strangetrip | Check-In November 15

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Check-In November 15

Next week was Thanksgiving, and Caroline's preparations were well under way. She had a list of food, all of the bartenders were working on drinks. There would be entertainment - the new guy, Coby, had said something about performing and she'd heard that he'd played on his balcony over the weekend.

Since it was one of the usual days for check-ins, Caroline had decided to take the opportunity of waiting for arrivals to decorate the lobby. As with every other holiday, the inn had a huge storage room full of decorations, all labeled and packed away for the right season.

Gourds had arrived in the last delivery, so now the pink of the lobby was complimented by the orange and yellows of pumpkins and squash. A cornucopia spilled fake fruit onto the front desk, where the staff kept coming by and rotating one apple a few degrees, as though it would look more real that way. They had lapel pins on, she'd noticed. Well, who said non-real people didn't deserve a little holiday cheer too?

Caroline perched on a ladder and fastened a streamer into the high corner of the roof, and watched the door.

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"We're still working on that." Abby confessed a little sadly. It had been almost a year that she'd been there. She wasn't one of the core first ones that arrived, but she and a lot of the others came not long after them.

"But, I think we're getting closer to figuring it out. There's a couple of times a window of opportunity showed up, where we could visit a different world than this one. We just haven't found the one that leads us back to ours." At least not yet.

Her expression turns more unhappy, lips pressing into a frown. "I can't stay here. I have a family. Children." She felt a sudden rush of panic for her boys and it seemed to intensify more as she tried to remember what had just happened to her.

Mary's shoulders tensed. Something was in the house. She remembered something was in the house.

She looked back to Abby with a more stubborn expression that was not willing to give in to an unfavourable answer. Her voice was more assertive, but there was an urgency there as well. "I need to go back. Now."

"I wish I could help you, I really do, but we can't. There's a barrier all around us. If you walk in any direction, you'll be stopped. I won't tell you not to try, because we all do. Heck I still do, but we can't leave." Abby stopped and thought about what she was about to say. She wanted to give her hope but at the same time, she didn't want her to think it was something that would happen.

"Some people have left, or disappeared. My friend Johnny was one. I hope he went back and not just to another place like this. But it's only happened once." That Abby knew about.

Mary did not like that answer at all. "You don't understand. My family is in danger. My boys are in danger." Mary still couldn't recall exactly what happened before but she knew something was wrong and she had been scared.

Her hand holding the towel bunched up as her mind reeled. There had to be a way. Some spell or something. She hadn't been hunting in so long she wasn't sure she could remember any spells that could be helpful. "I need a knife."

There was a war going on inside Abby right now. Anger and protectiveness battled with wary. Wary was losing because Abby always went with her instincts and her heart. While the woman asked for a knife, Abby was confident that she wouldn't go on a binge of threatening guests or staff with violence.

"That's not right. Not that anyone being taken away to here is right, but it's especially not right for families to be torn apart. And definitely taking a mom away when her kids are in danger is not cool. I promise, and I never break my promises, I promise that I will try to find a way to send you back to your kids. Even if it means I work 24/7 to figure it out."

Abby neatly avoided the topic of the knife.

Mary was still trying to grasp what exactly had happened just before she came here as Abby spoke. Her brow knitted as she concentrated - why was this so hard?

She closed her eyes, going completely still as she focused. Someone was in the house. No. Something. Lights had flickered. Ghost? No, she felt way more scared for her family than a ghost.

An image flashed through her mind. 'Come on, let's say goodnight to your brother'. Dean was always a good big brother. Her lips pressed into a tense small smile that was still filled with foreboding.

Nothing. Nothing more. She hands turned into fists and the towel dropped to the ground as Mary's brow knit further. She murmured a 'come on. come on.'

Sammy had woken up. John was -

Mary's eyes flashed open with newfound urgency mixed with horror while she breathed "Sammy" from her lips.

Abby didn't know what was going on, but it seemed the woman was concerned about a Sammy. She deduced it was likely her son and that was who was in danger. "Sammy?" Abby tried to get her attention on her rather than her thoughts. "Is that your son? The one in danger? Do you have a picture of him? Oh of course you don't. You don't even have pockets. Can you describe him for me? That might help make a connection to get you back."

She hoped that by focusing the woman on Sammy and what he looked like, it would be a good enough distraction to get her not as panicked. She hoped.

Mary blinked. She had almost looked like she was going to cry, but it never surfaced. Her parent's training, though shelved for several years, was still there in the back of her mind.

She glanced over to the woman and took a deep breath, trying to steady herself but the panic insider her chest felt as if it wanted to burst out at any moment. "He..." Her lips pressed together with a little tremble. She couldn't bring herself to talk about Sam out loud at the moment. Her poor baby boy.

Mary told herself to focus. This girl was offering to send her home. "He's my boy. He's... he's just a baby."

Well that answer made Abby's anger rise. An infant?! The power behind this brought a new mom that left the infant behind?!

"Oh it is so on. I am definitely going to find a way back for you now. I know this won't help much, but one of my theories is that time works differently here. I mean since I think we're at a nexus point, whoever took us can send us back to the same time. I've met people that are from the same place but different times and they didn't know the other was missing. So, either time works differently or this is like an astral projection where we're in both places at once and then we go back to our own time"

Mary only understood some of that. She might know stuff about the occult and about monsters, but science-fiction stuff was not something she followed. What she did understand was that this woman was trying to help. She gave a small nod and tried to push away her feelings at the moment. Panic wouldn't help, though it sat there under the surface still. There were still gaps in her memory.

"I'm sorry." She tried to slow her voice and calm down. "I'm here asking for your help, and I don't even know your name." She paused. "I'm Mary."

"It's nice to meet you, Mary. I mean sorry it had to be like this, but it is nice to meet you. Come on, let's get you settled in your room and see if we can find you something to wear. Maybe grab a beer or five." Abby grinned, "One of the perks of being a bartender here."

Mary still wasn't sure where 'here' was, but somehow getting a room felt too final.

"I'd rather... not get my room. Not yet." It didn't feel right. "I know you said you'd help, but... I think I'd like to try to find a way out on my on." She 'd still need a knife for that. "....Could be a spell."

It felt strange to say it out loud after so many years of 'normal.'

"Oh, you're a witch?" Abby filed that information away. "There's a lot of magical people here if you want to pool your resources." She shrugged, "and I get why you want to try on your own. I did, too when I first arrived."

Sometimes you just had to find out for yourself rather than take the word of a stranger. "Whenever you're ready, or if you feel like taking a nap and getting a fresh start with a clear head, you'll have a room here."

Mary's expression looked insulted. "I am not a witch." Her run-in with witches when she had hunted with her parents in the past were not favourable ones.

"But I know how to dispell things. It... U Used to be what my family did."

"Oh you're a Wizard then? Or maybe a Mage? Sorry. I never know what term to use for magical people." Abby assumed that's why Mary had looked insulted at being called a witch. "Wow, that's kind of cool that you come from a family of them."

"No, actually... I take care of Witches and Wizards and Mages." Though she was fairly certain they all referred to themselves as witches in real life. "I'm the opposite of that." She paused. "I'm a hunter. Or I used to be, anyways."

She could picture her father giving her a stern expression at 'outing' herself.

Abby had to re-evaluate the woman in front of her. Her first instincts were usually very good, but Abby didn't like the term hunter. Especially when it was used about other people. She could hear Gibb's voice telling her to go with your gut, Abs. You can read people and you liked her right up until she'd said hunter.

Maybe witches and magical people were bad where she was from and she hunted them like NCIS took care of the bad guys. Abby gave her the benefit of the doubt and tried to reassure her.

"Well, that kind of explains how you're taking this pretty good. I mean considering everything you've gone through. And I swear, you won't have to hunt them here. Magical people are good here."

Mary paused to consider what she had to say. From her experience, there wasn't any good witches, but right now that wasn't her concern. Right now Mary wanted - needed - to get home.

"If they're not the ones responsible for me being here then right now I don't care about them. I just want to get home to my family."

Fifteenth of the month. Check-in day, if anyone was coming. Sam did what he always did: went about his business and made sure to pass by the lobby a few times over the course of the day.

It was the second or maybe third time he'd walked through today when his gaze snagged on Abby talking to a distraught woman half-wrapped in a towel. Something about the woman made his heart flip over and he moved toward them instinctively.

He hadn't made it another two steps when she turned her head and his breath went out of him like he'd been punched in the gut. He had. He knew that woman.

Tongue rolling behind his teeth, Sam approached them. The only word he could get out of his mouth was, "...Mom?"

Abby was about to raise her hand in greeting to Sam but dropped it when she saw the stunned look on his face. It took a moment for the word mom to penetrate her brain. As her gaze ping ponged between Mary and Sam thoughts were tumbling - Mom? Sam? Sammy?

She could feel her jaw drop and she snapped it shut. "Uh, woah. Um. Wow." Sadly, that was all that Abby's brain could produce in a reaction to that stunning revelation. It wasn't the most intelligent conversational bridge, but it was all that she had at the moment.

Mary had no look of recognition as the stranger before her stepped closer and called her mom. Instead her brow knit a bit and she took a small half-step back. "I don't... I don't know who you are."

Gaze never leaving the face he'd only ever seen (that he could remember) in photographs, Sam said, "I've got this, Abs," and then took another step toward his...mother.

"I know you don't," he said as calmly as he could under the circumstances. "You're Mary Campbell Winchester. Your husband's name is John. You live in Lawrence, Kansas. You have a son named Dean, named after your mother Deanna. What was the date before you got here?"

"November 2nd, 1983." She said slowly and quietly while taking in the person in front of her who had called her mom. The more she looked at him, the more something seemed to tug closer to the surface.

"You called me mom."

The day she died.

Sam's throat tried to close down on him, and his voice was thick with emotion when he managed to speak. "Because I was born May 2, 1983. It's me, mom. Sam."

It hit her suddenly and she doubled over for a moment with a grunt as all the memories hit her at once. Waking up, seeing 'John', realizing it's not John, running in and seeing Azazel and trying to stop him from hurting her son.

Mary clutched her stomach as she remembered she was attacked and then thrown up on the wall and then burned. She remembered the feeling. She gasped a little and her eyes opened wide. There was surprise and guilt and regret on her face mixed with a sadness of loss.

It took her a second to gather her voice. "I... I died."

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