Author's Note: I've been watching Supernatural for a while. I didn't want this to happen. There are so many good SPN stories already out there. But I couldn't stop it.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.
Background: The title is a reference to the song Turn the Page by Bob Seger (and covered by Metallica). The story is set between seasons 5 & 6 and it's AU. The plot relies on a few slightly altered details in the episodes preceding the season 5 finale, but not many and I don't want to give away what they are right off the bat. It's not drastically different, but if you really hate changes to the show's plot this is not the story for you.
Song: Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
CHAPTER 1
Fortunate Son
Dean steers the Impala into a dusty parking lot somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere, Illinois. Metallica is blaring, loudly enough to permanently damage his hearing, but not loudly enough to occupy a glaring vacancy beside him. Metallica usually soothes him, but not this time.
It's been a week since Detroit.
He considered honoring Sam's last request, truly, he did. Not because he wanted to – only because it was Sam who had asked it of him. But they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Dean may not be old - not unless you count the time he spent in Hell - but he's lived hard enough to consider himself ancient.
It's not selfishness, the tiny, less damaged part of him insists, that he can't bring himself to give it up. Sammy doesn't understand. (Didn't? Doesn't). Sammy and Bobby and even his dad had something Dean never did: a life apart from this. You can't plunge into something like that without any experience.
So he finds himself at this dingy tavern, indistinguishable from the thousands of others he's visited in his long/short life. Richard's, it's called. He likes the name. Even though he's sure he's never been there before, he feels like a regular.
He glances back at his beloved Impala and watches its glossy, black finish fade into the night as he gets further away.
He steps into the bar, which seems to be made solely of pine and populated with drunks from various walks of life. It is 11 PM on a Monday, he supposes. He fits right in. He immediately shimmies onto a stool and orders a whiskey neat from the young, redheaded bartender, throwing down a couple of bills and bringing the medicine to his lips in one familiar motion. He sits quietly, listening to the constant thrum of the jukebox in the corner and the whirr of dying light bulbs.
He's in town on a job. Something to do with demons scrambling around like chickens with their heads cut off now that their god has been shoved back into his cage. He doesn't really care much about the specifics because he's really here to interrogate (read: torture, maim, and kill) every demon he can get his mitts on until one of them tells him how to rescue Sam.
Yeah, yeah, he knows he's supposed let it be, blah, blah, blah. But screw that. Sam is his brother, and he's gonna save his ass, just like he always does. This time isn't any different. Sure, maybe the mission will be a bit more elaborate, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. You quickly find in this line of work that nothing is impossible. And with an angel in his back pocket, he has an edge he's never had before.
But Cas has been distant. Whatever cosmic power vacuum has been unleashed in Hell, something similar is going on in Heaven, from what he's gathered. Whatever. It's Cas – it's Cas. Maybe he won't be joining him for stakeouts anymore, but he knows he'll come through when he needs him to. He has faith in nothing, but he has faith in this.
Dean, on his third whiskey, turns to his left to see a flannel-clad, gray-bearded man nursing a beer. He looks vexed.
"You from around here?" Dean asks, voice even more hoarse than usual on account of the burning liquor.
The man spares him an obligatory glance, before nodding sharply. "I take it you're not," is his gruff response.
"No," he answers. "I'm in town on a job."
The man's interest is piqued. "What type of job?"
Dean puts on his most winning smile. "Believe it or not," he starts, "I'm FBI – Agent Fogerty."
He extends his hand, but the man's unkempt eyebrows join in a skeptical frown.
"I'm off duty," Dean explains in regard to his appearance. He carefully retracts his hand, instead wrapping it around his glass. "The Bureau sent me to investigate an unusual influx of occult activity in the past weeks. Know anything about that?"
His fogged eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and he quickly fixes his attention on a bottle of Bacardi behind the bar. As if unable to resist the temptation, he flits his gaze back to Dean. "You really FBI?"
Dean fishes around in his jacket pocket to retrieve his forged badge.
"Name's McCarthy," the man offers after skimming the lettering. "Now, you're gonna think I'm crazy…"
Dean's lips curl into a knowing smile. "Trust me," he says, "I'm used to crazy."
The man – McCarthy – takes the longest swig of beer Dean's seen him take thus far. He has the distinct air about him of a man who doubts his own memory, which he considers promising.
"I wouldn' be sayin' this if I didn't see it with my own eyes," he prefaces, urging Agent Fogerty to trust his sanity. "But I swear to you, a couple o' days ago I saw my neighbor kill his wife – stabbed 'er straight in the gut, he did. There was blood everywhere. Naturally, I called the police as soon as I saw it. But when they got there, the wife was alive in kickin' and they were actin' like nothing'd happened. Now maybe I am a drunken old coot, but I know what I saw. I can't explain it, but I saw it clear as I see you in front of me. There's somethin' unholy goin' on in this town."
"I believe you," says Dean, to McCarthy's obvious surprise.
"You do?"
"Yeah. Where did you say your neighbors live?"
"I didn't. I live real close – a mile or so down the road. If you swing by tomorrow I can show you exactly where it happened. Right now, I gotta go hit the head and call it a night."
"Alright," he agrees. "See you bright and early tomorrow morning." He flashes him a grin.
McCarthy tips his trucker hat and deposits a few bills on the bar before making his way to the bathroom. Retiring the act, Dean lets his smile drop and stuffs his fake ID back into his jacket pocket, only to have his fingers brush a small, filmy parcel. He pulls it out – it's a photo of him and Sam with their dad, taken not long before Sam left for Stanford. He studies the image sadly before crumpling it in his fist.
The redheaded bartender sweeps the bills McCarthy left into a neat stack, folding it into her apron pocket. She casts a sidelong glance at Dean. She appears intrigued by the photograph, which he finds inexplicably enraging. He attempts to bite back the stifling heat that's creeping into his esophagus.
She opens her mouth as if she wants to say something, but ultimately decides against it.
"What?" Dean snaps.
She flinches, not realizing she'd been caught, but she eventually musters the courage to speak up. "Why were you talking to Old Man McCarthy?" Her tone is far more confident than he'd anticipated and doesn't match her timid demeanor.
"Old Man McCarthy? That's what you call him?"
She nods wordlessly, staring like a deer in the headlights.
Dean slides his empty glass towards her, which she promptly refills after tearing her eyes off of him. She mentally notes that this is his fifth whiskey and he is seemingly unaffected. When she's done, she places her hands on her hips and peers at him expectantly in a manner that seems to better suit her.
"I'm running an investigation," is all he says.
"McCarthy's the town idiot," she states exasperatedly. "You can't take what he says seriously."
Dean's light eyebrows arch in amusement. "Is he?" he asks through a smirk. It's clearly a rhetorical question.
The bartender ignores his dismissive attitude and inquires, "What are you investigating?"
Suddenly, a veneer of seriousness washes over Dean's features. He's back in the role. "A large surge of occult activity in the area. Have you heard anything about something like that?"
She purses her lips in a hesitant way that makes him think she has. "No," she contradicts, ostensibly hiding something.
His eyes narrow to daggers. "Withholding information from a federal officer is called obstruction of justice," he recites.
The girl exhales and looks wildly around the bar. There are only a handful of other people present.
"Look, in a small town like this teenagers tend to get up to no good," she says wisely. "The occult is just something to pass the time between sneaking vodka from their parents' liquor cabinets and stealing cigarettes."
"There's been a dramatic uptick in cattle mutilations," Dean points out.
"So they've upped the crazy a bit – hardly a job for the FBI."
He takes a long draught of his whiskey, polishing it off. "We'll see."
. . .
He looks different, somehow, broken, even though only exactly twenty-two hours have passed since he last saw him.
There's a hunger in him, a predatory stain on his face. His cheekbones have caved in on themselves, like the youth has been sucked straight out of him, like he has been robbed of everything that makes him him.
This isn't his brother, his little brother, he thinks, but it must be.
He is on his knees, bloody, as he stands tall over him. Dark and light. Good and evil.
Or so it has been said.
"Sam," he chokes, forcing that word out of his mouth with the last remaining scrap of life in his shattered body. He can barely speak through the salty blood that is drowning him, bubbling hot in his lungs.
He bends his neck to gaze down at his brother, eyes sharp but uncomprehending. They are an icy perversion of Sam's true eyes, gone, but in his memory so earnest and kind.
"We both knew it was going to come to this eventually."
Dean spasms awake in his shoddy motel room at 6 AM, after a fitful four hours of sleep. The mattress is lumpy and everything is familiar except the room is half as large as it should be. He sits up and rubs his temples, rubs the nightmares out of his brain.
The stagnant silence blanketing the room sears a hole in his chest, so he blasts the radio to fill the void. Just like in the car, it doesn't quite work. Everything feels a bit surreal and backwards, like he's in a dream that's almost a perfect imitation of his life, but one small detail is off and makes the whole thing unravel.
The words to the song – something by Pink Floyd – thunder through the room, fusing themselves to the very composition of the air. They are mingled with the faint buzz of static.
He can only hear the static.
He takes a swig from the half-empty five-dollar bottle of brandy on the nightstand, wincing. It's not the taste – he needs the taste – it's that he doesn't want to need it.
It's funny how the lack of something can make such a profound impact.
It's only temporary, he tells himself, wanting to believe it.
He's in a bad way, he knows. Worse than ever. Starting his mornings with a swig of booze is low, even for him. But there's nothing to be done except carry on. So he rolls out of bed, splashes water on his face, brushes his teeth, and pulls on his cheap suit fast enough to set a record.
McCarthy's house turns out to be a lot nicer than he expected but still not exactly nice. What strikes him first, though, is that it's not a home built for one person and he suddenly can't help but suspect maybe "Old Man McCarthy" isn't just a rambling old drunk and maybe he's just trying to get by under less-than-ideal circumstances. Dean can certainly empathize.
He raps on the door and after a few moments McCarthy staggers into view. It's clear that the noise has jarred him out of unconsciousness, but Dean has to give him credit for smiling good-naturedly nonetheless. In the sunlight, he notices his teeth are rotting.
"Hello, Agent Fogerty," he greets, letting him inside. What neglect the exterior could disguise, the interior could not. He wagers the house hasn't been cleaned in close to a decade, and he seriously considers signing the man up for an episode of Hoarders once he's finished the job. It looks like he robbed a dozen liquor stores and drank the spoils, and it sure smells like it, too.
"So, your neighbors?"
McCarthy nods and points to the yellow house next door. It's a bit shabby, but nowhere near as dilapidated as his. At least the grass is cut.
"Mr. and Mrs. Todd Stanley," he says. "As of yesterday, the most perfect, average couple in the whole state. A bit strange, seeing as they've been hurling dishware at one another on a daily basis for the past five years."
Dean chews the inside of his cheek in thought, before asking, "Are they there now?"
McCarthy nods in affirmation. "Yeah, but they should be headin' to church in a bit."
"Church? It's Tuesday."
The older man shrugs as if it's just as much of an enigma to him. "They've been goin' every morning since I saw him murder her."
This is all Dean needs to hear. He thanks McCarthy for his intel and hastily marches outside, back to the Impala.
Soon enough, his targets emerge from their yellow house and load into a gray sedan. Once they're on their way down the road, Dean shifts the car into drive and pulls out behind them.
He follows them all the way to an Evangelical church that looks to have been built some time in the 1950s. It's made of paneled wood slathered with layer upon layer of white paint; the paint is so thick that he can't help but suspect every time any damage was incurred in one area, they slapped a coat of paint on the whole thing. There's a tidy row of hydrangeas in the front. The rest of the street is appropriately quiet for 8 AM on a Tuesday morning. All in all, it's a mind-numbingly ordinary sight.
Apart from the fact that there are way more cars than there should be.
The Stanley's add their car to a long line of mid-priced Japanese-made cars in the parking lot around back. Dean parks on the street, waiting until they're inside to continue following them.
When they're out of sight, he steps out of the Impala, boots crackling against the gravel, and wrenches open the trunk. He outfits himself with a wide array of weaponry, not knowing quite what to expect. Demons, sure. But how many? How powerful? He straps the Ruby's knife to his ankle and fills his pockets with flasks of holy water. His trusty, demon-killing shotgun stays slung over his shoulder, unconcealed.
He climbs the three concrete steps leading up to the church and pushes the door open. A noisy creak echoes through the empty nave, signaling his entrance. He quickly shifts his gun into a ready position.
"Damn acoustics," he mutters to himself, nevertheless relieved to find there's no one in sight.
The basement it is, then, he decides, trying to find a staircase.
It ends up being off to the side, and even from above, he can hear some Latin chanting. Bingo.
He storms down, unwittingly plunging into a throng of around twenty demons. They turn to glower at him with their obsidian eyes.
"Am I interrupting something?"
"Dean Winchester," one of them, an old lady dressed from head to toe in pale pink, snarls.
"A church," he hums, scoping out the arena. "That's pretty ballsy."
The basement is dank and sticky and reeks of old books and incense. He can't tell if this is its normal stench or if the demons' ritual is to thank. He can see the resident priest strung up in a dark corner of the room, likely of casualty of whatever is happening here. From the looks of things, they're summoning someone.
"Who're you calling?" he asks.
No one answers, but everyone attacks. There's an upheaval of dust and loose papers and in a flash Dean's put each of his bullets into a different demon's skull and still there are some coming at him. He tosses his gun to the side, whipping out the knife.
He slices through every poor bastard until only one remains. Covered in other people's blood, he approaches Mr. Stanley and grabs him roughly by the collar.
"Who were you summoning?" he snarls violently, pinning him against the damp concrete wall.
The demon grins. His teeth are coated in blood. "It doesn't matter," it hisses, spraying his face with red spittle. "If he doesn't come here, he'll come somewhere else."
"Who?" Dean demands, digging his knife into his throat.
"Kill me, it doesn't matter," he laughs.
"Oh I'll kill you," sneers Dean, "nice and slow." He runs the tip of the blade lovingly across his cheek. "But first you're gonna tell me who you tried to summon."
"It was almost too easy, wasn't it?" he prattles on. "We weren't exactly what you would call high level. This stuff is going on around the country – he's coming."
"He? Lucifer's gone, you son of a bitch."
"Not Lucifer. One of us."
"One of you? A demon?"
Todd Stanley's head nods the demon's confirmation. "Crowley."
"Crowley? Who the hell is Crowley?"
"You'll find out soon enough."
Suddenly, the demon latches onto Dean's wrist and shoves the knife into its own neck. Dean watches, stunned, as it slumps to the ground in a bloody heap, along with all the others. He supposes his reputation precedes him. Good.
It's not until he wipes his blood-soaked hands on the fronts of his slacks that he realizes he's still wearing a suit. His only suit. Now ruined. Fuck.
And now he has to worry about some asshat named Crowley. But if Crowley's the new boss, maybe he'll know how to save Sam. It's worth a shot.
Deciding his outfit is now beyond repair, he uses the hem of his blazer to clean the knife and the sleeve to clean his face. The soles of his shoes stick to the congealing blood on the floor as he walks towards the staircase, his path illuminated only by the morning light from above.
He steps out of the church and immediately notices a figure at the end of the walkway leading to the road. Shit, he thinks as his eyes struggle to adjust to the brightness. He was really counting on no one being around. When he can finally make out what he's moving towards, he sees the redheaded bartender wringing her hands.
He knows he drenched in blood and probably looks a lot like a scene from John Wick. She's not nearly as petrified as she should be.
His knuckles tighten around the wooden handle of his blade.
"I need to talk to you," she blurts out.
Author's Note: I will continue to update because I literally cannot get this story out of my head, but I would looooove you forever if you review!