gwendolyngrace (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gwendolyngrace) wrote2008-06-26 07:09 pm
gwendolyngrace) wrote2008-06-26 07:09 pm
Entry tags:
Fifty Percent: Part Five
Fic title: Fifty Percent
Author name:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gwendolyngrace
Artist name:sazzlette
Genre: (rps, wincest, het, gen) Gen / Het
Pairing: John/OFC
Rating: R
Word Count: 46,450, Posted in 5 1/2 parts
Warnings/Spoilers: (if applicable) Told in two eras: 2007 and 1989. The 2007 storyline is set between “Bad Day at Black Rock” and “Sin City”; the flashback sequence references “Something Wicked.”
Summary: While cleaning out John’s storage locker, Sam finds an envelope from his father addressed to someone from their past. Dean objects to delivering it, but Sam happens upon a hunt that takes them practically to her doorstep. Could they be demons released when the Gate opened? In 1989, shortly after the shtriga hunt, the Winchesters settle in small-town Ohio while John figures out whether or not he can keep hunting. Beverly Kirkland, the children’s librarian, meets the boys and their father. After a chance encounter with John, she reluctantly grows closer to him, all the while wondering what it is about the family that doesn’t quite add up….
Author’s Notes: So many things about this, but I don’t want to give stuff away. Right. Well, first off, I had this in my head long before “Supernatural: Rising Son” came out, and before I found out that Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Mary-Louise Parker were a couple (and then they broke up before I finished drafting this). The idea came up while I was writing Trost und Freude for a holiday exchange - but takes place *before* that in the Wee!chester timeline. I’m very grateful tosazzlette for her art of awesome (10 sketches, count'em OMG! - AND a music mix!), etakyma for her unfailing willingness to read what I’ve written and tell me how to fix it, july_july_july for her incredibly insightful beta-reading, and Wikipedia for lots of helpful information, ranging from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collectibles to the names of Kansas Governors to facts (and missing information) about our MOTW.
Link to fic: Part One, Part Two, Part Three-A, Part Three-B, Part Four, Part Five
Back to Part Four
~*~NOW~*~
“Well, one thing’s for certain,” Dean said when they got back to the car, “if we don’t catch this thing in the next two days, someone else’ll be getting ganked in a week.”
“We don’t know that anyone will die,” Sam said. “Barker could have been a fluke. But it’s a good bet that someone here in Toledo will wind up in Columbus.”
“At Lowell’s Tavern, no doubt.”
“Yeah.”
“Super,” Dean complained. “So now we’re so far ahead of this thing that we have to wait for it.”
“Well, hang on,” Sam muttered. He was looking at the picture of Barker’s tattoo—or whatever it was—he’d snapped with his phone. “We may be able to anticipate something about the next victim. I know I’ve seen that symbol. Recently.” He reached over the bench for his laptop bag and booted up the computer.
“Where are we going, Sam?” Dean asked.
“Hang on a second.”
Dean ignored him and pulled out, but Sam saw why when he looked up. An unmarked car was parking right near when they had been sitting. Dean drove a few streets away until he found a Starbucks and parked.
“Want anything?”
Sam shook his head, pulling up some of the files he’d been looking at the night before. Dean climbed out.
“Dude, you might as well be staring at hieroglyphics, man,” Dean said, rolling his eyes as he stomped away.
Sam’s head popped up to watch Dean’s back through the driver’s window. Hieroglyphics! He remembered where he’d seen the symbol before, and it wasn’t on his computer. He dug through the satchel for the photocopied pages. By the time Dean returned with coffee, Sam had found the page. “I knew I’d seen that symbol. Look.” He held out the page with its table and tapped on the seven little triangles in their double row. “It’s cuneiform, Sumerian writing, Dean. It’s the symbol for five.”
“Five?” Dean frowned. “But there’s seven of ‘em.”
“Yeah, the Sumerians used two triangles, one on top of the other, as the symbol for zero.”
Dean swiveled his head toward him. “How could you possibly know that?”
Sam opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “I…saw the books in Lauren’s room and…I got curious.”
“So you just happened to look this stuff up, what, today? Yesterday?”
The corner of Sam’s mouth twitched. “Today,” he confessed.
Dean stared at him.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Dude, you are seriously freakish sometimes.” Dean started the car. “Okay, it’s the symbol for five, and it’s Sumerian.”
“Yeah, and I think the name Namru is, too. Hang on,” Sam flipped through the stack of paper. “I think I saw something when I was photocopying. We can stay here and look through this stuff, or we can head back down to Columbus and try to find this Mike, Mark, Malcolm guy.”
Dean pulled out. “We’ll be in Columbus in two hours, dude. Research fast.”
After an hour on the road, Sam looked up from his stack. “Yeah. Namru—he was a god of resurrection and science.”
“And five?”
“Well, numerologically speaking, the number five symbolizes life, regeneration, identity, and the self. And sometimes, nothingness.”
Dean sucked his teeth, but thankfully declined to take an easy shot at Sam’s esoterica. “Okay, so anything involving the god Namru is likely to have a lot of fives hanging around it?”
“I guess, and the spirit of a suicide is definitely the combination of nothingness and self.”
“I suppose,” Dean murmured. “So, have you figured out what’s going on?”
“No, but I know if we can find this guy at Lowell’s, we might be able to stop it.”
“Awesome.” Dean blinked at the road. “Huh,” he said, as if a thought had just struck him.
“What?”
“Well, I just realized. Columbus to Cleveland? Toledo to Columbus. Same distance, man. Hundred and fifty miles.”
“Seriously?” Sam said—not because he didn’t believe Dean on driving distances, but because he couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him, either. “Where’s the map?”
Dean jerked a thumb toward the back seat. Sam unbuckled his seatbelt and hung over the bench to dig around. Dean protested immediately, “Get your ass out of my rearview!” but Sam ignored him. He found the map (after making sure Dean would regret smacking him on the back of his thighs) and flopped back into the seat. To his vast amusement, Dean was unrolling his window as fast as possible.
“What the hell, man?” Dean was griping.
“Hang on,” Sam said. He refolded the map to show both Toledo and Cleveland at the top and Columbus at the bottom, and traced a direct line from each northern city down to the southern one. “Holy shit,” he said. “It’s a Roman numeral five, Dean.”
“Oh, now that’s just weird,” Dean said.
Sam scoffed. “Everything we’ve ever done, and this is what’s weird for you?”
Dean opened his hands on the wheel to shrug. “Whatever.”
They made it back to Columbus well before the end of the workday. Dean headed straight for Lowell’s. They flashed Gareth’s picture at the bartender—a different one from the night they’d come around asking about Lauren’s bar fight. “Was this guy in here a little less than a week ago?” Dean asked brusquely.
“Maybe,” he said. Sam handed him a twenty. “Yeah, he was here. Talking to Mitch.”
“Mitch?” Sam echoed.
“Mitch Fallon,” came the answer. “He comes in every couple days.”
“Okay,” Dean said in a professional tone, “could you point him out if he comes in?”
The bartender crossed his arms. “Mitch is a regular. If you’re looking to mess him up—”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Sam said quickly. “Honest, we just need to talk to him. He was with a friend of ours who went missing a little while ago.”
Dean reached for his wallet and pulled out a fifty. “Just bring us a couple shots of tequila if he comes in tonight, okay?”
“If he comes in,” the guy said dubiously. “He’s usually studying on Tuesday nights.”
“Studying?” Sam asked. This was a biker-bar, not a hot spot for intellectuals.
“Yeah, he’s a grad student at OSU.”
“Do…you know what he’s studying?”
The bartender shrugged. “Uh…I dunno, something about ancient history? Linguistics? Something like that.”
“Mesopotamian history?” Sam pressed.
“No idea.” He moved down the bar to pour for another customer.
They sat; they ordered. Dean decided darts were the thing and talked Sam into throwing a round with him. About an hour and a half later, a group of guys walked in. They were dressed in leather like most of the others, except that they leaned toward the Goth end of the spectrum, with spiked hair, eyeliner, and a few choice piercings alongside their dog collars, jackets, and biker gloves.
The bartender’s eyes flicked over to Sam and Dean, then followed the threesome as they took up a booth near the back.
“Look alive, think we’re up,” Dean said, slapping Sam’s arm with one hand while tipping up his beer with the other.
Sure enough, a few minutes later the waitress, who looked like she could double as a bouncer, if necessary, brought over two shot glasses of tequila. “Larry says these are for you two,” she announced with disapproval. “He said they don’t go on your tab,” she added, in a way that threatened that they’d better be reflected in her tip.
“Yeah, we, uh, we paid for ‘em when we came in,” Sam told her through his best boyish smile. One of their marks came back to the bar to pay for a billiard rental and headed back to the others.
The waitress harrumphed and moved on to other tables. Dean looked at Sam for a moment, head cocked, then he wiggled his eyebrows once and launched out of his chair. Sam watched him go to the bartender and return a moment later with a rack of billiard balls and two cues. “C’mon, Sam, let’s go,” he said as he passed their chairs. Sam nodded. He thought he had an idea of what Dean had in mind. He grabbed their beers, leaving the tequila untouched, and joined Dean to play his shill.
“Did Larry tell you which one is Mitch?” Sam asked Dean when he got to the table.
“Yeah,” Dean answered, not looking at the other group at all. “Nebbishy guy in the crewneck, not playin’—jus’ watchin’.” He set up the balls and broke, all business.
Sam could shoot pool almost as well as Dean, but since he’d hit a growth spurt in tenth grade, he’d hated the game. The billiard table was always too low for him. By the time he set up five shots, his back began to complain from the constant leaning over. So he usually left the hustling to Dean. But occasionally, Dean needed help hooking his fish, so either Dad or, more recently, Sam, had to set up the take. They’d put themselves through an average round of eight-ball, each one shooting a couple scratches and a number of outright misses, until the mark they wanted to grift took notice—and took the bait.
Dean had set up at the next table over from Mitch and his friends, which they in turn had chosen because it was near the booth where they had stashed their jackets and messenger bags. His friends seemed old for Goths, but they still rocked the black eyeliner and the leather with too many zippers. Mitch was dressed like them, but didn’t wear it as easily. He reminded Sam of a kid still learning how to be comfortable in his own skin.
After Dean sank his third scratch on an attempted side pocket shot, Sam saw that Mitch was watching their game more than his buddies. He was following Dean’s hands, as if memorizing the rhythm of their travel would improve his own game. Sam decided it was time to reel in the fish.
“Man, you suck,” he said loudly to Dean.
“Oh, bite me,” Dean replied genially. “I’m just not warmed up yet.”
“Yeah, whatever. More beer?” Sam asked.
Dean grunted, drained his mug, and handed it over. As Sam headed for the bar for refills, he heard Dean call to Mitch, “Hey, how about you, man? You play?”
When Sam got back, Dean was racking up the balls and Mitch had taken Sam’s cue.
“Sammy, this dude’s gonna show you how it’s done,” Dean announced. Though his voice sounded friendly to anyone else, Sam could hear the tightness in it.
“Oh, probably not,” Mitch said. He was certainly more of a nerd than the others, especially for in here. Sam thought of that unfortunate scriptwriter back in Hollywood—Walter. He’d thought he could dabble in controlling spirits, too, and it had got him killed. He’d been motivated by a desire to use knowledge of the supernatural for fame. What was it about guys who seemed so harmless on the outside? Sam guessed maybe they’d been pushed one too many times around the schoolyard. Sort of the supernatural equivalent of Columbine killers.
Mitch held his cue too tightly, so that it skipped off the cue ball when he tried to put English on it. Dean was going to have to trash his game just to give Mitch a chance. Dean noticed it too, from the way he raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes slightly when Sam handed him his beer.
“Oh, hey, Mitch, this is Sam,” Dean said, not bothering with an alias, but also not explaining who “Sam” was, giving him room to work an angle.
Mitch waved, index finger extended and the rest of his hand curled loosely. “You guys, uh, passing through, or what?”
“We’re visiting our aunt,” Sam said. “Just…there’s only so many evenings with the relatives that you can take, I guess.”
“What about you, Mitch?” Dean asked, deliberately missing a slot shot on the five-ball. “This doesn’t exactly look like your kind of place.”
“Yeah, it’s cool, right?” Mitch said, looking around. “I can’t stand college clubs. Everyone’s such a poseur, y’know?”
His friends agreed loudly. Dean fought back a broad smile and Sam could tell he was suppressing a smartass remark.
“Oh, you’re in college?” Sam asked to make conversation before Dean’s resistance broke down. He wondered how long they’d have to maintain the friendly act before they could separate him from his pals. Sam was certain they were no threat, but if they were all regulars, the last thing he and Dean needed was to fend off an entire biker bar. Especially one that had just seen a nasty fight a couple weeks ago.
“Grad school,” Mitch corrected. “I’m studying Ancient Mechanics.”
“Come again?” Dean said with a head jiggle.
“Ancient Mechanics. I’m sort of making up my own program. It’s a combination of anthropology, ancient languages, and physics.”
“To do what?” Dean pressed. “Figure out how to bring back that Mohawk?” He pointed at Mitch’s friend’s hair.
Mitch glanced at his friend, but didn’t seem to understand that Dean was twitting him. “Uh, no. I’m looking at the way ancient cultures believed the world worked and um, through that, how they conceived of and responded to technology—wow,” he interrupted himself. “That was some shot.”
“Huh?” Dean looked down. He hadn’t been paying attention to screwing up his pool game and he’d just banked off the end bumper, skittering the nine and the three toward the side pockets. The nine slid off the table and sank; the three was lined up perfectly.
“Oh. Flukey, huh? Wow,” Dean observed of his own performance. He over-cocked the angle so that when he shot, the ball had too much backspin and it rolled wide of the three.
“So…ancient mechanics?” Sam picked up on the interrogation. “Like how ancient?”
“Well, as far back as I can go. Antiquity and pre-antiquity, really. I mean, Greek and Egyptian, sure, but I’m more interested in the Mesopotamian cultures—Sumeria, Akkadia, Chalcedon, that kind of thing.” He lined up his shot and took it; his ball didn’t go in, but it did mess up Dean’s next lineup for the three.
“That’s pretty obscure,” Sam said.
“Yeah, but there’s new stuff getting discovered all the time,” Mitch said. His eyes lit up and he became much more animated. His enthusiasm made him relax a lot more, and Sam found him smart, funny, and pleasant when he forgot to act cool. He nattered at Sam about his thesis proposal and the fantastic book he’s just got three and a half weeks previously from a rare dealer.
“I mean, technically, it should be in a museum, right? Not my apartment. But man—it’s just amazing. The kinds of dedications they made to Namru—he was their god of science and resurrection. See, his priests believed that all mechanical devices had life forces that kept regenerating, which is how they kept working continuously. Did you know that they had all the elements necessary for an internal combustion engine?”
“Izzat right?” Dean commented. “What do you know—you say you got this about three weeks ago?” He wasn’t looking at Mitch, though; he was looking at Sam. Sam returned Dean’s angry stare with a grim nod.
“Yeah, just about.”
“Wouldn’t happen to be in—what’s the word, Sam—”
“Cuneiform.”
“Cuneiform, right. It wouldn’t happen to be in their glyphs, would it?”
“Well…yes,” Mitch admitted uneasily. “It’s a transcription of several monuments and tablets. The book was hand-drawn by a Cistercian—”
“Okay,” Dean cut him off. “Let’s cut to the chase. Mitch, have you been…translating the book?”
“Well, yeah. It’s part of my dissertation—”
“And have you been reading it out loud?” Dean pressed urgently.
“Uh…y-yes.”
His friends picked up on Dean’s accusatory tone. “Problem, Mitch?” one of them asked, trying to be menacing.
“I…don’t think so, Mark,” Mitch said. Sam looked at Dean.
“Your name is Mark?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are you a grad student, too?” Dean said. Sam could tell he was trying not to be a smart-ass, but he just couldn’t help it.
“Yeah, so?” Mark asked.
Sam pulled out Gareth Barker’s picture. “Do you know anything about this guy?”
Mark stared at the photo. “No,” he said flatly.
“Yeah,” Mitch said. “Don’t you remember, Mark? He was here…like a week ago? I took his business card.” He moved to the booth and flipped open his bag. “He was interested in my theories about mass-production using ancient designs as inspiration.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, I…have it here, somewhere,” Mitch fished for the business card, shambling back toward them.
“Why are you looking for this guy?” Mark asked.
“We’re not. He’s dead.”
Mitch fumbled the card. It fluttered out of his hand and he leaned heavily against the pool table.
“Dead?”
“He showed up in Toledo yesterday and blew away two people before getting shot by police. The thing is, Mitch, or Mark,” Dean said, facing off against both of them, “you guys might have been the last people to talk to him.”
“Are you cops?” Mark asked.
“We’re investigating his death,” Sam supplied. “Mitch, we have reason to believe that, crazy as this sounds, his death and your book are connected. Can you take us to see it?”
Mitch shrugged. “Well, yeah, but you can’t read Sumerian, isn’t gonna do you much good. Are you serious? This isn’t like, Punk’d or something?”
“We’re serious, Mitch,” Sam told him grimly.
Mitch shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why should you think I had anything to do with this guy? He died in Toledo.”
Dean crossed his arms. “Because witnesses said Barker was talking about Namru,” he snapped. “Now, since that’s not a word that generally comes up in casual conversation, and you happen to have a lot to say about this Namru guy, we thought we’d just ask you a question or two about the book.”
“Yeah, we…just thought you might have some information,” Sam added to soften Dean’s impatience.
Mark shrugged. “They want to ask questions about whether an ancient pagan god has something to do with a random guy’s death, Mitch, I say make sure they pay you for it.” He turned back to his pool game.
Mitch, meanwhile, had gone a bit pale. He glanced at Mark’s back, then said quietly to Sam, “I didn’t know…I mean, I just thought…what’s the harm?”
“Mitch, what’d you do?” Dean demanded, voice low, but loud.
“Let’s…go to my apartment. I’ll show you.”
Mitch rode in the back and gave Dean directions to his place. When they entered, he made straight for the side table. Sam saw candles, a small idol in the shape of a lion-headed god, a collection of herbs in a shallow bowl…. “An altar? You built an altar?”
“To Namru, yeah,” Mitch admitted. “But I didn’t think it would mean anything. I just…thought it’d be cool, y’know? A little immersion.”
“Mitch, people have been disappearing,” Sam said urgently. “They go missing, and then five days later, they turn up committing some awful crime. Why is that, Mitch? What’s in this book that makes them do that?”
“What!?” Mitch said, completely shocked and looking a little shaken and scared. “No, that’s—that’s impossible, that’s not what the ritual—”
“Ritual?” Both Dean and Sam said at the same time. “What ritual?” Sam barked.
“Uh…the ritual I found. It’s supposed to…uh, make the caster…well, y’know. Attractive. To women. It’s supposed to grant vitality and longevity.”
“And you’ve been conducting this ritual?” Sam concluded.
“Y-yeah. It says you’re supposed to recite it once per week for five weeks. The first part captures spirits and holds them in Limbo, watching over you from beyond. After five days, you light the candle and finish with a second incantation, and that…that releases the spirits back into the world. Oh, god. You can’t seriously think that it’s real?”
“Oh, it’s real,” Dean said confidently. “What’s more, your little spellwork is costing people their freedom and their lives.”
“Look,” Sam said, pulling Mitch to sit down so that he could explain. “You did the ritual for the first time three weeks ago, right? That same night, you summoned a spirit. The spirit of someone who’d committed suicide near where you were.”
“Namru collected the souls of suicides so they could be reborn,” Mitch muttered.
“Yeah, genius move, there,” Dean groused.
Sam waved him off to calm him down. “That spirit, I don’t know why, but it didn’t come here to you. It possessed someone else at the bar. David Owen.”
Mitch put his head in his hands. “This is impossible.”
“No, it’s not, Mitch. Look, you said five days later, you release the spirit?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, five days later, David Owen showed up outside of Cleveland, a hundred and fifty miles away. He committed an arson, and when the cops arrested him, he had no idea where he’d been or what he’d been doing.”
“Coincidence,” Mitch insisted. “And why would he go to Cleveland?”
“This sounds nuts,” Sam agreed, “but spirits don’t usually like to be summoned back. We think they tried to get away from you. Maybe a hundred and fifty miles is as far as it took to break free, or maybe that’s as far as they could go. It could even be that when you sent them back, they came back…off target, or something. We don’t really know. But we do know that they believed a violent act would force them out of their…host bodies.”
Mitch gaped at him. “That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You’ve been reciting the ritual,” Dean said suddenly. “You didn’t translate it, did you?”
“Well, I…I looked it over before I used it,” Mitch said. “I transliterated it into phonetics.”
Dean looked over Mitch’s head to Sam. “Maybe if he translates it, we’ll have a better idea what’s going on?”
Sam shrugged and nodded. Dean offered to make coffee and Mitch got to work.
“Oh, my God,” Mitch said, two pots of coffee and three hours later. “I…. Oh, my God.”
“What, Mitch?” Sam asked gently.
“Well, I…this incantation? It…changes partway through. It starts out as a simple spell for virility, but then—” He rose quickly and pulled the book off his desk. He flipped it open furiously, not bothering with cotton gloves, but still being careful of the pages. He found the spot he was looking for, held up the page. He turned it slowly. Flipped it back. Flipped it forward. “Yeah, it definitely changes in the middle.”
Sam held out his hand. “Let me see it,” he requested. Mitch handed the book over reverently. Sam bent the spine back as far as he could, ignoring Mitch’s frantic cry to protect the binding. Very close to the stitching, Sam saw, a page had been cut away. “There’s a page missing,” he announced.
Mitch’s eyes bugged out in horror. “What the hell was I doing, then?”
“We don’t know, dude,” Dean said. “But whatever it was, it was making suicide spirits hijack humans, ride them to distant towns, and commit random acts of violence.”
“That’s…like the worst horror movie plot ever!” Mitch moaned.
“No kidding.”
“No more Namru worship, dude,” Dean said laconically.
“Yeah, no shit,” Mitch agreed. He looked back and forth between them nervously. “So…what are you gonna do now? Report me to the cops?”
Dean scoffed. “Yeah, great. We’ll tell them a 6,000-year-old spell caused those crimes.”
“Dean…” Sam sighed. “Sorry. We usually…hunt things that aren’t human to begin with.”
“Hunt?” Mitch repeated. He pulled his knees up to his chest. “Like…The Most Dangerous Game?”
“No, no, no, no,” Sam said, holding out his palms. “It’s okay, Mitch. My brother and I hunt…spirits.”
“Oh. Like the Ghost Hunters?”
Dean cast his eyes heavenward. “Yeah. Only without the stupid cameras. Look, Mitch, the point is, we can’t turn you in, there’s no one to turn you in to. And we can’t kill you—well, we could, but that’s not what we do,” Dean caught Sam’s eye and Sam saw a glint of frustration there. “So I guess all we can do is hit you upside the head with a clue-by-four.”
“Well, you might also want to make some kind of reparation to the people whose lives you messed up,” Sam added, trying not to sound like their father in one of his lecture modes. “But I guess, that’s up to you.” He pulled out his journal and copied down the names. “And behave yourself. Or we’ll be back.”
~*~THEN~*~
Beverly had wanted to do it properly, with limited guardianship and power of attorney and all, but John refused.
“It’s six weeks at the outside,” he said, sticking with the winter break date. He did go to a notary and signed documents giving her the right to make medical decisions if either boy should need attention immediately. “I’ll call every day,” he promised, “and if something happens, I can get on the first plane back.”
He left her money to take care of them, too. On January 2nd, the day before they went back to school, he brought them over with their belongings. Each boy carried his backpack and one duffel, and John brought in a third bag that he said had all the “other stuff.” While the boys lugged their things upstairs, he handed her a thick envelope. “Should be enough for the month and for Dean’s party,” he explained. “About that...I plan to be back in time for it, but I’ve never been good at planning that kind of—”
“Leave it to me,” Beverly said. If she had maternal feelings at all, lately they were more for John than his children. But she worked with kids every day, and had no difficulty believing that between her and Dean, they could make all the arrangements.
“Okay,” he breathed. His voice was so soft that the “K” sounded harsh in contrast. “I’ll call at 8:30 every night,” he assured her. “And if for some reason I miss two calls in a row...Dean knows what to do.”
That sounded uncomfortably ominous, but Beverly guessed that over the years, they had to have developed contingency plans. For when John couldn’t get out of work, or whatever.
The boys clattered back down the stairs. She took the envelope into her office to give the Winchesters privacy for their goodbye, as well as to look at the amount without John. Inside was cash—$2,000. Enough for food, Dean’s party at the arcade, even new clothes should they need any. That was unlikely; she’d noticed that new socks, flannel shirts, and even a pair of jeans each had been part of their Christmas loot. Though John was relying on her to watch his children, he clearly didn’t want his debt to extend any further than necessary.
When she came out, she heard Dean in the living room, objecting to something. She hung back, eavesdropping, because she didn’t want to interrupt and because she figured this was the only chance she’d get to hear Dean’s real opinion about the next month’s arrangements. “—take care of Sammy myself, Dad.”
“Not for a month, you can’t. That’s enough. I expect you to behave for Mrs. Kirkland like you would for Pastor Jim—in front of the congregation. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.” Dean sounded sullen, but resigned.
“Good. Look, pal, I’ll be back for your birthday, okay? You get to stay until then. That’s what you wanted, right?”
Dean said something unintelligible.
“Dean, I do trust you,” John said, a little frustrated. “I’m giving you a choice. You can stay here a little longer, with your school friends, and get that party in the arcade. Or, you don’t want it, say so now and we’ll pack it up. Either way, I can’t stay another month. You know that. So what’s it gonna be?”
There was a pause. Beverly wondered in that moment how much damage John had really done, in the heat of whatever had happened that summer, and how long it would take for Dean to heal. One birthday party might salve John’s conscience, but it wasn’t going to make up for John running away—and from what she’d seen, that was just what he was doing. She wondered if perhaps she should refuse to enable him…but then Dean would just lose his party on top of everything else, and she would lose the opportunity to make any sort of difference for him and Sam.
Dean muttered again, words so soft Beverly couldn’t make them out. But he must have made his decision because John grunted. “That’s my man. So I’ll see you in about three weeks, okay? Don’t worry, sport, I’ll call so much you’ll get sick of me.”
Beverly heard him move to Sam next. She didn’t dare peek around the doorway, but she could imagine John reviewing his little brigade of troops, bucking up the men before a campaign. He said he’d been fifteen years out of the Corps, but he sure hadn’t lost any of the military routine when it came to relating to his sons.
“Sammy, you be good, okay?”
“Sure.” Sam’s tone changed, as if making a point to Dean. “I like Mrs. Kirkland.”
John was unimpressed. “Whether you like her or not, you behave for her. No fighting with your brother, no griping about the grub, lights out when she tells you, brush your teeth every day, help her with KP and trash detail, or whatever else, right?”
“Okay, Dad,” Sam said as if he’d heard this a number of times already.
“I mean it, little guy—none of your usual crap. And don’t watch too much TV.”
“Yes, sir!” Sam barked with enthusiasm.
“Attaboy.” There was a sound of shifting fabric. Beverly sneaked around the corner, eager to watch them hug. Instead she saw that John was standing from a crouch. He threw his bag onto his shoulder on top of his new coat, and was now patting Sam briefly on the head. “Okay,” he continued, catching her eye. “Thanks again,” he said to bring her over to the family.
“My pleasure,” Beverly said breezily. It hit her that he was really leaving, seriously going to abandon his kids with a relative stranger. And she was letting him. His CO in Vietnam had been right: he had balls for days. “Well, you’d probably like to get on the road,” she continued, fighting a sudden urge to throw him bodily out of her house and sue for full custody of the boys.
“Yeah. Not much daylight to begin with,” he commented wearily, making no move toward the door. “No sense wasting what’s left by standing here.”
Beverly felt a burning behind her eyes and closed them quickly. She would not give him the satisfaction. “We’ll come out on the porch to wave goodbye,” she announced, moving toward Dean and Sam. They retreated before her, which in turn forced John toward the entry hall.
He opened her front door and stepped into the cold. Without looking back, he walked to the Impala and tossed his bag in the back seat, then climbed behind the wheel. A few seconds later, the engine rumbled, he backed out, cocked the wheel to the right, and with a single sharp saluting wave, turned away. The exhaust clouded up in the cold air and covered the tail of the Impala like mist as he drove off.
Dean and Sam ran back inside immediately. Beverly watched long after the taillights were no longer visible and the sound of the engine faded in the morning quiet.
She quickly learned that the boys were incredibly self-sufficient and mostly low-maintenance. Dean kept Sam to a fairly strict schedule, which made Beverly wonder how much of the parenting he did even when John was around. The one thing she insisted on was doing the cooking, because it became clear in the first three days that their idea of supper consisted of takeout, diners, grilled cheese, and Chef Boyardee. After the first couple meals, however, neither of them seemed to mind the profound lack of Wendy’s and frozen dinners in their diet.
About a week after John left, Dean knocked on her office door. “Yes, Dean, what is it?”
He looked at her with a copy of John’s most stoic expression. “Dad loves Mom,” he told her simply. It was a challenge without any doubt, a dare to contradict him or deny the truth.
“Yes, Dean. He loves her a lot,” she agreed.
The mildness with which she said it surprised Dean so much that he blushed and looked away. She felt sorry for him; he wasn’t sure whether he’d been cut off at the knees or vindicated. Evidently, the uncertainty of it bothered him, because he tried again. “No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean, Dean,” Beverly said with a tired sigh. “And I understand exactly how he feels. You see, I still love my husband a whole lot, too.”
Dean looked around. “There’s a Mr. Kirkland?” He looked like he expected Tom to walk through the door at any moment.
“There was,” she explained. “It’s okay, though. Your dad and I are friends.”
“Friends?” Dean echoed uncomprehendingly. It was as if he couldn’t contemplate men and women being friends. He probably couldn’t. Beverly didn’t expect there’d been too many female influences on the boys in relation to their father since Mary’s death. John had pretty well confessed as much.
She nodded. “Well, he trusted me to look after you and Sam, right?”
Dean considered the validity of her logic. He took a tentative step toward her desk. “Yeah, I guess,” he admitted, one shoulder rising and then relaxing.
“And I’m happy to have you two visit, but between you and me, I’m glad I’m not a full-time mom.”
If he had been expecting a speech to prepare him for gaining a step-mother, her divulgence completely threw him for a loop. She suspected he’d come here prepared for a fight, but she wasn’t going to fall into that trap. She did take pity on him and decided to ease his anxiety a bit. “Come and sit down,” she invited, pointing to the one chair that didn’t have books in it, waiting to be shelved. He perched on the edge of the cushion, arms crossed.
“Dean, I don’t know if your dad would ever seriously consider getting remarried,” she told him candidly, “but I know that some of our first conversations were about the people we’d lost. I know he was really worried that you’d get the wrong idea because he asked me to let you and Sam stay here.”
“He was?”
“Mm-hm,” Beverly confirmed, nodding. “Now, I like you. But honestly, the kids at the library, having you two here for a month...that’s about all the mothering I can handle.”
Dean started to smile, but caught it before his lips opened to reveal teeth. “Well, Sammy is kind of a pain in the a—uh, butt.”
Beverly gave him a wry grin, mouth twisting, but no teeth showing, either. “No, I think you both do just fine. Do you want spaghetti tonight?”
Dean shrugged. “S’fine,” he said. He got up, and whether he was grateful for the subject change or just fooled by it, he crossed to the door. “Mrs. Kirkland?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love him, anyway?” His voice was quiet, plaintive, as if afraid that it wasn’t okay to love someone and not be loved back in the same way, or the same amount. As if he were worried that she would hate John for making her love him.
As if he were worried that John didn’t love him back, and as if that were his fault.
Beverly swallowed. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? It doesn’t change anything. I’m your librarian, Dean. And your dad’s friend.”
That seemed to satisfy him finally, but he couldn’t resist one last volley. He grinned ghoulishly and asked, “Can I ask you one other question?”
“Of course.”
“What’s sex?”
Beverly couldn’t quite stop her eyes from widening, her face from flushing. She dropped her pen on the blotter, but in the second it took her to retrieve it, she took a deep breath and blinked back at him. Tom would have said that Bambi had come home to roost, or something equally inane. “Well, Dean, there’s a whole section on that at the library. Why don’t we take a look tomorrow after school and I can help you pick out some books on the subject.”
“You’re not gonna just tell me?” he challenged. He didn’t mean what sex was, either—of that, she was sure.
“No, I’m not,” she replied, refusing to take the bait. “Because like I just said, I’m not your mother.”
~*~NOW~*~
It was late, but not too late to go back to Mrs. Kirkland’s house when they left Mitch’s place. Sam argued that they should, if only to return the key and take advantage of another night’s free stay. “Maybe she’ll let us do laundry.”
Dean was still distracted by the one that got away. “I wish we coulda capped him,” he muttered on the way back to Dublin.
“Dude. Do you want your rap sheet to get any longer?”
“I’m just sayin’, Sammy, this sucks. He’s getting away with murder.”
“Manslaughter,” Sam murmured.
“Whatever, man. This blows.”
“Yeah, it does,” Sam agreed glumly. “If there were any way—”
“I know. Not even an anonymous tip would make this stick.”
“You think he’ll do anything? For Lauren or David?”
Dean sniffed. “Probably not. What’s he going to do? Confess to the cops that he conducted an ancient ritual that didn’t quite do what he thought, and that’s why they flipped out?” He scoffed. “Nah, face it, Sam, all we could do on this one was stop this idiot from making it worse.”
Sam was silent for a minute. Then with a sigh, he concluded, “Well, he’s going to have to live with knowing that his stupid bid for glory caused a lot of pain to perfect strangers. That, and he’s going to have to start over on his research.” He grinned.
“You snaked the book?” Dean asked, glowing with pride.
Sam reached into his satchel and pulled it out. “I figured we could use it. Who knows, it’s something we’ve never seen before.” He didn’t mention that if he could find the other half of the ritual, there might be something in it to combat Dean’s impending doom. He didn’t want to think about Dean dying, but if worse came to worst, resurrection spells might come in handy.
“Aw, Sammy. I knew I raised you right.”
Mrs. Kirkland’s lights were still on when they pulled into her driveway. They climbed out and Sam grabbed their clothing duffels out of the trunk. The porch light clicked on as they approached. “I heard the car,” Mrs. Kirkland explained when she opened the door. “Come on in.”
She preceded them into the living room. “So, did you…finish your hunt?” she asked.
Sam dropped the duffels. “How did you…?”
“Your dad’s letter,” she said. She poured herself a drink. “Want one?” she offered, and turned over two more tumblers, splashing the liquid in without waiting for their answer. A silver bracelet circled her wrist. The charm glinted in the light as she poured and picked up the glasses.
“Mrs. Kirkland, are you ok—”
“I’m fine, Sam,” she said. “I even believe him. See, I read his letter this morning. Then I went to my library. And I looked up a few things. The Johnson House, Franklin Castle…all those haunted houses? They really were haunted, weren’t they? And you two…are you really wanted by the FBI?”
Dean’s jaw clenched. “You gonna call them?” he asked. His voice was deadly calm, but Sam could tell he’d gone from tired to terrified in two seconds flat.
Mrs. Kirkland stared at him for a long time. “No,” she said finally. “Here,” she said, passing one of the tumblers toward him. Sam got a good look at the charm—it had a protective symbol etched on it. “Have a drink.”
“Look, we can go if—” Sam began to offer.
“No. I’m glad you came back. I’m glad, Sam.” She looked at Dean. “Dean, I don’t care if you’re wanted. If half the things I’ve read since yesterday are true…well, if they are, then I’m not surprised the FBI has its head up its ass where you two are concerned. But more importantly, I knew your father. I think I know him even better now than before. And I can’t believe he raised either of you to be killers.”
Dean knocked back the whiskey and sat heavily on the sofa. “You and Dad…you….”
“I didn’t plan to, believe me, Dean,” she said quietly. “I don’t think he planned to, either.”
Sam’s head snapped up. That had been Dean’s issue, not the sex. He didn’t want to relive the past, true—Dean never liked looking back—no more than he’d wanted to force Mrs. Kirkland to look it in the eye. But what had been bugging Dean since the jump was the idea that Dad had felt more than lust for someone other than Mom.
Her next statement should have allayed that fear. “But he was so committed to your mother,” she said. “And I think now, I finally know why. Did he…did he find the thing that killed her?”
Dean looked away. Sam nodded. “Yeah, he…he did. We got the bastard, too.”
“But it killed him?”
Dean dropped his head. “Yeah. Basically,” Sam supplied.
Mrs. Kirkland nodded. Tears spilled out of her eyes. “I think you ought to know, he was so scared you boys would hate him. Dean, he told me, when we…talked…about you two staying here, he said that he’d been waiting for you to be ready for him. I didn’t get it at the time, but now I do. He was looking for you to give him permission to hunt. He also told me that the main reason he wanted you to stay through January was so that you could hang on to your friends long enough for a real birthday party.”
Dean got up and poured more liquor.
“But I think he was in trouble either way, right? He was afraid that if he pulled you out, you’d think that he was punishing you. That he was so angry with you over whatever wrong he perceived you’d done, that he couldn’t stand to be around.” She sipped her drink. “But you still thought that, didn’t you, because he left without you? Dean, you do realize that whatever happened, he wasn’t running away from you?”
“I don’t need this,” Dean muttered. He looked like he wanted to bolt upstairs, but Sam held up his hand to tell him to chill out.
“Maybe not,” Mrs. Kirkland admitted. “But—hang on. Stay there. I want to read you something.” She got up and went into her office, returning immediately with the letter.
Sam could see that his father had written it on pages from the journal, and that his writing crossed the lines of the paper and became progressively messy and uncontrolled. It went on for several pages. She scanned them. “He wrote this the day before he came back for your birthday, Dean. Here. I know you know that I’ll always love Mary, that I’ll always put her boys’ safety before my own happiness. But now you know why. and this: I have a mission. I’ve gotta finish finding out what caused Mary to die—why she was murdered—and I’ve gotta destroy it forever. And meanwhile, even more importantly, I’ve gotta make sure my boys are safe. That they know how to take care of themselves. Until I do that, I can’t give you what you deserve, Bev. I can’t ask you to play second fiddle to a memory.“
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “He said he wished things could be different. Believe me, I wish things had been different, too. But please, please don’t think your father ever thought anything was more important than you boys, and your mother.”
She took another slug of the whiskey. “Now, I think I should go to bed. You two probably want to get some sleep, too. And in the morning, I’m going to make pancakes, and you will eat them.”
~*~LATER~*~
You want to know about whom? Winchester? You can’t mean John…. Let me see that picture again? Yes…that’s John. John Winchester. Wow. Now there’s a man I haven’t thought of in….
Did I know he was on the FBI’s dangerous persons list? Do I look like a woman who would harbor a dangerous person? Don’t answer that.
Yes, I knew him. A long time ago. No, I’m sorry—I’ve no idea where he is or if he’s even alive.
What do you think the precise nature of our relationship was, Agent…Reidy? Do you expect me to be delicate about it? We had an affair. And his boys stayed with me, for about four weeks in 1990.
Heh. If you think that, you haven’t done your profiling work very well. John…well, one look at John and you knew you were never going to have his undivided attention. Even without the boys. His wife…none of us were ever going to stand in for her. But a man, even a man like John, needs companionship once in a while. Still, even the fifty percent of him—or even less, I guess, with Dean and Sam in the equation—even that was plenty.
No, I haven’t heard from either of them, either. I doubt they’d even know how to get in touch with me. Don’t know that they even remember much about it. John was careful about that. Didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. I have to say that at the time, the last thing I wanted was to become a step-mother….
You’re kidding. No. I don’t believe a word of it. John didn’t raise reprobates, let alone killers. I mean, they were a bit rambunctious, but…homicidal? No. They were good boys.
I’m sorry. I really haven’t seen them. Not since January 29, 1990.
Yes, of course, I understand, Agent Reidy. Yes, if I hear from them, I’ll call. But I really don’t think that’s going to happen. The Winchesters aren’t men who retrace their steps much.
No, I really don’t have anything else to say. Of course, Agent. I’m glad you liked the coffee. Take care, now.
~*~FIN~*~
Author name:
gwendolyngraceArtist name:
sazzletteGenre: (rps, wincest, het, gen) Gen / Het
Pairing: John/OFC
Rating: R
Word Count: 46,450, Posted in 5 1/2 parts
Warnings/Spoilers: (if applicable) Told in two eras: 2007 and 1989. The 2007 storyline is set between “Bad Day at Black Rock” and “Sin City”; the flashback sequence references “Something Wicked.”
Summary: While cleaning out John’s storage locker, Sam finds an envelope from his father addressed to someone from their past. Dean objects to delivering it, but Sam happens upon a hunt that takes them practically to her doorstep. Could they be demons released when the Gate opened? In 1989, shortly after the shtriga hunt, the Winchesters settle in small-town Ohio while John figures out whether or not he can keep hunting. Beverly Kirkland, the children’s librarian, meets the boys and their father. After a chance encounter with John, she reluctantly grows closer to him, all the while wondering what it is about the family that doesn’t quite add up….
Author’s Notes: So many things about this, but I don’t want to give stuff away. Right. Well, first off, I had this in my head long before “Supernatural: Rising Son” came out, and before I found out that Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Mary-Louise Parker were a couple (and then they broke up before I finished drafting this). The idea came up while I was writing Trost und Freude for a holiday exchange - but takes place *before* that in the Wee!chester timeline. I’m very grateful to
sazzlette for her art of awesome (10 sketches, count'em OMG! - AND a music mix!), etakyma for her unfailing willingness to read what I’ve written and tell me how to fix it, july_july_july for her incredibly insightful beta-reading, and Wikipedia for lots of helpful information, ranging from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collectibles to the names of Kansas Governors to facts (and missing information) about our MOTW. Link to fic: Part One, Part Two, Part Three-A, Part Three-B, Part Four, Part Five
Back to Part Four
~*~NOW~*~
“Well, one thing’s for certain,” Dean said when they got back to the car, “if we don’t catch this thing in the next two days, someone else’ll be getting ganked in a week.”
“We don’t know that anyone will die,” Sam said. “Barker could have been a fluke. But it’s a good bet that someone here in Toledo will wind up in Columbus.”
“At Lowell’s Tavern, no doubt.”
“Yeah.”
“Super,” Dean complained. “So now we’re so far ahead of this thing that we have to wait for it.”
“Well, hang on,” Sam muttered. He was looking at the picture of Barker’s tattoo—or whatever it was—he’d snapped with his phone. “We may be able to anticipate something about the next victim. I know I’ve seen that symbol. Recently.” He reached over the bench for his laptop bag and booted up the computer.
“Where are we going, Sam?” Dean asked.
“Hang on a second.”
Dean ignored him and pulled out, but Sam saw why when he looked up. An unmarked car was parking right near when they had been sitting. Dean drove a few streets away until he found a Starbucks and parked.
“Want anything?”
Sam shook his head, pulling up some of the files he’d been looking at the night before. Dean climbed out.
“Dude, you might as well be staring at hieroglyphics, man,” Dean said, rolling his eyes as he stomped away.
Sam’s head popped up to watch Dean’s back through the driver’s window. Hieroglyphics! He remembered where he’d seen the symbol before, and it wasn’t on his computer. He dug through the satchel for the photocopied pages. By the time Dean returned with coffee, Sam had found the page. “I knew I’d seen that symbol. Look.” He held out the page with its table and tapped on the seven little triangles in their double row. “It’s cuneiform, Sumerian writing, Dean. It’s the symbol for five.”
“Five?” Dean frowned. “But there’s seven of ‘em.”
“Yeah, the Sumerians used two triangles, one on top of the other, as the symbol for zero.”
Dean swiveled his head toward him. “How could you possibly know that?”
Sam opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “I…saw the books in Lauren’s room and…I got curious.”
“So you just happened to look this stuff up, what, today? Yesterday?”
The corner of Sam’s mouth twitched. “Today,” he confessed.
Dean stared at him.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Dude, you are seriously freakish sometimes.” Dean started the car. “Okay, it’s the symbol for five, and it’s Sumerian.”
“Yeah, and I think the name Namru is, too. Hang on,” Sam flipped through the stack of paper. “I think I saw something when I was photocopying. We can stay here and look through this stuff, or we can head back down to Columbus and try to find this Mike, Mark, Malcolm guy.”
Dean pulled out. “We’ll be in Columbus in two hours, dude. Research fast.”
After an hour on the road, Sam looked up from his stack. “Yeah. Namru—he was a god of resurrection and science.”
“And five?”
“Well, numerologically speaking, the number five symbolizes life, regeneration, identity, and the self. And sometimes, nothingness.”
Dean sucked his teeth, but thankfully declined to take an easy shot at Sam’s esoterica. “Okay, so anything involving the god Namru is likely to have a lot of fives hanging around it?”
“I guess, and the spirit of a suicide is definitely the combination of nothingness and self.”
“I suppose,” Dean murmured. “So, have you figured out what’s going on?”
“No, but I know if we can find this guy at Lowell’s, we might be able to stop it.”
“Awesome.” Dean blinked at the road. “Huh,” he said, as if a thought had just struck him.
“What?”
“Well, I just realized. Columbus to Cleveland? Toledo to Columbus. Same distance, man. Hundred and fifty miles.”
“Seriously?” Sam said—not because he didn’t believe Dean on driving distances, but because he couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him, either. “Where’s the map?”
Dean jerked a thumb toward the back seat. Sam unbuckled his seatbelt and hung over the bench to dig around. Dean protested immediately, “Get your ass out of my rearview!” but Sam ignored him. He found the map (after making sure Dean would regret smacking him on the back of his thighs) and flopped back into the seat. To his vast amusement, Dean was unrolling his window as fast as possible.
“What the hell, man?” Dean was griping.
“Hang on,” Sam said. He refolded the map to show both Toledo and Cleveland at the top and Columbus at the bottom, and traced a direct line from each northern city down to the southern one. “Holy shit,” he said. “It’s a Roman numeral five, Dean.”
“Oh, now that’s just weird,” Dean said.
Sam scoffed. “Everything we’ve ever done, and this is what’s weird for you?”
Dean opened his hands on the wheel to shrug. “Whatever.”
They made it back to Columbus well before the end of the workday. Dean headed straight for Lowell’s. They flashed Gareth’s picture at the bartender—a different one from the night they’d come around asking about Lauren’s bar fight. “Was this guy in here a little less than a week ago?” Dean asked brusquely.
“Maybe,” he said. Sam handed him a twenty. “Yeah, he was here. Talking to Mitch.”
“Mitch?” Sam echoed.
“Mitch Fallon,” came the answer. “He comes in every couple days.”
“Okay,” Dean said in a professional tone, “could you point him out if he comes in?”
The bartender crossed his arms. “Mitch is a regular. If you’re looking to mess him up—”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Sam said quickly. “Honest, we just need to talk to him. He was with a friend of ours who went missing a little while ago.”
Dean reached for his wallet and pulled out a fifty. “Just bring us a couple shots of tequila if he comes in tonight, okay?”
“If he comes in,” the guy said dubiously. “He’s usually studying on Tuesday nights.”
“Studying?” Sam asked. This was a biker-bar, not a hot spot for intellectuals.
“Yeah, he’s a grad student at OSU.”
“Do…you know what he’s studying?”
The bartender shrugged. “Uh…I dunno, something about ancient history? Linguistics? Something like that.”
“Mesopotamian history?” Sam pressed.
“No idea.” He moved down the bar to pour for another customer.
They sat; they ordered. Dean decided darts were the thing and talked Sam into throwing a round with him. About an hour and a half later, a group of guys walked in. They were dressed in leather like most of the others, except that they leaned toward the Goth end of the spectrum, with spiked hair, eyeliner, and a few choice piercings alongside their dog collars, jackets, and biker gloves.
The bartender’s eyes flicked over to Sam and Dean, then followed the threesome as they took up a booth near the back.
“Look alive, think we’re up,” Dean said, slapping Sam’s arm with one hand while tipping up his beer with the other.
Sure enough, a few minutes later the waitress, who looked like she could double as a bouncer, if necessary, brought over two shot glasses of tequila. “Larry says these are for you two,” she announced with disapproval. “He said they don’t go on your tab,” she added, in a way that threatened that they’d better be reflected in her tip.
“Yeah, we, uh, we paid for ‘em when we came in,” Sam told her through his best boyish smile. One of their marks came back to the bar to pay for a billiard rental and headed back to the others.
The waitress harrumphed and moved on to other tables. Dean looked at Sam for a moment, head cocked, then he wiggled his eyebrows once and launched out of his chair. Sam watched him go to the bartender and return a moment later with a rack of billiard balls and two cues. “C’mon, Sam, let’s go,” he said as he passed their chairs. Sam nodded. He thought he had an idea of what Dean had in mind. He grabbed their beers, leaving the tequila untouched, and joined Dean to play his shill.
“Did Larry tell you which one is Mitch?” Sam asked Dean when he got to the table.
“Yeah,” Dean answered, not looking at the other group at all. “Nebbishy guy in the crewneck, not playin’—jus’ watchin’.” He set up the balls and broke, all business.
Sam could shoot pool almost as well as Dean, but since he’d hit a growth spurt in tenth grade, he’d hated the game. The billiard table was always too low for him. By the time he set up five shots, his back began to complain from the constant leaning over. So he usually left the hustling to Dean. But occasionally, Dean needed help hooking his fish, so either Dad or, more recently, Sam, had to set up the take. They’d put themselves through an average round of eight-ball, each one shooting a couple scratches and a number of outright misses, until the mark they wanted to grift took notice—and took the bait.
Dean had set up at the next table over from Mitch and his friends, which they in turn had chosen because it was near the booth where they had stashed their jackets and messenger bags. His friends seemed old for Goths, but they still rocked the black eyeliner and the leather with too many zippers. Mitch was dressed like them, but didn’t wear it as easily. He reminded Sam of a kid still learning how to be comfortable in his own skin.
After Dean sank his third scratch on an attempted side pocket shot, Sam saw that Mitch was watching their game more than his buddies. He was following Dean’s hands, as if memorizing the rhythm of their travel would improve his own game. Sam decided it was time to reel in the fish.
“Man, you suck,” he said loudly to Dean.
“Oh, bite me,” Dean replied genially. “I’m just not warmed up yet.”
“Yeah, whatever. More beer?” Sam asked.
Dean grunted, drained his mug, and handed it over. As Sam headed for the bar for refills, he heard Dean call to Mitch, “Hey, how about you, man? You play?”
When Sam got back, Dean was racking up the balls and Mitch had taken Sam’s cue.
“Sammy, this dude’s gonna show you how it’s done,” Dean announced. Though his voice sounded friendly to anyone else, Sam could hear the tightness in it.
“Oh, probably not,” Mitch said. He was certainly more of a nerd than the others, especially for in here. Sam thought of that unfortunate scriptwriter back in Hollywood—Walter. He’d thought he could dabble in controlling spirits, too, and it had got him killed. He’d been motivated by a desire to use knowledge of the supernatural for fame. What was it about guys who seemed so harmless on the outside? Sam guessed maybe they’d been pushed one too many times around the schoolyard. Sort of the supernatural equivalent of Columbine killers.
Mitch held his cue too tightly, so that it skipped off the cue ball when he tried to put English on it. Dean was going to have to trash his game just to give Mitch a chance. Dean noticed it too, from the way he raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes slightly when Sam handed him his beer.
“Oh, hey, Mitch, this is Sam,” Dean said, not bothering with an alias, but also not explaining who “Sam” was, giving him room to work an angle.
Mitch waved, index finger extended and the rest of his hand curled loosely. “You guys, uh, passing through, or what?”
“We’re visiting our aunt,” Sam said. “Just…there’s only so many evenings with the relatives that you can take, I guess.”
“What about you, Mitch?” Dean asked, deliberately missing a slot shot on the five-ball. “This doesn’t exactly look like your kind of place.”
“Yeah, it’s cool, right?” Mitch said, looking around. “I can’t stand college clubs. Everyone’s such a poseur, y’know?”
His friends agreed loudly. Dean fought back a broad smile and Sam could tell he was suppressing a smartass remark.
“Oh, you’re in college?” Sam asked to make conversation before Dean’s resistance broke down. He wondered how long they’d have to maintain the friendly act before they could separate him from his pals. Sam was certain they were no threat, but if they were all regulars, the last thing he and Dean needed was to fend off an entire biker bar. Especially one that had just seen a nasty fight a couple weeks ago.
“Grad school,” Mitch corrected. “I’m studying Ancient Mechanics.”
“Come again?” Dean said with a head jiggle.
“Ancient Mechanics. I’m sort of making up my own program. It’s a combination of anthropology, ancient languages, and physics.”
“To do what?” Dean pressed. “Figure out how to bring back that Mohawk?” He pointed at Mitch’s friend’s hair.
Mitch glanced at his friend, but didn’t seem to understand that Dean was twitting him. “Uh, no. I’m looking at the way ancient cultures believed the world worked and um, through that, how they conceived of and responded to technology—wow,” he interrupted himself. “That was some shot.”
“Huh?” Dean looked down. He hadn’t been paying attention to screwing up his pool game and he’d just banked off the end bumper, skittering the nine and the three toward the side pockets. The nine slid off the table and sank; the three was lined up perfectly.
“Oh. Flukey, huh? Wow,” Dean observed of his own performance. He over-cocked the angle so that when he shot, the ball had too much backspin and it rolled wide of the three.
“So…ancient mechanics?” Sam picked up on the interrogation. “Like how ancient?”
“Well, as far back as I can go. Antiquity and pre-antiquity, really. I mean, Greek and Egyptian, sure, but I’m more interested in the Mesopotamian cultures—Sumeria, Akkadia, Chalcedon, that kind of thing.” He lined up his shot and took it; his ball didn’t go in, but it did mess up Dean’s next lineup for the three.
“That’s pretty obscure,” Sam said.
“Yeah, but there’s new stuff getting discovered all the time,” Mitch said. His eyes lit up and he became much more animated. His enthusiasm made him relax a lot more, and Sam found him smart, funny, and pleasant when he forgot to act cool. He nattered at Sam about his thesis proposal and the fantastic book he’s just got three and a half weeks previously from a rare dealer.
“I mean, technically, it should be in a museum, right? Not my apartment. But man—it’s just amazing. The kinds of dedications they made to Namru—he was their god of science and resurrection. See, his priests believed that all mechanical devices had life forces that kept regenerating, which is how they kept working continuously. Did you know that they had all the elements necessary for an internal combustion engine?”
“Izzat right?” Dean commented. “What do you know—you say you got this about three weeks ago?” He wasn’t looking at Mitch, though; he was looking at Sam. Sam returned Dean’s angry stare with a grim nod.
“Yeah, just about.”
“Wouldn’t happen to be in—what’s the word, Sam—”
“Cuneiform.”
“Cuneiform, right. It wouldn’t happen to be in their glyphs, would it?”
“Well…yes,” Mitch admitted uneasily. “It’s a transcription of several monuments and tablets. The book was hand-drawn by a Cistercian—”
“Okay,” Dean cut him off. “Let’s cut to the chase. Mitch, have you been…translating the book?”
“Well, yeah. It’s part of my dissertation—”
“And have you been reading it out loud?” Dean pressed urgently.
“Uh…y-yes.”
His friends picked up on Dean’s accusatory tone. “Problem, Mitch?” one of them asked, trying to be menacing.
“I…don’t think so, Mark,” Mitch said. Sam looked at Dean.
“Your name is Mark?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are you a grad student, too?” Dean said. Sam could tell he was trying not to be a smart-ass, but he just couldn’t help it.
“Yeah, so?” Mark asked.
Sam pulled out Gareth Barker’s picture. “Do you know anything about this guy?”
Mark stared at the photo. “No,” he said flatly.
“Yeah,” Mitch said. “Don’t you remember, Mark? He was here…like a week ago? I took his business card.” He moved to the booth and flipped open his bag. “He was interested in my theories about mass-production using ancient designs as inspiration.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, I…have it here, somewhere,” Mitch fished for the business card, shambling back toward them.
“Why are you looking for this guy?” Mark asked.
“We’re not. He’s dead.”
Mitch fumbled the card. It fluttered out of his hand and he leaned heavily against the pool table.
“Dead?”
“He showed up in Toledo yesterday and blew away two people before getting shot by police. The thing is, Mitch, or Mark,” Dean said, facing off against both of them, “you guys might have been the last people to talk to him.”
“Are you cops?” Mark asked.
“We’re investigating his death,” Sam supplied. “Mitch, we have reason to believe that, crazy as this sounds, his death and your book are connected. Can you take us to see it?”
Mitch shrugged. “Well, yeah, but you can’t read Sumerian, isn’t gonna do you much good. Are you serious? This isn’t like, Punk’d or something?”
“We’re serious, Mitch,” Sam told him grimly.
Mitch shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why should you think I had anything to do with this guy? He died in Toledo.”
Dean crossed his arms. “Because witnesses said Barker was talking about Namru,” he snapped. “Now, since that’s not a word that generally comes up in casual conversation, and you happen to have a lot to say about this Namru guy, we thought we’d just ask you a question or two about the book.”
“Yeah, we…just thought you might have some information,” Sam added to soften Dean’s impatience.
Mark shrugged. “They want to ask questions about whether an ancient pagan god has something to do with a random guy’s death, Mitch, I say make sure they pay you for it.” He turned back to his pool game.
Mitch, meanwhile, had gone a bit pale. He glanced at Mark’s back, then said quietly to Sam, “I didn’t know…I mean, I just thought…what’s the harm?”
“Mitch, what’d you do?” Dean demanded, voice low, but loud.
“Let’s…go to my apartment. I’ll show you.”
Mitch rode in the back and gave Dean directions to his place. When they entered, he made straight for the side table. Sam saw candles, a small idol in the shape of a lion-headed god, a collection of herbs in a shallow bowl…. “An altar? You built an altar?”
“To Namru, yeah,” Mitch admitted. “But I didn’t think it would mean anything. I just…thought it’d be cool, y’know? A little immersion.”
“Mitch, people have been disappearing,” Sam said urgently. “They go missing, and then five days later, they turn up committing some awful crime. Why is that, Mitch? What’s in this book that makes them do that?”
“What!?” Mitch said, completely shocked and looking a little shaken and scared. “No, that’s—that’s impossible, that’s not what the ritual—”
“Ritual?” Both Dean and Sam said at the same time. “What ritual?” Sam barked.
“Uh…the ritual I found. It’s supposed to…uh, make the caster…well, y’know. Attractive. To women. It’s supposed to grant vitality and longevity.”
“And you’ve been conducting this ritual?” Sam concluded.
“Y-yeah. It says you’re supposed to recite it once per week for five weeks. The first part captures spirits and holds them in Limbo, watching over you from beyond. After five days, you light the candle and finish with a second incantation, and that…that releases the spirits back into the world. Oh, god. You can’t seriously think that it’s real?”
“Oh, it’s real,” Dean said confidently. “What’s more, your little spellwork is costing people their freedom and their lives.”
“Look,” Sam said, pulling Mitch to sit down so that he could explain. “You did the ritual for the first time three weeks ago, right? That same night, you summoned a spirit. The spirit of someone who’d committed suicide near where you were.”
“Namru collected the souls of suicides so they could be reborn,” Mitch muttered.
“Yeah, genius move, there,” Dean groused.
Sam waved him off to calm him down. “That spirit, I don’t know why, but it didn’t come here to you. It possessed someone else at the bar. David Owen.”
Mitch put his head in his hands. “This is impossible.”
“No, it’s not, Mitch. Look, you said five days later, you release the spirit?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, five days later, David Owen showed up outside of Cleveland, a hundred and fifty miles away. He committed an arson, and when the cops arrested him, he had no idea where he’d been or what he’d been doing.”
“Coincidence,” Mitch insisted. “And why would he go to Cleveland?”
“This sounds nuts,” Sam agreed, “but spirits don’t usually like to be summoned back. We think they tried to get away from you. Maybe a hundred and fifty miles is as far as it took to break free, or maybe that’s as far as they could go. It could even be that when you sent them back, they came back…off target, or something. We don’t really know. But we do know that they believed a violent act would force them out of their…host bodies.”
Mitch gaped at him. “That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You’ve been reciting the ritual,” Dean said suddenly. “You didn’t translate it, did you?”
“Well, I…I looked it over before I used it,” Mitch said. “I transliterated it into phonetics.”
Dean looked over Mitch’s head to Sam. “Maybe if he translates it, we’ll have a better idea what’s going on?”
Sam shrugged and nodded. Dean offered to make coffee and Mitch got to work.
“Oh, my God,” Mitch said, two pots of coffee and three hours later. “I…. Oh, my God.”
“What, Mitch?” Sam asked gently.
“Well, I…this incantation? It…changes partway through. It starts out as a simple spell for virility, but then—” He rose quickly and pulled the book off his desk. He flipped it open furiously, not bothering with cotton gloves, but still being careful of the pages. He found the spot he was looking for, held up the page. He turned it slowly. Flipped it back. Flipped it forward. “Yeah, it definitely changes in the middle.”
Sam held out his hand. “Let me see it,” he requested. Mitch handed the book over reverently. Sam bent the spine back as far as he could, ignoring Mitch’s frantic cry to protect the binding. Very close to the stitching, Sam saw, a page had been cut away. “There’s a page missing,” he announced.
Mitch’s eyes bugged out in horror. “What the hell was I doing, then?”
“We don’t know, dude,” Dean said. “But whatever it was, it was making suicide spirits hijack humans, ride them to distant towns, and commit random acts of violence.”
“That’s…like the worst horror movie plot ever!” Mitch moaned.
“No kidding.”
“No more Namru worship, dude,” Dean said laconically.
“Yeah, no shit,” Mitch agreed. He looked back and forth between them nervously. “So…what are you gonna do now? Report me to the cops?”
Dean scoffed. “Yeah, great. We’ll tell them a 6,000-year-old spell caused those crimes.”
“Dean…” Sam sighed. “Sorry. We usually…hunt things that aren’t human to begin with.”
“Hunt?” Mitch repeated. He pulled his knees up to his chest. “Like…The Most Dangerous Game?”
“No, no, no, no,” Sam said, holding out his palms. “It’s okay, Mitch. My brother and I hunt…spirits.”
“Oh. Like the Ghost Hunters?”
Dean cast his eyes heavenward. “Yeah. Only without the stupid cameras. Look, Mitch, the point is, we can’t turn you in, there’s no one to turn you in to. And we can’t kill you—well, we could, but that’s not what we do,” Dean caught Sam’s eye and Sam saw a glint of frustration there. “So I guess all we can do is hit you upside the head with a clue-by-four.”
“Well, you might also want to make some kind of reparation to the people whose lives you messed up,” Sam added, trying not to sound like their father in one of his lecture modes. “But I guess, that’s up to you.” He pulled out his journal and copied down the names. “And behave yourself. Or we’ll be back.”
~*~THEN~*~
Beverly had wanted to do it properly, with limited guardianship and power of attorney and all, but John refused.
“It’s six weeks at the outside,” he said, sticking with the winter break date. He did go to a notary and signed documents giving her the right to make medical decisions if either boy should need attention immediately. “I’ll call every day,” he promised, “and if something happens, I can get on the first plane back.”
He left her money to take care of them, too. On January 2nd, the day before they went back to school, he brought them over with their belongings. Each boy carried his backpack and one duffel, and John brought in a third bag that he said had all the “other stuff.” While the boys lugged their things upstairs, he handed her a thick envelope. “Should be enough for the month and for Dean’s party,” he explained. “About that...I plan to be back in time for it, but I’ve never been good at planning that kind of—”
“Leave it to me,” Beverly said. If she had maternal feelings at all, lately they were more for John than his children. But she worked with kids every day, and had no difficulty believing that between her and Dean, they could make all the arrangements.
“Okay,” he breathed. His voice was so soft that the “K” sounded harsh in contrast. “I’ll call at 8:30 every night,” he assured her. “And if for some reason I miss two calls in a row...Dean knows what to do.”
That sounded uncomfortably ominous, but Beverly guessed that over the years, they had to have developed contingency plans. For when John couldn’t get out of work, or whatever.
The boys clattered back down the stairs. She took the envelope into her office to give the Winchesters privacy for their goodbye, as well as to look at the amount without John. Inside was cash—$2,000. Enough for food, Dean’s party at the arcade, even new clothes should they need any. That was unlikely; she’d noticed that new socks, flannel shirts, and even a pair of jeans each had been part of their Christmas loot. Though John was relying on her to watch his children, he clearly didn’t want his debt to extend any further than necessary.
When she came out, she heard Dean in the living room, objecting to something. She hung back, eavesdropping, because she didn’t want to interrupt and because she figured this was the only chance she’d get to hear Dean’s real opinion about the next month’s arrangements. “—take care of Sammy myself, Dad.”
“Not for a month, you can’t. That’s enough. I expect you to behave for Mrs. Kirkland like you would for Pastor Jim—in front of the congregation. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.” Dean sounded sullen, but resigned.
“Good. Look, pal, I’ll be back for your birthday, okay? You get to stay until then. That’s what you wanted, right?”
Dean said something unintelligible.
“Dean, I do trust you,” John said, a little frustrated. “I’m giving you a choice. You can stay here a little longer, with your school friends, and get that party in the arcade. Or, you don’t want it, say so now and we’ll pack it up. Either way, I can’t stay another month. You know that. So what’s it gonna be?”
There was a pause. Beverly wondered in that moment how much damage John had really done, in the heat of whatever had happened that summer, and how long it would take for Dean to heal. One birthday party might salve John’s conscience, but it wasn’t going to make up for John running away—and from what she’d seen, that was just what he was doing. She wondered if perhaps she should refuse to enable him…but then Dean would just lose his party on top of everything else, and she would lose the opportunity to make any sort of difference for him and Sam.
Dean muttered again, words so soft Beverly couldn’t make them out. But he must have made his decision because John grunted. “That’s my man. So I’ll see you in about three weeks, okay? Don’t worry, sport, I’ll call so much you’ll get sick of me.”
Beverly heard him move to Sam next. She didn’t dare peek around the doorway, but she could imagine John reviewing his little brigade of troops, bucking up the men before a campaign. He said he’d been fifteen years out of the Corps, but he sure hadn’t lost any of the military routine when it came to relating to his sons.
“Sammy, you be good, okay?”
“Sure.” Sam’s tone changed, as if making a point to Dean. “I like Mrs. Kirkland.”
John was unimpressed. “Whether you like her or not, you behave for her. No fighting with your brother, no griping about the grub, lights out when she tells you, brush your teeth every day, help her with KP and trash detail, or whatever else, right?”
“Okay, Dad,” Sam said as if he’d heard this a number of times already.
“I mean it, little guy—none of your usual crap. And don’t watch too much TV.”
“Yes, sir!” Sam barked with enthusiasm.
“Attaboy.” There was a sound of shifting fabric. Beverly sneaked around the corner, eager to watch them hug. Instead she saw that John was standing from a crouch. He threw his bag onto his shoulder on top of his new coat, and was now patting Sam briefly on the head. “Okay,” he continued, catching her eye. “Thanks again,” he said to bring her over to the family.
“My pleasure,” Beverly said breezily. It hit her that he was really leaving, seriously going to abandon his kids with a relative stranger. And she was letting him. His CO in Vietnam had been right: he had balls for days. “Well, you’d probably like to get on the road,” she continued, fighting a sudden urge to throw him bodily out of her house and sue for full custody of the boys.
“Yeah. Not much daylight to begin with,” he commented wearily, making no move toward the door. “No sense wasting what’s left by standing here.”
Beverly felt a burning behind her eyes and closed them quickly. She would not give him the satisfaction. “We’ll come out on the porch to wave goodbye,” she announced, moving toward Dean and Sam. They retreated before her, which in turn forced John toward the entry hall.
He opened her front door and stepped into the cold. Without looking back, he walked to the Impala and tossed his bag in the back seat, then climbed behind the wheel. A few seconds later, the engine rumbled, he backed out, cocked the wheel to the right, and with a single sharp saluting wave, turned away. The exhaust clouded up in the cold air and covered the tail of the Impala like mist as he drove off.
Dean and Sam ran back inside immediately. Beverly watched long after the taillights were no longer visible and the sound of the engine faded in the morning quiet.
She quickly learned that the boys were incredibly self-sufficient and mostly low-maintenance. Dean kept Sam to a fairly strict schedule, which made Beverly wonder how much of the parenting he did even when John was around. The one thing she insisted on was doing the cooking, because it became clear in the first three days that their idea of supper consisted of takeout, diners, grilled cheese, and Chef Boyardee. After the first couple meals, however, neither of them seemed to mind the profound lack of Wendy’s and frozen dinners in their diet.
About a week after John left, Dean knocked on her office door. “Yes, Dean, what is it?”
He looked at her with a copy of John’s most stoic expression. “Dad loves Mom,” he told her simply. It was a challenge without any doubt, a dare to contradict him or deny the truth.
“Yes, Dean. He loves her a lot,” she agreed.
The mildness with which she said it surprised Dean so much that he blushed and looked away. She felt sorry for him; he wasn’t sure whether he’d been cut off at the knees or vindicated. Evidently, the uncertainty of it bothered him, because he tried again. “No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean, Dean,” Beverly said with a tired sigh. “And I understand exactly how he feels. You see, I still love my husband a whole lot, too.”
Dean looked around. “There’s a Mr. Kirkland?” He looked like he expected Tom to walk through the door at any moment.
“There was,” she explained. “It’s okay, though. Your dad and I are friends.”
“Friends?” Dean echoed uncomprehendingly. It was as if he couldn’t contemplate men and women being friends. He probably couldn’t. Beverly didn’t expect there’d been too many female influences on the boys in relation to their father since Mary’s death. John had pretty well confessed as much.
She nodded. “Well, he trusted me to look after you and Sam, right?”
Dean considered the validity of her logic. He took a tentative step toward her desk. “Yeah, I guess,” he admitted, one shoulder rising and then relaxing.
“And I’m happy to have you two visit, but between you and me, I’m glad I’m not a full-time mom.”
If he had been expecting a speech to prepare him for gaining a step-mother, her divulgence completely threw him for a loop. She suspected he’d come here prepared for a fight, but she wasn’t going to fall into that trap. She did take pity on him and decided to ease his anxiety a bit. “Come and sit down,” she invited, pointing to the one chair that didn’t have books in it, waiting to be shelved. He perched on the edge of the cushion, arms crossed.
“Dean, I don’t know if your dad would ever seriously consider getting remarried,” she told him candidly, “but I know that some of our first conversations were about the people we’d lost. I know he was really worried that you’d get the wrong idea because he asked me to let you and Sam stay here.”
“He was?”
“Mm-hm,” Beverly confirmed, nodding. “Now, I like you. But honestly, the kids at the library, having you two here for a month...that’s about all the mothering I can handle.”
Dean started to smile, but caught it before his lips opened to reveal teeth. “Well, Sammy is kind of a pain in the a—uh, butt.”
Beverly gave him a wry grin, mouth twisting, but no teeth showing, either. “No, I think you both do just fine. Do you want spaghetti tonight?”
Dean shrugged. “S’fine,” he said. He got up, and whether he was grateful for the subject change or just fooled by it, he crossed to the door. “Mrs. Kirkland?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love him, anyway?” His voice was quiet, plaintive, as if afraid that it wasn’t okay to love someone and not be loved back in the same way, or the same amount. As if he were worried that she would hate John for making her love him.
As if he were worried that John didn’t love him back, and as if that were his fault.
Beverly swallowed. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? It doesn’t change anything. I’m your librarian, Dean. And your dad’s friend.”
That seemed to satisfy him finally, but he couldn’t resist one last volley. He grinned ghoulishly and asked, “Can I ask you one other question?”
“Of course.”
“What’s sex?”
Beverly couldn’t quite stop her eyes from widening, her face from flushing. She dropped her pen on the blotter, but in the second it took her to retrieve it, she took a deep breath and blinked back at him. Tom would have said that Bambi had come home to roost, or something equally inane. “Well, Dean, there’s a whole section on that at the library. Why don’t we take a look tomorrow after school and I can help you pick out some books on the subject.”
“You’re not gonna just tell me?” he challenged. He didn’t mean what sex was, either—of that, she was sure.
“No, I’m not,” she replied, refusing to take the bait. “Because like I just said, I’m not your mother.”
~*~NOW~*~
It was late, but not too late to go back to Mrs. Kirkland’s house when they left Mitch’s place. Sam argued that they should, if only to return the key and take advantage of another night’s free stay. “Maybe she’ll let us do laundry.”
Dean was still distracted by the one that got away. “I wish we coulda capped him,” he muttered on the way back to Dublin.
“Dude. Do you want your rap sheet to get any longer?”
“I’m just sayin’, Sammy, this sucks. He’s getting away with murder.”
“Manslaughter,” Sam murmured.
“Whatever, man. This blows.”
“Yeah, it does,” Sam agreed glumly. “If there were any way—”
“I know. Not even an anonymous tip would make this stick.”
“You think he’ll do anything? For Lauren or David?”
Dean sniffed. “Probably not. What’s he going to do? Confess to the cops that he conducted an ancient ritual that didn’t quite do what he thought, and that’s why they flipped out?” He scoffed. “Nah, face it, Sam, all we could do on this one was stop this idiot from making it worse.”
Sam was silent for a minute. Then with a sigh, he concluded, “Well, he’s going to have to live with knowing that his stupid bid for glory caused a lot of pain to perfect strangers. That, and he’s going to have to start over on his research.” He grinned.
“You snaked the book?” Dean asked, glowing with pride.
Sam reached into his satchel and pulled it out. “I figured we could use it. Who knows, it’s something we’ve never seen before.” He didn’t mention that if he could find the other half of the ritual, there might be something in it to combat Dean’s impending doom. He didn’t want to think about Dean dying, but if worse came to worst, resurrection spells might come in handy.
“Aw, Sammy. I knew I raised you right.”
Mrs. Kirkland’s lights were still on when they pulled into her driveway. They climbed out and Sam grabbed their clothing duffels out of the trunk. The porch light clicked on as they approached. “I heard the car,” Mrs. Kirkland explained when she opened the door. “Come on in.”
She preceded them into the living room. “So, did you…finish your hunt?” she asked.
Sam dropped the duffels. “How did you…?”
“Your dad’s letter,” she said. She poured herself a drink. “Want one?” she offered, and turned over two more tumblers, splashing the liquid in without waiting for their answer. A silver bracelet circled her wrist. The charm glinted in the light as she poured and picked up the glasses.
“Mrs. Kirkland, are you ok—”
“I’m fine, Sam,” she said. “I even believe him. See, I read his letter this morning. Then I went to my library. And I looked up a few things. The Johnson House, Franklin Castle…all those haunted houses? They really were haunted, weren’t they? And you two…are you really wanted by the FBI?”
Dean’s jaw clenched. “You gonna call them?” he asked. His voice was deadly calm, but Sam could tell he’d gone from tired to terrified in two seconds flat.
Mrs. Kirkland stared at him for a long time. “No,” she said finally. “Here,” she said, passing one of the tumblers toward him. Sam got a good look at the charm—it had a protective symbol etched on it. “Have a drink.”
“Look, we can go if—” Sam began to offer.
“No. I’m glad you came back. I’m glad, Sam.” She looked at Dean. “Dean, I don’t care if you’re wanted. If half the things I’ve read since yesterday are true…well, if they are, then I’m not surprised the FBI has its head up its ass where you two are concerned. But more importantly, I knew your father. I think I know him even better now than before. And I can’t believe he raised either of you to be killers.”
Dean knocked back the whiskey and sat heavily on the sofa. “You and Dad…you….”
“I didn’t plan to, believe me, Dean,” she said quietly. “I don’t think he planned to, either.”
Sam’s head snapped up. That had been Dean’s issue, not the sex. He didn’t want to relive the past, true—Dean never liked looking back—no more than he’d wanted to force Mrs. Kirkland to look it in the eye. But what had been bugging Dean since the jump was the idea that Dad had felt more than lust for someone other than Mom.
Her next statement should have allayed that fear. “But he was so committed to your mother,” she said. “And I think now, I finally know why. Did he…did he find the thing that killed her?”
Dean looked away. Sam nodded. “Yeah, he…he did. We got the bastard, too.”
“But it killed him?”
Dean dropped his head. “Yeah. Basically,” Sam supplied.
Mrs. Kirkland nodded. Tears spilled out of her eyes. “I think you ought to know, he was so scared you boys would hate him. Dean, he told me, when we…talked…about you two staying here, he said that he’d been waiting for you to be ready for him. I didn’t get it at the time, but now I do. He was looking for you to give him permission to hunt. He also told me that the main reason he wanted you to stay through January was so that you could hang on to your friends long enough for a real birthday party.”
Dean got up and poured more liquor.
“But I think he was in trouble either way, right? He was afraid that if he pulled you out, you’d think that he was punishing you. That he was so angry with you over whatever wrong he perceived you’d done, that he couldn’t stand to be around.” She sipped her drink. “But you still thought that, didn’t you, because he left without you? Dean, you do realize that whatever happened, he wasn’t running away from you?”
“I don’t need this,” Dean muttered. He looked like he wanted to bolt upstairs, but Sam held up his hand to tell him to chill out.
“Maybe not,” Mrs. Kirkland admitted. “But—hang on. Stay there. I want to read you something.” She got up and went into her office, returning immediately with the letter.
Sam could see that his father had written it on pages from the journal, and that his writing crossed the lines of the paper and became progressively messy and uncontrolled. It went on for several pages. She scanned them. “He wrote this the day before he came back for your birthday, Dean. Here. I know you know that I’ll always love Mary, that I’ll always put her boys’ safety before my own happiness. But now you know why. and this: I have a mission. I’ve gotta finish finding out what caused Mary to die—why she was murdered—and I’ve gotta destroy it forever. And meanwhile, even more importantly, I’ve gotta make sure my boys are safe. That they know how to take care of themselves. Until I do that, I can’t give you what you deserve, Bev. I can’t ask you to play second fiddle to a memory.“
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “He said he wished things could be different. Believe me, I wish things had been different, too. But please, please don’t think your father ever thought anything was more important than you boys, and your mother.”
She took another slug of the whiskey. “Now, I think I should go to bed. You two probably want to get some sleep, too. And in the morning, I’m going to make pancakes, and you will eat them.”
~*~LATER~*~
You want to know about whom? Winchester? You can’t mean John…. Let me see that picture again? Yes…that’s John. John Winchester. Wow. Now there’s a man I haven’t thought of in….
Did I know he was on the FBI’s dangerous persons list? Do I look like a woman who would harbor a dangerous person? Don’t answer that.
Yes, I knew him. A long time ago. No, I’m sorry—I’ve no idea where he is or if he’s even alive.
What do you think the precise nature of our relationship was, Agent…Reidy? Do you expect me to be delicate about it? We had an affair. And his boys stayed with me, for about four weeks in 1990.
Heh. If you think that, you haven’t done your profiling work very well. John…well, one look at John and you knew you were never going to have his undivided attention. Even without the boys. His wife…none of us were ever going to stand in for her. But a man, even a man like John, needs companionship once in a while. Still, even the fifty percent of him—or even less, I guess, with Dean and Sam in the equation—even that was plenty.
No, I haven’t heard from either of them, either. I doubt they’d even know how to get in touch with me. Don’t know that they even remember much about it. John was careful about that. Didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. I have to say that at the time, the last thing I wanted was to become a step-mother….
You’re kidding. No. I don’t believe a word of it. John didn’t raise reprobates, let alone killers. I mean, they were a bit rambunctious, but…homicidal? No. They were good boys.
I’m sorry. I really haven’t seen them. Not since January 29, 1990.
Yes, of course, I understand, Agent Reidy. Yes, if I hear from them, I’ll call. But I really don’t think that’s going to happen. The Winchesters aren’t men who retrace their steps much.
No, I really don’t have anything else to say. Of course, Agent. I’m glad you liked the coffee. Take care, now.
~*~FIN~*~
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