Stay With Me (Hold My Hand) ⋆ SPN

8. Six Months

Abby Winchester was pouting at a shitty bar in Chicago.

It was one of those, technically family-friendly because they won't throw a nine-year-old out places, but still not where most parents (or older brothers) would take a kid. Dean had promised Abby a Coke, so Abby was happy enough to sit in a booth with Sam across from her, looking at newspaper clippings.

She was thinking about how Sarah Balcom had just finished her junior year and by this time next year, would be getting ready to go to college. In Haley's last letter, she wrote about how nervous she was about her sister leaving. Abby was thinking about how, even when Sam left, she still had Dean. Abby wasn't sure what she would do if she didn't have either. It wasn't a line of thought she was a fan of pursuing, so she was glad when Dean interrupted it.

"I talked to the bartender." Dean sat down next to Abby and slid the promised drink over to her.

"Get anything other than her number?" Sam asked and Abby raised her eyebrows at Dean.

"Dude, I'm a professional. I'm offended you would think that." Dean paused and started to grin. "All right..." He held up a napkin with a number written on it and Abby rolled her eyes.

"You mind doing a little bit of thinking with your upstairs brain, Dean?" Abby was pretty sure her brothers had had this exact conversation over a dozen times in the past six months.

"There's nothing to find out. Meredith worked here. She waited tables. Everyone here is her friend. Everyone says she's normal. She didn't do or say anything weird before she died."

"Seems like you found out plenty of negatives, which are technically answers." Abby corrected.

Now it was Dean's turn to roll his eyes at Abby. "You've got to stop reading books all the time, you're talking like Sam."

"You're just mad she's right," Sam said. Abby gave Dean a triumphant smile.

"Alright, alright, the nine-year-old's smarter than me. What about that symbol? Did you find out anything?" Dean had found a symbol, or what he thought was a symbol, in the bloodstains on the carpet when he and Sam had gone into some 23-year-old named Meredith's house after she was murdered.

"No, nothing. It wasn't in Dad's journal, or in any of the usual books. I just have to dig a little deeper, I guess." Sam said.

"Well, there was a first victim, right, before Meredith?"

"Right, yeah. His name was, uh.." Sam shuffled through the research laid out on the table in front of them while Abby slurped on her Coke and Dean grinned to himself about the number on the napkin. "His name was Ben Swardstrom. Last month he was found mutilated in his townhouse. Same deal, the door was locked, the alarm was on."

"Any connection between the two of them?"

"Nothing I could tell- yet, at least. Ben was a banker, Meredith was a waitress. They never met, never knew anyone in common. They were practically from different worlds."

"So, to recap, the only successful intel we've scored so far is the bartender's phone number," Dean said.

"I got a Coke," Abby added, glancing across the table at Sam to see his reaction. He didn't hear her though, he was distracted by something across the bar, which Abby couldn't see.

"Sam?" Dean asked as Sam got up and started to move across the bar, towards a target neither of his siblings could detect.

"C'mon," Dean said to Abby, getting out of the booth so she could slide out after him, and grabbing her drink to take with her. Dean held his hands on her shoulders as they followed Sam's retreating back through the bar. Abby hated when she had to actually walk through the bars, everyone was so much taller than her, and she felt like they were going to step on her.