Adventures With Berrisfords
Author's Note: Someone had to write this. Someone else probably already did and probably will, but I wrote this in less than an hour because the plot sort of fell into place and I promise I haven't read anyone else's version. I've only watched the episode once and I'm terrible at writing Dean, so please excuse the errors.
Canon Note: This isn't a true Supernatural/Dark Angel crossover. It's more Dark Angel appropriated into the Supernatural world. There aren't really any spoilers except for SPN 711 "Adventures in Babysitting" and DA 211 "The Berrisford Agenda".
This picks up right in the middle of AiB, just after Krissy enters the warehouse and it goes to crap.
Colby, Kansas
Dean stood frozen in the abandoned warehouse. He hadn't taken a good look at the first vetala he'd knocked out, except to note that he'd seen better dressed prostitutes. But now, looking at her with her mouth open wide, about to bite straight into Krissy's neck, while her father had to sit there and watch it happen... Dean froze. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. One name repeated in his head: Rachel...
x X X x
Seattle, Washington
Dean had been nineteen at the time. At that time he and dad were usually hunting together. Sam would provide support over the phone often with Bobby's help in between pretending to be a normal teenager. Because dad was dad, it was easy for Dean to sneak off every now and then when he had a bottle in his hand. Easy for him to meet a high school girl with an easygoing smile and a father who was too rich for his own good.
Dean hadn't ever meant to speak to her. But she'd been beautiful, and that had immediately caught his attention. He'd been walking past her house on his way back to the motel from the library, and she'd stopped him, wondering if he was her new piano teacher. Dean would have liked to have been able to say yes, but he could barely carry a tune and didn't think she would really appreciate that he couldn't even play Chopsticks. So he'd shaken his head and introduced himself as Alec.
"Too bad," she'd said, eyes bright. "I bet you'd be much more fun than him."
The man in question had come along then. He was maybe a year or two older than Dean, and wearing glasses that made him look exactly how Dean expected a piano teacher to look. Rachel had turned to greet him, but as she let him in the gate, she'd turned back to smile at Dean.
Dean couldn't resist accidentally bumping into her again. He'd figured haunting the nearest private school was probably a good bet. He'd felt like a massive creeper, but it had paid off when he saw her leaving with a couple of her girlfriends.
She'd smiled at him again, ditched her friends who'd looked on with jealous eyes, and walked home with Dean. Dean had wanted to get to know her a little better, but they didn't have the time. Her father seemed to have been involved in something dangerous, and he tightened security on his daughter. Mr Berrisford and a driver started picking Rachel up and dropping her off at school. He wasn't exactly encouraging of Rachel's newfound friendship with a drifter.
Dean had shrugged it off. He liked Rachel, but she was just a girl. He and dad were in town on a job and then they'd be gone. Dad was absolutely certain that the thing that killed mom was here. Dean wasn't exactly sure what omen had sent his father here, but it had been pretty obvious on the first day that the thing that killed mom wasn't there. Or rather, had been long gone. Dad was looking into some house fires that happened about the time mom had died. Dean knew he should have been more into the hunt than he was, but he couldn't help himself. Fifteen years of dead ends had made Dean wary of getting his hopes up, of hoping that dad would kill the thing soon and it would all be over. He was nineteen now. He knew better.
Dad heard something about a demon and there was suddenly a string of people dying or disappearing. People torn to pieces. Dad said that was the sign of a demon deal coming good. What were they supposed to do about that? And then dad had shown him the list of people he suspected had made deals that hadn't yet come true. Among the last three people was one name he recognised: Robert Berrisford, Rachel's father.
Seeing that there, Dean knew he had to warn Rachel. So he'd left dad and gone straight to her house. Armed with nothing more than a handful of salt and an iron blade, he'd run. He heard the howling of the hellhounds from one house away. It took him longer than he would have liked to scale the fence and by the time he got to the house the hounds were gone.
It looked exactly like an animal attack. Rachel, lying outside the car. The driver's face torn to pieces. Berrisford himself unrecognisable. Rachel had been about to leave for school with her father. Lying there she... she still looked like Rachel, but she must have been tossed aside because the back of her head was bleeding and though Dean was upon her immediately, he watched her take her last breath.
That day, Dean's thirst for revenge had been renewed. Because although he knew that Rachel's death hadn't been his fault, if he'd paid more attention to his father and less attention to her, he might have been able to save her, and her father. He and his father never did catch up to that demon. And in the resulting binge that followed, neither Dean nor his dad ever told Sam the full story.
x X X x
Colby, Kansas
Once they'd dropped Krissy and her father at the hospital, Sam called Dean on his moment.
"You just froze, man," he said.
"No I didn't," snapped Dean, unable to come up with a wittier retort or an excuse. He deflected. "Frank got a hit on Bobby's numbers. Turns out we were missing one."
Sam let it drop. Dean had never been one for talking, and he was even less for it now.
x x x
It was only when Sam and Dean were driving away from Kansas that Dean spoke. "That vetala," said Dean. "The one that looked like a prostitute..."
"Sally," said Sam.
"Yeah," said Dean, eyes on the road. "Looked like somebody that I used to know."
"You mean like..."
"It was wearing her dead body," said Dean. "Dressed her up in that slutty outfit and that whoreish make-up. She was only seventeen, Sam. Her father would have killed her for wearing anything like that. I just wanted to... wrap her up in a blanket and take her home."
Sam offered his brother silent comfort. There was nothing he could say to make it better. All he could do was try to stop it from being worse.
x X X x
A/N: Hope you enjoyed. The ending kind of fizzled, huh?