Dead Man Walking
word count: 1515
rating: PG
characters/pairing: John, Dean, [Spoiler (click to open)]Victor Henriksen
warnings: mention of a suicide
summary: One night in May 2007, John Winchester walked out of a Devil's Gate and was never seen again.
It wasn't for lack of trying.
Post season 11 AU.
Also on AO3 here.
The bar was one he'd only been in once or twice as a human, frequented by hunters but not enough to include the hidden devils' traps and spellwork that the Roadhouse had.
He didn't know what would happen if he tried to cross a devil's trap, but he didn't really want to find out the hard way if he was vulnerable. Not when he really didn't know what he was, and certainly not before he had some sort of ally to help him figure it out.
He was a spirit, yes, but not a vengeful one, or at least not yet. Despite of the forty years in Hell, he didn't think he qualified as a demon. He would be the first to tell you that he wasn't an angel by any means, so that sort of left him in an undefined limbo.
He had spent years trying to become corporeal again. He rarely managed to solidify himself long enough to be visible or to move an object. He came to the conclusion that the concentration of supernatural energy in the old cowboy cemetery was the only reason he had been able to manifest for the boys that one time.
Taking a vessel was the first step in figuring out what he was and what he could do about it. For years he had spurned the idea, remembering what it was like to be possessed, remembering how it felt to hurt his sons against his will.
Then one day, he just happened to be right there when a young man jumped off the bridge. Not really certain how he had even done it, John jumped into the meatsuit and swam to shore, despite the other inhabitant of the body screaming to stop and just let him drown.
It turned out that taking a body was easier than John had ever dreamed. The owner didn't want it anymore, didn't want to live in this world anymore, so he just let go and his soul left, leaving John with the physical body.
An actual physical presence made it easier to move about, to move things around him, and to speak to others. Unfortunately, it also made it necessary to eat, sleep, and do things John had been accustomed to not doing as a spirit.
He had thought the body would make it easier to find the boys.
It should have.
But, he arrived at the Roadhouse to find a vacant lot. He went to Bobby's house, to find burned out ruins, and someone in town had told him "Singer? He died, what was it Ed, about three years ago? Shot in some kind of hunting accident, I heard."
Jim and Caleb had died before John had, and he knew that hunting was not a job with a long life expectancy, but it was still a surprise to learn that Ellen, Jo, Travis, Martin, Annie, Irv, and even old Rufus Turner, who John had always thought too mean to die, were all gone.
The hardest to accept however, was that Adam and Kate were dead. One of his biggest regrets was that he had never introduced Dean and Sam to their brother. He never told Kate and Adam about the supernatural world because he thought it would keep them safe. It hadn't.
He occasionally met with someone who knew the boys, so he had learned that they were, as far as the hunting community knew, alive and well.
For the moment at least, because if half the stories told could be believed, both of the boys had died and come back multiple times, they'd been possessed by Lucifer and Michael, at one point Sam had been believed to be the Anti-Christ, their best friends were an outcast angel and the King of Hell, and Dean may or may not have been a Knight of Hell at some point.
They were also somewhat of a polarizing factor, equally likely to receive a viciously hateful reaction as they were to receive worshipful praises. The hunting community seem to regard them as gods among men.
What no one knew, however, was where to find them.
There was talk that they had a home base, somewhere in the midwest. It wasn't at Bobby's old place, or any of the hunter safehouses John knew.
So John criss-crossed the country, sometimes picking up a hunt, but mostly looking for his boys.
After all, it wasn't like he had anything better to do with his time.
He almost caught up with them four times, but each time he arrived in town just after they had finished the case and gone.
He met a hunter along the way, a dark skinned man with a shaved head who obviously had law enforcement training that he didn't want to talk about.
They worked two demon cases together before John asked if the man knew the Winchesters.
The man just looked at him for almost a full minute and then said "Yeah."
He didn't say anything else, and John figured from his reaction, it was best not to press the issue.
It was eight months and three more hunts together later that they were splitting a bottle of whiskey after putting down a werewolf that Vince Henry started talking.
He had been an FBI agent, and his job had been to bring in the Winchester brothers, dead or alive. He'd tracked them for almost two years, and had them in custody twice.
The first time, they had escaped.
The second time, he let them go after being possessed by a demon and exorcised by Sam. He helped them exorcise a whole police station full of demons. After they left, one more demon came along, and killed everyone in the police station, including him.
Seven months later, he woke up in a mausoleum crypt. He never knew how or why.
Special Agent Victor Henriksen didn't think the FBI would appreciate his return from the dead, so he'd been hunting since then, using the name Vince Henry and his knowledge of FBI procedures to stay one step ahead of them.
Vince had kept tabs on the Winchesters, but never sought them out.
He had some pretty strong opinions about John Winchester, none of them favorable. John figured it was a good thing he was currently using the alias John Adams and the body of a biracial man half his age and that Vince thought he was just a fanboy.
They usually hunted together after that. Hunting was a lot easier and less lethal with a partner.
John wasn't sure how he managed to never tip off Vince that he was actually a spirit in a body that didn't belong to him.
John was waiting at the bar for Vince, as they had split up to interview separate witnesses in their latest case. He was waiting to hear what Vince had learned, but John was pretty certain he knew which grave they were going to dig up in a few hours.
One moment he had just finished his beer and was waving at the bartender for another.
The next he was standing in a forest he didn't recognize. He turned completely around, slowly. He couldn't see much. He could hear normal outdoor, night time sounds.
He didn't see or hear anything supernatural, but the hair on the back of his neck was standing up.
He reached out to touch the nearest tree, to verify that it was real and solid and not part of some hallucination.
The tree was real enough, but the sight of his own hand made him startle and freeze.
It was John Winchester's hand.
This was the hand of an older white man, with a long thin scar where he had cut it on a piece of barbed wire in boot camp. He hadn't seen this hand since he sent Sam to get him a cup of coffee in a hospital in Shiloh.
He looked down and realized that he wasn't wearing the clothes he had on just moments before. He usually wore an olive drab jacket with a USMC t-shirt. He'd found that people gave him a lot less trouble as a black man when they thought he was a veteran.
He was wearing jeans, a khaki t-shirt, and the button down that Dean said couldn't decide if it was brown or green or gray.
The clothes he had died in.
A twig snapped, and a branch rustled off to his left.
He quickly felt his pockets and his boots, looking for a weapon, but came up empty.
He spotted a piece of a broken branch, smaller than a baseball bat, but hopefully large enough to defend himself with. To his surprise, he was able to pick it up.
A voice he would have recognized anywhere spoke from the other side of the tree line.
"Come on, where the hell am I?"
John stepped into the clearing, finding himself face to face with an older, harder version of his eldest son.
"Dean?"
Dean raised his gun without hesitation, pointing it directly at his father's face.
"What the hell are you?"
A/N - this was intended to be the first chapter of a post season 11 AU in which John and Victor hunted with Dean and Sam and everybody clashed and Cas and Crowley didn't like the Dean/Victor bromance. Obviously, I never finished it.
rating: PG
characters/pairing: John, Dean, [Spoiler (click to open)]Victor Henriksen
warnings: mention of a suicide
summary: One night in May 2007, John Winchester walked out of a Devil's Gate and was never seen again.
It wasn't for lack of trying.
Post season 11 AU.
Also on AO3 here.
The bar was one he'd only been in once or twice as a human, frequented by hunters but not enough to include the hidden devils' traps and spellwork that the Roadhouse had.
He didn't know what would happen if he tried to cross a devil's trap, but he didn't really want to find out the hard way if he was vulnerable. Not when he really didn't know what he was, and certainly not before he had some sort of ally to help him figure it out.
He was a spirit, yes, but not a vengeful one, or at least not yet. Despite of the forty years in Hell, he didn't think he qualified as a demon. He would be the first to tell you that he wasn't an angel by any means, so that sort of left him in an undefined limbo.
He had spent years trying to become corporeal again. He rarely managed to solidify himself long enough to be visible or to move an object. He came to the conclusion that the concentration of supernatural energy in the old cowboy cemetery was the only reason he had been able to manifest for the boys that one time.
Taking a vessel was the first step in figuring out what he was and what he could do about it. For years he had spurned the idea, remembering what it was like to be possessed, remembering how it felt to hurt his sons against his will.
Then one day, he just happened to be right there when a young man jumped off the bridge. Not really certain how he had even done it, John jumped into the meatsuit and swam to shore, despite the other inhabitant of the body screaming to stop and just let him drown.
It turned out that taking a body was easier than John had ever dreamed. The owner didn't want it anymore, didn't want to live in this world anymore, so he just let go and his soul left, leaving John with the physical body.
An actual physical presence made it easier to move about, to move things around him, and to speak to others. Unfortunately, it also made it necessary to eat, sleep, and do things John had been accustomed to not doing as a spirit.
He had thought the body would make it easier to find the boys.
It should have.
But, he arrived at the Roadhouse to find a vacant lot. He went to Bobby's house, to find burned out ruins, and someone in town had told him "Singer? He died, what was it Ed, about three years ago? Shot in some kind of hunting accident, I heard."
Jim and Caleb had died before John had, and he knew that hunting was not a job with a long life expectancy, but it was still a surprise to learn that Ellen, Jo, Travis, Martin, Annie, Irv, and even old Rufus Turner, who John had always thought too mean to die, were all gone.
The hardest to accept however, was that Adam and Kate were dead. One of his biggest regrets was that he had never introduced Dean and Sam to their brother. He never told Kate and Adam about the supernatural world because he thought it would keep them safe. It hadn't.
He occasionally met with someone who knew the boys, so he had learned that they were, as far as the hunting community knew, alive and well.
For the moment at least, because if half the stories told could be believed, both of the boys had died and come back multiple times, they'd been possessed by Lucifer and Michael, at one point Sam had been believed to be the Anti-Christ, their best friends were an outcast angel and the King of Hell, and Dean may or may not have been a Knight of Hell at some point.
They were also somewhat of a polarizing factor, equally likely to receive a viciously hateful reaction as they were to receive worshipful praises. The hunting community seem to regard them as gods among men.
What no one knew, however, was where to find them.
There was talk that they had a home base, somewhere in the midwest. It wasn't at Bobby's old place, or any of the hunter safehouses John knew.
So John criss-crossed the country, sometimes picking up a hunt, but mostly looking for his boys.
After all, it wasn't like he had anything better to do with his time.
He almost caught up with them four times, but each time he arrived in town just after they had finished the case and gone.
He met a hunter along the way, a dark skinned man with a shaved head who obviously had law enforcement training that he didn't want to talk about.
They worked two demon cases together before John asked if the man knew the Winchesters.
The man just looked at him for almost a full minute and then said "Yeah."
He didn't say anything else, and John figured from his reaction, it was best not to press the issue.
It was eight months and three more hunts together later that they were splitting a bottle of whiskey after putting down a werewolf that Vince Henry started talking.
He had been an FBI agent, and his job had been to bring in the Winchester brothers, dead or alive. He'd tracked them for almost two years, and had them in custody twice.
The first time, they had escaped.
The second time, he let them go after being possessed by a demon and exorcised by Sam. He helped them exorcise a whole police station full of demons. After they left, one more demon came along, and killed everyone in the police station, including him.
Seven months later, he woke up in a mausoleum crypt. He never knew how or why.
Special Agent Victor Henriksen didn't think the FBI would appreciate his return from the dead, so he'd been hunting since then, using the name Vince Henry and his knowledge of FBI procedures to stay one step ahead of them.
Vince had kept tabs on the Winchesters, but never sought them out.
He had some pretty strong opinions about John Winchester, none of them favorable. John figured it was a good thing he was currently using the alias John Adams and the body of a biracial man half his age and that Vince thought he was just a fanboy.
They usually hunted together after that. Hunting was a lot easier and less lethal with a partner.
John wasn't sure how he managed to never tip off Vince that he was actually a spirit in a body that didn't belong to him.
John was waiting at the bar for Vince, as they had split up to interview separate witnesses in their latest case. He was waiting to hear what Vince had learned, but John was pretty certain he knew which grave they were going to dig up in a few hours.
One moment he had just finished his beer and was waving at the bartender for another.
The next he was standing in a forest he didn't recognize. He turned completely around, slowly. He couldn't see much. He could hear normal outdoor, night time sounds.
He didn't see or hear anything supernatural, but the hair on the back of his neck was standing up.
He reached out to touch the nearest tree, to verify that it was real and solid and not part of some hallucination.
The tree was real enough, but the sight of his own hand made him startle and freeze.
It was John Winchester's hand.
This was the hand of an older white man, with a long thin scar where he had cut it on a piece of barbed wire in boot camp. He hadn't seen this hand since he sent Sam to get him a cup of coffee in a hospital in Shiloh.
He looked down and realized that he wasn't wearing the clothes he had on just moments before. He usually wore an olive drab jacket with a USMC t-shirt. He'd found that people gave him a lot less trouble as a black man when they thought he was a veteran.
He was wearing jeans, a khaki t-shirt, and the button down that Dean said couldn't decide if it was brown or green or gray.
The clothes he had died in.
A twig snapped, and a branch rustled off to his left.
He quickly felt his pockets and his boots, looking for a weapon, but came up empty.
He spotted a piece of a broken branch, smaller than a baseball bat, but hopefully large enough to defend himself with. To his surprise, he was able to pick it up.
A voice he would have recognized anywhere spoke from the other side of the tree line.
"Come on, where the hell am I?"
John stepped into the clearing, finding himself face to face with an older, harder version of his eldest son.
"Dean?"
Dean raised his gun without hesitation, pointing it directly at his father's face.
"What the hell are you?"
A/N - this was intended to be the first chapter of a post season 11 AU in which John and Victor hunted with Dean and Sam and everybody clashed and Cas and Crowley didn't like the Dean/Victor bromance. Obviously, I never finished it.