Disclaimer: Well, working full time means my wallet aint exactly bare, but I still have no say in what you see those lovely boys doing on your TV. Supernatural's not mine, nor are the characters. This story, whilst based on what we know from the show, is mine.
A/N - So, believe it or not, Kij has been doing something; I even have proof, unlike that alien vis-… not the time, sorry. It seems I have a penchant for picking themes that are not exactly run of the mill so I hope you brave these waters and come out, if not a wild, kidnap-the-author-and-force-her-to-live-out-your-fantasies fan at least a little bit cleaner. And if you do come out the former, well, eep. Now, just before I quit this rambling a huge thankyou to captain obvious, otherwise known as InSecret, obviously, for being magic as usual. Enjoy!
The credits rolled onto the screen and the young man lifted the remote to turn off the television, leaving himself with only moonlight by which to make it back to his room. But this house had been home his whole life, and he knew his way, moving confidently around the room.
He had just reached the foot of the stairs when he heard the sound of glass splintering above, and was already flipping his father's gun cabinet open when his sister's screams travelled down to him. He grabbed the rifle his father kept loaded and loped up the stairs, swinging around the corner with the gun already raised.
He hesitated for a second in the doorway of his sister's bedroom, frightened of the dark-clothed, hulking figure he could see leaning over the bed. But he moved quickly when Selene called out.
'Gordon! Help me!'
The intruder looked towards the door, revealing a broad, bearded face, as he was momentarily distracted. Gordon took the opportunity, aimed and fired with the skill of someone who had been trained to shoot since he was old enough to be suspicious of strangers. But he was forced to recoil quickly, stunned. The man barely reacted to the shot. In fact, he didn't even seem aware of it, despite the fact that blood dripped from the small, perfect hole above his left eyebrow. He grinned at Gordon with teeth that were too long and sharp to be human.
'That was stupid, kiddo,' he growled, before advancing swiftly and throwing Gordon against the wall with an ease that made it look more like he was handling a toy than a human. The monster ignored the wheeze that burst from Gordon's stunned body and turned back to the girl who was huddled on the bed, eyes wide and frightened.
'You'd fight like a wildcat, wouldn't you?' he crooned. 'I like that in a girl.' He pinned her down with one hand pressed against her too-fast heartbeat, ignoring her struggles. 'You might be worth keeping around after all…'
Gordon came round to the sound of his little sister's terrified cries. His vision shimmered hazily and he could taste the sharp tang of blood in the air. He tried to scramble to his feet, but could only manage to blink blearily.
By then, Selene was gone.
He sank back into the haze.
…
The voices came from a distance. He wasn't sure if the faces were only in his mind, or really there, in front of him…
'Jesus, Gordon! What happened? What the hell happened!'
'She's gone… and the blood… oh God oh God… I think he's dead!'
'Relax honey, he's just stunned…' A cool hand pressed again Gordon's cheek and he turned his head a little. 'Dial 911 honey, stay nice and calm, tell them what happened… I'll look after our boy.' Gordon muttered something and the hand withdrew from his face.
His father was moving around the room. Gordon felt like he was floating in time until the older man returned and knelt down, his breath warming the air between them until the boy felt a cool bottle pressed against his lips. He tilted his head back obligingly and the whiskey set a fire in his belly. He coughed hard and came back to himself…
'That'll make you feel better, son.' His father was looking at him with piercing dark eyes and Gordon tried to focus his attention. 'I know it's hard, son, but do you remember what happened?' A tightly controlled tremor in his voice was all that told Gordon his father was as panicked as he was.
Gordon started to tremble as the memories of earlier that night assaulted him. His head was shaking back and forth, but from fear, not a lack of recollection.
'It's alright,' soothed his father. 'Let's go downstairs. You can do it.'
Gordon tried to struggle upright, but his muscles were still throbbing from being slammed into the wall, and he slumped back down, groaning in pain. His father bent down and picked him up without fuss, the older, larger man looking strangely noble with the lanky eighteen year old spilling out of his arms.
Gordon's father flinched at each moan that escaped Gordon, no matter how slowly he inched himself along the corridor or how carefully he lowered his bulk down the stairs.
'What did he say?' Gordon's mother looked up from the phone as her husband lowered their son onto the couch. Her eyes, normally full of laughter, had turned almost black with dread, her already diminutive figure appearing shrunken with worry.
'Still nothing, but –'
Gordon's father was cut off by his son's sudden interruption as Gordon pushed himself up off the cushions a little and sobbed, 'It wasn't human! A monster… it was a monster!'
His father rubbed a rough hand against Gordon's shoulders and murmured worriedly to his wife, 'I think you'd better call an ambulance. He's hurt real bad.'
…
'Why the hell won't you listen to me? I'm telling you, that guy wasn't a serial killer – it wasn't humaneven! There's some monster, a real monster out there, and you're not even listening! Whatever took my sister… it was Something Else.'
The trio standing outside the hospital room pretended they were unable to hear the yells that had been coming from Gordon's bed for the past few hours, speaking urgently to one another in low tones.
'Do you know how long he's going to be like this?'
'I'm sorry Mr. Walker, we really can't be sure.' The young doctor gave his clipboard a token glance before continuing to address Gordon's parents. 'The MRI doesn't show any signs of major trauma, so we can only conclude that whilst the roots of your son's, ah, delusion, are probably due to the mild concussion he received, his continued attachment to them is more psychological than anything else. You might want to consider talking to a psychiatrist. If you'd like I can send one of the hospital's specialists down?'
At the doctor's words, Gordon's parents drew together, taking comfort from each other in their grief. Mrs. Walker leaned into her husband who shook his head minutely at the doctor's suggestion.
'Do you… do you think it's okay if we take him home now?' he asked. 'Maybe he'll relax a little there…'
The doctor's smile was trained and shallow. 'Well, medically he's fine to go, so yes. But bring him back if you need to.' As he spoke, the man's eyes travelled to the sign that pointed to the psych ward, leaving no illusion as to what he was insinuating.
'Of course, sometimes grief like this can just work itself out.'
His attempt to be reassuring failed dismally.
…
Gordon's return home didn't have the effect his parents had hoped. He moved like a shadow throughout the house, doing nothing to restore the laughter and noise that had once filled their lives. His mother asked him every morning if he would tell them what had really happened, and his parents fought late into the night about it.
Eventually something had to give, and Gordon would remember the morning it did forever. Like a video, it played over and over in his head as he got older.
…
Breakfast in the Walker household had become a grim affair. Gordon hunched sulkily over his food at one end of the table while his father sat at the other end reading the paper. Mrs. Walker hovered between eating and cleaning the kitchen, a nervous habit she had picked up since her daughter's disappearance.
She turned from scrubbing the front of the stove to look at Gordon, paused to bite her lip, and then asked him the same question she had asked three times already that morning.
'Please Gordon. Honey, we just need to know.'
He looked up, his eyes red-rimmed. 'I keep telling you what happened, Mama,' he said desperately. 'I know it sounds crazy, but it's what I saw, it's what's happened!'
'Yeah, that's right honey.' His father's voice was laced with sarcasm and grief. He folded his newspaper flat so he could fix Gordon with an unobstructed hard stare. 'Don't you remember? It was a monster. A nasty vampire stole our little girl. That's what happened, right Gordon?'
'What do you want me to do?' Gordon demanded. 'I can only tell you what I saw happen. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm not lying!'
His father's face crumpled. 'I wish you wouldn't do this Gordon,' he said sadly. 'You can't keep hurting your mother, hurting me, like this. If you don't stop with this stupid story you can't stay here.' His voice broke a little but he repeated firmly, 'You just can't.'
'Where would you send me?' Gordon shot to his feet, his chair scraping backwards. 'You can't just kick me out!' A fearful thought flashed beneath this defiant mask. Can you?
'We could take you back to the hospital. There are people who can help you,' said his mother gently, reaching across the table in an attempt to pat his hand. The boy flinched back, realization dawning.
'You can't send me to the psych ward! What the hell is wrong with you? I'd run away first!'
'Well you just might have to!' roared his father. 'We don't know what else to do with you Gordon; you should be better now. I'm going to take you down there first thing in the morning.'
'Yeah, well, fuck you!' Gordon spat back, already running up the stairs to his room.
He pulled out an old bag and started to throw things in at random. How dare they try and send me away? He fumed, they're my parents – they should believe me! Who the hell would call their own son crazy and threaten to send him away? He steadfastly chose to continue ignoring the part of his mind that wondered if, just maybe, they were right. What if he was going crazy?
He knew he shouldn't believe his own story, wouldn't believe it if someone else had said it, but he desperately wanted his parents to play along, just like they had with Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. He wanted them to let him down slowly so that one day he realized he too simply didn't believe it anymore.
He wanted to be able to dismiss the memory, blame it on shock or trauma, but it was all just too real. He could still hear the awful sucking sound as the thing's teeth – fangs – retracted, and the echo of his sister's screams shattered his dreams every night. Then, of course, there was the gunshot. Nothing human, nothing living, should have survived that. The fucker should have been bleeding on the floor and instead it didn't flinch.
Gordon stopped and looked down at the football trophy in his hand. He couldn't let himself be taken to the psych ward, but there was no way he was going to lie to his parents just to keep them happy.
Gordon put the trophy back down, knowing what he had to do. It was time for him to leave home, but he was going to have to be smart about it. He was going to have to start thinking about survival. After all, who knew what was out there anymore.
…
Gordon resisted the urge to fill the house with light, knowing that he needed the dark to get away. He swallowed the sick feeling working its way up his throat and lowered his duffel bag to the floor beside his father's gun cabinet before easing the door open.
He hesitated for a moment over the rifle before picking up his father's old service pistol and sliding a box of ammo out of a drawer hidden in the back. He winced at the rattle of bullets as he returned his bag to his shoulder, but there was no sudden rush of noise above him, no sign that his parents knew what he was doing. Gordon slipped to the front door before hissing quietly at the challenge of the lock. The big old door would give a noisy click when he turned it, almost guaranteed to wake his parents. He decided he didn't have a choice and flipped the lock quickly, not bothering to shut the door as he dashed for his car.
As Gordon pulled out of the driveway he saw that all the lights in the house were still off. His parents hadn't even woken. Something unformed twisted in his chest, something that hinted at abandoned children and parents who didn't care enough to wake up in time. While the house was still in view he drove slowly, still secretly hoping that he would see them come running out of the house, banging on the window until he rolled it down, let them convince him to stay with a promise that it would all be okay in the end. With anything really.
…
Mrs. Walker's death certificate said she died of heart failure. Anyone who had seen her final days would have said she died from the overwhelming grief of losing both her children.
Three days after his wife's death, Mr. Walker blew his brains out with the same shotgun that had failed to save his daughter.
TBC.
A/N: This is the part where I say step out of the shadows, scratch my chin in a slow, mesmerising sort of way and say "The end? I don't think so." Then, out of nowhere (cos there's no jukebox in this scene), dark, melodious music starts playing, building up to a deafening dun dun dun! Basically what I'm trying to say is there's a lot left to come before we really get to see how Gordon became the evil son of a bitch we know and love, or at least love to hate.