varadia | Birthday fic for Aspen! (I know, I don't believe I wrote fanfic either!)

Dad didn’t do much consulting anymore—he hadn’t in a long while, not since the hospital. Jordan didn’t like to think of that much. It was too weird, imagining Dad on the inside of one of those places, stuck with the crazy people, especially when he wasn’t crazy at all. Well. No crazier than her, at least. And he’d always get this really still look on his face if she ever suggested there was something wrong with her, so obviously there wasn’t anything wrong with him, either.

One day he’d believe her when she told him that. But right now she was sitting in a window booth at the diner, picking at her burger and fries and waiting for Dad to come back from his not-quite-furtive enough phone conversation with some old FBI guy. Friend-of-a-friend, she’d been told, when she asked why Dad was getting in the game again.

She turned suddenly, attention caught by a gold-limned flicker in the corner of her vision. Oh no, not one of—huh.

Jordan frowned, rising half out of her seat. That wasn’t—none of her angels had ever looked like that. This one had a face, and eyes, and she was smiling, one finger held up to her mouth, calling for silence. She flickered then, wavering like a heat hazed image when two men stepped through the place she’d just been.

“Be right back, Dad!” Jordan called, slipping out of her seat, barely hearing the ragged strand of bells ringing as she hauled open the diner door and bolted out onto the sidewalk.

“Them? Are you sure? But he—if it’s for a case, I don’t want—are you sure you’re sure?”

All the other woman did was nod, looking a little sad this time, before she faded away.

Jordan heaved a sigh. Today just got a lot more complicated. At least she was getting used to managing Dad. A couple years ago and everyone would’ve been in much worse shape. Honestly. Parents.

“Jordan? Honey, where did you—ah. Didn’t we just have another talk about not running around by yourself when I’m working?”

And cue sheepish expression number four. “Uh, yeah, Dad. I just—thought I saw someone. You remember Becky, right? She said she was moving out this way, and I lost her phone number, and—“

Okay, yeah, Dad’s patient expression would forever make Jordan feel like she’d done something stupid and horrific that was about to take another ten years off his life. It sucked.

“Just—be careful, all right? Now how about that ice-cream I promised you?”

Ice-cream vs. visions. Hmm.

“Sounds good, Dad. I—are you done with the case yet?”

“Hmm? Oh. Almost. Just—helping finish up a profile. You—did you want to hear this?”

Want, maybe no. Need? Given the way she still had a faint haze of gold in the corner of her left eye, Jordan was pretty sure ‘need’ was way up there on her list.

“I—yeah. If there’s nothing really really gross involved. You can skim those bits, okay? I just ate.” She laughed a little, mostly for effect. Dad’s return laugh was pretty much the same. Times like this Jordan really missed Mom.

But as long as Dad wasn’t talking about vicious skinnings, burning priests, monkey-borne diseases, or exactly how sick and depraved a sociopath’s mind can get, Jordan wasn’t going to complain about talking to him. It was—good, to be treated almost like an equal. Even if it was only because she saw some pretty scary stuff a lot. Jordan’d take it. She kind of had to.

Halfway through the biggest waffle-cone Jordan’s ever seen, Dad’s phone rang. He said ‘Hello’ normally enough, but then he swung his chair out and away from the kitschy red table, voice dropping and back going really stiff.

This was very definitely not a good sign. Jordan hastily finished off the rest of her cone, wiping some stray melting rocky road off her chin and licking it off her hand.

“Dad? Something—“

Dad stood up, then, hand rougher than she’s used to when he took her arm.

“Jordan, come on. We’ve. Something’s come up.”

“But Dad! We were—what’s going on?”

Dad didn’t say anything else on the way to the car. This wass the first time in at least a year that Jordan’d been this afraid. The ghost-lady didn’t look much better, flickering in and out of Jordan’s vision like she was being torn in two directions at once.

She mouthed something, something that looked like ‘let him go’, before she burst into a shower of sparks and was gone. Well, crap. Jordan sagged even as she was dragged forward and stuffed inside the car. Looked like she was going to be camping out in the hotel tonight. At least it had atmosphere, even if the TV looked like it came from the fifties.

Vacation sucked.

Vacation really sucked. The golden ghost-lady was back, even while Dad was somewhere else with Agent Hendrickson, FBI. Jordan had been trying to sleep for an hour, finally giving up in the face of dreams about people being walled up, dogs barking fierce and frightened, and more blood than she’d seen since she was twelve. That was a special event, one she didn’t like remembering. Plus she was thirsty.

It was the thirsty that explained why Jordan was creeping down the hotel corridor to the kitchen when she bumped into a really really tall guy creeping in the opposite direction. She squeaked, trying to turn it into a less ear-piercing ‘whoof’ as she hit the ground.

When she looked up, there was a gun pointed at her. Jordan went really still. “Um. I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to—them? Really?”

The golden ghost lady was standing behind the guy with the gun, one hand hovering over his temple. She really looked sad this time.

“Shit. Dean. Dean! Get over here. We’ve got a problem.”

Another guy came from around the corner, scowling at the one with the gun. Except this one had a gun too. Jordan pulled her knees up tight, looking from gun-guy to Dean and back. “I can go back to my room, now, okay? Really, I just wanted some—“

“Oh Jesus. Sam. We can’t—wasn’t this place supposed to be empty? Christ, next thing you know that damn Hen—“

He coughed, eyeing Jordan sideways. “More people’ll be jumping out of the woodwork. Sh—“

Then the lights went out. Jordan was proud that she didn’t scream. And that she could still see ghost lady. Who was standing right by Sam, and looking down the opposite hallway.

“Um. I don’t—I don’t think we want to be in this hallway anymore. It’s—“

Jordan realized she probably didn’t need to say anything when two things happened. One, Sam grabbed her arm, yanking her up and after him and Dean, saying, “Don’t scream, just--stay quiet and we’ll get you out of this.” Two? The hallway got really, really cold, and Dean started shooting at things.

That, of course, is also when Jordan tripped over a corner of the carpet and smacked her head off an occasional table on the way down. Maybe that triggered the vision. Jordan won’t bet on that.

“Pillow.” Ow. At least this time the vision didn’t have any screaming.

“There’s hair in the pillow. Upstairs. There’s a lady embroidered on it. Ow.”

“Wha—Dean?”

Sam looked up, looked down, looked really lost. Jordan could almost relate.

“Sam, tell me you didn’t give a little girl a concussion in the middle of a job. Just—tell me that.”

“I—no, she just tripped, and now she’s—“

Jordan made a muffled grunting noise and attempted to heave herself back up. Hey, at least there wasn’t any more shooting.

“Can see why she went crazy.” She sighed, squinting in the dark.

“You’re Sam, right? She says—“ Jordan squinted again, “Slow down, I suck at lip-reading. Jess says to tell you to listen to me now, so you guys get out of here before the FBI shows up.”

Wait a second.

“FBI? Why are you—“

Now, for the first time, Jordan looked a little scared. “Um.”

Sam froze, staring at Jordan as if he couldn’t believe it. Dean, meanwhile, swore and punched the wall.

“This is just—okay. Sam? Let’s listen to the girl, do what your dead girlfriend’s telling you, and then get the hell out of here. You can ask her questions while we find the stairs, okay?”

Hard-as-nails eyes meet Jordan’s own for a second.

“You okay with that, too, kid? ‘Cause it’s better if you don’t get left alone here. This ghost is a nasty sonofabitch.”

“Um.” Jordan cast another quick glance at the Jess-lady, who smiles again, bright as the sun, and nodded. “I—okay? But we—you—hurry?”

It was really no one’s fault that Dad showed up just as Dean and Sam finished lighting the recently-salted pillow on fire. Fortunately Dad was a great believer in Jordan’s visions, especially after that other thing they never talked about, from back when Jordan was eight. Demons are really, really, really no one’s friend. Really.

“ . . . . so I know you don’t like lying, Dad, but—“

Dad sighed heavily, looking really really tired.

Jordan looked almost near tears.

“They’re important. What they do, what they—what they stop. It’s like Lucas, Dad, it is. What they stop, I mean. And—you have to help. You have to.”

Dad looked up from his own late-night meal, and for a minute Jordan remembered the way he looked after Mom died, and she wanted to cry even more.

“Yes, Jordan. I know. I—I do know.”

She leaned against him, then, closing her eyes. Sometimes this whole ‘gift’ thing was a curse, too.

She didn’t mind, but Dad—Dad took it really hard. Every time.

She opened her eyes, managing to muster up a tiny smile for Jess-lady and the other blond woman, both of whom brushed their hands over Dad’s head as they vanished out the diner door.

Maybe—maybe they’d both get a break for a while, after this one.

No one could say they didn’t deserve it. Except for that tiny lost-looking kid sitting in the corner of the booth, sobbing inconsolably into his hands.

Apparently it wasn’t only evil that never slept.

The Blacks didn’t get a break, either.

As she dug into her pancakes (blueberry and chocolate chip, no sense scrimping now) Jordan wondered, almost halfheartedly, whether the Winchesters did.

She was betting no.

Birthday fic for Aspen! (I know, I don't believe I wrote fanfic either!)

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