Chapter Seven

Dean was no stranger to being blindsided by unexpected information; he was a professional Hunter after all, and anyway he'd had plenty of it throughout his life just through existing as a human being:

- "The thing is, tiger, Mommy's gonna have a baby. You're gonna be a big brother!"

- "Oh, no, honey, Sammy's too little to eat pie, so don't put any in his bottle again, okay?"

- "Santa Claus isn't real, it's just your parents. Like the Easter Bunny."

- "So, the man and the lady, they do this thing where he pees at her, and then she gets pregnant."

- "What? What? Where the hell has this come from? Can't you go and ask your mothe- uh, okay, come and sit here with your old man, now, you know how boys and girls look different, yeah, and Mommy and Daddy look different from each other, Daddy grows a beard, and Mommy has, er, you know, the grown-up word is, uh, it's 'breasts', you know, how she fed Sammy when he was just a little baby, well, boys and girls are different in other ways, too..."

- "My parents are away for the weekend; hey, have you ever been skinny-dipping?"

- "Oh – My – GOD – you didn't just make the cut, you made Captain of the Cheerleading Squad! That's like, totally amazing!"

- "Uh, yeah, it's me, bro, could you, uh, look, don't tell Mom or Dad, okay, could you just, could you come and bail me out?"

- "Werebeaver? You're a werebeaver? There's such thing as a werebeaver? Whoa, Arjan, I thought your teeth were just, you know, because there weren't many orthodontists in Albania where you grew up."

Yep, as far as 'unexpected information' went, being informed that he and his brother had somehow wound up in an alternative reality might not overtake Where Babies Come From, but it was past There Are Such Things As Werebeavers But They Don't All Have Teeth Like That They're Just Arjan; it was about on par with Sam Tried Pot.

"But that's..." Dean sat silently for a few moments, stunned by the idea.

"Right now, it's the theory that best fits the available data," Sam stated grimly.

"But... how?" Dean wondered.

"I don't know," Sam told him. "But we'd better figure it out. Because whatever has caused it, we are, as of this moment, off the grid, out of the loop, completely broke, and on our own."

"Fuck," breathed Dean, "That's... fuck."

"Yeah," agreed Sam. "That is indeed 'fuck'."

"But... we're Hunters," Dean went on, "The stuff in the car, I've got my tattoo, so do you, we're tooled up for work, Sam, we're still Hunters..."

"Maybe – but we're not professionals," Sam noted. "Wherever we are, in this reality – we might be Hunters; but it's not a profession. It's not paid work. It's... I can't find anything. Except for some stuff on the wackier part of the internet. Unless..." he paused, looking uncomfortable, "Unless we are the wackier part of the internet, like, if we're a couple of conspiracy theorist nuts who've dropped off the grid so the government can't read our brainwaves, or something – oh, God, we've got this arsenal in the trunk, what if we're a couple of nutjob anti-establishment weirdos, planning the next atrocity in a public place..."

"No," Dean said firmly, "Don't overthink this, Sam – we're not conspiracy nuts. Or, at least, we are not conspiracy nuts, and we will not behave like conspiracy nuts. We're Hunters. We find a job, we do research, we confirm our target, we make absolutely sure that we know what we're dealing with, and we take down monsters that are hurting people. Right now, we may not be professionals, but it's what we do, and that's what we are, until evidence to the contrary comes to light. Saving people, Hunting things, the family profession." He looked thoughtful. "Do you remember Grandpa Samuel's stories, about his dad?" he said eventually, "About how Great-Grandpa Campbell Hunted, and started training him up? Before Hunters really got organised? Before anybody had even thought about FOOCER?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "It would be difficult not to," he observed, "Since he told the same stories over, and over, and over, every visit, every sleep-over, every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, it was like listening to a broken record. He never shut up about it, 'You kids don't know how easy you have it these days, when my father Hunted, he had to do it all himself, living on the road, on his wits, with no back-up from anybody except his dog and his Hunt buddy, and that's how my training started, and I had to wear short pants and sleep in the snow and eat nothing but dirt and back in those days the vampires were twenty feet tall and the werewolves could fly and wendigos shot death rays out of their eyes', and God forbid anybody should ever call him on any of his bullshit..."

Dean sighed; from when he was a small boy, he had enjoyed spending time with his maternal grandfather – one of his favourite memories was sitting on Grandpa Samuel's knee, learning to pack salt rounds while listening to his stories. Sam had not been such a fan; as a small child, he had preferred to spend time with Papa Winchester, who indulged the boy's curiosity about his occult book collection from a very young age. Samuel Campbell had been a great believer in the philosophy that children should be seen and not heard, and above all, they should take instruction and direction from their parents. He had frowned at the liberal parenting style of his daughter; he had loved both his grandsons but had not coped well with the budding intellectual who had been named after him, especially when that budding intellectual had started quizzing him on his assertions while in elementary school. (It had made for some interesting family gatherings, such as the Thanksgiving dinner where, as Samuel was once more holding forth on how knowledge of Hunting had been passed down through his family, parents to children, eleven-year-old Sam had put down his fork and said "So, what you're telling us is, nobody in the Campbell family has learned anything new for about a hundred years...")

Dean broke into the tirade. "Yeah, well, what if, what if this place, where we are, is like that? What if Hunters never, you know, got organised? Got professional?"

Sam stared at him for a moment. "Uh, okay," he turned back to his laptop. "So, for now, let's run with the idea that Hunters exist, and a need for Hunters exists, but they are, uh, off the grid. Unofficial. So, how are they, how are we, supposed to, well, do anything? Like eat? Find a place to sleep? Do laundry? Just, you know, live?"

There was a moment of silence. "Well," Dean began slowly, "We need to take an inventory of what we've got, and figure out our plan for immediate survival: we need shelter, food..."

"We need electricity," added Sam. "And wifi. Those are essential."

"Yeah, okay, so, first we take stock of our resources, and figure out those how to live things, so we have time to figure what's happened."

"Dean, we don't have any resources!" Sam almost yelped, "We are one hundred per cent destitute!"

"Well, yeah, right now, yeah," Dean nodded as he spoke, "We don't have any financial resources, but we got my Baby, and we got all the stuff in her, and we got our brains, Sam, we got stuff we know, and, and, I think I might have a very small piece of good news." He held up the collection of key-like items he'd found earlier. "I think I know what these are. And I think they can help us."

He told his brother what he was thinking.

"No," Sam snapped, "Absolutely not."

"We gotta be practical here, Sam."

"I said, no! What if we get caught? What if we get arrested? How do we tell the cops 'Don't mind us and the imperial shit-ton of weaponry we have in the trunk of the car, we're not planning to start a civil war, we're from an alternative reality where we're actually Feds'? We won't just get locked up, we'll get certified as nuts and locked up..."

"We won't get caught. We'll leave town."

"But you said the gas tank is empty!"

Dean came perilously close to infringing on his brother's Bitchface™ trademark. "Okay, let me ask you this: how long do you think you can go without a shower? That bottle of shampoo is almost empty – how long do you think you can go without shampoo? How long do you think you can function without electricity, Sam? Without internet? Without coffee?"

Sam's resistance crumbled. "Okay. But I want to go on the record as not approving of this."

"Duly noted. Now shut up and find the nearest bank out of this town."

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

They waited in the car until the sky began to darken, marvelling again at how Jimi the big-ass dog managed to curl himself up in the shotgun foot well. Sam stretched out across the back seat, surprised at how comfortable he felt there – in fact, he dozed off, and was awakened by Dean slapping his leg.

"Hey, wake up, Sleeping Beauty," Dean offered him one of the leftover purloined items of food, "Dinner is served."

"Right." Sam yawned and stretched, and took the proffered roll. "I had no idea I could sleep in your car."

"Yeah, you slept all right, if the snorin' was anything to judge by."

"How does he do that?" Sam asked, gesturing to Jimi, who was getting on with the business of napping. "How does a dog that size fit himself in there?"

"Same way a ginormous emo vegiesaurus curls up to sleep on the back seat," shrugged Dean, biting into his own dinner with a small noise of disappointment. "Second order of business will be a proper breakfast."

"Dean, I'm not sure I can do this..."

"Sure you can – just think about the shampoo. Think about the internet. Think about the coffee."

They waited for darkness, then headed for the trunk of the car to change quickly into dark clothes.

"It won't make any difference; there's street lights."

"Will you cut it out with the negativity?"

"Well I'm sorry if I can't rally a bit more enthusiasm for criminal behaviour, okay?"

"Look, I don't like it either, but right now it's our only option. Don't think of it as stealing; if we're Hunters, but we don't get officially paid, by an official organisation, officially, then we're still providing a public service, and this is getting paid by the public, unofficially."

"That there is one hundred percent Grandpa Samuel talking."

"That is one hundred percent practicality talking. And if the stuff is in the car is any indication, this isn't the first time 'we' have had to do this. So stop whining, Francis." Pulling his own beanie on, he handed the small cluster of key-things to Sam. "I think it's this one, or this one." He lifted a piece of hosing and a small gas can from the trunk. "Get the job done then get your ass back here, Baby and I will be waitin' and ready to go."

"Fine." Scowling, Sam straightened his shoulders, then headed for the street with the long line of parking meters.

Making Sam go without shampoo, coffee and wifi, I feel so mean. Maybe he'll feel less conflicted about pool or poker. Once he reconnects with the creature comforts of life, I'm sure a bit of petty graft will no longer discombobulate him so.

Unfortunately, I can't bring Dean's son RJ into this story - RJ didn't arrive until after Jimi Jr had gone to the Garden of Companions to Wait, and Lemmy and Lars had Chosen Dean and Sam, which happened shortly after Ronnie had Connor in the back of the Impala (events described in Brains, Brawn, Beauty, and Rumsfeld). It's kind of a shame, because the look on Dean's face when he was presented with a kid would be just hilarious.

Anyway, let's see how these FOOCERverse!Winchesters cope with having to make their own way in a world that doesn't know they exist (technically, in canon, aren't Dean and Sam officially dead as far as the wider world is concerned?) - feed John Edgar the plot bunny tasty reviews, because Reviews Are The Fat Juicy Parking Meters On The Street Of Life!