Summer, 1968
She'd gotten the wild idea to hitchhike from Philadelphia to San Francisco. San Fran was where it was at, and she wanted to be a part of it. She thought she could be part of it, like so many other young female musicians who had found fame and fortune: Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin just to name a few.
A fight with her parents sealed the deal. She'd packed a bag, slung her guitar over her shoulder, and headed out onto the road. Luck was with her from the start when she was picked up by a couple on their way to St. Louis. They were too old, they said, to join those free spirits out west, but more power to her for her gutsy endeavor. She sang for them. They bought her food, took her to St. Louis.
The day she left them the pleasant weather they'd had thus far turned ugly. It was overcast and rainy by the time she hit the road again and this time her luck did not hold. No one was stopping for a ragged hippy-girl with a guitar. She walked down the highway for miles as the sky darkened and the rain came down harder. There was no shelter to be found – only miles and miles of corn. It was too late to turn back. She could only slog on down the road and hope to find a barn somewhere along the way in which she could find shelter.
A barn, or a ride, she thought, as she heard the car approaching. It was a big car, coming fast, its duel headlights cutting through the darkness. She stepped up to the side of the road. A pale colored car was hurtling through the night much too fast for the weather. Even as she watched, and decided better of riding with this crazed driver, the car hit a sheet of water and its wheels left the pavement. Instantly it hydroplaned out of control into a wild, skidding spin.
She knew she was in trouble. With a cry she turned to run, but her sneakers slipped on the wet pavement and just like the car she could find no purchase.
The rear of the car spun around to strike her hard and knock her off her feet. When the front fender came around it hit her again, driving her body into the pavement before it continued sliding and spinning down the road. Her guitar got hung in the undercarriage. Her body was dragged against the asphalt until the car careened off the road nose first into a ditch. She was crushed beneath it. The stench of her blood sizzling upon the hot engine drove the driver from inside. He collapsed along the edge of the road where he would eventually die of his injuries before anyone found him. His name would forever be lost in time.
She didn't know how, or why, but she never lost consciousness. As her pain began to fade she felt something akin to euphoria, and instead of her normal senses, she found herself experiencing the world from an all new perspective. This perspective, her sentence, would last well into the future.
Spring, 1982 and '83
He had a charming smile and a bright spark of light in his eyes. She had liked him the moment she saw him. His low, pleasant, voice and gentle hands had wakened her from a nine year slumber after her last owner abandoned her. Groggy and slow she hadn't realized what was happening until the truck came for her. She hated the truck with its chains and lifts. To be dragged up upon the flatbed was akin to being violated, but this time it would be her salvation.
He took her to a garage, and for a long time it was just the two of them. Unlike her previous owner he was gentle and kind. He talked to her like she was a person, not knowing she was a person, or had been once upon a time.
"It's okay old girl, we'll get you fixed up good as new."
We. She wasn't sure who "we" was since he was always alone when he worked with her. Well, almost always. Sometimes there was a child with him, a little boy who bounced on her seats and pushed all the buttons on her dash. His small hands grasped her wheel – he couldn't see over the top of it – and he'd pretend he was driving.
"Vroom, vroom! Vaaaarooooom! I'm winnin' the race Daddy!"
"I see that, Dean. Good job."
He worked on her for a year, returning her to good health, making her look like she had just come rolling off the line – save for one thing.
She remembered the gold paint, how her blood had stained it. Those who salvaged her after the accident cleaned it off, but as she aged her steel grew patches of rust and once again she looked as if she were splattered with blood. Her new person, John, did not paint her gold. He painted her black, a bright, shiny black. He polished her chrome, replaced her torn leather seats, and for the first time in many, many years, she was taken out onto the road.
Ultimately he took her home to his wife. Mary was blond and movie-star pretty, everything she had never been in life. Could a car feel jealousy? A car infused with a spirit could, and she did. When Mary squeezed her big, fat pregnant body behind the wheel, she refused to start. When Mary rode shotgun and wanted to roll down the window, the window would mysteriously malfunction. Gone were the days when John would spend time alone with her, talking to her, keeping her company. Now she sat alone at the curb unless he or Mary needed to go somewhere.
She was there for them when the lights in the house came on in the wee hours of the morning. Mary's cousin drove up in her battered VW and hurried to the door. John and Mary rushed out soon after. She drove them to the hospital, and she drove them back again in the company of a small, squirming bundle of baby boy. When the four of them, her family, all climbed in to take Sammy to his christening, she carried them with pride.
It wasn't that she hated Mary, she was incapable of that, but her loneliness was profound. She remained apart from the people she had come to love, and would forever be apart from them. Every night she prayed to God to relieve her from the curse she was under, but every day she woke to the sun's reflection upon her dark hood. She couldn't cry, she could only grieve in silence, wondering if eventually she would simply go mad.
She didn't hate Mary, no, not at all. She tried to warn them when He came. Her horn bleated once before her battery shorted out, and she could only watch and listen from her place at the curb when all Hell broke loose inside the house. Fire burned within, she could see it through the window of the nursery. She could hear John shouting. She felt Mary die.
When the boy rushed from the house carrying the baby in his arms, she would have given anything in the world to be able to scoop them up in her arms and hold them tight. She would have given anything to be able to save them all from the pain that followed. After that night the spark would leave John's eyes, and she would never see his smile again.
As the fireman worked to put out the flames, her man, her boys, sat huddled together upon her hood. She could feel their grief. It seeped into her steel flesh, making her ache right along with them. The older boy, Dean - his grief struck her the most. It was raw and merciless in nature. It was ripping him to shreds inside, destroying parts of him he would never be able to recover. She could feel it through the small hand resting upon her hood. She tried to give something back, some sort of comfort, but would never know if she succeeded or not. It was right then that she vowed she would never leave him. He would need her. Just as her spirit had become bound to the car that killed her, she bound this small child to her spirit.
Fall, 2005
She was worried about John, who had abruptly vanished weeks ago. Now she was worried about Dean, locked up somewhere by the police while his overgrown brother stomped mercilessly on her pedals and took her God knew where. A car to Sam Winchester was just something to get him from point A to point B. He didn't refer to her as "she" as Dean did, but as "it" which she resented. Sam should have known better. He had sensed her.
It was weird, after thirty-eight years, to have someone actually pick up on her presence. It was weirder still to have Sam do it. After all she'd seen since John Winchester took up Hunting, it never occurred to her that one of the family would become one of them. Somehow it didn't surprise her any, perhaps she had sensed something off about him all along, ever since the demon came that night.
She'd been there when John learned the truth about his youngest son. He'd broken down into tears, clutching her wheel tightly in his fists. His voice had been raw and broken.
"Sammy..."
The abilities Sam had, that he was currently hiding from his brother, were demon borne, and potent. He'd known her true nature the minute he'd put a hand on her door handle. It startled him. He'd never been able to sense it before.
"Who are you?"
She couldn't recall her real name, too many years had passed without her thinking of herself as human. Dean called her Baby. It was as good as any name.
"Shouldn't the question be, what are you?" she shot back.
He'd flinched at her bluntness. She wasn't finished.
"You do anything to hurt Dean and I will run your ass over until you're nothing but a smear of blood on the pavement. You understand me?"
Sam had laughed at her – until she rolled forward just enough to press her bumper to his shin. He'd sobered enough then to realize he wasn't hallucinating and she wasn't kidding.
That had been their first, and last, communication.
Until now.
The apparition standing in the highway reminded her of herself. In her mind's eye she suddenly recalled the scruffy girl in jeans and tie-dye, guitar slung across her back, standing helplessly as she was mowed down by a car. It frightened her and she screamed in harmony with her tires as Sam slammed his foot onto the brake.
She stopped. Her engine idled. The girl was gone from the road, but she could still sense her presence. Her presence was now in the back seat behind Sam.
Now she recognized her. They'd met before, on the bridge, when she had been overcome and nearly ran over her own boys.
Constance was a powerful spirit. Those touched by evil generally were, and this one was tainted by the blood of slain innocents. She could not fight it when Constance took over control of the car once again. She was helpless, and frightened.
"Sam!"
They drove to the Welch house. Constance was going to kill Sam. She could not let that happen. It was she who urged Sam to drive through the house. It would be a risk for her – she had no idea what would happen to her if the car, her spirit's vessel, were severely damaged.
"Home. Sam. Take her home!"
He obeyed her, and she surged forward beneath the press of his foot on the accelerator. Her nose punched through the wall of the house, shattering it into splinters. One headlight exploded. She didn't feel any pain save for Constance's. The woman knew no greater fear. This homecoming would destroy her.
Dean followed anxiously. She could sense his concern – first for Sam, then herself, and then a small hint of remorse for the spirit he Hunted. For all his bravado, his hard-ass opinions, the sensitive child he had once been sometimes came through. He had realized the same thing she and Sam had; Constance was doomed.
She had never known what it was like to be a mother, and never would. She could not understand what would drive a woman to kill her own children. Neither did the boys. She felt their thoughts as their bodies were pressed tight against her side. Both thought of Mary. Dean thought of the mother he had lost, Sam of the mother he had never known. They watched in silence as Constance was brought to justice by the forgiveness of her murdered children. Her own pain, her guilt, destroyed her.
When it was all over they limped back to Palo Alto, returning Sam to his home. Driving away from the apartment she started missing on one cylinder, the normal purr of her engine growing rough and uneven. Something had broken loose during her charge through the house. Less than a block away Dean pulled over to see what was the matter.
She knew something was wrong before he noticed her headlights flickering, before the radio he'd left on suddenly went silent. Sam could have sensed her, but that night she was sure Dean did too. She had no other explanation as to why he suddenly raised his head from beneath her hood and turned to look back over his shoulder.
"It's HIM! Go back! Dean, go back!"
The light from Sam's bedroom window was not from a lamp. Fire licked the ceiling. She could hear him screaming and had she still been human she might have clapped her hands over her ears. Dean cursed and sprinted back to the apartment, kicking in the door and vanishing inside. The wait was agonizing. When a ball of flame exploded from the apartment window she feared she would never see either of the boys again.
A moment later they emerged, soot-blackened and coughing. Smoke rose up from the back of Sam's smoldering jacket. Tears ran down his face as he gasped for breath. Dean held on to him tightly, his face pale and drawn with fear, once again four years old and fleeing from the flames of Hell with his brother in is arms. She could just make out what he murmured softly into Sam's shoulder.
"It's all right now, Sammy."
But it wasn't all right. He had struck again. A girl was dead, and Sam finally understood the obsession that drove his father and brother. She felt his hands shaking as he opened her trunk to rummage idly through the contents. Her heart went out to him. He was just as much a pawn to the powers that be as she, and just as determined not to do their bidding without a fight.
He slammed the truck closed. There was a note of determination in his voice.
"We've got work to do."
Spring into Summer, 2006
She spent a long time in limbo, wandering alone and frightened in the dark until her senses sorted themselves out and she was once again aware of the world around her. It was no less frightening than the dark. Her "body" was a twisted mass of metal sitting in a place all too familiar to her – a wrecking yard. Frantically she sought to remember what had happened, and panic set in when she did.
John? Sammy? Dean!
Flies buzzed around the blood staining her interior. It was all over the seats, the door handles, the steering wheel, already beginning to decompose in the warm spring air. She stunk of rot, of death. Part of her wondered how many souls one car could hold, considering how her own blood had seeped into the Impala's steel, binding her to it. No one, however, answered her call. That didn't mean they weren't dead.
She hadn't known John was possessed, he'd been unconscious when they placed him in the back seat and took him to the cabin. All she knew after that was shouting and screaming and the sound of gunfire. Had she been human still she would have been shaking.
Dean? What's going on?
He'd been barely alive when Sam opened the door and propped him up in the back seat. John rode shotgun, bleeding freely from a wound in his leg. She could feel Sam's fear when he grabbed the steering wheel and cranked her engine into life. They had to get to a hospital, and fast.
Fast she could do, hugging curves that would have had a normal vehicle flying off the road. She was surefooted and true. Dean's life was in the balance and her loyalty was second to none. Sam said ten minutes. She'd cut the time in half. She'd...
She never sensed the truck coming. None of them had until the very last second before impact. Hell was reliving her death for a second time. For a moment she was human again, feeling the agonizing pain of her bones breaking when the big Chevy slammed into her body. She thought she'd screamed but couldn't be sure. Had she screamed that night in '68? Or had her lungs collapsed when the Impala first hit her? She didn't know then, nor now. When the semi hit her and everything went dark, she'd known nothing at all for a long time.
Now she was here, and she didn't know if her people were coming back. She didn't know if they were dead. What would become of her? She was twisted and broken. If she were taken apart where would her spirit go? What would she be then?
A scuff of boot upon gravel caught her attention. A familiar figure entered her awareness and gave her hope. She felt a fleeting recognition of her presence, a little reassurance reluctantly given - not to begrudge her, but a reflection of his unwillingness to admit he could sense her.
Sam!
"Man. Dean is gonna be pissed."
Dean was alive then, so was John. Sam wouldn't allow her to be dismantled, sold for scrap, as Bobby suggested. He insisted on saving her, not just for her own sake but for his own, and Dean's. It pained her to be hauled onto a flatbed. Bobby would be taking her far away from her family when she felt as if they needed her. Dean needed her; this she knew for certain when, just before she left the state, she felt him cross over to her side of the veil.
No! Oh no!
She sat for days in the yard at Singer's Salvage, alone, abandoned, trapped within the twisted hunk of metal that had been both her home and her self for nearly forty years. She mourned the loss of the boy she'd watched grow to manhood behind her wheel. He lifted her heart, made her existence worth the price she paid, and now he was gone. Despondent, her prayers for release returned, but like before they remained unanswered.
Barely a week had passed but she'd already become lost in her own dark thoughts as she had been prior to John Winchester finding her so many years ago. Bobby ignored her. Her only company were the flies who fed on the blood covering her seats, and the rodents who stole their stuffing. Her mind grew dull and despondent. When they finally came for her, she was barely aware of their presence. It was not until she actually heard his voice that she realized what was happening.
"Christ on a crutch! Look what the son-of-a-bitch did to my car!"
She did not know the why or the how of it, but there was Dean back from the dead, standing before her with his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. Sam loomed behind him. They both looked battered and weary. Sam squinted painfully into the sun, one eye a hideous shade of purple. Dean was thin, pale, and sported a barely healed gash on his forehead.
"She's beat up pretty bad," Sam agreed. "Bobby wants to sell her for scrap. He says he can round up something else, something newer. He said maybe a Crown Vic."
If looks could kill Sam would have dropped dead into the dirt at Dean's feet.
"Or not," he added hastily.
Dean's hand ran gently across her left front fender, caressing her as he might have a real woman. She could remember such caresses – vaguely. There had been a boy before, his face and name as lost in the void as her own, but he had touched her like that once. He'd made her his own only to throw her away not long after when something flashier came his way. Dean might have done the same thing if she were a living woman.
She knew him though and could find forgiveness. His issues with women were far more complex than anyone realized. His promiscuity was borne of a deep rooted fear of commitment, a fear of loss. The only woman he had ever truly loved had been taken away from him as a child. He wasn't about to go through that again – ever.
The car was safe. The car could be repaired. It was safe to love her. Neither one of them could get hurt that way.
He'd be damned if he was going to let the demon take her from him too. He would bring her back to her former glory, flaunt her in the bastard's face. She was as much a part of him an arm or a leg and until she were repaired he was not yet whole again himself.
John was dead, she knew it from the moment Dean touched her. She remembered how John tenderly cared for her, how he had transformed her from a rusting wreck to a show car. Now here was his son to do the same. She and Dean would mourn together silently, save for the tinny bleat of an old transistor radio and the rattle and clink of tools. Only she would bear witness to his pain. Every time he put wrench to bolt she could feel it. His grief was eating him alive.
She underestimated both Sam's intuition and how much he truly loved his family. With Dean things had always been crystal clear. Sam's affections had been more obscure, particularly those he'd held for John. There had been much resentment in him regarding his father, but, she would learn, a lot of love too.
"I'm not all right. But neither are you," he said.
The first stage of grief is shock, denial, disbelief.
The second is anger.
She braced herself for it as soon as Sam turned and walked away.
Dean attacked her because she represented his father. John left him with a heavy burden to carry, a burden he did not want, a burden he felt would break him. It should have been John who lived, Dean who died.
He attacked the trunk in particular for the life it represented. He'd never known a real home. It had always been the job, the job, the job. He had never had a childhood. He'd been forced to grow up the night he'd been handed the responsibility of saving his brother from the fire. All of his sacrifices had been given willingly, without regret, so that John could find the thing that killed his mother. Now the one man who could have destroyed the demon and saved them all, was dead, sacrificing himself for a life far less worthy.
Dean's own.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
There were no words, no tears.
Not yet.
Dean threw down the tire iron. He stood there panting for a few seconds before he quietly turned on his heel and walked off into the yard, making his way through the rows of wrecks stacked one atop another. She waited patiently. Her heart ached for him.
When he returned he was red faced and sweating, carrying a replacement for the trunk lid he'd just destroyed. He set it down against her flank and wiped his brow on his sleeve. From a cooler beneath the workbench he retrieved a bottle of water which he drank while leaning against her front fender. For a long while they simply stood there together, soaking up the warm summer sun and listening to the music playing on the radio. From inside the house came the sound of Bobby shouting from the kitchen – something about sandwiches for lunch – and Sam's indistinct reply.
It was then that she felt a trembling hand caress her, and something warm and wet falling against her dark, steel skin. His voice was low and gruff, barely a whisper.
"Sorry. I'm sorry."
Her spirit self, the girl she'd once been, sighed softly.
Dean wiped his eyes and quietly returned to his work as if nothing had happened.
Winter, 2007
"SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!"
She had heard the word "anguish" used before, but had not realized exactly what it meant until she heard Dean's voice echoing through the darkness, riding harmony with the thunder rumbling across the sky. He was in agonizing pain, but it was not physical.
Only seconds later Sam crossed through the veil.
Not long after that he was there, with her, standing beneath a tree beside the path Bobby and Dean had taken into the woods. She was able to meet him as herself here in this nether-place. Cold Oak was unique in that respect. Spirits and demons had power here, although hers was extremely limited. She could not leave the Impala, but could appear outside of it, sitting cross-legged upon the broad black hood with her guitar resting across her lap. After an initial start of surprise at her presence, Sam came and sat down beside her with a sigh.
"It's over."
"You think?" she asked softly. She'd heard Dean's cry. Sam hadn't. A man hurting that badly was unpredictable. There was no telling what he would do. "Sam," she added. "He loves you more than life itself."
He looked down at his hands, and then raised his eyes toward the dark, twisting path. "I don't know why."
"You're his brother. More than that, you're all he has in the world."
Sam smiled, and glanced her way. "He has you."
She snorted. "A car. I'm a freakin' car, Sam!"
"Yeah, I'm sorry for that."
"Not your fault."
"I could have tried to find a way to free you. I'm sorry."
It was her turn to look away. Her grip tightened around the instrument she held. She played a chord, quickly stopped the strings' vibrations with her hand. "Where would I go?" She shook her head, a surge of fear rushing through her at the thought of losing the only family she herself had known for so long. "No. Not yet."
"You won't leave him." It was a statement, not a question, and the truth.
"I can't leave him," she said firmly. "And neither can you."
"Jake took that option out of my hands."
She bowed her head, tears filling her eyes. "I know but..."
When she looked up again he was gone, and she was the car again. Whatever strange spiritual interlude they'd shared was over as quickly as it had begun. She cursed to herself. There hadn't been time to say all that she wanted to say.
He's fragile, Sammy, far more than you or I. He's his mother's son too. I know him. I knew her. She gave her life for you. Do you think he won't do the same?
There was a crashing sound from the bushes, and along the path there appeared Bobby and Dean carrying Sam's limp body between them. Dean's face bore an expression of grim determination, his jaw clenched tight. His physical burden was heavy. His emotional burdens had just become heavier.
They found refuge in an abandoned farm house far enough outside of Cold Oak to be safe from the dark powers that dwelt there. She sat outside and waited. She could feel Dean's strength faltering, his mind beginning to splinter. He drove Bobby away. She expected at any moment to hear the sound of a gunshot. He would do it too – take his own life – this she knew. Going on alone was not an option Dean Winchester would entertain for long.
If she had known where he was going when he suddenly appeared at her side, she might have refused to start. She thought he just needed to clear his head, to drive somewhere, anywhere, away from the body lying cold and still inside the house. That he'd go to the crossroads never occurred to her. Until he knelt at the intersection and dug down into the soft soil there, she had not realized what he was planning to do.
She began to scream at him, begging him not to do it. Suicide was the better option. It would be clean, painless. He could be reunited with his family once again. He did not hear her. The crossroad demon's presence shorted out her electrical system or she would have been able to make some sort of sound he could hear. She could only watch in silence as the demon made her offer and Dean, grieving, miserable, guilt ridden, and self loathing, accepted it.
One year. In one year she would lose him. Hell would swallow his spirit and crush it into oblivion. She would never have the chance to tell him...anything.
Her grief was only compounded when the newly resurrected Sam touched her, and she knew he had come back changed – not necessarily for the better. The demon blood still ran through his veins, but the power within him had gone dormant once again. His Hell-borne abilities were gone...but so was his faith.
God was dead, there was no afterlife, and the best anyone could hope for was oblivion. Sam's gentle soul had been corrupted by bitterness. Where there had once been joy and optimism there was now anger and distrust.
Sam had died and been resurrected, but despite Dean's sacrifice, he remained dead inside.
Summer into Fall, 2007
The things she would remember most about the following months were not all the cases they worked, the demons and other supernatural things they dispatched, but rather one particular pain-in-the-ass woman.
She hated Bela Talbot. She'd even go so far as to say she despised Bela Talbot. She'd begun hating the woman after sensing a begrudging admiration for her on Dean's part. There was nothing admirable about Bela. Dean, however, liked her chutzpah and if she weren't so horribly self-centered and grating to his his nerves, he might have bedded her. This "Baby" could not stand. The green eyed-monster reared its ugly head and every time Dean even mentioned Bela (He had her phone number for God's sake!!!) she stalled.
Had Sam still been able to sense her, and he'd shown no sign of this ability since his return from the dead, he might have known what was going on. Instead he made a comment about her failing reliability, the price of gas, and how much money they were spending on "this old wreck." It was a low blow, but at the time he'd said it, Sam was still smarting from yet another failed attempt to find a loophole in Dean's deal with the crossroads demon. She could forgive him, and Dean probably knew he didn't mean it, but nevertheless, the comment started the boys fighting
"This old wreck has saved our butts too many times to count, Sam. I'm not getting rid of her."
"Dean, this car puts us on the radar! The Feds..."
"Screw the Feds."
A child of the sixties, she echoed that sentiment.
Sam growled as he sat back in his seat. "Yeah, you can say that."
Dean hit him back, and aimed for below the belt. "Why, because I won't be around in six months? Damn, I'll bet I won't even be cold in the grave before you go sending her to the scrap heap."
"No. I'd sell her to a collector," Sam replied quietly.
"Thanks. That's real nice, Sam. Thanks a lot."
There was a long silence before Sam spoke again, and like Dean he was not disinclined to hit below the belt.
"You think I could stand driving around in your car without you?"
Dean hadn't answered. Sam turned away to look out the window. For the next twenty-four hours they said not a word to each other. Their silence was eerie, and sad. She was relieved when it finally ended.
They'd arrived on the East Coast to investigate some mysterious dry land drownings. She was parked at the curb in front of a marina, enjoying the view, when she felt a presence at the driver's side door that was not Dean or Sam.
It was Bela, holding a thin steel bar that she slipped down inside the door panel to pop open the lock.
"How dare you! Get off me you...you...cow!"
She made things difficult. Bela would put her transmission into neutral, and she'd pop it back into park. This went back and forth for several minutes until Bela was sweating into her expensive clothes and cursing in a cockney accent that betrayed her true origins. When finally Bela was able to keep the shift in the neutral position by hanging on to it, she stopped her slow roll forward by abruptly engaging the parking brake. Her forward momentum halted just a few inches shy of the tow-away zone. Bela barked her chin on the steering wheel and let go of the gearshift lever. It immediately slid back to the "park" position.
"You bitch!"
She chuckled to herself and honked her horn.
"Right back atcha."
Oh, but she was crafty, this purveyor of powerful occult objects. Bela took a deep breath, leaned casually up against the driver's side door, and looked around for the nearest sucker. It came in a pair of frat boys with an I.Q. of seventy between them. Bela went into helpless female tourist mode and batted her eyelashes at them. They were on her like bees to honey.
"Car trouble?"
"Yes, I'm so sorry to bother you. If you could just push it up a few feet..."
"That would put it in a tow-away zone," one warned.
"Oh, that's quite all right. I just need room for the tow-driver to get in close. I'll stay here and explain things to any policeman who may come. Thank you."
The two burly kids wrestled her into submission and pushed her into the tow-away zone. Bela set the parking brake and wedged a rock in against it to prevent her from rolling back into legally parked territory.
"You're lucky," Bela growled just before leaving. "I don't just shove you off the dock into the ocean."
She wasn't there for five minutes before a cop showed up and a tow-truck was called. Being hauled up onto a tow-truck and dragged away by the cops changed her hatred of Bela into utter loathing. When the boys rescued her from impound she'd had plenty of time to plot revenge, and if it hadn't been for Dean's quick thinking...
When she next encountered Bela she would have rolled back and crushed both of the woman's feet, but Dean reached in and swiftly pulled the parking brake. For the first time in her existence she felt anger toward him and he very nearly lost a finger when she slammed the trunk lid down unexpectedly. She fumed angrily.
You would have never worn stilettos again, bitch.
When Dean wasn't looking, Bela kicked her in the fender with said stilettos.
Later she scared the bejesus out of her nemesis by setting off a loud blast of her horn just as Bela was crossing in front of her. It caused Bela to scurry hastily after Dean lest she get run down by the freakish Chevy. Freakish Chevy chalked one up for herself.
"What do you call that car?" Bela asked.
Dean frowned. "The car," he replied facetiously.
"Might I make a suggestion?"
He looked at her as if she had lost her mind, and humored her accordingly. "Sure. Whatever you want, Bela."
"How about Christine," Bela growled, shooting her an ugly look.
Oddly, late one night, when the boys were in Michigan and she thought they'd seen the last of Bela Talbot for a long while, Bela made an unexpected appearance. She carried a crystal which she set in the dirt beside the car. After a moment she stepped back, waved her hand over the stone, and murmured a few words.
She felt a pulling sensation. It wasn't unpleasant, just unusual, and irresistible as it was urging her spirit away from the car. As she struggled to make sense of it, a path opened up before her, a path leading out into darkness. She felt no bad vibes so she followed it, treading cautiously, warily, until she found herself once again sitting on the hood of her car. This time, however, she did not commune with another spirit like herself, but with a living, breathing human.
"Neat trick," she said.
Bela smiled smugly. Bela did everything smugly. "I don't sell all my trinkets."
"What do you want?"
"Just confirming a suspicion." Stepping back a pace, Bela crossed her arms over her chest. "You know I have people who would pay big money for a possessed car."
"Try it and I'll slaughter you, Bela. You'll be roadkill before you know what hit you."
"My, what tough talk. You've been hanging around with the Winchesters too long. You used to be a pacifist."
She frowned. "What?"
With a sly look in her eye, Bela withdrew a piece of paper from her pocket, and read it by the light of a flashlight. "I've done my research. I managed to dig up the VIN number for that car of yours. Seems back in '68 there was a nasty accident. A hitchhiker was killed, run down by this very car, and I suspect you are her spirit."
"Tell me something I don't know," she snorted.
"How about your name?" Bela chuckled. "And it is not Christine."
She froze. She knew her name. Didn't she? It was Baby, right? Dean called her Baby.
Bela's smug look became even more smug. "You don't remember do you?" Slowly, she folded up the paper in her hand and tucked it back in her pocket. "Pity. If you did, it might be your ticket out of that rolling shit heap."
She was forced to repeat her initial question. "What do you want?"
Bela smiled. "You can't afford it to give me what I want." she said, and bent to pick up her crystal.
The car was her home, the car was her, but suddenly she wanted that link to her humanity. She needed it. When the end of the year came and she lost Dean, she had to find her human self again. Only then could she get to where she needed to go, and she had to go, because without him...
Life would be unbearable.
"Bela! Bela wait! Please!"
The lines of communication were no longer open. She was once again trapped within her four-wheeled prison, watching helplessly as Bela disappeared into the night taking the crystal and the name she held hostage with her.
"BELA! Please! What's my name!?!?!"
Winter, 2008
Divide and conquer. Wasn't that one of the rules of war?
They came early, the hounds, early by only a few hours but early just the same. Sam had gone to meet Ruby, for the she-demon claimed to have the key to saving Dean from the fire. Dean had gotten the call to come pick them up but he would not get to them in time. He'd have to face the hounds alone. Without Sam, without the knowledge Ruby supposedly possessed, he had no chance.
She could see them as clearly as he did. The brake was engaging long before his foot pressed down on the pedal. Her tires squealed on the pavement, bringing her to a stop several yards before she reached them. There were three, all lined up across the road; dark, salivating, red-eyed Hell Hounds. They were like some strange collaboration of canine and feline with a little bit of weasel and perhaps hyena thrown into the mix. The hounds of Hell - unearthly hybrids with only one purpose.
Dean's death by any means would send him straight to Hell, but this wouldn't be by any means. People killed themselves before facing death brought on by the hounds. They would tear Dean to pieces, consume him while he still lived. His death would be slow, hideous and painful. He knew it too. She could feel his hands tighten around the steering wheel and sense him fighting panic. Every muscle in his tense body trembled. Sweat beaded up across his forehead and ran down his back.
He reached for his cell phone. His mouth was dry. He could barely get the words past his lips before the phone went dead.
"Sam, they're here."
Her engine sputtered and died. Dean turned and slammed his hand down on the lock before making sure all the other doors were likewise shut and locked. He reached beneath the seat and pulled out the Colt. It was fully loaded. If the hounds got in, he would shoot them and maybe, just maybe, he could get away.
He managed a small chuckle as he prepared himself for the battle to come. "At least I'm not stuck in a freakin' Pinto."
She didn't get the reference, nor did she have time to think twice about it. The hounds had launched themselves down the road and were coming on fast.
DEAN!
One circled around to the driver's side door, another took on the doors on the passenger's side. The third, the biggest of them, sprang upon the hood. The hood buckled beneath its weight. Its claws scraped across the metal with a scream, tearing big gouges through the paint to the bare steel. Saliva splattered across the windshield as its teeth snapped at its prey, its hot breath fogged up the glass.
Dean pointed the gun at it and screamed back over its snarling. "Yeah, yeah! Come and get me you mangy son-of-a-bitch! Come and get me!"
The car rocked as the biggest hound reared back and attacked the windshield with its weight and its claws. A small crack appeared. At Dean's left there was a hideous screaming sound as both the door handle and the side mirror were torn away by snapping jaws. The passenger's side hound gave up on the doors and jumped upon the trunk. Like its fellow it began pounding on the glass of the rear window, bouncing up and down, driving its stiffened forelegs like pistons – or a jack hammer.
She was panicked, terrified, screaming silently as the crack in the windshield widened and another began upon the rear window. The hound still on the ground began digging at the side of the car, trying to rip its way through the door. She was helpless to stop any of it.
The safety glass in the windshield shattered, but it remained in place, an opaque mass of broken glass held together like a jigsaw puzzle. There was another thud as the second hound left the trunk to join the first atop the hood. Together they began tearing at the glass. A hole appeared.
"Shit!"
The gun blast was deafening inside the car. The bullet burst through the windshield and obliterated it upon impact. Glass rained down on the hounds, Dean, the interior of the car. One hound, the smaller of the two on the hood, fell back with an unearthly scream. The other, the biggest, thrust its head inside and snapped at Dean as he scrambled into the back seat. He let out a cry as teeth clamped down around his calf, turned quickly, and fired again. This time he missed, but the hound released its grip.
Dean sat huddled in the furthest corner of the back seat, gasping as he aimed the gun at the gaping hole where the windshield had once been. Blood ran down his leg to pool in the floorboards at his feet. His hands shook as he tried to keep his aim steady. His face was as white as death already.
A howl caught his attention. He spared a quick glance out the window and saw two more hounds emerge from brush along the side of the road. Peering toward the opposite side of the car he saw three materialize from out of thin air, stalking toward their victim, licking their chops. He could shoot them all, but more would always come.
"Oh, God!"
God was perhaps the only hope he had, and despite all the times she'd prayed in vain over the years, she found herself praying once more.
It was hard not to be jaded when all one saw was evil everywhere and prayers went unanswered. She'd watched as the faithful began to falter – Sam's heart seemed to grow colder every day. Her boys did their best to do the right thing. They were good. Why should Dean be punished for simply loving his brother?
Where there were demons there had to be angels. She could not remember her name but she recalled Sunday mornings as a child when she attended church with her parents. She'd gone to Catholic school where she'd learned about angels and devils and those who had fallen. More than that, she had been there when Dean saw what he called "God's will." Things just didn't happen. They happened for a reason.
Please! If you won't help me, help him! Please!
Dean shot the two Hell Hounds standing in the window, and the two that came after. The gun was nearly empty. There were more bullets in the trunk but he had no hope of getting to them. He had come to the end of the line. The hounds would kill him as soon as that last bullet was spent.
Blood loss and fear made it difficult to hold the heavy gun steady and cock the trigger. It shook badly in his hand until he stilled it with his own body, pressing the muzzle to the underside of his chin. Tears filled his eyes as his finger tightened slowly around the trigger.
NO!
She shuttered off her senses, in effect – closing her eyes. The last thing she heard was the warning growl of a hound - it would not stand for its prey to escape its jaws via suicide. She expected to hear the muffled bang of the pistol as Dean took his own life, but it never came.
When she opened her eyes the car was gone. The hounds and Dean were nowhere to be seen. Instead she stood at the center of a crossroad intersection, her bag in her hand and her guitar slung across her back, just as she'd been when she left home years ago. Her body felt real, alive, not like the few times her spirit had appeared outside the confines of the car. Was it...
"A dream?" she whispered. "Have I been dreaming all this time?"
"I'm afraid not."
She turned quickly. He had not been there before, this man who at first glance she thought was Dean Winchester. The resemblance was close, but this was not Dean, simply another handsome young man with similar features. His hair was longer and lighter, his eyes blue, not green. He was dressed simply in a white t-shirt and faded jeans, and didn't seem to mind the cold.
He smiled at her. "Hello, Amy."
"Amy?"
Her grip tightened around the strap of her bag as the few memories she'd retained were joined by many, many others. They surged through her mind one after another, including the one she wanted the most, the one she'd been seeking for forty years, the one that could free her.
The joy she felt was overwhelming, making her both laugh and cry. "Amy! My name is Amy." She dropped the bag and hugged herself, throwing her head back as she danced around in a circle. "AMY! I'm Amy...Fitzpatrick! Amy Fitzpatrick!"
She stopped abruptly, staring up at the sky. The stars played peek-a-boo with a few wispy clouds that, as she watched, began to release their burden. Big, light, fluffy snowflakes began to fall all around them. She could "hear" their silence, feel their peace. Up there, she realized, was Heaven in all its glory. The snow bore a message: paradise was ready and waiting for her arrival.
Slowly she lowered her gaze to her companion.
"A crossroads," she said quietly. "Is where deals are made."
He inclined his head in acquiescence. "And such deals are not exclusive to demons."
Amy dropped her arms to her sides, stunned. "Are you...?"
"Some people call us angels, but angels or demons, we're all the same creatures." He took a few steps forward and gently touched her face. "I'm here to offer you salvation, but whether you take it for yourself or another is a decision you must make, and make quickly."
"Dean," she murmured. His hand was soft, and warm. She turned her cheek into it and closed her eyes.
She saw the car stalled in the middle of the road, Hell Hounds circling it like vultures. She looked inside, where Dean's will to live battled with his fear of being killed by the hounds. Distantly she could see Ruby slouched behind the wheel of a stolen sports car, Sam riding shotgun at her side, driving at breakneck speed over winding country roads. Despite their haste, they would not arrive in time. They would find only a beat up car and Dean's lifeless body. He would be lying in the back seat stiff and cold, with half of his skull blown away and the Colt still clutched in his hand.
Her eyes popped open. "He'll die."
"He'll die, and his soul will go to Hell which, I'm told, is a very unpleasant place."
"But..." she prompted.
He lowered his hand. "Two years ago Dean was visited by a Reaper, a creature with no loyalties, good or evil, but he was shown his destined path, and with no other option, he was prepared to take it. He gave his soul to this 'angel of death.' She was to guide him - home."
Amy nodded slowly. "John..."
"John made a deal with the demon Azazel, who brought Dean back to life." His voice softened. "Dean bargained with stolen goods when he made his agreement here at the crossroads. His soul was promised first to another, and the promise was never fulfilled. Now that one is prepared to fight for rightful ownership of Dean Winchester's soul, but only if you say the word."
She was stunned. She felt hope, but also, confusion. "Me? Why do I have any say in it?"
"Because there can only be one miracle here tonight, Amy, only one soul can be rescued. Yours, or Dean's."
"But why?"
A loving smile, and a shrug, were all he would commit to, along with the words, "God works in mysterious ways. I do not question his motives, nor should you." He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Faith, Amy. You must have faith."
Turning from him, she walked a few paces away, trembling. This was what she'd been praying for since the day she died. It meant freedom. She would no longer be bound to a machine, a lumbering piece of steel, glass and rubber. Heaven was hers for the taking.
"What will happen to him if I...choose myself?"
"I think you know."
She closed her eyes again, and once again saw Dean dying by his own hand in the back seat of an old Chevy. "And if I choose him?"
"He'll live...but I can't guarantee when death will come for him, or where he will go when his life ends. All that hinges on the outcome of another battle."
Amy turned around quickly. "The war we're fighting now."
"It's an ancient struggle, but things have changed." He frowned. "Azazel had a few tricks up his sleeve we had not foreseen."
"Sam."
Blue eyes grew slightly vague. "His is yet another battle, the outcome of which we cannot predict. I can, however, tell you that if he fails to triumph over the canker now devouring his soul, Heaven and Earth will never be the same."
"And he will fail, without Dean." Clenching her fists, she nodded sharply. "What do I have to do?"
The man, the angel, the whatever he might have been, took her face between his hands and kissed her mouth. Warmth spread through her. Through him she glimpsed what she was giving up, and her heart ached - but only for a moment. When he withdrew she noted again how much he resembled Dean and felt as if her heart would burst with the affection she felt for him. She knew then she was doing the right thing.
"What do I have to do?" she repeated, breathlessly.
He said only one word.
"Run."
Two new hounds sprung up onto the hood. Beneath their broad paws her engine roared into life and a second later the gear shift dropped into drive. Her tires spun on the pavement, found purchase, and propelled her forward with a scream and the scent of burning rubber. Dean was thrust back against the seat, the Colt falling from his hand.
"What the Hell?"
"Hang on!"
Dean climbed back into the driver's seat as the hounds standing on the hood attempted to keep their grip and attack him through the windshield. Seconds before jaws would have closed around his throat, the car swerved, skidding around a turn and onto another stretch of highway. The demon dogs were flung to the ground and run over first by the car, and then by their fellows who galloped behind in pursuit. Dean pressed his foot down on the accelerator but it wasn't necessary.
She ran, and behind her, the surviving hounds suddenly found themselves being called back to Hell.
Dean watched in the rear view mirror as they slowly vanished into the darkness. He could not comprehend what had happened, how he had survived. Shock and blood loss were making him groggy. He was quickly succumbing, and laughed bitterly at the irony of surviving the hounds only to die when he drove off the road into a tree.
She would take care of him. She rushed down the road at over eighty miles an hour, hugging the curves, accelerating in the straightaways, long after his eyes closed and his hands slipped from the wheel.
Ruby and Sam would find the Impala a half hour later. She had pulled over at the side of the road near a town where she knew they could find Dean medical help. Her engine ticked softly as the hot metal cooled. Dean was slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious...but very much alive.
She noted Ruby's sour look as Sam left her side to go to his brother. Perhaps it was not only the hounds who had been thwarted that night.
Spring, 2008
Dust coated her flanks from a long drive over unpaved roads, but it was well worth it for the warmth of southern Texas sunshine and the quiet of the countryside. They'd just done some work in New York and small town boys that they were, Sam and Dean had longed for a place with a little less hustle.
Dean sat cross-legged on her hood like a tall, lean Buddha, sipping a beer and looking out across a pond sparkling in the sunshine. Sam stood at the bank, idly skipping stones across the top of the water. When his toss went awry and the stone sank with a "plop" Dean would happily call out, "You suck, Sammy!"
She sighed quietly to herself. She knew this serene moment wouldn't last. There were still demons out there. They might have won the last battle, but not the war.
The war whose outcome was bound to the status of one young man's soul.
Sam returned to the car, procuring himself a drink from the cooler they'd set down in the shade of a nearby tree. He leaned on her flank as he screwed off the top of a long-neck and took a swig.
"Heard from Ruby lately?" Dean asked.
"No."
Dean chuckled. "Good."
"Dean..."
"Sam." Turning, Dean interrupted his brother with a scowl. "Look, Ruby is pissed because if she'd saved me, you'd owe her, and God knows what she'd want from you. Bela's spirits say Hell is in an uproar because my contract mysteriously went poof. We both got out of a couple of crap situations with our asses intact – do we really have to know the how and why?"
Sam shook his head. "I guess not."
With a sigh betraying his reluctance to let go of his questions, he pushed off from the Impala's fender and walked back toward the lake. Watching him, she felt a sense of unease. Two years ago he would have been more receptive. He would have had more faith in the unknown, the unexplained, especially when it happened to be something good.
You'll find your faith again, Sammy. You have to. You have to keep fighting, for all our sake's.
Dean had another sip of beer, oblivious of her worries. "God works in mysterious ways," he said softly, patting the warm hood beneath him."Isn't that right...Baby?"
She smiled to herself, her attention leaving Sam to focus upon his brother instead.
You aren't fooling me Dean Winchester. You think I don't do inventory on my own trunk? Bela gave you an earful in exchange for that Maori tiki, didn't she?
"Sam!" Dean shouted, as a stone vanished beneath the surface of the pond. "You suck!" He unfolded his legs and slipped from the hood, shaking his head as he headed toward his brother. "You're doing it all wrong. Let me show you!"
The Impala sat basking in the sun at the side of the road, as her boys laughed and joked and skipped stones across the pond. Everything would be all right. Sam wasn't going down without a fight, Dean wouldn't let him, and she would look after them both. As long as they were all together, nothing could stop them.
She sighed, her spirit at ease once again.
You're right, Dean. It's Baby. My name is, and will always be, Baby.
FIN
Musical Inspiration:
Chevy Impala by the Four Bitchin' Babes
Crank down the windows,
Devil may care.
Man when she drives it, people gotta stare.
The music's too loud, the car's too fast.
Not a tank big enough to hold enough gas.
It's one heavy Chevy.
It's queen of the road.
It's a car so big it's got its own zip code.
Doesn't matter where you been,
Don't matter who are are,
From Newark to Knoxville, gotta love that car.