The Rock Cried Out (Supernatural) PG
The Rock Cried Out
A Supernatural ficlette
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: There's a man who wants to make a deal with Dean, and he's not taking no for an answer.
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to the CW and Kripke. No profit has been made from this fic.
Pairings/Characters: No pairings/Gen. Characters include Dean, Sam and an OC.
Rating: PG
Words: 3,230
Spoilers: Huge spoilers for Supernatural up to 2x12 "Nightwalker" (Jan. 25th's show).
Why: At the end of Nightwalkers, Dean comment to Sam that they are totally screwed. I had to find a way out of this mess for our boys, because really, isn't being chased by a demon and half the monster hunters in the continental USA bad enough?
Note: I'm of two minds about this, but here it is in its second draft. The first draft involved more rehashing and manly moping. Anyway, as always, much love to the Super-Wikki for help on character/date/location details.
~~~~~~
They'd come up for air for only a few days, chancing a run into this hick Oklahoma town to stock up on food and rock salt. It had been three months since the shapeshifter in Milwaukee, three months since everything went so very wrong.
Now Dean's face was on every police bulletin board in the country, his name splashed on every police scanner from here to Little Rock. He and Sam had gone to ground, the police after Dean and hunters after Sammy. They'd done a few jobs since Milwaukee, but mostly they hid, gone after things in the country, in the dark, where no one would see them. The initial plan had been to lay low until things had blown over.
But this... Dean knew this was never going to blow over.
Sam tried to keep a brave face on things, tried to pretend it would all be okay, because that was what Dean's punk-ass little brother did, tried to Pollyanna his way out of anything. Dean didn't even bother to answer Sam anymore. He didn't have anything to say, and after a while Sam stopped talking too.
Dean had thought about it, though. In the quiet nights, sleeping in the car to avoid the prying eyes of motel clerks, Dean had actually considered giving in, giving up. If that fed had been right, he was probably bound for a life sentence in jail. With any luck, he could avoid a death sentence. Not that it mattered. He'd died in that hospital room, no matter what kind of deal Dad had made for him. He was on borrowed time already, and in the end, he knew where he'd be going. And it wasn't up.
He'd actually considered making the call, once. But then all the promises he'd made came back to him, the one to Dad to watch out for Sammy, the one to Sammy to kill him if the time came. They weren't the kind of promises a normal person ever had to make, and it made Dean wonder about normal.
He'd had four years of normal, until a demon came along and went for Sammy, burned Mom up on the ceiling before Dean's eyes and made everything go straight to hell on earth.
He'd spent his whole life fighting evil, it seemed, and now here he was, considering giving in to it. Letting it win.
He couldn't bring himself to care much, anymore.
He was just so tired.
Sammy had been the one to insist they go into town. He was shopping at the hardware store, which was right next to the police station, while Dean slumped in a chair on the abandoned patio by the town's one coffee shop.
Sam was lucky he had the keys, Dean reflected as he swallowed another mouthful of the weak, tepid coffee. Otherwise, Dean might have been tempted to get the hell out of Dodge, with or without--
"Dean Winchester."
Dean dropped the cup, hand going to his hip for the gun he'd left in the car. A few feet away stood an older man, looking lawyerly and only mildly dangerous in his thousand-dollar suit. He held a briefcase and nothing else, and he was looking at Dean like he owned him. Fuck.
Still, Dean cleared his throat. "Who?"
The man raised his eyebrow. "Mr. Winchester, I am a man on a tight schedule and I don't have time for games." He glanced down the street. Dean followed his gaze, and his blood ran cold. Three... no, five men stood at varying intervals, all dressed casually and looking like they belonged, but Dean knew Feds when he saw them. "And neither do you."
Dean forced himself to relax, put his hand on the table. He wondered if he could text-message Sam without this guy knowing, telling Sam to run, that it was all over for Dean. That they'd found him.
A tiny, ashamed part of him was glad that it was over.
"I'll make this brief," the man continued. He stepped forward, placed his briefcase on the table, and sat in the chair across from Dean. "You are no doubt aware that the FBI and state police are looking for you and your brother. It's only a matter of time before they find you, and I'm afraid I can't let that happen."
Dean blinked. "What?" A horrible idea occurred to him. What if this wasn't a lawyer, and these weren't feds... that left something slightly more demonic in nature.
"Mr. Winchester," the man continued, opening his briefcase, "I'm here to make you a deal."
The muscles in Dean's left arm twitched. "I don't make deals," Dean ground out. He forced himself to smile. "Might want to shop that elsewhere, Monty."
The man pulled out a thick manila folder, and closed the briefcase. "My name is Garrison Stone, Mr. Winchester. I'm with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security." He dropped the folder on the table. "And you really don't have a choice in the matter."
"Homeland Security?" Dean let out a short bark of laughter. "Nice try."
"Dean Winchester, born January 24, 1978, to Mary and John Winchester," Stone said, leaning back in his chair. "You lived a normal life, with normal childhood illnesses and vaccinations and ailments, until November 2, 1983, when the demonic presence of Azazel in your brother's nursery killed your mother."
Dean's guts turned to ice. This wasn't good. This was so the opposite of good, and all he could do was sit there and stare like an idiot.
"Your father bundled you and Sam up, taking you on the road in the 1967 Chevrolet Impala that's currently parked behind the hardware store on Pine street. You stumbled your way through school, scraping by on innate intelligence and the ability to con people from an early age. Your brother, however, excelled in this environment, always at the top of his class no matter how many times you changed schools." Stone paused. "It would be interesting, wouldn't it, to see how far he could have gone if he'd had a normal life?"
"Yeah, he could be sitting across the table from someone like me in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere."
Stone flipped open the cover of the folder and pushed it towards Dean. "While your brother was at Stanford, you and your father continued hunting supernatural creatures. Like this one." The man tapped the top photograph on the pile of papers, and in spite of himself, Dean leaned forward to look.
It was a picture of a red cap. More specifically, it was a picture of the partially burned body of a red cap that him and Dad had killed in southern Ohio in 2003. The picture was attached to a copy of the speeding fine Dad had gotten the next county over, trying to hightail it out of town.
Dean rifled through the file. It was the last four years of his life, laid out in stark black and white. Almost every job he'd done with Dad, and later with Sam. Every crime, every broken law...
"We know what happened with Jessica Moore, about your father's disappearance and subsequent death, and... well, everything that's happened since." Stone watched Dean carefully.
Dean closed the folder. "Nice," he said. "You should try hawking this as a screenplay." He smiled, baring his teeth. "Hey, do you think you can get that guy who was in Devour to play me?"
"This isn't a joke, Mr. Winchester."
"The fuck it's not!" Dean wanted to hit something, but he made himself stay still, ready to move, to run. "What, you think you show me this and I realize the error of my ways? I can turn myself in to... who did you say you were with? The National Weather Service?"
"Homeland Security." Stone didn't appear to be phased by Dean's outburst. "I'd show you my badge, but you yourself have demonstrated on more than one occasion that no one knows what to look for in a Homeland Sectary official."
Government official or not, Dean was still betting this guy was a demon. Or something similar.
"So, back to my deal," Stone said. "It's actually very simple. We clean your record, wipe everything you've done off the books. No more running from the law, no more having to hide. At least, not from us. I can't help you with the hunters after your brother."
Dean waited. When it appeared that Stone was finished talking, he said, "And what? Me and Sam play children's parties on the weekends?"
"You and your brother go back to doing what it is you do best. You and your brother's kill rate is much higher than any of the other hunters we track, even higher than you had when you were working with your father." Stone raised his eyebrow. "Or what Sam had when he was at college."
Now Dean knew he'd caught the man. "Sam wasn't hunting at college."
A slow smile spread across the man's face. "Of course not," he agreed. "That goblin infestation in the Napa Valley just... went away."
Dean couldn't stop himself; he stood up. "This is bullshit," he exclaimed, noting how the closest fed started towards them. "That's not a deal, that's fucking--"
"Bullshit, I know." Stone waved the fed away down the street. "Mr. Winchester, do you think that you're the first hunter to have gotten himself in this much trouble with the law?"
"Fucking bullshit," Dean muttered, not sure what else to say. If it was just him, he'd have bailed, but this guy knew about Sam, and if they got their hands on him, Dean wouldn't be able to save his brother. He just had to hope that Sam had his eyes open, could see this mess before he walked right into it.
"Let's just say that your problem is not the first time we have intervened."
"So you're... what, the X-Files?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Winchester." Stone gathered his briefcase and stood up. "There are no such thing as aliens."
Dean put his hands on his hips and wished desperately for a gun. "What's the rest of the deal?" he demanded.
"What if I tell you that you have to accept before I fill in the details?"
"Then I tell you to go fuck yourself."
Stone rested his briefcase on the table. "We simply want you to continue to do what you do best. Hunt supernatural creatures." Then Stone smiled, and the expression set every alarm bell in Dean's head ringing. "And continue your hunt to destroy Azazel."
"Fuck," Dean muttered, taking another step back. In the distance, he could hear the familiar rumble of the Impala's engine. Sam was going to drive right into this and there was nothing Dean could do about it.
"Contrary to popular opinion, Mr. Winchester, the U.S. Government is not in the business of hurrying the arrival of Armageddon," Stone said. "The amount of demonic activity has increased in the last few years, to a level that even the bureaucrats in Washington have taken notice. My department has known about this for some time, but it's reached the level of urgency that I can bend more rules than before. We are fighting on the same side of this battle, Mr. Winchester."
Dean concentrated on keeping himself calm, breathing in and out like he didn't have a care in the world. "What if I say no?"
Stone turned and walked away. "You won't say no."
"You don't know that," Dean called.
"Yes, I do." Stone continued down the street to a big black town car, which drove away as soon as the man was safely inside. One by one, the feds disappeared off the street.
Dean sat back down, unable to explain the shaking in his limbs. He didn't know what had just happened. He could have been hallucinating, or possessed, or something. Anything made more sense then the idea that some federal suit had just offered him a freaking pardon to go hunt demons.
Sam pulled up in the Impala, a worried expression on his face. "What happened?" he demanded as soon as Dean was in the car. "What was with the guys on the street I saw when I drove past?"
"Just get us the fuck out of here," Dean said. "Get us off the main roads as soon as you can."
"Dean--"
"Would you just fucking go already?" Dean exclaimed.
Sam looked at him for a split second, then put the Impala in gear. "Fine."
They drove in silence for a while, until the trees grew closer to the road, where the road itself was little more than a gravel-laced suggestion in the forest.
Sam pulled the Impala off the road into the shade the trees, and killed the engine. "Okay, would you now please tell me what has you so freaked?"
Dean, who had been staring out the car window the entire time, tapped his thumbnail against his teeth and said, "I think I'm losing it."
~~~
Three days later, Dean Winchester started dropping off the national law enforcement radar.
The St. Louis murder charge was the first to go. Sam had to hack into the police files, but it seemed that Becky Warren's statement, where she'd sworn up and down that Dean Winchester hadn't been the one to attack her, finally saw the light of day. After adding back in the evidence where there had been surveillance footage and eye witness reports on the suspects of the mutilated bodies, the police had come to the grudging conclusion that whoever had attacked those women, it couldn't have been Dean. The too-hasty identification of the shapeshifter's body by the police was chalked up to shoddy work, and two cops were put on paid suspension for a few months.
When Sam finished reading Dean the report that exonerated him, Dean left the rickety cabin without saying a word.
Baltimore was the following week. With the St. Louis charges gone, and Detective Ballard's statement about her partner's confession to the Karen Giles murder, the Baltimore police had nothing on Dean.
A few days after that, Sam found Dean out in the field behind the cabin, throwing rocks at the rotting fencepost. "This might not be a bad thing," Sam said.
Dean aimed a rock at the farthest post. "Like making deals with demons is going to end well?"
Sam waited until the thunk from the rock on the wood faded. "You didn't make a deal with a demon."
"Demon, Homeland Security, same difference." Dean picked up another rock from the pile at his feet.
"You didn't make a deal," Sam pressed. "Right? You didn't agree to do anything for this guy."
Dean threw a little too hard, and missed the post by three feet. "When do demons give a fuck about little details like that?"
"We don't know it's a demon!"
"And we don't know it's not!" Dean shouted, whirling on his brother. "What the fuck are you doing out here?"
Sam sucked in a breath, stared at Dean for a long moment before looking away, a gesture as familiar to Dean as breathing. "Milwaukee's been cleared."
Dean went back to his rocks. "Good for it."
"It's kind of weird, actually," Sam ventured. "They are saying that Ron Reznick was some kind of terrorist, and he locked down the back to test some kind of airborne hallucinatory drug, that when applied to human flesh can cause skin to... melt."
"Jesus," Dean muttered. "Do you think they actually have shit like that?"
"I don't know. But the FBI are saying that the hallucinatory part of that means that no one in the bank can be trusted for an accurate account of what happened. You're in the clear, man. It's all over."
Dean rolled the stone in his hand, feeling the rough edge of the rock grate on the knife calluses on his fingers. "It's not over."
Sam waited, watching in silence until the sun had set and it was getting too dark to see anything. "Let's go into town and get something to eat," he finally said.
Brushing the dust from his hands, Dean turned and went back in the cabin. "Give it a few days," he said. "To see if it's actually real."
"Dean--"
The door shutting behind Dean cut off Sam's words.
~~~
They'd been back on the road for a month, eating at crappy diners and sleeping in dingy motels and doing all of it without being chased by the cops.
Dean's phone rang one early morning on the highway outside Amarillo. It was an unfamiliar number with a Washington, DC, area code. He almost let it ring out, but he finally flipped the phone open. Ignoring government workers worked about as well as ignoring demons. "Yeah?"
"Mr. Winchester," Garrison Stone's voice came over the line. "I see you've taken me up on my offer. That work in Santa Fe was inspired."
"You know, Stone, you keep riding me this close and I'm going to have to insist you buy me dinner first," Dean said, giving Sam a look before putting his eyes back on the road. "You want something?"
"Actually, yes."
Dean's hand tightened on the steering wheel. "Not interested."
"While we were researching your recent steps, I had my assistant scanning the police and hospital files in the continental US from the last year," Stone said as if Dean hadn't spoken.
"And?" Dean had no idea where this was headed, and Sam making weird faces, trying to get his attention, was as distracting as fuck.
"Four months before your father's death, a woman was admitted to a Nebraska hospital following a car crash. She had severe internal injuries and broken bones, consistent with being hit by a car at high speeds."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"One day later, she walks out of the hospital. Her legs were broken in sixteen places, there was no way she could have left under her own power, but there are eyewitnesses to her leaving."
"Sounds like something you should send to Ripley's Believe It Or Not."
"Her driver's license gave her name as Ellen Harvelle."
Dean almost missed the curve in the road. "That's got to be a mistake."
"We double checked. Your father used to spend a lot of time at the Harvelle Roadhouse, didn't he? And you and your brother had that little encounter in Philadelphia with Joanna Beth Harvelle several months ago."
So this was Stone's deal. Screwing with Dean's head, trying to get him to turn on the people he trusted. He had to give Stone credit, for a demon he was good. For a fed, he was brilliant.
Only...
Ellen had left that voicemail for his dad four months before his death, that had led Sam and Dean to the Roadhouse in the first place. She'd managed to pry an awful lot of information out of them on the demon, all for Ash, she'd said at the time. Dad had never talked about her, not in all the years on the road. All they had to go on was Ellen's word.
Dean floored the gas pedal, ignoring Sam's protests as he slid the car into the right lane, ready for the turn-off to head north to Nebraska.
"Enjoy your freedom, Mr. Winchester," was the last thing Stone said before he hung up the phone.
the end
A Supernatural ficlette
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: There's a man who wants to make a deal with Dean, and he's not taking no for an answer.
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to the CW and Kripke. No profit has been made from this fic.
Pairings/Characters: No pairings/Gen. Characters include Dean, Sam and an OC.
Rating: PG
Words: 3,230
Spoilers: Huge spoilers for Supernatural up to 2x12 "Nightwalker" (Jan. 25th's show).
Why: At the end of Nightwalkers, Dean comment to Sam that they are totally screwed. I had to find a way out of this mess for our boys, because really, isn't being chased by a demon and half the monster hunters in the continental USA bad enough?
Note: I'm of two minds about this, but here it is in its second draft. The first draft involved more rehashing and manly moping. Anyway, as always, much love to the Super-Wikki for help on character/date/location details.
~~~~~~
They'd come up for air for only a few days, chancing a run into this hick Oklahoma town to stock up on food and rock salt. It had been three months since the shapeshifter in Milwaukee, three months since everything went so very wrong.
Now Dean's face was on every police bulletin board in the country, his name splashed on every police scanner from here to Little Rock. He and Sam had gone to ground, the police after Dean and hunters after Sammy. They'd done a few jobs since Milwaukee, but mostly they hid, gone after things in the country, in the dark, where no one would see them. The initial plan had been to lay low until things had blown over.
But this... Dean knew this was never going to blow over.
Sam tried to keep a brave face on things, tried to pretend it would all be okay, because that was what Dean's punk-ass little brother did, tried to Pollyanna his way out of anything. Dean didn't even bother to answer Sam anymore. He didn't have anything to say, and after a while Sam stopped talking too.
Dean had thought about it, though. In the quiet nights, sleeping in the car to avoid the prying eyes of motel clerks, Dean had actually considered giving in, giving up. If that fed had been right, he was probably bound for a life sentence in jail. With any luck, he could avoid a death sentence. Not that it mattered. He'd died in that hospital room, no matter what kind of deal Dad had made for him. He was on borrowed time already, and in the end, he knew where he'd be going. And it wasn't up.
He'd actually considered making the call, once. But then all the promises he'd made came back to him, the one to Dad to watch out for Sammy, the one to Sammy to kill him if the time came. They weren't the kind of promises a normal person ever had to make, and it made Dean wonder about normal.
He'd had four years of normal, until a demon came along and went for Sammy, burned Mom up on the ceiling before Dean's eyes and made everything go straight to hell on earth.
He'd spent his whole life fighting evil, it seemed, and now here he was, considering giving in to it. Letting it win.
He couldn't bring himself to care much, anymore.
He was just so tired.
Sammy had been the one to insist they go into town. He was shopping at the hardware store, which was right next to the police station, while Dean slumped in a chair on the abandoned patio by the town's one coffee shop.
Sam was lucky he had the keys, Dean reflected as he swallowed another mouthful of the weak, tepid coffee. Otherwise, Dean might have been tempted to get the hell out of Dodge, with or without--
"Dean Winchester."
Dean dropped the cup, hand going to his hip for the gun he'd left in the car. A few feet away stood an older man, looking lawyerly and only mildly dangerous in his thousand-dollar suit. He held a briefcase and nothing else, and he was looking at Dean like he owned him. Fuck.
Still, Dean cleared his throat. "Who?"
The man raised his eyebrow. "Mr. Winchester, I am a man on a tight schedule and I don't have time for games." He glanced down the street. Dean followed his gaze, and his blood ran cold. Three... no, five men stood at varying intervals, all dressed casually and looking like they belonged, but Dean knew Feds when he saw them. "And neither do you."
Dean forced himself to relax, put his hand on the table. He wondered if he could text-message Sam without this guy knowing, telling Sam to run, that it was all over for Dean. That they'd found him.
A tiny, ashamed part of him was glad that it was over.
"I'll make this brief," the man continued. He stepped forward, placed his briefcase on the table, and sat in the chair across from Dean. "You are no doubt aware that the FBI and state police are looking for you and your brother. It's only a matter of time before they find you, and I'm afraid I can't let that happen."
Dean blinked. "What?" A horrible idea occurred to him. What if this wasn't a lawyer, and these weren't feds... that left something slightly more demonic in nature.
"Mr. Winchester," the man continued, opening his briefcase, "I'm here to make you a deal."
The muscles in Dean's left arm twitched. "I don't make deals," Dean ground out. He forced himself to smile. "Might want to shop that elsewhere, Monty."
The man pulled out a thick manila folder, and closed the briefcase. "My name is Garrison Stone, Mr. Winchester. I'm with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security." He dropped the folder on the table. "And you really don't have a choice in the matter."
"Homeland Security?" Dean let out a short bark of laughter. "Nice try."
"Dean Winchester, born January 24, 1978, to Mary and John Winchester," Stone said, leaning back in his chair. "You lived a normal life, with normal childhood illnesses and vaccinations and ailments, until November 2, 1983, when the demonic presence of Azazel in your brother's nursery killed your mother."
Dean's guts turned to ice. This wasn't good. This was so the opposite of good, and all he could do was sit there and stare like an idiot.
"Your father bundled you and Sam up, taking you on the road in the 1967 Chevrolet Impala that's currently parked behind the hardware store on Pine street. You stumbled your way through school, scraping by on innate intelligence and the ability to con people from an early age. Your brother, however, excelled in this environment, always at the top of his class no matter how many times you changed schools." Stone paused. "It would be interesting, wouldn't it, to see how far he could have gone if he'd had a normal life?"
"Yeah, he could be sitting across the table from someone like me in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere."
Stone flipped open the cover of the folder and pushed it towards Dean. "While your brother was at Stanford, you and your father continued hunting supernatural creatures. Like this one." The man tapped the top photograph on the pile of papers, and in spite of himself, Dean leaned forward to look.
It was a picture of a red cap. More specifically, it was a picture of the partially burned body of a red cap that him and Dad had killed in southern Ohio in 2003. The picture was attached to a copy of the speeding fine Dad had gotten the next county over, trying to hightail it out of town.
Dean rifled through the file. It was the last four years of his life, laid out in stark black and white. Almost every job he'd done with Dad, and later with Sam. Every crime, every broken law...
"We know what happened with Jessica Moore, about your father's disappearance and subsequent death, and... well, everything that's happened since." Stone watched Dean carefully.
Dean closed the folder. "Nice," he said. "You should try hawking this as a screenplay." He smiled, baring his teeth. "Hey, do you think you can get that guy who was in Devour to play me?"
"This isn't a joke, Mr. Winchester."
"The fuck it's not!" Dean wanted to hit something, but he made himself stay still, ready to move, to run. "What, you think you show me this and I realize the error of my ways? I can turn myself in to... who did you say you were with? The National Weather Service?"
"Homeland Security." Stone didn't appear to be phased by Dean's outburst. "I'd show you my badge, but you yourself have demonstrated on more than one occasion that no one knows what to look for in a Homeland Sectary official."
Government official or not, Dean was still betting this guy was a demon. Or something similar.
"So, back to my deal," Stone said. "It's actually very simple. We clean your record, wipe everything you've done off the books. No more running from the law, no more having to hide. At least, not from us. I can't help you with the hunters after your brother."
Dean waited. When it appeared that Stone was finished talking, he said, "And what? Me and Sam play children's parties on the weekends?"
"You and your brother go back to doing what it is you do best. You and your brother's kill rate is much higher than any of the other hunters we track, even higher than you had when you were working with your father." Stone raised his eyebrow. "Or what Sam had when he was at college."
Now Dean knew he'd caught the man. "Sam wasn't hunting at college."
A slow smile spread across the man's face. "Of course not," he agreed. "That goblin infestation in the Napa Valley just... went away."
Dean couldn't stop himself; he stood up. "This is bullshit," he exclaimed, noting how the closest fed started towards them. "That's not a deal, that's fucking--"
"Bullshit, I know." Stone waved the fed away down the street. "Mr. Winchester, do you think that you're the first hunter to have gotten himself in this much trouble with the law?"
"Fucking bullshit," Dean muttered, not sure what else to say. If it was just him, he'd have bailed, but this guy knew about Sam, and if they got their hands on him, Dean wouldn't be able to save his brother. He just had to hope that Sam had his eyes open, could see this mess before he walked right into it.
"Let's just say that your problem is not the first time we have intervened."
"So you're... what, the X-Files?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Winchester." Stone gathered his briefcase and stood up. "There are no such thing as aliens."
Dean put his hands on his hips and wished desperately for a gun. "What's the rest of the deal?" he demanded.
"What if I tell you that you have to accept before I fill in the details?"
"Then I tell you to go fuck yourself."
Stone rested his briefcase on the table. "We simply want you to continue to do what you do best. Hunt supernatural creatures." Then Stone smiled, and the expression set every alarm bell in Dean's head ringing. "And continue your hunt to destroy Azazel."
"Fuck," Dean muttered, taking another step back. In the distance, he could hear the familiar rumble of the Impala's engine. Sam was going to drive right into this and there was nothing Dean could do about it.
"Contrary to popular opinion, Mr. Winchester, the U.S. Government is not in the business of hurrying the arrival of Armageddon," Stone said. "The amount of demonic activity has increased in the last few years, to a level that even the bureaucrats in Washington have taken notice. My department has known about this for some time, but it's reached the level of urgency that I can bend more rules than before. We are fighting on the same side of this battle, Mr. Winchester."
Dean concentrated on keeping himself calm, breathing in and out like he didn't have a care in the world. "What if I say no?"
Stone turned and walked away. "You won't say no."
"You don't know that," Dean called.
"Yes, I do." Stone continued down the street to a big black town car, which drove away as soon as the man was safely inside. One by one, the feds disappeared off the street.
Dean sat back down, unable to explain the shaking in his limbs. He didn't know what had just happened. He could have been hallucinating, or possessed, or something. Anything made more sense then the idea that some federal suit had just offered him a freaking pardon to go hunt demons.
Sam pulled up in the Impala, a worried expression on his face. "What happened?" he demanded as soon as Dean was in the car. "What was with the guys on the street I saw when I drove past?"
"Just get us the fuck out of here," Dean said. "Get us off the main roads as soon as you can."
"Dean--"
"Would you just fucking go already?" Dean exclaimed.
Sam looked at him for a split second, then put the Impala in gear. "Fine."
They drove in silence for a while, until the trees grew closer to the road, where the road itself was little more than a gravel-laced suggestion in the forest.
Sam pulled the Impala off the road into the shade the trees, and killed the engine. "Okay, would you now please tell me what has you so freaked?"
Dean, who had been staring out the car window the entire time, tapped his thumbnail against his teeth and said, "I think I'm losing it."
~~~
Three days later, Dean Winchester started dropping off the national law enforcement radar.
The St. Louis murder charge was the first to go. Sam had to hack into the police files, but it seemed that Becky Warren's statement, where she'd sworn up and down that Dean Winchester hadn't been the one to attack her, finally saw the light of day. After adding back in the evidence where there had been surveillance footage and eye witness reports on the suspects of the mutilated bodies, the police had come to the grudging conclusion that whoever had attacked those women, it couldn't have been Dean. The too-hasty identification of the shapeshifter's body by the police was chalked up to shoddy work, and two cops were put on paid suspension for a few months.
When Sam finished reading Dean the report that exonerated him, Dean left the rickety cabin without saying a word.
Baltimore was the following week. With the St. Louis charges gone, and Detective Ballard's statement about her partner's confession to the Karen Giles murder, the Baltimore police had nothing on Dean.
A few days after that, Sam found Dean out in the field behind the cabin, throwing rocks at the rotting fencepost. "This might not be a bad thing," Sam said.
Dean aimed a rock at the farthest post. "Like making deals with demons is going to end well?"
Sam waited until the thunk from the rock on the wood faded. "You didn't make a deal with a demon."
"Demon, Homeland Security, same difference." Dean picked up another rock from the pile at his feet.
"You didn't make a deal," Sam pressed. "Right? You didn't agree to do anything for this guy."
Dean threw a little too hard, and missed the post by three feet. "When do demons give a fuck about little details like that?"
"We don't know it's a demon!"
"And we don't know it's not!" Dean shouted, whirling on his brother. "What the fuck are you doing out here?"
Sam sucked in a breath, stared at Dean for a long moment before looking away, a gesture as familiar to Dean as breathing. "Milwaukee's been cleared."
Dean went back to his rocks. "Good for it."
"It's kind of weird, actually," Sam ventured. "They are saying that Ron Reznick was some kind of terrorist, and he locked down the back to test some kind of airborne hallucinatory drug, that when applied to human flesh can cause skin to... melt."
"Jesus," Dean muttered. "Do you think they actually have shit like that?"
"I don't know. But the FBI are saying that the hallucinatory part of that means that no one in the bank can be trusted for an accurate account of what happened. You're in the clear, man. It's all over."
Dean rolled the stone in his hand, feeling the rough edge of the rock grate on the knife calluses on his fingers. "It's not over."
Sam waited, watching in silence until the sun had set and it was getting too dark to see anything. "Let's go into town and get something to eat," he finally said.
Brushing the dust from his hands, Dean turned and went back in the cabin. "Give it a few days," he said. "To see if it's actually real."
"Dean--"
The door shutting behind Dean cut off Sam's words.
~~~
They'd been back on the road for a month, eating at crappy diners and sleeping in dingy motels and doing all of it without being chased by the cops.
Dean's phone rang one early morning on the highway outside Amarillo. It was an unfamiliar number with a Washington, DC, area code. He almost let it ring out, but he finally flipped the phone open. Ignoring government workers worked about as well as ignoring demons. "Yeah?"
"Mr. Winchester," Garrison Stone's voice came over the line. "I see you've taken me up on my offer. That work in Santa Fe was inspired."
"You know, Stone, you keep riding me this close and I'm going to have to insist you buy me dinner first," Dean said, giving Sam a look before putting his eyes back on the road. "You want something?"
"Actually, yes."
Dean's hand tightened on the steering wheel. "Not interested."
"While we were researching your recent steps, I had my assistant scanning the police and hospital files in the continental US from the last year," Stone said as if Dean hadn't spoken.
"And?" Dean had no idea where this was headed, and Sam making weird faces, trying to get his attention, was as distracting as fuck.
"Four months before your father's death, a woman was admitted to a Nebraska hospital following a car crash. She had severe internal injuries and broken bones, consistent with being hit by a car at high speeds."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"One day later, she walks out of the hospital. Her legs were broken in sixteen places, there was no way she could have left under her own power, but there are eyewitnesses to her leaving."
"Sounds like something you should send to Ripley's Believe It Or Not."
"Her driver's license gave her name as Ellen Harvelle."
Dean almost missed the curve in the road. "That's got to be a mistake."
"We double checked. Your father used to spend a lot of time at the Harvelle Roadhouse, didn't he? And you and your brother had that little encounter in Philadelphia with Joanna Beth Harvelle several months ago."
So this was Stone's deal. Screwing with Dean's head, trying to get him to turn on the people he trusted. He had to give Stone credit, for a demon he was good. For a fed, he was brilliant.
Only...
Ellen had left that voicemail for his dad four months before his death, that had led Sam and Dean to the Roadhouse in the first place. She'd managed to pry an awful lot of information out of them on the demon, all for Ash, she'd said at the time. Dad had never talked about her, not in all the years on the road. All they had to go on was Ellen's word.
Dean floored the gas pedal, ignoring Sam's protests as he slid the car into the right lane, ready for the turn-off to head north to Nebraska.
"Enjoy your freedom, Mr. Winchester," was the last thing Stone said before he hung up the phone.
the end