And We Are Ashes - Chapter 1, Part 6

[thecatevari]

11,227 / 50,000 (22.5%)

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Jesus, Dean, Sam thinks, looking around at the scattered and obsessive chaos of the narrow room, what the hell did you get yourself into?

He knows Dean's a note-taker. In the downtime while Sam studied, Dean was always scribbling in his journal. Sam doesn't really know what's in it, whether personal recollection or just catalogues of the monsters they've fought and killed—ten percent silver mix is enough to kill garden-variety werewolves, but needs to be upped to fifty for loup-garou—but looking around at the walls, all Sam can think is that it looks like Dean's journal exploded.

He glances at Mary. She's poking through the pile of trash on the nightstand, nose wrinkled as she prods what looks like a week-old-or-older cheeseburger mixed in with all the other stuff. He sees the glint of crystal, like quarts or maybe fluorite and turns away, back to the walls. In the corner he sees where the leak the clerk mentioned was. The faux wood paneling is warped, visible because Dean's taken down whatever was hanging there to leave a blank space. The pages on either side are slightly browned and water-stained, edges curling up. Sam reaches to smooth down one at random, his eyes skimming over the information collected here. Then he sees something familiar.

"Mom," he says, tugging the Xerox down carefully so it doesn't tear. The tape doesn't want to give and it strips away some of the fake wood, leaving a bright patch. "Look."

Mary turns to him. "What?"

He shows her the article, identical to the one they were looking at in the library. Constance Welch's face looks back at them, creepily and artificially serene when compared to the angry/hungry look of her spirit-self. "Dean figured it out." Sam taps the Post-It Note and other constellation of papers that had hung with the article. "Constance Welch is a Woman In White."

"Oh, Constance, you bad bitch," Mary breathes. Then she considers. "Still, that should be an easy enough problem to deal with. Does it say where she's buried?"

Sam skims the article again, though he's pretty confident the answer is no. He's got a good memory for that sort of thing, another habit he'd happily get rid of forever if he could. "No," he says finally, confirming his memory and shaking his head. "Just the funeral home."

Mary shrugs and chews thoughtfully on her thumbnail. "Well, that's no big deal either. After we finish up here—and I shower, because man, do I stink—we can swing past the widower's and ask him."

"Like you asked the clerk about Dean?" he asks. The feeling in his chest as he watches her pupils blow wide is the same as when he'd spar with her or Dean and he'd step right on through their defenses for the strike.

"Sam," she says, a warning growl, and Sam decides he's too tired and in too much pain to pick this battle now.

"You know what?" he says, cutting in over whatever she's sucked in the breath to say. "Forget it. Never mind." He turns his back on her, weighing uneasily her need to have the last word in any argument over her desire to shut down his line of questioning.

Off to his right, on the dresser, he spots a picture of himself and Dean tucked crookedly into the mirror's frame. A girl named Emma Barlow—not really a friend, because he'd given up on making friends by then—took the picture at his high school graduation.

Sam remembers he'd had a growth spurt suddenly, in the week and a half between being measured for his gown and the ceremony. His already too short sleeves and hem became even more absurd, especially in conjunction with is equally ill-fitting dress shirt and slacks. He'd been completely self-conscious and hadn't wanted to take any pictures at all but Dean insisted. Mostly to capture Sam's humiliation for all time, he'd been darkly certain at the time.

Looking at the picture now—his scrawnier eighteen year old self looking embarrassed and irritated in his blue gown and purple Honor Society stole and Dean next to him with his arm around Sam's shoulders—Sam feels weird about finding it here. They're not a particularly sentimental family and Dean tends to carry his memories like he carries his wounds—internally. And given the acrimony when Sam left and how, he half-expected Dean to hate him—for leaving, for crossing their mother, for disrespecting the memory of their Dad. For giving up, as Dean said, just before Sam walked out the door.

He and Dean have been close by necessity because in a family of three, you can hardly help it, but Sam doesn't know if he'd call them friends. Dean had tried too hard to be Sam's dad. He'd been Sam's caretaker, his jailer, his drill sergeant, his exasperating and outrageously perfect older brother but none of that left a whole lot of room to be pals.

Sam wonders why it never occurred to him that Dean wanted the stupid fucking picture because he was proud. Proud of Sam.

Dean isn't by any means stupid. But he is a dropout, signing up and taking his GED exam sometime around his sixteenth birthday when nobody was looking. Mom had been pissed, Sam remembers. Dean shrugged that careless whatever shrug and said steadily and quietly, "You and Sam need me a lot more than that school. GED's as good as a diploma, anyway."

And Mom's lips pinched up tight but she didn't say anything else about it except to make Dean take extra target practice and chaperon Sam on his one and only date with Claudine Maxwell.

Sam caught Claudine on her knees sucking Dean off less than a week later. He and Dean had a huge screaming fight about it that only ended when Sam punched Dean in the face and knocked him down on his ass. Mary sent Sam to their room and two days later, they left.

Sam sighs and scrapes a hand through his hair feeling tired, headachy and overwhelmed by the sheer weight of all these memories that he hasn't even touched on in years. His phone chirps suddenly and he startles, drawn out of himself to recognize the 'voicemail received' tone. He digs the cell out of his pocket and sees he missed a call. From Jess. Dammit.

Mary's looking a question at him. "Jess," he explains briefly, feeling oddly defensive, but she only nods and goes back to rummaging through Dean's stuff. "I'm gonna take this outside," he tells her. His stomach growls loudly and painfully and he realizes he's suddenly, starvingly hungry. "Hey. You hungry?' he asks. "I think I'm gonna go get some food."

"Yeah." Mary nods and tosses Sam the Impala's keys. He fields them with one hand and tucks them in his pocket. "That sounds good. You know what I like, right?"

"Yeah."

"Hey Sam?"

He pauses with the door halfway open. Cool, fresh evening air hits him in the face, refreshing and bracing after the closeness of the room. "Yeah?"

"Do you know why I listen to all that 'moldy old rock' all the time?"

Sam's eyebrows wrinkle. "Because you're more ancient than the dinosaurs and so is your music?"

She snorts and smiles and a little of his worry about being flip eases. "No. Actually I wasn't allowed to listen to music when I was growing up. Any music."

Mary doesn't say much about her life before Dad. They've never gone to any family Christmases or visited an Aunt Ethel in Albuquerque. He and Dean always figured they were dead. "Geez, Mom, what kind of fundie crackpots did you grow up with?" A teasing thought occurs to him. "Was it like Footloose? Was your town like Footloose, with the dancing being all ugly in the eyes of God or whatever?"

She swats an irritated hand at him but her smile widens. "Something like that. The point is that up until your father, I never really knew anything about music. But that music, that 'moldy old music' that you hate so much…I listen to it because it's your Dad's music. Because he loved it and so I do too."

Sam ducks his head. "Why are you telling me this?" he asks quietly.

Mary shakes a hand through her hair, looking tired and two steps off fried. "To make a point. To show you that even though I may not tell you all the reasons, I always have them."

Sam shuffles a little and his toe scuffs the doorstop. "Yeah, I know, Mom." He sighs. "But you knowing the reasons and not telling us, telling me…that's just not always good enough."

He closes the door behind him and starts dialing his voicemail. He hasn't had a whole lot of time to think about it, but abruptly he misses her with a desperation that borders on insanity. He wants her. He wants the safe normalcy of his life. But he'll settle for the sound of her voice. At least with voicemail, she can't ask any more questions he can't really answer. He gets as far as dialing in his password and hearing a lazy, drawled, "Hey, baby, it's me…" before he looks up and sees the squad car pulled up in front of the motel office. Two uniforms are standing in a loose huddle with the clerk. As Sam watches in numb horror, the clerk turns to point and the two cops crane to look dead at him.

Oh, shit.

Sam's thumb hits the END button and cuts off the sound of Jess's voice mid-word. Without taking the cell from his face, his thumb dances over the keypad, dialing Mary from memory and touch.

"Don't tell me you forgot what I take on my burgers already?" Mary laughs.

"Shut up," Sam says in an urgent undertone. "Cops're here. Take off."

"Sam—"

"Um. They've already spotted me," he says as the two cops make their way unhurriedly in his direction. "Go on. I'll figure something out." He smiles his most harmless giant puppy smile at the two men and makes sure not to make any sudden movements. "Hey, guys," Sam says, sounding as brainlessly Californian college-kid as he can. "What's going on?"

***

Sam would like to be able to say that this was his first time being in a police station (age six, Pastor Jim bailing his mother out on a disorderly conduct and assault charge) or even his first time being arrested (age thirteen, the first time he actually got caught shoplifting) but no such luck. Still, it gives him some idea of what to expect and puts a rein on his panic.

I'm not the one that used the credit card and I didn't flash the badge. What they got is thin on the ground. I can handle this. I'm not going to lose my scholarship.

"I don't think you understand how much trouble you're in here, son."

He resents the 'son'. He may not want to follow in his mother and Dean's meandering footsteps, but that doesn't mean he doesn't give a shit about his dad, first of all, or that he's going to put up with being dicked around by some small-town Barney Fife who thinks he's going to roll over on a Winchester. "Is that like 'squeal like a pig' trouble? Sir?" he asks innocently, though inside he's seething. He doesn't know if it's at the cop, his mom, himself or even Dean, who indirectly landed him in this mess. He supposes it doesn't really matter.

"You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall," the cop—Henderson—says. "Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect."

"Well, that makes sense," Sam admits reasonably. "Because I wasn't even born when those first few guys went missing."

Henderson snorts and leans back. "We know you've got a partner. Older woman, quite the looker, from what we hear. Claiming she's your 'mom'." Henderson's voice drips contempt and disbelief and suddenly Sam's a lot harder pressed to stay peaceably in his chair, wrists flexing against the cuffs. "So, what I figure is this is kind of a family thing. Maybe a whole bunch of you. And that seems pretty much borne out by this here book." He thumps Dean's journal on the desk between them and despite himself, Sam jumps. The book falls open to a page at random and, in Dean's spare block handwriting, he sees the steps of a ritual to banish gremlins. "'Cause this shit is just nine kinds of crazy. So why don't you tell me? What've we got here? Is this something like the Manson family bullshit?"

One of the other cops pokes his head in the door, glancing from Sam to Henderson. "Hey Dave, we just got a 911. Shots fired over at Whiteford Road."

Henderson looks irritated for a split second before he glances back at Sam. "You gotta go to the bathroom?" he asks, lumbering heavily to his feet.

Sam shakes his head. "No."

"Good." Henderson handcuffs Sam to the table and exits the office.

Sam's breath goes out of him and he allows himself a few minutes to sag in the chair while a bunch of the uniforms suit up and file out. He's grateful for his long arms and legs as he maneuvers Dean's journal awkwardly towards him. They'd confiscated his lock picks, but when the journal fell open, Sam noticed a paperclip jutting a little way from one of the pages. He slips his fingernails into the bent twist of metal and the pages shift to open to that page.

He's not really looking, just a quick and reflexive glance of his eyes, but he sees the word Mom and it snags his attention. It looks like Dean wrote a letter.

Mom,

Constance Welch is a Woman in White. I don't know if you're going to come looking, but if you do, you should finish the gig. I'm okay. Don't look for me.

Sam stares at the page much longer than it probably warrants, his mind tossing back and forth between the phrases if you're going to come looking and Don't look for me.

God, Dean, Sam wonders again. What the fuck is going on?

He pulls the paperclip from the page and picks the locks on the cuffs. He grabs the journal and hotfoots it.

He's chafing with impatience, but he waits until he's out of the station and several blocks away before he calls Mary. On a dark, residential street, he finds an unlocked older car and climbs in to hotwire it. Ah, California.

"You all right, Sammy?" Are the first words out of Mary's mouth and Sam feels his throat tighten up a little bit.

"Nothing that a fake 911 call couldn't fix," he answers, without correcting her. When in doubt, go with sarcasm. It's a way of life.

"You're welcome."

"Thanks. Where are you?"

"On my way to the Welch's old house. They buried old Constance in the back yard." Mary sounds almost amused.

"Mom." Sam swallows. "I think Dean left town."

"Why would you think that?" her voice sharpens and gets short.

"The cops had his journal. He left you a message. He said not to look for him."

"Now why the hell would he do that?" Mary sounds genuinely confused amid the anger and frustration. "What…that boy…stubborn. Like…dy…"

"Mom. Mom. You're breaking up," Sam says patiently. Then he realizes what he's hearing. That's not static, it's EVP. Constance can't hurt Mom, he thinks, frantically chiming the stripped wires against each other. He racks his brain for the address from the article. She's a Woman in White and Mom's another female. She can't hurt Mom.

Nonetheless, Sam finds his fingers shaking and his stomach tightening up in knots, a little voice in the back of his head screaming hurry. Hurry.

Comments

[offtheceiling.livejournal.com]

I know you're worried that this is boring because you're just retelling season 1, but you're doing it DIFFERENTLY and I, at least, find it awesome and fascinating. Sam and Mary have such a different relationship than Sam and Dean do and just having her there instead of him makes this a completely different story than season 1. Plus all the stuff about her family. Really, I love this, honey. *beams at you*

[mona1347.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to lose my scholarship.

HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THAT THIS IS SAM'S FOURTH THOUGHT?!

Also, what Cassi said - this is a mirror-verse of canon, a diametric "who died? mother/father" switch-over that it's FASCINATING to hear the retelling of the Pilot in this way.

That the dynamic goes from "daddy's lieutenant" to "tried to be my dad" with Sam and Dean when it's the female parent who lives - also fascinating.

We know you've got a partner. Older woman, quite the looker, from what we hear. Claiming she's your 'mom'.

Awesome cause it's dirty. Not in a "turns me on" way but in a "yeah, that's the crudity of what would happen in that situation." The text of Sam becoming physically angered because OMG YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT HIS MOMMA and the subtext of Sam and Dean probably had to deal with this all their lives. Being the sons of this woman is not easy in many different ways, even mundane ones like "Whoo, your mom is hotass" and "sure that's your MOM, ha ha, cause I'd hit that."

[mona1347.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* Not Cassi. I am SO FOOLED every time someone uses an icon that I associate with someone else and it's ALWAYS poor Cassibean b/c she has the best icons that everyone takes. *sighs and shames*