Fic: Urban Legend
Title: Urban Legend
Word Count: 1377
Genre: urban legend
Rating: PG 13 (mild gore)
Summary: There are many versions of the Winchester legend.
A/N: Thanks as always to scarletjedi. Who is the best.
Two men sit in the corner of a café. They might be brothers. Or lovers. Or strangers. They might be dead men too. They are seated beside each other, the tallest by the window and the other, who has an apathetic face and sharp green eyes, beside him, feet stretched out under the table. There is an empty chair across from them and as they sip their coffee they stare at it.
There is a third man in that chair. None but the brothers can see him.
Well, not a man as such. An angel, if you believe the stories. If you believe that the names of those men might be Sam and Dean, and they are heroes, and they have not yet died. Or if you believe the other stories. (And if you believe those other stories you might vacate that particular café in a hurry. You might start running. You might keep on running until your feet bleed and your legs buckle and there is nowhere left to run. And there, on the edge of some beach or precipice, you might throw yourself into the waves and begin swimming and sinking, praying that the water is deep enough. Because death alone is not enough to keep you safe from the Winchesters.)
You might run if you notice them. But they are hard to notice. They’ve spent hundreds of years being anonymous. They are more invisible in the well-lit corner of a late night café than black birds are against a starless sky. So, chances are, they are sitting in the corner of your café. Chances are you even looked up as they walked in and will never pay them a second glance. Chances are they know all about you, and they will wait across the street from your window at night. They will watch you sleep soundly, or drift into the common nightmares that bear their faces. And they will hear you, of course, when you bolt upright in the dark and shout the name of your lover, or your sister, your mother, as if her entrails were strewn across your walls like Christmas lights. And they will know what creatures have been in your dreams.
And then they will move on, evacuating that space in the corner of your vision, the place where they’ll whisper your name. The empty doorway where you’ll turned to whisper “Hello?” They will leave quietly. They will never touch you. They hold no designs.
But after them the monsters will come. The same ones you saw in your dreams and worse. The next day. The next week. Pale teeth and pale eyes, deformed faces and long reaching fingers. A local child will turn up with her heart eaten out. The library will burn to the ground with someone’s parents and friends and babies inside. The priest will decorate his Sunday alter with the eyes and ears and tongues of sinners and the heads will never be found. The police (as always) will be at a loss. And it may be you have seen or heard or spoken sin. It may be you need a book to write your term paper that weekend. It may be that you think you’re in love.
Slowly, the freak anomalies will recede and everything will begin falling back together. The dead will be buried where the dead belong. And then someone will remember-you will, if you’re still alive, if you’re the one watching the news and not the one whose name flashes across the bottom of the screen-the two brothers in the café and the empty chair across from them. Someone will recall the snatches of conversation that are being caught by the waitress as she refills the coffee cups.
“What if we never find it?” says the tall one in the direction of the empty chair. A small silence follows, just long enough for an unheard interjection. Then:
“We keep looking,” answers the one with the green eyes. “We just keep fucking looking.” His voice is dark and scuffed up by the sound of too many sleepless nights on the road. He sighs and leans back in his chair. Wind rattles the window. The tall one sets his coffee cup down and the soft click of ceramic on linoleum ends the conversation.
As they stand to leave a car is probably passing by in the night. The glare from the headlights casts three rolling shadows across the café floor and maybe you see them: a tall shadow, a shorter shadow, and one winged shape. Twisted and bent under the weight of its captivity. A limping thing in agony, cringing as it’s driven before the two men like a broken dog.
xxx
There are many versions of the Winchester Legend. Some of them are tragic. Some of them are sinister. All of them have become intermingled and confused with each other over the years. In the Northeast they are described as fallen heroes, men who were infected by evil as they fought to keep it at bay. In the Midwest they are Monster Kings, wandering the old crumbling highways in the twilight with shadow things slinking at their heels. In the South they are harbingers of disaster and death, storms and earthquakes and disease come when they go. Canada doesn’t believe they exist. However the tales have filtered down into Mexico and children now sometimes dress in old-fashioned faded blue jeans and plaid shirts on Dia de Muertos to mimic the wandering ghosts that haunt the roadways of the U.S.
At night, the thundering rumble of an old combustion engine is a sign that they are near. The sighting of a long black car with red taillights. The sharp retort of a gunpowder bullet in the distance. And sometimes, though it is less common, they are said to appear in the dusk at crossroads with the rushing sound of crows’ wings.
Sam and Dean Winchester: most people agree that they must have lived. There are records, after all, if you know where to look or who to ask. Police reports, coroner reports, autopsy records.
The problem with compiling any historical account of the Winchesters is that the records contradict each other. There are multiple death certificates, multiple eye witness accounts of Sam and Dean (fitting identical descriptions) being gunned down, being burned beyond recognition, being found torn to shreds by wolves. There are DNA results and dental matches that prove, in no less than six different states, stretching a period of twenty years, that Sam and Dean are dead.
At Stull Cemetery (declared an historical site in 2099) the headstones of Mary and John Winchester still stand. A woman named Lisa, who doesn’t bear the Winchester name, and her son, Ben, are buried there. There is fifth stone that reads Bobby Singer-A Gentleman and a Scholar. It is a family plot. But there are no graves for Sam and Dean.
Almost all the legends agree that, if they are immortal, it is the angel that keeps them alive. In some versions he is a friend who aids them in return for their good deeds of the past. In others he is a hostage, lured to earth against his will and enslaved by the brothers. More recent myths describe him as the angel of Death, charged with keeping the brothers alive so they can live out their sins again and again.
And in all the legends the brothers are searching. Wandering the lonely paths and byways in endless hope and despair, deathless out of malice or grace or accident until they find what it is they seek.
None of the legends say what they are looking for.
xxx
“I hate that look,” Dean muttered as they walked out of the diner, relieved and fearful gazes watching them go. “I hate being suspected of being myself.”
“It is better than what is to come,” said Cas walking easily between them. He stopped and knelt to tie his shoe.
Sam snorted.
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” he asked dully, rubbing at the memory of some knot in his neck. Cas stood again, sad blue eyes glittering with immortality in the dark.
“Soon they will stop believing in you at all,” he said.
fin