Chapter Text
Bobby Singer was a gruff and, he liked to think, intelligent man, so when Dean shoved him and snarled to leave if he knew what was good for him like an animal, the fact that he had no response other than a quiet, "you know where I'll be" was a testament to his own grief.
But Sam wasn't the only casualty of the yellow-eyed demon's tantrum. The girl--Lou--was in the back of the impala, awake for the first time since the fight.
Bobby had her sit up and take off her ratty sweatshirt so he could look at her wounds, and had to help her. She couldn't lift her arms at all without shaking and fighting down what must have been a great deal of pain. He cut the shoulders of her t shirt away and cleaned out the gashes in her shoulders with peroxide.
He gave her the whiskey to drink.
"Alright kid. I'm gonna ask you some questions, starting with your name. What's your name?"
"Lou."
"Your full name."
"Mary Stanton."
Bobby paused. "How the hell you get Lou out of that?"
"Middle name's Louise." As she spoke, Lou's shoulders slumped with exhaustion, only to scrunch up again from pain.
"Do you know what day it is?"
"No," She mumbled. "Don't know how long I've been here."
"Fair enough," Bobby said. "S'pose you don't know where you are either?"
"Dakotas," She said. "Sam said."
Bobby's heart clenched at the sound of Sam's name, but not as much as it did at the question that followed.
"Is he gonna be okay?"
Tears welled up in Bobby's eyes and, hell with it, he let them fall. "Sam's dead, Lou," he choked.
Her eyes widened, and she whimpered a soft, "no." Bobby couldn't help but nod, and watch her curl up in a wretched little ball in the back seat and mourn for the boy who had saved her life.
“Where’s home for you, kid?”
“Don’t have one.”
Bobby took her home. His home, that is, in Sioux Falls. It was a six hour drive, starting at ass-o-clock in the morning, and he had trouble keeping his tired eyes on the road. Lou was in the backseat curled against the door. He’d have thought she was asleep, save for the occasional sniffly sigh that escaped her, and the dim glint of her eyes under the passing lights.
He pulled his truck into a gas station about halfway in for fuel and a cup of coffee. He parked and turned to Lou, who was staring off into nothing, looking beyond exhausted.
“You hungry?” he asked.
She started to shake her head, then seemed to change her mind and nodded. “I don’t know when the last time I ate was,” she admitted.
“I’ll grab you a sandwich,” he promised. “Anything to drink?”
“Water?”
“Comin’ right up.”
The cashier didn’t appear to have been expecting anyone at four a.m.; he was asleep, slumped over the counter. It took Bobby ringing the bell by the register three times to wake him up.
Lou ate like she’d been starved for a year. In fact, the more Bobby looked at her, the more it seemed like she’d been in trouble long before the demon got ahold of her. She was thin as a rail, with cheekbones like razors. Her collarbones were bandaged now, but when he’d handled them it had been like holding so many sticks in his hands instead of human bones, the skin stretched over them in ways that a well-nourished person’s shouldn’t have.
The same part of his heart that had ached for Sam and Dean whenever John dumped them at his door for a case ached for the damaged girl hunched in his backseat eating a turkey sandwich like it was a five-star meal.
He finally pulled into the salvage yard. It was just after seven, and Lou had managed to sleep through the sunrise. He tried to wake her gently, but couldn’t bring himself to be all that surprised when she flailed.
“It’s okay, kid. It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Lou nodded and tried to catch her breath, chest rising and falling rapidly. She swallowed hard, looking around and blinking repeatedly. “Where are we?”
“Singer Salvage,” Bobby grunted. “Home sweet home.”
He gave Lou one of the spare rooms upstairs and a box of his late wife’s clothes. He knew they were outdated and wouldn’t fit, skinny as Lou was, but he reasoned that they were better than the shredded t shirt and ripped up jeans the girl’s been wearing for God knows how long.
“Go get some rest,” he told her. “You look dead on your feet.”
He listened to her footsteps on the floor overhead until they were silent, then he let himself sit down at his desk and cry.