memento vivere - supernatural & criminal minds

chapter 12

Chapter 12
Eggshells

Jude shifted in the backseat and turned the page of her book, propping her giant bag of peanut M&M’s between her legs so they didn’t spill. With her back against the door, she could feel the rumble of the road beneath them as they drove through rural Colorado. Rock music still blared through the Impala’s speakers, but she found herself able to tune it out again, a skill that had lain dormant in her for years.

Dean’s hand extended over the seat and she dumped a mound of M&M’s into his palm. That had been the extent of their communication for hours. Sam was slumped over in the passenger seat, asleep for the longest stretch since Jessica’s death. They were both scared to even whisper. The music, of course, could play regardless - he had even more experience blocking it out than Jude did.

With a loud gasp, Sam jolted awake. Jude flinched in the backseat and her book fell from her hands, landing with a thud. “You okay?” Dean asked. Jude watched the fraction of Sam’s face that she could see in the rearview morph from panic to an artificial calm. He was doing all he could to stop them from worrying. Unfortunately, nothing he did was enough.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sam nodded. Dean caught Jude’s eye in the mirror and she shook her head. They couldn’t force him to talk.

“Another nightmare?” Dean pushed. Face hidden as she ducked to retrieve her book, Jude rolled her eyes. He couldn’t leave it alone. But even this simple question got them nowhere. Sam just cleared his throat and said nothing. Dean tried a different tactic. “You wanna drive for a while?”

Sam scoffed, turning to glance at Jude. That was Dean’s equivalent of asking someone to hold his child. The Impala was originally John’s car and being entrusted with it meant everything to Dean. “Dean, your whole life you never once asked me that.”

“I just thought you might want to,” Dean grumbled. “Never mind.”

Jude leaned over the seat. “Can I drive?” she asked, smiling at Sam’s snort of laughter.

“Absolutely not,” Dean elbowed her arm off the seat. “You drive a bug mobile.”

“Fuck you too, then.” Jude’s mocking turned into near-genuine offense. It had taken her months to find a VW Bug in her price range and it was one of her most prized possessions. The car fell back into silence while Sam studied a map. Dean put his hand back over the seat and Jude shook her head. “You’ve lost M&M privileges.” The open hand turned into a middle finger.

“Alright,” Sam cut in before Jude could start pelting his brother with chocolates. “Where are we?”

“Just outside of Grand Junction,” Dean said. 

Sam sighed deeply, folding up the map and tossing it back on the dashboard. “You know what? Maybe we shouldn’t have left Stanford so soon.” In the mirror, Jude saw Dean’s gaze flick back to her before he spoke. It was a habit now that he was treating each conversation with Sam, however short, like the defusing of a bomb. 

“Sam, we dug around there for a week. We came up with nothing. If you wanna find the thing that killed Jessica-”

“We gotta find Dad first,” Sam finished. 

“Dad disappearing and this thing showing up again after twenty years, it’s no coincidence.” Dean’s referral to his mother’s killer as ‘this thing’ made Jude realize that, two decades later, the Winchesters still had no solid lead. Without closure, John would run his boys into the ground trying to hunt this creature down. At least Jude knew her father’s killers were behind bars and the ghoul that killed her mother was dead - she’d watched Elliot smash it to bits. “Dad will have answers, he’ll know what to do.” It sounded almost like a mantra. Dean had idolized his father for as long as Jude had known him. Despite everything John had put them through, Dean probably couldn’t imagine him as anything but a hero. Having grown up as an outside witness to the Winchester family, Jude had a vastly different opinion of him.