A/N: I had fun with this chapter :). Janie confronts Leon in the bunker.
Chapter Seven
It had been a long, somewhat silent day. Janie had spent the day before with Sabrina as if nothing was changing. Sabrina seemed surprisingly okay with everything Janie had told her, and spent most of the conversation talking with Dean about her favorite classic cars. Sam was quiet, still silent disagreeing with Janie's decision. But since she seemed at peace with it, so he opted not to say anything. After checking that Sabrina was safe with her new family, they headed home.
The drive home had seemed even longer than normal. Janie didn't perform her usual routine of baiting them into friendly banter with her. Her mind was on one thing-confronting Leon. He'd been tied up alone in the bunker for over twenty-four hours at that point. Janie had checked the records before leaving, and found that Sabrina was now in the process of becoming Sabrina Adams-Johnson, the adoptive daughter of Roger and Beth Johnson. She had lost her parents, Jack and Marissa Adams, in a car accident months earlier, and was adjusting well with her new family. It hurt like hell, but Janie didn't regret it one bit.
When the door to the bunker opened a few hours later, Cass was already waiting for them. He sat at the kitchen table and greeted them, then informed Janie,
"Your father is still locked up in the dungeon."
"Cass, please stop calling him my father." Janie said, a slight edge to her voice. "He stopped being my father a long time ago."
"My apologies."
"No. Cass, I'm sorry. I'm just…tired. Thank you for everything you've done the last few days." Janie said.
"I'm happy to help." Cass said sincerely.
"I know you are." Janie said. "I'm going to get some sleep."
"I thought you wanted to talk to Leon." Sam said.
"I will. Later." Janie said. "I've waited ten years to ask him what I'm gonna ask him, a few more hours wouldn't hurt."
"He's been in there for over a day." Dean pointed out.
"He can last for three without water." Janie said. "He used to lock me up for two days at a time for nothing. I'm just giving a taste of his own medicine. I swear, in two more hours, I'll go in there."
Janie kept her word. Exactly two hours later, she stood at the door of a room she hadn't even been aware was in the bunker before, holding the doorknob in her hand and fighting the urge to tremble. A familiar hand took hers, and she looked up to see Sam and Dean standing next to her.
"You don't have to do this if you don't want to. But Dean and I are right here if you do."
Janie smiled. "I know I don't have to. But I need to know." She looked up and said, "Cass, I'm ready whenever you are."
Cass appeared behind the three of them.
Janie took a deep breath. "Let's do this."
Janie opened the door, walking towards the bookcases in the middle of the room with purpose. Sam helped her pull them aside, revealing an almost empty room with a devil's trap painted in the middle of it. Every light was off, and there was a single chair in the middle of the room with a familiar face strapped tightly into it. A face that had haunted Janie's dreams for the last few years. Leon had not seen her yet, but immediately started shouting the second light started streaming into the room.
"Who the hell do you jackasses think you are…?"
"You mean you don't like being restrained to a dark, cold room for days?" Janie said, making her way into Leon's field of vision. "Too damn bad."
"You." Leon said, shooting a look of pure hatred and venom Janie's way. "You're supposed to be dead."
"Janie Foster is dead." Janie said, as Sam and Dean made their way towards opposite corners of the room.
"Who are these clowns? Your goons?"
Janie laughed. "Goons. I kinda like that. Because one false move from you and they'll kill you before you have the chance to take another breath. Got that?"
"What the hell do you think I'm gonna do sitting here trussed up like this?"
"I don't know. You sure made short work of beating the hell out of me when you were drunk. Or sober. It didn't seem to really matter." Janie said bitterly, taking a seat against on top of a foldout table that was sitting against the wall.
"I never hurt you."
"Cass?"
Cass walked slowly behind Leon and placed both hands on top of his head. After a few seconds, Leon shouted and doubled over in pain. Cass hung on for nearly a full minute before withdrawing and standing back against the wall behind him. Leon was breathing heavily.
"What in the hell was that?"
"I gave Cass access to my memories of you. All of them. Every time you beat me, every time you locked me up, every time you did worse. He can take the pain and the fear that you made me feel and pass it on to you." Janie said with a smirk that unsettled Leon.
"That's impossible."
"Not when he's an angel."
"A…a what?" Leon said.
"An angel. Tell me, how does it feel knowing you're gonna have to answer for everything you did?"
Leon said nothing, just continued to glare at Janie.
"Okay, fine. Here's how this is gonna go. I'm gonna ask you three questions. You're gonna tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If I even suspect that you're lying, Cass takes every memory I've got of you and plays them over and over and over and over again, until I decide that they stop. Understand?"
"I don't have to do anything."
Before Janie could say anything, Cass again placed both hands on top of Leon's head and held them there. It took almost two minutes for him to cry out.
"Stop!"
"Give it twenty more seconds, Cass." Janie said coolly.
Cass held his grip tightly, and Leon continued to thrash and struggle as much as he could. When Cass finally released him, Leon was struggling to keep his composure. But Janie had no sympathy for him.
"Look at me." When Leon refused, Janie said again, "Cass."
"Fine!"
When Janie finally held his attention, she got directly down to business. "First question. What happened to mommy?"
Leon sneered. "Mommy? Aren't you a little old for mommy?"
"Cass. Five seconds." Cass repeated the motion, and five seconds later Leon was glaring at him with a vengeance that he used to throw on Janie on a whim.
"If you're trying to intimidate them or me, it won't work. So don't waste your time. Answer the question." Jane said. "What happened to mommy? Did she actually kill herself?"
Leon laughed again. "Are you that stupid?"
"Hey…" Dean growled from the corner of the room.
"Cool it, Dean. I'll take care of it." Janie said without taking her eye off Leon. "Answer the question."
Leon sighed dramatically, as if he was just doing it to humor Janie. "Fine. Your mother found out I had a girlfriend on the side, and she wasn't too happy with me. She started making plans to leave me, and I didn't want that."
"So that's when you two started fighting all the time."
"Very good." Leon said. "You're not as stupid as you used to be."
"What happened?" Janie said, not rising to Leon's bait.
"Your mom and I got into another fight. She told me she was going to pick you up from your friend's house and go to a motel. So, when she went upstairs, I stepped outside and cut the brake line on her car."
Janie fought to remain neutral, not wanting to give Leon the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her. "You killed her?"
"Sure did."
"So, let me get this straight. You were married to the woman who owned one of the biggest, most popular businesses in downtown. You left her for some tramp you met at a bar or something. And you think I'm the stupid one?" Janie asked.
As she had predicted, the taunt worked. "You stupid bitch…"
Dean moved from the wall again. "Watch it."
"Or what?" Leon asked.
"Or we hang you from the ceiling and beat you like a piñata." Sam suggested.
"Oh, I like that idea, Sam." Janie said.
"Figures you'd let them do your dirty work for you. You never could do anything for yourself."
Janie smiled. "You're right. I will let them do it. But not because I can't. Because I think it kills you that I have people who care enough about me to kill you for me without a second thought."
"They can't kill me." Leon said matter-of-factly.
"Why not?" Janie asked. "Sam? Dean? Cass? Am I wrong?"
"Nope." Sam and Dean said together.
"No, you are not." Cass said simply.
"So, if you don't want that to happen, I suggest you answer my questions."
"What do you want to know?" Leon asked.
"Did you kill my mom and dad?"
"I'm your father, and I already answered that…."
"You haven't been my father in years. Not since I was ten years old." Janie said. "Did you kill them or not?"
"Yes."
"How did you find out I was alive? And where I was?" Janie asked.
"Exactly as I suspected."
The new voice in the room caused Leon to jump, but the rest of them didn't move. Crowley walked to Janie and handed her a familiar piece of paper. Janie took it and read, her smile growing wider as she read.
"Janie? What's it say?" Sam asked.
"It says that my darling dad here made a deal with a demon to find out what really happened the night I supposedly died. Apparently, it got around somehow that he had impregnated me and his cellmates weren't that fond of him anymore."
"It 'got around' years ago. That son of a bitch you ran off with came to visit my cellmate and told him." Leon said.
This time, Janie did not restrain her emotion. She laughed, a long, hard, belly-shaking laugh that she hadn't experienced since long before her parents had been killed. John had called her one last time right before he died, and not long after she'd had Sabrina. He'd told her that she was 'safe now' and that Leon 'would understand now exactly what he's done to you'. She'd often wondered what he meant, and now she knew.
"It's not funny."
"Yeah, actually, it is." Dean said. "Janie, you mind if I take over for a minute?"
"Don't kill him. Not unless I ask you to later. But go ahead."
"I have hunted some disgusting sons of bitches before. But you take the cake of all of 'em." Dean said.
"Agreed." Sam said.
"You two don't know anything about me." Leon said. "You don't know what I've been through."
"It doesn't matter. We do know what you've put Janie through. That's enough for us."
"Guys, I want to finish this. If you want a go at him when I'm done, you can have it." Sam and Dena walked back to their respective corners, and Janie asked her next question, the most important of them all. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you turn on me? What did I do to you?" Janie asked. "I loved you. Why did you hate me so much?"
"Because you were the only reason your mother tried to make our marriage work." Leon said. "And you were the reason she was leaving."
"What does that mean?"
"She told me we needed a break from each other because the constant fighting was bad for you." Leon said. "Like it wasn't for us."
"So, she put what I needed ahead of you. And it pissed you off, so you got rid of her and tortured me." Janie said.
When Leon said nothing, Janie stood up, walked over to him, and drew her fist back. Before anyone had registered what happened, Janie had hit him six times; twice in the nose, once in each eye, once more on the nose, flattening it, and finally, a punch to the chin hard enough to send his chair falling to the floor. Sam and Dean stood watching, wondering whether or not to restrain Janie or let her continue to take out her feelings on Leon. When the chair clattered to the floor, Sam ran over and grabbed Janie around the waist.
"He's not worth it."
"Sam, let me go."
"Janie, you don't want to kill him. I know you think it'll make you feel better. And I know he deserves it after what he did to you…" Sam said.
"That wasn't for me." Janie seethed. Cass was pulling the chair back up to its full standing position. "That's for what you did to Sabrina."
"Sabrina, huh?" Leon asked, the words coming out gargled because of his severely broken nose. "You named her after your mother."
"Damn right I did. Because mom got me away from you."
"She'd been dead for years." Leon said.
"That's right. And every time you hit me, beat me, or forced me to have sex with you, I'd cry for her. Beg her to come back and help me. That's exactly what she did." Janie said. "Sam let me go."
"Don't…"
"I'm not gonna kill him. Myself. I'm just gonna talk." Sam reluctantly let her go, and Janie brushed herself off as if she'd just stopped a fight. She picked up the contract Crowley had brought with him. "Crowley, may I?"
"Please do. I don't make deals with psychopaths like that."
Janie ripped the contract up into tiny pieces, making Leon's eyes grow bigger with each increasing rip. "That's supposed to protect me!"
"When I approve them, yes. But you see, I'm the king of hell. And generally I do approve contracts. The more souls I have in hell, the better. But once in a while, there's a soul that even I won't take. And when that happens, I get to decide what to do with it."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Leon asked through gritted teeth.
"It means, that once I'm done here, Cass is going to smite you." Janie said. "You'll be dead. And after that, you get to spend eternity being his bitch." Janie pointed to Crowley, who was grinning wickedly.
"You said you wouldn't kill me."
"Actually, she said if you didn't want to die, you'd answer the questions. She never said she wouldn't kill you." Dean said.
"I, I…" Leon started to stutter, as if the words he was about to say hurt him physically. "Janie, please don't."
"Shut up." Janie said. "As many times as I begged you not to hurt me, you don't get to beg me. It's over. Sabrina is living with a family that loves and cares about her. She has no memory of you, of me, of anything about either of us. The damage you did to me will not be passed on to her."
"She's my daughter too…"
"If you want to die quick and painless, you'll shut the hell up. Now." Janie said. "She was never your daughter. I was. And you abused that privilege. For that, you're gonna pay. But first, I want you to know this. I am no longer afraid of you. You have no power over me. When I leave this room, I will never think of you again. But you, I'm sure, will think about me, every day, for the rest of eternity. Have fun." Janie turned and headed for the door. "Sam, Dean, let's go."
Sam and Dean joined her, walking back out into the hallway. As they did, they heard Leon scream, and the familiar sound of Cass smiting someone. When Janie stepped into the hallway, Sam wasn't sure what to make of the expression on her face. It seemed to be one of relief and sadness at the same time. But it was Dean who finally pinpointed it.
"You look different." he said. "At peace."
Janie nodded. "I am. I miss Sabrina, and my parents, and my mom, but it feels good knowing he can't hurt anyone else."
"How about we go for pie?" Dean said. "To celebrate."
"Thanks, but no thanks. I'm headed to bed. I want to look for a case and go find some other evil son of a bitch to kill." Janie answered. "Good night, guys."
"Good night, Janie." Sam and Dean said together.
Janie walked a few feet down the hall, then turned again. "Hey, guys?" When Sam and Dean turned around, Janie walked over and stepped between them to give them both a hug. "Thank you. For everything."
"Don't mention it, kiddo. That's why we're here." Dean said.
"Yeah. We're here for you, Janie. Always." Sam said.
Janie took a deep breath, and said something she was afraid she would never mean again. "I love you both."
"We love you too." Sam and Dean said together. Dean, who was just slightly taller than Janie, kissed her cheek. "Go get some sleep, kiddo. We'll talk in the morning."
Janie let them go, then finally headed to bed, sleeping for the first time in years with only good dreams.