Hey there, SPN fans. I bring before you my first SPN fanfiction, which indeed features not just one but three original characters. I promise you, I am doing my best to keep them from Mary Sue/Marty Stu territory, and that none of them will be paired up with the canon characters. The only pairing really in this fic is Destiel, and it will be in here by gum. I even have two deleted scenes that will be a bit too steamy for this fluffy little fic.
I have finished the story, but I'm not sure how many chapters I'm going to divide it into yet. I will be updating regularly, at least once a week.
The timeline for this fic is an AU where the people we love still live, but there are mentions of up to S8 within the text.
I hope you enjoy!
Cora Bartholomew packed up her oboe and slid her backpack onto her shoulders, calling goodbye to some people and hugging others before making her way out of the school with her best friend, Monica Reyes. Once they crossed the parking lot, they split up and went in separate directions; Monica to the right, Cora to the left.
During the fall, when the high school band played for the football games and competed in marching competitions, Cora's little brother Ben would go home with his friend Jimmy and wait for Cora to pick him up. Together, they would go walk the block it took them to get home and start dinner before their parents got home.
Ben and Jimmy were playing in Jimmy's front yard when Cora walked up the tree-lined street in the falling twilight. The sky was cloudy, making it darker than it usually would have been even though it was currently fall and the nights were coming earlier and earlier.
"Ready?" she called, switching her oboe case to the other hand.
"Coming!" Ben promised, heading inside for only a second to retrieve his bookbag and skateboard. On the way home, he skated on ahead of her, doing tricks against the curbs and driveways whenever she needed to catch up to him.
One part of the sidewalk was broken, the pavement jutting up sharply due to a tree root that the city had yet to do anything about, and Ben took the opportunity to sail over the makeshift ramp as he had been doing for the past several weeks, gaining height and confidence each time he did it.
Except for that one blemish, the street was nearly perfect. It was one of those suburbs that they recreate in movies all the time whenever a sleepy, idyllic neighborhood is required. Most of the houses were colonial in style with pillared porches, long manicured front yards that usually sported a tree of some sort in the very middle, all restrained by a low fence of some sort. A few of the neighbors even had wishing wells.
The Bartholomew house was no exception. The little gate that the children opened to admit themselves onto the brick walkway that split their yard in half was white with black wrought iron, and the tree in the front yard was a Japanese maple, its red leaves still clinging to the branches no matter how hard the wind was trying to loose their hold. They climbed the three shallow steps onto their white and shale porch with its pretty swing, now banging annoyingly against the enclosure thanks to the wind, and Cora fit her key into the lock on their pretty dark red door.
The door was her favorite part of the house. It was an unremarkable house otherwise, but the door, curved at the top with a four-sectioned glass porthole on the front made the split-level gabled cottage something unique in a neighborhood full of gingerbread houses.
Cora had been outside since school had let out at 3:30, so her first step inside was almost stifling. She dropped her oboe case and her backpack, shucking her jacket and sweater and kicking off her boots. Ben was already dressed in shorts, as he always was until the first snow of the year when their mother would force him into a pair of jeans, but even he found the indoors a little too stuffy after an afternoon outside.
They both dragged their backpacks into the kitchen and Ben settled down to do his homework while Cora turned on the oven to preheat while she dressed a thawed chicken and wrapped some sweet potatoes in foil and put it all into the oven to roast.
By the time their father walked in the door, the kids' stomachs were growling at the heady smell of baking chicken and Owen Bartholomew only added to their gastrointestinal distress by adding the smell of pan fried Brussels sprouts to the mix. He wouldn't tell their mother how he cooked them so she wouldn't know how much butter he melted in the pan before he put the little green half-domes face down to brown and caramelize the way the family (well, except for Ben) liked them to be.
As Cora sat huddled under a blanket, unsure as to whether or not her family lived or died, having just been ripped from them by some strange creature, it was funny to her how every detail of the evening played out in her mind, reminding her of what she was going to lose when the sicko who was currently sizing her up finally had his way with her and ended her life.
The ironic part was that she didn't really have a good grasp on how she had gotten into this current predicament. It was as though her brain were trying to replay only the happy parts of the evening. The broken window, the sound of inhuman snarling, the scream of her mother as she was cut across the chest, the snap of her brother's leg as the creature stepped on it mercilessly, the shout of her father as he collapsed from the heavy blow of a fist, all of that was a blur.
She couldn't just blank out the dank cellar she was currently incarcerated in, however. And she couldn't unsee the face—the thing—in front of her, no matter how hard she tried.
It was something out of a nightmare, this creature. It had the nerve to look practically human, save for the fangs and the claws and the odd markings on its body.
"Pretty girl," it rasped, lifting its hand to her face, brushing her dark curls back. "Pretty, pretty girl."
Cora just stared at it, feeling faint.
"Edgar Rothschild, you are a very pretty girl."
"My name isn't Edgar Rothschild," she said, grasping at that. "Please, I'm not who you think I am."
"You are Edgar Rothschild," it repeated. "Yes, you are his."
Cora realized what he was saying and shook her head again. "No, my father's name is not Edgar Roth, it's Owen Bartholomew…Please!"
Unable to do anything else, she closed her eyes against his horrifying face and started to sob.
"Please!" she repeated again.
"She is," it said, hopefully to itself because if there was another one of them hanging around, Cora wasn't sure she could handle it. "She is the child of Edgar Roth. He has transgressed against us, and he shall pay in the blood spilled from his children."
Cora let out a whimper and buried her head in her hands. Well, if he was going to kill her, could he just get it on with already? The sound of a crash in the silence made her jump and whimper some more. What was it doing? Smashing furniture? Another crash, and then someone shouted, "Dean, behind you!" followed by another crash, the sound of the creature groaning, a second voice saying, "I got it, Sammy!" and then an unearthly wail followed by a slight tremor.
Cora suddenly knew what the term "out of the frying pan and into the fire" meant.
"Where's the girl?" the second voice, the one presumably belonging to Dean asked.
"Check the blankets," Sammy suggested. "Cora? You here?"
They knew her name! Oh no, had they tortured her parents? Poor little Ben?
The blanket was thrown off of her and Cora found to her great relief that a very human face was smiling down at her. "You Cora?" he asked.
Cora nodded.
"I'm Dean, this is my brother Sam. We're gonna get you outta here, kay?"
"M-my family?" Cora shuddered, suddenly cold. Sammy, the one with the sandy brown hair and kind dark eyes shucked off his jacket and wrapped it around her before lifting her against his chest.
"Your family's fine," he promised her. "We'll take you to them."
Cora turned and looked at Sammy's face. "Who are you? Really?" Her voice sounded unnaturally high, but she assumed she could be forgiven for that under the circumstances.
"Just call us good Samaritans," Sammy said, pulling her closer.
Cora looked over his shoulder at Dean, who was coating the body of the creature with something. He threw a match down on it as he turned to follow them.
"It's okay; we're professionals," Dean promised with a wink.
Cora couldn't help herself. She sank into oblivion.
She awoke with a start, panic rising for a moment until she heard Sam say, "I just don't think Metallica's "Enter Sandman" is really going to help her get rid of the nightmares."
The music that had been playing abruptly stopped.
"I ain't puttin' in any Wham!," Dean groused.
"There has to be something between metal and pop," Sam reasoned. "Just like there has to be something between 1975 and 2012."
Cora sat up. "I've got The Clash, but that's as far as I'll go," Dean said, looking back at Cora in the rearview. "Hey, you back with us, kiddo?"
Cora looked out the window and felt that sinking feeling of dread again. "We're nowhere near my house," she squeaked.
"We're taking you to the hospital," Sammy supplied.
"No, I'm fine, just…take me home? Please?"
Dean looked at her in the rearview once more. "Well, your parents and brother at the hospital, so we thought we'd take you there. Is that okay?"
Cora breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, that's good."
"You warm enough?" Sam asked, turning to face her. Cora supposed it was her hormone addled teenaged mind that decided to notice that these two brothers had basically won the genetic lottery. They were so handsome and tall, and Monica was going to be really, really jealous when she heard the story. If she believed it, that was. "We can turn the heat up."
"I'm good," she promised, slipping her arms into his jacket. She didn't suppose they had any spare shoes in her size hanging around, so she didn't mention her stocking feet. "Um…that thing? What was it?"
The brothers glanced at each other. "It was a Djinni," Dean said.
"Like from the Arabian Nights?"
"Yeah exactly like that," Sam said with a smile. Cora's brain stopped working for a second. Wow. "Except they're literally bloodthirsty and they don't grant any wishes."
"What did it want with me?"
Sam and Dean exchanged a look again. "We don't know," Sam said, obviously lying. He just didn't have the face to pull that sort of lie off. Cora frowned at him. "Look, we need to talk to your mom," Sam said quickly, obviously on damage control.
The hospital was far too bright and quiet, the waiting room filled with a ragtag group of people in varying stages of health, age, weight, size, and criminal background. One particularly creepy looking man was staring at Cora's feet while he licked his lips. Sam shot him a withering look.
"Owen, Moira and Benjamin Bartholomew?" Dean asked the receptionist with a wink and a winning smile. "We have their daughter."
The receptionist looked impressed. "You found the kidnapped girl?"
"Well, not by myself," Dean said, turning the charm on a little thicker. "My brother helped a bit."
Sam, who had insisted on carrying Cora when he realized she was barefoot sighed and sort of held her out for a second. "Can you please tell us where the Bartholomews are?"
"Sure thing!" the woman said. "I'll take you back myself."
Owen was standing outside of a room, talking with a doctor.
"Daddy!" Cora screeched, causing her father to abruptly end his conversation and run to her, taking her from Sam's arms as she wriggled from his grasp.
"Cora!" he shouted hoarsely. "Oh, thank God! Thank God!"
"Not God," Dean said with a smirk. "Just us."
Owen looked up from where he had buried his head against Cora's hair and smiled at the brothers.
"You found her!" he said happily. "Thank you so much!" he let go of Cora enough to start pumping their hands with a huge smile on his face.
Oddly, both Sam and Dean looked pained at this. "Um…is Moira awake yet?" Sam asked.
"Oh, yes, she is," Owen said. "I'm sure she'll want to see you."
He turned to usher the brothers into the room, and Cora heard Dean say, "I doubt she wants to see us," under his breath.
Moira, it turned out, was happy to see the brothers, but her face turned troubled as well. Cora ran to her mother and threw herself at her, but then backed off at her mother's grunt of pain, remembering that the Djinni had slashed her across the chest.
"Did it hurt you badly?" Cora asked.
"I'm fine, honey. I'm fine." Moira sized up Sam and Dean. "So…you're the Winchester boys."
"Yes, Ma'am," they said in unison.
"I haven't seen either of you in years."
Cora turned to her mother sharply. "You know them?"
"Their father was friends with your father," Moira said.
Cora frowned at her dad, but he shook his head, a sad expression on his face.
"Oh," Cora said. "You mean my real father."
Sam and Dean exchanged another glance. "We'll just, uh…" Dean said at the same time Sam said, "I think we can find something…"
"No, you need to stay here," Moira said. "We don't have much time."
That sinking feeling came back. Cora turned to her mother with a frown. "Mom?"
Moira sank back against the pillows.
"She's not well," Owen pointed out.
"I'll be quick," Moira said. "Cora, Sam and Dean are going to take you someplace safe. They'll explain why. I need you to go with them and do whatever they tell you to, okay? I trust them."
Cora stared at her mother, unsure what was happening. "Wait, what? Mom, no…why?"
"Because, you're in danger right now. They're going to protect you, but you'll be okay."
Both Sam and Dean nodded and tried to give her a reassuring smile.
"Dad, you can't be serious…"
Owen wrapped his arms around her again. "We're serious, sweetie. I'm really sorry, but your mother is right. And it's not going to be forever, but for a little while, you need to go to a safe house."
"There are more Djinn out there," Dean said. "And they're going to keep coming after you right now."
Cora swallowed hard and thought about her family. If those things were going to keep coming, her family would just keep getting in the crossfire, and that wasn't fair.
"But what do they want with me?" she asked out loud.
Sam gave her a sympathetic look. "Your father is like me and Dean. He's a Hunter, and he was hunting a Djinni. It turns out that they have some sort of hierarchy, and the one your father ganked was sort of a prince or something in their culture. They're taking it as a personal affront, and they won't stop until they take your father's family from him."
"Edgar Roth," Cora whispered.
"Yes, that's his name," Moira said. "How did you know?"
"The Djinni. It called me 'Edgar Roth's Child.'"
"Ed's working with some other Hunters, trying to find out how to banish all the Djinn back to their dimension," Sam said. "He's really good with that sort of thing. There's another Hunter named Bobby who has a house that's safer than anywhere else in the world. Nothing will be able to touch you there."
"Are there more kids?" Cora asked. "The Djinni said that the blood of his children, plural, would be spilled."
"There's one more," Dean confirmed. "Another friend is going after him right now. You'll both be kept safe."
He. She had another brother. Out there, somewhere, was another brother.
Cora fainted again.
*Smirk* Monica Reyes. Sorry, couldn't help myself...
