Title: Crime and Punishment
Author: Silverkitsune
Part: 1/1
Pairings: None
Genre: Humor
Rating: G
Spoilers: None
Summary: When Dean accidentally kills a famous supernatural creature, both he and Sam are left to deal with the repercussions.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or any of its characters. That right belongs to the CW and Eric Kripke.
Authors note: Shout out and thank you to my beta reader Michelle. No Antelabbits, dogs or buffalo were hurt in the making of this story. Comments will be taken on cross country road trips, and constructive criticism will be taken seriously. Enjoy!
Dean bought the cage back in '97. He couldn't remember why, but he told Sam it had been an invaluable tool in a long ago hunt. It was probably true, so Dean didn't count it as lying or bullshit. It was a little larger than Sam's laptop, and had five thick horizontal bars stretched across the front, all equally spaced from one another, with a thin layer of wire mesh behind them. Until a day ago it had been the home for various pages of sheet music, and a set of violin strings. The sheet music and the strings actually had been invaluable tools in a long ago hunt, but it hadn't been a very interesting or noteworthy one so Dean never talked about it.
The elder hunter waited until Sam was gone, wandering out into the humid Illinois weather with the Impala's keys jingling in his hand, before gently setting the cage at the head of his motel bed. The mattress springs creaked in protest as he took a cross-legged position at the foot.
"So," Dean began, his hands drumming a slow rhythm across his thighs. "Been a shitty day, hasn't it?"
The smallest of the three twitched its whiskers.
"I mean," the hunter continued. "I speak from personal experience." He paused. One of cage's occupants pushed off its hind legs and pressed its front paws against the metal side. "I can't believe there are three of you."
"Not that I'm ragging on you guys," Dean finished in a rush. "Three isn't a bad number. Family of three. A trio. Got a nice ring to it, right? It's lucky. There's a whole bunch of -not evil mystical mumbo jumbo attached to it. I bet you love that."
Three pairs of eyes blinked at him. One of them lowered its face to the shredded sheet music that lined the bottom, nudging the black and white strips around with his nose.
Dean sighed. "I'm the one that made you three. It was an accident."
He considered putting his fingers through the gaps of the bars, but quickly vetoed the idea. He wasn't sure if they'd draw blood or not.
"Do you get what I'm trying to say?"
Behind him the doorknob rattled. Dean's hand dropped to his side where he'd strapped the largest of his knives.
The door opened and Sam stepped through, a white plastic bag cradled in his arms.
"I got the whisky."
A heavy dinner of alcohol sent each of the little fluffers directly into dreamland. They slept on their backs, heads cocked to the side. Curled front paws rose and fell with the small movements of their chests, and they snored. Occasionally, one of their back legs will jerk out, and then they would snuffle, twitch, and sigh before falling back asleep. It was exactly how Sam slept on a good night, and Dean got a punch to the shoulder when he voiced the comparison.
"So, do you want to name them?" Dean asked. They'd hefted the cage onto the now empty night stand that stood between the two beds of their dingy room.
"We're not naming them until we know they won't eat our souls in the middle of the night," Sam responded.
"Yeah, sure, of course," Dean said. "I think that one should be Angus Young."
"Possible soul eaters, Dean."
"Fine, that one can be Possible Soul Eater Angus Young." Dean pointed to another one of the small creatures. "That one can be Possible Soul Eater Malcolm Young, and that one can be Possible Soul Eater-"
"Let me name one," Sam protested.
Dean cocked an eyebrow at him.
"I never had a pet either," Sam grumbled.
"Ok, Sammy. What do you want name the last one?"
Sam shoved his hands into his pockets, thinking the question over, then grinned. "Raskolnikov."
Shrugging, Dean took a swig from the half empty whisky bottle. "You are very bizaare." Flopping back onto the bed, he stretched across the smoke smelling comforter. "So what are they?"
Three books, eight web sites, and one bar napkin later, they knew.
Antelabbits, the horny bunny, the aunt benny, the stagbunny, the deer rabbit, the warrior rabbit. Dean personally liked warrior rabbit (for obvious reasons) and the horny bunny (because it gave him an excuse to waggle his eyebrows at Sam).
Each one of them was a little bigger than his hand if he pointed his fingers straight out. They were covered in thick brownish gray fur that grew lighter as it worked its way down going white when it hit the belly. Long ears drooped down their heads, the tips brushing the center of their backs. Powerful floppy feet they had yet to grow into made their hind legs, and a short furry upturned tail decorated each rump. If it hadn't been for the two growing nubs of horn that rested on the crown of each head, Dean would have easily mistaken them for every other garden variety hippity-hop he had ever come across.
"Lepus-temperamentalus," Sam read aloud, his eyes fixed on the laptop screen. He snorted. "Someone gave an imaginary creature a Latin name."
Turning the volume on the T.V. down, Dean picked up a knife from his collection scraped it across the whetstone he held. "Anything else?"
Sam chewed his lower lip. "Well, according to this they're a cross between an extinct pygmy-deer and a species of killer rabbit."
The knife skipped. Sam's eyes followed the bouncing blade, and when it had stilled turned his head in the direction of the cage. Keeping the weapon in his hand, Dean reached for his phone. "We should call someone."
Bobby picked up on the third ring.
"Find a field. Let the little suckers go. Run. Their mama will find them and they'll be just fine." That was his first piece of advice.
Dean sighed. "That's not really an option."
"Why not?"
"I sort of ran their mom down with the car."
The voice that slid into Dean's ear was light, clear and amused. "Seriously?"
"Its damn horns took one of my tires out," Dean said, his breath making the mouth piece of his cell phone warm and sticky.
"Dude, it's really not that funny," the 26-year-old said, pointedly ignoring the deep belly laughs that were pouring out of the phone.
In between the guffaws and snickers, Dean managed to weed out a name, a Wyoming address and a mental list of ways he could disembowel a 50 something year old junkyard owner without getting too much blood on his boots. He was saddened to think that he would only get to put the first two to good use.
"Wait, wait! Christ kid, give a man a moment to catch his breath. I've got a few more tips for ya," Bobby wheezed when Dean tried to grumble his good-byes. "Buy a pair of ear plugs."
"Ear plugs?" Dean asked.
"It'll help block out the singing."
Dean blinked. "The what?"
"And one last thing," Bobby pressed.
"No, wait. Go back and explain the thing before the 'one last thing'," Dean said.
"If they try to give you directions don't listen."
"Who are you, Yoda? What the hell does any of that mean?" Dean snapped.
"I've got to go kid. Elvis is barking. Take care of yourself."
"Bobby, wait!" Dean demanded, but Bobby had never been one to respond to a Winchester's order.
There were 1,373 miles between Normal, Illinois and the podunk town in Wyoming that Dean had made Sam look up. The morning after his phone call to Bobby, Dean slid the cage into the backseat, made sure they had plenty of whiskey and punched a few pieces of carrot in between the bars in case they got hungry.
"Do they even eat vegetables?" Sam asked leaning over the backseat as Dean merged onto I-55 S. "If they're 'man-eating' shouldn't we give them meat?"
Dean shrugged. "No idea. Stick your hand in there, and see what they do. If you come back without it I'll stop at the next McDonalds."
Sam pulled his hands into his lap and turned to face the windshield. "I'm sure they'll be fine."
Somewhere around mile 405 Dean let Sam take the wheel. With the Impala rumbling steadily underneath him, and his arms around his middle the elder hunter dropped his chin to his chest, and slept.
It started in his hips, one low clear note that seeped through his muscles and skin until it hit his bones and made them hum. It leapt from rib to rib, and then headed to his breast bone. The feeling wasn't unpleasant. If anything it pulled him deeper into his dreamless sleep as it vibrated into his shoulder blades and down to his fingertips, slid into his spine and worked its way into his jaw bone. It turned circles on his ear lobes, purring around the many nooks and crannies before exploding into his ear drum and waking him up.
"Sam," Dean mumbled, trying to keep his mind in the land of fuzzy half sleeps where the shapes had soft edges, and his muscles were never required to move. "Turn the radio down."
Sam's large hand smacked against his chest, and Dean cracked an eye open. "Sammy, what do you want?"
"Listen."
The Impala was sitting on the side of the highway, and the hum in Dean's bones hadn't been abandoned at the threshold between waking and sleep. Dean slowly turned.
The hum had broken apart now, and Dean could pick out three distinct pitches. The notes scaled down, and the three pitches merged and harmonized before dropping off entirely. Six brown eyes blinked, and then the song began.
"Back in black, I hit the sack, I've been too long I'm glad to be back. Yes I'm cut loose from the noose-"
"Oh," Dean said. "Singing."
"Back in black," the three animals crooned. "Yes, I'm back in black."
Sam looked to his brother, hazel eyes wide. "Do you think we can teach them 'Bohemian Rhapsody'?"
Half way through Nebraska, they got lost. Dean blamed Sam. Sam blamed Map Quest. Not that it mattered. They could lay blame until the sun rose in the west and the moon flipped sideways. It wouldn't change the fact that they were a few miles outside Buffalo, South Dakota and god knows how many miles away from their intended target. Tired, and not in the mood to navigate by starlight, they pulled to the side of the road and spent the warm May night in the Impala.
Dean woke up with all three pounds of Angus bouncing on his lap, a missing brother, and a car that had been surrounded by buffalo during the night.
His eyes went to the rearview mirror. "How the hell did you get out?"
There was a neatly chewed hole in the wire mesh. Raskolnikov was also out, but he hadn't strayed from the backseat. Sitting up on his hind legs he hopped next to the driver's side window. Malcolm and Sam were gone.
A panicked glance to the passenger seat showed no blood, but the sight did nothing to quell his sudden storm of anxiety.
"He went that a way!" Angus chirped. "He went that a way!"
"Oh, come on," Dean moaned running a hand across his face.
"That a way! That a way!" Raskolnikov echoed happily.
Grabbing Angus by the scruff of the neck, Dean deposited him in the backseat and slammed the door on the two chanting voices. Stepping around the groups of lumbering buffalo, and piles of their droppings, he headed in the direction Angus and Raskolnikov had pointed. He made it to the road's thick unbroken yellow line before he remembered the rest of Bobby's advice.
"I am going to make gloves out of those things," Dean growled as he stalked back to the Impala.
Stepping onto one of the great grassy plains the Dakotas were famous for, Dean wiped the gathering sweat away from his forehead and called for his brother. His voice echoed, and to his great surprise Sam answered.
"Here!"
His younger brother darted out from behind one of the hairy plains creatures at a break neck run. Breathing heavily, Sam stopped just shy of Dean, Malcolm dangling from his fingers. There was a slash of blood across his middle, and spots of it decorated his face.
"Where are you hurt?" Dean asked, his own hands going to pat Sam down.
"It's not mine," Sam said in between breaths.
The news didn't stop Dean's eyes from searching for a tear in the fabric of the younger man's shirt.
"There was a situation," Sam said calmly. A slight shake to his hands jostled Malcolm, and the creature kicked its hind legs out. "But it's fine now."
"What happened?" Dean asked, scrutinizing Sam from top to toe. His eyes fell on Malcolm who, despite being carried by the scruff of his neck, looked oddly satisfied; his small belly round and swollen.
"Have you ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail?"
"Yeah."
"Replace the knights with wolves, and that's what happened."
Three Rilo Kiley songs, the entirety of "Voodoo Lounge", the theme song to "I Dream of Jennie", an operatic version of "Highway to Hell" that Dean wasn't sure he ever wanted to hear again, and a wide variety of show tunes later they crossed into Wyoming. Fifty miles into Wyoming, Sam dolled out the last of the whiskey to their backseat passengers, and they went from having three singing furballs to three drunk singing furballs who hiccupped occasionally and messed up the lyrics to "Shoot To Thrill." Four hundred and twenty-five miles after that they reached their destination.
It was the way Becka Deccico walked that let Dean know they'd found the right person. A 50 something year old woman that barely came up to Dean's shoulders, she moved with a sort of obvious intent placed behind each step that practically screamed "I kill things on a regular basis". Her hair was short, cut just above her chin, and brown, though blond streaks showed Dean it had been highlighted a few times. Cold brown eyes were framed with a mess of wrinkles, but they warmed the minute she spotted Sam hulling the cage out of the car.
"What took you two so long?" she asked, showing off a Chicago accent that hadn't been eroded away by years of wide open plains and howling winds.
Sam set the cage at the older woman's feet, but didn't answer.
"Well, these three can't be more than a few weeks old," Becka said. She unlocked the cage and pulled Raskolnikov into her arms. "You been giving them the whiskey, right?"
"Yeah, they're regular lushes," Dean said dryly.
"What are you going to do with them?" Sam asked.
"I'll try to get'em back into the wild if I can. God knows there are enough of them around here. If not, there are plenty of other uses for them."
Dean snorted. "Like what?"
"You're not going to eat them are you?" Sam asked.
Becka looked surprised. "There are choirs across the globe who would love to have one of these little guys. Jackalopes have beautiful singing voices. You wanna hear?"