Hunter's Mystique
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or its Characters including Sam and Dean Winchester, Bobby Singer, Castiel, etc. They are the property of Eric Kripke and The CW.
Author's Note: Hello there. I feel like its been forever, but it has only been a little over a month. Anyway, this chapter is a pretty big deal. You will finally get the story of Charlie and John and it is pretty much the beginning of the end. Be happy, I got a sudden burst of inspiration last night and wrote out pretty much the whole chapter because I hadn't been really focused on it at all. I hope you like it. Tell me what you think with reviews because we all know by now that I'm a glutton for comments :) Enjoy...
Chapter Twenty One
Revelations
Charlie stared down at the book, unable to take her eyes off of the words that seemed to transform and translate right before her. She blinked and rubbed at her eyes, making sure that they weren't playing tricks on her. There's no way she should be able to read this ancient text.
"You're joking, right? This is just some bad joke that's wasting valuable research time." Dean said.
"No, no jokes." Charlie responded. "It's like the symbols make sense to me—as if they were in English."
All three men looked at her with similar bewildered expressions—heads quirked, eyes narrowed.
"Okay then, what does it say?" Sam asked.
"Well, I'm not entirely sure. The sentence structure is awkward and there are a lot of old school words that I'm not really familiar with."
"Well, try and figure it out." Sam urged.
Charlie finally looked up from the book to glare at Sam. "Dude, will you give me like ten seconds to wrap my head around this? If you think it's so damn easy why don't you read it yourself?"
Sam put his hands up in surrender and took a step back. He mumbled an apology. Dean tried to hide his grin, finding amusement in Charlie's anger being directed at someone other than him for a change.
Bobby quickly spoke up to change the subject. "I guess we now know why Castiel sent you two morons to get Charlie. The book must be pretty damn important in this upcoming rumble with Lucifer."
Dean furrowed his eyebrows and looked at Charlie in concern. He didn't want to think about her fighting against Lucifer—didn't want her putting herself in any more danger. He cringed at the idea.
"Castiel!" Dean barked so suddenly that Charlie nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Jeez, Dean!"
"Cas, get down here right now!" Dean continued to holler despite Charlie's protests to his shouts.
Castiel popped into the room a moment later, looking at Dean expectantly. Charlie almost thought he was going to say something sarcastic like "you rang?" but then she remembered that this was Cas and that he would never do that.
"What are you shouting about?" Castiel asked Dean in that deep, raspy monotone of his.
"Why can she read this?" Dean asked, picking up the book and thrusting it at Castiel.
Castiel took in the book in silence—a long, long moment of silence. He studied it and then he looked up and studied Charlie in the same way.
"You can read this?" Castiel asked Charlie.
Charlie nodded and for once she saw something other than a blank stare on Castiel's face. She saw confusion. And that scared her.
"You can't even read it, can you?" She deduced by the look on his face.
Cas looked back down at the book. "I know many dead languages and lost writings, but this one I have never encountered before."
"Yea, neither have I, but low and behold I can read it." Charlie said.
"Yes, very strange." Castiel responded.
"Wait, if you didn't know she would understand it, then why did you send Charlie to us? How did you know we would need her help?" Sam asked.
Castiel's gaze slid up to the ceiling. "I just relayed my higher orders back to you."
Charlie's eyes practically bugged out, but she let a grin lift the corners of her mouth. "No shit! I was chosen by the big guy?"
Castiel just gave a curt nod while Charlie let out a big laugh. "This is just…" She didn't know how to finish her thoughts. How is a person supposed to respond when they find out that they were chosen by God to help prevent the end of the world?
"So what now?" Dean interjected after he realized she wasn't going to finish her sentence.
"Charlie gets to work on reading that book." Castiel said. And then he was gone.
Charlie's head whipped around like she expected him to suddenly appear behind her. He didn't. But when she looked back at the table she saw that the book had been put on the table before Cas left.
Charlie sighed and dragged herself over the table. She plopped down in one of the chairs and flipped over the first page of the book, ready to get down to business. "I'm going to need junk food and a shit ton of caffeine so you guys can stop gawking at me and go get me some fuel," she told the three men who were watching her closely.
Days later and Charlie was just about ready to pull her hair out in frustration. She had made her way through the majority of the book, but there were still chunks of passages that she couldn't make heads or tails of. There was one passage in particular that was bothering her—it felt familiar and important but she just couldn't seem to crack it.
She let her head fall, smacking her forehead against the book pages and tried to ease the ache in her eyes. Reading so many words was making everything swim and she could feel the start of another headache coming on.
Bobby looked up from the seat next to her where he had been doing his own research. He laughed at her misery. "Oh stop your bellyaching. If you can read the thing it really shouldn't be taking you this long to find something useful."
Charlie's head shot up and she fixed him with a ragged glare. "I might be able to read the symbols, but we're still talking thousands of pages of ancient grammar and syntax here, including one symbol in particular that seems to have absolute no translation to English even though it looks eerily familiar to me. So why don't you stop being disruptive and make yourself useful by getting me coffee." Charlie snapped.
Bobby knew better than to do anything, but comply. Dean entered the room as Bobby scattered. Long days filled with longer hours where Charlie's head was constantly buried in a book had her on edge. Surprisingly Dean's presence was the only thing keeping her sane. He would just quietly sit beside her, keeping her company while researching other sources as opposed to Bobby and Sam who would nag her with questions and comments, or worse just sit and watch her read.
Dean took a moment to study Charlie. He could clearly see the bags under her eyes and the knots from where she ran her fingers through her hair. She looked like she had gone ten rounds with a vamped out Rocky Marciano. Dean cast a glance around the house and saw that they were relatively alone. He smiled. He walked over to Charlie and picked up her left hand in order to get her attention.
She looked up at him with a question in her eyes.
"Get up." He said softly.
"Huh?" She answered.
"Get up. Quick! They're gone. It's time to make an escape."
"No, I can't." She said, turning her attention back to the book and glaring at it.
"You have to. It's making you even crazier than usual."
Charlie was so frazzled that she didn't even react to his little jibe. "It's just so frustrating. I feel like I'm so close—like if I can just figure out this one word the entire translation will make sense."
Dean cupped her face in her hands and turned her head so that she would look at him again. "You need a break from it—rest your brain for a bit and when you come back you may have a clearer head for finding the answer." Dean's words made sense, but Charlie still didn't seem completely convinced. "Also if we escape now we can be truly alone together for the first time in days."
That idea immediately brought a smile to her face. She pushed up from her chair, grabbed Dean's hand and pulled him out of the house.
"I knew you wanted me bad." Dean said as he stumbled over his own feet as she yanked him harder.
"Where can we go?" She asked. She stopped and turned to face him, sliding her arms around his neck. She rose up on her tip-toes to put her lips a breath distance away from his ear. "Any ideas?" She whispered and then went about nibbling at Dean's ear in a way that made him groan with pleasure.
"The Impala is around the corner in the junkyard, out of sight." Dean answered. She didn't make any motion to walk to the car, just continued nipping and sucking at the sensitive spot behind his ear. He didn't want to waste any more time here. Gripping her thighs, he hoisted her up so that she wrapped her legs around his waist and carried her around the junk to the waiting Impala.
Charlie jumped off of him as Dean fumbled through his pockets for the keys. He finally found them and was in such a rush to put the key in the lock that he nearly scratched the paint on his baby. Charlie laughed at his enthusiasm and helped guide his hand. They finally got the door unlocked and opened and then climbed inside.
Dean felt like he was back in high school—fumbling hands, racing pulses, and desperate kisses. Though Dean couldn't remember any high school girl making him feel this excited…this invigorated. In fact, he couldn't remember any girl who made him feel this good. Ever.
Charlie arched her back suddenly, making Dean's body react instantly and happily. Dean broke from her lips for a moment. "I like the eagerness."
Charlie started laughing and raised her hips higher. "Don't flatter yourself tiger. I'm laying on Sam's empty Gatorade bottle." She shifted a few more times and then Dean heard the bottle finally clatter to the floor.
Charlie relaxed her hip back down to the seat so that she and Dean were no longer pelvis to pelvis. She still had a huge grin on her face from Dean's presumption. He couldn't help but smile back. The exchange had disrupted the frenzied make-out session. Dean moved his hands to her face and caressed her cheek.
"It's nice to see you smile again." Dean whispered.
Charlie moved towards him slowly and gave him a leisurely kiss as her hands clung to his shirt.
"Thanks. I needed this."
"So your head is clearing?" Dean asked, pressing a light kiss to her forehead.
Charlie shook her head. "No, it's still fuzzy—just a different kind of fuzzy." She said, looking at him pointedly and slipping her hands under his shirt to feel up his stomach underneath and make sure he understood her meaning. "What about you?"
"I wouldn't say you make me feel fuzzy. More like sizzling or zinging."
"I like that." Charlie said as her hands continued to roam. "But I should get back soon. I'm almost there. Ya know 'Life's real failure is when you don't realize how close you were to success when you gave up.'"
Dean jerked back a bit when she said that. "Where did you hear that?"
"What?"
"That saying—that's so weird. My dad used to say that. I think he stole it from my mom. It never really sounded like him to me, but he's the only one I ever heard say that." Dean tilted his head to the side and stared at her.
Charlie inwardly flinched. She had forgotten the source of that saying. "You're right," she said, leaning closer to him. "That is weird." And she pulled him to her lips, picking up where they had left off. But Charlie's mind was elsewhere, running over John's words in her head and wondering why they had chosen that moment to pop into her head. Her thoughts took off from there until… "Oh my God! John!" She pushed Dean away and tried to climb around him to make it to the car door.
Dean sputtered in confusion at Charlie's sudden change. He grabbed her arm, trying to keep her in the car. "Umm, not John—gross. I'm Dean."
She looked at him for a moment, pressed a quick kiss to his lips, and said, "I know." And then she tore from his grip, bolted from the car, and went into the house. Dean took a moment to gather himself and then followed her in.
Charlie tore into the house and made a bee-line for Dean's duffle bag, ignoring Bobby and the steaming cup of coffee in his hand.
"Where have you been?" Bobby asked, taking in her disheveled appearance. Charlie didn't respond, but Dean's entrance to the room in a similar state of dishevelment gave Bobby an answer. "Oh, damn it. You two? Really?" He said, looking back and forth between the couple. Dean gaped at him, unsure of what to say while Charlie just continued to tear apart the bag.
"I need the journal—John's journal. Where is it?"
"What? Why do you need my dad's journal? How do you even know about it?" Dean fired off question after question, getting more frustrated and confused with each one.
Charlie just got more and more aggressive in her search.
"Charlie, you need to calm down." Bobby ordered.
"No Bobby, you don't understand. That final symbol—I've seen it before, but I couldn't place it until now. It's in John's journal—that's where I've seen it before." She told him. Bobby was surprised, but he let a hint of a smile creep onto his face. Dean was completely perplexed, wondering how on earth Charlie had gotten her hands on the journal long enough to read it.
"What's going on in here?" Sam asked from the doorway. He was carrying bags of takeout for dinner.
"Oh Sam! Good! Where's your dad's journal?"
"Uh…in my bag in the bedroom." Sam answered and Charlie fled to go get it.
Sam looked to Dean and Bobby for some kind of explanation, but neither were inclined to give him one. Charlie returned to the room, journal in hand and immediately found the page she was looking for.
"This is it, guys. This could completely clear up the confusion over that passage!" In her excitement, Charlie was barely aware of their presence, pretty much talking to herself. "Damn, I just wish John was still alive. He never did tell me where he found this symbol." Charlie moved over to the table where the Necronomicon lay open and set the journal down next to it. She sat in order to finish the translation, but Dean wasn't ready to let her. He moved quickly, snatching the journal from the table and glaring at Charlie.
She immediately stood back up. "What the hell are you doing? I need that!" She yelled in annoyance.
"No, you need to explain yourself first." Dean said sternly.
"We don't have time for this. Sam, tell him." She pleaded to who she believed would be the more reasonable brother.
"Actually…I'd like to know too." Sam replied.
"Know what?"
"What exactly was your relationship with our dad? How did you know him?" Dean asked.
"I've already told Sam this. I had met him while on hunt with my father." Charlie answered vaguely.
"That doesn't explain the journal. Our father wasn't exactly trusting. I mean, he barely let Bobby look at this. He would only let you see it if you were close to him." Sam said.
Charlie knew this was true.
A disturbing idea suddenly came to Dean. "Oh jeez, you and him were…ya know?" Dean couldn't voice his disgusting thought aloud.
Charlie knew exactly what he was referring to and she couldn't even believe he would think that. "We weren't what?" She challenged with a glare.
"Were you having an affair with him?" He sputtered out, phrasing it in the least offensive way possible. He was prepared to start gagging if she confirmed it.
"Of course not." She said firmly.
Dean let out a huge sigh of relief.
"Oh please don't let this be another Adam situation." Sam grumbled, rubbing his temple.
Dean shot Sam a look of complete alarm.
"Ew! No, I'm not your sister! That's disgusting." She focused her eyes on Dean. "Do you really think I would have let anything happen with us if I was related to you? Who do you think I am?" Charlie yelled, clearly offended.
Sam looked between Charlie and Dean. "Wait, something happened…I knew it!" Sam exclaimed. "You two have been acting so weird and civil late—."
Dean cut him off. "Sammy, not the time to get a clue." He said. "The more important detail is how you know what Sam meant about Adam—that he was our brother."
Charlie looked at Dean then, noticing the edge in his eyes. "Was?" Charlie asked softly, almost afraid for the answer.
Sam looked down at his hands sadly. "He died."
Charlie closed her eyes, looking truly pained by the news.
"I'm sorry." She whispered.
"What? You didn't already know? You seem to know everything." Dean spat.
Charlie could see he was pissed that she hadn't been honest with him.
"I don't know everything, but I did know your dad well."
"How?" Sam asked.
"He became my partner of sorts. On hunts. And then slowly, but surely he became one of my closest friends."
"No, that's not possible. We would have met you." Dean replied.
"He wanted to keep me separate. Didn't want me meeting you guys because he didn't want our hunting relationship to go past a convenient professional partnership."
"How did it even start?" Dean asked.
Charlie slowly lowered herself into the chair, preparing to launch into the long story. She looked at Bobby, who had been quietly watching the conversation from the corner of the room. He nodded at her, encouraging her to speak. "Sam, I was telling you the truth about the picture I showed you in the Impala. I drew that the night I met John. I was on a hunt with my dad. We were going after the same group of witches. There were five of them—he was even more outnumbered than we were, so in a move that I realized later was completely out of character for him we decided to work together. He was pretty desperate. After that hunt they kept in touch—our dads had a lot in common. They would call each other if one was in the area and the other needed help. I pretty much kept my distance from John, but when my dad died he was one of the few hunters that I felt I knew enough to call if I needed help. So one day I needed help and I called. We made a good team. So next time he needed help, he called. And it just became normal. We worked together more and more and we became friends. When I moved in with Quinn and Gavin, I started taking my college classes so I was hunting less, but that was okay because by then he wasn't as freaked about your safety, you could handle a hunt on your own. He'd still call for the occasional assist, but I suspect it was more to check up on me than anything else. And when Darren died, he understood my decision to quit when I told him I was going to fake my death—he actually convinced me that he should know where I ended up. Just in case I needed him—said he'd just waste valuable time looking for me anyway if I didn't tell him. He would call and check in on me once or twice a month. And then the calls stopped. And that's how I found out that he was killed." She finished her story quietly and waited for the boys to react.
She wasn't all that surprised that Dean was quick to anger. "So you're saying that all those times that he dumped me and Sam at some random high school and left us alone for weeks that he was picking you up in the next town over for the hunting adventures of Charlie and John? You're younger than I am!" He shouted.
"Yea, but hunting with me was different than hunting with you guys."
"How?"
"Because he didn't care about me! That was the entire point! He didn't care for me like he did for you and Sam. I wasn't his kid. I was just another hunter who was damn good at her job. He could hunt with me without constantly worrying about my safety the way he did when he hunted with you. And without any real guilt because my own dad had been hunting with me forever." She explained it the best way she knew how.
"But he told you things—personal things…like Adam." Sam said. "Things he never told us."
"Yea, but it didn't mean all that you're thinking it did. I was more like a sounding board than a confidant. He needed someone to talk to or he would have gone insane—." Charlie shrugged as a corner of her mouth lifted in a nostalgic smile. "Well, more so than he already was at least. He told me things because he could handle my disapproval, my judgment. He could tell me about Adam because he didn't care whether or not I would think badly of him for his indiscretions and I was cut off from the rest of his world, unable to tell any of his secrets to those people that mattered to him." She gestured at the two of them as if it weren't completely obvious who she was referring to. "He didn't want you guys to hate him. You have no idea how much he loved you—always talking about you. Or how guilty he felt about bringing you up in this life when that's the last thing your mom ever wanted for you. And how much he missed her. He loved Mary so much." Charlie looked at Dean when she said this. "He could tell me these things because I was neutral in the beginning—the info wouldn't affect me. It wouldn't hurt me like it might have hurt you two. And then after a while the talking thing just became a habit." Charlie finished.
Dean took a deep breath and looked to Bobby. "Did you know about this? About her and my dad?" He asked with a coldness to his voice that made Charlie shiver. Bobby looked to her and then back to Dean.
"Yea." He answered simply.
"And you didn't think to mention anything about this." It was more of a angry statement than an actual question.
"It wasn't my story to mention."
Dean shook his head, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room. He tossed the journal back on the table and left the room. Sam smiled slightly at Charlie. He was handling the entire situation a lot better than his big brother. He shrugged and went after Dean. Charlie took the journal and found her page. Bobby moved to sit by her as she did her work.
A few hours later, Charlie wandered outside to find Dean sitting on the front steps with a scotch in his hand. He didn't even let her get a word in before he stopped her.
"I don't want to talk about this anymore. I just need some time to process it all. Okay?"
Charlie nodded and took a step back, opening up the screen door again so she could re-enter the house. "I just need to give you one more tidbit to process." She told him. She practically glared a hole in the back of his head, willing him to at least turn and look at her. He didn't. She sighed. "I know how to kill Lucifer." And with that she went inside, the door banging shut behind her.