The
morning Jessica Moore set out to accidentally meet Sam
Winchester, she dressed deliberately – calf length tan corduroy
skirt, crimson scoop neck shirt, knee high brown boots. All that
research and she hoped she’d gotten it right.
Apparently she had because by Christmas break most nights were
spent with Sam in her dorm room or her in his. His roommate
flunked out in February, so by the end of spring semester they
lived out of Sam’s room, the two twin beds pushed together to
make one big enough for two.
By mutual consensus, in between summer classes, they spent June
searching through want ads and bulletin boards until they found
the perfect little apartment just off campus. Sam was glad it
was cheap. Jess smiled to herself over the deadbolts and new
window locks.
******
The
day before they moved, Jess slipped away while Sam packed. At
the apartment she stood on a ladder and carved protection sigils
into the top edge of all the doors, where even someone of Sam’s
height wouldn’t see them. She hired a couple of Mexican
immigrants to replace the baseboards throughout the house,
directing them to leave a slim opening at the top where salt
could be poured inside. She tore up the boards from the window
sill, carved more symbols into the wood underneath, then
hammered everything back into place again.
Sam never noticed a thing.
******
When she’d taken this job they’d told her it was temporary – she
was just filling in for Sam’s real guardian – but temporary for
someone who had lived four centuries was a lifetime for everyone
else.
The night Jess met Dean Winchester she knew it was over; she was
done. And just when she’d begun to hope it would last longer,
because Sam was someone impossible to let go of.
It had only been two and a half years.
She watched Sam vacillate between them, pulled in both
directions, and knew she had to step aside, or she would help to
tear him apart. She wasn’t ready to be done, wouldn’t ever be
ready, but she let Sam leave with Dean and for the first time
since she could remember, found herself adrift.
She waited in the shell of their home until it showed and
her only regret was that Sam would see the end of it, that she
couldn’t spare him the pain of thinking her dead. She was
comforted by the knowledge that his brother, new guardian soul
that he was, would watch out for him – protect him – and that
she would always be able to watch him from afar.
She cast her gaze down on him, silent and content on their bed,
and whispered to the hidden evil in the room with them.
“I’m ready.”