strangetrip | [EP] What a nice surprise

"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.

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That made Molly think and try to work around her frustration tinged with anger. "So the creepy front desk dude has records of ghosts." It was a statement as she was working through her thoughts. "And he has 'checked out'. Okay, when I first arrived I thought that I could access the Nevernever and get out."

Molly let her eyes focus on the bridge of Sam's nose. It looked like she was looking in his eyes, but she wasn't. The last thing she wanted was to have a Soulgaze with Sam. That would freak him the hell out, Molly had no doubts.

"In my world, the Nevernever is sort of like limbo. Not between Heaven and Hell but where supernatural beings exist. You can cut through there and time works differently. Maybe Flash is in the equivalent to that with the hotel. He hasn't left but to grab a Star Trek Next Gen quote, he's out of phase with this reality."

She was pretty sure she was throwing a lot at Sam, but Molly was also very confident that he would pick it up and turn over what she was saying in his mind with what he knew from his world.

"I don't know if he does have a record of ghosts," Sam answered while he turned the rest over in his mind. "I couldn't tell if he thought 'His Ghost' was a name or not, since if you ask any of them about the ghosts, they kind of blink at you and offer you towels.

"Not that it changes anything. I guess Flash could've phase-shifted or something, but if he could do that, why did he wait? And if he didn't do it on purpose, is it going to start happening to other people? Or did he just go home? I mean, if we're ghosts in a machine, AI versions of ourselves or something, blipping out here would just be an ending, maybe."

Of course, he was running off at the mouth, but Dean wasn't showing his face for Sam to bounce theories off. Molly worked. Of course, he was more interested in what she said than the contents of his skull at the moment. "I doubt we're going to figure it out any time soon, so..." He shrugged. "How do you cut through the Nevernever in your world? Maybe it'll give us an idea."

There was only a slight hesitation and it wasn't because of anything Sam did or said, it was more wondering how he'd take it, especially if she talked about walking through people's minds.

"Magic. Like the horror movie characters coming to life that I talked about on my arrival. Only that was through White Court vampires that feed on fear rather than blood." She watched his expression, knowing that he could handle what she'd said, but still curious as to how he'd take reality versus theoretical.

"Right. I figured magic. But is it a spell or is there a portal or what?" Just because Sam didn't know how to do that kind of magic, Henry had come through a portal in time and they all had arrived here somehow. "Because if it's a spell, maybe we can study its effects and try to, I don't know, make it stronger or something."

"It's a spell, sort of. The Sidhe can just open it, like opening a door into our world. I have to use a wand. You travel through it to get somewhere else. Kind of like a wormhole. I mean we don't leave Earth and step onto the Klingon homeworld, but it only takes a few hours walk through the Nevernever to go from Chicago to Scotland. That's why I think this place is connected to it somehow. I was in Chicago and now we're in California, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it." Molly explained as best she could what it was like.

"Okay. Is the Nevernever an actual place? Or is it just a fold in space?" Like a tesseract. Actual shortest distance between two points. "And can you lose or gain time through the Nevernever? Because I don't know what year you're from, but Jack Robinson is from 1929, and my brother's from more than a year before me, and we arrived here within seconds of each other."

"It's an actual place. The Winter and Summer Court of Sidhe live there as well as Wyldfae, those that aren't aligned with either Court. There are others, too but they're the ones closer to the Mortal World in the Nevernever." Molly thought about her time in Actis Tor, not something that she liked to do, but in answer to his question, she had to.

"I'm not sure about losing or gaining time. I know with magic you can travel through time though that's forbidden. I was in the Winter Court for a little bit and it seemed like a long time, but I think that was more the circumstances than reality. Is it possible to pull me from 2012 and your friend from 1929, yeah I wouldn't put it passed the ability of those in the Nevernever at all."

Molly thought back to everything she'd learned about it from her father, Harry and Lea. "The Nevernever also is the 'home' of Heaven, Hell, Elysium, Olympus, Tartarus, and Gehenna. It exists next to our world and the Courts are just the closest to us."

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?"

"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."

"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.

[EP] What a nice surprise

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