The Year of Redemption

Chapter 31: Lonely Too Long

The next few weeks seemed eerily reminiscent of Dean's old road trips with Sammy. Dean followed leads that took him across the country, once to Tennessee, another time to Arkansas, and then all the way to Wyoming. He tracked ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, skinwalkers, and werewolves. He ruthlessly beheaded or staked or torched or blew their brains out, then he moved on to the next job.

Except Sammy wasn't there. No one was. It was just Dean and his Impala, cross-country with his arsenal of weapons and traps, saving people and killing things.

The family business.

But it wasn't actually the same at all. He didn't get satisfaction out of it. Even when he saved someone just before they had their guts ripped out or their throats slit by some creature of the night, he still felt hollow. In truth, he was lonely. He felt more alone than he ever had before. It was the worst kind of torture. He hated it, but it was the way things were – it was the way things had to be.

Perhaps that's why he decided to talk to her. He'd had almost no social interaction with people outside of the occasional sheriff or FBI agent or aggrieved family member or mortician. He went to plenty of bars, but he usually opted to drown in alcohol alone at some corner table, only saying enough words to give his order to the barkeep.

He was on a case in some border city in Indiana. Just your run-of-the-mill string of murders. Just your everyday run-down dive bar.

She was sitting at a corner table too, across the room. She seemed to be alone, a beer beside a newspaper that was splayed across the table in front of her. Dean walked over.

She wore cowboy boots over her dark blue skinny jeans and a purple plaid button-down shirt. The shirt hung open over a white tank top that was tucked in at the waist, showing off a brown belt to match her boots. She had dirty brown, wavy hair that kept falling in front of her face as she read the newspaper. She continually had to brush strands of it back and behind her ear. She seemed homey, comfortable – but also knowing and perceptive, somehow.

As he approached, Dean could tell there was a story behind her dark brown eyes. He had no idea why he was entranced by this stranger, but he walked over anyways. She didn't look up when he arrived beside her table, and she appeared startled when he cleared his throat right next to her. She narrowed her eyes at him, as if studying his face. "Hello," she greeted in a somewhat surprised voice, throwing him a friendly smile.

"May I?" Dean asked, gesturing to the empty chair opposite her. He scanned the newspaper article she had been reading. It was the same one he had been scouring for omens just a couple of hours ago.

"Sure," she shrugged. "I always let random strangers sit with me."

Dean sat down, smiling slightly at her sarcasm. "Strange, the murders that are happening around town," he said, motioning to the paper.

"You know what," she replied, closing the paper. "Let's talk about something else." She took a sip of her beer and eyed Dean. "You seem like you're into cars. Chevy or Ford?"

Dean was caught off guard by the sudden change in topic – and by her ability to read him so well. Still, he wouldn't miss a chance to talk about his baby. "'67 Chevy Impala," he shot back swiftly.

"Ooh, sexy," she replied. "'88 Chevy pickup," she shot back. "Fixed it up one or two times, but still runs like a charm." She grinned.

Dean liked the way this conversation was going. "You should've seem my Impala at one point. I had to redo the whole body, the whole frame, everything. Totally totaled it. Took me weeks, but I fixed her up good."

She nodded as he talked, a look of understanding in her eyes. "And everyone probably said, 'what an idiot, why don't you just get a whole new car?' But it's just not the same, you know?"