SPN AU Fic: Frater Felis 1/1
SUMMARY: Stanford senior Sam Winchester has been shot by his own father. This is the story of the aftermath and of the buildup. This is the story of the boy with an older brother who is more than he seems. This is the story of the Stanford Cougar. And this is how it all comes to a head.
The sun shone into the windows of the hospital on the campus of Stanford University. It fell across the face of the unconscious young man on the bed.
Senior Sam Winchester lay with monitors beeping all around him. The bright sunshine caressed his face, but the young man did not stir.
Sam’s older brother Dean sat in the chair beside the bed, his elbows on the mattress and his focus single-mindedly on the bed. “Come on, Sammy,” he whispered. “Come on. Come back to me.”
He waited, but the only sound was the beeping of the monitors. The only movement was the mechanical rise and fall of Sam’s chest as the ventilator breathed for him.
Dean growled softly, his jade green eyes fading into golden yellow as he hissed, “You have to beat this, Sammy. Don’t let him win. Do NOT let that bastard win!”
Sam slept on, and Dean’s yellowed gaze turned upward before flicking toward the door, which had begun to open.
THEN
John and Mary Winchester seemed to be a normal pair of newlyweds, raising their young children in a suburban Kansas neighborhood. As far as he was concerned, his wife was special. She was beautiful and smart and more than a little skilled with anything physical. She'd even pinned him a time or two.
But what John Winchester did not know was that his wife Mary was not fully human. She came from a long line of were-cats. Her particular form was a sleek tan cougar with beautiful golden eyes. Unlike other were-creatures, her shifts were not forced by the lunar cycle and were completely under her control. It was an inborn instinct - none of her family were taught how to do this.
Above all, Mary wanted to be normal. She hid what she was from her husband and was thrilled that he never put two and two together about the cougar sightings around their Kansas home. So she still changed. She felt better as a cat and when the pressures of suburbia got too much, she would go for a prowl.
Her one wish was that neither of her boys would inherit this gift. She had wept in sheer relief when neither of her boys was born with golden eyes. She had no idea that her oldest, Dean, had inherited her gift and used it to protect his little brother.
All she knew was that she would put Dean into his bed and find him in the morning curled around Sammy in his crib. She would scold him and send him on his way, never noticing the flash of gold in her oldest's eyes when he would glare at her behind her back or the whisper he would purr to his brother. "She just doesn't understand, Sammy. It's okay."
One fateful night, she was awakened by her youngest crying over the baby monitor. That was a little unusual, so it woke her right up. She walked into the nursery and thought the man standing over the crib was her husband. So she left him alone.
But when she found her husband downstairs, holding their sleeping oldest on the couch, she realised something was very wrong. She spun on her heel and raced back upstairs, two feet rapidly shifting to four as she did so.
It was the cougar that knocked the man off of the crib railing, spraying blood onto the wall and over her baby boy. It was the cougar who snarled when the man regained his feet to show eyes that were not golden, but a jaundiced type of yellow. It was the cougar who leapt again at the man as he raised his hand.
But it was Mary Winchester who hit the ground, groaning as the demon inside the man forced her to resume her human shape. It was Mary who had presence enough to scream, bringing her husband running.
And it was Mary who burned in the nursery, managing to hold on just long enough to see her husband put the baby in the arms of their four year old, and see them run out of the room.
Then she closed her eyes - and exploded.
NOW
Bobby Singer froze as he entered the hospital room and took in Dean -- every detail of him. “Somethin’ you wanna tell me, son?”
“When did you get here?” Dean challenged. “Why are you here?”
“You called me.” Bobby edged closer to the bed. “Don’t you remember?”
“No,” Dean said honestly, his eyes darkening back to jade green as his hand rubbed across his forehead. “The last few hours have been a blur.”
“I bet. So how is he doing?”
Dean sighed and recited the laundry list of injuries. “One bullet went through his right thigh, another went through his right upper arm and lodged in his right lung. He just got out of surgery. Another bullet went right through his left side and hit his girlfriend in the belly. She’s still in surgery. The last one plowed a groove in the side of his head. We’re waiting on when he wakes up to see if there’s been any damage.”
He shook his head. “Bobby, if there’s been damage….I-I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“We’ll find out. Finding out a lot today,” Bobby mused softly, sitting down across from Dean and taking Sam’s pulse as he said calmly, “So you’re the Stanford cougar.”
Dean breathed in sharply and his eyes turned golden again. “So you’re here to hunt me. Just like -- him.”
THEN
Dean grew up watching his father hunting and hating everything that wasn't fully human. He suspected that his father would hunt and hate him if he knew that he could become a cougar whenever he wanted to.
This remained only a feeling until nine-year-old Sam drew the attention of a sadistic older student who had killed several kids. His reign of terror came to a bloody end at the jaws of Dean’s cougar form, but not before he had drugged Sammy.
By the time their father had located them and scooped Sammy into his arms, Dean was so thrilled to see him and so worried for Sammy that he'd forgotten he was still a cougar and had instinctively run toward his father.
Seeing only a cougar with a bloody muzzle, John had kicked it in the head full-force and left it for dead.
Dean thought it was a miracle that the steel-toed work boot hadn't just destroyed his skull. As it was, he spent weeks recovering from a hairline fracture and near-blinding headaches. He claimed not to remember what had happened, though in reality he remembered every agonising detail.
He now had absolute proof that his father would kill him without a second thought if he knew what Dean truly was. It made him sick to his stomach to know that his father's love was so conditional.
NOW
Bobby shook his head. “Dammit, boy, I am not here to hunt you. I’m not like your daddy.”
“He’s not my daddy,” Dean snarled, the growl of an angry cat. “He forfeited that the second he drew that gun.”
“Then? Not when you left him?”
“We didn’t leave him, Bobby. He threw us out.”
“He told me you two left him. Called me in a drunken stupor. So how about you tell me what really happened?”
THEN
Sammy was scary smart. Dean had known that from the time his baby brother had taught himself to read from the closed captioning on one of their babysitters' TVs. So when his 14 year old brother told him that he knew what Dean was and what he could do, Dean wasn’t really surprised.
Nor was he surprised that Sammy’s grades were high enough to get him into college. The full ride to Stanford, though, was a bit of a shock. Dean was so proud of him that he was purring - literally. They made plans - Dean would set up home base near the college and give Sam a place to belong. Just like always.
But then they told John, expecting him to be thrilled. Instead, John hit the roof - almost literally. The fight was truly epic, both in its duration and its volume. At the end of it, John screamed that if Sam left for Stanford, not to come back. Ever.
Doors slammed - one to John storming to his truck and away to calm down, one to Sam's room - and Dean was left alone in the living room, eyes slowly turning golden as he yowled softly in feline distress as his world crumbled around him.
Those eyes narrowed after a few moments as a decision was made. Dean knew exactly what he had to do.
Dean checked quickly to make certain John was gone before he turned toward Sam's room. He knocked on the door quickly and opened it.
He wasn't surprised to see Sam on his knees beside the closet, haphazardly throwing clothing and everything else he could find into it. "I'm not changing my mind," Sam said, not looking up.
"I'm not asking you to do anything but put that duffel on the bed, empty it out, and let me help you repack it so things fit better."
Sam's head snapped around to face Dean so fast that he had a crazy mental image of it rolling right off Sam's neck and down the hall. "....you'd do that?"
"Of course I'm doing that," Dean said, gesturing at the bed impatiently. "You can't get all your clothes in there at the rate you're loading them. Let's take a few minutes and we'll get you set to rights."
Sam upended the duffel on the bed and Dean showed him quickly how to fold and load things. About five minutes later, he stopped and asked, "Think you've got it from here?"
Sam grinned at him. "I do. Thanks." His smile faltered and he sighed. "I'm going to miss you."
"No, you're not," Dean said as he walked into their father's bedroom and returned with a second duffel. "I'm coming with you."
Sam froze, eyes huge and jaw slowly lowering.
"Plan's still on, Sammy." Dean began to fold his own clothing and load the bag. "Exactly what we dreamed. Only thing that's changed is we're not going to stay in touch with Dad." His eyes blazed golden fire as he looked at his brother. "He's driven us both away tonight, Sammy."
Packing was put on hold for a few moments while Dean suddenly had his arms full of half-sobbing little brother. But only for a few moments. They were up against a deadline.
NOW
Dean looked at Bobby, an eyebrow cocking. “The rest you know, if you know about the Stanford Cougar.”
“Most of it,” Bobby nodded. “John assumed you’d taken Sam to the bus stop, then he crawled right into that damned bottle. I don’t know how long he stayed there, exactly, but it was a while. Then…” He gestured at the bed, at Sam’s still form. “I can only guess that without his family holding him together, John lost his damned mind.”
Dean snorted. “I’d pass that up. That’s a sucker bet.”
Bobby shared a grin with him, then he said softly, “So what made you decide to be the Stanford Cougar?”
“It’s not like I planned it,” Dean said. “It’s what I am, and … well…”
THEN
By the end of the first week of classes, Dean had a job working at a garage. He worked his own schedule around Sam's, allowing him to be able to eavesdrop on some classes that interested him. Sam teased him about being a cougar when he did so, having spotted him listening outside the window. "One of these days I'm going to have classes on an upper floor and you'll be out of luck then. Wouldn't it be easier just to audit the class? You'd be able to have the professor answer any questions that way, too."
"Sammy, you know I'm not comfortable in a classroom. I'd just be a distraction."
"And a five-foot long cougar curled up outside the window isn't?"
That didn't stop Dean. He still made it a regular practice to curl up and listen underneath the window.
Around mid-September, the world changed. Three terrorist attacks in one day shifted the atmosphere and suddenly anything and everything different was a threat.
Three times the first week after that shift, Dean had to move fast because one paranoid student was convinced that the cougar was going to eat him and called the police. By the time the police arrived, the big cat was gone and a sandy-haired man with emerald eyes was sitting on a bench across the quad from the building the cat had been lounging under, silently judging the student who was shaking with emotion as he tried to tell the cops that he wasn't insane, the cat really had been just right there....
After the third call, the cops brought the kid over and sat him down on another bench next to Dean. One of the police sat down beside him and told him in no uncertain terms that calling the police on fake calls -- "...cougars on the campus of Stanford? Really, kid?" -- was not a good idea and to knock it off.
Then they left him alone.
Dean watched him fold in on himself, arms wrapped around his stomach. He really looked at the kid and saw him for what he really was: a slight, frightened kid who looked a hell of a lot like the idiots who had killed so many people. No wonder he was paranoid.
The kid just sat there, eyes closed, shaking slightly. Suddenly he heard a tiny little sound -- like a cross between a chirp and a meow. He opened his eyes and turned to look out over the empty quad.
A sandpaper tongue rasped over his hand, making him gasp and whirl to face the other side of the bench. He found himself looking into the beautiful golden eyes of the very cougar he'd been so frightened of -- less than two inches away. A massive paw moved, not to threaten, but to rest lightly on his knee. The same sound the kid had heard -- a chirping sort of meow -- came from the creature's throat.
His eyes widened in fear, then he swallowed hard as something hit him. ".....you aren't trying to hurt me. Why aren't you trying to eat me?"
If a cat could smile, the creature smiled at him. But it wasn't nasty. If anything, it felt...comforting.
A tall, gangly man walked out of the building and called out, "Dean! Hey, Dean! Made a friend?"
The cat's tail twitched and it sat up and stretched before lithely leaping off the bench and padding over, meeting the newcomer halfway and butting his head against his knee.
"All right, all right," he laughed. He sat down and held out his hand. "Sam Winchester."
"Mark Turcabe." He nodded at the cougar. "That's yours?"
"More like I'm his," Sam laughed again. "Seriously, he's tame. He's only hurt one person my entire life and that one was actively trying to kill me."
Mark's hairs raised as the cougar emitted a low, dangerous rumble. But the moment passed, and the lightness was back as Sam carded his fingers over the massive furred head, scratching behind one of his ears and earning something like a purr in return.
And Mark found himself smiling.
NOW
Bobby nodded. “Something else I don’t get -- you said Sam went into Law. But the news reports said he was pre-med.”
Dean chuckled. “Yeah, about that….”
THEN
Sam took all the pre-requisite courses that any college freshman had to have, all the while agonising over his major. The brothers stayed on campus over the holiday breaks, and Sam found himself talking about getting a part time job as well.
On Christmas day, Dean sat him down after they had cleared away the debris from breakfast and their gift exchange. "Okay, talk to me."
Sam looked at him, then chuckled. "I'm gonna need a little more parameters, Dean. I can talk about anything."
Dean blinked, then sat back, impressed. "Bitch."
"Jerk. Parameters, Dean."
"Okay, fine. Why do you want to take on a job on top of your studies when between my job and your full ride, everything is covered and we are in no danger of going into debt?"
"Yet. But if my major changes...." He winced, realising he'd just blurted it out.
Dean nodded slowly and leaned forward again. "And there we have it. You're not satisfied with pre-law and want to change your major. But what you're leaning toward must be stupid expensive and you're stressing out about it and wanting to fix it all yourself instead of coming to me and us dealing with it as a family."
"I'm not a kid," Sam growled. "I can't go running to my big brother with every problem I have!"
:"I'm not saying you're a kid," Dean said firmly. "I am saying we're family and family deals with things as a unit. Dad was wrong, trying to drive us apart. And you can't sit here and say that wasn't what he was trying to do those last few years."
Sam blinked, visibly startled. "....wow," he gasped. "You understand."
"I think I always did," Dean said slowly, lowering his eyes to look at his hands, clasped on the table. "I don't think I wanted to see it, but I think on some level I did." He raised his eyes to meet his brother's, and his own were golden with emotion that leaked out in a slight yowl as he spoke. "You know what I am, Sammy. I was born as much cat as human. I'm pretty sure I inherited it from Mom. You know that big cats are solitary until it comes to one thing."
Sam nodded, finally getting it. "Family. If a cat bonds, they bond for life."
"Yeah. Lots of folks don't believe it, but it's the truth. I don't know if that's true for me because of the fact I'm a cougar -- which are pretty solitary despite family -- or if it's because I'm human as well. But it's the truth. We're family, and ---"
"-- and family solves things together," Sam finished. "All right." He held up a hand. "But let me finish my research before I tell you what major I'm thinking about. Give me till New Year's Day."
Dean nodded. "Deal."
One week later, the brothers sat on their couch and watched the seconds count down on TV while the ball in Times Square rapidly descended. The lights lit up proclaiming 2002 to be off to a rousing start.
As Dick Clark was kissing his wife and embracing her to celebrate the new year, Sam spoke up quietly over the crowd singing "Auld Lang Syne". "Pre-med."
To his credit, Dean didn't spit out the beer he'd just drunk, but it was a near thing. He swallowed and said, "Why that?"
Knowing it was curiosity and not condemnation, Sam leaned further into the couch cushions and said, "Because I want to help people. I thought I wanted to do it with the law, but after talking to my classmates and advisors, I figured out -- on my own -- that my primary reason for going into law was I was so used to arguing with Dad and I wanted to keep arguing. That's the wrong reason to go into a profession."
Dean thought for a long moment and then turned off the TV. "Let's sleep on it and discuss it in the morning." At Sam's surprised look, he held up his over half-full bottle. "I'm buzzed and not in the best of brains right now."
Sam smiled, understanding. Due to his feline metabolism, Dean had trouble with alcohol. One half of a bottle of beer made him buzzed enough to be impaired, and more than that made him sick. They had found that out the hard way when Dad had given Dean his first beer at way too young an age.
So they tabled the discussion till the next day -- after they watched the Rose Parade and ate homemade pancakes. Some traditions were non-negotiable.
The first day of the semester after New Year's Day found both brothers in the Registrar's office, officially changing Sam's major to pre-med.
NOW
Dean shook his head. “And then…. today happened.”
THIS MORNING
November 2, 2005 turned out to be a warm day in California, full of sun and a warm breeze. It was Dean's day off work, so he decided to spend it in his favourite spot. By now, the students were familiar with the large golden cat that liked to curl up underneath windows on Stanford, so hardly anybody spared the sleepy-looking cougar a second thought.
Sam scratched him behind the ears as he headed in to class, as did Sam's friend Jessica Moore. Mark, the man who had been so afraid of him, even dared a warm stroke of the broad head before he headed to another building for class. Feeling happy and content, Dean settled in to listen to class under the window that Sam helpfully opened.
An ear twitched as a truck rumbled by, and Dean suddenly felt uneasy. His head raised and he scented the air, feeling something had changed. But he wasn't sure what, so he returned his head to his paws and sighed.
Just as the warm sunlight and the interesting discussion banished the feeling of unease and Dean was starting to feel sleepy, a loud crash roused him. He leapt to his feet, stretched, and looked into the room. He saw a scene from his nightmares come to technicolor life.
Their father was in the room, yelling about demons and Sammy being evil and all kinds of crap. Suddenly he drew his gun and sprayed the room with bullets, seeming to focus on Sam.
Dean roared. He leapt into the room and used his full weight to take down his surprised father, then knocked the gun out of his hand and turned to see if Sam was all right.
Sam was on the floor, unconscious and bleeding. His friend Jessica lay beside him, bleeding from her abdomen, crying softly as she caressed his hair.
Dean snarled. He turned back to their father, growling, only to find himself stunned as his father punched him in the head and got up, running. Dean shook his head and raced after him, tearing out onto the campus proper.
John turned and managed a shot in his direction, causing Dean to quickly change course in order to avoid getting hit. But in those few seconds, John made his getaway.
Dean shifted to two legs, cursing and shaking his ringing head. Then he spun on his heel and raced back to the classroom, bursting in and calling an ambulance at the same time.
It never crossed his mind that he'd changed in front of several people -- most of whom were very willing to dismiss what they'd just seen. The others -- well, there is a reason "who will believe you" is a legitimate question.
But for Dean, all that mattered was his brother was suffering and he had to be there.
NOW
Dean looked up as the door opened and smiled slightly. "Any word?"
Mark nodded as he walked in. "Jessie is going to be okay. They got the bullet out and she should make a full recovery. She’s scared, but that’s to be expected.” He frowned slightly. “And who’s this?”
“My uncle,” Dean said. “Bobby Singer, meet Mark. I was telling you about him.”
Bobby nodded. “Nice to meet you, Mark.”
Dean smiled, then turned back to Mark. “Are you going back to sit with her?”
“Yeah, I’m just the messenger.” He seemed uncomfortable.
“Well, out with it, then,” Dean said playfully, trying to put him at ease.
Mark shifted position, then sighed and looked at Sam. “Jessie … she said to tell you she’s reconsidering being Sam’s girlfriend. She’s had a huge shock and… needs some time.”
Dean shook his head and gripped the rail on Sam’s bed. “So, in plain talk, she’s breaking up with Sammy.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, man, I know that’s not what --- Dean, look.”
“No, Mark, I get it, it’s --”
“No! Dean -- look at your brother!” Mark pointed.
Startled, Dean snapped his head around to look at Sam. Instantly he put his hand on Sam’s face. “Sammy? Sammy, hey…. hey, come on, little brother….”
Bobby raced to the other side of the bed, clapping Mark on the shoulder as he did so, and pushed the button to summon the nurse.
Sam hadn’t moved, but tears had begun to trail from his eyes when he got the news.
He was waking up.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Bobby excused himself to the hallway while the nurses worked on Sam. He drifted down the hallway and heard raised voices near a stairwell. He went over to investigate and saw that Mark kid arguing with a boy that looked about Sam’s age.
“--not going near them, I told you that before! They don’t need your influence right now!”
“C’mon, Turcabe, I’m good for them and you know it!”
“No, Brady, you’re not going near either of them! Let them rest, they’ve been shot to hell!”
Bobby’s eyes narrowed. What was this?
“Fine, Turcabe. You won’t do it the easy way, we’ll do it the hard way.” Then Bobby heard a sound he’d heard in his nightmares a million times -- the soft but angry roar of a demonic cloud leaving its host.
Cursing, Bobby burst into the stairwell to see the cloud wrapping itself around Mark and then retreating back into the body it had left. “What in hell’s name is going on?” it demanded. “Why can’t I have you?”
Before Mark could answer, Bobby yelled out an exorcism and the creature was banished. Brady’s body fell to the ground, seized, and went still. Bobby felt for a pulse, cursed, and yelled for a doctor.
When the body was being taken away, Bobby turned to Mark. “It had a point -- why couldn’t it get inside you?”
Mark pulled his collar aside and revealed a starburst pendant. “Dean wanted me to get a tattoo, but that’s haram -- I mean--”
Bobby nodded. “Forbidden in your faith. I get it. So you wear an antipossession charm where no one can see. Dean’s a smart kid.”
“He is.” A nurse came down the hall and Mark asked, “Our friend--”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, there were too many drugs in his system. We tried to revive him….”
Bobby nodded. “Come on, let’s get back to the brothers.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
When they returned, they saw Sam’s eyes closing and his breathing slow again, back to the rhythm of the respirator. “Dean?” Bobby asked.
“He woke up,” Dean said, his voice strangled. “Blinked at me in code. Can’t move his arm or his leg, can’t breathe right, and we won’t know about talking till the respirator’s done, but he’s definitely himself.”
Bobby watched him lean over and kiss Sam’s forehead, and saw Sam’s dimples emerge as he smiled around the tube. Then Dean walked over to him. “Mark, can you stay with him?”
Mark nodded. “I’ll take the precautions you showed me.”
“Already done. Just maintain them. And check in with me every few hours, okay?”
“Deal.” Mark went to sit by Sam.
Bobby frowned as they left the room. “You’re not staying?”
“That was what Sammy told me,” Dean said, his voice hard. His eyes slid golden and his tone took on a distinct growl. “He told me to get the bastard. So I’m getting the bastard.”
Bobby nodded. “Follow me to the parking garage. I have a good place for you to start.”
In the parking garage, Bobby opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a laptop computer, booting it up as Dean cocked an eyebrow. “That must have cost a pretty penny.”
“Over a grand,” Bobby admitted. “Worth every penny, though. Especially with a few friends helping me out.” He activated a program and tapped the screen. “Caleb worked a case a couple of months back with him. I had him install a tracking device in that monster of a truck your daddy drives.”
Dean nodded. “And this will let you track him? Sweet!” He looked at the screen and frowned. “Wait -- that looks like --”
“It is,” Bobby growled. “That’s Stanford. Here’s the hospital. He’s three miles away and closing.”
Green eyes went fully golden and Dean snarled, “Then we’d better get ready for him.”
“What? Dean, what are you --” Bobby sighed as he found himself talking to a massive cougar that crawled under Bobby’s car and settled in to wait. “Winchesters,” he sighed deeply.
He could swear that blasted cat actually laughed at him.
Knowing Dean? He probably did.
~*~*~*~*~*~
He rolled his truck up into the lowest level of the parking garage and parked in an unobtrusive spot in the shadows. He took the time to get the armaments right and slide the gun into his waistband. It had taken him some time to locate a gun that wouldn’t show up on scanners, but this was worth it.
He paused for a second, thinking about his mission. This still felt a tiny bit wrong -- this creature had begun life as his baby boy.
All doubt fled when the now-familiar touch to his mind whispered that he was in the position now to avenge his beloved Mary. That thing in the bed was only wearing the face of his baby, and it had since he’d left. Sammy would never have left him, so he was possessed.
And possessed things died.
Firmly resolved that he was in the right, John Winchester opened the truck door and stepped onto the concrete of the parking garage.
Without a single sound or any hint of warning, two hundred pounds of coiled muscle slammed into the open door at nearly thirty miles an hour, and the force of it slamming into John’s back knocked him off of his feet. He hit hard, and felt the wind go out of him.
John rose to his knees and turned -- and found himself face to face with a familiar face. “.....Dean? What… What are you doing here?”
“Giving you more mercy than you deserve,” Dean snarled.
John shook his head. “I don’t understand… mercy? What are you talking about?”
“I am not the coward who hides behind a classroom full of students to do my killing. I am giving you the mercy of seeing my face before I end you.”
“Dean, that -- that THING in there is not your brother! Not anymore!”
“That thing in here is not my father. It is a monster.”
“The only monster I’m interested in is the one wearing my son’s face and its master -- the yellow-eyed bastard who--”
“Interesting you should bring him up. Cause you see -- he’s not the golden-eyed devil you need to worry about.”
John froze, ice sliding down his spine. “Why … Why do you say that, Dean?”
“Because that? Would be me.” Dean’s emerald eyes flared golden yellow and his body -- rippled.
Before John could fully process what he was seeing, the massive cougar that had replaced his oldest son lunged. John was knocked onto his back, anchored in place by eight massive claws that were digging into his shoulders. He could see every hair on the cat’s muzzle and could feel its hot breath as it drew three large gulps of air in.
Then a corner of the muzzle drew slowly upward, revealing wickedly sharp fangs.
John’s last sight was the cat’s head moving rapidly before those massive jaws clamped shut over his throat.
By the truck, Bobby Singer actually had to turn away for a moment.
When Dean padded back over, Bobby threw a water bottle at him. “Wash your face, boy.”
Dean went onto two legs and did as he was told. “Put him in the truck and follow me. We’ll burn him before we come back to Sammy.”
“Hunter’s funeral?” Bobby said, eyebrow raising.
“He was still my father. That’s who we’re burning, not the monster he became.”
“Deanie, Deanie, Deanie -- I’m hurt.”
They whirled to find John sitting up, the wound in his throat slowly closing as he gained his feet, his face twisted by a cruel smile. “Monster? Seriously? Your own father….” He pointed at Dean. “But that? That was an interesting trick. Maybe you can teach it to me. After all…” The smile grew and his eyes turned a sickly shade of jaundiced yellow. “We’re two of a kind.”
Dean growled, “I’m nothing like you!”
“No? Your eyes are like mine. So like your mother’s. She was a puma, too -- before I gutted her. It’s going to be a pleasure to gut her whelp. And then ---” He smiled toward the ceiling. “I’ll go claim my favourite son.”
Bobby began the exorcism rite, only to be flung over a row of cars and land hard, knocking the breath out of him. “Now, stop it,” the creature chuckled. “I’m too powerful for that puny ritual. Besides,” he said, smirking at Dean. “I’m going to find out what makes this one tick.”
Bobby lurched to his car, making the creature laugh. “And again, you’re abandoned by a father figure, Deanie. Must be a cat thing.” He waved a hand.
Dean yelled as he was slammed into a pylon and pinned there. John’s body walked forward slowly. “Change, Deanie. I want to see the eyes of the puma before I snap its neck.”
“Go…. to hell…..” Dean ground out, twisting as if he could break the grip.
“No,” the creature laughed. “I like it here better. Now, you and I have unfin---” His words cut off in a gasp as water splashed him and his flesh began to sizzle.
Dean fell to his knees and gained four feet, racing to Bobby’s side as the older man opened another bottle and flung more holy water at the creature. “I need one of your whiskers,” Bobby hissed.
Dean held very still, not making a sound and only flinching slightly as Bobby tugged one of the precious sensory organs from his face. He stuck it into a bundle of herbs, lit the bundle, and threw it onto the cursing demon as he began to chant something in a language that definitely was not Latin.
The creature began to shudder. “.....what…..what is this…..what are you…..”
Bobby took a deep breath and nodded at Dean, who returned to human form. “I gave you an order, you slimy bastard!” he roared. “Go to Hell!”
Bobby said the final words of the ritual.
The creature lit with blue fire and tore downward, straight into the earth through the concrete, which cracked with the force. When the light show faded, John’s body had been reduced to a tiny pile of ash. The gun he’d had in his waistband and the truck keys in his pocket hung ludicrously in the air for a second before they fell with a clatter to land dead-centre in the ash pile.
Dean picked the gun up and stared at it before he threw it into the truck, watching Bobby pocket the keys. “What the hell was that you just did, Bobby?”
“Old magic,” Bobby said. “An old rite I found in one of those old tomes you are always teasing me about having my nose stuck in. It calls on the spirit of the animal, of nature itself, to destroy the imperfection. It’s fatal, but since he was dead anyway….” He shrugged. “Near as I can figure, it trapped that slimy so-and-so in one of the lower levels of Hell and it’ll take a while for him to claw his way out. Probably centuries.”
Dean nodded and shook himself like the large cat he was -- one of the behaviors that he kept on two feet. “Then it’s over.” At Bobby’s acknowledging nod, he raised his eyes toward the elevators. “I need to get back to Sammy.”
Bobby called after him, “What about the… uh…” He gestured at the pile of ashes.
“Let the cleaning staff take care of it. It’s really a poetic kind of justice.” Dean paused a second and shook his head. “A lot of what he did belonged in the garbage. It’s kind of fitting that he end up there, too.”
With that, Dean turned and entered the elevator, heading back to his brother’s side.
“Damn,” Bobby breathed. “Ruthless as a cat, too.” He looked around and frowned. “Hang on -- we’re in the parking garage of a hospital in the middle of a crowded college campus. Where the hell was everybody?”
~*~*~*~*~
The janitor walked onto the parking garage floor as Bobby took another elevator up. He looked around, hummed, and smirked, pulling the lollipop from his mouth. “Yup, they did it. I didn’t think they had it in them, but they did. Amazing what a little time-freeze will do, isn’t it?”
He replaced the lollipop and gently swept the ash pile into a small sack, which he hung on the belt of his coveralls. “The kid was right. This is just desserts for you, bucko.” He patted the sack and went on, “Though you’re going to be spared the trash can, seeing as how your son stopped the Apocalypse with the help of Brainiac Bobblehead over there. No, your ashes are going to be put with those of your wife, as your soul is going to be reunited with her. Rest well, John. And don’t worry about Samwise. He’ll be just fine.”
The janitor grinned and shifted the lollipop to the other side of his mouth. “....eventually.”
A snap of his fingers and the janitor was gone. And people shimmered back into view, living their lives unaware of the cosmic events that had occurred right under their noses.
Only the crack in the concrete, a weird bloodstain, and a mysterious black truck that was suddenly parked where nothing had been a few moments ago remained to show it had ever happened at all.
Upstairs, slow healing began for Sam Winchester. It would be almost a year before he would return to finish his senior year. In that time, his brother helped with his rehabilitation.
Though Dean never quite got over the humiliation of wearing a harness when he would openly walk the campus beside his healing brother.
END
The sun shone into the windows of the hospital on the campus of Stanford University. It fell across the face of the unconscious young man on the bed.
Senior Sam Winchester lay with monitors beeping all around him. The bright sunshine caressed his face, but the young man did not stir.
Sam’s older brother Dean sat in the chair beside the bed, his elbows on the mattress and his focus single-mindedly on the bed. “Come on, Sammy,” he whispered. “Come on. Come back to me.”
He waited, but the only sound was the beeping of the monitors. The only movement was the mechanical rise and fall of Sam’s chest as the ventilator breathed for him.
Dean growled softly, his jade green eyes fading into golden yellow as he hissed, “You have to beat this, Sammy. Don’t let him win. Do NOT let that bastard win!”
Sam slept on, and Dean’s yellowed gaze turned upward before flicking toward the door, which had begun to open.
THEN
John and Mary Winchester seemed to be a normal pair of newlyweds, raising their young children in a suburban Kansas neighborhood. As far as he was concerned, his wife was special. She was beautiful and smart and more than a little skilled with anything physical. She'd even pinned him a time or two.
But what John Winchester did not know was that his wife Mary was not fully human. She came from a long line of were-cats. Her particular form was a sleek tan cougar with beautiful golden eyes. Unlike other were-creatures, her shifts were not forced by the lunar cycle and were completely under her control. It was an inborn instinct - none of her family were taught how to do this.
Above all, Mary wanted to be normal. She hid what she was from her husband and was thrilled that he never put two and two together about the cougar sightings around their Kansas home. So she still changed. She felt better as a cat and when the pressures of suburbia got too much, she would go for a prowl.
Her one wish was that neither of her boys would inherit this gift. She had wept in sheer relief when neither of her boys was born with golden eyes. She had no idea that her oldest, Dean, had inherited her gift and used it to protect his little brother.
All she knew was that she would put Dean into his bed and find him in the morning curled around Sammy in his crib. She would scold him and send him on his way, never noticing the flash of gold in her oldest's eyes when he would glare at her behind her back or the whisper he would purr to his brother. "She just doesn't understand, Sammy. It's okay."
One fateful night, she was awakened by her youngest crying over the baby monitor. That was a little unusual, so it woke her right up. She walked into the nursery and thought the man standing over the crib was her husband. So she left him alone.
But when she found her husband downstairs, holding their sleeping oldest on the couch, she realised something was very wrong. She spun on her heel and raced back upstairs, two feet rapidly shifting to four as she did so.
It was the cougar that knocked the man off of the crib railing, spraying blood onto the wall and over her baby boy. It was the cougar who snarled when the man regained his feet to show eyes that were not golden, but a jaundiced type of yellow. It was the cougar who leapt again at the man as he raised his hand.
But it was Mary Winchester who hit the ground, groaning as the demon inside the man forced her to resume her human shape. It was Mary who had presence enough to scream, bringing her husband running.
And it was Mary who burned in the nursery, managing to hold on just long enough to see her husband put the baby in the arms of their four year old, and see them run out of the room.
Then she closed her eyes - and exploded.
NOW
Bobby Singer froze as he entered the hospital room and took in Dean -- every detail of him. “Somethin’ you wanna tell me, son?”
“When did you get here?” Dean challenged. “Why are you here?”
“You called me.” Bobby edged closer to the bed. “Don’t you remember?”
“No,” Dean said honestly, his eyes darkening back to jade green as his hand rubbed across his forehead. “The last few hours have been a blur.”
“I bet. So how is he doing?”
Dean sighed and recited the laundry list of injuries. “One bullet went through his right thigh, another went through his right upper arm and lodged in his right lung. He just got out of surgery. Another bullet went right through his left side and hit his girlfriend in the belly. She’s still in surgery. The last one plowed a groove in the side of his head. We’re waiting on when he wakes up to see if there’s been any damage.”
He shook his head. “Bobby, if there’s been damage….I-I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“We’ll find out. Finding out a lot today,” Bobby mused softly, sitting down across from Dean and taking Sam’s pulse as he said calmly, “So you’re the Stanford cougar.”
Dean breathed in sharply and his eyes turned golden again. “So you’re here to hunt me. Just like -- him.”
THEN
Dean grew up watching his father hunting and hating everything that wasn't fully human. He suspected that his father would hunt and hate him if he knew that he could become a cougar whenever he wanted to.
This remained only a feeling until nine-year-old Sam drew the attention of a sadistic older student who had killed several kids. His reign of terror came to a bloody end at the jaws of Dean’s cougar form, but not before he had drugged Sammy.
By the time their father had located them and scooped Sammy into his arms, Dean was so thrilled to see him and so worried for Sammy that he'd forgotten he was still a cougar and had instinctively run toward his father.
Seeing only a cougar with a bloody muzzle, John had kicked it in the head full-force and left it for dead.
Dean thought it was a miracle that the steel-toed work boot hadn't just destroyed his skull. As it was, he spent weeks recovering from a hairline fracture and near-blinding headaches. He claimed not to remember what had happened, though in reality he remembered every agonising detail.
He now had absolute proof that his father would kill him without a second thought if he knew what Dean truly was. It made him sick to his stomach to know that his father's love was so conditional.
NOW
Bobby shook his head. “Dammit, boy, I am not here to hunt you. I’m not like your daddy.”
“He’s not my daddy,” Dean snarled, the growl of an angry cat. “He forfeited that the second he drew that gun.”
“Then? Not when you left him?”
“We didn’t leave him, Bobby. He threw us out.”
“He told me you two left him. Called me in a drunken stupor. So how about you tell me what really happened?”
THEN
Sammy was scary smart. Dean had known that from the time his baby brother had taught himself to read from the closed captioning on one of their babysitters' TVs. So when his 14 year old brother told him that he knew what Dean was and what he could do, Dean wasn’t really surprised.
Nor was he surprised that Sammy’s grades were high enough to get him into college. The full ride to Stanford, though, was a bit of a shock. Dean was so proud of him that he was purring - literally. They made plans - Dean would set up home base near the college and give Sam a place to belong. Just like always.
But then they told John, expecting him to be thrilled. Instead, John hit the roof - almost literally. The fight was truly epic, both in its duration and its volume. At the end of it, John screamed that if Sam left for Stanford, not to come back. Ever.
Doors slammed - one to John storming to his truck and away to calm down, one to Sam's room - and Dean was left alone in the living room, eyes slowly turning golden as he yowled softly in feline distress as his world crumbled around him.
Those eyes narrowed after a few moments as a decision was made. Dean knew exactly what he had to do.
Dean checked quickly to make certain John was gone before he turned toward Sam's room. He knocked on the door quickly and opened it.
He wasn't surprised to see Sam on his knees beside the closet, haphazardly throwing clothing and everything else he could find into it. "I'm not changing my mind," Sam said, not looking up.
"I'm not asking you to do anything but put that duffel on the bed, empty it out, and let me help you repack it so things fit better."
Sam's head snapped around to face Dean so fast that he had a crazy mental image of it rolling right off Sam's neck and down the hall. "....you'd do that?"
"Of course I'm doing that," Dean said, gesturing at the bed impatiently. "You can't get all your clothes in there at the rate you're loading them. Let's take a few minutes and we'll get you set to rights."
Sam upended the duffel on the bed and Dean showed him quickly how to fold and load things. About five minutes later, he stopped and asked, "Think you've got it from here?"
Sam grinned at him. "I do. Thanks." His smile faltered and he sighed. "I'm going to miss you."
"No, you're not," Dean said as he walked into their father's bedroom and returned with a second duffel. "I'm coming with you."
Sam froze, eyes huge and jaw slowly lowering.
"Plan's still on, Sammy." Dean began to fold his own clothing and load the bag. "Exactly what we dreamed. Only thing that's changed is we're not going to stay in touch with Dad." His eyes blazed golden fire as he looked at his brother. "He's driven us both away tonight, Sammy."
Packing was put on hold for a few moments while Dean suddenly had his arms full of half-sobbing little brother. But only for a few moments. They were up against a deadline.
NOW
Dean looked at Bobby, an eyebrow cocking. “The rest you know, if you know about the Stanford Cougar.”
“Most of it,” Bobby nodded. “John assumed you’d taken Sam to the bus stop, then he crawled right into that damned bottle. I don’t know how long he stayed there, exactly, but it was a while. Then…” He gestured at the bed, at Sam’s still form. “I can only guess that without his family holding him together, John lost his damned mind.”
Dean snorted. “I’d pass that up. That’s a sucker bet.”
Bobby shared a grin with him, then he said softly, “So what made you decide to be the Stanford Cougar?”
“It’s not like I planned it,” Dean said. “It’s what I am, and … well…”
THEN
By the end of the first week of classes, Dean had a job working at a garage. He worked his own schedule around Sam's, allowing him to be able to eavesdrop on some classes that interested him. Sam teased him about being a cougar when he did so, having spotted him listening outside the window. "One of these days I'm going to have classes on an upper floor and you'll be out of luck then. Wouldn't it be easier just to audit the class? You'd be able to have the professor answer any questions that way, too."
"Sammy, you know I'm not comfortable in a classroom. I'd just be a distraction."
"And a five-foot long cougar curled up outside the window isn't?"
That didn't stop Dean. He still made it a regular practice to curl up and listen underneath the window.
Around mid-September, the world changed. Three terrorist attacks in one day shifted the atmosphere and suddenly anything and everything different was a threat.
Three times the first week after that shift, Dean had to move fast because one paranoid student was convinced that the cougar was going to eat him and called the police. By the time the police arrived, the big cat was gone and a sandy-haired man with emerald eyes was sitting on a bench across the quad from the building the cat had been lounging under, silently judging the student who was shaking with emotion as he tried to tell the cops that he wasn't insane, the cat really had been just right there....
After the third call, the cops brought the kid over and sat him down on another bench next to Dean. One of the police sat down beside him and told him in no uncertain terms that calling the police on fake calls -- "...cougars on the campus of Stanford? Really, kid?" -- was not a good idea and to knock it off.
Then they left him alone.
Dean watched him fold in on himself, arms wrapped around his stomach. He really looked at the kid and saw him for what he really was: a slight, frightened kid who looked a hell of a lot like the idiots who had killed so many people. No wonder he was paranoid.
The kid just sat there, eyes closed, shaking slightly. Suddenly he heard a tiny little sound -- like a cross between a chirp and a meow. He opened his eyes and turned to look out over the empty quad.
A sandpaper tongue rasped over his hand, making him gasp and whirl to face the other side of the bench. He found himself looking into the beautiful golden eyes of the very cougar he'd been so frightened of -- less than two inches away. A massive paw moved, not to threaten, but to rest lightly on his knee. The same sound the kid had heard -- a chirping sort of meow -- came from the creature's throat.
His eyes widened in fear, then he swallowed hard as something hit him. ".....you aren't trying to hurt me. Why aren't you trying to eat me?"
If a cat could smile, the creature smiled at him. But it wasn't nasty. If anything, it felt...comforting.
A tall, gangly man walked out of the building and called out, "Dean! Hey, Dean! Made a friend?"
The cat's tail twitched and it sat up and stretched before lithely leaping off the bench and padding over, meeting the newcomer halfway and butting his head against his knee.
"All right, all right," he laughed. He sat down and held out his hand. "Sam Winchester."
"Mark Turcabe." He nodded at the cougar. "That's yours?"
"More like I'm his," Sam laughed again. "Seriously, he's tame. He's only hurt one person my entire life and that one was actively trying to kill me."
Mark's hairs raised as the cougar emitted a low, dangerous rumble. But the moment passed, and the lightness was back as Sam carded his fingers over the massive furred head, scratching behind one of his ears and earning something like a purr in return.
And Mark found himself smiling.
NOW
Bobby nodded. “Something else I don’t get -- you said Sam went into Law. But the news reports said he was pre-med.”
Dean chuckled. “Yeah, about that….”
THEN
Sam took all the pre-requisite courses that any college freshman had to have, all the while agonising over his major. The brothers stayed on campus over the holiday breaks, and Sam found himself talking about getting a part time job as well.
On Christmas day, Dean sat him down after they had cleared away the debris from breakfast and their gift exchange. "Okay, talk to me."
Sam looked at him, then chuckled. "I'm gonna need a little more parameters, Dean. I can talk about anything."
Dean blinked, then sat back, impressed. "Bitch."
"Jerk. Parameters, Dean."
"Okay, fine. Why do you want to take on a job on top of your studies when between my job and your full ride, everything is covered and we are in no danger of going into debt?"
"Yet. But if my major changes...." He winced, realising he'd just blurted it out.
Dean nodded slowly and leaned forward again. "And there we have it. You're not satisfied with pre-law and want to change your major. But what you're leaning toward must be stupid expensive and you're stressing out about it and wanting to fix it all yourself instead of coming to me and us dealing with it as a family."
"I'm not a kid," Sam growled. "I can't go running to my big brother with every problem I have!"
:"I'm not saying you're a kid," Dean said firmly. "I am saying we're family and family deals with things as a unit. Dad was wrong, trying to drive us apart. And you can't sit here and say that wasn't what he was trying to do those last few years."
Sam blinked, visibly startled. "....wow," he gasped. "You understand."
"I think I always did," Dean said slowly, lowering his eyes to look at his hands, clasped on the table. "I don't think I wanted to see it, but I think on some level I did." He raised his eyes to meet his brother's, and his own were golden with emotion that leaked out in a slight yowl as he spoke. "You know what I am, Sammy. I was born as much cat as human. I'm pretty sure I inherited it from Mom. You know that big cats are solitary until it comes to one thing."
Sam nodded, finally getting it. "Family. If a cat bonds, they bond for life."
"Yeah. Lots of folks don't believe it, but it's the truth. I don't know if that's true for me because of the fact I'm a cougar -- which are pretty solitary despite family -- or if it's because I'm human as well. But it's the truth. We're family, and ---"
"-- and family solves things together," Sam finished. "All right." He held up a hand. "But let me finish my research before I tell you what major I'm thinking about. Give me till New Year's Day."
Dean nodded. "Deal."
One week later, the brothers sat on their couch and watched the seconds count down on TV while the ball in Times Square rapidly descended. The lights lit up proclaiming 2002 to be off to a rousing start.
As Dick Clark was kissing his wife and embracing her to celebrate the new year, Sam spoke up quietly over the crowd singing "Auld Lang Syne". "Pre-med."
To his credit, Dean didn't spit out the beer he'd just drunk, but it was a near thing. He swallowed and said, "Why that?"
Knowing it was curiosity and not condemnation, Sam leaned further into the couch cushions and said, "Because I want to help people. I thought I wanted to do it with the law, but after talking to my classmates and advisors, I figured out -- on my own -- that my primary reason for going into law was I was so used to arguing with Dad and I wanted to keep arguing. That's the wrong reason to go into a profession."
Dean thought for a long moment and then turned off the TV. "Let's sleep on it and discuss it in the morning." At Sam's surprised look, he held up his over half-full bottle. "I'm buzzed and not in the best of brains right now."
Sam smiled, understanding. Due to his feline metabolism, Dean had trouble with alcohol. One half of a bottle of beer made him buzzed enough to be impaired, and more than that made him sick. They had found that out the hard way when Dad had given Dean his first beer at way too young an age.
So they tabled the discussion till the next day -- after they watched the Rose Parade and ate homemade pancakes. Some traditions were non-negotiable.
The first day of the semester after New Year's Day found both brothers in the Registrar's office, officially changing Sam's major to pre-med.
NOW
Dean shook his head. “And then…. today happened.”
THIS MORNING
November 2, 2005 turned out to be a warm day in California, full of sun and a warm breeze. It was Dean's day off work, so he decided to spend it in his favourite spot. By now, the students were familiar with the large golden cat that liked to curl up underneath windows on Stanford, so hardly anybody spared the sleepy-looking cougar a second thought.
Sam scratched him behind the ears as he headed in to class, as did Sam's friend Jessica Moore. Mark, the man who had been so afraid of him, even dared a warm stroke of the broad head before he headed to another building for class. Feeling happy and content, Dean settled in to listen to class under the window that Sam helpfully opened.
An ear twitched as a truck rumbled by, and Dean suddenly felt uneasy. His head raised and he scented the air, feeling something had changed. But he wasn't sure what, so he returned his head to his paws and sighed.
Just as the warm sunlight and the interesting discussion banished the feeling of unease and Dean was starting to feel sleepy, a loud crash roused him. He leapt to his feet, stretched, and looked into the room. He saw a scene from his nightmares come to technicolor life.
Their father was in the room, yelling about demons and Sammy being evil and all kinds of crap. Suddenly he drew his gun and sprayed the room with bullets, seeming to focus on Sam.
Dean roared. He leapt into the room and used his full weight to take down his surprised father, then knocked the gun out of his hand and turned to see if Sam was all right.
Sam was on the floor, unconscious and bleeding. His friend Jessica lay beside him, bleeding from her abdomen, crying softly as she caressed his hair.
Dean snarled. He turned back to their father, growling, only to find himself stunned as his father punched him in the head and got up, running. Dean shook his head and raced after him, tearing out onto the campus proper.
John turned and managed a shot in his direction, causing Dean to quickly change course in order to avoid getting hit. But in those few seconds, John made his getaway.
Dean shifted to two legs, cursing and shaking his ringing head. Then he spun on his heel and raced back to the classroom, bursting in and calling an ambulance at the same time.
It never crossed his mind that he'd changed in front of several people -- most of whom were very willing to dismiss what they'd just seen. The others -- well, there is a reason "who will believe you" is a legitimate question.
But for Dean, all that mattered was his brother was suffering and he had to be there.
NOW
Dean looked up as the door opened and smiled slightly. "Any word?"
Mark nodded as he walked in. "Jessie is going to be okay. They got the bullet out and she should make a full recovery. She’s scared, but that’s to be expected.” He frowned slightly. “And who’s this?”
“My uncle,” Dean said. “Bobby Singer, meet Mark. I was telling you about him.”
Bobby nodded. “Nice to meet you, Mark.”
Dean smiled, then turned back to Mark. “Are you going back to sit with her?”
“Yeah, I’m just the messenger.” He seemed uncomfortable.
“Well, out with it, then,” Dean said playfully, trying to put him at ease.
Mark shifted position, then sighed and looked at Sam. “Jessie … she said to tell you she’s reconsidering being Sam’s girlfriend. She’s had a huge shock and… needs some time.”
Dean shook his head and gripped the rail on Sam’s bed. “So, in plain talk, she’s breaking up with Sammy.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, man, I know that’s not what --- Dean, look.”
“No, Mark, I get it, it’s --”
“No! Dean -- look at your brother!” Mark pointed.
Startled, Dean snapped his head around to look at Sam. Instantly he put his hand on Sam’s face. “Sammy? Sammy, hey…. hey, come on, little brother….”
Bobby raced to the other side of the bed, clapping Mark on the shoulder as he did so, and pushed the button to summon the nurse.
Sam hadn’t moved, but tears had begun to trail from his eyes when he got the news.
He was waking up.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Bobby excused himself to the hallway while the nurses worked on Sam. He drifted down the hallway and heard raised voices near a stairwell. He went over to investigate and saw that Mark kid arguing with a boy that looked about Sam’s age.
“--not going near them, I told you that before! They don’t need your influence right now!”
“C’mon, Turcabe, I’m good for them and you know it!”
“No, Brady, you’re not going near either of them! Let them rest, they’ve been shot to hell!”
Bobby’s eyes narrowed. What was this?
“Fine, Turcabe. You won’t do it the easy way, we’ll do it the hard way.” Then Bobby heard a sound he’d heard in his nightmares a million times -- the soft but angry roar of a demonic cloud leaving its host.
Cursing, Bobby burst into the stairwell to see the cloud wrapping itself around Mark and then retreating back into the body it had left. “What in hell’s name is going on?” it demanded. “Why can’t I have you?”
Before Mark could answer, Bobby yelled out an exorcism and the creature was banished. Brady’s body fell to the ground, seized, and went still. Bobby felt for a pulse, cursed, and yelled for a doctor.
When the body was being taken away, Bobby turned to Mark. “It had a point -- why couldn’t it get inside you?”
Mark pulled his collar aside and revealed a starburst pendant. “Dean wanted me to get a tattoo, but that’s haram -- I mean--”
Bobby nodded. “Forbidden in your faith. I get it. So you wear an antipossession charm where no one can see. Dean’s a smart kid.”
“He is.” A nurse came down the hall and Mark asked, “Our friend--”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, there were too many drugs in his system. We tried to revive him….”
Bobby nodded. “Come on, let’s get back to the brothers.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
When they returned, they saw Sam’s eyes closing and his breathing slow again, back to the rhythm of the respirator. “Dean?” Bobby asked.
“He woke up,” Dean said, his voice strangled. “Blinked at me in code. Can’t move his arm or his leg, can’t breathe right, and we won’t know about talking till the respirator’s done, but he’s definitely himself.”
Bobby watched him lean over and kiss Sam’s forehead, and saw Sam’s dimples emerge as he smiled around the tube. Then Dean walked over to him. “Mark, can you stay with him?”
Mark nodded. “I’ll take the precautions you showed me.”
“Already done. Just maintain them. And check in with me every few hours, okay?”
“Deal.” Mark went to sit by Sam.
Bobby frowned as they left the room. “You’re not staying?”
“That was what Sammy told me,” Dean said, his voice hard. His eyes slid golden and his tone took on a distinct growl. “He told me to get the bastard. So I’m getting the bastard.”
Bobby nodded. “Follow me to the parking garage. I have a good place for you to start.”
In the parking garage, Bobby opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a laptop computer, booting it up as Dean cocked an eyebrow. “That must have cost a pretty penny.”
“Over a grand,” Bobby admitted. “Worth every penny, though. Especially with a few friends helping me out.” He activated a program and tapped the screen. “Caleb worked a case a couple of months back with him. I had him install a tracking device in that monster of a truck your daddy drives.”
Dean nodded. “And this will let you track him? Sweet!” He looked at the screen and frowned. “Wait -- that looks like --”
“It is,” Bobby growled. “That’s Stanford. Here’s the hospital. He’s three miles away and closing.”
Green eyes went fully golden and Dean snarled, “Then we’d better get ready for him.”
“What? Dean, what are you --” Bobby sighed as he found himself talking to a massive cougar that crawled under Bobby’s car and settled in to wait. “Winchesters,” he sighed deeply.
He could swear that blasted cat actually laughed at him.
Knowing Dean? He probably did.
~*~*~*~*~*~
He rolled his truck up into the lowest level of the parking garage and parked in an unobtrusive spot in the shadows. He took the time to get the armaments right and slide the gun into his waistband. It had taken him some time to locate a gun that wouldn’t show up on scanners, but this was worth it.
He paused for a second, thinking about his mission. This still felt a tiny bit wrong -- this creature had begun life as his baby boy.
All doubt fled when the now-familiar touch to his mind whispered that he was in the position now to avenge his beloved Mary. That thing in the bed was only wearing the face of his baby, and it had since he’d left. Sammy would never have left him, so he was possessed.
And possessed things died.
Firmly resolved that he was in the right, John Winchester opened the truck door and stepped onto the concrete of the parking garage.
Without a single sound or any hint of warning, two hundred pounds of coiled muscle slammed into the open door at nearly thirty miles an hour, and the force of it slamming into John’s back knocked him off of his feet. He hit hard, and felt the wind go out of him.
John rose to his knees and turned -- and found himself face to face with a familiar face. “.....Dean? What… What are you doing here?”
“Giving you more mercy than you deserve,” Dean snarled.
John shook his head. “I don’t understand… mercy? What are you talking about?”
“I am not the coward who hides behind a classroom full of students to do my killing. I am giving you the mercy of seeing my face before I end you.”
“Dean, that -- that THING in there is not your brother! Not anymore!”
“That thing in here is not my father. It is a monster.”
“The only monster I’m interested in is the one wearing my son’s face and its master -- the yellow-eyed bastard who--”
“Interesting you should bring him up. Cause you see -- he’s not the golden-eyed devil you need to worry about.”
John froze, ice sliding down his spine. “Why … Why do you say that, Dean?”
“Because that? Would be me.” Dean’s emerald eyes flared golden yellow and his body -- rippled.
Before John could fully process what he was seeing, the massive cougar that had replaced his oldest son lunged. John was knocked onto his back, anchored in place by eight massive claws that were digging into his shoulders. He could see every hair on the cat’s muzzle and could feel its hot breath as it drew three large gulps of air in.
Then a corner of the muzzle drew slowly upward, revealing wickedly sharp fangs.
John’s last sight was the cat’s head moving rapidly before those massive jaws clamped shut over his throat.
By the truck, Bobby Singer actually had to turn away for a moment.
When Dean padded back over, Bobby threw a water bottle at him. “Wash your face, boy.”
Dean went onto two legs and did as he was told. “Put him in the truck and follow me. We’ll burn him before we come back to Sammy.”
“Hunter’s funeral?” Bobby said, eyebrow raising.
“He was still my father. That’s who we’re burning, not the monster he became.”
“Deanie, Deanie, Deanie -- I’m hurt.”
They whirled to find John sitting up, the wound in his throat slowly closing as he gained his feet, his face twisted by a cruel smile. “Monster? Seriously? Your own father….” He pointed at Dean. “But that? That was an interesting trick. Maybe you can teach it to me. After all…” The smile grew and his eyes turned a sickly shade of jaundiced yellow. “We’re two of a kind.”
Dean growled, “I’m nothing like you!”
“No? Your eyes are like mine. So like your mother’s. She was a puma, too -- before I gutted her. It’s going to be a pleasure to gut her whelp. And then ---” He smiled toward the ceiling. “I’ll go claim my favourite son.”
Bobby began the exorcism rite, only to be flung over a row of cars and land hard, knocking the breath out of him. “Now, stop it,” the creature chuckled. “I’m too powerful for that puny ritual. Besides,” he said, smirking at Dean. “I’m going to find out what makes this one tick.”
Bobby lurched to his car, making the creature laugh. “And again, you’re abandoned by a father figure, Deanie. Must be a cat thing.” He waved a hand.
Dean yelled as he was slammed into a pylon and pinned there. John’s body walked forward slowly. “Change, Deanie. I want to see the eyes of the puma before I snap its neck.”
“Go…. to hell…..” Dean ground out, twisting as if he could break the grip.
“No,” the creature laughed. “I like it here better. Now, you and I have unfin---” His words cut off in a gasp as water splashed him and his flesh began to sizzle.
Dean fell to his knees and gained four feet, racing to Bobby’s side as the older man opened another bottle and flung more holy water at the creature. “I need one of your whiskers,” Bobby hissed.
Dean held very still, not making a sound and only flinching slightly as Bobby tugged one of the precious sensory organs from his face. He stuck it into a bundle of herbs, lit the bundle, and threw it onto the cursing demon as he began to chant something in a language that definitely was not Latin.
The creature began to shudder. “.....what…..what is this…..what are you…..”
Bobby took a deep breath and nodded at Dean, who returned to human form. “I gave you an order, you slimy bastard!” he roared. “Go to Hell!”
Bobby said the final words of the ritual.
The creature lit with blue fire and tore downward, straight into the earth through the concrete, which cracked with the force. When the light show faded, John’s body had been reduced to a tiny pile of ash. The gun he’d had in his waistband and the truck keys in his pocket hung ludicrously in the air for a second before they fell with a clatter to land dead-centre in the ash pile.
Dean picked the gun up and stared at it before he threw it into the truck, watching Bobby pocket the keys. “What the hell was that you just did, Bobby?”
“Old magic,” Bobby said. “An old rite I found in one of those old tomes you are always teasing me about having my nose stuck in. It calls on the spirit of the animal, of nature itself, to destroy the imperfection. It’s fatal, but since he was dead anyway….” He shrugged. “Near as I can figure, it trapped that slimy so-and-so in one of the lower levels of Hell and it’ll take a while for him to claw his way out. Probably centuries.”
Dean nodded and shook himself like the large cat he was -- one of the behaviors that he kept on two feet. “Then it’s over.” At Bobby’s acknowledging nod, he raised his eyes toward the elevators. “I need to get back to Sammy.”
Bobby called after him, “What about the… uh…” He gestured at the pile of ashes.
“Let the cleaning staff take care of it. It’s really a poetic kind of justice.” Dean paused a second and shook his head. “A lot of what he did belonged in the garbage. It’s kind of fitting that he end up there, too.”
With that, Dean turned and entered the elevator, heading back to his brother’s side.
“Damn,” Bobby breathed. “Ruthless as a cat, too.” He looked around and frowned. “Hang on -- we’re in the parking garage of a hospital in the middle of a crowded college campus. Where the hell was everybody?”
~*~*~*~*~
The janitor walked onto the parking garage floor as Bobby took another elevator up. He looked around, hummed, and smirked, pulling the lollipop from his mouth. “Yup, they did it. I didn’t think they had it in them, but they did. Amazing what a little time-freeze will do, isn’t it?”
He replaced the lollipop and gently swept the ash pile into a small sack, which he hung on the belt of his coveralls. “The kid was right. This is just desserts for you, bucko.” He patted the sack and went on, “Though you’re going to be spared the trash can, seeing as how your son stopped the Apocalypse with the help of Brainiac Bobblehead over there. No, your ashes are going to be put with those of your wife, as your soul is going to be reunited with her. Rest well, John. And don’t worry about Samwise. He’ll be just fine.”
The janitor grinned and shifted the lollipop to the other side of his mouth. “....eventually.”
A snap of his fingers and the janitor was gone. And people shimmered back into view, living their lives unaware of the cosmic events that had occurred right under their noses.
Only the crack in the concrete, a weird bloodstain, and a mysterious black truck that was suddenly parked where nothing had been a few moments ago remained to show it had ever happened at all.
Upstairs, slow healing began for Sam Winchester. It would be almost a year before he would return to finish his senior year. In that time, his brother helped with his rehabilitation.
Though Dean never quite got over the humiliation of wearing a harness when he would openly walk the campus beside his healing brother.
END