Author's/Underhill's Note: OH MY GOD. I am soooo sorry, it's been seven days since last update! At work I couldn't concentrate on writing (dear god I am so close to a breakdown) and OH GOD I'M BECOMING ONE OF THOSE FIC WRITERS THAT IS ALWAYS MAKING EXCUSES NOOOO. But I digress. So this is chapter 26. I really don't know if it's any good because I... sleep is weird sometimes. Now. 1) disclaimers disclaimers I own nothing Supernatural and if I did SLASH FIC ALL DAY LOOONG, 2) thank you reviewers! I really think you guys are awesome, and I really appreciate the input. Cookies for you! All different kinds! 3) ?. Now, I've got a bunch of the next chapter outlined and I'm gonna go start writing it. So, please review, and I will see you next chapter! Yay!
March 24, 5:43 PM, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
"That is not seriously…"
"I assure you, it is," Balthazar says drily, dropping the dirty body.
Sam glares at Cas - - who is passed out of the couch - - because any and all snarky comments the new angel makes? Cas's fault. He can't dwell on that long though, because there's a Winchester lying on the window seat.
"How?" Bobby asks with a seriously bemused face.
"It appears, as with Adam, as with Dean, he has been Risen." He gives Sam an arch look. "You'd think you'd be used to this by now."
Oh, Sam is so giving Cas a piece of his mind when he wakes up.
"He means why?" Sam corrects. Bobby just nods; he won't stop looking at the body in front of them.
"Dean Winchester is inaccessible as a vessel," Balthazar says. "And Adam, Risen to take his place, is hidden. So they moved on to the third option…"
"John Winchester," Bobby breathes.
He's not the father Sam remembers. This John is young, like the one he saw possessed by Michael in the past. So there always was another option; Sam snorts. Angels.
"Maybe we should clean him off," Bobby says, still sounding more shocked than anything, but Sam can see he's trying to make light of the conversation.
"Think the mud's gonna ruin the upholstery?"
"Maybe. I got a dust buster in the closet. That might work."
"What about Cas though?"
Bobby snorts. "He can clean his own damn fool self up; he should wake up soon, right?" When Balthazar doesn't respond he flips his chair the angel's way. "Right?"
"Oh. Yes," the angel says. "He has simply overexerted himself. With his level of Grace so low, the fight tired him."
"Wait wait wait." Sam puts his hands up in the halt position. "Fight?"
"Yes. You think Heaven would raise John Winchester and then leave him unprotected? It is chance that we beat them there, and testament to Castiel's skill that he managed to defeat three angels."
"You didn't help?" Bobby asks.
"Some of us might have… skipped combat training."
That's what breaks the tenuous control Sam has on his emotions. An angel skipping on training. What. The. Hell. "Uh…" Bobby says, but Sam can't hear it over his own hysterical laughing.
March 24, 7:46 PM, Columbus, Ohio
Adam stares down at his own blood-stained hands. This is only the second Hunt he's been on, and he's already thinking of them with capital H's.
"What am I doing?" he asks aloud. L - - an angel - - told him to keep his head down, and here he is killing another monster. It strikes him that his life is kind of ridiculous.
Eight days ago Adam killed a Ghoul. It took him three days to find and another person died before he managed to find it. Since it happened he's been having nightmares.
"I won't do it again. I swear. I'll leave town. Bodies only from now on. He surprised me, that's all."
Adam wants to believe him.
He'd done all sorts of research on the topic, not that there was a lot to find. Internet searches, library books, it's all myths and legends and very little turned out to be fact. All he really had to go on is what the first ghouls he'd met had told him - - while they ate him. He has nightmares about that too.
"John Winchester's boy. Do you know he killed our father?
She slices a knife across his arm and bites down. Adam screams though the gag muffles it. When she leans back up her mouth is bloody.
"And what did our father do? Nothing." She emphasizes the word with another cut across the other arm, only this time it takes a chunk out. "He was just trying to survive. He didn't hurt anyone." Another slash. "He only fed on the dead. What about your father, Adam?"
"Mfff!"
She leans closer like she's actually listening. "What's that?" Adam desperately tries to make a sound and he sees as it makes her smile. She leans up, back, raises the knife again.
"He hurt everyone. Everyone he touched. Even you. He knew this could happen; he never did anything to stop it."
Jesus. Fucking Christ.
"…didn't love you like our father loved us. He never would have left us. But you…"
Adam closes his eyes.
"Your father never cared."
He doesnt know why at the time that'd bothered him; he should have been focused on the whole GETTING EATEN; he doesn't even know his father. He's seen him a handful of times in his life (the man desperately trying to father-son bond with a baseball game and a beer) and not at all in the past three years. But if his dad knew about this world, why leave him exposed with no way to protect himself? God, what about his mom?
He wipes his hands on his pant legs, not caring about the mess. He should probably buy some better fitting stuff anyway. The cast offs he took that were his brothers' (and how weird is that, wearing hand-me-downs when he thought he was an only child?) fit well enough, but he's tired of tripping over the rolled up cuffs that are necessary with the long legs. One of his brothers? Is a goddamn giant.
The blood is his. He got pretty banged up by (well, he guesses it's not technically a monster) the poltergeist haunting, of all places, the grocery store he's standing in. His hand makes a crunching sound against his jeans when he wipes it again and he frowns. Cornflakes. He's in the cereal aisle and it's stuck all over where he's bleeding. Then it hits him: cereal. Food.
He grabs a cart and starts filling it. Apple Jacks. He's totally getting Apple Jacks.
8:20 PM
He ends up at a bar after the grocery store, because what goes better with Apple Jacks than beer (besides everything)?
One look at the bartender and he knows that the beer is not going to happen. The man is eying him with a suspicious look, and Adam knows why; Adam looks barely old enough to drink and he doesn't have his ID, so a beer is off the table even if he thinks he deserves one (or something much, much stronger). He ends up getting a soda because he has a long drive if he wants to get out of the state by morning; he needs to caffeinate. He slides two bucks across the table to the bartender.
Adam's still got a wad of bills from his uncle's cabin, but the stash is quickly dwindling no matter how he tries to stretch it. Gas is expensive, and sometimes it gets too cold to sleep in the car, and he does have to eat...
Maybe he could steal some more stuff. He looks across the bar and sees a cue crack into a black ball and the man holding it curse as it falls into the pocket. Now there's an idea… He's seen a game 'hustled' before (his friend Auggie, the poor bastard, was a complete sucker), and Adam?
Well, he's always been pretty good at pool.
March 24, 8:07 PM, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
John wakes up a few hours later. The first thing John sees when he opens his eyes is a man drooling on a couch across the room, covered in a trench coat that's draped over him like a blanket. Second thing he sees is a face that's suddenly all up in his, all hazel eyes and ridiculous brown hair.
"You need a haircut," he moans. In all fairness, it's the first thing that comes to mind and he's not really thinking straight.
A huffed breath. "Yeah, that sounds familiar. It's him alright."
The man leans out of John's space and he breathes easier. He's in unfamiliar territory; training kicks in. He takes in the ramshackle room in an instant with a disciplined eye. It's a house, halfway rundown, a place Mary - -
There are four occupants: a man in his twenties, tall; a grizzled older man in a wheelchair; a blond guy who looks somewhat dubious about even being here; and the guy conked out on the couch. John's back is to the wall but there are people on all other sides. He's cornered.
"This is… surreal," the tall one says.
"It is. I never saw him that young. How old are you, son? Twenty five, twenty six?" Twenty-four, John doesn't say.
"Why do you think they brought him back younger?"
"Most likely to erase memories."
"They took mine and Dean's last year and gave us all new ones without de-aging us. God, de-aging? Is that even a word?"
"Probably not," the older man says and gets a glare from the blond one for the interruption.
"What they did when they gave you the identities of Smith and Wesson was dangerous. Many memories are linked to the body and the five senses. The pretense Zachariah put you under was only meant to be temporary. Long term modifications would have… consequences."
"Oh, well THAT'S comforting."
"So they resurrected a younger John without all the baggage?"
"Essentially: yes."
John can't take this anymore. These people are insane. "Now hold on a minute," he starts. Then…
"Wait." He takes in the tall one's features again, so seemingly similar and familiar. He can't place his finger on it till HE CAN.
"I know you," he says. And I am going to kill this son of a bitch.
"I know you," John says, and Sam stills. He couldn't possibly remember…
"You're Mary's cousin. You showed up that night; you got her killed." John's voice is quiet, deadly.
"Killed?" Sam asks. Mary and John's memories had been wiped after that night, and Mary lived for years after until the nursery fire. What is John talking about? Then it hits him, this horrible suspicion. "Shit. What's the last thing you remember?"
John doesn't speak.
"Are you from 1978?"
"Ooooh," Bobby says. "This is gonna get awkward. Think I'll wheel myself to the kitchen and get a beer."
"I died," his dad says - - but he's not really his dad yet, is he? "And that angel, Michael, he brought me back to save Mary, but it was too late." He has an agonized look on his face and Sam swears. He is reminded once again how big of dicks angels truly are. "I was too late. Because you killed her." And he leaps for Sam.
Before Sam has a chance to react, Balthazar has two fingers on John's forehead and John falls prone on the floor. Bobby wheels back in, beer in hand.
"Well," he says, taking a sip. "That doesn't look like it went well."
Fucking understatement of the century.
March 24 9 PM, Michigan
"John Winchester," Claire says and wonders if she should be afraid. In the Monster community, the Winchester elder is a boogeyman; he shows no mercy to the supernatural, never flinches, always kills what he tracks.
Am I a Monster? Claire wonders. Because she knows to Hunters that's what angels are: just more Monsters, and Claire can house one. Or do I not count because I'm human? What line do they draw? God, she wishes she knew.
Her mom's been worrying her even more lately, and not because she's sleeping through the day and drinking. No, it's more because her mom is going out. Amelia Novak will leave the house without warning and not return for hours. Claire has no idea where she goes. It's not like she can follow her; they only have the one car.
They didn't take a whole lot with them when they left. Her mom had gotten a Uhaul and they'd filled it with whatever they could in the few hours her mother had given them. It was an odd assortment of necessities and random crap. Pots but no pans, forks but no dishes, and for no reason no towels. She's not sure what all her mom brought, but Claire took all her own books, a few changes of clothes, and her jacket - - and one of her dad's old trench coats.
She's got the trench coat covering her like a blanket while she waits up for her mom and soaps on in the background, which she is getting oddly attached to.
("Seriously? You're brilliant, you know that? And a coward. A brilliant coward!")
Her mom doesn't come home that night.
March 24, 10 PM, New York, New York
"Liselle found the tree, but there's nothing near it. Her man found nothing; no Grace, no vessel, no explanation for where they might have gone." She clicks the window closed with a shake of her head and gently closes the laptop. "So we're back to square one."
"We'll figure something out," Dean says, patting her on the back. "We're the defender of all cute, fluffy supernatural creatures, remember?"
"We are never living down California, are we?"
"Oh hell no. Our reputation as heartless, coldblooded thieves is trashed," Dean says, sounding entirely too cheerful about the whole matter in Bela's opinion. But she can't deny the truth of his statement, because California was an unmitigated disaster.
It turns out two rival werewolf packs were trying to inhabit the same city, and the first wanted to hire them to drive the second out of town. They offered them a totem of sorts ("Six thousand, tops," Bela told him later with a shake of her head) and some information on the Washoe artifact they were looking for. They'd figured they could at least make an attempt to bargain with the second pack and agreed to the first's conditions.
They went back to the hotel, got two hours of sleep before subsequently being kidnapped from their room. The other pack had followed them having heard about their rival's plans. They were… displeased to say the least. Bela has a tendency to turn disadvantage situations to her advantage though. In twenty minutes she'd gotten them to untie them and they were hammering out details of a peace treaty. Dean has no idea how she does it. He remembers that speech he gave her in the graveyard right before she shot Sam, and how she hadn't bought a word. Takes one to know one. She's an even bigger bullshitter than him and he adores her even more for it.
He still thought the plan was crazy though.
"Bela, they tried to kill us."
"…This is business, Dean. Everybody tries to kill everybody."
"…You know you scare the crap out of me."
She kisses him on the cheek. "You love me."
"The two aren't mutually exclusive!"
The pack leader shouts over, "Are you two done with your foreplay or are we going to start negotiating prices?"
"I swear," Dean mutters. "One more person says that…"
"Don't worry, darling." She pats him on the cheek. "At least I know you're as gay as the day is long."
"Har har. Hilarious."
It's barely believable but the two packs agreed on sharing territory. They'd shaken hands and the leaders had told them they'd make sure to spread their name around.
(At Bela's boggled look, the first leader explains, "To drum you up some additional business, of course. There's a lot of conflicts out there in the supernatural world, and a neutral party is useful. And the fact that a demon and a human can cooperate enough to not only not kill each other, but to be lovers…" Dean twitches. "Is a symbol our community needs.
The supernatural community? Dean wonders.
Bela hands them their card because, as she mutters, "it's not like someone else won't."
Dean throws an arm over her shoulder and she doesn't even pretend to shrug it off. She leans in and sighs.
When they got home, they had ten messages on the business's machine, one of which was from a regular client and nine of which were from prospective clients (all of which were 'Monsters'). Dean still laughs at the look Bela wore and will for many years to come. Right now though, Bela wears an incongruous pout on her face.
"Oh my god, you are totally disappointed about the angel."
"No," but even her answer sounds petulant and she knows it.
"It's not even cuz you're worried is it? You're just curious."
"…Maybe."
"And you think I'm dysfunctional."
"You are!"
He grins and slings his arm around her again. "C'mere." She leans in without hesitation and they lie back on the couch. "We'll figure it out."
Her eyes roll. "I know THAT," she says, as if stating the obvious. "It's just taking so looooong."
"Patience, Bels," he says, closing his eyes. Maybe he'll sleep for a little. Bela will keep an eye on him.
Meanwhile, a small, brown, paper-wrapped package is in the mail heading towards Sioux Falls.