Episode Nine: Let Go

By irismay42

Part Three

The sky had been blue a few minutes ago.

Dean was sure of it.

Where had all these black clouds come from? Why was the air so hot it hurt to breathe?

And why was he was lying flat on his back in the middle of the road staring up at the sky in the first place?

He blinked, taking in the fact that he was, at least, still breathing. Even if it hurt. And his heart was beating. Which, in his experience, was usually a good thing.

He tried to move, but couldn’t seem to get his body to co-operate, wincing as pain shot through his left shoulder and down his arm, his left leg seeming to scream, Try that again and you’re a dead man!

So maybe moving wasn’t such a good idea.

He settled instead for continuing to stare up at the black clouds, concentrating on breathing the hot, acrid air, and finally realizing he wasn’t looking at clouds at all.

He was looking at smoke.

Thick, black, gasoline-filled smoke.

There’d been a car in a ditch.

And a guy with a lighter.

And Sam.

Sam.

Sam!

“Sam!” Dean yelled the name so hard it hurt his throat, already raw and scratchy from the smoke he’d inhaled. “Sam!” he yelled again, flailing around wildly before realizing there was something heavy on top of him, crushing his left side, and that he had his right hand wrapped impossibly tightly around someone else’s wrist.

“Sammy?”

Dean managed to raise his head all of an inch, relief flooding him when he realized the dead weight on top of him didn’t seem actually… dead.

“Sam?”

The asphalt was hot against Dean’s shoulder blades and he could feel the heat from the burning SUV even from this distance, the force of the explosion having sent him – and apparently Sam – flying halfway into the road, landing in a muddled heap with Dean half trapped underneath his brother’s lanky form.

At least Sam had landed on something softer than the blacktop.

Sam was lying awkwardly and Dean was scared to try and get out from under him in case the kid was more injured than he looked. He tried to move his right side a little, but gasped at the sharp pain shooting up his leg. “Son of a…” he hissed, taking a breath. “Okay, nap time’s over, Sammy,” he grunted through gritted teeth. “You gotta get off of me now.”

“Dean?”

Sam’s head moved ever-so-slightly, eyes dulled and confused as he tried to figure out why the world had shifted on its axis and everything was suddenly more horizontal than it had been.

“It’s about time, Sleeping Beauty!” Dean tried unsuccessfully to hide his relief at the sound of Sam’s voice.

“What happened?” Sam asked, going for the obvious question when nothing else seemed able to penetrate his addled brain.

“I pulled you out of an exploding car, dumbass,” was Dean’s just as obvious reply, as he tried to push Sam off him with a little more success than his previous attempt. Managing to free his arm and shoulder, he sat up carefully, the world spinning as his eyes homed in on the burning SUV and the dark shape huddled in the front passenger seat.

“Adrian!” Sam twisted suddenly, as if the events of the past few minutes had suddenly rushed back into his head the second Dean saw the burning body. Dean winced as Sam pushed roughly away from him, the younger Winchester managing to get to his knees before the world took another lurch for the horizontal.

Sam closed his eyes momentarily, attempting to regain his equilibrium as Dean tried to steady him with a hand against his shoulder.

It was then that Sam realized he’d lost all sensation in his left hand. He glanced down before looking back up at his brother. “You can let go of me now, Dean,” he announced calmly, indicating the death grip the older Winchester still had around his wrist.

Dean returned Sam’s stare blankly before following his gaze downwards, a slightly abashed look briefly clouding his features as he released his brother abruptly. Figuring sometimes a good offense really was the best defense, he indicated the steadily burning SUV with a nod of his head before demanding, “Dude, what were you thinking?”

Sam shifted painfully into a sitting position, shoulder to shoulder with his brother in the middle of the road. “I wasn’t,” he admitted at length, staring at the burning corpse just visible through the clouds of thick smoke enveloping the SUV. “I wasn’t thinking at all.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me!” he burst out. “Why in hell would you get into a car leaking fuel with a guy waving around a lighter? Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the ‘in a town full of suicidal maniacs’ part!”

Sam dragged a hand through his shaggy hair. “It was pretty dumb, I admit.” His tone became wistful as he continued to stare at the SUV. “I thought I could save him.”

Dean put a hand on his brother’s shoulder then, his own tone softening. “We can’t save everyone, Sammy,” he said. “I think you told me that once.”

“I could have saved him,” Sam returned, not meeting his brother’s concerned gaze. “If it hadn’t been for – for…” he broke off suddenly, lacing his fingers at the back of his neck and leaning his forehead on his knees.

“You heard the baby again, right?”

Sam looked up at that, locking eyes with Dean's head-on. “I think he heard it too,” he said, indicating Adrian with a tiny movement of his chin. “He certainly heard something…”

“Well right now, I hear sirens,” Dean said, trying to shrug off Sam’s words. He managed to get shakily to his feet, feeling like an eighty-year-old who’d misplaced his walker.

He straightened, offering Sam his hand, which the younger brother took almost absently, pulling himself up off the asphalt with a groan, so engrossed by the flames dancing before his eyes that he almost missed the fact that Dean held on to him slightly longer than was absolutely necessary.

Surprised, he just looked at his older brother for a second, before the words, “I’m fine,” tumbled automatically from his mouth, closely followed by a slightly less defensive, “And thanks.” When Dean continued to gaze at him levelly without saying a word, he added, “For saving my ass and everything.”

“Again,” Dean observed, before adding, “But hey, how bored would I be without something trying to possess, choke or blow my little brother up every other day, huh?”

“Yeah, you’d miss me if I was gone,” Sam said, absently trying to match Dean’s lighter tone as his gaze drifted off in the direction of the multitude of approaching blue lights.

Dean continued to look at him thoughtfully, an almost pained expression crossing his face. Yeah, I did, he thought. And I’m damned if I’m going to let that happen again…

* * * *

“Ow!” Dean bit back a flood of curses as the ER nurse dabbed carefully at the cut above his eye before applying a couple of butterfly bandages.

Male nurses. Surely a crime against nature.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Sam admonished from the next bed, flexing his elbow as his cute blonde female nurse finished up dressing the burn to his right arm.

“Don’t be such a pain in the ass,” Dean retorted, scowling at the guy nurse, who stood back to admire his handiwork.

“Superficial really,” the nurse said, smiling reassuringly.

“Yeah, he gets that a lot,” Sam interjected with a wry grin, eliciting another scowl from his brother.

“Shouldn’t even scar,” the nurse added.

Although tempted to trot out the tried and tested “chicks dig scars” line, Dean bit it back, instead nodding over at his kid brother. “And how about the human briquette over there?” he asked. “He gonna live to see another barbecue?”

“He’s going to be just fine,” the cute blonde nurse assured him, oblivious to Sam’s irritated grimace. “You guys were pretty lucky.”

Sam met Dean’s gaze, a serious look in his eyes, and for once Dean didn’t look away. “Yeah,” Sam agreed, quietly. “Damn lucky.”

* * * *

“So you really think this is – you know – appropriate?” Sam asked awkwardly, following Dean into the hospital elevator without failing to notice his big brother’s slight limp.

“Sammy,” Dean said, pushing the button for floor six. “How often do we get survivors, huh? Caitlin Newton might be our one and only lead.”

“Maybe,” he agreed reluctantly, glancing at the floor guide pinned to the elevator wall. “You think they’ll even let us in to talk to her?”

Dean shrugged. “Who can resist two guys who just narrowly avoided getting their eyebrows burnt off by an exploding car, huh?” he arched his uninjured brow. “That nurse was right: We’re damn lucky we’re still this pretty.”

“Not to mention modest.”

“Modesty’s for wallflowers, geeks and Oscar acceptance speeches,” Dean announced, stepping off the elevator and exchanging his trademarked grin with Sam’s patented long-suffering head shake.

As Dean approached the big Hispanic lady at the nurses’ station, Sam cast an uncertain glance down the antiseptic white corridor to his right, a chill suddenly overcoming him.

He shuddered, pulling his jacket tighter around him as Dean turned back from the nurse, who appeared to have just finished up giving him directions.

Sam frowned. “We got in?” he asked skeptically.

Dean nodded. “Course we did,” he said, heading off past Sam, down the corridor that had so chilled his brother seconds before. “She’s in the Long Term Care Unit,” he added. “Not so tight on visiting restrictions.”

Sam seemed a little surprised by this but let it slide, figuring Dean had probably told the nurse they were relatives of the poor kid or something equally untrue. He followed his brother down the hallway, noting how it seemed to be growing colder by the second, each breath becoming more painful than the last.

Dean was heading for a room at the end of the corridor, where a teenaged girl with long blonde hair was perched on the edge of an uncomfortable-looking bright red plastic chair, blue tennis shoes scuffing anxiously against the grey and white tiled floor.

The girl looked up as Dean approached, wiping at tear-stained cheeks awkwardly. Dean smiled gently, and was about to introduce himself when he realized Sam was no longer behind him. He didn’t need to turn to confirm this; he just knew it.

Finally glancing over his shoulder, Dean was surprised to see Sam standing in the doorway of the next room down the hall, gazing inside as if whatever was in there was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

“Don’t tell me,” Dean offered, pulling up behind his brother and peering over his shoulder. “Keira Knightley in one of those backless hospital gowns, right? You always did go for the willowy English rose types…”

“Guess again,” Sam corrected him, staring fixedly at the occupant of the room’s only bed as Dean suddenly realized his kid brother was shivering.

“Whoa,” Dean burst out, following Sam’s gaze. “Grandma, what big eyes you have.”

It was hard to tell how old the lady in the hospital bed actually was. Late eighties if Sam had to guess. Her long white hair hung over her shoulder in a single thick braid, thin white lips pursed together in a sleep that looked anything but peaceful.

But what really stood out about her were her eyes – completely white as they stared sightlessly up at the ceiling.

“Cataracts?” Dean asked, taking a step closer to the old woman before hesitating, suddenly remembering the old crone in Fitchburg. I sleep with my peepers open. He stopped dead, glancing back at Sam, who shrugged, but came no further into the room than the doorway, an uncomfortable expression on his face.

“What?” Dean asked immediately, hand jerking reflexively to the 9mm stuck in the waistband of his jeans. “Sam?”

“I don’t know,” Sam tried to explain, frowning. “There’s something – not right – with her…”

“Not right how?” Dean asked, glancing to the old lady before fixing his attention back on Sam. “Sam? Something made you come in here, right? Tremor in the Force or what?”

“When I passed her door,” Sam admitted slowly. “I felt as if I’d walked into a meat locker.”

Dean frowned, gaze sliding back to the old woman before he carefully inched over to the end of her bed where he plucked her chart off the rail. “Esther Haywood,” he read, flipping through the notes without understanding a whole lot of what was written there. He was able to guess that the old lady had been here for some time from the sheer number of pages attached to the clipboard, but he finally found a note that confirmed this. “Transferred here from Cedar View Rest Home two months ago.”

“She’s in a coma?” Sam asked.

“Pretty much,” Dean confirmed.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s old, dude,” Dean replied simply. “Getting near her time.” He shrugged, replacing the old lady’s chart before pushing past his brother and back out into the hallway, obviously having decided that Esther Haywood didn’t warrant any more of their attention.

“C’mon, Sam,” he urged, when Sam continued to linger on the threshold of the old lady’s room. “We’ve got living – well, nearly living – people to talk to.”

Sam nodded, tearing himself from Esther Haywood’s doorway grudgingly, and following his brother back out towards the blonde girl, who sat waiting, watching them.

“Hey,” Dean was already in full charm offensive, smiling at the girl, who looked up at him uncertainly. “I’m Dean, this is my brother Sam,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Is this Caitlin Newton’s room?”

The girl nodded, inclining her head towards the open door in front of where she sat. “She’s in there,” she said, voice thick, as if she’d been crying for hours, which, from the look of her face, Dean figured she probably had.

Dean smiled again, peering through the open door to where a young girl lay on a standard hospital bed, open, unseeing eyes gazing up at the ceiling much as Esther Haywood’s had.

A frazzled-looking woman in a nurse’s uniform sat in another of the hard plastic chairs next to the girl’s bed, hand clutching at her daughter’s fingers, every now and then straying to the bandages about her wrist.

Dean glanced back at Sam, motioning him into the room before taking up the chair next to the blonde kid in the hallway. “She your sister?” he asked carefully, acknowledging Sam’s entering Caitlin’s room with a slight nod of his head.

The girl nodded, brushing at the tears on her cheeks with the sleeve of a sparkly white cardigan that was half on, half off her hunched shoulders. “Catie,” she said quietly.

Dean nodded. “And that would make you…?”

The girl didn’t answer, just looked at him, suspicion clouding her already darkened features. “That depends who you are,” she said, sniffing back her tears as she fumbled around for her usual surfeit of sass.

Dean smiled lopsidedly. “Good point,” he said. “My brother and I are checking out the – uh – the people who have tried to hurt themselves around here. Sam’s a student at NYU…”

“So you’re trying to find a reason?” the girl seized on his words. “A cause?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. We – ”

“Don’t bother,” the girl cut him off abruptly, folding her arms sullenly across her chest. “I’m the cause.”

Dean bit his lip, considering his next move. “What did you say your name was again?” he tried.

“I didn’t,” the girl responded, gaze now on Sam as he pulled up a chair next to her Mom. “Ashleigh,” she admitted finally, tone softening, almost in resignation.

Dean smiled at her. “Nice to meet you, Ashleigh,” he said. “Wish we could have met under better circumstances.” Ashleigh cast him an uncertain glance, and he seized his opportunity. “So why’s this your fault?”

Ashleigh continued to gaze at him. “I was mean to her,” she said simply. “I was mean to my little sister.”

“Mean how?”

Ashleigh looked away. “I – I told her I wished she’d never been born,” she admitted. “All because I wanted to go to a stupid party with a stupid boy who just wanted to…” She broke off, leaning her elbows against her knees and covering her eyes with her hands. She took a deep breath, before looking up at Dean again. “That’s why she hurt herself. Because of me. Because I said that to her.” Fresh tears began to slide down her cheeks, and Dean put a tentative hand on her shoulder.

“I said that to my little brother once,” he admitted, nodding in Sam’s direction.

Ashleigh didn’t respond straight away, just glanced from Dean to Sam and back again. “You – did?” she said eventually, almost as if she didn’t believe him.

Dean nodded. “He was only a baby, though,” he said. “I could have been reading him Dr. Seuss for all he knew about it.”

Ashleigh frowned. “Then that’s not the same thing,” she said, almost sounding betrayed.

“No it’s not,” Dean agreed. “But I felt pretty bad after I said it. And I swore I’d never say it again, no matter how mad I got at him.”

“Were you mad at him when you said it?”

Dean cocked his head to one side, trying to remember. “No,” he said finally. “Not at him. But he was closest. Which was worse.”

Ashleigh nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Catie was closest too.”

“Is that why you’re out here and she’s in there?”

Ashleigh’s eyes slipped to examine her shoes. “I can’t go in,” she admitted. “I can’t face her. Not after this. Not after what I said.”

“Why d’you think she did this?” Dean asked. “Because she was mad at you?”

Ashleigh just looked at him. “Maybe.”

“If she was mad at you,” Dean said, “don’t you think she would have taken her anger out on you rather than herself, just like you took your anger out on her?”

“I guess…”

“Then maybe she didn’t do this because she was mad at you.”

“Why else would she have done it?” Ashleigh didn’t understand what Dean was getting at.

Dean put a hand on her arm. “Maybe she did this because she loves you. Ever think of that?”

* * * *

“…So it’s a coma?” Sam asked, leaning forward slightly in his chair.

Gina Newton looked haggard as hell, curly brown hair all over the place and mascara blackening her pale cheeks.

Sam had a knack of getting information out of people, and Gina felt like he was the first person she’d spoken to all day who understood. Who she could trust. She wasn’t sure why. He just had nice eyes. Sincere. Trustworthy.

“Not really,” she answered, eyes straying from Sam’s to Catie’s. “The doctors say she can probably hear everything we’re saying. She just – she just doesn’t want to come back to us. Not just yet.”

Sam studied Caitlin’s waxy face thoughtfully, eerily reminded of that doll Dean had had to torch to off the kid in the evil portrait. Her blue eyes were open, gazing up at the ceiling, and she even blinked every once in a while. But Sam didn’t have a clue what the girl was looking at… Maybe just the ceiling tiles, like everyone else. “So it’s shock?” he asked. “Like post-traumatic stress?”

Gina shrugged. “Maybe. To be honest, I don’t think the doctors really know. Wait and see. That’s all they can advise…” She trailed off, gaze slipping back to her youngest daughter as her fingers caressed her hand.

“We’re – ” Sam tried to figure out how to phrase what he was about to say next. “Me and my brother. We’re trying to find a – a cause for all of this…” Gina’s eyes returned to his in surprise. “For all of these people – hurting themselves.”

Gina nodded then. “Catie would never have done this,” she said quietly. “Never. But lately…”

“It’s that girl,” Ashleigh’s voice broke in on her mother’s thoughts, the nurse turning in surprise to see her oldest daughter enter the room, closely followed by a young man she guessed was Sam’s brother.

Ashleigh seemed almost afraid to enter the room, never mind look at her sister. Her eyes trailed the tubes in Caitlin's arms, the monitor attached to her finger, the beeping heart machine over on the other side of the bed.

She could feel Dean standing close behind her, and wondered at first whether he was waiting to stop her if she lost her nerve and tried to bolt. But one glance over her shoulder told her otherwise. He was standing there just to be there, and Ashleigh realized that here was someone who actually understood exactly what she was feeling.

I wish you’d never been born. Then Mommy would still be here…

Dean remembered saying those words as clearly as if he’d said them yesterday, five years old and trying to get his baby brother to go to sleep in a strange room in a strange motel with Daddy reading strange books that seemed to make him deaf to Sam’s frightened sobs.

Dean had been frightened too, but hadn’t known what to do about that. Daddy didn’t seem to hear Dean any more than he heard Sammy just lately.

He hadn’t meant to say it. The words had just come tumbling out of his mouth of their own accord because Dean was mad that Mommy wasn’t here to make Sammy quiet the way she used to, and Daddy just wasn’t listening.

Eventually, after several minutes of covering his ears and glaring at his baby brother sullenly, Dean had hefted Sammy up onto his shoulder like Mom used to, and to his amazement he had been rewarded almost immediately with a cessation of the wailing, followed eventually by a satisfied gurgle and little hands hugging his neck.

And suddenly Dean wasn’t as frightened any more.

In that moment, Dean had sworn he would never ever wish his little brother away again. And he would certainly never blame him for Mom not being there. Because that was just plain stupid.

“What girl?”

Grown-up Sam’s voice startled Dean out of his less-than-pleasant reverie, the younger Winchester swiveling in his chair to better question Ashleigh.

The teenager glanced uncertainly at her Mom, as if somehow seeking her permission to be in Caitlin’s room. Gina held out a weary hand to her eldest, which Ashleigh took gratefully, and Sam, ever the gentleman, vacated his chair so that the family could sit together at long last.

Ashleigh was eyeing Caitlin nervously, as if expecting her wide-open eyes to suddenly turn on her accusingly.

But they didn’t, and Catie continued to stare up at the ceiling as if Ashleigh wasn’t even there.

“What girl, Ashleigh?” Gina prodded then, echoing Sam’s question.

Ashleigh took a big, shuddering sigh. “I thought she was just an imaginary friend at first,” she explained. “I know Catie’s a little old for that kind of thing, but – you know – she is kinda – ” she fumbled for the right word. “ – Odd like that. She said this girl had started visiting her in her bedroom – talking to her.” She met her mother’s uncertain gaze. “Catie said she was a ghost,” she finished finally.

“A ghost?” Gina echoed, trying to keep the cynicism out of her voice. “You’re kidding, right?”

Ashleigh shook her head. “Catie said she just appeared and disappeared out of thin air.”

Gina shook her head and drew an exhausted hand across her forehead, while Sam and Dean just glanced briefly at each other to confirm they were on the same page.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Gina demanded, reminding Dean uncomfortably of the way Dad had chewed him out for not telling him about Sam’s visions earlier.

“Like you’d have believed me!” Ashleigh returned. “A ghost in Catie’s bedroom? Get serious, Mom.” Her gaze shifted again to her sister, voice lowering in bewilderment. “I just thought she was making it up.”

Dean shot Sam a glance before asking, “So. This ghost girl. She have a name?”

Ashleigh shook her head slowly. “If she did, Catie never mentioned it.”

“You – uh – you ever see her?” Sam asked tentatively.

Ashleigh seemed to look at him properly for the first time. “Like I said,” she reiterated with an exasperated sigh. “I thought Catie was making the whole thing up. Little sisters sometimes do stupid stuff to get attention.”

A wry smile lifted the corners of Dean’s mouth, and he leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “Yeah,” he agreed, looking pointedly at Sam. “Little brothers too.”

* * * *

“C’mon, Doris, you can’t still be mad,” Dean wheedled, sticking a cup of Starbucks’ finest in front of the microfiche reader.

Sam picked up the hot cup, moving it away from the old machine with a glare that wordlessly chided Dean for his gross breach in library etiquette.

Dean pulled up a heavy wooden chair with an exaggerated sigh, the squeak of legs on old-fashioned parquet floor causing the three middle-aged women using the room’s other fiche readers to look up and shake their heads at him disapprovingly.

Dean grinned winningly at them before leaning in close to Sam and whispering, “Take a good long look, Sammy. That’s your future, dude.”

Sam did his best I’m not listening jaw clench, eyes staring fixedly at the screen in front of him, scrolling through page after page of the Clifton Chronicle’s newspaper archive a little too fast to be actually reading any of it.

“I never did anything stupid to get your attention,” he growled finally, still not looking at Dean.

I knew it, Dean thought to himself, before instantly replying, “Transformer in the microwave,” and beginning to count on his fingers. “Jumping off a second story balcony to illustrate the laws of gravity. Trying to convince me you knew how to drive because you’d watched a Knight Rider marathon. Oh, and let’s not forget that whole dog food lasagna incident…”

“Shut up,” Sam returned, an irritated grin pulling at the corners of his mouth despite his best efforts. “And besides, I think you’re forgetting that department store Santa.”

Dean didn’t miss a beat. “The guy had it coming,” he said. “Shouldn’t have promised you an Optimus Prime if he couldn’t deliver.”

“You set fire to his beard.”

“Could have been worse. He’d have been ho-ho-hoing down the barrel of a .38 if Dad hadn’t shown up.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “What was I thinking putting Optimus Prime in the microwave?”

“You were one twisted six-year-old, dude,” Dean commented, eyes straying to the fiche screen as Sam took a sip of the coffee. “So any luck tracking down our suicide whisperer?”

“Always supposing that’s what she is…” Sam pointed out distractedly, eyes lighting on a front page spread with the headline, “Child death stuns local community.”

He read carefully, scrolling down the screen and finally landing on a photograph of two little girls sitting on the steps of a big blue house that could easily have belonged on any street in Clifton. The girls were virtual mirror images of each other, one maybe a few years older than the other, but both so alike that it was actually quite eerie.

Sam squinted at the caption beneath the photograph, reading it twice, three times, before zooming back up to the top of the page and muttering, “No. Way,” in disbelief.

“What?” Dean asked, also squinting at the screen.

“May 5th, 1933,” Sam said. “Eight-year-old Emily Haywood takes her own life by hanging.”

Dean grimaced. “Eight?” he echoed. “What would make an eight-year-old hang herself?”

Sam continued to read the article before giving Dean the edited highlights. “Dad loses his job at the local textile factory in 1931 – near the beginning of the Great Depression. He goes off to New York City to find work, leaving his two daughters, then aged six and eleven, in the care of their elderly grandmother – their Mom died in childbirth. Grandma gets sick, leaving big sister to care for her and for the younger girl. Little sister hangs herself when food gets scarce and money even scarcer, and she starts believing she’s too much of a burden to her sister…”

“Younger sibling commits suicide,” Dean muttered. “Jeez, and I thought we had a crappy childhood.”

“You’ve not heard the best part.”

Dean arched an eyebrow expectantly. “Oh do tell, Geek Wonder, the suspense is killing me.”

“Older sister’s name. Esther Haywood.”

Dean frowned. “Where’ve I heard that name…?”

“Old gal in the next hospital room to Catie Newton.”

“Coma Granny? ‘I got chills they’re multiplying’ Coma Granny?”

Sam nodded. “The very same.”

“Huh,” Dean commented, looking back at the picture of the two little girls smiling broadly on the blue house’s front porch. “Little Emily look familiar?” he asked carefully.

Sam didn’t look at him. “Maybe,” he replied quietly, the closest he was going to get to admitting he’d seen – or thought he’d seen – anything at all to his brother. He too studied the grainy, sepia-toned photograph, eyes lingering on the girls’ long blonde hair braided under identical straw hats, their big dark eyes seeming to swallow the camera lens.

“So little sister Emily’s persuading younger siblings everywhere to follow her lead, huh?” Dean theorized.

Sam shrugged. “Stranger things have happened,” he said. “Violent death. Pissed off spirit.”

Dean nodded. “That thing say where Emily’s buried?”

* * * *

“Just tell me one thing,” Sam said sullenly, leaning on the handle of the shovel and wiping sweat from his forehead. “Why do we always have to come to creepy graveyards in the middle of the night?”

Dean looked up from digging just long enough to shoot Sam a “well, duh!” look. “You wanna sell front row tickets to this little salt n’ burn party, be my guest,” he said, continuing to dig, despite the gravestone above him seeming to glare at him.

Emily Louise Haywood, 1925 – 1933. Beloved daughter and sister.

Dean hated kid jobs.

“Speaking of interested onlookers,” Sam said suddenly, turning his attention to a spot several rows of graves beyond Dean’s shoulder. “I think your boyfriend’s back.”

Dean stopped what he was doing instantly, dread creeping up his spine as he turned slowly, eyes finally lighting on a darkly dressed figure propped up against a distant gravestone.

Watching them.

“Aw, man!” he muttered, sinking the shovel into the dirt as he turned back to Sam.

“You got a stalker, bro,” Sam had that highly amused grin on his face again, and Dean was seriously tempted to wipe it off with a well-placed blow from the shovel.

“What’s he doing here?” Dean asked, not really expecting Sam to answer, but hoping if he pretended the guy wasn’t there, he might magically disappear.

Sam shrugged. “Go ask him.”

“You go ask him!” Dean returned. “You’re the sensitive sympathetic one, remember? I just do the driving and dig the holes!”

Sam tossed him an exasperated frown. “Go talk to him.”

“You’re not hearing me, Sammy! You talk, I dig. Them’s the rules.”

“Not this time, Romeo,” Sam replied, snatching the shovel out of his brother’s hand. “This time I dig, you talk. Now go.”

Dean did his best to replicate Sam’s Do I have to? look, but he’d never managed to get it down to a science the way Sam had.

“Go,” Sam insisted, shooing Dean away with a flick of the hand. “I mean it.”

Dean’s scowl darkened. “Man,” he muttered under his breath. “There aren’t enough M&Ms in the world to make up for this…”

He hopped up out of the as yet quite shallow hole, and trudged across several final resting places before coming to a halt in front of the young man who had served them earlier at the gas station. “So, Pete, right?” he said.

The clerk looked up at him uncertainly, eyes a little muddied by the contents of the three-quarters-empty beer bottle clutched in his hand. The white headphone cord of his MP3 player stood out starkly against his black clothing, and Dean noted the fresh coat of black nail polish and thick black eyeliner ringing his sunken eyes.

Goth kid. Just his luck.

Pete pulled one of the headphones from his ear, head still jerking slightly in time to something loud that Dean didn’t recognize.

“Sorry,” the kid shrugged, glancing at the headphone. “Muse,” he explained. “They’re English. Craig liked them.”

Dean nodded, noting the three empty beer bottles nestled around Pete’s black-booted feet before moving on up to the name etched on the gravestone against which he was leaning. Craig James Carter, 1981 – 2006. Only the good die young.

Dean admired the sentiments, sighing as he sat himself down on the damp grass next to Pete. “So,” he began, wishing for the hundredth time that Sam was taking care of this touchy-feely crap. “You and Craig….?”

“Completely one-sided,” Pete said instantly, his speech slightly slurred as his eyes slid in and out of focus as he tried to fix his attention on Dean. Not that having to look at Dean was a chore or anything. But he just couldn’t shake the feeling that Craig might be watching somehow; like he was being unfaithful or something. “He was engaged,” he said quietly. “I told you that, right?”

Dean nodded, his attention drawn to a blue-green tub with yellow writing on it which had been discarded with the empty beer bottles. It looked somehow familiar, but he couldn’t quite identify it in the gloom. “Yeah,” he agreed. “That pretty much sucks.”

Pete raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“The unrequited thing,” Dean clarified. “Not the engaged thing.”

Pete nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Unrequited sucks.” His distracted gaze had briefly shifted back to Sam. “So your brother’s digging up someone’s grave,” he observed, his voice devoid of emotion.

“Yeah,” Dean said slowly, shrugging. “Kid’s gotta have a hobby.”

Pete nodded, beginning to stare at him again, like he had at the gas station earlier, and Dean found himself shifting uncomfortably.

“We’re kinda trying to – to fix what’s going on around here,” he managed to explain lamely. “We don’t want to see anyone else die…”

“Then you should go,” Pete interrupted abruptly, popping his headphone back in his ear, just as the repeated refrain, “When will this loneliness be over…?” caught the edge of Dean’s hearing.

“Wait – ” Dean grabbed hold of Pete’s wrist, pulling out the headphone just as he realized why the blue-green tub at the kid’s feet had seemed familiar.

Advil.

He snatched up the bottle with his free hand, shaking it silently. Empty.

“Pete,” he said slowly. “What did you do?”

When will this loneliness be over…?

Pete smiled sadly. “Soon…” he said, finally keeling over sideways.

“Dammit!” Dean swore, catching hold of the front of the kid’s shirt. “Pete!” He shook him slightly until his eyes fluttered back open. “Pete, you got a car?” he demanded urgently. “Pete?”

Pete nodded, voice distant. “Silver Jetta.”

“Keys?”

“Pocket.”

Dean rifled through Pete’s jacket pocket, finally pulling out a set of keys on a rabbit’s foot fob. “I guess this is your lucky night after all, Pete,” he muttered, resting the kid against Craig’s gravestone and pulling himself to his feet. “Don’t go anywhere!”

He sprinted over to Sam, skidding to a halt next to the now slightly deeper hole in front of Emily Haywood’s gravestone. “Sam!”

Sam looked up, alarmed by the desperate expression on his brother’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Dean winced as he tossed Sam the keys to the Impala, which Sam caught one-handed. “Dude, you gotta get this done,” he said urgently. “I think Emily’s up to her tricks again.” He indicated Pete with a jerk of his thumb. “Pete’s just decided to try out this new cocktail he’s invented: Bud versus Advil.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “He what?”

“Burn her,” Dean ordered, sounding way too much like his Dad for his own liking. “I gotta get him to the hospital. In a Jetta. So it might take a while.”

Sam nodded, understanding. “I’ll meet you there when it’s done.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “But be quick about it. This chick’s really starting to piss me off.” He turned as if to go, but stopped suddenly, glancing back at Sam with a torn look on his face. “You’re okay with this, right?” he said cautiously, not sure himself whether he meant salting and burning the bones of a mean dead girl intent on sabotaging his kid brother’s sanity, or the fact that he was leaving his kid brother alone to salt n’ burn the bones of a mean dead girl intent on sabotaging his sanity.

“I’m fine, Dean,” Sam insisted, for what felt like the fiftieth time that day. “Once she's burned, she’s gone, right? No problem.”

Dean nodded uncertainly, acutely aware that every second he stood here deliberating about whether to leave Sam alone was one second less he had to try and save Pete’s life. “All right,” he agreed. “But if you see anything – and I mean anything – you call me and I’ll be back here so fast that Jetta won’t know what hit it.”

Sam nodded. “Count on it.”

Dean turned tail then, sprinting back to Pete, who looked as if he was sleeping against the gravestone. “Oh no you don’t,” Dean said, grabbing the kid’s wrists and hauling him up.

Pete’s eyes fluttered open, and he smiled dazedly at Dean, before muttering, “Saved by an angel.”

Dean frowned at him. “Dude,” he said, hoisting the kid to his feet and sliding an arm around his waist. “If I’m your idea of an angel, no way do I wanna see your version of Hell…”

* * * *

Sam leaned on the shovel, watching Dean disappear towards the road, dragging the stocky gas station kid along with him awkwardly.

He took a slow breath, the thought, “There but for the grace of God…” surfacing in his head as he remembered how he’d felt those first few weeks after Jessica’s death; when the anger had started to wane a little, only to be replaced by a dull, empty ache.

He shook his head, focusing on the task at hand. Wallowing in grief wasn’t going to get the job done. “You’re not getting this one, Emily,” he muttered, starting to dig again.

“Don’t do that, Sam.”

Sam looked up, startled, dropping the shovel at the sound of the little girl’s voice.

And the screams of the baby.

He covered his ears involuntarily, the infant’s screeching reaching new levels of intensity as he raised his eyes to look at the little girl standing at the edge of the grave. Her long, lank blonde hair fell about her shoulders as she put her hands on her hips and stuck out her lower lip in a perfect pout. Despite the fact that she was standing on newly-dug dirt, the hem of her black dress was spotless, as were her black lace-up boots.

“Don’t, Sam,” she repeated, her voice like a blast of icy air down the back of Sam’s neck. He could barely hear her over the noise of the baby. “It won’t help. It won’t help your brother.”

She leaned down slightly, ghostly hair brushing against the back of Sam’s hand with a crackle of static. “And you want to help your brother, don’t you, Sam?”

Sam just stared up at her, eyes barely able to focus as his head felt like it was being split in two.

The little girl straightened, smiling ever-so-slightly. “You’d do anything for him, wouldn’t you, Sam?” she said.

Sam winced, the continued assault on his eardrums making him feel faint and nauseous. “Yes,” he said a little too loudly. “Anything.”

The little girl frowned quizzically. “Anything?” she echoed, as if double-checking.

Sam nodded. “Anything,” he confirmed.

The little girl raised her chin, expression completely serious now. “Would you die for him?” she asked.

“Yes,” Sam replied without hesitation, standing up straight and meeting the girl’s ghostly gaze evenly. “Yes. I’d die for him.”

The little girl’s lips twitched into a satisfied smile. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

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