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Two Days After
It doesn’t take Bobby long to realize that whatever he’d thought he’d known about teenagers did not, in fact, apply to Lou.
Sam and Dean had learned to deal with their individual traumas as children. It started out bad, and only got marginally worse over time.
But Lou? Bobby didn’t think her life had been sunshine and roses before Cold Oak, but he was willing to bet that it hadn’t prepared her for demons.
Living with Lou was unsettling. She tiptoed around like a ghost in his wife’s clothing, skinny as a rail and silent as a mouse. She didn’t eat except on invitation, and rarely left her room unless she thought he was too busy to pay her any mind.
Bobby was distracted, sure. Several hundred demons had just burst out of hell, and, despite the passage of time, they weren’t showing their ugly faces anywhere. Even so, he could only handle so many days of Lou’s hiding.
He made dinner—real dinner, on the stove—and called Lou down to eat, trying not to notice the anxious shifts of her movements as she sat down. For all her hesitance, she ate like a starving animal.
“Lou,” he said finally, when she seemed to be losing steam. “We need to talk.”
She froze, eyes wide and scared, for three seconds before her shoulders sagged and she looked at her plate. “You want me to leave,” she said.
“No, that’s just the thing,” Bobby said. “I’m not gonna kick you out, kid. I told you you can stay, and I meant it. As long as you need.”
Lou looked very confused. “I’m not doing anything—“she started.
“That’s my point. You’re walking on eggshells, and for no good reason. I know you’ve been through a lot, and I’m not gonna make you talk about it if you don’t want to. I’m sure as hell not gonna boot you out. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna watch you tiptoe and waste away under my roof.”
The confusion on her face didn’t fade any, and he sighed. “I’m gonna as you again. Do you want to go?”
She shook her head so fast her neck may have cracked a little. “No.”
“Okay. So just…chill out. Nothing and no one’s gonna hurt you here.”
She nodded, pursing her lips. She flicked her eyes up at him. “Can I have seconds?”
“Help yourself,” Bobby sighed.
Three Days After
The boys stopped by on their way through South Dakota, Sam sullen and subdued, Dean riding a false high whenever he thought his brother was looking. Dean excused himself to “work on the car,” while Sam came to Bobby with doe eyes and a request for lore. Bobby did his best to supply.
While he was searching his library for one of the rarer demonology books, he heard the soft sound of approaching footsteps that signaled Lou’s descent down the stairs.
“Sam?”
“Lou?”
Bobby turned in time to see Lou launch herself at Sam, wrapping her narrow arms tight around his ribs. Sam turned to him in bemusement.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. The words were for Lou, but the question was for Bobby, who remembered abruptly the conversation he’d had with Ellie Stanton.
“That’s a long story,” he said wearily, “and you might want to go get Dean.”
“Wait,” Dean said, all traces of last-night-on-earth recklessness gone. “We have a sister?”
“I’m not sure why this is so much of a shock to you,” Bobby said uselessly.
Dean was pacing the room, just short of frenzied, his hands in his hair. Sam was standing near the couch where Lou sat, knees drawn up to her chest and an expression on her face that Bobby didn’t recognize from the past few days. He couldn’t tell if it was amusement or irritation.
“But Dad—Dad wouldn’t—“
“Your daddy wasn’t exactly a paragon of restraint, Dean,” Bobby said flatly. “It stands to reason that he had some one night stands.”
“It’s not like you’re celibate, Dean,” Sam put in, eyes sad.
“But what about Mom?” Dean asked. His voice rose in pitch at the end, and his eyes held the wide, lost look of disillusionment.
“Mom died over twenty years ago, Dean,” Sam said.
“But—“
“If it helps, he was really, really drunk,” Lou said quietly. “Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing.”
Dean whirled on her. “Can it, princess,” he snapped. “We weren’t talking to you.”
“Dean!” Bobby snapped, but he was momentarily distracted by the decidedly steely look on Lou’s face.
“Who are you calling princess, you dick?” she asked. “I didn’t ask for this either you know. Not to mention, I also got stuck with the crazy mom who tried to kill me. And foster care. And I was homeless, for a year.
“Obviously you’ve had a life. You’ve hunted things I didn’t know existed until a week ago. But fuck you if you think that just because my childhood didn’t include demons and ghosts means that I had it easy, because I didn’t.”
Her glare retained its ice and never wavered from Dean’s face. Bobby and Sam exchanged a look—one part impressed, and one part uneasy, because as nice as it was to see Lou stand up for herself, to say Dean was volatile was the understatement of the year.
Dean looked away first.
Sam choked back a laugh, and Bobby cleared his throat.
“What are we supposed to do about this, Bobby?” Dean asked. “We can’t take her with us.”
“I’m not asking you to take her with you,” Bobby scoffed. “I just thought you should know you’ve got a sister. She’s gonna stay here, for the time being. Lord knows the house is big enough.”
“Awesome,” Dean muttered, sounding anything but thrilled.
Sam and Lou wandered off talking in low voices after a while, Sam’s head bent to listen as she spoke, hers tipped up towards him. She looked more at ease than Bobby had seen her.
Dean stood off to the side and watched, and Bobby saw for the first time since he’d arrived just how utterly lost Dean was.
Five Days After
Bobby went into town for food and gas, and took Lou with him. He’d been up late researching and had come across omens in Lincoln, Nebraska, and knew he was in for a long couple of days.
He just wanted to make sure Lou was situated while he was gone.
They stopped at a Goodwill first and Lou finally got clothes that fit, t shirts and jeans and a heavy sweatshirt. At Walmart, she got a pair of tennis shoes and underclothes, and Bobby stocked up on frozen and canned food.
He told her he was leaving on the way home.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Nebraska,” Bobby said. “Looks like there might be demons there.”
Lou didn’t say anything, but looked troubled for the rest of the ride home.
When he packed up the car that night to leave, she helped him carry things out, walking a little more confidently in her new threads than the sundresses that were probably older than her.
“Be careful,” she said finally, peering at him through the passenger window, sunken cheeks making her gaze all the more solemn.
“I will, kid,” Bobby promised. He found that he meant it more than usual.