AN: Daemons are the external physical manifestation of a person's inner-self that takes the form of an animals. In HDM, daemons are usually the opposite gender of their people.
This oneshot crossover takes place during Season 5 while the Winchesters are trying to find a way to avoid being Michael and Lucifer's vessels.
This was written for the /r/fanfiction crossover challenge.
"It's nice to actually see you for a change." Dean Winchester met his brother with a handshake as he entered the garage. Sam shook back hard while Circe and Maia touched noses, a cordial greeting. Circe's thick black nose dwarfed Maia's delicate red snout. The daemons parted a second before the brothers released their grip on one another.
Saturdays had once been their favorite day of the week; as kids, those mornings had been full of cartoons before their parents woke up and too much sugary cereal. Even as adults with their own lives, they had used Saturdays to get together and work on cars. Dean always said it was good for baby brother not to get too out of touch with his roots now that he was a hotshot lawyer. Back then, though, Sam had only been in law school, and once he was truly working for a law firm, he had not had time for these casual get-togethers very often. If anything, Sam had been a little distant lately even when he was in the same room. Whenever Dean grumbled about it under his breath, Circe always reminded him that he was proud of his brother's success.
"Now that I've closed the Johnson case, I'll finally have time to relax, have a beer, all that." Sam walked over to the mini-fridge in the corner of the garage, flicked it open, and lifted out a bottle. "You want one too?"
"You offering me one of my own beers at 10:30 in the morning?"
"On a weekend," Sam confirmed. Dean nodded and caught the bottle his brother tossed. Maia tilted her head to one side. Dean had always been amused by this expression his brother's daemon gave, perhaps because he knew what would follow. Though red foxes were not petite animals, Maia had never lost her childhood habit of climbing onto Sam's shoulders. She did so now, touching her paws to his leg. Thoughtlessly, he bent his knee slightly, giving her just enough space to clamber up with a knee, the crook of an elbow, and then the shoulder muscle itself. She draped herself across his shoulders as he took a sip of his beer.
Dean looked over at Circe. Her bright blue eyes glowed up at him arrogantly, and she circled twice as huskies are wont to do before lying down at his feet. Overt affection had never been her style. Dean leaned back against the wall and looked at the battered 1967 Chevy Imapala in the middle of the garage. The clunker had belonged to their dad years ago, and since John's heart attack last year, Dean had been on a quest to track it down. Looking at it now, though, he wondered if they could even salvage the piece of junk.
"Are we going to need a new transmission, after all?" Sam popped the hood of the Impala to look inside.
"Dude, you have been gone for a while. I rebuilt the tranny three weeks ago," Dean said. Circe looked up at him pointedly, but he ignored her. Despite her clear observation, Dean knew his tone was fine.
"Was it really that long? Shit. I guess I really haven't been here in... what?" He looked up, counting, but Maia tapped her paw against his shoulder. "Yeah. Six weeks?"
"Or more." This time, Circe gave a low growl. "Jesus, Circ. I'm not mad at him or anything. Damn it. Sam, you know I'm just being a dick? I'm not actually mad you had to work and be a lawyer and all that."
Sam laughed. "Yeah, I know. Thanks for having my back, Circe." The husky turned a stony gaze on him, unaccustomed to being addressed, but put her head back down and closed her eyes. Sam started poking around under the Impala's hood.
Dean straightened up to walk towards the car when a ripping sound filled the garage, a sound like fabric caught in gears and pulled apart, and the air in front of him seemed to separate, creating an opening to a black void. Filling that void and popping into existence were two men. Dean gripped the edge of the cabinet hard and felt his insides clench. He willed his guts not to betray him and spill out into his pants. In front of him, he was looking at himself and his brother, Sam. This other Sam shared the massive height and basic facial features of his brother, but his hair hung shaggy and lank around his lean, tired face. Rather than wearing a polo shirt and shorts, he was dressed in layers of tan, brown, and black like some kind of underground resistance fighter one might see on the news. The other Dean, however, looked much like himself, from the flannel shirt to the boots to the short, orderly haircut. The familiarity heightened, rather than soothed, the anxious fear flooding through him.
"Where the hell in our life is this?" Not-Dean demanded, looking around. His eyes lit on the Impala and grew round. "What happened to my baby?"
"Dean..." Not-Sam's voice was measured but worried. "Something's wrong."
Aliens? Some sort of creatures? Dean's mind raced for explanations, and he ignored his swirling head and wobbling knees, reaching for a wrench. Circe rose to her feet, bristled from snout to tail, but rather than snarling, she whined plaintively. Confusion hurled Dean's stomach in a circle again.
"Easy, dog," Not-Dean said. "Listen. What year is this?"
Dean heard a Sam voice and jerked his head from his own image to his brother and the Not-Sam. His real brother was speaking now and held the attention of both of the intruders. Maia had risen, her lower half still on the shoulder but her front paws rested on Sam's head, mussing his short, lawyerly hair and baring her small, pointed teeth. Maia, rather than Sam, seemed to shock the intruders into silence.
"It's 2009," Sam said. "What are you?"
Not-Sam finally turned to Not-Dean. "It's 2009 here. Wherever the hell here is!"
"Earth," Dean corrected from his side of the room, relieved to hear that his voice was steady though his hands trembled badly. He and Circe looped around the car to stand beside his brother and his daemon. They all took a wide berth around the other set of brothers.
"I'm going to freakin' find a way to kill angels, and I am going to gut Zachariah," Not-Dean was muttering while Not-Sam seemed to calm down, deliberately recomposing his face. When he spoke this time, his voice was higher, calmer, and it sounded more like the lawyer brother Dean knew.
"Listen, I'm Sam, and this is my brother, Dean. We're humans from 2009. Also on Earth."
"Yeah, right. I bet you come in peace too. What are you?" Dean repeated his brother's question. He felt the warmth of Circe's furry body leave his leg. Circe approached the Not-Dean and though, like all daemons, she rarely spoke in front of other humans, she addressed him directly. Not-Dean recoiled from her slightly. Her eyes never left his face.
"He's us." Her voice was quiet authority. She turned to look back at Dean, and he felt a surge of love, wanted her to come closer again. "Dean, he's us. He loves Metallica and likes pie and women and sometimes maybe men, though like you he doesn't want anyone to say that out loud."
Sam and Not-Sam's heads snapped to look at their respective brothers, but Circe kept going. "He's different though. He hunts... terrible things."
Not-Dean looked shaken. "What is that thing?"
"Circe?" Dean replied, trying to ignore the small bubble of anger that Circe would voice anything so personal in front of his brother. "My daemon."
Smaller daemons sometimes hid up their humans' sleeves or tucked in their pockets, so in the first few moments of shock, Dean had not noticed the other brothers' lack of companionship. He felt it suddenly now, and his stomach turned again. Humans who could walk and talk and project normalcy without daemons could only be monsters.
"Your demon? You have a damn demon? Why's it an animal?" Not-Dean echoed, his voice loud.
"All daemons are animals," Sam replied. "You said you were human."
"We are," Not-Sam replied, looking confused, but Maia bristled suddenly, leaping from Sam's shoulder. She landed on her four paws with cat-like grace, and as she approached the intruders, she had none of Circe's brazen confidence. She circled wide, sniffing the air and the ground.
"He's not entirely human. He's not all you, Sam," Maia's gravelly tone hadn't been heard in this house in years. When Sam had been a child, she had spoken often to everyone, but years of corrections by their parents' daemons had finally cultivated a sense of reticence.
Sam recoiled from the idea of himself as only partially human, but the Not-Sam hung his head for a second, embarrassed, before looking back up. The Not-Dean touched his arm, the briefest of comforting gestures, a gesture not unlike a daemon would offers its human.
"Ignore the talking fox demon, Sammy," Not-Dean said before looking back up at all the humans and daemons in front of him. "Listen, we're not getting anywhere like this. Why don't we all sit down like men and talk about this? We've ended up here, and we're not sure why, but we're not dangerous unless your demons try anything."
"Daemons," Circe corrected. Dean felt betrayed as he watched her lean her solid weight against Not-Dean's leg. He braced himself for the paralyzing feeling of wrongness that accompanied another person touching his daemon, but instead, he felt nothing amiss, no more so than if Circe had bumped against the Impala. Dean did not know if it was because she was correct in thinking that the Not-Dean was truly him or because it was not human at all.
"I won't touch him," Maia spoke up to Sam, suspicious eyes on the Not-Sam. "She's making a mistake."
"Hush," Circe whirled to look at her with a snarl, snapping her much longer teeth in the air. "I'm older than you. I know what I'm doing."
"Maia's right, Dean," Sam said. "We shouldn't let them inside."
"My house, my rules," Dean replied. "Alright, fellas, let's just go inside and have a seat at the kitchen table. We can talk this out."
He led the ragtag group inside, thanking God his knocking knees did not betray how rattled he was. Not-Dean seated himself at the table, accepted the offered beer and took a slug. Circe stayed at Dean's side but watched Not-Dean with the singleminded focus usually reserved for her human. Dean tried to ignore how much it was like looking in a mirror. Not-Sam moved hesitantly but did take a seat at the table as well, though he declined a drink. Sam himself stood against the wall, Maia back on his shoulders. She quivered against him.
Conversation began slowly at first, and Dean answered bizarre questions about daemons. The strangers seemed to believe that daemons came from Hell, as in the place of religious persecution for those who did not follow God's orders. Dean was not a believer in God, and he found the idea ridiculous, but he found the apparent reality of their world equally ridiculous: humans did not have daemons there. When Not-Sam explained that emphatically, factually, Circe and Maia both curled tight to their humans. Circe also looked sadly at Not-Dean.
After the factual conversations, Dean found himself talking to Not-Dean about normal life. The other brothers listened eagerly and asked probing questions about the simplest of details. Dean could not understand why it would be of interest that Mom worked as an accountant now after having taken classes at the local community college. ("Did she get good grades?" Not-Sam asked, and both brothers had grinned when Dean had admitted that her grades had been lackluster at best.) Of all things, Not-Dean smiled upon hearing Dad had died last year after a heart attack, and Not-Sam's face had changed entirely when Sam mentioned that he hoped Jess would let them name their firstborn after John. Suddenly Not-Sam seemed to be looking at the wedding band on Sam's hand every few minutes.
"Well," Sam said, "You know a lot about us, but you haven't returned the favor. What are you doing here?"
The other Winchesters looked at each other. "You live normal lives?" Not-Dean said it as a question.
"Yeah," Dean confirmed. "I guess so."
"I'm not mixing them up in this shit," Not-Dean said bluntly to his brother, ignoring the others. "Mom's alive. Dad died of a normal heart condition. You're married to Jess. I've got this sweet house. The animal thing is a little weird, but wherever this is, there's no yellow-eyed demon, no Apocalypse, no Lucifer, no hunting. We have to leave well enough alone."
"There's some reason we're here, Dean." Not-Sam leaned his elbows onto the table and looked at his brother. Dean noticed the way the two of them folded in on themselves in personal conversation, shutting the other two out efficiently and effortlessly. "We should stay and find out what it is."
"Oh you mean like the time Zachariah erased our memories and made us hunt ghosts to prove I'm destined to be a hunter? Or the time the son of a bitch sent me into the freakin' Croatoan future to show me how not saying yes is going to ruin the world? The lesson's for me, Sammy, and I already know what it is. I don't have to screw up these two's lives to find it out." Not-Dean grunted as he finished speaking, setting his beer bottle down on the table. Dean's head spun as he tried to follow the absolute lunacy of what he was hearing. Apocalypse? Croatoan? Ghosts? If two men looking just like he and his brother had not shown up in his garage half an hour ago, he would have been certain this conversation proved insanity.
"You already know?" Not-Sam shook his head. "How?"
"The lesson's going to be about how I can't save you. I guarantee you this kid over here," Not-Dean jerked his thumb towards Sam, who looked startled, "is doing something bad."
Not-Dean turned to look at Sam, standing up as he did so. He moved like a predator now, a lethal litheness to his movements. "What is it, bud? You embezzling from your law firm? Cheating on Jess? Drawing up Satanic rituals in the basement? All of the above?"
Dean opened his mouth to defend his brother, prepared to scoff, but he watched Sam flinch as if he had been struck. As if Sam's face alone were not enough to betray him, Maia turned her head away from the onlookers, curling her tail over her nose. Something was true.
"Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner," Not-Dean said flatly. "I get it, Sammy. Zachariah wants me to know it's not just Azazel, not just the demon blood, not just Ruby. He wants me to know that it's you. That something's wrong with you."
Not-Sam was looking at Sam now, only half-listening to his brother. "Tell me he's wrong. Tell me you're not doing anything like that."
Sam closed his eyes and turned his head to his brother, ignoring the strangers. Dean waited until he opened his eyes again and met his gaze; Circe pressed her head against his hand to steady him. "You wouldn't do anything like any of those things."
Sam swallowed hard. His Adam's apple bobbled like a lure on a pond, snagged by an intepid bass. "I slept with someone else, and she's pregnant. I need help figuring out what to do," he whispered hoarsely. Dean looked away, and Circe growled from her very core. Maia growled back.
"So here in Picture Perfect land, you're a cheater. You've knocked up some poor girl and Jess has no idea. You're a real bastard here," Not-Dean said to his own brother, waving his hand in Sam's drection. "Who cares?"
Not-Sam frowned. "This proves it's not the demon blood."
Not-Dean tossed his hands in the air. "It's bullshit, Sammy. Zachariah picked this place, and he picked for a reason. To prove his agenda. It's not real. No offense, guys," he looked to them. "I mean, it's real, but it's just the place that proves his point. He wasn't going to show us the future where me telling Michael to shove it up his ass was a good thing or the one where you were a model citizen. He's pushing his agenda, and we're not playing."
"Okay." Not-Sam said the word weakly, but his face brightened ever-so-slightly. Through the swirl of confusion and anger Dean felt, he recognized that these brothers connected on some level deeper than he had ever connected with another human. The only being he spoke to with such sincerity – and who spoke with equal blunt honesty – was Circe.
"Let's get out of here then," Not-Dean pushed his chair back and threw his empty bottle into the open trashcan. He turned to face Dean, ignoring Sam. "Sorry to have blown up your weekend."
"I guess I'm glad you were here," Dean answered, avoiding Sam's stony, defeated gaze beside him. To know was better than not ignorance "I don't know how you'll get home though. There's no magic in our world. At least I don't think so."
Not-Dean shrugged. "Oh, I'm not worried about that. You may have a demon up your sleeve-"
"Daemon," Circe corrected quietly.
"but we have an angel."
And if Dean wasn't mistaken, both brothers bowed their heads to pray, invoking the name of Castiel, before disappearing in the same ripping, wrench of time and space as they had arrived.