I Will Dismember You

[hootiepgh]

Author: hootiepgh
Word Count: ~4,100
Rating: PG-13

Summary: s4 AU in which Jump The Shark goes completely different.

Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I’m just having some fun. Some lines/scenarios in this story are directly from s4e19, Jump The Shark.

“So one call on dad’s phone and one call on yours. What did they say?” Sam asked as he finished brushing his teeth.

Dean was contemplating the phones in his hands.

“Well, one was normal. There’s some kind of ghoul thing going on in Minnesota. The other was something else entirely.” Dean looked at Sam meaningfully. “It seems we may have a brother.”

Sam’s brows drew together in confusion. He shook his head as if shaking a bad thought away.

“What?”

Dean lifted one of the phones. “There was just a call on dad’s phone that was from someone looking for dad.”

“It’s dad’s phone. It would make sense that whoever called was looking for him.”
“Yeah, I get that part, Sammy. But someone claiming to be his son?” Dean quirked an eyebrow at Sam.

“Yeah. That one sounds a little weird,” Sam admitted.

Dean told Sam the names of the towns the calls had come from. The ghoul situation was happening in Westbrook, Minnesota. The son situation was happening just one town over in Windom.

“So what do you think we should hit first?” Sam asked.

“Simple, Sammy. Innocent people are in trouble with the ghoul problem. Fake-son can wait,” Dean told him decisively.

They packed up and aimed Baby toward Minnesota.

~oOo~

The Winchesters pulled into the parking lot of St. Anthony’s church. There was a cemetery right beside it and ghouls usually ate the flesh of the dead. It was the middle of the afternoon, so they didn’t have to worry about using flashlights and random people came to the cemetery to grieve over loved ones all the time, so they didn’t have to worry about disguises, either.

They casually strolled through the lot and passed through the black wrought iron gates wrapped around the cemetery grounds. There were several people at various graves, some standing, some kneeling, almost all conversing with their dead loved ones.

Except one guy.

When Dean saw him, he tilted his head trying to remember why this guy looked so familiar.

“Sam, do you recognize….” he started.

“Dean, check this out.” Sam pointed to a mausoleum whose lock had been broken, leaving the doors slightly ajar.

“Ghouls are scavengers. They eat the dead.”

“So what do you want to bet this is the last place they fed?”

“Let’s come back tonight and stake it out. Maybe we can…” The ringing of dad’s phone again cut off Dean’s plan. Ever since it rang that first time this morning, Dean had been carrying it in his jacket pocket just in case it rang again. As he reached for it, he said, “It’s probably that Adam Milligan guy again.”

Recognizing the formerly unfamiliar number, Dean picked up the call saying, “Yeah, Adam, what’s up?”

“Um… you said you’d call when you got to Windom. Are you still coming? Are we still meeting? When will you be here?” Adam asked timidly.

“We had to make a short pit stop first. We are in Minnesota, but we’re in Westbrook. Do you know where that is?”

“It’s only about half an hour away. Do you want me to meet you there?”

“Can you?” Dean wanted to know. There were a lot of tests he wanted to run on this Adam guy.

After a brief pause, Adam suggested, “There’s a place called Bonnie & Clyde’s II on 1st Avenue. They open at four o’clock. Why don’t we meet there for dinner?”

“See you then.” Dean abruptly snapped the phone closed.

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Geez, Dean. Why didn’t you just say, ‘We don’t believe you, we’re not meeting you, never call this number again’ and then break it in half?”

They had been walking back to their car when Dean came to a complete stop. “Come on, Sammy! You can’t really believe this guy!”

Sam stopped beside him and shrugged. “It’s not impossible.”

Dean looked at him in disbelief.

Sam shrugged again. “He’d be gone for weeks and he wasn’t exactly a monk.”

Dean just looked at him.

Sam continued. “Hunter rolls into town, kills the monster, saves the girl, sometimes the girl’s grateful….”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Now I’m thinking about dad sex. Stop talking!”

“…maybe he slipped one past the goalie…”

“Dude!”

“Just saying…” Sam finished.

“Well, what we are doing is that we are gonna go get a room, prepare all the tests we need to do, then go meet this supernatural jackass and figure out what we’re gonna do with him when he fails.”

The guy that looked a bit familiar passed by them as they were standing in the parking lot arguing.

Once again, Dean tilted his head. “Does that guy look familiar to you?”

Sam turned to look at his retreating back and assess him. “Judging by his clothes, I’d say he was another hunter. Maybe we weren’t the only ones to get a call about the ghoul problem.”

Dean pulled out his phone and dialed. “Hey, Bobby. Sam and I got a call this morning about a ghoul problem in a town called Westbrook, Minnesota. Did any other hunters get sent up here?”

On the other end of the line, Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know, Dean. Why?”

“I just saw someone that looked kind of familiar. I wondered what we were looking at here: hindrance or help.”

“What did he look like?”

Dean thought for a moment. “A little older than my dad… hair starting to grey… beard… dressed like us… Saw him in the cemetery.”

“Sure sounds like another hunter. I really wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been getting ghoul calls about that area the past couple’a days. It wouldn’t be surprising if others got the call.”

“Guess not,” Dean conceded.

“Hey, Dean? Watch you and your brother’s backs, OK? I heard these ghouls are a little different.”

“How so?”

“I heard they attacked a fresh human or two. They’ve even cannibalizing each other from what I’ve heard.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me we got ghouls that are going all Hannibal the Cannibal on each other? Why?”

“No idea. That’s what you’re there for.”

Dean could hear his smug smile through the phone. “Thanks a whole hell of a lot, old man.”

Both Sam and Dean could hear Bobby cursing as Dean hung up on him.

~oOo~

The Winchesters found a moderately priced place to say called the OYO Hotel on Highway 14. It was their usual drive-in motel style, so it was just what they were looking for.

They checked in, got their room keys, and went to their room parking just outside the door.

They collected their bags and headed inside while Dean filled Sam in on the potential possibility of running into other hunters and the potential of running into cannibal ghouls.

“Cannibalizing each other? Why? Not enough dead bodies for them to munch on in the cemetery?” Sam asked. “That’s weird.”

“Know what else is weird? They’re going after fresh meat, too.”

Dean laid out salt, holy water, and silver on the small table by the window before throwing his duffle onto his bed near the door.

Sam made a mild bitchface. “Fresh meat? That’s unusual.”

After that, the Winchesters got showered and ready to go meet a possible brother they knew nothing about. All the demons in hell and every other monster were out for them. They would figure out what it was and take it out. Easy peasy.

Then they’d deal with this ghoul issue.

~oOo~

At Bonnie & Clyde’s II, Sam and Dean sat in a booth in the corner waiting for this imposter to show up.

“So what do we know about this kid?” Dean asked, implementing all his tests into the place setting.

“Born September 29, 1990. He is a biology major, pre-med at the University of Wisconsin.”

“And he’s our brother how, exactly?”

“No idea,” Sam admitted. “But dad’s journal says that he came to Minnesota in January 1990 for a case and then the next few pages are torn out.”

Dean scoffed. “That’s not suspicious at all.” Then he noticed someone at the bar. “Doesn’t that guy look familiar to you?” he asked Sam, indicating the guy he had noticed when they were leaving the cemetery.

Sam and Dean turned their attention to the front door when the entrance bells sounded and a young man with dirty blonde hair came in and looked around curiously. Sam waved at him. “I think that’s him,” he whispered to Dean.

The young man walked over to their table. “Are you the guys I talked to on the phone?”

Sam pointed at Dean and Dean said, “That would be me.”

“So you guys knew my dad?” he asked eagerly, sliding into the bench across from the Winchesters. He picked up the water glass Dean had substituted holy water into and took a drink. Nothing happened.

Dean watched Adam swallow and noticed nothing happened to him. “Dammit,” he whispered under his breath.

“We worked with him.”

“Until he died, right?” Adam asked. When Sam and Dean nodded, he said, “I thought he was a mechanic.”

“A car fell on him,” Dean said unsympathetically shrugging.

Adam’s lower lip wobbled. “Were you there? Did you see it happen?”

Sam and Dean’s eyes widened and they looked at each other.

“Well, um, there was this car…” Sam began. “And it was up in the air…”

“It was on a rack,” Dean corrected.

“Uh-huh,” Adam nodded, waiting for more details.

“And then it… wasn’t.” Sam finished lamely.

“Because it fell. You know. On him,” Dean finished, nodding to indicate the scant details were true.

“How does that even happen?” Adam asked, tears in his eyes.

They hadn’t been expecting tears. That kind of threw them for a loop.

“Well, there was this car… in the air,” Sam started explaining again.

“It was on a rack,” Dean corrected.

Adam looked at them through watery eyes. “I heard you the first time.” He nervously rearranged the place setting. (Obviously silver didn’t work either, dammit.) “I just don’t know what to do now.”

“About what?” Sam asked.

Adam leaned forward in confidence. “I kind of have this problem. And dad said if I ever had a problem, I should call him.”

OK. It was time for some clarification.

“So your dad told you to call him if you ever ran into a problem,” Dean repeated back to him. Adam nodded. “Your dad. Who was John Winchester.” Adam nodded. One last time Dean made the point of saying, “John Winchester. Who was your dad.”

Adam looked at him in disbelief. “Why do you keep asking about my dad? He told me to call if I ever ran into any trouble. I ran into some trouble, so I called. Who are you guys, anyway?”

Sam and Dean looked at each other. Time for the big talk. Dean nodded slightly to Sam.

“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we are John Winchester’s sons.” He motioned with his thumb between himself and Dean.

Adam’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “You mean I’ve got brothers?”

“I don’t know if…” Dean began.

“Brothers who could help get me out of trouble?” Adam asked hurriedly.

“Exactly what kind of trouble are you in, Adam?” Sam wanted to know.

Adam glanced around the bar and restaurant. “It might be better if we talked about this somewhere else.”

“We’re staying at the OYO down the road. Why don’t we go talk there?” Sam offered.

Adam nodded and the three of them got up and left together.

They didn’t notice the slightly grizzled older man who followed them out into the parking lot.

~oOo~

When they got to the room, Adam started with, “If I’m gonna tell you guys about my problem, maybe I should know who you are.”

“I’m Sam and this is Dean.”

“Maybe you’d like to tell us how you’re John Winchester’s kid,” Dean countered.

“Well, mom was a nurse. She said John came into the emergency room all torn up from a hunting accident. She didn’t go into any other details, but I do know how the world works.”

“And when did he find out about you?” Dean pressed.

“I kept bugging mom about him, so she called him and I finally met him when I was 12. I would see him on my birthdays. He took me to baseball games.” Adam smiled at the memory.

“He took you to a freakin’ baseball game?” Dean asked in disbelief.

Before Adam could answer, Sam nudged Dean and pointed into dad’s journal. “September 29, 2004. One word… Minnesota.”

Dean wanted to know about these baseball games. “Do you have any proof?”

Adam took is wallet from his pocket, pulled something out and showed it to Dean and then Sam. It was John with a 14-year-old Adam at a baseball game.

“Anything else?”

Adam passed over a folded up piece of paper to the brothers.

They opened it to find the results of a blood test confirming that John Winchester was indeed Adam’s biological father.

“I’m a middle child,” Sam said softly.

Dean gave him a bitchface and rolled his eyes. “OK, kid. We believe you. Now what’s this problem you’re looking for John to help you with?”

Adam’s eyes got watery again. “I don’t think I’m human!” he wailed.

The Winchesters gasped.

“I know it sounds nuts! I do! But just hear me out…”

“What do you think got you?” asked Sam.

“Was it a werewolf?” asked Dean.

“Did you get bit?” asked Sam.

“Was it a werewolf?” asked Dean.

“Or did you get scratched and bled on?” asked Sam.

“Was it a werewolf?” asked Dean.

Sam turned to Dean. “You just want him to be a werewolf so you can shoot him with a silver bullet, don’t you?”

Dean blushed and ducked his head.

“Dude! He’s our brother!”

Adam watched with disbelief as his two new brothers were trying to figure out what supernatural creature he had become. And they sounded like they totally believed him. He definitely did not see that one coming.

Sam turned back to him. “Look, Adam. It could have been one of a million things to happen to you. And it could be any number of creatures who did it.”

“So you believe me. Just like that.” Adam snapped his fingers.

Dean shrugged. “It’s what we do for a living.”

“So Dad told you about…”

“Many, many years ago.”

“And Dad died…”

“Because of a demon. Dean killed it.”

“Wow.” Adam thought this would be a lot harder. He didn’t imagine that strangers would more readily believe that he had become a monster than they would that they were related.

“So seriously. What got you?” Dean asked, leaning forward. He was kind of hoping for werewolf.

“All I know for sure is that I got eaten,” Adam explained, shoulders slumping.

Sam pointed. “You… got…”

“…eaten,” Dean finished.

The brothers looked at each other then jumped up, pulling their guns and pointing them at Adam.

“Wait! Don’t shoot!” Adam jumped up, holding his hands in front of himself.

“How do you know you got eaten?” Dean wanted to know.

“I remember it happening.”

“Then what?”

“I was filled with Adam’s memories. Absolutely everything. About his mom, his absent father, his life, school, girlfriends… everything. When he met John years ago, John wanted him to be safe. So he told him about what was out there, how to avoid it by following stories in the paper, how to protect himself with sigils and runes. He got letters from John every few months.”

“So what were you contacting John for? What do you want us to do?” Sam asked.

“Help me be me again! I read somewhere that some things can change back to human if they don’t feed. I haven’t fed on anything!” Adam insisted. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to fed on even if I get hungry. All I know is that I feel a pull to the cemetery.”

“Cemetery?” Dean looked at Sam. “Hunger for dead flesh?”

“Zombie or ghoul,” Sam told him, shrugging.

“Too smart and too fresh for a zombie. Plus he remembers getting eaten,” Dean reasoned.

“Ghoul then,” Sam affirmed.

“What’s that mean?” Adam asked.

The Winchesters looked at each other.

Adam looked between the brothers. “WHAT’S THAT MEAN?”

~oOo~

About thirty minutes and several tests later, they knew that this Adam could tell them anything and everything about Adam’s life, if something got cut off of his body, it would reattach, and that his diet now needed to consist of corpses, hence being drawn to the cemetery.

“The good news is that you can go a long time between feedings,” Sam told him with a smile.

Dean shook his head in disbelief. “Sammy… what are you doing?”

“What?” Sam asked, his puppy dog eyes wide.

“He’s a monster! We have to kill him! He ate the real Adam!”

“But I’m Adam!”

“Dude… no you’re not.” Dean was adamant.

“Yes I am!”

“Dean… we can’t kill him. He’s our brother.”

“Will you listen to yourself? He’s a monster!” Dean was sure this wasn’t going to end well.

Sam rapidly flipped through pages of the book in front of him. He slid his fingers down each page as he scanned the text. “Here!” he shouted, pointing to a drawing showing a body laid out on an altar. “So get this… If we do this spell with Adam here, we can transport his consciousness and soul back to the original Adam…”

“And what about his eaten up body? How do we stop that from dying again from catastrophic injuries?” Dean asked.

Sam didn’t have an answer to that one. Then he asked, “What if we make this Adam corporeal? He already has all of Adam’s memories and knowledge, so he’s Adam.”

“We just need to get rid of his unnatural hunger for corpses.”

“Exactly!” Sam beamed at Dean and his new soon-to-be brother. “I think I saw a spell in this other book…”

~oOo~

When they left around eleven o’clock to prepare for the ritual, they sent Adam to the cemetery to find and clear out a suitable mausoleum while Sam and Dean headed to the all-night grocery store for fresh herbs to mix together.

They didn’t notice a shadow step out from next to the office. It was the shadow of an older man, grizzled with experience and following them as they headed out into the night.

~oOo~

Slowly and silently, Adam made his way through the quiet cemetery to a group of mausoleums in the middle that stood out in the bright moonlight.

He couldn’t believe his luck.

It was only two weeks ago that he woke up to eating human Adam, the young man’s memories flooding into him as the human consciousness took over.

He saw a pretty blonde woman dressed in scrubs as she left for work at the hospital. She was bending down to kiss his forehead. He saw a haunted-looking scruffy guy who, though he stood military straight and exuded attitude, there was softness and a sort of wonderment behind his eyes as they were introduced for the first time.

The rest of the memories came fast and furious: baseball games with the scruffy guy; nights alone while his mom worked; making his own dinner; studying and particularly liking science and math; being at the prom with his friends and the girl in the hot pink dress that he took that night, Kristin McGee; applying to colleges; submitting essays for scholarships; graduating high school; packing up and leaving for college; going to classes and labs on the university campus; getting a call from mom that there was a problem and she needed him to return home from school; and, finally, being attacked and eaten by something that looked like his mom and someone who he thought was a bartender in town.

In this new body, he arose to find Adam’s insides in his hands as he munched on them. He also remembered some of the crazy stories the scruffy guy, John, told him so long ago about monsters that were out there and how to protect himself.

He had that memory too late, though.

As Adam approached the third mausoleum - he was strong, but why hadn’t he brought bolt cutters? - he heard a noise coming from in front of him. It wasn’t the cracking of twigs, the rattling of dead leaves, or even someone’s breath.

It was a whump. Like something heavy being thrown to the ground. Kind of like the Winchesters duffle bags, if he really thought about it.

Suddenly, a figure stepped out from around a large headstone.

“Surprise, you undead mother…”

There was a thunking sound as his head was chopped off with a long machete and hit the ground. It rolled a couple times and finished up against the base of a headstone, watching as someone cut him into pieces.

~oOo~

“I’m telling you, Dean, the ingredients called for parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”

“So just like the song?”

“Just like the song.”

“And now we’re going to meet up at Scarborough Fair, right, Garfunkel?”

“You were the one who was trying to come up with an excuse to shoot our brother with a silver bullet.”

Dean scoffed. “I was not.”

“How many times did you ask if he was a werewolf?”

“We’re in Minnesota, Sam. With their environment, it’s not entirely impossible.”

As they got closer to the group of mausoleums, they heard a voice yelling, “Get away! Get away, you filthy scavengers!”

The scene they came upon was not what they were expecting.

Near a large headstone was what looked like a garbage pile. As they got closer, they could see it was body parts. Beside the pile, a man was waving a machete, keeping a couple of advancing monsters at bay.

“But he’s freshly dead,” one of the talking monsters was reasoning. “So much better than we’re used to getting.”

“I’m not dead!” a voice yelled from the ground.

Sam and Dean came to a stop behind the monsters.

“Hey! What’s going on here?” Dean shouted to draw the focus to himself.

“Sam! Dean!” the voice near the ground yelled out.

Sam pointed at the pile. “Dean… that’s Adam.”

“Adam my ass,” the older hunter said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Dean looked at the other hunter in disbelief. “What did you do to our brother, man?”

The hunter pointed at him. “I told you before, I’m not your man.”

A light went on in Dean’s head. “Son of a bitch… Rufus.”

“Bobby’s friend Rufus?” Sam asked.

“Again… what did you do to our brother?”

“This isn’t your brother.” Rufus pointed at the pile of parts.

“Yes I am!” yelled the head on the ground.

“No, you’re not. You’re a new version of ghoul that’s been feasting on the flesh of the living!” Rufus insisted. “The only way to get rid of you is to cut you into pieces and salt and burn those pieces at different locations.”

“No! No! I haven’t fed on anything! I swear!”

“We just met him. He’s really our brother,” Dean said.

“We were going to make him human again.” Sam held up the bag of ingredients he was carrying. “I found a spell. We were about to perform a ritual.”

“Not with a whole body you can’t.” Rufus pointed to the two ghouls who had been trying to claim Adam’s body as their meal.

They were running toward the woods with pieces of Adam held closely to them like a prize.

Dean was off and running after them.

“HEY! Give that back! He’ll be alive again in a couple of minutes.”

Rufus looked on in amusement as the younger hunter tried to catch up to the ghouls.

“You know you’re never gonna get those body parts back, right?” he asked Sam, a sardonic grin on his face.

“We gotta try.”

Sam took off after his brother and the ghouls.

“Do you really not think they’ll get the rest of me back?” the head on the ground asked Rufus.

“I really don’t know. But if there is one thing I do know about the Winchesters is that they will never give up.”

“Good. I always wanted brothers.”

On the ground, Adam’s face smiled as he thought about what adventures he could get up to with his new brothers.

A/N: Title borrowed from Sarah McLaughlan’s “I Will Remember You.” I couldn’t get that song out of my head as I started to write this.