Chapter 2

Bitter Memories

"Personally, I love Thanksgiving traditions: watching football, making pumpkin pie, and saying the magic phrase that sends your aunt storming out of the dining room to sit in her car." Stephen Colbert, American Comedian

Bobby watched Dean's face turn to a frown as he looked at the number on his phone. Apparently, he didn't know it, and that fact on its own wouldn't be a problem; there was a whole slew of hunters now who called the Winchesters for support and advice. But none of them standing there was foolish enough to assume that the call had nothing to do with the big, black car sitting in the driveway. It also didn't help that Azrael, creepy thing that she was, looked intrigued by this turn of events. Bobby was pretty sure that what she found interesting was probably bad news for them.

Dean pressed talk and then speakerphone almost simultaneously, and still had time to look perturbed at the angel, who was busy moving between the black car and his all-but-husband. It wasn't a surprise he didn't like Cas's protective streak. "Hello?" Dean said loud enough to be heard over the gold winter wind.

"Hello, Dean Winchester. I can guess that you've connected this call to the car now sitting in your driveway."

"Who are you?" Dean asked.

"That's actually a complicated answer, so let me explain. I'm here to help, and I have in my car one of my employees. Her name's Charlie Bradbury. She's a tech expert who can help you set up a security system and a computer system that can out-do anything any hunter has ever seen."

"What makes you think we need a security system?" Bobby asked because his house had been secure and now it was practically fortified thanks to the angels."

"Bobby Singer, I think?" the voice on the phone said. The man had a slight drawl, and Bobby could tell that there was a light wanting to turn on in Dean's noggin, but something wasn't quite meshing to connect the wiring to make it happen.

"That's me."

"I am pleased to meet you, so to speak. I have heard good things. What you have done to create a hunter network sans high tech equipment is nothing short of amazing."

"Thanks," he replied for lack of something else to say. He was fairly sure, from the guy's tone, that that wasn't a dig at his abilities or his lack of technology.

"So, let's talk a little more about Charlie. Charlie is a non-possessed, 100-percent-human who has read more about about you and me and federal secrets than is probably wise for her own safety. What I'm asking is that you guarantee her safety. No matter how you react to me."

"There something about you that might make us want to do something to you? Because you're talking like you aren't human," Dean said.

"Personally, I consider myself very human, but on your scale of human and not, I'm probably not falling into the human category. I'm a shapeshifter, and we had a friend in common. That's why I'm here. Because even if you did get him killed for helping you, he never

resented you. He even considered you a friend."

Bobby could pinpoint the moment the lightbulb lit up in Dean's head, and the moment after when something just snapped. "You son of a bitch! You're fucking wearing Ash!" Bobby tried to place the name. Roadhouse. Mullet. Idiot savant. "How long have you been doing it? How much do you know?"

"Ash and I were at MIT together. I had his permission to use his identity when a hunter outed me. Now, I'm coming here for a reason, and it isn't to spoil your Thanksgiving. I'm just asking that you hear me out and don't shoot me."

"Or me," a woman's voice added. Probably this Charlie person.

"I'm going to step out of the car now," this other Ash said.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" the woman's voice asked more quietly.

The man didn't acknowledge her worries for his safety. "And I will apologize for any unhappy memories I'm bound to drag up." The door opened and a man with dirty blond hair, a well tailored suit and fear written across his features got out with his hands in the air. Bobby could vaguely remember what the young guy from the Roadhouse had looked like, but dressed as he was with his neat haircut, he looked like a different person entirely. He seemed to be signaling to the person in the back of the car to stash where they were and then gave instructions to the driver.

Cas swiftly moved in front of Dean to guard him, and if this situation wasn't so explosive, Bobby might have laughed at how perturbed Dean looked at the angel's protectiveness. The man kept one hand raised while the other unbuttoned his suit and showed he wasn't hiding any weapons.

"I know you have no reason to trust me, but I am here to help. You were spotted by a skinwalker a few months ago, yes?"

"What's that got to do with you?"

"They're a close cousin of ours, and apparently, they have been trying to spread the news about your bouncing bundle of joy for all that time. Didn't do much good in the skinwalker community. They're fragmented, stuck with pack mentality and generally scared of the Winchesters. So they reached out to shifter, to the people vying to be the new and generally scared of the Winchesters, like any reasonable creature is. So they reached out to shifters, to the people vying to be the new Alpha. They found a strong one, too, and he direct-dialed into our heads to find you and your family, then kill you."

"That isn't helping your case," Dean warned.

"Not all of us long to indulge in greed or wrath or lust. Have you ever considered that the shifters you've met might have been the bad apples? Thousands of us live nice, normal lives. But unfortunately for me, because he liked you, I like you, at least enough to want to help."

"He doesn't appear to be lying," Azrael said. She'd phrased that like it was a possibility this shapeshifter was deceiving her, but Bobby couldn't imagine that she could be duped by anyone. Sometimes, he felt like she really undersold her abilities.

#

Ash's eyes darted to the woman—no angel—who was vouching for him. There was something unnerving about her, from her appearance to her incredible strength, to the fact she was clearly a friend of the Winchesters, but he was certain she was none of their known angel cohorts. Balthazar, Metatron and Gabriel all had preferred forms. This one was an unknown, and in Ash's experience, unknowns were very bad.

"You'll probably want to call your brother, and maybe get us all inside where it's warm and you have weapons," he said as he tried to retain his calm. "Please understand that me showing up on your doorstep is far more frightening for me than it is for you."

"Not that I'm exactly frightened by a guy in a suit, but how do you figure that?" Dean asked.

"Because you're Dean freaking Winchester. You and your brother are the monsters hiding under little creatures' beds." And damned if Dean didn't puff up a bit at that. Ash had to remind himself that Dean didn't see creatures, particularly shifters, as anything but subhuman.

"Charlie is going to stay in the car for her own safety. She is here because she works for me and because she is, apparently, a 'huge fan' of the Supernatural series." As was actually a little pleased to see Dean and his angel grimace at that. Then again, Ash didn't think he'd like it much if his entire life was documented in a set of books.

He had inched a little closer to these well-meaning serial killers. If they could just let him into the house, he could explain. Sam actually, if he remembers the original Ash telling him about his "joke on MIT," knew some of the story and could corroborate it. "I am coming to you as a husband and father," he said, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket slowly. He flipped it open to show the picture of his wife and his two girls. "I'm here because I know you have a little boy you need to protect. I'm here to help."

"I can protect him just fine," Dean snapped, but he was at least offering a glance at the photo in Ash's hand.

Everything was pointing to this going down as the best possible scenario until a scream came from inside the house. Ash suddenly felt a blade at his neck. He was relatively sure it wasn't silver, but he was equally as sure it could kill him all the same. Just like the strong hand at his arm could probably break his bones, stronger than a human's or not.

"Go," the woman told the others. "I will keep an eye on the car."

And with that, Ash got his very first experience with angel travel.

#

Sam was trying not to laugh because he had enough experience with relationships to know that it wouldn't really engender him to his girlfriend's mother if he found humor at her expense. Instead, he tried to force a stern expression on his face and lecture Gabriel about proper etiquette for appearing in front of strangers. The angel only gave him an odd look and said, "What? Castiel told me she knew."

"Knowing and being prepared are two different things," Emma chimed in as she rubbed her mother's back. Tish looked like she was trying not to hyperventilate.

It took a few seconds before she asked breathily, "Which one are you?"

"Gabriel, he answered with a grin. It only widened at her confounded expression. He was one of the best known of all of the angels, thanks to church Christmas pageants the world over. He also failed to meet almost anyone's expectations of what he would be.

"Sam! Emma! Tish?" Dean yelled from downstairs.

"We're okay, Dean. It was just Gabriel scaring Tish by being Gabriel."

"I resent that," the archangel snapped back, but he was at least checking on Tish to be sure she wasn't actually hyperventilating. Sam thought he even heard him actually apologize to the woman, which was an improvement on his too playful personality.

"We've got another problem," Dean said. "I need you down here, now. Bring silver." Sam and Emma exchanged looks.

"I'll keep an eye on Tish and Johnny," Gabriel said. "Emma, too, if she's staying here."

Emma had already pulled out the silver pocketknife she had made shortly after they'd met. Sam could guess she wasn't going to hide out with her mom unless Tish made her stay, and it looked like the woman wanted to do that. Tish was still having issues with the fact that Emma had a growing arsenal of weapons, that she was broadening her knowledge of monsters with personally induced homework each night, and that she was now stamping all jewelry she sold with an anti possession symbol, which Tish had initially been confused meant the exact opposite of demonic or satanic.

Sam ran into his bedroom and got the silver plated hunting knife he kept there. "Let's go, then," he said, trying to ignore the frown of disapproval on Tish's face. Having her know he was a hunter was bad enough, but if something had actually come to their doorstep, it was going to be really difficult to get the woman on board with this relationship.

"I've got them," Gabriel assured him. "And if you need me, shout."

The hunter nodded and spared Tish one last apologetic look before he went down the stairs and headed for the living room. He stopped dead in his tracks, causing Emma to slam into his back, thankfully not with the knife. "Ash?" Sam asked before his mind put the pieces together that his brother had told him to get the silver and that the real Ash was dead. "A shifter."

"Hello, Sam," this Ash said, trying to look calm, but his voice made it clear he was all nerves. Sam couldn't really blame him. Cas had his arm wrapped around his shoulders from behind and his angel blade to the shifter's throat.

"What are you doing here?" Sam asked.

"Like I explained to your brother," Ash said, "I'm here to help. Shifters know about your family, from Johnny to the young lady standing at your side. And they are bound to attack any time now."

"And you're just here out of the goodness of your heart," Dean said derisively.

"Yes, actually, I am."

"So why pick Ash? Why not someone we didn't know was dead?"

"Because this is me. Has been for more than a decade." Ash looked at Sam. "I tried to explain this to your brother, but perhaps some of this story might sound familiar to you. When I first met Ash, my name was George Winslow."

#

"Looking for a cheap place to live?" asked a voice with a sort of twangy drawl behind him. George turned to see a white kid with what looked like a fairly impressive mullet, if someone could actually call that impressive. George was leery of this man, and not because he was black. Hell, George had only been black for three years. He didn't have the history of racism or any reason to fear"good old boys."

But he always feared someone getting too close and figuring him out.

Then, he realized the guy was holding a stack of fliers looking for a roommate. "My roomie couldn't cut it," the mulleted man said, offering George one of the fliers. "Started freaking out at exam time."

"What's the place like? Is it quiet?" George was trying to act like he hadn't been living in his car for the last semester."

"Sometimes. I mean, put on a Titans football game and give me some PBR, it isn't so quiet."

"It'd be just you?" George had been hoping to find a place by himself, but just one roommate he could handle.

"Yeah. Place has two bedrooms, but the living room is kind of on a curve, so it was damned hard to get chairs in there, let alone a couch or a bed. The guy who turned it into apartments cut it up all weird, but that makes it cheap."

George nodded. "Let's have a look."

They had to ride a bus to get to the apartment, and Ash just never seemed to shut up. He seemed like he should have been an idiot, but it only took about five minutes of talking to him to realize he was a genius. He had plans and concepts that George's mind could barely wrap around, let alone allow him to carry on anything resembling a dialogue.

When they got to the apartment, it was clear that Ash hadn't been kidding. Not only was it accommodating the curved architecture of the Victorian-era building, but one of the walls was actually at an angle. Ash said he'd never really gotten to see the other apartment, but he assumed it had something to do with the installation of the larger doors.

It was a quirky place, but George liked it. "I'll take it."

#

He'd been living with Ash for two years before the hunter came. His name was Travis, and he'd stumbled across George in trying to find out about a rugaru who was about George's age. He'd befriended Ash first; there was a lot about Ash's personality that lent itself to getting along with hunters. But what everyone tended to forget about Ash was just how smart he really was, not to mention that he had an abnormally high alcohol tolerance, at least before it started affecting just how much of a genius he was.

Ash managed to get everything out of Travis before he came running into the apartment, half-smashed, but making surprising sense, despite the slurring. "Travis is this thing called a hunter," he said. "He said you were a shifter."

"Don't be silly," George said. "You're drunk."

"Yes," he slurred. "I am. But I'm not wrong, either. Dude, he's going to sober up, and then he's going to come here and kill you. Because that's apparently what hunters do."

Ash calmly made coffee while George began to panic about what he was going to do, where he was going to go, and how his life was over.

"I have an idea," he said, pouring the coffee into a mug and adding more sugar than was probably healthy. "And that's why I'm trying to sober up. I need to convince him that you are already dead. That I took his whole spiel to heart and did the deed myself. Maybe tell him you panicked when you found out I knew and attacked me."

"And how exactly do you expect to make that believable? There needs to be a body."

"There will be. I'll be burning it when I call him."

"How are you getting a body? I mean, you know that I'm not a monster, not a killer like he says I am."

"I know that," Ash said. "But I have a friend who works at a butcher's shop and the biology department has a few real skeletons."

"Those were bodies donated for science. Other people's skeletons," George said as he began contemplating how he would pack. He'd need to escape and quickly.

Ash gave him this strange smile. "Yeah. All shifters have to be crazy monsters who slaughter people. Look at you: worried about a dead man's skeleton if it could save your life. Yeah. Killers. Horrible, all of you." He rolled his eyes. "You're going to help me get the skeleton. I'm going to burn it, and go off to find out all of the things I didn't know existed."

George looked at him, and under other circumstances, he would have been amused. Leave it to Ash to just be curious. "I'll need to go to the homeless neighborhood, borrow a face until I can find something more permanent."

"No need," Ash said. "I've got that taken care of. You shouldn't have to start over. You're almost done with your degree."

"You've got a senior willing to let me copy him?"

"Grad student, actually. He's got this fellowship, scholarship, too, plus a sweet bartending gig until he finds something more permanent. Though you'll have to take on his student loans, sorry, dude."

George scrutinized Ash carefully. "You want me to be you?"

"Yeah. I mean, it isn't mechanical engineering, but computer engineering and networking, that's not bad, right? And you can tap into my head when you need to if you don't know an answer. There's bound to be a learning curve. Different area, skipping two years..."

"You can't be serious. People will get suspicious."

"Nah," Ash said, draining a cup of coffee. "I'll have that covered."

They had been friends for a while now, but George wasn't used to people doing something nice for him. "What's the catch?"

"Keep the mullet for a year, see if it grows on you." That was accompanied with a grin that George would grow to miss.

#

"I remember talking to ash about that. He said that he liked to mess with MIT for kicking him out. It was all real? The tech business in St. Louis, the MIT alumni magazines? That was you?"

"All me," Ash said. Dean approached and took the wallet from him, looking at the picture of Ash with his family. Castiel was still waiting for word from the hunter to let his blade drop from the man's throat.

"So, how exactly do you explain to your board members that your girls don't look anything like you or your wife."

"Moira and I tell them that they're adopted from China," Ash replied back in a monotone. "Because they were. Being a shifter in this society... I wouldn't inflict that on an innocent child." Castiel could empathize with this man's desire to provide something better for his children. Though Johnny was beautiful in Castiel's eyes, he couldn't help but worry about how the boy's "deformity" might get him treated in the years to come. Castiel wanted to shield him from that, and he had considered seeking other ways to correct the boy's hand, but there were limits even to his skills now as an archangel.

"Not to mention it's probably hard to explain why your children keep exploding and changing," Sam said.

"There's that, too," Ash said. He didn't sound all that amused by Dean. It was a contrast to the stories Castiel had heard about Ash, to his own interactions with the man's soul in Heaven. This Ash had obviously borrowed his friend's appearance, but not the entirety of his personality.

"Does your wife know?" Emma asked. Castiel wondered if her own position in this family gave her special perspective on the shifter's wife.

"Of course," Ash replied earnestly. "I told her everything."

"What if she had told people? Or thought you were crazy and told people that?" Dean asked. Castiel could see the conflict for the hunter; it was so palpable, he could practically feel it. He was hurt that this man looked like his old friend, but wanted to trust him and hurt him for that same reason. He wanted to believe this story, of the family man just wanting to help. He also wanted to rely on everything he'd always known about shifters, that they were horrible creatures who did bad things.

"I knew I could trust her. I know you and he..." And though Castiel was standing behind the shifter, he could guess he was doing something with his face to indicate the angel. "...have had your trust issues in the past, but Moira and I have been solid from the beginning." The words brought up an old shame that Castiel was beginning to assume he might never actually have resolved. He met Dean's eyes and found no hardness there. The feeling was again tangible, so much so that the angel questioned if Dean was purposely using their connection to ensure that the angel knew he had been long since forgiven.

"So, tell me what you know." Dean gave Castiel a nod to drop the blade, but he wasn't foolish enough to put it away.

#

Charlie squeaked when a lithe woman plopped into the seat beside her. "What would Hermione do? What would Hermione do?" She looked at the woman's too-thin face, thinking that the pronounced nose was probably the biggest thing making her not look like a skeleton. This woman, an angel, she guessed, was looking at her intently, like she could see her inside and out. "Are you what's hiding under a dementor's hood?"

And that made the woman laugh. Though she looked like she was chuckling pretty hard at it, the sound was actually pretty soft. "Charlie Bradbury, even if that isn't really your name, I quite like you."

"First it's 'I like you,'" Charlie said. "Then, zap! Frog time."

"Not a witch, Charlie," she said.

"You knew the reference?" Charlie wasn't used to people getting her references. This angel had just got two of them.

"Which am I? Flemeth or Morrigan?" Well, this woman still made Charlie want to pee a little out of fear, but she somehow knew Harry Potter and video games, and that was cool.