Anna
She was right. She so did not want to be part of the monsters are real conversation. Even if she seemed to be the only person in the car John wasn't angry at. Although she had her doubts as to how long that would last considering that she was with the boys.
"Monsters. Monsters?" He asked again, hands clenched tight around the wheel of the familiar-unfamiliar rumble of the Impala.
"Yes." Mary sounded tired from her place in the front seat. Anna was crammed in the back with both Sam and Dean, although somehow all four Winchesters had managed to agree around the monsters are real conversation that she needed to be leaned across the back bench propped against Dean, and her legs laid across Sam's lap.
She'd checked herself over after everything had calmed down, and she hadn't broken her ribs. They were bruised, and she wished to high Olympus that she had some nectar or ambrosia right about now, but it wasn't that serious. Not that any of the others had been willing to listen to her. Between Sam and Dean's overprotectiveness, John's newness to monsters, there were too many bullheaded personalities for her to argue against. And Mary had been unwilling to interfere beyond agree with Anna's insistence that her ribs weren't broken.
"Monsters are real." Anna was also of the opinion that the man who's entire worldview had just gotten flipped on its head should not be driving. But it wasn't like anyone was listening to her much at the moment. Well John sorta was, he'd paid slightly better attention to her when she'd done some of the more technical explanations around the kind of monsters mortal hunters hunted. But Sam and Dean still thought that she was crazy, and Mary didn't know her. Even if Sam and dean weren't technically wrong, it still stung that they didn't trust her.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know ho-" Mary tried to explain herself for the fifth time.
"And you fight them? All of you?" John cut her off. Again. Anna was mostly too tired to have an opinion, but found herself not feeling particularly generous towards either Winchester. Although Anna' is self aware enough to understand that her irritation with Mary's secret keeping is intensely hypocritical considering her own tendency to keep secrets.
"Yeah." Sam confirmed quietly. Anna shrugged, wincing as the motion pulled at her torso. She gives a short nod when as she meets John's gaze in the rearview mirror. Dean shifted under her, and carefully wrapped his arm securely around her waist.
"Try not to move." He admonishes her gently. Anna tried to twist around to glare at him for the scolding, but he gently tightens his grip on her, preventing her from moving. She let out a heavy sigh and leaned back against him. Dean's other hand came up and smoothed itself against her hair once, and Anna let her head drop against his shoulders. Her eyes slid half closed as the orange streetlights flashed past.
"How long?" John demanded.
"All my life?" Came Mary's sheepish response. John's hands tighten over the steering wheel, and the car jerked under them as they went even faster. Both boys leapt to their mother's defense.
"John just try to understand-"
"She didn't have a choi-"
"Shut up! All of you!" He snapped. Anna raised an eyebrow, content to remain an observer in the unfolding family drama.
"Not another word or so help me I will turn this car around." John threatened.
"Don't. We need to get to a safe house." Anna warned. John glared at her warningly through the rearview mirror. Anna glared right back. The upside to showing up out of the blue in the garage is that she is - ironically enough - the only person who hasn't lied to John Winchester that day. He looked away first, turning his glare back to the road.
"Where?"
"Lake View. I have a safe house on the north end of the lake." Her father had spent the majority of the seventies on the East Coast, for reasons Anna has only ever been able to speculate at. The cabin near the lake would be empty, and is fortified nearly as well as her own safe houses are in the future - present? Figuring out time was hard enough when considering her time in Hell and Tartarus without also factoring in time travel.
Either way, it was the safest place for them to go when they had an angel on their tails. Her family had been perfecting angel wards since before monotheism got trendy. John hardly even glanced at his wife, who had opened her mouth to protest the destination. The engine rumbled, and the car jerked under them again as John pressed even harder on the gas.
Silence filled the car. Dean and Sam exchanged uncomfortable glances over her head.
"Wow. Awkward family road trip." Dean muttered. Anna elbowed him. He pinched her side in retaliation, mindful of her injuries.
"Yeah. No kidding." Silence fell over the car again as John drove silently, stewing in all the new information he'd just learned about the world and his wife. It didn't take long for him to pull off the highway, navigating down the narrow one lane streets leading towards the lake. Anna sat up, directing the car down dark roads and driveways shrouded in the late night shadows. They had to double back twice, because Anna is operating off a map that doesn't technically exist yet.
Asphalt transitioned first to gravel, then to dirt, and finally to grass. The Impala pulled up next to a long cabin painted an eye watering shade of orange. The engine growled loudly before it cut out, and the sudden quiet was made even more prominent by the tension between the four other occupants of the car.
"What in the hell was Abba thinking when he painted this place?" She muttered, carefully sitting up as she inspected the house. There were four matching expressions of surprise as she was carefully maneuvered out of the car by Dean. Anna limped towards the house and kicked the dead plant next to the door. The heavy terracotta pot shifted, revealing a knotted floorboard. Groaning loudly, Anna knelt down and pulled it open, feeling the familiar tingle of blood wards flowing over her hands. She plucked the key from its hiding spot and tossed it to Dean before carefully replacing the board and the pot.
The lock opened with a loud click, and Dean warily pushed the door open. She reached out to brace her hand against the doorframe, when a warm hand caught her under the elbow. She looked up to see Mary reluctantly gripping her arm. The other women gently helped her to her feet and Anna limped inside.
"The house is built with iron and salt in its foundations, all the supports in the house are cast in iron too. Salt, silver and iron filings are mixed into the plaster, along with a host of other protective herbs and protection spells. There are wards against most kinds of beasties painted directly into the plaster, and others -" Anna slid the doormat aside to reveal the devils trap hidden beneath "- are painted onto the floors. Only way to be safer would be to be holed up in something built from solid iron that had been tempered in salt water. Abba probably hasn't been by in years, so no food. But there should be extra salt, holy water, silver, iron, all the works in a closet down the hall. Weapons will be in the armory down the hall, or hidden around the furniture. Take what you need. Abba won't notice, he never uses this place." And he never did. They'd never come near enough to use it while he'd still been alive.
Anna stayed in the house, in the future.
Once.
After the house fire that had killed her father.
At the time she'd been too traumatized to notice if anything was out of place, and she'd only stayed here for one night, terrified of the monsters chasing her catching up to her. The only reason why she even knew it existed was because her Abba had drilled the locations of each and every one of his dozen safe houses around the country into her head. Once she'd gotten older, Anna had built dozens more of her own, the protections she built into her own houses designed to protect against greek monsters, instead of just the veil ones she'd grown up hunting. She'd gone through a lot of celestial bronze. She'd owed Beckendorf a lot of favors for a really long time.
"I'll grab salt, how about you show the boys where the guns are?" Mary strode forward, flicking on lights as she went. John poked around the dusty furniture, eyeing the iron fixture. His eyebrows had rose steadily with each mention of the protections Anna had easily rattled off. For a civilian his poker face was pretty good, but no one else in the room was an ordinary person. All of them could see the the stubborn self preserving disbelief coloring his expression.
"All that stuff will do is piss her off. It's not going to stop her." Sam warned.
"What'll kill it? Or slow it down at least?" Mary studiously avoided looking at her husband, hyper focused on the task at hand to avoid the clearly approaching confrontation. Anna limped her way over to the couch, and sank down into the dusty cushions with a groan.
"Can you just trust we know how to handle this?" Dean asked his mother. Mary Winchester squinted at her son.
"No." Anna laughed.
"Smart lady." Both boys glared at her. Mary eyed her with slightly less hostility than before. Anna just ignored her, slumping deeper into the couch.
"So? What can we do to stop an angel?" Mary prompted, turning back to the rest of the group.
"Not much." Sam admitted.
"Great." Anna eyed Mary through the corner of her eyes, the other woman's shoulders slumping at the news. Angels really were a massive pain in the ass. Anna sighed, leaning her head back against the cushions. She wrapped an arm around her waist, trying to cover her shaking hands.
"The house is warded against angels. There are sigils carved into the foundations at each cardinal point, as well as enochian wards painted onto every exterior wall. Only way an angel can get in is with a direct invitation. Even then, they're not going to be fully powered up." Both Sam and Dean's heads snap towards her, jaws hanging open in shock.
"You can do that?" Dean asked her, pulling out a scrap of paper from his pocket. She recognized the banishing sigil scrawled on it. While occasionally handy, it barely qualified as a stop gap measure when dealing with a seriously determined celestial. Especially when used as a preventative measure. A well prepared angel could easily work around the banishment sigil.
If an angel did somehow manage to get into the house without permission, then it was definitely higher ranked than a seraph, and at that point no banishment sigil was going to help them anyways.
"Of course you can. And it's more effective than that." Anna jerked her head towards the scrap of paper Dean was holding onto. He shot her baleful glare and tossed it down onto the table. Mary stepped forward, arms crossed defensively in front of her.
"So that solves the slowing it down portion of the problem. How do we kill it?" A small grin spread across Anna's face. Reluctantly enough, she found herself liking Dean and Sam's old lady. Mary had tried to get out of the game, and even though she's been dragged back into hunting in one of the worst ways possible, she was still focused on the job. Anna could respect the kind of strength required to do that. Mary Winchester was made of iron and salt rounds. It was too bad she'd never gotten to meet her in Anna's time. Dean briefly lifted the duffle bag he had slung over his shoulder. Metal clanked inside, and Anna's fingers itched for the sword she knew was inside.
She really missed her sword. It's absence from her side felt like she'd lost a limb. An integral part of her was missing. Eleos had gotten through literally every traumatic experience in her life, had kept her safe through every major fight, battle, and war. The fact that the boys had taken it from her ached like a septic wound.
"Sam said not much, but it's not nothing. We packed." Dean dropped the bag onto the table and carefully unloaded its contents.
"We've got holy oil. It's kinda like a devil's trap for angels-" Anna interrupted Sam, glaring at him out the corner of her eye.
"If you even think about setting that oil on fire inside this house, next time we go on a hunt I'll use you for monster bait." Anna warned. Sam froze guiltily, the jug cradled in his hands.
"Show me how to use it. We can set traps outside. It's not like we can stay holed up inside this house forever." Mary tugged on his elbow and the two of them left the room. Neither her nor John looked at each other as she walked past him. Mary's eyes remained fixed on the door, and John deliberately turned away from his wife. He briefly caught Anna's gaze before fixing his eyes on the wall just over her shoulder.
The front door slammed shut. John flinched, and in an obvious effort to hide the motion turned back towards Dean, who was carefully unloading a second jug of holy oil, and a couple of the silver three sided blades.
"Hey, what's the deal with that paper? What does it do?" Dean looked up at his dad in shock. The surreality of the situation was beginning to set in for Anna. She'd met John Winchester, in her future/past. The man she'd met would never have asked a question like that, would have been barking orders and taking charge over the hunt. For a mortal hunter, the man had been exceptionally well researched. He knew things about monsters and hunting most mortals never even considered, let alone imagined since they'd stopped believing in the things that went bump at night.
"It's a sigil, uh it means-"
"I don't care what it means. What does it do, and where does it go?" Dean managed to cover his flinch. Anna got to her feet with a groan, and almost immediately fell back over. Both men lunged towards her when she yelped, Dean pulling her back down onto the couch when she yelped a second time as his shoulder collided with her side, accidentally driving the air out of her lungs.
"It banishes angels, and it doesn't go anywhere in this house." Anna wheezed, gasping for air as her lungs constricted with pain. Her eyes watered as she struggled to breath through the sharp throbbing in her chest.
"Why not? Y'all might've treated me like a fool, but I am not useless. I can draw a damn whatever it is- a, a sigil." The irritation in the elder Winchester was familiar. She recognized the tell me now tone he would eventually use more often than not, once he becomes a hunter.
"It's not about being useless John. Sigil like that has to be done in human blood. And these walls are ugly enough without staining them with dried blood." Dean snickers next to her, the motion jostling her. Anna sucked in a hard breath through her teeth.
"Ah, let's get you some ice." John amended his previous gung-ho attitude, open concern crossing his face as he took in her collapsed position on the couch. She opened her mouth to protest the point, but Dean's glared silenced it. She closed her mouth, her lips thinning with irritation as she acquiesced to their fussing.
After all, so far Dean had given her the courtesy of not asking her how and why she was at the garage in the first place. Although she could sense the lecture coming, like a sixth sense.
The two of them carefully maneuvered her around furniture and into the dusty kitchen. Dean flicked on the lights and took her chin in his hand, tilting her head back and forth as he checked her over more throughly than the quick field assessment they'd done before getting into the Impala. His hand slowly slid up to cup her cheek, his green eyes intently studying her face. Anna obediently held still as he studied her face. The quiet banging of John investigating every empty cabinet and drawer filed the room. The only things he found were the two plates, two cups, and bare minimum number of utensils required that were standard in all the safe houses Abba had built.
"You weren't kidding when you said there was nothing in here." John glanced over at her, dark eyes observing her and Dean interact. Dean's hand dropped away from her face like he'd been scalded, and she was too tired to compartmentalize the way the action stung.
"Me and my dad have a few of these safe houses scattered around the country. It would be stupid to leave much of anything in here when we spend so little time in any of them." Dean glanced down towards her sharply. Anna kept her chin up, meeting his gaze steadily. He was not entitled to her secrets or to her safe houses. Besides, most of them aren't convenient for the transient nature of hunting. And most of hers weren't well stocked for hunts like Dean was used to anyways. Most of the houses she set up were good stopovers for quests and demigods - not mortal hunters.
"Why not? It seems like this place is a safe set up for monster hunting." John prompted her, finally opening the freezer. Anna shrugged.
"They're not actually that helpful for hunting. Good for emergencies, or for laying low. But for the most part my dad and I stayed in motels for hunts that were too far from our actual house." Anna's hand clenched into a fist.
She still technically owned the land her old house stood on. But there was nothing there. She'd been unable to bring herself to knock down the burned out husk the house had become to build something new there.
"Where's your dad now?" Apparently there was ice, and John had managed to scrounge up a towel. Carrying the makeshift ice pack, he knelt in front of her, making the same careful inspection of her face that his son had made. Anna hissed as he carefully pressed the cold towel against her cheek, reaching up to take the ice from him.
"Dead." She wasn't going to screw around with timelines. Her Abba died when she was ten years old. Anna is nearly twenty seven now, according to the calendar of the mortal world. Her father has been dead for over half her life. He's not suddenly resurrected just because he's currently alive in the past, where she was currently hanging out.
"Oh, I'm sor-" Anna shook her head, moving the ice to her shoulder now that the left side of her face was unpleasantly cold and slightly numb.
"Don't. It was a long time ago, and I watched the thing that killed him die. In our world, that's good enough." Dean's head snapped around towards her. Her friend's eyes were wide.
"Yellow-eyes killed…" Anna shot him a wry grin.
"Yeah. He did. Special, remember?" Dean flinched at her careless reminder of the yellow eyed demon's words. Of course, Dean still has no idea why her family is special. Plus she'd kinda died right after that particular incident, even if it'd only been a temporary thing. John glanced between the two of them, a deep furrow in his brow as he turned over the implications of the information he'd just learned.
"Your world. God, this monsters are real crap. It really is real isn't it?" Anna set the ice aside, ignoring Dean who was clearly about to object.
"Yeah. It's real. With monsters and demons and angels. But hopefully after tonight, after we deal with Ana the murderous angel, you won't have to deal with it again. Just sit tight. Sam and Dean, they brought all the right goodies to kill an angel." John shook his head and slumped down into a chair across from her. In the hall behind him, Sam appeared. In his hands was a presumably empty jug of holy oil. Although Anna didn't see Mary. Her lips thinned as she wondered where the boys' mother had gone. With Ana the murderous angel after her, it wasn't a wise idea to leave her unguarded.
"Your world. Just, this, this is crazy. This is crazy isn't it? I mean, how long have you known about, about all this hunting stuff?" Anna and Dean exchanged a loaded glance. Sam had frozen in the doorway, eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights.
John Winchester had just unintentionally wandered into the emotional minefield that had led to his and Dean's long estrangement from Sam while he'd been at Stanford. And then he'd died before either of the boys could get any real closure from their father. Dean cleared his throat uncomfortably.
Anna decided to take pity on him.
"I was raised in this world. Born into it, if you want to be technical about. My parents, uh, well. It's complicated. Everyone in my family has fought monsters, for as long as anyone on either side can remember - or at least, anyone who's left can remember. There's a lot of hereditary enemies. We get killed off a lot. My Abba did his best, kept a roof over my head, loved me best he could. Taught me enough so that I could defend myself when I had too, showed me how to protect myself so I wouldn't have to fight if I didn't want to. Tried to give me other options even though it wasn't safe. But one of those hereditary enemies, a demon named Azazel, caught up to us, and... he died. There were a lot fewer options after that. Eventually I just picked up the family business and stopped looking back." Anna shrugged. Dean's hand settled on her shoulder, squeezing gently. She smiled at him, even if the comfort wasn't particularly needed. She's known who and what she was for a long time. She'd known about monsters for even longer.
For a demigod to walk into camp with their eyes wide open to what the world was actually like… well, Anna survived all those years for a reason. And it wasn't luck.
"Dean and I,' John jumped as Sam walked into the room, 'we've known since pretty much forever. Our dad, he raised us in it. Like Anna."
"You're serious?" John looked disgusted. Sam stopped next to her, setting the holy oil down on the table and took her chin into his hands, making the same inspection that his brother and his dad had made. Anna rolled her eyes, and gently pulled herself out of his grip. She shifted the ice pack to her ribs. Every inch of her ached from the beating she'd taken. Next time they fought an angel, she's not letting them keep Eleos away from her.
"Who the hell does that to a kid?" John spat out, shock written all over his face. Anna chances a look over at her boys. Dean's face was a mask, completely blank. Sam on the other hand looked surprised. Anna set her hand over Dean's, where it was still resting on her shoulder, and squeezed his fingers gently. He looked down towards her, Sam's defensive response loud right over her shoulder.
"Well, for the record-"
"Why don't you check the perimeter? Figure out where your mom went?" Anna suggested quietly. Dean smiled down at her gratefully, turning his hand to squeeze her fingers back. Then he left the room as quickly as his dignity would allow.
"-what kind of irresponsible bastard lets a child any where near - you could have been killed! All of you!"
"I uh- I came kinda close, actually…" Sam admitted.
"I have too. That's the price we pay to protect people. You should understand that John. You're obviously a military man." Anna pointed out quietly. John scoffed. Loudly.
"I volunteered. I was an adult. You three… you were only kids. The number it must have done on your heads…' Sam was pointedly not looking at her, 'your parents were supposed to protect you. Not drag you into some hunt, or into some secret fight with hereditary enemies - I mean, what the hell is a hereditary enemy?"
"He was trying." Sam insisted. "He died trying." Anna's lips thinned. She had her own opinions on the John Winchester of her time. She'd respected him as a hunter, but as a parent… The less said on the matter the better. it wasn't like her Abba wasn't much better either. He might not have been the drill sergeant that John Winchester was to his boys, but her father knew exactly what he was doing when he met her mother. Plus, he doesn't have the excuse most demigod's mortal parents have.
"Believe me… I used to be mad at him. I- I used to hate the guy. But now… I- I, I get it. He was just doing the best he could. And he was trying to keep it together in this, in this impossible situation. See, uh my mom. She, was amazing, and beautiful. And she got killed. And I think he would have gone crazy if he didn't do something." Sam sucked in a breath. Anna reached up to take his shaking hands. John dying had shattered the boys. Broke them neatly down the fractured seams that had already been frayed by the stress of a lifetime spent deep in a hunt to get revenge for that grief. Sam and Dean spent their whole lives reliving the horror that was Mary Winchester's death as John dragged them along on his single minded pursuit of his revenge.
"Truth is… my dad died, before I got to tell him… that I uh, I understand. Why he did what he did. And that I forgive him for what he did for us. I do. And I love him."
AN:
First off, it's been a long time since I've updated! I'm so sorry about the ridiculous wait, but life get's crazy and then I wanted to rewatch SPN to make sure I wasn't making anyone wildly OC and then by the time this chapter got written it was months and months since my last update. Thank you for your patience and I hope you like this chapter!
Secondly, I want to go on the record that John Winchester - whoever he may have been in the past/in this episode - is a terrible parent. The fact that the show made excuses for his abuse over and over again is intensely problematic. No matter how much I love SPN and the cast and the writers for bringing this show to tv, that needs to be said.
John Winchester is canonically abusive and neglectful, and 100% should have had CPS called on him, had his children removed from his custody, and spent a very very long time sitting in jail thinking about all the ways he harmed his children. Same goes for Anna's dad, who 100% knew that any kid of his would be hunted and forced to become a child soldier - and he compounded that by having a kid with Athena who has created a lot of monsters that hate her demigod children.
However, as much as I would love for Sam to go off on John about how shit of a dad he was, and for John to get his comeuppance, and for Sam to have never forgiven him, I did think this scene was really important to keep the same as the show.
Sam deserved the closure from his dad's death that he desperately needed. Because no matter how awful of a parent John Winchester was, Sam needed for the last thing he told his dad - even if the John who knew Sam never hears it - to be that he loved his dad, instead of those angry words from their last fight in the hospital before he'd died. This scene isn't about John being forgiven for his future actions. It's about Sam getting to close the chapter of his life his dad had filled in a way that gives Sam peace of mind.
While forgiveness isn't the path for every survivor, I do think it was a good one for Sam. In this season at least, because he let go of his anger for once instead of repressing it.
On that note, if you or someone you know, is suffering from abuse, regardless of if it's physical, mental, emotional, economic, academic, sexual or any other kind of abuse, there are resources to help you.
One of those is the National Domestic Abuse Hotline which has 24/7 services for abuse victims and survivors. This hotline is still up and running 24/7 even in these crazy times. The website for the domestic abuse hotline is and has a lot of resources there for you to use. It can also direct you to more resources based on where you live. This is an American based resource, since that is where I live, but no matter where you live in the world, you deserve to live a good life free from manipulation and abuse.
There are a lot of resources out there designed to help abuse victims and abuse survivors, and if you are in a situation where you either aren't safe, or even aren't being treated the way every human being deserves to be treated, please get help. There is no reasoning or excuse on this earth, or anywhere else, that abuse or neglect or mistreatment is ok. It doesn't matter if others have it worse, or if what's happening to you isn't that bad, or if you can deal with whatever is happening. You deserve better, period, and you should know that there are people out there whose job is to help you.
As always, stay safe! Drink water, eat good food, wear your masks, and wash your hands!
Cheers,
Hartley