Chapter Text
Dean jumps when Ash drops a thick folder on the counter next to him.
His hand knocks over the room-temperature beer bottle he’d been nursing from last night and it spills in his lap. The liquid, and smash of the bottle on the ground, make him open his eyes with shock. The light hurts his eyes and starts a throbbing headache that feels like his brain is just a bit too large for his skull. Dean throws up a hand to his face to shield his eyes but, having forgotten he was sitting on a stool when he passed out, tilts back just a bit too far.
“Whoa!”
He hits the ground and has to gasp for a second to get air into his empty lungs.
All this happens in a span of five seconds and Dean’s hungover brain makes that whirring noise old laptops make when they’re turning on before he can fully process that, yes, he is on the ground, his shoulder and tailbone ache now, and his headache was only worsened by his head hitting the hard floor.
A loud burst of laughter makes Dean groan.
Sam bends over at the waist, shoulders shuddering as he laughs.
“Shut up,” Dean grumbles. “Bitch.”
Sam hiccups, unable to wipe the shit-eating grin off his face. “You’re not very alert for a hunter, you jerk.”
“I’m allowed to celebrate saving a kid’s life,” Dean mumbles back, cracking open an eye with caution.
The smile slides right off Sam’s face at the reminder of the case they’d just finished. A lone werewolf had been hiding in the woods near a town and kidnapped a bunch of kids in order to turn them and create a new pack. They’d all been turned except one.
It makes Sam a little sick to think about walking into the bloodbath—one of the turned kids had gotten loose and killed the others.
“I guess,” the younger Winchester mutters.
“Why’d you wake me up?”
Jo nudges his form with the toe of her boot. “We’ve got a roadhouse to run. Plus, we have a case for you. And it was really funny.”
That piques Dean’s curiosity. “What is it? Vamps? Wendigo? Werewolf?”
“We’re not sure,” Ash answers, handing the folder to Sam to rifle through. “Hunters have been dropping off the grid. A lot.”
“We’ve got people that’ve been finding abandoned cars and phones, too,” Jo adds. “Then the missing hunters show up—sometimes—and they set up a normal life. These are people that have shown no inclination to leave before, mind you.”
“So hunters are leaving the life?” Dean asks, sitting up to frown at Jo. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Uh, the disappearance?” Jo snaps. “The abandoned cars and phones? They don’t go back for their shit, Dean. It’s just there, and police have been finding the arsenals in the trunk. There are more cops breathing down people’s necks at all times. Hunters leaving the life? Some of them, sure, but people like Bruce Chappell and Y/N Y/L/N—they like the life. Y/N said to me a bunch of times how much she’d hated school.”
“Hold on, did you say Y/N Y/L/N?” Dean interrupts. He and Sam share a worried look. Now there’s no way they won’t take the case.
“Yeah.” Jo bites her lip, eyes scanning over Dean’s face. “Why, you know her?”
Sam and Dean nod in unison.
“Her dad and our dad were friends—sort of. I mean, her dad used to drop her off with us whenever they went hunting together. She was a year younger than me and a terrible influence,” Sam reminisces. “Our dad always got so mad whenever they’d get back because she’d always get us in trouble but he couldn’t stay mad at her for long. She was really good at pretending to be innocent and sweet.”
“Yeah,” Dean grumbles, glaring at Sam as he hoists himself up into a chair, “and I almost always got in trouble, because Sammy always backed Y/N up. She’s like a fucking spider and Sam got caught up in her web, but goddamnit…” he sighs and leans across the table for the case folder Ash had compiled. “I got stuck in her web too. She was a little heathen.”
Jo blinks at them. “That’s… I’ve never heard you speak better about someone.”
“Well, she’s basically my little sister… in law.” Dean grunts when Sam kicks him under the table. “Hey! Sorry, ex -sister-in-law.”
Jo laughs, confused but knowing that what she’s watching is funny.
“Sammy here had a crush ,” Dean sings. Sam kicks him again. “Ow! You’re a menace, Sammy.”
“Y/N never mentioned you two,” Jo says, frowning. You’d only ever talked about hunting and made empty, half-drunk, and not-remembered promises to take Jo hunting after she finished high school. Then, about four years ago, you’d stopped dropping by so frequently and never brought up hunting together again.
“See,” Dean points at her, “that’s why I say ‘ex’. Sam left to go to college and Y/N didn’t like that. She hasn't contacted us since. Hell hath no fury, right?”
“It’s not like that,” Sam mutters, embarrassed and red. “She’s my annoying little sister and she felt like I was abandoning her. Dean’s always been annoying about his fantasy about me liking Y/N. He wants her to be really in the family. But anyway.” He grabs the case file out of Dean’s hands. “She’s missing?”
Jo nods. “I tried calling her a week ago and she hasn’t picked up since. I don’t know how long exactly she’s been missing, but Rufus and Bobby found her car and brought it back to Bobby’s.”
Sam swallows and Dean’s face goes somber.
“We should head over there, then,” Dean declares. “Maybe there’s a clue in her car about what happened to her.”
Sam nods but keeps his eyes glued to the picture Ash had used for your profile in the file. You’re older than he’d ever seen you in life. His chest aches when he thinks about how much of pure you he’s missed out on for years. It’s crazy to how he saw you constantly as a kid and he doesn’t even know what you look like now.
And it was all for nothing. He’s hunting again, but without you in the backseat. And you’re missing.
“Yeah, let’s go,” Sam says suddenly, his eyes watering because of all the dust in the roadhouse, and nobody mentions his choked voice.
“Little sister my ass,” is all Jo mutters as her eyes follow the boys out.
Sandwiched between two boys both six inches taller than you, fifteen-year-old you leans back on the couch and pouts as both fathers lecture the three of you.
“Dean, you’re twenty years old,” John scolds. “You should know better than to help Y/N and Sam sneak into an amusement park!”
“We just wanted to see if we could,” Sam protests. Your dad crosses his arms.
“Yeah, and if you all got caught? You would all get arrested.”
“We had a fake story all planned out!” you pipe up indignantly. “Dean had a fake I.D. and everything! Besides, we just would’ve broken out.”
“Put a finger to your lips, Y/N!” your father barks. “You are in deep, deep trouble.”
“Nothing even happened!” you snap back, clenching your jaw and narrowing your eyes slightly.
“John and I came home and we didn’t know where you were! There was no way for us to find you!”
“You never tell me where you’re hunting!”
“What if there had been a monster at Kings Dominion?” Your dad’s face is starting to turn red, as is yours.
“Y/N,” Sam mutters at your side and you very deliberately plant your hands on the couch and lift your butt so you move away from him. Sam falls silent as if struck dumb.
You like to run the show whenever you’re with the Winchester boys and do not like it when they back someone else over you. It may be a little childish and petty, but you’ll be petty when you can. Almost every other aspect of your life requires you to be generous and self-sacrificing.
“We had our weapons,” you reply to your dad, ignoring Sam. Your voice is suddenly cool and aloof. It’s your way to assert dominance—acting like you’re above everyone and you couldn’t care less about them. “We’re allowed to have fun sometimes.”
“Not dangerous fun,” your dad mutters, beginning to cool down as you freeze. He can’t stay mad at you for long. None of them can.
“All fun is dangerous,” Dean butts in but raises his hands in surrender when your dad glares at him. “Never mind.”
“Coward,” you mumble under your breath and Dean jabs you in the side with his ebow. You squeal and fall into Sam’s lap. Your dads roll their eyes and the past is behind you all, even though everyone knows you’ll come up with another crazy idea the boys will follow you into executing soon.
Sam sticks a finger into your side and you twist away from him, too, pink from laughter or embarrassment or something else you’ve decided to ignore so it’ll go away staining your cheeks and making your ears hot.
Your elbow hits Sam in the gut and he groans. Dean laughs and then grunts when Sam hits him lightly on the shoulder.
“Oh, it is on,” Dean growls and lunges at his younger brother. You scoot away from the fight you’d started and laugh as the brothers tussle.
Even while fighting, Sam’s ears recognize your laugh and he blushes at the thought of you watching him play fight with Dean.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean whispers while Sam has him pinned, “your pathetic puppy-love crush is super obvious.”
“Hello?” Dean waves his hand in front of Sam’s nose. His little brother is staring out the window with no expression on his face and vacant eyes. “Earth to Sammy?” He snaps again and Sam blinks, disoriented, before shoving Dean’s hand away from his face. “Where’d you go?” Dean inquires, switching his gaze back to the flat expanse of pavement Baby’s cruising along.
Sam clears his throat and replies, “Just... lost in thought,” deliberately avoiding the question.
Dean can tell that immediately, obviously, but he doesn’t question his brother. “Okay.”
The silence between them lasts only ten seconds before Sam angles his body in Dean’s direction and says, “Dean?”
“Yeah?”
Sam furrows his eyebrows. “Why’d Y/N never contact you? Me, I get… sort of. But you’d think she’d still want to keep in touch with you.”
“It’s like I always said, Sammy,” Dean grins, “Y/N was only using me to get to you.” He chuckles.
Sam rolls his eyes. The idea of him having a crush on Y/N is laughable, but not even a love potion could get you to like him in any way other than as a brother. Which doesn’t make Sam’s stomach churn. It was the roadhouse food, for sure—Jo and Ellen are great, but the food they serve is just as good as any other roadhouse’s food—which is to say, terrible.
“Nah, I’m joking. We all know I was her favorite, at least until she started blushing at the mere mention of you.”
Sam shakes his head.
Dean shrugs. “Fine, believe what you want to believe, it’s your loss. We both know Y/N would never make the first move if she actually liked a guy. If you don’t accept your feelings she’s gonna move on eventually. If she hasn’t alrea—”
“Look, you’re not my relationship counselor or whatever,” Sam interrupts. “Please stop with all that crap.”
The elder brother sighs. “You know full well Y/N’s spotty with her comms. I guess she was so mad at you she got mad at me because we’re brothers or some weird excuse—so thanks for being such a humongous dick my baby sister hated me, by the way—and I didn’t call her and she didn’t call me. At first she was probably just mad but then she probably got anxious and then I got a new number because my phone got smashed, so I wouldn’t be able to answer any of her calls if she did call me and then she would probably think that I hated her for disconnecting my number so…” Dean heaves a sigh and shrugs again. “You left me with a heaping pile of shit, man. And you broke her heart. I don’t care if you think Y/N loved you romantically or platonically, she felt abandoned by you.”
Sam stares at his lap. “I know Y/N can hold grudges, but still. That’s pretty extreme.”
“You give her too much credit, man,” Dean replies. “Y/N isn’t good with emotions that aren’t anger or happiness, so she just changes all the other ones to those two. You know her mom was shit, plus she’s a hunter… I’m not surprised she reacted like that. Hell, we’re better adjusted than her and you know what Dad was like.”
Sam shifts in his seat. “She’s pretty good, Dean.”
“Yeah, she is.” Dean looks at his brother out of the corner of his eye. “We helped. You, especially, what with your desire to turn our life into a chick flick.”
Sam laughs, not because it was especially funny, but to break the tension, and after a pause Dean gives a chuckle too. “Nothing could turn our life into a chick flick.”
“Maybe an action-slash-romance after you save her,” Dean muses.
Sam shoves him.
Sam goes to search your car while Dean passes out in one of Bobby’s spare rooms. He’d wanted to come along too, but a full night of driving had him struggling to keep his eyes open.
“Her keys were in the ignition,” Bobby says while unlocking the car with said keys. “Rufus and I cleared out the trash in the back and washed the laundry, which I put into the trunk. I doubt you’ll be able to find anything we didn’t. I know all Y/N’s tricks. Good luck, though, boy.” He pats Sam on the shoulder and leaves him with your small Prius. Dean had always hated it because of its boringness, and you’d always responded by predicting his unusual car be the thing that helps cops track him down, if cops were ever on his ass.
“My car is normal and small,” you’d always said. “Nobody will ever notice it, and I don’t have a Bigfoot brother to lug around.”
“And you’re too small to see the road when you’re driving bigger cars,” Sam always teased, grinning, and you’d always gone a bit red and aimed a kick at his shin.
Sam has to crouch to start feeling around in your car, but one accidental brush against a hot seatbelt buckle makes him hiss and flinch away.
When Dean comes out, all four of the doors of your car are opened and Sam’s ass is sticking in the air as he feels around the car in the driver’s area. There’s got to be a hidden compartment somewhere, if Sam knows— knew you.
Maybe you changed.
Dean’s voice shakes that thought from Sam’s mind as he says, “Wow, this really brings back memories, doesn’t it?”
“Not really,” Sam’s about to say, because you’d only had the car for two months before he left for Stanford and whenever the three of you hunted together you always traveled in the Impala, but Dean continues to talk.
“Remember when I got stabbed by a vamp and had to lie in the backseat but there wasn’t enough room?”
“I do not remember that,” Sam replies. He can’t even imagine the three of you in that car together. He and Dean are just too big.
The humor slides right off Dean’s face. “Oh, yeah,” he says flatly and turns around.
“What’s the sudden attitude about?” Sam asks.
“You didn’t go with us on that hunt because you were too busy watching the mail and, more importantly, making sure Dad wouldn’t find your Stanford letter. Remember?” Dean leans against the car’s opposite side. “We got patched up, came through the door, Y/N said something about all hunting together, and you just blurted out, ‘I’m leaving you guys’.”
Sam sighs and gives up on the search momentarily, standing up to glare at his brother. “Dude, you gotta stop guilt-tripping me about leaving for college. I get that you were hurt by my decision, but it’s just that—my decision.”
“I’m not getting into this argument with you,” Dean mutters and crouches down to search through the car as well.
Sam rolls his eyes. “Dean—”
“Aha!” Dean holds up a box that he’d pulled from somewhere, but Sam had checked that side twice and found nothing. Where could you have hid a box about half the length of a pillow where Sam, Bobby, and Rufus wouldn’t have found it?
“Where’d you—”
“Me and Y/N hollowed out the passenger seat a bit and stuck this box inside for her to hide stuff. It’s where she keeps her journal, mostly, so maybe that’ll help us figure out when and where she went missing. We invited you to help, but you needed to study.”
“Dude.” Sam stands up and slams the driver’s door shut. “ Stop, okay? I get it. I left. I’m back now, aren’t I?”
“Just wait until we find Y/N,” Dean says. “If you think I’m being bad or annoying about how you abandoned us and, if it was up to you, Yellow-Eyes would be running rampant and killing people’s moms.”
“I’m sure I’ll get it bad from Y/N!” Sam replies. “But you can’t hold that against me for the rest of my life, okay?”
“You’re right,” Dean concedes. Sam’s mouth barely has enough time to quirk up before he adds, “I’m sure you’ll do something else I can get pissed at you for doing sometime in the future.”
Sam rolls his eyes and turns back to the house.
“Well, you are my younger brother!” Dean yells at his retreating back. “I’m always gonna be on your case about something !”
“Idjits,” Bobby mutters and Dean takes the box from Sam, which is much lighter than it looks (and should be, Dean’s brain says, but you might have gotten a new, smaller journal after filling up your first one, and used the burner phone without getting a new one, and put the photo album somewhere else in the car) and sets it on the table.
He pats his pockets up and down until the zip-up one on his left leg yields results. A relatively new-looking silver key glints in the light as he puts it in the lock and turns.
There’s nothing in the box.
“Did you find anything apart from the trash, clothes, and weapons?” Dean asks.
Bobby shakes his head.
The boys scour your car for three straight hours but come up with nada again. Sam hit every square inch of the car’s interior to knock loose any secret compartments. Dean cuts open every seat for more hidden boxes, reminding himself to just buy you a better car. His little sister won’t be driving around in a Prius.
Bobby even looks at the interior and exterior of the car with a blacklight on the off chance you’d left a message in invisible ink.
There’s absolutely nothing.
“I wanna key this car so bad,” Dean finally grumbles when they all give up.
“Y/N’s already gonna be pissed about her seats,” Sam points out. He wouldn’t stop Dean if he did, though. He’s just as frustrated as his brother, and also exhausted. He has to run a hand through his hair to get it away from his forehead to cool down a bit. “Hey, Dean?”
“Hmm?”
“How come you had a key to Y/N’s box?”
“We got them driving home on the night you left,” Dean starts.
“Shit, did you and Y/N decide to do everything in the few days before I left? God damn it.” Sam has to stare up at the sky and count to three before gritting out, “Sorry. I’m just annoyed by your constant guilt trips and anxious about Y/N. By all means, continue and make me feel even worse, please.”
Dean leans against the car and closes his eyes. “You know perfectly well Y/N was always doing fifty million things at once. It was just convenient, what with how we had recently made the box but Y/N wanted a lock on it, and we saw a place for that at the Walmart we stopped at for snacks. She got three.”
Sam exhales sharply and closes his eyes as well. Both brothers lean against the car with no clues, the sun just starting to set. Without opening his eyes, Sam asks, sounding like someone is twisting his arm, “Is it too forward of me to assume the third key was to be mine?”
“Nah, it was,” Dean replies. His eyes burn.
“Great,” is all Sam mutters. Dean heras him walk away but can’t bear to watch him do it. He doesn’t know where one of his siblings is, and the one that’s walking away from him now is the one that always walks away. The one that never walks away walked away from him too.
After a while Dean remembers to put the empty box back in your car. It seems like too much hassle to put it back inside the seat correctly, so Dean opens up the trunk to set it inside. The trunk doesn’t close fully when he tries to, even when Dean slams it, so he shoves some knives away from the space he wants it to go in. One knife slips under the carpet bottom of the trunk, even though there shouldn’t be a slit in the fabric there. You’d probably torn it while tossing weapons in after a hunt.
Dean lifts up the flap to retrieve the knife and his mouth drops open.
“But if she didn’t want anyone to find them, Y/N would’ve put them in the hidden box that only she and you can open!” Sam argues.
“Maybe someone else knew about the box or had the key? There’s not a lot of other possible scenarios, Sam. A monster would’ve just dumped the whole book instead. Why take the trouble of taking every picture out of its page and putting them in the trunk of her car? Y/N obviously wanted to keep them safe.”
Bobby ignores the bickering brothers and sorts through each of the pictures separately. They’re the Polaroids that print immediately. Your dad gotten you one of those cameras because they were easier to use than trying to go through the whole printing process at, like, a Costco or whatever.
One picture is of Bobby cleaning out one of his guns, another a sopping-wet Sam next to a grinning Dean. There’s one of the dog you and Sam had had for a week when you’d run away as kids.
A few feature a man who looks almost sickly-thin next to a smiling version of you Bobby hardly recognizes: you, a full adult now, without Sam or Dean by your side to make you look small, new slashes on your body from hunting.
Bobby’s seen you maybe twice in the last four years. He’ll be sure to rip you a new one when the boys come home for being so immature about your feelings being hurt.
Bobby was your second father, just like he was to Sam and Dean, but maybe, because of how little you saw your dad, Bobby was more your primary father.
And you called, sure, sometimes, but you could never be bothered to show up and visit for fear of Dean being there.
“How did I raise such a dumbass?” Bobby asks himself, his beard twitching as he smiles. If you’re dead, he’s going to kill you.
The Winchester brothers look away from each other angrily, unable to keep the conversation from going in circles. Dean storms off to get a beer and Sam sits down next to Bobby.
“There’s a lot of her and that one guy,” he notices, pointing to the pile Bobby had made.
“Yeah, she and Garth were hunting together before they both dropped off the comms,” Bobby answers his unasked question. “He’s a good guy. I don’t think he’s her type, though.”
Sam wants to ask Bobby what he thinks your type is, but he bites his tongue. He doesn’t get to be interested after leaving, and anyway, he’s not even interested. You’re his little sister.
“How about this,” Bobby says loudly so Dean, who’s sulking in the other room, hears him too, “we all go to bed. Tomorrow, we clear out Y/N’s trunk to see if there are any other pictures or clues hidden in it, all right?”
“Whatever,” Dean grumbles from the kitchen, not even bothering to pretend he wasn’t he listening. Sam hears him open and close the fridge, probably to put back his beer, and then the heavy sound of Dean stomping to the bedroom he always sleeps in.
Bobby stands up as well. “Sam? You coming?”
“In a sec,” Sam replies distractedly. They both know it’s a lie.
“Make sure you sleep soon,” is all Bobby says before he, too, turns away.
Then it’s just Sam and the pictures. Pictures of his maybe-dead little sister hanging out with people he doesn’t know.
The don’t capture you, at least not exactly. The photographer was too far away or the camera’s too shitty, but your eyes look like only one color instead of the thousand flecks Sam knows better than anyone else’s eyes. Your skin looks paler than he remembers and the wrinkles on your forehead aren’t captured either.
Or maybe Sam doesn’t recognize you because it’s been four years. Maybe the creases on your forehead have smoothed without Sam and Dean at your side. Maybe you’ve spent less time outdoors. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Sam rubs his hand together. If Stanford taught him anything, it taught him to never act solely on your emotions. Be analytical. Investigate every path you can find.
Well, Sam’s going to investigate this path. He doubts he’ll be able to find anything, looking through these pictures, other than an immense feeling of loneliness, but you’re gone. Sam’s going to find you.
He’s already wasted four years pretending you’re still around.
(Maybe he doesn’t recognize you because you’re not with him and Dean. Maybe he’s never met a Y/N that hasn’t been a Winchester.)
Bobby’s surprised when Sam’s not still up in the morning. Obviously it had taken him more than ‘a sec’ in getting to bed, though, because all of the small photographs have been lined up in a small block of orderly rows. Three empty beer bottles stand on top of three, completely covering them.
Bobby frowns and crouches down to move the bottles. The pictures Sam had deliberately covered up are a bit wrinkly from the bottle’s condensation soaking into them but they’re not ruined. Bobby can clearly see the subjects of the photos, and they’re all the same: you and a boy with tousled dark brown hair. In the first, the boy is kissing your cheek as he hugs you. In the second, you and the boy are sleeping in the same bed, lax bodies curved towards each other though you sleep on the far sides of the bed. The third picture is blurry. The boy’s form is easy to make out, only his arm blurry, and you’re a blur as you spin around. You’re dancing with him.
Bobby remembers, once, Sam had twirled you around and round in this room. You’d giggled and moved on to Dean, but Bobby had watched Sam’s face.
His emotions were written on it clear as day.
“Whoa,” Dean says as he enters the room, the beer from last night already in his hand. “Sam went OCD, huh?”
“They look to be in chronological order.” Bobby takes the beer from Dean, silencing his protests with a stern look, and stows it back in the fridge. “I’ve got eggs, bacon, and waffles. That sound good to you, boy?”
“Sounds great!” Dean smiles at Bobby. “I mean, you just put my regular breakfast in the fridge, so. That sounds awesome.”
Bobby frowns while pulling the frozen waffles out of his freezer. “Shouldn’t Sam be taking better care of you?”
“What, are you kidding?” Dean snorts. “Kid can barely handle himself. Half the time he would forget Y/N wasn’t in the backseat.”
“Huh.”
The two men share a look but decided against any further commentary. Sam might be awake and listening. Plus, breakfast needs to get eaten quickly so the case can resume. Dean doesn’t think he’d be able to forgive himself if they find you and all the other hunters, only you’re freshly dead, and him eating waffles for breakfast—having any breakfast at all, really—was what slowed him down just enough he couldn’t save you.
Dean leaves Bobby to his cooking and goes back to the living room. Considering how hectic and disorganized the rest of the room is, the pictures on the ground almost blend in.
Dean flips over a picture of you and a dog. The date it was taken is scrawled on the back, and your familiar handwriting knocks the air out of Dean’s lungs. He hasn’t had anything of yours for the last four years, save five pictures on his phone he knows by heart. If he had known how soon you were going to leave after they were taken, Dean would have taken a lot more.
Handwriting Dean both barely and clearly remembers is scrawled on the backs of most of the pictures.
“So Sammy hadn’t been doing it all on guesswork,” Dean muses. “Huh.”
Your alien face scares Dean. It’s one he used to know well, one he thought he would know forever. It’s in almost all of the pictures, whether you be hugging a dog, leaning against a car with a scared-looking little girl clutching at your leg, or the only person swimming in a dark lake.
“We’ll let Sam sleep,” Bobby says from the doorway. “Losing two people you love so quickly can be rough. Come and eat.”
“Y/N’s done well with herself,” Dean remarks with a mouth full of scrambled egg. “She’s got two hunting partners, one of which is her boyfriend. I guess she’s even got a dog.” Never mind that Dean had always thought your two partners would be him and Sam, and your boyfriend would be Sam instead of a shaggy stranger.
“Weird choice of pet for a hunter.”
“Weird for a hunter to have a pet at all,” Dean counters and frowns. “Bobby…” He sets down his fork and locks eyes with him. “What you said, about Sam losing two people he loves… you don’t think Y/N is dead, do you?”
Bobby shakes his head. “Y/N’s a fighter, and in her prime. I’m sure she’s fine. What I was talking about was losing Y/N to that boy she’s with now.”
Dean scowls. “Hey, Sam was the one that left us. He couldn’t seriously think we’d wait our whole lives for him, especially after he said he wasn’t coming back.”
“I’m not blaming anyone,” Bobby interrupts, glaring at Dean. “Personally, I think you all were in the wrong.”
The face Dean makes tells it all.
“Sam, for leaving the way he did,” Bobby explains. “Y/N, for leaving, too, and ignoring us for four years. And you, for not trying to broker peace between your brother and father. Sam goes to college and the rest of the family breaks up too, is that it? You’re going to lose people in this line of work and you can’t break up every time that happens, because shit like this will happen.”
Dean drops his fork and stands up. “I’m going to search Y/N’s trunk."
“Dean,” Bobby calls, exasperated, after his retreating back. “Boy!”
He doesn’t turn around.
Dean sweeps the mess of weapons out of your trunk carelessly, hardly registering the clatter as they hit the ground, and yanks the carpet out. Two little pictures come with it and drift to the ground while three polaroids wedged partly behind the far right corner stay. You’d obviously hidden them on purpose, maybe from whoever took you.
It’s hard to get them out without ripping them completely, and one of the corners of the first picture tears off, but Dean can be patient sometimes.
The top picture is one Dean remembers taking. It features you and Sam sleeping on a couch together, his arm thrown over your waist casually and your feet tangled together. You’d written the date on the back like the other pictures.
The second one doesn’t have a date, and it’s blurry. It looks to be a lit up sign of a store or something, which is useless.
The third picture you’d hidden is just as useless. It’s a picture of a hotel door labeled 20.
The two pictures that had fallen to the ground fit more in the theme of your other pictures: one of that dog, a German shepherd, with snow on his nose, and another of you with someone you’d saved: a little boy with rope burns on his wrists with a name Dean assumes is his on the back.
“All right, so there’s nothing in the pictures,” Dean mutters aloud. He still pockets the three hidden pictures, though. “Let’s try the weapons.”
The only thing Dean discovers is that you like to label your knives by writing what they are on a piece of tape and sticking the tape on the weapon’s handle. You’ve got knives dipped in virgin’s blood (Dean makes a mental note to tease you by asking if it’s your blood), brass, silver, and bronze knives, and one labeled ‘Demon’ that looks to be made out of bone. Dean’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean because you can’t kill demons with knives; you can’t kill demons at all—maybe it’s one that exorcises it immediately?
He just keeps getting more impressed by your arsenal. You have darts filled with Dead Man’s Blood, bullets made out of every metal, and even bullets with Devil’s traps carved onto them.
With all these weapons at your disposal, how could you have been taken? What if they’re walking into something they’re not prepared for?
Sam wakes up at one in the afternoon.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Bobby says when he sees him conscious, albeit bleary-eyed and with hair that looks like he just walked through a tornado because of all his tossing and turning during the night.
Sam huffs out a half-laugh and rolls his eyes.
“Dean’s looking through Y/N’s trunk,” Bobby adds. “But if you’re hungry, there’s food.”
Sam shakes his head and hurries out to the car, mentally berating himself for sleeping in so long. You need help, damnit.
“What did you find?”
Dean spins around. Sam doesn’t miss the hand that automatically flies to his right jacket pocket. “Just three—two! Two pictures I’m pretty sure Y/N intentionally hid because of where they were in the trunk, and a Girl Scout-level of weapons.” When Sam doesn’t get it, Dean elaborates, “She’s prepared for everything. Some of these things I don’t even know what she could use them for.”
“Huh.” Sam kneels and picks up the knife you’d labeled ‘Demon’. “I don’t think Y/N’ll be too happy about the mess you made of her car.”
“She’s getting a new one anyway.” Dean hands Sam the pictures of the neon sign and hotel door labeled 20.
“Maybe they’re clues?” Sam suggests. “She doesn’t usually take pictures of stuff like this.”
Dean shrugs. “It’s either that or she took them on accident but then she would’ve just thrown them away, so I’m betting that’s what it is.”
“All right.” Sam shoves them into his pocket.
“Oh! I almost forgot.” Dean grins sheepishly at his younger brother, just now remembering the photos of the dog and you and the boy. The picture he’d wanted to hide from Sam—the one of you and him—comes out as well, and Dean tries to act nonchalant about putting it back in his pocket. “But these look normal.”
Sam flips over the one of you and the boy. “Dennis Walker, July 2006. And nothing on the picture of the dog, as usual. I wonder why she hasn’t said anything about the dog or…” he trails off, a shadow falling over his features, and Dean doesn’t know how to feel about the pain on his baby brother’s face. Maybe he deserves to be in pain for how he’d treated you, treated them all, but Dean also doesn’t want Sam to be in pain.
“Her partners?” Dean suggests as a less painful alternative to ‘boyfriend’. “I don’t know. It’s Y/N, man. You can’t understand her.”
“I used to,” Sam mutters. Dean pretends not to hear. It’s his fault.
“I’ll see if these mean anything,” Sam says, half-turning around before jerking to a stop. “What’s the third picture you don’t want to show me?”
“Huh?” Dean laughs nervously. “It’s really nothing. Just another picture of that dog—”
“Then show it to me.” Sam tilts his head and shifts his feet. “What, it’s not a picture of her having sex with that new boy, is it?” He means it as a joke but realizes as the words leave his mouth that he really wants to know the answer to that question.
“It’s nothing, Sammy.”
“Then why did Y/N hide it and why are you hiding it? If we’re going to—”
Dean starts to walk inside and Sam splutters, “Dean! I need all the information—”
Without turning around, Dean says, “ Drop it, Sammy.”
Sam grabs his shoulder and whirls him around. “Dammit, Dean, just show me it!”
“It’s not important!”
“If you and Y/N both felt the need to hide it, then—”
“Fine!” Dean fishes the pictures out of his pocket and rifles through them. He shoves it at Sam, who almost tears it with his mixed annoyance and curiosity when he grabs it.
Dean almost blinks and misses the grief Sam works too hard to mask at the reminder of how things used to be, of better times.
“She hid it?”
“Yeah.”
“She didn’t chuck it, though.”
“Sammy—”
Sam angrily drags his sleeve over his eyes. “Let’s just find her, Dean.”
“Hey, you wanted to see it.”
“Shut up. Is Bobby ready to drive?”
“Yeah. We were waiting on you. The town she disappeared in is only five hours away, so get ready. I’ll pack our stuff.”
“I’ll get Y/N’s stuff.”
Dean pretends to look through his pockets until his brother’s gone inside, and then he hurries back to your car. He has a weird feeling about your odd knife.
After a moment of hesitation, he pockets it. As a hunter, you should always trust your gut, and his gut is telling him the knife fits into all of this… somehow.
“Could you stop with the pictures?” Dean finally snaps when Sam starts to rifle through the large stack for the third time. “None of them are going to change anytime soon.”
“A lot are missing,” Sam replies, frowning. “There’s at most six in here of us, but I specifically remember Y/N taking so many more of us.”
“They were probably in the photo album,” Dean suggests. “The one she either tossed or lost.”
“Just like her notebook,” Sam murmurs. “Doesn’t this feel weird to you, Dean?”
“Well, yeah, but what do you think is weird, Mr. College?”
Sam shoots his brother a side-eyed glare but decides not to rise to the bait. “Hunters dropping off the grid all over the place—like, maybe all in one town, sure, but Rufus’s been finding trucks all over. And there’s no sign of a struggle in here but Y/N’s gone and so are all her pictures of us, yet whoever took her didn’t take her weapons.” Sam sighs. “It’s just weird .”
“Sammy, we hunt monsters. There’s no such as weird for us.”
“This is,” Sam insists. “This feels big.”
“Sure.” Dean glances at his brother and sighs exaggeratedly. “Fine, Sam, if you think this is so ‘big’, what do you propose we do about it? What does your prophecy change, exactly? Let’s go with the facts instead of what this feels like.” He knows he’s being a total hypocrite, considering he stole one of your knives because he felt that it was important, but Sam’s emotions are more messed up because of this case than Dean’s.
“Don’t be such a jerk.”
“Then stop being a bitch,” Dean retorts, a small smile on his face, and he grins wider when he turns up his music and Sam rolls his eyes. There’s still too many things left unsaid between them that’ll probably never get said, but they’ll get through this like how they get through everything.
They’ll have you back soon, too, and then things will get even more back to normal.
Or maybe it won’t.
The grin slides off Dean’s face. Maybe you still won’t want anything to do with them. Maybe you’ll say that you’ve moved on. Maybe you won’t want to leave your new partners.
Dean’s cell phone rings and he answers it immediately, mindful of the way Sam’s eyelashes are fluttering and the hands he’s using to prop his chin up as he looks out the window.
“Yeah?”
Bobby’s voice growls, “Drive faster, ya idjit!” before he promptly hangs up.
Dean chuckles and presses harder on the gas pedal.
Dean and Bobby check in with each other just before entering the small town you’d disappeared in. Sam had fallen asleep minutes after Bobby had told him to hurry up and started snoring soon after. If Dean was more of a jackass he would’ve cranked his music up or woken him, but even though they’ve been fighting lately, he still cares about his little brother. Even if his brother is, has been, and always will be an idiot.
Bobby peers into the Impala to check on Sam before walking around to where Dean’s standing, one hand over the mysterious knife you’d labeled ‘Demon’ in his jacket pocket. Bobby eyes the odd placement of Dean’s hand but decides against commentary. He trusts Dean, except for when he’s being an idjit.
“He’s really taking this hard.”
Dean shoves his hands into his pockets and hunches his shoulders. “You weren’t there the night he left, Bobby. They both said some really nasty things, and now Y/N’s missing. Plus, he loves her. Loved her. You can’t really tell with Sam.”
“Yeah, you can, but enough sappy talk.” Bobby holds out a hand and Dean places the two mystery pictures of yours. “I’ll find the motel that labels their rooms like that and then figure out what place Y/N was trying to take a picture of. You and Sam—”
“We’re gonna ask around, see if anyone’s seen anything strange.” Dean nods and takes a step back to the Impala. “You call when you’ve located the room. Sam and I will check it out so you don’t have to.”
“Why, you think I’m too old for some recon?” Bobby growls.
“I wanna get both of these places identified, that’s all,” Dean almost yelps. “Thanks, Bobby!” He practically throws himself into his car and slams the door so hard behind him that Sam wakes up with a jump, looking around wildly before he gains his bearings.
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” Dean teases, which is probably a joke he and Bobby use too much. “We’re here. Pretty much. We’ve got, like, thirty seconds more to drive.”
Sam rubs the sleep out of his eyes and sits up straight. “Why’d we stop?”
“Bobby had to go over our game plan and we didn’t want to interrupt your beauty sleep.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “So what’s the plan, then?”
“You and I,” Dean starts, tossing Sam a FBI badge so he knows the name on it, “are going to ask around for our friend. We’re from the FBI but here because we’re personally looking for Y/N, not officially.”
The Impala rolls past the town’s ‘Welcome’ sign. Underneath the ‘welcome’ is one of those corny phrases you hear in commercials: ‘Where your kids come home’. Sam huffs at that, wondering just how many kids hate their circumstances just like he’d hated growing up in a car and hunting the nightmares people hope are fake.
“Okay, hottest girl we see, let’s see who can get her number,” Dean challenges, his head on a swivel as he looks for anyone that looks suspicious.
Sam follows his lead. Everybody looks pretty normal and like they’re not paying attention to the hunters. By chance, his eyes meet someone’s in the passenger mirror, but they slide away before Sam fully realizes what had happened. He’s almost positive he just saw your boyfriend in the mirror, but when he turns around, there’s no one resembling him.
“What’s up?” Dean asks, also looking back like he’ll see something off.
“Nothing, I just—my eyes playing tricks on me, I guess,” Sam replies, settling back into his seat and slapping his brother’s shoulder. “Eyes on the road, Dean. I just think I’m still tired.”
“That, little brother, is why we don’t drink to forget the ones that get away,” Dean says wisely. “We always remember.”
“Shut up,” Sam replies, and pushes him. “I don’t know how many times I have to say this: I think of Y/N as a little sister. Nothing more.”
“Yeah, and I went to Stanford,” Dean says in such a serious voice that Sam stares at him. “I thought we were describing each other!”
“You’re a real jerk, you know that?”
“You’re just a bitch.”
“Hey, did you tell Bobby to go to the first motel in the phone book first?” Sam checks, only just having remembered the system you had used when you hunted with them.
“Yep, and if the labeling mathes we’re gonna ask the desk about Harriet Mills, presumably in room 20.” Dean gives a half-laugh as Bobby pulls into the parking lot of a motel in front of them. “Dude, I’m not the rusty one.”
Sam purses his lips and begins to drum his fingers on his seat. “So are you taking us to a grocery store or bar?”
“As much as I’d love to grab a beer right now,” Dean sighs, “Y/N was more likely to have visited a drugstore for Ibuprofen and chips than a bar for alcohol.”
“You always were disappointed she’d practically sworn off alcohol,” Sam says softly, smiling wistfully. “You always teased her about it, and she’d always tease you about the latest crazy stunt you’d pulled while drunk. You remember when you peed in a motel’s closet and made a bed out of your dirty laundry?” Sam chuckles. “Classic.”
“Look, all I’m saying is that she’s a little too uptight, you know? Nothing wrong with getting drunk every so often.”
“Except the utter humiliation and shame I’d make you feel,” Sam says.
“Sammy, you’re so considerate,” Dean says sarcastically while pulling into the parking lot of the first grocery store he sees. “And totally not part of the reason why Y/N doesn’t drink. All right, you ready to rock n’ roll?”
“Which picture are we using again?”
Dean holds out a picture of you smiling and leaning against your car with that dog next to you. “This one is good, right?”
Sam shrugs. “Yeah, that’s fine.” He doesn’t move when Dean opens his door.
“Huh. Well, I’m glad it pleases you, Mr. Stanford,” Dean snarks. “Now are we going or sulking in the car all day?”
“Jerk,” Sam says, opening up his door with more aggression than necessary.
“Bitch.”
They stride inside the girl behind the register obviously looks Dean up and down and he flashes a cocky grin at her. Sam rolls his eyes but trails after his brother.
“Hey,” Dean says, leaning against the counter.
“Hi,” she responds. “How can I help you?”
“Yes, um, Shelly?” Dean says, reading her nametag. “I was just wondering if you had seen this girl anywhere?” He hands her the small picture. “That’s our little sister. She was on a road trip and last we heard from her she was in this town.”
“Oh, no,” Shelly gasps. “That’s awful.”
Sam shrugs but no one notices him. As usual, he’s pushed into the limelight. One good thing about you was that you never really favored one brother over the other. Too bad you’re missing. Sam would love to be able to exchange looks with you behind Dean’s back.
“That’s so sweet that you drove all the way out here to find your sister,” Shelly gushes. Dean shrugs and smiles.
“So, um, have you seen her?” Sam butts in. Shelly and Dean both shoot him matching glares but he can’t be bothered to care. Dean’s apparently forgotten that you’re missing and could even be dead. Sam hasn’t.
“Um, yeah, maybe,” the cashier snaps. “I think I saw her at the Silver Diner with two other men. I thought it was weird because one of them was pretty old and the other was, like, way out of her league.”
Sam snorts and turns away. If Shelly had seen you with your boyfriend and other hunting partner, then she was dead wrong: you are so out of your boyfriend’s league it’s crazy. And even if it hadn’t been them, you still would have been out of anyone’s league. You’re, like, perfect.
Dean thanks the cashier, his voice significantly cooler.
“Come on, Sam,” he mutters and tugs him by the sleeve out the door. “There’s only trash in there anyways.”
“So, a Silver Diner with two other men,” Sam says, deciding not to say anything about the cashier’s comment because it’ll make him even angrier. “I bet it’s that Garth dude and that boy.”
Apparently too angry about the cashier too, Dean doesn’t even make a biting comment about how he’s actually boy friend and instead just grunts in what Sam takes to be agreement.”
Before they can get into the Impala, Dean’s phone rings. He flips it open. “Bobby? Yeah. Okay, we’re on our way.” He ends the call. “So the first motel was a hit. ‘Harriet Mills’ had actually checked in to room 32, so I’m assuming something else happened in room 20.”
“Or maybe she was in a hurry and just needed to leave any clue so she took a picture of the numbering,” Sam points out. “It led us to the motel either way.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll figure it out, then,” Dean says, and off they speed in the Impala.
“Here they are,” Bobby says when they walk through the door. “My associates,” he adds. The brothers take the hint and immediately reach for an FBI badge. They don’t even have them out before the receptionist starts to yell.
“I don’t care if you’re FBI or what! You’re going to pay for your damages or… or I’m calling the cops!”
They all would be amused by that ineffectual threat except for the fact that this receptionist that they’ve never seen in their lives apparently knows them and has a bone to pick with them.
“Calm down, buddy,” Dean says, stowing his badge. “Why don’t you tell us what you’re talking about, all right?”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t remember!” the weaselly little man yells, pointing a finger at him like he’s lecturing him. “You two scumbags come in here just a few weeks ago and check out room 20!”
Sam and Dean look at each other, but the receptionist isn’t done.
“All I know is that you two go out for dinner and come back with a girl, and the next morning the room is trashed and all three of you have vanished!”
All three hunters are stumped. As Dean hands the receptionist a credit card to settle the cost of the repairs, Sam looks at the picture he has of you. Going on a crazy hunch, he asks, interrupting the conversation between his brother and the therapist, “Is this the girl we had with us?”
The receptionist looks at him like he’s crazy. “Shouldn’t you know?”
“Just answer the question,” Sam replies.
The man glances at the photo and nods. “Yep, that’s her. Harriet Mills. She came in with her brothers a week before you two. She must’ve been the first visitor we’ve had in a year. What, did she lead you scumbags here or somethin’? Were you two following her? Did you kidnap her?” The excited receptionist hops up and down. “I should call the police on you!”
“Again, sir, we’re with the FBI,” Dean says, exchanging a dumbfounded look with Sam. The man visibly deflates. “We’re going to need to see room 20, as well as anything we might have left behind that you cleaned up.”
The receptionist glares sullenly at the three hunters, but, recognizing that he’s outnumbered in every way, hands over a key to the room.
“Do you have any security tapes of that night?” Bobby asks.
The man shakes his head. “They got wiped. I’m guessing,” he glares at Sam and Dean, “by you.”
Dean taps Sam’s shoulder. “That’s all you, bro. Bobby and I’re gonna go check out the room, ‘kay?”
It’s not terribly hard to retrieve the tapes. Somebody had deleted them and locked down a program that would allow them to be retrieved. It’s almost too easy to hack, and Sam keeps glancing over his shoulder like it’s a trap. It certainly feels like one.
Sam clicks on the tape for rooms 20 to 30 on the day he and Dean had apparently checked in at the motel. A few minutes after check-in time, he and Dean appear on the screen.
Sam’s heart starts to pound. Their eyes flash.
“Shifters,” he says out loud. “Why would shifters—”
“What did you say?” the receptionist asks eagerly.
Sam lifts his eyes from the computer’s screen. “Nothing.”
“What’s a shifter?” the receptionist presses.
“It’s code,” Sam says shortly. “And you don’t have enough clearance to know what it’s code for.” Maybe he’s still tired, or maybe he’s just worried about you, but this guy is really rubbing him the wrong way.
He speeds up the tape until he and Dean appear on the screen again. There’s someone with them, a girl with Y/H/H hair and Y/S/C skin. She turns around, probably to see if anyone’s watching, and reaches into the inside of her jacket. She doesn’t get the chance to take whatever it is out, because the shifter that looks like Dean sneaks up behind her and wraps his arms around her torso. The shifter that looks like Sam quickly ties her hands together.
The girl spits something at the fake Sam, who punches her in the face.
Sam stomach flips when the girl leans her head back and he can finally confirm that it’s you. You do know that that wasn’t Sam, right? Sam would never do that to you. Never.
He can only watch as his body reaches into the jacket pocket you’d been reaching for and pulls out a familiar notebook. It’s your hunting journal.
Sam rewinds the video, a faint hope making him blind to the situation. Maybe your eyes will shine on the recording too and Sam will stop feeling so queasy. He’d rather die than watch you get hurt by himself.
But he hadn’t died the last time you’d been hurt by him, had he? And that had actually been Sam, too. He’d savored every cutting word that came out of his mouth. He’d been so angry he’d relished the look on your face as he’d spit at you.
You’re making the same face in the tape as you had when Sam had left for Stanford.
So there’s not much difference, is there?
The fake Sam says one more thing to you. You spit in his face and he hits you so hard you’re knocked unconscious.
Sam can only watch as the shifters drag you away. Only minutes after you disappear, a man runs up to door 20 and takes a picture of it. Sam’s stomach drops. That’s… your boyfriend, isn’t it?
He’s barely left before the fake Sam and Dean come back. They both both look directly into the camera before going back into room 20.
Having seen all he needed to see, Sam deletes the video for real. When he stands up, the receptionist looks up quickly. “Did you find anything?”
“Uh, no,” Sam lies. “It was deleted completely.”
“Then why’d you say something about shifters?”
“They left their signature in the codings,” Sam quickly invents. “We’ve been tailing them for months.”
“What?”
“The people that trashed our room,” Sam explains, hoping his explanation is confusing the receptionist just enough that he won’t ask more questions. “They wiped the tape.”
The receptionist nods, looking a bit bewildered, and watches Sam as he leaves to go to his brother and Bobby.