SPN FIC - He Believes In Happily Ever After (Carol's Top 10)
You might be curious about my favorite John story. It's this one - a bit of an answer to "How much did he know, and when did he know it?" It got very little attention when I first posted it, I suppose for a variety of reasons, but I'm proud of it.
CHARACTERS: John, Mary, Rufus Turner
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: In the Beginning
LENGTH: 3376 words
With a headache blossoming like a summer-rain-fed weed behind his eyes, pain he told himself came purely from driving without sunglasses, from sleeping and eating and drinking too little (drinking water too little; from drinking the hard stuff too much), he pulled the truck off onto the dirt shoulder of the road and dropped the engine down out of gear. The moment the truck stopped moving he lost hold of the little bit of wakefulness he'd been nursing since he crossed the state line into Vermont. The leaden weight his body had then made him wince. It'd be a wonder, he thought, a goddamned gold-plated wonder, if he'd be able to walk more than a couple of steps without falling flat on his face.
HE BELIEVES IN HAPPILY EVER AFTER
By Carol Davis
Anybody with common sense would have stopped. Would have pulled into the parking lot of one of the motels that'd been popping up every mile or so along the road and laid down payment for a room. Would've found themselves some dinner, whatever the menu offered that didn't suggest they'd be singing Hello, heartburn, my old friend at two o'clock in the morning. Would've submerged themselves in a stinging-hot bath and let it leach the road-weariness back out of their bones.
Would've tapped into the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue that'd been riding shotgun since three states back, and to hell with Rufus Turner.
Anybody with sense would have done that.
But nobody had accused John Winchester of having the sense God gave a cocker spaniel since…
Since before.
Since that other life.
Still… What was true now would still be true tomorrow.
And who the fuck was Rufus Turner, anyway?
With a headache blossoming like a summer-rain-fed weed behind his eyes, pain he told himself came purely from driving without sunglasses, from sleeping and eating and drinking too little (drinking water too little; from drinking the hard stuff too much), he pulled the truck off onto the dirt shoulder of the road and dropped the engine down out of gear. The moment the truck stopped moving he lost hold of the little bit of wakefulness he'd been nursing since he crossed the state line into Vermont. The leaden weight his body had then made him wince. It'd be a wonder, he thought, a goddamned gold-plated wonder, if he'd be able to walk more than a couple of steps without falling flat on his face.
You need some sleep, said a whispery voice in the back of his head.
No time for that.
The voice didn't answer, but the shudder that ran through his shoulders did. Lacking common sense was one thing, but being exhausted enough to be unable to hold his own in a fight - well, maybe that was worth listening to.
No time.
But there was time, wasn't there? One night? Just one night. Turner would still be there in the morning. Turner rarely left his house, hadn't gone much past the town limits for years. He'd be there, when John was ready to talk to him.
He'd be ready.
Question is, are you ready? the voice asked. You ready for this, John?
Back then, back before, he'd liked the way sleep would wrap him up and take him when he was too far gone to keep his eyes open. Best part of the day, when he could slide down between cool, soft sheets and sink his head onto a pillow that, if it smelled like anybody other than him, smelled like her. When he could just let go of the day, and the one that would come after.
When he could forget.
Never gonna be ready.
Riding shotgun alongside the blue-and-white foil box that'd set him back a hundred and fifty bucks was a folder jammed tight with newspaper clippings and scrawled notes and Xerox copies and faxes. He'd been putting that mess together for twenty years.
Never.
Never gonna be…
Rufus Turner probably wouldn't need to look at any of it.
* * *
"It's all right," she told him, but there was nothing in her voice to back that up. Nothing on her face, etched into a kind of frantic, frozen stillness he'd never seen there before - although he'd seen it on other faces. Back there. In country.
He thought he'd fought his way out of that. Had found his way back home, where things made sense.
"What -" he muttered.
"Sssshhh."
She was stroking him. Caressing his face. It would've made some kind of sense if he'd been sick, if he'd been lying in bed with her trying her best to bring him down from a bad fever. But he wasn't in bed, he was…on the ground. The numb cold in his butt and legs told him he'd been there for a while, out in the woods where it hadn't thawed all the way out from winter yet.
"Mary, what -"
He struggled. Forced his way out of her grasp, sat up, looked around.
Saw Mary's father lying dead arm's reach away, staring up at the sky.
"I want you to take me away," she said.
* * *
The tapping woke him up. There was a stranger standing alongside the truck, wearing civvies, but with Off-Duty Cop painted all over him. He had that pinch between his eyebrows that said he'd just as soon John not be there.
In his town.
Ever.
"You okay there, buddy?" he asked without much genuine interest.
Twisting his face into something he suspected wouldn't pass for a smile in anybody's imagination, John opened the window halfway and offered, "'M okay."
"Sure about that."
"Yeah. Yes. Thank you."
The stranger's gaze fell on the blue-and-white box. He'd spotted it before then, for sure, but he was ready to make sure John knew he'd seen it. And that he'd spent a good long while sizing John up before he bothered tapping on the window. "Motel right down there," he said, cocking his head. "Rates are decent."
"Thanks," John said again. "Headed for a friend's place."
"This friend expecting you?"
"Uh -"
That was a little bit too slow. Made Off-Duty's eyebrows pinch a little tighter.
Motel right down there. And sure as shit Off-Duty figured on following John down there. Figured on watching from the parking lot while John got himself signed in and made his way to a room. Pretty safe bet, too, that he'd sit there long enough to make sure John didn't come back out a few minutes later.
"Friend might like you a lot better if you show up in the morning."
You get my drift, asshole?
"Yeah," John said. "I…yeah."
The scrunched eyebrows loosened some. Off-Duty knuckled the truck and offered, "Ass end's hanging out into the road. Way they come flying around that turn, you could've created some shit."
"Motel," John said.
"Be your best bet."
* * *
His best bet.
He got one boot off before sleep took him again.
* * *
All he could do was stare. At her. At Sam Campbell, staring up at nothing.
"What -" he stammered, and it surprised him how thin his voice sounded. How it made him sound like a kid.
"It's over," she told him.
"What's over? What -"
She was clutching him pretty tight. He had to pry her fingers open before she'd let go of him. He'd figured on scrambling to his feet, but he was too cold - or maybe too something else - to make that happen, so he crawled from sitting to kneeling.
Her father was dead, all right.
"What happened?" he blurted, shrill as a girl.
She didn't answer. Just sat there, her arms curved around empty space, as if she thought she was still holding him.
"Mary."
"He went crazy," she mumbled, maybe more to herself than to him, her voice hollow, empty. "He hurt you. He would have killed us both."
John settled back a little, onto his haunches. Tried to remember how they'd gotten out here. It came back in little pieces: her running out to the car in tears, begging him to take her away. Settling down little by little the farther they got from her house. Settling down enough that he thought, Okay, let's just do it. It's a nice night.
They could elope, he'd thought. If she wanted to go away, they'd do that. Run away. Get married.
"Will you?" she asked.
He turned to look at her, at the way her eyes didn't seem to focus on anything.
Then his gaze went back to the body.
The body.
"I want to go away, John."
It was a while before he could bring himself to touch her.
* * *
Turner poured a couple of fingers of that hundred-and-fifty-buck whisky into a kitchen tumbler that had white and yellow flowers all over it. Set the bottle down, and positioned the glass right in front of him. Smiled at it, slow and sly, like he figured he had the world by the tit.
Pretty much did, John figured.
"So whaddayou want me to tell you?" Turner asked.
He'd taken his sweet time letting John inside the house. Had a whole collection of crazy-ass signs taped around his front door that all said basically the same thing: Leave me the fuck alone. Not until John had invoked a couple of names, and produced the JW Blue as an amen, did the ornery son of a bitch unlock the door.
All that aside, it was a pretty safe bet that Turner'd unlocked the door only because he was curious.
Curious about an unshaven, beat-down-looking guy in clothes that were a lot of years away from being new, and who the hell knew how long away from being washed. John had showered, had had a little bit of breakfast, but the guy who'd looked back at him from the truck's rearview was nobody he would have admitted into his own house, back…before.
It was close now, he reminded himself - the thing he'd been aiming for all these years. Time to get some shit together. His own, and some other people's.
Lot easier said than done.
Take me away, John. You said you'd take me away.
"Couple people told me you know things," John said, rubbing at the back of his neck.
"Maybe I do."
"About a demon."
Turner picked up the flowered tumbler and considered it like it was the goddamned Jewel of the Nile.
"Demon with yellow eyes," John specified.
"Azazel," Turner murmured.
"What?"
"A. Za. Zel. Thing's got a name."
"Okay."
Slow and gentle, with a wisp of a smile on his face like he was fucking that glass on a hot, sweet summer morning, Turner sipped his whisky and watched John sit there opposite him, trying with all the patience he could muster not to twitch. When Turner had drained the JW down to not much more than a stain in the bottom of the glass, he poured himself some more. Tipped the tumbler in John's direction in a little bit of a salute, a little bit of a bottoms up - although John had yet to touch his own drink - then began to nurse that second go-round in sips that wouldn't fill a teaspoon.
"Look," John said after a minute.
Turner raised a brow.
And said evenly, "She shoulda left you dead."
There was nothing mean-spirited about it. Nothing cruel. The man might as well have said This weather's a bitch or Can't get cellphone reception here worth a heap of monkey shit.
John's mouth opened a little.
Turner sat looking at him from the other side of his crooked, beat-up kitchen table, bottomless eyes unblinking over the lip of the tumbler. He was waiting for John to react, because John was going to react, and in exactly the way Turner expected him to; the boys in Vegas wouldn't even have bothered coming up with odds for that one.
With a hand that somehow didn't wobble, John lifted his glass, took a sip, and let the whisky cook its way down.
"Woulda been doin' you a favor," Turner said.
John's lips formed an I, prelude to I don't know what you're talking about.
Trouble was, he did know what Turner was talking about.
"Ain't a whole lot of coincidences in this world," Turner went on. "You figured that out a while back."
John shifted his shoulders. Didn't speak.
"Ten years to the day between you wakin' up on the ground, not knowin' what happened - and when that baby was born. Ten years to the day." Turner considered the flowered tumbler, turned it gently around in his long-fingered hands, took another sip. "Could be a coincidence, to somebody who don't know any better. But that ain't you, is it?"
"No," John said. "No. It's not."
* * *
Did I -? Did I? Oh my Jesus God.
He remembered Sam Campbell hauling Mary out of the car, dragging her like some wild thing with prey in its jaws. Remembered scrambling after her thinking He just wants to protect you??
Protect her? Was that protecting his daughter?
Drunk, maybe. Maybe he was drunk.
John lifted a hand to his neck, rubbed at the place where Campbell must have struck him to knock him out. It ached there, ached in a deep, persistent way that had shards of broken glass in it. He left the hand there, rubbing a little bit with the pads of his fingers, as he leaned in for a closer look at that man who'd been protecting his daughter. There was blood on Campbell's shirt. From what kind of wound, John couldn't tell. Not without pulling the shirt up.
"John," Mary groaned. Almost a keening sound.
"We can't go."
She plucked at his arm. Pleading.
"Mary. We have to call the police."
There'd been no weapon in the car. He was sure of that. No knife, certainly no gun. There weren't even any tools in the back; he hadn't had time to equip the trunk of his new baby with the things his dad had taught him were must-haves. He'd looked in the trunk back at the car lot and all that was in there was a spare and the tire iron. And you sure as hell didn't stab somebody to death with a tire iron.
"Mary," he rasped. "Tell me what happened."
* * *
"She never told you," Turner said.
Maybe it was the whisky that'd loosened things up. Maybe it was the road-weariness, the lack of sleep, of anything decent to eat.
Or maybe this had been going on for too fucking long.
"No," John replied. "She never did."
"Police report said he went nuts. Fought with the wife. Broke her neck, then stabbed himself. Out of remorse, maybe. Or just insanity. Stayed alive long enough to chase his daughter out there in the woods, tried to get her away from you, and dropped dead from blood loss. That sound about right?"
"Yes."
"Dropped dead. After he knocked you out."
"Yes."
"That make sense to you?"
"People can run for a while on adrenaline," John said quietly. "They said he was enraged. Just kept going."
"Enraged enough to kill you."
"He didn't -"
Turner considered his glass. "Report said he had a psychotic break. Fancy talk for going bugshit crazy. Man's a part of the community for a bunch of years, a little bit eccentric, comes and goes a lot, but gets along halfway decent with most people. Has a nice wife and a pretty daughter. Pays his taxes and gives out candy at Halloween. That seem like the kind of person who'd all of a sudden just go completely bugshit crazy? Occasional bad temper aside."
"People -"
"Shit happens? That what you're gonna put it down to?"
"I used to," John replied.
* * *
He held her hand at the funeral. Stood beside her as she accepted condolences from neighbors, acquaintances, people who had liked her mother. Her father had no friends, it seemed like. Or if he did, they hadn't shown up to help bury him.
There would be no going away. Not for a while; not until the police said it was all right.
She refused his company the next day. That afternoon, he sat behind the wheel of the black Impala, parked maybe forty yards from the house, and watched as Mary and a black man, a stranger, carried a series of boxes from the house to the man's battered old Ford Fairlane.
Tools, he told himself. The boxes contained Sam Campbell's tools.
From the basement. And the garage.
Just tools.
* * *
"It was you," John said.
Turner lifted a brow. Took another small, slow sip.
"You came to the house. Took all of his weapons away in your car. I thought it was tools you bought. Or car parts. Something. But she gave you all of his weapons."
"Gave her a fair price."
"She told you what happened?"
"Didn't need to," Turner replied. His free hand snaked across the table to touch the thick, rubber-banded folder John had carried in from the truck, his collection of notes and clippings and faxes, twenty years' worth of…what, evidence? "You know what went on back then. April of '73. Whole string of deaths. Mutilated cattle. Electrical storms. Power going out for no good reason. It was there."
"Azazel."
"Mm-hmm. Her parents die. Both of 'em, for no good reason. You wake up out in the woods and you don't know what hit you. And ten years later, ten years to the damn day -"
"We had a baby."
"You know what ten years means," Turner said. "Don'tcha?"
"I do now."
"You track him? Across the country? Write down what he did back in '73?"
John glanced at the folder. At the wrinkled, untidy collection of papers rubber-banded within it. "Storms. A lot of storms."
"And ten years later…a whole lot of children."
"How do I kill it?" John bit off, eyes locked on Turner's.
A couple of seconds slipped by. The air in that house hung heavy and silent. John could see dust motes swimming lazily around in the slice of sunlight coming in through the streaked and dirty kitchen window.
"I'll tell you some things," Turner said softly. "But you ain't gonna like 'em."
John lifted his glass and took a long, slow drink. Helluva thing to do at this hour, on top of a breakfast that was nothing more than a few bites of scrambled eggs and toast. But this was what it had come down to.
This morning, and this man.
"Tell me," he said.
* * *
Ten years to the damn day.
He woke to the spill of sunlight across his face. Blinked against it, threw an arm over his eyes. His neck ached, throbbed, started his head singing in counterpoint.
Ten years.
She shoulda left you dead.
Shoulda…
He stumbled from the bed, dragging the covers with him halfway to the bathroom before they agreed to turn him loose. Tripped on the metal threshold strip, collapsed to his knees on the tile floor hard enough to make his kneecaps shrill in protest, and dry-heaved into the crapper. Nothing much in him to bring up - he'd had nothing to eat in what, two days? Nothing but a few bites of eggs and toast. Nothing in him, really, but the whisky.
Nothing in him but pain.
He could not have said how long he crouched there, bile dribbled into his beard, the vertebrae in his neck shrieking, being played like a xylophone by something that had passed his way on a damp, chill night back in May of '73. When the heaving finally stopped he crawled away from the toilet, past the scrape of that crooked threshold strip, onto the thin, almost napless green plaid carpet of the motel room that cop had forced him to sign up for.
He huddled there on the floor, numb with cold although the room must have been warm, must have been, couldn't possibly have been that cold, enough to make his teeth clack and chatter.
Time was, Dean would have tucked a blanket around him. Would have tugged and pulled and heaved until he was back up on the bed.
Time was, she would have done that.
Would have sponged his forehead with a wet cloth. Would have stroked his hair.
He could feel her. Could feel even after two decades the shape and the weight and the give of her.
Could feel his boys, the weight and shape of them as he carried them in his arms away from that house. The place where he'd built his life, the life he shared with her, the one he'd thought he could keep.
The place he'd taken her to, instead of taking her away.
Shoulda…
"Sammy," he moaned, almost a keening sound. "Deeeeeean."
For a long time, he wept.
Then he slept there, on the floor.
* * * * *