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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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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.

Sam blinks because... well...

"Who else would you have heard about her from?"

Jo gives him an incredulous look.

"Just because you give up the life, doesn't mean you stop existing or that people don't remember."

Her mother (and father) took damn good notes.

Edited 2009-09-29 12:14 (UTC)

Sam slows the car, staring back at her.

Baffled.

"What are you talking about?"

"Your mother?" There's a strange way to the wording.

Like she's sure this should be obvious, and she's getting it's not.

And how that's just kind of fucked five ways from Sunday.

"I mean, if we're being specific, Mary Campbell. Mary Winchester's only connected to--" He knows what Mary Winchester is connected to is what her purposely dangling sentence means while she's looking right at him.

Sam...

pulls the car over.

"Jo," he says, and there's a warning in his voice, the sort of confusion and the tone Jo is using, like he should know something about his mother that apparently everyone else knows.

"What about my mother?"

Jo's trying to make sentences in her head.

It's not that she can't. It's that they all sound dumb.

Because -- it's just -- there's no --

She's shaking her head, "You can't not know."

"Apparently, it's very possible that I can."

He's waiting.

"Fucking Christ."

On a Pogo stick. Headed Straight for Hell.

Otherwise known as Lawrence, Kansas.

Jo swallowed, kind of hating his dad and her mom and even Dean, cause Dean knew here, there was no way he didn't. Fucking hell. Would she have gotten in the car if she'd known she'd have to do this?

"She was hunter. Before U--John even." Jo's throat dry, but she pushes herself on. "Good, but not the staying in kind. But, yeah. She--she was--"

And Jo's realizing how much bigger it gets.

Fuck. Fuck. She was going to glare at Dean.

"Her parents, your grand parents, too. The Campbells."

Sam startles.

There's no better word for it, the blink that leaves his eyes wide, the jerk that pulls his shoulders back, the sudden freeze of his limbs, unmoving, staring, trying to process.

"What."

It's not a question.

Campbell is a name he knows, but only vaguely. They never talked about family, John never talked about Mary. School projects about family members, Sam always got Fs for not turning anything in until he got smart enough to start making up names and history, anything, everything. John didn't know anything about hunting when they started, all his hunting friends have said it, even Bobby. So he couldn't have known that Mary used to be--

No, he could have. He could have found out. He could have died with the secret because hey, why would his boys need to know? What would the point be, right?

They probably went hunting.

"Yeah." Jo's studying him, very still, trying not to feel like she's walking on everything precious that never was.

"I didn't meet her before here. But she was what I expected." Beat. Strangely sharper, but not at him, she'd glanced to her hand and then the window. "I expected he would've told you. Bastard."

She may have blurred John and Dean in that sentence.

"He told you?"

That-- wasn't supposed to have been as insulting as it was.

Jo shook her head.

The tone went right over it.

(And burned a little more than it should have.)

"It was in some old notes."

Beat. "I didn't even know you guys then."

Sam takes this all in with a shake of his head. He doesn't-- can't think about this now. He's driving, he wants out of Lawrence. And it doesn't matter anyway, not in this world where there are no demons and nothing watching them, recording their moves and arranging their lives.

It doesn't matter.

It's just Mary, being a hunter in a long line of hunters.

Looking at him and putting a hand to his cheek and whispering apologies.

Sam drives.

She can't tell him to go back now, to wait.

Her dad knew what she wanted and she knew what he was. He bought her bow and arrow sets, when her mother bought her journals. She would want to stand in front of him and have him see every inch of jumped into the void and would do it again even if it killed me.

She was his daughter through and thought.

She just made it clear Sam knew less of his mom than he thought. Even not regretting telling him the truth she hates that in herself.

Jo leaned her head against the window of the car, letting it vibrations shiver through her.

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