What Should Have Never Been Pt 2

Author: Linda Atkinson

Fandom: Supernatural

Rating: FRT

Characters: Sam, Dean, John, OCs

Warnings: Completely AU after What Is and What Should Never Be, some rough language, violence, angst, Drug-use, abuse, Evil Sam(maybe).

Note: I have no knowledge of Freudian Psychology. Everything the doctor says I just made up. If you have actually studied Freud just go with me on this one.

Summary: Dean is so shaken by events in What Is and What Should Have Been that he makes a deal with the cross-roads demon to change the past so that his father doesn't become a hunter and ends up in a alternate world where things are radically different, except that he alone can remember the original time-line.

Thanks to Sioux_Sioux for the beta and input on the story.

The house was quiet; Dean could hear the low murmuring of night sounds outside. The chirp of crickets, the barking of a dog down the street, gentle sounds of talk and laughter from the couple in the house next door. It all seemed surreal. Of course, it was all surreal to Dean. He remembered how it had been before. He remembered the succession of shabby hotels and cheap rentals of growing up. Of Dad leaving them with Pastor Jim or Bobby Singer or a dozen other hunters he knew well enough to trust with his children when they were too young to stay alone. He remembered the weekends without Dad when he was old enough to watch Sammy in some out of the way dump where the neighbors were not too curious. This beautiful house was about as far from those places as Oz had been from Dorothy's family farm. A sweet, mocking voice rang in his head.

"Well, you sure ain't in Kansas anymore, Deano."

God, why did his conscience always sound like her?

Pushing the comforter off Dean slid out of bed. The hall was bathed in a soft yellow light, a tiny nightlight, like the one that Sammy had plugged in beside his bed wherever they went was glowing at one end of the hall. Dean supposed it was in case Dad got out of bed at night and went into the hall.

The door to his father's room was open, couldn't be locked as a matter of fact. Dean had checked; at least they didn't lock in him at night. But when he ducked his head around the corner he could see his father asleep draped in a quilt. For one horrible moment a vivid image of his father's blanket wrapped corpse popped into Dean's head, and he closed his eyes trying hard to banish it.

Quietly he walked into the room and settled on the edge of the bed. John was sleeping curled onto one side and he jerked rolling over onto his back when Dean sat down. John flinched, and Dean was once again horrified at the look of fear that crossed his father's face.

John blinked sleepily.

"I didn't do anything."

"I know, Dad. I just wanted to see how you were doing," Dean said hesitantly.

John looked confused as if that wasn't something he heard very often. He sat up and Dean patted his arm. John looked down, clearly confused.

"Do you need something, Dean?"

"No Dad, I just wanted to see you, that's all."

John bit his lip worriedly.

"Did Sammy send you in here? Because I didn't do anything."

"I know that Dad, I'm sorry that I woke you. Why don't you go back to sleep, okay? I'll see you in the morning."

John looked confused again as if he was trying to pull up a memory, then he surrendered and lay back down. Dean sat beside him for a minute, made all the more uneasy by the wariness in his father's face. Finally, Dean gave up and rose.

He padded silently through the house to the kitchen. He hit the light switch, and the room was bathed in bright fluorescent light. Dean made a quick but thorough search of the room noting that one of the drawers had a lock installed on it, presumably a knife drawer, as if his Dad couldn't be trusted with sharp objects.

The other drawers held a variety of cooking implements, and pots. The pantry was neatly organized and well stocked. Someone in the house liked to cook. Well it had better not be him, because Dean was sure that was one thing that was going to change pretty damn quick.

The upper cabinets held dishes. The ones they had used yesterday for lunch and dinner along with a china case and nicer dishes for special occasions. He spent a long time searching through the cabinets but came up with nothing. Finally, in one small side cabinet near the sink Dean found four pill bottles, brown plastic containers with white safety lids and white labels. All four bottles bore his father's name, and he carried them over to the phone desk pulling out a pad of paper. Quickly he scribbled the name of the doctor who prescribed the medication and the name of the drugs themselves.

Ripping the page off the pad Dean went back to his room. Settling back in the bed he made up his mind that he was going to get some answers. This was not the life that Dean had bargained for, but it was one he was determined to make better. He, Sammy and Dad were alive, if not well, and Dean could work with that.

After breakfast Dean settled into the den at the 'family' computer and began researching the name Clearview. It didn't take long for an image to pop up on the screen. He scrolled through the entries and found one for Clearview Mental Institution, in Palo Alto, California. The photographs on the webpage were of a large white building surrounded by a wide expanse of green lawn and a long curving driveway lined with stately oak trees. He smiled grimly, the place tried to dress itself up but there was no disguising the metal bars on the window; a pretty prison was still a prison.

Dean carefully wrote the address and phone number for the institution on a sheet of paper, just like he would in any other job. Then he clicked back to Google and searched for the name of the doctor who had written John's prescriptions and, what do you know, the doctor was on staff at good old Clearview.

Dean quickly gathered up the project he had started working on last night. He checked the envelope he had carefully concealed in a drawer and pulled out the cardstock and laminating paper he had liberated from Sam's study. He had spent forty-five minutes the night before hustling his father into the den and taking pictures with Sam's brand new digital camera. John had not wanted to cooperate, but he had managed to get several good head shots of his father, and make the older man take some of him. He had also retrieved an accordion folder from the glove compartment of the Impala and scanned in his driver's license and social security card. He had spent some time working up phony IDs for both himself and John. Now he pulled up the seal of the state of California and began working on another badge. Another ID for himself.

Researching the medications themselves was a bit more time consuming, but his Dad had made sure that both Sam and Dean had a good grasp of Latin and that did aid in researching medical terms. He checked the first name, Seroqeul. It turned out to be an anti-psychotic drug for the treatment of schizophrenia. Dean frowned; rubbing a hand over his eyes, one of the side effects of the drug was sedation. That explained why his Dad was so listless most of the time. He checked the second name on his list, Klonopin, which turned out to be an anti-seizure medication. The other two medications were for high blood pressure and stomach problems.

He glared down at the computer screen, anti-psychotic and anti-seizure medications, what the hell had they done to his father?

There was a noise behind him and Dean quickly hit the back button on the computer bringing up the news. Sara smiled at him as she began loading the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. He heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner in the other room and went out. His father was, more or less, vacuuming the rugs in the living room. It was a sort of hit and miss proposition but they really didn't look like they needed it anyway. He glanced up at his sister-in-law as she passed and she shrugged.

"It keeps him out of trouble."

Dean frowned again, she sounded like she was talking about an errant five year old child, not John Winchester. He leaned against the doorframe watching silently. His Dad flipped the clearer's cord over his shoulder and moved toward the largest of the three rugs. He turned and the cord wrapped around his neck. Suddenly John's hand went up and he made a distressed half-strangled sound.

Dean leapt forward, but stumbled to a halt. He could clearly see the cord plugged into an outlet, and there was enough slack in it that the length wrapped across John's shoulders so it should not be tight. Dean took two steps into the room, and watched in mute horror as the cord tightened, as if pulled by unseen hands. Quickly he grabbed the cord and it immediately went slack in his hands falling away from his father's body. Dean glanced at the outlet, and saw Sara standing in the doorway. She finally summoned a smile.

"Is he alright?"

With a causal grin Dean flicked the cord enough to pull it out of the outlet. She frowned but didn't say anything. Pulling his father along after him Dean dodged past her and dragged John into the den.

"Yeah, he's fine, he just got it caught around his neck."

John looked at him.

"I didn't…she…"

Dean cut him off with a harsh glare.

"Not now Dad."

John shut up immediately without so much as an inkling of an argument. He sat down on the sofa, shooting Dean a wounded glare. Dean felt like crap. Sara reappeared with the baby and a bottle. She brushed past Dean and offered the blanket wrapped infant to his father.

"Would you like to give Annie her bottle, John?"

The closest thing to a real smile that Dean had seen broke across John's face. He carefully took the baby and held the bottle to her tiny bow of a mouth. She took the nipple easily and John did what Dean called the Mommy bounce rocking her gently.

A sudden cold memory wrapped itself around Dean's mind, a day not too long after 'that night' of his Dad desperately trying to soothe a wailing Sammy who was screaming from hunger because he didn't want to take the bottle his father was trying to offer. At the time Dean didn't understand that it had meant that his mother was breastfeeding and Sam wasn't accustomed to a bottle, but now he knew.

Dean slid onto the sofa beside his father waiting quietly until Sara was off on another of her daily chores. He watched his father's big hands deftly handling the tiny body, as he had watched before. Looking up at the man Dean wondered how had things gone so wrong.

Looking around to be certain that his sister-in-law was nowhere to be found he got John's attention by patting his arm.

"Dad, what happened? How did we end up like this?"

John shrugged.

"I don't know. It's been so long now. But I'm glad you're not him. Not my Dean. You're a better man than he was. I can tell."

Dean smiled, hearing those words meant so much to him. He leaned against his father just a bit, just like he did when he was little, but John was not a stout as 'his' father had been and he couldn't take much of Dean's weight.

"Why do you say that?"

John shot him a look as if that should have been as plain as day.

"You've been here two days now, and you haven't hit me once."

The spit dried in Dean's mouth and he felt a pain in his chest sharp enough that he thought his heart might stop beating. All this time, he thought that Sam had hurt their father, all this time he had thought that John might be in danger from the others, but now. Closing his eyes Dean heard the demons' mocking voice slide through his brain.

"Sammy doesn't like dealing with the old man without his enforcer."

The horrible truth finally reared its ugly head. Sam wasn't the one beating their father, he was.

John calmly finished giving the baby her bottle then draped the light blanket over his shoulder to burp her. She was sleepy, and his father rocked her gently a little. He glanced over at Dean.

"Do you want to…" John indicated the baby in his arms. Dean blanched.

"No, its okay. Not my thing really." He smiled at his father and the two men sat quietly side by side, with the baby sleeping peacefully in John's arms. The mood was broken when Sara appeared at the den door carrying a paper cup and a bottle of water. She handed them to Dean then collected the baby.

"John, time for your medication."

Dean looked at the cup then smiled at the young woman.

"Why don't you put the baby down for her nap. I'll get the meds in him."

He could see the frown on his father's face but Sara just took Annie and left. Dean picked the pills out of the cup. He handed the blood pressure pill and the stomach medicine to John and the water. John swallowed them down then Dean looked at the other two pills. He flipped the seizure medication out and handed it to his father as well. John accepted it, and watched carefully as Dean dropped the other pill into the garbage can. His eyes went wide.

"Dad, listen to me very carefully 'cause I'm hoping that you're not psychotic. But I need you be careful what you tell Sam and Sara, okay? No more saying that I'm not your Dean, because I am, okay? I'm your son now, your Dean."

"Okay," John whispered. "You're my Dean."

"Good and I'm going to make sure that you're my Dad again too."

The next morning John was sitting on the den floor on a blanket with Annie. She was just old enough to try flipping over from her stomach to her back. Right now she was lying on her back beneath some kind of brightly colored plastic frame with a number of colorful plastic toys hanging down on ribbons. Dean thought it was the perfect thing for strangling a kid, but he supposed when they got big enough to sit up you got rid of the contraption. The TV was tuned to some kind of kiddie show with loud music and muppets. Dean smiled he wasn't sure who was watching it more, the baby or his Dad.

But John seemed clearer this morning, and when Dean brought the cup with his pills in his father only put up a token argument, just enough to satisfy Sam and Sara. Once again Dean palmed the Seroqeul.

After lunch Sara appeared with his father in tow, the baby in a large stroller and a diaper bag. She looked at Dean.

"John seems to be in a good mood today so we're going to the shopping center down the street for a haircut. Do you want to come, or would you like a little free time."

Dean smiled at her.

"Actually, I have an errand to run, is that okay? I'll be back in a couple of hours."

She nodded.

"Fine. Just be home before Sam get's back from work. He's tired at the end of the day, and your father and he just don't get along."

"Yeah, no surprises there," Dean sighed. "I'll be back."

After they had left Dean dressed in a suit and gathered up the IDs he had made, dropping all but one in the glove compartment of the car. He fastened the badge to his jacket pocket and looked at the map he had printed off.

There was a huge wrought iron gate at the end of the driveway of the Clearview Institution. Dean picked up the phone and punched in the number for the operator. When a voice came on the other end he said,

"Hi I'm Jerry Porter from Adult Protective Services here to see a Doctor Harry Odell."

The doctor met him in the foyer of the main building. Dean shook his hand looking the other man over. Doctor Odell was mid-sixties so he had probably been at the institution for a while now. He made a perfunctory glance at Dean's ID and then pulled a thick manila folder from under his arm.

"Mr. Porter, I'm pleased to meet you, but I am sorry to hear that there is a need for your services. I had always thought that John should stay here."

Dean took the folder and followed the older man down the hall.

"Why is that Doctor Odell?"

"Well, you'll see in the case files. John is a stubborn man, and he's always been in denial about his mental illness. That can cause some friction when family members try to deal with the patient."

"And you think that sets the stage for abuse?"

"Well, I never saw anything, but it's my understanding that John has two sons and I only met the one. I don't know about the older boy."

Dean smiled. "He probably loves his father very much and would anything for him."

The doctor shot him a funny look, but shrugged.

"The younger one paid for everything. I know that much. I think he's a law clerk at Dunham and Young, and in law school at Stanford. Anyway, the case is pretty well outlined in the files. All my notes are transcribed and typed for convenience. You know what they say about a doctor's hand writing."

Dean nodded smiling tightly.

"What was your personal experience with John, was he violent or aggressive? Why do you think he did it?"

"I don't know but the delusions were an on-going problem. It was almost as if John picked these things up from someone else. They read like a movie plot sometimes. Stories he'd come up with of him and the older boy, Dean, hunting. Not just hunting mind you but these horrible things, ghosts...uhh…vengeful spirits John used to call them. And the meds never really worked, we had him on many different kinds and the delusions and hallucinations never went away."

"What kind of delusions?"

"Oh mostly killing, but never people. Oh no…always some kind of mythical monsters; ghosts, werewolves, demons. Some of them were very detailed and very specific. For instance killing a ghost in white…"

"A woman in white," Dean provided. The doctor glanced at him,

"Yes, a woman in white in Jericho, California. Or a female vampire or even some demon girl named Meg."

"Seems like a pattern…"

"Well yes, typical Freudian associations between sex and death. I think it was just that John could never reconcile his masturbatory fantasies of women other than his late wife."

Dean flinched; masturbation and Dad, there were two words that he hoped never collided in his brain again…ever. Taking a deep breath he followed the doctor to a small conference room. Once the older man was gone he opened the file and began reading.

Dean had a headache by the time he was finished with the first portion of the file, and he was seething mad; at the State of California, at Sam and Uncle Roger and Aunt Carol.

Apparently in this reality his Dad hadn't realized that Roger, his own wife's brother was about to stab him in the back. At least not in time. Dean remembered their hurried departure from Lawrence, right after his Dad's last visit to Missouri Mosley. And his resulting first hunt, a quick salt and burn in the Lawrence Memorial Gardens.

He read through the doctor's notes and attached police reports becoming angrier as he went along. They had gotten away in his time-line. His Dad had done the job and returned to the hotel before his brother-in-law showed up. In this reality, he and Sammy had been tucked up in bed asleep and Roger had shown up before John finished that first job, not after.

Their uncle was wary of John's stories that something unnatural had happened to Mary. That she was pinned on the ceiling and a dark figure had been in the nursery, a dark figure with glowing yellow eyes. In his reality Dean remembered that Dad had kept it to himself, accepted what he was told, kept quiet. Here, that hadn't happened. Getting caught desecrating a grave really hadn't helped his case either.

His father had been certified insane and committed to an institution in Lawrence at his uncle's request. Roger and Carol had been awarded custody of Dean and Sam as their closest relatives and Roger had also become John's conservator, making medical and legal decisions on his behalf. They had transferred John to Clearview a few years later when Roger and Carol relocated to California. Apparently the state had insisted that John be kept close enough that the boys could visit him as a stipulation for granting his aunt and uncle sole custody of Sam and Dean.

Dean skimmed through the records quickly, not understanding much of the medical mumbo-jumbo until he got to a part that made his blood run cold. John had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. And he had been given convulsive shock therapy. Slamming his fist on the table Dean slapped the file closed. They had goddamn electrocuted his father. That explained the anti-seizure meds.

Glancing at his watch Dean saw that he had been here for an hour. Sara was alone with his Dad, and while he didn't think she'd try anything that couldn't be conveniently explained away, particularly when no one else was with his father, Dean didn't want to be gone too long. Added to that was the fact that Sam would be home for dinner soon, and he wanted to be there on time. Now that Dean had a plan, of sorts, he couldn't afford for Sammy to kick him out of the house, and lose access to their father.

Dean deposited the file with the front desk and walked out to his car. It was a short drive back to the house and Dean pulled in just as Sammy's car hit the driveway. Smiling he draped an arm around his brother's shoulders and squeezed. Sam relaxed under the touch, smiling at his brother.

"How'd it go today? Everything okay? You know I don't mean to get so riled up, but with school and work it gets a little hectic. I forget how easy it is for you with Dad."

"Yeah, I know. He's doing really good today. Went for a haircut with Sara, and took care of the baby."

True enough when they got into the house John looked more like himself than he had since Dean got there. He seemed to be focusing better and was helping put things on the table for dinner. Sara glanced from Sam to Dean, and for a minute Dean thought that she looked annoyed.

Sam actually smiled at John.

"Hey, Dad. You're looking good today."

John shrugged.

"I feel good, Sammy. How was the office?"

They sat around the dinner table talking, and laughing and for once Dean felt satisfied that everything was going to be okay.

TBC