Women In The Night

Next Steps

Shockingly, Sera couldn’t just up and leave her life the very next morning.

Of course, this was partially because Sera and Dean had gone barhopping the night before to celebrate and were fairly hungover. However, there were also issues such as lease, rent, cash, and storage. It seemed like so much, and Sera had nearly no idea where to start.

Dean was no help. Sera had asked her the morning after their night of drinking what she and her mother had done to go off the grid in the first place, and Dean had just shrugged while she nursed her coffee.

“I don’t remember much, since I was just a kid. But I know a lot of our stuff got lost in the fire, so we got a bunch of insurance for that. Mom took it in cash, sold pretty much everything else we didn’t need, then hit the road. She already had experience, so she knew what she was doing.”

As it turned out, Dean had loads of experience of living off the grid, but didn’t know how to get there per se. 

So yes, Sera had a lot of work ahead of her.

However, when Sera walked into work on Monday morning, she had a smile on her face.

Jared clearly noticed, because he sidled up to her desk with a smirk.

“Well, someone seems chipper for a Monday morning.”

“Yeah,” Sera admitted as she set her stuff down, “well, I ran into an old friend of mine.”

“Really?” Jared asked, “Who?”

“Dean Whitlock. We used to live on the same street when we were kids, and I ran into her the other night. She basically saved my life.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Well...I was trying to talk to Anita when she attacked me, but Dean managed to fight her off. It all seems so surreal, but it was very real. Anyways, the weird ghost attacks are stopped, so hopefully no one else gets hurt.”

“Are you okay?” Jared asked with a laugh, “Or did you hallucinate the entire weekend?”

“It kinda feels like I did, in all honesty.” Sera sighed, looking at her desk. It was drab, like the rest of the office, all greys and browns and sleek surfaces in her cubicle. She had tried her best to spruce it up, putting up pictures of faraway places, classical art drawings, a couple of little sigils here and there. But it was still an office, still a cage, “But I think it gave me some clarity.”

“What do you mean?”

Sera turned to Jared and grinned, “I’m quitting. Today.”

“What?!” Jared cried, catching the attention of a couple of other people still coming into the office, “You’re leaving?!”

“Not yet!” Sera said quickly, “And keep your voice down! I don’t want to make a big deal of anything just set, since I’m not gonna be leaving for another month or so, but I’ll be putting in my resignation today.”

“Why? Did you find a new job somewhere else?”

“No, not really. Just a new opportunity to travel with Dean.”

“So….” Jared began, looking Sera over, “you’re telling me...that after you spend one weekend with a childhood friend you haven’t seen in like, twenty years, you’re just gonna quit your job to go backpacking with her?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Sera huffed, “Dean’s mom has gone missing, and I offered to help find her. And...I dunno, I guess it’s sorta giving me a new sense of purpose. It’s nice.”

Jared stared at Sera for a minute before sighing deeply, “Look, Sera, I know that you’ve been kinda down in the dumps, and I get that you want an escape from corporate life but….I don’t think this Dean is the answer you’ve been looking for.”

Sera frowned, “What makes you say that?”

“Well, I mean, you’re running away with someone you barely know!”

“We’ve been best friends since we were kids!”

“Uh, no,” Jared corrected, “you were friends as kids and have only recently reconnected, from my understanding. I mean, how do you know that Dean isn’t a wanted criminal? That you’re not running away with a serial killer?!”

Because I know for a fact that Dean kills things in order to protect people, and I have no doubt that she is wanted by the law to some degree, Sera thought, but of course, she couldn’t say as much out loud. 

“I can’t really explain it,” Sera began, “but this just feels...right, like it was supposed to happen, like it was fated or something.”

“Right…” Jared said, before sighing, “Well, I know you well enough that once you set your mind to something, you won’t turn back, and I totally get wanting to leave this shitty, capitalist life behind; running off with your best friend to hunt down a missing person kinda sounds like a wild fantasy come true. But I just want to make sure that you’re making the right choice here, Sera. I’m worried about you, as your friend.”

“I appreciate your concern Jared, I really do,” Sera said with a smile, “but I think...I think this is what I gotta do.”

“If you say so,” Jared said with a shrug as he backed out of the cubicle, “Well, I guess it’s time to start planning your goodbye party. At least it’ll give me something interesting to do around here.”

“Happy to give you something to do,” Sera laughed as she turned to her computer. She couldn’t help but feel excited as she booted it up, knowing that in a month’s time, it would all be over. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dean had officially run out of patience.

Her mother’s clues had always been difficult to follow – a couple of random coordinates here, a vague allusion to a suspicious headline there, always something that only Dean would know to look for.

It had been easier in small towns. Dean could just follow the trail of destruction of some monster or magicked-up human, which would eventually lead her to the next clue. There were always sheriffs to talk to, dinky little libraries to check out, locals to ask. If Dean had a nickel for every time a local mentioned how weird it was to see two strangers in town so close to each other, both asking about the recent mysterious deaths – well, Dean would be a very rich woman.

But she didn’t have any of that stuff in Toronto. Looking for a seasoned hunter that didn’t want to be found in a city was like looking for a leaf in a forest. The worst part was that the trail was going cold, and with each passing day, Daisy Whitlock got farther and farther away.

Dean sighed as she leaned back from her laptop, closing it with a snap as she rested her head on the back of the couch.

Sera had promised to help her, but she was busy with work and trying to get everything on the road. Dean was helping her friend of course, even if only to get them gone a little bit sooner. 

Dean was currently searching for any supernatural occurrences or odd deaths in the area, because Daisy’s clues tended to lead to a hint that was either left unfinished or she just wanted Dean to deal with it. 

However, since it was Toronto, it was difficult to find a case anywhere within the region. Normally she wouldn’t mind looking a few hours away, even in another province if she felt like driving for hours on end. She wasn’t sure how far her mother’s radius would be, how far behind Dean was, and she just felt more anxious with each passing second.

Dean wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring at the computer before she heard shoes approaching and the door unlocking. She stood from her seat, her hand drifting to her gun tucked into her jeans. Of course, it was only Sera.

“Hey,” Dean greeted, turning and leaning on the counter to better face her friend, watching as Sera toed her shoes off, “How was work?”

“Long,” she admitted with a sigh, “but there’s finally an end in sight, so at least it’s something. How about you, any luck with your mom?”

“None,” Dean grumbled, shutting her laptop, “She’s always been hard to follow but now….she’s just disappeared.”

“Right. Well, let’s see if I can’t do something about that.”

Sera pulled her laptop out of her bag and set it on the counter beside Dean’s.

“So, first things first,” she said as she turned to Dean with a smile, “how do you and your mom usually find each other?”

“We have codes,” Dean began, “Like um, if we’re ever separated, she’ll give me a town to go to, and I’ll go to the first motel in the phone book. If she’s not there, then it’s the second restaurant and we leave a note by the door. We both have aliases that change constantly, but we use different things – she often uses tinseltown movie star names, I like to use punk musicians.”

“Okay…” Sera said, fingers hovering over her keyboard expectantly, “and I’m assuming checking the motels was the first thing you did, right?”

“Of course!”

“Right….what about hostels? Toronto’s got a bunch of those.”

“I…” Dean frowned, “I don’t think we’ve ever used a hostel.”

“Well...why not?”

Dean began to count on her fingers, “Crowded, no parking, it’s basically all communal areas so no privacy, too many people see our faces. Either a motel or we camp out in the cars.”

“Right…” Sera said, her fingers making quick pinching motions as she stared at the screen, a small frown coming to her face.

“What?” Dean demanded.

Sera startled a bit, “What?”

“You’re thinkin’ real hard about something,” Dean said. When Sera just stared at her, she jerked her chin in the direction of Sera’s hands, “You did the same thing as a kid whenever you were thinking.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Sera said, stopping the movement, “I can’t believe you remember that. Anyways, I really didn’t want to pry or anything earlier but, well, I gotta know everything I can in order to help you.”

“Okay…. Well, what do you wanna know?”

“Um…” Sera seemed to be struggling to find the words, but Dean just waited patiently, “I know you said that you guys get separated a lot and she normally leaves clues for you.”

“Yeah, we don’t always travel together.”

“Right. Course. So I guess what I’m trying to get at is, I mean –” Sera took a breath and looked at Dean head-on, “What makes this time so different? Why is it so much harder this time around?”

Dean opened her mouth to snap at Sera, to tell her to f**k off, it was just hard because she was in a big city! But she knew that her friend was just trying to be nice, so she sighed and slumped against the counter, looking around the apartment as she spoke.

“Mom and I...we had a fight. We helped out an old friend on a hunt and he got hurt pretty bad. He lived, but Mom and I kinda blamed each other for it. Anyways, it got pretty heated and I decided to just. Leave, take a break, do my own hunt. Once I cooled down, I called her, got no answer. That’s not really out of the ordinary – Mom has a bad habit of not answering her phone. I kept trying to call her over the next few days, went back to the last town I knew she was in. That’s when I began to find the clues around the town, leading me from one hunt to the next. Usually, her clues will lead to her, or at least the last job she was working. Sometimes I might be a couple of towns behind, but I always find her eventually. But now…” Dean sighed again and rubbed her face as she tried to keep her voice steady, “I have no idea how far behind I am because I haven’t seen her in almost three months and the trail just keeps getting colder and colder, and no matter how many times I call her damned phone, she never answers! For all I know, she could be monster chow and couldn’t even be arsed to call me for help because she has to do everything by herself!”

“Hey,” Sera said, standing up and putting a gentle hand on Dean’s shoulder, “hey, it’s okay! It’s alright Dean, we’ll find her. And if it was that serious, well, I can’t pretend to know Daisy that well, but I know that she’s a smart woman, and she can rely on you.”

“I doubt it, but thanks,” Dean laughed, “Alright, enough with the chick-flick s**t, what’re you thinking?”

“Well, it seems that for whatever reason, your mother is trying harder than usual to stay ahead of you,” Sera said, turning back to her laptop once she was sure that Dean was alright, “I don’t really know that much about psychology so I can’t even begin to imagine why she’s staying so far ahead, but I’m gonna take a guess and say that she’s running from something and is taking extra steps to not be found, which means we just have to look harder. And I think our first bet is the All Star Hostel.” She snapped her laptop shut and grinned, “We can go there and you can check out the guest book. And if we’re lucky, we might be able to grab some dinner at Casa Loma.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

They took the subway there, since Toronto was kind of hellish to drive through, especially with a live-in van. Dean seemed uncomfortable, eyeing everyone around them, her fingers twitching towards her hip and her pockets where she likely had hidden weapons.

“Dean, calm down,” Sera said quietly, “No one’s gonna hurt you.”

“You never know,” she mumbled, eyeing up the businessman next to them. He noticed her staring and winked, but she glared at him and he took a step away.

“You’re paranoid.”

“Gotta be. The things I hunt are a helluva lot stronger and faster than I am, so I just gotta be smarter.”

“So I stand a chance then,” Sera said with a smile.

Dean turned to look at her with a slight frown, “Look, Opal, no offense or anything, but as it stands, you have no chance of winning a fight against a monster.”

“But you just said all you have to do is be smarter than them!”

“I did not say that,” Dean clarified firmly, “I said that you have to be smarter because they’re already stronger and faster, but you still need strength and speed. You can’t just kill a monster with a plan, you have to actually fight it.” 

“So what? Am I just never going to actually fight?”

“Not for a long time. I don’t want you anywhere near the violence for as long as I can help it. I’ll teach you to protect yourself, of course. Trust me, you don’t wanna be in the fight until you are as ready as humanly possible.”

Sera wanted to argue a bit more, but she was remembering that she was going to have to choose her battles with Dean. And besides, it wasn’t like her friend was being irrational; hunting monsters seemed incredibly dangerous, and Sera was woefully unprepared.

“We get off here,” she said as the train began to slow down. She and Dean got off at the Dupont station, climbing the steps into the warm autumn evening. Sera could see Casa Loma off in the distance and she was already wondering what they might have for dinner there. Of course, they couldn’t go until they’d checked out the hostel.

It was a short walk to the hostel, which looked unassuming; it was a brownstone walk-up with a little iron fence and gate, as well as a wooden sign and black awning over the entrance reading “All Star Hostel”. There was a small outdoor table with a floral umbrella out front with four seats, though it was unoccupied. One of the windows on the upper floor was cracked open with some folk music pouring out.

“Too small,” Dean mumbled, looking it over, “Probably only a front and back entrance. No way Mom would stay here.”

“Well, won’t know until we try it, right?” Sera offered with a smile, “Besides, you said yourself that she’s changing things up, so it makes sense for her to shake up the pattern. Let’s at least check it out, since we’re here.”

“Alright,” Dean sighed, opening the gate and striding up to the door, leaving Sera to follow behind. 

Sera watched Dean walk and she couldn’t help but admire the sheer confidence that her friend had.

Sera had been thinking over the past couple of days about Dean, how much she’d changed from when they first knew each other. Sera was trying really hard to separate her childhood memories or Dean from the woman in front of her, well aware of the passage of time and how it had affected both of them, not to mention the things that Dean had seen during her life as a monster hunter, what she was trying to protect Sera from. 

But then Dean would shove her hands in her jacket pockets and squint her eyes against the afternoon sun, and suddenly they were in kindergarten again, shoving pretty pebbles in their pockets.