Carry On

Later that afternoon Jenna woke up, thoroughly embarrassed to find herself in Dean’s arms once again, and even worse that she’d been having another nightmare, and had quickly moved herself to the floor in front of the coffee table and buried her nose in one of Jill’s journals to keep from having to be too close to Dean. She was depending on him far too much, especially when she had a feeling that as soon as they dealt with whatever had killed Jill he’d be long gone and she’d never see him again.

“So, nothing weird yet?” Dean asked her, and Jenna shook her head before one thing caught her eye. She vaguely remembered it happening; Jill and a couple of kids from her class had been playing in the field by their elementary school – and had somehow wandered all the way to the other side near where the town canal was. Jenna had just got a bad feeling about it – she’d been waiting for a piano lesson, and instead had started off in the direction that the group of kids had been going. she would’ve only been nine or ten at the time, and as her gut kept feeling worse she soon found herself running, and got there just in time to see Jill slip over the edge and into the water. She’d quickly ran in after her and saved the six year old who couldn’t swim, dragging her back up the bank.

“You all right?” Jenna’s head snapped up and she blushed slightly as she realized both Sam and Dean were watching her carefully.

“Y-yeah, it’s just… I remember this happening. To see what Jill had written makes me sound like some kind of superhero or something,” she explained, one small tear going down her cheek as she handed the book over to Dean. He read it, a soft grin on his face before he handed it back.

“You really got lucky with that one,” he allowed, and Jenna nodded.

“I don’t know what it was… I was just so worried that something bad was going to happen I had to go check on her and make sure she was okay,” she shrugged, before going back to reading. Dean made a note of it, having come across another story where Jenna had rescued Jill from an accident waiting to happen.

“Seems like Jasmine seemed to get you three into trouble and you got them out,” Dean pointed out, and Jenna laughed.

“Well, Jasmine can be a little wild; she likes trying new things, whereas I like to stick more to what I know, and Jill tended to get stuck in-between the two,” she chuckled, and Dean nodded before going back to the journal he had.

“So… pizza?” Jenna asked as she stood up.

“Sounds awesome,” Dean replied, and she looked to Sam, who nodded, before going into the kitchen. They kept on reading, until about ten minutes later Dean was wondering why she hadn’t come back to the living room yet.

“Take you that long to order pizza?” he asked, and heard her laugh from the kitchen.

“Who said anything about ordering pizza?” she called back, and both men went to investigate. They found her covered up to her elbows with flour, mixing pizza dough with other ingredients set out on the counter.

“You’re gonna make it?” Dean gasped, his stomach growling loudly as if on cue. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had a homemade pizza.

“Well yeah – it’s a lot cheaper than buying one,” she rolled her eyes and kept mixing her dough.

“Well, do you want a hand?” Dean offered, and she shrugged.

“Well if you want to, but it doesn’t matter. There’s still a lot of journals to go through,”

“I’ll help,” he decided, taking off his button-up so he had no sleeves to worry about, and Jenna tried not to notice the way his dark grey T-shirt clung to his pectoral muscles and shoulders.

“Okay, do you want to start cutting salami? Sorry I don’t have any pepperoni; this was on sale,” she admitted, and Sam laughed.

“I know the feeling – I was at Stanford for a couple of years,” he told her, and her eyes widened.

“Really? Stanford? What was it like?” she asked, completely enthralled by the idea. Sam told her the highlights, especially about being in California and by the ocean – that seemed to be what she most wanted to hear. Not that they were incredibly far from the ocean here in Ellensburg, but they learned she’d only ever been as far as Yakima.

“Like I said; my parents didn’t have a ton of money, we just stayed around here. And with all the forests around we didn’t really have to go far to go camping or anything like that,” she shrugged, and continued to grill Sam about if California was as great as it was cracked up to be. He answered all of her questions as best as he could, grinning all the while at her enthusiasm.

“I’m going to get out of here someday; after I graduate I’m going to travel all across North America, see everything,” she told them, pressing the dough into a pan.

“Some of it’s not that great,” Dean told her, and she rolled her eyes.

“That’s not the point though, I mean, how can somebody want to stay in one place their entire life if they haven’t even seen anything else? I mean, I can see going away for a year or two and coming back even, but to me it’s like settling for something because you’re too afraid to search for something more,” she told them, leaving Dean absolutely floored. He’d never understood why people would move around from place to place when they had the choice to stay and make a home. After the life he and Sam had lived he would’ve liked nothing better than to settle down somewhere and stay there, but to hear Jenna say it like that; it made sense.

“Never really thought of it that way. I mean, we moved around a lot as kids, I would’ve killed to just stay somewhere and call it home, you know? But you make it make a hell of a lot more sense,” he told her, and she just smiled, content with herself and because she’d always worried that she sounded ridiculous talking about it. So many people she’d graduated high school with were still here – and so was she – but many of them had no intentions of leaving. Taking over the family business, starting up their own… all of their plans included staying here, and many of them had never been far away, just like her.

“I get it from your point of view too though, I mean, if I’d been a ton of places I’d probably want nothing more than to find one and stay there,” she shrugged, and Sam slowly excused himself from the kitchen, leaving Dean and Jenna to their new-found things in common and Dean’s strange new desire to be helping in the kitchen. He started just skimming through the journal, and came up with at least three more instances of Jenna’s uncanny knack for watching out for Jill. He started making notes, and by the time Dean and Jenna had returned to the living room had upside of twenty instances where she’d managed to be there in time to prevent something that would have had the potential to be life threatening from happening to Jill. It struck him as strange; just how lucky Jenna was at getting there in the nick of time.

“Anything?” she asked, but he shook his head, insisting he’d found nothing new. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to share this information with Jenna, he needed to find out a little more about her first. Sam felt a bit guilty keeping all of this to himself, but he was starting to form a possible idea, and needed to keep Jenna calm until he was sure about it.

The half-hour it took for their pizza to cook went by quickly, and both brother’s mouths watered at even just the sight of it.

“Well, you’re going to ruin restaurant food forever,” Dean complained, smiling as he took another bite. Jenna just shrugged, cutting another bite off of her piece and blowing on it lightly to cool it off.

“Your loss,” she teased back, and Sam had to laugh at the way she could quickly get back at Dean’s teasing without appearing to have to try.

She moved her arm and he saw dark skin up by her shoulder; it looked like she’d been burned. Jenna had shed her sweater before they’d started the pizza, but he hadn’t noticed anything earlier.

“Did you burn yourself getting it out of the oven?” he asked, and Jenna shook her head before turning so he could see clearer.

“No, there was a fire in our house when I was a kid; we’d been sleeping and a wire had short-circuited. The fire alarm hadn’t went off, and my mom had woken up when the house started to feel warm and she could kind of smell smoke,” she told them, and then shrugged. “Mom pulled me out of my bed; the fire had been in the kitchen right beside my bedroom, so I had some pretty bad burns. The doctor’s said I was lucky to have made it out alive, let alone be in as good of shape as I am now; no lung problems, just some burns on my back and this one. I don’t really remember it happening, I was really little, but I remember being scared and the heat.”

“Wow, lucky you,” Dean agreed, before giving Sam a look that clearly told him to shut up or change the subject. He started asking about her university classes instead, and they finished their dinner with Jenna busy answering Sam and Dean’s questions.

Afterward Jenna decided they needed a break from reading through the journals, which both brothers knew was hard on her, and so turned on the TV. Jenna curled up on the pullout with a blanket as she clicked on Top Gun, and Dean turned to stare at her.

“No way,” she raised an eyebrow, finding his reaction strange.

“There’s no way you like movies like this,” he repeated, making her laugh.

“Well, you’re wrong,” she answered, before shushing him as the movie started. Sam pretended to watch the movie, keeping an eye on Jenna, and Dean, who had decided to also sit on the pull out and had put himself right beside her. It didn’t take long for Jenna to fall asleep, and as she did her head rested against Dean’s shoulder. He looked down at her before wrapping his arm around her and pulling her into his side, purposefully ignoring the looks Sam was giving him.