If I Could, Would You?
Dean wasn't really sure what had happened. It probably hadn't been a good idea to fire his gun in his dad's storage building, but desperate times and all that.
Anyway, whatever he'd shot and shattered, he was sure that was the blinding flash that had dropped him off in this place.
The blinding white light had faded into ordinary daylight, and he looked around. He was in a park or something. There was a creek nearby, some picnic tables under a covered pavilion, and a building that was potentially a set of restrooms.
He could hear traffic and realized the area was nestled under a highway bridge. He heard something else: the faintly tinny sound of music, loud but distant.
Dean turned in a slow circle, gravel crunching under his shoes. He located the source of the music, a picnic table out in the open, nearer the creek, and further from the highway. A girl was sitting there, facing him, frozen in the act of biting a sandwich.
He awkwardly raised a hand, waving. She slowly bit her sandwich, something wary in her posture.
Sure, man. She likely just saw someone appear out of thin air or something.
Dean started walking slowly towards her, almost raising both hands, then remembered he still had his gun pulled.
Dean hastily tucked it away.
She lowered her sandwich, and her hand disappeared under the edge of the table. He wondered if she was reaching for a weapon. He could relate.
The song changed as he slowly approached, something he only vaguely recognized, but not too bad.
He halted when he was close enough that she stiffened. He lifted his hands, palms open and facing her.
"Hi," he said amiably. "I don't suppose you can tell me where I am?"
"Where the fuck did you come from?"
Dean tried his best smile. "I don't suppose you'd believe upstate New York?"
She frowned. "Considering you appeared in a flash of light, I might believe you even if you'd said Mars or Asgard."
He chuckled a little. "Nothing that far-fetched."
She quirked an eyebrow even as Dean himself caught the absurdity of that.
"How'd you do that?" Her guarded tone did not suggest she was likely to believe him, but that she was more likely trying to trap him into revealing some sort of trickery or prank.
He took a step towards her again, but she whipped her hands up, revealing a slingshot.
"Nope," she said flatly. "In case you're not impressed, take a look at those tables over your right shoulder."
He glanced back and saw some cans strewn about the tabletop; they looked pretty banged up, dented, and punctured.
"That was just river pebbles," she said. "This is a ball bearing."
"Look," he started.
"No, you look. I just saw someone appear from literally nowhere. You can just keep your distance."
"I get it," he tried again.
"Do you?" she asked skeptically.
"In my line of work, yeah, I do."
"What might that be?"
"You wouldn't believe me-"
"Really," she commented dryly.
"Can I put my hands down?"
"Free country."
"You going to lower that?"
"Nope."
Dean sighed. "Can you at least tell me where I am?"
"A long way from upstate New York."
He nodded. "I'm a hunter. I hunt things."
"Things?"
"Yeah. Things."
The song faded out and another started. He pointed a finger towards her phone.
"What is that?"
"A phone."
He chuckled again. "The music."
"Alice in Chains. 'Would?'"
He nodded. Not the sort of thing his dad had listened to, but he found himself liking it.
"Don't they have classic rock stations in upstate New York?" Her tone was just biting enough to show she still didn't believe him.
He shrugged. "I don't know. I usually listen to my dad's old tapes."
The slingshot dipped a little.
"Maybe you should update your library. Even Alice has been defunct for over twenty years, you know." She frowned. "I feel old now."
He chuckled again. She frowned.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"My name's Dean." He looked at her expectantly.
"Kate," she answered grudgingly.
"Kate. Nice to meet you Kate. Where are you from, Kate?"
"Not upstate New York," she snarked. "And neither are you."
He nodded. "My family lived in Lawrence, Kansas."
"Not too far from home then, Dean."
He blinked, surprised.
"We're in Kansas?"
"No, Missouri. Lawrence county, though." She allowed herself a grin.
"Okay. So, Kate from Missouri."
"Dean from Kansas who hunts 'things'."
He nodded.
"So how did you get here, Dean from Kansas who hunts things."
"I don't know," he admitted. "Sammy and Cas and me were in Dad's storage locker. Somehow, a demon got in-"
"You got a good hook, but you don't tell stories well, Dean. Back up, start somewhere near a beginning."
Her tone was still even, but he sensed she was teasing him. A good sign. Dean eased his hands down and tried his winning smile again.
"Sammy is my little brother. Our dad is, was, a hunter, too. Ever since Sammy was a baby. During his hunts, when he came across cursed or dangerous artifacts, he'd store them in a locker with every protection he could think of."
"And Sammy is a hunter too? And this Cas?"
"Yeah, Sammy and I are a team."
She's letting me gloss over Cas, thankfully. Dean wasn't sure he was up to the "angel" talk yet.
"So you are in this, locker, of your father's," she prompted.
He nodded. "Somehow, a demon got in, despite the spells and protections." Dean frowned, wondering about this, but determined to puzzle over it later. "And I took a shot at it. I missed and hit something." He shrugged. "There as a flash of light and," he gestured around. She nodded.
"Let's say I believe you," she started. "What are you going to do?"
He grinned. "First thing I should do is call Sammy." He pulled his phone.
She went back to her sandwich.
Dean drifted away, dialing. The shrill jangle of the recorded message made him jerk his phone away from his ear, but he knew what the robot woman was telling him.
Sam's phone number didn't exist.
He quickly went through every hunter's number he knew, starting with Bobby's.
He got a few answers, but not anyone he knew, and even more "nonexistent" messages.
Dean looked over his shoulder at the girl again. Not really a girl, Dean. She's gotta be your age. He was sure she'd been truthful, that this was Missouri, but he was not at all sure where he was.
He walked back over, even ignoring the slingshot as it came back up. He sat on the bench opposite Kate, straddling it, facing towards the spot he'd appeared.
He eyed her calmly, then pulled his gun out from his belt and set it on the table, pushing it gently towards her.
"Here. Don't waste your ball bearing," he told her.
"You got silver bullets I there?"
He smiled thinly, mood still soured by his revelations.
"Not today."
"Who are you, really? You one of those social experiment plants? A LARPer perhaps?"
"Not the first time I've been accused of that."
She lowered the slingshot. "What did your brother Cas say?"
"Sammy," he corrected. She nodded.
"Couldn't reach him. His uh, his number doesn't exist."
"That seems odd," she commented.
"What doesn't right now?"
She nodded again.
He fished his phone from his pocket, fiddled with one of his apps, then found the list he'd been looking for. He set it on the table nearer her than his gun, and pushed it to her.
"Know where I can find these things?"
She looked it over, frowning. "I'm not even sure what some of this is." She handed his phone back to him directly, instead of setting it on the table.
He watched her clean up her picnic wordlessly, then went back to his contemplation.
"You coming?" she asked, jingling keys at him. She gestured at his phone.
"We can probably find all that stuff at either a health food store or a new age store. The ones I know best are in Springfield. You got money?"
"Credit cards," he replied, stuffing his gun in the belt.
"Good enough."
He followed her to a car sitting off to the side of the park area.
She was sliding a CD into the dash player as he sat down, buckling in. The first tune was the one he'd asked her about, and he briefly wondered if she'd picked the CD because of that.
"All right, Dean, let's get your weird-ass shopping list filled."
They drove awhile, mostly listening to the music. Dean knew almost none of it, but found himself liking most of it.
A weird, pop song came on, all in what Dean assumed was Japanese. Catchy, but not really my style. And what exactly is my style? Everything I listen to is either Dad's music or whatever Sammy plays when he drives. He shook away this disquieting but all-too familiar thought. He had thought himself at peace with John Winchester's grooming of him; hell, he'd even embraced it, or so he'd thought.
"What's with frowny face? Don't like J-pop?"
Dean shook his head, not meaning no, just not able to explain. "It's not that."
She nodded, a little unsure.
"I, I've never listened to much besides Dad's music."
"Ah, well, all the best cowboys have daddy issues."
He frowned, meaning to argue, but he stopped himself.
She casually hit the skip button. He glanced at her sharply, but she shrugged.
"I'm not in the mood for that song anyway."
Dean didn't really believe that, but he said nothing.
"I think we should make a couple of other stops while we're here in town," she commented as they navigated the small city.
She took him to the health food store, which had all but one of the odd herbs he needed, but Dean wasn't surprised by that; engelswort was a useless weed only good for one thing Dean knew.
The new age store had most of the rest of the list. He'd just picked up a bag of blessed salt when Kate called to him.
"Check this out," she said, handing him a book. It was an encyclopedia of herb magic, according to the cover.
"'Engelswort'," he read, "'a cryptid plant mentioned in alchemy texts and grimoires, used for summoning rituals'."
Dean looked up at her. "So?"
"So a couple of things, Dean-who-hunts-things," she commented sourly. "One, plant does not exist. Two, 'summoning rituals'? What the hell are you trying to summon?"
He tried smiling, but that was the wrong answer, somehow. She took the book from him, shelved it, and started for the shop door. He caught her arm.
"I'll scream," she said flatly.
He put his hands up in surrender. "Cas."
She frowned. "What?"
"I was going to summon Cas. I don't like it, but he can get me home."
She waited.
"Castiel. He's an angel," Dean winced, waiting for her reaction.
"You're crazy."
He put his hands down.
"Fuck, I must be crazier than you," she muttered. She pulled the book again, leafing through it.
"Here. If you use this, maybe it will work like a phone call."
He looked at the book entry.
"'Juniper berry'." He looked at her. "You want to make a substitution in a summoning ritual?"
"Not necessarily. I'm giving you a suggestion. You're the expert in these matters."
Dean wasn't at all sure that substitution was a good idea. Some of the things he'd bought already would keep well enough. One or two wouldn't. He had maybe a week to find engelswort or use something else.
Seeing his hesitation, Kate shrugged. "All right. I guess we should hit the mall then."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Unless you want to live in those clothes forever?"
They picked up a quick dinner, and she drove them to her house. He enjoyed the meal, certainly an upgrade from diner and bar food, and she had his new clothes washed and dried fairly quickly.
Kate picked out a movie, and after it was over, she went to bed. Dean slipped into the comfy new sweatpants and stretched out on the freshly made couch. He was sleeping a lot easier and sounder than he might have suspected when she woke him.
Kate was wearing a simple, flimsy robe.
"I'm not much for games, so I'll be plain. I don't get a lot of action, and if you'd be interested, you're welcome to sleep with me. If you wouldn't be, that's fine, too."
She opened the robe, letting him see her body.
"Look, I app-" he started, but she shrugged.
"All right, Dean," was all she said.
In the morning, she made some breakfast.
"So what are you going to do, Dean?"
He stabbed a bite of egg, chewing thoughtfully.
"You mind me using your computer?" He nodded towards a laptop nearby.
"No porn. Don't download anything?"
He nodded.
Absorbed in his research, he hadn't realized how much time had gone by until she brought up lunch.
"I was going to the deli and grab a sandwich. Want one?"
"Yeah. Ham and Swiss on rye?"
She nodded.
He rubbed his eyes when she left. What he'd found, or rather hadn't found, was troubling.
His family didn't seem to exist. No warrants, no wanted lists, nothing. His family's home in Lawrence was an empty lot. He couldn't find any trace of anyone he'd known. In desperation, he'd tried looking up Carver Edlund, or even Chuck. Nothing. No books, no fandom. He had also remembered the TV show from the other world, and tried looking that up. Again nothing. He had found Jensen Ackles, improbably. There was a short bit on an actor's database website listing the handful of episodes the guy had done on a long-running soap before his young death. Ackles hadn't even looked much like Dean had at that age.
The enormity of it all hit him.
No Winchesters, real or fictional.
He had then shifted his focus to the things they hunted, and fond out something even more astounding: they didn't seem to exist either. He had thought that maybe he'd finally found something when he'd run across that SCP site, but he quickly suspected – and nearly proved – that it was only an elaborate joke. Or, maybe more accurately, an odd sort of immersive entertainment site.
Dean had been grateful when Kate had brought up lunch.
He did some more cursory research while waiting on lunch, looking for random people, places, and events he knew, but ultimately his research was fruitless.
At this rate, he was doubtful that the magic he knew would work either.
He tore into the sandwich she brought, brooding.
"So, what's eating you?" Kate asked.
Morose, he told her about his research, filling in background whenever she asked questions. It was all far more cathartic than he might have thought.
The sandwiches were long gone before he'd finished, and when she offered him a beer, he took it gratefully.
"Are you going to try any magic?"
Dean swigged his beer thoughtfully.
"I don't know. I don't even know it will work."
She nodded. "I have some errands to run. You can come with, or stay here."
"You go ahead," Dean answered. He wasn't sure what he would do in the meantime, but he didn't feel up to going either.
"You like cheeseburgers?" she asked.
He grinned.
"All right. What don't you like, and I'll bring us back some dinner."
"I like it all."
He was watching a movie when she came back, bearing the promised burgers. He paused it.
"Have you seen this?" he asked.
She glanced at the screen. "Guardians volume two," she commented. "Yeah, it's pretty good." She glanced at him. "Have you watched the others?"
"I watched the first one."
"Yeah, but I mean, the rest of the MCU."
His look must have answered her question.
They finished the movie together, then launched into a spree, starting at the beginning.
In a few weeks, they had watched the entire MCU, plus a related series. They had also started spending nights together, which were sweet and uncomplicated.
Dean found out that Kate was home most of the time. She volunteered at the local library, and occasionally ran a friend's thrift store, for pay, yes, but not a living.
"So you don't have a job. You a trust fund baby or something?" he asked, accepting the offered beer.
Kate laughed, opening her own beer. "Nothing so grand or lucrative, I'm afraid. I guess you could say I make a living by cutting people out of my life." She laughed again, a little bitterness in the tone. "When I was in college, I met a guy. Not a looker by any means, but he liked me a great deal. He worked his father's farm, a nice, modern affair, rather profitable. Profitable enough that with just his share he fully bought a brand new truck in two payments over the course of a month."
Dean whistled, impressed.
"Anyway, he invited me and a couple of my girlfriends to lunch, and he asked what I was doing next semester. He wanted to know if I was taking my degree and transferring or sticking around. He wanted to date. I was uncertain about his proposition. His family were quite devout, and I really didn't have reciprocal feelings for him. Or Him, for that matter."
"So what happened?"
Kate shrugged. "Peer pressure. My girlfriends thought it was a great match, and I was already feeling like an old maid."
He arched his eyebrows, taking another swig of beer. She shrugged again.
"In my hometown, I had classmates with marriages and toddlers, or kindergartners, already. I told myself I wanted to live my life before saddling myself with a family, but I was worried no one would want me. Now, here was Trevor Keith, and he wanted me to stick around." She drank again, her eyes staring off.
"Trevor's biggest concern was my lack of faith. Literal faith, mind you. He needed a God-fearing girlfriend. Long story short, I convinced myself and Trevor that I wanted him, God, and a promised piece of farm land and life."
"Then what happened?"
"I was baptized in his father's church, we were married, and we were gifted the parcel of his family's farm as a wedding gift. In a year, we were expecting a baby. I wanted to name him after my father, but Trevor insisted on a biblical name. I relented, and I picked Isaiah. It really looks nice on the marker, so I'm glad for that, if nothing else."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No," she answered flatly. "Suffice it to say it was a miscarriage. Trevor and his family insisted it wasn't my fault, that it was all part of God's plan. My family was more practical. Mom reminded me that these things happen, something like one in four pregnancies. There was an elaborate funeral, praising God in His wisdom."
"Ouch."
"The first one was bearable. Mostly. The second time, though.."
Dean winced.
"His name was Zachariah. When my mother-in-law insisted that he'd 'been called to keep his brother company', I snapped at her that they both could have very well been here keeping us company."
"She take that well?" Dean asked, suspecting not.
"She said I just didn't understand God's plan. I remarked God must be planning on being the meanest bastard in the universe at this rate." Kate drank again. "You'd think I'd slapped her across the face."
Dean nodded.
"Anyway, I filed for divorce. It was pretty amiable, all considering. The judge gave me alimony payments as recompense for my 'selling' Trevor my half of the farm. On Mother's Day, Trevor sends me a picture of the trees growing on the babies' graves."
"Ouch," Dean said, but Kate shook her head.
"No. I asked him to. It's actually a proviso in our divorce papers."
Dean didn't know what to say to this.
"The other income comes from royalty checks. When I got married, my sister ran away from home to be actor. She was pissed I had ditched her, so she took some notebooks we had written with TV and movie pitches. One or two of them have been bought and developed. She was at least honest enough to credit me, and I get checks. According to TMZ, the fabulous Lithium Black is working on a new original project, so maybe I'll get a pay raise."
She laughed for the first time in a while, and tossed her empty bottle into a nearby recycling bin.
He was silent, finishing his own beer.
"Better than credit card fraud and hustling pool," he said teasingly.
Kate nodded solemnly.
In another week, indolence was getting to Dean. He'd always been a man-of-action, on the move.
He found a part-time job in a performance shop. His boss, the owner's son, was impressed by the speed Dean could fix older engines and transmissions, and his knowledge on how to tweak everything to peak performance earned him a pay raise in due time.
A bare month later, he and Kate were sleeping together every night, and he'd been to meet her family. He had acquired a wardrobe, adopted a comfortable routine, and was, to his slight amazement, happy.
He was at home, waiting for her with a nice ring in his pocket, and a nervous question in his mind when blinding light filled the room.
Dean blinked.
"Dean!" Sammy cried. He was folded into an almost desperate hug before he even realized who had him.
"Wha-?"
"When you disappeared, Cas and I tried everything we could think of! Where were you?"
Dean stood, shocked at his disappointment and anger. He composed himself as best as possible.
"Missouri," he choked out, extracting himself from his brother.
Sam couldn't figure it out. Dean refused to speak of his missing time, other than his single admission of being in "Missouri". He fell back into their hunting rhythms easily enough, though seemingly reluctantly. His skills were rusty at first, which made him frustrated and angry on top of the morose sullenness he always expressed now.
Dean bought a bunch of CDs, all music Sam remembered from high school, which his brother had never seemed to care for back then.
It was the necklace that really made Sam wonder though. Mere days after Cas and the others had brought him back, Dean had gone somewhere and bought a chain on which he hung a delicate looking ring.
Sam opened his mouth to ask about it, but Dean scowled at him and pointedly cranked the volume on the Alice in Chains CD he'd just popped in, singing with the song.
Sam turned to face the windshield and shut his cakehole.