Chapter Text
1973 — Lawrence, KS
Dean keeps the shock off his face when a young man walks into the living room carrying two bottles of beer, condensation already beading on the glass. The living room smells like pot roast and something floral—air freshener, maybe, trying to mask the underlying scent of gun oil and old books that no amount of Glade could quite cover. The carpet is burnt orange, the kind that would show every stain, and the furniture is that heavy dark wood everyone seemed to have in the seventies—a console TV in the corner, a coffee table with water rings no one bothered to polish out, a couch with olive green upholstery that's seen better days.
This was different than seeing his mother, different than meeting his grandparents for the first time. The young man was about Dean's height with shaggy black hair that fell past his ears, the kind of carelessly long that came from not bothering with haircuts, not from any deliberate style. He moved with easy confidence, loose-limbed and taking up space without apology. The floorboard creaked under his boots—work boots, scuffed and worn—as he crossed the room. And those eyes. Amber, shot through with gold—the same eyes Dean had seen a thousand times, though never this bright, never this young. Never this unmarked.
"You trust me, Mr. C," the kid says, his voice carrying that distinctive lilt—Irish softened by years in Boston, vowels that couldn't decide which side of the Atlantic they belonged to. The accent was thicker than Dean remembered, unpolished by decades of American hunting. He handed one beer to Samuel with a casual toss, the bottle spinning once before Samuel caught it, and kept the other for himself. Popped the cap on his belt buckle without looking and took a long drink. The smirk on his face was pure teenage bravado, the kind that hadn't been beaten out of him yet. "And I'm a hunter."
Dean watched him, trying to reconcile this loose-limbed kid with the man he'd known. This wasn't the Patrick Dean remembered—the hard, silent man who'd shown up at motels and rented houses throughout Dean's childhood, who barely spoke except to confirm coordinates or share intel. The Patrick who looked at his own daughter like she was a responsibility he hadn't asked for, who'd dump her with John or Bobby and disappear for weeks at a time. Who looked at the world like it had taken everything from him and he was just waiting for it to take the rest. This was a kid. Couldn't be more than seventeen, maybe eighteen. His hands were smooth except for a few fresh nicks and calluses—working hands, but not the scarred hands Dean remembered. His face still had softness to it, the kind of roundness that teenagers have before life carves them down to sinew and bone and sharp edges. Still believed the swagger meant something. Still thought being good with a shotgun made you invincible.
Dean felt something twist in his chest. Somewhere in the future, this kid had a daughter. A daughter he'd look at like she was a burden. A daughter who'd spend her childhood being dropped off at Bobby's or with the Winchesters because her father couldn't stand to be around her for more than a few weeks at a time. What the hell happened between now and then?
"That's different, Patrick," Samuel counters, taking the beer but not drinking it. The older man was bald, early fifties, with the kind of build that came from a lifetime of physical work—broad shoulders, thick forearms, hands that looked like they could crush walnuts. "I knew your dad.” He pointed the bottle at Dean. “Him?" He shook his head. "I don't know anything about."
"Knock it off, Samuel," Deanna's voice came from the dining room, warm but firm. She appeared in the doorway, blonde hair cut short and practical. Dean watched as she set down the last plate with the kind of precise movements that spoke to years of hosting hunters at her table—forks on the left, knives on the right, everything just so even though half the people eating would probably have blood under their fingernails. "He's a hunter."
Samuel scoffed. "So he says."
"Who passed your little pop quiz," Deanna continued, moving into the living room with her hands on her hips, "and now I am inviting him to dinner." She turned to Patrick, her expression softening. "Honey, can you get the extra chair from the basement?"
"No problem, Mrs. C." Patrick was already moving, taking another long drink from his beer as he headed for the basement door. The bottle was already half-empty. He caught Dean's eye as he passed and gave him a slight nod—hunter acknowledging hunter—and Dean caught the smell of cheap beer and teenage boy sweat and something else, some drugstore cologne that was trying way too hard. Dean watched him disappear down the basement steps, heard the scrape and bang of a chair being dragged across concrete. Tried to picture this kid—casually drinking beer in his foster parents' living room, cracking jokes, still soft around the edges—turning into the man who'd barely look at his own daughter.
Deanna moved closer, and Dean found himself looking into the face of the grandmother he'd never known. She held out her hand, and her palm was warm and slightly rough, the hand of someone who cooked and cleaned and probably reloaded her own ammunition at the kitchen table. "Are you hungry?"
"Starving," Dean managed.
"Good." Deanna smiled, the kind of smile that probably made every hunter who walked through her door feel like family, like maybe they had a home after all. "Now wash up. Bathroom's down the hall."
Dean watched her return to the kitchen through the dining room, heard her humming something under her breath—some old hymn, maybe. He looked at Mary, who'd been quiet through the whole exchange, watching him with those careful eyes. From the basement came the sound of something heavy scraping across concrete—Patrick hauling up the extra chair, probably dragging it instead of carrying it because why make two trips? Dean swallowed hard. His grandparents' names were one thing. But sitting at their dinner table with a teenage version of Addison's father, watching him drink beer and crack jokes like the world hadn't broken him yet? Castiel had dropped him into something a lot more complicated than he'd expected.
Dean sat next to Patrick at the dining room table, the chair creaking under his weight as he settled in. The table was meant for four, maybe five if everyone was friendly. Patrick's elbow knocked against Dean's as he reached for his water glass, a casual brush of contact that the kid didn't even notice. Dean noticed. Noticed everything about sitting next to this seventeen-year-old version of a man he'd known as broken and angry. Mary sat across from them, and Deanna and Samuel took their positions at each end like generals commanding their troops. The table was crowded with serving dishes—a platter of pot roast that had been cooked so long it was almost gray, falling apart at the touch of a fork. A bowl of mashed potatoes with real lumps in them, butter pooling yellow in the valleys. Green beans that looked like they'd been boiled into submission, limp and grayish-green. The kind of meal that said family in a way Dean hadn't experienced ever. The heat coming off all those dishes made the small dining room warm, almost stifling, and the smell was overwhelming—beef and butter and something slightly burnt from the bottom of the pot.
Deanna reached over and touched Dean's arm, her hand warm and slightly damp from the kitchen. "First time in Lawrence, Dean?"
"Well, it's been a while." Dean accepted the bowl of potatoes Patrick passed him, their fingers brushing on the ceramic. Patrick's hands were still smooth, the nails clean except for a bit of dirt under one thumbnail. "Things sure have changed…I think.” Patrick snorted into his water glass, his shoulder shaking against Dean's.
"You working a job?" Samuel's voice cut through the pleasantries like a knife, blunt and suspicious. He hadn't touched his food yet, just sat there watching Dean like he was waiting for him to screw up.
Dean met his grandfather's eyes across the table—across the pot roast and the basket of rolls and the serving dish of beans that nobody wanted. "Yeah, maybe."
"What's that mean?"
"It means I don't trust other hunters either, Samuel." Dean scooped potatoes onto his plate with more force than necessary, the spoon scraping against ceramic. A glob of butter slid off and onto the tablecloth. Deanna didn't even blink.
Mary cleared her throat, breaking the tension before it could solidify into something uglier. "Hey, so why were you following me and John?"
Dean looked up at his mother—God, that was still weird—and tried to find words that wouldn't sound insane. "Mmmm, I thought something was after your—uh—um..." He cleared his throat, grabbed his own water glass and took a drink to buy time. The water was lukewarm, had been sitting out too long. "Your boyfriend. But um, I don't think that anymore."
"John Winchester mixing it up with spirits." Deanna shook her head with a fond smile as she passed the green beans to Mary. The bowl was old Corningware, the pattern faded from years of washing. "Can you imagine?"
A loud, deliberate sigh came from Samuel's end of the table. Dean didn't need to look to know it was theatrical, but he looked anyway. Caught his grandfather rolling his eyes like a disapproving father in a sitcom. "I saw that," Mary said, pointing her fork at her father.
"What?" Samuel's expression was pure innocence, but his eyes betrayed him—sharp and unforgiving.
"That sour lemon look."
"Now hold on." Samuel set down his own fork with a clink against his plate. "John's a really, really nice...naïve civilian."
Mary's jaw tightened, her knuckles going white around her knife. "So what? You'd rather me be with a guy like this?" She gestured toward Dean with the knife, and for a second Dean saw the hunter she'd been, the woman who knew how to wield a blade. "Or with Patrick?"
Patrick, who'd been mid-bite, swallowed quickly and pressed his hand over his heart with exaggerated drama. His elbow bumped Dean's again as he shifted in his chair, taking up more space than his frame actually required. The accent thickened, playing it up. "Aye, Mary, you're going after my heart now. But alas, the green grassy hills and barrels of Guinness are calling me back to the homeland.” Dean felt Patrick's whole body shift with the performance, the kid practically vibrating with the energy of his own joke.
"Last time I checked, Patrick, you're from Boston." Mary's lips twitched, fighting a smile despite herself. She stabbed a piece of pot roast with perhaps more force than necessary. "But with the way you act, you could be from another planet."
Patrick opened his mouth—probably to deliver some smartass retort about aliens, Dean could see it forming—but Deanna's voice cracked through the brewing argument like a whip. "That's enough.” The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. Everyone froze. She looked around the table, her gaze landing on each of them in turn. "All of you. We have company."
Patrick shifted in his seat beside Dean, suddenly very interested in his pot roast, cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces. Mary's cheeks flushed slightly, and even Samuel had the grace to look chastened, reaching for the rolls like that had been his plan all along. Dean seized the opportunity to redirect, leaning forward slightly. The table was so crowded his plate nearly knocked into the serving dish. "So, what about you, Samuel? You, uh, working a job?"
"Might be." Samuel cut his meat with precise, controlled movements, each slice exactly the same thickness.
"That's Samuel speak for 'yes.'" Patrick leaned back in his chair with the confidence of someone who'd been translating Campbell-ese for years, his arm draping casually across the back of Dean's chair for just a second before he reached for his beer. He ignored the sharp look Samuel shot him, took a long drink. "He's working a job up at the Whitshire Farm."
"Whitshire." Dean frowned, the name tugging at something in the back of his mind. He pushed his green beans around his plate—they were every bit as sad as they looked. "Why does—why does that sound familiar to me?"
"Well, it's been all over the papers." Samuel gestured with his fork, a piece of pot roast speared on the end. "Tom Whitshire got tangled up in a combine a few towns over."
"That kind of thing happens." Dean kept his voice neutral, but his hunter instincts were already firing. He took a bite of potato—real potato, with the skin still mixed in, butter and salt and a hint of garlic.
"So why was he on it in the first place when his crops are all dead?"
"Demonic omens?"
"That's what I gotta find out."
Dean leaned forward slightly, warming to the topic. His elbow knocked Patrick's water glass, and the kid caught it without looking, steadied it with two fingers. "What about the rest of the town? Well, did you find anything on the web—" He caught himself as every head at the table turned to stare at him. Even Deanna paused with a serving spoon halfway to the green beans. "—of information that you have assembled?” Patrick's eyebrows shot up, and Dean could see him trying not to laugh, his shoulders shaking slightly where they pressed against Dean's. The kid bit his lip, looked down at his plate.
"Electrical storms maybe." Deanna jumped in smoothly. She set the serving spoon down with a soft clink. "The weather service graphs should be here on Friday."
"By mail?" The words were out before Dean could stop them.
"No, there's little magical fairies that instantly bring them after you request them." Patrick's voice dripped with sarcasm, but his eyes were bright with amusement, that amber catching the light from the overhead fixture. He took a swig of his beer—his second, Dean noticed—and the bottle was already half-empty again.
Dean couldn't help it—he laughed. The sound surprised him, genuine and unguarded, and Patrick's grin widened, pleased with himself. Sitting here with his family, with a teenage Patrick cracking wise like the world hadn't broken him yet, beer in hand and that cocky tilt to his head…for just a second, it almost felt normal. Like maybe Dean belonged at this crowded table with its overcooked pot roast and burnt orange carpet and the grandmother he'd never known asking if anyone wanted more rolls. He cleared his throat, getting back to business. "You know, it sounds to me like we might be hunting the same thing. If we go in there in numbers, we could take care of this thing real quick." He directed this at Samuel, hopeful.
His grandfather's face hardened into stone, every line deepening. "What part of 'we work alone' do you not understand, son?"
The word son hung in the air, heavy between them. Patrick went still beside Dean, and Mary's fork stopped halfway to her mouth. Even Deanna seemed to be holding her breath. Dean swallowed hard, his throat suddenly tight. If Samuel only knew.
Seventeen-year-old Patrick Liam Sloan was sitting at the desk in his small bedroom, hunched over a notebook with a pencil in hand. A pair of headphones covered his ears, the cord snaking down to an eight-track player perched on the corner of the desk—the plastic casing was that distinctive seventies brown, and Dean could hear the faint mechanical whir of the tape inside, that slight hitch and click when it switched tracks. The music was loud enough that Dean could hear the tiny leak of sound from the doorway, tinny piano and soaring vocals. The room was small—barely bigger than a closet, really. Maybe eight by ten feet. A twin bed shoved against one wall with a thin blue bedspread that had probably come with the room. A dresser with a cracked mirror, the silvering coming off in the corners. And the desk Patrick occupied, a cheap particleboard thing that wobbled when he shifted his weight. The whole space felt temporary, like Patrick was camping out rather than living here. Like he was ready to pack up and disappear at any moment.
Old lore books were stacked on the floor next to a duffel bag that looked like it had seen better days—canvas worn soft at the edges, one strap repaired with duct tape. A few pictures were tacked to the wall above the bed: a dark-haired woman who must've been his mother, pretty in that old photograph way, her smile wide and genuine. A stern-looking man in flannel and jeans—his father, probably—holding a shotgun and squinting at the camera like he didn't have time for pictures. And one of Patrick with Mary, both of them younger, maybe thirteen and fifteen, making faces at the camera. Patrick was all elbows and knees in that photo, before he'd grown into his frame. The room smelled like teenage boy—sweat and cheap cologne, that drugstore Brut or Old Spice that every guy seemed to wear, applied with too heavy a hand. Underneath it was the mustiness of old book pages, the faint ghost of mothballs from whatever had been stored in here before Patrick moved in.
Dean knocked on the doorframe. Patrick turned, pulling the headphones down around his neck. His amber eyes were guarded—the easy cockiness from dinner had faded into something more careful, more wary. "Yeah?"
"What are you listening to?" Dean stepped into the room, uninvited but curious. The floor creaked under his weight—everything in this house creaked. Patrick hesitated, then pulled the headphones off completely and held them out. Dean took them, the foam pads still warm from Patrick's ears, and pressed one speaker to his own ear. The music filled his head—piano, layered and rich, and then that voice, high and clear. Hold me closer, tiny dancer. Count the headlights on the highway. Dean listened for a few seconds, caught in it despite himself, then handed them back. "Elton John?"
"Hey, Elton is awesome." Patrick's defense was immediate, almost defensive, as he turned back to his homework. The headphones went back around his neck, forgotten. Math, from the look of the equations scattered across the page. Algebra, maybe geometry. The kind of homework that felt pointless when you were pretty sure you weren't going to live long enough to use it. "Don't knock it."
Dean moved further into the room, hands in his pockets. There wasn't much space—three steps and he was at the desk. "How do you know, uh, the Campbells?"
"My dad was friends with Samuel." Patrick's pencil kept moving across the page, scratch of graphite on paper, but his shoulders had tensed slightly. The loose, easy posture from dinner was gone. He was making himself smaller, hunched over the desk like he was trying to disappear into the homework.
Dean nodded, processing. Watching the way Patrick's hand moved, forming numbers with the careful precision of someone who'd been taught penmanship by nuns or strict teachers. "And your dad dropped you off..."
He trailed off when Patrick's head whipped around, amber eyes sharp and suddenly cold. The expression was familiar—defensive, wounded, a warning to back the fuck off. Dean had seen it before, years from now, on a man who looked at the world like it was nothing but teeth and claws. Dean forced a smile, raising his hands slightly in surrender.
"My dad died three years ago." Patrick's voice went soft, each word carefully controlled, stripped of emotion. Flat. "A wendigo got him.” He stared at Dean for a moment longer, and Dean could see it—the fourteen-year-old kid wandering through the woods, calling for his father, finding...
Dean knew what wendigos left behind. The way they hung their victims. What they did to the bodies. The sounds, probably, that Patrick heard before he found him. The smell.
Patrick turned back to his homework, but his pencil had stopped moving. His hand was shaking, just slightly. He gripped the pencil harder, knuckles going white. "And my mom died in a car accident when I was five. Do you need more of my life story?"
The words hung in the air, heavy with grief that was still raw despite three years passing. Dean could hear it—the crack in Patrick's voice underneath the control, the way he was gripping that pencil like it was the only thing keeping him anchored. Could picture it too: a fifteen-year-old kid wandering through the Minnesota woods, searching for his father. Maybe calling for him at first, voice getting hoarse and desperate. Then finding what was left. Christ. No wonder the adult Patrick had looked at the world like it was nothing but teeth and claws waiting to tear into you.
"I'm good." Dean cleared his throat, suddenly wanting to be anywhere else. The room felt even smaller now, suffocating. "Where's Mary?"
"Probably downstairs in the den." Patrick didn't look up. Picked up an eraser and rubbed at something on the page, too hard, leaving a smudge.
Dean turned to leave, grateful for the escape, but something in the trash can caught his eye. An envelope, the distinctive crimson and blue of the University of Kansas logo visible even crumpled at the bottom, half-buried under wadded notebook paper and a candy bar wrapper. He pulled it out before he could think better of it, smoothed it slightly with his thumb. The paper was heavy, official. Still sealed. "You're going to college?"
Patrick's shoulders hunched, his whole body going rigid. "That's something the guidance counselor made me do." He finally set down the pencil and turned in his chair, the metal legs scraping against the floor. "I don't know what I want to do, but I'd like to go back home. To Ireland."
"Ireland." Dean looked at the envelope again—unopened, rejected before it even had a chance. Before Patrick even knew what it said. The weight of it felt significant in his hand. "You remember it?"
"Some." Patrick's voice softened, the defensive edge fading into something more wistful, younger. His eyes went distant, unfocused. "I remember green. Everything was so green. And the smell—rain and peat smoke and the sea. And my mam—“ He stopped himself, jaw tightening. The distance in his eyes shuttered closed. "It doesn't matter. Can't exactly hunt from a classroom, can I? And that's what I know how to do."
Dean looked at this kid—seventeen, orphaned twice, living in someone else's converted closet with his dead parents' pictures on the wall, convinced his only option was to follow his father into a life that had already taken everything from him. Convinced that wanting anything else was stupid, pointless. That college acceptance letters belonged in the trash with the candy wrappers and the failed math homework. He thought about Addison. About the woman she'd become, growing up with a father who'd given up before he even started. Who'd looked at college acceptance letters like they were meant for someone else. Who'd dump her at Bobby's or with the Winchesters and disappear because he couldn't stand to look at the life he'd created, the responsibility he hadn't asked for. "Your dad would want you to go," Dean said quietly.
Patrick's laugh was bitter, too old for his face. Too knowing. "My dad wanted me to be a hunter. That's what Sloans do. That's all we're good for."
"That's bullshit."
"Is it?" Patrick stood up, and for a moment Dean saw a flash of the man he'd become—angry, hurting, lashing out at anything that got too close. The chair scraped back, hit the bed frame. "Look around, Dean. You think any of us get happy endings? Samuel's been hunting since before I was born. My dad died with his guts torn out in the fucking woods—" His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard, forced it back under control. “Your—" He stopped himself, something flickering in his expression. Caught himself before he said something he couldn't take back. "Hunters don't get to have normal lives," Patrick continued, quieter now, but no less certain. He crossed his arms over his chest, defensive. "We don't get college and careers and white picket fences. We get blood and salt and burning things that go bump in the night until something bigger and meaner takes us out. That's the deal. That's how it works."
Dean wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him he was wrong. But he couldn't. Because Patrick was right. At least about how it usually went. How it had gone for John. For Samuel. For Patrick's father, hung up in those woods. For most hunters Dean had ever known. "So what, you're just gonna give up?" Dean asked instead. "Not even try?"
Patrick sat back down, turning away. His shoulders were hunched again, making himself small. "I'm being realistic."
Dean looked at the acceptance letter in his hand one more time—that heavy paper, that crimson and blue logo that represented something Patrick had already decided he didn't deserve. Then he set it on the desk beside Patrick's homework, right on top of the half-finished equations. Right where Patrick couldn't ignore it. "You've got until fall to decide," Dean said. "That's months away. A lot can happen in months."
Patrick didn't respond, just put his headphones back on and picked up his pencil. But Dean saw him glance at the envelope, just once, before bending back over his homework. Dean left him there, surrounded by his small room and smaller dreams, the eight-track player clicking to the next track, and wondered what the hell happened between now and the broken man who'd barely look at his own daughter. Who'd teach her to shoot and hunt and survive, but never how to hope for anything better. The man who'd look at her college acceptance letters the same way.
Patrick stares in disbelief as the body of Deanna Campbell is wheeled out of the house on a gurney, the white sheet covering her form small and still. Too small. He keeps thinking that—she looks too small under that sheet, like she's shrunk, like death made her less somehow. Red and blue lights wash over the lawn in nauseating waves, painting everything in alternating shades of emergency. The colors hurt his eyes. Make everything feel unreal, like he's watching this happen to someone else. Neighbors cluster on the sidewalk in their bathrobes and slippers, whispering behind their hands, and Patrick can feel their eyes on him. The poor orphan boy. Again. He stands on the porch, arms wrapped around himself even though it's not cold—May in Kansas, the air thick and humid—watching the paramedics load his foster mother into the back of the ambulance. Because that's what she'd been, really, even if the papers never said so. Even if she'd never formally adopted him. She'd been more of a mother in three years than anyone had been since his mam died.
And now she's gone too.
He never expected this. Not tonight. Not after staying late at the library arguing with Tommy and Rick about whether Kirk or Spock was the better officer, about warp drive physics and whether the Federation's Prime Directive made any goddamn sense. Laughing so hard Tommy snorted Coke out his nose. Debating whether Khan was actually the villain or if Kirk was for marooning him in the first place. Patrick had been the last one to leave, still grinning about Rick's terrible Shatner impression, thinking about nothing more serious than whether he'd have time to finish his English essay before Monday.
Then he'd opened the door.
The smell hit him first—copper and meat and something burning. His brain couldn't process it for a second, couldn't make sense of those smells in Deanna's kitchen. Then he saw her. On the floor. Sprawled on the yellow linoleum in front of the sink. Blood pooled around her, so much blood, dark and spreading toward the baseboards. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. One hand stretched toward the phone on the wall like she'd been trying to reach it. The other was clutched against her stomach, where her shirt was soaked black-red. Patrick had dropped the book. Heard it hit the floor with a slap that seemed impossibly loud. "Mrs. C?"
His voice cracked on her name. He took a step forward, then another, his sneakers sticking slightly to the linoleum. Not blood yet. Something else. Spilled water, maybe, from when she fell. The smell of burning was stronger now—something on the stove, a pot of soup or stew boiling over, scorching on the burner.
"Mrs. C?" Louder now, desperate, even though he could see she wasn't breathing. Could see that she was gone, had been gone for a while probably, the blood already starting to darken at the edges. He'd knelt beside her anyway. Pressed his shaking fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse he knew wouldn't be there. Her skin was still warm. That made it worse somehow. Still warm but completely empty, like a house with all the lights off.
Patrick had backed away then, stumbling, his hand coming away red. Reached for the phone with blood-slick fingers and dialed the operator. Gave the address in a voice that didn't sound like his own. Flat. Mechanical. Like he was reading from a script. Then he'd stood there in the kitchen doorway—couldn't make himself go in, couldn't step in all that blood—and waited for the sirens. He'd stood there for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, just staring at that book and not thinking about anything at all.
Now the cops are finishing their interviews, their questions perfunctory and useless. Did you see anything? Hear anything? When did you get home? Patrick answered on autopilot, gave them nothing useful because he had nothing to give. The detective—Thomas, his name was—keeps looking at him with this expression that's probably meant to be sympathetic but just makes Patrick want to put his fist through something.
A car pulls up at the curb—John's Impala, the '67 he just purchased, black paint gleaming under the streetlights and those nauseating red-blue pulses. Patrick turns to see Mary climb out of the passenger side, John close behind her. Even from this distance, even in the flickering emergency lights, Patrick can see it on her face. The hollow look in her eyes. The way she moves like she's underwater, like her body is too heavy and the air is too thick.
Someone else died. Samuel.
She doesn't have to say it. Patrick can see it in the way John has his hand at the small of her back, guiding her like she might collapse. In the careful blankness of her expression—the same blank Patrick's been wearing for the past hour, the same mask that drops over your face when your brain can't process what just happened so it just…stops trying. Mary walks up the path slowly. Stops at the bottom of the porch steps and looks up at him. Her eyes are red-rimmed but dry. Cried out, probably. Or maybe in shock. Patrick doesn't know. Doesn't know what to say. What do you say when you've both just lost everything in one night?
"Samuel?" he asks anyway, even though he already knows. Mary nods once. Doesn't elaborate. Doesn't need to. John stays back by the car, giving them space. Smart. This isn't his grief. Not yet. The cops finally clear out around midnight, leaving behind only crime scene tape and the coppery smell of blood that seems to have seeped into the walls, into Patrick's clothes, into his lungs. He'll smell it for days. Weeks, probably. The kind of smell you can't wash off.
Patrick is in his room—was his room—shoving clothes into his duffel bag when Mary appears in the doorway. She's still wearing the clothes she'd worn that day, but there's a smear of something dark on her jeans. Blood, probably. Her father's blood. Her eyes are red-rimmed but dry, all cried out.
"What are you doing?" Her voice is hoarse, scraped raw.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Patrick doesn't look up, just keeps shoving T-shirts and jeans into the bag with barely controlled violence. His hands are shaking. Have been shaking since he knelt beside Deanna's body in the kitchen. He can still feel the warmth of her skin on his fingertips. Still see her eyes staring at nothing.
"That you're getting ready to go out and do something that's going to get you killed.”
Patrick stills, a flannel shirt bunched in his fists. His shoulders hunch. He wants to argue. Wants to tell her she's wrong. But he can't, because she's not wrong. He was halfway to loading a shotgun before he realized he didn't even know what he was hunting. Demon, probably. Maybe. Could be anything.
Mary steps into the room and closes the door behind her, leaning back against it. "I'm staying with John," she says quietly. "And he said that you're welcome to stay too."
Patrick's hands tighten on the flannel. Unsaid: because you've got nowhere else to go. Because every hunter Patrick knows barely tolerates him because he's seventeen and cocky and Samuel's charity case. Because legally, he's a minor for another three months, and if he doesn't have somewhere to stay, someone to vouch for him, the state will come asking questions. Foster care. Juvie, maybe, if they dig into his record and find all the fake documents and forged signatures that kept him in school while he and his dad traveled.
"I'm tired of losing people." His voice cracks on the last word, and he hates himself for it. Hates the weakness, hates the grief that keeps taking and taking until there's nothing left. His da. His mam before that. Now Deanna. Samuel. Everyone who ever tried to give him something resembling a home.
"Me too, Patrick." Mary's voice is soft but firm, and when he finally turns to look at her, he sees that hollow look is still there. Like someone carved out her insides and left just the shell. "I'm done with the job. I'm going to live a safe, normal life with John. This job—” She stops, swallows hard. Her hand goes to her throat like she's trying to hold something back—words, tears, a scream, Patrick doesn't know. "This job takes away people we love. I've lost both my parents now. You've lost your dad. And I don't know about you, but that's too many people for me."
Patrick remains silent, staring down at the duffel bag. At the life he's shoving into canvas and zippers. Three years with the Campbells. Three years of Deanna making sure he did his homework and ate vegetables and had clean clothes. Of her humming while she cooked dinner, calling him "honey" like he was actually hers. Of Samuel teaching him to shoot better, to track more efficiently, to think like a hunter even while grumbling about teenagers and their smart mouths. Of Mary treating him like the annoying little brother she never asked for but got anyway, rolling her eyes at his jokes but always laughing eventually. All gone now. Just like his mam. Just like his da.
"You, uh..." He clears his throat, tries again. His voice sounds strange—flat, empty. "You don't think John would have a problem with me staying with you guys until my birthday, do you?” He finally looks up at her, and he knows his eyes are too bright, too desperate. Knows he looks exactly like what he is—a seventeen-year-old kid with nowhere to go, begging for scraps. "It'd make things easier. Less questions asked, you know."
Because the authorities would have questions otherwise. An orphaned seventeen-year-old with no legal guardian, no family, nowhere to go. They'd come with their clipboards and their concerned faces and their questions about his schooling, his records, his father. They'd find the gaps. The forged signatures. The fake addresses. The months-long absences explained away with lies. Foster care, probably. Or worse—they'd dig deeper, find out Patrick Liam Sloan barely existed on paper, that half his documentation was fraudulent. That he and his father had been living off the grid for years.
Mary's smile is soft and sad, and it makes her look older. Makes her look like someone who's already buried too many people. "It's not a problem."
Patrick nods, then goes back to packing. His hands have stopped shaking, but they feel numb now. Distant. Like they belong to someone else. Like all of him belongs to someone else and he's just watching from far away, seeing this kid shoving clothes into a duffel bag, leaving behind another home he'll never see again.
"Patrick." Mary's voice makes him pause, his hand hovering over the dresser. "I mean it. About being done. No more hunting. We're going to be normal."
He wants to believe her. Wants to believe that they can just walk away from this life, that it's as simple as deciding to stop. That you can wash the blood off your hands and pretend you never learned what's out there in the dark, waiting. But he's seen too much. Lost too much. And sitting on the desk, right where Dean left it, is the University of Kansas acceptance letter. Still unopened. Still sealed. Definitively irrelevant now. "Yeah," he says anyway, because she needs to hear it. Because she needs to believe it, even if he can't. "Normal sounds good."
Mary lingers in the doorway for another moment, then leaves him to finish packing. Patrick can hear her footsteps on the stairs, the low murmur of her voice talking to John in the kitchen. Making plans, probably. Figuring out logistics. Patrick zips up the duffel bag and takes one last look around the room. At the pictures on the wall—his mam, his da, Mary. At the University of Kansas acceptance letter still sitting on his desk, unopened and irrelevant. At the eight-track player and the headphones and the half-finished homework he'll never turn in. The equations will never be solved. The English essay will never be written. He turns off the light and doesn't look back.
Downstairs, John is talking quietly with Mary in the kitchen. Making plans, probably. Figuring out logistics—where Patrick will sleep, what they'll tell people, how to handle three traumatized people trying to pretend they're okay. Patrick walks past them and out to the porch, where the crime scene tape still flutters in the night breeze. Yellow plastic, garish against Deanna's carefully tended flower beds. The house is quiet now. No more laughter from the kitchen. No more arguments about hunting tactics at the dinner table. No more Deanna calling him "honey" or Samuel grudgingly teaching him a new trick with holy water or Mary rolling her eyes at his jokes. Just silence and blood and ghosts.
Patrick sits down on the porch steps, his duffel bag beside him, and stares out at the street. At the neighbors' houses with their windows dark, everyone back in bed now that the excitement's over. At the empty street where the ambulance was, where they took Deanna away in a bag. He's good at this now. Waiting. Surviving. Packing up and moving on because there's nothing else to do. It's all he knows how to do.
Somewhere in the house behind him, Mary is crying. Soft, broken sounds she's trying to muffle. John's voice, low and soothing, trying to comfort her. The sound of the refrigerator humming. Normal house sounds, like this is a normal night. Patrick pulls his knees up, wraps his arms around them, and waits for whatever comes next. In three months, he'll be eighteen. Legal. Old enough that no one can make him do anything.