Midnight Of the Century - Section Two

[glasslogic]

Chapter Five

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, it doesn't go away."
                                    -Phillip K. Dick

Two hours later they were on the road.

While Jess dug out more winter gear than she normally wore, Sam had gone on a shopping trip. She stood baffled and concerned while he sorted his purchases and added some things from the apartment. A bag of salt, lighter fluid, a new shovel, and a brace of iron pokers Sam had owned when she met him and dragged without explanation through several different apartments, all got loaded into the trunk.

"Sam…" she started dubiously.

He flashed her what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile, but since he was holding a shovel and a directory of local cemeteries at the time, it had rather the opposite effect.

"I know what I'm doing, Jess. Ready to go?" He opened the passenger side door for her.

She handed him the duffel bag she had packed for them for an overnight trip to add to the trunk.

"Okay. Just remember what you promised. I'm not convinced, you see the doctor."

"Absolutely." He grinned at her.

"You seem awfully excited about this."

He slammed the trunk shut and slid into the car, flipping open a map he had made some notes on.

His handwriting was illegible as far as Jess was concerned, so she had no idea where they were going.

"I suppose I am on some level. Telling you about this? It's like having this huge weight off my shoulders." He laughed. "I didn't even know. I'm just so used to not talking about it to anyone, not talking to you about it wasn't even a decision I had to make. And then Dean and Dad not coming around... it just seemed like something I could wall up in the past."

"It sounds like your childhood was a lot more interesting than you've implied."

"Yeah, interesting is one word for it. And gruesome, and grim, and scary."

"But you're excited about it now?"

He smiled and pulled out of the driveway. "It's weird, and I wouldn't go so far as to say I miss it, but this was my entire life until I came to Stanford. This is like, I don't know, taking you out to the old homestead and showing you where I grew up. I love your family and the stories you have about when you were a kid, it's nice to be able to return the favor a little." He looked over at her bundled up for the weather. "It's going to be a few hours."

Jess shrugged out of her heavy jacket and started looking for a good radio station. "This doesn't mean I believe you, you know."

"I know." Sam grinned. "Just wait."

~~~~~~~

Jessica spat grass and dirt out of her mouth and heaved for air. She was sprawled out on her belly, Sam a limp and heavy weight across her back pinning her down.

"Off!" she gasped, wriggling beneath him in panic, trying to free herself.

The loose salt stung the scrapes across her arms and hands where she had instinctively tried to break her fall when her boyfriend unexpectedly slammed into her. She had been standing in a thick salt ring beside the freshly opened grave, holding a flashlight and absolutely certain than intensive psychotherapy was the least of the things Sam needed, when Sam had shouted in alarm, and then been suddenly flying through the air and sending them both sliding through the edge of the ring and into another tombstone.

Abruptly Sam, who was starting to weakly move on his own, got a lot lighter.

Jess stared wide-eyed and skittered away on her backside as a flicking translucent figure effortlessly hauled Sam up into the air and pinned him against a tree by the throat.

Sam struggled against the spirit, but his hands and feet went right through it without purchase. He was trying to squeak something to her, but she couldn't make it out.

She tore her gaze away from the strange tableau --it was actually making her grip on reality hurt-- and looked around desperately for the iron pokers Sam had lugged from the car. She clearly remembered him saying iron would chase a ghost off. She might not have been willing to believe ghosts existed before one tried to kill her, but she was damn sure able to identify one once presented.

Thick grass made the pokers invisible in the darkness, and her flashlight had broken in the fall.

"Dammit!"

The moonlight was just enough for her to make out the open pit beside her knees, and she was distantly grateful she couldn't make out the open casket at the bottom.

"Sam!" she shouted. "Sam, I don't know what to do!"

He flailed an arm in her direction and gurgled something. He had told her a lot of things while she watched bemused as he demonstrated expert skill in opening a grave.

She had been mostly focused on the logistics of getting him the help he obviously needed, and what exactly she was going to tell the cops if they were discovered. What Sam was saying was a distant third concern. He talked about burning bones...

The sharp scent of lighter fluid hit her nostrils and she pounced on the rucksack by the tombstone. It didn't have anything in it but the remaining salt and she tossed it aside, where it tumbled unnoticed into the open grave. She slammed her hands on the ground in frustration and by chance her hand landed on the fluid container. It was open on its side, and she realized Sam must have been holding it when he was attacked. There was very little liquid left inside, but the weakening rasps and rustling from the tree told her the time to consult on a backup plan had long passed.

Jess dumped what was left in the metal box into the dark pit, and dropped the can in for good measure. She ripped a match book from her pocket and struck one with shaking hands still damp with lighter fluid. The entire book went up and seared her fingers, she flung it away from her into the hole. A whoosh, and the casket and its contents exploded into flame.

"Sam!" she spun.

He was in a heap at the foot of the tree. Coughing weakly and rubbing his throat.

She crawled over to him.

"Are you okay?!"

He nodded at her, then tried a weak smile, and rasped, "Yeah."

"Good!" She punched him as hard as she could and burst into tears.



Chapter Six

"Thou dost frighten me with dreams and terrify me by visions."

                                                             -Job 7:14

Sam was holding an ice pack to his face while Jess was in the shower. The irony of his situation was not lost on him. He had fled from his family and hunting, with its endless parade of fear and pain and sleazy no-questions-asked motel rooms, and had gone to college in pursuit of a normal life. He had graduated from a top-tier law school, gotten an excellent job offer, and become engaged to the woman of his dreams ...with whom he was now sharing a sleazy no-questions-asked motel room, while nursing injuries received from a brawl with a ghost in a cemetery over an open grave. And his fiancée's right hook.

Not that he could blame her.

He might have been a bit shy on some of the details when she had agreed to accompany him on his quest to prove he wasn't insane. He had definitely downplayed the danger. Though in his defense, she didn't believe him anyways, and should have been completely safe in the salt. He didn't remember ever running into a spirit that was aware enough of things outside the immediate threat to think of throwing something at a protected person to knock them out of the ring. He wondered if it was really that unusual, or if it was something his dad and Dean, with their vastly greater experience, would have thought of.

Jess stalked out of the bathroom with hair still dripping, wrapped in a motel towel that didn't quite make it all the way around her, leaving a long line of pale flesh bare to Sam's eyes.

He caught her gaze, the look in her eyes clearly daring him to comment. He turned his head politely while she rummaged through the duffel she had packed for clean clothes and dragged them on, but not before he had caught a glimpse of the green and red signs of bruising along her arm and shoulder and up her back. Probably from where he had hit her, right before they both hit the gravestone. His own injuries were mostly around his neck, but it didn't seem to be anything more than bruising, and Jess was moving like she was sore, but not actually in pain. The scratches on her arms and hands looked superficial, and just needed a little triple-antibiotic and maybe a band-aid or two. It could have been much, much worse.

He shifted the ice pack a bit and cleared his throat.

She paused from toweling her hair and eyed him.

Sam wondered how long it would be before she could look at him without the sudden urge to land a blow. "I just wanted to thank you."

"For what?" She casually walked over to the towel rack and grabbed the only other clean towel and started in on her hair again.

Sam didn't say anything about it. She'd had a bad day, and some upset to her world view, and it was entirely his fault. If her pique was satisfied with a punch and stealing his towel, he would be getting off extremely light.

"For finishing off the ghost," he touched his neck gingerly, "before it finished me off."

"You're just lucky I found the lighter fluid in the dark."

"I didn't even think you were paying that much attention to what I was saying."

She leveled a look at him. "You kept talking about burning bones. Digging up the grave to burn the bones. I didn't have to pay that much attention to grasp what was involved."

"You don't usually use salt to start a fire."

Jess looked puzzled.

Sam frowned at her look.

"Salt. You had to salt the bones before you burned them to exorcise the spirit."

"I didn't know that. I just dumped in the lighter fluid and the matches. I don't know what happened to the salt."

Sam had seen the remains of the rucksack's metal buckle in the charred remains at the bottom of the grave when he had inspected it with his keychain flashlight, once he had determined neither of them was dying and had settled Jess a bit. So he knew the salt had ended up down there somehow. But as an accident... he felt ill as he realized that their close call had been even closer than he had imagined.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. The washcloth full of ice he had been holding to his jaw was melting rivulets of water down his throat, leaving streaks in the grime.

"Why don't you go take a shower, Sam." Jess took a long look at the rising ring of bruises around his neck, his slumped posture, and his swollen jaw. "I'll even walk down to the office and get some more towels for you," she sighed.

"You don't have to."

She stood up and reached for the room key on top of the TV stand. "Yes, I do. Go take a hot shower. We can talk after you're clean."

"Talk about what shrink you're going to drag me to?"

Jess snorted and pulled the door open. "Only if they're doing a 2-for-1 special. We need to talk about what else goes bump in the night. I need to know what's out there if I ever expect to sleep again."

"Once I tell you, you really might never sleep again."

"Something to look forward too then," she said wryly as she slipped out.

~~~~~~~

Getting the towels had taken longer than she would have ever believed. It was almost thirty minutes of arguing and waiting before she was able to walk back to her room victorious, two more rough threadbare towels tucked under her arm. She assumed Sam would have just had to use her damp ones by now, but it was the principle of the matter that had kept her drumming her nails on the clerks counter long after there should have been any reason to pursue it.

But the water was still running when she pushed the door open.

"Sam?" she called warily.

There was no answer.

She closed the door behind herself, but didn't set the locks in case she had to run. Tossing the towels down on the bed, she grabbed one of the pokers off the dresser and crept quietly to the bathroom door.

Jess had insisted they bring the pokers into the hotel room with them, and had even pulled over at a Wal-Mart to buy an enormous amount of salt to replace what they had lost. Sam had taken it all in bemused stride, but he was used to living in a world full of ghosts and god-alone-knows-what-else. It was new to her, and what she needed to feel most while she digested this shocking new information was safe. Salt and pokers made her feel safer at least, and her boyfriend could just deal with it. Not that he had really objected. She kind of had the feeling he was waiting for her to start screaming and banging her head against a wall or something.

Jess didn't think that was going to be necessary, but she was holding that plan in reserve just in case.

"Sam?" she called again right outside the door. No answer, she thought she heard something moving though. "Sam? I'm coming in."

She twisted the handle and pushed the door open, slowly at the first, then shoved into the wall as soon as she got a good look inside. The poker she dropped careless to the carpet.

Sam was crumpled in the floor of the shower, it looked like he had fallen and grabbed out on his way down because the shower rod and curtain were tangled into a heap with him. He must have hit the taps too, because the water that soaked Jessica's shirt and skin when she reached out to find a pulse was shockingly cold. Soap was still bubbly in his hair and she gave an involuntary yelp of surprise when he suddenly grabbed her wrist.

"Jess..." he rasped.

She grabbed his chin to help him tilt his head so she could see his face better. Blood ran freely from his nose. He squinted his eyes shut and tried to wrench out of her grip. "Sam?"

"The light," he gasped, still trying to pull away.

"I'm calling an ambulance," Jess said flatly, straightening her back and preparing to stand.

Sam tightened his grip on her wrist.

"No doctors." She could barely hear him.

"Sam, you were half strangled a few hours ago, and punched in the face, now you've slipped in the shower, have blood dripping off your chin and can't even stand to open your eyes in the crappy light in this bathroom. A head CT is probably only the beginning of the things you need. At the least--" she eyed him a bit helplessly, "--if you don't feel like you have anything broken, let me drive you to the ER, just to get you looked over. We can tell them you were mugged."

"No ...no. I don't need ...doctor," Sam let her wrist go and tried to struggle to his knees.

Jess grimaced and reached out to help untangle him before he fell on his face.

They finally got him to his feet on the tile outside the tub. His skin was icy cold and she wondered uneasily how long he had been lying in the freezing water before she got back.

She ran and grabbed the towels to dry him off as best she could while he leaned against the wall and made fumbling attempts to help.

His nose was still bleeding so she finally just had him hold a washcloth against his face to keep his hands out of her way. His hair was still soapy.

"Sam, did you hit your head when you fell?"

He made an indecipherable noise, eyes closed and head tipped back against the wall.

"Sam -- your head, did you hit it?"

"No."

Jess nodded even though he couldn't see and turned the sink on until the water was warm.

"Come lean over the sink for me; let me get the soap out of your hair."

He shuffled over. It was awkward, but they finally got him twisted to where she could use the plastic cup that came with the room to pour warm water over his dark hair until the last of the suds were gone.

"You know," she commented, helping him back up and reaching for the towel to get as much water out of his hair as possible, "when I think of spending time running hands over my naked boyfriend in a hotel room on vacation, there is usually less blood and trauma involved."

"And property damage?" Sam asked weakly.

Jess appreciated the effort, and eyed the downed curtain and rod. "Not necessarily."

She gave him another critical look over. "You aren't going to let me take you in, are you." It wasn't really a question.

"No."

"Want to tell me what happened just now?"

"I'm cold, Jess. And my head is killing me. I just want to get warm."

She sighed and finished getting as much of the water out of his hair as seemed productive, then made sure he got tucked under the blankets. Jess checked the door, set the locks and made sure there was a poker on the nightstand when she curled herself around him a few minutes later. The lights were all still on. She didn't really have any plans to turn them off.

"What happened, Sam?"

"Had a vision."

"A vision," she repeated flatly. "Of course you did. Something else you just didn't get around to telling me about?"

"Don't have them very often," he mumbled, burying his face in her shoulder.

"Your nose had better have stopped bleeding."

He didn't reply and she was content to lie there for awhile in silence. She was really quite exhausted. If Sam wasn't going to die before the sun rose, she was starting to think she might do well with some sleep before starting in on the heavy interrogation... until she realized warm wetness was seeping into her shirt where his face was pressed into her.

"Sam!" She pushed him away. "I told you--" Jess cut off abruptly and sat up. He was crying.

"Baby, what's wrong?"

"What I saw." Sam rolled onto his back and rubbed at one eye with the back on his hand. "I just don't know what to fucking do anymore, Jess."

"Tell me what you saw."

Sam opened both his eyes and looked at her. "You're taking this pretty well."

"What? That you have apparently incapacitating visions?"

"Yeah."

Jess leaned down off the bed to her dirty pants on the floor and pulled a travel pack of tissue out of the back pocket. She dropped them on Sam's chest. "Your nose again."

"I don't really know what kind of reaction you are looking for from me, Sam. Three days ago you told me you believed in ghosts and spent your childhood fighting them--" Sam made a sound like he wanted to interrupt but she spoke over him " --and we are going to leave it at ghosts for tonight, Sam. Tomorrow you can tell me what else I should be fearing for my life from, okay?" He didn't say anything so she continued with her thought. "And today you proved pretty conclusively that they exist. Which I'm still finding a little mentally traumatic, and there is the looming promise of a long and lengthy list of other monsters out there that you are going to let me in on as soon as I can stand to hear it and not run screaming, so ...all things being equal, I find the idea that you have visions, presumably things you see in your head that can't leap out from an alley and grab me, fairly unexciting. Or at least far down the line of things I plan to get excited about. I promise I will get there eventually." She patted his arm and watched him stuff tissue up his nose. "Now what did you see? I've known you six years, Sam, and I've never seen you cry."

"My brother. He was dying."

Jess frowned. "Right now? The brother whose ghost you saw in the churchyard?"

"Don't know, and yeah." He shook his head, and then winced, holding very still with his eyes shut. "There's no way of knowing when what I see will happen. Sometimes it's five minutes; some things I've never found out about."

"So maybe right now?"

"Maybe."

"Do you have his number? Can I call him?"

"He changes his number a lot, and I haven't had one for years."

"Do you know anyone who does?"

"Bobby might, give me a cell."

Jess grabbed her phone off the nightstand and handed it to Sam.

She waited impatiently while Sam punched numbers in, squinting against the pain in his head, and then held it to his ear.

"Bobby? It's Sam. Look, I know it's late, but I need to talk to Dean, it's an emergency. What? No. I'm fine." He was quiet for a minute, listening. "No, Bobby -- I had a vision. Yeah, about Dean. He was dying, Bobby! No, I don't know when. No, no way of knowing where. It was, um --dark? And loud. Really loud, and booming. I didn't see anyone but Dean. He was soaking wet and lying in water, I think. It was cold. No, I don't know anything else, Bobby. I need to talk to him, warn him." Sam was quiet again, then he sat up abruptly. "What do you mean you don't know where he is?! This isn't a game, Bobby! Dean's going to die, and this may be the only thing that can save his life."

Jess could hear some excited speech from the other end of the line, but not well enough to make out any of the words. She saw Sam's eyes shimmer with tears again and he was nodding. "Yeah, yeah, I understand Bobby. Yeah, thanks. I'll have the phone. The number? It's my girlfriend Jessica's. You can call either number; she always knows how to find me. Yeah, fiancée. Thanks, Bobby."

Sam ended the call and let his hands drop to his lap. Jess took the phone and set it back on the nightstand.

"Bobby says congratulations," Sam said dully.

"He doesn't know where Dean is?"

"Even better, after he told me where to find Dean last time, he doesn't even have a number for him. It apparently didn't take Dean long to realize who must have told me where he was, and he blew up at Bobby and cut him off completely. He doesn't have a clue what Dean is up to now or who might know how to find him."

"So that's it?"

"He's going to call around and see if any of the other hunters he talks to might have crossed paths with Dean recently, or have heard anything about where he might be. Hunters move pretty fast though, so even if someone had heard something, the odds of Dean still being there are almost nonexistent."

"Hunters?"

"It's what we call ourselves, the people who do this -- hunting the supernatural."

Jess nodded. "So what now?"

"What do you mean, "what now?" We go home. I have the Bar to study for, you have work on Monday. We still have wedding stuff to work out." Sam rubbed at his temples. "If Bobby hears anything he will give me a call."

"Is anyone going to go look for Dean?"

"Some people will probably keep their ears out, and if they happen to be in the area they might take a professional interest and do some poking around. Bobby will keep the pressure on as much as he can. But no, no one is going to drop everything they are doing and try and find him. Hunting is a dangerous business; one more hunter lost in the world isn't going to get anyone excited."

"But this plays into your visions from earlier, right? The ghost in the churchyard that means he wouldn't survive the year, and now a vision of how he dies?"

"The thing in the churchyard was technically a fetch, not a ghost. Fetches aren't dangerous, they're just ...death omens. Ghosts are angry spirits that can actually interact with the world and kill people. But yeah, they seem to be pointing the same way."

She ignored the impromptu monster lesson. "Just knowing he was going to die without any facts or details was enough to send you driving across the entire country to warn him, but now that you have some facts that could actually save him --no one is even going to look?"

"I knew where he was, Jess. He was in touch with Bobby. I did the best I could. And he was pretty damn clear about how much he appreciated my help."

"So he's going to die."

"I..." Sam heaved a breath, frustrated, "I don't know how he's going to avoid it without knowing what to look for."

"And you can live with this?"

"What do you want me to say, Jess! I don't want my brother to die, even if he does hate me, but there isn't anyone who is going to abandon whatever they are working on to make finding Dean their job. He's a full-grown hunter, and you accept certain realities when you work in the business."

"There isn't anyone? No one at all?" Jess's eyes were boring into him and he felt like he was missing something obvious, but his head was still aching from the trauma of the vision earlier, and the frustration of the situation.

"We don't have any family, Jess. And hunters don't work for money, they work out of obsession. Even if I had the money to pay one to take this on, no one would do it. Even besides the fact that hunting hunters is suicidal. They tend to be paranoid in the first place --shoot first and ask questions later."

Jess rolled her eyes and gave up. "Could you find him?"

"Me?" Sam looked at her, shocked. "Um, I'd have a better shot than most people, but this isn't a weekend trip, Jess. This could take months, if I could do it at all. And I would have no way of knowing when ...when it happened. So if I didn't find him I would still have to try for the entire year. An entire year, Jess. That's what I would have to assume this would take."

"Anything happening in the next year you can't postpone?"

Sam was starring at her, baffled.

"You've graduated school, you don't have any loan payments, and you don't have a job yet. What's keeping you here?"

"I went to college to get away from hunting, and now you want me to jump right back in? What about the Bar? The wedding? What about you, Jess?!" He shook his head, ignoring the blinding pain it caused. "I tried to get back talking with Dean. I tried to reach out to him and he backhanded me again. He hates me, Jess. He really does. I don't know why, and he wouldn't tell me, but I've done what I can for Dean. I don't owe him anything else and I'm not going to sacrifice you for him."

"This isn't hunting, Sam. This is finding your brother. The Bar will be there whenever you want to take it. The wedding --I'll make that up to my mom, somehow-- but we can be married by any Justice of the Peace. And as for giving me up, Sam -- ignoring the insulting idea that I wouldn't wait for you for a year while you try to save your bother's life, you don't have to worry about that since I'll be sitting shotgun right along side you. When I'm not driving, of course."

"What the hell are you talking about, Jess?"

"Our road trip to find my brother-in-law." Jess said calmly, with a strange light in her eyes that reminded Sam of the Jess he had first met in undergrad, the flame that had drawn him in.

"Jess..." Sam shook his head, unable to believe where this conversation seemed to be heading. "You can't. Your entire life is here. Your family, your job, your friends. You can't give up everything to take up a life on the road for a year. What would you even tell people?"

Her expression was steely. "I'd tell them my fiancé and I are taking a pre-wedding extended honeymoon and the rest is none of their damn business. As for what I would be "giving up" -- I gave up med school and Doctors Without Borders for you, Sam! Why would you think I'd choke over losing a tech job in a cubicle and facing a few awkward questions from the family? Our lease ends next month; we can shove all of our stuff into storage and live off our savings."

"Our savings won't cover a year, even if we slept in the car and bathed in YMCAs. Somehow I don't see your parents funding this, even if we could tell them what it was for. And what the hell do you mean you gave up med school for me?!"

"My trust fund opens up to me the day I turn twenty-five. Our savings will get us by until then." She frowned. "I can't imagine hunting pays much. How did your family stay afloat?"

"We might get around to that one day," Sam hedged. "Med school?"

Jess shifted on the bed and stretched her legs out in front of her. "I didn't mean to say that. And it can wait until tomorrow; we've covered enough stuff tonight. We're both injured and tired, we should just get come sleep."

"I really think I need to hear more about this, Jess."

"It's stupid, Sam. And it doesn't mean anything, doesn't really have anything to do with you at all."

"That's how I feel about this road trip to find Dean idea you've latched onto. It doesn't have anything to do with you."

She flared up. "You're talking about the death of your only living relative. The man who is supposed to be my brother-in-law, and regardless of anything else, is still a human being. If we can stop his death we should at least make the effort!"

"And you're my fiancée! Stupid meaningless things don't slip out accidentally. I want to know what you meant, Jess!"

An almost sullen silence settled between them. Sam's head was still throbbing; he grimaced and turned on his side to face her.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe we should both get some sleep; there isn't anything else we can do tonight no matter what. Things might look different in the morning."

Jess nodded slowly. "Okay."

"I'm not going to stop asking, Jess."

She didn't say anything, but curled back up in the sheets and waited for sleep.



Chapter Seven

"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."

                                                        -Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

"If we weren't engaged, if you had never met me, and just continued on in life like you were when I met you --what would you be doing right now?"

Jess groaned and rolled onto her back. The aches and pains of the day before had blown into agony. She couldn't think of anything offhand that made her want to survive the next five minutes.

Then the tantalizing aroma of coffee registered, and she decided maybe there was one thing.

"Whatever time it is, Sam, it's way too early to pick this back up." She cracked an eye open.

Sam had pulled the chair up to the side of the bed and was sitting next to her, wearing his jacket and holding a cup of coffee loosely in both hands. The bruising that had been faint yesterday was much more apparent, the greenish black mark on his jaw especially vivid, but she was too achy and tired to feel any real guilt about that.

Another cup was steaming on the nightstand, and she dragged herself into a sitting position and reached for it.

"What would you be doing, Jess?" he repeated.

The clock said 7 a.m. "I'm pretty sure I would be sleeping, Sam."

He didn't say anything, just watched her thoughtfully and sipped at his coffee.

She sighed. "I don't know. Be about to graduate med school probably."

"Why aren't you doing that now?"

"Sam, this isn't anything that was your fault. When people get new priorities sometimes they have to reevaluate old ones."

"If you would have been in med school if you hadn't met me, then clearly it's has to be something to do with me, fault or not. I don't understand why you changed your mind."

"I wanted to go to med school so I could do third world relief work, Sam. I wanted to travel and make a difference to people where no one else would, or could. I wasn't really thinking of getting married, having a partner. I didn't really have the sort of career goals that go hand in hand with a husband and kids. And then I met you, and I found that I wanted different things. Besides, the kind of law you want to do? You need a partner who can hold up their end of the deal, throw the right parties, know the right people." She shrugged.

"When you met me I wanted to do legal aid work," Sam said in a low voice.

"And when you asked me to marry you, you were interning with one of the biggest corporate firms in town and spending every happy hour schmoozing some of Dad's best buddies to get an edge for the job application. Not that you really had to apply," she added wryly, "Dad was never going to risk his son-in-law working for a subpar firm. But I grew up in this kind of life, I didn't walk into anything and get taken by surprise, Sam."

"You never said anything."

"When I made my plans it was just me. When it was you and me ...I knew I had to make some changes."

"But why not med school? You could still be a doctor --there are people right here in this city that need help."

"I had degrees that were immediately employable and could get me a job that would support us both while you went through law school. The only thing your undergrad degree was going to get you was a spot at a fast-food joint. We didn't need to start our life together with both of us drowning in debt. And as for going now --I never wanted to be a suburban practitioner. I wanted adventure, and to see the world, and to … I don't know, feel like every day I was making a difference. That might be naïve, but I wanted to give it a shot. But medicine requires so much more college, and then a residency, and the stress, and the hours, and to be another city doctor... I have nothing but respect for them, but if I couldn't have exactly what I wanted, then I decided wanted other things more. I don't want to spend my life apart from you, I want us to be together."

She took another long sip of her coffee.

"The way it is now, I can hang on at my current job until you are established and we are ready to start really settling in. It's not like I actively hate my job. The translation business is just ...routine. And when children are right, I can go part-time, or quit. Your schedule will probably be insane for years. This way I'll be there with the kids, and able to rearrange at least my schedule so we can maximize our time. And it's not like with my family I don't know how to help you work the social circuit. It just seemed like the best plan."

Sam was appalled at the bleak vision of their future she was painting. "Jess ...I never wanted you to give up your dreams for me. I don't want you to sacrifice the things you want to do in life so you can raise my kids and host parties for my career."

She quirked a wry smile in his direction. "You know, that sounds a lot worse when you say it."

"Why didn't we talk about this?"

"You seemed so driven; I didn't want you to feel like you had to choose."

"You didn't have to be the only one to make changes, Jess! I don't have to do corporate law, there are tons of other things I can do with a law degree that will help pay the bills perfectly well, and not ...just not be what you described. Like legal aid. It's still intensive, but no one expects you to stay until midnight and show back up at five. And …maybe I could even do something international if you wanted a career with travel. I'm sure those organizations you were interested in need legal advisors or something."

"You used to want to do that sort of thing; why did you change your mind?" She asked curiously.

Now it was Sam's turn to shrug. "After I met you--" he broke off abruptly.

"Sam?"

"We're idiots."

"We spent yesterday getting tossed around the cemetery by a ghost, and up at the crack of dawn to hash out our relationship. I'm not going to argue with that."

"No, I mean," he chuckled, "it's really not that funny. I just can't believe we never talked about any of this. I switched my focus after I met you and your family and we got serious. I never planned a career that would give me more than enough money to pay the rent and eat. But your family ...I wanted to give you the kind of life you grew up with. I didn't want you to regret marrying me in ten years when we were still living in low-income housing, clipping coupons."

"It's a good thing we are both holding hot coffee, because I could be extremely tempted to bludgeon you with a pillow about now. I wanted to live in a tent, in the backest back-waters of Africa, and possibly never come home." Almost definitely never come home. She loved her parents, but she wanted something for her life that was so wildly different from their own expectations that they would never understand. And when she was around them, surrounded by her family and all the familiar things of her upbringing, it was easy to forget, easy to fall into the trap of their life, to see how they saw, and to want what they wanted.

In Sam she had seen something that grabbed her, something exciting and different. She had wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything in her life, but the price of having him had been her heart. When he began to turn towards the road that led to her parents' life, she hadn't been able to turn away from him. She didn't even really want to. Next to the reality of their relationship and their future, her dreams of adventure and travel seemed almost childish and distant. She had thought that maybe that was just the price of growing up.

But now she saw a new possibility, another chance to grab the brass ring.

Sam held his cup out like a toast, "To long life, happiness, and telling each other what the hell we are up to before we rearrange our lives in misguided attempts to please the other person."

She smacked his cup with hers and swallowed the last of her coffee. "I'm glad we've got this all out in the open, Sam. Now that we are agreed neither one of us are doing what we want anyways, it seems like an ideal time for a road trip."

"Jess--" Sam began.

She cut him off, "Can you really live with yourself if he dies, and you didn't even try? Really, Sam? I mean, I've never met the guy, but from the very little you've said he was clearly the most important person in your life for almost twenty years. And now he's your only blood family left. You know he's going to die, you know how he's going to die --or at least have clues-- and we have just established that neither of us is doing anything we care about at the moment. You can take the Bar anytime, you don't need the job offer, our lease ends next month, we have savings for now and a trust fund opening in three weeks, and I certainly am not being held in place by any great love for my employment - why not try and save your brother? Clearly you and I have communication issues. At the worst, we spend a year on the road exploring the country while you explain this whole hunting thing to me and we work on our relationship. I'm not seeing the problem here."

She slid off the bed and started stuffing dirty clothes into the empty duffel.

"What are you doing, Jess?"

"Time's a'wasting, Sam. You said your vision could be anytime, so the sooner we get moving the better."

Sam looked somewhat lost. "We can't just pack up and go! We have to put things in storage, and tell people. I need to let people know I'm not going to sit for the Bar this turn, and we have to let people know the wedding is postponed. I don't know what to tell your parents..." he trailed off.

Jess ducked her head by him as she grabbed her dirty shirt from the day before off the floor and planted a noisy affectionate kiss on his cheek.

"What was that for?"

"I love you." She tied her boots, zipped the bag up, hooked the strap over her shoulder and grabbed the keys off the dresser.

"We leave anything else?"

"I think that's everything."

"Great. Don't worry about all those things you just mentioned. I mean, take care of your Bar stuff, I'll grab some cardboard boxes when we get back so you can pack everything you don't want to lose for storage, and then you can hit the road tomorrow morning."

"What happened to "right by your side"?" Sam asked as she herded him towards the door.

"Oh, I will be. Just as soon as I close out the apartment and have it out with my parents. I can take a bus or something to wherever you are in three or four days. I figure I'll lock the stuff we plan to keep in storage, and post the rest on Craigslist for immediate pick up."

"I still can't believe how --enthusiastic-- you are about doing this. This is completely upending our lives -- it's a huge thing…."

"All the better to get rolling before the second thoughts kick in then," she said firmly, tossing the bag in the backseat and sliding into the car.

"I'm still on first thoughts."

"Are you happy, Sam?" Jess demanded. "Are you looking forward to the next decade working sixty- or seventy-hour weeks making rich people richer and only seeing natural daylight in photographs?"

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. "No."

"Then what's to stop us? Let's get out before we get trapped! We don't owe anyone anything right now, we have money, and we have time. I've never been farther away than Colorado, and I suddenly have a desperate need to see the Eastern seaboard. I want to see it with you, and I don't want you to live with the guilt of not even having tried to save Dean. Even if he is a jackass."

"Okay."

"That's it?" she asked suspiciously.

"I can't argue with your logic. Maybe in a year we can come to a mutual decision over what we want our future to be, together." Sam still looked a little stunned, but his next question was pure concern. "Are you sure you don't want me to talk to your parents with you?"

"I've got it covered. There's no reason for both of us to have to beard the lion, and I have more practice. Where are you going to start looking for Dean?"

"Tennessee, I suppose. Bobby said he hasn't heard anything from Dean since then, and I know for sure he was there four days ago."

"That would make this a very short trip."

"Maybe. But just because we find Dean, doesn't mean we have to come home." Sam said, sounding more relaxed than he had since his vision the night before.

Jess grinned. "Glad you're on board. This would have been a lot more difficult if I had to stuff you in the trunk."



Chapter Eight
On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again
And I can't wait to get on the road again
                                                ~On The Road Again, Willie Nelson

Sam was pacing the worn green carpet in room 107 of the Key West Inn in Cookeville, Tennessee, ten days later when the Nashville airport shuttle dropped Jess off in the parking lot. At a loss for what else to do after discovering that Dean had moved on, Sam had rented the room his brother had been using at their last meeting in the futile hope of finding anything that might suggest where Dean had headed next.

There was a banging knock, and he opened the door to catch a double armful of his excited fiancée.

Her backpack swung down off the shoulder she had tossed it over and bashed him in the side with the force of her impact.

Sam staggered back, his legs hit one of the chairs and he went down into it under her weight. All the air flew out of his lungs, and when he tried to breathe again her lips were glued to his.

After a leisurely exploration, Jess found her feet again and smiled down at him. "Miss me?"

"Like breathing," Sam wheezed.

She rolled her eyes and shrugged her coat off onto the table. "Don't be such a baby; I just survived a two hour ride in a freezing van that smelled like tobacco and sweat. We won't even discuss the plane ride. And you're damaged because of a kiss?"

"You could have gone Greyhound."

"Don't think I won't next time. But that would probably have had the same special ambiance, just for longer." She looked around the room with interest. "Find anything?"

"You mean since your last phone call an hour ago?" He took her bag and dropped in on the dresser. "No."

Jess nodded, tugging her t-shirt over her head. "I need a shower, and a nap. But I can sleep in the car. We have a place to head?"

"I have some ideas, nothing promising enough that we can't stay here one more night and let you get some sleep in a bed." Sam watched the disrobing with interest.

She paused in the act of tugging her jeans off her hips. "I haven't seen you in almost two weeks, and things weren't exactly hopping before that. If we stay, and sleeping is the only thing that happens in that bed tonight, I will be deeply disappointed in you."

Sam gave her a lazy smile. "Do we have to wait until tonight?"

"We have to wait until I have a shower, and not for another damn thing."

~~~~~~~

Later the haze of twilight was filtering through the cheap curtains. The heater under the window was doing a poor job compensating for the icy cold radiating through the glass, but curled up together in the bed, Sam and Jessica were hardly aware of it.

Sam blew a strand of her blond hair away from his face and traced a finger over her collarbone. "You're going to need another shower."

"You too. A shame we'll never fit into the stall together," Jess murmured sleepily.

"How did closing the apartment up and things with your parents go?"

She yawned and stretched, rolling away from him and arching her back. "Fine. Everything I couldn't get Craigslist people to come pick up I had the Salvation Army haul away. The stuff we picked out to keep is stashed in long-term storage for twenty bucks a month; I let the landlord keep half the deposit for cleaning. I didn't know you could get dust that deep on a carpet. We really should have moved the furniture and cleaned behind it at some point."

"What about your parents?"

Jess smiled without opening her eyes. "I took a line from someone I know and left them a note on my way to the airport this morning. They probably aren't even home to get it yet."

Silence. She cracked an eye open and looked at Sam, even in the dimness she could make out the appalled look on his face.

"You, of all people, aren't going to lecture me on that are you?"

"Jess! They're your parents! Don't you think they are going to be a little upset that you just upended your entire life and set off on an extended road trip!"

Jess sat up and looked at him with interest. "I didn't know your voice could get that high."

He glared. "You said you were going to talk to them, try to explain so they didn't send the cops after you."

"I am going to explain. I'm just going to do it from a distance."

"So you don't have to see your mom cry?" Sam demanded, annoyed. "This is why I offered to go with you -- we owe them a chance to be concerned and ask questions. To let them see we both want to do this."

"Excuse me for not feeling like having to climb out a second story window to get to the airport."

"Like having to ...what?"

"My dad is a big believer in order, and that with enough time to think everyone will come to see the world his way."

Sam blinked.

"He wouldn't have seen anything wrong with trying to lock me in my old bedroom for a few hours," she said dryly, "just as long as it took him to have me committed."

"You aren't serious."

Jess just looked at him.

She waited until his eyes grew big before grinning. "Probably not. But I did wait until the last minute, and then they took an unexpected trip to visit my aunt for the day so I wasn't able to actually speak with them. It's probably just my positive karma working in my favor. I've always--" she broke off as her parents distinctive ringtone started up from her purse across the room.

"That must be your positive karma calling now," Sam suggested as he slid out of bed and headed towards the bathroom.

"Hey! I thought you wanted to be by my side while I did this?"

"I'll be sending you good thoughts from the shower. Give your mom my love."

"Coward!" Jess called as he closed the door and she scrambled for the phone.

~~~~~~~

"I'm not answering that anymore."

Sam frowned without taking his attention off the road. "It's been a week, what else do they want to know?"

"When I'm coming home," she sighed. "I stopped being polite Tuesday, I've been on 'when I damn well feel like it' for the last three days."

"Would it make things any better if I spoke to them?"

Jess snorted."No. Right now you have been reduced from 'favored future son-in-law' to 'that evil bastard who poisoned our sweet baby,' so trust me that you don't want to talk to them anytime soon. Once they calm down I think they will actually be relieved we're together and I'm not out wandering around on my own."

"When do you think that will happen?"

"In about eleven months."

"Ah."

She pressed the ignore button and settled back into her seat again. They were flying through Kentucky on their way to check out another possible Dean sighting. It had been eight days since she had packed her bags and fled Palo Alto to meet Sam in Tennessee.

Eight glorious days of freedom.

Even with all the awful things she was learning about her fiancée's past, and the horrible things that were lurking in the dark, she still woke up every morning tingling with euphoria. She had the two things she wanted most in life: Sam, and her freedom.

For his part, life on the road was settling around Sam like an old familiar coat. Almost seven years of college and so-called mainstream life falling away like a dream. Occasionally he would zone out on the road, and snap back to himself surprised to find that he wasn't in the Impala.

That Jess wasn't Dean.

And then he felt guilty.

Leaving had been his choice; turning away from him for it had been his father and brother's. When Sam had wanted something other than a horror-show vagabond life, his family had rejected him completely; but when Jess had found out that Sam was different than other people she knew, she had thrown herself into the insanity with him with both feet. She had his back ...and his belly. And any other body parts she felt like claiming.

His sudden smile caught her attention.

"Something you want to share with the rest of the class?"

"I love you. Want to sleep in a tent tonight?"

She arched an eyebrow and glanced pointedly out at the frozen landscape, but her only comment was, "did we bring that many blankets?"

"The sleeping bags zip together. Hotel room walls are just so ...thin."

"I like tents," Jess agreed. She tossed the map she had been reviewing into the backseat and kicked her sock covered feet up onto the dashboard. "Now, you were telling me about Reapers?"

Section Three


Masterpost

Comments

[angeblond.livejournal.com]

Lool

Ok i like that Jess, but i dread Dean and Jess battle over Sam.

[glasslogic.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you like this version of Jess so far! It's hard to write a character that in canon, rally doesn't have much character *wryly*

[ruby-jelly.livejournal.com]

"Jess snorted."No. Right now you have been reduced from "favored future son-in-law" to "that evil bastard who poisoned our sweet baby," so trust me that you don't want to talk to them anytime soon. Once they calm down I think they will actually be relieved we're together and I'm not out wandering around on my own."

"When do you think that will happen?"

"In about eleven months."

"Ah.""

You made me laugh aloud! Loving this Jess, fits with how I see her! Thanks for this!

[glasslogic.livejournal.com]

*grins* I'm glad you are enjoying it, and hope the rest of the fic meets with your approval as well. I love hearing what people like in the story!