Supernatural - Chapter 59: Good Days, Bad Days (Patreon)

Nancy was found at the beginning of August.

To be precise, they found her body.

Henriksen called the following afternoon. All three of them went over that same day.

Nancy's car had been left near a disused highway outside town. Her body was dumped in a warehouse that had stood empty for years, several hundred yards away. The estimated time of death was roughly the night she disappeared.

Even knowing what to expect, Murphy's spirits sank when she saw Nancy herself.

A few months earlier, at the police station, Ruby had proposed using a virgin's heart to power a spell. Nancy had gone white with fear, yet she'd still stepped forward and volunteered.

After everyone escaped safely, she'd clutched her bag and joked with Murphy that she needed to lose her virginity as soon as possible. Being a virgin had come much too close to getting her heart cut out.

Murphy had laughed with her then.

Now Nancy was lying here.

The medical examiner had little useful information so far. There were no obvious fatal wounds, though bruising around Nancy's wrists and ankles showed she'd been restrained for a long time. It was something in her car, rather than on her body, that told them the situation was worse than it looked.

Sam found traces of sulfur beneath the driver's seat.

Henriksen's face went grim as soon as he saw them.

A demon.

They could at least be certain a demon was involved. Beyond that, the discovery raised more questions than it answered.

Nancy had returned to her ordinary life after that night at the station. She went to work, came home, and hadn't been caught up in any more supernatural trouble.

Henriksen went back through everyone she'd been in contact with. Sam checked her calls, travel, and whatever other records he could obtain. By every measure, she was an ordinary young woman.

Which only made the decision to abduct her deliberately all the more baffling.

They stayed in the area for two days.

Sam reconstructed the days surrounding her disappearance. Dean and Henriksen revisited several locations where she'd last been seen. Murphy searched her own memories for anything that might explain it.

None of them found an answer.

In the story Murphy remembered, Nancy hadn't even survived the police station. The months she'd lived since then had never been part of the original events Murphy knew.

She could remember what had happened before, but that didn't tell her why this was happening now.

In the end, they left without answers.

The only conclusion they could draw was that demons had killed Nancy. Who'd done it, and why they'd chosen her, remained complete mysteries.

Dean was furious about it and said little on the way home. Sam made copies of everything they'd uncovered in case another incident gave them something to compare it against.

-

By the time the three of them got home, the first week of August was almost over.

Their lives finally grew quiet again.

It was around then that Sam resumed his morning runs.

He'd been a runner for years. Injury, the move, and one case after another had interrupted his routine, and now he was simply taking it up again.

For the first few days, running was all he did.

He went out shortly after six each morning, followed the familiar roads for a few miles, then came home to shower and eat breakfast.

Some mornings Murphy was still asleep when he returned. On others she'd already be in the kitchen eating. Dean, who wouldn't get up a minute early if he could help it, wanted no part of Sam's voluntary dawn exertions.

On the fourth run, Sam changed his route for the first time.

Ruby was waiting for him in a stand of trees a few miles from the house.

They'd already spoken once since that phone call, and Sam had been clear about what he wanted: to learn to control his powers.

He hadn't been able to put the eruption on May 2 behind him. When his abilities surfaced on their own again later, it became even harder to pretend they weren't there.

The power lived inside him. The next time danger came, it might well break loose without his permission again.

Sam refused to wait until Dean or Murphy was in danger and then gamble on whether he could call it up. Besides, if he could drive a demon out of its host using his mind, they might not have to kill the human being along with it.

Ruby was delighted that he'd finally come to her voluntarily.

Sam didn't share her enthusiasm, particularly when he remembered that he was hiding the whole thing from both Dean and Murphy.

"Don't get the wrong idea," he warned her immediately. "I'm only learning to control it."

"Of course," Ruby agreed so readily that it was obvious she didn't take the distinction seriously.

He couldn't be bothered to argue.

The first training session gave him little reason to celebrate.

He could barely find the sensation that accompanied the power, much less summon it at will. After more than half an hour of trying, he'd managed to make Ruby uncomfortable for a while and given himself a headache.

The second session went a little better.

By the third, he finally felt his power tug distinctly at the demon inside Ruby. It lasted only seconds.

Blood was already running from his nose by the time he stopped.

Ruby needed a good while to recover, but when she looked up, her eyes were noticeably brighter.

"See? You can do it. Keep practicing and Lilith won't be any match for you."

Sam wiped his nose and refused to follow her down that road.

"I've got a long way to go."

Before going home, he ran the rest of his route as usual.

That was what made the morning runs so useful. There was no fake itinerary to invent. He really did run. The sweat on his clothes was real, as was the mud on his shoes. He left and returned at about the same times. All he'd done was hide half an hour in the middle.

He knew exactly whose suspicions he was trying to avoid.

Dean was hard enough to fool. Murphy was worse. She could bring up an offhand remark from months ago with perfect accuracy. Feeding her a story full of holes would only be asking for trouble.

His old habit was his best cover.

Sam met Ruby twice more over the following week.

He wasn't eager to increase the number of sessions, however much she pushed him. He had no intention of running himself into the ground at the start. Progress was slow but real. At least he was beginning to know how to reach for the power deliberately instead of waiting until his emotions got out of control.

For now, no one at home had discovered his secret.

By mid-August, though, another thing he'd been keeping from Murphy came very close to exposing itself.

The three of them happened to be in the kitchen together that morning.

Murphy spent an absurd amount of time examining a newly purchased box of cereal before declaring that the brothers would have to eat it. She didn't trust how it would actually taste. Dean was frying bacon beside her, while Sam sat at the table with his coffee.

His language lessons had finally moved beyond the basics. The more he learned, the more one question had been bothering him.

"Murphy."

She lifted her head. "Mm-hmm?"

"How do you pronounce your name back home?"

Dean's spatula paused. He knew exactly why Sam was asking.

Murphy didn't.

She said it for him, slowly and clearly.

Sam waited a beat. "I thought that was just how you said Murphy."

Now she was the one who looked puzzled.

"No. Listen." She repeated her name.

This time Sam listened carefully.

It was close enough to Murphy that someone unfamiliar with her language could easily mistake it for the English name. Once you knew what to listen for, though, the difference was unmistakable.

Dean finally realized what was going on, too.

He turned from the stove. "Hang on. Say that again?"

She repeated it again. Then she looked between the brothers, wondering why they were making such a fuss.

The kitchen went quiet for a couple of seconds. Dean's expression became increasingly complicated.

"So we've been getting your name wrong this whole time?"

"I wouldn't go that far." She thought about it. "When you call me that, I know you mean me. That's what matters."

"That is not the same thing!" Dean exclaimed, brandishing his spatula.

Murphy honestly didn't see the problem.

When she'd met Dean, she'd introduced herself using the pronunciation she'd grown up with.

He'd looked at her in the rearview mirror and said, "Murphy? Your parents must've had a twisted sense of humor."

Meeting Sam the following day hadn't gone much better. She'd introduced herself again, and he'd repeated, with the same confused expression, "Murphy?"

After two attempts, she'd given up explaining.

They barely knew one another then, and she still had no idea how she'd fallen from the year 2026 into this place. Arguing about two similar-sounding names had been the last thing on her mind.

As time went on, Murphy started sounding familiar, even pleasant. Eventually she'd simply let them call her that.

"I've been saying it that way since the beginning," she reminded Dean. "More than once."

Dean tried to remember.

On the night at the crossroads, he'd just traded his soul to bring Sam back. His mind had been full of the deal and getting back to his brother, and then he'd somehow picked up a woman dressed like a vampire along the way.

He did remember her saying her name from the back seat. He even seemed to remember making a comment about her parents...

Although he'd since learned she didn't have any parents at all...

"..."

Dean fell silent.

When he thought about it that way, he couldn't exactly put all the blame on her. Most of it was his.

Sam had been listening quietly. Now he tried her name himself, carefully following her pronunciation.

It wasn't perfect, but he came far too close for someone supposedly trying it for the very first time.

Murphy, still busy arguing with Dean, turned her full attention to Sam as soon as she heard him say it.

Neither brother had ever used that pronunciation before.

After more than a year, Murphy had become so natural that she rarely thought about the fact that it had begun as a misunderstanding.

But hearing Sam suddenly say her name properly, those two familiar syllables, gave her an odd little flutter in her chest.

"That's pretty accurate," she said, looking at him a little longer than she meant to. "Getting it so close on your first try? That's impressive."

"Really?" Sam smiled, clearly pleased by the praise.

Dean almost laughed aloud.

First try? Sure. Sam was really selling that one. The kid had been practicing in secret for weeks and now stood there looking as though the name had just occurred to him.

But Dean had promised not to give Sam away in front of Murphy yet, so he swallowed his amusement.

Sam knew perfectly well what his brother was thinking. He ignored him and asked Murphy whether he could use that pronunciation from now on.

She didn't mind either way. She'd answered to Murphy for over a year, and hearing her name the way she'd grown up with was fine too. Either would do.

A few minutes later, though, Sam carried his empty mug over to the sink and called casually, "Murphy, want some coffee?" He used the pronunciation she'd just taught him.

Her head came up almost immediately.

"...Yes."

Sam had already turned toward the cupboard for another mug, as natural about it as if he'd always addressed her that way.

Murphy lowered her eyes again, but the peculiar sensation in her chest lingered.

How strange.

It was only a name.

At the stove, Dean was pouting and muttering something under his breath.

-

The second half of August brought them a rare stretch of days when no case was chasing them down.

The peace felt different now that they lived in a proper house instead of moving from motel to motel.

The refrigerator gradually filled with things each of them liked. Clean clothes had somewhere to go. Every few days the living-room remote mysteriously vanished into the couch cushions.

Murphy's own bedroom, meanwhile, was becoming more decorative than functional. She spent noticeably fewer nights there now.

One morning, Dean woke up before her.

They hadn't quite closed the curtains the night before. August sunlight slanted through the gap, falling across Murphy's bare shoulder and one side of her sleeping face.

Her hair lay tangled across the pillow, and the light made her skin almost dazzling. She was still deeply asleep.

Dean hadn't been thinking anything in particular when he woke. He simply thought she looked beautiful, watched her for a while, and then found himself unwilling to look away.

She was practically glowing.

The thought was so sappy it made him cringe. He certainly wasn't going to say it aloud. Still, he felt ridiculously happy.

Usually, his mind got straight to work as soon as he opened his eyes. Did they have a job today? When were they leaving? Did Baby need gas? Had Sammy finished the last of the coffee again?

For once, none of that even occurred to him. He just lay there with Murphy asleep beside him, thinking how nice it might be if he could wake up to this every morning.

Then his thoughts wandered a little further, into dangerous territory.

All day.

Every day.

Her things would always be in this house. She'd sleep beside him at night and be there when he woke up. Years from now, maybe even decades, the mornings might still look like this.

For the briefest instant, Dean even pictured a ring.

...Okay.

When had he started thinking about things like that?

The strange part was that the idea didn't bother him in the slightest.

Eventually Murphy woke because he was staring at her. She blinked sleepily at Dean's face only inches away, taking a few seconds to get her brain working. "What're you looking at?"

He showed no embarrassment at being caught. Instead, he grinned.

"Morning, gorgeous."

"Have you seriously been watching me this whole time?"

"With a view like this, why wouldn't I?"

That woke her up a little more, and she laughed. "For how long?"

"Didn't keep track." Dean brushed the stray hair off her face without taking his eyes off her. "If you don't want me staring, maybe try not being so pretty next time."

"I'll work on it."

"Don't." His answer was immediate. He drew her closer and kissed her shoulder. "You're just right as you are."

The kiss tickled. Murphy shrugged instinctively, which only made him hold her more snugly.

She was about to accuse him of being shameless first thing in the morning, but couldn't be bothered. Instead she settled against him again.

Dean wasn't in any rush to make her get up. For once, he had nowhere to be.

As for the ring he'd imagined...

That could wait.

-

Several days later, Murphy realized that the brothers sharing a bathroom might be a design flaw.

Dean had risen unusually early that morning and gone outside to wash Baby before the sun got too fierce.

August heat didn't give him much of a break, though. When he finished, his hair and the back of his T-shirt were damp. As soon as he stepped inside, he announced that he needed a shower.

Murphy was curled up in the living room playing a video game. She acknowledged him without looking up and went straight back to her screen, missing the fact that Dean's phone rang just as he was about to head upstairs. He stayed downstairs to take the call.

Sam returned from his morning run at almost the same moment.

He'd met Ruby halfway through today's run and was almost half an hour later than usual. To make his absence less conspicuous, he'd covered a little extra distance on the return leg. By the time he came through the door, his T-shirt was soaked with sweat.

Murphy had her back to the entrance and her headphones on. She was so absorbed in her game that she didn't notice him. Sam said nothing and went straight upstairs into the bathroom.

A few minutes later, Murphy got up to fetch something from her bedroom.

As she passed the bathroom the brothers shared, she heard water running. She didn't give it a second thought. Dean had just said he was going to shower, after all. She knocked twice.

"Dean?"

The water drowned out any possible reply.

She waited a few seconds and knocked again. Still nothing. Assuming he simply hadn't heard her, she turned the handle and opened the door.

At precisely that moment, Sam shut off the shower.

Both of them froze.

For a rare second Murphy's mind went completely blank, though her eyes were still doing a perfectly good job of taking everything in.

Sam.

Sam, fresh out of the shower.

Sam, wearing absolutely nothing.

Big.

...Big everywhere.

A heartbeat later, she finally understood what she was looking at and slammed the door shut.

"I'm sorry!"

She stood in the hallway, utterly mortified.

The image had already been welded into her memory with the clarity of a screenshot. For the first time in her life, she sincerely wished her perfect recall would break down for a few minutes. Unfortunately, her brain refused to cooperate.

Especially the thought about how big everything was. It was still echoing in her head.

Murphy squeezed her eyes shut.

Great. She was never going to forget this for the rest of her life.

And then she heard footsteps from the stairs.

Dean had finally finished his call. He clearly hadn't showered yet, and his clothes were still damp from washing the car. Seeing Murphy rooted to the spot outside the bathroom, he looked puzzled.

"What're you doing out here?"

She stared at him, abruptly overcome by a thoroughly unreasonable urge to blame him.

You said you were taking a shower! Then why didn't you? If he'd gone upstairs when he was supposed to, she wouldn't have mistaken Sam for him.

"Nothing."

Dean wasn't fooled that easily. He studied her face. "What's wrong with you?"

"I'm hot."

"The air conditioner's on upstairs."

"I know."

Murphy wanted this conversation over. She turned on her heel and disappeared into her own room.

Dean stood there, baffled. Before he could work out what that had been about, the bathroom door opened beside him.

Sam emerged, fully dressed.

The brothers met face-to-face.

Dean looked at Sam, then slowly turned his gaze to the door Murphy had just closed.

Sam appeared remarkably composed. As he passed his brother, he offered a casual reminder. "Bathroom's free."

"...Thanks."

Dean considered the situation for another couple of seconds, then decided not to waste a perfectly good opportunity for a shower. He hurried into the bathroom.

Only after Sam returned to his room did he really have time to process the accident.

Of course it had been embarrassing. When the door suddenly opened, his mind had gone almost entirely empty. He remembered only Murphy staring in shock for a few seconds before immediately slamming it shut.

But once he'd dressed and calmed down, his thoughts began wandering in a distinctly unexpected direction.

How much had Murphy seen?

The question was ridiculous, and he knew it. Yet the more he told himself to stop thinking about it, the harder it became not to replay the moment.

He'd just come back from running and finished showering. At least he ought to have looked reasonably good.

Sam glanced down at himself and went quiet.

Wait.

Was he seriously checking whether he'd made a good impression on Murphy?

The thought was embarrassing in its own way, but he couldn't honestly deny it.

And with Murphy's memory, she'd probably be able to picture the scene as clearly years from now as she could today. For some reason, that thought made him feel a little less mortified.

There was even a tiny, secret flicker of satisfaction.

...Well, at least he hadn't embarrassed himself in that sense.

All those years of working out had apparently paid off in a way he'd never anticipated.

That evening, Murphy went downstairs for some water and ran straight into Sam in the kitchen.

Most of the day had passed since the bathroom incident. The moment she saw him, however, her brain helpfully replayed the entire scene.

In excruciating detail.

She immediately regretted choosing this exact moment to be thirsty.

Sam was looking for something in the refrigerator. He seemed slightly awkward when he noticed her, though nowhere near as unsettled as he'd been earlier.

He clearly had no intention of bringing up the subject himself. He took out a bottle of water and moved aside to give her room.

His aggressively normal behavior made Murphy feel even more awkward.

She filled half a glass before finally giving in. "About this morning..."

Sam understood at once.

"You don't have to apologize," he said. "I know you thought I was someone else."

There went the explanation she'd been preparing.

She took a sip of water. "I did knock."

"I know."

"You didn't hear who I was calling for?"

"Only heard the knocking."

So that was it.

Once they'd cleared things up, there really wasn't anything else to discuss. It had been a straightforward accident. Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of it.

The trouble was that Murphy couldn't put it behind her. She suspected she'd still remember the exact direction of every strand of Sam's hair decades from now.

Her expression turned complicated again.

Sam watched her for a moment. He could more or less guess why she was so uncomfortable. He'd spent plenty of the afternoon going over it himself, and by now he'd actually relaxed.

"Murphy."

Her head came up almost at once.

He used her original pronunciation occasionally now, but this time there were only the two of them in the kitchen, and the bathroom incident had happened just that morning. Her name sounded oddly clearer than usual.

"It's really okay," he said.

His tone was easy, and he showed no sign of holding it against her.

Murphy looked at him for a few seconds before finally relaxing a little.

"You got over it fast."

Sam blinked, then laughed.

"I can't keep avoiding you over something like that."

There was nothing wrong with his answer. Yet somehow Murphy felt that something was slightly off.

Sam genuinely wasn't nearly as embarrassed as she'd expected. If anything, he appeared to be in a rather good mood.

She eyed him suspiciously, then settled for one last remark. "Lock the door next time."

Sam uncapped his water bottle and took a drink, looking thoroughly casual.

He could hardly tell her that he'd spent the afternoon seriously considering whether he'd looked good when she saw him.

Murphy couldn't figure him out. She only knew he was being far too calm about the whole thing. After finishing her water, she headed upstairs. At the kitchen door, she couldn't resist glancing back.

Sam happened to look up at the same moment.

Their eyes met. Murphy turned away first.

Forget it. It had only been an accident.

That was what she told herself.

As for the picture in her head that absolutely refused to be deleted...

That was another matter entirely.

-

Despite the bathroom mishap, the rest of August passed peacefully.

There was still no progress in Nancy's case.

Henriksen contacted them several more times. He'd followed every lead he could find, but none of it explained why demons had singled out an ordinary young woman.

For now, Murphy could only put the mystery aside until something new surfaced.

Sam's morning runs became part of the daily routine again. So did the secret he was keeping.

After September began, Castiel started showing up a little more often.

Dean was hardly pleased to see him. At first, whenever someone suddenly appeared in a room, his body went rigid on instinct. That reaction slowly faded as it happened more often.

Castiel was as solemn as ever. He wouldn't disclose anything Heaven forbade him to share, but occasionally he answered questions that clearly went beyond his original investigation.

The conversations between them still tended to be anything but pleasant.

Dean hated how Heaven only ever told them half the truth. Castiel, meanwhile, sometimes needed several serious seconds to decide which part of Dean's sarcasm was supposed to be an actual question.

Yet at some point Dean stopped calling him Castiel and began saying Cas instead.

The first time Murphy heard it, she nearly thought she'd misheard.

Castiel himself accepted the nickname without difficulty. Dean apparently didn't realize it meant anything special.

Murphy kept quiet and smiled to herself. Some things, it seemed, still grew into the shapes she remembered.

Most of September slipped by like that.

Nothing about that afternoon seemed remarkable. Murphy was working on her laptop in the living room. Sam was researching something on the other side of the room, while Dean listlessly flipped through a car magazine. Bobby called in the middle of this utterly ordinary scene.

Dean checked the caller ID and put him on speaker.

The conversation began normally enough. Bobby asked if they'd encountered any trouble lately. Once he heard they hadn't, he mentioned he'd wanted to ask a hunter friend for help with something.

The problem was that she hadn't answered him in three days.

"Maybe she's working a case?" Dean suggested.

"If she'd left town on a job, she'd at least call me back," Bobby snapped. "I've left more than a dozen messages in three days. Not one answer."

Sam stopped what he was doing.

A hunter going missing for three days was never the sort of thing you could assume had a happy explanation.

Dean tossed aside the magazine and asked what she'd been investigating. Sam had already turned his computer around to look up her address and a route.

Murphy hadn't paid much attention until Dean asked, "Who is it?"

"Olivia Lowry."

Her fingers froze over the keyboard.

She knew that name, and the corresponding events from the original story surfaced immediately.

That was how it happened in the timeline she remembered, too. Bobby couldn't reach Olivia, grew concerned, and took Dean and Sam to her house. By the time they arrived, she was already dead.

Then the dead began to appear again. More and more hunters were attacked, until they realized the spirits weren't ordinary ghosts.

They were Witnesses.

And the Resurgence of the Witnesses was one of the sixty-six seals.

A cold feeling settled in Murphy's stomach.

"Bobby," she said at once, "give us her address."

Both brothers looked toward her.

Bobby didn't ask why. He gave them the address, Sam immediately started plotting the route, and Dean got up for Baby's keys. Only Murphy remained seated, a growing sense of dread taking hold of her.

In the original timeline, the First Seal should already have been broken before the Witnesses rose.

And it should have been Dean who broke it.

He was supposed to die on May 2, be dragged to Hell, endure years of unbearable torture, and eventually give in, becoming the one who tortured another soul.

Instead, Dean stood just a few steps away, telling Sam to hurry while checking which pocket he'd put Baby's keys in.

Dean had never been to Hell.

Murphy had assumed that changing the events of May 2 had erased that vital beginning along with everything else.

But if Olivia really had been killed, and if what came next was still the Resurgence of the Witnesses she remembered, then what about the First Seal?

All at once, Murphy wasn't sure she wanted the answer.

Oh, God.

...

Note: The original alternates between “Murphy” and “Mò Fěi,” reflecting different pronunciations of her name. I’ve used “Murphy” consistently for readability, explaining pronunciation differences in the narration whenever they matter to the scene.