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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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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?"

This is because Jo hasn't seen Sam Winchester do much at all.

Jo stretched the pockets of hoodie as she nodded, sending blonde curl bobbing along her black clothed shoulders, looking neither annoyed or bored or anything extra. It was a really logical assumption given the residents.

"Yeah."

"Then why-"

Two questions to ask simultaneously, one far more important than the other, and also being the hardest to ask.

"Why are there weapons still here?" Easy.

A harder swallow, a gruffer tone as he replaces the crossbow.

"And where's Mary?"

This is Jo's turn to let her face wrinkle with some confusion. It made sense for all four of them to be gone; especially if other Sam really was training Jess. It wasn't even the oddest way someone had come into the field.

Not being dead. Not being a sacrifice.

"Probably with the others." She shrugs, looking toward the closet. "And they probably just didn't take these ones. There was a lot in the house the last time I was visited. More than these."

That's not that odd, the weapons. Well-- it is, but not if Sam thinks of it like Bobby's house. He must leave weapons behind when he goes out, whereas Sam and Dean have always kept everything with them, on their person or in the trunk of the car. Really, it's more the house that bothers him.

He can ignore that.

Sam frowns and looks up at Jo, brows wrinkled. "This-- other guy went out hunting with his civilian wife and mother in tow?"

Jo's look might be getting odder.

For a long lingering moment, mouth opening slowly.

"Last I saw her Jess wanted to be trained, and Sam was for it." She has to keep her mouth moving before he stops her there. "And, well, I doubt Deana or Sam could stop Mary if she wanted to go."

He wasn't going to stop her. Not verbally, anyway, and it's doubtful Jo is all that cowed by the wrinkle in his forehead that grows at 'Sam was for it.'

Stopping Mary just gets a look, assuming the force they'd be trying to stop would be Motherly Concern.

The closet door is closed, weapons hidden, and he gives a final look to the house. That's the real thing that bothers him - the house. And how easy it was to get in, with nobody around.

Jo is given a nod. Lead on.

Jo opens the door, holding it for him, both nobs in her opposing hands, watching him with still copper eyes that are still trying to trace the confusion of knowing something isn't right.

Still isn't right; that only just started not being.

"You could leave a note." Her cheek rest on the door edge. It doesn't sound hopeful. It's what people said about her post cards. The few who knew. It was a thing. Mothers of hunters, who knew the job themselves.

The look he gives her is--

Not right.

The message, more than the look, really. This isn't his home, that's not his 'sister' or his mother. He doesn't have a wife, or a girlfriend. He doesn't have a double.

It's just another break-in to a home he doesn't belong in but needed information from.

Sam shrugs his shoulders, adjusting his jacket, and walks down to the car.

Sam's walking on ghosts. Jo closes the door quietly.

She's still grateful that she started here, even if here was so far from where she was now. The only parts of it still constant Dean, then Rachel, the Jack. She doesn't regret decking Sam or shooting near Dean, or helping save Sam or kissing Dean.

All of those are good things to know.

Things Sam has given her without even realizing it.

Jo walks down the drive, and nods the direction of her house.

"At least she'd be receptive to what you had to say."

At least he wouldn't have to shoot her on first sight.

Even un-zombie, she's not sure her mother would be.

Edited 2009-09-27 15:39 (UTC)

"Who?"

Deanna? Mary? Jess?

Whatever the answer, his step doesn't pause and Sam doesn't turn around.

She almost says 'your mother,' but it rings too much of things she's heard herself.

A nod, as they pass another house, "Mary."

"What the hell would I have to say to her?"

It's defensive and sharp.

And it's also, partly, an honest question.

Jo frowns, she looks off.

Hello

I miss you

I love you

I'm sorry

"Everything. Anything." Beat. "Hello, goodbye. Don't talk, I just wanted to see you." There's a hollow, dry almost-laugh in the way she presses her lips. "I always wanted to say that one back when."

"Which house?" falls from Sam's lips like a punctuation of every word that came before, hard and final.

That's enough.

It's Sam's line. It's hardly hers.

And Sam drawing lines in her world rarely works.

"This one." She turns pretty much as he asks, walking up her walk. It such a generic little thing, isn't it. The door is locked, and she still has the key back in Metropolis. The irony causes her the shake her head.

He falls back easily. This isn't hunting or his, and the combativeness of the air around him fades significantly.

Especially when she gets to the door and Sam hesitates at the porch.

"You want me to wait out here?"

"Got a lock pick on you?"

She didn't want to shoot the door handle if she didn't have to.

Sam blinks.

Vaguely amused, he pulls a couple of picks from a pocket and offers them to her. It makes him feel better, slightly to know that the last house was open for anyone to walk into, but Jo's is at least locked.

Jo's specific like that.

Swearing her head off, pissed as all hell at Rachel and Dean, screaming for Jack and running into the fire, she'd still locked the door on the house she never returned to.

"Thanks."

She made short work of the door, playing with it in her hands as she went inside. Dust and shadows, she flicked a switch on, walking past the shelves of alcohol and a few weapons headed for the bedrooms.

...she didn't say to wait outside.

Sam stays in the front room, though that doesn't make anything less interesting. He looks over the bottles, the weapons left behind, the furniture. Where people live, when they have the time to live there, says a lot about them.

He'll love the shattered bathroom mirror then.

Jo vanished into a bedroom.

There was some riffling. It's about a minute before she calls out.

"Think they'd appreciate being left the weapons?"

She didn't need them really. She had a lot. She knew intimately where there was. It was why she put them away from her. It was why she could have listed them by rote now.

She'd start using them sometime soon. Sometime.

She'll keep all ammunition, of course.