Title: Santa Cruz
’Verse: Lost and Found
Author: LadyMacbeth
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG13 (for some cussin’)
Word Count: 2226
Disclaimer: “Supernatural” and all its characters belong to the genius that is Eric Kripke. I make no profit.
Summary: Missouri reveals a secret to the boys that send them on a journey to Santa Cruz where they find a brother they never knew and an even darker revelation that none of them saw coming.

*****

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

The air hanging in Missouri’s kitchen is hot and uncomfortable, and Dean’s incessant pacing isn’t making things any better.

He stops and turns to her again.

“You are kidding right? I mean, our lives have never exactly been normal, but this is too much… even for us.”

Sam sits silently in the chair opposite the psychic, not having spoken since she had let the news leave her lips; the long held secret that had finally been revealed.

“I mean, Jesus!” Dean cries, resuming his pacing. “This is the kind of bullshit they pull on soap operas! This doesn’t happen in real life!”

Missouri purses her lips, trying to keep her patience. It was, after all, a lot to digest, especially after all these years, but Dean just had a way of getting under her skin.

“I’m sorry Dean,” she tries again. “I wanted to tell you boys, especially after your father passed, but he had made me promise not too. I couldn’t help your dad find him, so we just didn’t talk about it. But now…” she trailed off, unsure if talking things out would help at all.

“I can’t believe it,” Sam breaths finally, keeping his eyes on the kitchen table.

Missouri reaches out a hand and lays it on the younger Winchester’s. Dean stops pacing and eyes his little brother before taking a breath and letting it out slowly.

“Ok,” he says, trying to calm down. “Just tell me again how Dad could keep this from us? Explain to me once more, the concept of having another brother out there.”

Missouri’s eyes leave Sam’s hunched form and levels her gaze at Dean until he scowls and takes a seat in the chair next to his brother, draping a hand across the back of the younger’s chair.

The psychic closes her eyes as she thinks back to the chain of events that have led to this moment: John’s arrival and questions, her inability to find the other boy, the years of nothing, and then the tragedy that had woken her in the middle of the night with the knowledge John had searched for all those years ago.

“It happened the day after you were born, Dean… someone broke into the hospital maternity ward. The police and security staff said it was probably a woman dressed as a nurse so as not to arouse suspicion. She was in and out in moments, leaving no trace of her self, and taking only one thing: a baby.” Missouri opens her eyes and runs her fingertips over her forehead. “It was a little baby boy, born the day before. He had been asleep in a basinet next to his brother, which was against hospital policy, but the children’s father had been very insistent.”

Sam looks up now, brow furrowing, catching something behind the words that has yet to be said outright.

“The parents were devastated, offering all the money they had as a reward to anyone who could give them information. But nothing ever came of it. So they took their remaining son home, broken and reeling. They prayed. Every day they prayed… even years later, when another child came into their lives…”

“Hold on a minute,” Dean rasps, voice rough and unsure, thoughts struggling forward to impossible conclusions. “Are you trying to tell me…” His eyes dart to his brother who now stares opened mouthed at the psychic, having reached the same mental destination. “Are you seriously trying to tell me…”

“Yes, Dean,” Missouri interrupts, tired of the secrets and hidden truths.

“You’ve got a twin brother.”

*****

“You… you said we had a brother… you didn’t say anything about him being my twin,” Dean’s voice is quiet and even, which is ultimately more intimidating than outright anger.

The psychic breaks eye contact with the oldest Winchester. She wants to snap at him as she usually does when he gets out of line, but this time she deserves every heated word.

Not for the first time in her life, she curses John Winchester and all his damn stubbornness. She had begged him, more than once, to just tell the boys, but he refused, saying that they needed to focus on bigger things; on the hunt.

Damn that man, she thinks as she watched the expressions play over the faces of the boys. Damn him for everything he’s done to them.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, unable to stand the stony silence any longer. “You have every right to be furious with me. Just know that even while you boys were hunting that demon, your father had me searching for your brother.”

She lifts her eyes to them again, tears in her voice despite her efforts to conceal them. “I tried, boys. I tried so hard. But I couldn’t find him. Your dad and I… I hate to say it, but we thought he must have been dead.”

Sam flinches, just barely, at the thought of losing a piece of their family they hadn’t even known existed.

Dean listens silently until this moment, arm tightening around his little brother’s shoulders as he breaths, shakily, “And now?”

Well, that’s the million dollar question, now isn’t it? thinks the psychic. “Now,” she starts slowly, trying to choose her words carefully, “Now I know where he is.”

“How?” Sam chokes, still not quite believing what he’s hearing.

“I had a dream a few nights ago. A vision, I guess. I saw him… I saw him receive a phone call. His mother… the woman he thought was his mother, the woman who took him from the hospital all those years ago, had killed herself. She…” Missouri struggles to pull together the images and emotions that had flooded her unconscious mind in the night. “She had been in an institute for years. She was unstable… which is probably why she kidnapped him in the first place. I saw him get the call, and I felt what he felt.” She takes a deep breath. “He believes he’s alone now, boys. Actually he believes he’s been alone for a long time. The death of his ‘mother’ triggered some sort of emotional out reach; a break in his mental defenses. It gave me enough of an insight into his head that I was able to find out where he is.”

“Where?” Dean demands, before Missouri can even catch her breath.

The psychic glances at Sam who now stares at her imploringly with something akin to fear and hope in his eyes.

“Santa Cruz,” she says, the undeniable feeling of a weight being lifted from her shoulders washing over her.

“His name is Priestly.”

*****

The ride to California is silent and tense.

It’s not until they’re about fifty miles outside of their destination that Sam finally cracks.

“Are we going to talk about this?” he starts, and Dean swears his brother’s true calling was not to be a lawyer but a therapist.

“No,” he tries, hoping in vain Sam will let it go.

Fat chance.

“Dean, come on! We’ve been driving for days and you haven’t said one word about what the hell we’re going to do when we get to Santa Cruz. We’re going to find your long lost twin for Christsakes. It’s completely insane, but you haven’t said a single thing since we left Kansas. Say something!”

“The hell do you want me to say?!” Dean snaps, wrenching his tired eyes from the road ahead of him. “What the hell do you expect me to say, Sam? I’m just as fucking confused as you are! This isn’t the kind of event you have a prepared speech for!”

He shut his eyes suddenly and briefly before turning back to the horizon, fingers tense on the wheel and shoulders shaking slightly.

Sam feels like he could kick himself. He really sucks at this sometimes. Of course Dean is having trouble processing everything.

Sam might have discovered he had another brother, but Dean just found out he has a fucking twin.

That was… beyond comprehension.

“It’s alright,” the younger man says after a moment of stressed silence. “We’ll figure this out.”

Dean’s hands relax just a little.

*****

They’re barely out of the car when Dean says, “How will we know it’s him when we find him?”

Sam looks at him with an expression that says, Are you fucking retarded?.

Dean just stares back blankly for a moment before it dawns on him and he has the sense to look sheepish.

“Right. Twin. Gotcha.”

Sam rolls his eyes and heads in the direction of a sub shop Missouri had seen in her vision.

It’s small and eclectic and Dean mutters something about fucking hippies as Sam tentatively opens the door.

Instantly he knows they’re in the right place because the blonde girl behind the counter has just dropped the plate she was holding and is now staring open mouthed at Dean.

Sam tries to smile.

“Uh, hi,” he says, feeling unbelievably awkward. “Uh, we’re looking for Priestly?”

The girl takes another moment to stare at Dean in disbelief before shrieking “Priestly!” at the top of her lungs.

It’s almost surreal the few stretched moments before he emerges. Neither brother will admit it, but they feel like they’ve been holding their breath since they entered Missouri’s kitchen.

And then he comes out of a doorway behind the counter and if the Winchesters thought things felt surreal before…

As crazy as it is to admit, the thing Sam can’t get over is the hair. It’s a Mohawk… and it’s blue.

Dean can’t believe his mirror image is wearing eye liner. Seriously. That’s what shocks him. The damn make-up.

And they’ve gotta hand it to him, because the guy, their brother, is staring right back.

“Jen?” he starts, and Sam hears Dean’s voice come out of the stranger.

The blonde girl doesn’t take her eyes off Dean and Sam when she responds. “Ya?”

Priestly, too, holds the eyes of the boys. “You slipped something in my food, right? Like, I’m hallucinating, right? ‘Hahaha, let’s send that douchebag Priestly on an acid trip’?” His voice has the tone of begging underneath it and Sam feels a pain somewhere in his chest.

Before the girl answers, Dean breaks his silence.

“You’re not hallucinating, man.”

He steps forward and Priestly holds his ground, eyes still latched on to the mirror image in front of him.

“My name’s Dean Winchester and this is my little brother Sam… and I think the three of us need to talk.”

*****

It takes more coaxing and a pinch on the arm from the blonde to assure him he isn’t dreaming, but eventually Priestly agrees to talk.

Things are somewhat… tumultuous after that.

“You’re fucking shitting me.” he barks and Dean just smiles tiredly.

“Ya, that’s what we said.”

Sam, for once in this kind of situation, stays silent, knowing, somehow, that this is better left to Dean; better left between the twins.

And there’s still no getting over that.

His brother… his brothers talking it out, cursing and flailing their arms (ok, the flailing is mostly Priestly) and the realization that they are uncannily alike.

Sam shouldn’t be shocked. He’d taken psychology courses that had theorized that the bond between twins transcended separation.

It isn’t until he hears the word mother that he fades back into the conversation.

“I guess I always knew something was off, ya know? Just this feeling in the back of my head. I mean, she was never the mothering type, but it was more than that. I felt no connection to her, like she was a babysitter instead of my mother. I guess now it makes sense.” He leaned back in his chair, running a hand over his face and Sam swears he sees Dean’s forehead crinkle in distaste when he catches a glimpse of chipped black nail polish.

“I still can’t believe it… though, I guess what she said makes a little more sense now… though I still have no idea what the fuck she meant…”

Sam finally opens his mouth, convinced it’s safe. “What did she say?”

Priestly sighs before sitting back upright in his seat, left hand absently starting to pick at the polish on his right.

“She called me a few days before she…” his faces scrunches in concentration, as if preparing to endure something unpleasant. “… before she killed herself.”

Sam sees Dean lean forward to rest his elbows on the small patio table out of the corner of his eye. The bustle of the coffee shop fades into the background as a sense of foreboding washes over the intuitive younger boy.

“She had been in that fucking institute for years and never once tried to contact me. So when she called about a week ago, it shocked the hell out of me. And I swear, the voice on the other end of the phone was the sanest I’ve ever heard from her. But what she said…”

“What did she say?” Dean urged from Sam’s left.

The feeling in Sam’s stomach was heavier now, dark and unpleasant.

“She said, ‘I’m sorry’ and…” Priestly paused, unsure, avoiding the eyes the brothers he had never known.

“‘And’?” Sam whispered, barely daring.

Dean’s brow furrowed.

“And,” Priestly continued, looking up and at them square in the eye, “she said the devil made her do it.”

To be continued...