Oh Comely, for floranna
Title: Oh Comely
Author: coyotesuspect
Recipient: floranna
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~6,400
Warnings: violence against women
Author's Notes: Story diverges from canon around mid-season 3. The monster is based on two separate, but similar, pieces of French and English folklore, and I’ve taken liberties with both its name and abilities. Thank you to my recipient for the fun prompts! I hope you enjoy!
Summary: Dean asks Jo for help hunting secretive monster in northern California; Jo’s happy to help, but she soon realizes Dean’s keeping secrets of his own.
She's thumbing about 30 miles east of Quincy, an old mining town high in the mountains, closer to Nevada than the endless beaches most people think when they think of California. The sun’s setting to her back and her shadow is a long, thin thing stretching crookedly in front of her. She’s been standing there close to an hour, waving off motorists as she waits.
Then she sees the red car round the bend and wink in the sun, and she thinks to herself, 'Gotchya.'
The red car reaches her in another thirty seconds, going manic-fast down the mountain road, and it squeals to a halt a decent jog in front of her. She grabs her duffel and rushes to meet it, snorts when she reads the vanity plate: MR FOX. This is definitely their guy. Barbleues are always flashy.
The man who steps out to meet her is tall and lean, in his forties and handsome. His hair is auburn and he's pushed it back, away from his face, so that she can see where his hair has turned white just at his temples. The stubble on his face is also silvering, seems almost blue.
He smiles at her, mouth full of white, even teeth.
"You look like you could use a ride."
“Sure could,” she says, smiling back. She hoists her duffel bag in the direction of his car, and he catches and steadies it. “Thanks for stopping.”
“Where are you headed?” he asks. He lifts his hands to help her wrestle with the duffel, and the slanting light of the sun catches his hands, turns them, for a moment, an eerie red. She keeps smiling steadily.
“Well, I was hoping I could make it down to Chico by this evening, but it’s gotten pretty late…”
“I’m afraid I’m not headed that far west either. I only live on the other side of Quincy.”
“Oh, well that’s fine. Don’t suppose there’s a motel in town you can drop me off at?”
He winks at her and opens the passenger door with a flourish. He’s charming, Mr. Fox.
“That I can definitely do, Miss…?”
“Jo,” says Jo firmly, as she slides into the passenger seat. “It’s Jo.”
“What’s that short for?” he asks, adjusting the rearview mirror as he gets in himself.
“Joanna, but no one calls me that except -”
“Well, Joanna,” he interrupts, “there’s a lovely little motel right at the edge of town I’d be happy to bring you too.”
My mom, she finishes in her head, but she keeps the annoyed look off her face. “That’s very kind of you.”
“Of course,” he adds, “you’re more than welcome to my spare room.”
Jo laughs girlishly. “That’s even kinder, but with all due respect sir, I don’t even know your damn name.”
From the look he gives her, she can tell she said the right thing. It occurs to her he’s the type of predator who likes playing with their prey.
“It’s Renard,” he says warmly. “And I can’t say I don’t understand your misgivings. The road’s certainly a scary place for a young woman such as yourself.”
There’s an implied question there, and Jo shrugs. “I’ve been hitching rides since I was fifteen. Guess I’m lucky or got good intuition. No one’s ever given me much trouble.”
“A runaway then?”
“Something like that.”
“Well I won’t pry then.”
“I can’t promise the same.” Jo grins at him. “What you do, Renard? ‘Sides play the knight-in-shining-armor?”
Renard laughs, and Jo knows she’s biased, but he puts her in mind of her seventh grade science teacher, a cheerful man who liked to hover over girls at their desks under pretext of helping them. Jo reaches into memory for his name and finds it - Mr. Anderson. All the eighth-grade girls said wear a sweater in his class. Jo smiles humorlessly, not like she’d ever had to worry. She’d been flat as the boys at that age.
In the cool, leather smelling interior of Renard’s car, the hairs on Jo’s arms raise.
“I’m retired,” he tells her. “I was a doctor.”
“You’re pretty young to be retired.”
Renard winks at her. “Probably not as young as you think, but I had some, ah, family money as well.”
“Must be nice,” says Jo, and the rest of the ride passes similarly. They make small talk, Jo definitely lying and Renard probably lying. They drive through Quincy, all peaked roofs and wooden houses, a few flags and signs from their Fourth of July celebration still hanging around. It’s a clean, pretty little town, and Jo’s grateful when Renard finally pulls into the parking lot of the Gold Pan Lodge, even more grateful when she sees the black pool of Dean’s car parked there.
“Thanks!” she says brightly, unhooking her seatbelt before he’s even finished parking. “I really appreciate the ride.”
“It was my pleasure,” says Renard, laughing again. He touches her arm gently. “But you don’t need to run out of here, Joanna. Do you have enough money?”
“To stay here? ‘Course, I wouldn’t have asked to be dropped at a motel if I didn’t.”
Renard presses three twenties into her palm.
“All the same, he says, “I couldn’t sleep if I let a slip of a girl like you defenseless.”
Jo laughs, and she touches her dad’s knife where it’s tucked into her waistband.
“Hardly defenseless,” she says, but she takes the money all the same.
x
Dean’s waiting for her when she gets into the room, a dark, restless shape near the window.
“Took you long enough,” he barks soon as she’s inside.
Jo shrugs and drops her duffel on the floor. She doesn’t rise to take Dean’s bait because she can tell he was worried; it’s in the stiff way he glances over her, looking for signs she might be hurt.
“He was later than we thought he’d be,” she asys. She kicks off her shoes and strides across the room to sit on her bed. There’s a mounted deer head between hers and Dean’s bed, and she makes a face at it. The owner of the motel is apparently a big hunter; the lobby was full of similar trophies. She hates it.
“We have any pizza left?” she asks, looking away from the deer.
Dean watches her for another moment, his face twisted up. She thinks back to when she met him, when he was grieving, but sweet. Whatever’s happened in the two years since has settled on him hard. He doesn’t meet her eyes as much anymore, and when he does, he looks angry.
“Yeah,” he says finally, turning back to the window. “It’s in the fridge.”
Jo gets off the bed and digs out the last couple pieces of pizza. She watches Dean’s back carefully. They’re friends, or as much friends as a Winchester can be with anyone, but they’ve been moving around each other awful carefully. It makes sense, she guesses. They haven’t spoken since Duluth.
“How’s Sam’s hunt going?” she asks.
Dean startles.
“What?” he says, turning to face her.
“His hunt?” she repeats. Her eyes narrow. She’d thought maybe Dean was lying about Sam, and this only firms up the suspicion. “You said he was, what, figuring out a banshee up in Portland?”
That’s what Dean had said, when he called her. He needed a girl to help him on this case - and wow Dean, thanks - while Sam took a different case farther north. Implicit, or at least Jo had thought, was that Dean and Sam were separating so Sam wouldn’t freak Jo out. But now Jo’s thinking Sam and Dean’s separation has nothing at all to do with some bullshit chivalric consideration of her delicate sensibilities. Dean can barely remember the story he fed her.
“Right,” says Dean blankly, and then some of the old Dean comes back into him, and he straightens up, looks brighter and sharper. Looks, Jo thinks, like a pool shark right before he walks away with a table full of winnings. “Haven’t talked to him about it today. But Sam’s reasonably bright. I’m sure he hasn’t fucked up too badly.”
Bullshit, thinks Jo, but she gives Dean the same sweet smile she was flashing at Renard earlier. Dean at least has the decency to looks unsettled by it, can at least sense the threat of teeth beneath.
“Of course,” she says. “It’s good to catch up, by the way. Haven’t seen you since the last time one of you Winchesters decided to use me as bait.”
She’s being mean, she knows. It was a demon, not Sam using her as bait for Dean, but she doesn’t like that Dean’s keeping secrets from her, and she knows he needs her for this case. It’s not like Dean’s gonna be a viable fake-bride for a monster with the wife munchies. He can’t tell her to fuck off.
But Dean just rolls his eyes, doesn’t let her see weakness. “We all got our special talents, Jo. Speaking of bait though, did he like you?”
“He gave me sixty bucks, so yeah. I think he liked me.”
“Ooooh,” says Dean, like a fucking twelve-year-old, and he makes a dirty gesture. Jo flips him off.
“Go fuck yourself!” she laughs. “And don’t fucking think I’m sharing it. It’s hazard pay.”
Dean snorts. “So you get woo’d, and I’m gonna be in the fucking library all day tomorrow. And you’re the one complaining about the case.”
Jo shrugs and then covers a yawn with her mouth. The late hour’s snuck up on her, always does in the summer.
“Tough shit,” she informs Dean. “I’m gonna turn in. Gotta be up bright and early to meet ‘Renard’ for breakfast.”
Dean snorts. “A date already? You move fast.”
“No date,” says Jo, stepping to the bathroom to change out of her jeans. It feels weird to not just strip down and go to bed, and it’s not like she and Dean’ll jump each other if he sees her in her underpants. But she guesses even hunters have their weird sense of decorum.
The lights are off and Dean’s in bed when she steps out of the bathroom. She pauses in the cramped space between the bathroom door and sink and watches him for a moment. It’s weird, she decides, hunting with Dean. But it’s not bad. She knows he has her back, and it’s not like hunting with her mom, who acts like Jo’s still learning to drive at times.
She sleeps pretty well.
x
“Joanna!” says Renard the next morning. “You’re still in town!”
Jo pauses and smiles at him. She’s been sunning herself on a bench near the diner she and Dean saw Renard eat at yesterday morning, waiting to see if he’s a regular here. She’s in luck.
“Yeah, I figured this seemed like a nice place to stick around and try to make a few bucks. Everyone says there’s no work in Chico in the summer.”
“Very true,” nods Renard. “That is what college towns are like. And since you’re staying in town, you’ll have to let me treat you to breakfast.” He gestures at the diner. “Ms. Madigan makes an excellent fry up.”
“You’re pushy,” says Jo, but flirt-like. She stands. “But sure. I’ve never passed up a free meal. No plans to start now.”
The diner’s a diner. It’s got a bit of a mystic woo-woo vibe going for it - lots of stars and moon décor - but a quick look around assures Jo it’s just amateur stuff. The crowd is about the type you’d expect to see in a small town along a highway, which means they look like a slightly cleaner version of the clientele they got at the Roadhouse. Their waitress behind the counter is white-haired and plump, and she greets Renard warmly.
Jo watches the interaction thoughtfully. If she and Dean are right, he’s a monster, so it’s weird to think Renard’s a regular at some diner, that he’s some regular, upstanding member of the community.
“Did you know this is an old mining town?” says Renard, as the waitress pours them coffee.
“You mean like the gold rush?” asks Jo.
“Sure do.”
“Huh.” Jo looks up from the menu. “Did they find what they were looking for?”
Renard touches his chest lightly, right where Jo can make out the dim outline of a pendant. She didn’t see it last night in the car, but he’s wearing a delicate chain around his neck, and it slips beneath his shirt. He smiles faintly.
“Some of them did.”
“Well, I don’t know about gold, but I could really go for some pancakes right now.”
Renard laughs and pats her wrist. He keeps his hand there for a second too long, and then raises it to call the waitress back over.
“Pancakes we can definitely do,” he says.
He’s still smiling, and he puts his hand back on her wrist. It stays there until the waitress comes back with their order, when Jo pulls her hand away, a little more sharply than she probably should have. Renard raises his eyebrows at her.
“You’re pretty familiar with people, aren’t you?” she says
“I’ve been accused of being friendly before,” says Renard. He leans forward slightly, and the chain on his neck swings forward as well. She catches sight, briefly, of a brass key hanging at the end.
He realizes she’s spotted the key and tucks it back into his shirt.
“What’s that for?” she asks.
“Just a room in my house,” he replies airily. “It’s not important.”
She raises her eyebrows at him. “If it weren’t important, then you wouldn’t keep the key around your neck.”
Renard pauses, and regards her thoughtfully over his cup of coffee. He laughs, but there’s an edge to it now, some of the constant bustle and warmth has leaked out of him.
“Women are always so curious,” he says. He dabs at his mouth with a napkin. “But you’re right, I suppose. I should correct myself. The key is to a room full of things of largely sentimental value.” He smiles at her, a little sadly. “It’s where I keep my late wife’s possessions.”
“Oh,” says Jo, feigning surprise and sympathy. “Sorry to bring up your loss.”
Renard shrugs. “Perfectly understandable Joanna.” He gives her a sly look and waves for the check. “You know, you rather remind me of her.”
x
He kisses her cheek at the end of the meal. It’s a quick kiss, and his hand rests gently around her upper arm. When he pulls away, he’s smiling.
Jo blushes. The spot on her cheek where he kissed her faintly burns.
x
She meets Dean outside the library in the early afternoon.
“He’s definitely our guy,” says Dean as soon as he sees her. The sunlight is falling straight down, and it turns his eyelashes to bright gold. Jo studies his face for a moment, half-expecting to feel the old, familiar hard-stomach squeeze of infatuation. But she doesn’t feel anything of the sort, just a irritable fondness.
She almost breathes a sigh of relief and walks with Dean to his car. Inside the Impala, he hands her a folder full of scanned photos to examine.
The first of the stack is a very old photo of a wedding. Jo looks at his bride; she looks young, really young, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and her hair is unbound and curling. She looks thin, but happy. Next to her, proud and smiling, is her groom. Renard.
“When was this taken?” asks Jo, handing the scan back to Dean.
“1850,” says Dean, matter-of-fact.
“And the bride?”
“Eleanor Sweeney, died 1851. In childbirth. Kid didn’t make it either.”
Jo snorts. “Sure. Childbirth.”
She flips through the other photos. They’re all more or less the same - old photographs or newspaper clippings, a young woman, usually blonde but the occasional brunette, dressed in white and smiling next to Renard. There’s over a century of different bridal fashions. Jo puts the folder down. She feels a little ill.
“I saw the key,” she says quietly. “It was around his neck.”
Dean’s eyes go round. “You did?” he says, voice pitching high for a moment. “You sure?”
Jo stares at him. “Well, there was a key around his neck and he didn’t want to talk about it. So…”
“Great,” says Dean. He rubs at his mouth, and his eyes are somewhere else. “Great.”
Jo twists in her seat and flicks his shoulder.
“Hey! You hiding something from me, Winchester?”
Dean’s far-away expression lifts and he looks disgruntled. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Oh yeah,” snaps Jo. She crosses her arms over her chest. She feels, suddenly, like her mother dressing down a hunter who’s had too many at the bar. “I wasn’t fucking born yesterday, Dean. Why’s the key so important?”
There’s a pause, and Jo can tell Dean’s working out his options.
“This have something to do with Sam?” she presses. It’s not really a guess. Most of Dean’s secrets have to do with Sam, one way or another.
Dean’s jaw clenches in response.
“Sam’s in Portland. Talked to him this morning. That kind of key’s just valuable.”
Jo raises her eyebrows. “Yeah. Which is why we burn it, along with, you know.”
She touches her cheek, distracted for a moment. The idea of burning Renard is starting to sit uneasy with her. He’s not a bad guy, friendly, maybe a little misunderstood. He’s been nothing but a gentleman to her so far.
“You burn the wives’ bodies,” says Dean, breaking through her thoughts. “That’s where his power comes from, dumb ass.”
Jo’s stomach falls. She’d forgotten about the wives’ bodies.
“So I’ll call him tonight and set up a meeting.”
“Meeting’s not exactly what I’d call it,” smirks Dean.
Jo flicks his shoulder again. “Douchebag. Like I was saying, I’ll get him to take me to his house tomorrow.” That’s how these things work, gotta be invited in. Barbleues are weird - all old world magic and blood.
Dean nods and worries at his lower lip with his teeth.
“You sure you’re all right with that?” His voice is gruff.
Jo considers flicking him in the shoulder for a third time. She settles for long-suffering instead.
“Yes, Dean. You do realize I’ve gone on hunts by myself before.”
Not very many, admittedly. Most of her hunts have been with her mom, who’s decided that if Jo’s going to hunt, she should at least have back up. But that’s nothing Dean needs to worry about.
“Yeah and last time I was on a hunt with you, you - ”
“ - That was my first hunt, and let me remind you, when we first met, my mom and I had you and your brother at gunpoint and then you almost got eaten by a damn clown.”
“We did not almost get eaten by a clown!” says Dean, affronted.
“That’s not what Ash told me,” says Jo smugly, and a soft, sad feeling fills her chest at the mention of Ash. She wishes she had something to remember him by, but as it is, her entire childhood burned up last year. She touches her dad’s knife. At least she’s got that, and that’ll have to remind her of everyone she hunts for.
Dean’s mouth twists. “Yeah, well Ash… Ash talked too much.”
x
It’s not until they get back to the motel and Dean goes to take a shower that Jo remembers how excited he was about the key. He takes off his shirt to go shower, and Jo catches sight of three long scars down his back. They look like claw marks.
She’d heard a rumor in a bar in Greensboro: that Dean had sold his soul for Sam, that he’d gone to Hell, that Sam had stood astride the cracks of the world and pulled his brother out.
Jo hadn’t even known Sam had died, last she knew was what her mom said: that a demon had tried to open the gates of Hell, and that she and Bobby and the Winchesters had managed to close it, had killed the demon that killed Mary Winchester.
She wonders what the hell Dean is hiding from her, and if it has anything to do with getting Renard’s key.
She touches her cheek again at the thought of Renard, and has to look up at the mounted deer’s head to ground her.
“He probably did to his wives what that hunter did to you,” she says out loud, to the deer.
Her voice feels over-loud in the motel room. The deer stares impassively back at her, its eyes blank and terrible.
x
Renard is all too happy to have her over. He picks her up around five the next day, all smiles and hugs as he gets out of his sports car. Jo smiles at him shyly and leans a little bit into his embrace. He smells like aftershave and peppermint and the pine forest that embraces Quincy.
She thinks vaguely of her mom, that Ellen’ll be happy Jo’s moved on from Dean entirely and has someone else, and then Renard pulls away from her and Jo blinks. The hell was she thinking? Her head feels overlight, the way it used to after the cross country races she ran in high school.
If Renard notices her disorientation, he doesn't say anything. He just helps her into the car.
"I hope you're looking forward to dinner as much as I am," says Renard, which wouldn't be creepy, exactly, except for how Jo knows what she is. And she reminds herself of that firmly.
But there's still something stretching strange and animal twisting between them, a feeling like being at a bar and catching the eye of the guy you're going home with that night. Jo glances at the sideview mirror and catches sight of Dean wandering out of the motel room and walking to his car.
She feels comforted. She knows he'll be following.
Renard’s house is out in the Klamath Forest, a good ten minutes from town. The road curves up along a ridge, and he takes the curves fast, sends Jo clutching for the dashboard and armrest. The trees are huge, shaggy pines, and they stand close and dense together. They seem to close in behind the car.
She doesn't catch sight of the Impala once.
Renard is saying something to her, but she doesn't really hear it. It's all small talk and soft syllables. His right hand rests lightly on her hair.
His house looks very old, and it's covered in ivy. It's the kind of house, Jo thinks, as they walk up to it, that kids dare each other to go inside - crooked and tall with windows that look like black and hungry eyes. A bird seems to shriek a warning, and Jo laughs and grabs at Renard's arm.
"This isn't anything like I expected," she says. "I thought it would be one of those super-modern yuppie houses. You know - lots of windows and light?"
Renard smiles down at her. His face seems to have changed since getting out of the car. It's leaner-looking, hungrier. His teeth seem almost sharp.
"Family inheritance," he says. "I couldn't bear to have parted with it."
Jo nods, and jerkily walks forward with him.
“Renard,” she says, on the doorstep, loath to go inside, “what was your first wife like?”
Renard gives her an odd look, and, after a moment, says, “Sweet. Curious.” He smiles as if at a private joke. “Very curious.”
He leads her to the dining room and unhooks the key from around his neck and rests it on the table. Jo looks at it, but neither of them mention it.
"Would you like something to drink?" asks Renard. "Water? Wine?”
"Whatever you're having," says Jo automatically. She's still looking at the key. Her cheek burns again.
She wants to pick the key up.
Renard smiles at her and leaves, and Jo immediately picks the key up. It glitters in her hand. As if in a dream, she stands up and walks down the hallway. She knows what room the key unlocks. She feels it calling to her, like following the thread of a song through a large, empty house.
She descends a flight of stairs and winds up at a large, wooden door. She stands there for a moment, held still by a strange double knowledge. She knows if she opens the door, she’ll find the wives’ bodies - all hung up on hooks if the stories are true.
But she also knows there could be gold - no, not gold. Her dad, her mom. Ash. The Roadhouse. And it would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking tragic that she was so desperate to get out of that fucking place right up until the moment she learned it had burned down. Then all she had wanted to do was go to her room behind the stock room, in the same bed she’d slept in since she was a kid, with the same princess canopy her dad had built over it when she was three. She had wanted, so badly, to climb into that bed and wrap her blankets around her and fall asleep listening to the humming sounds of the full bar, her mother’s occasional dry and lovely laughter.
She knows her bed will be behind the door.
She slips the key into the door and, slowly, she turns it. She pushes the door open.
“I never told you I had more than one wife, Jo,” says Renard from behind her. He sounds a little sad.
She turns quickly, but Renard is already upon her. He grabs her by her jaw and lifts her up. She shrieks, and grabs at his wrists instinctively, scrabbling at him with her blunt nails.
“Let go of me!”
Renard tuts. “I’m afraid not, darling. Like I said, I never told you I had more than one wife - ” and she recalls referring to his first wife as the entered the house. Stupid, she chides herself. Amateur “- which means, I’m afraid, that you’ve been prying. And if you look around, you’ll see what I do to women who pry.”
Her eyes flit from side to side and, finally, she sees them.
His wives’ bodies are hanging off hooks, headless and naked. The flesh on many of them coming off in graying strips.
There are dozens of them, more than Dean had in his folder.
Whatever spell her put on her lifts, and the stench of decay slams into her. Her eyes water. She can see blood on the walls, on the floor - some dried to rust color, but some of it still gleaming wet and viscous.
“Your wives,” she gasps. Her hands drop to her side, and she starts to go limp. “I’m not -”
Renard smiles coldly.
“I don’t marry all of them, Joanne,” he says conversationally, as if they were having breakfast at the diner again. She can feel his fingers bruising her jaw and she winces in pain. “Women want too much out of courtship today. They all have careers they want to worry about.” He shakes her. “So I’m left with scraps like you instead. Hitch-hikers and runaways. Bitches on the margins.”
Jo wrenches her dad’s knife from her belt and stabs Renard in the hand. He screams and jerks away.
“That’s right! Iron, you asshole!” Jo shouts, stumbling back. She bumps into one of the corpses and fights back the urge to vomit. The smell of rot and blood is overpowering, and her boots stick to the floor.
Renard’s mouth is a terrible gash in his face, all crimson and yellow-toothed and hungry. He stares at her, his eyes dark pits.
“Hunter,” he spits. “I should’ve known.”
Jo firms her grip on her knife and makes herself look at him, only at him. Something brushes her shoulder and she shivers.
“Damn right,” she says. “Not like it was hard to figure out what you were though.”
He smiles. It’s an ugly smile. “Well lucky for me you came alone.”
“Actually,” says Dean from behind Renard, “she didn’t.”
Renard whirls. “Who - ”
Dean shoots him in the face.
It’s not enough to kill him, not nearly. But he jerks back in surprise, momentarily stunned, and it gives Dean the opportunity to toss Jo a container of lighter fluid. She immediately sets about spraying the room with the stuff.
She hears Dean fire another bullet and Renard shriek again, then Dean grunts in pain, and Jo turns. A fox is clinging to Dean’s arm, its teeth clamped around his wrist. Dean heaves his arm and smashes the fox into the wall. The fox yelps and lets go. It leaps to the foot of the stairs and turns back into Renard.
“You!” he howls at Jo. “You brought him here!”
He lunges at her, and Jo gets her arms up just in time to protect her face. But she goes skidding backwards and falls, her feet slipping on a pool of blood. She doesn’t understand why it’s still so fresh, and the dizzy terrible thought occurs to her that Renard may have been in the process of bleeding a girl out even as he was courting her.
Her head smacks against the floor hard, and her vision bursts black for a second. Renard is on top of her, and his hands are around her neck. Barbleues aren’t strong, no more so than the average men; they’re just immortal from the lives they steal.
Jo headbutts Renard and he grabs his nose and falls to the floor in pain. Jo scrambles across the floor and back to the stairway. The feet of the newer corpses brush her back, and she gags. Dean grabs her by the arms and helps pull her up, out of the room.
Jo pulls her lighter from her pocket and flicks it on.
“Fuck - the key!” says Dean suddenly, but Jo’s already throwing the lighter, and the room goes up in flames.
Renard comes to his feet jerkily; he looks like a mannequin. Fire crackles around him, racing up the bodies of his victims. But he doesn’t seem affected by the heat.
“They deserved it!” he wails. He lifts his arms, his hands turned to claws.
“Oh, shut up!” yells Jo, but she’s worried - the fire doesn’t seem to be working, and smoke is billowing out of the room, up the stairs, obscuring her and Dean’s vision.
Then the fire stops completely. Renard stands at the edge of the stairway, nose to nose with Jo.
He smiles and raises his hand.
There’s a shrieking sound like fabric tearing and the ghosts of Renard’s victims rise up from the floor and grab him, a silvery wave of women, their throats slashed and their mouths bleeding.
They drag him to the floor.
Renard starts to scream. It sounds human at first, and then goes high and animal. The ghosts’ claw and pull at him. They don’t say anything. The whole house is silent except for Renard’s screams.
Then, he begins to melt. And the room and door and key start to melt with him. One of the ghosts lifts her head from the fray for a moment and looks at Jo. She’s wearing a very old-fashioned dress, and with a start, Jo recognizes her as the girl from the first photo. Renard’s first wife.
The girl mouths, “Thank you.”
And then the stairs start to melt, too.
“The stairs!” yells Jo. Her throat hurts when she speaks. “Dean! They’re melting too!”
They stumble up the stairs. Everything behind them is collapsing, and she’s never seen anything like this before. It’s as if the whole house were held up by the spirits of the women. Their bodies and souls turned to immortal labor on behalf of Renard. The house isn’t melting from the heat; it’s an explosion of spectral power.
She and Dean make it out just as the whole house shudders and goes, leaving nothing but a pool of black tar. When Jo looks, Renard’s car is also gone, dissolved into a similar pool.
Jo and Dean are breathing heavily, and, as they stand at the edge of the pool, it begins to shrink.
It’s not long before there’s just an empty lot where Renard’s house was, and soon, Jo thinks, the forest will take that, too.
Without saying a word, she and Dean walk to his car.
x
“I didn’t know they could turn into foxes,” says Jo, halfway into the ride back. They’ve both been quiet, and Dean’s knuckles are white around the steering wheel.
Dean grunts.
Jo rubs the bridge of her nose. She can feel a headache coming on. “He whammied me with something, too, some kind of spell or something. And Jesus, I wasn’t expecting his wives’ ghosts to show up like that.”
“I’ve heard of it happening before,” says Dean. Jo flashes him an annoyed look.
“Coulda mentioned something,” she snaps. “Or said something about the fucking house melting.”
Dean goes very, very tense.
“I didn’t know that would happen.”
Jo realizes he’s thinking about the key. She still doesn’t know what the hell he wanted it for.
“Dean,” she says softly, after a moment, “where’s Sam?”
Dean is silent, and then he seems to collapse inwardly. He doesn’t say anything until they coast into the motel parking lot. But Jo’s patient. She waits for Dean to park, and then she touches his hand as takes the key from the ignition.
“Where’s Sam?” she repeats.
Dean looks at her hollowly.
“In Portland. Jesus, Jo, I’m telling the truth. Last I heard from him, he was in Portland.”
“Okay,” says Jo. “Okay. I believe you, but Dean. You’re not telling me something. How come Sam didn’t come on this hunt?”
Dean takes a deep breath, and then he says, in a voice like he’s recounting the plot of a movie, something impossible, something that happened to someone else:
“Sam can’t see me, or else I go back to Hell.”
Jo stares at him. Her chest feels tight. This is bigger than her, she knows. Whatever her tragedies are, and hers are great indeed, the Winchesters are always those fuckers who have to one-up you.
“I heard a rumor about something like that,” she says. “But Dean, you’re gonna have to explain things real slow so I understand what you’re saying.”
Dean, after a long moment, explains. He tells her about the long, sorry year - Sam dying, Dean selling his soul, Sam desperate to save Dean and then the deal coming due, and, finally, how Sam powered up and rode a Reaper into Hell to drag Dean back. There are parts Dean steps back from, blank spaces in the story where he’s clearly not telling something, and all of them have to do with Sam.
But she doesn’t press; she’s just silent after he tells it. She wonders if Dean’s ever told this much to anyone. Somehow, she doesn’t think she has.
“So what did you want the key for?” she asks eventually.
Dean’s mouth twists. “I know this - well, she’s a real fucking piece of work, is what she is - but she’s got something valuable that might help lift the restriction on Sam.” He lifts his head up, face twisted in a snarl. “But she wants something valuable in return. She pointed me here.”
He says restriction like maybe it’s an actual, legalese, bureaucratic muckity-muck restriction. Demons, she knows, are creatures of chaos; maybe reapers abide by order to balance that out. Jo knows she knows more about the strangeness of the world than most, but it’s still weirder and uglier than she could ever really believe. It’s humbling, and sad.
She thinks about hugging Dean, but honestly, that feels like something she’d do more for her own comfort than for his. She wants to say even if he didn’t get the key, he did a good thing, killing Renard and saving countless future women. Sam would approve of it, and there will be other opportunities, other things he can trade with this woman.
But she knows Dean knows that, and she won’t patronize him. There are things you lose that you can never get back, which is why people like her and Dean and Sam and even her mom hold on to what they’ve got all the harder.
She just sits with him in the car, her hand on top of his, and the sky slowly grows dark around them.
They both still smell of smoke.
x
Dean drives her down to Chico the next morning. It’s a quiet ride, but not an uncomfortable one. Dean plays one of his tapes, and even though it’s not Jo’s favorite kind of music, it’s the kind of stuff most of the hunters she grew up with listened to, the kind of stuff that was always playing on the jukebox at the Roadhouse. So it’s comforting, and she knows all the words. It’s a hot day, and the road shimmers in front of them as they come down from the mountain.
“You got a partner, Jo?” Dean asks suddenly, when they pull into the bus depot.
Jo shakes her head, surprised by the question. “Work with my mom sometimes. Why?”
Dean nods thoughtfully. “I tell you what, I know this guy, Victor. Used to be a Fed, but he’s seen the light and hunting now. I’ll send you his number.” He pauses and gives her a wry smile. “He could use someone more experienced to show him the ropes, keep his ass from getting killed.”
Jo’s taken aback, and goddammit if she doesn’t feel a tiny surge of pride.
“Yeah, all right. I don’t usually like working with amateurs, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Dean laugh, a bright, honest laugh, and gets out of the car.
“You don’t need to walk me to the bus, Dean,” says Jo, amused. She gets out too, hauling her duffel with her. She hitches the bag over her shoulder and looks at Dean.
“If I see Sam…”
Dean nods. “Yeah, let me know.”
Jo nods sharply back and gives Dean a cheeky salute and small smile.
“Will do. You take care.”
“You too, Jo,” and then Dean walks around the car and hugs her. It’s a brief hug, but a good one, and worry and fondness fill Jo’s chest in equal measure.
“I’m glad you’re not in Hell,” she says as he pulls away.
Dean looks at her, funny-quiet, for a long moment, and then he says, “Yeah. Me too.”
Jo smiles at him again, and then she walks away.
She reckons she’ll call this Victor guy. It’s good, hunting with a partner.
-End
End notes: Renard is based both on the very similar French Bluebeard myth and the English Mr. Fox myth. The monster name (barbleue) is a major corruption of the French for blue beard. This fic was based primarily on the prompt “AU where Jo is alive, she and Dean go to a hunt together. Sam is...somewhere else,” but I’ve added a little of the prompt “Victor Henricksen survived and became a great hunter” towards the end there, too. Thanks for reading!
Author: coyotesuspect
Recipient: floranna
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~6,400
Warnings: violence against women
Author's Notes: Story diverges from canon around mid-season 3. The monster is based on two separate, but similar, pieces of French and English folklore, and I’ve taken liberties with both its name and abilities. Thank you to my recipient for the fun prompts! I hope you enjoy!
Summary: Dean asks Jo for help hunting secretive monster in northern California; Jo’s happy to help, but she soon realizes Dean’s keeping secrets of his own.
She's thumbing about 30 miles east of Quincy, an old mining town high in the mountains, closer to Nevada than the endless beaches most people think when they think of California. The sun’s setting to her back and her shadow is a long, thin thing stretching crookedly in front of her. She’s been standing there close to an hour, waving off motorists as she waits.
Then she sees the red car round the bend and wink in the sun, and she thinks to herself, 'Gotchya.'
The red car reaches her in another thirty seconds, going manic-fast down the mountain road, and it squeals to a halt a decent jog in front of her. She grabs her duffel and rushes to meet it, snorts when she reads the vanity plate: MR FOX. This is definitely their guy. Barbleues are always flashy.
The man who steps out to meet her is tall and lean, in his forties and handsome. His hair is auburn and he's pushed it back, away from his face, so that she can see where his hair has turned white just at his temples. The stubble on his face is also silvering, seems almost blue.
He smiles at her, mouth full of white, even teeth.
"You look like you could use a ride."
“Sure could,” she says, smiling back. She hoists her duffel bag in the direction of his car, and he catches and steadies it. “Thanks for stopping.”
“Where are you headed?” he asks. He lifts his hands to help her wrestle with the duffel, and the slanting light of the sun catches his hands, turns them, for a moment, an eerie red. She keeps smiling steadily.
“Well, I was hoping I could make it down to Chico by this evening, but it’s gotten pretty late…”
“I’m afraid I’m not headed that far west either. I only live on the other side of Quincy.”
“Oh, well that’s fine. Don’t suppose there’s a motel in town you can drop me off at?”
He winks at her and opens the passenger door with a flourish. He’s charming, Mr. Fox.
“That I can definitely do, Miss…?”
“Jo,” says Jo firmly, as she slides into the passenger seat. “It’s Jo.”
“What’s that short for?” he asks, adjusting the rearview mirror as he gets in himself.
“Joanna, but no one calls me that except -”
“Well, Joanna,” he interrupts, “there’s a lovely little motel right at the edge of town I’d be happy to bring you too.”
My mom, she finishes in her head, but she keeps the annoyed look off her face. “That’s very kind of you.”
“Of course,” he adds, “you’re more than welcome to my spare room.”
Jo laughs girlishly. “That’s even kinder, but with all due respect sir, I don’t even know your damn name.”
From the look he gives her, she can tell she said the right thing. It occurs to her he’s the type of predator who likes playing with their prey.
“It’s Renard,” he says warmly. “And I can’t say I don’t understand your misgivings. The road’s certainly a scary place for a young woman such as yourself.”
There’s an implied question there, and Jo shrugs. “I’ve been hitching rides since I was fifteen. Guess I’m lucky or got good intuition. No one’s ever given me much trouble.”
“A runaway then?”
“Something like that.”
“Well I won’t pry then.”
“I can’t promise the same.” Jo grins at him. “What you do, Renard? ‘Sides play the knight-in-shining-armor?”
Renard laughs, and Jo knows she’s biased, but he puts her in mind of her seventh grade science teacher, a cheerful man who liked to hover over girls at their desks under pretext of helping them. Jo reaches into memory for his name and finds it - Mr. Anderson. All the eighth-grade girls said wear a sweater in his class. Jo smiles humorlessly, not like she’d ever had to worry. She’d been flat as the boys at that age.
In the cool, leather smelling interior of Renard’s car, the hairs on Jo’s arms raise.
“I’m retired,” he tells her. “I was a doctor.”
“You’re pretty young to be retired.”
Renard winks at her. “Probably not as young as you think, but I had some, ah, family money as well.”
“Must be nice,” says Jo, and the rest of the ride passes similarly. They make small talk, Jo definitely lying and Renard probably lying. They drive through Quincy, all peaked roofs and wooden houses, a few flags and signs from their Fourth of July celebration still hanging around. It’s a clean, pretty little town, and Jo’s grateful when Renard finally pulls into the parking lot of the Gold Pan Lodge, even more grateful when she sees the black pool of Dean’s car parked there.
“Thanks!” she says brightly, unhooking her seatbelt before he’s even finished parking. “I really appreciate the ride.”
“It was my pleasure,” says Renard, laughing again. He touches her arm gently. “But you don’t need to run out of here, Joanna. Do you have enough money?”
“To stay here? ‘Course, I wouldn’t have asked to be dropped at a motel if I didn’t.”
Renard presses three twenties into her palm.
“All the same, he says, “I couldn’t sleep if I let a slip of a girl like you defenseless.”
Jo laughs, and she touches her dad’s knife where it’s tucked into her waistband.
“Hardly defenseless,” she says, but she takes the money all the same.
x
Dean’s waiting for her when she gets into the room, a dark, restless shape near the window.
“Took you long enough,” he barks soon as she’s inside.
Jo shrugs and drops her duffel on the floor. She doesn’t rise to take Dean’s bait because she can tell he was worried; it’s in the stiff way he glances over her, looking for signs she might be hurt.
“He was later than we thought he’d be,” she asys. She kicks off her shoes and strides across the room to sit on her bed. There’s a mounted deer head between hers and Dean’s bed, and she makes a face at it. The owner of the motel is apparently a big hunter; the lobby was full of similar trophies. She hates it.
“We have any pizza left?” she asks, looking away from the deer.
Dean watches her for another moment, his face twisted up. She thinks back to when she met him, when he was grieving, but sweet. Whatever’s happened in the two years since has settled on him hard. He doesn’t meet her eyes as much anymore, and when he does, he looks angry.
“Yeah,” he says finally, turning back to the window. “It’s in the fridge.”
Jo gets off the bed and digs out the last couple pieces of pizza. She watches Dean’s back carefully. They’re friends, or as much friends as a Winchester can be with anyone, but they’ve been moving around each other awful carefully. It makes sense, she guesses. They haven’t spoken since Duluth.
“How’s Sam’s hunt going?” she asks.
Dean startles.
“What?” he says, turning to face her.
“His hunt?” she repeats. Her eyes narrow. She’d thought maybe Dean was lying about Sam, and this only firms up the suspicion. “You said he was, what, figuring out a banshee up in Portland?”
That’s what Dean had said, when he called her. He needed a girl to help him on this case - and wow Dean, thanks - while Sam took a different case farther north. Implicit, or at least Jo had thought, was that Dean and Sam were separating so Sam wouldn’t freak Jo out. But now Jo’s thinking Sam and Dean’s separation has nothing at all to do with some bullshit chivalric consideration of her delicate sensibilities. Dean can barely remember the story he fed her.
“Right,” says Dean blankly, and then some of the old Dean comes back into him, and he straightens up, looks brighter and sharper. Looks, Jo thinks, like a pool shark right before he walks away with a table full of winnings. “Haven’t talked to him about it today. But Sam’s reasonably bright. I’m sure he hasn’t fucked up too badly.”
Bullshit, thinks Jo, but she gives Dean the same sweet smile she was flashing at Renard earlier. Dean at least has the decency to looks unsettled by it, can at least sense the threat of teeth beneath.
“Of course,” she says. “It’s good to catch up, by the way. Haven’t seen you since the last time one of you Winchesters decided to use me as bait.”
She’s being mean, she knows. It was a demon, not Sam using her as bait for Dean, but she doesn’t like that Dean’s keeping secrets from her, and she knows he needs her for this case. It’s not like Dean’s gonna be a viable fake-bride for a monster with the wife munchies. He can’t tell her to fuck off.
But Dean just rolls his eyes, doesn’t let her see weakness. “We all got our special talents, Jo. Speaking of bait though, did he like you?”
“He gave me sixty bucks, so yeah. I think he liked me.”
“Ooooh,” says Dean, like a fucking twelve-year-old, and he makes a dirty gesture. Jo flips him off.
“Go fuck yourself!” she laughs. “And don’t fucking think I’m sharing it. It’s hazard pay.”
Dean snorts. “So you get woo’d, and I’m gonna be in the fucking library all day tomorrow. And you’re the one complaining about the case.”
Jo shrugs and then covers a yawn with her mouth. The late hour’s snuck up on her, always does in the summer.
“Tough shit,” she informs Dean. “I’m gonna turn in. Gotta be up bright and early to meet ‘Renard’ for breakfast.”
Dean snorts. “A date already? You move fast.”
“No date,” says Jo, stepping to the bathroom to change out of her jeans. It feels weird to not just strip down and go to bed, and it’s not like she and Dean’ll jump each other if he sees her in her underpants. But she guesses even hunters have their weird sense of decorum.
The lights are off and Dean’s in bed when she steps out of the bathroom. She pauses in the cramped space between the bathroom door and sink and watches him for a moment. It’s weird, she decides, hunting with Dean. But it’s not bad. She knows he has her back, and it’s not like hunting with her mom, who acts like Jo’s still learning to drive at times.
She sleeps pretty well.
x
“Joanna!” says Renard the next morning. “You’re still in town!”
Jo pauses and smiles at him. She’s been sunning herself on a bench near the diner she and Dean saw Renard eat at yesterday morning, waiting to see if he’s a regular here. She’s in luck.
“Yeah, I figured this seemed like a nice place to stick around and try to make a few bucks. Everyone says there’s no work in Chico in the summer.”
“Very true,” nods Renard. “That is what college towns are like. And since you’re staying in town, you’ll have to let me treat you to breakfast.” He gestures at the diner. “Ms. Madigan makes an excellent fry up.”
“You’re pushy,” says Jo, but flirt-like. She stands. “But sure. I’ve never passed up a free meal. No plans to start now.”
The diner’s a diner. It’s got a bit of a mystic woo-woo vibe going for it - lots of stars and moon décor - but a quick look around assures Jo it’s just amateur stuff. The crowd is about the type you’d expect to see in a small town along a highway, which means they look like a slightly cleaner version of the clientele they got at the Roadhouse. Their waitress behind the counter is white-haired and plump, and she greets Renard warmly.
Jo watches the interaction thoughtfully. If she and Dean are right, he’s a monster, so it’s weird to think Renard’s a regular at some diner, that he’s some regular, upstanding member of the community.
“Did you know this is an old mining town?” says Renard, as the waitress pours them coffee.
“You mean like the gold rush?” asks Jo.
“Sure do.”
“Huh.” Jo looks up from the menu. “Did they find what they were looking for?”
Renard touches his chest lightly, right where Jo can make out the dim outline of a pendant. She didn’t see it last night in the car, but he’s wearing a delicate chain around his neck, and it slips beneath his shirt. He smiles faintly.
“Some of them did.”
“Well, I don’t know about gold, but I could really go for some pancakes right now.”
Renard laughs and pats her wrist. He keeps his hand there for a second too long, and then raises it to call the waitress back over.
“Pancakes we can definitely do,” he says.
He’s still smiling, and he puts his hand back on her wrist. It stays there until the waitress comes back with their order, when Jo pulls her hand away, a little more sharply than she probably should have. Renard raises his eyebrows at her.
“You’re pretty familiar with people, aren’t you?” she says
“I’ve been accused of being friendly before,” says Renard. He leans forward slightly, and the chain on his neck swings forward as well. She catches sight, briefly, of a brass key hanging at the end.
He realizes she’s spotted the key and tucks it back into his shirt.
“What’s that for?” she asks.
“Just a room in my house,” he replies airily. “It’s not important.”
She raises her eyebrows at him. “If it weren’t important, then you wouldn’t keep the key around your neck.”
Renard pauses, and regards her thoughtfully over his cup of coffee. He laughs, but there’s an edge to it now, some of the constant bustle and warmth has leaked out of him.
“Women are always so curious,” he says. He dabs at his mouth with a napkin. “But you’re right, I suppose. I should correct myself. The key is to a room full of things of largely sentimental value.” He smiles at her, a little sadly. “It’s where I keep my late wife’s possessions.”
“Oh,” says Jo, feigning surprise and sympathy. “Sorry to bring up your loss.”
Renard shrugs. “Perfectly understandable Joanna.” He gives her a sly look and waves for the check. “You know, you rather remind me of her.”
x
He kisses her cheek at the end of the meal. It’s a quick kiss, and his hand rests gently around her upper arm. When he pulls away, he’s smiling.
Jo blushes. The spot on her cheek where he kissed her faintly burns.
x
She meets Dean outside the library in the early afternoon.
“He’s definitely our guy,” says Dean as soon as he sees her. The sunlight is falling straight down, and it turns his eyelashes to bright gold. Jo studies his face for a moment, half-expecting to feel the old, familiar hard-stomach squeeze of infatuation. But she doesn’t feel anything of the sort, just a irritable fondness.
She almost breathes a sigh of relief and walks with Dean to his car. Inside the Impala, he hands her a folder full of scanned photos to examine.
The first of the stack is a very old photo of a wedding. Jo looks at his bride; she looks young, really young, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and her hair is unbound and curling. She looks thin, but happy. Next to her, proud and smiling, is her groom. Renard.
“When was this taken?” asks Jo, handing the scan back to Dean.
“1850,” says Dean, matter-of-fact.
“And the bride?”
“Eleanor Sweeney, died 1851. In childbirth. Kid didn’t make it either.”
Jo snorts. “Sure. Childbirth.”
She flips through the other photos. They’re all more or less the same - old photographs or newspaper clippings, a young woman, usually blonde but the occasional brunette, dressed in white and smiling next to Renard. There’s over a century of different bridal fashions. Jo puts the folder down. She feels a little ill.
“I saw the key,” she says quietly. “It was around his neck.”
Dean’s eyes go round. “You did?” he says, voice pitching high for a moment. “You sure?”
Jo stares at him. “Well, there was a key around his neck and he didn’t want to talk about it. So…”
“Great,” says Dean. He rubs at his mouth, and his eyes are somewhere else. “Great.”
Jo twists in her seat and flicks his shoulder.
“Hey! You hiding something from me, Winchester?”
Dean’s far-away expression lifts and he looks disgruntled. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Oh yeah,” snaps Jo. She crosses her arms over her chest. She feels, suddenly, like her mother dressing down a hunter who’s had too many at the bar. “I wasn’t fucking born yesterday, Dean. Why’s the key so important?”
There’s a pause, and Jo can tell Dean’s working out his options.
“This have something to do with Sam?” she presses. It’s not really a guess. Most of Dean’s secrets have to do with Sam, one way or another.
Dean’s jaw clenches in response.
“Sam’s in Portland. Talked to him this morning. That kind of key’s just valuable.”
Jo raises her eyebrows. “Yeah. Which is why we burn it, along with, you know.”
She touches her cheek, distracted for a moment. The idea of burning Renard is starting to sit uneasy with her. He’s not a bad guy, friendly, maybe a little misunderstood. He’s been nothing but a gentleman to her so far.
“You burn the wives’ bodies,” says Dean, breaking through her thoughts. “That’s where his power comes from, dumb ass.”
Jo’s stomach falls. She’d forgotten about the wives’ bodies.
“So I’ll call him tonight and set up a meeting.”
“Meeting’s not exactly what I’d call it,” smirks Dean.
Jo flicks his shoulder again. “Douchebag. Like I was saying, I’ll get him to take me to his house tomorrow.” That’s how these things work, gotta be invited in. Barbleues are weird - all old world magic and blood.
Dean nods and worries at his lower lip with his teeth.
“You sure you’re all right with that?” His voice is gruff.
Jo considers flicking him in the shoulder for a third time. She settles for long-suffering instead.
“Yes, Dean. You do realize I’ve gone on hunts by myself before.”
Not very many, admittedly. Most of her hunts have been with her mom, who’s decided that if Jo’s going to hunt, she should at least have back up. But that’s nothing Dean needs to worry about.
“Yeah and last time I was on a hunt with you, you - ”
“ - That was my first hunt, and let me remind you, when we first met, my mom and I had you and your brother at gunpoint and then you almost got eaten by a damn clown.”
“We did not almost get eaten by a clown!” says Dean, affronted.
“That’s not what Ash told me,” says Jo smugly, and a soft, sad feeling fills her chest at the mention of Ash. She wishes she had something to remember him by, but as it is, her entire childhood burned up last year. She touches her dad’s knife. At least she’s got that, and that’ll have to remind her of everyone she hunts for.
Dean’s mouth twists. “Yeah, well Ash… Ash talked too much.”
x
It’s not until they get back to the motel and Dean goes to take a shower that Jo remembers how excited he was about the key. He takes off his shirt to go shower, and Jo catches sight of three long scars down his back. They look like claw marks.
She’d heard a rumor in a bar in Greensboro: that Dean had sold his soul for Sam, that he’d gone to Hell, that Sam had stood astride the cracks of the world and pulled his brother out.
Jo hadn’t even known Sam had died, last she knew was what her mom said: that a demon had tried to open the gates of Hell, and that she and Bobby and the Winchesters had managed to close it, had killed the demon that killed Mary Winchester.
She wonders what the hell Dean is hiding from her, and if it has anything to do with getting Renard’s key.
She touches her cheek again at the thought of Renard, and has to look up at the mounted deer’s head to ground her.
“He probably did to his wives what that hunter did to you,” she says out loud, to the deer.
Her voice feels over-loud in the motel room. The deer stares impassively back at her, its eyes blank and terrible.
x
Renard is all too happy to have her over. He picks her up around five the next day, all smiles and hugs as he gets out of his sports car. Jo smiles at him shyly and leans a little bit into his embrace. He smells like aftershave and peppermint and the pine forest that embraces Quincy.
She thinks vaguely of her mom, that Ellen’ll be happy Jo’s moved on from Dean entirely and has someone else, and then Renard pulls away from her and Jo blinks. The hell was she thinking? Her head feels overlight, the way it used to after the cross country races she ran in high school.
If Renard notices her disorientation, he doesn't say anything. He just helps her into the car.
"I hope you're looking forward to dinner as much as I am," says Renard, which wouldn't be creepy, exactly, except for how Jo knows what she is. And she reminds herself of that firmly.
But there's still something stretching strange and animal twisting between them, a feeling like being at a bar and catching the eye of the guy you're going home with that night. Jo glances at the sideview mirror and catches sight of Dean wandering out of the motel room and walking to his car.
She feels comforted. She knows he'll be following.
Renard’s house is out in the Klamath Forest, a good ten minutes from town. The road curves up along a ridge, and he takes the curves fast, sends Jo clutching for the dashboard and armrest. The trees are huge, shaggy pines, and they stand close and dense together. They seem to close in behind the car.
She doesn't catch sight of the Impala once.
Renard is saying something to her, but she doesn't really hear it. It's all small talk and soft syllables. His right hand rests lightly on her hair.
His house looks very old, and it's covered in ivy. It's the kind of house, Jo thinks, as they walk up to it, that kids dare each other to go inside - crooked and tall with windows that look like black and hungry eyes. A bird seems to shriek a warning, and Jo laughs and grabs at Renard's arm.
"This isn't anything like I expected," she says. "I thought it would be one of those super-modern yuppie houses. You know - lots of windows and light?"
Renard smiles down at her. His face seems to have changed since getting out of the car. It's leaner-looking, hungrier. His teeth seem almost sharp.
"Family inheritance," he says. "I couldn't bear to have parted with it."
Jo nods, and jerkily walks forward with him.
“Renard,” she says, on the doorstep, loath to go inside, “what was your first wife like?”
Renard gives her an odd look, and, after a moment, says, “Sweet. Curious.” He smiles as if at a private joke. “Very curious.”
He leads her to the dining room and unhooks the key from around his neck and rests it on the table. Jo looks at it, but neither of them mention it.
"Would you like something to drink?" asks Renard. "Water? Wine?”
"Whatever you're having," says Jo automatically. She's still looking at the key. Her cheek burns again.
She wants to pick the key up.
Renard smiles at her and leaves, and Jo immediately picks the key up. It glitters in her hand. As if in a dream, she stands up and walks down the hallway. She knows what room the key unlocks. She feels it calling to her, like following the thread of a song through a large, empty house.
She descends a flight of stairs and winds up at a large, wooden door. She stands there for a moment, held still by a strange double knowledge. She knows if she opens the door, she’ll find the wives’ bodies - all hung up on hooks if the stories are true.
But she also knows there could be gold - no, not gold. Her dad, her mom. Ash. The Roadhouse. And it would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking tragic that she was so desperate to get out of that fucking place right up until the moment she learned it had burned down. Then all she had wanted to do was go to her room behind the stock room, in the same bed she’d slept in since she was a kid, with the same princess canopy her dad had built over it when she was three. She had wanted, so badly, to climb into that bed and wrap her blankets around her and fall asleep listening to the humming sounds of the full bar, her mother’s occasional dry and lovely laughter.
She knows her bed will be behind the door.
She slips the key into the door and, slowly, she turns it. She pushes the door open.
“I never told you I had more than one wife, Jo,” says Renard from behind her. He sounds a little sad.
She turns quickly, but Renard is already upon her. He grabs her by her jaw and lifts her up. She shrieks, and grabs at his wrists instinctively, scrabbling at him with her blunt nails.
“Let go of me!”
Renard tuts. “I’m afraid not, darling. Like I said, I never told you I had more than one wife - ” and she recalls referring to his first wife as the entered the house. Stupid, she chides herself. Amateur “- which means, I’m afraid, that you’ve been prying. And if you look around, you’ll see what I do to women who pry.”
Her eyes flit from side to side and, finally, she sees them.
His wives’ bodies are hanging off hooks, headless and naked. The flesh on many of them coming off in graying strips.
There are dozens of them, more than Dean had in his folder.
Whatever spell her put on her lifts, and the stench of decay slams into her. Her eyes water. She can see blood on the walls, on the floor - some dried to rust color, but some of it still gleaming wet and viscous.
“Your wives,” she gasps. Her hands drop to her side, and she starts to go limp. “I’m not -”
Renard smiles coldly.
“I don’t marry all of them, Joanne,” he says conversationally, as if they were having breakfast at the diner again. She can feel his fingers bruising her jaw and she winces in pain. “Women want too much out of courtship today. They all have careers they want to worry about.” He shakes her. “So I’m left with scraps like you instead. Hitch-hikers and runaways. Bitches on the margins.”
Jo wrenches her dad’s knife from her belt and stabs Renard in the hand. He screams and jerks away.
“That’s right! Iron, you asshole!” Jo shouts, stumbling back. She bumps into one of the corpses and fights back the urge to vomit. The smell of rot and blood is overpowering, and her boots stick to the floor.
Renard’s mouth is a terrible gash in his face, all crimson and yellow-toothed and hungry. He stares at her, his eyes dark pits.
“Hunter,” he spits. “I should’ve known.”
Jo firms her grip on her knife and makes herself look at him, only at him. Something brushes her shoulder and she shivers.
“Damn right,” she says. “Not like it was hard to figure out what you were though.”
He smiles. It’s an ugly smile. “Well lucky for me you came alone.”
“Actually,” says Dean from behind Renard, “she didn’t.”
Renard whirls. “Who - ”
Dean shoots him in the face.
It’s not enough to kill him, not nearly. But he jerks back in surprise, momentarily stunned, and it gives Dean the opportunity to toss Jo a container of lighter fluid. She immediately sets about spraying the room with the stuff.
She hears Dean fire another bullet and Renard shriek again, then Dean grunts in pain, and Jo turns. A fox is clinging to Dean’s arm, its teeth clamped around his wrist. Dean heaves his arm and smashes the fox into the wall. The fox yelps and lets go. It leaps to the foot of the stairs and turns back into Renard.
“You!” he howls at Jo. “You brought him here!”
He lunges at her, and Jo gets her arms up just in time to protect her face. But she goes skidding backwards and falls, her feet slipping on a pool of blood. She doesn’t understand why it’s still so fresh, and the dizzy terrible thought occurs to her that Renard may have been in the process of bleeding a girl out even as he was courting her.
Her head smacks against the floor hard, and her vision bursts black for a second. Renard is on top of her, and his hands are around her neck. Barbleues aren’t strong, no more so than the average men; they’re just immortal from the lives they steal.
Jo headbutts Renard and he grabs his nose and falls to the floor in pain. Jo scrambles across the floor and back to the stairway. The feet of the newer corpses brush her back, and she gags. Dean grabs her by the arms and helps pull her up, out of the room.
Jo pulls her lighter from her pocket and flicks it on.
“Fuck - the key!” says Dean suddenly, but Jo’s already throwing the lighter, and the room goes up in flames.
Renard comes to his feet jerkily; he looks like a mannequin. Fire crackles around him, racing up the bodies of his victims. But he doesn’t seem affected by the heat.
“They deserved it!” he wails. He lifts his arms, his hands turned to claws.
“Oh, shut up!” yells Jo, but she’s worried - the fire doesn’t seem to be working, and smoke is billowing out of the room, up the stairs, obscuring her and Dean’s vision.
Then the fire stops completely. Renard stands at the edge of the stairway, nose to nose with Jo.
He smiles and raises his hand.
There’s a shrieking sound like fabric tearing and the ghosts of Renard’s victims rise up from the floor and grab him, a silvery wave of women, their throats slashed and their mouths bleeding.
They drag him to the floor.
Renard starts to scream. It sounds human at first, and then goes high and animal. The ghosts’ claw and pull at him. They don’t say anything. The whole house is silent except for Renard’s screams.
Then, he begins to melt. And the room and door and key start to melt with him. One of the ghosts lifts her head from the fray for a moment and looks at Jo. She’s wearing a very old-fashioned dress, and with a start, Jo recognizes her as the girl from the first photo. Renard’s first wife.
The girl mouths, “Thank you.”
And then the stairs start to melt, too.
“The stairs!” yells Jo. Her throat hurts when she speaks. “Dean! They’re melting too!”
They stumble up the stairs. Everything behind them is collapsing, and she’s never seen anything like this before. It’s as if the whole house were held up by the spirits of the women. Their bodies and souls turned to immortal labor on behalf of Renard. The house isn’t melting from the heat; it’s an explosion of spectral power.
She and Dean make it out just as the whole house shudders and goes, leaving nothing but a pool of black tar. When Jo looks, Renard’s car is also gone, dissolved into a similar pool.
Jo and Dean are breathing heavily, and, as they stand at the edge of the pool, it begins to shrink.
It’s not long before there’s just an empty lot where Renard’s house was, and soon, Jo thinks, the forest will take that, too.
Without saying a word, she and Dean walk to his car.
x
“I didn’t know they could turn into foxes,” says Jo, halfway into the ride back. They’ve both been quiet, and Dean’s knuckles are white around the steering wheel.
Dean grunts.
Jo rubs the bridge of her nose. She can feel a headache coming on. “He whammied me with something, too, some kind of spell or something. And Jesus, I wasn’t expecting his wives’ ghosts to show up like that.”
“I’ve heard of it happening before,” says Dean. Jo flashes him an annoyed look.
“Coulda mentioned something,” she snaps. “Or said something about the fucking house melting.”
Dean goes very, very tense.
“I didn’t know that would happen.”
Jo realizes he’s thinking about the key. She still doesn’t know what the hell he wanted it for.
“Dean,” she says softly, after a moment, “where’s Sam?”
Dean is silent, and then he seems to collapse inwardly. He doesn’t say anything until they coast into the motel parking lot. But Jo’s patient. She waits for Dean to park, and then she touches his hand as takes the key from the ignition.
“Where’s Sam?” she repeats.
Dean looks at her hollowly.
“In Portland. Jesus, Jo, I’m telling the truth. Last I heard from him, he was in Portland.”
“Okay,” says Jo. “Okay. I believe you, but Dean. You’re not telling me something. How come Sam didn’t come on this hunt?”
Dean takes a deep breath, and then he says, in a voice like he’s recounting the plot of a movie, something impossible, something that happened to someone else:
“Sam can’t see me, or else I go back to Hell.”
Jo stares at him. Her chest feels tight. This is bigger than her, she knows. Whatever her tragedies are, and hers are great indeed, the Winchesters are always those fuckers who have to one-up you.
“I heard a rumor about something like that,” she says. “But Dean, you’re gonna have to explain things real slow so I understand what you’re saying.”
Dean, after a long moment, explains. He tells her about the long, sorry year - Sam dying, Dean selling his soul, Sam desperate to save Dean and then the deal coming due, and, finally, how Sam powered up and rode a Reaper into Hell to drag Dean back. There are parts Dean steps back from, blank spaces in the story where he’s clearly not telling something, and all of them have to do with Sam.
But she doesn’t press; she’s just silent after he tells it. She wonders if Dean’s ever told this much to anyone. Somehow, she doesn’t think she has.
“So what did you want the key for?” she asks eventually.
Dean’s mouth twists. “I know this - well, she’s a real fucking piece of work, is what she is - but she’s got something valuable that might help lift the restriction on Sam.” He lifts his head up, face twisted in a snarl. “But she wants something valuable in return. She pointed me here.”
He says restriction like maybe it’s an actual, legalese, bureaucratic muckity-muck restriction. Demons, she knows, are creatures of chaos; maybe reapers abide by order to balance that out. Jo knows she knows more about the strangeness of the world than most, but it’s still weirder and uglier than she could ever really believe. It’s humbling, and sad.
She thinks about hugging Dean, but honestly, that feels like something she’d do more for her own comfort than for his. She wants to say even if he didn’t get the key, he did a good thing, killing Renard and saving countless future women. Sam would approve of it, and there will be other opportunities, other things he can trade with this woman.
But she knows Dean knows that, and she won’t patronize him. There are things you lose that you can never get back, which is why people like her and Dean and Sam and even her mom hold on to what they’ve got all the harder.
She just sits with him in the car, her hand on top of his, and the sky slowly grows dark around them.
They both still smell of smoke.
x
Dean drives her down to Chico the next morning. It’s a quiet ride, but not an uncomfortable one. Dean plays one of his tapes, and even though it’s not Jo’s favorite kind of music, it’s the kind of stuff most of the hunters she grew up with listened to, the kind of stuff that was always playing on the jukebox at the Roadhouse. So it’s comforting, and she knows all the words. It’s a hot day, and the road shimmers in front of them as they come down from the mountain.
“You got a partner, Jo?” Dean asks suddenly, when they pull into the bus depot.
Jo shakes her head, surprised by the question. “Work with my mom sometimes. Why?”
Dean nods thoughtfully. “I tell you what, I know this guy, Victor. Used to be a Fed, but he’s seen the light and hunting now. I’ll send you his number.” He pauses and gives her a wry smile. “He could use someone more experienced to show him the ropes, keep his ass from getting killed.”
Jo’s taken aback, and goddammit if she doesn’t feel a tiny surge of pride.
“Yeah, all right. I don’t usually like working with amateurs, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Dean laugh, a bright, honest laugh, and gets out of the car.
“You don’t need to walk me to the bus, Dean,” says Jo, amused. She gets out too, hauling her duffel with her. She hitches the bag over her shoulder and looks at Dean.
“If I see Sam…”
Dean nods. “Yeah, let me know.”
Jo nods sharply back and gives Dean a cheeky salute and small smile.
“Will do. You take care.”
“You too, Jo,” and then Dean walks around the car and hugs her. It’s a brief hug, but a good one, and worry and fondness fill Jo’s chest in equal measure.
“I’m glad you’re not in Hell,” she says as he pulls away.
Dean looks at her, funny-quiet, for a long moment, and then he says, “Yeah. Me too.”
Jo smiles at him again, and then she walks away.
She reckons she’ll call this Victor guy. It’s good, hunting with a partner.
-End
End notes: Renard is based both on the very similar French Bluebeard myth and the English Mr. Fox myth. The monster name (barbleue) is a major corruption of the French for blue beard. This fic was based primarily on the prompt “AU where Jo is alive, she and Dean go to a hunt together. Sam is...somewhere else,” but I’ve added a little of the prompt “Victor Henricksen survived and became a great hunter” towards the end there, too. Thanks for reading!