Burn It to the Ground

Maura’s POV.

Laundry was, without doubt, my least favorite activity in life in general; I would personally rather wrestle a human heart out of the saliva-dripping-fangs of a werewolf than stand in front of a cheap washer with five other people, parading my personal items around in a little, contained tornado in the washer. Nevertheless, I guess it’s better than walking around covered in blood and all around ick.

I was just piling my sister’s clothes into the washer, because she’s too damn lazy to do it herself, when I heard anxious footsteps shuffling up behind me, shortly followed by a hand on my shoulder. I figured someone forgot not to mix their red thongs in with their white socks and was about to promptly turn around and lecture the woman-or man- on proper laundry-doing when I was greeted by a worried look Sam.

“Before you ask-No, I will not do your laundry too.” I interrupted whatever he was about to say, hoping the frown would disappear and he would, at the very least, roll his eyes.

“It’s Kassia.” He said instead, causing my stomach to immediately turn sickly. “What’s wrong, what happened?” I demanded, my mind running through possibilities of what could have happened to my sister in the short amount of time I had been absent. I realize she’s twenty-two years old, but why the hell did I leave her alone so often? It never turns out well! Sam shifted his gaze to the other people in the small laundry room: a jogger, a teenage boy looking as though he was forced to be there, an old man in a Hawaiian shirt, a middle-aged soccer mom and Prudence, an old Asian woman who had been telling me stories about her three grandkids. I liked Prudence; she was a good storyteller.

“She, err…she had a nightmare.” I stared at him as if he had to have been telling some poor excuse for a joke. “She had a nightmare?” I double-checked. Now don’t get me wrong, I was sympathetic. I was haunted just about every night by dreams of my house burning down and my mother dying, but I did not send people out to alert Kass when she is clearly in the middle of hearing about Prudence’s wacky Scottish terrier.

“Yeah.” He nodded, looking uncomfortable “About the thing…With the eyes…?” He told me, as if I was supposed to jump and run back to the motel room in alarm. I just gave him another odd look while toying with the idea of going back to doing laundry and completely ignoring him. Out of the four of us, I would have bet good money on him being the last to completely lose his mind. This was quite possibly what made him so appealing to me.

“…Are we talking about Freddy Krueger, here?” I asked, raising my eyebrows and speaking in obvious sarcasm. He just sighed, “You’re lucky it’s not my brother you’re talking to; he wouldn’t have the slightest clue who you’re talking about.” It didn’t distract him though, as I had planned, and he went right back to informing me that my sister had a bad dream.

“Alright, alright.” I flipped the switch on the dryer and motioned for him to lead the way, not quite sure what I was expecting. But, turning out of the small room filled with machines and harsh smelling detergents, I was starting to get anxious. Even when Kass was little, she never went through the whole waking up in the middle of the night and crying about monsters thing, not once did our dad or I have to leave a light on or look in the closets of various crappy motel rooms for the boogey man-Though we did, anyway.
So I really didn’t see a grown woman having a fit about a nightmare, especially not her.

I thought back to a few days ago, being relieved to put the Shapeshifter case behind me and being optimistic about a nice, safe mass suicide investigation. No being tied up in a sewer or molested by a monster pretending to be an especially attractive Winchester. That’ll teach me to be optimistic.
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Sam’s POV.

They were in the girls’ room, Kassia sitting in a leather armchair on the verge of tears. We stopped abruptly in the doorway as Dean turned to acknowledge our arrival with a weary glance. “Kass, what happened?” Maura asked anxiously, realizing the situation was far more serious than she had originally anticipated.
My brother stood up and dragged me out of the room.

“We need to call dad.” I’m not sure, but I think I flinched a little. “Dean, we don’t need him for this one. Maybe it’s a coincidence, we’ve all had vivid nightmares, it comes with the territory.” I explained in exasperation, he raised an eyebrow and brushed it off. “Look, whatever the hell is going on isn’t a coincidence. First we run into dad and Yellow-eyes pays a little visit to Kass.” This brought a good opportunity to voice a question I had:

“Can he even do that?” Silence followed, my brother frowning as he tried to think, though it didn’t last long; Dean doesn’t like thinking much.

“I don’t know Sam,” He replied snippily, “Can you see the freaking future?” I just sighed and shook my head, realizing he was probably right about calling dad. It was the logical thing to do, considering he definitely knew way more about the situation than we did. “Fine, call him.“ He cocked a smile at me and pulled his cell phone, walking out towards the Impala as he waited for an answer. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure Kass was pulling herself together with the help of a couple of beers. My thoughts drifted to something I hadn’t thought about before, but probably should have.

What about their dad, Andy? Where was he in all of this? While his daughters were nearly killing each other on dark, backcountry roads and, well, being in constant danger-Didn’t he care? Hunters or not, what ever happened to families giving a shit?