(Criminal Minds/SPN) White Lamb for savorvrymoment
Title: White Lamb
Author: liliaeth
Fandoms:Supernatural/Criminal Minds
Characters Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester; Penelope Garcia, Derek Morgan, Aaron Hotchner, also appearances by Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss and David Rossi
Pairings: Sam/Jess, hints of Sam/Garcia
Rating:PG
Wordcount:6307
Spoilers: Through s5 and the start of s6 for Criminal Minds and I guess up to 607 for Supernatural (even if the fic does go during the pilot, there’s still plot elements used from the sixth season)
Warnings: Death of major canon characters. (just none of the featured characters)
Disclaimer: Supernatural and Criminal Minds both belong to their respective owners, I can’t lay any claim to them, no matter how much I might like to.
A/N: I’d like to thank both temporalranger and runriggers for their quick betawork.
Summary: Jessica Moore was murdered by a monster, Sam Winchester swore that he’d fight the kind of monsters that killed the woman he loved. Goes AU in the pilot.
Five years ago, his life had been different.
He’d had Jess, and a ring hidden in his underwear drawer. He’d wait until Jess was in the bathroom, then take out the box and open it, watch the way the light sparkled off the huge rock. He’d had to save his tips for a whole year just to be able to afford it. Everyday he’d wanted to ask her, and everyday he’d decide no, better to wait until he had his degree, until he was sure he could provide for them both. Jess would have batted him over the head if she’d heard him say macho crap like that; she was going to be a doctor and she didn’t need him - or anyone - to look out for her. Or so she’d say. But God, he could see his future so clearly in the facets of that diamond. Every moment of that day stood as clearly in his mind now as it had then. Jess’ voice in the shower, the notebook with his appointment at the Dean’s office circled in bright red. He’d had his interview waiting after the weekend and a life as a lawyer to look forward to.
Jess had been nigh perfect, she was gorgeous of course, but it hadn’t ended there. She was kind, and caring. She made his world glow with the twinkle in her eyes and when she smiled, full out smiled, it was like the clouds had broken open and revealed the sun. And when it happened, he’d lost her and his life changed forever.
And he’d gotten a new dream, a new purpose of his own. Get his hands on the monster that killed her, the freak that had taken the woman he loved away from him forever. He needed revenge as desperately as his father had when Mom died.
Sam closed his eyes for a second, refused to look at the FBI agents surrounding him. The keystone cops surrounding them stared at them either in envy, or anger It hadn’t helped that the local sheriff was a glory hound who’d put the idea in his deputies' heads that the FBI was only there to take away their collar. Never mind that if he’d stopped fighting them and actually cooperated, that the last two victims might actually still have been alive. But hey, big government was the big evil, right?
The door in front of him opened and Sam stepped in, staring straight through the one way mirror. The room on the other side was bare, empty, apart from a metal plaque attached to one of the walls.
There was one man in the room, dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt and an amulet. He glared at the mirror for a moment, before turning his eyes back to the table in front of him. He looked tired, almost confused, as if he wasn’t quite sure why he was here. Sam could imagine the quips waiting to come out of that mouth, the easy smirk. Sam stood still as he stared at the familiar face and felt himself slip back into time for just another second, remembering.
“They got him last week.” SA Victor Henriksen wasn’t known for his kind demeanor. He was driven, cared too much about every case, about the lives they tried to save. It made him a good agent, but it would also burn him out far too soon if he wasn’t careful. “It took a while to identify him, but they’ve got him for at least ten murders, and that’s the ones we know about.”
Sam nodded, imprinting that face in his mind.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Henriksen sounded almost gentle, patient, willing to give Sam time to compose himself.
“It’s him. It’s Brady.” Sam could feel the tension leave his body for the first time in years. Jess would finally be avenged. His hand rested on the ledge of the window, his knuckles strained white.
“Good work.” Henriksen didn’t even look at him. “We never would have made the connection if you hadn’t pointed it out.” Then he finally turned to Sam. “So what are you going to do now, Special Agent Winchester?”
Sam couldn’t answer. With Jess’ killer in custody his future was wide open. All he could think to say was: “Anything.”
****
So he’d lost that dream. That dream of the normal life and the marriage and the children they might have had. It hadn’t been a bad dream, as far as dreams went. A bit naïve maybe - he should have known better than to think that a Winchester’s life could ever be anything remotely close to normal. But it had been a child’s dream. A little boy who dreamt of normal as though it meant safety. As if normal meant that all the shadows were gone, just because they were hidden away from the light. He hadn’t realized that the light didn’t remove shadows; it just made them darker in comparison.
He’d had no choice but to grow the hell up, when a serial killer’s knife cut down every hope he’d ever had for a future. He abandoned that dream, when he realized that it hadn’t been some ghost or monster that killed Jess. Those nightmares had been familiar and easy to slip into, but they’d been as much a dream as the rest of his beliefs in the inherent goodness of man.
But he’d gotten a new dream out of it. When he’d been a child, his brother had been his hero, as much as his father had been Dean’s. He was the valiant warrior fighting the darkness, Dad’s little soldier standing up against evil, Sam’s protector. But when it came down to it, when Jess had depended on it, neither his father nor his brother had been there to keep her safe.
And neither had he. He’d salted their home, he’d warded the entrance, he’d made Jess wear a protective amulet - anything to keep her safe. But none of it had been any use against a human criminal. He remembered those nights, trying to look for omens, for signs. He’d kept on calling Dad and Dean, but neither of them even bothered to pick up their phone or answer his calls. He should have known better than to think they’d care.
He’d been about to leave, had packed his stuff, ready to try and find whatever monster had taken Jess away from him. Hell, he’d been standing at the door, his stuff already in his rental, when he got a visit from an FBI agent who told him about the proof they’d found against Brady.
Brady, his friend. And sure the guy had had his troubles - the drugs, the women. He had lost himself when he came to college, just as Sam had managed to find himself.
Brady had disappeared before they could arrest him, but his fingerprints on the knife and his DNA inside… all of it had been enough to prove conclusively that Brady had been the one to murder Jess. The FBI had done that, the BAU, working alongside the police.
The very next day, Sam wiped away the salt, threw away his old delusions of what the world was like and gained a new dream. When Dean finally called back, apologizing and talking about the case he’d been on, it had been too late. All the talk about a lady in white just seemed so ridiculous, pointless compared to what had happened to Jess. So he’d hung up on Dean, cancelled his law school interview, waited for his certification, and applied to Quantico.
Maybe it had been too easy to ignore the past, to push all those childhood memories of fighting monsters back into the past where they belonged. To pretend all that had been a part of the nightmare his father had made of their life, that none of it had ever been real. That maybe his father had been insane and had dragged him and Dean along with him.
It took a while before Dean had stopped calling to check up on him. And Dad, he might as well have been dead. Sam didn’t care. As far as his superiors were concerned, they were just a dark blotch on his file, and something he’d gotten out of. Sam had hated the man, his father, when he realized that his family’s criminal records worked against him when he applied for his new dream.
But even then, he hadn’t been able to blame Dean. Dean was as much, if not more, a victim of their father than he was. Just look at him, on the road, throwing his life away, fighting shades and mirages, no home, no nothing, just a car and a madman’s mission. If anything, Sam wanted to save his brother from that. But it was too late for Dean, far too late, and the only one he could save was himself.
He thanked God, the day a letter told him that Quantico was willing to overlook his past. He’d been given a chance to prove himself and he grabbed it with both hands and all of his heart.
It took him more than two years to graduate, another two years before he got taken even remotely serious and another two before his dream came true; assignation to the BAU, and the chance to do what he was meant to do, fight monsters, saving people. And maybe, just maybe, that’d be enough to make his dad proud even if he had joined ‘the enemy’.
****
Sam kept his head low while he sat in his office, staring over the files. He still wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. Aside from not being Jennifer Jareau that is. Sam wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to do to change that. It wasn’t his fault that Strauss had told SSA Hotchner that they either accepted a new Acting Media Liaison or she’d be forced to replace Hotchner himself and still put in her choice for the job. Not that Sam had known about that when he first arrived; all he’d known was that his dream of joining the BAU had finally come true.
It’s not like they didn’t talk to him, they did. And Sam knew better than to expect them all to suddenly see him as their new best friend right from the start. But he had too many years behind him of constantly being the new kid, the freak, that he couldn’t help spotting their unease whenever they had to deal with him. They were professional, let him do his job. But he could hear them arrange to meet after hours, hear their private jokes that he just wasn’t included in.
He released a sigh, it wasn’t their fault. He was probably exaggerating, he’d only been with them for two cases. They were a family, they didn’t know him, he didn’t know them. But he wanted so much to fit in, to be one of them, that this… distance between him and them hurt more than he was able to express.
He got up and went to get himself a cup of coffee, the coffee sucked, but it was warm and for some reason that mattered a lot right now. He noticed her almost immediately. Technical Analyst Garcia. The resident computer engineer. She was cursing as she was trying to pick something out from under the water fountain.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“My earring snapped.” She answered without even looking up at him. “Thing fell underneath, but I just can’t reach it.
Sam considered it for a moment before grabbing the thing and pushing it up. It was heavy, but he barely managed a lift off.
“Got it, …” that’s when she looked up and saw him. “Thanks.”
“Wow, you sure are big and strong.” It was probably also the first time he wasn’t slouching as he talked to her. He’d been told he had a tendency of doing that. But when people got intimidated just being near you, then it helped to cover your height a bit.
“No problem. Hi, I’m Sam.”
“I know.” She was still staring and Sam was pretty sure it wasn’t at his face. She seemed a bit… tense.
“I’m just trying to do my job," was all he said in the end, low enough that she might have pretended to miss it, if she wanted to.
“It’s not your job.” Her eyes were huge. Sam looked away. He knew he was looming over her. But damn it.
“I’m not trying to take her place.” ‘Just trying to make a place of my own’, Sam thought as he looked at her, trying to bring up that particular face that Dean used to call his puppy dog eyes. And he could see it was even starting to work when SSA Morgan showed up behind them.
“Is he bothering you, Garcia?” Sam turned around, looking at the large black man standing there. He was about Dean’s size. Morgan was known to joke and tease and be one of the most easy going guys in the building. But the way he was looking now… he looked a lot like Dean.
“No.” Garcia said. “We were just talking.” It didn’t help the tension between them. “Sam just helped me get my earring back.” She smiled at him and Sam couldn’t help but smile back. She was gorgeous when he smiled, it almost… reminded him of Jess. He pushed it down as quickly as it came up.
Sam heard them talking later. “Damn baby girl, he’s just trying to win you over.”
“Oh he won me over.” Garcia said while licking her lips “He definitely won me over.”
Sam left before he overheard any more. It wasn’t his business. Her laughter sounded like Jess’s as well. Full, as if the world was for the taking, it made him want to hear more of it.
****
Sam couldn’t wait to start them on their next case. Three families murdered in their own home. Three newborn babies missing. Sam couldn’t even think what kind of a monster would do this to people. The first family had had three children, the oldest had been four. The number of children didn’t seem to matter, nor the age of the older children, the second family had only just had their firstborn child and the third family’s oldest son from the wife’s previous marriage had been fifteen. The boy’s body had been found in his little sister’s bedroom; he’d been trying to protect his sibling.
Sam had called the team and soon they were on their way to Minnesota. There was no time to waste, not as long as there was still a chance of saving the babies.
Sam called Garcia as soon as they arrived, asking for the names of the relatives. He wondered if the team knew just how much they owed to their tech worker. From the way they treated her, especially Morgan’s protectiveness, he guessed they did. He was almost expecting for the older man to corner him against a wall somewhere and demand to know his intentions. Was it so wrong to want a friend, just the one?
It’s not like he had any other intentions. They barely even knew one another, and she had a boyfriend. The way you wrote it sounds like Garcia hardly knew her boyfriend. But he really liked the way her smile brought out the dimples in her cheeks.
Sam was the first one to approach the chief of police, working to appear as non-threatening as he could. Not an easy thing to do, considering his size. But he’d prepared the work and the man seemed to like him well enough on the phone. After that it was a matter of setting up the board and preparing witness interviews.
Even now, after a few weeks of working with the BAU, Sam still marveled at the way they worked. They weren’t just good, they were amazing. He did his best to fit in, to help out where he could; interviews with witnesses, talking to the press, and making sure the media didn’t get any more or less information than was needed.
It didn’t take them long to find out that the families all had something in common. None of the fathers were the children's biological fathers. One survivor, the father in the second family, had insisted that he couldn’t be the child’s actual father. Bloodwork suggested the same for the other two. All three had an anomaly in their blood that indicated that all three shared a parent in common. This was actually good news. If what the team presumed was true, namely that the birthfather had come to collect his children, then chances were high that all three kids were still alive. They just had to find out who the biological father was and how he’d both met the mothers and how he’d managed to get them to sleep with him.
By the time they came up with a store camera that had shown a man following one of the mothers, Sam wasn’t even surprised anymore. He was waiting, just as tense as the others, while Garcia improved the picture enough to make it workable.
They were all looking at the computer as the images Garcia was sending were starting to come through. Sam froze in place.
“Good job, Garcia, look through the criminal database and see if you can find any matches.”
Sam knew he had two choices. And neither of them were good ones.
“That isn’t necessary,” he whispered. SSA Hotchner turned to him.
“Why is that?”
“That’s my brother.” He took another look at the frozen image to make sure. “That’s Dean.”
*****
Sam sat down in the office the locals had given them as they handled the case. The blackboard was filled with pictures of their unsub's victims. He tried to imagine Dean as the one cutting those children’s throats, as the one murdering those parents as they tried to protect their children. But no matter how hard he tried, all he could think was, not Dean. He wouldn’t do it.
The rest of the team had gathered around him, the computer standing on the table next to them displayed Garcia in her office. It was just them and the Chief of Police and Sam was desperate not to look any of them in the face.
“Look, I’m sure he’s not your killer. Dean’s a lot of things, but he’s not a murderer.” He tried to look at the webcam, to look at Garcia, but she was focusing on the computers in front of her.
“Do you have his phone number, do you know how to reach him?” she asked. If she knew his phone number, she might be able to trace him.
Sam shook his head. “We haven’t talked in years. I stopped taking his calls while I was at college and he… he never came by.” Not that he’d seen at least, except the once. “The last time I talked to him was six years ago.”
“And you think he couldn’t possibly be our unsub?” Morgan was clearly not buying it. Sam wished he had more to offer than his gut instinct. But what was he going to say? That Dean might have been thinking he was fighting monsters, that his brother might well be insane, or that he, Sam was crazy.
“I… he’s my brother.” Killing things and saving people. But why would he take the infants?
“Sam, why did you two stop talking?”
They were looking for the stresser, for whatever might have broken Dean, to get him killing people, Sam wasn’t a profiler, but he knew that much.
“My girlfriend was murdered. Her name was Jessica Moore.” He could see that several of them recognized the name. They should, Hotchner had created the profile that had led them to Brady in the first place. “A friend of mine at school, he gutted her. I found out later that she’d been one of the first of his victims. After she died, I tried reaching Dean, my Dad, neither of them picked up the phone. Dean called a few days, almost a week later, saying he’d been too busy with work to return my call. He thought … a ghost was more important than coming to help me deal with Jessica’s funeral. And I got angry, with him, with Dad. By the time I got over myself and decided to call back; I’d applied to Quantico and he’d changed his number.”
Sam closed his eyes for a moment. “After that I just didn’t know how to reach him anymore.” He faced the others. “I tried to contact some friends of ours after I graduated, but either they wouldn’t take my call or their numbers were disconnected. I haven’t heard from any of them since. ” He wasn’t sure what Hotchner would say of the next, but… ”A lot of them seem to have gone underground.”
“Why would they refuse to take your calls?” Prentiss asked.
“Because most of them were criminals, or had a criminal background.” Hotch answered in Sam’s place. Sam wasn’t even surprised, it was all in his file after all, part of his psychological profile, part of his answers when they checked to see if he was mentally suitable to join the Bureau.
“My family were hardly upstanding citizens. Dad did a lot of credit card fraud, identity fraud, breaking and entering, and other stuff when I grew up and Dean followed his lead on pretty much anything. I’m sure Garcia probably found his police record by now.”
Sam turned to the video feed still connecting them with their tech analyst.
“It was… crazy, growing up with them. Dad would move us around every few months, going from school to school, no friends, no family, just a few people he trusted, people who thought like him. I know that Pastor Jim and Bobby were involved in a lot of the same occult stuff that him and Dean were. And don’t even get me started on Caleb or Travis or… A lot of them, they’ve got reasons to worry about the law on their backs, so when I gave up on all that, joined the FBI instead, they …”
“They broke contact?” It was the first time that Morgan looked at him in understanding.
“When I left for Stanford, my dad told me that if I went out the door, I shouldn’t bother ever coming back. He meant what he said and that was before I joined ‘the enemy’.” He marked the quotemarks in the air.
“When you say occult stuff…” Rossi was now paying attention.
“My dad believed that some kind of monster murdered my mother when I was a baby. He felt it was his job to hunt down this monster, this demon and to bring it down and kill it. Dean, he believed every word my father said. He thought our father could walk on water, would have jumped off a cliff if Dad asked him to. “
“But you didn’t?” Prentiss asked, her voice made clear she’d already guessed the answer to that one. No, he didn’t. God he remembered those fights, he remembered the disagreements, the anger every single time he had to leave behind everything he’d built in yet another town.
“I wanted a normal life, I wanted out of dad’s insanity. Dean didn’t understand that. He thought I was a fool for ever thinking I could be safe without his or dad’s protection.”
Reid threw him a look of sympathy and went in on some litany about schizophrenia and paranoia. By the time he got to the numbers of survivalists and occultists in the country Sam had started to block out most of it. From the looks of the others, he wasn’t the only one.
“Dean, he looked after me. Dad would leave us for days, sometimes weeks at a time. And Dean would take care of me. Sometimes dad would leave us with friends of his, but not always. A lot of the time, he’d just give Dean money for groceries, he’d pay a set amount for rent and then he’d order Dean to ward the doors and windows and to look after me.”
Sam picked up the printed out image of Dean at the grocery store, helpless to keep himself from wondering where Dean had been, what he’d been doing, how much he’d changed.
“I can’t even remember when he started doing that, making Dean care for me. I remember this one time when I was eight, it was Christmas, Dean was twelve, and dad was only supposed to be gone for two days, it ended up being closer to two weeks. Dean ended up stealing presents from the kid next door to us, just so I’d think that dad had at least visited to check up on us." It had been the day he found his dad’s journal, when he realized for the first time, just how crazy their lives had really been. "And I know that wasn’t the first time he left us alone. Sometimes Dean had to do things, to arrange for food, extra money for rent, stuff I needed for school. It got easier as we got older, but as kids…”
He turned to the others. “You’ll bring him in alive, right?” He barely stopped himself from adding a please. “Please don’t kill him.”
No one answered. Sam knew as well as they did that that depended on Dean, on whether he cooperated or not. “I need to be there.” He whispered. “When they arrest him.” He tried to face them. “I might be able to stop him from resisting.” Because Dean was always armed, even when he was sleeping. And he didn’t want his brother accidentally gutting any of his colleagues or the cops before he realized what he was dealing with.
“We have to arrest him, Sam,” Hotchner stated, staring at him as if trying to read his mind.
“I know.” He did know, and he hated it, he hated betraying his brother. But he’d do it, if it meant saving Dean’s life. “Maybe if you do, we can prove it isn’t him.” He added more to himself than any of the others. He didn’t want them to feel sorry for him, even if their faces told him that they did.
****
They found Dean a few hours later, holed up at his usual kind of hide out. Sam told them about Dean’s habit of using the names of rock stars and staying at fleabag motels and after that Garcia made quick work of crosschecking motel records. Sam asked them if he could go in, ask Dean to come out with him, give him a chance to surrender before they did anything else. Hotchner agreed, on condition that Sam took Morgan with him and wore a vest. Sam tried to tell them it’d work better if he went in alone, but Hotchner didn’t go for it.
Sam tried to steel himself; this was the first time he’d see Dean in eight years. The last time had been at Stanford, Dean asking for a place to spend the night while he healed up from a ‘cold’. Sam had sat up all night, nursing his brother through feverish nightmares. Dean almost died, but he wouldn’t even consider going to the hospital for what he considered a 24 hour bug. Sam knew better from the start, if it had been nothing, Dean wouldn’t have even asked his help to begin with.
When Sam had to leave for classes, he’d told Dean he’d be back in a few hours. By the time he got back, Dean was gone, leaving little more than an envelope full of money.
He knocked on the door. No response. He knocked again, but they knew Dean was in there, the place was surrounded, there was no way he could have slipped out. “Dean, open up, it’s me.” Then he was about to knock again. The door opened slightly before he had the chance.
“Well look at you, Mister Big Time FBI.” Sam could practically hear the capital letters crack through the air as Dean leaned up against the door jamb, still enough out of sight that a sniper wouldn’t be able to catch him.
“Dean. “
“What do you want, Sam? Playing officer friendly for your buddies in blue?” There was a gun in his hand. Sam tensed up, but forced himself to continue.
“Dean, they think you killed those people.” Sam wished that Dean looked more surprised, instead he backed up into the room, leaving the door wide open for Sam to follow him in. Morgan was right behind him.
“Oh goodie, Sam. Come to introduce me to your new best friends? I thought we were over playgroup meetings when you outgrew pre-school.”
There was a thick smell filling the top of the room, like rotten eggs - or sulfur.
“What else is new? It’s like being stuck in rerun hell" Dean muttered as he sat down. He continued in the most sarcastic voice possible: “Watch as the amazing and wonderful Dean Winchester saves people and the cops think he was actually killing, show at eleven.” He let the Colt, an antique that Sam had never seen before, sink on the bed between his legs. Sam knew that Morgan was about to call for back up, he’d spotted the rest of the weapons laid out on the bed spread as well. Sam knew he had to be fast, keep Dean talking so he wouldn’t try anything. Dean was good, but if he shot Morgan, or Sam, even just to clip him, they’d kill him.
“Dean, this is serious. You have to come in with me, let me prove you didn’t do it.”
Dean started laughing at that. “How much of an idiot do you think I am, Sam?” He raised an empty hand. “Don’t answer that. “ He got up from the bed and stared stalking towards Sam. Morgan raised his gun and was telling him to drop the Colt, but Dean wasn’t even looking at him.
“You think they’d ever believe me? That I just have to tell them it was some kind of shapeshifter? That there’s a fucking alpha shapeshifter out there who’s trying to raise an army of itty bitty shapeshifters for whatever war they’re all aiming it?” The gun went down again and Sam could hear Morgan’s demands of Dean to just put down his weapon. Sam didn’t even think about it when he moved in between Dean and Morgan.“Tell them that they should stop going on their little picnics, start worrying about the dark, because what’s out there will gobble them up for a snack?"
Sam stood a bit stunned. God, he’d done such a good job of putting all that insanity behind him, and here stood Dean, bringing it up all over again.
“Dean.”
“I forgot, Sammy doesn’t care anymore. Sammy doesn’t give a damn about the monsters, Sammy would rather pretend none of the dark exists. But it does, Sam. You’ve seen it with your own two eyes.”
“I’ve seen nothing.” Dean puffed at that, Sam took a step closer and froze when Dean aimed the gun at him.
“What? And all the ghosts we salted and burned no longer exist? That werewolf up in Maine, the shapeshifter- all just an old man in a mask I reckon?”
“Dad was crazy.”
“Shut up." It was more of a hiss than a sound. Dean was inches away from him a second later, the barrel of the colt pressed against Sam’s face.
“He lost his mind, Dean. He lied to us.”
“Shut up!” Dean was growling by now. “Don’t think I won’t shoot you.” But Sam knew him better than that, Dean would never harm his family.
“Remember when I was nine years old, Dean? I told dad I was scared of the monster in the closet.” Dean didn’t answer. “He gave me a .45 and told me to shoot it, if it came out.” Sam knew he had to take control of this, before Morgan did something to stop Dean. “There was no monster, just shadows.”
“He was trying to keep you safe, Sammy.” And with that the fight slipped out of his brother’s voice.
“He turned us into soldiers, Dean. His little soldiers in his private war. And you’re still fighting it. Damn it, Dean. Where’s dad?”
Dean lowered the Colt, Morgan was about to step in, but Sam motioned at him to stay back.
“He’s dead.” Sam stood stunned, but no more so when Dean faced him, the colt held down, his arms limp.
“Dean.”
“It was me.” Dean whispered. “It was me, I … killed dad, Sammy. I shot him.”
“Oh God, Dean.”
“The demon had gotten into him, it took him, it killed Pastor Jim, and Caleb and Travis. It killed Ellen and it had Bobby." Sam couldn’t help wonder who Ellen was, from the way Dean talked about her, she’d been someone he’d known closely, you didn’t get into Dean’s circle of people he cared about, that easily. “You remember Uncle Bobby, right Sam. The demon was taking him apart and I took the Colt and I aimed it and I told him to stop, that I was going to shoot. And the demon laughed, it said I’d never do it, that I’d never be able to. Bobby was crying. Bobby never cries, but he was breaking. So I shot him, right between the eyes, the demon, the yellow eyed demon that killed Mom. I shot him, I shot Dad.”
“Oh God, Dean.” Sam just completely forgot the Colt at that and grabbed Dean in a hug, he was almost surprised that Morgan hadn’t knocked him out yet, hadn’t knocked both of them out yet.
“When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?” And it suddenly made sense, why none of Dad’s contacts would answer his calls, why all their friends seemed to have disappeared.
“Five years ago.” Dean whispered. About the time that Dean had stopped calling.
“Oh God, why didn’t you come to me?” He finally let go of his brother. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Why hadn’t he been there for his brother when Dean needed him and why had Dad let this happen?
“I didn’t want to get you killed too. I checked up on you, you were safe, I figured, it was best that way, leave you alone, give you your normal life.” Dean turned away from them both, staring at the window. “I figured that if I called you, you’d have to tell your bosses, or worry about breaking your oaths and I didn’t want to do that to you.”
Dean clicked the safety on, pulled out the cylinder and it was then that Sam realized that all this time, Dean had been pointing an empty gun at him. He doubted there was even a bullet in the barrel as Dean dropped the Colt on the bed alongside the rest of the weapons.
Sam had no answer for that. “You still could have called.”
“Everyone dies Sammy, everyone I love dies, I didn’t want to lose you too. I thought, if I’d just hunt, just focus on the hunt, killing things, saving people, then you’d be safe.”
“Is that what you’re doing here, Dean? The Hunt?”
Dean’s shoulders dropped.
“There’s a war going on, Sammy. The monsters, they’re building up to something. They’re all recruiting, or forming a base for their army. Those babies, they’re all little shifters and the alpha shifter is picking them up. I thought, if I find the babies before the shifter got to them, then… I could. But I was too late, the alpha already killed most of the family by the time I got there.”
“Dean, where are the children?” Dean didn’t answer, he just stood there. Sam was about to repeat his question, when a baby started crying behind the closed door that probably led to the bathroom.
Morgan pulled the door open and halted. The baby's crying became louder, verged on screaming.
“Winchester.” Both Dean and Sam looked up. “Sam, you’d better take him into custody now.”
“Dean.” He worried for nothing. His brother just held his own arms behind his back and let Sam grab them and cuff them without even a single sign of a fight left in him. Sam grabbed his brother’s shoulder hoping to keep it gentle, to make it clear to Dean that he was trying to help him. Dean just snorted at the kindness. But Sam knew, his brother might try to escape later, but he wouldn’t ruin Sam’s career by trying to fight his way out of this now. As ever, looking after Sam came first for him.
Morgan came out of the bathroom, holding a small baby covered in blood and gore.
Sam had no idea what to say, he just stared at his brother, but Dean wasn’t responding anymore. Dean’s body was still there, but not his mind. Sam stood there, his hand on his brother’s shoulder as he led them outside. The glares of the police cars and spotlights hurt his eyes.
Sam sat down on the steps, staring at nothing. Morgan clasped his shoulder as he came passed. "Are you ok, Winchester?"
Sam shivered, not sure what to say. And for a moment, Sam remembered, he remembered the ghosts, salting and burning the corpses, Dean shooting the werewolf or dad gutting that shifter.
“You did the right thing, Sam,” Hotchner said afterwards. Sam didn’t answer, he just stared at his brother in the back of a police car, staring at nothing.
What had he done?
-END-
Prompt:
-They finally resort to bringing in the BAU to track down the Winchester brothers. Of course, Hotch and his team do manage to track them down and interrogate them. However, they also quickly begin to realize there's more to the story than Dean & Sam are telling them. (Would also love to see some Sam/Garcia action here, if at all possible.)
-Protection
-Judging a book by its cover
-Research lands surprising discovery
Author: liliaeth
Fandoms:Supernatural/Criminal Minds
Characters Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester; Penelope Garcia, Derek Morgan, Aaron Hotchner, also appearances by Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss and David Rossi
Pairings: Sam/Jess, hints of Sam/Garcia
Rating:PG
Wordcount:6307
Spoilers: Through s5 and the start of s6 for Criminal Minds and I guess up to 607 for Supernatural (even if the fic does go during the pilot, there’s still plot elements used from the sixth season)
Warnings: Death of major canon characters. (just none of the featured characters)
Disclaimer: Supernatural and Criminal Minds both belong to their respective owners, I can’t lay any claim to them, no matter how much I might like to.
A/N: I’d like to thank both temporalranger and runriggers for their quick betawork.
Summary: Jessica Moore was murdered by a monster, Sam Winchester swore that he’d fight the kind of monsters that killed the woman he loved. Goes AU in the pilot.
Five years ago, his life had been different.
He’d had Jess, and a ring hidden in his underwear drawer. He’d wait until Jess was in the bathroom, then take out the box and open it, watch the way the light sparkled off the huge rock. He’d had to save his tips for a whole year just to be able to afford it. Everyday he’d wanted to ask her, and everyday he’d decide no, better to wait until he had his degree, until he was sure he could provide for them both. Jess would have batted him over the head if she’d heard him say macho crap like that; she was going to be a doctor and she didn’t need him - or anyone - to look out for her. Or so she’d say. But God, he could see his future so clearly in the facets of that diamond. Every moment of that day stood as clearly in his mind now as it had then. Jess’ voice in the shower, the notebook with his appointment at the Dean’s office circled in bright red. He’d had his interview waiting after the weekend and a life as a lawyer to look forward to.
Jess had been nigh perfect, she was gorgeous of course, but it hadn’t ended there. She was kind, and caring. She made his world glow with the twinkle in her eyes and when she smiled, full out smiled, it was like the clouds had broken open and revealed the sun. And when it happened, he’d lost her and his life changed forever.
And he’d gotten a new dream, a new purpose of his own. Get his hands on the monster that killed her, the freak that had taken the woman he loved away from him forever. He needed revenge as desperately as his father had when Mom died.
Sam closed his eyes for a second, refused to look at the FBI agents surrounding him. The keystone cops surrounding them stared at them either in envy, or anger It hadn’t helped that the local sheriff was a glory hound who’d put the idea in his deputies' heads that the FBI was only there to take away their collar. Never mind that if he’d stopped fighting them and actually cooperated, that the last two victims might actually still have been alive. But hey, big government was the big evil, right?
The door in front of him opened and Sam stepped in, staring straight through the one way mirror. The room on the other side was bare, empty, apart from a metal plaque attached to one of the walls.
There was one man in the room, dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt and an amulet. He glared at the mirror for a moment, before turning his eyes back to the table in front of him. He looked tired, almost confused, as if he wasn’t quite sure why he was here. Sam could imagine the quips waiting to come out of that mouth, the easy smirk. Sam stood still as he stared at the familiar face and felt himself slip back into time for just another second, remembering.
“They got him last week.” SA Victor Henriksen wasn’t known for his kind demeanor. He was driven, cared too much about every case, about the lives they tried to save. It made him a good agent, but it would also burn him out far too soon if he wasn’t careful. “It took a while to identify him, but they’ve got him for at least ten murders, and that’s the ones we know about.”
Sam nodded, imprinting that face in his mind.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Henriksen sounded almost gentle, patient, willing to give Sam time to compose himself.
“It’s him. It’s Brady.” Sam could feel the tension leave his body for the first time in years. Jess would finally be avenged. His hand rested on the ledge of the window, his knuckles strained white.
“Good work.” Henriksen didn’t even look at him. “We never would have made the connection if you hadn’t pointed it out.” Then he finally turned to Sam. “So what are you going to do now, Special Agent Winchester?”
Sam couldn’t answer. With Jess’ killer in custody his future was wide open. All he could think to say was: “Anything.”
****
So he’d lost that dream. That dream of the normal life and the marriage and the children they might have had. It hadn’t been a bad dream, as far as dreams went. A bit naïve maybe - he should have known better than to think that a Winchester’s life could ever be anything remotely close to normal. But it had been a child’s dream. A little boy who dreamt of normal as though it meant safety. As if normal meant that all the shadows were gone, just because they were hidden away from the light. He hadn’t realized that the light didn’t remove shadows; it just made them darker in comparison.
He’d had no choice but to grow the hell up, when a serial killer’s knife cut down every hope he’d ever had for a future. He abandoned that dream, when he realized that it hadn’t been some ghost or monster that killed Jess. Those nightmares had been familiar and easy to slip into, but they’d been as much a dream as the rest of his beliefs in the inherent goodness of man.
But he’d gotten a new dream out of it. When he’d been a child, his brother had been his hero, as much as his father had been Dean’s. He was the valiant warrior fighting the darkness, Dad’s little soldier standing up against evil, Sam’s protector. But when it came down to it, when Jess had depended on it, neither his father nor his brother had been there to keep her safe.
And neither had he. He’d salted their home, he’d warded the entrance, he’d made Jess wear a protective amulet - anything to keep her safe. But none of it had been any use against a human criminal. He remembered those nights, trying to look for omens, for signs. He’d kept on calling Dad and Dean, but neither of them even bothered to pick up their phone or answer his calls. He should have known better than to think they’d care.
He’d been about to leave, had packed his stuff, ready to try and find whatever monster had taken Jess away from him. Hell, he’d been standing at the door, his stuff already in his rental, when he got a visit from an FBI agent who told him about the proof they’d found against Brady.
Brady, his friend. And sure the guy had had his troubles - the drugs, the women. He had lost himself when he came to college, just as Sam had managed to find himself.
Brady had disappeared before they could arrest him, but his fingerprints on the knife and his DNA inside… all of it had been enough to prove conclusively that Brady had been the one to murder Jess. The FBI had done that, the BAU, working alongside the police.
The very next day, Sam wiped away the salt, threw away his old delusions of what the world was like and gained a new dream. When Dean finally called back, apologizing and talking about the case he’d been on, it had been too late. All the talk about a lady in white just seemed so ridiculous, pointless compared to what had happened to Jess. So he’d hung up on Dean, cancelled his law school interview, waited for his certification, and applied to Quantico.
Maybe it had been too easy to ignore the past, to push all those childhood memories of fighting monsters back into the past where they belonged. To pretend all that had been a part of the nightmare his father had made of their life, that none of it had ever been real. That maybe his father had been insane and had dragged him and Dean along with him.
It took a while before Dean had stopped calling to check up on him. And Dad, he might as well have been dead. Sam didn’t care. As far as his superiors were concerned, they were just a dark blotch on his file, and something he’d gotten out of. Sam had hated the man, his father, when he realized that his family’s criminal records worked against him when he applied for his new dream.
But even then, he hadn’t been able to blame Dean. Dean was as much, if not more, a victim of their father than he was. Just look at him, on the road, throwing his life away, fighting shades and mirages, no home, no nothing, just a car and a madman’s mission. If anything, Sam wanted to save his brother from that. But it was too late for Dean, far too late, and the only one he could save was himself.
He thanked God, the day a letter told him that Quantico was willing to overlook his past. He’d been given a chance to prove himself and he grabbed it with both hands and all of his heart.
It took him more than two years to graduate, another two years before he got taken even remotely serious and another two before his dream came true; assignation to the BAU, and the chance to do what he was meant to do, fight monsters, saving people. And maybe, just maybe, that’d be enough to make his dad proud even if he had joined ‘the enemy’.
****
Sam kept his head low while he sat in his office, staring over the files. He still wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. Aside from not being Jennifer Jareau that is. Sam wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to do to change that. It wasn’t his fault that Strauss had told SSA Hotchner that they either accepted a new Acting Media Liaison or she’d be forced to replace Hotchner himself and still put in her choice for the job. Not that Sam had known about that when he first arrived; all he’d known was that his dream of joining the BAU had finally come true.
It’s not like they didn’t talk to him, they did. And Sam knew better than to expect them all to suddenly see him as their new best friend right from the start. But he had too many years behind him of constantly being the new kid, the freak, that he couldn’t help spotting their unease whenever they had to deal with him. They were professional, let him do his job. But he could hear them arrange to meet after hours, hear their private jokes that he just wasn’t included in.
He released a sigh, it wasn’t their fault. He was probably exaggerating, he’d only been with them for two cases. They were a family, they didn’t know him, he didn’t know them. But he wanted so much to fit in, to be one of them, that this… distance between him and them hurt more than he was able to express.
He got up and went to get himself a cup of coffee, the coffee sucked, but it was warm and for some reason that mattered a lot right now. He noticed her almost immediately. Technical Analyst Garcia. The resident computer engineer. She was cursing as she was trying to pick something out from under the water fountain.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“My earring snapped.” She answered without even looking up at him. “Thing fell underneath, but I just can’t reach it.
Sam considered it for a moment before grabbing the thing and pushing it up. It was heavy, but he barely managed a lift off.
“Got it, …” that’s when she looked up and saw him. “Thanks.”
“Wow, you sure are big and strong.” It was probably also the first time he wasn’t slouching as he talked to her. He’d been told he had a tendency of doing that. But when people got intimidated just being near you, then it helped to cover your height a bit.
“No problem. Hi, I’m Sam.”
“I know.” She was still staring and Sam was pretty sure it wasn’t at his face. She seemed a bit… tense.
“I’m just trying to do my job," was all he said in the end, low enough that she might have pretended to miss it, if she wanted to.
“It’s not your job.” Her eyes were huge. Sam looked away. He knew he was looming over her. But damn it.
“I’m not trying to take her place.” ‘Just trying to make a place of my own’, Sam thought as he looked at her, trying to bring up that particular face that Dean used to call his puppy dog eyes. And he could see it was even starting to work when SSA Morgan showed up behind them.
“Is he bothering you, Garcia?” Sam turned around, looking at the large black man standing there. He was about Dean’s size. Morgan was known to joke and tease and be one of the most easy going guys in the building. But the way he was looking now… he looked a lot like Dean.
“No.” Garcia said. “We were just talking.” It didn’t help the tension between them. “Sam just helped me get my earring back.” She smiled at him and Sam couldn’t help but smile back. She was gorgeous when he smiled, it almost… reminded him of Jess. He pushed it down as quickly as it came up.
Sam heard them talking later. “Damn baby girl, he’s just trying to win you over.”
“Oh he won me over.” Garcia said while licking her lips “He definitely won me over.”
Sam left before he overheard any more. It wasn’t his business. Her laughter sounded like Jess’s as well. Full, as if the world was for the taking, it made him want to hear more of it.
****
Sam couldn’t wait to start them on their next case. Three families murdered in their own home. Three newborn babies missing. Sam couldn’t even think what kind of a monster would do this to people. The first family had had three children, the oldest had been four. The number of children didn’t seem to matter, nor the age of the older children, the second family had only just had their firstborn child and the third family’s oldest son from the wife’s previous marriage had been fifteen. The boy’s body had been found in his little sister’s bedroom; he’d been trying to protect his sibling.
Sam had called the team and soon they were on their way to Minnesota. There was no time to waste, not as long as there was still a chance of saving the babies.
Sam called Garcia as soon as they arrived, asking for the names of the relatives. He wondered if the team knew just how much they owed to their tech worker. From the way they treated her, especially Morgan’s protectiveness, he guessed they did. He was almost expecting for the older man to corner him against a wall somewhere and demand to know his intentions. Was it so wrong to want a friend, just the one?
It’s not like he had any other intentions. They barely even knew one another, and she had a boyfriend. The way you wrote it sounds like Garcia hardly knew her boyfriend. But he really liked the way her smile brought out the dimples in her cheeks.
Sam was the first one to approach the chief of police, working to appear as non-threatening as he could. Not an easy thing to do, considering his size. But he’d prepared the work and the man seemed to like him well enough on the phone. After that it was a matter of setting up the board and preparing witness interviews.
Even now, after a few weeks of working with the BAU, Sam still marveled at the way they worked. They weren’t just good, they were amazing. He did his best to fit in, to help out where he could; interviews with witnesses, talking to the press, and making sure the media didn’t get any more or less information than was needed.
It didn’t take them long to find out that the families all had something in common. None of the fathers were the children's biological fathers. One survivor, the father in the second family, had insisted that he couldn’t be the child’s actual father. Bloodwork suggested the same for the other two. All three had an anomaly in their blood that indicated that all three shared a parent in common. This was actually good news. If what the team presumed was true, namely that the birthfather had come to collect his children, then chances were high that all three kids were still alive. They just had to find out who the biological father was and how he’d both met the mothers and how he’d managed to get them to sleep with him.
By the time they came up with a store camera that had shown a man following one of the mothers, Sam wasn’t even surprised anymore. He was waiting, just as tense as the others, while Garcia improved the picture enough to make it workable.
They were all looking at the computer as the images Garcia was sending were starting to come through. Sam froze in place.
“Good job, Garcia, look through the criminal database and see if you can find any matches.”
Sam knew he had two choices. And neither of them were good ones.
“That isn’t necessary,” he whispered. SSA Hotchner turned to him.
“Why is that?”
“That’s my brother.” He took another look at the frozen image to make sure. “That’s Dean.”
*****
Sam sat down in the office the locals had given them as they handled the case. The blackboard was filled with pictures of their unsub's victims. He tried to imagine Dean as the one cutting those children’s throats, as the one murdering those parents as they tried to protect their children. But no matter how hard he tried, all he could think was, not Dean. He wouldn’t do it.
The rest of the team had gathered around him, the computer standing on the table next to them displayed Garcia in her office. It was just them and the Chief of Police and Sam was desperate not to look any of them in the face.
“Look, I’m sure he’s not your killer. Dean’s a lot of things, but he’s not a murderer.” He tried to look at the webcam, to look at Garcia, but she was focusing on the computers in front of her.
“Do you have his phone number, do you know how to reach him?” she asked. If she knew his phone number, she might be able to trace him.
Sam shook his head. “We haven’t talked in years. I stopped taking his calls while I was at college and he… he never came by.” Not that he’d seen at least, except the once. “The last time I talked to him was six years ago.”
“And you think he couldn’t possibly be our unsub?” Morgan was clearly not buying it. Sam wished he had more to offer than his gut instinct. But what was he going to say? That Dean might have been thinking he was fighting monsters, that his brother might well be insane, or that he, Sam was crazy.
“I… he’s my brother.” Killing things and saving people. But why would he take the infants?
“Sam, why did you two stop talking?”
They were looking for the stresser, for whatever might have broken Dean, to get him killing people, Sam wasn’t a profiler, but he knew that much.
“My girlfriend was murdered. Her name was Jessica Moore.” He could see that several of them recognized the name. They should, Hotchner had created the profile that had led them to Brady in the first place. “A friend of mine at school, he gutted her. I found out later that she’d been one of the first of his victims. After she died, I tried reaching Dean, my Dad, neither of them picked up the phone. Dean called a few days, almost a week later, saying he’d been too busy with work to return my call. He thought … a ghost was more important than coming to help me deal with Jessica’s funeral. And I got angry, with him, with Dad. By the time I got over myself and decided to call back; I’d applied to Quantico and he’d changed his number.”
Sam closed his eyes for a moment. “After that I just didn’t know how to reach him anymore.” He faced the others. “I tried to contact some friends of ours after I graduated, but either they wouldn’t take my call or their numbers were disconnected. I haven’t heard from any of them since. ” He wasn’t sure what Hotchner would say of the next, but… ”A lot of them seem to have gone underground.”
“Why would they refuse to take your calls?” Prentiss asked.
“Because most of them were criminals, or had a criminal background.” Hotch answered in Sam’s place. Sam wasn’t even surprised, it was all in his file after all, part of his psychological profile, part of his answers when they checked to see if he was mentally suitable to join the Bureau.
“My family were hardly upstanding citizens. Dad did a lot of credit card fraud, identity fraud, breaking and entering, and other stuff when I grew up and Dean followed his lead on pretty much anything. I’m sure Garcia probably found his police record by now.”
Sam turned to the video feed still connecting them with their tech analyst.
“It was… crazy, growing up with them. Dad would move us around every few months, going from school to school, no friends, no family, just a few people he trusted, people who thought like him. I know that Pastor Jim and Bobby were involved in a lot of the same occult stuff that him and Dean were. And don’t even get me started on Caleb or Travis or… A lot of them, they’ve got reasons to worry about the law on their backs, so when I gave up on all that, joined the FBI instead, they …”
“They broke contact?” It was the first time that Morgan looked at him in understanding.
“When I left for Stanford, my dad told me that if I went out the door, I shouldn’t bother ever coming back. He meant what he said and that was before I joined ‘the enemy’.” He marked the quotemarks in the air.
“When you say occult stuff…” Rossi was now paying attention.
“My dad believed that some kind of monster murdered my mother when I was a baby. He felt it was his job to hunt down this monster, this demon and to bring it down and kill it. Dean, he believed every word my father said. He thought our father could walk on water, would have jumped off a cliff if Dad asked him to. “
“But you didn’t?” Prentiss asked, her voice made clear she’d already guessed the answer to that one. No, he didn’t. God he remembered those fights, he remembered the disagreements, the anger every single time he had to leave behind everything he’d built in yet another town.
“I wanted a normal life, I wanted out of dad’s insanity. Dean didn’t understand that. He thought I was a fool for ever thinking I could be safe without his or dad’s protection.”
Reid threw him a look of sympathy and went in on some litany about schizophrenia and paranoia. By the time he got to the numbers of survivalists and occultists in the country Sam had started to block out most of it. From the looks of the others, he wasn’t the only one.
“Dean, he looked after me. Dad would leave us for days, sometimes weeks at a time. And Dean would take care of me. Sometimes dad would leave us with friends of his, but not always. A lot of the time, he’d just give Dean money for groceries, he’d pay a set amount for rent and then he’d order Dean to ward the doors and windows and to look after me.”
Sam picked up the printed out image of Dean at the grocery store, helpless to keep himself from wondering where Dean had been, what he’d been doing, how much he’d changed.
“I can’t even remember when he started doing that, making Dean care for me. I remember this one time when I was eight, it was Christmas, Dean was twelve, and dad was only supposed to be gone for two days, it ended up being closer to two weeks. Dean ended up stealing presents from the kid next door to us, just so I’d think that dad had at least visited to check up on us." It had been the day he found his dad’s journal, when he realized for the first time, just how crazy their lives had really been. "And I know that wasn’t the first time he left us alone. Sometimes Dean had to do things, to arrange for food, extra money for rent, stuff I needed for school. It got easier as we got older, but as kids…”
He turned to the others. “You’ll bring him in alive, right?” He barely stopped himself from adding a please. “Please don’t kill him.”
No one answered. Sam knew as well as they did that that depended on Dean, on whether he cooperated or not. “I need to be there.” He whispered. “When they arrest him.” He tried to face them. “I might be able to stop him from resisting.” Because Dean was always armed, even when he was sleeping. And he didn’t want his brother accidentally gutting any of his colleagues or the cops before he realized what he was dealing with.
“We have to arrest him, Sam,” Hotchner stated, staring at him as if trying to read his mind.
“I know.” He did know, and he hated it, he hated betraying his brother. But he’d do it, if it meant saving Dean’s life. “Maybe if you do, we can prove it isn’t him.” He added more to himself than any of the others. He didn’t want them to feel sorry for him, even if their faces told him that they did.
****
They found Dean a few hours later, holed up at his usual kind of hide out. Sam told them about Dean’s habit of using the names of rock stars and staying at fleabag motels and after that Garcia made quick work of crosschecking motel records. Sam asked them if he could go in, ask Dean to come out with him, give him a chance to surrender before they did anything else. Hotchner agreed, on condition that Sam took Morgan with him and wore a vest. Sam tried to tell them it’d work better if he went in alone, but Hotchner didn’t go for it.
Sam tried to steel himself; this was the first time he’d see Dean in eight years. The last time had been at Stanford, Dean asking for a place to spend the night while he healed up from a ‘cold’. Sam had sat up all night, nursing his brother through feverish nightmares. Dean almost died, but he wouldn’t even consider going to the hospital for what he considered a 24 hour bug. Sam knew better from the start, if it had been nothing, Dean wouldn’t have even asked his help to begin with.
When Sam had to leave for classes, he’d told Dean he’d be back in a few hours. By the time he got back, Dean was gone, leaving little more than an envelope full of money.
He knocked on the door. No response. He knocked again, but they knew Dean was in there, the place was surrounded, there was no way he could have slipped out. “Dean, open up, it’s me.” Then he was about to knock again. The door opened slightly before he had the chance.
“Well look at you, Mister Big Time FBI.” Sam could practically hear the capital letters crack through the air as Dean leaned up against the door jamb, still enough out of sight that a sniper wouldn’t be able to catch him.
“Dean. “
“What do you want, Sam? Playing officer friendly for your buddies in blue?” There was a gun in his hand. Sam tensed up, but forced himself to continue.
“Dean, they think you killed those people.” Sam wished that Dean looked more surprised, instead he backed up into the room, leaving the door wide open for Sam to follow him in. Morgan was right behind him.
“Oh goodie, Sam. Come to introduce me to your new best friends? I thought we were over playgroup meetings when you outgrew pre-school.”
There was a thick smell filling the top of the room, like rotten eggs - or sulfur.
“What else is new? It’s like being stuck in rerun hell" Dean muttered as he sat down. He continued in the most sarcastic voice possible: “Watch as the amazing and wonderful Dean Winchester saves people and the cops think he was actually killing, show at eleven.” He let the Colt, an antique that Sam had never seen before, sink on the bed between his legs. Sam knew that Morgan was about to call for back up, he’d spotted the rest of the weapons laid out on the bed spread as well. Sam knew he had to be fast, keep Dean talking so he wouldn’t try anything. Dean was good, but if he shot Morgan, or Sam, even just to clip him, they’d kill him.
“Dean, this is serious. You have to come in with me, let me prove you didn’t do it.”
Dean started laughing at that. “How much of an idiot do you think I am, Sam?” He raised an empty hand. “Don’t answer that. “ He got up from the bed and stared stalking towards Sam. Morgan raised his gun and was telling him to drop the Colt, but Dean wasn’t even looking at him.
“You think they’d ever believe me? That I just have to tell them it was some kind of shapeshifter? That there’s a fucking alpha shapeshifter out there who’s trying to raise an army of itty bitty shapeshifters for whatever war they’re all aiming it?” The gun went down again and Sam could hear Morgan’s demands of Dean to just put down his weapon. Sam didn’t even think about it when he moved in between Dean and Morgan.“Tell them that they should stop going on their little picnics, start worrying about the dark, because what’s out there will gobble them up for a snack?"
Sam stood a bit stunned. God, he’d done such a good job of putting all that insanity behind him, and here stood Dean, bringing it up all over again.
“Dean.”
“I forgot, Sammy doesn’t care anymore. Sammy doesn’t give a damn about the monsters, Sammy would rather pretend none of the dark exists. But it does, Sam. You’ve seen it with your own two eyes.”
“I’ve seen nothing.” Dean puffed at that, Sam took a step closer and froze when Dean aimed the gun at him.
“What? And all the ghosts we salted and burned no longer exist? That werewolf up in Maine, the shapeshifter- all just an old man in a mask I reckon?”
“Dad was crazy.”
“Shut up." It was more of a hiss than a sound. Dean was inches away from him a second later, the barrel of the colt pressed against Sam’s face.
“He lost his mind, Dean. He lied to us.”
“Shut up!” Dean was growling by now. “Don’t think I won’t shoot you.” But Sam knew him better than that, Dean would never harm his family.
“Remember when I was nine years old, Dean? I told dad I was scared of the monster in the closet.” Dean didn’t answer. “He gave me a .45 and told me to shoot it, if it came out.” Sam knew he had to take control of this, before Morgan did something to stop Dean. “There was no monster, just shadows.”
“He was trying to keep you safe, Sammy.” And with that the fight slipped out of his brother’s voice.
“He turned us into soldiers, Dean. His little soldiers in his private war. And you’re still fighting it. Damn it, Dean. Where’s dad?”
Dean lowered the Colt, Morgan was about to step in, but Sam motioned at him to stay back.
“He’s dead.” Sam stood stunned, but no more so when Dean faced him, the colt held down, his arms limp.
“Dean.”
“It was me.” Dean whispered. “It was me, I … killed dad, Sammy. I shot him.”
“Oh God, Dean.”
“The demon had gotten into him, it took him, it killed Pastor Jim, and Caleb and Travis. It killed Ellen and it had Bobby." Sam couldn’t help wonder who Ellen was, from the way Dean talked about her, she’d been someone he’d known closely, you didn’t get into Dean’s circle of people he cared about, that easily. “You remember Uncle Bobby, right Sam. The demon was taking him apart and I took the Colt and I aimed it and I told him to stop, that I was going to shoot. And the demon laughed, it said I’d never do it, that I’d never be able to. Bobby was crying. Bobby never cries, but he was breaking. So I shot him, right between the eyes, the demon, the yellow eyed demon that killed Mom. I shot him, I shot Dad.”
“Oh God, Dean.” Sam just completely forgot the Colt at that and grabbed Dean in a hug, he was almost surprised that Morgan hadn’t knocked him out yet, hadn’t knocked both of them out yet.
“When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?” And it suddenly made sense, why none of Dad’s contacts would answer his calls, why all their friends seemed to have disappeared.
“Five years ago.” Dean whispered. About the time that Dean had stopped calling.
“Oh God, why didn’t you come to me?” He finally let go of his brother. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Why hadn’t he been there for his brother when Dean needed him and why had Dad let this happen?
“I didn’t want to get you killed too. I checked up on you, you were safe, I figured, it was best that way, leave you alone, give you your normal life.” Dean turned away from them both, staring at the window. “I figured that if I called you, you’d have to tell your bosses, or worry about breaking your oaths and I didn’t want to do that to you.”
Dean clicked the safety on, pulled out the cylinder and it was then that Sam realized that all this time, Dean had been pointing an empty gun at him. He doubted there was even a bullet in the barrel as Dean dropped the Colt on the bed alongside the rest of the weapons.
Sam had no answer for that. “You still could have called.”
“Everyone dies Sammy, everyone I love dies, I didn’t want to lose you too. I thought, if I’d just hunt, just focus on the hunt, killing things, saving people, then you’d be safe.”
“Is that what you’re doing here, Dean? The Hunt?”
Dean’s shoulders dropped.
“There’s a war going on, Sammy. The monsters, they’re building up to something. They’re all recruiting, or forming a base for their army. Those babies, they’re all little shifters and the alpha shifter is picking them up. I thought, if I find the babies before the shifter got to them, then… I could. But I was too late, the alpha already killed most of the family by the time I got there.”
“Dean, where are the children?” Dean didn’t answer, he just stood there. Sam was about to repeat his question, when a baby started crying behind the closed door that probably led to the bathroom.
Morgan pulled the door open and halted. The baby's crying became louder, verged on screaming.
“Winchester.” Both Dean and Sam looked up. “Sam, you’d better take him into custody now.”
“Dean.” He worried for nothing. His brother just held his own arms behind his back and let Sam grab them and cuff them without even a single sign of a fight left in him. Sam grabbed his brother’s shoulder hoping to keep it gentle, to make it clear to Dean that he was trying to help him. Dean just snorted at the kindness. But Sam knew, his brother might try to escape later, but he wouldn’t ruin Sam’s career by trying to fight his way out of this now. As ever, looking after Sam came first for him.
Morgan came out of the bathroom, holding a small baby covered in blood and gore.
Sam had no idea what to say, he just stared at his brother, but Dean wasn’t responding anymore. Dean’s body was still there, but not his mind. Sam stood there, his hand on his brother’s shoulder as he led them outside. The glares of the police cars and spotlights hurt his eyes.
Sam sat down on the steps, staring at nothing. Morgan clasped his shoulder as he came passed. "Are you ok, Winchester?"
Sam shivered, not sure what to say. And for a moment, Sam remembered, he remembered the ghosts, salting and burning the corpses, Dean shooting the werewolf or dad gutting that shifter.
“You did the right thing, Sam,” Hotchner said afterwards. Sam didn’t answer, he just stared at his brother in the back of a police car, staring at nothing.
What had he done?
-END-
Prompt:
-They finally resort to bringing in the BAU to track down the Winchester brothers. Of course, Hotch and his team do manage to track them down and interrogate them. However, they also quickly begin to realize there's more to the story than Dean & Sam are telling them. (Would also love to see some Sam/Garcia action here, if at all possible.)
-Protection
-Judging a book by its cover
-Research lands surprising discovery