SPN FIC - Legend (Part Eleven: The Intruder)
I'd heard whispered bits of the story since I was a kid. Just after Halloween, back in '83, the demon Azazel had crept into the nursery of a baby boy, intending to drip blood into the child's mouth and turn him into demon spawn. But Mary Campbell was waiting for him. She had a gun a stranger had brought to her family ten years before: a gun that could kill anything. She used it to kill Azazel that night. Saved her child. Then she disappeared.
Legends are told in bits and pieces, spread by word of mouth over the years. This is the story of Mary Campbell's family: the husband to whom she told the truth of who she was. The son who grieved the loss of her so deeply that he spent half his life on the road alone, searching for her. And the son who found success, and love, and peace ... until things went a little bit sideways.
Part One: Dean and Jo
Part Two: Dean, Sam, and Jessica
Part Three: John and Deacon
Part Four: Missouri and Pamela
Part Five: Sam and Dean
Part Six: John, Mary, Dean and Sam
Part Seven: Dean and Pamela
Part Eight: Deanna and Samuel
Part Nine: Sam and Missouri
Part Ten: John and Dean
CHARACTERS: Dean, John, Sam, Missouri, Pamela
GENRE: Gen (AU)
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2351 words
LEGEND
By Carol Davis
Ten: The Intruder
Dean's weight shifted toward the dining room table, toward the array of weapons displayed there: knives, a sword, a machete, two sawed-off shotguns, a revolver, a wide variety of ammo, a jug of holy water, a rosary. Dozens of other items. All of it in perfect working condition and ready to be snatched up and used.
"All your pretty toys," Pamela said. "But…which to choose?"
"Who are you?" he ground out.
She smiled, and he had to struggle not to shudder. The expression had done nothing so much as slither onto her face.
"All in good time," she told him.
In the living room, both Dad and Sam had gotten to their feet, both of them ready to do whatever needed to be done. For the time being, it was to protect Missouri, who was moaning softly, her face buried in her hands. They held their positions as Pamela wandered into the dining room and ran a hand over some of the items in Dean's arsenal.
"I've always felt there was a certain power in anonymity," she said. "Some of my…kinfolk…like to break cover. Throw their weight around. Watch their adversaries tremble in the face of their power. But I've always found that there's an advantage to waiting for the right moment. It makes sense, don't you think? If you don't know what I am, you don't know how to fight me."
"How about my fist in your face?" Dean suggested.
"Oh, Dean," she sighed.
"You're something powerful," Sam said. "Missouri had no idea what you are. She thought you were Pamela Barnes."
"Maybe I am."
"You're a psychic from Defiance, Ohio."
"Maybe I am. Maybe I'm not."
She could have been, Dean figured; nothing said she wasn't just a wiseass playing a game. But a normal woman playing a game wouldn't have reduced Missouri Mosely to tears. Not Missouri, who'd held her own against the most formidable of enemies: angry spirits. A shapeshifter on a search for others of his kind.
The IRS.
So the odds were that this was something other than a human woman. Wearing a human woman, possibly; or she could have been a shifter, or a skinwalker, or any one of a thousand other otherworldly things capable of assuming (or projecting) a human shape.
And they'd let her into the house.
"Go ahead," she said, wearing that smarmy smile again. "I enjoy a nice game of Twenty Questions. Go ahead and ask. Maybe I'll answer them and maybe I won't."
"Or, I could blow you right to Hell."
"Dean," she chided. "If we're going to do this, let's at least try for some creativity, shall we? It'll make the evening so much more interesting. We could spend it throwing each other around the room, but I like these clothes. Getting them all messed up and wrinkly would really make me…unhappy."
"I should worry about keeping you happy?"
She glanced past him into the living room. "I let down the walls the tiniest little bit, and what your friend the mind reader saw so horrified her that she's sitting there crying. Yes, Dean, I think you should worry about keeping me happy."
"What's the alternative?" Sam asked her.
"Well…one option is, you all die. But that would put a crimp in my long-range plans. It'd over-complicate things, let's say."
"Plans," Dad echoed.
She drifted through the dining room, running the fingertips of one hand along Dean's arm as she passed him. Both Sam and Dad moved to block the living room doorway before she reached it, which didn't seem to bother her; she was smiling almost cheerfully as she confronted them, looking at each of them in turn as if she intended to critique their clothes, or their haircuts. Like she was going to tell them they were dissing their loved ones by wearing jeans and flannel and not shaving on a holiday.
"The Winchester boys," she crooned. "On stage together, one night only. Pretty spectacular, I think. And I've got you all to myself. You have no idea how problematic that was to arrange."
"Why?" Dad growled.
"Because. You're well known in some circles. There are…grudges."
"That why you're here? Because of a grudge?"
"It might be."
"Against all of us, or just one?"
"Maybe. And yes, it's bigger than a bread box. Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Let's say 'animal'."
"Has it got anything to do with my father-in-law?"
"Oooh," she said. "I like that one. Very perceptive of you, John. Yes, it has something to do with your father-in-law. And I'll go you one better: it concerns your mother-in-law, too. Although, when you consider the number of things they slaughtered before they went on to their Great Reward, that's still a pretty wide field."
"Then this is about revenge."
"Possibly."
"Revenge," Sam said. "But you're not going to kill us."
"Which still leaves me a lot of options. I could maim you in any number of ways. You could lose a limb or two. Be blinded. I could cut your tongue out. Although…no. I think I like you talking. That could be useful." Something attracted her attention for a moment; she looked up at the ceiling, then seemed to look on past it, into the upper floor of the house. "Grandpa's still up there checking salt lines. Maybe one of you ought to pop on up there and tell him salt's not going to stop something like me. He really could be putting his energy to better use - especially since he came all the way back here just to help take care of you boys."
Dean began to move away from her, putting the dining room table in between the two of them. For a moment, her back was to him, though he knew better than to assume that because her eyes were directed away from him, she didn't know what he was doing.
"If there's a real Pamela Barnes," she said without turning, "you wouldn't want to hurt her, would you? If she's just a fun-loving girl from Defiance?"
According to Rufus Turner, there was a real Pamela Barnes: a bona fide psychic, one of the best in the country.
"Seen enough psychics to last me ten centuries," Dean had told him.
"Not like this one."
"Yeah, like that one. Like any one."
The grizzled old man had taken a long, slow sip of his drink - the drink Dean had invested a couple hundred bucks to bring him - and looked at Dean over the rim of his glass. A collectible, he'd told Dean: Chewbacca from the Star Wars set given out by Burger King back in the late Seventies. He'd collected the whole series, figuring they'd be worth something someday. "But they ain't worth shit," Turner said. "Which oughta show you how psychic I am. But this Barnes woman - she knows her stuff. I could send you somewhere just to get you outta my house, but being as how you brought me a present, I'm telling you to go where you'll get some results."
And Dean hadn't gone there.
He'd been on his way there - had gotten halfway across Ohio and was skirting around Columbus to avoid the traffic - when something else Rufus Turner had said came back to him.
"You been at this sixteen years?"
"Yes," Dean told him.
"Not just looking for your mother. Taking the time to talk to the right people. Hear you spent almost a year out west with a couple of Dan Elkins' boys."
"Yeah."
"Got yourself trained."
"Yeah."
"When you coulda been a mechanic, like your old man."
Turner'd had a firm hand on that Chewbacca glass. It might not have been worth shit on eBay, but he held onto it like it meant something to him. After a minute Turner had settled back in his old chrome-and-blue-vinyl kitchen chair and let a slow, amused grin settle onto his face. "Got yourself trained so she'd be proud of you. That it?"
Dean had shrugged. Feigned interest in his own drink.
"You figure any fool with two hands and half a brain can fix cars. But maybe this business means something," Turner said. "I got that right?"
Again, Dean shrugged.
"You get yourself out to Defiance," Turner told him. "You're a good kid. And no, you don't remind me of me. I would've had enough sense to hang up this quest after a year or two, and you wouldn't find me living outta some old Chevy. But you got a good heart. So I'm telling you: this woman's worth seeing. Word is, she's been talking to some people who get around. Living and dead. If there's an answer to be found, she's got it."
And Dean hadn't gone to see her. Instead of heading north at Dayton, he'd kept going due west.
Toward Sam.
Should've done what he told me. Kept Sam out of this.
"Maybe Sam wants to be a part of this," Pamela said.
"You and me," Dean told her. "You don't need them. I was supposed to come see you alone. Fine. Let's go somewhere, you and me."
"You, me, and a happy ending? That what you're thinking?"
"Don't you know?"
Sixteen years, he'd been doing this: had been living on the road, largely alone, almost resigned to the fact that each new day would be no different than the one before. But really, his life had changed the first time he'd laid out Mom's journals. The day he began to read. After the first few pages, he'd begun to take notes of his own.
So she'd be proud of you.
Dad and Sam were trained, too; Mom had insisted that Dad be able to protect himself, that he be able to help her protect their boys - and later on, Dad had insisted that Sam learn at least enough to keep himself safe. They'd been what Dean thought of as part-timers, back when Dean was still living at home, and Sam still was that, although he was strong and smart and capable when he did choose to hunt. But Dad had turned things around a few years back, when he'd gotten tired of living in Lawrence by himself, going to ball games and Fourth of July picnics as the odd man out.
He was damn good at the job now.
A lot more so than most people were aware.
When Pamela turned to look at Dean, to consider the possibility of reducing this situation to one-on-one, Dad took a couple of silent steps toward her, gesturing for Sam to hold back, to stand between Missouri and harm's way.
"Tell us who you are," Dean said. "Or we'll find out."
"How about why I'm here?" she offered.
Dean didn't answer her. He'd positioned himself alongside the table within easy reach of the old silver knife he'd bought from Walter Bear Tooth.
The country was full of hunters, he'd figured at the time, but nobody knew evil shit like the Native Americans - and Walter had proven that theory correct. Learning to use that knife in the most productive way had taken almost a month of hard work; a few more days of the old man saying "Try again" and Dean would have been tempted to throw in the towel, but he'd finally crossed a line. He'd brought a smile to the old man's face.
He might not be able to kill the thing standing on the other side of this table, but he could make her sorry she'd come here.
Then he blinked.
When his eyes opened, Pamela was holding the knife.
"There's such a thing as misguided optimism, Dean," she told him.
She threw the knife exactly as Walter had taught him to do, a movement that looked simple and was anything but. He felt the small rush of air as the knife hurtled past his left ear and heard the solid thunk as the blade embedded itself in the wall. He allowed himself a glance to see where it had landed and flinched at the sight of it buried all the way up to the hilt.
"I'm here for the same reason all of you are," Pamela said. "I want to find your mother."
"Why?" Dean rasped.
"Because she killed my father."
"He probably deserved it."
Again, she glanced overhead. This time, it was plain to Dean what she was looking toward: the bedroom that had been Sam's nursery.
"I've been around for a while," she said in a mild tone. "And I'm like you, in a way. I've spent a long time getting myself ready. Growing stronger. Learning all the things I needed to know. When they couldn't hold me back any longer, I clawed my way up here. Then I searched. I talked to people. I followed trails that led nowhere. We've seen each other before, you know - here and there. Now and then. But I let you go on your way - all three of you - because you didn't really know anything worthwhile."
"And now?" Dad said from behind her.
"Now things are coming together. So I stole some meat. And I came to dinner."
"Tell us who you are," Sam said, and there was more vehemence in his voice than Dean had heard coming from him in a long time.
She thought that over for a moment, then shrugged. "Fair enough. I could make you guess all night long, but what's the point? We're all here for the same reason. No, I'm not Pamela Barnes. She's tucked away in here" - she tapped her temple with her index finger - "and I have to say, all that super-special psychic talent came in handy. It led me here to you boys." Smiling again, she looked at each of the Winchesters in turn, then held out a hand to Sam, since he was the one who'd made the demand. "I have a name, but…you know how it is. Your folks pick it out, and it doesn't quite suit you. I found one I like better. It belonged to a little college student from Andover, but she doesn't need it any more.
"You can call me Meg."
* * * * *
Legends are told in bits and pieces, spread by word of mouth over the years. This is the story of Mary Campbell's family: the husband to whom she told the truth of who she was. The son who grieved the loss of her so deeply that he spent half his life on the road alone, searching for her. And the son who found success, and love, and peace ... until things went a little bit sideways.
Part One: Dean and Jo
Part Two: Dean, Sam, and Jessica
Part Three: John and Deacon
Part Four: Missouri and Pamela
Part Five: Sam and Dean
Part Six: John, Mary, Dean and Sam
Part Seven: Dean and Pamela
Part Eight: Deanna and Samuel
Part Nine: Sam and Missouri
Part Ten: John and Dean
CHARACTERS: Dean, John, Sam, Missouri, Pamela
GENRE: Gen (AU)
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2351 words
LEGEND
By Carol Davis
Ten: The Intruder
Dean's weight shifted toward the dining room table, toward the array of weapons displayed there: knives, a sword, a machete, two sawed-off shotguns, a revolver, a wide variety of ammo, a jug of holy water, a rosary. Dozens of other items. All of it in perfect working condition and ready to be snatched up and used.
"All your pretty toys," Pamela said. "But…which to choose?"
"Who are you?" he ground out.
She smiled, and he had to struggle not to shudder. The expression had done nothing so much as slither onto her face.
"All in good time," she told him.
In the living room, both Dad and Sam had gotten to their feet, both of them ready to do whatever needed to be done. For the time being, it was to protect Missouri, who was moaning softly, her face buried in her hands. They held their positions as Pamela wandered into the dining room and ran a hand over some of the items in Dean's arsenal.
"I've always felt there was a certain power in anonymity," she said. "Some of my…kinfolk…like to break cover. Throw their weight around. Watch their adversaries tremble in the face of their power. But I've always found that there's an advantage to waiting for the right moment. It makes sense, don't you think? If you don't know what I am, you don't know how to fight me."
"How about my fist in your face?" Dean suggested.
"Oh, Dean," she sighed.
"You're something powerful," Sam said. "Missouri had no idea what you are. She thought you were Pamela Barnes."
"Maybe I am."
"You're a psychic from Defiance, Ohio."
"Maybe I am. Maybe I'm not."
She could have been, Dean figured; nothing said she wasn't just a wiseass playing a game. But a normal woman playing a game wouldn't have reduced Missouri Mosely to tears. Not Missouri, who'd held her own against the most formidable of enemies: angry spirits. A shapeshifter on a search for others of his kind.
The IRS.
So the odds were that this was something other than a human woman. Wearing a human woman, possibly; or she could have been a shifter, or a skinwalker, or any one of a thousand other otherworldly things capable of assuming (or projecting) a human shape.
And they'd let her into the house.
"Go ahead," she said, wearing that smarmy smile again. "I enjoy a nice game of Twenty Questions. Go ahead and ask. Maybe I'll answer them and maybe I won't."
"Or, I could blow you right to Hell."
"Dean," she chided. "If we're going to do this, let's at least try for some creativity, shall we? It'll make the evening so much more interesting. We could spend it throwing each other around the room, but I like these clothes. Getting them all messed up and wrinkly would really make me…unhappy."
"I should worry about keeping you happy?"
She glanced past him into the living room. "I let down the walls the tiniest little bit, and what your friend the mind reader saw so horrified her that she's sitting there crying. Yes, Dean, I think you should worry about keeping me happy."
"What's the alternative?" Sam asked her.
"Well…one option is, you all die. But that would put a crimp in my long-range plans. It'd over-complicate things, let's say."
"Plans," Dad echoed.
She drifted through the dining room, running the fingertips of one hand along Dean's arm as she passed him. Both Sam and Dad moved to block the living room doorway before she reached it, which didn't seem to bother her; she was smiling almost cheerfully as she confronted them, looking at each of them in turn as if she intended to critique their clothes, or their haircuts. Like she was going to tell them they were dissing their loved ones by wearing jeans and flannel and not shaving on a holiday.
"The Winchester boys," she crooned. "On stage together, one night only. Pretty spectacular, I think. And I've got you all to myself. You have no idea how problematic that was to arrange."
"Why?" Dad growled.
"Because. You're well known in some circles. There are…grudges."
"That why you're here? Because of a grudge?"
"It might be."
"Against all of us, or just one?"
"Maybe. And yes, it's bigger than a bread box. Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Let's say 'animal'."
"Has it got anything to do with my father-in-law?"
"Oooh," she said. "I like that one. Very perceptive of you, John. Yes, it has something to do with your father-in-law. And I'll go you one better: it concerns your mother-in-law, too. Although, when you consider the number of things they slaughtered before they went on to their Great Reward, that's still a pretty wide field."
"Then this is about revenge."
"Possibly."
"Revenge," Sam said. "But you're not going to kill us."
"Which still leaves me a lot of options. I could maim you in any number of ways. You could lose a limb or two. Be blinded. I could cut your tongue out. Although…no. I think I like you talking. That could be useful." Something attracted her attention for a moment; she looked up at the ceiling, then seemed to look on past it, into the upper floor of the house. "Grandpa's still up there checking salt lines. Maybe one of you ought to pop on up there and tell him salt's not going to stop something like me. He really could be putting his energy to better use - especially since he came all the way back here just to help take care of you boys."
Dean began to move away from her, putting the dining room table in between the two of them. For a moment, her back was to him, though he knew better than to assume that because her eyes were directed away from him, she didn't know what he was doing.
"If there's a real Pamela Barnes," she said without turning, "you wouldn't want to hurt her, would you? If she's just a fun-loving girl from Defiance?"
According to Rufus Turner, there was a real Pamela Barnes: a bona fide psychic, one of the best in the country.
"Seen enough psychics to last me ten centuries," Dean had told him.
"Not like this one."
"Yeah, like that one. Like any one."
The grizzled old man had taken a long, slow sip of his drink - the drink Dean had invested a couple hundred bucks to bring him - and looked at Dean over the rim of his glass. A collectible, he'd told Dean: Chewbacca from the Star Wars set given out by Burger King back in the late Seventies. He'd collected the whole series, figuring they'd be worth something someday. "But they ain't worth shit," Turner said. "Which oughta show you how psychic I am. But this Barnes woman - she knows her stuff. I could send you somewhere just to get you outta my house, but being as how you brought me a present, I'm telling you to go where you'll get some results."
And Dean hadn't gone there.
He'd been on his way there - had gotten halfway across Ohio and was skirting around Columbus to avoid the traffic - when something else Rufus Turner had said came back to him.
"You been at this sixteen years?"
"Yes," Dean told him.
"Not just looking for your mother. Taking the time to talk to the right people. Hear you spent almost a year out west with a couple of Dan Elkins' boys."
"Yeah."
"Got yourself trained."
"Yeah."
"When you coulda been a mechanic, like your old man."
Turner'd had a firm hand on that Chewbacca glass. It might not have been worth shit on eBay, but he held onto it like it meant something to him. After a minute Turner had settled back in his old chrome-and-blue-vinyl kitchen chair and let a slow, amused grin settle onto his face. "Got yourself trained so she'd be proud of you. That it?"
Dean had shrugged. Feigned interest in his own drink.
"You figure any fool with two hands and half a brain can fix cars. But maybe this business means something," Turner said. "I got that right?"
Again, Dean shrugged.
"You get yourself out to Defiance," Turner told him. "You're a good kid. And no, you don't remind me of me. I would've had enough sense to hang up this quest after a year or two, and you wouldn't find me living outta some old Chevy. But you got a good heart. So I'm telling you: this woman's worth seeing. Word is, she's been talking to some people who get around. Living and dead. If there's an answer to be found, she's got it."
And Dean hadn't gone to see her. Instead of heading north at Dayton, he'd kept going due west.
Toward Sam.
Should've done what he told me. Kept Sam out of this.
"Maybe Sam wants to be a part of this," Pamela said.
"You and me," Dean told her. "You don't need them. I was supposed to come see you alone. Fine. Let's go somewhere, you and me."
"You, me, and a happy ending? That what you're thinking?"
"Don't you know?"
Sixteen years, he'd been doing this: had been living on the road, largely alone, almost resigned to the fact that each new day would be no different than the one before. But really, his life had changed the first time he'd laid out Mom's journals. The day he began to read. After the first few pages, he'd begun to take notes of his own.
So she'd be proud of you.
Dad and Sam were trained, too; Mom had insisted that Dad be able to protect himself, that he be able to help her protect their boys - and later on, Dad had insisted that Sam learn at least enough to keep himself safe. They'd been what Dean thought of as part-timers, back when Dean was still living at home, and Sam still was that, although he was strong and smart and capable when he did choose to hunt. But Dad had turned things around a few years back, when he'd gotten tired of living in Lawrence by himself, going to ball games and Fourth of July picnics as the odd man out.
He was damn good at the job now.
A lot more so than most people were aware.
When Pamela turned to look at Dean, to consider the possibility of reducing this situation to one-on-one, Dad took a couple of silent steps toward her, gesturing for Sam to hold back, to stand between Missouri and harm's way.
"Tell us who you are," Dean said. "Or we'll find out."
"How about why I'm here?" she offered.
Dean didn't answer her. He'd positioned himself alongside the table within easy reach of the old silver knife he'd bought from Walter Bear Tooth.
The country was full of hunters, he'd figured at the time, but nobody knew evil shit like the Native Americans - and Walter had proven that theory correct. Learning to use that knife in the most productive way had taken almost a month of hard work; a few more days of the old man saying "Try again" and Dean would have been tempted to throw in the towel, but he'd finally crossed a line. He'd brought a smile to the old man's face.
He might not be able to kill the thing standing on the other side of this table, but he could make her sorry she'd come here.
Then he blinked.
When his eyes opened, Pamela was holding the knife.
"There's such a thing as misguided optimism, Dean," she told him.
She threw the knife exactly as Walter had taught him to do, a movement that looked simple and was anything but. He felt the small rush of air as the knife hurtled past his left ear and heard the solid thunk as the blade embedded itself in the wall. He allowed himself a glance to see where it had landed and flinched at the sight of it buried all the way up to the hilt.
"I'm here for the same reason all of you are," Pamela said. "I want to find your mother."
"Why?" Dean rasped.
"Because she killed my father."
"He probably deserved it."
Again, she glanced overhead. This time, it was plain to Dean what she was looking toward: the bedroom that had been Sam's nursery.
"I've been around for a while," she said in a mild tone. "And I'm like you, in a way. I've spent a long time getting myself ready. Growing stronger. Learning all the things I needed to know. When they couldn't hold me back any longer, I clawed my way up here. Then I searched. I talked to people. I followed trails that led nowhere. We've seen each other before, you know - here and there. Now and then. But I let you go on your way - all three of you - because you didn't really know anything worthwhile."
"And now?" Dad said from behind her.
"Now things are coming together. So I stole some meat. And I came to dinner."
"Tell us who you are," Sam said, and there was more vehemence in his voice than Dean had heard coming from him in a long time.
She thought that over for a moment, then shrugged. "Fair enough. I could make you guess all night long, but what's the point? We're all here for the same reason. No, I'm not Pamela Barnes. She's tucked away in here" - she tapped her temple with her index finger - "and I have to say, all that super-special psychic talent came in handy. It led me here to you boys." Smiling again, she looked at each of the Winchesters in turn, then held out a hand to Sam, since he was the one who'd made the demand. "I have a name, but…you know how it is. Your folks pick it out, and it doesn't quite suit you. I found one I like better. It belonged to a little college student from Andover, but she doesn't need it any more.
"You can call me Meg."
* * * * *