick her way through the junkers in Bobby’s yard. They’d tried to give her shoes but she’d kicked them off. Dean had even taped a pair to her feet but she’d managed to work her way out of those too.
Lucy would pause when she was on top of a roof every now and again and wave, not quitting until both Sam and Dean had waved back. It seemed their little skirmish was completely forgotten. She was like the sun, Dean thought. There were clouds and darkness but the clouds passed and it was sunny again.
“Mom didn’t die because of her,” Sam said when Dean was finished. “She died because of us.”
“No, Sammy. That’s not it at all,” Dean tried but Sam shook his head slowly.
“If anything, it just proves that Mom picked wrong,” Sam said and Dean looked at him.
“How do you figure?”
“Because she took me home and the demon still came. Who knows what would have happened if she’d taken Lucy. Maybe nothing.”
“Don’t say shit like that, Sammy. What’s done is done.”
“You were ready to blame Lucy. We don’t know what happened to her to make her this way. Maybe it was the nightmares or that nobody cared. She was alone Dean. Alone.” Sam turned on the back step, eyes serious. “Seeing the things I see, sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“You think she has freak-visions too?”
“Not sure,” Sam said, face clouding and hand going to his chin, rubbing absently. “She heard you from miles away so maybe she’s different.”
“What are we going to do with her? She’s unstable and the yellow-eyed demon seems to be starring nightly in her dreams.”
“I want to take her with us,” Sam said and Dean snorted and dropped his forehead onto his knee.
“Of course you do,” Dean groaned.
Lucy had her blankets pulled up to her chin and was watching Dean, eyes tracking his every movement. “You’re spilling,” she intoned gravely as Dean laid a salt-line on her windowsill. Bobby had protective charms all over the house but Dean couldn’t help following the old ways, feeling like overkill maybe wasn’t so dramatic when it came to Lucy.
“It’s to keep you safe,” Dean said, looking back at Lucy who had her head canted and that damn line between her brows that was so like Sam’s it made Dean’s gut twist. Kid sister he thought grimly. She’s my kid sister. I have a kid sister.
“Dean?” she said from behind him and Dean stilled.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t hate me,” she said, matter-of-factly like she was asking for a glass of water.
“I don’t hate you.”
Lucy looked at Dean steadily for a few moments and her expression was one he could read easily because he saw it on Sam’s face all the time. It was his patented don’t try and bullshit me expression.
They were back on the road sooner than Dean would have liked. He had protested the inclusion of Lucy in their little travelling show but Sam had dug his heels in. “We’re going to lose her at a truckstop somewhere when she wanders off,” Dean had tried but Sam hadn’t bought it.
They were in a diner in a little nothing town called Pleasant when Lucy snatched the paper Dean had been scanning from his hands. “Hey, give it,” Dean snapped but Lucy was flipping pages furiously like she was looking for something. She finally stopped about three quarters of the way through the paper and folded it.
“There,” she said, pushing the paper across. Dean looked at the story, a tiny insert with a picture of a woman and three kids. According to the story they’d lost their father when a prowler had entered the house and the father had tried to intervene when he’d entered the children’s bedroom.
“Looks like a B and E gone wrong,” Dean dismissed and watched Lucy turn to Sam, shoving the paper under his nose.
“Sam!” she snapped, all the petulant demand of a child in her voice. “There,” she repeated and Sam looked and then frowned.
“What?” Dean prodded.
“I did look at this one. No forced entry and the police couldn’t find anything. The husband’s neck was snapped and that doesn’t happen as often as the movies would like you to believe.”
“Christ, what do you think? She’s a supernatural diving rod or something?” Dean huffed, looking at Lucy who had lost all interest in the paper and was back to shovelling eggs into her face like she was starving.
“We’ve checked out shakier stuff,” Sam said, shrugging. Lucy eased her way out of the booth and then stood, stretching like a cat. Dean caught half a dozen guys in the diner watching her and something sharp and protective flared in him. He reached out and tugged the hem of her shirt down so it was covering the slice of belly showing between her jeans and the shirt. “Calm down Dad,” Sam snorted. “No one’s going to mess with her because they’ve seen us.”
“Shutup,” Dean grumbled, watching Lucy weave her way to the bathroom. He didn’t know why but he was just waiting for her to disappear as quickly as she had appeared and he was worried because he was starting to get attached and he didn’t like it. She still had her bad days but she could be as goofy as Sam when in a good mood and they were so alike that affection came easily.
“Nah, it’s very cute,” Sam said and Dean smacked him in the back of the head.
The woman was going to shut the door in their faces. Dean could see it as clear as day but what he hadn’t foreseen was the way Lucy would just push past them and put an arm around the woman and she would collapse, like she’d been waiting to cry.
There was nothing strange about the case though. The prowler had been the old-fashioned human kind who had been watching the woman’s daughters on the playground for weeks before, she told them tearily. A man had been arrested two states over.
Dean raised an eyebrow at Sam as they were leaving and Sam frowned back at him. “So much for Lucy being useful,” Dean grumbled and Sam jabbed him in the side with an elbow.
Sam jerked up in his seat just outside of Kentucky, Lucy snoring softly in the backseat.
“Where are we going?” he demanded and Dean hunched his shoulders up because he’d been wanting to get closer before Sam realised.
“I want to know what we’re dragging around with us,” Dean said, taking the exit to a town called Pickering where he and Sam had nearly died. He’d been in too much of a hurry to get Sam to a hospital to worry about checking the place out but he was curious. He’d been half-starved and seeing everything in washes of grey as they’d stumbled out of the farmhouse and it had been bugging him that Lucy had taken out so many hunters.
“No!” Lucy yelped from the backseat and Dean felt small hands close around his neck and haul backwards. Dean lost his grip on the steering wheel as he was yanked up and he let out a strangled cry as the Impala veered left, heading for a field and some very startled-looking horses.
Sam put one hand on the steering wheel to yank the car back straight and the other to grab Lucy by the collar and tug her sideways so she lost her grip on Dean. Dean had never been more thankful of his younger brother’s freakishly long arms. He dropped back into the driver’s seat and jammed a foot on the brake, steering them onto the shoulder.
“What the hell?” he demanded, looking over the seat and seeing Lucy had curled herself against the door.
“I killed. They died. You’ll see,” Lucy said, frantically scrubbing her hands against her jean’s legs like she was trying to get rid of stains. “Blood everywhere but He said it was the only way.”
“Sam,” Dean sighed, rubbing at his neck. “She’s… we can’t do our jobs and…”
“I know,” Sam said, sounding defeated. “I just wanted to try.”
Dean opened his eyes to Lucy looking down at him. He figured if she was going to kill him in his sleep she would have done it by then so he wasn’t really worried. She was only looking curious anyway, not particularly blood-thirsty. She was kneeling by his side on the bed, he could feel the little points of her knees resting against his ribs.
“You still don’t like me,” she accused, but she wasn’t pouting, more puzzled.
“I do like you and I don’t lie to family so you have to believe me.”
“You lied to Sam,” Lucy said and Dean scowled, knowing that he was about three coffees short of where he needed to be for this conversation.
“That’s different,” Dean sighed, rolling over and presenting Lucy with his back.
“Okay,” Lucy said and Dean almost asked her if she was really related to Sam because no way would Sam let something go like that. He should’ve known because she was related to Sam, she wouldn’t.
In the morning it was too late to realise this because in the morning Lucy was gone.
They searched up and down the highway that led out of the town and the town itself. They broadened their search but were restricted to involving the conventional authorities because of their delicate position in regards to the law. Dean almost marched into a police station anyway but a gentle hand on his shoulder stopped him.
Sam looked sad but resigned.
“She found us before,” Sam said, looking back towards the highway. “She’ll find us again… when she’s ready.”
Dean wondered if maybe she was waiting for them to be ready for her.