Chapter Text
The midnight air smelled of new growth and decaying leaves. With the absence of the daytime warmth, these early spring nights still held the chill of winter. Parked on the gravel shoulder of some forgotten two-lane highway in Michigan, a heavy dew coated the already-fogged windows of a steel-blue '99 Buick Century. The moon was shrouded from view by a heavy layer of clouds, causing the surrounding forest to be swallowed up by an inky blackness that was as tempting as it was disorienting to stare into. Stare too long and all perception of depth dissolved beyond that first line of trees and underbrush, and any manner of creature could manifest in the mind's eye from the shadows. The rest of the road beyond the next curve may cease to exist at night and one would never know from where they stood here on this chunk of land.
A pillow was thrown onto the dashboard of the car in a haphazard attempt to block the view in, and various pieces of clothing draped across the windows from the inside in a similar manner. Huddled under a fleece blanket and at least two layers of flannel shirt, a dying flashlight in hand, Paige gripped her paperback novel between two almost-numb fingers, fighting the urge to tuck them under the inviting warmth of her body till she had finished this chapter. A glossy dog-eared cover, with the price sticker from a second-hand store still clinging to it, read Supernatural in a red blood-splatter font reminiscent of classic slasher films. Whether it was from the cold or fighting her ever-increasingly heavy eyelids, a shiver wracked through her body, causing the book to nearly slip from her grasp.
It was no use to turn the car over, even for a moment to get some heat. There was hardly any gas left in the tank and the last time she'd attempted to start it, a thick billow of pungent smoke coughed out from under the hood before it had shuttered and fallen silent. It wasn't like she didn't have ample warning. The engine light came on a month ago or more and the rattling started soon after. She'd been on the road for over a year without so much as an oil change, hopping from town to town, using her moderate knowledge of tailoring to scrape together enough money for food and gas. The last thing she could deal with were costly car repairs so she just kept driving in a state of willful ignorance. Perhaps if she ignored it long enough it would go away, or maybe it really didn't need to be checked so urgently, maybe it could wait till she found someplace more permanent. Now her reliable companion had been reduced to nothing more than a metal-sided tent with leather seats. It could be worse, at least she had a roof over her head when the rain came.
It was the third night like this. She had the misfortune of breaking down outside of civilization, too far to walk to the nearest town and miles of woods on either side. She'd been able to flag down someone the first day, an older man with a grey beard and a rusted white pickup, to drive her to a convenience store for food and to ask about work. The clerk was nice enough to let her use their phone, but as she sat in their break room under a mysterious ceiling stain, holding a slim white receiver, dial tone droning in her ear, she realized she couldn't come up with a single person that would be remotely happy to hear her voice on the other end. Even in the year that she had been on the road, she'd never stayed in one place long enough to make the kind connection that would compel a person to drive hours out of their way to do her a favor.
Her parents were out of the question entirely. After taking the family car and several hundred dollars in cash, turning her back on the faith that ruled their entire lives, and leaving the only home she'd ever known in the middle of the night, the name black sheep didn't even do justice. Not that she wanted in the slightest to return to the very thing she fought to escape from. The thought of their delight, their condescension, reveling in her admitting defeat left a bitter taste in her mouth. Tom and Janine Breleigh and their perfect god fearing family, prodigal daughter returning home, dragging her tail with failed rebellion to be made an example of. Then consequences would come, swift and caustic punishment supposedly befitting of her crime of free will. Paige had seen what Father Josiah was capable of when she was considered an obedient and valuable member of their cult, she could only imagine the horror that awaited her knowing that she had actively turned against him.
Fifteen minutes passed with her sitting, phone to her ear, staring blankly at the wall with the weight of her decision before she finally slammed it back down. Things could be worse. She didn't know how exactly, but she knew it would be a cold day in hell when she asked for their help. Back she went to her car, to her books about two monster-hunting brothers to keep her company at night, and waited out the days hitchhiking in and out of town. They wouldn't have turned tail and run away when backed into a corner, neither would she. It was a shit hand she'd been dealt but it was hardly the end of the world.
Paige had ten pages left in this book, not an insurmountable task when she seemed to devour the chapters. Before she gave into the encroaching grasp of sleep, she had to know how it ends, what happened to Lilith, and Ruby, and if the boys were driving full speed into certain death or would they manage to slip the hangman's noose once again. If she was lucky, she'd close the book and dream about it, see it all herself just like watching a television screen. It would happen once or twice a week since she'd started the Carver Edlund series. She was beginning to think she wasn't partial to the chosen bodice-ripper illustration style because the characters looked consistently different in her dreams. For one there were more clothes than pictured on the burly bare-chested underwear model types who posed in all their oiled-up masculine glory on the laminated covers. There were also little details that just didn't track, and on more than one occasion she'd go back to her book the next morning and find that some of the things she'd seen or heard in her dreams in fact never appeared in the text. The name Winchester floated across her mind one of the mornings after a particularly vivid dream, despite a surname to the brothers never being uttered before. That really should have been the first thing that tipped her off to her 'gift' but instead she chocked that up to an overactive imagination, despite all the times that her dreams had disclosed events unknown to her in the past.
She was in fact so engrossed in her book, and so at the edge of sleep that she didn't notice the crackling of a branch underfoot mere feet away, or the sound of shoes crunching on gravel as they approached her car. Only the forceful rattle of her car door immediately jarred her concentration and caused her to question with panic that she had locked her doors before she had settled in for the night. The question was short lived as the back passenger door by her feet was ripped open and Paige scrambled to throw the tangled blankets off of her and back herself as far against the opposite side as she could. All the while a caucasian man with a hungry glint in his eyes that bordered on evil advanced inside her car from the open door and attempted to grab her by the ankles and drag her across the seat. Instinct took over and she chucked the first thing in her hands at the intruder: the flashlight she'd been using to read. It barely stunned him as it hit his forehead and bounced off comedically, and she wasn't sure if his hesitation was one of shock or amusement at her futile attempt to wound him but it was enough for her to scramble over to the driver's seat and take a flip-knife from the center console. The assailant followed suit, trying the front passenger door, and it was then that she saw the rows of unnaturally long teeth that protruded from his hungry smirk pressed up against the window like something from her more vivid dreams. Her blood ran cold.
She became acutely aware that he had not come alone as another like him crawled in through the back, his nails sinking into her shoulder from around the side of the grey vinyl seat back. She sunk the knife into the hand that had her, effectively separating two fingers from his hand before she managed to rip free, too blinded by terror to really feel the searing pain of torn flesh. She backed herself against the steering wheel with her feet braced against the seat throwing her weight against the car horn in a futile attempt at a distress signal for what good it would do her in the middle of nowhere. Ripping the second door from its hinges, the first one lunged inside the car but this time she countered with more than a half-pound flashlight as soon as he reached for her, slashing indiscriminately in an adrenaline-fueled fury. However deep her blade cut, whatever body part she'd managed to wound, he was undeterred, that ravenous hunger for the sight, the smell of the blood pulsating from her torn shoulder driving him unflinchingly forward. The horrifying sight of his teeth haunted her vision, ever-closer as she became aware that she couldn't evade his grasp much longer and she began to calculate the right moment to bolt from her car if she had a prayer of outrunning them with the slightest of headstarts. Her hope was short lived as the windshield exploded in a rain of glass shards while a third creature stood atop the hood of her car, making her acutely aware that running was out of the question
It was all too fast to comprehend, kicking and fighting for her life, knowing she was most-likely going to end up a mutilated body in the local news, if there was anything left of her that is. With the blood drumming in her ears, her vision filled with glass and red and long yellowed teeth, it's possible she didn't notice the glare of the headlights shining in like a spotlight behind her car, the low growl of an engine, or the heavy metallic groan and slam of a car door, but as suddenly as he had ripped open her vehicle, the monster who was inches from tearing into her like a fresh steak, was yanked by his neck back into the blackness. Similarly someone opened her door and dragged her out into the frigid night air, an arm hooked tightly across her chest. For the first time, she shrieked, as if the sound had been stuck in her throat this whole time while stumbling out onto the gravel ditch. She braced herself, knife in hand, just in time for the stranger to let her go, towering over her with hands raised in defense. The long blade of what appeared to be a machete wobbling loosely between his thumb and his palm caught the light and Paige knew she was pathetically outmatched despite his disarming stance. Coincidentally at the same time the severed head of one of her attackers also rolled lifelessly to a stop at her feet, horrifying mouth agape, and soulless eyes staring blankly at the inky night sky.
"Hey, take it easy... we're the good guys." A deep and unnaturally calm voice came from her would-be hero, a man who appeared 7 feet tall outlined in the stark lighting.
"Good guys who decapitate people with machetes??" The words came streaming from her mouth without censor, unsure still of what exactly she had just witnessed.
"Not people, vampires" quipped another, his figure more shadowed and hidden from her on the other side of the car, but who she assumed had dispatched the head that had just landed at her feet.
"Vampires--?" the crack in her voice was a bit higher than she'd intended, it wasn't that she always sounded like a mouse hitting puberty when she was scared but her voice seemed to be floating away from her as her head was still slightly spinning.
"Yeah and it's a good thing we got here when we did, or you'd be dinner" the tall one spoke again.
".. I think I was...handling it" she replied stubbornly, not really sure that she believed her own words but needing to grasp even the tiniest straws to mask how helpless felt at that moment. He was right and she'd never been so close to death. The similarities tracked with her reading material but nothing could have prepared her to fight for her life when the monsters had suddenly left her book pages.
"Yeah sure that pocket knife you've got there really woulda saved the day." came a sarcastic quip from the other side of the car accompanied by a chuckle. Normally a comment like that would make her blood boil but she was crashing fast and she was still processing the fact that he had acknowledged vampires were part of this reality.
"Dean Stop- Hey your shoulder-- you're bleeding pretty badly" The man closest to her turned his attention back to Paige, having dropped his hands back down to his sides. The features of his face were partially lost to the contrast of the single lightsource, but the dark eyes and worry-furrowed brow that settled on her held a particularly non-threatening quality. Once his words took shape in her mind, she was finally able to look down and on cue the pain came streaming up her arm to fill the void, forcing her to acknowledge the wound. She didn't want to see it, she could only imagine how deep it was as she became acutely aware that her shirt and undershirt was torn and sticky with fresh blood "I think I've got something for that in the car, I can wrap it up till we get somewhere to have a better look at it"
"You a doctor or something?" Paige wondered aloud between gritted teeth, perplexed by this man's continued eagerness to help her. Both of them seemed so nonchalant, if she didn't know better she'd think this was routine pest control.
"No, not a doctor, We're hunters.-- but don't worry, we deal with this kind of thing all the time, you won't get gangrene or something I promise--the vampire, he didn't happen to bleed on you at all did he?"
First vampires, now hunters? She supposed if one existed naturally the other had to. Considering the lack of vampire representation, she could only assume that logically someone out there had to be keeping them from chowing down on the local population. Popular media had listed any number of methods of vampire-slaying but only one so far had mentioned beheading as the be-all-end-all. Perhaps, she thought, the Supernatural books were meant to be read as some sort of covert hunter's manual and their recluse author was really just one of them. Then, for how she had devoured countless chapters, she should be an expert.
To mention it, had either hunter even given their name...?
"Uh no. No I don't think so--" Paige answered before her mouth twisted slightly while she followed the tall one back to their car. The halo from the headlights faded as she approached the second car and could see more clearly the front grill of a 1967 Impala, instantly recognizable from the cover-art with it's lantern-shaped running lights. She grounded herself against the sturdy metal above the back wheel well, feeling like she might keel over at any moment as she waited for her hero to dig through the trunk. As soon as the cool black-painted metal touched her back she was flooded with instant relief and a strong feeling of deja-vu. Something about it felt so familiar, like a home she'd been trying to return to but had never visited. The distant possibility that her dreams were more than just that prodded the back of her mind constantly, that she knew this car and who it belonged to, and the voices of her rescuers. It could just be a fantasy, a hope, but she couldn't shake it.
"...I get the feeling you guys aren't the log cabin full of deer heads sort of hunters" she added, peeking over to see a whole arsenal of suspicious and unusual weapons stashed in the compartment where a spare tire should have been, before he finally stood back to full height, a towel and a rolled bandage in-hand.
"No.. No we uh, hunt more this kind of thing--I'm Sam by the way. That's my brother, Dean." he replied with a vague gesture to the other man who was presently dragging the vampire corpses back into her car. Paige opened her mouth to protest but not before her heart jumped into her throat at the mention of their names. She knew before he spoke them, but the confirmation was enough to silence her along with the rest of her doubt for now.
"I'm Paige.. Paige Breleigh." She replied through a wince as Sam helped her maneuver her arm out of the sleeve that covered the wound. "... Your last names... It wouldn't be Winchester...would it?"
Hazel eyes traveled down her arm as he gingerly dabbed at the blood, settling on a smudged sigil of a pentagram surrounded by a sunburst drawn and drawn over again in permanent marker and faded at the edges where the ink had run into the tiny crevices of her skin. His gaze shifted to meet hers, melting into an expression of cautious bewilderment yet still never loosing that endearing puppy-like quality that she couldn't help but trust.
"It is.. How did you know? And your arm, that's an antiposession symbol... where did you learn that?"
Paige's mouth twitched at the corners with a tinge of pride before shaking it off as she scrambled for an explanation that would make a lick of sense.
"This is going to sound crazy.." she trailed off.
"We just saved you from Vampires...crazy is kinda what we do"
"Alright then..." she took a pensive breath as she chose her words with care "There were these books--"
"The Supernatural books? Uh, raunchy looking covers, written by a guy named Chu--erm Carver Edlund?" Sam interjected before Paige could finish.
"Right, those, yeah-- but it was more than that. I saw them, I saw...well...everything in my dreams, and they have this freaky way of coming true so I wanted to be like them."
"Like....us?" His expression twisted in confusion again. "So..the sharpie--"
"--Was a just in case... '' it was her turn to interrupt now "I mean I'm a girl out here on my own and if there's a possibility that maybe this stuff was real, I figured I'd cover all my bases... I felt like, somehow... it made me a little bit braver.'' He had effectively distracted her from the fact that he had almost finished cleaning and wrapping her shoulder till he secured the bandage and the movement pulled at the skin a little causing her to recoil.
"I think that should hold, at least till we can get back to the motel." He shifted subjects giving the wrapping a proud little pat, indicating to Paige that she was out of time to ask the multitude of questions still swimming in her head.
"Motel--? I don't think I can afford--" she sputtered
"Don't worry about that right now...the point is, you can't stay here, it's not safe" maybe it was the exhaustion, but Sam's voice was just so earnest that despite the multitude of what would seem like blaring red flags in a normal situation, she probably would have gone just about anywhere if he'd said so at that moment.
"Yeah, and hey bad news about your car, I mean besides being covered in vamp guts, I don't think she's goin anywhere like that." Dean seemed to reappear out of the darkness walking towards them, casually drying the blood from his hands on his pants.
"It wasn't going anywhere in the first place... the engine's dead" Paige replied with a note of defeat as she carefully shrugged her bloody shirt back up onto her shoulder, if anything to keep out the cold. "....and... it's... also stolen" she added in an inaudible mutter. She thought she might have caught an impressed nod from the eldest brother before he snapped his head in the other direction, but it was so fleeting she could have imagined it.
"And I'm guessing you don't have a couple grand just laying around to fix it." Dean finished "... Best we can do is torch it and get rid of these bodies before the sheriff comes sniffing around. You might wanna grab your stuff." Paige nodded stiffly. She knew she'd have to say her goodbyes to this car one way or the other but she hadn't anticipated having to watch it go up in flames. Somehow that made it worse.
"Right. Uh--" she paused, gesturing to her shoulder as she walked back to open her trunk and grab a suitcase. Dean reluctantly followed and she handed him a large black case with a padded strap.
"The hell is in here??" He asked gruffly, clearly not anticipating the weight of it as he adjusted the strap on his shoulder.
"A sewing machine. And be careful with that, it's vintage" Immediately he made a face, eyebrows raised and bottom lip jutting out in what could only be described as a "mocking pout," before carefully placing it in the trunk of the Impala.
"So what are you, runaway Betty Crocker or something?" Dean noted as Paige hoisted the suitcase in beside the case and he slammed the heavy steel lid shut.
"'Or something' sounds about right" she sighed heavily as she leaned against the back door, watching Sam douse her Buik with a canister of gasoline and she quietly said her goodbyes to the car that had become her last vestige of the life she left behind.