WHERE DO I HIDE?, tag: Sam, Dean, Ruby

[HOLLY PARKER]

Does anybody know the secret?

or the combination to this life and where they keep it?

((Forgive this incoherent post. x.x I will get better.))

COLLBRAN, COLORADO -- ALPINE MOTEL

Only after 13 hours of driving, two days with no sleep, and one terrifying swerve on the highway after almost hitting a fluffy bunny, did Holly realize that she had to stop and rest somewhere. She did not dare stop in Grand Junction, but kept going along the I-70 until turning off the road to Collbran. She parked the Honda in the parking lot of the Alpine Motel in the tiny town and stepped out, her legs nearly folding underneath her as she did. Thin arms flailed a bit as she grabbed hold of the rear-view mirror for support, nearly wrenching the damn thing off in the process.

When she managed to right herself again, her cheeks were red from embarrassment and her heart was skipping beats and pounding crazily in her chest -- though that could have easily been from all the chocolate and soda she'd consumed to keep awake. Gingerly, Holly stumbled around to the other side of her car, pulling open the passenger door to search for some money. Candy wrappers and empty soda cans spilled out onto the pavement on either side of her, but there came no rain of magical money. Crap.

Well. She could always sleep in the car, right?

Two minutes later she was at the front desk of the motel, grit in her eyes, hair a mess and probably smelling a little funky, with absolutely no plan for how to convince the owners to let her stay. The woman behind the desk was cursing a bulky PC desktop and jabbing at the keyboard with a single manicured finger. Holly let her mouth hang open gracelessly as she watched the woman struggle for a few minutes before a flash of brilliance prompted a crooked, sheepish smile.

"Computer trouble?"

_______________________

They agreed to let her stay for one night after she fixed their computer, which meant she had just one night to decide what she was going to do with the rest of her (possibly short) life. She started by dragging her bags into the motel room, hastily looking around to make sure no one caught what she was doing. With a strained grunt she shoved the bags through the door, toppling the one with the books onto its side. The sword she'd grabbed in a panic off her uncle's wall fell out of the bag at her feet with an innocent sort of gleam, reflected in her glasses.

Holly stared at the short sword for a minute or two before she squatted in front of it and picked it up by the hilt, bringing it close to her face so she could squint at it. What had possessed her to grab such a thing anyways? She'd thought that when she cleaned out her uncle's secret room, she'd been acting like a crazy person with no rhyme or reason to her actions. But, somehow amidst the crazy, she'd thought to grab a weapon because she was sure Tudor was not coming to save her. No one was.

Tears pricked at her eyes and she took a shuddering breath, looking around the motel room with an air of despair that threatened to crush her. Still, there was a shred of resolve remaining in her gut that spurred her to get to her feet and step outside, sword in hand. It was one of her only weapons...the least she could do was try to teach herself to use it. She went to the small courtyard near her room and picked out a thick tree to stand in front of, holding the sword with both hands nervously, the tip dragging against the grass. The last time she'd held a sword was when her and Brandon had gone LARPing in Irwindale -- and even then she'd been one of the first killed in action (by a priest, no less).

She'd also watched the Lord of the Rings movies at least eight times and, really, wasn't this almost the same thing?

"Right..if Hobbits can do it, so can I..." She muttered to herself and pushed her glasses up on her nose with grim determination. She swung the sword lightly a few times, from side to side, from overhead, and even a few golf-swing type maneuvers to take tiny chips off the tree's bark. The minute she got more bold and took a harder swing, the side of the blade lodged itself in the tree. Holly gave it a few tugs in vain before she had to put a foot on the trunk for leverage and resume tugging.

"Oh--very--nice--Holly--!" She criticized between tugs, arms straining with the effort to free the sword. "You're--doomed--OOMPH" She flailed when the blade came loose and went flying backwards onto her backside in the grass, just in time to see a couple staring at her bug-eyed. Holly met their shocked gaze, looked at the sword in her hand, and then looked back them, trying to find something to say. "....Renaissance Fair." She finally croaked her excuse and the couple hurried off, avoiding looking at her. The girl sighed and winced when she got to her feet, rubbing her abused bottom while dragging the sword behind her back to her room.

If she couldn't fight...she could at least flee. In theory, at least.

After showering away two days of grime and grease, Holly sprawled out on the creaky motel bed and closed her aching eyes, willing herself to sleep and deal with the problem of life tomorrow. She barely made it twenty minutes before she jerked awake with a long, sucking gasp for air, haunted by the events of the past few days. All she could see were the demons and all she could think about was her dead uncle and grandmother.

She cried and exhausted herself, but was still too terrified to sleep. How could she when she didn't feel safe? I'm never going to sleep again, she bemoaned silently and rubbed roughly at her face, fumbling for her glasses. The sun had begun to set outside, the hours wiled away faster than she could have ever thought. Tiredly, she opened up a can of salt and made lines on all of the window sills, yawning hugely. There was just enough salt left for the front door.

She'd moved only a few steps forward when the lights flickered and she froze in horror, salt spilling into useless mound next to her foot.

"...Oh God..."

IT'S KINDA SAD WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW THE MEANING, BUT EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON

template coded by always and forever of atf

[RUBY]

What an opening line…if it wasn’t for the fact that Ruby was trying to hide her demonic heritage she might have answered with ‘guess again’ but she didn’t. It wasn’t too long after the little girl, well little girl in Ruby’s mind, had fallen asleep that she’d picked the lock and gotten inside. She thought it was all kinds of adorable how four eyes was running around trying to keep demons out when one was sitting in her living room watching her, not that she was going to share that particular piece of information with the scared thing, she hadn’t even told Sam the truth about herself so she wasn’t itching to make it common knowledge, especially since she wasn’t sure how she stood with him yet.

Ruby had gotten the information that John had sent Dean and Sam out after this girl thanks to a demon with a loose tongue who let it slip that they were going to be using this opportunity to catch up to Dean and Sam and off the big brother (since it was more or less common knowledge that harming Sam would bring Azazel’s wrath down on you and no demon wanted that honestly). Well that might make Ruby’s job easier but at the same time she saw an opportunity that she couldn’t pass up, if she showed up and was able to warn the brothers off then she’d possibly cement herself in Sam’s mind as a true ally. He’d been keeping her at arm’s length so far and no matter how much information she’d been feeding him it was like he still wasn’t ready to fully accept that she was his ally in this fight, which she was to an extent, but it was like Sam could tell that she wasn’t truthful with him as to why she was doing what she was doing and that annoyed her to no end. Ruby had never met someone so damned hard to crack, then again it could be that for the second time in her long time as a demon that her heart wasn’t completely in the con, there was just something different about Sam Winchester and it pissed her off. Ever since the first time she’d met him he had this odd effect on her, just with a look or a word he made her change her plans and sometimes talk too much, give more of herself away then she wanted too. There also was that odd need to stick her neck out for him and if she was being honest she’d say that part of the reason she was here was because Sam wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Dean so she didn’t want anything to happen to him either, because it would hurt Sam.

Taking a few more moments she finally stood up and looked around the room, she knew the demons were nearby and that stupid flickering of light show really was a pitiful show of power on their part, it told Ruby so much about what they were facing, young demons, and the boys had to be close if they were pulling stupid stunts like this. They were trying to scare the girl, make her panic, and by the looks of it they were doing a damn fine job of it. The thing was Ruby didn’t have what one might call people skills, well she did but only as far as she needed to, because being nice sort of went against her nature most of the time. Giving the girl a flat look she did her best not to sneer.

“Demons, plural, not God, you got their attention. The good news is that you got my attention as well and I can deal with them well enough till your knights in shining Impala arrive. I guess you knew someone who knew John Winchester, he’s sent his sons to come fetch you, right into the trap you’re bait for. I suppose you all can thank me later.”

Moving over to a window she pulled from under her jacket her knife, palming it and seeing if she could see any movement out there, before she pulled out her cellphone and typed in a quick text message to Sam giving him the address where Holly was and the fact that they needed to watch out, that they were driving into a trap.

[SAM WINCHESTER]

Too many questions and not enough answers; it was always the same deal, wasn't it? Sam couldn't think of a time when they had known everything, going into a hunt – although part of him wasn't sure if that had just been because Dad had always been so insistent on him staying back for as long as possible, until Sam had had to remind him that he was bigger than both him and his brother, and that he was never going to be a good hunter if he got stuck being babysat. It wasn't that Sam had wanted to be a hunter, but more that if he was going to be thrust into this life, he might as well know everything he could. And he'd tried to get away from it, he really had, and yet here he was, like he'd never been to Stanford, like he'd never fallen in love—except if that hadn't happened, Sam wouldn't even be here. Jess wouldn't be dead, he'd be on his way to becoming a lawyer...and he wouldn't have seen his brother in years. There were always going to be pros and cons to everything, and Sam wasn't happy, not in the slightest, but he had to admit that there were worse things in the world than teaming up with Dean again. They did it well, and it had almost been fun, before they'd gotten stuck in Lawrence, of all places. It didn't hold the same significance to Sam that it did for Dean, because he didn't remember being here, having a life, he didn't remember Mom, but it was still home, wasn't it? It was still a place that they should have avoided—would have avoided, if it hadn't been for his visions, at least until the demon problem had made its way onto their radar. But now that that had happened, they still seemed to be just as clueless as ever. Their father being around meant that whatever had killed their mother and Sam's girlfriend was probably near, and Sam had, at least, met someone who seemed to know something about that, since his dad seemed to refuse to share any information that he had under the pretence of protecting them, but he still felt lost. It probably wasn't possible to feel anything different, at the moment.

This was yet another job that Dad had sent them on with very little information; a girl, and it was probably an old debt, because they seemed to be paying those for their father lately. Sam couldn't resent that, not really, because he knew that keeping in other hunters' good books was important, but he wanted to be staying in Lawrence, he wanted to keep digging for information about the demon that had killed Jess, and he hated that they were stuck here, sure, but he also hated that they weren't getting much further with that. Even with Ruby helping, it wasn't like Sam had really gotten all that far, and when it came to this, he didn't know how to be patient. It was the only thing that mattered, really, wasn't it? It was the only thing that he wanted to focus on—but Dad had said jump, so they only needed to ask how high. Receiving a text from Ruby had just confirmed it, and yes, okay, Sam was worried by the fact that she said it was a trap, but what could he do, really? He wasn't just going to leave some girl to get hurt so that he and Dean could be safe, it wasn't what they did. They'd just have to keep an eye out, and if Ruby was hanging around too, then that was someone else on their side – and maybe she'd do her mysterious disappearing thing again, she'd kill a few demons, drop a few huge hints that she had information and then go away, but it would be a chance to prove to Dean that the person he was getting information wasn't just some mythical creature. At least this time, he was prepared to face demons, weapons already in hand as they pulled up; no point having to rummage through the trunk if it was an emergency. “Dude, remember it's probably a trap,” he reminded his brother as he got out, looking around. “Ruby?”