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Dean is apparently living at Jo's. Leah is working and while she usually has time for a drink, Sam doesn't want to interrupt her, or hang around too much. No jobs to do, that he knows of. No real desire to go out by himself to do them, either. There's nothing wrong with his car and he's not Dean - meaningless tune-ups don't interest him. His guns and knives have been cleaned and polished, he's stocked up on bullets, salt, holy water. Ransacked more than a few bookstores and churches. Sat around the apartment he usually shares with his brother and stared at blank walls.

Sam is bored. Very, very bored.

And in Kansas.

Metropolis is a few hours from Lawrence. What's in Lawrence is... complicated. But maybe it's time he finally checked it out. Looked it in the eye and addressed it's existence.

(the "it" in question is debatable)

For now, Sam Winchester is sitting on the front step of the apartment building he sleeps in, frowning to the north.

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"Six?"

His hand doesn't shake when he reaches for the door knob, and that surprises him a little. It moves slowly, though. He never tries to correct that.

He wonders what the apocalypse did to the house, what the new occupants did. If it's changed and if it's changed enough not to bother him.

"Dean n' me." And didn't that sound weird.

In a way that creaked, was comforting and complicated.

"Back way at the beginning. Before I moved down the street."

She's taking the stairs, and stopped to lean on the porch, thinking oddly enough of the crass teasing she'd given Dean right here on these steps. A girl who was still outrunning her shadow, clueless about her mother.

"He stayed longer, but things got weird when Sam returned with Jess all--" Married is a mutter. And there was Rachel then and Jack's promise to take her away. And the Farm happened, the splitting up. All of it. An endless roll.

Edited 2009-09-23 11:03 (UTC)

"Married."

Said louder but not loud. Stronger but not strong. Simple statement of fact. It doesn't have to bother him - that Sam isn't really Sam. That Jess isn't really Jess.

And he's glad they're both not here.

The door pushes open with a creak and Sam peers inside, frowning a little. Furniture, knick-knacks, blankets over a couch and pillows on cushions.

But empty, all the same.

Jo ran her finger down a table with a can on it.

Coming up with a slight layer of dust.

"Empty for a while."

"Looks like it."

Maybe he shouldn't look around. It's not really his house and people lived here. Maybe not the right people, but people. And Dean, once.

Sam frowns, walking through the halls. He'd like to have a shotgun in his hands. What he's got is the handgun at his back and a few knives. It's the only way he knew to make this feel like a real job.

At the end of the hallway is the kitchen, which only gets a glance before he turns back to Jo-

And turns back to the kitchen. More specifically, to the window that leads to the backyard.

She's watching him.

It's not like the Road House. He's not emptying coffers after taking out the only people who mattered more than breathing. The only people who could gut her. The only people she'd known all her life could always have that happen to them, and that be demanded of her.

It's his home and the people here are not demons.

He doesn't have to kill them and refuses to live with them.

Two different sides of a coin rolling its ways through hell.

When he looks away, she catches the tense of his shoulders. She knows what's out there. She was there for it. "Pretty, ain't it?"

Edited 2009-09-23 14:30 (UTC)

He doesn't appreciate her rhetoric.

Sam's eyes narrow slightly on her. The shake of his head is not in response - not to Jo, anyway, but maybe to the words in his head. He walks away from her, out the back door.

The the backyard, filled with rubble, like haphazardly thrown gravel, and trees with branches out of a Salvador Dali painting.

He knows who did this.

exploded rocks and melted trees

He just doesn't know what.

She follows him out, letting him look.

"That one is from when he brought Jess home."

There's less of a pointing and more of a nod toward.

"He was less than thrilled that I wasn't having it."

Sam hesitates, looking in the direction of her nodding. He's not sure if she's talking about one of three awkward, melting trees or two different crumbles of rock.

"You weren't having with what?"

"Him. All married. Without coming home, without tests, without talking to Dean, or Mary." Her tongue still slides comfortably over the names, even as she's studying the wreckage of the yard.

"There she was, all be-ringed--and he was--" Jo frowned, hands settling on her hips oddly. The word was giddy. "Seriously. Did anyone really think I needed extra excuses to throw holy water at one of you if you even faintly sounded like you'd fallen off the deep end?"

She gets a sharp-eyed glare for that.

No. He didn't think there needed to be an extra excuse. And he doesn't think any of this is particularly funny either.

Which would be why it wasn't, even when she said it.

"His appreciation of that was blowing up that tree."

And screaming at her about Dean.

He'll take recognition that she's annoying him over an actual apology any day. Especially when it would probably be sarcastic, coming from Jo.

Sam turns back to the tree - the one that isn't melted and is, instead, black and charred.

"...did he tell you how he learned to do all this?"

Hands are firmly placed in the pockets of his jacket, so this is not accompanied by a vague wave at the back yard.

That's probably for the best, since she's neither realized it nor would make one. She wouldn't care for the why. His issues with his doubles were his -- and any lingering issues between herself and all Sam Winchester were far easier to handle at a pointed end of words.

Especially at the smallness of what she was coming back from.

"No." But it was obvious it was something else.

She knows home and she's seen enough else to recognize it.

But what else? As hard as Ruby pushed, he can't imagine she'd hold back information on getting a power like what's displayed in the back yard.

Except this doesn't save people.

Sam frowns at it all for a minute more before shaking his head and turning away, back to the house. "You figure it's abandoned?" he asks Jo over his shoulder.

"For a while." Jo's hands ended up in her jeans. "Nothing's a wreck."

Aside from the back yard, but that's not new?

"Could be anything from hunting to traveling."

To simply vanishing. It was a fucked up world.

"They don't talk to Dean at all?"

He can see Dean not wanting to be here. He just can't imagine Winchesters, any Winchesters, letting him disappear without a fight.

Even if John isn't here.

In the kitchen again, he's blinking at a clean white hand towel with an embroidered rose on it.

Jo shrugged, a little awkwardly.

Half because she didn't, honestly, know.

The other half because it was logical to consider the fact Sam asking her about Dean's talking to people, like Dean talked to her at all about his family important, which both were super illogical to have assumptions about.....or at least they had been until, well, Dean staying.

"Not that I know about."

"How long has it been since you've seen any of them?"

He doesn't really want to look through the house. He doesn't really want to be here when they get back either. Not if Dean wasn't already certain that they were-- weren't human.

"Months."

Jo's going to look a little -- it's hard to label the shift. Expressions and words and walking are all new. And the day she left Lawrence, that day, was the day she went to the Road House.

She made herself to it though.

"I didn't come back after I went-"

It takes effort and she hates that.

Because she's going back soon.

"-home."

She's given up fighting that it is and isn't.

Sam looks at her.

It's the first time he really has since entering the house.

"You wanted to stop by your old place?"

Jo studies him for a long moment, very still.

Dean didn't tell him everything. Not that she remembers exactly what she told Dean. A lot of moments blurred the lines between memories, almost dreams, and waking nightmare that wouldn't end.

"It never blew up here."

She can do this. She can do this.

No one's even asking her to but she feels she has to.

"Instead it got zombie'd, along with everyone inside of it."

Sam-- goes very still, too.

Dean told him everything. But he won't say it.

He'll stand there and listen, though, in this ghost of a house.

It's not really a story.

Her home was turned into a fucking nightmare.

And she took care of it. And she's still alive.

And she's always known something like it could happen.

And she really wants to kick one of the chairs next to her.

Sam wouldn't stop her.

Though his voice, when it comes, has a cooler edge to it.

"Explains why you don't give half a shit about all this."

Vague wave of the hand.