Chapter 28
A/N: The idea for the John meets Pastor Jim story came from nardasarmy over at spnflashback. This didn't make it to the Back to School Challenge Prompt list and I was very disappointed to see that and so I added it here.
John sat in front of the fireplace and drank the hot chocolate that Joyce was passing out. It was Christmas time and everyone was relaxing after a big Christmas Eve dinner. The kids were sitting on the floor listening to Giles tell a story about his early experiences as Buffy's Watcher. Needless to say the entire evening had been filled with such stories and laughter.
"How about you John? Do you have a story about your early years as a hunter?" Willow asked. She was hoping for a story similar to the one Sam had told them on the first day of school.
John thought back to his early years. It hadn't been easy and in his mind there were more things awful than funny about his education but there was one story he could tell. "Well, when Dean was almost six and Sammy was one and a half I met Pastor Jim and his wife Evie.
"We were in this little town in Arkansas and I was still learning about what goes bump in the night. It had only been a year since Mary had been murdered but I had learned enough to start hunting. I hadn't learned that salting and burning the human remains of a ghost would stop the ghost yet, but I had learned how to do an exorcism. There was a ghost killing teenaged boys in revenge for her rape and murder in this old house close to where we were staying. It had taken me weeks to figure it out, mostly because being a full time parent and working a full time job left me little time to do the research. Not to mention the fact that I was still learning 'how' to do research.
"I had a neighbor who was in the same boat I was, being a single parent that is, and we worked opposite shifts. I worked days and she worked nights, so we traded babysitting. Neither one of us could afford to pay anyone. She dropped the kids off one night and saw that I had a shopping list out on the table. Before I could grab it from her she picked it up and said "Well I have no idea why you would want holy water, but if you really need it the only place you can find it is over at Pastor Jim's. He's the minister over in the next town." Now this whole area is almost militant Southern Baptist. I had no idea of where I was going to get holy water for blessing the house. I was shocked that a Baptist minister would have holy water.
"So after I get off work that Friday I take the boys and plan a little road trip to see if this minister really had the holy water I needed. It turned out that he did and since I didn't know I could tell him why I needed the holy water, I admit I stole it. I needed a lot of the stuff for a job the size of a house and I came back every night for a week. I still feel sorry for the poor guy. Here he was filling up the bowl every day and overnight it would disappear. He knew that nothing evil could touch it but he couldn't figure out who was taking it. Every hunter he knew would just ask for some because they knew he kept a store of it in the basement of the church.
"So he figures it must be some kids playing around and he sets up surveillance on the bowl of holy water." Kit, Carlos and Dawn start giggling, imagining a soft southern minister hiding in the shadows of the church watching a bowl full of water. John nodded at the kids. "Yeah, it was pretty silly. But he was really worried about what these supposed kids were doing with his holy water. So you can imagine his surprise when he sees me sneaking into the church with Dean and Sammy holding onto my legs because I'm trying to empty the holy water into an empty Sprite bottle and not spill any."
It was the mention of the Sprite bottle that did it. The play on words was too much for the guys and they joined the kids in laughing their backsides off. John just smiled and shrugged, it had worked as a jug and he hadn't been one to knock what had worked whether it was something to carry holy water in or the fact that ghosts were repelled by salt. "Well he sees this scruffy guy with two little boys hanging onto his legs stealing his holy water and doesn't know what to think. So he comes up behind me, and like I'd said I'd only been at this for a year now and I really wasn't good at the job yet, and when I put the bowl down and put the cap on the bottle I turn around and there he is. He's just standing there with his hands in his pockets looking at me, then the boys and then up at me again and asks, "Couldn't you have set a better example and just asked for the holy water?" I felt about two inches tall standing there. Dean is the one who saved the day. He told Pastor Jim that I didn't want to steal the holy water but I needed it to stop a ghost from killing some grown up boys and he wouldn't have given us the holy water for that because regular people don't believe in ghosts and we didn't want to lie to someone who worked for God.
"He straightened up, took the jug from me and ushered all three of us down to the basement. When we got down there he pulled out two gallon jugs of holy water and asked if that would be enough or did I need more for the job? To say the least I was shocked. He then explained to me that he supplied the Hunters who came through with anything that he could, including holy water. Then he added that we were coming over to his house which was next door to the church and having a home cooked meal because his wife would have his hide if he let us leave without letting her feed us.
"By the time we got done with dinner they'd not only figured out I was a rookie but that I was a driven rookie and wouldn't be dissuaded. So Evie took the boys and settled them down for a story and a nap and Pastor Jim started to quiz me on the job. Lord, I was so green you could have called me Kermit."
"The only good frog," Willow declared and the others shushed her.
"Pastor Jim was the one who explained to me that I didn't need to exorcise the whole house, what I needed to do was find the body of that poor girl; dig her up and salt and burn her body to ashes. That would purify and break the connection to this world that the ghost needed to do damage here. He went with me that night and showed me how to do the job properly. He also taught me an exorcism for buildings that didn't need holy water. The one I was trying to do was for living people possessed by demons. The three of us have been part of his special flock ever since." John concluded with a smile.
"He sounds like a special friend," Tara said.
"That he is, Tara but he never has stopped teasing me about stealing that holy water." That got another laugh from the group and Dean turned to Faith who had just walked in after finishing her patrol.
"Are you ok?" he demanded after seeing the shreds her clothes were in.
"Yeah, I'm fine, just real wore out and more than a little freaked. Wes, Jeeves, we got us a different type of vamp out there now. Stakes don't do any good, neither did holy water. I could barely keep him off and I finally had to take his head off with my knife. He sure was an ugly bastard." She gave a decent description of the vampire and went and sat down by Dean.
"Were you underground at the time?" Wesley asked.
"I was doing the school patrol Wes; I promise I wasn't going looking for trouble. I was in the basement and fell down into a hole." Faith wasn't happy about the new vampire. It had shrugged off her favorite stake and she had lost it. "Sorry about the stake Dean. He took it with him when I cut his head off."
"It was a Turok-Han," Wesley said grimly.
"The super vamps?" Sarah asked, her voice rising in worry.
Wesley nodded. "The only way to kill one is by beheading or sunlight so they tend to stay underground even during the night, only going above ground to feed."
"We'll deal," Dean said. "I'm just glad that you made it back. I'll carve you another stake, no problem. Now, Giles and my dad each just finished with a funny yet embarrassing story from when they just got started in the business. It's your turn." He grinned up at Faith. He wanted to get her distracted from the super vamp and bring the party back to where it was before she came in.
Faith turned to the Potentials and said, "Never sleep in the nude because you never know when you are going to have to jump out of bed and slay something. I saved some people and ended up arrested for indecent exposure."
"You didn't!" exclaimed Sam, who was sharing the love seat with Aphra. She had sent her family out of town and Sam had invited her to spend her Christmas with them.
"She did!" chorused the original Scoobies. They had heard about that story the first night they had met Faith. Of course this time she wasn't bragging about it or explaining just who she had saved. It was just one of the things that showed how much she had changed since she first came to Sunnydale.
"B's turn!" Faith declared.
Buffy hung her head. "I've got two. The first is never wear a strapless formal dress when you know there are vampires gunning for you. They crashed the dance and I jumped up on one football player vamp to decapitate him with this pen knife I had. When he dusted I fell down on the cutest boy at the dance and continued to fall out of my dress right in his face." The girls groaned in sympathetic embarrassment while the guys hid their looks from Buffy. No one wanted to provoke her as her face was already a bright red.
"The second thing is to tell whoever is in charge of you," and this time she looked directly at Jody, the Potential who had arrived the day before with her parents in tow. Her Watcher had been killed in the explosion in London and she had dragged both her parents to Sunnydale on her own, "When you need to go save the world from an apocalypse, either a mini one or a full on major production. I didn't and I got grounded for it."
"Oh Lord, which one was that?" Joyce asked. "I know it had to have been before you told me about being the Slayer."
"That was when we had to take care of those eggs for the baby deal." Xander said. "I accidentally saved myself from becoming a zombie Xander by boiling my egg. Imagine my horror when I went to peel it." As he had intended, this sent the group back into the laughing party spirit.
"Your turn Xander, how about one of your dating experiences?" Willow teased.
"How about I don't?" Xander firmly put his foot down. "Always watch where your feet are because you never know when you'll find yourself standing in the middle of a mystical circle. I went to save a nerd from some bullies and ended up being possessed by a hyena. While I only ate the pig who was the school mascot, the bullies ended up eating the school principal."
"You were possessed by a hyena and a soldier?" John asked.
"Hyena, soldier, been thralled by vampires, had love spells go wrong, I think if you name it, it either has happened to me or is on the list to happen to me." Xander shook his head. "There is a reason they call me a demon magnet."
"Yeah," Sam agreed, "Lets see, I've been nearly drowned, strangled more times than I want to count, got fleas from a werewolf, been possessed by ghosts, "
"You got fleas from a werewolf?" Willow asked, appalled. She knew that the Winchesters didn't hunt those who did no harm, but still.
"God, I remember that," John laughed. "Both of them were itching something fierce by the time that job was done. Those bastards liked to hunt children and I didn't know there was more than one of them. It wasn't a case of someone who didn't know what they were. While I was coming back from rescuing a little girl, taking her home and making sure she and her folks were ok, the other one went after Dean and Sam. By that time none of us were rookies though, and Dean shot it before it got close to either of the boys. The fleas came from the boys getting rid of the body."
The stories and laughter continued well into the night.