Song Remains the Same

Chapter 113: Hunteri Heroici

"Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with."
- Brodi Ashton

Not even a full two minutes after Cas reappeared in the Impala, Dean's phone rang. He didn't seem to recognize the number but he answered nonetheless in a tired, wan tone. He probably thought it was going to be Mrs. Tran again.

"Hello?" His face abruptly registered intense shock not even a second later and his voice shot up a couple octaves. "... James?" Cas and Sam both looked at Dean, who was suddenly panicking a little. "Hey! Uh—yeah, no, I can talk, I can talk," he said, words stumbling out of him like a waterfall as he slammed on the brakes and jerked the car over to the side of the road to a dead stop. "Just hold on a second—" No sooner had he said that than he got out of the car, shut the door, and walked off ahead of the car in a hurry for privacy.

Left alone, Sam and Cas shared a weighted silence for a moment. Sam watched his brother pace back and forth a dozen paces in front of the car and he wondered what he and Jamie were talking about. Dean had definitely had her on his mind lately and had been kicking himself for 'running her off' as he put it. Maybe this would give him closure. Or maybe Jamie wanted back in. Wondering if maybe they were about to add a fourth person to this ragtag group of theirs, Sam glanced back at Cas, who was staring with a very odd, tense expression at Dean. Hesitating, Sam wondered whether or not he should say anything at all. But concern for his friend won out. "You okay, Cas?" he prompted carefully.

Castiel's tortured blue gaze glanced at him briefly before falling away guiltily. "Everyone needs to stop asking me that," he muttered evasively, setting his gaze on the window beside himself. "I'm fine."

A little stung and wondering privately if Cas blamed him in some way for everything that had happened to Alex, Sam nodded stiffly and accepted that Cas didn't want to talk to him. Feeling very alone with his very overwhelming grief and pain, Sam was forced to swallow it down and remain lost in his own sadness and confusion. He again wondered why both he and Dean were turned down when they attempted to sell their souls for her. He wondered why Cas wasn't ripping apart Heaven and earth to find a way to bring her back. He wondered how Dean could be so... fine. Fine wasn't the word. But after initially finding out and actually showing emotion about their sister's death, Dean had withdrawn and compartmentalized and shut down. And Cas was trying to do the same thing. It hurt. It didn't seem right. But who was Sam to judge how someone else handled their grief?

He missed Amelia abruptly. She'd been a comforting presence, or at least a haven from the storm. Most of the time. There had been pain, too... especially toward the end. Sam got more and more dismal as he thought about her. He'd thought he found someone. Finally, finally found someone. But now there was only the empty, lonely feeling again. Funny thing—he'd tried calling her a couple days back (bad impulse decision, maybe) but the Amelia Richardson he found in the online phone book for Kermit, Texas was an elderly woman. He guessed maybe his Amelia wasn't listed in the phone book. Why had he erased her number from his phone? He didn't even remember doing that.

That Evening
Oklahoma City PD

After Dean got off the phone with Jamie, he got back into the car and started driving again like nothing had happened. When Sam asked about the phone call, Dean just said she called to check in and say hi and that she wasn't going to be meeting up with them. He didn't volunteer any more information and obviously didn't want to talk about it—but he had spent about fifteen or twenty minutes on the phone with her and there was clearly more to the story. However, Dean closed the subject and Sam let it go albeit a little jealously—Dean had talked to her on that single phone call more than he'd talked to Sam in the past few days.