Author Note: I did delete and repost this first part. Sorry for any email spam - I'm just happy you're actually GETTING the alerts, because the first one didn't go out today.
This is the story that was prompted by Nova42 to be my 150th Supernatural fanfic. I believe it's actually #151, because it took me a little longer than I expected to get an outline put together from that prompt, and to get this first part written.
She wanted to see a story expanding the little bits of awesomeness we got of Winchester family togetherness in "Lebanon". Basically, a 'what if they got Dad back for a few days as opposed to a few hours?' story. A 'what if Dad got to see what Dean is going through with Michael?' story. A 'give me a bigger, better moment between Dean and John' story. There will be some scene expansions of what we saw in the ep (particularly in this part), and some teeny tiny interpretive liberties taken. I'm not prepared to identify this story as a full-fledged AU, but it is, I suppose, AU-adjacent. As the title would suggest, and due to my respect of the SPN canon, we will end up in the same place, at the end.
This will be posted WIP, but I do have an outline, so I'm not flying blind. There will be five total parts to the story. Unless these guys decide to go off-book somewhere along the way. It happens.
The Long Goodbye
Part I
"You boys better tell me what the hell is going on right now. What do you mean you summoned me?"
Dean can't get a single coherent thought to settle in his racing mind, let alone form words. His eyes are pinned on his father, his heart thrumming wildly as he picks through the possible scenarios that have gotten him here. Djinn, spell, witch, curse. His ribs ache where Dad hit him, but he's been tricked before, a dozen different ways. The pearl, the Baozhu, feels warm where it's clenched in his palm, a guilty pulse of heat.
Dad is here, not as a ghost or a fever dream or a figment of his imagination, but flesh and blood here.
At his side, Sam's mouth is working silently like a giant, stupefied fish. Still, he beats Dean to stringing a sentence together.
"We weren't trying to, we were—it was supposed to be—"
"It was an accident," Dean cuts in quickly, snapping out of it. Jesus, Sammy, he thinks, without any heat behind it. Shut the hell up. "You know me, always touching things I shouldn't." He turns to his brother, holding up the pearl with a sheepish shrug. "What'd you say this thing does again?"
Sam's cheek offers a rebellious twitch, but Dean knows he'll play along. Hell, he's the one who has been talking about ways Dean can distract himself from Michael whaling on the walls.
This is a hell of a distraction.
"I don't—I don't know where to start," Sam yammers, his eyes damp. "This is…"
Dad looks between them, lowering his gun to point at the floor. "This is real?"
"It's real. It's…" Sam turns to Dean with such an achingly open expression, he's suddenly worried his brother is going to slip and give everything away. Not just Michael—all of it. Even worse, Dean's not sure he'd be able to stop him.
But Sam reins it in. "God, it's good to see you," he says, voice thick.
"It's good to see you too," Dad says. "Been a while."
Sam huffs a laugh. "You can say that again."
Dean wants to participate, but his head is spinning as he tries to figure out what his father knows right now, what he doesn't, and what he can't ever know.
"2019, huh?" Dad glances around the library, looks back with a tilted head. "You boys have shit poker faces, you know? I take it I'm, uh, I'm not around anymore."
"No," Sam tells him, sounding choked. "Not for a long time."
Dean finally finds his voice. "About thirteen years now."
Dad lifts his chin. "Well. Damn. And here I was, thinkin' I saw you just a few hours ago. Of course, you looked a hell of a lot more like a kid than you do now." He turns to Sam. "And hell, Sammy. You don't look like a kid at all."
The energy in the room is heavy, and unlike anything Dean has ever felt in a space he's occupied with his father and brother. He can't remember the last time he stood between Sam and Dad without bracing himself to pull one off the other. Even when Dean was stuck in that hospital bed with Dad knowing what was waiting for him in the next room, they were two seconds away from going at each other.
He's almost afraid to move, worried the illusion will come crashing down. This is a moment, a feeling, he wants to cling to for as long as he can. Nothing matters but this. Not Michael or his plan, or the timer counting down on the stability of the cage in his head. He just breathes, and watches Dad take in the bunker, digesting what they've told him so far, and steeling himself for what he doesn't yet know. Sam shoots him little glances every few seconds, unspoken flares of emotion Dean won't, can't, acknowledge.
Once Dad has readied himself, he squares back up to his sons. "How?"
I was dying and you offered yourself up in my place, and damned me to a life of trying to make sure it was a worthwhile trade.
"The, uh, thing that killed Mom," Sam answers. Thankfully, he seems to have gotten with the program, and isn't going to offer up any of the good stuff before they have a chance to talk. "It was a demon."
"A demon? You ever find out why it took her?"
"Yeah." Sam folds his arms over his chest. "But that's probably her story to tell."
John's eyes blow wide. He rocks back a step as though physically struck. "What?" He blinks, his face drained of color, gaze locked on Sam. "What are you saying? Your mother is…"
"Oh, shit." Sam drags a hand down his face. "Dad, Mom's alive. She's here. Well, not here, not right now. She's—"
"I'll call her," Dean cuts in, glad for the distraction, the task. The look in Dad's eyes is raw, like he's been split open, his insides exposed to the world. Dean can't stomach that sort of vulnerability in his father. Not when he's feeling so open and exposed himself.
That's why the man is here, right?
Dean steps away to dig his cell phone from his pocket and realizes he still has the damn Baozhu in his hand. He crams the pearl deep into his pocket, pulls out his phone and pulls up Mom's contact. He pauses, thumb hovering over the screen as he listens to Sam lead Dad down the hallway, quietly confirming Mom is alive, and well, before excitedly pointing out items in the bunker he's geeked out over.
He shakes it off, knowing he can't afford to leave his brother alone with Dad for long. He definitely can't allow Sam to start answering questions about how Mom is alive. Forget Michael, that's a conversation littered with landmines, and is one Dean can't even fathom having himself.
Well, Dad, I took on a cursed mark from Cain—that Cain—to kill a knight of Hell named Abaddon. You know that name, right? The mark turned me into a demon after I died, again, but Sam cured me, and also worked behind my back to have the mark removed, which happened right after I killed Death, and removing the damn thing released God's sister from her cage. I lose you yet? So then, after a whole mess of crap, she rewarded me for reuniting her with her brother—you know, GOD—by giving me Mom back.
He taps the screen, swallowing hard as he brings the phone to his ear. Don't pick up, he thinks as it rings. Don't pick up. He doesn't know what he'll say if she does. Leaving a message feels safer. He gets his wish, hears the generic voicemail greeting.
"Mom, hey." His voice is raw, choked mess, and he rushes to cover. "I'm fine—we're fine, but you should get home. There's something here you need to see."
Message left, phone tucked away, Dean is out of tasks, out of things to do. From the direction of the kitchen comes the deep rumble of a voice he never thought he would hear again. His mind is full of things he wishes he'd had the chance to say to his father. Some thankful, some understanding, and some angry.
Dean stops short of the kitchen threshold, feet stubbornly rooting him in place. How many times over the years has he wished for this moment, this opportunity? Dad's here.
But why now?
Holding the Baozhu, he'd been thinking about Michael, like he was supposed to. Thinking about blasting the son of a bitch out of his head. Hell, he's barely been able to think about anything else. But Sam didn't say the pearl could read his mind, he said it grants what the heart desires. Dean will be the first to admit, his head and his heart are rarely on the same page.
He falls back against the tiled wall, digs a palm into his eyes. Okay. Focus. Dad is going to have a lot of questions. He just time-warped sixteen years into the future and found out he's been dead for most of them. They've been through a lot of shit in that time, and Sammy's already got that loosey-goosey, two-beers-doing-karaoke look.
A rumble of stilted laughter jars him back, and Dean rolls into the doorway. Sam has settled a bottle of whiskey and three glasses on the kitchen table. Good thinking, Sammy. Dean knows this John Winchester, remembers him well. But he doesn't recognize the wide-eyed look his father is sending around the room, taking in the home his grown sons have made for themselves.
There are enough stories between them to last the night, but too many of them are things Dean doesn't want his father knowing. Things he's done, or hasn't done. Things he's said and wishes he hadn't. He catches Sam's eye and jerks his chin, summoning his brother into the hallway.
Sam frowns, a quick crease between his brows that's gone in a flash as he touches Dad's shoulder and excuses himself.
Dean can't help but wonder how his brother makes this look so easy.
He steps back into the hall as Sam approaches, the crease back in his forehead.
"What's up? Did you get ahold of Mom?"
"Left her a message. Listen—"
"What the hell did you tell her?"
"Just that she needed to get home. I couldn't—I didn't say anything about Dad." Dean lowers his voice. "Sam, we need to set some ground rules here."
"Ground rules?"
"He doesn't need to know everything."
"Maybe not," Sam concedes. "But he has a right to know how he died. That we killed the thing that killed Mom."
"Well, I did," Dean says, because he can't help himself.
Sam presses his lips together, unamused.
Dean scrubs a hand down his face. "Okay. Obviously, we need to tell him some things. But we don't tell him anything he doesn't absolutely need to know."
Sam's gaze shifts, darting toward the kitchen. "Let me guess. You're the one who decides what he needs to know."
Dean lifts a shoulder, gives his brother a meaningful look. There are things Dean knows his brother would rather Dad not know about. Things like demon blood, like trusting the sons of bitches. Well, really just the one. But when his mouth twitches, Dean knows that's clearly not where Sam's mind has settled.
"You mean he doesn't need to know about Michael."
"I mean he doesn't need to know about a lot of shit that's gone down since he died, but mainly, yeah. I mean Michael."
"Dean—"
"I'm not even gonna argue with you about this, Sam. Dad doesn't even know angels are real, and I'm not going to drop that bomb by telling him there's one renting a room in my freakin' head."
Sam's expression softens. "Dean, for all we know, Dad is here. Like, really here. Permanently."
Dean's heart lurches at the thought. This is what he wanted right? His family, together. But he knows what Sam is saying. The kid still goes ahead and says it anyway.
"He's going to find out eventually."
He stares pasts his brother's shoulder to where his father has settled at the table. He knows Sam is right, that if Dad is here for even a few hours, it's likely Michael is going to pound the walls and say hi. He isn't the same son that Dad thinks he knows right now, but this is the same Dad Dean remembers. The man has had his world—and his place in it—rocked, sure, and his eyes are already softer for it, but there's still something about his presence that has Dean standing straighter. He can't disappoint his father right out of the gate.
He sighs. "Then we'll deal with it when that happens."
All in all, Dad's taking this pretty well. Of course, he'd always planned to go out on the job. Maybe he even hoped for it.
Once the shock of his arrival has worn off, Dean is taking it pretty well too. But that might have something to do with the sizable dent he's put in the whiskey Sam set out. He'd been quiet at first, almost concerningly so, before his talk of ground rules and "need to know." Sam wonders if his brother even knows how much like Dad he sounded while laying out the way things were going to be. He also wonders if Dean is aware of the "good soldier" posture he's automatically slipped back into. Sam would be lying if he said he didn't find himself standing a bit straighter too.
Still, he can't help but feel himself relaxing in his father's presence. It doesn't matter that Michael is locked inside Dean's head, biding his time. It doesn't matter that the angel has promised to leave his brother a hollowed-out shell when he eventually breaks free. Dad is here, and Dad will know what to do.
Except Dad doesn't know a goddamned thing about angels, let alone angelic possession.
Sam is grateful for the opportunity, this chance to do things differently. To have a better last memory of his father.
For all I know, Dad died thinking I hated him.
But this isn't what was supposed to happen, and there's a small voice in the back of Sam's mind that is whispering, taunting, another dead-end.
Dad's fingers are fidgety around his glass, his gaze darting between them and the empty spaces of the room. They haven't spoken of Mom since Dean called her and reported that she was on her way home, but that doesn't mean they haven't all been thinking about her.
He hasn't asked many questions about how he died, which is just fine, because Sam can tell his brother wants nothing to do with that particular conversation. He put up some fight before, but he understands. There are certainly things in the past he'd rather not have Dad know. Their relationship was a shit show for years, and Sam spent hours telling Dean he didn't give a damn what John Winchester thought of his choices, but that was before Ruby. Before a lot of things. He put up a fight on principle but is not opposed to the Think Before You Talk policy with Dad.
And Dad? He has a lot of questions. A dozen or so, locked and loaded, ready to fire as soon as they're both seated across from him.
"What is this place?"
"How did you find it?"
"Why didn't you finish school?"
"How's that hardass Singer doing?"
And finally, midway through his second glass: "Did I at least take that yellow-eyed son of a bitch with me?"
Sam smiles. "Eventually. We got him for you, Dad."
At his side, Dean clears his throat, and Sam rolls his eyes. "Okay," he relents. "Dean got him."
"Yeah, but you helped," Dean says, looking at Dad. "Climbed right outta…" He trails off, runs a hand over his mouth.
Sam's eyes dart to his brother. They just talked about this. He maintains that Dad deserves to know what happened when he died, but he's going to defer to Dean here.
"Anyway," Dean says. "You held him off long enough for me to line up the shot."
"So, it's done then?"
"Yeah, Dad. It's done."
Dad's smile is teary. "That's real good to hear." He frowns. "But you boys didn't stop hunting. You're still doing the job. Together." There's a question in his tone, if not his words, because taking down Yellow Eyes was supposed to be the finish line. The end game.
How are they supposed to tell him why they kept hunting after killing the demon without revealing Sam's death, Dean's deal?
Ground rules.
Dean lifts a shoulder, his face impassive. "It's all we've ever known."
It's the best meal Dean has ever had. And that's certainly not down to Mom's crispy-edged, artery-clogging casserole. It's because the entire family is seated at the table for the first time ever. They laugh, and they tell the stories Dad can enjoy and appreciate. Sam standing downtrodden in a parking lot looking like he was attacked by PCP-crazed strippers tops the list. Sam retaliates with tales of his brother's flying phobia, of being sidelined by a twelve-year girl, screaming bloody murder at the sight of a cat, getting stoned by a sandwich, and turning into a lovesick puppy under the spell of those witches.
Dean sputters wordlessly for a long moment before closing the conversation the way he always does—by telling Dad that he killed Hitler.
The four of them stay at the table for hours, running through the two bottles of wine they fetched from the store in town when Mom sent them out with a grocery list, and most of a bottle of good whiskey Dean's been saving for no particular reason.
Finally, Mom casts a glance around the library, takes in the remnants of their meal. "It's getting late. We'd better start cleaning up."
Sam bumps Dean with his bony elbow. "We got it, Mom."
"We do?" Dean screws up his nose as his brother stands and begins to collect plates.
"Yes," Sam says, with a pointed look. "We do."
Dean makes a show of huffing and rolling his eyes as he scoots back his chair. It's all in good fun, because nothing can put a damper on this moment, this night. Mom and Dad are holding hands on the tabletop, both laughing at the scene he's making, and that's all that matters.
It comes out of nowhere.
He's off his game, lulled into a false sense of security by the fact his entire family is somehow together under one roof. Somewhere in the midst of an evening of incredibly rare relaxation, Dean lost sight of how Dad made the trip from 2003. The point of his holding that damned pearl in the first place.
Michael.
Stupid, Dean berates himself as the room fuzzes and a high-pitched ringing drowns out all other sound. He reaches blindly for the back of his chair, his temple thumping like a bass drum, like a fist against steel.
He clenches his jaw, drawing forth a mental image of the cage where he's tucked Michael. Not now, you son of a bitch. He imagines barriers between the angel and himself, piling them on until the ringing fades.
Dean ducks his chin, swallows. The room as gone quiet. The lapse can't have lasted more than a few seconds, but these are some of the most observant assholes in the world, and two of them are already primed for catching these little slips. Mom's face is folded with concern, but Sam's expression is good old-fashioned I told you so. Dean skips right past them to give his father a lopsided grin.
"Guess I'm gettin' to be a lightweight in my old age."
Dad chuckles, lifts his glass. "Could've warned you."
Dean ducks his chin as he helps Sam clear the table, avoiding eye contact until they've escaped into the relative privacy of the kitchen. Once they've piled the dishes in the basin, Sam pins him against the wide sink with a hard look.
"You okay?"
Dean gives his brother a look he hopes communicates exactly what a dumbass question that is.
Sam raises his hands in surrender, moves to turn on the tap to soak the dishes. Dean bumps him to the side and hands him a towel instead.
"You're drying."
His brother quirks an eyebrow. "You want to wash the dishes?"
Mostly, he wants to put some space between his parents and what's just happened. But, sure. "You're fussy about it," he tells Sam.
Sam huffs, but there's no heat behind it. "I can't believe this is happening," he says.
"Yeah," Dean replies, because there aren't words to capture how much this night has meant to him.
They work their way through most of the pile in silence, and then Dean's ears perk to the too obvious sounds of two people sneaking past the kitchen. He and Sam rotate in tandem toward the threshold. Down the hall, a door shuts with a quiet click.
"Okay," Dean says, closing his eyes. "So, we're going to have to avoid that hallway for like, forever."
"Yeah," Sam agrees quickly, suddenly very invested in swiping the inside of a water glass with his towel.
After the dishes have been put away, Sam almost has to bodily haul his brother his room and threatens to stand guard at the door to keep Dean's stubborn ass inside. He needs to rest, to gather the strength necessary to keep Michael's attacks at bay.
"Dad will still be here in the morning," he tells Dean. Then he leans against the wall outside the room, wincing when he hears a muted snore after only fifteen minutes.
Sam had expected it to take much longer for his brother to fall asleep. Maybe Dean was more worn-down than he thought.
For the first time in a while, it's just them in the bunker. Everyone else is out on a job. So, the sound of footsteps in the library draws Sam's attention. He finds his father surveying one of the bookcases with a hand tucking in his jeans pocket, a glass of whiskey in the other. When he turns, Dad looks happier, and younger, than Sam can remember ever seeing him.
They had a moment before dinner—Dad acknowledging that he screwed up a lot when they were kids and Sam reassuring him that he'd forgiven the man a long time ago. So, for the first time, Sam is seeing his father without an iota of the anger and resentment he carried with him for years.
Sam goes to the bar cart, pours himself a few fingers of whiskey, and shares his first real drink with the old man. They stand side-by-side in comfortable silence, and Sam can sense with the comfortableness of the moment begins to fade.
Dad shifts his weight and sips his drink, rolls his head on his shoulders the way he used to when he had something to say. Sam is in the odd, new position of being the one with the answers, and he knows he needs to wait his father out instead of accidentally offering up too much information.
Finally, Dad turns sad eyes on him, lifts his chin the direction of the hall. "What happened to him?"
It's the first hint Sam's had that his father sees something isn't right. Dad doesn't have to specify—he's obviously asking about Dean. Sam knows Michael has been giving his big brother hell, and Dean had a small slip at dinner, but he'd laughed it off, and has been otherwise strong in front of Dad.
He shrugs, plasters on a little's brother grin. "Lightweight."
"I'm not talking about that. There's something…" Dad pulls his hand from his pocket, makes a vague gesture to his eyes. "I hardly recognize him."
"Dean's been through a lot," Sam says, dropping his voice, unwilling to commit to specifics. "We both have."
Dad shakes his head. "It's more than that, Sam. He looks…haunted." He pauses, waiting for Sam to disagree.
He doesn't. He can't.
"That's a hard-earned look, Sammy. It's not new."
Sam bobs his chin and takes a fortifying sip from his glass. He knows what Dean said, what he agreed to, and he can't see how telling the old man will change a damn thing. It certainly won't lighten anyone's load, but maybe Sam can help Dad understand how they got here, that look he's spotted in Dean's eyes. He can't drop the Michael bomb—not yet—but maybe he can explain that first domino in the line, the one that's woven an underlying current through every decision they've made since.
"Dad," he starts, then bites down on his lip, dropping his gaze to his glass. "Something happened, after you died. There was a…a fight, and…I died."
He hears his father's sharp intake of breath but doesn't look up. Not yet.
"Dean made a deal to bring me back." Now Sam looks up, watches the emotions pass Dad's face: denial, anger, and devastation in rapid succession.
"How…" Dad looks to the doorway Sam entered a few moments ago. "Why would he do that? He knows better."
"He did know better," Sam says. His fingers tighten around his glass. He's in this now, popped the top of the can of shit. He sighs. "But everything he knew he learned from you. Dad, the demon didn't just get you in a fight. Dean got hurt, bad. He was in a coma, dying, and you summoned the demon. You traded your soul for his life. You went to Hell for him, and that messed him up. But before you did, you told him something that…"
He maintains eye contact, watches every verbal hit land. "Dad, when we were growing up, what do you think Dean heard more from you than anything else?"
Dad is quiet for a long moment. "Watch out for Sammy."
Sam nods. "I'm not saying this is your fault. It's not. I can't blame you for this, not any of it. And I know Dean doesn't. I just want you to understand how we got here. Dad, you taught Dean that protecting me was his responsibility, that it came before anything else, including himself. The last thing you ever told him was to save me. So, when I died, Dean did what you taught him to do. He saved me by trading his soul for my life, and then he went to Hell."
Dad nods to himself, eyes wet, throat working. "But he…you got him back."
The pang is unexpected, like pulling the scab off a still-healing wound. "Believe me, I tried. It wasn't me."
"Then how?"
"Angels," Sam says. "But it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts. They pulled him out of Hell and told Dean the same thing you did, that he had to save me. That it was his job, his…destiny," he spits out the word, then takes a breath, watching his father. "That weight, the one that came from you, from them, from the whole damn world…it was a lot. And it wasn't fair. But he's Dean, you know? So, he took it on. All of it. And he didn't complain, or even ask for help. Because that's how you raised him. That's what he thought he was supposed to do. Carry that weight. Put me first."
Dad's eyes blur, his gaze shifting to the middle distance. Turning inward, no doubt mentally rehashing what he can remember, since he didn't live through these things Sam is telling him. He doesn't say anything.
"He's never really been the same since. And I wish I could tell you that was the end of it. But no matter what we did, no matter how many fights we won…there was always something else. Another weight added to the pile." Sam sighs, sets his empty glass on the top of the closest table.
"So, yeah, Dad. Dean looks haunted, and no, it's not new."
To be continued...
