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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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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.

That the urge is there now is a big enough step.

For so long she couldn't even grasp the idea and a reaction.

"This was all first, and not so bizarre given the multiverse. And then that triggered all of this." And their this's as she stacks them may be different. "Well. This n' fucking horror land. All together there's a lot less to give a damn about."

Except for how much she really did give a damn.

About all of it. About all of them. About all of this.

Sam will always be a younger brother. His statement was half observation. Half complaint.

Winchester bullshit.

"I've seen enough." He moves past her, down the hall and toward the door. "Which one is the house you wanted to stop at?"

Another one of those great moments of miscommunication.

They are so diametrically opposite in their thoughts.

"A few down. It's a short walk."

There's vague wave, before she walking.

Sam nods, letting her go first, following behind. He's still thinking about rocks and trees and what else might explode or melt when in this neat and tidy house, the toe of his boot catches on a bump in the carpet.

The door knob he uses to catch himself is to a closet.

Where a rifle and a crossbow manage to tumble out the open door.

Sam blinks at them for a moment before smirking humorously. "I guess the psychic powers weren't everything," he observes darkly, crouching to pick up the weapons.

Jo gives him an oddly bemused look.

Bemused, because Sam Winchester rarely needs to catch his balance in her presence when she isn't punching him the balls while someone else is riding his body.

The rest of it reads, Hunters n' weapons. Duh.

Except it's only a little absent, like normal.

But her eyebrows quirk a little more.

Jo hasn't often seen Sam in full Research Mode, distracted from anything and everything that isn't information. Especially where it concerns crazy doubles that freak out his brother and-- may or may not be more Sam Winchester than he is.

Maybe.

Which is why the smugness fades somewhat as he puts the rifle back, holding the crossbow. If the other man was solely using psychic abilities to hunt, that's one thing. But if he's using them in addition to regular weapons, that's-- well, that's closer.

He's still looking at the crossbow when he finally blinks and looks up at Jo.

"Didn't you say they were hunting?"