Carry On

About twenty minutes later Jenna came back downstairs in an old, baggy, Bob Marley T-shirt and a pair of jeans, her hair half-dried and thrown up into a ponytail, just her bangs hanging slightly off to the side of her face.

“Ready to go?” Dean asked, and she nodded, pulling on a CWU hoodie before slipping into a black pair of skate-style shoes that had definitely seen better days.

“Well, I’m going to head down to city hall and see if I can pull some of Jill’s records, okay? Where are you guys going to be?” Sam asked, and Dean looked to Jenna.

“There’s a shooting range just a couple miles out of town,” she told him, before drawing him a map how to get to it. It was simple, and Sam quickly said goodbye, taking the keys Jenna offered him to her vehicle as she climbed into the passenger seat of the Impala.

“So is Sam your little brother?” she asked Dean as they left the town limits and soon saw the sign for the range.

“Yeah, we’re four years apart,” he nodded, signaling before turning down the long lane toward the empty field that had been designated as a shooting range. A fence ran along the front to park vehicles at, then there was a long, narrow lean-to with another short fence in front of it, and several targets down the range.

“This wasn’t quite what I was expecting when you said shooting range,” Dean admitted as they got out of the car. Jenna shrugged, following his lead and standing beside the tire as Dean unlocked the trunk.

“Well, this is the only one I know of. My dad used to come here occasionally, I don’t know if it’s really even used anymore,” she replied, and he nodded. Suddenly her eyes widened as he lifted a fake floor and she saw the massive array of weaponry. He propped it open before taking a quick look and then handing her a sawed off shotgun. She held it nervously as he got out a couple of handguns and some ammunition.

“Okay, so first thing’s first – I’m going to show you how to load it,” he told her, setting them down on the table in the lean-to. She put down the shotgun, and watched carefully as Dean showed her how to put bullets into the clip for the Colt handgun he had, and then she slowly loaded the second gun, taking a lot of time to make sure she was doing it exactly as he had. He handed her earplugs, and then showed her how to stand; taking just a moment to adjust her left-hand grip so that she wouldn’t get pinched when it fired.

“Okay, now take a deep breath, and as you’re letting it out pull the trigger,” he told her, and she did so, missing the target by quite a bit and jumping because of the level of noise as well as the kick.

“Holy shit,” she gasped, quickly putting it down on the table. Dean laughed, and put his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s always a little scary the first time, but you’re doing good. Here,” he picked up the weapon and placed it in her hands, letting her get her grip right before he stood behind her and put his arms around her; his large hands covering her small ones on the weapon to help steady her so she could try again.

“It’s okay, just take another shot,” he encouraged her, and she did so, only being pushed lightly into Dean from the kick. She took a few more shots like this, until Dean decided she was confident enough to do it herself. As soon as he’d moved away she felt the chill of the weather; Dean was like a human space heater – he was ridiculously warm.

“Okay, now I want you to aim for the middle of that wooden bulls eye, all right?” Dean told her, and she nodded, taking a few moments to try and aim before taking the shot. She was disappointed when she hadn’t even hit the target at all, but Dean was quick to encourage her and soon she was in the outer rings of the target, which impressed Dean. She’d admitted to never having even held a gun before, so this was good, quick progress.

“Oh my God!” she let out a holler, and Dean whipped around, having expected her to be in some kind of trouble. Instead she was smiling wide, and at his confused expression pointed to the target. A grin spread across his lips then as he squinted and saw that she’d nicked the center circle of the target.

“There you go; it only took you like an hour too. Good job,” he told her, and quickly showed her how to disarm the gun. He re-loaded it and had her disarm it, until he was positive she was competent enough with it to do it herself if she needed to. Then he showed her how to load the shotgun, which was a different story.

“Can I just stick to the handgun?” she asked, but Dean shook his head.

“No, you need to learn how to do this too, just in case,” he insisted, and after nearly twenty minutes she was angry enough to just quit with it all. She kept jamming the goddamn thing and she didn’t know why.

“Hey, easy there all right? You’ll get it,” Dean told her, but her glare quickly shut him up.

“Easy for you to say! You know how to do this! It’s frustrating as hell because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” she complained, and he shrugged, before handing her the unloaded Colt.

“Take a couple shots, see if it helps relax you and calm down your nerves,” he instructed, and after taking a deep breath she loaded three bullets into the hand gun and proceeded to hit the target all three times. They weren’t all dead-on shots, but Dean knew that if it came down to it she would have hit the demon on all three of them, so he was satisfied. Then he got her through loading the shotgun once more, and this time while she struggled a lot she managed to get it loaded.

“There you go,” he pushed, and tried not to laugh when the kick almost landed her on her ass.

“You could’ve warned me!” she insisted, trying to keep from laughing herself. Dean shrugged, before offering her a hand up. She swatted him away, standing up herself and dusting the dirt off of the back of her jeans.

“You should’ve known – the bigger the gun the worse the kick,” he taunted her, and laughed when she stuck her tongue out at him. He lunged at her, and her eyes widened before she took off running, and let out a laugh as Dean caught her and tackled her to the ground. The two continued wrestling, laughing incessantly until someone coughed to let them know of their presence. Sam was leaning against the building, watching the two of them play fight, so immediately they quit and stood up, brushing the dirt and grass off of themselves as they made their way back to him.

“So, uh, any news?” Dean asked, and Jenna looked at the large file in Sam’s hands.

“Lots of it. Um Jenna, how much do you know about Jill’s parents?” he asked, and she shrugged.

“Not tons, but enough. Why?”

“Did she ever mention being adopted?” he asked, and Jenna’s eyes widened.

“No, never. What’re you… was she?” she asked, and Sam nodded. She blinked a few times without saying anything, and then reached out her hand. Sam flipped open the file and handed her a birth certificate, along with a certificate of adoption. She stared at the two, going between them, looking pale and uncertain. Dean gently led her back inside the building and got her sitting down, then she began to shake a little.

“Do you think this has something to do with it?” she asked. Dean looked to his brother as well, but Sam just shrugged.

“I have no idea Jenna, it was just something I found. And Dean, Jill’s real parents died in a house fire when she was a baby,” Dean’s blood went cold at the news, and he saw the uncertain look in Sam’s eyes as well. Maybe there were many more that they’d missed, but it didn’t make sense. If Azazel had been behind this wouldn’t Jill have been summoned to fight against the other children like Sam had?

“What does that have to do with anything?” Jenna asked, looking up at them with tear-stained cheeks. Dean looked to Sam before letting out a sigh.

“That’s how our mother died,” he whispered, and saw her expression fall even more, if it was possible. Dean froze up when she put her arms around him and hugged him, before awkwardly patting her back in response before she pulled away.

“I’m so sorry,” she hiccupped, swiping at the tears on her cheeks.

“I’m going to have to keep doing more research, but I haven’t found anything that would make sense with a demon coming after her,” Sam explained, and Jenna nodded, still trying to control her sniffling.

“I think we should head back and keep digging, all right?” he suggested, slowly helping Jenna to her feet as she tried to keep a hold of herself. Sam took over then, helping her into the Impala as Dean collected his guns and ammunition from the table before joining them.

The drive back was silent, and Dean wished he knew what to say to help comfort her. She’d been through enough already, and now he felt bad that they were tearing up her best friends’ past right in front of her.

“I’ll um, I’ll get those journals for you guys,” she whispered and disappeared upstairs as soon as they were in the door. Sam looked concerned, but Dean shook his head.

“She probably just needs a minute Sam,” he explained, before making his way to the living room and sitting down. After a quick glance up the stairs Sam followed suit, pulling out his laptop and booting it up. He handed a book over to Dean, who let out a sigh before opening it and starting to read.

“Here they are,” they both looked up at Jenna’s quiet voice, and then stared at the large cardboard box in her arms, brimming with notebooks. She set it down on the coffee table, and then noticed the men’s expressions.

“I told you she always kept a journal – some of them are from like grade one or two, and they don’t make much sense – mostly just pictures and stuff like that, but she always wrote in a journal,” she reminded them, and Dean groaned, shutting his book.

“That’s going to take forever,” he complained, and Sam nodded.

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed, and Jenna nodded mutely. She stood up and made her way to the kitchen, returning with two bottles of beer and handing them to the brothers. Dean quickly popped the top off and took a swig before thanking her, and Sam nearly made her laugh with how he rolled his eyes at his older brother.

“I’m going to finish going through these files first, all right?” Sam suggested, and Jenna handed Dean a notebook before taking one herself and after a long moment opening it.

“Just a question, what are we looking for?” she asked, and with that Dean turned to Sam.

“Anything… out of the ordinary, I guess,” he allowed, and she nodded before beginning to read. The three sat in silence for a while, until Dean caught Sam watching Jenna carefully, his brow drawn. Dean had no idea what was going through Sam’s head, but he knew that something was up.

“Sam?” Jenna’s head snapped up then, and she looked expectantly at him, he brown eyes wide.

“It’s just… It says in this file Jill had two older sisters, also given up for adoption after the fire,” he quietly told them, and Jenna stared at him.

“So you mean Jill has sister’s she never even knew about?” she asked, and he shrugged.

“I guess, I mean, it has no names or anything, I don’t even know if it’s enough to go on to get any other files from the town office,” he said, and Jenna sat back in her chair, looking like she’d just seen a ghost. Without a thought Dean handed her his drink, which she took a large swig of before handing it back without even having to look at him.

“I just can’t believe… it’s like I knew everything about her but I didn’t know one single thing,” she mumbled.

“It’s okay Jenna – if Jill didn’t know how do you expect to have known?” he asked, and she shrugged.

“We need to find out then, right? I mean, what if this has something to do with it?” she asked, and Sam nodded.

“Yeah, I know. I just wish we had more to go on, you know?” he asked, and Dean nodded.

“Well, looks like we’re suiting up and making an appearance then,” Jenna raised an eyebrow, before they were both stuttering for answers.

“Well, you see, sometimes when we need to get information—”

“And it’s something you can’t exactly just walk in and ask for…”

“You pretend to be Federal Marshalls or something?” she finished, a smirk on her lips, they shared a look before answering her, and she shook her head when they informed her she was right.

“Well, it’ll have to wait until after lunch – they close from twelve to one,” she said, before standing up and stretching.

“And I need lunch too; I’m starved, I don’t know about you guys,” she added before making her way to the kitchen. Dean shrugged before quickly standing and going after her, and Sam wasn’t far behind.

“Do you guys want like a sandwich? Salad?”

“Rabbit food,” Dean grimaced, and Jenna rolled her eyes at him before continuing to inspect the contents of her fridge. Sam gave Dean a rough elbow to the ribs when he caught Dean staring, and somehow his brother seemed to look a little embarrassed. Usually he was downright shameless.

“Okay then… hmm…” she started pulling things out and putting them on the counter, which kept Sam and Dean completely in the dark until she pulled out a soup pot.

“You guys can keep at it for a little bit – this will probably take about a half-hour or so,” Sam nodded and headed back to the living room, tugging Dean by the back of the shirt to come with him.

“We could have at least offered to help,” Dean argued with him. Sam raised an eyebrow, knowing exactly what this was about.

“Dean, you just don’t want to keep reading. And I think that you like her,” he told his older brother, and left Dean sputtering.

“You’re full of it Sam, I’m trying to be polite. She’s letting us stay here and feeding us and all,” he mumbled, before burying his nose in the journal he’d started reading earlier. Sam shook his head, knowing that Dean was trying to hide the fact that he’d been called out.

They both jumped when they heard a tiny yelp come from the kitchen, and when Dean called out to Jenna got no response. He looked to Sam before grabbing his pistol and quickly going to the kitchen. Once inside he saw another girl who looked incredibly like Jenna, and saw her eyes widen at the sight of him and Sam both armed.

“Oh my God!” she screamed, backing up. Jenna whipped around before relaxing when she saw it was them.

“Jasmine, it’s okay – this is Sam and Dean. They’re, um, helping investigate what happened to Jill,” she quietly explained, and Dean immediately put on a smile for her frightened friend, both of them quickly putting down their weapons.

“So they’re just hanging out? What the hell’s going on here?” Jasmine hissed at her friend, pulling her close and obviously thinking she was quiet enough that the two men couldn’t hear her.

“They’re trying to find any motive that someone would have for doing that to Jill, and they’d stopped by so I offered to help them out. They’re heading down to the town office to look up some more files, but since it’s closed for lunch and I was already making something I invited them in,” Jenna fibbed, the words sounding as natural as if it were true. Dean had to hand it to her, she could be a hell of an actress.

“O-oh, well, I’m going to go to my room and get some more of my stuff,” she quickly excused herself, and Jenna watched her friend go, a painful look in her eyes.

“She’s definitely not okay,” she sighed, turning back to the pot of homemade soup she had going. It smelled incredible, but her appetite had basically just disappeared.

“Some people just need a little more time Jenna, she’ll be okay,” Sam tried to comfort her, and while Jenna smiled they both noticed it didn’t reach her eyes. It only took about ten minutes for Jasmine to reappear downstairs and leave without so much as a second glance at her friend. Jenna seemed to collapse as she sat down on a chair, looking ready to fall apart at any moment.

“But this… the way she’s acting… that’s not normal,” she insisted, looking up at Sam.

“I can’t tell you if it is or isn’t Jenna – I don’t know her. But she’ll come around, just give her some time,” he offered her a little lopsided smile, and she nodded, unsure of what else to do. She turned her attention back to the lunch she was making, and soon had Sam and Dean at the table with bowls of soup and sandwiches in front of them. They dug in, but Dean noticed the lackluster way she picked at her food. Unlike last night where she’d eaten quite a bit, she hardly ate half a sandwich and he wasn’t sure she even touched the soup.