Chapter Four

For those of you who are confused about the timeline, Dean/Priestly got hurt when he was 26, a few months after he and John started hunting by themselves, which (on the show) was a couple months before Dean got Sam from Stanford. So now, the story is taking place two years later in 2007.

Priestly stepped down the pier towards his father and brother, hands in his pockets. He found his gaze drawn to John, searching his face in much the same way as he had Sam's. He found his own nose there and Sam's smile.

Maybe we are brothers, Priestly thought. We're just the kind that look more like our parents than each other.

Priestly stepped up to the two of them, giving them an awkward smile.

"Hey, Priestly," said John.

Priestly glanced at Sam real quick, knowing he had told their father to call him that. He looked back at John. "Hi…Dad."

John's smile twitched a little when he called him that. He began to take a step forward towards him, but then hesitated. He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment before taking a step towards Priestly and pulling him into a hug. Priestly let the hug continue, but not very comfortable with it. He knew John needed to hug his son after being missing for two years. Sam, however, had refrained from a hug so far.

John pulled away from Priestly, a hand on his shoulder. "It's good to see you, son." He lowered his hand, his gaze moving over Priestly's shoulder. "So, is that your girlfriend?"

Priestly turned to look at Tish, who was sitting on a bench in front of the pier and watching the surf on the beach. "Yeah." A smile spread on his face as he looked back at them. "She's my girl."

"You guys meet at the sub shop?" asked Sam.

"Yeah, she was working there when I started," Priestly told them.

"What's her name?" asked John.

"Tish," Priestly replied. "I'll, uh…introduce you guys later." He glanced at Sam. "Well, what about our mother? I mean, we do have a mother, right?"

Sam's face grew sad as John's did also. "We did. She, uh…she died when I was a baby."

Priestly's heart plummeted at the news. "How?"

"House fire," John told him.

Priestly frowned. "Arson?"

A look passed over both of their faces, something Priestly couldn't really identify.

"No," answered John. "It was bad wiring in the walls."

Priestly glanced over at Sam to see his eyes shift nervously down to the ground. They're hiding something.

"So, it's just the three of us?" asked Priestly. "No other siblings?"

"Nope," Sam told him. "Just two brothers."

"So…how old am I?" asked Priestly.

"Twenty-eight," Sam told him. "You were born January 24, 1979."

"Huh, twenty-eight," mused Priestly. "What do you know? I was only off by a year." He looked at Sam again. "And you are…"

"Twenty-four," Sam replied. "May 2, 1983."

"Oh, so, I'm the older brother," said Priestly.

Sam frowned at him.

"Well, I thought you'd be older since you're taller," Priestly told him.

"Nope, just tall," Sam replied.

"And I'm a mechanic?" asked Priestly.

John nodded. "Just like me."

"That's how I know how to take care of cars," mused Priestly, leaning up against the pier railing.

"So, now you know about us," said Sam. "But…what happened to you…the past two years, that is."

Priestly shrugged a little. "Well…Woke up in the hospital with no memory and a lot of injuries…spent two months there, waiting for visitors—" he noticed his family's somewhat guilty expressions, "then I shacked up in a shelter after I was released. A few weeks later, I wandered into the grill and got a job."

"And this new look of yours…" began John, "you really like dressing like this?"

Priestly looked down at his pink "Crack for the C.I.A." shirt. "Yeah." He chuckled as he looked back up at his father. "Yeah, I kinda do."

"Sorry," said John, laughing a little. "It's just, you never looked like this. I wouldn't have thought you'd ever put on eyeliner, let alone wear pink."

Priestly shrugged. "People change, I guess."

John watched him wistfully. "Yeah…Yeah, I guess they do." After a moment, he pulled his wallet out, flipping through it until he finally passed it over to Priestly. "That's your mother Mary."

Priestly accepted the wallet, looking down at a blonde woman laughing in a yard on a sunny day. He ran a finger over the woman's face. "She's beautiful."

"You know, I, uh…I always thought you looked like her," John told him.

It was true; Mary did look a lot like him: the light hair, the green eyes, the same smile.

Priestly flipped to another photo. He recognized himself in a second. The picture looked to be less than ten years old. A younger Priestly and a younger Sam appeared to be in the middle of washing a black '60s Chevrolet Impala, but they had stopped to have a water war, apparently. Both of them were soaking wet, and Priestly had the hose pointed at Sam, while Sam had just flung the water from the soap bucket at Priestly.

Priestly chuckled. "Nice car." He looked up at them.

Sam's face brightened immensely at that. "You think so?"

Priestly nodded. "Oh, yeah. That's, what? A '68?"

"'67," John told him.

"Ooh, even better," whistled Priestly.

"It's yours, actually," said John.

Priestly's eyes widened. "No way." He looked down at the picture of the car. "That's mine?"

"Yep," smiled John. "It used to be mine, but I gave it to you just a month or so before you disappeared."

Priestly's gaze shot up to John, horrified. "Don't tell me I got into the accident in this car!"

Sam shook his head quickly. "The Impala was in the shop for the day, so you rented. In fact, the Impala's back at our motel."

A smile appeared on Priestly's face. "Really?"

"Yeah, we can head over there later and you can see for yourself," said John. "Maybe it'll jog a memory loose."

"Yeah, maybe," Priestly speculated, handing the wallet back to John.

"So, you look like you've made pretty good friends at the grill," said Sam.

Priestly nodded. "I have. They're kinda like family. You guys can come by tomorrow. I'll introduce you."

John nodded. "Sure, sounds good."

"Wait, so, if you guys are staying in a motel, and I was in an accident while on a road trip, does that mean we're not local?" asked Priestly.

"No, we're not from Santa Cruz," replied John.

"Well, that explains why it took you two years to find me," said Priestly. "Where are we from?"

"Lawrence, Kansas," John told him.

"Kansas, huh?" said Priestly, mulling it over. "Not what I pictured, honestly."

"Well, we moved around a lot," Sam told him.

Priestly nodded, and they stood there in silence for a moment.

"Well…shall we?" suggested Sam, waving his hand back towards the beach.

Priestly nodded. "Yeah."

The three of them headed back down the pier.

Priestly approached the bench where Tish sat, holding his hand out for her. "Hey, babe. Got some people I want you to meet."

Tish stood, taking his hand and giving him a peck on the lips.

Priestly turned back to the other two. "Tish, this is my brother Sam and our father John. Guys, this is my girlfriend Tish."

"Nice to meet you," greeted Tish, shaking hands with each of them.

"You, too," said Sam.

"So, tell us how you two met," John asked Tish.

Tish and Priestly looked at each other and shared a smile.

************************************************** **SPN/TIH***************************************** ****************************

"And so, then, I had to tell her my name is Boaz," Priestly reminisced.

Sam and John laughed.

"The awesome thing was that she said her name was short for Platisha," Priestly went on.

"Ooh, harsh," laughed Sam.

The three of them were walking back to Sam and John's motel as they promised after dropping Tish off at their apartment.

"Oh, yeah, that's something I meant to ask you guys," Priestly spoke up suddenly. "If my name is Dean Winchester, then why did my insurance card say I was Boaz Priestly?"

Sam and John exchanged hesitant looks.

"What?" asked Priestly.

"Well…" began John, "that's the thing. You were kind of undercover."

Priestly actually froze in his tracks, causing the others to stop with him. "Undercover?"

"The three of us are F.B.I.," Sam told him. "You were after a lead in San Francisco when you had your accident."

"We're all in the F.B.I.?" Priestly asked skeptically.

"It's kind of a family business," John told him. "You see, your mother…she was killed."

"So, it was arson," stated Priestly.

John nodded. "We all joined the Bureau to stop anything like that from happening again and to catch her killer."

Priestly wasn't really sure what it was, but he could somehow tell that even though he was getting closer to the truth, they were still being vague about something.

A smirk formed on Priestly's face. "I'm F.B.I.?"

Sam nodded. "Yep."

Priestly began chuckling, which grew into semi-hysterical laughter.

"What is it?' asked John.

"Nothing," Priestly forced out past his laughter. "It's just that I set out under an assumed name and get amnesia, becoming that person. How much more undercover can you get?"

The laughter became contagious as they set off again, and by the time they reached the motel, all three were catching their breath as the laughter died down.

Priestly spotted a black Impala in the parking lot near the building. "Is that it?"

"Yep, that's your Impala," said Sam.

As if there's another '67 Impala in the lot, Priestly thought.

Priestly stared at this Impala that was his, without a hint of recognition.

"I imagine in different circumstances, she'd be a sight for sore eyes, wouldn't she?" said Priestly.

Sam gave him a sad smile. "Yeah, she would." He stepped over to the car, opening a back door and gesturing towards the back window.

Priestly frowned, but climbed inside the backseat of the Impala. As he slid onto the seat and caught the scent of leather, gasoline and—peculiarly—gun smoke, something sparked in Priestly's mind.

Classic rock blaring through a radio…

Hum of the engine…

"Strap in, Sammy. We got eight hours to go…"

Fresh breeze through the windows…

"Slow down, Dean. She's not a Ferrari…"

Sunlight glinting off the chrome as he worked on the engine…

"Are you ever gonna let me drive, Dean?..."

"Priestly?" asked Sam, sticking his head into the backseat.

Priestly looked up at him with a frown. "Huh?"

"You okay?" asked Sam.

Priestly glanced around the inside of the car. "I don't know…"

"What just happened?" asked Sam, sitting down on the seat next to him.

"I'm not sure," Priestly muttered. "Just a few flashes of stuff."

"Stuff?" asked John, leaning down at the car door.

"Uh, music, driving," began Priestly, looking up at Sam, "Sammy..."

Sam's eyes brightened immeasurably as he exchanged an excited look with John.

"I think the smell of the car triggered something," Priestly told them.

Sam looked back at Priestly with a thousand watt smile. "That's great, Dean! I-I mean, Priestly."

"So, why am I sitting in here?" asked Priestly.

Sam turned towards the back window. "This."

Priestly looked at the shelf of the back window, finding two sets of initials carved there: DW and SW.

"We did that when we were kids," Sam told him.

"And which one of us did that?" asked Priestly, pointing at an army man crammed in the ash tray of the door.

Sam chuckled. "That'd be me. And I also did this." He grabbed hold of the amulet hanging from Priestly's neck.

Priestly glanced down at the amulet. "This?"

"I gave it to you Christmas sixteen years ago," Sam told him. "You haven't taken it off since." He lowered his hand.

Priestly wrapped a hand around the amulet, looking down at it before looking over at the initials carved into the car. He thought back to Sam calling him Dean in his excitement, thinking he was getting his brother back.

"You know what?" Priestly said, looking over at Sam. "I'm still going by Priestly, but…you guys can call me Dean if you want."

Sam and John smiled warmly, looking pleased at this small victory.