I don't own supernatural.
….I'm afraid you guys aren't going to like this chapter. Everyone seemed to love this story the way it was, but I honestly can't see any other direction I could've taken with this. This popped into my head and I had to write it. With my stories it isn't like I write them and chose how they go. It's like the story chooses what it wants to happen and I'm just the vessel who has to do the writing.
All my stories have a twist in them that I use to try and make them a little more original, and this is the chapter with a twist.
WARNINGS!: mentions of child abuse. Not John, not precisely. You'll see if you read.
More notes coming at the end.
Chapter 5 The Switch
Sam Winchester woke up in an unfamiliar bed. This in itself wouldn't be all that odd; he and Dean rarely stayed in one motel more then a couple of nights. What was odd, was that he was snuggled up to Dean. He hadn't slept in the same bed as Dean since before he went to college.
"Dean!" he hissed as he glanced around at the room they were in. They hadn't gone to sleep in this room last night, he knew. "Dean!" he tried again when his brother only stirred and gripped Sam tighter to him.
Dean woke with a start. "Sam?" he asked groggily. "What're you doin' in my bed?"
"I don't know where we are, Dean," Sam informed his big brother as he tried to coax Dean to full wakefulness.
Sometime worked (Sam wasn't sure if it was his words or his nails tapping gently on Dean's shoulder) because Dean jolted into a sitting position. He had neglected to let go of Sam, however, so Sam was pulled up with him.
"Where are we?" Dean questioned urgently as he looked around wildly.
"I don't know," Sam choked out from where he was being nearly strangled by Dean's tight hold on him. "I think something must've gone wrong on our way back to our own reality."
Dean moaned. "Please tell me we didn't end up in a reality where we're lovers," he begged.
"Don't be ridiculous," Sam answered briskly (he had managed to loosen Dean's strangle hold). "We're brothers here, at least," he continued confidently.
"How do you know?" Dean asked worriedly.
Sam grabbed the amulet around Dean's neck. "Where else would you have gotten this?" he inquired with a raised eyebrow.
"Oh good," Dean sighed in relief. "It would be sooooooo awkward to be in a world where we're lovers."
Sam nodded in agreement. "We aged backwards, too," he added in. It was true. Dean looked around twenty if Sam had to guess.
It was right after the Flagstaff incident, he realized; he had never had quiet as bad of a punishment as he had had after that incident. When his father and brother caught up with him, John had sent Dean out, then proceed to punish Sam. With first take his belt to Sam, and then a switch. It had left welts on Sam for weeks after wards.
The door was suddenly opened, interrupting their conversation.
"Oh good, you're up," a tall man with messy black hair said. Sam shrunk back towards Dean as the unfamiliar man approached.
"Aw, look Sammy," Dean exclaimed excitedly. "It's Uncle…..you're Uncle Mark, aren't you?" he questioned.
At the man's confused nod he continued.
"I haven't seen him since I was four. You never saw him, of course."
"We have uncles?" Sam asked in confusion, tilting his head back so he could see his big brother.
"Yep," Dean confirmed, popping the p. "Four of them. That's why Dad went so crazy when you asked about family for that one project you had in eleventh grade."
"Oh," Sam said blankly. "That's what he considered bad enough to rip up all the work I'd already done?"
"He didn't want his family involved in hunting," Dean shrugged. "Something about not putting them in danger, so it would be safer to never mention them again."
"That's nice," Sam snorted.
"If it keeps them alive…" Dean trailed off.
Sam nodded his acceptance.
"You two coming down to breakfast?" Mark asked unsurely. There was something wrong here.
"Sure, if you'll show us the way," Dean answered nonchalantly. "We're not exactly familiar with our surroundings."
"Alright," Mark agreed slowly. Something was very wrong here. Sam wasn't even in eleventh grade yet. He left the room to give the boys time to get dressed.
Sam and Dean got out of bed and dressed quickly.
"God I forgot how short you used to be," Dean proclaimed as they walked out of their bedroom. He easily swept Sam into his arms, carrying him like a toddler.
"I'm not six, Dean," Sam informed his older brother with a pout.
"No, you appear to be around, what, sixteen?" Dean questioned.
"Yep," Sam replied, "and you're twenty. Where do you think Dad is? You think he just dumped us here?"
"He's waiting for you at the table," Mark said, sending them an odd look.
"Oh, well that's great," Dean muttered sarcastically. His view of their father had rapidly deteriorated after John's order to save Sam or kill him. He now took anything John had ever said with suspicion.
Sam had always kept it to himself that their father acted differently when Dean wasn't home. He hadn't wanted to take his brother's idol from him. Sam suspected that their father had known for a very long time that there was a possibility of Sam going evil.
Ever since Sam was fifteen, every time Dean left the house their father would start drinking. The first time Sam didn't think much of it. His birthday had just passed, and he knew birthdays were hard on his father. So he simply decided to stay out of John's way. That hadn't worked.
He had been doing his homework peacefully in his room (far away from his father) when the bedroom door had slammed open. John had entered, his face a thunder could of anger. Sam had been confused; he had done all of his chores, finished training for the day, and left his father alone to drink, so why was the man angry?
He had quickly found out it had something to do with his mother's death. His father had snarled something about "Mary sacrificing herself for this?" and proceeded to take his belt to Sam. Sam had had a hell of time hiding the welts from Dean.
After that it happened every time Dean left the two of them alone for more than an hour. Eventually John had decided Sam was too old for the belt and started cutting a switch when he needed one. The night Sam had left for Stanford his father had decided the switch wasn't working either. He had threatened to either get a whip and try to physically whip the evilness out of Sam, or take the switch to Sam's back.
He had had enough, and simply ran before his father could make good on his threat. The switch already came away bloody from his beaten backside; he didn't want to know what it would do to his much less padded back.
Dean had never found out, though; he made sure of that. He could only imagine what it would do him if he found out Dean was beating up little kids in his spare time. He thought it would be something like that for Dean if he told his big brother about what their father was doing when Dean wasn't watching.
So Dean was completely oblivious to how much fear Sam connected to their father as they walked into the family dinning room.
Dean looked around the table and spotted only three more open chairs around the huge table. He also spotted Caleb, which he would be asking about later. Two of the open chairs were next to his father, obviously waiting for him and Sam. The other open chair had to be Uncle Mark's.
Dean strode into the room, ignoring the odd looks he was getting because he was carrying Sam. Sam himself felt like hiding his face in Dean's shoulder, but resisted the urge.
He had always been shy, but Hell had made thing infinitely worse. Michel and Lucifer had put parts of him in regular display that he had never shown to anyone but Jess and a few other special girls. And Dean, of course. Dean had changed his diapers; he literally had nothing Dean hadn't seen before.
Anyway, whenever people stared at him now, it was like Michel and Lucifer were inspecting him all over again. Maybe licking their lips as they planed out what they wanted to do with him later. Lucifer always loved to taunt him about how Sam was his bitch in ever sense of the word. He hadn't been lying.
Sam shuddered, and felt Dean pull him impossibly closer. He was probably sending nasty looks at everyone over Sam's head too.
Dean took his seat and sat Sam on his lap, completely ignoring the chair right next to him that was meant for Sam. Sam couldn't bring himself to be embarrassed or even to want off of Dean.
Hell had left him broken in ways no one else could imagine. Sometimes he felt like six year old Sammy again, who just needed Big Brother to make everything all better. It was hard when he was six foot four, but right now he was the perfect size for Dean to take care of again. It was actually kind of nice, and Dean was more then perfectly happy to be able to take care of Sam again. He had missed his baby brother as much as Sam had missed his big brother.
As soon as they were seated conversation around the table restarted. "Are you ok?" John asked, looking at the two of them oddly as Sam reached for the oatmeal (something he had hated as a child, but also one of the few things on the table that didn't remind him of Hell in any way) and Dean grabbed the honey for him.
"Actually," Dean began conversationally. "We are adjusting to this reality at this moment. Stupid angel transported us to the wrong universe on our way home."
The whole table stopped to stare again. "Don't you people have anything better to do then stare at us?" Dean questioned angrily.
"Aw, you already managed to ruin the joke, Deano," a pouty voice proclaimed from where Gabriel was suddenly standing in the middle of the table. "They weren't supposed to know you were from a different universe."
"You have something to do with this?" Sam inquired disbelievingly. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"
"Ah, my dear little Sammy, I love that you're naive enough to think I only have something to do with this. I have everything to do with this, sweetheart. By the way, did anyone ever mention to you how absolutely adorable you were when you were younger?"
"Umm…." Sam trailed off.
"I'll take that as a 'no' then," Gabriel sighed. "I am, in fact, dead in your time. I had to set this up so it would work even after I died. Very tricky, let me tell you," he confided.
"Yeah, well, do you mind getting your angelic feet out of the bacon?" Dean queried with annoyance.
"Only you," Caleb snorted.
All attention focused on him.
"What?" he questioned. "It's true. Only Dean could be worried about the bacon when we have an angel standing in the middle of our table."
"Don't worry dear boy," Gabriel assured. "Dean has had more then enough time to get used to angels popping up in the most random of places. I think my baby brother took care of that, did he not?"
"You mean the one I'm gonna stab through the head if I ever see him again?" Dean asked sweetly. "We can just see how he likes it." His expression changed to an ugly scowl.
"Oh," Gabriel winced. "What did he do?"
"Sam came back from Hell without a soul. I got death to put his soul back in and put up a wall so Sam wouldn't have to deal with the Hell memories. Darling old Castiel broke the wall," Dean gritted.
Gabriele stared at Sam. "And you're not a drooling vegetable?" he asked, sounding impressed.
Sam winced. "Not quite," he hedged.
"Huh?" Gabriel shrugged. "So how did it come out? Hallucinations, brain damage, uncontrollable spastic shaking-?"
"Shut up!" Dean yelled.
"Touchy," Gabriel disapproved. "Well, I suppose you want to know why I brought you here," he sighed.
"It would be nice," Sam admitted.
"It's simple really. Neither of you actually had a child hood or a good father (you actually had a horribly crapy father) so I decided to give you some time with family," Gabriel declared carelessly.
"What!" Dean cried. "You brought us to a whole other universe because you thought we could do with some family bonding?"
"Well, that and Sammy has some secrets he needs to tell," Gabriel deliberated. Sam stiffened. "Let's just say there were sides to Daddy that even little Deano never got to see. He was a much worse man then anyone but baby Sammy realized."
That struck everyone at the table as ominous.
"Don't worry though," Gabriel continued in a much lighter tone. "This version of Daddy is much better then the last one. Very protective, nice man, the whole nine yards. I did a through background check before I chose this universe for you, and we're all good."
Suddenly he turned to John. "Oh, and by the way; that hunt you came here for? Complete bust. I set it up so you would have no choice but to come here and see family again," he grinned.
"You know, you weren't exactly in my good books to start with, but now you're just plain on my hit list," Dean threatened.
"I'm sorry; I'm already dead and happen to be impervious to threats to my life," Gabriel smirked. "I could always throw you in another time loop instead.." he trailed off. "I don't think Sammy would like that very much. In fact, isn't that another thing you never told big brother about?" Gabriel questioned. "You never told him that that was your second Wednesday. He never knew about those six moths you spent without him courtesy of my tricks, did he?"
"What?" Dean gasped.
"Oh yes. And do you know what the funniest thing about the situation was? Sammy thought you were down doing time in Hell, but you were actually up in Heaven the whole time. You couldn't go to Hell because it wasn't time for the demon to collect yet," Gabriel chuckled.
'You said he was in Hell," Sam accused with little real heat. "And besides, Dean doesn't like Heaven either. He says he would get lonely." He was a aware that with the tone he had used he might as well have added "so there!" on to the end, but didn't care.
"And I'm sure he would," Gabriel confirmed. "You need to be up there for him to be actually happy. You know that's actually the oddest case I've ever heard of? I don't think two guys have ever shared a patch of Heaven, let alone two brothers."
"Moving on!" Dean interrupted loudly. "When can we go home? We've got Bobby depending on us, and leviathans to take care of; we really don't have time for this little vacation."
'When you get back home no time will have passed," Gabriel tossed out indifferently. "Going home is going to be the whole problem, however," he seemed almost sheepish, and it sent of so many warning bells that Sam's head was ringing.
"What did you do?" he interrogated with a small hint of fear.
"I can't get you back home until specific conditions are met, but I also can't tell you these conditions. So you're just going to have to mosey along until you manage to meet the requirements," Gabriel informed them. "I'm going to leave now before Dean finds a way to murder me even though I'm already dead." He was starting to fade.
"Oh, and Sammy?" his voice echoed back even though he was mostly gone already. "If you don't tell Dean exactly how much all that business with Ruby wasn't your fault, I'm going to find a way to make you. And it won't be pleasant…..for you at least." And then he was completely gone with only a fading cackle to signify that he had ever been there.
Sam and Dean were left alone with a table full of silent and insanely curious relatives. Awesome.
Let's pretend an angel transported Sam and Dean to a random universe sometime after Castiel died and the leviathans got loose. I don't think Dean would've forgiven Castiel as easily as he did in the series. He was big brother Dean for most of season six and the first part of season seven.
What do you think? Like I said, sometimes I feel like the stories write themselves and I have no choice but to put down what they want. When I first had this idea I tried to think of something else to do, but a little part of my brain always seemed to be working on it with this twist. I finally just gave up and wrote what it wanted.