WIP fic: Watermark (2/?)
Title: Watermark
Author: Bella Temple
Category: SPN, Gen with a dash of het, multichaptered WIP, non-linear storytelling
Rating: Adult (nothing explicit just yet, but mature themes are used, and I can't guarantee it won't get ugly)
Warnings: non-linear storytelling, natural disasters, and unpopular fictional opinions
Spoilers: general through season three. Half the story is preseries, the other half takes place in between "Ghostfacers" and "Long Distance Call"
Characters: Sam, Dean, mentions of John, OCs
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of Warner Bros, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction.
Author's note: Well, hey, only took me five months to update! (yeesh)
Summary: Sam's got a case in New Orleans that just might get him information on how to get Dean out of his deal. Dean's got a history with the city itself and too much baggage that he's got to lay to rest. And the city? Well. She's got her own problems. . . .
Part 1
So tell me it's okay.
Tell me anything, or show me there's a pull,
unassailable, that will lead you there,
from the dark, alone, to benevolence that you've never known,
or you knew when you were four and can't remember.
-- "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" by the Weakerthans
Chalmette, Louisiana, October 2005
As it turned out, when Monica had said it'd be a "bit of a drive", she'd been making the understatement of the damned century. The Parish, as his passengers called the area, was something of a peninsula, a flared bit of land and island sticking out like a shredded toe of the Louisiana boot. As far as any of them knew, the entire place had been flooded by the storm surge. There wasn't a single business running that they could find, and while there were little bunches of rescue workers supplying basic necessities scattered throughout the New Orleans area, Monica and her friends asked him to keep going. Dean suspected there was something about the act of actually paying for what they needed that they all found comforting. They even offered to pitch in for his gas, though he turned them down.
The grocery store they finally found didn't have much -- many other returning residents seemed to have the same sense as his little group did, and the place was sold out of many of the basic staples. Still, they managed to load up the Impala, piling food, bottled water, and toiletries on top of Dean's duffel bags and dirty laundry.
No one mentioned the mess of his car once. Dean was constantly on the edge of apologizing for it, anyway.
When they got back to the Parish, they camped out in the parking lot of a Taco Bell with a lamp post through its roof. They all pitched in to clear enough branches and debris from the dirty asphalt for them all to sit comfortably on four blankets: the ratty old faux Mexican thing that Dean kept for nights spent in the Impala, an equally ratty yellow and white comforter that Helen kept in her own car, and two flannel sheets that Ernest had somehow managed to salvage from his attic. The latter two were dusted in parts with insulation, Dean's smelled like sweat, motor oil, and smoke, and Helen's bore stains from a long ago picnic, but laid out together like that against the black, white, and gray, they looked like a little slice of heaven.
Well. A little slice of normal, at least.
Dean had tried to unload the car himself once the blankets were set, but by the time he'd turned around to start grabbing bags, the others had already gotten most of them out and were starting to hand things around. If they'd noticed the false bottom to the trunk, they didn't mention it. They circled together like a wagon train, leaving a hole just large enough for Dean between Monica and Katie, and for the first twenty minutes or so, they just huddled there, passing boxes and cups back and forth, shoulders slung low and forward, speaking only to ask for a fork, or offer a little more water. Dean sat with them, kept quiet, and wondered what would happen next.
Then Nate, a broad shouldered, dark skinned man about Dean's age, twisted a ring on his left hand, stared down at his paper plate of cold, barbeque pork, and asked "Has anyone heard from Bill Rodriguez?"
And it was like the levees breaking again, loosing a flood of questions. Did anyone know about FEMA money? Who survived? Who was dead? Had anyone looked downtown, was this landmark still standing? That one? Was anything still okay? When the answers ran out, the stories began. Helen's husband had been recovering from back surgery when they evacuated -- three weeks after the storm, she'd removed his stitches herself. Monica and her family had stopped at a motel in a nearby town, an absolute shit hole on par with some of the worst that the Winchesters had ever stayed in, to hear her tell it. Jim -- the older one, with silvered hair and deeply lined cheeks -- had stayed home, said he'd weathered hurricanes before and had thought he'd know how to handle it. When the flood waters in his house had reached his waist, he'd started sorting through all his belongings to find anything that looked like it would float. When the water reached six feet, he'd gone up into his attic. When they reached twelve, he'd taken a hammer and busted his way out of his house through the roof. He was rescued by a boat crew and taken to another, higher roof, where he'd been stranded with half his neighborhood for five days before a group of locals made it out on boats to start ferrying them out.
Where the questions had been spoken at once, half-phrases spouting out like the ones that Monica and Christian had greeted each other with, the group took turns with the stories. They sat silent and attentive in a way Dean had never seen before, not even offering empty sympathies. Katie let out a choked noise when Christian mentioned being forced to leave his cat behind, and when the younger Jim had had to pause in his story to collect himself, Helen put an arm over his shoulder and murmured "baby" just once. Dean kept silent the whole time and tried not to think of the number of ghosts that would fill the place, years down the line.
When the stories ran out, the group ate in silence again, until Bob looked up from his empty plate and caught Dean's eye.
"So," he said. "What's your story?"
Dean swallowed. "No story. I just wanted to help."
It'd been enough for all of them, up to that point. Dean was there and he was willing to drive and listen and that was all they'd wanted from him. But now, all their eyes turned towards him in question. Bob cleared his throat.
"That's nice, boy." Dean tried not to bristle at the word -- Bob was one of the younger ones, he couldn't have been more than five years older than Dean. His eyes weren't cold the way a police officer's would've been, but curious, and slightly suspicious. The world had fucked Bob over; it must've been hard for him to accept that some small part of it might try to make amends. "But you didn't come from nowhere. What do you do?"
"Between jobs," Dean said, and he wasn't entirely lying. There was no concrete job here, no news reports of anything other than numbers of survivors and the extent of the damage. Dean had just thought he would probably find one once he got here.
He supposed he had, though not one that John would ever consider a hunt.
"Where you from?"
"Kansas."
"The whole state?"
"Lawrence," Dean said. "But we, uh. Moved around a lot."
Bob nodded once. "I don't mean to be interviewing, but everyone's got a story, Dean. We've told you ours. Might be nice to hear one that doesn't involve the storm."
"The storm" was what they all called it. There was some sort of unspoken agreement never to speak Katrina's name aloud.
Katie nodded, and Christian let out a soft grunt of agreement. Monica turned her head to look at him curiously, and Dean knew he'd have to speak. Offer up some part of himself in return for the parts the others had offered. He looked down, cleared his throat, and took a moment to pick which story he could tell without letting them in too deep.
"My, uh. There was a fire, in our house. When I was little. 'Bout twenty two years ago, now. My mom died. My dad was in sales, so we all hit the road. Me and Dad and my brother." They listened to him speak the way they'd listened to each other, and Dean found their silence a little overwhelming. He barreled on, desperate, suddenly, to fill it. "So I was born in Kansas, but I guess you could say I'm from all over. We used to stay in these total shit holes, too," he turned to offer Monica a small grin. "Probably stopped at the one you guys were in a time or two. You get pretty used to that crap after awhile. I always kinda liked it, actually. It wasn't home or anything, but at least we were all together, right?"
That got a few affirmatives from the group. Lost homes and keeping families together was a familiar theme for them. Dean smiled again with half his mouth and shrugged his opposite shoulder.
"Sam, though. He's my brother. He hated it. Never understood why Dad couldn't find a normal job, let us stay in one place. So a couple years ago, he finished high school and got into Stanford. Never looked back. Dad kept goin' on his jobs and I started lookin' for my own, and I finished up the last one and didn't have anywhere to be. So I came down here. Wanted to help."
Monica reached out then, put her hand on his shoulder and gave it a soft squeeze. He glanced over at her and she offered him a quirk of her lips. He looked away.
"Look, I've heard the news. I know you guys got royally screwed, more ways than I can count. All kinds of people who are supposed to help aren't doing their jobs. I guess I thought maybe a guy who isn't 'supposed' to do much of anything might be able to pitch in a little."
"We take care of our own," Bob said, still giving Dean that suspicious look. Dean met it with a bit more of his usual confidence.
"I can see that." And he could, in the way the people sitting in the circle had latched onto each other. In the stories each of them had told about themselves and their families and friends. "But, hey. I know a thing or two about fucked up shit. The stuff that looks so big you can't see anything else or anything you can do about it. And an extra pair of hands that's willing to listen to orders usually doesn't hurt. And I got no place better to be."
"Well then," that was Nate, twisting his ring again and giving Bob a firm look before he turned back to Dean. "Welcome to the Parish."
* * *
The French Quarter, New Orleans, March 2008
As it turned out, Cafe Du Monde, while certainly . . . interesting, wasn't the place to go looking for their first clues into the hunt. They stayed long enough for Dean to down two plates of beignets, piled so high with sugar that it puffed up around his face in tiny clouds every time he exhaled, and for Sam to nibble on one plate of his own and drink his coffee. It was all just as good as advertised, the beignets almost too sweet and so fresh and hot that Sam nearly burned the roof of his mouth taking his first bite, and the coffee milky and strong, but the ambient noise of all those people along with the nearby street and the band that hovered just outside the fence made it nearly impossible to talk to each other, much less any of the other patrons. Monica had paused long enough after delivering their order to insist that it was on the house and hand over her phone number, but otherwise was swamped with other customers. Dean gave up fairly quickly, and far more cheerfully than Sam might've expected.
He was getting the feeling that Dean's little speech about someone knowing what was going down had just been an excuse for a sugar high.
Once Dean was down to swiping his finger through piles of powdered sugar and licking it and Sam had built a modest tower out of the napkin dispenser, the sugar jar (and really, who needed more sugar at this place?) and his coffee mug, Sam finally cleared his throat and gave Dean a hard look. Dean lifted his eyebrow challengingly in return, but then shrugged.
"Let's hit up the Square."
If it got them out of the diabetic coma waiting to happen, Sam was all for it.
Hitting the Square, it turned out, meant crossing the street. Jackson Square marked the center of the river side of the French Quarter, an entire block taken up by a fenced-in park with a statue of Andrew Jackson riding high in the middle. The three sides not lining the street were a pedestrian mall, cluttered with artists, fortune tellers, musicians, and, Sam saw, a few young black kids tap dancing for cash. Dean nodded and grinned to them all as they headed up towards the cathedral that loomed over the place on the far side of the square, and Sam had to grab his arm more than once to stop him from shelling out their limited cash on a con or a piece of art they'd never be able to keep in the Impala. Sam wished he could blame the sugar, but Dean seemed to be riding another sort of high, here, giddy and goofy as a little kid.
When they reached the far corner, Dean pulled his arm out of Sam's grip and turned on him, face darkening slightly, though his eyes seemed perpetually crinkled in the face of the life and color of the mall. "What?"
"What are we doing here?"
Dean shook his head. "Relax, dude. Let loose a little. That's what this city's made for."
"Are you kidding me?"
Dean scowled and turned away from him, heading for a tarot reader stationed next to a row of black metal benches. Sam reached for his arm again and Dean dodged, but he turned around.
"Dude."
"We're here to work, Dean."
"Look at the sign, man. She's descended from the Great Angelique!"
Sam pursed his lips. "You have any idea who 'the Great Angelique' is?"
Dean grinned. "Nope." And he turned again and made a beeline for the Great Angelique's granddaughter's table.
The woman, probably in her mid-thirties and sporting a brightly colored scarf wrapped like a turban around her head, graced him with a bright smile. "Hello, sir!" she called, far louder than she needed to, considering Dean was only a few feet away, her voice sing-songing over the three syllables in what Sam was pretty sure was a faked African accent. "Would you like your fortune told? Maybe a hint or two on your love life." And at that she flashed a knowing look and a smile at Sam that made him hunch his shoulders and brought heat to his cheeks.
"Not me, ma'am," Dean said, his grin ever so slightly wicked. "But Sammy here, well. He's just got no idea where to turn."
"Dean," Sam said warningly. Dean turned his grin on him, but Sam had seen it often enough to be immune.
"Sammy, come on. No one likes a wet blanket."
The woman straightened her worn deck of cards slowly and then held them out in Sam's direction. "Your friend is right, Sammy. You let Miss Laura give you a bit of guidance." She looked so certain of herself that Sam suddenly found it hard to say no.
"I really don't think --" He turned to Dean in a last ditch attempt to get out of it, but Dean had stepped away and was talking quietly with a man in an eye-patch sitting on the bench next to them and wasn't paying attention anymore. He turned back. "No offense, uh, Miss Laura. But I'm not sure my, uh, friend and I have time --"
"Just a small spread, then. You pay only what you think the reading's worth." She held the deck out again, and Sam took it reluctantly. For all that he and Dean had trafficked in the supernatural for most of their lives, he'd never actually had a tarot reading done before. He knew that the belief in the cards had some element of truth to it, but he also knew how dangerous it could be to know too much. He held the deck carefully, as though it might bite him.
"I don't know."
"A single card?" Miss Laura offered, the African cadence fading from her voice, replaced by the loose phrasing of a tongue used to soft French sounds. "That isn't your usual deck there, sir. Done up by a local artist, New Orleans special."
Sam sighed and gave in. "What do I need to do?"
"Think of a question you want answered, and give the deck a shuffle. I'll do the rest. Take your time and pick something important. Get it real clear in your mind."
Sam almost snorted. There was only one question he wanted answered, these days. He wondered at Dean handing him over to Miss Laura so easily, when he had to know what Sam would choose to focus the reading on. He glanced over at his brother, who was talking animatedly with the eye-patched man now, though their voices were too low for him to make out what they were saying.
Dean didn't want to die. Maybe his casual, relaxed air along the Square had been a front, a bluff in case the demon holding his deal was keeping an eye on him. Maybe he was giving Sam a chance to save him, after all.
Sam closed his eyes, focusing hard. How can I save my brother? He shuffled the deck with practiced fingers -- it was larger than a basic poker deck, seeming to fit his hands perfectly. He cut it once, just to be sure, then held it back out to Miss Laura.
She nodded and took the deck with one hand, gesturing for Sam to take a seat across from her with the other.
"Keep that question in mind now, sir. You want the single card, or something more complex?"
"One card."
She nodded, brushed her fingers once over the top card, then took it and turned it over.
She was right when she said it wasn't your typical tarot deck. It had the basic symbolic elements that Sam recognized from more common decks, but the style was distinct, there were added elements, and the card bore no name. The middle of the top of the card bore a hand written IX. The body of the image was dominated by an old man with a large gray beard, wearing a straw hat and leaning heavily on a crooked walking stick. A small mongrel curled up at his feet. Miss Laura was speaking, describing the card and its meaning, and Sam caught occasional words: "guidance" and "distance", and something about coming forth to share a lesson, but he wasn't really listening. He was focused instead on a detail gracing the bottom left corner of the card, an upright, equilateral cross drawn in simple lines, with curling flourishes wrapping in almost a circle around the apex. The top and bottom of the cross had small oblongs, with lines radiating out from the central line to the edges of the curved shape like the veins on a leaf. The left hand arm had more small spirals, the right hand a second vertical line with a half-moon curve at the top. All four points bore asterisk-stars.
He recognized it immediately, having come across it in research on a number of occasions, especially since last May. It was a voodoo veve. The ninth card in the major arcana of tarot was the Hermit, an old man with a walking stick, but that wasn't the figure represented on the card. He reached out to run his fingers over the figure and the veve, but paused before they could touch the card. He took a slow breath and heard Miss Laura ask if he was alright. He glanced up at her through his bangs, then back down at the card.
"Papa Legba."
* * *
Violet, Louisiana, October 2005
When the picnic broke up and the group separated out into clumps of twos and threes, Monica stuck close to Dean. He gave her a lift back out to her house and they sat there, parked at the Winn Dixie and staring across at it. Dean opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't think of what to say. The sun was starting to set, casting the sky in a darker gray and making the scene all the more desolate. He had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do now.
"You got somewhere to stay?" he asked finally. She couldn't stay in the house. Even if she wanted to, he wasn't sure he'd let her.
"Yeah," she said. "Friend of a friend downtown. His house is okay. You?"
Dean shrugged. "I'll find something. Always do." He could feel her watching him, but didn't turn his head.
"This is what you do?" she asked. "Travel around, looking for people to help?"
"Pretty much,"
"You find a lot of 'em?"
"Yeah."
"Do you try to charm the pants off of all of 'em, or am I special?"
Dean laughed. "Bout half and half, I guess."
"Does it usually work?"
"Yep." He turned his head, giving her a devilish grin. "Ladies can't keep their hands offa me."
She snorted. "I bet." She tilted her head, giving him a once over. "You're not my type,"
"I'm everybody's type."
"You're not my type," she repeated. "But. I can't let the guy who drove all over town just to try and get me coffee sleep in his car. Come with me downtown. I'm sure we can get you at least a nice bit of floor."
Dean considered saying no. He considered dropping her off and getting his ass back out of town, maybe heading up to New Hampshire to see if John was done with his hunt up there. Getting as far from this dead Parish as he could get.
Instead, he shifted the Impala into gear and asked "which way?"
The Parish might've been dead, and the city in critical on life support. But Dean couldn't shake the feeling that, somehow, he was where he belonged.
* * *
The French Quarter, New Orleans, March 2008
Sam gave Miss Laura fifty dollars for the reading, far more than the rates advertised on her sign. She didn't protest. He stayed seated long enough for her to confirm that the card was, indeed, Legba before thanking her quietly and standing up, turning his body to face his brother, though his eyes stayed stuck on the veve on the card.
He was madly sorting through what he knew of the voodoo loa, specifically as they were presented in the amalgamated Americanized version of the religion, which borrowed a great deal from the Catholic saints as well as the gods and spirits of its origin in Africa. Legba was the Gatekeeper, associated with St. Peter, but was also sometimes connected to Ellegua, an African trickster. He was the middle-man between mankind and the rest of the loa, the first and last summoned in a voodoo ritual. He was a warrior and a guardian of destiny, a master of all languages and a storyteller. In Africa he was a seducer and symbol of fertility.
Most importantly for Sam's purposes, he was the guardian of the crossroads.
Sam could've kicked himself for not thinking of it, sooner.
Dean was finishing up with his new wanna-be-pirate friend as Sam finished thanking Miss Laura and turned away from her table. He looked up at Sam with an open, hopeful expression and a slightly sardonic turn of his lips.
Trickster, warrior, guardian. Yeah. Dean was definitely a Legba man.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
Dean rolled his eyes slightly and elbowed Sam in the ribs, leading the way towards the other side of the cathedral to a pedestrians-only alleyway marked as Pirate's Alley. "Well, how'd it go?"
Sam shrugged nonchalantly, though inside he was burning with the need to go hunt down more information and a voodoo practitioner or two. "It was okay."
"Was she a total crank, or what?"
Sam shrugged again and Dean chuckled. If he had any idea that Sam had gotten some useful information out of Miss Laura, he wasn't showing it. "Well, while you were getting your new age on with Laura, I got some information from Pepe, back there."
Sam half-turned to look back towards the eye-patched man. "Pepe?"
"His real name's probably Steve or something. Total poser, but that's about half of what you get around here. The French Quarter's actually more newcomers than born-and-breds."
"Then what the hell are we doing here?"
"Newcomers are all into the culture, man. They're very up on a lot of the hoodoo and legends. And not so used to the crime around here not to want to know all about the latest string of murders."
Sam couldn't argue much with that logic, though he suspected Dean was throwing it together on the fly, looking for more excuses to hit up some of his favorite tourist traps in the city rather than get down and dirty with the hunt. Sam couldn't blame him, really. It was a far cry from his mad-cap sex adventures and the massive gluttony that he'd engaged in just after the deal went down, but Dean was still looking to live it up during his final year. Now that he had a clearer direction on where to look for a way to give Dean all the extra years he really deserved, Sam was much more willing to just play along.
"So what'd Pepe have to say, then?"
"A lot of what you've already managed to dig up, the river mud, the smothering, the lack of connection between the victims. He did tell me there's been another one. Just last night, apparently, over in Marigny. Some poor old rich gay dude who ran a B&B, out walking his dog."
Sam nodded. "And if it was just last night. . . ."
"We've got time to check out the corpse." Dean turned left as they left the alley and started down the block. "I figure we'll circle back around to the car, get ourselves settled in somewhere, and then go pay a visit to the morgue."
"Sounds good," Sam said, reaching out to swat a hand over Dean's hair. "But I think we should shower first. You've got sugar in your hair."
* * *
In and around New Orleans, Louisiana, October 2005
The friend of a friend's house came exactly as advertised -- an almost undamaged cottage on the edge of the French Quarter, packed full of people as homeless as Monica. Every spare piece of furniture that might make a decent bed had been claimed, but Dean was more than happy to take up a bit of floor space with his duffel as a pillow. It gave him room to stretch out his legs that the Impala couldn't provide, and while there were certainly places all around where Dean could have squatted, for once being surrounded by "normal" people wasn't making him feel claustrophobic.
They may not have been hunters, but every person in that place was as far from "normal" as he was.
The place was owned by a grizzled Creole man named Rene who Dean didn't manage to meet until he'd been staying there for several days. Rene was a very busy and exceptionally secretive man, and try as Dean might, no one in the house would ever seem to talk about him. It was enough that he had welcomed them in. If he wanted to share his story with them, he'd do so on his own time. Dean had a feeling Bob wouldn't have lasted long in the place.
Dean had no concrete case to be working on, and the first night, he'd lain awake on the hardwood floor of the living room, staring up at the dim illumination coming in through the wood-slat blinds that covered the windows and wondering if he should be moving on. The next day, John called, telling him he was headed for Jericho, California to check out a series of missing persons. When Dean asked if he wanted help, John brushed him off. Said he could do more good if he kept going after his own cases. The same spiel Dean had gotten since just after Sam had jumped ship, as though they were supposed to be somehow stronger if they were divided. Still, John had a point. There were other people out there helping here, and other people out there who needed the unique Winchester brand of help. So he started packing his bag.
Then Monica asked him for a ride to her grandmother's house in Violet. And he sat in the Impala, staring forward at the little gray brick house with the white, spray painted tag noting that a single body the search and rescue team had found in the back bedroom, and Monica turned her face into his shoulder and sobbed. He reached out a hand, awkwardly and hesitantly, and rested it between her shoulder blades. A second tag, this one in dark blue, represented the salvage team which had finally come to remove the body. The date listed on it was only a few days before he'd gotten into town.
He decided he could stick it out for another day.
The next day, Christian showed up with a battered, mud covered truck, the bed filled with sledgehammers, crowbars, and face masks. Gutting materials. And Dean had found himself up to his elbows in damp sheetrock and moldy insulation by noon and rinsing off in a sudden downpour before sharing a beer with the man at three. On his sixth day there, he was holding Monica again, this time after hearing the news that Ernest had been found dead on his front lawn -- an apparent heart attack -- and he finally stopped promising himself he'd only stay another day.
It wasn't until he'd been there more than a week that he realized there really was a hunt to be had, here.
He was at Christian's place, finishing up the gutting on the back room with the other man, when Bob and Katie arrived with the news. The older Jim was dead, found floating in his overflowing, dirty swimming pool the night before. Word on the street -- the only real word there was in the Parish, these days -- was that he'd committed suicide. Bob said it matter-of-factly, eyes locked on Dean's as he spoke, as though challenging him to say something. Dean imagined he could read the man's thoughts, hear the See? Where's your hope and help now, Kansas? that Bob refused to say, and he kept quiet, jaw tight and face solemn, holding Bob's gaze firmly until he finished speaking and Katie spoke up.
"It doesn't seem right." She wiped at the corner of one eye with the ragged edge of her long sleeve t-shirt. Her eyes were slightly red, but her cheeks were clean, and if she was close to tears, she was holding them back. "You heard what he did. You don't chop your way out your own attic just to drown yourself a few months later."
The look Bob turned on her was pitying, and he put an arm over her shoulder. "Not everyone's strong enough for this," he said, not unkindly, before looking back up, this time to Christian instead of Dean. "We should get going. Just wanted to let you know."
Christian nodded his thanks and Bob and Katie were on their way. Dean stayed where he was, leaning against the front wall of Christian's house, and followed Bob's silver sedan with his eyes until it turned the corner and pulled out of sight. He heard Christian cross the lawn to his truck and return with a clink of bottles, then finally turned his head when he felt cold glass press into his arm. He took the offered beer with a nod and popped it open against the windowsill.
"He's right," Christian said, when they'd both downed about half their bottles. "Not everyone can do this." He shook his head. "Don't blame Jim in the least."
Dean could, but kept his mouth shut.
"Ernest, either," Christian continued, and Dean frowned.
"Ernest was a heart attack."
"So they say."
"You got reason to think otherwise?"
Christian shrugged. "Ernest was a healthy man. Looked after himself, before the storm."
"Maybe the stress got to him."
Christian sighed, looking back towards his house. Dean figured that if stress could take down anyone, it'd be a man who'd just lost his entire life in a flood. The look on his face seemed to show that Christian agreed.
"Yeah," he said, shoulders rising slightly. "Exactly."
* * *
Foubourg Marigny, New Orleans, March 2008
Sam researched the latest victim while Dean showered. It took everything in him not to pull up a new tab and run a search for everything on Legba and tarot and voodoo on the internet, but even if Dean had purposefully sent him to the fortune teller -- even if Dean had developed a semblance of subtlety -- they were still supposed to be going to the morgue next, and they couldn't exactly walk in and ask to see the "poor old rich gay dude".
Well, they could, and hell, from what Sam'd seen of this town so far, they might not even seem that weird for doing it. They'd just get tossed on their asses and a lecture on morbid tourism or something. Much better to go in prepared with some info, especially considering Dean's assurance that he "already had the perfect cover" for them. Sam was just hoping they weren't bikini inspectors again.
"Know what I love about this city, Sam?" Dean asked as they drove to Tulane University Hospital, where the latest body had ended up.
"I'm guessing it's the sugar. You wanna know about our latest vic or not?"
"It's the acronym."
Sam frowned and looked up from where he was skimming over his notes on the case so far. ". . . What?"
"Acronym. You know, when you get a word out of the initials of --"
"I know what an acronym is, Dean." Though he was slightly surprised that Dean did -- or at least that he was able to think of the word on the fly. Vocabulary had never been Dean's strong suit.
"Right, so. The acronym."
"Is your favorite part about the city."
Dean tilted his head with a slight smirk. "Okay, so Bourbon Street might actually win out, but the acronym is way up there."
Sam couldn't help but bite. "Why?"
Dean flipped open his fake badge with his eyebrows raised and his lips pulled back in a grin. "No P.D.!"
Sam was torn between rubbing his forehead and laughing. "You've been planning that since Texas, haven't you."
"Nah, just since Baton Rouge. But man, think about it. No police department. No waste management. University of No."
Sam shook his head. "I think that one's actually referred to as UNO."
"Almost as cool."
Sam did laugh then, under his breath, and caught sight of Dean's bright smile fading into something real and triumphant for a moment, out of the corner of his eye. He had a sudden image of this being it for them -- Dean's final hunt with his brother, making sure he got in all the sights and sounds and laughs that he could. And that, Sam suddenly knew, was why Dean had lead him to Miss Laura. Son of a bitch was trying to let Sam down easy and give them both a last hurrah.
Sam was going to kill him. Just as soon as he saved his life.
Dean must have caught some hint of Sam's thoughts on his face because he abruptly sobered. "Right, so. Old, rich, gay, dead dude."
"His name was James."
"Old, rich, gay, dead James, then."
"Aged fifty-seven, co-owner of the Cajun Courtyard Guest House in --"
"Marigny," Dean finished. "We already knew that part. Which makes fruity James the third victim from the Frenchman's Street area. Sucker's got a hard-on for East New Orleans."
Sam tried not to roll his eyes at Dean name-dropping neighborhoods. "Anyway. James Blockhaus was a Pennsylvania native, moved to New Orleans with his partner in 1985."
"The first chick was a transplant, too. Could be a pattern."
Sam nodded slowly and flipped through his notes, then shook his head. "No good. Got a couple locals in here, too."
Dean pursed his lips. "There's gotta be a connection somewhere."
"Different sexes, different races, ages, hometowns, sexualities, religions. . . ." Sam sighed. "Nothing."
"Right. Maybe the body'll give us a hint. If not -- think Mrs. Gay Dead James is still in town?"
"Don't see why not. I could go talk to him while you hit the morgue."
"We're not splitting up."
"Yeah, well, I'm not going to let you call Mr. Blockhaus's partner 'Mrs. Gay Dead James'."
Dean grinned suddenly as he turned into the parking lot for the hospital. "Aw, Sammy, you never let me have any fun."
Sam shook his head, not bothering to stop his own lips from curling up while he checked his own badge. "Detective Andre DeSoto? Dude, are you trying to get us caught?" He shook his head, flipping it closed again. "Why didn't you just name me Stanley Kowalski?"
"Who?"
"Streetcar Named --" Sam cut himself off when Dean continued to stare blankly at him. "Never mind. Let's go, McSwain."
* * *
In and around New Orleans, October 2005
New Orleans had always been a transitory place in Dean's mind -- any place that got that many tourists had to be used to comings and goings. It was, it seemed to him, even more so in the months after the storm. People came back, saw the damage, and, most often, left again almost immediately. It was still too big for them to deal with, and places to stay while sorting it out, especially for Parish residents, were few and far between. Dean heard from a few that they weren't going too far, just a couple towns over and up, where the damage wasn't so bad and they could wait for -- whatever they might have coming. Some, it seemed, took one look at their old home and gave up, left without looking back.
He could understand both. Well, as much as a guy who'd never had much of a home to speak of could understand those who'd had one at all.
Still, by the end of the first week, he and Monica were some of the longest standing residents of Rene's cottage, and Dean had been offered to trade up from his floor spot more than once, though he always turned the offers down. Each time, if Monica was around, she'd give him this measuring look and say "You can't stay on the floor forever," and Dean would shrug back, flash her a smile, and point out that, if he wanted cushioning, he could always sleep in his car, a luxury that many of the people who came and went at Rene's didn't have. Monica would nod, keep up that strange, measuring expression for a moment longer, and then move on. Dean was pretty sure he was turning out to be more and more her "type" after all.
The cottage was up-river and slightly lake-side (New Orleans, Dean quickly learned, didn't put much stock into "north" and "south", something that made more sense when you realized that the "West Bank" had a tendency in places to actually be to the east) of the French Quarter, and the days that Dean wasn't heading into the Parish with Monica and Christian to gut and salvage he spent talking to the few people he found around town, some of whom had been in town seemingly since the storm itself, dodging National Guard and living off of salvaged materials and spoiling food. He wanted to ask them about unusual deaths, but it was hard to pin down what counted as "unusual" when the person had spent the last six weeks baking lasagna on hot tarred roofs or watching TVs powered by car batteries. It seemed like everyone in town had a "dead guy story", as one survivor with a particular fondness for coining phrases had put it. Dead guys on porches, dead guys in the street, dead guys noted in spray paint on the sides of houses. Dead guys and girls and dogs and goats, and not just from the storm and the flooding. Seemed like crime was skyrocketing as people were trickling back in -- the expected looting, of course, especially for groceries -- but robberies and muggings, too. Even the occasional senseless killing. The city was a wild thing, these days, people almost as likely to snap and lash out as they were to stop and help.
Dean couldn't help but think that it sounded like almost every day of his life.
Some of the stories weren't so bad. There was the man who drove around in a truck covered with magnets -- bits and bobs he'd picked up from refrigerators people had lugged out and left for dead by the side of the road -- and the woman near City Park who'd taken to adopting whatever stray cats wandered past her house -- and there were plenty of strays of every sort to go around. Still, there wasn't a single person around who wasn't high strung and on edge, making the city and its suburbs prime spots for anything from spirit activity to demonic infestation. And all Dean had were a couple explainable deaths in the Parish, and a handful of people who didn't want to think that their neighborhood was a broken as it really was.
And then one day, towards the end of Dean's second week in town, a man pulled up in front of Helen's house in a shiny, mud-free silver rental and wearing a crisply pressed black suit and offered to buy the place. She turned him down, gave Christian a heads up on the guy over dinner, and headed home. She was found dead two days later by a returning neighbor, and Dean suddenly had a lead.
No one could say for sure if Ernest had been approached, but Katie was able to confirm that Jim had, and had reacted the same way as Helen. Now he just had to figure out how to track down a mysterious guy in a suit and a silver car when the only eye-witnesses he had to the guy were dead.
He could never pick the easy cases, could he?
He didn't even consider the question of whether or not the case was his thing. Hell, it probably wasn't. But the police was alternately laughable and terrifying, definitely not a system that Dean was willing to trust. And he'd been here, now, longer than he'd been anywhere since Sam had graduated high school; he was beginning to care about these people, Monica and Christian especially. So even if the guy was some psycho real estate freak who hadn't lined up fast enough for the Walgreens prozac, it was still up to Dean to track him down and end him.
In a city as empty as this one, one wouldn't have thought it'd be that hard.
He asked and he asked and he asked. No one knew much of anything -- the only ones who'd seen the guy were apparently the people he approached for a deal, and they were all either dead or long gone, transplanted to some other, less desolate city. After two days, even Christian, who'd shared his suspicion at the deaths of his friends, was looking at him funny or changing the subject. Bob, who'd taken to stopping by most days, either to borrow tools or just share a beer, was particularly unhelpful.
"Knock it off, kid."
"You don't think it's strange."
"Isn't much around here that isn't, these days."
"Strange even for here."
Christian made his excuses and headed off around the house, leaving Bob and Dean to lean against the wall and watch the narrow street. Bob set down his beer and moved to face Dean head on. "What are you doing here, Dean?"
Dean rolled his eyes. "I told you."
"You think this is helping? These people are scared enough."
Dean gritted his teeth. "What's your problem, Bob?"
"This city cares for itself."
"This city is dying."
"And you think one upstart from Kansas is going to make a difference? What can you possibly do for us that we can't do for ourselves?"
"You have no idea what I'm capable of."
"And you have no idea what you're messing with."
Dean squared his shoulders and stared Bob in the eye. "Then tell me."
Bob huffed, stared back for a moment, and then turned away. "Get out of here, kid. Work's done for the day. I won't tell you again."
Dean scowled and dug out his car keys. "Good. Getting sick of hearing it." He turned and headed down the narrow, impassible street towards the main thoroughfare where he'd parked the Impala, not looking back to see Bob watching him go.
Some people just didn't know how to accept a helping hand.
He got within ten feet of the car when he felt an arm wrap around his neck. He reached up to grab it, squawking out a curse -- mostly at himself for not being armed aside from his knife in his boot -- and a cloth, dark colored and foul smelling, smacked down over his nose and mouth. He inhaled automatically, gagged, and felt the arm around his throat tighten briefly before the world spun around him and went black.
* * *
Additional author's note: As I mentioned in part one, this fic and the stories and lives of the original characters are based upon primary sources, both written and oral, of actual Katrina victims. While the characters and the specifics of each story are fictional, their basis is not, and each is an amalgamation of stories actually told to me by residents of St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans, and the columns of Chris Rose as compiled in the volume 1 Dead in Attic. My primary focus here is, of course, to write an interesting and compelling story, but should anyone be interested in helping out in St. Bernard Parish, St. Bernard Project is always accepting volunteers and donations, and there's still a lot of work to be done. Thanks for reading.
Author: Bella Temple
Category: SPN, Gen with a dash of het, multichaptered WIP, non-linear storytelling
Rating: Adult (nothing explicit just yet, but mature themes are used, and I can't guarantee it won't get ugly)
Warnings: non-linear storytelling, natural disasters, and unpopular fictional opinions
Spoilers: general through season three. Half the story is preseries, the other half takes place in between "Ghostfacers" and "Long Distance Call"
Characters: Sam, Dean, mentions of John, OCs
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of Warner Bros, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction.
Author's note: Well, hey, only took me five months to update! (yeesh)
Summary: Sam's got a case in New Orleans that just might get him information on how to get Dean out of his deal. Dean's got a history with the city itself and too much baggage that he's got to lay to rest. And the city? Well. She's got her own problems. . . .
Part 1
So tell me it's okay.
Tell me anything, or show me there's a pull,
unassailable, that will lead you there,
from the dark, alone, to benevolence that you've never known,
or you knew when you were four and can't remember.
-- "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" by the Weakerthans
Chalmette, Louisiana, October 2005
As it turned out, when Monica had said it'd be a "bit of a drive", she'd been making the understatement of the damned century. The Parish, as his passengers called the area, was something of a peninsula, a flared bit of land and island sticking out like a shredded toe of the Louisiana boot. As far as any of them knew, the entire place had been flooded by the storm surge. There wasn't a single business running that they could find, and while there were little bunches of rescue workers supplying basic necessities scattered throughout the New Orleans area, Monica and her friends asked him to keep going. Dean suspected there was something about the act of actually paying for what they needed that they all found comforting. They even offered to pitch in for his gas, though he turned them down.
The grocery store they finally found didn't have much -- many other returning residents seemed to have the same sense as his little group did, and the place was sold out of many of the basic staples. Still, they managed to load up the Impala, piling food, bottled water, and toiletries on top of Dean's duffel bags and dirty laundry.
No one mentioned the mess of his car once. Dean was constantly on the edge of apologizing for it, anyway.
When they got back to the Parish, they camped out in the parking lot of a Taco Bell with a lamp post through its roof. They all pitched in to clear enough branches and debris from the dirty asphalt for them all to sit comfortably on four blankets: the ratty old faux Mexican thing that Dean kept for nights spent in the Impala, an equally ratty yellow and white comforter that Helen kept in her own car, and two flannel sheets that Ernest had somehow managed to salvage from his attic. The latter two were dusted in parts with insulation, Dean's smelled like sweat, motor oil, and smoke, and Helen's bore stains from a long ago picnic, but laid out together like that against the black, white, and gray, they looked like a little slice of heaven.
Well. A little slice of normal, at least.
Dean had tried to unload the car himself once the blankets were set, but by the time he'd turned around to start grabbing bags, the others had already gotten most of them out and were starting to hand things around. If they'd noticed the false bottom to the trunk, they didn't mention it. They circled together like a wagon train, leaving a hole just large enough for Dean between Monica and Katie, and for the first twenty minutes or so, they just huddled there, passing boxes and cups back and forth, shoulders slung low and forward, speaking only to ask for a fork, or offer a little more water. Dean sat with them, kept quiet, and wondered what would happen next.
Then Nate, a broad shouldered, dark skinned man about Dean's age, twisted a ring on his left hand, stared down at his paper plate of cold, barbeque pork, and asked "Has anyone heard from Bill Rodriguez?"
And it was like the levees breaking again, loosing a flood of questions. Did anyone know about FEMA money? Who survived? Who was dead? Had anyone looked downtown, was this landmark still standing? That one? Was anything still okay? When the answers ran out, the stories began. Helen's husband had been recovering from back surgery when they evacuated -- three weeks after the storm, she'd removed his stitches herself. Monica and her family had stopped at a motel in a nearby town, an absolute shit hole on par with some of the worst that the Winchesters had ever stayed in, to hear her tell it. Jim -- the older one, with silvered hair and deeply lined cheeks -- had stayed home, said he'd weathered hurricanes before and had thought he'd know how to handle it. When the flood waters in his house had reached his waist, he'd started sorting through all his belongings to find anything that looked like it would float. When the water reached six feet, he'd gone up into his attic. When they reached twelve, he'd taken a hammer and busted his way out of his house through the roof. He was rescued by a boat crew and taken to another, higher roof, where he'd been stranded with half his neighborhood for five days before a group of locals made it out on boats to start ferrying them out.
Where the questions had been spoken at once, half-phrases spouting out like the ones that Monica and Christian had greeted each other with, the group took turns with the stories. They sat silent and attentive in a way Dean had never seen before, not even offering empty sympathies. Katie let out a choked noise when Christian mentioned being forced to leave his cat behind, and when the younger Jim had had to pause in his story to collect himself, Helen put an arm over his shoulder and murmured "baby" just once. Dean kept silent the whole time and tried not to think of the number of ghosts that would fill the place, years down the line.
When the stories ran out, the group ate in silence again, until Bob looked up from his empty plate and caught Dean's eye.
"So," he said. "What's your story?"
Dean swallowed. "No story. I just wanted to help."
It'd been enough for all of them, up to that point. Dean was there and he was willing to drive and listen and that was all they'd wanted from him. But now, all their eyes turned towards him in question. Bob cleared his throat.
"That's nice, boy." Dean tried not to bristle at the word -- Bob was one of the younger ones, he couldn't have been more than five years older than Dean. His eyes weren't cold the way a police officer's would've been, but curious, and slightly suspicious. The world had fucked Bob over; it must've been hard for him to accept that some small part of it might try to make amends. "But you didn't come from nowhere. What do you do?"
"Between jobs," Dean said, and he wasn't entirely lying. There was no concrete job here, no news reports of anything other than numbers of survivors and the extent of the damage. Dean had just thought he would probably find one once he got here.
He supposed he had, though not one that John would ever consider a hunt.
"Where you from?"
"Kansas."
"The whole state?"
"Lawrence," Dean said. "But we, uh. Moved around a lot."
Bob nodded once. "I don't mean to be interviewing, but everyone's got a story, Dean. We've told you ours. Might be nice to hear one that doesn't involve the storm."
"The storm" was what they all called it. There was some sort of unspoken agreement never to speak Katrina's name aloud.
Katie nodded, and Christian let out a soft grunt of agreement. Monica turned her head to look at him curiously, and Dean knew he'd have to speak. Offer up some part of himself in return for the parts the others had offered. He looked down, cleared his throat, and took a moment to pick which story he could tell without letting them in too deep.
"My, uh. There was a fire, in our house. When I was little. 'Bout twenty two years ago, now. My mom died. My dad was in sales, so we all hit the road. Me and Dad and my brother." They listened to him speak the way they'd listened to each other, and Dean found their silence a little overwhelming. He barreled on, desperate, suddenly, to fill it. "So I was born in Kansas, but I guess you could say I'm from all over. We used to stay in these total shit holes, too," he turned to offer Monica a small grin. "Probably stopped at the one you guys were in a time or two. You get pretty used to that crap after awhile. I always kinda liked it, actually. It wasn't home or anything, but at least we were all together, right?"
That got a few affirmatives from the group. Lost homes and keeping families together was a familiar theme for them. Dean smiled again with half his mouth and shrugged his opposite shoulder.
"Sam, though. He's my brother. He hated it. Never understood why Dad couldn't find a normal job, let us stay in one place. So a couple years ago, he finished high school and got into Stanford. Never looked back. Dad kept goin' on his jobs and I started lookin' for my own, and I finished up the last one and didn't have anywhere to be. So I came down here. Wanted to help."
Monica reached out then, put her hand on his shoulder and gave it a soft squeeze. He glanced over at her and she offered him a quirk of her lips. He looked away.
"Look, I've heard the news. I know you guys got royally screwed, more ways than I can count. All kinds of people who are supposed to help aren't doing their jobs. I guess I thought maybe a guy who isn't 'supposed' to do much of anything might be able to pitch in a little."
"We take care of our own," Bob said, still giving Dean that suspicious look. Dean met it with a bit more of his usual confidence.
"I can see that." And he could, in the way the people sitting in the circle had latched onto each other. In the stories each of them had told about themselves and their families and friends. "But, hey. I know a thing or two about fucked up shit. The stuff that looks so big you can't see anything else or anything you can do about it. And an extra pair of hands that's willing to listen to orders usually doesn't hurt. And I got no place better to be."
"Well then," that was Nate, twisting his ring again and giving Bob a firm look before he turned back to Dean. "Welcome to the Parish."
* * *
The French Quarter, New Orleans, March 2008
As it turned out, Cafe Du Monde, while certainly . . . interesting, wasn't the place to go looking for their first clues into the hunt. They stayed long enough for Dean to down two plates of beignets, piled so high with sugar that it puffed up around his face in tiny clouds every time he exhaled, and for Sam to nibble on one plate of his own and drink his coffee. It was all just as good as advertised, the beignets almost too sweet and so fresh and hot that Sam nearly burned the roof of his mouth taking his first bite, and the coffee milky and strong, but the ambient noise of all those people along with the nearby street and the band that hovered just outside the fence made it nearly impossible to talk to each other, much less any of the other patrons. Monica had paused long enough after delivering their order to insist that it was on the house and hand over her phone number, but otherwise was swamped with other customers. Dean gave up fairly quickly, and far more cheerfully than Sam might've expected.
He was getting the feeling that Dean's little speech about someone knowing what was going down had just been an excuse for a sugar high.
Once Dean was down to swiping his finger through piles of powdered sugar and licking it and Sam had built a modest tower out of the napkin dispenser, the sugar jar (and really, who needed more sugar at this place?) and his coffee mug, Sam finally cleared his throat and gave Dean a hard look. Dean lifted his eyebrow challengingly in return, but then shrugged.
"Let's hit up the Square."
If it got them out of the diabetic coma waiting to happen, Sam was all for it.
Hitting the Square, it turned out, meant crossing the street. Jackson Square marked the center of the river side of the French Quarter, an entire block taken up by a fenced-in park with a statue of Andrew Jackson riding high in the middle. The three sides not lining the street were a pedestrian mall, cluttered with artists, fortune tellers, musicians, and, Sam saw, a few young black kids tap dancing for cash. Dean nodded and grinned to them all as they headed up towards the cathedral that loomed over the place on the far side of the square, and Sam had to grab his arm more than once to stop him from shelling out their limited cash on a con or a piece of art they'd never be able to keep in the Impala. Sam wished he could blame the sugar, but Dean seemed to be riding another sort of high, here, giddy and goofy as a little kid.
When they reached the far corner, Dean pulled his arm out of Sam's grip and turned on him, face darkening slightly, though his eyes seemed perpetually crinkled in the face of the life and color of the mall. "What?"
"What are we doing here?"
Dean shook his head. "Relax, dude. Let loose a little. That's what this city's made for."
"Are you kidding me?"
Dean scowled and turned away from him, heading for a tarot reader stationed next to a row of black metal benches. Sam reached for his arm again and Dean dodged, but he turned around.
"Dude."
"We're here to work, Dean."
"Look at the sign, man. She's descended from the Great Angelique!"
Sam pursed his lips. "You have any idea who 'the Great Angelique' is?"
Dean grinned. "Nope." And he turned again and made a beeline for the Great Angelique's granddaughter's table.
The woman, probably in her mid-thirties and sporting a brightly colored scarf wrapped like a turban around her head, graced him with a bright smile. "Hello, sir!" she called, far louder than she needed to, considering Dean was only a few feet away, her voice sing-songing over the three syllables in what Sam was pretty sure was a faked African accent. "Would you like your fortune told? Maybe a hint or two on your love life." And at that she flashed a knowing look and a smile at Sam that made him hunch his shoulders and brought heat to his cheeks.
"Not me, ma'am," Dean said, his grin ever so slightly wicked. "But Sammy here, well. He's just got no idea where to turn."
"Dean," Sam said warningly. Dean turned his grin on him, but Sam had seen it often enough to be immune.
"Sammy, come on. No one likes a wet blanket."
The woman straightened her worn deck of cards slowly and then held them out in Sam's direction. "Your friend is right, Sammy. You let Miss Laura give you a bit of guidance." She looked so certain of herself that Sam suddenly found it hard to say no.
"I really don't think --" He turned to Dean in a last ditch attempt to get out of it, but Dean had stepped away and was talking quietly with a man in an eye-patch sitting on the bench next to them and wasn't paying attention anymore. He turned back. "No offense, uh, Miss Laura. But I'm not sure my, uh, friend and I have time --"
"Just a small spread, then. You pay only what you think the reading's worth." She held the deck out again, and Sam took it reluctantly. For all that he and Dean had trafficked in the supernatural for most of their lives, he'd never actually had a tarot reading done before. He knew that the belief in the cards had some element of truth to it, but he also knew how dangerous it could be to know too much. He held the deck carefully, as though it might bite him.
"I don't know."
"A single card?" Miss Laura offered, the African cadence fading from her voice, replaced by the loose phrasing of a tongue used to soft French sounds. "That isn't your usual deck there, sir. Done up by a local artist, New Orleans special."
Sam sighed and gave in. "What do I need to do?"
"Think of a question you want answered, and give the deck a shuffle. I'll do the rest. Take your time and pick something important. Get it real clear in your mind."
Sam almost snorted. There was only one question he wanted answered, these days. He wondered at Dean handing him over to Miss Laura so easily, when he had to know what Sam would choose to focus the reading on. He glanced over at his brother, who was talking animatedly with the eye-patched man now, though their voices were too low for him to make out what they were saying.
Dean didn't want to die. Maybe his casual, relaxed air along the Square had been a front, a bluff in case the demon holding his deal was keeping an eye on him. Maybe he was giving Sam a chance to save him, after all.
Sam closed his eyes, focusing hard. How can I save my brother? He shuffled the deck with practiced fingers -- it was larger than a basic poker deck, seeming to fit his hands perfectly. He cut it once, just to be sure, then held it back out to Miss Laura.
She nodded and took the deck with one hand, gesturing for Sam to take a seat across from her with the other.
"Keep that question in mind now, sir. You want the single card, or something more complex?"
"One card."
She nodded, brushed her fingers once over the top card, then took it and turned it over.
She was right when she said it wasn't your typical tarot deck. It had the basic symbolic elements that Sam recognized from more common decks, but the style was distinct, there were added elements, and the card bore no name. The middle of the top of the card bore a hand written IX. The body of the image was dominated by an old man with a large gray beard, wearing a straw hat and leaning heavily on a crooked walking stick. A small mongrel curled up at his feet. Miss Laura was speaking, describing the card and its meaning, and Sam caught occasional words: "guidance" and "distance", and something about coming forth to share a lesson, but he wasn't really listening. He was focused instead on a detail gracing the bottom left corner of the card, an upright, equilateral cross drawn in simple lines, with curling flourishes wrapping in almost a circle around the apex. The top and bottom of the cross had small oblongs, with lines radiating out from the central line to the edges of the curved shape like the veins on a leaf. The left hand arm had more small spirals, the right hand a second vertical line with a half-moon curve at the top. All four points bore asterisk-stars.
He recognized it immediately, having come across it in research on a number of occasions, especially since last May. It was a voodoo veve. The ninth card in the major arcana of tarot was the Hermit, an old man with a walking stick, but that wasn't the figure represented on the card. He reached out to run his fingers over the figure and the veve, but paused before they could touch the card. He took a slow breath and heard Miss Laura ask if he was alright. He glanced up at her through his bangs, then back down at the card.
"Papa Legba."
* * *
Violet, Louisiana, October 2005
When the picnic broke up and the group separated out into clumps of twos and threes, Monica stuck close to Dean. He gave her a lift back out to her house and they sat there, parked at the Winn Dixie and staring across at it. Dean opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't think of what to say. The sun was starting to set, casting the sky in a darker gray and making the scene all the more desolate. He had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do now.
"You got somewhere to stay?" he asked finally. She couldn't stay in the house. Even if she wanted to, he wasn't sure he'd let her.
"Yeah," she said. "Friend of a friend downtown. His house is okay. You?"
Dean shrugged. "I'll find something. Always do." He could feel her watching him, but didn't turn his head.
"This is what you do?" she asked. "Travel around, looking for people to help?"
"Pretty much,"
"You find a lot of 'em?"
"Yeah."
"Do you try to charm the pants off of all of 'em, or am I special?"
Dean laughed. "Bout half and half, I guess."
"Does it usually work?"
"Yep." He turned his head, giving her a devilish grin. "Ladies can't keep their hands offa me."
She snorted. "I bet." She tilted her head, giving him a once over. "You're not my type,"
"I'm everybody's type."
"You're not my type," she repeated. "But. I can't let the guy who drove all over town just to try and get me coffee sleep in his car. Come with me downtown. I'm sure we can get you at least a nice bit of floor."
Dean considered saying no. He considered dropping her off and getting his ass back out of town, maybe heading up to New Hampshire to see if John was done with his hunt up there. Getting as far from this dead Parish as he could get.
Instead, he shifted the Impala into gear and asked "which way?"
The Parish might've been dead, and the city in critical on life support. But Dean couldn't shake the feeling that, somehow, he was where he belonged.
* * *
The French Quarter, New Orleans, March 2008
Sam gave Miss Laura fifty dollars for the reading, far more than the rates advertised on her sign. She didn't protest. He stayed seated long enough for her to confirm that the card was, indeed, Legba before thanking her quietly and standing up, turning his body to face his brother, though his eyes stayed stuck on the veve on the card.
He was madly sorting through what he knew of the voodoo loa, specifically as they were presented in the amalgamated Americanized version of the religion, which borrowed a great deal from the Catholic saints as well as the gods and spirits of its origin in Africa. Legba was the Gatekeeper, associated with St. Peter, but was also sometimes connected to Ellegua, an African trickster. He was the middle-man between mankind and the rest of the loa, the first and last summoned in a voodoo ritual. He was a warrior and a guardian of destiny, a master of all languages and a storyteller. In Africa he was a seducer and symbol of fertility.
Most importantly for Sam's purposes, he was the guardian of the crossroads.
Sam could've kicked himself for not thinking of it, sooner.
Dean was finishing up with his new wanna-be-pirate friend as Sam finished thanking Miss Laura and turned away from her table. He looked up at Sam with an open, hopeful expression and a slightly sardonic turn of his lips.
Trickster, warrior, guardian. Yeah. Dean was definitely a Legba man.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
Dean rolled his eyes slightly and elbowed Sam in the ribs, leading the way towards the other side of the cathedral to a pedestrians-only alleyway marked as Pirate's Alley. "Well, how'd it go?"
Sam shrugged nonchalantly, though inside he was burning with the need to go hunt down more information and a voodoo practitioner or two. "It was okay."
"Was she a total crank, or what?"
Sam shrugged again and Dean chuckled. If he had any idea that Sam had gotten some useful information out of Miss Laura, he wasn't showing it. "Well, while you were getting your new age on with Laura, I got some information from Pepe, back there."
Sam half-turned to look back towards the eye-patched man. "Pepe?"
"His real name's probably Steve or something. Total poser, but that's about half of what you get around here. The French Quarter's actually more newcomers than born-and-breds."
"Then what the hell are we doing here?"
"Newcomers are all into the culture, man. They're very up on a lot of the hoodoo and legends. And not so used to the crime around here not to want to know all about the latest string of murders."
Sam couldn't argue much with that logic, though he suspected Dean was throwing it together on the fly, looking for more excuses to hit up some of his favorite tourist traps in the city rather than get down and dirty with the hunt. Sam couldn't blame him, really. It was a far cry from his mad-cap sex adventures and the massive gluttony that he'd engaged in just after the deal went down, but Dean was still looking to live it up during his final year. Now that he had a clearer direction on where to look for a way to give Dean all the extra years he really deserved, Sam was much more willing to just play along.
"So what'd Pepe have to say, then?"
"A lot of what you've already managed to dig up, the river mud, the smothering, the lack of connection between the victims. He did tell me there's been another one. Just last night, apparently, over in Marigny. Some poor old rich gay dude who ran a B&B, out walking his dog."
Sam nodded. "And if it was just last night. . . ."
"We've got time to check out the corpse." Dean turned left as they left the alley and started down the block. "I figure we'll circle back around to the car, get ourselves settled in somewhere, and then go pay a visit to the morgue."
"Sounds good," Sam said, reaching out to swat a hand over Dean's hair. "But I think we should shower first. You've got sugar in your hair."
* * *
In and around New Orleans, Louisiana, October 2005
The friend of a friend's house came exactly as advertised -- an almost undamaged cottage on the edge of the French Quarter, packed full of people as homeless as Monica. Every spare piece of furniture that might make a decent bed had been claimed, but Dean was more than happy to take up a bit of floor space with his duffel as a pillow. It gave him room to stretch out his legs that the Impala couldn't provide, and while there were certainly places all around where Dean could have squatted, for once being surrounded by "normal" people wasn't making him feel claustrophobic.
They may not have been hunters, but every person in that place was as far from "normal" as he was.
The place was owned by a grizzled Creole man named Rene who Dean didn't manage to meet until he'd been staying there for several days. Rene was a very busy and exceptionally secretive man, and try as Dean might, no one in the house would ever seem to talk about him. It was enough that he had welcomed them in. If he wanted to share his story with them, he'd do so on his own time. Dean had a feeling Bob wouldn't have lasted long in the place.
Dean had no concrete case to be working on, and the first night, he'd lain awake on the hardwood floor of the living room, staring up at the dim illumination coming in through the wood-slat blinds that covered the windows and wondering if he should be moving on. The next day, John called, telling him he was headed for Jericho, California to check out a series of missing persons. When Dean asked if he wanted help, John brushed him off. Said he could do more good if he kept going after his own cases. The same spiel Dean had gotten since just after Sam had jumped ship, as though they were supposed to be somehow stronger if they were divided. Still, John had a point. There were other people out there helping here, and other people out there who needed the unique Winchester brand of help. So he started packing his bag.
Then Monica asked him for a ride to her grandmother's house in Violet. And he sat in the Impala, staring forward at the little gray brick house with the white, spray painted tag noting that a single body the search and rescue team had found in the back bedroom, and Monica turned her face into his shoulder and sobbed. He reached out a hand, awkwardly and hesitantly, and rested it between her shoulder blades. A second tag, this one in dark blue, represented the salvage team which had finally come to remove the body. The date listed on it was only a few days before he'd gotten into town.
He decided he could stick it out for another day.
The next day, Christian showed up with a battered, mud covered truck, the bed filled with sledgehammers, crowbars, and face masks. Gutting materials. And Dean had found himself up to his elbows in damp sheetrock and moldy insulation by noon and rinsing off in a sudden downpour before sharing a beer with the man at three. On his sixth day there, he was holding Monica again, this time after hearing the news that Ernest had been found dead on his front lawn -- an apparent heart attack -- and he finally stopped promising himself he'd only stay another day.
It wasn't until he'd been there more than a week that he realized there really was a hunt to be had, here.
He was at Christian's place, finishing up the gutting on the back room with the other man, when Bob and Katie arrived with the news. The older Jim was dead, found floating in his overflowing, dirty swimming pool the night before. Word on the street -- the only real word there was in the Parish, these days -- was that he'd committed suicide. Bob said it matter-of-factly, eyes locked on Dean's as he spoke, as though challenging him to say something. Dean imagined he could read the man's thoughts, hear the See? Where's your hope and help now, Kansas? that Bob refused to say, and he kept quiet, jaw tight and face solemn, holding Bob's gaze firmly until he finished speaking and Katie spoke up.
"It doesn't seem right." She wiped at the corner of one eye with the ragged edge of her long sleeve t-shirt. Her eyes were slightly red, but her cheeks were clean, and if she was close to tears, she was holding them back. "You heard what he did. You don't chop your way out your own attic just to drown yourself a few months later."
The look Bob turned on her was pitying, and he put an arm over her shoulder. "Not everyone's strong enough for this," he said, not unkindly, before looking back up, this time to Christian instead of Dean. "We should get going. Just wanted to let you know."
Christian nodded his thanks and Bob and Katie were on their way. Dean stayed where he was, leaning against the front wall of Christian's house, and followed Bob's silver sedan with his eyes until it turned the corner and pulled out of sight. He heard Christian cross the lawn to his truck and return with a clink of bottles, then finally turned his head when he felt cold glass press into his arm. He took the offered beer with a nod and popped it open against the windowsill.
"He's right," Christian said, when they'd both downed about half their bottles. "Not everyone can do this." He shook his head. "Don't blame Jim in the least."
Dean could, but kept his mouth shut.
"Ernest, either," Christian continued, and Dean frowned.
"Ernest was a heart attack."
"So they say."
"You got reason to think otherwise?"
Christian shrugged. "Ernest was a healthy man. Looked after himself, before the storm."
"Maybe the stress got to him."
Christian sighed, looking back towards his house. Dean figured that if stress could take down anyone, it'd be a man who'd just lost his entire life in a flood. The look on his face seemed to show that Christian agreed.
"Yeah," he said, shoulders rising slightly. "Exactly."
* * *
Foubourg Marigny, New Orleans, March 2008
Sam researched the latest victim while Dean showered. It took everything in him not to pull up a new tab and run a search for everything on Legba and tarot and voodoo on the internet, but even if Dean had purposefully sent him to the fortune teller -- even if Dean had developed a semblance of subtlety -- they were still supposed to be going to the morgue next, and they couldn't exactly walk in and ask to see the "poor old rich gay dude".
Well, they could, and hell, from what Sam'd seen of this town so far, they might not even seem that weird for doing it. They'd just get tossed on their asses and a lecture on morbid tourism or something. Much better to go in prepared with some info, especially considering Dean's assurance that he "already had the perfect cover" for them. Sam was just hoping they weren't bikini inspectors again.
"Know what I love about this city, Sam?" Dean asked as they drove to Tulane University Hospital, where the latest body had ended up.
"I'm guessing it's the sugar. You wanna know about our latest vic or not?"
"It's the acronym."
Sam frowned and looked up from where he was skimming over his notes on the case so far. ". . . What?"
"Acronym. You know, when you get a word out of the initials of --"
"I know what an acronym is, Dean." Though he was slightly surprised that Dean did -- or at least that he was able to think of the word on the fly. Vocabulary had never been Dean's strong suit.
"Right, so. The acronym."
"Is your favorite part about the city."
Dean tilted his head with a slight smirk. "Okay, so Bourbon Street might actually win out, but the acronym is way up there."
Sam couldn't help but bite. "Why?"
Dean flipped open his fake badge with his eyebrows raised and his lips pulled back in a grin. "No P.D.!"
Sam was torn between rubbing his forehead and laughing. "You've been planning that since Texas, haven't you."
"Nah, just since Baton Rouge. But man, think about it. No police department. No waste management. University of No."
Sam shook his head. "I think that one's actually referred to as UNO."
"Almost as cool."
Sam did laugh then, under his breath, and caught sight of Dean's bright smile fading into something real and triumphant for a moment, out of the corner of his eye. He had a sudden image of this being it for them -- Dean's final hunt with his brother, making sure he got in all the sights and sounds and laughs that he could. And that, Sam suddenly knew, was why Dean had lead him to Miss Laura. Son of a bitch was trying to let Sam down easy and give them both a last hurrah.
Sam was going to kill him. Just as soon as he saved his life.
Dean must have caught some hint of Sam's thoughts on his face because he abruptly sobered. "Right, so. Old, rich, gay, dead dude."
"His name was James."
"Old, rich, gay, dead James, then."
"Aged fifty-seven, co-owner of the Cajun Courtyard Guest House in --"
"Marigny," Dean finished. "We already knew that part. Which makes fruity James the third victim from the Frenchman's Street area. Sucker's got a hard-on for East New Orleans."
Sam tried not to roll his eyes at Dean name-dropping neighborhoods. "Anyway. James Blockhaus was a Pennsylvania native, moved to New Orleans with his partner in 1985."
"The first chick was a transplant, too. Could be a pattern."
Sam nodded slowly and flipped through his notes, then shook his head. "No good. Got a couple locals in here, too."
Dean pursed his lips. "There's gotta be a connection somewhere."
"Different sexes, different races, ages, hometowns, sexualities, religions. . . ." Sam sighed. "Nothing."
"Right. Maybe the body'll give us a hint. If not -- think Mrs. Gay Dead James is still in town?"
"Don't see why not. I could go talk to him while you hit the morgue."
"We're not splitting up."
"Yeah, well, I'm not going to let you call Mr. Blockhaus's partner 'Mrs. Gay Dead James'."
Dean grinned suddenly as he turned into the parking lot for the hospital. "Aw, Sammy, you never let me have any fun."
Sam shook his head, not bothering to stop his own lips from curling up while he checked his own badge. "Detective Andre DeSoto? Dude, are you trying to get us caught?" He shook his head, flipping it closed again. "Why didn't you just name me Stanley Kowalski?"
"Who?"
"Streetcar Named --" Sam cut himself off when Dean continued to stare blankly at him. "Never mind. Let's go, McSwain."
* * *
In and around New Orleans, October 2005
New Orleans had always been a transitory place in Dean's mind -- any place that got that many tourists had to be used to comings and goings. It was, it seemed to him, even more so in the months after the storm. People came back, saw the damage, and, most often, left again almost immediately. It was still too big for them to deal with, and places to stay while sorting it out, especially for Parish residents, were few and far between. Dean heard from a few that they weren't going too far, just a couple towns over and up, where the damage wasn't so bad and they could wait for -- whatever they might have coming. Some, it seemed, took one look at their old home and gave up, left without looking back.
He could understand both. Well, as much as a guy who'd never had much of a home to speak of could understand those who'd had one at all.
Still, by the end of the first week, he and Monica were some of the longest standing residents of Rene's cottage, and Dean had been offered to trade up from his floor spot more than once, though he always turned the offers down. Each time, if Monica was around, she'd give him this measuring look and say "You can't stay on the floor forever," and Dean would shrug back, flash her a smile, and point out that, if he wanted cushioning, he could always sleep in his car, a luxury that many of the people who came and went at Rene's didn't have. Monica would nod, keep up that strange, measuring expression for a moment longer, and then move on. Dean was pretty sure he was turning out to be more and more her "type" after all.
The cottage was up-river and slightly lake-side (New Orleans, Dean quickly learned, didn't put much stock into "north" and "south", something that made more sense when you realized that the "West Bank" had a tendency in places to actually be to the east) of the French Quarter, and the days that Dean wasn't heading into the Parish with Monica and Christian to gut and salvage he spent talking to the few people he found around town, some of whom had been in town seemingly since the storm itself, dodging National Guard and living off of salvaged materials and spoiling food. He wanted to ask them about unusual deaths, but it was hard to pin down what counted as "unusual" when the person had spent the last six weeks baking lasagna on hot tarred roofs or watching TVs powered by car batteries. It seemed like everyone in town had a "dead guy story", as one survivor with a particular fondness for coining phrases had put it. Dead guys on porches, dead guys in the street, dead guys noted in spray paint on the sides of houses. Dead guys and girls and dogs and goats, and not just from the storm and the flooding. Seemed like crime was skyrocketing as people were trickling back in -- the expected looting, of course, especially for groceries -- but robberies and muggings, too. Even the occasional senseless killing. The city was a wild thing, these days, people almost as likely to snap and lash out as they were to stop and help.
Dean couldn't help but think that it sounded like almost every day of his life.
Some of the stories weren't so bad. There was the man who drove around in a truck covered with magnets -- bits and bobs he'd picked up from refrigerators people had lugged out and left for dead by the side of the road -- and the woman near City Park who'd taken to adopting whatever stray cats wandered past her house -- and there were plenty of strays of every sort to go around. Still, there wasn't a single person around who wasn't high strung and on edge, making the city and its suburbs prime spots for anything from spirit activity to demonic infestation. And all Dean had were a couple explainable deaths in the Parish, and a handful of people who didn't want to think that their neighborhood was a broken as it really was.
And then one day, towards the end of Dean's second week in town, a man pulled up in front of Helen's house in a shiny, mud-free silver rental and wearing a crisply pressed black suit and offered to buy the place. She turned him down, gave Christian a heads up on the guy over dinner, and headed home. She was found dead two days later by a returning neighbor, and Dean suddenly had a lead.
No one could say for sure if Ernest had been approached, but Katie was able to confirm that Jim had, and had reacted the same way as Helen. Now he just had to figure out how to track down a mysterious guy in a suit and a silver car when the only eye-witnesses he had to the guy were dead.
He could never pick the easy cases, could he?
He didn't even consider the question of whether or not the case was his thing. Hell, it probably wasn't. But the police was alternately laughable and terrifying, definitely not a system that Dean was willing to trust. And he'd been here, now, longer than he'd been anywhere since Sam had graduated high school; he was beginning to care about these people, Monica and Christian especially. So even if the guy was some psycho real estate freak who hadn't lined up fast enough for the Walgreens prozac, it was still up to Dean to track him down and end him.
In a city as empty as this one, one wouldn't have thought it'd be that hard.
He asked and he asked and he asked. No one knew much of anything -- the only ones who'd seen the guy were apparently the people he approached for a deal, and they were all either dead or long gone, transplanted to some other, less desolate city. After two days, even Christian, who'd shared his suspicion at the deaths of his friends, was looking at him funny or changing the subject. Bob, who'd taken to stopping by most days, either to borrow tools or just share a beer, was particularly unhelpful.
"Knock it off, kid."
"You don't think it's strange."
"Isn't much around here that isn't, these days."
"Strange even for here."
Christian made his excuses and headed off around the house, leaving Bob and Dean to lean against the wall and watch the narrow street. Bob set down his beer and moved to face Dean head on. "What are you doing here, Dean?"
Dean rolled his eyes. "I told you."
"You think this is helping? These people are scared enough."
Dean gritted his teeth. "What's your problem, Bob?"
"This city cares for itself."
"This city is dying."
"And you think one upstart from Kansas is going to make a difference? What can you possibly do for us that we can't do for ourselves?"
"You have no idea what I'm capable of."
"And you have no idea what you're messing with."
Dean squared his shoulders and stared Bob in the eye. "Then tell me."
Bob huffed, stared back for a moment, and then turned away. "Get out of here, kid. Work's done for the day. I won't tell you again."
Dean scowled and dug out his car keys. "Good. Getting sick of hearing it." He turned and headed down the narrow, impassible street towards the main thoroughfare where he'd parked the Impala, not looking back to see Bob watching him go.
Some people just didn't know how to accept a helping hand.
He got within ten feet of the car when he felt an arm wrap around his neck. He reached up to grab it, squawking out a curse -- mostly at himself for not being armed aside from his knife in his boot -- and a cloth, dark colored and foul smelling, smacked down over his nose and mouth. He inhaled automatically, gagged, and felt the arm around his throat tighten briefly before the world spun around him and went black.
* * *
Additional author's note: As I mentioned in part one, this fic and the stories and lives of the original characters are based upon primary sources, both written and oral, of actual Katrina victims. While the characters and the specifics of each story are fictional, their basis is not, and each is an amalgamation of stories actually told to me by residents of St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans, and the columns of Chris Rose as compiled in the volume 1 Dead in Attic. My primary focus here is, of course, to write an interesting and compelling story, but should anyone be interested in helping out in St. Bernard Parish, St. Bernard Project is always accepting volunteers and donations, and there's still a lot of work to be done. Thanks for reading.