Supernatural: House of Cards 1/?
Title: House of Cards
Author: Ada C Eliana
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: AU where anything's game
Characters: Sam/Jess, Dean, John, and more
Disclaimer: I don't own anything besides the computer I'm typing this on....
Note: This is a multi-chaptered fic. I have a bunch of (longer) chapters of this written already, so expect some quick updates!
Summary: AU. John had been declared mentally incompetent by the state, his boys split up and raised by two different families. Now, 20 years later, Dean goes to his naive brother to tell him that the demon is coming for him, and to try and protect him.
One misstep and everything they'd built could collapse like a house of cards.
House of Cards
Chapter One
Lawrence, Kansas August 2005
The doors slid open, allowing him entry. He stared at the brightly colored walls and wondered when he had become a regular here. He couldn’t quite remember; he knew the first time had been when he had cried and screamed and refused to eat or talk to anyone kindly until someone took him to see his father. They had obliged him, and during his first walk through the long yellow hallway his stomach turned and he decided he would never go again.
But then he did. When he was eight, his adopted mother had finally given in to his pleading and tears and promises, and led him back there. She waited uncomfortably outside the room, picking at her nails and twisting her hair around her fingers, wondering if she had made a mistake.
She never went in.
But she took him back, as many times as he asked, waiting, her dark hair in disarray by the time he was done. She was a good mother, nothing like the one he lost, but she did her best. She tried so hard, but she would never go in, she couldn’t face him, couldn’t listen to the things he said about her friend; the stories of blood and fire made her queasy. But more than that he thought she had been afraid that if she went in and listened long enough she might believe it. He supposed she believed anyway, why else would she let him continue to come back? But it was okay, knowing what he knew, he could understand why others would want to be naive, want to live in their happy bubble where nothing irregular ever happened.
Where fire was just fire and death wasn’t murder.
He supposed that place must be nice.
Jerry, the kind-hearted day nurse smiled broadly as he walked by. “Your old man’s excited to see you today,” Jerry said.
He just nodded and continued on his way, his boots thumping loudly in the quiet atmosphere.
He followed the corridor around a turn, and then came to room number 58. Sighing deeply, he pushed the door open. On the far side of the room he could see his father staring out the window, arms clutched around his chest; deep in thought. The room had been painted in light blue, apparently a popular color in mental institutions, used to soothe the patients. He just found it annoying after all these years. A simple bed sat against the wall in the corner, a table and chair on the other end. But the notes scribbled in a frenzied hand and tacked up around the small space were what kept his father in here. All sorts of notes about demons and fires acted as decorations, a testament to what some called insanity, and others called knowledge.
He cleared his throat briefly, catching his father’s attention. Stubble shown on the older man’s face, and his hair was at odd angles, as it became when he ran his hands through it too many times. The brown eyes that blinked at him seemed worried, and pensive.
He supposed Jerry had not meant excited in the happy-go-lucky way, more in the ‘is he here yet, there’s something I need to tell him’ way.
That could not be good.
“Dad?” he asked, stepping into the room. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s back,” he said simply, but those words carried so much weight, and so much pain with them. “It’s back, I know it.”
“But Dad…” He wanted to ask him how he knew, where he had heard this from, if it could even be true, but he lost the words as his greatest fears rushed over him quickly. “What… what does it want?” he murmured.
“Your brother. You have to find Sammy, Dean. You have to protect him.”