This story is set during Season 3, some time after Jus In Bello. This is a younger sibling fic. I know its been done before, but it looks like fun so I thought I would give it a try too.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, nor do I want to. That is too much responsibility.
Rain pounded heavily on the roof of the modest Pennsylvania farmhouse for the second day in a row. Bloated grey clouds hovered low in the sky with no intention of dissipating. Twelve-year old Tanner Finnigan hated being couped up indoors and longed for the rain to cease so he could cruise around on his ATV. He intended to blast around all 15 soggy acres of farmland until he was an unrecognizable, muddy mess. Tanner glanced at the clock and groaned. His mother would not be home with dinner for another two hours and he was bored out of his mind. He flipped off the video game with a sigh and padded through the house, searching for his sister. He figured he would join her in what ever activity she was up to or goad the fifteen-year old into a fight. The choice was Annie's, but either was sure to be an entertaining way for him to pass some time. The sound of creaking boards drew his attention towards the ceiling. He followed his ears to the hallway and was intrigued to see that the ladder-door to the attic was pulled down. Tanner climbed up the stairs and poked his head through the opening. Peering past old furniture and boxes of Christmas ornaments and long-forgotten toys, Tanner could see Annie sitting in the far corner of the attic, surrounded by a pile of shoeboxes. He climbed the rest of the way up and made his way carefully past all the junk and sat down next to her.
"Whatcha doin?"
Annie looked up and smiled. "Check it out, I found a huge stash of old photographs. From when we were little kids and babies. Even a bunch from when mom was younger. There's enough material here for I don't even know how many scrapbooks!"
Tanner rolled his eyes. Annie had gotten hardcore about scrapbooking over the past year, filling her room with all kinds of girly arts and crafts crap and snapping a million pictures at every opportunity. Still, he was actually interested in going through some of the photgraphs. They had been packed away up here and forgotten since the move 5 years ago, when their mother had inherited the family farm.
"Can I help you sort through them?" Tanner asked.
"Sure," Annie beamed, it was rare that either of her family members joined in her passion for preserving memories. "Start with this box, I think its mostly baby and toddler pictures of us. Mom never made any baby books, so if you sort them out I can make one for you and one for me."
The old, blue shoebox she indicated had lost its shape over the years and was stuffed to over capacity with photographs. Tanner began pulling them out one by one. The next hour or so was passed in amiable silence, broken occasionally when a picture would spark some reminiscing about various relatives and ill-conceived hairstyles. Tanner had emptied out his shoebox and was about to toss it to the side when he noticed a photograph, face-down and sticking out from under a cardboard flap at the bottom. He pulled it free and flipped it over.
"Hey, who are these people?" Tanner asked, handing the picture over.
Annie took the picture, looked at the image and felt her stomach dropped and the blood drain from her face. It was a picture of a man smiling tenderly at a baby cradled in his arms. He was a large-ish, rugged looking guy with dark hair that was begining to grey at the temples. Tanner was startled by his sister's strong reaction to the photo and scooted closer so he could look at it again over her shoulder.
"Who are they?" He repeated.
Annie took a second to form the words and finally answered. "Its our dad, Tan. Thats me he's holding."
Tanner exhaled sharply and took the picture back to study it closely. The resemblence was undeniable. Both siblings shared his dark hair color. Tanner's was an unruly mop in need of a cut, while Annie's curls ended neatly at her shoulders. Tanner could also see that the way Annie's eyes crinkled when she smiled look just like the man's in the picture.
"This is our dad?" He breathed in disbelief, "I thought mom got rid of all these."
"I guess she must have missed this one." Annie replied, wincing at the memory Tanner's words brought bubbling to the surface.
She had been five years old that weekend their mom's sisters had flown in for a visit. One night, after polishing off a box of wine, Aunties Claire and Shannon decided that they'd had enough of Linda Finnigan's heartache and convinced her to purge the house of all traces of her baby-daddy. There had been pathetically little to even bother with, but every photo and trinket that held his memory was gathered and ceremoniously burned in the backyard. Linda had woken up the next morning with a pounding headache and a load of guilt. Annie was heartbroken when her mother confessed what she and her sisters had done and Tanner had grown up never knowing what his father even looked like.
"Annie," Tanner began hesistantly, still staring at the photo.
"Yeah, Tanner?"
"Why- I mean, the way he's smiling at you, it looks..." Tanner struggled to get his thought out coherently, "It looks like he really, you know, loves you. So why-"
He faltered again and brought his eyes up to meet his sister's. "Why'd he leave?" He finished softly.
Annie gently took the picture back and pondered Tanner's question seriously. She knew that her parents had barely known each other and that Annie was basically the result of a one night stand. Their father rarely came around after she was born, but had apparently stayed long enough at one point to impregnate her mother for a second time. Annie had only one real memory of him and it was of the day he left for good. Barely three years old at the time, she had been drawn out of bed by the sounds of arguing. She crept into the hallway and watched the commotion, unnoticed by either adult standing in the small kitchen of their old house. Her mother was hugely pregnant and in a heated discussion with her father. The actual words had long since faded away, but Annie could clearly remember her mother's angry shouts followed by her father's low and serious replies. Eventually came the terrible sounds of heavy boots walking away, the front door slamming, the deep rumbled of a car driving off and finally, her mother crying. Annie had known in that moment, with absolute certainty, that her father would never be coming back.
Tanner shifted restlessly, drawing Annie back to the present and the question at hand. Tanner watched her closely, his expression cautious and hopeful. Their mother discouraged any discussion about their dad and was always quick to change the subject on the rare occasion that he was brought up. Tanner was concerned that his sister might react to his question in a similar manner, but she did not.
"I'm not really sure." Annie admitted slowly, "I was so little when it happened. All I really know are the few things mom has said about him and some stuff that I picked up from eavesdropping on Auntie Claire and Shannon."
"Like what?" Tanner asked, eager to know anything about his dad, even the smallest morsel of information.
"Well, I know mom met him back when she first started her job at the morgue. He said he was investigating some strange deaths for the FBI. But it turned out he was actually unemployed and just impersonating an FBI agent for some reason. I think he was, like, a degenerate gambler or something. Mom was worried because he got a lot of his money illegally and was involved with dangerous people somehow. I guess she was afraid that some of that dangerous stuff would follow him back to our family and we would get hurt. The aunts think he is unstable."
"Whoa." Tanner absorbed this information and thought it over carefully.
"What if-" Tanner started, but broke off. A theory was forming rapidly in his mind and he had to wait for it to complete before he could continue vocalizing his thought.
"Well, maybe - I mean, its been 12 years right? So a lot of people with gambling addictions go to therapy and get better. Maybe he's not even like that anymore, but he's ashamed because he abandoned us and was gone for so long and he thinks that we hate him and don't even want him to come back. Maybe he's got his act together now and just waiting for us to reach out to him!"
"Or, maybe," Tanner continued, "he was never even like that to begin with. Why would a degenerate gambler pretend to be an FBI agent and investigate murders anyway? It doesn't make any sense. Maybe he really was undercover for the FBI and mom discovered his true identity and he had to go even deeper undercover and couldn't contact us for our own safety."
"Maybe." Annie conceded doubtfully, uneasy with how quickly he was latching onto such hopes. Even more uneasy with how closely they resembled hopes she herself had endulged in from time to time.
Tanner carried on this way for some time, while his sister listened patiently and eventually began chiming in with theories of her own. Before long they were both giggling as their stories became more and more elaborate and implausible, neither of them aware that the truth about their father was more frightening and ubelievable than anything they could ever imagine.
"Hey Annie, you ever tried to google him?"
Annie contemplated his question, her mind in a turmoil over the possibility. Of course, she had thought about searching for him, but her father was such a taboo subject that she had never seriously entertained the idea. This conversation with Tanner was the longest she had ever spoken aloud to anyone about her dad and the discovery of the picture had unlocked a longing for her father that had been long since tucked away and ignored. Now, the prospect of gathering more and new information, maybe even finding a way to contact him, was growing too tempting to ignore.
As Tanner waited for an answer, a terrible thought occurred.
"I don't even know his name! Do you?"
"Yes I do." Annie answered and her face broked into a wide, mischevious smile. "Its John Winchester."
With that, Tanner knew his sister was on board his train of thought and he grinned back triumphantly. Both kids leapt to their feet and thundered down the attic stairs, the old photos temporarily forgotten and left behind in neat piles on the dusty floor. They raced each other to the computer room, intent on learning as much as possible before their mother got home.
I have a few more chapters written and its taken me forever. Mad props to all of you who update your stories weekly, I don't know how you do it. Please review if you feel so inclined.