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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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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.

Of course.

Sam glances toward the sound of her voice and-- doesn't answer. Either she's asking about the opinions of the next potential residents of this house, or she's talking about leaving the weapons on the step of the old Winchester house.

And how the hell should Sam know what they'd appreciate?

She comes out, pushing something into a pocket and with a sling bag hanging over her shoulder that isn't very packed. She ends up in Rachel's doorway next, but she doesn't know that there's anything she's missed or needed.

Jo turned and walked back. "Deana and Mary might. They wouldn't find it odd that I'd let myself into the house, or left stuff."

That Sam....was still strange. Even given the pink nail polished, and she didn't know Jess enough to leave her stuff.

The doorway Jo stands in leads to an empty, dusty room. Aside from the closet. Several neat and untouched items of clothing still hang from wooden hangers.

Sam's jaw sets and it's an effort not to snap at her. Deanna. Mary. Zombies, shapeshifters, alternate-universe-whatthefuckever. No matter which way it's spun, they're freaks masquerading as Winchesters.

No reason at all for that to rub Sam the wrong way.

"Take your time," he says, low and almost monotone as he heads for the door. "I'll be in the car."

She does.

She takes Rachel's stuff, in case. Maybe not as neatly folded, but it's the thought right? She walked back down to the other house, with only the bad over her shoulder still, not waiting or explaining. Just walked in casually, leaving the front door open for two minutes.

During which she wrote a note.

Mary

Don't know if you're gone-- or to where.
I left the backdoor unlocked. Whatever
you want, it's yours.

Jo

In Metropolis if you need anything.

Generic enough, without being specific. No word about where her house was, or how her other two boys were. The depth of words between the lines only a third as much as those she wrote to her own mother years ago now.

Then she headed back toward Sam's car.

With an odd look on her face.

There's an odd look on his.

But Sam is staring straight ahead, hands on the wheel, waiting for her. As soon as she's in her seat, before the door's closed, he's turned the engine over.

Dean promised himself he'd never go back to Lawrence, and has been back twice since. Sam never made any such promise.

But he doesn't see any reason he might ever come back.

"I don't get you."

It's quiet, she's looking out her window.

But there's something to it. Serious, even in the evenness.

"No kidding."

I don't know you. That's what he'd told her, when she'd bared her soul and experiences with him. But she's never said it to him.

This is as close as she's ever gotten to admitting it.

And yet it's so far from what he thinks it is.

"If I had the chance to see my father, again." Jo frowned at the window. She'd only shared this with her Sweet Killer Girl. Only, and ever. "Christ. I'd do more than walk through his house, or even give a damn about what decided to cling to him--"

Her father. If she could ever have him--him and his leather jacket--and his razor burn, and they way he smelled like blown bullets and salt and dirt, never having clean fingers and always that laugh that lingered in her dreams.

Yeah, that's... more specific than he thought.

Sam frowns, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows, Porsche slowing even as he keeps the curve of the road and drives away from the house.

"First of all," Sam begins, surprisingly calm and almost monotone, "I seriously doubt that whoever or whatever that thing is, is my mother.

"Second? If it weren't for pictures, Jo, I wouldn't even know what she looked like."

She's a memory and an image trained into him, and there have been times where he's despised her for the path she started them on, even unwittingly.

"That's the point. You don't or haven't and you could." Jo shook her head. "Mary was pretty much everything I ever heard of her. No extra arms or toes or super powers."

"That you know of. Shapeshifters don't have anything special besides the shifting."

Which isn't to say Mary is a shapeshifter, exactly. Just that there are things out there that can hide in plain sight and never give a clue of being supernatural.

He shakes his head, eyes still on the road. "Yeah, well, I doubt Dean was being real objective when he talked to you about her."

Jo looked over at him, with a frown.

"Like Dean would want to talk to me about his mother."

God. Sam. You make it sound like they actually talk. About. Things.