[ 𝟎𝟎. 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 ]

— 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫 —

IT WAS QUIET. There was some noise from the light rain shower sliding down the roof of the house, but the rooms within were quiet and had been that way for three days.

Little Tess was only two, but she could tell that something was wrong, especially when her mommy and daddy entered the same room. She might not have understood the word tension, but she could tell that everyone was walking on glass, waiting for something to break.

The problem with being little, you were easily overlooked and ignored... however it certainly made it easier to listen and observe. So it came as no surprise that her older brothers didn't pay attention to her presence at the doorway of their bedroom as they spoke.

"Is daddy leaving?" Drew suddenly asked to break the lull of silence.

"Daddy's leaving?" Peter repeated the question and turned his head toward their oldest brother, Nathaniel, tears forming in his eyes.

Nate quickly shook his head and denied the truth that they'd overheard their parents speaking about just days ago. "No, you idjit."

The word was pronounced clumsily and didn't have the same effect that it had when their father said it, but Nate was currently in a stage of life where he idolized his father and wanted to be just like him.

"But he's fighting with mama," Drew insisted. "It sounded bad."

"Dad and mama fight alot," Nate brushed aside his concern. "Don't worry. It's okay."

Fate has a cruel sense of irony. Downstairs another argument between their parents started, only this time Karen didn't leave the matter alone. Seconds into the conflict, they were screaming at one another. Now sure, they bickered and squabbled like any married couple, but the children had never heard their parents use such a hostile tone with one another.

Footsteps stormed up the stairs and Karen screamed over her shoulder in the direction she'd left her husband. "If that's how you feel, fine." Karen slammed the door of the bedroom and the silence echoed around the house.

Tess no longer cared or remembered that she was hiding to eavesdrop on the conversation. She ran into her brothers' room, but tripped over a toy left out and fell to the ground hard. Her brothers looked up in surprise, but before they could snap at her in annoyance, her eyes welled up with tears and they rushed to her side to console her.

"Shhh," Drew tried to cover her mouth. "Shhhh."

"You have to be quiet, Tessie," Nate explained, anxiously looking toward the door. They'd never really had a reason to be afraid of their parents, but over the last three days, something had changed in their mother.

"Quiet, Tessie," Peter repeated shushing her with the same sound that Drew had made as he covered her mouth.

As their parents' bedroom door swung open on its hinges, the siblings jumped and huddled together. Additionally, Nate tried to position himself protectively in front of the others.

Karen turned toward them and although she placed a false smile on her face, there was something cold in her eyes that they didn't recognize as mother. "Nathaniel."

Nate nodded his head, stepping forward while casting an anxious glance back at the others. "Yes, mama?"

"Help your brothers pack their bags," Karen instructed. "We're going to grandma and grandpa's."

"But—" Nate stopped speaking and gulped at the look he received. He nodded his head again before urging Peter and Drew to do as expected.

"Come here, Theresa," Karen demanded and stretched out her hand. Tess slowly stepped forward and placed her small hand into her mother's. Her smile grew more satisfied as she led the girl down the hall toward the nursery. "You can help me with Delilah and Phillip."

Tess knew better than to complain, even if the grip of her mother's hand was beginning to hurt or even if she was walking too fast for the girl's short legs to keep up at a comfortable pace. She didn't exactly remember much after that, the events all started to blur together. But as her mind did clear, she recognized that she was strapped into the back seat of the car sitting between Lila and Nate.

She leaned her head forward and quickly realized that all six of them had been crammed into the backseat of their father's truck rather than the minivan that accommodated a seating arrangement appropriate for their age. Instead, Nate was abnormally pale as he held on to their infant brother while Drew and Peter clung to one another on the other side of Lila. The small red-headed girl's eyes focused on the scenery outside blurring past at what felt like a million miles an hour as their mother drove like a madman, glancing into the rear view mirror with a twisted paranoia.

"Nate..." Tess quietly tried to ask a question, but the way her brother immediately shut her down as he shook his head helped her understand how serious the situation was. She was just beginning to understand how people felt matched their expressions, but now she was learning something else entirely: the world was a scary place.

Gently, she slipped her hand into her younger sister's and intertwined their fingers. Believing they were just playing a game, Lila's face lit up and she giggled before nuzzling closer to the sister she already looked up to although only being just over a year old.

Lila suddenly gasped with delight, clapped her hands, and pointed at the window. "Daddy!"

Although she was certainly too short to see their father's face, the top of the car strapped with scrap metal from the yard was visible and instantly recognizable. As the honking of horns and shouts from the highway grew louder, Tess pulled her sister closer and covered the younger's eyes before closing her own. Maybe if she couldn't see anything, it would all go away. It did not.

Screaming all around her was enough to startle her eyes open again. They widened in horror trying to process how bizarre the world looked upside-down and why gravity had suddenly stopped working as her delicate blonde curls floated around her head. The wind was knocked from her lungs as the car's hood smashed against the concrete and the seatbelt tightened around her chest. Her head started to hurt and she could feel something trickling down the side of her head as the weightless feeling returned while the car flipped again and again, rolling to a stop. She could hear the screams, but that's when her memories began to blur together once more.

By the time her head cleared, she was back in the house. Everyone was walking on eggshells again, but no one mentioned the accident... at least not until the mood swings returned. The next thing she could remember was her father trying to keep the closet door closed with a look of pure desperation plastered to his face. She sat buried underneath the winter coats, holding baby Phillip in her numb arms as Lila buried her face into her shoulder. Nate and the boys cowered behind their father, but looked as if they were trying to keep a brave face. They succeeded until the wood splintered and piece by piece gave way.

The next thing she remembered was her mother dragging Nate away by the ankle as her father ran after them. Drew and Peter had immediately run to her side and tried to cover hers and Lila's ears, but had failed to do so in time.

The gunshot was chilling and it would be many years before she actually understood everything that had happened that night. All she knew: she no longer had a mother.

•⍟───✧⍟✦⍟✧───⍟•

TESS'S EYES SHOT OPEN AS THE PILE OF FILES WAS DROPPED ON HER DESK. She rubbed her face to clear the grogginess of her head before meeting Henriksen's stern glare.

"Long night, Holmes?" He asked, and for a second, she caught a glimmer of amusement in his eyes that he'd seen her slip up.

Well there certainly wasn't any way of casually playing it off at this point. So, she yawned and stretched and decided to give him a dose of his own smug medicine. "Actually yeah, my partner and I were busy picking up for your slack on the cold case Groves assigned last week."

Henriksen frowned and crossed his arms, but as he opened his mouth to speak, her partner seemed to magically appear at the right moment, walking down the hall while apologizing as she practically ran into half a dozen other agents.

"Excuse me... pardon... coming through," Lila apologized before setting the pair of drinks down on her sister's desk. "One London Fog, just the way you like it."

"Thanks, Jo," Tess nodded appreciatively before lifting the cup to her lips. She removed the lid, blew on the steaming liquid, then took a satisfying sip before turning back toward Henriksen expectantly. "Did you have any beneficial input to add or am I free to retrieve the data from the lab I've been waiting on?"

"We've got a new case," Henriksen explained. "Groves says it's top priority and we're meant to ship out to Milwaukee within the hour."

"Wisconsin?" Delilah wrinkled her nose, rolling from her desk across the aisle to continue eavesdropping.

"We got a tip on a bank heist gone wrong—"

"That sounds like it's S.W.A.T.'s jurisdiction, not ours," Tess interrupted, crossing her arms as she leaned back in her seat. "How does this take precedence over—"

"Because we're looking at our St. Louis killer here, Holmes," Henriksen returned the favor of interruption. "Everything else is in the file."

Tess glanced down at the stack of files and opened her mouth to voice her complaint about how inconvenient the whole thing being dropped on them at the last minute was, but Henriksen was already gone. She released a huff of frustration, but began to look through the pile of research that Henriksen had been too eager to drop off for her liking.

"Winchester..." Tess muttered the name out loud. She knew she'd heard it before, probably in a debriefing, but there was something else too. "Now why does that sound so familiar?"