Roswell Fanatics

Blood Will Tell



Banner By: mrsjbehr

Author: Kiara Alexis Klay


Disclaimer: The words are mine but the worlds are not: Roswell belongs to Jason Katims, Melinda Metz, the WB and whomever else; Supernatural belongs to the WB/CW and uh, whoever created them J Unfortunately, I do not own Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, or Brenden Fehr (sigh) but I can dream and drool can’t I?

Summary: I was reading all those Buffy is the littlest Winchester stories on the great crossover site Twisting the Hellmouth, and then I read Kath’s wonderful One Tree Hill crossover in which Liz is the Scott brother’s little sister, and then I was beta-ing for Queen Fee and inspiration struck as I got to wondering…What if Liz was the Winchester’s baby sister?

I don’t think this has ever been done before…and as much as I love the Drifter pairing (Jensen so hot, Jensen and Shiri together even hotter!) I figured this would be an interesting story to tell. That and it’s been bugging me since I got the idea and I have some of the main points outlined and I probably won’t be getting to Chimera’s Kismet or Da Man N His Woman until I get some of this typed out.

Pairing: Unknown for the younger generation…probably Michael/Maria and Isabel/Jesse, but definitely John/Mary, Jeff/Nancy, Jim/Amy

Rating: C’mon, this is Supernatural we’re talking about…most certainly M for Mature.

Category: Crossover/Roswell/Supernatural

Timeline: I’m not up on all my Supernatural episodes, but for Roswell it’s after Graduation only I’m going to Kristin-warp a good majority of seasons 2 and 3 to suit my purposes * insert evil laugh * and let’s just say a bunch of crazy stuff like the shooting, the FBI, running away, all that heartache never happened in Graduation, okay?

And I’m going to say that yes, Liz and Max did break up and no, Future Max didn’t happen the way he did in EotW. And that’s all I can think of off the top of my head and to find out more you’re just going to have to read now, huh?


~~~

Bodies rubbed together, sweat and other fluid easing and fueling the heat, the passion of the most ancient of dances. Hands trailed over naked skin, fingers caressed and teased and coaxed fire and ice throughout their bodies on the wave of wildly racing hearts and adrenaline.

Blunt teeth nipped, nails gouged filaments of red over once supple perfection, hisses and moans and growls filled the air, even as the weight of something dark and burdensome waited for its moment.

“Jeff!”

“Mary!”

Both names, shouted as they pair climaxed simultaneously, was enough to shake the other out their grief and passion induced haze and look at one another in shock and horror.

The dark descended but yet their eyes saw.

“Nancy, oh my God…”

“John…”

For a moment the pair just stared at one another, panting and sweating heavily from their exertions, as if time had suddenly stood still. With an almost audible sonic boom, time jumped back to normal, and they regained their senses.

“By the Blessed Lady!” John Winchester launched himself off his wife’s best friend and dived for the pile of clothes that were mostly his.

“I’m so sorry,” Nancy’s trembling voice whispered as she pulled the cast aside sheet up and over her body, suddenly shaking, and it wasn’t in post-orgasmic bliss.

“The Hunted won’t have to kill me, Jeff will do it for me,” John mumbled as he pulled up his britches.

“Nancy…”

“Jeff…”

For the third time their words overlapped and both gave sheepish looks, neither one able to look at the other as John finished dressing. It was most awkward, as if they were youths and unsure of themselves in the wake of that first coupling. The silence seemed thick and heavy as if it were a living entity of its own - unusual between a pair who had been as intimate with each other as they had been just moments ago.

“We’re going to forget this ever happened,” John announced to the wall, still not looking at the petite blonde in the bed.

“That would be best,” Nancy’s eyes skittered everywhere. Everywhere but where the broad man of average height stood with his hands stilled on a shirt halfway buttoned.

They fell silent but neither moved, heartbeats slightly calming down but still rapid in light of what they had done.

“I miss her too,” Nancy finally broke the silence and John canted his head enough in her direction to listen. “She was like a sister…the sister I never had but always wanted…and she loved you very, very much.”

“He loves you even when he acts like an ass,” John spoke after a brief moment taking in Nancy words and it was her turn to close her eyes and catch the hitch in her breath. “Don’t blame him for doing something I asked him to do, loyalty is ingrained in us.”

“Don’t I know it,” Nancy sobbed out on a bitter laugh while wiping the tears on her face away.

Both man and woman could finally smile and somehow this seemed to ease some of the tension between them enough to meet each other’s gaze.

“Go back to Jeff, Nancy, and for what it’s worth…thank you.”

John didn’t wait for anything else to be said but walked out the door, leaving Nancy Winchester to stare after her brother-in-law and tremble.



TBC?

Wow! Your responses were amazing! *blushes*

I was originally going to wait until next week to post the next part, but I can't help it, I'm so excited about this story and your responses that I have to post it!

But if I do this, you're going to have to wait until next friday for the update.

You've been warned.


~~~ Four months later ~~~


“It’s going to be okay, sweetie, shh…it’s okay,” Jeffrey Adam Winchester soothed as he held his wife’s hair back as she once again heaved the contents of her stomach into the porcelain throne she’d been worshipping at for the past half hour.

“So says you,” Nancy managed to gulp. Her normal golden skin was now sickly pale and combined with her dirty blond hair, she looked washed out. Too washed out and tired for Jeff’s peace of mind.

Jeff gave his wife a tender smile, though there was concern lurking in his eyes. This was by no means an unfamiliar scenario to the pair; in over a decade of marriage they had had to endure this same event six times. Six times now; six pregnancies, five miscarriages, and one stillborn starting the same way had made this a familiar scene indeed.

Nancy leaned over the toilet and emptied her stomach once more, dry heaving more than anything else and Jeff deduced from experience this bout of sickness was over for the moment. He quietly helped his love up off the floor and lightly held onto her waist to support her as she brushed her teeth and gargled with ACT mint flavored mouthwash before escorting her directly to their still rumpled bed from where the pair had been sleeping blissfully until Nancy had awakened with the urge to purge.

Nancy groaned as she heaved herself into a semi comfortable position on her side and sighed in relief and pleasure as Jeff’s strong and tawny arms wrapped around her while he spooned her back, allowing herself to sink back and snuggle into the one person who made her feel the safest. He gently stroked over the slight bulge in her tummy, that same minute bulge where a tiny life was taking form.

Husband and wife were wrapped in silence. Nancy was just drifting off when she felt Jeff kiss her hair and nuzzle the side of her neck, his favorite spot on her. She had a drowsy smile on her face as Jeff propped his chin between her neck and shoulder, kissing behind her ear, and she managed a tired chuckle at her husband’s antics.

“Jeff,” she protested sleepily, twitching her head slightly. His breath was tickling her neck and he knew it. She could feel him smiling against her skin before he sighed and held her closer. His hands stayed protectively splayed over her abdomen.

“I love you Nancy Amanda Richardson Winchester,” he murmured against her ear.

“I love you too, Jeffrey Adam Winchester, but you better let me sleep,” Nancy mumbled.

There was another moment of silence when Jeff once again broke the silence.

“Who’s the father?”

Nancy’s startled eyes snapped wide open in the darkened bedroom.

~~~

SMACK!

The sound of flesh against flesh resounded within the normal sounds of the Roadside Bar and various hunters of the dark creatures watched a worn, familiar sight.

“You asshole! As if getting your own wife killed and endangering your children wasn’t bad enough, you do the same to mine!”

Ellen rolled her eyes from behind the bar she was tending as the brothers got into it again. The Winchester brothers if they weren’t killing demons and other things that go bump in the night were trying to kill each other. This recent charge, while startling and off their normal touchy subjects, was in a similar vein to any of the other fights that precursored this one. Many that usually led to Ellen having to replace whatever damaged glass or furniture resulting from a Winchester bout.

She kept an eye on the brothers as she slid old Gus another pint of his favorite beer, an imported German brew she had kept around just for him. An excellent business move on her part as all Gus’ so called ‘apprentices’ had developed a taste for the foreign stuff. It made the cost of importing it more than made up for in profits, as the Roadside was the only joint for States around that carried this particular brew. The Roadside was much sought out and not just for the safety of the company.

A string of curses honed by several tours in the Marine Corps rained on her ears and she flicked another glance at the arguing siblings while shaking her head. It was difficult to see that the pair was actual blood kin. Whereas John Winchester was of average height and his once dirty blonde hair had now darkened some with age, the younger brother, Jeff, was as tall, lithe, and dark as his brother was short and broad.

They came from a long line of respected and some not so respected hunters, some of the best in the business but it was John who truly wanted to follow in his family’s legacy. Jeff, while partaking of the ‘family’ business, didn’t care all that much for it and just wanted to have a ‘normal’ life. And what did the idiot do for a ‘normal’ life?

He joined the Army Rangers.

Just having to compete with big brother who had decided hunting demons wasn’t enough and had joined the Marine Corps. Honestly, the pair was so competitive it stopped being amusing not long after it started. Especially since most of the ‘friendly competitions’ were anything but.

Ellen wasn’t ashamed to admit she had had a crush on both Winchesters at various points in her life when she was younger –still had a soft spot if truth were told – and she couldn’t blame herself. She herself had come from a line of hunters and those who supported the hunters. Both brothers had a rugged handsomeness and edge of darkness that many a girls’ heart had quickened. It was one Jeff Winchester she’d lost her virginity to not that she or he had admitted the fact at the risk of both their fathers killing Jeff. She’d been heartbroken to hear he had gone back East and eventually married.

She’d watched and grown up with the both of them, had even hunted a few times alongside and consoled them with drinks and company of someone who understood exactly what their life was like and how much they had to sacrifice with every hunt. Their wives didn’t know about that though both men refused to let the friendship become anything else despite any attraction they might have felt, either past or present.

Winchester men were fiercely loyal and singular in their passions and she regretted she wasn’t one of them when she’d had her chance.

But then Jeff stopped hunting and to everyone’s surprise so did John, who claimed hunting wasn’t ‘any fun’ if he couldn’t scrap with his brother during and after a hunt. For while both brothers would try their best to murder each other if anything or anyone messed with the other, the fury of the Winchesters would descend on the unlucky being, a sort of ‘I’m the only one who can mess with my family’ deal going on.

Blood will always tell, and it’s thicker than water, Ellen mused as she frowned when John easily flipped his younger brother onto his back in the middle of the floor, the hunters on either side watching with amusement. Some were laying bets, some were just watching for the entertainment value and some were only watching so that they could rescue their drinks or dinner if a wayward Winchester got too close.

“Okay, everyone with the name Winchester, out right now!” Ellen finally had enough.

Jeff had managed to escape his older brother’s grip but at the cost of one of the chairs, and even now John was stumbling after his brother with murderous intent, ignoring the blood flowing down his face.

Both men paid her no attention to her and that was the breaking point.

Ellen hated being ignored.

“Gus, Davi!” Ellen called her favorite ‘bouncer’ hunters and the pair grunted but left their drinks to grab the younger men and heaved them outside.

Ellen followed her bouncer hunter’s wake and glared at the two men in the waning daylight.

“You two are worse than a pair of Wendigo’s in the same stretch of forest! Settle your differences out here, now and don’t think of coming back in. Ever!”

With that threat, Ellen went back into her bar, passed down from generation to generation, and ignored another family legacy breaking outside.

Instead of fighting some more, Jeff Winchester eyed his brother, glaring and ignoring the twinge of guilt and the need to help as his brother bled. Bled by wounds he himself had caused.

“We are through! Do you hear me, through! I let you drag me back into the Hunt because I felt Mary needed some justice. But it’s obsessing you, and I almost lost my wife because of it. My wife! We are through! I’d take Dean and Sammy if I could but you knew that when you hid them from me, didn’t you?”

“Leave my boys outta this,” John spat a stream of blood out of his mouth, trying to push aside the hurt his baby brother’s words were causing to him.

“You involved them when you went on the Hunt again that killed their mother! I told you, I told you that this would come back and ruin our family but did you listen? No!”

“C’mon Jeffy…”

“Jeffrey!”

“Jeff Jeff. Together, me and you we can find this Demon fast and kill it and then our families would be safe!”

“That’s what you said three years ago! And it’ll never work at least not until the next Big Bad you piss off comes after us. You said you were going to give up hunting, that it wasn’t for you anymore. Good lord, you have two boys to look after! An eight year old and three year old! What are you going to do with them? Huh? Drag them on hunts with you and pray to God that nothing figures them out to be morsels and leverage? The answer is no, hell fucking no. Don’t even think about it. But that’s not what’s all wrong between us.”

“What? What’s wrong? What does the littlest Winchester have against big brother that has his panties in a twist shrieking like a little girl?” John sneered, forcing bravado to the surface. He tried to listen and look after his little brother, but damn, those remarks about Dean and Sammy hit him hard and he hit back.

Jeff was just jealous he didn’t have boys of his own to teach to hunt.

The look Jeff Winchester gave his brother had John’s gut twisting painfully and he wondered, briefly, if Jeff was as psychic as that crazy Missouri gal his brother had befriended years ago and heard that uncharitable thought.

It was as if Jeff had aged a hundred years right before his eyes, looking far more of their shared Indian heritage than any Winchester had a right to. His features were old and the planes of his face seemed to sharpen and cast shadows but his eyes were burning points of mica, hurt and anger and pain and grief all rolled in one.

“You slept with my wife.”

Five little words quietly spoken and yet they had the power that broke the greatest Hunting duo to stalk the creatures of the night into little pieces. John looked at Jeff dumbly and the taller man’s jaw twitched as his brother confirmed what Nancy had told him with inability to speak.

Silence stretched between them for a long time with neither knowing what to say that could make this right. Knowing too that nothing would make this right.

Jeff look at his brother one last time before fury overtook him and he had to turn away before he did something he would regret more than his words.

As much as he longed to see the man who had slept with his wife writhe in pain, as much as he wanted to see that man’s blood stain his hands in rivulets of red…he couldn’t kill his brother.

For the very first time, John Winchester’s shoulders slumped in defeat as he watched his brother storm away, stomping over the remaining pieces of his heart.

“What have I done?”

Thank youk, Thank you all who reviewed (you know who you are). I have to go to work soon, otherwise I'd answer all your reviews individually, but alas, one of my co-workers decided that she didn't have to come into work when scheduled for a week and lie to us when she called in.

Needless to say, the corporation should fire her ass, meanwhile we are seriously shorthanded, especially with one other co-worker with health problems who's going on vacation here soon. Bleh.

But, all that nastiness aside (as much as I can considering I'll be working seven days a week to pick up the slack) I have chapter one for your reading pleasure!

*takes a bow*

I must say I am impressed with the content of the reviews, it really made me think over some of the story, and gave me ideas (I won't tell you now you'll just have to see, )

But without further ado, and before I'm late for work, here is Chapter One.


Blood Will Tell

Chapter 1 - Thicker Than Water

Disclaimer: The words are mine, but the worlds I use the words for are not.

Rating: Mature

~~~ Kansas ~~~

“You have got to be kidding me,” Dean Winchester scowled, which earned him a slap upside the head.

Beside him Sam Winchester tried his best not to laugh or otherwise show that his brother’s distress amused him whatsoever. He had no desire to share his brother’s fate and he knew from experience that Missouri did not slap or hit like a girly girl.

He figured that as many times as Dean had fallen under the sharp stinging pain of Missouri’s wrath he’d figure out what exactly made her lash out and when to keep his mouth shut. But then again therein lay the problem. Dean keeping his mouth shut. Such an occurrence happening had to be the herald of something apocalyptic at best.

“You laughing at your brother Samuel Winchester?”

Sam winced and Dean gloated but discretely.

“Not anymore, ma’am,” he responded meekly. He ducked his head and let the fringe of his bangs partially cover his eyes as he looked up at his foster momma of sorts with large, dark puppy dog eyes.

Well, as meekly as one who had been caught laughing at his brother’s punishment could get. Which, under that particular chocolate-orbed glare was meek indeed.

Grunting something about ‘Winchesters, past and present generations,’ the town’s resident psychic rolled her eyes and heaved her considerable self toward the kitchen to make supper. She didn’t want to admit it but she’d always been a sucker for the puppy dog look, which would work as much for Dean as it did with Sam if only Dean weren’t so…Dean.

The brothers only had time to glare at each other before Missouri’s, “Some Winchester boys better help me with supper and set the table or else!” spurred them into action.

“I’ll set the table!” Dean called first and Sam tried not to loose a curse though he smirked. As if it were really an option who would help with actual cooking involved.

“I’ll help with the food!”

“Dean, set four places please,” Missouri sang out from her place at the stove stirring a big pot of good smelling something.

“Four?” the elder Winchester brother repeated raising an eyebrow and Sam once again rolled his eyes at his brother’s inability to keep his mouth shut.

“Yeah, you know it comes after three,” Sam shook his head, wondering if he were somehow channeling his brother, and grabbing some napkins and cutlery to start placing them around the table.

“Ouch!” Sam yelped as a Missouri smack got him upside the head.

“Appears your brother isn’t the only one who can’t keep his mouth shut. You give them items to your brother and go stir the pot!” Missouri ordered with an inward sigh while sending a glare Dean’s way to make sure he didn’t gloat or any such thing he was liable of doing.

It didn’t take a psychic to know what the siblings would do to piss the other off. The things she had to put up for with when it came to the Winchesters.

“Is this jambalaya, Missouri?” Sam asked as he stirred the spicy smelling concoction, sighing as the smells hit him.

“That it is, the best in these parts,” Missouri nodded, pleased that Sam could recognize the dish. Dean on the other hand, wouldn’t know jambalaya from stir-fry if it hadn’t been printed on a box.

“As opposed to Louisiana jambalaya which also says it’s the best.”

Missouri gave Dean another glare and raised her hand threateningly, but Dean suddenly paused in setting the table and gave Missouri a sharp glance. The psychic took that back; Dean for all his cocky, smart aleck and more brawn than brain ways was very smart in his own way and she had underestimated him if the darkening of his eyes and mood was any indication.

Sam glanced back at the sudden silence; Dean being silent equaled something wrong and he figured something was major wrong at the tightening of his brother’s jaw and instant subdued behavior.

“What? What’s wrong?” Sam asked, automatically looking to Dean for the answer. He frowned as he watched the warning look Missouri sent to Dean; it was as if she were pleading with him not to say anything.

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong,” Dean finally gritted out though the plunking of the plates with unnecessary force bespoke otherwise.

“Okay,” Sam agreed quietly with his tone suggesting anything but. However, he followed his brother’s lead and went back to stirring the pot so the food wouldn’t scorch.

“Winchester men,” Missouri shook her head, wondering. They never ceased to amaze her, these Winchester men. They could fight like the worst of enemies but when it came down to it they had each other’s backs in a fierce way that defied all convention.

Dean finished setting the table, gently this time, and cast concerned looks every now and then at Sam. It was getting on Sam’s nerves, who had a sort of ‘sibling-sense’ when his brother would look at him. Many times it had soothed him, knowing his big bro was watching out for him, but as he grew up and just at the moment, it irritated him.

Sam meanwhile was trying to figure out what would have Dean acting like that when it hit him.

Jambalaya.

They were having jambalaya, which was a favorite of the family, but most importantly it was the all time favorite food of…

“John Winchester, you shut that door and don’t let any flies in!”

Sam stopped stirring and stared at the man he hadn’t seen in months after year’s worth of absence. John paused on the threshold of the side door while eyeing his second born.

“Hey, lookie here Sammy, Daddy’s home,” Dean drawled tersely and leaving Missouri groaning and shaking her head.

~~~

Okay....Am I the only person who keeps getting an Invalid Session. Please Re-submit the form whenever I try to post a comment or update? My stupid computer won't let me freaking update and it's driving me nuts! I can't even pm someone!

arrrggghhh....okay, we'll see if this works, but if an admin is reading this, is it something wrong with the forum or is it just my computer (as always?).

~~~

Missouri sighed once more and resisted the urge to shake her head or groan. It seemed to be an acquired habit one developed when dealing with any male bearing the surname Winchester.

Well…any male period, she amended silently.

Supper was a near disaster, laden with an almost hostile silence, as Sam tried to ignore his father, John tried to act like having his youngest snub him was all right, and Dean trying to be mediator at the expense of Missouri slapping him for several remarks and jokes that fell flat.

She could hardly blame the boy though; Dean loved his father and brother with a passion that not even his drive to hunt could ever come close. She noted that the only reason Dean hunted was because it was what his father did and it was the only life he’d led. Well, the only life since Mary was murdered.

“Okay, you two better kiss and make up and you,” Missouri pointed a finger at a surprised Dean, “Better be quiet and don’t interfere. Just to make sure you don’t…you do the dishes. NOW.”

Leveling her best ’do-what-I-say’ look, Dean reluctantly stood up and stomped into the kitchen. The clattering wasn’t as loud as it could have been and Missouri was surprised, but only for a moment, as she realized Dean probably wanted to eavesdrop in the ‘conversation’ between his brother and father.

“I’m not hearing any making up,” she warned ominously and John gave an annoyed sigh.

“It’s not as if I’m dating him and we’re arguing over prom dresses,” the eldest Winchester barked back, meeting Missouri glare for glare.

“Oh, stop acting as pig-headed as Jeff and get this over with!” Missouri finally erupted, and then froze realizing her mistake, watching as a look of shock and pain radiated off John Winchester.

The two old friends stared at each other for the longest time, Sam and Dean completely forgotten. John’s eyes were bitterly pained and Missouri’s regretful, hers asking for forgiveness and his tiredly accepting before shuttering down. Like always.

“Who’s Jeff?” Sam asked puzzled. Why had that name affected his father as only their mother and the next hunt could?

“No one,” John replied but Missouri shook her head, the tingling at the base of her neck foretelling the coming of another vision.

“That didn’t sound like nothing,” Sam insisted, and Dean came in, hands soapy, to look anxiously between the three in the living room. Missouri, with her tingling awareness, could tell that the name had struck a chord with Dean. He didn’t know why it was familiar, why shouldn’t he - he hadn’t heard that name in almost twenty-one years- but it was there all the same.

“He’s no one!” John snapped and he turned to leave but Sam reached out and grabbed the older Winchester and Missouri heard the tolling of Fate.

Sam’s eyes widened as it seemed a surge of …something hit him full force, then his eyes rolled up till only the whites showed and his head snapped back as if hit. He was on the ground before anyone could react and then all Missouri could hear was Dean shouting his brother’s name while John staggered to collapse into a chair.

~~~

Blood Will Tell
Chapter 2
You Told Me To Go Back To The Beginning

Disclaimer: Words are mine the worlds my words inhabit are not. Also, the title is part of a quote taken from The Princess Bride. Kudos to those who can guess who and when.

Summary: The Flashback chapter so bear with me, eh?

~~~

Sam was in a room full of swirling colors, everything was dark at first, but then it started to lighten up, like there was a sun or lamp that gradually turned up the longer he was there.

The swirls eventually stopped swirling so quickly and a few figures coalesced out of the darker blurs and became distinguishable from the others. There was his father, only looking so young, hunting side by side with another man, who kinda reminded Sam of himself if only from the dark coloring and tall height. Both men were fighting and hurling insults at each other during the fight but despite that, they moved as one, working as a team to bring the baddie down.

John and Jeffery Winchester, the names seemed to spring forth out of his mind like they’d been there all along.

Jeffery Winchester, as in a relation? Sam could make out a glowing, reddish gold cord binding his father and this…uncle? A cousin? Whatever he was that mystic cord bound his father and him. Both men seemed to glow the same reddish gold color and then they faded into the swirls.

The next figures to emerge from the swirliness was his mother and another woman, both blond beauties in their own rights. How he knew one of them was his mother was thanks only to having had seen a vision of an older Mary at the house she died in, and of the single faded and worn photograph Dean secretly carried in the glove compartment of the Impala.

‘Mom!’ Sam tried to shout, but the Mary-that-was couldn’t hear him. Sam watched, desperate and interested, as his much younger mother who looked to be in a college dorm talk with who was obviously her best friend.

‘His name is John Winchester and he is sooo dreamy!’ Mary Jameson screeched to her best friend as she plopped down on the bed while Nancy studied at the desk.

‘Winchester? What is he…a rifle?’ Nancy Richardson chuckled, not looking up from her textbook on Native America: The Mesaliko of New Mexico by Claudia Elizabeth Parker.

‘Not a rifle but what a smoking gun!’ Mary sighed as she fanned herself with her hand, eyes rolling upwards to stare up at the ceiling dreamily, a goofy smile upon her lips and Nancy rolled her eyes. An act Sam heartily followed; his mother was such a boy crazy lady in her youth obviously.

‘I’m sure he is,’ Nancy murmured absently, making a note in the notebook by her side.

‘He’s a Marine!’ Mary squealed the last word as she went on talking to the ceiling and her friend both. She might as well have been talking only to the ceiling for as much attention she was getting from Nan.

‘How nice,’ Nancy hemmed, caught up in her studying.

Mary pouted at that, rolling her eyes toward her friend and narrowed at said friend’s lack of empathy for a fine male specimen; a pillow flying and an oomph later had both girls laughing and shouting as they indulged in a good old fashioned pillow fight.

Sam found himself smiling and laughing at the memory and was greatly disappointed when his mother, smiling, was faded away. But not before he could see the beginnings of a reddish gold glow begin to surround them.

~~~

More swirliness, and if Sam wasn’t mistaken, he could have sworn they were spinning faster and faster. He wondered if that was as important as the reddish gold glow he was beginning to sense as a pattern.

Once again the figures emerged and Sam eagerly watched to see what else was going to be revealed.

‘C’mon, Jeffy…she’s great!’ John Winchester coaxed his brother.

‘It’s Jeff or Jeffrey, not Jeff Jeff, and you date her!’ Jeff shrugged off John’s attempt at matchmaking for him…again.

‘I’m dating her best friend,’ John explained patiently as if it were perfectly logical.

‘Since when has that stopped you?’ Jeff snorted and John cocked his head, thinking.

‘Never,’ he grinned a cocky smile so like Dean’s that Sam had to blink.

‘Thought so,’ Jeff grunted.

‘C’mon, Jeff Jeff, Mary says you’ll love her! College student, brainy, a real nerd she’s perfect for you!”

‘No.’

‘C’mon, Jeff!’

‘No!’

‘Jeff…c’mon, little brother I’m only looking out for you. When was the last time you got laid?’

‘Jeez-us, is that the only thing you can think of? How long did it take you to con Gary or whatever her name is outta her virtue? Wait, it is a girl right?’

‘You bitch!’

The scene faded out as the Winchester brothers started fighting like…well like Sam and Dean. The conversation was eerily similar to many he and Dean had shared over the course of the past few years.

~~~

‘See, there he is!’ Mary pointed someone out to Nancy but her attention was elsewhere. Sam found himself looking to see where his mother’s younger self was pointing as he tried to focus in on the new memory.

‘Look, there she is!’ John jabbed his brother in the ribs. But Jeff was already focused in that direction.

‘Hey, baby doll!’ John greeted his girlfriend, the only one he could consider as such. He’d actually went on a few dates, real dates, with this one and had so far only slept with her twice.

It had to be love.

‘Hell-lo, Leatherneck hottie!’ Mary smirked and came in eagerly for a kiss.

‘Oh, I missed that,’ John smirked after they came up for air, staring into those eyes he could willingly let himself drown in and was rewarded by her pleased giggle.

‘I missed something else,’ she whispered huskily and John nearly groaned.

It had been too long.

‘Girl after my own heart,’ he managed to rasp while giving her a look of mutual desire.

‘Not just your heart,’ she grinned wickedly, causing things lower than John’s bellybutton to tighten. Damn this girl would keep me on my toes…or my back, John leered.

He half expected Jeffy to make some caustic remark about libido and something to that effect but nothing came. John realized then that he couldn’t feel his little brother anymore, sending him into red alert, and his head whipped upward to search for him when…he saw the unexpected.

Tall, lanky, former hunter-turned-Army Ranger little brother of his who hadn’t been interested in a girl since Ellen when they were kids was kissing…a girl. Not just any girl oh no! He was kissing a girl who was pretty, and very pretty at that. A blonde who, if he hadn’t been seeing and sleeping and happy with Mary, he would have wanted to get to know a little better kind of pretty girl.

‘Who’s that kissing my best friend?’ Mary cocked her head, looking at the couple and John started, staring from Mary to his brother locking lips with the blonde, and back to see Mary looking at him questioningly.

‘That…is my brother. Weren’t we worried about failing in trying to set them up?’

‘You ass!’ Mary slapped her boyfriend’s shoulder with a grin. ‘Well, do you think we should introduce them or wait for the shotgun wedding?’

~~~

Sam watched as the scenes unfolded before him, the romance between the one he now knew was his uncle Jeff and his mother’s best friend Nancy, watched as his grandmother Claudia – I didn’t even know we had one- took her in as an intern and saw his mother and father get married in a double ceremony with Jeff and Nancy. He watched as his father gave up hunting when Jeff did, see him settle down and grin as baby Dean was born.

He really was named after James Dean, Sam marveled.

He watched and cried, as his little cousins didn’t make it, saw the strain and heartache tear his aunt and uncle, see the pain as little Sam was born just as his last cousin was stillborn. But through it all the bond of friendship and loyalty to one another never wavered, and a reddish gold chord that seemed to solidify as time went on bound them all.

Time seemed to fast-forward and then Sam knew it was after his mom’s death. His father now wearing a familiar hard and grieving mask only this time still so fresh and hurting; his uncle leaving his aunt to go on one last Hunt with his brother for the thing that had attacked Family. His aunt not being able to deal with the possibility of losing her husband, the final straw when she left after loosing another baby and Jeff was away, hunting.

~~~

Three years had passed and still no sign of the thing that had killed Mary Winchester, her best friend and sister of her heart. It had caused her grief and pain and the loss of a husband who was there but not really. Nancy packed her bags, leaving the house she and Jeff had built, and sending the divorce papers to their friend Missouri, who always seemed to know where the brothers were next.

~~~

Missouri crying in hurt and sorrow before she even saw the return address, knowing who it was for and why, without ever reading it herself.

~~~

John tracking Nancy down after coming across his brother collapsed in grief.

‘I’m loosing her, I’m loosing her, and the Devil’s spawn hadn’t even taken her,’ a drunk Jeff slurring as he cried onto his big brother’s shoulder.

A rumpled up letter and a stack of official looking documents resting next to the booze.

~~~

John Winchester leaving Dean with a three-year-old Sam at a friend’s house and coming across Nancy. Both get to drinking some at the little apartment they shared, Nancy accusing him of killing her best friend, each reminiscing of their favorite Mary memories. Grieving together…offering comfort the only way their not as drunk as they should be selves could.

~~~

John leaving after that night and Nancy going back to Jeff, who once again swore off of hunting, but knowing he had to cut old ties to keep his family safe.

~~~

Nancy finding out she was pregnant.

~~~

Nancy thrilled, scared, and suddenly horrified; what if the baby wasn’t Jeff’s? What if…oh God! Please don’t let it be John’s! She couldn’t do that to Jeff, to Mary.

~~~

The images just kept going faster and faster as Sam reeled while he tried to keep up. Jeff doing the mental math of the time he and Nancy got back together, to the time they had started sleeping once more together, and the number of weeks that she was now pregnant.

There was more than a month in between.

This baby wasn’t his.

~~~

Jeff agonizing.

He couldn’t leave Nancy, he loved her too much, and she had come back to him.

As much as it hurt and he loathed the thought of any other man with his wife, he understood at the time they had been separated and she obviously had sought comfort.

~~~

The pain. Oh, the pain. She could have slept with anyone else…but his own brother? The blood of his blood and the flesh of his flesh?

Dear lord have mercy.

The Demon could stand in line; Jeff Winchester would kill his own brother.

~~~

He couldn’t do it. Looking into the eyes of the man who had protected and sacrificed and fought so much beside him…he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill his own blood.

But that didn’t mean he had to know about the baby.

He had walked out on Nancy that night, knowing that all it took was one time, and he had never checked back in to see if she were okay or if there was even the possibility she could be pregnant. In his mind, that made John exempt from his fatherly duties. He only wished he could have found where his brother had hid his nephews but could only hope and pray that little Dean took up the ever expanding slack of John Winchester.

~~~

There was a girl, with long flowing dark hair and these dark brown eyes, so similar in shape and coloring to Sam’s own but with a pretty pout and lips like Dean. She was young, maybe sixteen or seventeen and she was wearing a ridiculous blue suit with metallic silver accents and bobbing antennae on her head.

Two men arguing and a gun firing off.

She was shot and somehow she was better.

But she had a glowing, reddish gold chord binding her, and Sam’s eyes followed that chord back to him, back to Dean, and finally, back to John Winchester.

The four were bound together, only the girl’s chord was a darker red than the others, the color of Nancy’s chord, whereas Dean and Sam’s was more golden, like Mary’s had been. They were all glowy red like John and Jeffrey’s. That could only mean one thing…

‘No,’ Sam started shaking his head. No way, no freaking unbelievable way, no!

‘Sam…’

Sam looked up and his heart hurt to see Jessica there. His Jess, who had been taken from the same foul creature who’d stolen his mother from him. She often appeared to him when a vision was urgent.

‘Search your heart Sam…worlds will be lost or worlds will be saved, depending on how you decide.’

Sam tore his eyes off his dead girlfriend long enough to look at the dark haired girl one last time before looking back to Jess.

‘Guard the Guardian.’

Sam frowned. That quote seemed so familiar…ah, now he remembered! He knew Jess had been a fan of Anne McCaffrey but why was she quoting from The Rowan?

‘Guard the Guardian,’ Jess repeated, and then she too faded away.

~~~

Sam jerked awake as the stinging on his cheeks flamed and then started to fade away to a dull ache. He shook his head and as his eyes came to focus he realized he was back from…wherever he had went to. John was on one side, Dean on the other, and Missouri in front of him with all three were looking worried and relieved at his waking.

“Dude, don’t pull shit like that ever again,” Dean laughed shakily, trying to joke his way through the emotional wreck.

Chick flick moments weren’t his thing and he always seemed to have one every other day the more time he hung around Sam.

“What happened?” John demanded, but it was Missouri’s quiet “Where do you need to go?” that Sam answered.

“Roswell, New Mexico,” and he looked straight at his dad who suddenly paled.

~~~

Blood Will Tell
Chapter 3

A/n: I can’t remember if Sean was there at graduation but let’s just say that he was? Also, can anyone tell me why I keep getting that stupid, Invalid Session. Please resubmit the form message everytime I try to update or leave a remark? This is doing havoc on my updating abilities!

~~~

“We’re grad-uuu-aaate-ed!” Maria Alexandra DeLuca sang out, stretching the last word up and down the musical scale.

Elizabeth Claudia Parker tried not to wince as Maria hit a high note and held it, but she gave a strained smile, long since resigned and somewhat tolerant of her friend’s little quirks and eccentricities after a veritable lifetime spent together. Just something one had to overlook if they were to be friends with one firebrand named Maria DeLuca for any length of time.

“Technically,” Liz began but Maria shook her head, placing a well-manicured hand over her brainy friend’s mouth. Liz could only watch with wide, bemused eyes

“Chica, honey, if you say anything about a ceremony, blah blah, getting diplomas, yadda yadda, and it happening tonight to be ‘technically’ graduated, I will disown you.”

Liz arched a brow at the firm command in her friend’s voice but merely watched her calmly.

Someone’s been hanging around a certain resurrected alien general too long,Liz quirked her lips awkwardly around the hand still placed over her mouth, but her eyes sparkled slightly.

Maria felt herself relaxing as she caught the familiar and long absent sparkle in her best friend’s eyes and she found herself smiling as her fierce expression softened. Maria removed her hand so that it cupped the smaller girl’s chin and the two shared one of those best friend moments, where you could read anything and everything, just by one held glance.

“Oh, please tell me you’re going to kiss her.”

Surprised, both girls jerked away and simultaneously turned to the origin of the voice. Michael Guerrin, alien-human hybrid created from a dead alien general, and Maria’s on again, off again hot-cold boyfriend of sorts stood nearby, looking from one to another with a somewhat hopeful and…eew, excited look in his dark eyes.

“Please?” he begged but the surprise of Michael actually knowing how to use the word was diminished by the trademark smirk and knowing look in those dark caramel eyes.

“Don’t tell me you’re holding her like that,” he demonstrated with a hand wave, “so close and then not kiss her. Please?”

“Eew, Michael! What a perv, now I know one of your sick fantasies and that’s what it is! Sick!” Maria’s face scrunched up adorably and she swatted her boyfriend with all the rage, offense, and embarrassment of the moment behind it. Her neck and face were a red to match Liz’s as they realized the bent of Michael’s thoughts and Liz sighed as she rolled her own eyes.

“You are so twisted, Michael,” Liz shook her head, but she couldn’t help but find some of the situation funny and knew she and Maria had been asking for it.

She supposed they had been close, but she hadn’t thought they were that close. But did that mean she had to actually know the thought of her and Maria sharing a kiss flicked Michael Guerrin’s Bic?

She shuddered at the thought.

“Why is Michael twisted, and better yet, why are we talking about it?” Maxwell Evans came up to the small group. His eyes skimmed over to Liz and warmed slightly, even as Liz had to look away.

Things between her and Max…they were better but as for a ‘they’ it could never be. This time it was her taking the whole ‘step back’ and Max being the one to want to hang on. But with all the drama of the past years…Liz couldn’t take it anymore.

“Michael’s twisted? That is so gross and I did not want to know,” Kyle Valenti wrinkled his nose much as Maria had and gave Liz a grin and a friendly one armed hug. Max’s lips thinned and his jaw tightened, but otherwise, he kept his cool. Smart man.

“Yeah, man, I’m twisted,” Michael snorted, unaffected by the shorter man’s comments.

“Maria must really love ya to put up with ‘it’,” the dark blond jock went on and everyone groaned at the typical Valenti styled innuendo.

“Well, now that we know your preferences, we’ll just make sure your man isn’t twisted,” the reply just seemed to flow off Liz’s lips and everyone stared at her in surprise, except two, whose deep male laughter shocked the rest of them to action.

“Way to go, Liz!” Sean DeLuca, former juvenile delinquent and elder cousin to Maria, gave Liz an enigmatic grin. Michael just grunted and gave one of those rare Guerrin grins and a, “Nice, Parker.”

Kyle resembled a fish, mouth open and working as if he were trying to talk, but couldn’t get the words out. Liz decided the better part of valor was to take her self out of possible endangerment and slipped out from under Kyle’s arm, which slapped his side limply.

“Liz…”he finally managed when he could talk, still gawking at her. “Liz…I’m shocked.”

“Really, who could tell?” Sean rolled his eyes but a smile still lingered on his lips and in his eyes.

Then a huge grin broke out causing those baby blues to sparkle and with a delighted laugh, Kyle gave her a big hug, picking her up and giving the side of her face an exuberant kiss.

“I’m so proud of you…my little baby’s growing up,” he faked remarkably realistic tears and Liz could only respond with laughter of her own though she was horrified now.

Red faced, Liz turned from the group as soon as he let her go and made a hasty exit to the safety of her locker just a few feet down, ducking into the relative safety of the excited, jostling crowd. She was trembling so hard her fingers wouldn’t put her combination in properly, and it took her a few times to get it right.

Once she got it open she let out a loud gush of pent up air, and her shoulders sagged.

“Did I just do that?” she wondered aloud, even as the familiar scent of books, paper, and backpack nylon calmed her down. The only thing that could have worked just as well or even better would be formelahyde but that wouldn’t be found in her locker.

That was a funny thought. Books and school supplies were to her what all the cedar and aromatherapy oils were to Maria.

“Yup, you did,” an amused voice answered her, breaking her thoughts, and Liz whirled around to bang her elbow on the locker door.

Sean flinched with her and raised a hand to run his thumb over the smarting area soothingly, a light smile playing across his lips.

“Careful, Parker, there’s a door there.”

“Gee, Michael, what would we do without your wonderful, stellar powers of observation?” Maria shook her head and rolled her eyes, smacking him as he scowled down at her but she was used to it.

“Watch it DeLuca, I think Max will bite your hand off if you don’t remove it from Ms. Parker’s person,” Kyle joked in a faked serious, Southern drawl. Those sparkling blues would have been at home on an imp or some other mischievous pixied sprite.

“I would not,” Max protested, but there was no heat in it, and Liz shook her head.

“Too much testosterone,” she sighed.

At the sudden light and smirk in Michael’s eyes Liz nearly groaned at the fact she reminded him of what had caused this fiasco in the first place. Wearily, she resigned to hear the next Michael-ism but she was thankfully saved but the most unlikely of sources.

“Come on people, the graduation ceremony is in approximately four hours and we need to prepare!”

Isabel Evans Ramirez, every inch perfectly coifed, every wrinkle pressed, every bubble in the nail polish alien mojo-ed to perfection, stood in the hallway as kids spread like the Red Sea before her. Her disapproving glare beat the boys into submission long enough for Liz to grab whatever notebooks, pens, papers, calculators and other ‘geek stuff’ to use a shared Kyle-and-Michael phrase and try to load it into an already overloaded backpack.

“Um, Parker, when normal people graduate, they usually throw all this junk in the garbage where it belongs,” Michael arched a brow toward her as she struggled to adjust the heavy weight on her back.

Liz frowned at him, but decided not to comment, knowing it would just flow off his back like water on a duck’s back. Useless.

Isabel’s heeled foot clacked impatiently as she tapped it, and so Liz gritted her teeth and accepted Sean’s help gratefully, her wounded elbow not even registering on her radar, as she shut her locker and realized suddenly it would be the last time she would do so. Four years…four years and so many memories, good and bad, had occurred and it was like shutting the door on a piece of her life.

There were actual tears in her eyes that she quickly tried to hide from the others, not wanting to be the brunt of any more ‘nerdy’ jokes for now. She knew it was stupid…but she had liked school, and she’d miss her teachers and lab and locker and books and mad study sessions like she’d miss a limb. She’d already cried when she had to return all her textbooks, and had shared sniffles with some of her favorite teachers, and been chastised properly by Maria all day.

“You finished, Liz?”

Liz knew Isabel wasn’t really as bitchy as she came off but she still narrowed her eyes slightly at the bossing tone in the taller blondes voice.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

Sean gave her a sympathetic look that she skittered away from and with back straight – well, kinda bent to take the weight of her pack – she marched down the hallway. Isabel’s disapproving frown and glance at the pack and her mouth opening to say something caused Liz to stop and level her with a Look.

“Don’t. Even. You get to go all Christmas and Graduation Nazi over everything, but on this…this. Is. Mine. Just. Don’t.”

Isabel’s jaw snapped shut with a clank and satisfied Liz continued her march through the halls that she wouldn’t come back to on a daily basis come fall. She had no idea where this new strength had come from, and didn’t know whether she liked it or not.

“Whoa, Parker grew a backbone and a funny bone within the last six hours,” Michael mused while Maria smacked him.

“Hey, I’ll meet up with you all later,” Sean said his good byes and took off after the direction Liz went.

“Think she’ll be okay?” Maria worried, grabbing her long, golden hair and chewing slightly on the end of her ponytail. It had been a nervous habit when she had had longer hair as a child, one of the reasons she’d had to cut it so short. She only did it now if she was really worried or absentminded about something.

“I’m sure she can fend your cousin off with that overstuffed geek bag if she absolutely had to,” Kyle managed a straight face and even Max, staring wistfully after the two, had to smile.

“Parker? She’s tougher than she let’s even herself know about,” Michael shrugged and everyone stared at him.

“What? I can’t say something insightful every once in a while?” he glared back at them in true Michael fashion and flicked Kyle off before he could start.

“Can we please all just leave this place so we could get ready for tonight?” Isabel scowled at the remaining members of the Pod Squad and sighing, they followed the ‘Graduation Nazi’ out of West Roswell High for one of their final times.

~~~
Blood Will Tell
Chapter 4

~~~

Liz found herself wandering familiar haunts, smiling as she had the now empty halls to herself, and eventually found herself standing in the quad near the table Alex had nicknamed ‘the Unofficial Wardroom’, the ‘official’ one being either the almost reserved booth at the Crashdown Café and Diner or the Crashdown’s back room.

Alex.

Thoughts of her lanky, goofy best guy pal brought the tears and throat clogging all over again, and Liz felt a keen sense of loss ache through her. She set her pack on the table, glad to be rid of it’s weight for a moment, and reverently sat down in the space no one had had the heart to occupy since that dreadful night when Sheriff Valenti had come to tell them Alex was with them no more.

A year and half almost…one whole school year, gone, without him. And now they were to graduate…Liz shuddered and sitting there in Alex’s ‘spot’, she let loose the pent up tears and she sobbed as she drew her knees and legs up to her chest and cried into the harsh denim of her pants.

She had loved him, she had fallen in love with Alexander Charles Whitman at some point in their lifelong friendship, and he died before she realized it and could tell him. It had shocked her when in the course of her quest for answers to the strange circumstances surrounding his death she had sat down to think about where this sudden zeal and obsession had come from.

True, if it had been any of the others –except Tess- she would have been just as dedicated, but even she knew herself better than to think that she would have went at it so gung-ho and manic to the point of having the others hate her if there wasn’t something else behind it.

Yes, her emerging alien powers of premonition and almost psychic ability to see the past, present, and possible future outcomes had something to do with it, but not all. That was when, in true Liz fashion, she’d made a list of all the reasons she’d given herself and lo and behold, the very first thing she wrote down was, I love him. That single line had seemed to jump off the page, growing bigger and bigger, until it swarmed around her brain and filled her eyes and ears and nothing else seemed to matter except that she loved him.

And not in the platonic sense either, she’d been surprised to discover.

She didn’t know the when, all that she knew was that she had, and now he was gone. That she would never have a chance to explore this new development in their relationship, or talk about computer programs or other ‘geek’ stuff, or even have another crazy dance marathon where they both admitted to each other it was probably for the good of mankind’s survival both of them should avoid dancing as a profession…these kind of things hit her hard and it was losing him all over again.

Never to hear his voice again, or feel his arms around her…she’d never get to find out what it would have been like to kiss him, to know she was the object of Alex Whitman’s attention the way that Isabel Evans held for him. Never to watch him laugh or serve him orange soda ‘on the rocks’…to see his face light up when his favorite songs came on the radio, or the intense concentration while he scribbled furiously on paper or napkins as part of some lyrics or notes came to him that he could put to song when the muse hit him.

She had loved Max at one point but that was the key wording: at one point. Sure she had been attracted to Max, what girl in their class aside from Isabel hadn’t? And Kyle, dear sweet Kyle, she’d loved him in a way too…but it wasn’t the kind of love she figured out too late that she held for Alex.

Her love for Alex wasn’t the dazzling supernova, filled with high passion and angst and drama that had marked her feelings for Max, which flared bright and true for a moment and then blew up all over the place leaving a terrible void. Nor was it the shy, instant attraction of Mr. Popular Jock noticing the wallflower Ms. Brain that had characterized the short relationship between her and Kyle.

No…her love for Alex had been a gradual thing…like your favorite homemade spaghetti sauce or stew that sits in the crock pot on low for days and days, tempting you with bits of a wonderful aroma that made your mouth water and your stomach clench, and had you sneaking just a taste. And when you finally get to eat it you realize it was more than worth the wait, for the anticipation and build up had made it so much more.

That was her love for Alex. She hadn’t even told Maria, somehow instinctively knowing to do so would open a rift of sorts that the fragile truce between her and the rest of the Pod Squad and orbiting humans might break.

Oh yes, poor Isabel, whom Alex had loved with a passion previously held only to computer programs and songwriting. Such a tragic thing, for her ‘human’ interest to be lost…Liz rolled her eyes. In a rare moment of reaching out, a broken Isabel had come to her balcony, and the two had talked about Alex and their respective feelings. Or more accurately, Isabel spoke and Liz listened, and the part of her that loved Alex as more than the friend everyone thought her to be was irrationally pleased and somewhat angered to hear that Isabel hadn’t loved him like she should have.

That guilt had been tearing at the Ice Queen, who had genuinely liked him as friend, but honestly didn’t believe that they were meant to be together. Then she’d gone on to talk about how she felt about her father’s new intern at his law office, Jesse Ramirez, and that was the start of a budding, tentative friendship that was about them, Isabel and Liz, and not Max and Liz’s relationship.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, hugging her knees close to her chest, before she felt The Presence. Sniffling and tears still escaping down her face, Liz slowly drew her face up from her knees and took a cautious look around. She carefully scanned the entire courtyard and the surrounding area, but she couldn’t see anything or anyone. But she could have sworn…there, she felt it! A cold breeze that raised the hair on her skin as it passed over her but none of the leaves on the trees moved. It was utterly still and the sun shone down, but she hadn’t imagined it. If anything it felt…familiar, like an old friend.

Like Alex.

She could swear she could hear the sound of his laughter echoing around her, as if she could strain and listen hard enough, she could hear him. Looking closely at the trees, a frown marring the smooth skin of her forehead, she felt that cool brush again against her shoulder as if someone had set a comforting hand on her.

“Alex,” her eyes wide she turned in the direction the cool brush had come from…

…and met Sean DeLuca’s eyes as he made his way across the yard toward her. Abruptly, that comforting cool presence was gone, and the trees started to bend in a warm, summer breeze. Liz stared dumbly at the trees and their traitorous leaves glinting in the sun’s light, and she shuddered.

“That was weird,” she murmured, then erased any signs of the supernatural or otherworldly and gave Sean a timid smile.

She liked Sean, she liked him a lot, as a friend and as a confidante she’d lacked since Alex was taken. He was a good friend, he was always willing to listen to her, and between him and Kyle she had a feeling of enough normalcy to ground her in the face of the drama of the Alien Abyss. Those two had sort of banded together as her unwitting support group, Kyle because he liked having fun outside the Pod Squad, and Sean because he enjoyed her for her, not for what she could do in a crisis. Maria was still her bestest of the best friends, but the gradual growing up stage and her closeness to Michael and even Max had her just as completely immerged with the latest alien drama she forgot how it was to be human and have fun.

She hadn’t told him of the Czech’s secret, nor had any of the others, and for that she was grateful. She didn’t want to have to lose another friend for the Cause, no matter how brave or noble or unintentional that loss may have been.

She also wished she could love him like he did her but she couldn’t. It was something between the two that they tried to work on, but Liz wasn’t making any promises, to him or to herself based on the heat of a moment. She’d had too much of that and look where it had taken her. One friend who could have been more six feet under and more sorrow and pain than she had ever thought anyone could go through in only two years time.

Was it only two years ago her biggest worry was getting an A- on any test instead of wondering when the next evil aliens attack by Khivar and his merry Corn Flakes?

“Hey,” the other dark blond guy in her life greeted with a pleased smile.

“Hey, you,” she greeted back, immediately feeling herself relax. Only Sean and Kyle seemed to have that knack on her anymore.

“I’ve been looking for you. How’s the arm?” he gestured to her elbow and Liz blushed at the memory.

“It’s been better. You’ve been looking for me, why?” Liz cocked her head, curious.

“Oh, you know…you kinda gave Isabel the big brush off and left the rest of us doing Kyle’s earlier fish impression.”

Liz laughed and immediately felt better, though she made a mental note to apologize to Isabel later.

“I’m sorry…it’s just. I don’t know,” Liz sighed. “I liked school. I really did. I liked it here, I liked the memories, and it’s important to me y’know? And I love Isabel since she’s fast becoming my number two gal pal, but honestly? Right then, I really didn’t need to hear the Nazi going into overdrive,” she confessed quietly.

“Hey, hey, don’t get all weepy again. It’s okay to feel things, I’d be afraid for you not to feel things,” Sean protested, coming to sit by Liz but making sure not to intrude on that spot. “It’s good for you. Besides…it’s okay to let someone know when they’re too much, and sometimes our dear Princess can be a little much, eh?”

Liz started at Sean’s nickname for Isabel, but looking up, she could see he’d only been teasing and hadn’t known. Slowly, she started to smile, and sighed again but not so sadly this time.

“I just wish he could be here,” she finally admitted, voice going almost whisper soft.

Sean looked at her closely, studying the almost heart shaped face, and his stomach clenched painfully and his throat filled as the distant, wistful look in her eyes couldn’t match the one emotion he wished those chocolate orbs would cast his way.

“You loved him,” he sounded surprised and Liz’s eyes flew to his, startled once more. She studied him as closely as he’d studied hers, and he left himself open, showing her all his pain, sadness, friendship, and lastly, resigned acceptance on his mobile face. Liz swallowed another lump in her throat as she decided to do the same and trust him.

“Yes,” her lips formed the word, but Sean could hardly hear. It seemed the word carried on the wind and the trees seemed to sigh.

“I don’t know how,” she began, blinking back the rush of tears. “He’d always been there you know? And I was too caught up in my whole I’m-supposed-to-love-Max deal that I didn’t see…couldn’t see what was in front of me the whole time. And when he was gone,” she choked the last, “I was so lost, and I didn’t know why. I never so much as even kissed him or ever had a thought or dream about him that way and I was acting as if my lover and not my best guy friend had died. Somehow…I fell in love with Alex and now he’ll never know. We’ll never find out where we would have gone from there.”

Liz blinked several times more but the tears fell freely and finally she just gave up and simply stared at Sean.

“He was always so in love with Isabel,” the thought seemed to pain her but she continued, “but she could never love him back, never go past friendship. And it nearly destroyed her, the guilt she carried, that she couldn’t return the level of his feelings. Sean…”

“Don’t…please, Liz, don’t,” Sean had tears of his own running down his face.

“I don’t know if I can be in love you Sean DeLuca…but I can care deeply and right now that’s all I can give.”

Sean clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, shaking as he drew in a deep breath, and slowly let it rattle out. A wry sort of grin crossed his mouth and when he opened them, Liz was grateful to see a sort of sad acceptance there.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever felt for anyone, the way you seem to have and still feel for Alex. Or even Max and Kyle for that matter.” Sean ran a hand through the short stubble of his hair and tried to think of better words. “So if this is love I feel for you…God, why does it have to hurt so much? It’s supposed to be a good thing, right?”

Liz barked out a choked laugh while shaking her head and swiping at the tear tracks on her cheeks.

“So I’m told but…” she trailed off, finishing with a shrug.

“Yeah.”

The pair was silent for a while before Sean suddenly burst out, “Love sucks!”

He didn’t know what was so amusing as Liz suddenly went into peals of laughter, before he managed to get a garbled ‘dark’ and ‘angel’, ‘Alec’, ‘Max’, and ‘space needle’ out of her, and finally connected the dots.

“Oh, ha ha, trust me to make some profound statement that’s already been taken by a post apocalyptic futuristic television show.”

Liz hadn’t felt so carefree in so long, and she did nothing to hold her laughter back.

“Well, if I’m going to be laughed at, let’s do it where I can get some soda or coffee at least.”

“Coffee?” Liz looked at him dumbly before her eyes suddenly widened. “Oh my God, coffee! Oh, I’m in so much trouble, what time is it? Oh…I’m so going to die!”

“What? Wait? How are you going to die over coffee?” Sean was confused, more so at logical Liz going all manically Maria on him and that was scary.

“I promised my dad I’d come home after school and help him out with some things at the Crashdown since we’re closing early for graduation tonight. I’m so going to die!”

Liz grabbed her pack and heaved it on, eyes still wide and panicked.

“Whoa, wait, hey, take it easy. You’re dad’s a nice guy, right? He’d understand you’d take a little longer to get home…”

“By almost an hour?! Sean, school’s been out for over an hour and I was supposed to have been home at least forty minutes ago and I haven’t even checked in or called or…or checked in! My dad’s going to go berserker!”

Liz made a dash for the stairs, grunting and huffing at the unfamiliar weight on her back, and Sean followed with his own noticeably lighter bag.

“Liz, Liz, it’s okay, don’t panic! Just tell him you were with me…” Sean almost tripped over her as Liz suddenly stopped and whirled to face him.

“Oh, no, that would be of the bad, very, very bad. If you want to join me in the ranks of death, just tell my father that the reason I was an hour late from school, when I’d been noticeably crying, and not even calling to check in because of a boy?” Liz gave him an incredulous look.

“Maybe if we ask him parley?”

“I am so going to die!”

Look at the pretty banner mrsjbehr made for this story! I didn’t even ask her to and look at how wonderful a job her kindness had brought about.

This next chapter, in thanks, appreciation, gratitude, and all that good jazz is dedicated to…who else? mrsjbehr!

* applauds *

And now….on with the story!

~~~

Blood Will Tell
Chapter 5

~~~

Jeffrey Parker woke up that morning with a throbbing in his spirit, a sort of melancholy wistfulness that he hadn’t experienced in years. Instantly on alert, it took him a moment to determine there wasn’t anything demon-y or spirit-like in the room…that in fact it was simply his subconscious letting him know what was so important about today and tonight in particular. Relaxing slightly, he slipped the large hunting knife back in its sheath on the edge of the mattress near the wall, and paused to take in the sounds of his home.

A few bedrooms away he could hear the spray of the shower going and a smile crept across his craggy face.

Liz is up early, he chuckled silently.

Still, he stayed alert, senses attuned to everything around him.

A familiar warm body curled next to his on the bed and Jeff looked down at his wife of over twenty-eight years. The years and the rough circumstances that had marked their first decade together and that insidious Three had etched themselves in that fair skin Jeff loved. The golden hair that had captured his attention wasn’t as shiny as it once had been, having darkened instead of lightened in the years spent in Roswell, but despite it all she still had the ability to make his heart stop beating with just a smile or word.

And she doesn’t even know what she does to him, the stinker, Jeff smiled as he gently traced the curve of her jaw. She only twitched in her sleep, but smiled, even in sleep recognizing her husband’s touch.

“Nancy…” he whispered in a voice roughened by sleep and unwillingly, she started to wake to see what he wanted.

“Hmmm?”

“Nancy…Liz is awake, already. You slept in.”

“Uhm…wha-? What?”

Nancy shot upward, wide-awake now, and Jeff’s reflexes just barely saved his chin from being smacked as she jerked.

Hair sticking all around her face, some of it poofing as it pulled away from the little elastic band she’d gathered it all in the night before, and little red lines from the pillow crisscrossing one side of her face made her the most beautiful and favorite sights Jeff had ever seen.

Nancy blinked and looked at the clock on the nightstand, and as her face puckered in a pout their daughter had learned and utilized well, she wailed, “Jeff why didn’t you wake me sooner!”

Dashing out of bed, and hastily stripping out of the baggy men’s lounge sleep pants and extra large t-shirt she wore as pajamas, she charged the personal bathroom like a madwoman.

Flipping onto his back in the middle of the bed, with arms crossed behind his head and long legs stretched out before him, Jeff listened with amusement his wife’s irritated commentary through the partially opened bathroom door.

“You can sit there all smug like all you want…you didn’t make plans to make your daughter a large breakfast for her last day of school…I did! And I wanted to get it ready before she was up but did my husband wake me up so I could surprise our daughter? Noooo…Oohh,” Nancy growled the last in frustration.

It was the fastest shower Jeff remembered her ever taking, not even five minutes, and he made sure any signs of his smile or other mirth was careful blanked away as the little blond tornado sending droplets of water all over the place came bursting out in a towel that barely covered her.

Not that Jeff was complaining.

His eyes followed hers; hunger and amusement warring for dominance, as the towel went flying off the still wet and mumbling figure that grabbed the first articles of clothing she came across. A pair of lacy red low rise bikini bottoms and their matching bra set that did nothing whatsoever to hide what was underneath went on first; Jeff’s right eyebrow raised upwards, completely alert now if he wasn’t.

He also tried not to laugh, because he was sure that Nancy in her haste, didn’t realize she had grabbed her under things from the lingerie drawer and not her ‘bland’ under clothes drawer she wore on normal days.

Whirling slightly Nancy grabbed the first pair of pants off the pile of clothes on the dresser waiting to be put away; they happened to be a pair of Jeff’s red flannel pajama bottoms that she tightened but they still rested low enough he could see the edges of her lacy underwear peeking through.

What time does Liz have to leave? Jeff wondered, doing nothing to hide the wicked gleam in his eye, or the pleased smile curving his lips as he watched his wife toss a black tank top on top of her pile and quickly dash around to the little vanity off the side to grab a scrunchie and whip her still wet hair in a messy bun.

“Love ya, gotta go!” and Nancy was out the door in a spray of water.

“Love you too!” Jeff grinned, then sighed, knowing he was going to be taking a cold shower this morning.

As he turned on the spray, he wondered if he could wait long enough for his little girl to take off for school before ravishing his wife.

~~~

A much calmer Jeff emerged from his shower some twenty minutes later, shaved, dressed, and smelling of the cologne Nancy had bought him that he wore only for special occasions. The day his daughter graduated was certainly one of those special occasions, and if it was also the same cologne that Nancy had admitted to driving her wild whenever he wore it, then, well who was he to protest whatever his wife might do to him?

“Hello, my most beautiful of beautiful ladies,” he called out to them in greeting.

“Hey, Dad!” Liz looked up at him from her place behind a mountain of food, a sweet smile upon her lips, not the partial quirk of the mouth she’d been giving them the past couple of years, and it warmed Jeff’s heart. His little girl was making a comeback from whatever abyss she’d slipped into slowly but surely.

“Hey, Honeybear,” his mother’s favorite nickname for her came out of Jeff’s mouth easily, and he could have winced, but Liz didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her smile got bigger, and she left her plate of Nancy’s good cooking to come give him a full two-armed hug.

She hadn’t hugged him like that since she was ten and informed him that since she was now developing her breasts due to an increase in hormones signaling the onset of puberty that she would hug him from the side with one arm as was appropriate. She’d then went on to explain that she was tender in that particular area and that this was the first step toward womanhood. It had been one of those moments where he had kind of blanked out with a glazed look, and Nancy had had to hold back her laughter at him.

“Thought this wasn’t appropriate,” Jeff couldn’t help but tease and laughed at the telltale blush that spread across her delicate heart shaped face.

“Da-ad!” she whined, affecting a pout similar to her mother and also reminded him of someone else. His breath hitched in his chest while his heart ached.

“Oh, don’t listen to your father, he’s still mad that you didn’t join the girl’s basketball team and ruined his dreams of raising a future WNBA star,” Nancy smiled, finishing making breakfast, knowing how much Jeff loved to eat.

“Hey, now!” Jeff protested, releasing his daughter with a wink and grabbing a mug by the counter. “That was a great dream.”

“Yeah…until she decided to follow in her mother and grandmother’s scientific footsteps,” Nancy beamed proudly, pouring Jeff some coffee and handing him the sugar bowl and a spoon.

“Or could it have beeen the incredible height disadvantage to your vertically challenged daughter?” Liz interjected, grinning.

“That’s not an excuse…look at the Valenti boy. He’s hideously short for a guy and yet he made Varsity captain when he was a freshman and held it through the remaining years.”

“Dad! Kyle is not hideously short!”

“Then what do you call his lack of manliness?”

“Jeffrey Adam! Height has nothing to do with manliness and you know it!”

“It has everything to do with manliness…the poor kid’s going to be picked on for the rest of his life because he’s a runt.”

“Oh…don’t tell the Sheriff that,” Liz giggled. “I’d hate for Mom and I to have to bail you out. It might take an exceptionally long time to process through.”

“That’s right…those things take time,” Nancy nodded, agreeing. “It’d take a lot of skill and careful negotiation.”

“Not to mention butt-kissing.”

“Yes, can’t forget the butt-kissing.”

“There will be no butt-kissing of any Valenti male by my girls!” Jeff growled, eyes narrowing.

“What do you think Mom…a month of free meals at the Crashdown?” Liz went on, purposefully ignoring her father while Nancy winked at her.

“A month, hell no!” Jeff winced. He could just imagine those two bachelors eating them out of business within the first two days. “What did I do in a past life to deserve this?” Jeff mock sighed, affecting being highly put upon.

Today was a lazy day of sorts, he wasn’t going to open the Café until about noon and even then they would be closing at about four, so he took his time to enjoy his family.

Family.

Jeff’s eyes turned sorrowful for a moment, then glinted hard, and he hid his expression from the two most important people in his life, who were talking and laughing at some female joke. It did his heart good to see that. Guilt had wracked Nancy so hard, when she found out she was pregnant with Liz, and all the contributing circumstances that when she was born it took Nancy a while to try and connect with her new daughter.

Jeff had taken one look at those newborn dark eyes – Winchester eyes, a voice whispered in his mind – and he couldn’t hate her anymore than he could kill his brother. It had been difficult for Nancy to get over her guilt, and her relationship with Liz had suffered, as she constantly reminded Nancy of a truly painful time and bad decision. So Jeff had made his peace with the daughter of his brother and accepted her as his own, and tried to make up for Nancy’s lack during those intervening years.

“Never had a female Winchester before,” he had surmised that day, knowing it was truth. All the female Winchesters had married into the family, and each and every one of them were exceptional in their strength and determination. But none had been born of the Winchester line.

Nancy’s one condition was that Jeff never, ever teach their daughter to Hunt. And Jeff had acceded to her wishes, but he couldn’t leave it completely alone either. For he knew exactly what was out there, and he couldn’t ignore a lifetime of instruction, or bear the thought of Liz getting hurt because he didn’t prepare her.

So he took his daughter on camping trips and taught her the basics of survival and self-defense. Nothing that would make her Jackie Chan or Annie Oakley, but enough to keep her alive until he or other help could arrive. It helped that at a young age, Liz’s little scientific mind had kicked into overdrive, and those trips were made to collect various ‘specimens’, whether it was dirt, rock, twigs, or any and all things slimy, scaly, or creepy crawly.

So it had been with an aching heart that Jeff watched his little girl grow up, eventually pulling away even from him, and Nancy had had to restrain him when she first went out on an actual date. The fact that it was Valenti’s boy did nothing to assuage the overprotective instincts, as the Hunter in him screamed to keep his little girl safe.

He almost did go off when he found out that the Valenti boy had dared to kiss his little girl…two days prior to The Date! In the Eraser Room no less! Jeff knew what went on in the Eraser Room and the fact that his baby girl had been in there…Jeff came close to breaking his promise to Nancy and nearly went on a Hunt just to have something to kill.

But the real clincher that made him like raising a teenage girl even less was the whole fiasco with that Evans boy that was still going on but not quite to the extent it had. Since the shooting here almost two years ago, he’d watched his bright cheerful little girl turn into a sad, almost war wearied woman and a lot of it he was sure was Evans’ fault.

He wasn’t stupid; he could see the influence that he held over the others of that little group as if he were their king. At first Jeff had thought that they had all grouped together for some unsupervised Hunting that they might have stumbled upon, and dragged his little girl down in the process, but he quickly discounted that after discussing the issue with the local Hunter.

So he’d watched as Max Evans and the others stomped on his little girl’s heart and when Alex had died…well, it was like Liz died with him. When he heard the rumor that Liz and Kyle had slept together he’d rushed to the Valenti household to strangle the little bastard within every inch of life for even daring to think about touching his baby that way. By the time he’d got there, he’d somewhat calmed down, and rational thinking told him that Liz wouldn’t have done that…especially not if he and Nancy had been in the house as they had been that night.

A tense Jim Valenti had answered the door and both fathers cornered an unsuspecting Kyle who not even Buddha could save if Jeffrey Parker let Jeffrey Winchester take over. He wasn’t nicknamed JAWs in his Ranger unit for nothing.

Talking to Kyle only caused more questions and after reassuring both Valenti’s he didn’t harbor any ill will – unless Kyle actually did sleep with his little girl sometime later without the safety of a marriage ceremony and license – he’d left and started to pay as much attention to what went on as he had on any Hunt.

“Hey, Dad!”

Jeff jerked out of his thoughts and looked at Liz, who was wearing an amused grin to match her mothers. He couldn’t help but see, every now and then, another dark hair and eyed toddler when he saw her.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“I said I’m leaving for school now. Walk me to the alley where Maria’s waiting?”

“Sure thing, Honeybear.”

Smiling, Jeff drained the last of his coffee after shoving the last bite of waffle in his mouth and then followed his little girl out the door, Nancy watching them go with a pleased smile. She hummed as she went about cleaning up the breakfast dishes, contented that they had had a family meal without any interruptions for the first time in years.

~~~

“Where is she?”

Jeff paced an angry swath in his office and just barely restrained himself from rushing out to check every time a door opened. He drummed his fingers against his thigh, and cast an annoyed glance at the phone, the mutinous item in question blatantly defying him by remaining silent.

“Jeff…” Nancy warned, peeking carefully around the corner of the open office. She knew better than to enter without warning. Jeffrey Parker he may be, but he would always have the skills and instincts of Jeffrey Winchester, Army Ranger and Hunter first and foremost.

“Where is she?” Jeff grit out, looking up at his wife with poorly veiled concern and worry.

It wasn’t that she was late – well not just because of that- but he’d been having some extremely weird dreams. Dreams of his past life as a Hunter, and always nagging at the back of his mind was the thought, what if this is the day that the Demon finds out about Liz?

“Relax, Jeff, what could possibly get her in broad daylight? Something major bad?” she corrected herself.

“What could possibly get her? Rapists, kidnappers, murderers, drunk or high creatures, and those are only the human baddies,” Jeff growled. “Not to mention shapeshifters, witches, warlocks…some subspecies of vampire, ghosts, wil’o’the wisps, pixies and other fey…most of those are unhindered by sunlight.”

“Jeff…I think you’re overreacting. It’s only been…”

“An hour! I know, only an hour, but Nan, she usually has already called in by now to say she was detained or something…an hour! And the Mad Hatter is already here with the rest of the Tea Party so where. Is. She?”

“Maybe she found the clock for the White Rabbit,” Nancy folded her arms across her chest, watching as Jeff spun around and crossed the short distance to the largest of the tall cabinets, the one that was always locked.

Opening it, Jeff revealed weaponry and ammunition of all kinds, from shotguns to handguns, knives to bows and arrows, crossbows and bolts, wooden stakes, holy water, rock salt, a machete and an M16, another short sword almost the length of Nancy’s arms, and four Winchester rifles.

“Good Lord, Jeffrey…is that even necessary?” Nancy paled at all the weaponry.

“I’m going to find my little girl and I’m going to be prepared just in case,” Jeff answered without looking over his shoulder, strapping on various deadly weapons that seemed to disappear within pockets, clips, and folds of clothing. There was at least six knives that Nancy saw him pick up from her awkward angle guarding the door, and three…no four handguns he secreted away, plus spare clips of ammo.

“Who do you think you are…Rambo? For goodness sakes, Jeffrey, she’s only been missing an hour and we don’t even know that she’s missing!”

Jeff shut the door and locked it, placing the key on the chain about his neck, the heavy metal coming to rest against the platinum colored pentagram pendant with a blood red ruby centerpiece.

“Who’s missing?”

Jeff did nothing to hide the scowl as Max Evans looked around Nancy Parker to see what was going on.

“None of your business, boy,” some of the old Hunter growled out in warning.

“Jeff,” Nancy hissed, eyes begging.

Max for his part, had to do everything not to flinch back, but the Parkers had said something about ‘she’s missing’ and the only one who they’d get worked up over was Liz. If anything happened to her and he did nothing because he was afraid of her father…he’d never forgive himself.

“Is it Liz?” he forced himself to ask and Jeff’s deepening frown and glare told him everything.

“You’re not looking for her and that’s final.”

Jeff carefully moved his wife aside and brushed by the irritating snip of a boy his daughter had somehow seen something in, and proceeded to walk out toward the door. The rest of the gang was there in the back room to help with some of the decorations and looked startled at Jeff’s thunderous countenance. They’d never seen him this way except when Liz was seriously in trouble.

“Mr. Parker,” Maria began timidly.

Jeff stopped abruptly and told himself to breathe, relax, breathe and pay attention. He’d lasted eighteen years and nine months without giving away himself, so his Hunter could wait just a few moments longer.

“Yes, Maria?” he managed in a tight voice. He couldn’t look at them, or her, now. He wasn’t in enough control and the Evans’ boy continued presence by his side had his Hunter instincts screaming ‘smack’.

“What’s wrong?”

That was from Michael and something in Jeff told him he could trust the surly lad. Reminded him a bit of his own family and he was able to meet the young man’s eyes. He didn’t know what it was about him, but the soldier in him recognized a kindred spirit.

“Liz hasn’t come back yet. I’m going to look for her.”

Watch my home and family?

Yes, sir, I will. A look between two soldiers was what it was and Michael curtly nodded at the unspoken exchange.

“Oh, well, she’s probably with still with Sean,” Maria began and Kyle slapped a hand over her mouth, grimacing. He backed away, taking Maria with him, recognizing the look in the elder Parkers eyes. He’d rather face Hurricane DeLuca than Jeffrey Parker in Overprotective Father Mode any day.

“Sean,” the name was ground out before he spun on his heel and into the diner.

The six left behind in his wake stared after him and Nancy could only shake her head and give a shaky smile towards the younger people who stared at her in askance.

“Jeff’s always been protective over Liz,” she shrugged lamely.

“That’s an understatement,” Michael grunted.

“Hands off!” Maria slapped Kyle’s hand away from her with a glare. If he thought that just because he might be extremely close to becoming her stepbrother that he could do what he just did…well, she’d have to disabuse him of that notion.

“Hey, everybody, what’s going on? I just saw Jeff and whew!” Jesse Ramirez came in the back, looking for where his wife was sure to be.

Six people only shook their heads and Isabel let out gusty sigh.

“Let me just say I am glad I am not Sean or Liz. Definitely not Sean.”

The others couldn’t agree with her more.

Nancy just hoped Jeff didn’t shoot or maim him.

~~~

Blood Will Tell
Chapter 6

~~~

Liz was panting as she trudged along the sidewalk as fast as she could with being as encumbered with her overloaded pack as it was. She knew it had to be her panic at her father’s reaction that made her consider Michael’s comment about tossing it all in the nearest garbage bin, but quickly decided against it. Besides, she was almost to the CrashDown.

Sean had tagged along with her as far as the DeLuca shop where Amy had suddenly burst out, scaring them both and grabbed him by the collar where she then started in on why he was late helping her with some last minute preparations. With a look of shared resignation and sympathy, Liz had left him to his fate while being unable to fathom which option was worse the wrath of her father or that of Amy DeLuca?

She hastily looked both ways at the crosswalk before jetting down the street, paying no attention to details other than making sure that she didn’t plow anyone over or falter her pace for more than a few seconds. So she didn’t note beat up Chevy Blazer across the street at the UFO Museum.

~~~

“That’s her! That’s the girl in my vision!”

The attention of the other two passengers in the Blazer looked to where Sam was pointing: a beautiful girl of about eighteen was rushing madly with a backpack to the diner.

“If Sammy were more than a foot and a half shorter, female, and about three years younger she could have been him. So we found the girl of Sammy’s vision; she sure does look spry for being gut shot.”

“Dean!” John Winchester chastised, but his awareness was riveted on the girl. That waist length coffee colored hair and the large doe looking eyes struck him as familiar somehow.

Sam reached between the seats and smacked his brother. He hadn’t told his father and brother about the relationship between Vision Girl and themselves, only that he saw a girl in his vision that they needed to help out and she was in Roswell.

Dean whipped around in the driver’s seat of the borrowed vehicle, still irked he’d had to leave his precious Impala behind for repairs, and was about to retaliate when John’s, “Oh, dear Lord,” brought their interest back to the girl.

An older man had joined her; most likely her father, and he didn’t look happy. Nor did their conversation appear, either.

“Oh, shit,” Sam groaned but only Dean noticed.

John was staring in disbelief at the face of a man who might as well been dead to him for eighteen years.

~~~

“Elizabeth Claudia Parker!”

“Dad!”

Liz had to break really fast or she would have barreled right into Jeff Parker; she still would have as the heavy weight swung her small frame around and she fell toward the ground with startled eep! Her pack slid off her shoulders with a jerk and a thud, and strong hands caught her before she followed.

A pained hiss told her that her pack had thudded right on Jeff Parker’s feet and she knew she wasn’t gaining any brownie points with that one.

“Um…hi, Dad,” Liz tried to smile her way out of trouble but Jeff wasn’t having any of it.

“What did you think you were doing young lady? You were supposed to be here an hour ago!”

Jeff was so relieved his baby girl was all right he did the only thing he could think of with all that pent up worry: he blew.

Liz shakily got to her feet and turned to face her father, pleadingly.

“Dad, I-”

“You should have called!” I wouldn’t have been so afraid.

“But-”

“We,” I, “were worried sick!” Something bad could have snatched you.

“Da-”

“I’d ground you from doing homework or something but you’re getting ready to graduate in…” Jeff looked at the watch on his left wrist, “three and half hours. What kind of groundwork of responsibility are you setting? That’s not going to do you any favors in college come the fall. Is this how you’re planning on getting into Harvard or any other college for that matter?”

“No, sir,” Liz could only look up at her father’s face, helpless and resigned to do anything else, while she held back tears that threatened to escape during his tirade.

She’d cried enough for today and for two lifetimes, and she wasn’t going to continue anymore. Jeff’s words cut deep and it sorrowed her immensely, especially after this morning’s amazing start at breakfast. She may have grown up from the ten-year-old little girl who had worshipped her father but she was still daddy’s girl, and his anger broke her in ways that Max or Tess or Alex’s death couldn’t even compare.

The quaver in his little girl’s voice and the crushed, hurt look in her eyes that killed any of the earlier spark from breakfast brought him up shorter than a troll’s punch to the gut. How could she do that with one look? And this time it wasn’t Max Evans who put that shattered look on his baby girl, he himself was to blame. For goodness sake, he brought his girl to tears!

Feeling like every inch the fool, he sighed and looked away, ashamed, crossing his arms in the process. But Liz didn’t see the remorse in her daddy’s eyes, she saw only his previous anger, the shame and disgust, and the action only served to slam home the fact that she was still the disappointment to him today as she’d been for two years.

“Daddy, I’m sorry, I made you worry. It won’t happen again.” The last fell on a sob, as she couldn’t stop the traitorous tears that fell. Liz whirled away to escape into the alley, not stopping as she rushed around the corner, no doubt to run up the ladder to the safety of her balcony.

Jeff was the one left to stare helpless after her, and his shoulders slumped in defeat. Liz hadn’t called him Daddy in ages; only when she was extremely upset did she call him that.

Raising a hand to rub the back of his neck, Jeff looked up at the sky as if seeking Divine help, and coughing on a bitter laugh, “God, I sounded like John and my father.”

Sighing he looked down and blinked. The large backpack that had fallen on his feet still lay off to the side where he’d nudged it away in pain and irritation and he recognized it for his daughters. He contemplated it for a moment before reaching down and scooping it up, rolling his eyes at the weight, but before he could straighten up his Hunter instincts started a Red Alert.

Freezing, he stilled as only a predator could, tense and waiting. Hardly daring to breathe, he expanded his honed senses and flicked his eyes up and down the street, up the windows, and around the sky and drainage ditches.

As much as a Hunter knows how to track prey, he knows at the same time when he becomes prey.

A Hunter being hunted is not a good thing.

~~~

“Duck!”

Dean and Sam dived under cover by habit and John held his breath, wincing as the action pulled muscles and bones not yet fully recovered, but inwardly cursing.

He should have known that eighteen years out of the Hunt wouldn’t have dulled his brother’s instincts one bit. Jeff was a Winchester through and through and a Winchester never let his guard down. Even Sam, though he’d deny it, hadn’t let himself go too much when he was at college.

“What-” Dean began but John shushed him.

“Later, son. Stay down.”

“This is fucked,” the elder Winchester boy grumbled but he obeyed his father anyway and hunkered down awkwardly behind the steering wheel.

“Still want to drive, big brother?” Sam smirked; he couldn’t help it and John’s annoyed ‘shush’ and Dean’s glare was more than worth it.

~~~

Jeff frowned as his eyes kept focusing in on a battered, Chevy Blazer. Years of gut instinct told him that was where he was being watched originated from, but he couldn’t stay where he was for much longer. People were already staring, and an old wound from a nasty Wendigo attack throbbed on his knee, telling him it was time to move or else.

With a grunt, Jeff slowly rose, taking his daughter’s backpack with him, and very carefully re-entered his store. His shoulders prickled even though he knew whomever, or whatever, had been watching him was ‘gone’ so to speak.

But he couldn’t help but feel that something about that watchful gaze had felt oddly familiar.

~~~

~~~

Chapter 7

‘The only thing that’s worse than one is none.’ – Linkin Park, In Between, new album Minutes to Midnight.

~~~



“You can’t stay in your room forever.”

Sighing, Liz sniffled and swiped at the tears still rolling down her face. Her harsh sobs that had accompanied her up her ladder, through her window, and onto her bed had abated after a few minutes of rough crying. A headache was forming to go with the sore puffy redness ringing her eyes and Liz was certain it was Lady Luck taking pity on her that she had foregone her usual makeup today. Otherwise it too would have suffered a watery fate.

She glanced at the watch gracing her wrist and winced. She needed a shower and had yet to make an appearance downstairs, she was now running really late. Gathering her clothes she marveled that neither Maria nor Isabel had come up to grill her about her absence and lecture her on timeliness and the plans Isabel had spearheaded. Then again, maybe her Dad hadn’t said anything…or maybe he had.

“No thinking of Dad!” Liz scolded herself, firmly pushing thoughts of her father aside as she stripped and adjusted the temperature of the water. As much as she would love to soak in her tub, she just didn’t have the time.

“Don’t know why we just couldn’t have had the entire day off like normal people whose daughter is about to graduate,” she mumbled, rubbing some of her vanilla scented bodywash into the soft bath sponge and working up a good lather.

Scrubbing up and rinsing off, Liz flicked her head back to the warm spray and sighed as the water pelted and wet her hair and body, massaging away for a few seconds all the pain and stress of the day.

“Why, why does this all happen to me?” she asked for no reason, rethinking the day’s events, and sighing. She grabbed her bottle of shampoo, stopping for a moment to just enjoy the creamy strawberry tang wafting out of the plastic container, and then set to work on her long, thick tresses.

~~~

“Bout time you showed up, Parker.”

“Missed you too, Guerin,” she sassed back, sending him partial smile as she bounced down the stairs toward the lockers. It figured that Michael would have been the first to notice her presence.

The others straightened up but Nancy’s tentative, “Liz?” and sigh of relief halted the New Inquisition.

“Yeah, about me being late, I am so sorry to have worried you Mom, but let me get changed real quick and help finish out this hour before Maria disowns me as her friend and I promise we’ll talk,” Liz rushed out as she grabbed her clean Crashdown uniform and darted for the employee’s restroom.

In the wake of bemused glances Liz managed to get out of her clothes and into her uniform and back into the room before anything more could be done.

“Okay, I’m here, and I’ll talk with you all later, gotta run!” Liz bounced up on her tip toes to kiss her mother’s cheek and exited through the swinging doors as she adjusted the metallic alien head shaped apron about her waist.

“Dude…what just happened?” Kyle shook his head, and everyone quieted as Maria’s shriek of, “Chica, you’re so dead!” came to their ears.

“Whatever’s bugging Parker, Maria’ll find out eventually,” Michael smirked and shrugged.

~~~


~~~

A/N: Kay, this chapter is really short (really short) but it's all I had the time for.

Please enjoy and no, Roswell and Linkin Park and any other familiar presence does not belong to me!

Hey, y'all.

Here's a little teaser to keep ya interested until I finsih putting together the next chapter, lol.


“She may be the child of your body but she’s mine and I’m not going to let you drag her into danger like you did with Dean and Sam! Not when I can stop it.”
“Danger?” Liz frowned, but no one heard her as the two men continued to argue, now standing and in each other’s faces. Well, as much as one could be in one’s face when John had to look up to his ‘little’ brother’s darkly towering form.
“That’s not your right!”
“I have every right! And I thought I told you to leave my family alone!”
“In case you didn’t notice, we ARE family! I couldn’t very well leave myself alone now could I?”
Both brothers paused for a second as that sunk in and then their faces twisted as they tried not to laugh, which was difficult, when they noticed the looks on their children’s faces.
“That didn’t come out right did it?” John asked, unsuccessfully holding back his sheepish grin.
“I wish it hadn’t come out at all!” Jeff snorted, trying not to ache with the memories of better times with this temporary truce.
“Which “it” are we talking about?”
“Hopefully not the “it” I’m thinking about,” Nancy shuddered, covering Liz’s ears.