On The Other Side of the Coin
…
Summary: Crossover fic for Jemmz. AU. Set in the third season. Stumbling across the vampire-infested town of Mystic Falls, Dean comes across a man who he can almost relate to, only to learn sometimes the monsters in the world have a habit of sharing human traits.
…
It was a solo job he was currently pursuing, which was very unusual for the brothers.
Life on the road had been tenser than normal, what with Dean's impending death sentence hanging over his head, and Sam had had just about enough of his cavalier attitude about the whole issue, which had, naturally, led to a huge row which, sadly, wasn't exactly a rare occurrence these days.
"How can you not care, Dean? It's your life!"
"Exactly! It's MY life, Sam! Stop raining on my parade with your incessant nagging!"
"You consider a death sentence a parade?"
"Hell, up until we were ten, Sammy, that's what did constitute a parade in our family! We were carted around the country, chasing after things that could've killed us, things that weren't supposed to exist, and then moved on again! Our LIFE is a freakin' parade, minus, you know, the joy, the happiness, and the fact all the freaks in our lives are neither in costume, nor carting big balloons around."
"Would you stop with the parade analogy, Dean! This is just you shutting down, too afraid to admit you're afraid! And since when have you complained about the way we live our life?"
"Ha, ha, you wanna talk about shutting down? The way you chose to deal with a disagreement with dad was to RUN! You ran away when we needed you most!"
"I wanted to get away, asshole! You and dad were all psyched about this life, so I thought I might as well leave you to it. You might accuse me of sucking up to dad towards the end, but you've been doing it your whole life, and trust me, your golden boy act got old real fast!"
"Oh, blow me!"
In the end, Dean had taken the Impala, and had driven away from Sam, too damn stubborn to admit his baby brother might've been right. The thought of death had never scared him before because there'd always been the chance he'd come out fighting, but this? Having a god-damn timer above his head, slowly ticking away the days of his life, seriously screwed up his focus.
Scanning local newspapers, he'd soon found a job in a town which sounded like it'd leapt straight from the pages of a piece of teen literature.
Mystic Falls.
The story, he read with weary eyes, was a number of animal attacks, but though it read like a traditional report stating genuine facts about a genuine animal attack, certain details had been omitted, which had triggered his suspicion. There were no mentions of any specific victims. All the articles seemed to do was list the basic facts, almost like it was trying to report the event and then move on.
Sitting in the local bar – well, The Mystic Grill, which was hardly an adequate bar in his opinion, more like a family restaurant which were always lame places to go – he nursed his beer, his expression moody.
He wasn't in the mood to particularly scan round for attractive women, although there was a fiery red haired woman in the corner, with a dark haired teenager with a frown on his face. Also, if he cast his sullen eyes in the other direction, he could see a group of young girls – high school age, maybe? Seniors at best – giggling together, and it genuinely surprised him to learn he had no interest in any females in the vicinity at present.
Maybe after a few beers he would, but right now, he sensed a case.
He raised his head, beckoning the current bus-boy – a quiet, blonde haired teenager who looked more like jock material than serving behind a bar, but he would take what he could get at this point – over with an impatient hand gesture.
"Can I help you?" the teenager asked, with an air of resignation he well remembered feeling after around about the fifteenth time of starting another school he had no particular desire to be a part of.
"Yeah, my name is Hank Wells, and I'm a reporter for the Denver Gazette," he told the young man, reading his name tag as one Matt Donovan.
"A reporter eh? What are you doing this far from Denver?" Matt asked, flinging a dish rag over his shoulder.
"Doing a little digging. I notice the statistics regarding animal attacks here seem to be remarkably high for such a low key area," Dean reported, having worked out his story beforehand. "I'm just wondering who would be the best people to ask about that. Who are the go-to people in this town?"
Matt scrutinised him, clearly thinking he didn't look like a reporter. Dean could've gone with the FBI agent role, but he hated wearing suits, and since Sam was the one who always insisted they wear them, and since his so-called pest of a brother wasn't around to nag him into doing so, he was going to bend the rules and go with a different role.
"Well, there's Sheriff Forbes," Matt reluctantly listed. "She's in charge here, essentially, although if you wanted to talk to the Mayor Lockwood, she might know some things too. I guess it depends on the questions you want answering. What's your article about? The one I assume you're writing?"
"Well, I'm not writing one just yet," Dean hedged. "I'm just here for some investigative work." He tapped his nose secretively. "Would appreciate you keeping this conversation private."
"Sure, whatever. Can I get you a beer or something?" Matt asked, clearly bored.
"Make it two," Dean commented, realising he was going to need a lot of alcohol to clear his head, even though the irony was alcohol was probably only going to screw him up even more, but who gave a damn?
There was no Sam around to nag him into sobriety, so he had to take these moments while he could.
"Hank Wells?" sneered a voice. "You couldn't have come up with a better fake name than that?"
Dean slowly turned his head, regarding the stranger on his right with a mixture of wariness and dislike. The man beside him, wearing the biggest smirk in the world, possessed dark locks of hair – too dark to be auburn brown, too light to be ink black, so it was some weird combination of the two – and electric blue eyes. He possessed a sturdy jaw, appeared to be in his twenties, or thereabouts, but there was something about him he didn't like, something he couldn't quite put his finger on which made him uneasy.
"It's my name," he said coolly.
"Sure, keep up with that pretentious lie," his neighbour snorted. "You're not very convincing, but I do appreciate your efforts in continuing to try to be so."
Dean smiled humourlessly.
"I suppose you're the master at telling lies then?" he asked, sounding dubious. "Give me a break." He gave him a sideways glance. "What's your name?"
"Tom Howard," came the reply.
"Your real name?" Dean demanded.
His dark haired companion smiled.
"Very good. Now, tell me your business in my town, and I may just supply you my real name if you're good." He winked. "No guarantees though."
Dean rolled his eyes.
Oh, so he was one of those guys.
"I'm a reporter," he replied stiffly. "I noticed the unusual statistics regarding the animal - "
"Oh, is that the lie you're perpetuating to fit in here? Interesting... You don't look like any reporter I've ever seen."
"Yeah, well, buddy, I'm one of a kind. What can I say?" Dean shifted uncomfortably, finding he was slowly disliking everything about this artificially perfect town, including its residents. "Not that it's any of your business why I'm here anyway."
"Considering I know most of the town's residents – the important ones anyway – I'd say it is my business when strangers with false identities stumble into town without rhyme or reason," came the malicious tones of the raven haired man, who without warning fixated his gaze on him. "Now, tell me, what's your real name?"
Dean didn't want to answer – hell, he knew they NEVER gave out their real names, only to the people they saved in order to earn them the trust needed to save their lives – but something compelled him into confessing. It was like the truth just rolled off his tongue.
"Dean Winchester."
"Interesting. Never met a Dean before. Why are you here?"
He tried to resist, but again the answer just rolled off his tongue. It had to be something in the way his companion stared at him.
"In town on business."
"And what business are you on exactly?"
"Hunting."
The other man leaned back, his gaze speculative.
"What kind of hunting?" he asked suspiciously.
"Supernatural. We're talking ghosts, zombies, werewolves, the whole shebang."
"So, naturally, Mystic Falls fell onto your radar because...?"
"There were too many deaths put down to animal attacks to be considered normal. Plus the details on the various autopsy reports are consistent with the patterns of a vampire. Bite marks, loss of blood, etc." Why am I saying these things to a total stranger? "I thought it was worth checking it out."
Dean blinked rapidly, turning his head to one side as he tried to figure out what had just happened.
"How did you get a copy of the autopsy reports?" came his inquisitive neighbour's next question, which thankfully was interrupted by Matt returning with his two beers.
"I see you've met our resident bad boy, Damon Salvatore," Matt introduced, giving Damon a thinly veiled contemptuous look.
The man known as Damon gave Matt his best simpering smile, which was laced with an almost bitter sense of humour. Dean watched this exchange with interest, all the while trying to work through the last exchange he'd had had with that man. His mind had not felt like his own, and that was when his suspicions started to flare up.
Clearly, some darker supernatural element was occurring in this town, and there was a chance back up was needed.
He sighed irritably, grabbing his two beers, making a move to leave. He didn't know what the bar's policy was on removing alcohol from the premises, but he wasn't about to adhere to it. He'd find a motel, get settled, call and update Sam on the situation, and then work on making his way to the local police station, see what information he could gather from the sheriff.
Casting a sour look in Damon's direction, Dean made a swift retreat, deciding that one of the first questions he was going to ask the Sheriff was about the Salvatore family.
There was something not right about him, and perhaps the biggest clue confirming that theory was that Damon had barely batted an eyelid when he'd blurted out what he did – in fact, he'd seemed a little too interested in that aspect of the conversation.
Damn it.
Why was it that the smallest, quietest towns seemed to hold the most evil?
….
"Remind me again why the FBI feels the need to poke around our town?" Sheriff Forbes, a tight lipped woman in her late thirties, possibly early forties, enquired sharply.
Dean fidgeted, still shaken by his earlier encounter with Damon.
In fact, it bugged him that something like that had even shaken him, because given the fact he had a death clock ticking above his head, it wouldn't have been presumptuous to assume he had bigger things to worry about.
He'd changed roles to an FBI agent because he figured that would be the best part to play to gain the answers he needed. It'd been an excellent choice on his part; the Sheriff here seemed to be extremely reluctant, not to mention nervous, to give him anything but short, clipped answers to his questions.
"I'm with the department that handles small town crime waves," he said smoothly. "Based on the time span between these so-called animal attacks, my superiors are pressing me to see if that's all it really is. They're concerned it might be something bigger."
"Well, I appreciate your superiors wanting to make sure we're alright, but we're handling it," Sheriff Forbes told him. "We've made sure animal control are aware of the situation, and we have deputies constantly patrolling the fringes of the woods. Now, if that's all I can do..."
"Actually," Dean said slowly, inwardly smiling to himself knowing he'd caught the Sheriff on a lie, because he'd called animal control before – local and international lines, as well, just to be sure -, and they'd reported there'd been no contact exchanged between themselves and the Mystic Falls police department. "Could you tell me what you know about Damon Salvatore?"
"Oh." The Sheriff's face seemed to relax, a touch of warmth flooding onto her face. "He's been such an immense help to this town. He's on our council here – the one which overlooks the running and co-ordination of the town..."
"Isn't that the Mayor's job?" Dean pointed out.
"Well, yes, but Carole always makes sure she has a second opinion before she makes any decisions, and that's the council's job," Sheriff Forbes patiently replied. "Damon has always been there when I needed him." She scrutinised him carefully. "He's not a suspect, is he?"
Dean smiled again.
"Why would he be? There's no crime here, right?" he said, enjoying the flush which coloured her cheeks as she realised her mistake.
"He lives up at the old Boarding house, if you need to talk to him," she said, sounding less than enthused at this point, and he knew she was just eager to be rid of him. "I can get you a map, if you'd like?"
"Thanks." Dean gave her a quick smile of appreciation. "One more thing, Sheriff... " He couldn't resist asking the question. "Where's the best place to grab a bite here?"
"The Mystic Grill," Sheriff Forbes replied promptly.
Dean sighed. He had been hoping to avoid that particular spot, but it seemed like everything in his life seemed to be veering towards impending doom anyway, so why should this scenario be any different?
As he walked out of the police station, his phone rang.
"Sam. What you got for me?" he answered, straight down to business.
"From what I gather, Mystic Falls isn't particularly well known except for the part it played in the civil war. It doesn't really have a lot of history."
Dean pinched the ridge of his nose.
"Figured you'd say that, but something's going on here."
"Why? Could just be coincidence, all these animal attacks."
"Since when have we been able to ever chalk up a job to mere coincidence?" Dean snapped. "Look, I ran into a guy earlier, and I swear he got inside my head or something. I told him I was a hunter. What could've possessed me into doing that?"
"Alcohol?" was his brother's less than helpful response.
If Sam had been there in the room with him, Dean could guarantee that smart-ass response would've been dealt with via some sort of violent response. As such, all he could do was smile humourlessly, letting sarcasm drip into his every word.
"Thanks, Sam. When I want a serious response to a question, I now know to avoid you like the plague."
"You want a serious answer?"
"Even more than I want to get out of this god-damn town," Dean snapped.
"Um, could be witchcraft I suppose? Did you check for hex bags?"
"Yeah." Dean frowned, thinking hard for his own theories. "This place doesn't really feel like there are witches here. I mean, I swear to God the autopsy reports suggest vampires, but we might not be dealing with ordinary vampires here."
"Surely you can deal with vampires that sparkle in the sun, Dean. You just have to find an ordinary teen girl to lure them into trap, maybe conditioned with false promises of being in a successful, well written movie adaptation based around their lives."
"I knew letting you read Twilight – even for the purposes of scoping out what other vampire literature there is other than Bram Stoker's Dracula – would come back and bite me in the ass," Dean said, scowling. "Now, without giving me a smart-ass response that'll earn you the ass kicking of a lifetime, tell me any and every kind of vampire – or other supernatural being – which can use mind control..."
"Wait a second." Sam's tone suggested confusion. "You're thinking you had your mind controlled?"
"It's the only suggestion I can think of to explain why I blurted out all our secrets within the space of thirty seconds," Dean said bluntly. "As uncomfortable as it makes me, I think there might be some sort of mind-controlling creature in town. It might be how they're getting away with murdering people."
"By controlling what people believe, they can control who knows what to avoid detection," Sam filled in. "It fits, I suppose."
"I think it only works with eye contact too," Dean continued, expanding on this theory. "So I'm just going to not look at everyone in the eye."
There was a long pause, and it was clear from that silence Sam thought he was an idiot.
"Well?" he demanded. "What's wrong with it, genius?"
"Um, so you're going to tackle the problem by avoiding eye contact. Dean, can I just point out the obvious flaw in your logic?"
"You can, but you won't. Call me when you're done being a smart-ass," Dean growled, before hanging up on him.
….
He prowled around the town when darkness first shrouded the sky. Every moment was careful, deliberate, but he wasn't particularly sure where he was supposed to be searching.
Earlier on, he'd had a look at some of the bodies at the morgue – the ones which hadn't started the process of decay that is – and he could see the same old patterns. Bite marks on the neck, loss of colour to suggest a substantial amount of blood-loss... He'd seen the signs before.
Now, after acquiring directions, he decided to make a stop at the Salvatore Boarding House, if not to ask interrogative questions (with his eyes averted), then to make a kill of some kind. He was fully prepared for that scenario, and just to give himself extra confidence, he patted the stake in the back of his trouser pocket for extra measure.
The Boarding House was quaint in appearance, something you clearly only saw in pictures of historic properties, perhaps in an old TV show or movie, never in real life. He parked the Impala and slowly made his way up along the drive, eyeing the building with a mixture of wariness and admiration.
He'd never admit it to Sam, but old buildings kind of fascinated him, you know, when he wasn't busting into them in order to track down and kill some supernatural son of a bitch. Maybe it was something he inherited from his dad, but there was something about the old and antique he could almost relate to.
Maybe this particular train of logic was sparked from his contemplative thoughts about his upcoming death sentence. Maybe he was just feeling nostalgic for home, a property he would always hold close to his own heart, although he knew going back there just the one time had certainly shaken him to the core enough that he knew he could never revisit it.
Dean shook his head, rattled by his own train of thought.
Quickening his pace, he realised why he felt so on edge – Sam wasn't here to get his back, and the reasoning behind that was that Sam was also pursuing a solo case, somewhere that wasn't reachable within a car within the space of a few hours or so. They were taking a break, as it were, from each other to gain a sense of perspective, plus Dean had pointed out earlier, to a frustrated Sam, that his brother was going to end up hunting alone anyway, so they might as well get used to working cases alone.
The thought broke his heart a little, but he kept himself anchored to the present moment, determined not to let his emotions pull him under.
There was a crashing noise which came within the house which immediately caused him to stiffen.
Unable to resist the urge to just battle evil in whatever shape or form it came in, he barrelled through the front doors, his stake at the ready, but nothing could've prepared him for what he would see.
As he ran down the corridor, he stormed into the lounge, discovering upon entrance that he wasn't quite sure which was the bigger threat here.
A greyish wolf with bitter eyes – was that even possible? Could wolves even express that emotion? - snarled at a tense and angry looking Damon, who seemed to be accompanied by a young woman with spiky brown hair, who looked absolutely terrified.
Dean froze, instinctively glad he'd brought a gun in case his intended victim had tried to attack. The gun wouldn't have helped in any case, but his and Sam's general rule was that if they couldn't shoot to kill, then shooting to stun (and possibly disarm) was the next best course of action they could've taken.
"What are you doing here?" Damon snarled from the corner of his mouth, still frozen, his eyes on the wolf who seemed to circle them.
Dean then realised it was a werewolf they were dealing with, because no wolf behaved in that way, like it knew exactly what it was doing. He squared his shoulders, raised the gun, and fired just as the wolf pounced to attack.
His bullet connected with the shoulder of the wolf, who howled in pain, but chose to continue its path and sunk its teeth into the shoulder of the woman, who gave a sharp cry of agony before falling.
Dean released a stream of bullets at the wolf, who gave him an angry glare, before running off with an indignant growl. He cursed and made to run after it, but Damon stopped him with an arm movement.
"Don't," he ordered, sounding bitter. "The bitch is down. There's nothing more any of us can do."
He turned to tend to his companion, which threw Dean completely.
He'd done his research before coming here, just to make sure he was pursuing the right suspect. Records indicated Damon and his brother Stefan were born in the 1800s, and he'd found an old newsreel clip which showed one of the brothers standing in the background, looking barely a day over seventeen despite the fact it was the 1950s, and realistically he should've been dead.
Sam had also dug up the interesting fact that the string of animal killings, as the media told it, had started when the Salvatores had first moved back into town, a coincidence Dean couldn't ignore.
"You're a vampire," Dean stated flatly, circling the pair, eyeing the deep wound on the woman's shoulders with a look of disgust. "Looks bad."
"Yeah, well, it feels worse," the woman spat, before eyeing the stake in his hand with an almost curious blend of fear and defiance.
"You really want to use that? Really?" Damon eyed the stake cockily. "I don't mean to be ungrateful – though of course, you are here to kill me, so lack of gratitude could be excused here – but I think you should consider leaving here while your heart remains in your chest."
"You want to play this game? Seriously?" Dean smiled. "You did something to me earlier. I want to know what you did."
"It's called compulsion." Damon gave him a cocky smile to rival his own. "It's a nifty little thing we vampires possess."
"Not all of you possess it. None of the ones I've come across had that gift," Dean retorted.
"Huh." Damon considered that for a moment. "That I can't explain, but I assure you after the day I've had, I am not above ripping your head off and mounting it on my wall."
"Damon -" his companion tried to soothe him, but he shook her off impatiently.
"Not now, Rose. This idiot could expose us. It would be a crime not to kill him. Though," he added with a grimace, "I suppose I should thank you for helping get rid of that bitch. You take werewolves down often then, I suppose?"
"Often enough," Dean responded, never lowering his stake – or guard, for that matter – for a moment. "You know the werewolf then?"
"Oh, I pissed her off earlier on a full moon and she declared me marked," Damon replied, for the first time looking uneasy, his gaze almost sorrowful as he watched his companion – Rose – examine her shoulder. "That was meant to be me, you know."
"It doesn't look too bad," Rose commented fairly, her brow furrowed.
"A werewolf bite is fatal to a vampire," Damon commented to Dean, who looked nonplussed.
"How many vampires are in this town?" he wondered.
"Enough for you to know you're outnumbered," Damon warned. "And too few for you to really be worried about."
"We don't hurt people," Rose piped up. "Some of us stick to the blood bags."
"Stefan sticks to the bunny diet," Damon added, rolling his eyes. "I'm sure one of these days, the bunnies will rise up and overtake him, but my warnings to my dear brother about this matter are always ignored, so why bother?"
Dean looked uncertain.
He knew Sam's stance on these matters – they never killed the innocent, even if the innocent were monsters driven by an insatiable thirst forced upon them by their 'creator', so to speak. Sam always did have that naïve streak in him, that cute but unrealistic ability to see the good in everyone.
Dean, however, knew his approach was just to kill anything supernatural, just because if it exceeded normal expectations of what nature provided, it was usually going to end up being something which brought more harm than good to the world, therefore needed to be exterminated.
"I hunt what I need to hunt," he said flatly. "What you are ain't natural."
"You're not the first to hunt my kind," Damon responded. "And you won't be the last. But consider this – there are some sick, twisted humans in this world, some worse than any monsters you'll ever come across. Going by your logic, would you sneak up on them when they were immersed in some mundane activity and put a bullet in their head?"
"Well, I - "
"Vampire I may be, but how closely I choose to adhere to that term depends entirely on my mood, which right now is set to pissed off," Damon continued, glaring at Dean. "I've snapped the necks of better men than you, and I do not give a damn if all the hunters in the world came to strike me down. I won't go down without fighting, I'll tell you know."
Dean had to respect that. It was the very motto he lived by, the very reason he was even here. Though he didn't like in any way being under the compulsion of anyone – least of all a vampire cretin with about as much of a moral compass as a demon did – he did have to respect that to an extent, Damon was right. Humans were sometimes the worst monsters of them all – history was certainly an indicator of how cruel and monstrous some humans could really be – but nevertheless, while the majority remained innocent, he had to put aside that notion and do what his father would've done.
"I'm sorry," he said flatly. "I agree, to an extent, about what you're saying, but I'm taking down all the monsters I can, and unfortunately you fit the bill, so - "
He advanced on Damon with the stake, who, anticipating the move, twisted his arm and knocked him down, glaring at him.
"You can thank Elena I'm not breaking your neck and leaving your body hanging for me and my brother to play piñata with," he muttered. "As such, what I'm about to do is considerably less fun, and definitely a sign I'm going soft, but what the hell?"
Dean instinctively closed his eyes, anticipating Damon's move, but something compelled him to open them again, and that was when Damon's gaze locked onto his, and he knew he was stuck.
"You will leave Mystic Falls at once," Damon instructed calmly. "You will forget the name of this town, forget my name. If you have a partner, as I'm sure you have – who would be stupid enough to come here without backup at the very least? - you will tell him your hunches were wrong, that there's no danger here. You will move on and hunt whatever it is you hunt elsewhere. Don't come back here."
Dean blinked, and then gazed in confusion at his surroundings.
"Sorry. I must've been – How did I get here?" he asked, cocking his head to one side.
"You stumbled in by mistake," Damon said, giving him an award winning smile. "It happens. Now please get out."
"Yeah. Sorry 'bout that," Dean muttered, scratching his head as he made for the door. "I think I need more sleep."
And without casting so much as a glance back, he exited the house promptly, still looking completely confused.
"You know," Damon mused thoughtfully, glancing at a somewhat perturbed looking Rose. "If he wasn't such a monumental ass intent on killing me, I think we could've gotten on quite nice. He had a certain...je ne sais quoi I enjoyed."
"I think that's because he was a sarcastic ass too," Rose mumbled, giving him a playful, unabashed grin.
Damon shot her an evil look, but wondered if maybe there was an element of truth in that theory.
He never thought he'd come across the day when he stumbled across a better looking Alaric, but it had arrived – admittedly on the worst possible day, but he found the experience quite exhilarating.
He really was going to have to start preventing himself from pissing people off to the point where they actually attempted murder under his own roof.
He wished he could say it was a one time thing, but looking back at his record, it was a habit more than anything else.
Some people just didn't appreciate his charm.
Their loss.
….
"So there wasn't a case after all?" Sam sounded just too delighted by that fact. "You were wrong?"
"Could you dial down the joy, Sam? It makes you come across as a dick."
"Well, you're never wrong about a case. I'm just enjoying this moment before it disappears. Don't tell me you wouldn't be doing the same thing if it were the other way round?"
Dean opened his mouth to say something, but his witty response died immediately.
"Shut up, Sam. No one likes a smart-ass."
….
A/n: This is a one-shot for my friend Jemma who requested this crossover fic. :) I hope you like it hon! I really enjoyed writing this. Oh, and please ignore the fact that the woman who plays Rose in TVD also plays Bela in SPN. Just pretend they are played by different people ;)