“Is this ‘I did something stupid and I’m sorry in advance’ pie?”
June 17
It was hotter than hell out in Sioux Falls. The sun was an unforgiving bastard as it shined down, punishing anyone who dared to be outside beneath it.
There was some shade given by Baby, but not so much that the lone worker in a lot filled with junk cars wasn’t still sweating his ass off.
Dean Winchester slid out from beneath the car he was painstakingly working on. When he stood up, there was a soreness in his arms that he embraced with his whole freaking soul.
Rebuilding Baby was a labor of love, one that took all of Dean’s physical and mental energy. There was no time to think about Dad or the Colt or the yellow-eyed demon. There was no time to think about how Dean should have died but didn’t. And there definitely wasn’t time to think about Dad’s last —
Dean was busy, was the point.
There were five thousand freaking things that Dean couldn’t do a damn thing about, but he could fix Baby. Dad left the car to Dean, his mission to Dean, Sammy to Dean. It was Dean’s job to take care of all those things and he was starting with the Impala.
Baby looked good too. Dean inspected her proudly while he took a break with a cold one to fight off the heat. Cosmetically, she still needed to be painted, but the engine was back in and Dean had maybe a day or two worth of work before she would be purring on the road again.
There were five thousand things Dean couldn’t fix, but damn if his car wasn’t one of the things he could fix.
Dean tore off his sweat and grease soaked shirt as he slowly made his way inside Bobby’s house. It was good of Bobby to let him and Sam crash there, Bobby had always been good like that. If they needed a bed, alibi, or help on a case- Bobby was their first call.
Bobby met Dean inside his kitchen and offered another beer. Dean had already finished off his first one and he accepted the second with a nod. Sam’s laptop was opened on the kitchen table and there were newspapers, notebooks, and Dad’s journal scattered around it.
While Dean had been burying everything in the engine of a 1967 Chevy Impala, Sam buried it all in work.
Saving people, hunting things, the family motto.
Dean had one finger for that motto.
For Dean’s entire life he had been raised within the motto. Dean killed his first vamp at ten, ganked ghosts even earlier. Dean saved more lives than even Sam’s brilliant brain could count. Dean stayed with Dad and hunted all the things that creeped through the night while Sam tried for an apple pie life at college.
When Dad said jump, Dean said yes sir.
And where was Dad to give Dean his next set of orders? Salted and burned to ash in a hunter’s funeral.
For the first time in his life, Dean had no standing orders. Dean knew he needed to get back to finding the demon that killed his mom and probably his dad as well, but without the Colt then it was just another bullshit suicide mission.
“Where’s Sam?” Dean asked Bobby. Bobby leaned against the kitchen counter with his own beer in hand and his eyes watching Dean too closely. It was the same way Sam watched him- everyone waiting for Dean to blow up or lose his shit.
What good would that do? Dean could scream that it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. Dean could break shit and get too drunk to stand up. Dean could even have some chick flick moment where he hit his knees and cried over his mom’s tombstone that he didn’t know what to do anymore, but that wouldn’t change anything.
Dad was dead. The only weapon they had against the demon that killed Mom was gone. It was just Dean and Sam left with an impossible mission that they didn’t have to take up.
Revenge fueled Dad to his grave, it didn’t have to kill his two sons too.
“Bobby?” Dean kicked his chair back and stared hard at Bobby. “Sam?”
“Oh.” Bobby must have been searching hard for ‘impending breakdown’ in Dean’s eyes because it took him a moment to answer him.
“I think he went to the store,” Bobby said with a shrug. “I dunno, I gave him keys to a car and he said he’d be back.”
Dean grunted in acknowledgment and tilted his chair to look at what Sam had pulled up on his laptop. While Dean had been distracting himself with the car, Sam had been picking up where Dad left off.
For someone who always defied Dad, hated hunting, and wanted out of the life- Sam had a damn talent for it.
There were fifty freaking tabs open on Sam’s browser and not a single one was porn. Dean clicked through them carelessly, reading headlines as he went.
A chick was found dead in a locked room, the cops called it suicide and her family didn’t believe it. There was a string of fires in movie theaters, secure footage couldn’t find anyone anywhere near the crime scenes before the fires happened. An airplane crashed in Nevada, the sole survivor swore there was another passenger who lived as well though none had been reported on the passenger list. There were parents in Nebraska being murdered and their kids swore it was by clowns.
Dean snorted at that one and couldn’t believe Sam even left the tab open. Sam could stare down a tulpa without twitching, but if he even saw a red nose the kid was panicked and flailing.
“How’s the car comin’?” Bobby asked after Dean closed Sam’s laptop. There was an innuendo in Bobby’s tone, and not the sexy kind. It was an innuendo Dean ignored completely.
“Real good,” Dean said with pride. “I pulled a transmission from that old Chevy you had and put it in. I think I can replace the spark plugs, calibrate the cat, find a blower motor, and she’ll be ready for a paint job.”
“Good. And you?” Bobby asked gruffly. “How are you holding up?”
I’ll die before I kill Sam. I should be dead.
“I’m fine,” Dean said firmly.
Dean needed Bobby to quit asking him or Dean was going to be honest eventually. And if Dean couldn’t carry the weight of Dad’s mission and Dad’s last words, he sure as hell wouldn’t put that on Bobby.
Bobby Singer was one of the few uncomplicated things in Dean’s life. Bobby was just Bobby. He used to be Dad’s friend, a fellow hunter and safe place for Dad to dump his boys on his hunts, but Bobby was Dean’s in a way nobody else was. Bobby was the man that baked a cake on Dean’s birthday when he was there and called him every year after. Bobby was solid, dependable, there.
Bobby needed to stop trying to play shrink though or Dean was going to lose his shit.
Dean wandered upstairs to grab a quick and cold shower, scrubbing off the grime, sweat, and dirt that he had been covered in. The water pressure in Bobby’s place was a hell of a lot stronger than the motels where Dean usually camped out though and he ended up just standing in the water for a long time.
How the hell did everything go so wrong so quickly?
They had the Colt, they had Dad, they had the demon.
And then they had nothing.
Dean closed his eyes and didn’t know if it was grief or pure rage that led him to hit the tiled wall in the shower over and over until it cracked and his blood poured freely.
There were five thousand things Dean couldn’t fix and he freaking hated all of them.
Dean could hear Sam down in the kitchen after he got dressed and wrapped his damn knuckles up. Sam could have done a better job with the bandage, but then Sam would ask why Dean did it and what was Dean thinking and why won’t Dean just open up and share all his feelings with him?
Sam was only twenty-two to Dean’s twenty-six and he made Dean feel freaking ancient. Sam was a 6’3” giant who just oozed all his feelings and emotions all over the place and made everyone else deal with it.
Sam cried when he left for Stamford and he cried when Jessica died. Sam cried when Dean was on Death’s doorstep and he cried when they burned Dad’s body.
Dean felt so damn old because he didn’t cry, not ever. Not where Sam could see, not where Dean had to admit to it.
Dean didn’t cry, period.
Sam was dry-eyed and bushy tailed or whatever when Dean made his way back to the kitchen. Bobby had cleared the tools off his table and there were styrofoam containers of take out in three of the seats. Dean slid in the open seat and popped his container open with a loud sigh.
“Oh, thank God.” Dean leaned in to take a deep whiff of the burger and fries Sam got him from whatever the closest diner was. When Dean was gearing up to slam the burger, Sam sweetened the deal.
“Here, they had pie.” Sam slid a smaller square container to Dean and Dean only had a moment of childish glee before the shifty look on Sam’s face made him hesitate.
“Is this ‘I did something stupid and I’m sorry in advance’ pie?” Dean demanded. Dean would eat it either way, it wasn’t the pie’s fault it was dirty, but he wanted all the facts before he picked up his fork.
Dean practically raised the kid sitting across from him, he knew all his looks. Dean knew when Sam was feeling guilty or he was embarrassed. There wasn’t a damn thing about Sam that Dean didn’t know.
“It’s ‘they had the pie right at checkout’ pie,” Sam scoffed. Dean didn’t even get a chance to taste the freaking pie before Sam ruined it all.
“But I did find a case,” he said.
Dean stared Sam down as he picked up the burger and took a huge bite. Sam was a pain in the ass, but at least he always remembered how Dean liked his burgers; greasy, loaded, and with as much bacon as legally allowed.
“Actually, I found a bunch of cases,” Sam said. Dean noticed that the food in front of Sam was going untouched, though Bobby was making short work of his dinner.
“I saw ‘em,” Dean said with a mouthful of food. “I say we start with the clowns. You love a good clown, eh, Sammy?”
“About as much as you love flying,” Sam shot back without missing a beat. Sam pulled a face and Dean opened his mouth, showing off the chewed up food, and Sam pulled another face. Dean grinned when Sam had to look away, it meant Dean won.
“You got a plane wreck on the list too, dontcha, Sam?” Bobby asked.
Dean frowned in his food. Planes made no freaking sense, and Dean lived in a world with monsters and ghouls and creatures that people couldn’t imagine. It was logical to be a little nervous when flying, clowns though? That didn’t make any sense.
“Yeah, actually.” Sam opened his laptop and Dean kept half his attention on the food Sam wasn’t eating.
“So listen to this…” Sam cleared his throat and began reading off the screen. “‘Flight 737 from London Heathrow to Nevada International Airport claimed the lives of one hundred and seven passengers when the aircraft experienced mechanical failure on its descent. The only survivor of the crash states that there was a second survivor— hold on, let me find this girl’s blog…”
Sam turned the laptop around so that Dean and Bobby could see the screen. It only took Sam two clicks to pull up a video of a teenage girl. The chick had dark pink hair and was curled up in a ball on a bed, probably talking in her camera from beneath a blanket. Sam clicked play and they all three listened to her message.
“My name is Michaela Turner,” the girl whispered in the camera. “Today is June fifteenth and if you’ve seen the news, you know what’s happened in Nevada. The doctors said I’m wrong, that the boy on the plane didn’t exist, but he did! He is real and I am not crazy and someone has to find him!! Harry, if you’re watching this, I know you’re real!”
The video cut out when it looked like a nurse pulled the blanket off the girl and Dean snorted.
“She really uploaded that?” he asked, grinning even if no one else was. “I guess she isn’t worried about future job prospects, huh?”
Bobby snorted, Sam rolled his eyes, and everything felt okay for a moment. Just long enough for Dean to think he could work a case with his brother and it would all end up just fine. If not just fine, then at least it would be alright.
They didn’t have their dad or the Colt, but Dean still had Sam.
And Baby, as long as Dean was living and breathing that car would be too. Sam could huff and roll his eyes all he wanted, Dean was finishing the car before they left for Nevada. The paint job couldn’t be rushed though and so the boys accepted the keys to a freaking soccer mom van out of Bobby’s lot to take.
“This radio sucks,” Dean complained as he drove. Sam was in the passenger seat with a stack of newspapers on his lap, each one being marked carefully with highlighters.
Dean glanced over when Sam didn’t reply to his complaint and couldn’t help the brow that raised at Sam’s work. The kid had to have a paper from every major news outlet in the country and he was flipping through each one, highlighting bits, making his own notes on a notebook.
It made sense for Dean to shove everything down and work on the car for the last week. The car was something Dean could fix. What didn’t make a damn bit of sense was why Sam was burying all his shit in hunting. Sam didn’t live for the hunt, Sam hated it actually.
The only reason Sam started hunting again after his four year vacation at Stamford was because Dean dragged him into it. Then Sam’s girlfriend was killed by the same demon that took their mom - took their dad - and Sam stuck around to help kill it.
“What’s the plan, Sammy?” Dean asked, too loud and pointed to be ignored again.
Sam didn’t stop working though as he answered in an absent tone.
“I figured we’d say we’re with the FBI,” Sam said, his eyes and attention clearly still on the papers. “We have the suits and badges. We interview the witness, check the wreckage, go from there.”
Dean hummed in agreement and then rolled his window down. Sam yelped when Dean quickly reached over to snatch his newspapers and threw them all out the window, leaving them to fly away in their dust.
“Dean, what the hell?!” Sam yelled. “I needed those!”
“No, you need to give it a rest,” Dean snapped right back. “You need to sleep and eat and quit trying to turn every article in to a case!”
“There are cases!” Sam said, not yelling anymore but sure as hell looking pissed. “People are dying, Dean! People that we can help!”
Dean couldn’t have held back his scoff even if he wanted to.
“What?” Sam demanded. “What’s that mean?”
Dead gripped the steering wheel tightly, hating the unfamiliar feel beneath his hands. Dean hated the freaking minivan, he hated cases involving airplanes, he hated the whole damn world.
“It means why the hell do you care?” Dean asked, only looking over long enough to see Sam’s face for an instant. Sam had on his hardest glare, the one that meant the kid was bubbling up with every feeling except hate.
Dean shut everything down when he was hurt, Sam got louder.
“Because - because I think this is what Dad would have wanted,” Sam said, tripping over his words. “I’m just- I’m trying to do what he wanted.”
“Look out for your brother. You have to save him. And if you can’t? Dean, you have to kill him.”
“For the first time in your life,” Dean told Sam harshly, keeping his eyes on the road so he didn’t have to see Sam’s face. “It’s too little, too late, Sam. He’s dead.”
It was a quiet drive after that.
Sam didn’t sleep, Dean didn’t apologize.
John Winchester didn’t return from the grave to take back the last words he said, whispered in Dean’s ear just before he died.
The boys checked in a motel not far from where the place crash survivor lived. Dean handed over his fake ID, stolen credit card, and accepted the room key in exchange. Sam carried in the suits they bought to wear with the fed badges they forged months ago.
They didn’t say a word to each other outside of Dean demanding they grab lunch before interviewing the kid that survived. They drove through the night and even when Dean stopped for a breakfast burrito, Sam only got a juice.
“Eat or I’m going to interview alone,” Dean told Sam after buying them both lunch in a drive thru.
If Sam was feeling some fucked up feeling of guilt over Dad’s death and wanted to hunt himself to an early grave, Dean couldn’t stop him. But he’d be damned if Sam was going to keep skipping meals.
“Happy?” Sam mumbled with a death glare for Dean after he took a big bite of the chicken sandwich Dean got him.
“Thrilled,” Dean lied.
They ate in silence on the short drive to the area Sam found for Michaela Turner.
Sam only spoke up to give Dean all the facts when they pulled in a neighborhood filled with colorful houses that Dean thought might not have been so bad to grow up in.
Flight 737 had no record of mechanical problems leading up to its flight. There was heavy turbulence on its descent and then - out of the blue - all the engines failed. The plane fell 28,000 feet and there were no survivors except for one fifteen year old girl. The girl swore that there was a boy who rode on the plane with her that also survived, but no security tape showed anyone who matched her description and there were no lists of other unaccompanied minors on board.
“So we’re looking at a spirit,” Dean said when they climbed out of the car at the address Sam had.
“Yep. A powerful one too if it shut all the engines down at once,” Sam agreed.
If there was one thing Winchesters could do, it was put all their other shit away to deal with a case. They were dressed up in the fed suits with their badges pocketed. Dean naturally took the lead as he strode up to the door and knocked firmly.
It never failed to make Dean smirk as he realized how well he could mimic a cop-knock.
When the door was answered it was by a total MILF. A woman stood in the doorway of the house and her eyes lit up when she looked at Dean. She was practically drooling when she looked at Sam though.
“Hello, ma’am,” Sam said, all business. He flashed his badge quickly. “We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, here to talk with you and your daughter about the recent plane crash.”
“Oh.” The woman fluttered thick lashes at Sam and backed up, waving an arm for them to enter the house. It was a nice place, pretty damn colorful though.
“Michaela just talked to some people with the Transportation Department,” the woman said as she led them from a bright green painted entry room to a blue and yellow kitchen. “She’s still… a little confused,” the woman laughed and shot a glance at Sam.
Since Sam wasn’t picking up what she was putting down, Dean elbowed him subtly. Sam grimaced and Dean rolled his eyes.
Baby.
“That’s understandable, we just need to get a little more information,” Dean told her. They stopped in the kitchen doorway where it connected with the living room. Dean could spot the girl with the pink hair from the video, Michaela, curled up like a cat in a plush yellow chair. The TV was on, but Dean doubted if the girl was actually watching anything while she stared at the screen.
“Does your daughter fly often?” Sam asked the mom. If not, it could be a spirit linked to the kid.
“Oh, yes. Michaela flies between my house and her dad’s twice a year.” The woman was definitely flirting when she gave Sam a coy look. “We’re divorced. He remarried, I never did.”
Dean didn’t laugh, but he did clap Sam on the shoulder and loudly announce that he would go talk with the girl while Sam interviewed the mom.
Teasing Sam around Women was one of the few hobbies Dean really had.
Michaela snapped back in from where she had been zoning out as Dean approached her in the living room. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the girl, aside from the pink hair and nose ring.
She was just another teenager who got caught up in the supernatural shithole of life.
“Hey, there.” Dean gave the girl a smile that other teenage girls went crazy for. Not that one, Michaela only glared at Dean with her arms crossed over her chest.
“I wanted to ask you about the accident you were in,” Dean said. “That work for you?”
The girl rolled her eyes and in Sam-lingo that meant ‘get on with it’, so Dean did.
“I bet you were pretty scared, huh?” Dean asked her. “Do you remember what happened?”
“I’ve probably got PTSD, not like brain damage,” Michaela snapped.
God. Dean hated teenagers.
“My mistake,” Dean said, holding his hands up innocently. “You mind telling me what happened?”
“Are you going to believe me or call me crazy?” Michaela demanded. “Because I’m not going to keep repeating myself if everyone’s going to call me a liar.”
Dean kneeled down so they were on eye level with each other. The angry look melted some when Dean answered her with nothing but the truth.
“Whatever you tell me, I will believe,” Dean told her. “Try me.”
“Fine.” Michaela flicked her head, tossing her pink hair over her shoulder, before raising her chin in what felt like a ‘try this, bitch’ type of move.
“I met a boy on the plane and he was totally real.” Michaela shot a filthy look where her mom was hitting on Sam, probably.
“And what did the boy say?” Dean asked, thinking of the demon that took down three planes back in March.
“He said he was looking for his dad because his aunt and uncle were total bullies,” Michaela said. “He was super cute and so I said he could come home with me and I’d help him find his dad, you know?”
No, Dean didn’t know because Dean had never been so damned stupid in his life. Even if it was a teenager and not a demon, pissed off spirit, or even a poltergeist- it was still naive to invite a stranger home.
“Yeah, makes total sense,” Dean lied through his freaking teeth. “What did he look like?”
Michaela sighed and made the face that girls her age used to make at Dean when he was closer to her age.
“Sooo cute,” she sighed, all girlie and ridiculous. “He had like the prettiest green eyes, sort of like yours but pretty, you know?”
Dean would not choke a child.
“And he had this sort of sexy bed-head look?” Michaela giggled when she let her eyes flicker toward Sam. “Like your partner except Harry’s hair was - IS! Harry’s hair IS black!”
So probably not a ghost then.
“You said his name’s Harry?” Dean checked, making an actual note of that. “You’re sure?”
“Duuuh,” Michaela drawled out slowly, rolling her damn eyes for effect. “Harry Potter. And you really need to find him, he doesn’t know anyone here! His godfather is in Spain and he’s trying to find his dad in Vegas and he’s probably all messed up from saving our lives. Maybe he has amnesia!”
“How sure are you that this kid lived?” Dean asked her, watching her carefully for any twitches or tells. “Nobody on scene saw him and he wasn’t listed as a passenger.”
Dean was fishing for more information, something else to go on. If Michaela could describe him in such girly ass detail, it wasn’t a ghost. A demon taking some poor kid for a ride was a better bet, but why crash the plane?
“I need you to believe me because nobody else does,” Michaela suddenly whispered. She reached out and grabbed Dean by the shoulder, pulling his face closer to hers.
“Harry saved my life,” she whispered quickly, her voice shaking just enough for Dean to hear. “I don’t know how, but I know that everything was falling and I was freaking out and I held on to Harry and he saved my life. You saw the wreckage, right? You saw where our seats weren’t even like scratched? Harry did that. And then he just disappeared.”
Damn it all, Dean believed her. When he told her so, she sat back and wrapped her arms around herself more firmly and nodded. Dean understood her look, it was the look everyone had when Dean showed up after they witnessed something supernatural and told them they weren’t crazy.
Nobody else would ever believe them, but it must be a nice few seconds of feeling sane.
“Now you have to find him and help him find his dad,” Michaela told Dean. “I tried googling his dad, but I couldn’t find anything. But if you’re like some cop or whatever, you can find him for Harry.”
“Sure, alright.” Dean placated her and held a pen to write down the name of the dad just below the name of the kid. “What’s the name?”
“John. John Winchester.”