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It's a beautiful clear day outside in Palo Alto, California. A slight warm breeze is rustling through the trees in a cemetery, and birds are chirping happily. But the mood coming from off one Sam and Harriet Winchester is nothing but that of pain and grief, walking through an otherwise empty cemetery. They are both smartly dressed in black, Sam holding a bouquet of beautiful flowers minus roses and Harriet with her arm looped through her brothers as they finally approached the headstone.
Sam lets out a sigh, and Harriet gives his arm a comforting squeeze. On the stone, it read the deceased's name of one 'Jessica Lee Moore, Beloved daughter, January 24th 1984-November 2nd 2005.' Above it was a small picture of Jessica grinning back at them set into the stone, leaning against it was also a black and white framed photo sat between a white teddy bear and a wooden box with a crucifix leaning against the picture, there's a small American flag beside the box and three candles sitting on the gravestone; one of them being that of the Virgin de Guadalupe.
Sam glanced between the flowers he had and the gravestone taking a deep breath, "I, uh..." his sister gives his arm an encouraging squeeze, knowing that this was difficult and painful for both of them, "You always said roses were, were lame, so I brought you, uh..."
He now peered at the picture in the gravestone looked away, choking back his tears. Harriet just let her tears fall as she stared at the picture, guilt rising from within the pit of her stomach that Sam must also be feeling.
Letting go of sister for a moment, he took another step closer, "Jess...oh God..." he kneeled, placing the flowers down, "I should have protected you. I should have told you the truth," picking up the flowers, he rests them before the crucifix.
Harriet rests a hand upon his shoulder, sensing his pain and squeezing it, "We both let her down, Sam."
Suddenly a dirt-covered arm blasted out from the soil and took Sam by his wrist.
-Supernatural-
10th November 2005
Dean had watched over his siblings with nothing but increasing worry and concern over the last few days since Jessica's funeral. It pained him what they were going through, knowing that witnessing somebody you cared for burn to death and unable to do anything, but he's going to help them through this challenging time, he knows that it will take time for them to come through the other side and continue to guide them.
Now, as he continued to drive towards the coordinates their father had left in his journal, as is if by magic from his very thoughts, both Sam and Harriet jolted awake with almost gasping for air. Dean peered at his sister through the viewing mirror, stretching and yawning in the backseat, then to Sam beside him in the passenger seat, who began blinking and rubbing his eyes.
"You guys okay?" Dean asked, looking and sounding concerned.
They didn't engage in answering for a moment as they looked at him before glancing away to stare blankly out the windows.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Sam offered with an emptiness in his voice.
"Oh, just peachy," Harriet responded in the same manner.
At his sibling's off response, Dean tried brushing it off with a nod and went to face the road again. It was pretty obvious when somebody tells you 'I'm fine' they really weren't in the best of places, so no, Sam and Harriet were not 'fine' or 'peachy' about anything in the slightest. Because the worrying amount of nightmares they'd been having recently since Jessica's death, also the tell of dark circles starting to appear underneath their eyes, showed the lack of sleep from these so-called nightmares had given them.
But he couldn't let them off so easily. He needed something from them, anything to engage, "Another nightmare?" Sam awkwardly clears his throat but doesn't make eye contact or respond. Harriet just continued to stare mindlessly out the car window, a tactic they've both implemented before to show or acknowledge anything was wrong.
From the silence of their response, he glanced at them both with a bit more hesitation, adding, "You wanna drive for a while?"
In that very moment, his siblings woke up a little more as they peered back at him with absolute bewilderment, both laughing as Harriet now asked disbelievingly, "Woah?!"
"Dean, your whole life, you never once asked us that," Sam adds, a bit more rationally.
Faced with the incredulous expressions of his brother and sister, Dean comes overall defensive before simply responding, trying to pretend he wasn't sick with worry about them, "Just thought you might want to. Never mind."
"Look, you're worried about us," Harriet leaned forwards, placing a reassuring hand upon, "I get it, and thank you, but we're perfectly okay."
Now grabbing the map, Harriet passed it over to Sam from her duffel bag, "All right, where are we?"
"We are just outside of Grand Junction," Dean replied.
Harriet glanced over Sam's shoulder just as he folded down the map, which is that of Colorado with a large drawn-on X with 35-111, as he finally let out with a defeated sigh, "You know what? Maybe we shouldn't have left Stanford so soon."
"Sam, we dug around there for a week," Harriet rests a comforting hand on his shoulder, "We came up with nothing."
"Harry is right, Sam, if you wanna find the thing that killed Jess..."
Sam cuts him off abruptly, not looking up from the map, "We gotta find Dad first."
"Dad disappearing, and this thing showing up again after twenty years, it's no coincidence," Dean continued from where he got interrupted, "Dad will have answers. He'll know what to do."
Looking at the map in Sam's hands, Harriet instantly noticed something somewhat off about it and pointed it out to her brothers, "It's weird. These coordinates dad left us. This Blackwater Ridge."
"What about it?" Dean briefly glanced at his sister.
"There's nothing there. It's just woods," upon hearing his sister's confusion, and Sam put down the map.
"Why is he sending us to the middle of nowhere?" He asked aloud, only for Dean to shrug in response.
-Supernatural-
Soon they pulled up to the Ranger Station to gather more information about the area in question. Both Harriet and Sam went over to a 3D map model of the site after entering the centre.
"So Blackwater Ridge is pretty remote. It's cut off by these canyons here, rough terrain, dense forest, abandoned silver and gold mines all over the place," Sam explained, as he and Harriet looked over the map display while Dean was checking out some pictures on the wall.
"Guys, check out the size of this freaking bear," Dean said excitedly. Both the twins slowly turned their heads and glared at him with disbelief.
"Dean, we're on the job! Concentrate!" Harriet tells him through gritted teeth.
"And a dozen or more grizzlies in the area," Sam went on to list what he has learned about the area, "It's no nature hike, that's for sure," all three siblings now looking at the framed photo of a man stood behind a much larger bear.
Suddenly a voice spoke up from behind the three siblings, "You aren't planning on going out near Blackwater Ridge by any chance?"
They all whipped around, a little startled to find an older ranger stood before them with a coffee in hand and the other on his hip.
Thinking quickly on the spot, Sam comes up with a rather convincing lie, "Oh, no, sir, we're environmental study majors from UC Boulder."
His twin sister added nervously with a laugh following his lead, "We're just working on a paper."
While Dean just casually grinned and raised his fist, "Recycle, man," Harriet almost groaned with embarrassment for her older brother's line and had to restrain herself from slapping him for being so idiotic in actually thinking he cared about the planet.
"Bull," the ranger scoffed. The siblings sharing a look of hopelessness, wondering how or what had given their act away, but are somewhat rather grateful that the ranger wasn't that overly concerned as continued to talk, "You're friends with that Haley girl, right?"
Dean mulls this over for a few seconds before definitively responding to the statement, "Yes. Yes, we are, Ranger-" he takes a glance at the Rangers name tag and adds, "Wilkinson."
"Well, I will tell you exactly what we told her. Her brother filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn't be back from Blackwater until the twenty-fourth, so it's not exactly a missing person now, is it?" Dean shook his head, wanting to gain the ranger's trust, "You tell that girl to quit worrying. I'm sure her brother's just fine."
"We will," Dean told Ranger Wilkinson before taking a quick stab in the dark with one of his charming smiles, just as the Ranger was about to leave, "Well, that Haley girl's quite a pistol, huh?"
"That is putting it mildly," the man returned with a scoff.
"You know what would help is if I could show her a copy of that backcountry permit. You know, so she could see her brother's return date," Dean now stated.
Ranger Wilkinson and Dean stared at each other for a moment before the man gave his consent and went to make a copy of the permit. Soon, Dean and his siblings walked out of the Ranger Station with the eldest Winchester holding up the copied permit with laughing with pride at his success. But, on the other hand, Sam and Harriet were far from impressed takin from their icy expressions
"What, are you cruising for a hookup or something?" Sam inquired to Dean in a snippy manner.
"What do you mean?" Dean asked, confused as to why his siblings looked upset.
"The coordinates point to Blackwater Ridge, so what are we waiting for? Let's find Dad. I mean, why even talk to this girl?" Harriet now asked with a demanding yet snarky tone, arms folded in front of her and narrowed eyes.
By this point, the three siblings have come to a stop only to stare at each other from opposite sides of the Impala, "I don't know," Dean began to explain sarcastically, "Maybe we should know what we're walking into before we walk into it?" he pauses for a moment gazing back at them confused, "Since when are you all shoot first ask questions later, anyway?"
"Since now," Sam offered with a severe expression painted across his face, getting into the car and slamming the car door shut, making Dean almost jump.
"Really?" Dean asked, looking across to his sister, wondering if she felt the same.
"Yes, really," she returned in the same manner before getting into Baby, slamming the passenger door shut as Dean almost jumped, knowing he's hit a nerve with them both. Feeling nothing but an unbearable heaviness once inside the car, he knew it would still take them a lot of time and healing.
-Supernatural-
They now arrived at the residence listed on the permit, and Dean, as usual, took the lead wrapping his knuckles upon the screen door covering the front door. Only after a short moment does a girl with brunette shoulder-length hair answer the door wearing a brownish vest top. She stood behind the screen door staring questioningly back at them.
"You must be Haley Collins. I'm Dean, and this is Harriet and Sam. We're, ah, we're rangers with the Park Service. Ranger Wilkinson sent us over. He wanted us to ask a few questions about your brother Tommy," Haley eyed them skeptically, which Harriet could understand. With her eldest brother being 26, he could barely pass for a park ranger, and with Sam being almost tall as the trees, he could pass for 22. But for Harriet being only at 5'4, with her flawless, youthful complexion and cute button nose. Harriet could still almost pass for a teenager next to her brothers, even if she was the older of her and Sam just by a couple of minutes.
"Lemme see some ID," Haley insisted, Dean rummaging through his jacket pockets for the fake ID, pulled it out, and pressed it against the screen, as he hasn't gotten around to making his siblings anymore yet. The girl quickly glanced at it and between Dean's face
"Come on in," Haley finally decided to open the door and let them in, Dean thanking her as they about entered when she caught a glimpse of the Impala and inquired, nodding towards it, "That yours?" The three siblings turned to look back at Baby, knowing she talked about the car.
"Yeah," Dean offered with a hint of pride in his voice whenever he talked about his car.
"Nice car," Haley complimented, glancing over her shoulder at Dean walking back into the house. Dean is holding the screen door for his younger siblings to go before him.
They now followed Haley further into the house with her somehow believing all three were 'rangers.' Dean paused in his movements of following after Haley into the kitchen, only to turn back towards Harriet and Sam. He mouthed something to them, only but to roll their eyes in response.
Upon finally entering the kitchen, sat a young boy at the dining table with a laptop in front of him was Haley's younger brother, probably around Harriet and Sam's age.
"So if Tommy's not due back for a while, how do you know something's wrong?" Sam began to inquire while Haley came back into the room with a bowl and placed it on the dining table.
"He checks in every day by cell," she answered, "He emails, photos, stupid little videos we haven't heard anything in over three days now."
Harriet cut in, "Well, maybe he can't get cell reception."
"He's got a satellite phone, too."
Dean now dropped in his question, "Could it be he's just having fun and forgot to check-in?"
Harriet felt her elder brother might be possibly onto something. Recalling, God knows how many nights she and Sam had spent cooped up in motel rooms while Dean wandered off to bars once he was old enough to pass twenty-one. A man not much younger, maybe just a few years shy of her and Sam who looked up to their older siblings.
Ben had been sitting in silence at the table, listening intently to the conversation until finally speaking up to insist, "He wouldn't do that!" the young man shot Dean a dark look as he continued to speak as if he was intentionally trying to take a jab at his brother.
"Our parents are gone," Haley explained, placing another dish on the table, "It's just my two brothers and me. We all keep pretty close tabs on each other."
This gave Harriet a sudden yet eerie familiar feeling of déjà vu along with the Collins' situation wasn't far from her family's own. They, too, have lost their parents, becoming more tightly bound and protective of one another without parental figures to guide them. Sure, her old man had tried his best to take care of the growing but sometimes did a pretty shitty job of it with him and going off hunting all the time, forcing Harriet, Sam, and Dean to take care of one another. So she could relate as to why Hayley was so concerned for her brother's safety. Not to mention, Haley was looking for her brother, which was rather coincidental when they were looking for their father. No matter how much she hated the older man's guts, she still worried about him, though.
"Can I see the pictures he sent you?" Sam asked kindly. Haley agreed with a nod and went to fetch her laptop, pulling up the pictures her brother In Tommy had recently sent. She browsed through them before finally coming to a video and playing it:
"Hey Haley, day six, we're still out near Blackwater Ridge. We're fine, keeping safe, so don't worry, okay? Talk to you tomorrow."
Harriet then almost catches a slight flicker of a shadowy figure that rapidly darted past upon the screen just nearby the tents behind Tommy and her Sam, gently nudging her in the side, indicating he'd also seen too.
"Well, we'll find your brother," the eldest Winchester reassured Haley, "We're heading out to Blackwater Ridge first thing."
In which his younger sister mouthed, "Are we really?" glaring disbelievingly at him and folding her arms before her, Dean could only but could subtly nod and roll his eyes.
"Then maybe I'll see you there," Haley now wandered away from the laptop turned back to inform Dean casually. He and his siblings share similar expressions of confusion, "Look. I can't sit around here anymore. So I hired a guy. I'm heading out in the morning, and I'm going to find Tommy myself."
That same look of understanding appeared on Dean's as he looked at Haley, revealing to Harriet that her brother finally had caught on that his own family's situation was similar to that of hers, to which Dean sincerely replied, "I think I know how you feel."
Sam spoke up from sitting beside his sister, both looking at the laptop, "Hey, do you mind forwarding these to me?"
"Sure," and with that, the twins got up, and the three Winchester siblings left the Collins' residence.
-Supernatural-
The three siblings are currently sitting at a table in a bar, where they decided to grab something to eat and go over their research gathered so far. Harriet fetches out their father's journal from her bag, and Sam pulls his laptop along with some articles from both, setting everything out on the table.
"So, Blackwater Ridge doesn't get a lot of traffic. Local campers, mostly," Sam began to divulge, as his sister opened the journal, "But still, this past April, two hikers went missing out there. They were never found.
"Any before that?" their older brother questioned with a frown.
Harriet pulled out a newspaper article and passed it to Dean with the following headline reading 'Grizzly Bear Attacks!: Up To Eight Hikers Vanish In Lost Creek Area, Hikers Disappearance Baffle Authorities.'
"Well, in 1982, eight different people all vanished in the same year. Authorities said it was a grizzly attack," Harriet now answered her brother's inquiry as Sam opened up his laptop. To Dean, it was as if they had rehearsed all this beforehand like it was some little play which sometimes he found weird even when they were younger. Maybe it was some twin thing they had. Knowing when to start once the other was finished. Sometimes it also made Dean forget how smart his siblings were, especially when doing the research.
"Also again in 1959 and again before that in 1936," Sam now added, finally getting the video of Tom they had seen earlier of the mysterious, quick-moving shadow that had been in the background now up on the laptop screen Haley sent over,
"It happens every twenty-three years, just like clockwork," the female Winchester carried on from her brother, "Also, take a look at this. Of the video, Sam downloaded of Tommy. You're going to want to see this."
Dean carefully watched the video as Sam skipped it through three frames as Harriet again saw the shadow flitting across the tents behind.
"Do it again," Dean stated.
Getting Sam to repeat those frames, but at a much slower rate which now made the shadow much clearer as Harriet indicated seriously at the screen, "That's in only just three frames."
"That's a fraction of a second," Sam continued in the Sam manner, "Whatever that thing is, it can move."
"Told you something weird was going on," Dean suddenly wallops Sam in the chest.
Harriet rolled her eyes at her eldest brother in disbelief, "Oh, that was real mature."
"Yeah," Sam dismissed as he closed the laptop.
"But also get this," Harriet voiced rather eagerly, wanting to share something else important she had found while researching with Sam. Her brothers looked over, her twin brother offering her a slight smile recalling how smug she had gotten finding this information before her brother, "In '59, one camper survived this supposed grizzly attack," she passed Dean over The Lost Creek Gazette, "Just a kid. Barely crawled out of the woods alive."
"Is there a name?" Dean questioned his sister, green eyes scanning over the article.
"Yeah," Harriet replied with a nod glancing at the notes she'd taken earlier, "A Mr. Shaw. I managed to get his address as well. So maybe we should visit him."
Graphic by Winter326