a subtle sort of brilliance (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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avandell2008-02-11 07:05 pm
theladyscribe) wrote in avandell2008-02-11 07:05 pm
Entry tags:
Land of Canaan
Title: Land of Canaan
Characters: Ensemble (Bobby/OFC [omg!] and some Dean/Jo)
Rating: PG-13 (for language and some content)
Word Count: 6503
Betas: This story would not have been possible without the encouragement and beration of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rillaotvalley, duce_gemini, and neetha. Also, many thanks to the girls of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
scriobhcairdeas who let me yak at them about this story even when it had nothing to do with the prompts.
Summary: She sighed. “Something big’s gone down, half my contacts have gone missing, and I didn’t know where else to go.”
Notes: Set in my version of S3 that starts with Further On Up the Road, though this piece certainly stands on its own. AU after AHBL, loosely following the S3 timeline as much as possible. Title is from “Land of Canaan” by the Indigo Girls.
Land of Canaan
Amy Salier had not intended to be here, but here she was, standing outside Bobby Singer’s junkyard in June and steeling herself to walk back into his life. She moved slowly, assessing the place. It had hardly changed since the last time she’d been in the yard, mufflers stacked next to the house and hubcaps nailed to the side of the barn-turned-garage. It was all the same, with the exception of the blonde-haired girl sitting in a rickety rocking chair on the porch patching a pair of jeans. A pit-bull lay at her feet, head on its paws, eyes shut.
“Can I help you?” said the girl. She was younger than Amy by at least a decade, maybe a little more, but the suspicious narrowing of her eyes betrayed the fact that the girl had probably seen a lot in her twenty-something years.
“I’m looking for Bobby Singer,” she answered. “He still live here?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed further. “What do you want with him?”
Amy smiled. “So he is still here. Good. Is he here now? I need to talk to him.”
“He’s out back. Working,” the girl said pointedly.
“Course he is. Bobby’s always working.” Amy paused. “Can I go see him, or do you have to escort me?”
The girl considered her for a long moment. “I’ll go get him. You got a name?”
“Tell him Amy Salier needs work done on her car.” The girl raised an eyebrow, and Amy cracked a grin. “He’ll understand the message.”
The blonde nodded and rose from her chair, draping the jeans over the arm rest. “Wait here.” To the dog at her feet she said, “Blackheart, watch.” The dog raised its head, sniffed Amy once, and immediately dropped its head back to its front paws and resumed snoring. The girl rolled her eyes at the dog, muttering “Stupid mutt” as she jumped off the porch.
Amy stood for several moments before deciding she’d waited long enough. Watching the pit-bull carefully, she began to edge toward where the girl had disappeared. The moment she moved, Blackheart perked up, eyes tracing her steps. She froze, and it blinked at her once before again going back to sleep. She let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding and slowly began to move again.
She came around the corner just in time to see Bobby hit his head on the hood of the car he was working on.
“Amy Salier?” he sputtered. God, was it strange to hear her name from his mouth again. He’d changed a lot in the past fifteen years – he’d aged more than she would have thought possible, but she could still see the man who had once been her mentor. His voice, though – that hadn’t changed much, still gruff but soothing, even after all these years.
“She said she has car trouble or something. Sounded like it might be some kinda code?”
Bobby wasn’t paying attention to what she said. Neither one of them noticed Amy walking toward them yet. “What the hell is she doing here?” he said, scratching his chin and speaking more to himself than to the girl.
She shrugged. “Dunno. I wasn’t too sure about her when she first showed up, but Blackheart completely ignored her, so at least she’s not possessed or anything.”
“Course she’s not,” Bobby said, sounding a little miffed. “Girl’s too smart for that. Probably has a whole string of anti-possession charms hanging ‘round her neck, and maybe a few tattooed as well.”
“Well, Bobby, you do know me well,” Amy said, and they both turned to see her. She grinned. “Although, I do have to admit my only tattoo is that Soundgarden one I got at A Gathering of the Tribes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“You ever gonna ask me something besides that when we meet?” He frowned, and she sighed. “Something big’s gone down, half my contacts have gone missing, and I didn’t know where else to go.” She glanced at the girl and then back to Bobby. “She gonna keep her mouth shut if I talk to you?”
The girl shot her an affronted look, and Bobby smirked a little. “She’s a Harvelle. They know when to keep quiet.”
Amy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Harvelle? As in Billy Harvelle?”
“He was my father,” she answered quietly.
“I met him once, years ago. He was funny, told some good jokes. Never really got to know him, though.” She paused. “What’s your name?”
“Jo.”
“Hi, Jo, I’m Amy,” she said, sticking out a hand and grinning. “Bobby’s probably told you nothing about me, but that’s okay. He and I haven’t spoken for fifteen years.” Jo smiled back and shook her hand.
Bobby coughed. “So what are you doing here, Amy?”
“I swear, Bobby, you gotta come up with a more original question for me.” She huffed a little, and then sobered before saying, “Something happened out west, near Yellowstone. A whole lotta demons have gotten really busy in the past month or so, and not a soul I’ve spoken with knows how it happened. Of course, I haven’t spoken to too many souls because most of my usual people have dropped off the face of the earth all of a sudden. I’ve got my theories as to what went down, but I’m no expert on demonology. So here I am, asking you if you know anything.”
Bobby pursed his lips – a sure sign that he was considering something – and said, “How do we know we can trust you? It’s been an awfully long time.” He said it softly, almost gently, but the caution and mistrust were still in his voice.
“Would I have come to you otherwise?” she replied.
He crossed his arms. “You tell me.”
Amy tightened her jaw. “You know the answer,” she said quietly. “You gonna help me or should I just leave now?”
He waited a beat before answering, and even then he didn’t really answer. “Jo, take Amy inside, get her something to drink. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Amy blinked; she’d forgotten that Jo was standing there. Jo nodded and headed for the house, motioning for her to follow.
The inside of the house had changed even less than the outside. The kitchen still had the yellow walls and white cabinets that clashed with the rest of Bobby’s life. From where she was seated, Amy could see that books still lined every available surface in the hallway and den. She imagined that many of the old tomes were still in the same places they had been when she had last visited the house; it was doubtful that any of them saw much use.
“Amy?”
She shook her head, shoving away her thoughts. “Sorry, drifted off for a moment there.” She looked up at Jo. “What did you say?”
“I was asking if you wanted coffee or beer.”
“Does Bobby still have loose-leaf tea?”
Jo frowned. “Loose-leaf tea?”
“If he does, it’ll be hiding in the cookie tin on the top shelf behind the… table salt, I think it was.” She rose and began rummaging around in the cabinets above the sink. “A-ha! Here it is.” She pulled out the Christmas cookie tin and opened it; the smell of tea leaves and spices was like coming home. “What?” she asked, seeing the odd look Jo had on her face.
“How long did you say you’ve known Bobby?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever really known him,” Amy said. “I met him seventeen years ago. I haven’t seen him in almost fifteen.”
“Then how did – I mean, I’ve known Bobby since I was a kid, and I had no idea he drank tea.”
Amy looked up at her sharply. It was strange to think that he had dropped the habit; she thought it was something he’d done all his life. “Really? He drank it all the time when I was younger. He’d lace it with whiskey instead of honey, usually. I was only eighteen at the time, and he wouldn’t let me have any from his mug.”
Jo laughed a little at that and then paused, looking thoughtful. “So if you were eighteen then, and Bobby must be almost fifty by now—”
“He’s fifty-one come September,” Amy interjected.
“Oh. Well.” She paused again. “So how’d you guys meet, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I, um—”
“We met on a hunt,” said a voice, and the women turned to see Bobby standing in the doorway. He moved into the kitchen, picking up the Christmas tin as he went. “Beer?” he said, putting the tin in the cupboard and pulling three bottles from the fridge. He uncapped them and handed one to each of the women before taking a drink from his own, studying Amy carefully.
“Yeah, a hunt,” she repeated weakly, hoping Jo wouldn’t press.
“You were hunting that early? Mom barely lets me go hunting now, and that’s with Sam and—” Jo stopped short at a stern look from Bobby; Amy filed it away – there would be time to inquire about it later.
“So you want books on demonology?” Bobby asked.
“Yeah.”
He nodded and began moving into the den. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“Nothing too specific yet,” she said, following him. “Although, the activity started in western Wyoming, so if you’ve got anything with information about Yellowstone or that general area, that’ll give me a starting point.”
“Yellowstone it is,” he said, pulling a couple books from the shelves and handing her one. “This one’s about the general layout of the area – where the hotsprings are located, how many geysers there are, that sort of thing.” He handed the other one over. “This one has local legends and folklore of Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Utah. It might tell you what you’re looking for.”
“Thanks.” Amy paused. “You don’t mind if I stick around for a few days while I’m researching, do you? I mean, I can get a motel room, but I don’t want to take off with your books…”
Bobby sucked in a breath. “Jo can set you up in the extra room upstairs.”
“I’ll go round up some bedding,” she said, excusing herself from the room.
Amy turned back to Bobby. “Thanks.”
He nodded curtly, and walked out the door, saying, “I’ve got work to be doing.”
--------------------
The next several days passed in a blur of dejà vu. Each day, Amy woke up around dawn to the sound of Bobby fixing breakfast, though by the time she made it downstairs there were only plates of bacon and eggs sitting in the warming oven. She ate her breakfast and made some tea before settling in the den to do her research, Jo joining her after returning from the land of the sleeping dead. Amy skimmed dusty tomes while the younger girl read from the novels Bobby had stacked on the shelf by the fireplace, the pit-bull lying at her side.
She once asked Jo to help her research, but the wide-eyed girl refused with the excuse that, “I’ve always been terrible at research. You really don’t want me to help you.” Amy personally thought that maybe she’d be better at it if she actually did it, but decided not to press the issue, instead leaving her to Kerouac and Salinger.
Around noon, the two women stopped their respective reading and fixed lunch together, usually sandwiches. The meals were always quiet, each person wrapped up in their own food – Bobby ate in ten minutes and immediately went back outside, while Jo and Amy savored their sandwiches before cleaning up. Then it was back to research.
Supper was entirely Amy’s domain – she knew from experience that Bobby’s cooking ability ended at breakfast and quickly learned that Jo’s abilities were limited to what could be found in the freezer section of the grocery. The girl offered to help, and Amy relegated her to grabbing ingredients from the cupboard.
“I know, my cooking skills suck,” Jo said one evening when she had managed to burn the spaghetti noodles. “Dean won’t even let me in the kitchen when he’s fixing food. Says I curse the food just by standing in the room.”
“Who’s Dean?”
“No one.” Jo would have gotten away with blowing off the question if she hadn’t answered so quickly.
“Come on now, who is he?” Amy teased.
“He’s, uh, a friend.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “An imaginary friend?”
Jo blushed. “No, of course not.” She bit her lip. “We’re not even really – I mean, I guess we’re – it’s complicated.”
Amy let out a small laugh. “I know complicated. He’s another hunter, isn’t he?” The way Jo’s eyes darted away was answer enough. “What, you don’t see him often enough for your liking?” she asked with a smile.
“Yeah. No. I mean, I don’t know.” The girl was obviously floundering. “It’s just—”
“Complicated?” she supplied.
“Yeah.” They slipped into silence, Jo scrubbing furiously at the scorched noodles in the bottom of the pot and Amy improvising meatball subs in place of the burned spaghetti.
“You know, this Dean of yours, you should try to work it out,” Amy said after a moment. “I mean, I know it’s gotta be hard, with him off hunting and everything, but if you really – I mean, don’t let it hold you back. It’s too easy to lose yourself to the job.” She paused. “And whatever you do, don’t let him push you away. You probably need him more than you realize – and I suspect he needs you just as much.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
--------------------
Bobby was the only thing significantly different from when Amy had spent her summers here. When she’d first started hanging around Singer Salvage, she had dogged after him, soaking up everything he would teach her and begging him for more. Eventually he had caved, finally agreeing to lend her some of his books. After that, they would sit in the kitchen or the den, drinking iced tea and talking through the texts she’d been reading – sometimes the ones he had given her, occasionally ones she had read in school, not always related to the supernatural. It had been a comfortable friendship that slowly grew into something more, at least on her side.
Now, he hardly stayed in the same room with her, finding excuses to be anywhere else. Finally, she became fed up with it and cornered him on the back porch one night.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
He grunted in reply.
“Does it bother you that I’m here?” He didn’t answer, and she continued. “I mean, God, Bobby, I thought maybe after fifteen years we could let bygones be bygones, y’know? It’s in the past, right? We’re both older, wiser, all that shit, and it’s time to move on. Or am I still as naïve as I was all those years ago, just a stupid kid who thought she could be a hero.”
It was like talking to a wall; he hardly even moved.
She sighed. “If you want me to leave, just say so. I’ll go.” She started to walk back inside, fighting the tears that threatened to fall.
“Amy.” Bobby’s voice stopped her short, and she turned to look back at him. He gazed at her evenly from under his ballcap. “My house is open to any hunter looking for information. If my books have something that’ll keep you from getting yourself killed, I’ve got an obligation to let you use them.” He took a deep breath. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”
She took the permission to stay for what it was – an olive branch.
After that, some of the tension eased between them. Bobby no longer found excuses to leave the room when she entered, even if he did maintain a rather distant attitude.
A couple weeks later, Amy and Jo were cleaning up from breakfast when Bobby came into the kitchen with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
“Going somewhere?” Amy asked, a grin on her face.
“I’m heading to Nebraska for a few days. There’s a job down there needs doing.”
“Nebraska?” Jo asked at the same time Amy said, “A job?”
Bobby soldiered on, ignoring both their questions. “And before either of you ask, no, you cannot come along.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Amy started. “What if you need back-up?”
“I’ll call the boys on my way. They’re in Missouri and can meet me there.” Before she could ask him what boys, he was out the door.
She turned to Jo. “What boys?” The girl shrugged a shoulder, looking at her feet before running out of the room. Amy sighed and turned back to the food she was putting away; no one around here ever gave her any answers, and it was making her wonder what they were hiding.
--------------------
Bobby called a few nights later to let them know that the hunt had been a success. “What’s the bad news?” Amy asked, knowing from the tone of his voice that something had gone wrong.
“Tamara and Isaac Donnithorne were tracking the same set of demons,” he said quietly. “It turned out to be the Seven Deadly Sins.” Had it been anyone other than Bobby relating the story, Amy would have thought it was a joke – the Seven Deadly Sins incarnate, yeah right – but he knew his stuff. He sighed. “Isaac’s dead, and Tamara took it pretty hard.”
“I can imagine,” Amy whispered. “You’ll be back here soon?”
“Yeah, it’ll be a day or two. I want to make sure Tamara’s gonna be okay.”
“Alright. See you then.” She hung up the phone and went in search of Jo.
She found the younger girl in the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
Jo rose and grabbed a second glass from the cabinet, gesturing for her to sit. “Why are men so infuriating?” she said as she poured them each a shot.
Amy gulped hers down, feeling a sort of masochistic pleasure at the burn in her throat. “If I knew the answer to that, I’d quit hunting and write a book with the answer.”
Jo snorted ungracefully, making her wonder how much the younger girl had already had to drink. “So they don’t get better with age?”
“Believe me, they only get worse.”
They were quiet for a moment, and then Jo blurted, “It’s just – he makes me so angry, throwing his life away like that and then blowing it off like… Fuck.” She slammed back a second shot and immediately poured a third. “Sometimes I’d like to shoot Dean Winchester in the face.”
Amy blinked, startled by Jo’s announcement. “Wait, what? Your Dean is a Winchester? As in, the Winchesters, who are practically worshiped and just a little bit feared by hunters everywhere? Are those ‘the boys’ Bobby went hunting with?”
Jo scowled. “He’s not my Dean,” she said, answering all of Amy’s questions in four words. She paused. “And he’s an asshole.”
Amy chuckled. “They’re all assholes.” She took another drink of whiskey. “So what’d he do?”
“He won’t come home,” she said quietly and then laughed bitterly. “Not that this is home to him anyway. I don’t think they’ve ever had a home, except maybe that damned car. But I always ask him if they’re coming back around anytime soon, and it’s always, ‘Yeah, soon’,” she mocked in a fake-deep voice. “And they never come. Fucking Winchesters.”
“Yeah,” Amy agreed absent-mindedly, filling her second (or was it her third?) glass of whiskey.
They’d fallen silent, each in her own thoughts and drinking their whiskey, when suddenly Jo asked, “So what’s the story?”
Amy raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean, what’s the story?”
“You and Bobby. How’d you meet?”
“Uh-uh. ‘M not drunk enough yet for that one.”
“Come on, spill it.”
“No way. It’s too embarrassing.”
“Please?”
“You really wanna know?” Jo nodded slowly, and Amy wondered vaguely if she’d end up having to retell the story after they recovered from their hangovers. She threw back another shot anyway. “Alright, I’ll tell ya. When I was eighteen, my friends and I were having our post-prom party. We played truth-or-dare, and Jenna – my best friend at the time – dared me to spend twenty minutes in the Usher House, which was this abandoned house on the outskirts of Spearfish, where I lived. It was supposedly haunted and all that shit, so it was a big deal or whatever.”
“And it really was haunted?”
“Not anymore.” She smiled wryly. “The weird mechanic from Deadwood who worked on my dad’s car every now and then was in the basement, doing some sort of cult ritual – learned later it was a purification ritual, of course. At the time, I was big into folk-cult sort of stuff – you know, fake hippy voodoo crap – so I watched for a few minutes, and then breathed in a huge gulp of dust, sneezed, and fell down the basement stairs.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” She shrugged. “I tripped, banged up my knees, and nearly got shot with iron buckshot. Bobby chewed me out for a good ten minutes before personally escorting me out of the place. My friends were long gone at that point, and he ended up driving me back to my house at four in the morning.” She let out a high-pitched giggle that nearly turned into a snort. “My parents still don’t know that part of the story.”
“But then what happened?”
“Well, I, uh, showed up here and asked him to teach me about spirits. He refused, but I kept coming back and wouldn’t leave him alone until he taught me to shoot, research, exorcise demons, and how to do a tune-up on my car. It took almost three full summers, but I finally got him to take me on a hunt, too.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you haven’t seen him in so long,” Jo said.
“Doesn’t it?” Amy asked. “I was an idiot teenager. After spending three summers practically living here, I got ideas into my head. I was in love.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Tookalmost getting taken out by a ghost before I finally told him. But by then, it was too late.”
“Too late?”
“Bobby’d decided that I was no good for him, and he was no good for me. He tried to push me away, but I pushed right back. We fought, and he told me to leave. So I did.” She took a long pull straight from the whiskey bottle, trying to banish the still-painful memories, and let out a shaky breath. “This is the first time I’ve been back since.”
--------------------
A couple days later, Bobby was back, and Jo was flitting around like a hummingbird, singing under her breath. It was a sharp contrast from Bobby’s decidedly somber mood, and Amy wasn’t sure she understood.
“You’re in a good mood,” she noted when Jo was bustling through the den, dusting off books that probably hadn’t been moved in years.
Jo grinned. “Dean called me last night. They’re coming through in a few days. Said they needed to stock up on some stuff that can’t be found in most ammunition shops.”
“So I’ll finally get to meet the infamous Dean?” she asked.
Jo blushed and turned back to the bookshelves. “I suppose so.”
“What are you supposing?” asked Bobby, coming into the den. His face was smudged with engine grease, and he was sweating under his ballcap.
“Just that I’ll finally have the honor of meeting John Winchester’s boys,” Amy said, trying to keep her voice light for Jo’s sake. “You know, Bobby, you could have told me that’s who you went hunting with. I wouldn’t have gotten too jealous.”
He harrumphed at her, essentially refusing to acknowledge her slight barb. “Jo you know how long they’re gonna be here?”
The girl shook her head. “Dean didn’t say. Probably a day or two, though. He said they’re needing to make some more bullets.”
Bobby rolled his eyes. “Which means that that boy expects me to feed him.” He turned to Amy. “You’re gonna have to make food for four extra people for a couple days.”
“I thought there were only two of them.”
He chuckled. “You’ve never seen them eat.”
--------------------
“Hey Jo, whatcha—” The man stopped his sing-song greeting midway as Amy turned from the sink. Bright green eyes peered suspiciously from a freckled face. “Who’re you?” he asked, moving into a defensive position.
Before she could answer, another person came barreling into the room. “Hey, Dean, I don’t think—who’re you?” The younger man unwittingly echoed both his brother’s sentiments and stance, immediately shifting his weight so he loomed even larger in the doorframe.
“I swear, everyone around here acts like a demon’s just gonna come waltzing up the front step and eat you alive. I’m Amy Salier. I’m a…friend of Bobby.” She grinned a little. “And you must be the Winchesters. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Christo,” Dean said.
Amy rolled her eyes at him. “It’s Christus, not Christo. Use proper noun declension, okay?” He frowned back at her, and Amy had to suppress a second eye-roll. “Look, when you say Christo, you’re saying—you know what? I don’t feel like giving a Latin lesson today. Bobby and Jo went into town to pick up a couple of things. They should be back any minute. Now, would you two like something to drink, or are you scared I’ll poison it?”
They blinked at her in unison, and then the shorter one – Jo’s Dean – sniffed and said, “What’s in the oven?”
“Lasagna,” Amy answered slowly, not sure where he was going with his question.
He eyed her for a moment. “What’d you put in it?”
“Ricotta and sausage. Why?”
He shrugged, not an answer. “You making bread?”
“They’re bringing a loaf back.”
He grinned. “Good. Need help with the dishes?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, grabbed a towel out of the drawer, and began to dry the plates in the dish drainer. Amy frowned at the younger brother, who shrugged and backed out of the kitchen.
“Hey!” Dean’s voice made her jump. “You gonna finish washing these or are you gonna make me do all the work?”
Amy shook her head and turned back to the sink, deciding she’d somehow managed to pass the Winchesters’ litmus test without even realizing she was taking it.
“So, uh, Amy, right?” She nodded. “What brings you to Bobby’s?”
“Research. I’ve been here, oh, not quite a month, I guess. I haven’t found everything I’m looking for, but I’m gonna have to leave soon. Can’t stay here forever, no matter how much I want to.”
“Yeah, I know how that goes,” Dean said quietly. She flicked a glance at him. Jo had been right; the guy was good-looking, but he had an air of sadness about him that she hadn’t expected.
“So, Jo’s told me a little about you,” Amy started, hoping to steer the conversation into lighter topics.
“Oh really?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah.” She smiled. “She says you’re kind of an ass.” He laughed, and it was easy for Amy to see what drew Jo toward this man.
“She might be right,” he chuckled. He looked like he was about to say more, but the back door creaked loudly behind them, and they both turned to see the blonde walking in with a bag of groceries in her arms. Dean dried his hands and moved to take the bag from her. “We were just talking about you,” he said with a smirk as he set out the groceries on the counter.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Amy here was telling me that you want to eat me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
Amy’s eyes went wide, but before she could protest, Jo laughed. “Is that right, Winchester? Because I think I told her that you’re only big enough to be an appetizer. You’re too scrawny to be a complete meal.” She elbowed him aside to put away a bag of flour.
Dean’s grin grew wider. “Says the girl who’s barely—” he jabbed at her stomach “—big enough to stand in a breeze without blowing away.” He poked her side, and Jo swatted at his hand.
“Stop that!”
“Stop what?” His grin filled his face now, and Amy wondered what he was up to as he moved closer to Jo, backing her up to the kitchen table. A hand snaked out to brush against the girl’s waist, and she yelped as she tried to wriggle away from his fingers. Jo ducked away and darted out of the kitchen, and he followed, cackling as he went.
Amy watched them go, turning back to the door when it creaked open again. “Hey,” she greeted Bobby. “Dinner’ll be ready just as soon as I get the bread toasted.”
“I noticed the Winchesters have arrived,” he said.
“Yeah. They haven’t been here long; just enough for the younger – Sam, right? – to take their stuff upstairs and for Dean to, well, you probably heard Jo.” Her words were emphasized by a second shriek and an ominous thud above their heads.
“Hope those boys aren’t here too long,” he grumbled. “No one will ever get any rest with Dean and Jo chasing each other all over the house like a couple of third-graders.”
“Bobby, please, never change,” she laughed.
--------------------
Dinner was comfortable for once, the two new additions lightening the slight tension that always seemed to linger over the table.
Dean regaled them with the tale of their most recent hunt – a disco dancer who had been murdered on the way home from the roller-disco. “He showed up just as we were opening his casket. Man, you shoulda seen the suit he was wearing. Like something outta Saturday Night Fever.” He laughed and shook his head. “Poor Joe Manera, doomed to die in that ugly-ass leisure suit.”
“Is that how you got your black eye?” Bobby asked, nodding toward the shiner blooming across Dean’s left eye socket. “Did you mock the ghost before you struck the match?”
Dean touched it tenderly, starting to speak before Jo interrupted.
“That was me,” she said, blushing a little when Sam snickered.
Dean winced a little. “She got me in the stomach, too.”
“Yeah, well, it’s what you get for backing me into a corner and tickling me,” she retorted.
He mock-glared at her. “You asked for it!”
“I did not!”
“Did too!”
“Did not!”
“Children!” Amy interjected. They both snapped their jaws shut, eyeing her guiltily. “I saw how the whole thing started. Dean, Jo did not ask for it. But Jo, that still doesn’t warrant punching him in the face.”
“Didn’t punch him,” Jo mumbled, blushing even more.
Amy raised her eyebrows.
The girl shrugged her shoulders, squirming under the gazes of the other four people at the table. “Got him with my knee,” she muttered.
They (excluding Dean) blinked at her before Sam finally laughed out loud. “Mind trying to explain that one, Dean?”
Dean had gone very quiet, staring down at his lasagna, his ears tinged pink. “Shut up, Sam.”
After a brief moment of amused silence, Bobby coughed. “You boys got any leads on where you’re headed next?”
“Actually, yeah,” Sam began. “There’s a job down in Kentucky, sounds like it might be Native American spirits of some sort. And we were hoping… Jo, would you go with us? I could really use the extra hand on the research.”
“Really? I mean, yeah, I’d love to.”
Sam grinned. “Great.” Jo was beaming, and Amy didn’t have the heart to point out her purported lack of research skills.
--------------------
The house was almost lonely without Jo around. The Winchesters had insisted on leaving the next morning – the faster to get to the job and get back. This left Amy to research in the too-quiet den, no Jo noisily turning pages or slurping down tea. The tension that had slowly been dissipating between Amy and Bobby was back; she hardly saw him except at meals, and even then it was only long enough for him to grab some food and disappear again.
She was mostly left to her own devices, her only real company the pit-bull, Blackheart, who had chosen to follow her around in the absence of Jo.
The phone rang twice before Amy remembered she was the only person in the house. She grabbed it in the middle of the third ring. “Singer Salvage,” she answered automatically.
“Jo?” Amy could hear the frown in the woman’s voice over the line.
“No, sorry. Jo’s out at the moment. Can I take a message for her?”
“No, I just thought… Never mind. Could you tell Bobby that Ellen called; let him know Jacob and I are almost done patching up the tracks in Wyoming, sealed up tighter than before. Nothing’s ever getting out of this Devil’s Gate again.”
“The Devil’s Gate?” Amy repeated the woman’s words dumbly, her mind working fast to sort that information into place among her own notes about Wyoming. “Yeah, I’ll let him know. Anything else you want me to tell him?”
“Nah, just tell Jo I’ll be back around in a few days.”
“Will do.” She struggled not to slam the phone down.
She’d been betrayed. And they’d both done it, Jo and Bobby, leading her on and letting her think that she was on the right track with researching Yellowstone when they’d known all along exactly what she was looking for. They’d intentionally misled her, and she couldn’t figure out why.
She found Bobby outside his shop.
“Ellen called,” she said when he noticed her.
“Oh?”
“She said to tell you the Devil’s Gate in Wyoming is sealed.”
She crossed her arms, scowling at Bobby, whose facial expression went from pleased to startled to guilty in a matter of seconds.
“A Devil’s Gate?” she snapped. He wouldn’t look at her, his ball cap shielding his face. “An honest-to-God portal to Hell? You better have a damned good reason to keep that from me.”
“You didn’t need to know,” he said evenly.
“What the hell are you talking about? Of course I needed to know! That was the whole point of me coming here in the first place—”
“Was it?” he asked sharply. “Was that really the reason you came back here, for demon lore?”
Amy’s jaw snapped shut.
“That’s what I thought.”
“You still should have told me,” she bit out. “I told you I was here to find out what was going on and why it was centered in Wyoming. You had all the answers already and you willingly kept them from me.”
“I had my reasons.” The angry glint in his eyes was replaced by something else, and his voice came out softer. “We – the boys and I – we were in Wyoming, when it happened. We tried to stop it, but some things… can’t be stopped. Ellen – Jo’s mother – and I started getting the word out as quickly as we could, but you know how hunters are. They took ‘we were there,’ to mean ‘we let them out.’ So when you came not knowing about it… I told Jo not to say anything.”
“Why?”
“To keep you out of it.”
“To keep me out of it?” she repeated in disbelief. “Bobby, I’ve been in ‘it’ for fifteen years. I think I know a little bit about what I’m doing.”
His anger came back full-force. “I told you what happened with Tamara and Isaac, you know what happens when people try to take on things too big for them. Hunters don’t exactly have long lifespans, and everyone involved in the opening of the Devil’s Gate has a giant bullseye on them right now, ripe for whatever demon feels like messing with them. And we’re trying to make sure no one else gets caught in the line of fire. And if that means keeping you in the dark so you don’t go chasing down things you can’t even begin to comprehend, then so be it.”
“You told Jo about it,” she pointed out. “And she’s been on, what, three hunts in her life?”
“Jo Harvelle has lived with the consequences of hunting all her life, Amy. Her father died on a hunt. And her mother was there. Ellen nearly died herself, trying to get that gate closed.”
“And that makes Jo qualified to go hunting with the Winchesters? Because last I heard, they didn’t exactly have the greatest track record with bringing other hunters back alive.”
“Those boys have been through more in the last twenty-five years than you or I will ever have to deal with.” Bobby’s voice was venomous. “If you’d been through half of what they’ve seen, you’d understand why I kept this from you. No one deserves the kind of trouble that’s been brought down on that family, and no one in their right mind would go searching it out.”
“You think that’s what I’m doing?” she snarled back at him. “Looking for trouble? God, I’m just trying to do my job. And part of that’s knowing what’s out there, knowing what might come knocking any moment. You’re the one who taught me that in the first place, and now you’re keeping me from something that might save my life?” She backed off a little, shaking her head. “You don’t make any sense.”
“I was trying to keep you safe,” he growled. “To keep you far away from the hell they’ve been through.”
“I’m not a little girl, Bobby,” she replied quietly. “I can take care of myself.” She stalked back toward the house, only then realizing that they had an audience standing dumbfounded by Dean Winchester’s black car, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
--------------------
Jo found her as she was loading up her car. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
Amy sighed. “Yeah.”
“It’s because of Bobby, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s not.”
“You’re lying.” Jo’s look was accusatory. And then she said softly, “Did you mean what you said back there? About me? …About Dean?”
Amy was too ashamed to answer, throwing her bag into the back of the Jeep.
“That’s it, then?” Jo sounded furious. “You’re just gonna leave? You’re not gonna even try to fix things?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“So all that stuff you told me, about hunters needing each other whether they realized it or not – all that’s just a bunch of shit?”
There was nothing she could say to that; Jo was right about all of it – it was just a bunch of shit. She wrenched the car door open and climbed in. “I’ll see you around, Jo.”
“Yeah right,” the girl spat, and she stomped back to the house as Amy turned the key.
She drove out of the lot, kicking up dust and gravel, eyes on the road ahead of her.
----------------------------------------------
A/N: So after eight months of working and working and stalling and working on this, I've finally finished. Hope you guys enjoyed it. And yeah, there will be outtakes, because I've got a whole file full of them (including an alternate ending).
Characters: Ensemble (Bobby/OFC [omg!] and some Dean/Jo)
Rating: PG-13 (for language and some content)
Word Count: 6503
Betas: This story would not have been possible without the encouragement and beration of
rillaotvalley, duce_gemini, and neetha. Also, many thanks to the girls of scriobhcairdeas who let me yak at them about this story even when it had nothing to do with the prompts.Summary: She sighed. “Something big’s gone down, half my contacts have gone missing, and I didn’t know where else to go.”
Notes: Set in my version of S3 that starts with Further On Up the Road, though this piece certainly stands on its own. AU after AHBL, loosely following the S3 timeline as much as possible. Title is from “Land of Canaan” by the Indigo Girls.
Land of Canaan
Amy Salier had not intended to be here, but here she was, standing outside Bobby Singer’s junkyard in June and steeling herself to walk back into his life. She moved slowly, assessing the place. It had hardly changed since the last time she’d been in the yard, mufflers stacked next to the house and hubcaps nailed to the side of the barn-turned-garage. It was all the same, with the exception of the blonde-haired girl sitting in a rickety rocking chair on the porch patching a pair of jeans. A pit-bull lay at her feet, head on its paws, eyes shut.
“Can I help you?” said the girl. She was younger than Amy by at least a decade, maybe a little more, but the suspicious narrowing of her eyes betrayed the fact that the girl had probably seen a lot in her twenty-something years.
“I’m looking for Bobby Singer,” she answered. “He still live here?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed further. “What do you want with him?”
Amy smiled. “So he is still here. Good. Is he here now? I need to talk to him.”
“He’s out back. Working,” the girl said pointedly.
“Course he is. Bobby’s always working.” Amy paused. “Can I go see him, or do you have to escort me?”
The girl considered her for a long moment. “I’ll go get him. You got a name?”
“Tell him Amy Salier needs work done on her car.” The girl raised an eyebrow, and Amy cracked a grin. “He’ll understand the message.”
The blonde nodded and rose from her chair, draping the jeans over the arm rest. “Wait here.” To the dog at her feet she said, “Blackheart, watch.” The dog raised its head, sniffed Amy once, and immediately dropped its head back to its front paws and resumed snoring. The girl rolled her eyes at the dog, muttering “Stupid mutt” as she jumped off the porch.
Amy stood for several moments before deciding she’d waited long enough. Watching the pit-bull carefully, she began to edge toward where the girl had disappeared. The moment she moved, Blackheart perked up, eyes tracing her steps. She froze, and it blinked at her once before again going back to sleep. She let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding and slowly began to move again.
She came around the corner just in time to see Bobby hit his head on the hood of the car he was working on.
“Amy Salier?” he sputtered. God, was it strange to hear her name from his mouth again. He’d changed a lot in the past fifteen years – he’d aged more than she would have thought possible, but she could still see the man who had once been her mentor. His voice, though – that hadn’t changed much, still gruff but soothing, even after all these years.
“She said she has car trouble or something. Sounded like it might be some kinda code?”
Bobby wasn’t paying attention to what she said. Neither one of them noticed Amy walking toward them yet. “What the hell is she doing here?” he said, scratching his chin and speaking more to himself than to the girl.
She shrugged. “Dunno. I wasn’t too sure about her when she first showed up, but Blackheart completely ignored her, so at least she’s not possessed or anything.”
“Course she’s not,” Bobby said, sounding a little miffed. “Girl’s too smart for that. Probably has a whole string of anti-possession charms hanging ‘round her neck, and maybe a few tattooed as well.”
“Well, Bobby, you do know me well,” Amy said, and they both turned to see her. She grinned. “Although, I do have to admit my only tattoo is that Soundgarden one I got at A Gathering of the Tribes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“You ever gonna ask me something besides that when we meet?” He frowned, and she sighed. “Something big’s gone down, half my contacts have gone missing, and I didn’t know where else to go.” She glanced at the girl and then back to Bobby. “She gonna keep her mouth shut if I talk to you?”
The girl shot her an affronted look, and Bobby smirked a little. “She’s a Harvelle. They know when to keep quiet.”
Amy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Harvelle? As in Billy Harvelle?”
“He was my father,” she answered quietly.
“I met him once, years ago. He was funny, told some good jokes. Never really got to know him, though.” She paused. “What’s your name?”
“Jo.”
“Hi, Jo, I’m Amy,” she said, sticking out a hand and grinning. “Bobby’s probably told you nothing about me, but that’s okay. He and I haven’t spoken for fifteen years.” Jo smiled back and shook her hand.
Bobby coughed. “So what are you doing here, Amy?”
“I swear, Bobby, you gotta come up with a more original question for me.” She huffed a little, and then sobered before saying, “Something happened out west, near Yellowstone. A whole lotta demons have gotten really busy in the past month or so, and not a soul I’ve spoken with knows how it happened. Of course, I haven’t spoken to too many souls because most of my usual people have dropped off the face of the earth all of a sudden. I’ve got my theories as to what went down, but I’m no expert on demonology. So here I am, asking you if you know anything.”
Bobby pursed his lips – a sure sign that he was considering something – and said, “How do we know we can trust you? It’s been an awfully long time.” He said it softly, almost gently, but the caution and mistrust were still in his voice.
“Would I have come to you otherwise?” she replied.
He crossed his arms. “You tell me.”
Amy tightened her jaw. “You know the answer,” she said quietly. “You gonna help me or should I just leave now?”
He waited a beat before answering, and even then he didn’t really answer. “Jo, take Amy inside, get her something to drink. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Amy blinked; she’d forgotten that Jo was standing there. Jo nodded and headed for the house, motioning for her to follow.
The inside of the house had changed even less than the outside. The kitchen still had the yellow walls and white cabinets that clashed with the rest of Bobby’s life. From where she was seated, Amy could see that books still lined every available surface in the hallway and den. She imagined that many of the old tomes were still in the same places they had been when she had last visited the house; it was doubtful that any of them saw much use.
“Amy?”
She shook her head, shoving away her thoughts. “Sorry, drifted off for a moment there.” She looked up at Jo. “What did you say?”
“I was asking if you wanted coffee or beer.”
“Does Bobby still have loose-leaf tea?”
Jo frowned. “Loose-leaf tea?”
“If he does, it’ll be hiding in the cookie tin on the top shelf behind the… table salt, I think it was.” She rose and began rummaging around in the cabinets above the sink. “A-ha! Here it is.” She pulled out the Christmas cookie tin and opened it; the smell of tea leaves and spices was like coming home. “What?” she asked, seeing the odd look Jo had on her face.
“How long did you say you’ve known Bobby?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever really known him,” Amy said. “I met him seventeen years ago. I haven’t seen him in almost fifteen.”
“Then how did – I mean, I’ve known Bobby since I was a kid, and I had no idea he drank tea.”
Amy looked up at her sharply. It was strange to think that he had dropped the habit; she thought it was something he’d done all his life. “Really? He drank it all the time when I was younger. He’d lace it with whiskey instead of honey, usually. I was only eighteen at the time, and he wouldn’t let me have any from his mug.”
Jo laughed a little at that and then paused, looking thoughtful. “So if you were eighteen then, and Bobby must be almost fifty by now—”
“He’s fifty-one come September,” Amy interjected.
“Oh. Well.” She paused again. “So how’d you guys meet, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I, um—”
“We met on a hunt,” said a voice, and the women turned to see Bobby standing in the doorway. He moved into the kitchen, picking up the Christmas tin as he went. “Beer?” he said, putting the tin in the cupboard and pulling three bottles from the fridge. He uncapped them and handed one to each of the women before taking a drink from his own, studying Amy carefully.
“Yeah, a hunt,” she repeated weakly, hoping Jo wouldn’t press.
“You were hunting that early? Mom barely lets me go hunting now, and that’s with Sam and—” Jo stopped short at a stern look from Bobby; Amy filed it away – there would be time to inquire about it later.
“So you want books on demonology?” Bobby asked.
“Yeah.”
He nodded and began moving into the den. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“Nothing too specific yet,” she said, following him. “Although, the activity started in western Wyoming, so if you’ve got anything with information about Yellowstone or that general area, that’ll give me a starting point.”
“Yellowstone it is,” he said, pulling a couple books from the shelves and handing her one. “This one’s about the general layout of the area – where the hotsprings are located, how many geysers there are, that sort of thing.” He handed the other one over. “This one has local legends and folklore of Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Utah. It might tell you what you’re looking for.”
“Thanks.” Amy paused. “You don’t mind if I stick around for a few days while I’m researching, do you? I mean, I can get a motel room, but I don’t want to take off with your books…”
Bobby sucked in a breath. “Jo can set you up in the extra room upstairs.”
“I’ll go round up some bedding,” she said, excusing herself from the room.
Amy turned back to Bobby. “Thanks.”
He nodded curtly, and walked out the door, saying, “I’ve got work to be doing.”
The next several days passed in a blur of dejà vu. Each day, Amy woke up around dawn to the sound of Bobby fixing breakfast, though by the time she made it downstairs there were only plates of bacon and eggs sitting in the warming oven. She ate her breakfast and made some tea before settling in the den to do her research, Jo joining her after returning from the land of the sleeping dead. Amy skimmed dusty tomes while the younger girl read from the novels Bobby had stacked on the shelf by the fireplace, the pit-bull lying at her side.
She once asked Jo to help her research, but the wide-eyed girl refused with the excuse that, “I’ve always been terrible at research. You really don’t want me to help you.” Amy personally thought that maybe she’d be better at it if she actually did it, but decided not to press the issue, instead leaving her to Kerouac and Salinger.
Around noon, the two women stopped their respective reading and fixed lunch together, usually sandwiches. The meals were always quiet, each person wrapped up in their own food – Bobby ate in ten minutes and immediately went back outside, while Jo and Amy savored their sandwiches before cleaning up. Then it was back to research.
Supper was entirely Amy’s domain – she knew from experience that Bobby’s cooking ability ended at breakfast and quickly learned that Jo’s abilities were limited to what could be found in the freezer section of the grocery. The girl offered to help, and Amy relegated her to grabbing ingredients from the cupboard.
“I know, my cooking skills suck,” Jo said one evening when she had managed to burn the spaghetti noodles. “Dean won’t even let me in the kitchen when he’s fixing food. Says I curse the food just by standing in the room.”
“Who’s Dean?”
“No one.” Jo would have gotten away with blowing off the question if she hadn’t answered so quickly.
“Come on now, who is he?” Amy teased.
“He’s, uh, a friend.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “An imaginary friend?”
Jo blushed. “No, of course not.” She bit her lip. “We’re not even really – I mean, I guess we’re – it’s complicated.”
Amy let out a small laugh. “I know complicated. He’s another hunter, isn’t he?” The way Jo’s eyes darted away was answer enough. “What, you don’t see him often enough for your liking?” she asked with a smile.
“Yeah. No. I mean, I don’t know.” The girl was obviously floundering. “It’s just—”
“Complicated?” she supplied.
“Yeah.” They slipped into silence, Jo scrubbing furiously at the scorched noodles in the bottom of the pot and Amy improvising meatball subs in place of the burned spaghetti.
“You know, this Dean of yours, you should try to work it out,” Amy said after a moment. “I mean, I know it’s gotta be hard, with him off hunting and everything, but if you really – I mean, don’t let it hold you back. It’s too easy to lose yourself to the job.” She paused. “And whatever you do, don’t let him push you away. You probably need him more than you realize – and I suspect he needs you just as much.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
Bobby was the only thing significantly different from when Amy had spent her summers here. When she’d first started hanging around Singer Salvage, she had dogged after him, soaking up everything he would teach her and begging him for more. Eventually he had caved, finally agreeing to lend her some of his books. After that, they would sit in the kitchen or the den, drinking iced tea and talking through the texts she’d been reading – sometimes the ones he had given her, occasionally ones she had read in school, not always related to the supernatural. It had been a comfortable friendship that slowly grew into something more, at least on her side.
Now, he hardly stayed in the same room with her, finding excuses to be anywhere else. Finally, she became fed up with it and cornered him on the back porch one night.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
He grunted in reply.
“Does it bother you that I’m here?” He didn’t answer, and she continued. “I mean, God, Bobby, I thought maybe after fifteen years we could let bygones be bygones, y’know? It’s in the past, right? We’re both older, wiser, all that shit, and it’s time to move on. Or am I still as naïve as I was all those years ago, just a stupid kid who thought she could be a hero.”
It was like talking to a wall; he hardly even moved.
She sighed. “If you want me to leave, just say so. I’ll go.” She started to walk back inside, fighting the tears that threatened to fall.
“Amy.” Bobby’s voice stopped her short, and she turned to look back at him. He gazed at her evenly from under his ballcap. “My house is open to any hunter looking for information. If my books have something that’ll keep you from getting yourself killed, I’ve got an obligation to let you use them.” He took a deep breath. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”
She took the permission to stay for what it was – an olive branch.
After that, some of the tension eased between them. Bobby no longer found excuses to leave the room when she entered, even if he did maintain a rather distant attitude.
A couple weeks later, Amy and Jo were cleaning up from breakfast when Bobby came into the kitchen with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
“Going somewhere?” Amy asked, a grin on her face.
“I’m heading to Nebraska for a few days. There’s a job down there needs doing.”
“Nebraska?” Jo asked at the same time Amy said, “A job?”
Bobby soldiered on, ignoring both their questions. “And before either of you ask, no, you cannot come along.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Amy started. “What if you need back-up?”
“I’ll call the boys on my way. They’re in Missouri and can meet me there.” Before she could ask him what boys, he was out the door.
She turned to Jo. “What boys?” The girl shrugged a shoulder, looking at her feet before running out of the room. Amy sighed and turned back to the food she was putting away; no one around here ever gave her any answers, and it was making her wonder what they were hiding.
Bobby called a few nights later to let them know that the hunt had been a success. “What’s the bad news?” Amy asked, knowing from the tone of his voice that something had gone wrong.
“Tamara and Isaac Donnithorne were tracking the same set of demons,” he said quietly. “It turned out to be the Seven Deadly Sins.” Had it been anyone other than Bobby relating the story, Amy would have thought it was a joke – the Seven Deadly Sins incarnate, yeah right – but he knew his stuff. He sighed. “Isaac’s dead, and Tamara took it pretty hard.”
“I can imagine,” Amy whispered. “You’ll be back here soon?”
“Yeah, it’ll be a day or two. I want to make sure Tamara’s gonna be okay.”
“Alright. See you then.” She hung up the phone and went in search of Jo.
She found the younger girl in the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
Jo rose and grabbed a second glass from the cabinet, gesturing for her to sit. “Why are men so infuriating?” she said as she poured them each a shot.
Amy gulped hers down, feeling a sort of masochistic pleasure at the burn in her throat. “If I knew the answer to that, I’d quit hunting and write a book with the answer.”
Jo snorted ungracefully, making her wonder how much the younger girl had already had to drink. “So they don’t get better with age?”
“Believe me, they only get worse.”
They were quiet for a moment, and then Jo blurted, “It’s just – he makes me so angry, throwing his life away like that and then blowing it off like… Fuck.” She slammed back a second shot and immediately poured a third. “Sometimes I’d like to shoot Dean Winchester in the face.”
Amy blinked, startled by Jo’s announcement. “Wait, what? Your Dean is a Winchester? As in, the Winchesters, who are practically worshiped and just a little bit feared by hunters everywhere? Are those ‘the boys’ Bobby went hunting with?”
Jo scowled. “He’s not my Dean,” she said, answering all of Amy’s questions in four words. She paused. “And he’s an asshole.”
Amy chuckled. “They’re all assholes.” She took another drink of whiskey. “So what’d he do?”
“He won’t come home,” she said quietly and then laughed bitterly. “Not that this is home to him anyway. I don’t think they’ve ever had a home, except maybe that damned car. But I always ask him if they’re coming back around anytime soon, and it’s always, ‘Yeah, soon’,” she mocked in a fake-deep voice. “And they never come. Fucking Winchesters.”
“Yeah,” Amy agreed absent-mindedly, filling her second (or was it her third?) glass of whiskey.
They’d fallen silent, each in her own thoughts and drinking their whiskey, when suddenly Jo asked, “So what’s the story?”
Amy raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean, what’s the story?”
“You and Bobby. How’d you meet?”
“Uh-uh. ‘M not drunk enough yet for that one.”
“Come on, spill it.”
“No way. It’s too embarrassing.”
“Please?”
“You really wanna know?” Jo nodded slowly, and Amy wondered vaguely if she’d end up having to retell the story after they recovered from their hangovers. She threw back another shot anyway. “Alright, I’ll tell ya. When I was eighteen, my friends and I were having our post-prom party. We played truth-or-dare, and Jenna – my best friend at the time – dared me to spend twenty minutes in the Usher House, which was this abandoned house on the outskirts of Spearfish, where I lived. It was supposedly haunted and all that shit, so it was a big deal or whatever.”
“And it really was haunted?”
“Not anymore.” She smiled wryly. “The weird mechanic from Deadwood who worked on my dad’s car every now and then was in the basement, doing some sort of cult ritual – learned later it was a purification ritual, of course. At the time, I was big into folk-cult sort of stuff – you know, fake hippy voodoo crap – so I watched for a few minutes, and then breathed in a huge gulp of dust, sneezed, and fell down the basement stairs.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” She shrugged. “I tripped, banged up my knees, and nearly got shot with iron buckshot. Bobby chewed me out for a good ten minutes before personally escorting me out of the place. My friends were long gone at that point, and he ended up driving me back to my house at four in the morning.” She let out a high-pitched giggle that nearly turned into a snort. “My parents still don’t know that part of the story.”
“But then what happened?”
“Well, I, uh, showed up here and asked him to teach me about spirits. He refused, but I kept coming back and wouldn’t leave him alone until he taught me to shoot, research, exorcise demons, and how to do a tune-up on my car. It took almost three full summers, but I finally got him to take me on a hunt, too.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you haven’t seen him in so long,” Jo said.
“Doesn’t it?” Amy asked. “I was an idiot teenager. After spending three summers practically living here, I got ideas into my head. I was in love.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Tookalmost getting taken out by a ghost before I finally told him. But by then, it was too late.”
“Too late?”
“Bobby’d decided that I was no good for him, and he was no good for me. He tried to push me away, but I pushed right back. We fought, and he told me to leave. So I did.” She took a long pull straight from the whiskey bottle, trying to banish the still-painful memories, and let out a shaky breath. “This is the first time I’ve been back since.”
A couple days later, Bobby was back, and Jo was flitting around like a hummingbird, singing under her breath. It was a sharp contrast from Bobby’s decidedly somber mood, and Amy wasn’t sure she understood.
“You’re in a good mood,” she noted when Jo was bustling through the den, dusting off books that probably hadn’t been moved in years.
Jo grinned. “Dean called me last night. They’re coming through in a few days. Said they needed to stock up on some stuff that can’t be found in most ammunition shops.”
“So I’ll finally get to meet the infamous Dean?” she asked.
Jo blushed and turned back to the bookshelves. “I suppose so.”
“What are you supposing?” asked Bobby, coming into the den. His face was smudged with engine grease, and he was sweating under his ballcap.
“Just that I’ll finally have the honor of meeting John Winchester’s boys,” Amy said, trying to keep her voice light for Jo’s sake. “You know, Bobby, you could have told me that’s who you went hunting with. I wouldn’t have gotten too jealous.”
He harrumphed at her, essentially refusing to acknowledge her slight barb. “Jo you know how long they’re gonna be here?”
The girl shook her head. “Dean didn’t say. Probably a day or two, though. He said they’re needing to make some more bullets.”
Bobby rolled his eyes. “Which means that that boy expects me to feed him.” He turned to Amy. “You’re gonna have to make food for four extra people for a couple days.”
“I thought there were only two of them.”
He chuckled. “You’ve never seen them eat.”
“Hey Jo, whatcha—” The man stopped his sing-song greeting midway as Amy turned from the sink. Bright green eyes peered suspiciously from a freckled face. “Who’re you?” he asked, moving into a defensive position.
Before she could answer, another person came barreling into the room. “Hey, Dean, I don’t think—who’re you?” The younger man unwittingly echoed both his brother’s sentiments and stance, immediately shifting his weight so he loomed even larger in the doorframe.
“I swear, everyone around here acts like a demon’s just gonna come waltzing up the front step and eat you alive. I’m Amy Salier. I’m a…friend of Bobby.” She grinned a little. “And you must be the Winchesters. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Christo,” Dean said.
Amy rolled her eyes at him. “It’s Christus, not Christo. Use proper noun declension, okay?” He frowned back at her, and Amy had to suppress a second eye-roll. “Look, when you say Christo, you’re saying—you know what? I don’t feel like giving a Latin lesson today. Bobby and Jo went into town to pick up a couple of things. They should be back any minute. Now, would you two like something to drink, or are you scared I’ll poison it?”
They blinked at her in unison, and then the shorter one – Jo’s Dean – sniffed and said, “What’s in the oven?”
“Lasagna,” Amy answered slowly, not sure where he was going with his question.
He eyed her for a moment. “What’d you put in it?”
“Ricotta and sausage. Why?”
He shrugged, not an answer. “You making bread?”
“They’re bringing a loaf back.”
He grinned. “Good. Need help with the dishes?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, grabbed a towel out of the drawer, and began to dry the plates in the dish drainer. Amy frowned at the younger brother, who shrugged and backed out of the kitchen.
“Hey!” Dean’s voice made her jump. “You gonna finish washing these or are you gonna make me do all the work?”
Amy shook her head and turned back to the sink, deciding she’d somehow managed to pass the Winchesters’ litmus test without even realizing she was taking it.
“So, uh, Amy, right?” She nodded. “What brings you to Bobby’s?”
“Research. I’ve been here, oh, not quite a month, I guess. I haven’t found everything I’m looking for, but I’m gonna have to leave soon. Can’t stay here forever, no matter how much I want to.”
“Yeah, I know how that goes,” Dean said quietly. She flicked a glance at him. Jo had been right; the guy was good-looking, but he had an air of sadness about him that she hadn’t expected.
“So, Jo’s told me a little about you,” Amy started, hoping to steer the conversation into lighter topics.
“Oh really?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah.” She smiled. “She says you’re kind of an ass.” He laughed, and it was easy for Amy to see what drew Jo toward this man.
“She might be right,” he chuckled. He looked like he was about to say more, but the back door creaked loudly behind them, and they both turned to see the blonde walking in with a bag of groceries in her arms. Dean dried his hands and moved to take the bag from her. “We were just talking about you,” he said with a smirk as he set out the groceries on the counter.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Amy here was telling me that you want to eat me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
Amy’s eyes went wide, but before she could protest, Jo laughed. “Is that right, Winchester? Because I think I told her that you’re only big enough to be an appetizer. You’re too scrawny to be a complete meal.” She elbowed him aside to put away a bag of flour.
Dean’s grin grew wider. “Says the girl who’s barely—” he jabbed at her stomach “—big enough to stand in a breeze without blowing away.” He poked her side, and Jo swatted at his hand.
“Stop that!”
“Stop what?” His grin filled his face now, and Amy wondered what he was up to as he moved closer to Jo, backing her up to the kitchen table. A hand snaked out to brush against the girl’s waist, and she yelped as she tried to wriggle away from his fingers. Jo ducked away and darted out of the kitchen, and he followed, cackling as he went.
Amy watched them go, turning back to the door when it creaked open again. “Hey,” she greeted Bobby. “Dinner’ll be ready just as soon as I get the bread toasted.”
“I noticed the Winchesters have arrived,” he said.
“Yeah. They haven’t been here long; just enough for the younger – Sam, right? – to take their stuff upstairs and for Dean to, well, you probably heard Jo.” Her words were emphasized by a second shriek and an ominous thud above their heads.
“Hope those boys aren’t here too long,” he grumbled. “No one will ever get any rest with Dean and Jo chasing each other all over the house like a couple of third-graders.”
“Bobby, please, never change,” she laughed.
Dinner was comfortable for once, the two new additions lightening the slight tension that always seemed to linger over the table.
Dean regaled them with the tale of their most recent hunt – a disco dancer who had been murdered on the way home from the roller-disco. “He showed up just as we were opening his casket. Man, you shoulda seen the suit he was wearing. Like something outta Saturday Night Fever.” He laughed and shook his head. “Poor Joe Manera, doomed to die in that ugly-ass leisure suit.”
“Is that how you got your black eye?” Bobby asked, nodding toward the shiner blooming across Dean’s left eye socket. “Did you mock the ghost before you struck the match?”
Dean touched it tenderly, starting to speak before Jo interrupted.
“That was me,” she said, blushing a little when Sam snickered.
Dean winced a little. “She got me in the stomach, too.”
“Yeah, well, it’s what you get for backing me into a corner and tickling me,” she retorted.
He mock-glared at her. “You asked for it!”
“I did not!”
“Did too!”
“Did not!”
“Children!” Amy interjected. They both snapped their jaws shut, eyeing her guiltily. “I saw how the whole thing started. Dean, Jo did not ask for it. But Jo, that still doesn’t warrant punching him in the face.”
“Didn’t punch him,” Jo mumbled, blushing even more.
Amy raised her eyebrows.
The girl shrugged her shoulders, squirming under the gazes of the other four people at the table. “Got him with my knee,” she muttered.
They (excluding Dean) blinked at her before Sam finally laughed out loud. “Mind trying to explain that one, Dean?”
Dean had gone very quiet, staring down at his lasagna, his ears tinged pink. “Shut up, Sam.”
After a brief moment of amused silence, Bobby coughed. “You boys got any leads on where you’re headed next?”
“Actually, yeah,” Sam began. “There’s a job down in Kentucky, sounds like it might be Native American spirits of some sort. And we were hoping… Jo, would you go with us? I could really use the extra hand on the research.”
“Really? I mean, yeah, I’d love to.”
Sam grinned. “Great.” Jo was beaming, and Amy didn’t have the heart to point out her purported lack of research skills.
The house was almost lonely without Jo around. The Winchesters had insisted on leaving the next morning – the faster to get to the job and get back. This left Amy to research in the too-quiet den, no Jo noisily turning pages or slurping down tea. The tension that had slowly been dissipating between Amy and Bobby was back; she hardly saw him except at meals, and even then it was only long enough for him to grab some food and disappear again.
She was mostly left to her own devices, her only real company the pit-bull, Blackheart, who had chosen to follow her around in the absence of Jo.
The phone rang twice before Amy remembered she was the only person in the house. She grabbed it in the middle of the third ring. “Singer Salvage,” she answered automatically.
“Jo?” Amy could hear the frown in the woman’s voice over the line.
“No, sorry. Jo’s out at the moment. Can I take a message for her?”
“No, I just thought… Never mind. Could you tell Bobby that Ellen called; let him know Jacob and I are almost done patching up the tracks in Wyoming, sealed up tighter than before. Nothing’s ever getting out of this Devil’s Gate again.”
“The Devil’s Gate?” Amy repeated the woman’s words dumbly, her mind working fast to sort that information into place among her own notes about Wyoming. “Yeah, I’ll let him know. Anything else you want me to tell him?”
“Nah, just tell Jo I’ll be back around in a few days.”
“Will do.” She struggled not to slam the phone down.
She’d been betrayed. And they’d both done it, Jo and Bobby, leading her on and letting her think that she was on the right track with researching Yellowstone when they’d known all along exactly what she was looking for. They’d intentionally misled her, and she couldn’t figure out why.
She found Bobby outside his shop.
“Ellen called,” she said when he noticed her.
“Oh?”
“She said to tell you the Devil’s Gate in Wyoming is sealed.”
She crossed her arms, scowling at Bobby, whose facial expression went from pleased to startled to guilty in a matter of seconds.
“A Devil’s Gate?” she snapped. He wouldn’t look at her, his ball cap shielding his face. “An honest-to-God portal to Hell? You better have a damned good reason to keep that from me.”
“You didn’t need to know,” he said evenly.
“What the hell are you talking about? Of course I needed to know! That was the whole point of me coming here in the first place—”
“Was it?” he asked sharply. “Was that really the reason you came back here, for demon lore?”
Amy’s jaw snapped shut.
“That’s what I thought.”
“You still should have told me,” she bit out. “I told you I was here to find out what was going on and why it was centered in Wyoming. You had all the answers already and you willingly kept them from me.”
“I had my reasons.” The angry glint in his eyes was replaced by something else, and his voice came out softer. “We – the boys and I – we were in Wyoming, when it happened. We tried to stop it, but some things… can’t be stopped. Ellen – Jo’s mother – and I started getting the word out as quickly as we could, but you know how hunters are. They took ‘we were there,’ to mean ‘we let them out.’ So when you came not knowing about it… I told Jo not to say anything.”
“Why?”
“To keep you out of it.”
“To keep me out of it?” she repeated in disbelief. “Bobby, I’ve been in ‘it’ for fifteen years. I think I know a little bit about what I’m doing.”
His anger came back full-force. “I told you what happened with Tamara and Isaac, you know what happens when people try to take on things too big for them. Hunters don’t exactly have long lifespans, and everyone involved in the opening of the Devil’s Gate has a giant bullseye on them right now, ripe for whatever demon feels like messing with them. And we’re trying to make sure no one else gets caught in the line of fire. And if that means keeping you in the dark so you don’t go chasing down things you can’t even begin to comprehend, then so be it.”
“You told Jo about it,” she pointed out. “And she’s been on, what, three hunts in her life?”
“Jo Harvelle has lived with the consequences of hunting all her life, Amy. Her father died on a hunt. And her mother was there. Ellen nearly died herself, trying to get that gate closed.”
“And that makes Jo qualified to go hunting with the Winchesters? Because last I heard, they didn’t exactly have the greatest track record with bringing other hunters back alive.”
“Those boys have been through more in the last twenty-five years than you or I will ever have to deal with.” Bobby’s voice was venomous. “If you’d been through half of what they’ve seen, you’d understand why I kept this from you. No one deserves the kind of trouble that’s been brought down on that family, and no one in their right mind would go searching it out.”
“You think that’s what I’m doing?” she snarled back at him. “Looking for trouble? God, I’m just trying to do my job. And part of that’s knowing what’s out there, knowing what might come knocking any moment. You’re the one who taught me that in the first place, and now you’re keeping me from something that might save my life?” She backed off a little, shaking her head. “You don’t make any sense.”
“I was trying to keep you safe,” he growled. “To keep you far away from the hell they’ve been through.”
“I’m not a little girl, Bobby,” she replied quietly. “I can take care of myself.” She stalked back toward the house, only then realizing that they had an audience standing dumbfounded by Dean Winchester’s black car, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
Jo found her as she was loading up her car. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
Amy sighed. “Yeah.”
“It’s because of Bobby, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s not.”
“You’re lying.” Jo’s look was accusatory. And then she said softly, “Did you mean what you said back there? About me? …About Dean?”
Amy was too ashamed to answer, throwing her bag into the back of the Jeep.
“That’s it, then?” Jo sounded furious. “You’re just gonna leave? You’re not gonna even try to fix things?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“So all that stuff you told me, about hunters needing each other whether they realized it or not – all that’s just a bunch of shit?”
There was nothing she could say to that; Jo was right about all of it – it was just a bunch of shit. She wrenched the car door open and climbed in. “I’ll see you around, Jo.”
“Yeah right,” the girl spat, and she stomped back to the house as Amy turned the key.
She drove out of the lot, kicking up dust and gravel, eyes on the road ahead of her.
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A/N: So after eight months of working and working and stalling and working on this, I've finally finished. Hope you guys enjoyed it. And yeah, there will be outtakes, because I've got a whole file full of them (including an alternate ending).
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Um, yeah, so...I love you, like, a LOT, for writing that. Gosh. The episode tie-in and how fleshed out Amy was (and how seamlessly you fit her into Supernatural canon), just...yeah.
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Thank you. :)
I'm glad that you liked how I tied it into S3 canon - I had meant to get this finished before the season started, but I think it worked better to include the events of Mag7. And I got lucky with this week's ep - it wasn't totally jossed, because Bobby and Amy didn't meet until after he started hunting. \o/
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I really enjoyed this line. It's kind of amusing because all of the hunters know about the Winchesters, but the boys don't know about them.
Good job. Thank you for Bobby-fic fix. :)
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And I'm glad you liked that line! It was one of my favorites. :)
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I would love to request a sequel, preferably not another six months in the making. Especially since I've been hounding you for Bobby, ofc since August. :) I love Bobby. You did a very good job with his character by the way. I loved the bits about hiding under the edge of his baseball cap.
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As for a sequel, I won't say it's not going to happen, because that usually means that I'll end up cranking one out within a week, and I don't have time for that right now, lol.
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You own mem you are so much better then me! good job!!!
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I love your original character. OFC's are the best!
Love that she's independent, stubborn, and proud.
You did a great job weaving in the Devil's gate into the story, I actually wasn't suspicious until halfway through.
Bobby fics are the best! thanks for a great read!!!!
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And I'm glad I was able to keep you as clueless about the gate as Amy was. That was one of my biggest fears - she's a hunter, why wouldn't she know about the gate? I'm glad to know it worked for you. :)
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I really love your OFC and how she just fits in so seamlessly. And Bobby needs some love in his life ♥ =D
Loved it!
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And your Jo? I love her too. And just...eep. :D Love. ^^
(I followed your link from...uh...one of them communities, btw.)
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And if you're interested in reading more about this interpretation of Jo, you should read Further On Up the Road. It's set in the same 'verse and takes place a few weeks before this story.
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Now I'm going to go read more of your fics. :)
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But, most of all, I think I love you for this:
Amy rolled her eyes at him. “It’s Christus, not Christo. Use proper noun declension, okay?”
My work here is done. And that made me squee so much that I couldn't leave proper comments so I will need to re-read this tomorrow.
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But, most of all, I think I love you for this
I put that line in just for you, you know. And because Dean would get all befuddled and adorable if anyone ever tried to correct him on it.
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I put that line in just for you, you know. And because Dean would get all befuddled and adorable if anyone ever tried to correct him on it.
My inner Charlotte was very happy and a little perturbed. If memory serves, Dean's reaction to her was to ask Sammy to get his gun... ;-P
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And I'm glad you caught onto the hope with Dean and Jo. In a lot of ways, they act as a foil for Bobby and Amy in this.
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Although, I must admit that in the early drafts of flashbacks/backstory I wrote, Amy met the brothers Winchester in the summer of '92. But I like this introduction to them better. :)
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The whole knee-ing thing was just kind of a random bit I wanted to sneak in, so I'm glad you liked it.
And I hope you feel better soon! Danielle's been sick this week, but we're still heading to FL for spring break. YAY.
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