Originally this story was called "Heroes of Sorts". It was supposed to be a general story about the lives of Clark Kent, John Winchester and his boys and how those lives are entwined through a thing called destiny. It still very much is that with a different title, but I wanted to add a more action-adventure kind of plot. This story will primarily be in John Winchester's POV. I'm sorry for leaving people hanging but when I came back to it after a few months, I decided this was one of my better ideas and leaving it like this...is just unsatisfying. I am going to be re-watching Smallville in the meantime. Thank you to everyone that reviewed/favorited/alerted the previous story. I can't promise fast updates but since I'm motivated again, rest assured, there will be more.
Also just to let you guys know I will be taking down "Heroes of Sorts" sometime in the next few days.
Along this Road We Take, My Brothers
Synopsis: AU to both shows; SPN x SV. Out in the country side of South Dakota, Clark is traveling alone. John and his boys are just passing by on their way to meet Bobby up in Sioux Falls. 16 years since Mary died and John is still struggling on the definition of "fatherhood". Sam and Dean had always thought family only revolved around their father and each other but soon learn that even a stranger can become a brother and in dark times, they may all discover how far a family's love goes to save one of its own.
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1. "PILOT"
SOUTH DAKOTA
16 years later
JOHN
Sometimes John felt like he blinked once and missed his sons growing up. Sammy wasn't…Sammy anymore, he was sixteen now, a pain in the ass teenager with his own wants and needs and demands. John remembered when Sam was a wailing baby crawling in seedy motels or fast asleep in a four year old Dean's arms in the backseat of the Impala. He heard a grunt from the back that sounded suspiciously like Sam. John looked up in the rearview mirror. He could see Dean hiding his snicker into a fist, and Sam glowered from the other side of the car. He rubbed his arm before reaching over to punch his brother hard in his arm in retaliation for whatever the hell Dean did this time. Dean let out a hissed, "Ow, brat."
John's lips twitched up in a grin at his sons' antics. It was early morning in the middle of August of '99. The boys didn't look too tired because John kept some weird hours, the hunt for Mary's killer taking him all over the country. Sam hated it while Dean loved it. John wished Sam was more like his brother and took in the hunting life with a graceful embrace, but at the same time he was relieved that Sam wanted normal. Normal was safe while hunting was dangerous, a dreadful life that only few people took, and only when they had good reason. Like John's reason.
Still what Sam wanted, John couldn't give. Neither could Dean. As long as Mary's killer was running rampant, John feared no one was safe, at least either of his sons. He wished he could make Sam understand that. But lately Sam stopped going to John for answers. He went to Dean. For another moment, John watched his sons tousle in the backseat. 'They're more like children in adult bodies,' John thought to himself as Dean made to pinch Sam's arm, Sam just slapped away his attempt before settling in his corner with the novel in his lap he'd been trying to finish for a week.
"Leave me alone, Dean, I'm trying to read," Sam said through clenched teeth.
John's other son smirked in triumph but left Sam alone for the few hours on the road. It must have been a new record, John decided as he pulled the Impala up to a fast food joint that served both breakfast and lunch at odd hours. The three Winchesters piled out of the car and the boys raced each other to the door. John took his time walking behind them. He sometimes liked to pretend this road trip wasn't a hunt for Mary's murderer that may or may not exist out there causing more terror in its wake, but instead really was just a road trip with his boys. He wasn't sure the destination just yet, and every so often it'd change.
One summer when Sam was only seven and Dean was eleven, John told them they were all taking a camping trip together. He remembered the large grin on Sammy's face when he said it, the excited chatter he and Dean had been witness to for several hours on the road.
Dean's face, however, told John his elder son knew the cold hard truth. It said, 'Why don't you just say the truth for once, dad?' John did camp out that night instead of pulling into a cheap motel. Dean had been pleasantly surprised. Sam demanded marshmallows and smores like any good seven year old. It was the most fun John had since the days Mary had been alive. That night it really was just a father camping out in the wilderness with his sons.
The next day was a completely different story. They were back on the road hunting things that went bump in the night, and living in cheap, seedy motels. The case was a regular salt and burn in a backwater town in Texas. Dean was supposed to stay with Sammy. John had already put down the necessary protection to ward off evil spirits and other supernatural creatures. When John got back a few days later, red eyed from staying up all night to comfort the couple, hair in disarray from being thrown into a wall by the spirit, he'd come back to a frightened, wide eyed Dean and a sleeping Sam. Dean clutched in his hands the motel lamp he'd picked up from the bedside table. John was left speechless until he took a good look down himself and found the salt line in front of the door ruined.
"I…I didn't know," Dean stuttered as he traced John's gaze. "I didn't know, dad."
John's heart sank when he looked back up at his son. He realized it was inevitable that his sons would find out, he just didn't want it to happen like this. At only age eleven, Dean was introduced to the dismal life of a hunter. John put more pressure on his eldest and it paid off. Dean made an incredible hunter. Sometimes John would think, 'He's a natural, maybe better than me,' with a start. It was true. John noticed Dean was quick on his feet, quick with decisions that would take John a beat later to make. It was also a sad realization because a hunter's life wasn't glamorous. John lived on lies and scams. They often never got thanked and more times accused for murders they never committed and the ones they did, well…it wasn't exactly of the human variety.
When Dean knew the truth behind their moves and John's absence, Dean's hero worship seemed to take off ten fold. Dean wanted to join on John's hunts but John would rarely take him. He'd kneel to be on Dean's level and say sternly, "Now, Dean, your job is really important. You and I both know that Sammy needs you here. You have to protect him, remember?" Dean leaned back and nodded, obedient to a letter. John patted his son's head and went out. That week he hunted down a werewolf loose in Mississippi.
Dean was twelve when he got his own gun, John's old one he used to use when he first started hunting. He was thirteen when John took him on his first salt and burn. At the end of the year, Sammy witnessed his own supernatural encounter and thus, was sucked into this odd, dismal world as well.
Now Sam was sixteen and Dean was twenty and John was getting tired. Sometimes it felt like a wild goose chase, even Mary in John's dreams whom used to smile down at her husband and say, "Don't worry, John. You'll get it. I know you will," seemed to have given up hope in John. Whenever he dreamed of her, she'd sigh and lean back into him like she was trying to melt into him–something alive-Mary used to do. She'd then say, "How're the boys holding up, John?" instead of talking about the hunt. The gentle tone dream-Mary used seemed to accuse John of something he realized he should know but didn't. The faint sadness in Mary's eyes told him she thought the same. The dream would end before John could think to demand what Mary knew that John himself didn't.
It was when Sammy was fourteen and Dean was eighteen, both having already been on their first hunt, that John awoke from a vivid dream of his dead wife in cold sweat and a dreaded feeling in his gut. Reality crashed all around him. He could never take back what happened to Dean. His eldest son loved the hunting life. It was as much a part of him as it was John. But Sam…
Sam was only fourteen. He still had a choice. He could still pick normal if John hung out the choices for him. John sat up in an empty motel room in a town in Washington. He looked glumly at the phone on the other side of the room. Even though his sons weren't within an arm's reach, he knew they were just a phone call away. It'd only take two or three hours to drive back in the Impala. The right thing to do was to give his sons an out. John took a deep breath and made one of the hardest decisions in his life. He glanced at the alarm clock and fell back to sleep. Dream-Mary gave him a disappointed look and said nothing until she disappeared and John was back to running after the phantom of her killer.
When he woke sometime in the afternoon, John dug up another grave and salted and burned the corpse. He had lunch at the local fast food joint and politely informed the woman her son was put to rest, he accepted her gracious dinner invite and caught a couple hours of restless sleep. In the morning he drove back to his sons and said nothing about his late night revelation. He didn't give either an out. Instead John pulled his sons deeper in the heart of the supernatural world. Who was dream-Mary kidding? The Winchesters weren't meant for normal.
"Dad. Hey, Dad. One sec, ma'am. He'll have some iced water and as for me, I'll take a glass of water with no ice. What about you, doofus?" John jerked back to reality at the sound of Dean's half amused voice. "Oh hey, Dad, I hope you don't mind I ordered for you."
John blinked, feeling like he'd just awoken from a surreal dream. The three men were situated in a booth in the corner of the restaurant, John on one side and both Dean and Sammy on the other. He noticed Sam's face pressed in his book and seemed to not have heard Dean's question until Dean impatiently snapped his fingers in his face. Sam jerked back and hit his head against the booth chair. "Ow! Come on, Dean," Sam complained loudly as he rubbed the back of his head, glaring at his brother over the top of the book. Dean just smirked. "What do you want now?" Sam hissed.
Dean jerked his head to the amused waitress hovering by their table with a small clipboard. Sam jerked his head up, finally noticing the waitress that was waiting patiently to take Sam's order. John's youngest son turned a good shade of red and ducked his head with a mumbled, "Water, please. No ice." The waitress nodded and wrote down the order before heading to the back.
After the waitress came back with their drinks ten minutes later, they ordered their meals without incident. When Sam decided to finally set aside his book, John looked at his boys gravely and the atmosphere at the table almost instantly changed. For the next hour and a half, John got down to business and told them they were hunting a Djinn in the country side of South Dakota. It was the first either sons heard of it and John quickly went about an explanation on what it was and what exactly it did.
"There are things that can grant wishes?" Dean asked skeptically, lowering his voice in case people around them heard him. John shared Dean's skepticism. Sure there were a lot of powerful things that lived in this world, but something that granted wishes sounded like it ought to be kept in fairy tales with genies in magical lamps. But it was what it was. Although John personally never seen a Djinn before he knew a lot of folks around the world believed something like this could exist. John had researched ahead of time and from what his old hunting friend, Bobby, told him Djinns were as real as deadly and he needed a pair of ready hands to take the thing down.
Well…more than a pair of hands really. He knew after he ended the call with Bobby last night that Dean would want on the case and just the right nudges to his other son, he knew Sam would be right behind them, maybe begrudgingly but a Winchester was a hunter by blood. That was what John learned in the past few years. It wouldn't have mattered if John gave Sam an out. Once the supernatural found you, it sunk its teeth and claws into you, never letting you go. It'd be inevitable for Sam to go right back to hunting after a few years of white picket fences and peaceful sunshine and a normal family and school and friends. It only took one little push, maybe a restless spirit or a black dog and it'd be back to traveling on fast food and coffee and cheap motels and credit card scams, singing along to AC/DC or some other rock band with a restless brother that teased you and a driven father that didn't know the meaning of staying in one town long enough to put the faces of your peers to names down a list that didn't matter because you'd be long gone before you could even think of making friends.
John wasn't proud of dragging his sons into the hunter's life. He knew when he explained the situation to Bobby; he'd be just as disapproving. John sucked in a shaky breath once they were back on the road. He turned the radio up and Dean whooped in approval when AC/DC blasted out of it just as Sam groaned and tried to once again hide behind his book. Dean sang along to the crazy vocals of the song as John drove them to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
The last time Bobby saw Sam and Dean, Sam had been five, Dean nine. They had both been innocent of the supernatural and John remembered how hard it was to tiptoe around the topic with his kids just a room away. Bobby had been content to watching a football game while John fumbled around the subject of Mary and what he thought he knew of Mary's killer, which back then had been near nada. It was still near nada, with one huge difference. Eleven years ago, John had been full of righteous fury and hope in finding her murderer, whole heartedly believing her murderer was not indeed human. Now he was just getting tired. Sixteen years of not a single lead.
The only thing he really ever had was watching his wife burn on the ceiling of their nursery in a mysterious fire that sprang out of nowhere. When he told it to Bobby, the hunter had agreed that it was strange and most likely a supernatural thing. Beyond that, John had no idea what he was dealing with. It could be a number of things really, which was why John took every case he could get his hands on, hoping to get lucky and stumble upon something that could lead to his answer. He never told this to Dean or Sam. Dean's hero worship told him that John took cases because that was what heroes did; they hunted evil and saved people. In reality, John felt anything but a hero. He wanted more than to save lives. He wanted revenge for Mary, justice.
If the killer had been human, John suspected with a slight pang in his chest, he'd hunt him down as well. Faced with the hard truth, John tightened his knuckles around the steering wheel until they were chalk, white. Only when his fingers felt ready to break off sometime in the half way to Sioux Falls did John loosen his grip, concentrating only on the road, his sons' light snores coming from the back and Highway to Hell that was playing on loop to its heart's content.
John would have made it to Sioux Falls by nightfall as originally planned, but when you're a Winchester, nothing ever goes as planned. As it happened, on precisely 7:46 pm on a hot August night of '99 on the lonely countryside of South Dakota, a little ways from Sioux Falls, John Winchester picked up a stray.
ALONG THE ROAD A FEW MILES DOWN
CLARK
Clark walked barefoot on the edge of the road. He tried not to look down at himself because then he would see the dirt on his shirt and mud caked on his pants. He didn't have a bag with him and or any money in pockets. When he tucked his hands in the front pockets of his pants Clark came out with lint and more dirt. He wasn't sure where he even was, all he knew was that he didn't recognize this place when he woke up this morning. It felt like he'd been sleeping for ages and he'd only just woken up.
For the past quarter of an hour, Clark had been walking up and down the same stretch of road hoping to hitch a ride to the nearest town. After another five minutes of pacing, Clark was ready to give up. Then headlights beamed in the darkness like a beacon of salvation. Feeling a frantic panic bubble in his chest, Clark waved his hands out hoping the person was kind enough to stop.
THE IMPALA
JOHN
If John didn't pay close attention to the road, he wouldn't have seen the small figure moving erratically up and down along the road. When he pulled the Impala up closer he saw that it was a boy waving his hands around like a maniac trying to get John's attention. The boy's hair was a dark brown, almost black, disheveled like he'd just gotten out of bed and staggered out to the road without bothering to comb it. His eyes were a startling blue, his skin pale and his white tee had dirt and mud staining it while his jeans hung loose with holes. He was missing shoes and socks and John could see the boy's toes curl into the dirt.
All in all, the boy spelled trouble with a capital 'T' and John wondered if he should leave now. Where the Winchesters were headed, they didn't need more trouble if they could help it. As if sensing John's inner thoughts, the boy gave a startled jolt forward and was at the window of the front passenger's seat before John knew what was happening. John still wasn't sure why he did it, maybe it had been the kid's pleading blue eyes or the way his hands seemed to tremble as he clutched onto the door, whatever it was, John had rolled down the window before he could think straight.
"Are you…going to town?" the kid had asked, his eyes darting around nervously, trying to peer into the back to see John's slumbering sons.
Feeling suddenly protective of his sons from a stranger's prying eyes, John tried to veer his attention back to him as he cleared his throat pointedly. The kid looked blushed at getting caught but John had his attention back at least. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he weighed his options. He couldn't possibly leave the boy in the middle of nowhere ready to be snatched by some child molester or killer now that he knew the boy was here. John couldn't have that on his conscious. For a moment he berated himself for deciding to stop. Now he was responsible for a kid and that would surely delay getting to Bobby's.
Sioux Falls wasn't for another two hours.
John finally said, "Yeah, I am. Me and my boys, we're headed to Sioux Falls. Familiar with the name, kid?"
The kid shook his head and bit his lip in a nervous gesture, probably scared John would decide to leave him stranded here. "No, sir." He looked ready to say more but something about John's looks made him think better of it.
John raised an eyebrow when the boy didn't say anything else or do anything, just stood there looking as lost as a runaway John could imagine. John finally gave in when the kid didn't budge. He gestured for the boy to get in. "Come on, kid. Hop in. We don't have all night."
The kid looked at John in surprise, his blue eyes huge on his face and lips parted in a little 'o' that would have amused John any other time but now all he wanted to do was be on his way to Bobby's and listening to AC/DC, and watching his sons grow up some more (Dean would no doubt surpass John as a hunter some day in the near future, and maybe when all was said and done, Sam could go and have a normal apple pie life far away from the supernatural like he planned since childhood) and eventually, he wanted to catch Mary's killer and make it pay for not only ruining his life but the lives of his sons as well.
The kid still seemed wary of John but obediently opened the door and climbed into the Impala. He shut the door noiselessly and fumbled for his seatbelt. John would like to say that the kid was bright but then the kid did hop into the car of a stranger that could have very well been a psycho with delusions of killing people. He turned the Impala on after the kid got situated well enough and incidentally Highway to Hell was still playing. He pulled the car back onto the main road and pretended to listen to it though what he really heard was the pounding of his heart inside his chest. John gripped the steering wheel and drove to Sioux Falls where Bobby and a Djinn resided. The Impala's wheels squealed heavily against the road.
