Title: In Another Life
Crossover: The Possession
When: Set around toward the end of season 7 of Supernatural.
A/N: As I watched The Possession, I kept waiting for Jeffrey Dean Morgan to turn all Daddy Winchester and handle that demon, or for Dean and Sam to show up and save the day. Yes. I'm a huge nerd like that. So, to kind of satisfy that wish I wrote this.
The face.
The voice.
Right down to the way the man moved.
Dean didn't know how, or why, just knew that it was. Knew it with everything in him that he wasn't wrong. Knew it every time he saw Sam looking at the man.
It was Dad.
Dean wanted to pull him away from the family surrounding him, and make him remember who he was. To make him remember his sons.
A quick look at Sam and Dean knew his little brother wanted the same thing. At right that moment Sam wasn't a grown man all his own, he was a son who wanted his dad to look at him and know him.
Dean turns back to the family holding on to one another. A pretty wife, two picture perfect little girls, and a man that had been given a second chance.
"Thank you." The man looks up at Dean then Sam. "Thank you for my family." The sincere gratitude he hears makes Dean's throat tighten.
Sam gives a jerky nod.
Dean has to look away.
Clyde, still holding on tight to his family, follows the brothers back to his daughter's hospital room.
The men, Sam and Dean, don't enter the room, but turn to leave once everyone else is in.
"Wait." Clyde steps back out into the hall after them, causing them to turn his way. "I know I can't ever thank you both enough." He looks from one brother to the other. What they'd was immeasurable in his eyes. They'd helped him when others wouldn't. They'd saved his little girl, sent the demon that was taking his baby back into hell. "But if there's anything I can ever do for either of you…?"
"Stay away from old boxes." Dean says with sarcasm, the older brother, who has been gruff and distant since they had showed up on his door step saying Tzadok had sent them. In light of how he's helped, Clyde can easily forgive it.
"No." Sam, the taller one, answers in earnest. "No. Just... just take care of yourself." He seems to want to say more, but doesn't.
A moment later he watches them walk down the hospital hall, people giving them a wide berth as they go. An illogical sense of paternal pride washes through Clyde for a brief moment, but then it fades and he goes back to his wife and girls.
"I'm sorry you had to find out that way." Cas's voice is still deep and still whiskey rough, even if most days he's seems out of touch.
"So Clyde is Dad?" Sam poses it as a question, but it's not one.
"He was given a second chance." The angel looks out the window and for a second Dean can pretend that it's the old Castiel again. "He suffered undeservingly, and was given a second chance."
It's the only explanation Cas gives before he's talking about flowers, and street lights, and senior citizens who like to watch MASH reruns.
A very bitter, a very disappointed part of Dean, thinks he hates this life.