(Continued from Sunlight on Sadness)

Lawrence, Kansas...

There were two more places Dean needed to visit on his road trip to the past before he and Nim left Lawrence behind. The first held mixed memories, both good and bad. He wasn't sure why he was going there exactly, but he'd been to the place where it had all ended, and it seemed only right that he visit the place where it had all began. He wasn't sure what he was going to find, but for some inexplicable reason, he felt drawn there, as if he needed to visit the place before he could put it all behind him and move on.

The house Dean pulled up in front of was nothing special - just an ordinary family home in an ordinary neighborhood. The house didn't look the same as he remembered it, but the fire had done a lot of damage, and it had been remodeled since then. Dean wasn't too clear on what had happened to the house after the fire. He assumed insurance had covered the cost of repairs, but it didn't really matter. He'd never spent another night in that house after the fire. John had more than likely let the mortgage go and the bank had foreclosed, but by that time, they had taken to the road, spending their nights in roach motels when they weren't sleeping in the Impala.

At least, that's what had happened in Dean's version of the universe. Maybe that was why he'd come back here - to make sure some things hadn't changed, to see if they were still the same. He and Sam had been back only once years ago, Dean vowing never to come back here again. And yet, there he was. It seemed that no matter how he tried to put the past to rest, it always seemed to come back to haunt him.

He hadn't mentioned to Nim where it was they were going next. The heavy emotion of the morning had been gently relieved by their playful lunch, and the calm assertion they now knew they shared that when either of them mentioned love, they meant for life and all that entailed. As the Impala trundled through the ordinary neighborhood, Nim's mind wandered again, another faint smile rising at imaginings of being able to live in such a place and raise a family the way the blissfully ignorant hordes of so-called normal human beings did everyday. She shifted toward Dean as he killed the engine, sliding an arm along the back of the seat to curl about his shoulder, leaning up against his side as she followed his gaze to one house in particular. It didn't take a genius to work out where they were now. "Seems like a nice place to grow up."

Dean looked wistfully over at the house where he'd spent the first few years of his childhood, reassured by her closeness as a flood of old memories washed over him. They came in a slow trickle at first, memories both good and bad, things he hadn't thought about in years. "It was," he agreed, though in truth, he hadn't really grown up there. He'd only spent the first four years of his life there, and yet, in some ways, his childhood and his innocence had ended the night the fire had taken his mother from him.

Her arm curled closer about him as he confirmed in two words her suspicions, both hands coming together as she encircled her lover in her supportive embrace. Her lips brushed his cheek lightly for a moment. "Tell me about it?" she asked very softly, resting her cheek against his shoulder as her eyes returned to the house, absorbing the strange mixture of happiness and painful regret that seemed to ebb out from him.

He frowned thoughtfully at the question, acutely aware of her embrace, her cheek against his shoulder, her unannounced attempt to offer him comfort as he revisited a few ghosts of the past. "Tell you about the house or my childhood?" He knew what she meant, but asked anyway, as if he needed a moment to segue into the answer. It was easier to talk about the house itself than the memories of his time spent inside its walls. If only those walls could talk, what would they say about all they'd witnessed throughout the years"

Dark eyes slipped from the house to study his face, so close to her own, with unassuming patience. Though she had nothing in the way of memory to draw on, to help her understand the pain of remembering, Nim could imagine a little of it. Her fingertips rose to stroke against his jaw briefly as she watched him. "Anything that comes to mind."

Still frowning in thought, he kept his gaze fixed on the house, even as he felt her fingers lightly brush his jaw in a fond caress, encouraging him to go on. For a moment, the house that stood there now faded from view, replaced by the house he knew from before the fire. He heard a child's laughter - his own - mixed with the sound of an older, deeper voice he recognized as his father's as the memory played out in his mind. "We used to play catch right there in the front yard," he said, nodding his head toward the place, where a carefully-manicured lawn and garden now took precedence in front of the house.

"My dad signed me up for t-ball that year," he started, lost in the memory. That year could only mean one thing - the fateful year Dean's childhood had ended. "My dad's mitt was too big and it used to always fall off. He promised if I was good, Santa would bring me one of my own. Can you believe I actually believed in Santa Claus?" He paused a moment as his mind moved over those thoughts. He'd never received that Christmas present. Mary had died in November, and Santa had forgotten him.

As she listened, Nim's gaze shifted once more from Dean's thoughtful frown to the lawn in front of the house, a thoughtful smile of her own playing about her lips as she tried to imagine the scene. But no matter how hard she tried, it wasn't Dean and his father playing catch in her mind's eye - it was Dean and their son, whatever he might look like when that time came. "Why wouldn't you believe in Santa?" she asked softly, tilting her head to look at him once more. "You were a normal kid, just for a little while." Her arms hugged him tighter for a moment as she shifted just a little closer. "At least you have good memories." At least you have memories.

He hadn't told her, but in a way, he envied her memory loss. Sure, he had a few good memories - probably more than he gave himself credit for - but the bad memories always seemed to outweigh the good. Maybe if he could say goodbye to those memories and put the past behind him, he and Nim could make new memories, good memories, memories of their own.

Dean wondered if he was being ridiculously sentimental. "I remember when they brought Sammy home. How worried Mom was that I'd be jealous, but I never was. She'd spend time with me when Dad was at work and Sam was asleep. She'd bake me cookies, make me hot chocolate." He grew quiet as memories of his mother predominated so many of his early childhood years - the first woman he'd ever loved.

"I'd love to know what you were like when you were little," she admitted with a low chuckle. "Can't help picturing this cute little heartbreaker in over-sized jeans." Perhaps it was a little out of place to try and lighten his mood as he travelled down memory lane, but she felt he'd been to that darker part of his past long enough for one day. He needed to learn that he could remember without hurting himself. Her eyes scanned him, making sure he saw her looking him up and down. "Haven't changed much, have you?"

He chuckled a little at her remark, turning his head to face her, and in a way, turning his back on those memories, at least for a moment. "I'm not sure how many hearts I broke when I was four." The truth was, the four-year old Dean was a much different person than he was now - quiet, shy, thoughtful, sensitive - and yet those same qualities were still a part of him, even if they were buried deep inside.

Her smile relaxed as he chuckled, relieved that he wasn't getting lost in the pain again, nuzzling her nose to his fondly for a moment before her eyes turned gentle once again. "What was she like?" she asked him very gently. "Your mom?"

He smiled as she brushed her nose against his, an almost playful display of affection. His brows rose at her question, not having been asked that in a very long time. The last person to have asked was Sam, but that had been a long time ago. The smile faded as he considered the question. How did you describe the one person in your life who you loved more than any other, who was perfect in your eyes, who you'd lost forever but whose memory lived on in your heart' "She was..." He shrugged his shoulders, at a loss for words. "Beautiful. Caring. She was a hunter, too, like us. I never knew that until a few years ago. She just wanted a normal life, a family. She loved my Dad, but he wasn't perfect. She used to call me her angel."

Nim's smile deepened as she listened to him, still soft, but very lightly envious of the memories he had of a woman who clearly still meant the world to him. What she wouldn't give to be able to recall her own mother, even in such vague detail as this. "She sounds wonderful," was her quiet response, her eyes lifting to the house once again. What would his life have been like, she found herself wondering, if this special person in his memories had lived" Would he ever have met the Jo she used to be?

He sighed softly and turned back to the house that was no longer his home, having said more about his mother in a few short sentences than he'd ever told anyone, but Sam. "Whenever I had a bad dream, she'd sing me to sleep and tell me not to worry, that angels were watching over me." He frowned at the irony of that.

"Hey." She touched another soft kiss to his temple, hugging him warmly to try and ease that frown away. "Don't think about what came after, what makes those memories ironic or strange. Just enjoy the fact that you have memories of being a normal kid, with your mom and dad, and your little brother. People all over the world don't have that, and they don't have to be hunters for it to be taken away from them."

Dean turned away from the house again, Nim's words reaching him and pulling him away from any grief he was feeling at the loss of his mother and his childhood. She was right - things could be a lot worse and were for some people. He, at least, had those memories of his mother and no one could take them from him, or so he hoped. He frowned as he realized how lucky he was to at least have those memories, when she did not. "Your mother loved you, Nim, and she was proud of you."

Her answering smile was just faintly touched with bitterness. She ducked her head, ashamed of the unspoken jealousy that he remembered her mother when she didn't, drawing a veil over that quietly uncomfortable feeling before she lifted her gaze to his once more. Her palm cupped his cheek as she brushed a tender kiss to his lips. "Thank you. But this is about you, Dean. I can live with not knowing."

"Hmm?" She blinked, turning a blank face to him for a few moments, at a loss as to what he was referring to. It had never occurred to her that her reflexes might be any different to any other hunter. Drawn to a halt by the way he froze, her hand still in his, she turned to look at him with a vaguely confused smile. "Do what? The ball thing?"

"Yeah, you didn't even see it coming. It's like you just....knew." He wasn't sure if he was perceiving what he'd seen correctly or not. Maybe he'd missed something, but he could have sworn she'd plucked the ball from the air without even looking at it. He had pretty good reflexes for a hunter, but not that good.

Nim grimaced faintly, glancing back toward the children who had resumed their game with only an occasional look back at her. "Uh ....is that unusual for me to be able to do?" she asked uncertainly, biting at her lower lip. "I kinda thought hunters had better reflexes anyway."

"Well, yeah, but..." He shook his head, shrugging the incident off, wondering if he was over-reacting or over-thinking things. "You missed your calling. You should have been a baseball player." There was some irony in that somewhere, but he pushed the incident aside and continued on their way toward the house.

Slightly unnerved by this apparently unusual skill of hers having alarmed him a little, Nim fell into step with him again as he took the lead once more. "What in, the little league?" she asked with a half-smile. "Anyway, you're gonna teach me, remember?" Would she be any good at catching a ball she could actually see coming toward her"

He chuffed, half-chuckling at the reminder. "What's to teach' You already have catching mastered." He threw a smirk her way. "We'll see how well you can hit." Though he had a feeling hitting a moving ball would be a piece of cake for her. It wasn't all that different from catching and used the same hand-eye coordination. "You ever go at a vampire with a machete?" he asked, curiously. "It's not much different, except you're whacking a ball instead of a head."

"No, but I have hit one with a baseball bat," she offered with a faint smile, relieved that the conversation had turned to something normal. Well, normal for them. "Don't you try and get out of it now, princess, you promised. Besides, it'll be funny to see Bobby's face if I can catch like that on purpose, won't it?"

"It'll be funny to see my face," he muttered to himself. He'd seen her in action before, but he'd never seen her demonstrate such quick reflexes. "You're gonna make me look bad," he told her with a smirk, as he started up the walkway to the porch stairs.

It seemed as though her memory wasn't the only thing that had been affected by her snap from one reality to another; those reflexes weren't exactly highly-trained, which meant they had to have come from somewhere. "Like I could ever make you look bad," she snorted with laughter, tipping her head back to look up at the house as they approached it. "I'm the arm candy here."

"Hey, I have an easily-bruised ego, you know!" he exclaimed with a good natured grin, though he was only half-kidding. He was used to being the Alpha Male and wasn't sure if he liked the idea of a girl being able to beat him at anything, especially hunting, though it sure would come in handy if he needed help. He smiled warmly as he led her up the porch stairs to the front door. "You're a lot more than eye candy, Nim."

"Well, obviously I'm not, but we're not supposed to talk about that in polite company," she grinned back, thumping up onto the porch beside him, squeezing his hand before her fingers loosed from his. If there was something strange going on here, she wanted her dominant hand free, lifting it to knock on the door. "Here goes."

Dean followed her lead, his right hand sliding into one of the many pockets of his jacket to wrap around the handle of his Beretta, just in case, though so far, he hadn't noticed anything suspicious.

A few minutes passed without anyone answering the door, and Dean was starting to think he either had the wrong house or no one was home. He moved over to the window to peek inside, but he couldn't see anything past the curtains that lined the window. He scrunched his nose, turning his glance back to Nim, as he thought he caught an unmistakable scent nearby, possibly coming from inside the house. "Do you smell something?"

The quiet response to the knock on the door wasn't exactly unusual. Perhaps this Missouri person wasn't in, or perhaps she was significantly older in this reality than Dean remembered her being. But Dean was right ....there was a very distinct smell tickling Nim's nose as they waited. Very distinct, and not at all something she would expect from a psychic. Her eyes lifted to meet Dean's gaze, one brow rising in wry curiosity. "I take it she's not a big smoker?"

"She's not a smoker at all," he replied with a frown, adding, "and that's not cigarette smoke." The odor wafting from somewhere inside the house was definitely not the kind associated with tobacco. "Oh, for cris'sakes," Dean muttered, clearly irritated as he moved away from the window and back toward the door. "Watch this," he said as he tossed a smirk over at Nim before banging a fist on the door. "Hey! This is the police. We know you're in there, so open the damned door before we knock it down!"

Of course it wasn't cigarette smoke. Only one kind of smoke made that sickly sweet, acrid scent to hit you in the back of the throat whether you intentionally breathed it in or not. Catching Dean's smirk, Nim snorted with laughter as he pounded on the door, swallowing her chuckles as the sounds of unsteady panic made themselves known from inside. "You're a cruel man, Dean Winchester," she grinned, shaking her head in amusement.

He smirked and offered an innocent shrug. "Just doing my civic duty." He banged again, raising his voice so those inside could hear him. "You've got ten seconds to open the door or we're coming in. Ten..." He smirked over at Nim. "This should be good. Nine!"

"Times like this make me wish I carried the Feeb badge at all times," she laughed back to him, rolling her eyes at the increasing sounds of movement inside. A billow of that distinctive smoke cascaded down from an upper window as it was opened hurriedly, coinciding with the sound of someone not at all in full grasp of their faculties clattering down the stairs inside. "How coherent are you expecting these people to be?"

"Not very," Dean answered with a decidedly amused smirk. He'd think about why Missouri wasn't living there later, when he wasn't having fun messing with the potheads inside the house. "Three!" he shouted, leaning toward the door, hearing the shuffling going on inside. "I wonder how many times they had to flush the toilet."

"Yanno, we could always not be here when they open the door," Nim suggested, listening with half an ear to the not very well muffled argument going on behind the door. She crossed her arms, leaning comfortably against the porch railing, her head tipping backward as another gust of smoke floated down over them. "If they do that again, I think I might be sick."

"Oh, come on....Don't you want to see the looks on their faces when they answer the door and find two plainclothes detectives canvasing the neighborhood?" He grinned, following her gaze toward the cloud of sickeningly sweet smoke that was billowing from the window, scowling as he waved a hand in front of his face in an attempt to disperse it. "Be like Clinton and don't inhale," Dean countered, just as someone finally answered the door.

Nim's slightly strangled laugh was quickly stifled as the door abruptly sprang open to reveal the decidedly dishevelled occupants of the house. Neither could be more than twenty years old, boy and girl both pierced and dreadlocked and distinctly unfocused as they looked back and forth between Dean and Nim. "Why're you banging, dude?" the boy asked in a drawl that did nothing for any attempt to pretend he wasn't high. "We were comin'."

Dean turned toward the pair at the door, looking them over a moment, giving them the patented Dean Winchester glare that told them he was someone to be reckoned with. "Sorry to interrupt your party, but we're looking for someone named Missouri Moseley. We were told she lives here. Have you seen her?"

The boy swayed backward under Dean's scowl, his already unhealthily pale complexion turning even whiter at the prospect of possibly being in real trouble with an angry cop. The girl, on the other hand, swallowed, lifting her red-rimmed eyes to meet Dean's scowl head on. "Who?" she asked with a frown. "Ain't no one lived here in my whole life but me an' my dad, and I ain't called Missouri." The bad grammar was obviously faked, and Nim rolled her eyes, shaking her head. They weren't going to get anything useful out of these two.

Dean's brows furrowed at their answer. It wasn't what he wanted to hear, but it wasn't completely unexpected either. He wondered if Missouri didn't live here, then where was she, if she even existed at all. Dean leaned toward the girl to take a closer look at those red-rimmed eyes, mostly just to mess with her and maybe scare them both sober. "Have you being smoking cannabis, young lady' You know that's illegal."

"No." It was instant denial, and completely see-through. What made it better was the look of dull stupidity on both the kids' faces as they glanced at one another, each groping for an explanation to excuse themselves any trouble. "Uh ....I've been cryin'," the girl said finally, and her boyfriend nodded vigorously. "Yeah, we've been real sad," he agreed, expanding pointlessly to try and seem sober. "See, I hit her, and ....and then she hit me, and it made me cry, and ....yeah, and she was cryin' 'cos I was. Officer." At this point, Nim had to look away, or they'd have seen her failing attempts to keep a straight face, covering her snort of laughter with a cough.

"Mmhm," Dean replied, crossing his arms against his chest in obvious disbelief. "How do you explain the smoke that was coming from the upstairs window that reeked like marijuana" The whole house reeks like marijuana! You know, I could call the station and get a search warrant, like that." He uncrossed his arms to snap his fingers. "I could even call Roto-Rooter and find out if any illegal substances have been flushed into the city's sewer system. There's a law against contaminating the public works, you know." He was so making this up as he went along, but he was having a good time doing it.