Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. There's also references to canon child abuse and self-deprecation. Also canon-typical injuries. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: I just really wanted a young Dean to meet two of Mary's friends, because John is a jerk-face assbutt.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Quidditch League (Post S10); Hogwarts 2.0 (Term 01); RAVEN (2023); MC4A (Fa-Y6)
Individual Challenges: Red Instead; Quaffles; Bludgers; Pet Food; Vegetable Broth; Fruit Stand; Purple Scholar; Feather Head; Magical MC; No School MC; Hunter MC [x3]; Old Shoes; Binger; Graphic; Animated; Singer; Tossed Chum; Elder Berries [x2]; Ethnic & Present; Neurodivergent; Rian-Russo Inversion; Rowl in Her Grave; Short Jog; Bucket Listing; Eating Cake; Exchange; Greatest Gift; Green Ribbon; Two Cakes; Salt Wrench; Vial Collector; Bi Bi Bi; Zed Era; Rainbow Connection; Finders
Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw
Assignment: Term 01-04
Subject [Task (Prompt)]: Health & Fitness [Task#1: Write about someone feeling a strain in some part of their personal life.]
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Gather [Sorcerer (Draconic Bloodline - ALT)](Bloodline); Case [Occamy](Snowglobe)]
Post Season QL Challenges: Bingo [D4](Whispered Confessions)
RAVEN Challenges: Colors [131](Seafoam); Items [84](Needle); Settings [43](Dawn)
Other MC4A Challenges: FaB [4C](Blanket); Set [3B](Forest/Woods); Chim [Bugwort]("The Anonymous Ones" – Dear Evan Hansen; Turned Left Instead AU); Hunt [Fa Items (Scarf; Wax); Fa Set (Midnight); Fa WD (Buddhism; Migraine)]; Fire [x3](Prompt Hunt); Garden [Network (Legacy; Nonbinary; Ward)]; Harvest [C&CTs (Desi; Native); Descriptions (Off-Key); Settings (Bog/Swamp; Night)]; Hang [Phrase1](n/a); Soup [L (Latino); C (Caretaker); K (Kelly Green)]
Representation(s): Dean Winchester; Carlos Cervantez; Latika Desai; Stanford Era
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Morrigan's Tentacles; Sitting Hummingbird; Second Verse (Not a Lamp; Persistence Still; White Dress; Found Family; Nontraditional; Sneeze Weasel; Zucchini Bread; Middle Name; Nightingale; Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice; Brooms Only; Car in a Tutu; Lovely Coconuts; Grease Monkey; Lyre Liar; Muck & Slime; Rock of Ages; Casper's House; Corvid Brain); Chorus (Odd Feathers; Pear-Shaped; Pocky Pockets; Wabi Sabi; Bee Haven; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Rediscovery; Tomorrow's Shade; A Long Dog; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Abandoned Ship; Head of Perseus; In the Trench; Surprise!; Seven Gates; Turtle-Duck); Demo 1 (Queen Bee); Demo 2 (Mermaid); Demo 1p (Under the Bridge; Where Angels Fear; Bog Beast; Lettuce Hold Hands)[x4]; Demo 2p (Getting On; Not Mozart; Stitchin' Time; Sailor Take Warning; Tootsies)[x5]
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Terrarium); SN (Rail; Spare); FR (Satisfaction; Liberation); O3 (Orator; Oust); HoSE (Sanctuary); RoIL (Satisfaction; Amelioration); War (Orator; Obstruction; Sanctuary; Ennui); TY (Ntaiv; Kulonbozo); Mea (Ennui; Bisect; Rampant; Athenaeum)
Word Count: 2977 words

(^^)
Family Legacies
(^^)

Dean Winchester woke up like he had most days of his short life: suddenly and painfully. He bit back a groan, careful to keep the only noticeable sign of his waking as the tension he could feel in his shoulders. Through the haze of pain, he tried to process the night before and only managed to scrape together a few basic facts.

He had been on a hunt. Of course, he had been on a hunt. He wasn't Sammy and had anything else going for him. Dean wasn't smart enough to get out of this life. All he had was a GED, a give-em-hell attitude, and the vague hope that maybe someday, if he worked very hard and saved enough people, he might actually be worth something.

So Dean had been hunting something. He couldn't remember what, but he did remember yelling as he had flown through the thick, humid air. Then there had been an impact that had stolen all the air from his lungs. Then the darkness of oblivion.

Alright. So the what might be a little beyond him right then. Maybe he should focus on the where.

He had been in an old house somewhere in the swampy Ozarks, close enough to the state line that he might not have still been in Missouri by the time he had found the damn place. There had been some kind of magic involved-the previous resident had warded the house like he was preparing for a supernatural siege of some sort. Yet for all that, the only protection against mundane entrance had been a closed door and its remote location in the middle of a forested swamp. The door hadn't even been locked.

Dean was probably never going to get his boots dry. His clothes were definitely beyond washing. Swamp muck stained worse than black blood did and reeked more than burning flesh. There wasn't any kind of tomato juice that could solve the issue.

He breathed in slowly through his nose. The stench of the marsh was still strong and present. Clearly, Dean hadn't been moved while he had been unconscious. That could be a sign that the place was as abandoned as he had been led to believe, and he had just run afoul of the wards. It could also mean that he just wasn't important enough to bother with after the initial threat had been neutralized. It could also mean that he was being stored for later like a packet of chips left in the pantry until the midnight snack run.

Dean exhaled slowly before he attempted to shift his limbs. The pain he was feeling had dulled to a low throb, but he was still pretty sure that he had some major damage. He had been tossed pretty far, after all. He inhaled carefully, only to feel his ribs vehemently protest the act.

Oh, fuck, that hurt. Yeah, that's definitely cracked ribs. They're going to be a bitch to wrap once he managed the hike back to the Impala and then the drive back to the hotel. It would be easier if he had Dad with him, but since Sammy had left them, John had made himself even more scarce than he had been when they had been kids.

Not that Dean blamed him at all. Dean understood that without Sam, there was no reason for Dad to stick around. It wasn't like Dean was enough of a reason by himself. All he had going for him was his ability to do as he was told. There were dozens of hunters who could do the same thing, and probably do it better than Dean could.

Still. Dean might be in a lot of pain and misery, but one thing was clear: he was alive. As long as he was alive, he still had a job to do. And that meant he had to get back on his feet.

He had to get back to the car. There was a first aid kit in the car. It should get him together enough that he could make it back to the hotel without passing out or aggravating his injuries too much. No matter how much he hated the idea of it, there was just no way that he was going to be able to push through without some kind of break to regroup.

His ribs screamed in protest as Dean sat up. For several long moments, all he could do was sit there and pant shallowly. White spots danced through his vision. His stomach churned threateningly.

Maybe that regrouping break needed to include some kind of medical professional. Not an emergency room-Dean hadn't been back to one of those since that time he had taken Sammy for his broken arm. The fallout of that little fiasco had just cemented hospitals as things to be avoided if at all possible. Dean still wasn't certain if avoiding it was possible this time.

His fingers scratched against the rough floor as he tried to get enough leverage to get his knees under him. They brushed against a familiar cylinder shape before he could even try. His hand closed around the hilt of the blade on instinct. The sudden weight of it sent a jolt of pain through his torso, but Dean held onto the weapon as he used his other hand to push himself up. He wasn't sure what was worse, the pain or the possibility that he had injured himself badly enough to require a hospital.

The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He spit out the foulness and stared at it, horrified and fascinated in equal parts. What was that stuff? It couldn't be blood because there wasn't a single cut on his tongue. So how come he could taste it so distinctly?

A sound echoed in the silence, so soft that it was barely audible. Dean looked up, listening to the sound more carefully as his eyes adjusted to the growing darkness. Something vaguely humanoid came into focus as a strip of lightened floor about forty feet ahead of him. The footsteps paused for the briefest moment before rushing forward, stopping barely out of his reach.

Wearily, Dean raised the blade in his hand as he struggled to his feet. He might be fading fast, but he was determined to do whatever it took to get away. If he was very, very lucky, he might even be able to take out the threat before escaping. One thing for certain was that this was not how he wanted to go out, not if he could help it. He had to go down fighting, even if the only one who would ever know was himself.

Dean's muscles protested the act of standing, his knees threatening to give out beneath his weight. Dizzy from pain, he stretched out a hand to touch the wall beside him. His palm slipped against the perfectly smooth wood paneling.

"I'm gonna go out on a bit of a limb," the vaguely human-shaped blur said in a light tenor with an even lighter accent that came from traveling all over the country for years. The blob now sported two smaller blobs, as if they were holding their hands out from their sides in a gesture of peace. "But I don't think you're the will-o-wisp that I was hunting."

"Ghost," Dean muttered, head filled with cotton. His arm holding up the knife shook but did not fall. He blinked rapidly, hoping to get his vision to focus better. He kept talking, letting his mouth fill in the gaps in his memories. "Found the story in the newspaper archives in town."

"Local historical society has a real witch of a librarian," the guy countered, a cheeky grin making half his mouth tilt upwards. "She confirmed that the death you found was not the first one, just the first one to make a newspaper. Swamp's been here longer than colonizers."

"Will-o-wisps aren't exactly..." Dean trailed off as a wave of nausea crashed over him. The guy tilted his head to the side. His long hair followed the motion in a waterfall of black and white. After a moment of silence, he took a step closer.

"I know that we just met," he said, "but you look like you need medical attention. Did you get thrown? 'Cause it looks like your ribs need set and getting thrown will do that." He looked around the empty room. "What would have thrown ya? There ain't nothing here."

"Wards," Dean managed to gasp as the black spots that had been dancing along the edges of his blurry vision dragged him under again.

(^^)

Dean awoke much more gently to a soft rustling that seemed to come from somewhere close by. He blinked his eyes open, barely remembering the need to stay still and observe his surroundings. He was lying in a bed, in a room he didn't recognize, and the walls were made of the same kind of stone that had been used to make a lot of the older buildings in the nearest town. He noticed a window. The dawn light filtering through the glass lit up the room.

He heard an off-key humming over the rustling and realized it was coming from the corner of the room nearest the window. In an overstuffed armchair sat an Indian woman, her dark hair spilling over her shoulder in a long thick braid that had a kelly green scarf woven through it. Beyond the wordless humming, she was quiet as she worked a thin needle through a fabric stretched out on a wooden hoop. With meticulous movements, she passed the needle across a ball of wax before picking up a group of the tiniest beads that Dean had ever seen and adding them to the pattern that she had already mostly completed. It was hard to tell from his place on the bed, but it certainly looked like one of the protective wards that Bobby had carved into the woodwork of his place.

He couldn't take his eyes off of her. She was about the same age as his father, at least as far as Dean could guess. She had the same timeless quality that most women out of that region had. She definitely was not as young as him or as old as Bobby. But what really had him transfixed was the quiet certainty in her movements between the tray on her lap and hoop in her hands.

Seeming to sense him watching, the woman raised her gaze to meet his. Her eyes were such a dark brown that they appeared almost black. When she smiled at him, a warmth burst to life inside his chest, both familiar and alien at the same time. She stopped her humming as she stabbed the needle into the stretched fabric before setting the hoop down on the tray laying across her lap. Carefully, she set aside the tray before rising to her feet.

"Hey, there," she greeted as she approached with her empty hands out to either side. Her voice had traces of an accent that sounded only vaguely British. She wore a lime green kameez that had the protective sigils embroidered along the hems in black thread. Instead of the shalwar that would have been proper, she had on seafoam green yoga pants. "We were beginning to think we might have to call the doctor. You've been out for a few days."

"Where—?" Dean started to ask but stopped when his throat stuck together. He sat up carefully and fully aware of his wrapped ribs. The woman quickly poured water into a cup that she put a lid on it and added a twisty straw through the hole before she held it out for him to drink.

"You're at my home just outside of town," she answered as he drank. When he was finished, she sat the cup on the bedside table next to a snowglobe of the St. Louis Arch. "Losy thought it would be better than risking the hospital. Hunters have a tendency to wake up swinging when they've been injured, as I'm sure you know." She gave a bleak smile. "I'm Lata, by the way. Latika Desai. And Carlos Cervantes—Losy—was the person who found you."

"Looking for a will-o-wisp," Dean managed. His voice sounded like he had been gargling gravel. "Said a librarian told him it wasn't a ghost like I had thought."

"Oh, yes," Lata agreed, her brown face flushing a bit, "he did mention that you were looking for a ghost when you tangled with the wards of the cottage he found you in. He's out there now to better secure the place." She paced a bit away to a nearby desk that was covered in leatherbound books. Laying her hand on one stack, she turned back towards him. "I'm not certain if we're going to be able to undo the warding or make them less likely to randomly attack people. You were lucky that Losy was in the area. You likely wouldn't have made it very far on your own."

"Yeah, I noticed that." He touched his ribs. "Thanks for this."

"So do you have a name or…?" She bit her bottom lip as she trailed off. It was Dean's turn to blush.

"Oh, right. My name's Dean, Dean Winchester."

Lata started like she had been tazed. Her dark eyes raked over his face, clearly looking for something. She left the desk as she crossed to the bed again.

"You're not—" She cut herself off, pressing her fingertips to her lips briefly before dropping them. "Is your mother's name Mary, by any chance?"

Dean froze. Normally, if people recognized his name, they connected him with his father. John Winchester definitely had a reputation among hunters. This was the first time that he had ever met anyone who connected him to his mother.

"It is," he confirmed cautiously. Lata looked like she was either going to cry or be sick. "How do you know her name?"

"I knew her a long time ago," Lata said, her voice flat. "Back before she quit hunting to marry your father." She shook her head in disbelief. "She didn't want her children raised to be hunters like she had been. I guess that didn't work out as she had hoped."

"Mom was a hunter?" Dean almost couldn't believe it. He only had a few memories of his mother, ones that he had held onto as tightly as he had tried to hold onto Sammy. He had no real idea how much was things he had made up around those memories and how much were the real deal. Wouldn't he have noticed if his mother had been a hunter? Wouldn't his father have noticed?

"All of the Campbells were," Lata said in a gentle voice, like she knew that she was blowing his mind and upsetting his paradigm. "It's why they tended to die bloody and oddly. I know that Samual died—"

"Samual?" Dean interrupted. He swallowed hard enough for it to hurt.

"Mary's father," Lata explained quickly, like she had some idea of why he was reacting to the name. "I guess he would be your grandfather, but as I was saying, he died before you would have been born. I never got the details, just that he and Deanna passed at the same time."

"Deanna?"

"Your grandmother."

"Mom named me and Sammy after her parents?" He fell backwards against the headboard of the bed. His head felt like it was going to explode with the information that he was getting. "You knew my mother?"

"I did," Lata confirmed. She sat down on the foot of the bed. "Losy and I both knew her, back when we all much younger. We lost touch when she quit hunting. Her cousin Maggie was killed by a demon, and after that, all Mary could think about was having a normal life." Lata looked him over again. "She wouldn't have wanted this for you."

"She was killed by a demon, too," Dean whispered, like he was sharing a secret. Maybe he was. Dad didn't exactly go around talking about the Yellow-Eyed Demon with anyone, not even other hunters. Since Dean wasn't supposed to research the topic on his own, he had never actually said the words to anyone. He couldn't even remember actually discussing it with Sammy. Unfortunately, Lata didn't seem shocked to hear that.

"I'm not surprised," she said. Her smile was nothing but a ghost now. "Demons had always seemed particularly keen on Campbells. Djinn, too. Actually, any creature that deals primarily with the mind or soul. A half-djinn that I met once described the whole bloodline as particularly bright and loud."

"Must have skipped me," Dean said with a dismissive shrug. "Sammy's the bright one. That's why he's at Stanford." He shook his head before focusing on something else she had just said. "Wait. Half-djinn? How does that happen?"

"You see, when two people love each other very much," Lata started, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief. Dean rolled his eyes. His head was aching to the point of his thoughts were starting to feel fuzzy and slow again. Lata patted his leg over the blanket. "You look like you're about to pass out again. We can finish catching up later. Any child of Mary's is more than welcomed to stay as long as they like."

"Thank you," Dean said as he moved back into a prone position. Lata fussed with his blanket, essentially tucking him in like he was a child. He couldn't summon the energy to complain, not even when she pressed a kiss to his forehead and murmured something in another language. It felt nice, almost familiar.

He fell asleep feeling safe for the first time in a very long time.