Not Until We Are Lost

Piotr was anxious to get everything rolling. While putting the meeting off had given extra time to round up others who might need to be in on it, it meant a delay of information that he wasn't truly comfortable with. He'd managed to play it off with everybody that he'd encountered, making as if this wasn't as big a deal as it really was to him. Inside, Piotr had been twitchy. Anything could happen at any time. They were all dealing with the unknown. There were too many variables, the risk was far too high. Lingering only swayed things away from their favor.

It was very domestic, the way he readied for the guests. He didn't let Max lift a finger. It was the only way he could keep himself from stewing, really. To move, work. Put plates together. Ready beverages. Create a spread that Martha Stewart would have been proud of.

He even dressed up.

Black suit, crisp white shirt, black tie, shiny black shoes, hair combed impeccably, guns tucked away in their holsters under his arms and hidden carefully by the jacket of his expensive outfit. Not a lick of metal showing anywhere to give him away, and that was more a throwback to the long nights of watching a mark than anything else. Piotr didn't have any good reason for it now, but it felt right.

When there was nothing left to do, he leaned against the arm of the couch and worried his lip between his teeth. There wasn't a watch to check on his wrist, so he glanced every few minutes at the clock on the wall, ticking away in its hideous orange and purple motif, strange detached bunny ears the hands, a mangled face grinning behind them. It was disturbing at best, though Piotr didn't really see the image, just the minutes.

The doorbell rang and he opened it, taking up the entire doorway. He smiled at the first guests and stood aside to allow them in. He made motions toward the table of snacks and directed them toward the kitchen for drinks. Every single newcomer got the same treatment. Max still not allowed to do anything that might have taken even an iota of the control out of the Russian's hands. They weren't military people, those who were showing up, they weren't highly trained like he was, but he would be damned if he wasn't in command of everything.

There were so many faces that he didn't recognize, and still no sign of the one that he was still seeking. Rayne was not with any of the others that showed up. Piotr couldn't help the worry he felt for his charge. The strange woman who he'd met in Malden, what felt like a hundred years ago now. He didn't ask after her, knowing that if any of these people knew her, she would have been here. He'd been careful to set the time of the meeting right after sunset to accommodate her and any others that might be like her. If she was here, by some strange chance, and had not been informed of the meeting, and hadn't come looking for him, if she had, in fact, decided to keep herself secret, then she had a reason for it, and it wasn't Piotr's place to draw attention to her. The hope of that was beyond slim, however, and he knew it. She wasn't here, he just had to admit it.

He let everybody mingle for almost an hour, to make sure that all the people that had been told had a change to show up. That and it was obvious that some of them had been looking for each other for a while, and they were just now discovering one another. He couldn't bring himself to break that up. He knew how he would have felt if he'd found his friend. He wouldn't have been able to focus on anything else but making sure that she was alright.

Finally, he stood in the center of the living room, his eyes skating over the seating, knowing that there wasn't enough for everybody and regretting it, and cleared his throat to get the attention of the assembled.

"We are all here right now for the same purpose." Piotr's voice wasn't loud, but it was demanding. His accent cut through everything else easily. The edges of it were sharp, the middles heavy. He wouldn't, couldn't be ignored. "All of us were brought to this place, world or dimension, and we have all been seeking answers since we woke up. It is time to share what we have found."

He smiled a little at Mary, at Cas, then at Rob, still not giving up his position.

The library had not provided Johnny with what he was hoping that it would. There had been a great deal of information to be had, he couldn't deny that. But it was lacking. He had to admit to himself, finally, that he didn't give a shit about this world or why there was Easter and Halloween happening all at the same time.

He wanted to find Mary.

No library, no matter how complex and extensive it was, would have that information for him. He needed to get out and look for her himself. The task was daunting enough due to the fact that he didn't even know if she was here. But adding to it that he didn't know the area, and the fact that his phone seemed to be entirely missing made it all harder.

So far, he'd only run into strangers. Albeit, strangers who had no idea where they were either, who had come from other places, even one who had been in Electric City, they were still strangers in the end. He'd not seen Jo around, which would have been a face that was almost as welcome as Mary's would have been. He'd not seen Dean, either. He'd yet to have a face to face with Dean as he had with Jo, but he was sure - if Dean were here - that it was coming.

Johnny's first instinct was to return to the street that he'd started on, and the house that he'd woken up in. It was the house that he claimed as his, despite it not being his. He knew that Bo was there too, or there sporadically. He saw little things moved around. Stuff left or taken from the counter that wasn't his doing.

To him, the source of everything was Belmeadow Avenue. Maybe not everything, but that's where the big answers were going to be. The ones that were the most important to him, now. The one that was most important to him now.

He spent about an hour sitting on the porch of his house, watching people come and go, and not seeing a familiar face, before he decided that he couldn't be inactive. Since he didn't have his phone - he couldn't find it anywhere in the house at all - he couldn't call people. He couldn't text. He couldn't do anything that he would have normally done first. The option he had was to knock on doors. It was going to be absurd, he knew. It was going to get tedious, and it was going to be a little embarrassing. But he was going to do it.

Johnny smiled politely, hat in hand, at the first door, asking if anybody named Mary lived there, getting a fairly confused look in return. The second house, the hat stayed on, the smile was in place, and the confused look turned into outright scorn, as if he were trying to sell something. The third house, there was less smile on him and more ire from the person on the other side, who accused him of being a religious nut. His trip to the fourth house was made with doubt and frustration and an expectation that he'd just get the door slammed in his face.

The rethinking of this route was weighing on him as he knocked. Hope dying in him a little bit. Johnny looked out onto the neighborhood and wondered what he could do instead of this.

Johnny left the house that contained the woman who had tried to eat him. Even though she claimed that that wasn't what she'd been doing, that she'd been feeding and not eating he'd come to call it that in his head. Not physically like some might, but there had been an attempt at consumption. That bothered him. Though, not as much as the fact that she couldn't do it. Whatever she'd been doing, she'd been stopped somehow. Something about him was different enough that she couldn't take what she wanted from him. She'd been just as bothered and confounded by it as he had.

He was so unnatural that he couldn't feed whatever kind of creature she was.

There was part of him, that part that Jo had started to build and he'd been constructing with Mary, that thought Bo might be the kind of thing that needed to be hunted. That part was small, though, and he'd gotten to know and understand the woman enough to let her slide out of that hunted status. She was a little odd, but nice enough, and she'd not actually tried to kill him. Or anybody, for that matter. That he knew of.

Despite whatever dark thoughts were circling around in his head, Johnny still had a need to find Mary. They'd grown close. And the idea of her not being here with him bothered him. He didn't want to be apart from her. He didn't want to lose... whatever it was that they had. He knew that it was different for her, that she had him in the future in a way that ... well. It was different.

Being out of the house wasn't really any better than being in it, since the weird decor extended to the exteriors as well and seemed to take over the whole block. As he walked and left the street, he saw that it went through the whole neighborhood, and also the rest of the town.

Johnny found a newspaper and picked it up, reading The Caldbury Times emblazoned across the top of it. At least he knew where he was, he supposed. He didn't read it, but tucked it under his arm. He wanted coffee. He didn't know if he needed it, but he wanted it. He walked a little bit, a little freaked out that he wasn't getting the normal kinds of stares, but instead eliciting smiles from the passersby. Unable to take much more, he ducked into a coffee shop, nearly running headlong into some kid.

Johnny didn't have to be fully awake for him to know that there was something really wrong happening. Every sense he had was on full alert before he ever got to clear the fog of sleep from his head completely. He didn't move, though, just in case there was anything immediately life threatening in the room with him and it wasn't yet aware that he was conscious.

He listened carefully and heard nothing. The sounds of a busy city were not happening outside the window. The bed was much more comfortable than the one he'd gone to sleep in, and he got the general feeling of a lot more space around him, as well. Daylight streamed through the window, he could feel it warming the room. The scent of old socks, half-assed cleaning, and mold was missing.

Sitting up carefully, Johnny glanced around. He was in a room. A bedroom. An actual bedroom. Not a motel room. It was very clean, very nice. There was a hand stitched quilt over him and the sheets on the bed were white with little yellow duckies. There was a photograph of a flowery field on the wall above the bed, but on the other end the wall was covered in jack-o-lantern cutouts.

Shaking his head, he rubbed at his face. He knew this couldn't have anything to do with alcohol. The amount it would have taken for him to black out would have been unaffordable for any of the people that he knew. Even if they combined all their money. So how had he gotten here? Where was here?

He was wearing his normal shirt, pants, and nothing else. His boots were by the bed, he saw after a brief check. Johnny paused to listen. He felt like maybe he wasn't alone, even though there was nobody immediately here in his view. Had he heard something to cause that feeling? Smelled something?

Lately, Mary had been going over a lot of things in her mind. There had been a lot of memories of Johnny from her time that were now called into question. She wanted to tell herself that it didn’t matter what was and wasn’t true now, but she couldn’t just let it go. She knew that the Johnny that was in the present couldn’t answer all of her questions-certainly not her most urgent ones. But she still had questions that he could answer.

She hadn’t seen him in a few days because she’d been busy looking into aliens and trying to give the suspicion that her parents were throwing her way time to die down. She thought that it would just draw more attention if she was visiting him on a daily basis. But enough time had passed that she thought it couldn’t hurt too much to drop in and maybe ask a few things.

Mary brought the burgers because she knew that they were one of his favorites and she figured that playing twenty-one questions might be a little bit more palatable if done over dinner. She didn’t bother with drinks this time. It felt a little pointless anyway, unless she was prepared to buy out another liquor store.

She found her way to his motel room and juggled the bags of food enough so she could knock.

( Q&A Session )

( Conversations and healing )

The more time Mary spent in the past, the more she went over certain things from her time. And the more time with Johnny, the more she started to see all of the things that had happened over the course of their relationship in a different and sometimes unsettling light.

It was easy to pick out some of the lies now. She just wished it wasn't. All the same, she couldn't help going over certain things in her head. These days, her thoughts felt a little like a broken record because certain things stuck out more than others and she couldn't just get those off her mind.

( Memories )

Being around Johnny was always a strange experience. Lately it seemed to be bringing up a lot of memories. It was hard not to think about the way things had been in her time, especially now that she was starting to suspect that 'her time' didn't exist anymore and wouldn't exist.

There were good memories, mostly, and Mary was determined that she wasn't going to brood over them. Mostly, she found that she couldn't help but smile a little when she thought about things like the first time she'd met the Johnny of her time.

( Not exactly your typical meetcute )

Future girls holding complex feelings currently stuck in the present, not dying nor aging even a tiny bit, fairies, aliens, seven and a half bottles of strong liquor to get drunk, overprotective mothers who weren't yet mothers. Johnny was pretty full up with shit he didn't want to deal with. Unfortunately, not one part of it could be pushed aside. People he cared about were wrapped up in all of it. Friends. Johnny hadn't had friends in a very long time. He felt defensive of them all. Fiercely protective. He dreaded what would happen to them if he let his vigil lapse, if he tried to push all the issues aside for even a little while.

He had to take it one problem at a time, though, and he was going to go for the absolute easiest first. Which meant talking to Mary about Jo. Not just the most recent conversation with his hunter friend, but also about what they were going to do regarding certain knowledge. It was becoming increasingly difficult to hide that he knew Jo was Mary's mother. The other parts - like the bit on how he never died or grew old - that was still very easy to conceal. Johnny was pretty sure that there was nothing in existence that could convince him that letting those tidbits out was a good idea, nor would it ever become a difficultly for him to hide. But he thought that right now, even Jo was harboring frustration when it came to Mary's parentage. He felt like he and Mary needed a plan of action on that end. They needed to construct a story.

Not to mention the fact of a certain note that had been slipped under his door, and Mary's attempted avoidance on the topic of the Drunk Night. She seemed to think that they - or she - had done something wrong, and he wanted to put her straight on that.

Johnny carefully waited until he was absolutely sure that Jo and Dean and anybody else who might see were gone and headed to Mary's door. He felt that the daylight hours were safe from prying eyes, as everybody was attempting to discover what was going on around them, and had been, and would be, gone for hours.

When she answered, he was leaning against the door jam and grinning.

"Your mom says we can't fall in love. And I don't think I'm allowed to play at your house anymore."

Jo didn't really know what she was going to say to Johnny, but she knew that she needed to say something. Preferably without bringing her shotgun or hitting him, no matter how much that might have been her instinct.

She liked the cowboy. She respected him, and he'd been nice enough to accompany them to Electric City. Not to mention that she realized that he couldn't possibly know when Mary was from or any reason why he shouldn't get involved with her. And he really couldn't know that she was Jo's daughter. No one was supposed to know that after all.

So she knew that reasonably, she couldn't be angry about the fact that he'd been drinking with her daughter in his hotel room. She also realized that he'd carried her back to her room instead of... well, whatever else could have happened.

That didn't make the war with her head and her gut instinct to protect her future daughter any easier.

What Jo did know was that there were two people who might end up hurt once Mary was able to get back home, and she wanted to try to prevent that if she could. Her talk with Mary didn't seem to have made an impact, which was why she found herself knocking on Johnny's door a few hours after that talk, and after the run-in with jack.

After her conversation with Jack and the strangeness about the eyes of everyone else in the bar, Mary had had the chance to talk to her mom about it all. Worse, she had the chance to hear about the conversation with her mom and the stranger who seemed to be a bit too in the know about this place. She... didn't feel better after that talk.

It was starting to really sink in that they still hadn't found Ellen and they had no leads. If the person that had talked to her mom-to Jo, since Jo wasn't her mom yet-if that person was right, then they were supposedly on some other planet? With aliens?

How the hell was she supposed to find her sister and then find the angel that had stranded her in York to begin with and get him to bring her the fuck back to where and when she belonged.

She'd wandered for awhile before finding a bar. After drinking down her feelings and finding that she still felt like shit, she wandered for a bit before she found a liquor store.

The guy behind the counter had given her a look and Mary was pretty sure he was considering refusing selling her the amount of liquor that she was trying to purchase. That was before she leaned forward and made sure that her jacket fell open just enough to display the gun that was in the inside pocket.

For some glorious reason, that seemed to clear things up and Mary was soon making her way back to the motel that they'd all camped out in with her arms literally full of those brown paper bags of whatever alcohol she could find with the highest proof-mostly a whole lot of Everclear.

She didn't care right now that she'd told Johnny that they should keep their distance from each other. She didn't even care if her parents-who weren't yet and might never be-her parents saw. She would tomorrow, but right now all that she cared about was that she might never get back to her Johnny or her life and she just really wanted to see him.

She pounded on the door as best as she could white the bottles clinked together in the bags. At least she still had the presence of mind not to shout the name Daniel as she waited for him to answer.

Talking to the woman who was supposed to be her future daughter was still not something that Jo was sure she knew how to do. All the same, she couldn't help but feel a bond with Mary-even if she was still shaky on things with Dean. That didn't change the fact that Mary was family. That Mary was hers.

If Dean had spent a year looking for her, it sounded like Mary might have spent the past year in the same way. Jo felt like she owed Mary a visit to let herknow that she was back and to try... she didn't know what she could try-to make up for lost time perhaps? That hadn't gone over all that well with Dean. Not really.

She still had to see her daughter. However it might turn out.

The surprise came when she reached Mary's door and realized that she wasn't the only person heading to see the youngest Winchester daughter.

She had been in York for about a week and Mary was getting restless. She’d helped her dad rescue her mom, which was a good thing. But they had no leads on the other missing people. The longer that Ellen was gone, the more likely it was that she wasn’t coming back alive. Every part of Mary’s experience told her that, but every bit of her that was loyal to her family refused to accept it. In fact, she just wanted to shoot the hell out of something right about now.

In the not quite helping things column, her... her Johnny, for lack of a better word to call what they’d become, wasn’t really hers. Not in this time. He was trying to help with the missing people too and it was equal parts frustrating and reassuring to have him around.

Today Mary stopped in at his room, as she’d been doing for the last few days. Just in case he’d heard something new or gotten a lead to follow. Maybe there was a bit of comfort in simply seeing his face, even if the eyes that looked out at her didn’t look at her in quite the same way.

( De ja vous )