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nightspear) wrote2008-03-14 04:23 pm
Finding Home (12/21)
Title: Finding Home (Main Post and Chapter List)
Rating: PG-13/R for language, mostly
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of materialistic value from this.
Pairings: Gen.
Notes:
A few facts from the case in this chapter might be a little different from canon, but hey...it’s AU (and it’s not a huge difference, anyway). The chapter’s also kind of heavy on canon references and jokes—all in good fun, of course.
The cases referenced should be pretty obvious. Also (again), the timing of events is different, sometimes they play out differently, and not every case in the series is actually here. This chapter is light(er) on the angst—a transition chapter of sorts—so hopefully that’s reflected.
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“I mean, our family’s so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable.”
(“Wendigo”)
XXXXXXXXXX
“Come on, Sam, up and at ‘em,” Dean said as soon as his brother woke that morning.
Well, maybe he kicked his brother in the foot and flipped on the light, but he was just speeding up the process.
“Dean? What time ‘s it?”
Ignoring the groggy question, he said, “Heard from Dad.”
Sam sat up quickly, all traces of sleep disappearing. “What? When?”
“Sometime last night.”
“Why the hell didn’t you wake me?”
“Didn’t get the message until now.”
Sam paused in flailing to his feet. “Message. You didn’t talk to him.”
“Nah,” Dean answered casually. “He sent a text message.” Sam was still frozen halfway out of his blankets. “Move your ass, Sammy! What’re you waiting for?”
“A text message.” Sam came fully to his feet. “From Dad?”
“Am I speaking a foreign language here?” Well. Sam might know some foreign languages, actually, so he amended, “Besides Latin. Or whichever one you were trying to learn in high school, what was it, Spanish or somethi—”
“Dude.” Sam held his arms out to the side and tilted his head, clearly asking something.
Dean stared back. “What?”
“Dad barely knows how to operate a toaster. He’s barely even likes e-mail—you don’t think it’s weird that he’s texting you?”
Dean shrugged. “I don’t really care. He’s sent us a message; that’s good enough for me.” The last part came out like a challenge. Sam recognized it, too, and lifted his chin stubbornly but didn’t argue.
“Well, what does it say?”
Unable to conceal his excitement completely, Dean held his phone up for Sam to see. “New coordinates.”
That got his attention, and Dean could see defiance warring with curiosity. Eventually, Sam grabbed the phone to peer more closely at the screen. “Where’s this point to?” he asked.
Dean had only had time to look that part up. “
“Huh.” His tone was oddly forced, but his eyes remained fixed on the map so that Dean couldn’t see his expression.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Dean waiting, resisting the urge to tap his foot impatiently, which would just be more likely to make Sam clam up. Sure enough...
“It’s just that we’ll have to make sure we stay away from Stanford,” Sam said lightly, his finger tracing a route on the map. “They’re probably still suspicious about the fire and everything.”
Because that was clearly the reason why he wanted to stay away from the school. “
“Yeah.” Pushing the map away, Sam reached for a reasonably clean shirt and checked his watch. “If we leave now, we can get there before evening.”
Hell, yes.
It had only been five days, but holed up here with nothing to do, Dean was about to start climbing the walls. There were only so many times a person could clean his weapons. He’d killed some time scrounging up cash and getting some clothes to replace the ones Sam had lost in the fire, which had felt kind of gay, but dammit, he was tired of Sam borrowing—and stretching—his clothes. Working on the Impala was always nice, but seriously, there was only so much you could do for a perfect car.
So he was a little surprised to hear himself say, “You’re sure you’re ready?”
Even if Josh was still the same guy Dean had known before, he couldn’t help feeling a little uneasy around so much psychic talk all the time without a clue what exactly was going on. And those things that looked like witch bags still gave him the willies.
Sam folded a sheet (Dean wasn’t sure why since they’d just be tossing them into the laundry for Josh, anyway. Neat freak.) “I can’t stay here forever. We’ve gotta find Dad.”
Sam was fixated on the demon; Dean could understand that. He didn’t quite understand how much Sam wanted to find Dad, but he was leaving that gift horse alone. He’d take what he could get between his brother and his father.
“Well, okay, then. Pack your crap. We’ll head out after breakfast.”
Joshua was a little more reluctant but eventually nodded. “If you’re sure you don’t want to take this with you...” he suggested again, holding out a bag.
“No,” Sam said firmly. “Thanks, Josh, but I’ll manage.”
Dean agreed. The little bag still looked a little too much like a Hex Bag for his liking, and he was staying away from that as much as he could.
“Call me if you need help, Sam,” Josh said. “If you’re nearer, Missouri Mosely in
With an uncomfortable glance at Sam, who was picking up his bag, Dean said, “Uh huh. Thanks for your help, Josh.”
Once in the car, heading toward
“Same way as always. Keep our eyes open for anything weird going on; that’s where Dad’ll be.”
“Have you checked the news?”
“I haven’t exactly had that much time yet, Speedy. We’ll check once we get closer.” With a grin of contentment, he added, “Besides, research is your job. Time to get your geek on, Poindexter.”
XXXXXXXXXX
Dean looked up at the sound of a payphone slamming back onto the hook, loud enough to carry clearly through the glass window. Sam was pushing through the door of the diner and stalking toward the table where Dean was sitting.
“The phone do something to you, Sammy?”
Ignoring the jibe, Sam fell into the opposite seat and told him, “I’ve checked two local hospitals, the police station, the morgue... No one matching Dad’s description was brought in over the past two weeks.”
Dean raised his eyebrows. “A little early for that, isn’t it? We’ve been here less than twenty-four hours.”
“Look, I’ve scoured every newspaper I could find, did an internet search, and checked all the local news channels. There’s nothing here.”
Dean warily watched the butter knife that Sam was clutching like a clumsy weapon rather than an eating utensil. “Well, maybe you need to work on those reading skills, college boy,” he said, pushing a newspaper across the table. “Check it out.”
Exhaling hard through his nose, Sam jerked it toward himself and scanned over the headlines. “I’ve looked over this one.”
Rolling his eyes, Dean tapped on a short article with the handle of his fork. “Try again.”
“So a man died in a car crash,” Sam said. “And?”
“And he wasn’t the first one. That’s the third person who died or went missing driving on that same stretch of road. All young men, all driving alone, all near an old abandoned house where people supposedly died violent deaths.”
Come on, it didn’t get clearer than that. No way Sam could be this badly out of practice after a few months’ break.
“Yeah, I’m not blind, Dean. The repetition, the pattern...sounds like it’s just an angry spirit.”
Dean knew he had to be missing something, because had Sam really just said that? “I’m sorry, which memo did you miss? The one where
“Dammit, Dean, it’s not--!” Sam broke off as patrons turned at the noise. More quietly, he said, “There’s gotta be something else.”
Still not understanding, he asked, “Why? Most of the stuff we do is restless spirits. I’m telling you, this is it.”
“Dad didn’t come here to salt and burn a few bones.”
“Well, let me know when you find something you think is more worthy of his time, because this spirit is all that’s going on in this town, Sam.”
“Then he’s not here.”
Dean looked at Sam, eyes narrowed.
“Dean, he’s spent nineteen years looking for the thing that killed Mom. Now he finally knows what it is, and you think he’s gonna ignore it for a hitchhiking ghost?”
“You know what, I don’t get you. You haven’t tried to see eye to eye with the man in years.”
“The sooner we find him, the sooner we can get this over with.”
“ ‘Get this over with’?” Dean repeated.
“The demon.”
Irritation boiled over into anger. “You think I don’t want to kill that sonuvabitch as much as you do?”
“Then what’re we doing here?”
“What Dad wants us to do! He wants us here. I don’t know what he’s doing, but...”
Sam shoved the paper away from himself. “Not like he’s ever told us what was going on. I don’t know why I expected this time to be different.”
“I can’t believe you,” Dean hissed. “You’d never even want to see him again if it you didn’t want to just pick his brain about this fucking demon.”
Sam was quieter this time, but the hurt in his eyes spoke loud enough. “That’s not true.”
Dean wasn’t in the mood to coddle. “Hey, maybe he was here, maybe he wasn’t. But we’ve gotta trust him. We’ll find Dad and we’ll send the demon back to hell, but we’re not gonna ignore everything else on the way.” When he saw Sam wavering, he added, “People are dying, Sam.”
The last bit was a cheap shot—he knew it would work—but it was also true. Normally, Sam would have been the first to point that out. There was something wrong about being the one to push that part through Sam’s preoccupation with the demon.
He’d hit the mark, though. Shame flickered through Sam’s lowered eyes, and he nodded, biting his lip. “Yeah. You’re right.”
“I’m always right. Eat your breakfast.”
As Dean paid the bill, Sam said, somewhere between teasing and cautious, “You just wanna go set something on fire, don’t you.”
Dean grinned in relief and anticipation. “Hell yeah.”
XXXXXXXXXX
“Constance Welch,” Dean read from the article Sam had just printed out. The laptop was Dean’s technically, though his brother had practically taken it over since leaving Josh’s place, which was fine—Dean knew his way around computers, but Sam knew more tricks and was more in his element in that arena.
“Yup. Doesn’t say where she’s buried.”
He shrugged. “So we'll go talk to the husband. Maybe he knows something more.”
“Uh...why don’t you go ahead. I’ll keep looking around here.”
Dean paused at the door. “We’re two-and-a-half hours away from Stanford, Sam. You’re not going to bump into someone if you leave the motel.”
“It’s not that. There’s just...there’s a lot of research I haven’t sifted through yet.”
Pulling the car keys from his pocked, Dean left it alone.
“Hey, Sam, you haven’t had any, you know, weird dreams lately, have you?”
Sam tilted his head in thought. “No, actually. You think something’s wrong?”
I’m perfectly happy with that. He shrugged casually. “Maybe going to Josh did some good, huh? Maybe you’ll stop having them now.”
Sam looked up and gave a hopeful smile. “Yeah. Guess so.”
xxxxx
“Get anything?” Sam asked when Dean returned later that night.
“The guy didn’t say much. But I get the feeling their marriage wasn’t as happy-go-lucky as he was pretending. You?”
“These three victims weren’t the first. There were a few others before—and get this. Four of the widows had filed for divorce just days before
Dean frowned. “You think they were doing something to the husbands?”
Sam shrugged. “Maybe. But it could just be something more mundane. Domestic disputes or something—could be anything.”
Remembering Joseph Welch’s shifty expression, Dean realized, “I’ll bet you anything they were cheating.” He smirked at Sam’s neat row of victims’ photos on the wall. “You sly dogs.”
His brother considered. “A Woman in White, you think?”
It fit—an affair, the dead children, the suicide. “Looks like it. But we’ve got a problem. Her body was never recovered after she jumped.”
“No bones to burn, then,” Sam said. “Unless you feel like taking a swim.”
“Very funny.” Dean sighed in disappointment. “So we’ve gotta find some other way to take care of her.”
“Hold on,” Sam said suddenly. “Everyone who died was near the abandoned house on
“Yeah, get this: that was their home. Husband moved out after she died.”
“So that’s where the kids died. Where she killed her own children.” Sam looked at him significantly.
Dean snapped his fingers in satisfaction. “I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
The smile Sam flashed at him was sharp and had an edge of pride andI’m-good-and-you-know-it. Sam was good at this part, he admitted—not out loud, obviously, Jesus—and he liked it, no matter how much he pretended he didn’t.
“Well, come on, then. Let’s take the bitch home.”
XXXXXXXXXX
The next case was in
“There’s was a sulfur residue on that plane.”
Sam peered doubtfully into the eyepiece. “You can tell just by looking at it under a microscope?”
Dean shrugged. “You’re supposed to be the genius here,” he sniped, “’cause you’re sure not the graceful one.”
“Dean, will you get over it? I didn’t break your walkman.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not gonna fix it, now, is it?”
Although...
“An EMF meter?” Sam said skeptically when Dean was done.
“It’s homemade,” he said proudly. Sam rolled his eyes.
xxxxx
“How’d you know it wasn’t me?” Dean asked when he’d freed himself from the rope holding him to a column.
“The shapeshifter?”
“No, I mean the other supernatural freak of nature we’ve been hunting down. Yes, the shapeshifter!”
Sam shuffled his feet guiltily. “I lined the collar of your jacket with silver wire a month ago. Saw the rash on its neck.”
“Wait, you did what to my jacket?”
“Well, clearly, it’s barely noticeable.”
“I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
“It’s still driving your car,” Sam reminded him.
Dean growled. “So I’ll kill it first, and then I’ll kill you.”
xxxxx
“Seriously? These spiders? That’s what killed her?”
“That’s what they’re saying.”
“But...they’re tiny. They don’t even look real.”
“Spider venom can be pretty deadly. Who knows how toxic they were.”
Dean shook his head, grumbling, “Killer beetles and spider bites. There’d better not be bees.”
xxxxx
“I can’t believe we’re being sacrificed to the Vanir.”
“You’re tied to an apple tree, Sam. What exactly is making this hard to believe?”
“No, I mean, it’s always a couple. Like, a fertility thing.”
A pause. “So they think we’re...? Come on! You’re joking, right?”
“I’m tied to an apple tree, Dean. I’m not making jokes right now.”
“...Does it even count as fertility when it’s two guys?”
“I’m trying not to think about that.”
Dean let his head thud backward into the apple tree. “Man...”
xxxxx
“Dad. It’s Sam, and I know you probably don’t wanna hear from me, but, uh...it’s Dean. H-he’s sick, and the doctors say there’s nothing they can do... But I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get him better. I swear, Dad, I wouldn’t screw this up... Alright. Just...thought you should know. If you even get this.”
“Dad, it’s Sam again. Dean’s okay. Thought you might want to know. Or not. But. He’s fine.”
xxxxx
“That’s the symbol of Kronos.”
“Who the hell is Kronos?”
“From Greek mythology. And it goes back to alchemy, too—it’s the symbol for a heavy metal.”
“Heavy met—That’s it! I remember where I saw this now. It’s the Blue Oyster Cult logo.”
“Blue Oyster Cult? Oh. So you think Craig might have had something to do with the Hell House?”
“Let’s go find out. And dude—alchemy? This is exactly why you never get laid.”
xxxxx
New
“You were totally into that Sarah girl.”
“Enough, Dean.”
“Come on, this isn’t about Jessica, is it? You’re not trying the long-distance relationship thing?”
Sam paused for a moment, then continued reorganizing paper. “No, we’re... She and Steve started dating a couple of weeks ago.”
“Well then...?”
“Just...leave it alone, alright?”
“Fine, fine. So...what’s the deal with Old Man Merchant?” Dean tilted his head and wrinkled his nose the portrait. “This is one fugly painting. We should just burn this thing on principle.”
xxxxx
“So Gloria really believes what she’s saying.”
“A hooker named Gloria found the glory of God?”
A sigh. “You mind focusing, Dean?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, she’s saying the guy she killed was guilty. He was marked for punishment by an angel.”
“There’s no such thing as angels.”
“...Yeah. Well, let’s talk to people who knew her, see if there might be a restless spirit doing this.”
xxxxx
“Dude, ‘a belly scale from a crocodile’? Why do you even know that?”
XXXXXXXXXX
It lasted a few, magnificent months. They’d made it into May before Dean woke to the sound of Sam rolling off the bed and cradling his head.
Sam spent the next day sitting in bed, staring at the back of his eyelids while frowning and breathing deeply or something, trying to see something more. Dean paced until he couldn’t stand it anymore and asked,
“You see something important?”
Sam opened his eyes slightly and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve seen this kid in a vision before, but I still don’t know who the hell he is.”
“What’s he doing?”
“It’s...all in pieces. Someone’s beating him—he called him ‘Dad’.”
“The dad’s possessed, you think?”
Sam grimaced. “No.”
Dean stopped, took a deep breath, and blew it out. “Any idea where?”
“I only saw the inside of the house. No numbers, no address... I don’t even know where to start looking.”
Three nights later, Sam was shaking him awake, his face pale and hands trembling. “We have to go to
By the time they made it to
“That’s him,” Sam said hoarsely—from emotion or the headache he was nursing, Dean wasn’t sure. “That’s the kid from my vision.”
“Max Miller,” a neighbor said. “His dad and uncle both died just yesterday. Horrible accidents.” Sorrowful headshakes. “He didn’t take it very well. Kill his stepmother and then himself. And after the way his mother died when he was a baby...poor family.”
Sam turned away and exhaled hard. “We’re too late.”
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Chapter 13