[EP] What a nice surprise

[st_andingtall]

"Eugene Thompson," repeated the Innkeeper, when Sam finally broke down and stopped searching for the wheelchair guy to ask. "One moment, please. Do you need any--"

"No. I have plenty of towels." What the heck was it with the towels, anyway? Sam shifted his weight to his other foot and tried not to screw up his face too much. The guy was just doing his job. Even if that was literally all he could do. "Um, but thanks."

"You're welcome." The Innkeeper did something that was probably smile, but Sam couldn't have described it, or his face for the life of him. "Ah, yes." He tapped a finger against the rounded black monitor screen that was as almost as old as Sam. "Mr. Thompson has checked out."

"Huh?" Sam's felt the surprise overtake his face and he had to work hard to plant his hands at the edge of the counter instead of reaching across to grab the guy by the collar. "I thought you said we couldn't leave."

"That is correct."

"But Flash--"

"Flash Thompson has checked out."

"How does that even make--" Never mind. The lyrics of Hotel California came to him. "So, you're saying he's dead and I should look for his ghost?"

"I have no record of His Ghost."

Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Okay, yeah. Thanks."

After he'd stalked away from the front desk, Sam dropped into one of the round red leather booths in the Copper Cafe and pulled out his cell...which was absolutely fucking useless and he still forgot half the time. "Great. The Innkeeper's useless. Flash has 'checked out'. And I can't text anyone to tell them about it."

Oh yeah. Life in the days before instantaneous communication sucked. And blew.

Comments

[st_arkcrowblack]

"Thank you," Snow said very softly. And for a time she didn't say anything at all. It wasn't exactly an easy, companionable silence, but it wasn't an uneasy one, either. After a time, though, she did stop eating to ask, "What d'you think happened to him?"

[st_andingtall]

Sam didn't mind being quiet and eating. At least with Snow, not-talking wasn't Not Talking. It was just Snow being Snow. Turned out, too, that when she finally did speak up, it was on a subject he'd been pushing around in his brain.

"I don't know," Sam told her honestly, while pushing at his salad with his fork. He shrugged and lifted his gaze from his plate. "Could be he just went back where he came from. Or somewhere else like this. I'm gonna keep looking, but so far it doesn't seem like we're gonna find anything to say otherwise."

[st_andingtall]

Sam nodded his understanding but stayed quiet for a few minutes, turning it over in his head. He'd need to talk to Dean and Henry to see what they knew about Elysium, Olympus, and the others. Hell, he knew, was its own place in his world.

"I don't think they're all connected in my world. But I'm not sure that matters. It depends on whether the spell to open the way to the Nevernever works because of the will of the caster or because of some property of the Nevernever. Have you tried it here, yet?"

[st_eampunk]

"As soon as I arrived." Molly nodded with a grimace. "There are only so many week points in it and you have to know where they are. I assumed. which was probably stupid on my part, that where I arrived was a weak point since I came through it. But, I'm determined to find it here." She smiled slightly, "I've been told I'm stubborn. I go out every day and in different areas around the hotel and try to cut into the Nevernever. One of those times, it'll work."

[st_andingtall]

"Why didn't you heal yourself?" was Sam's immediate question. If he could, it seemed like he should have. But if you had to to draw on the power of your own soul, "Is it not possible to perform magic directly on yourself?" Of course, Henry had asked him a question. "Yeah, I'm good at languages. I have a couple of them. And, uh, I might have a leg up on the tapping into my own soul thing... it's kind of complicated, and we probably shouldn't talk about it here."

It was weird to be so open about what he knew, was capable of, and wanted, especially with another Winchester. But it felt pretty good, too, because for once, the stuff someone wanted him to do was the stuff he was actually good at.

[st_andingtall]

"So, if you disappear, I'll know what happened." The corner of his mouth quirked up, almost a smile, but not really. "Don't expect me to take that for granted or to stop looking." He'd spent the better part of two days looking for some guy he didn't know. If Molly disappeared, it would be a long time before he gave up on her.

[st_udious]

"I didn't have any supplies on me for a basic healing and after...after everything I'd been through before I arrived here, if I'd tried to tap into my soul again, it would've killed me," Henry said quietly, more sheepishly than he'd otherwise have liked. "And not to sound too melodramatic, but at that point it felt like perhaps...perhaps I'd earned a bit of physical pain."

Henry cleared his throat. "I'm willing to listen to whatever you have to say whenever you're ready to say it and wherever you feel we might need to have that conversation." He was pretty sure that nothing his grandsons said could surprise him at this point.

[st_ableandbar]

Not just similar world then, but roughly the same time period, if they could share all three of those musical references. And relatively quick on word play, although Hotel California had probably been on the minds of most who'd heard it before, now they were all stuck here. Definitely the kind of guy worth keeping an eye on.

"What about you? Other than investigating things most of us didn't have cause to think about 'fore comin' here, what's your thing?"

[st_arkcrowblack]

"I wanna go home," Snow whispered. And then she jumped, surprised as though she both couldn't believe she'd said such a thing--for a variety of reasons--and then fear as though she expected to be punished somehow for saying it.

[st_andingtall]

She looked so scared, Sam almost wanted to look to see if there was anyone behind him. He didn't tell her it was okay, because none of this was okay and she didn't need him to patronize her. Instead, he asked quietly, "Where's home?"

[st_andingtall]

Sam screwed up his face at Henry saying he deserved a little bit. It sounded like Dean saying a year was a good deal for his life. Since he didn't know Henry well enough to argue with that, he just let it go. Besides, there was the other topic, which was a lot more fraught.

"Uh, yeah. Maybe not today. Nothing about you, but I'd rather you and Dean were on speaking terms before I opening the family bone closet."

[st_arkcrowblack]

"Gotham," Snow mumbled with an awkward, one shouldered shrug. Fear faded and embarrassment flooded in, leaving her face a bright pink.

[st_andingtall]

"Investigating things most of us didn't have cause to think about," Sam replied, a hint of bitterness in it. "Didn't leave much time for anything else. I guess... law school was gonna be my thing, but the investigating got in the way."

Used to be hard to admit that, one of those things he held close, but it had stopped mattering after Azazel. Mostly.

[st_andingtall]

"Steph's Gotham?" Sam couldn't help asking. The two women didn't seem to know each other when they got here, but living in a big city, they could easily not have met.

[st_ableandbar]

Lindsey didn't know the guy at all enough to say how well he would've done in law school, or in practice, although since he said 'law school' and not 'the law,' Lindsey was inferring he'd been in undergrad when the investigating got in the way.

"Law school, huh? I worked in the mail room of a law firm for awhile, a few years back. To a one, those lawyers were self-involved, egotistical assholes, some of 'em flat out evil. The kind that prove all the jokes true. But I guess somebody's gotta do it."

[st_arkcrowblack]

Snow White could only shrug at that. "I think we're talkin' 'bout the same city. Same version or year, though? No clue." She took a breath before she went on, like stringing so many words together was work, and for her it probably was to some degree. "Not from there, originally. Got dragged there from 1878. I was somewhere in Montana, at the time."

[st_andingtall]

That was more words from Snow than Sam thought he'd ever heard, not just at once, but all together. So when he'd finished his bite of salad, he asked kindly, "How long were you in Gotham before here?"

[st_andingtall]

Sam shrugged and bit back the wave of irritation that set his tongue rolling behind his teeth. "Investigating things most people don't know about means learning about a lot of people not being as guilty as they look, and some being a lot guiltier. The law doesn't deal with supernatural shit, so sometimes the people who do--" Like his brother and him. "Need lawyers."

He wasn't sure what kind of law he'd planned to practice, because being normal had a strong appeal. Back then it had. Now, he figured there were other, better reasons for him to be a lawyer...not that he expected it would ever happen.

[st_arkcrowblack]

"'Bout two years." Had it really been so short a time? When Snow thought of her time with Regina and Bear and Sissy and Roy and everyone else, it seemed so much longer, more vivid and colorful than the seventeen years that came before.

[st_andingtall]

"Longer than I've lived almost anywhere." Stanford had been the one exception. But it couldn't be home. Not anymore. Not with Jess dead. But it had been before that. And for someone like Snow who seemed to have been so badly abused--Montana, 1873, and at least part Indian almost guaranteed it, whether she'd been residential schooled or not--two years somewhere with people who treated her well, two years would be a lifetime. "Long enough to make a home. Did you have people, family, there?"

[st_arkcrowblack]

Snow froze. Nodded. Turned back to her food.

[st_andingtall]

He'd heard the expression a deer caught in headlights his entire life, but this was the first time he'd seen the genesis of it. If her eyes were any more frozen, if any of her was, she'd ice over.

Poor kid.

"I get it. I won't ask anymore if you don't want to talk about it. But if you want to, or want to tell me their names so I'll know if they get here, I'll listen."

[st_ableandbar]

"So that coulda been you, huh? Lawyer to the weirdos and monsters and things that go bump in the night." Kindred spirit? Like minds? Too soon to tell, but everything he learned made Lindsey determined to learn more. If Winchester was any good, Wolfram & Hart would've grabbed him up in a heartbeat. How he'd have done there, that was a different question.

"D'you get around to takin' the, uh, the LSAT things?"

[st_arkcrowblack]

Snow went quiet again, for a long enough time that it probably seemed she wouldn't speak again at all. "Bear was the first Indian I ever met," she said in a little whisper.

[st_andingtall]

Sam had already suspected that McDonald wasn't on the level. He couldn't put a finger on it, exactly; he just knew the guy was more than he appeared. And the way he asked, something about the "uh" seemed forced, like he wouldn't normally say it. Yeah, people had lots of reasons to hide who they were, but it made Sam a little cagey. Either that or he wasn't as okay with talking about not going to law school as he thought.

"Yeah. I did," he answered. "Why?"