Disclaimer: This takes place immediately before "Born Under a Bad Sign," but is only a little spoilery. Original content is mine, the Winchesters are not. My only profit is my own entertainment—yours, too, I hope.

A/N: With extreme gratitude to the fabulous and stalwart ParallelVerse, who overcame a potentially lethal cocktail of bureaucracy and dentistry to beta with patience, grace and a judicious red pencil. It's a leaner, meaner story for her efforts, which I greatly appreciate. Remaining errors, poor word choice and abuse of dashes and ellipses are mine alone.

Five Days Past Texas

It's been five days since west Texas. Exactly five, because then it had been time to settle in, get some dinner—he'd gone for burgers—and now, a thousand miles away, the shadows are growing long in the motel parking lot. Dark, like the shadows beneath your eyes, where the skin is bruised because you've driven across half the country almost without stopping, without sleeping, without breathing. Because he's gone. Just gone. And there's a hole inside you that's twice as big as the ground you've covered in these last five days.

Where? The question has chased you screaming, engine racing, along the interstates and the back-roads, frantic to find him, heart in your throat, swollen with dread. There are a million places he might be, and you'd willingly follow him to every one of them if only you knew where to start.

You can't go to the cops on this one, not like before. Not anymore. But you reconnoitered the lock-up and the hospital the best you could—called Bobby just to double-check—and then you had to go. Couldn't take the waiting, the wondering. The worrying. Better to be on the road, where you could fool yourself into thinking you were doing something.

You headed for Lawrence first, because just maybe…but no. Swung up to where Dad….well, you had to try. Turned west toward Colorado, kept pushing it, on over to Cali, to Palo Alto, but there's been nothing. Not a sign, not a word.

Where? hunts you with deadly aim, its arrows tipped with panic and fear, but why? haunts, a ghost that salting and burning will not release. So many times you've lost him before, or nearly lost him. To college. To human monsters. To his own desire to discover his destiny. Twice you saw it coming, or should have, but this time….

You can't lose him again, you can't. How could you just lose him again?

You called Missouri, called Sarah and Rebecca, hoping. Called Ellen, too, surprised and relieved and ashamed when there was no judgment, no disappointment in her voice, just concern that sounded warm and genuine. That first time, something threatened to break loose in your chest, and you ended the call with an abrupt goodbye. Since then, you've been better prepared for her compassion, kept yourself in check, but she's had nothing more to offer.

He's told you before that you'll have to let him go, but this isn't the time. It's not over, it can't be. Not yet, and not like this, whatever this is.

Now, it's been five days. It's that time just before sunset, and you can tell from the way it's cooled off that there's probably a storm in the mountains. But there's no rain here, just the high gray clouds come suddenly from out of nowhere. You can't bear to be inside because there are moments when you can actually see the air, encroaching evening coloring it yellow and then pink before it becomes invisible again. You know he would have appreciated the magic of it, that weird quality of light that gives the air substance and dimension.

And you know the truth is that you just can't bear to be inside alone, without him.

At least in the car there's the driving. Not like you couldn't do it in your sleep—have, in fact. Just for milliseconds, maybe, never for long, but still…. Driving, there are things to keep you occupied—watching the road, turning the wheel, adjusting the mirrors and the seat like they aren't already exactly where they need to be because you've spent almost your entire life in this car. Turning up the volume on the tape-deck, turning it down. Turning the damn thing off just so you can turn it back on again. Watching the odometer roll past meaningless numbers as the miles fly by.

Yeah, driving, there's always something you've got to do. Driving, there's always something else you can think about, something that isn't the empty seat beside you. Something that isn't why?

But it's always where? And where isn't here.

Since leaving Palo Alto, you've come down the middle of Cali, through the fields and orchards, the barren stretches of sand and hardpan, along the old truck route that has become state highway. Skirting LA, on past Indio, headed toward Mexico. Time to turn east, but you've run out of gas. Not the Impala, just you. After five days, you're running on empty, and you just can't run anymore.

So here you are, in a strip-mall of a dusty, nameless little town two miles off the highway—three square blocks of aging stucco houses and a mini-mart. End of the main drag, on the left, the motel, all six rooms of it. Bienvenidos, the sign reads. Welcome.

Hell, you can see the air, and it's almost enough to make you believe in miracles. The way he does.

There's a noise that for a second might be mistaken for thunder, but it's just some truck out on the highway. A humorless smile tugs at your mouth because you realize you'd been hoping for more, for rain to pour down and somehow lave away this torment, cleanse you of the guilt and the sorrow. The loneliness. You tip your head back to watch the clouds, and there's that pink again, and maybe the faint arc of a rainbow overhead. You're just so damn tired.

It's his favorite time of day, and you hate that you know that, because it just makes being without him that much harder. Not knowing where he is makes it almost unbearable.

There's a soft breeze picking up, and it scuffs through the summer-brown palm fronds in a way that almost sounds like footsteps. Your heart picks up a bit, like it's him coming back to you. But it isn't—he isn't—and the yellow and pink become a dusky blue as the sun slips closer to the horizon.

There's something damp on your cheek, and you think maybe it is raining after all.