SPN fic - Ain't No Grave - 1/1
Title: Ain't No Grave
Rating: R
Word Count: ~6895
Warnings: Salty language, slightly cracky, possible spoilers for all aired episodes.
Disclaimer: All the witty disclaimers are already taken. Supernatural and its characters do not belong to me.
Summary: When John Winchester wakes up to a post-apocalypse future, he only wants to know two things: where are his sons, and just what brought him back? AU in which the apocalypse caused a lot more trouble for society and ended a little differently.
Also available as a podfic, read by greeniron.
Author's Notes: Title from the traditional song of the same name, preferred version by Johnny Cash. This was written for rainylemons for the spn_summergen fic exchange. I used prompt #2, but the story bears very little resemblance to the original idea.
--
John woke in darkness: close, musty, and complete. He thrashed, still caught in the nightmare's grip. He'd been dead, hadn't he? Dead and in hell. Christ, what a dream.
He reached out - for a lamp, a bedside table, his favorite knife - but knocked into a wall. Other side - same thing. No light. No sound. He blinked, listening for anything outside his own panting breaths, the rush of blood in his ears. He was starting to catch on. His hands slid on the silk underneath his back, along the tight walls. He reached up, pretty certain by now what he would find. Not just a low ceiling. A lid. A coffin lid.
He slapped a palm against it. Sounded hollow, not the solid thud of six feet of dirt. Okay, so maybe not buried alive? (Yet.) He pushed at the lid and met resistance, but it didn't feel airtight.
He shoved and strained. Again. Once more, and something gave, some latch or seal. The lid groaned and fell open, rocking the coffin back and forth. He sat up, gulping the fresher air.
Wherever he was, he didn't find much more light, just a sliver of murky yellow at the bottom of a wide door. He patted down his clothes, found a Zippo in his left breast pocket. A couple of flicks later, he realized he was sitting in a coffin propped up on two sawhorses. The lighter's flame showed him a square room filled with shelves, long shadows, strange dark shapes. The shelves held a shitload of curse boxes he recognized as Bobby Singer's work. He was in his storage unit in Black Rock.
Once he'd extracted himself from the coffin, he found the pull chain for the bare light bulb and took a closer look around. A thick layer of dust covered everything: the dented metal file cabinets, the weapons behind the grate, the creepy-ass stuffed owl whose curse he'd never figured out how to break. It looked like someone had been here at some point, though - a curse box was missing, though damned if he could remember which one. A few guns were gone, empty spots where they'd hung on the back wall. And though the devil's trap just inside the door was still intact, the sickly yellow light picked up dark stains that could only be blood - and, bizarrely, the strange silhouettes of giant wings. He knelt, brushed fingertips over the shadow pattern of feathers. Looked almost burned on.
Whatever weird shit had gone down, it must have been some time ago. The only signs of disturbance in the dust were his own.
He breathed deeply of the dank air and closed his eyes, trying to quiet his nerves. The dream had been real. He knew he'd been dead. Remembered hell, though it seemed a mercifully distant memory. The last thing he clearly recalled was his escape, crawling out of the pit to find his boys fighting the yellow eyed demon in some crumbling old cemetery. He remembered watching Dean fire the Colt, watching the demon twist and jerk, lit from within, as the creature that had destroyed their family was finally put down at the hands of his oldest son. He'd never been so proud in all his life.
Well. Afterlife.
Everything after that was a blank. He didn't know what could have brought him back, or why, but he knew he had to find his boys. Jesus, how long had it been? Days? Years?
He supplied himself from his worst-case-scenario stash, the main reason he kept a few storage units like this one in the first place. A solid .38 Special tucked into his waistband, a serrated blade in his boot. He had $300 in rainy day cash, an ID packet complete with a driver's license, Social Security card, and birth certificate. A package like that had cost him a pretty penny through that shady contact of Caleb's. He checked the driver's license. Set to expire in 2008, two years after he'd died. He wondered if it was still good.
There was a hunter bar a few miles from his lockup. The bartender there was the one who'd told him about the no-questions-asked self-storage years ago. It was as good a place as any to start.
The only unattended car near Castle Storage was a rusted out Dodge Omni propped up on blocks, so he hiked along the shoulder, following the two-lane blacktop into the town's cluster of strip malls and fast food joints. He hadn't gone two blocks before he realized that something was very wrong. Most of the businesses he remembered were gone, boarded up or burned out. What used to be a Wal-Mart was now a pile of rubble. A couple of gas stations were still in business, lines at the pumps five or six cars deep. The price of regular unleaded was listed as $12.67 per gallon.
He was relieved to find Mac's Bar intact. The neon sign out front flickered and buzzed, "Ba" instead of "Bar." There were a couple of cars parked in the lot, an early '90s Taurus and a newer Dodge Ram so beat to hell it already looked ten years old. Inside he found the dirty tables and scarred mahogany bar he remembered, a bartender he didn't. He slid onto a stool at the end of the bar with his back to the wall.
Two guys in worn jeans and faded NASCAR shirts sat at a booth along the wall, a good half dozen empties and a haze of cigarette smoke between them. Locals, most likely. A third man sat at the bar, his denim and flannel too much for the warm night. Another hunter, then.
The guy behind the stick looked ex-military. Buzz cut, strong jaw, hard muscles under a tight black T-shirt. A ridge of knife scar snaked up his neck from under the collar. He limped his way down to John's end of the bar. "What'll it be?"
"Whatever's on tap."
While the bartender poured a draft from an unlabeled tap, John looked around, searching for any detail that might tell him the date, or what the hell had been going on. The old TV mounted in the corner had a bullet hole through the screen. No help there. No sports section lying around, soaking up spilled beer. Even the damn NASCAR shirts were a few years out of date. He turned back to the bar just as the bartender placed a glass in front of him.
The beer was the best he'd ever tasted, clean and crisp and cold. Christ, it had been so long. There'd been a time he thought he'd never taste anything but his own blood again. He closed his eyes and drained half the glass in one long pull.
"Been a while, huh?" the bartender asked, focused on wiping down the bar. Not intrusive. Like he'd seen it before.
John cleared his throat. "Guess you could say that. Been...away for a while."
"Upstate?"
Standard New York code for prison. Good a story as any. He nodded. Took another sip. "Lost touch with most of my contacts while I was inside. Came here hoping Tony could hook me up with some intel."
The guy looked up from his rag. "Tony's not around anymore. Virus got him, 'bout four years ago now. But I might be able to help you out."
John heard the unspoken for a price, figured he'd be leaving a pretty hefty tip.
He thought for a moment about where to begin, what questions wouldn't make him sound batshit crazy. Hell, who was even left to ask about? Pastor Jim and Caleb were gone. He'd pissed off so many people over the years, his circle of contacts had shrunk down to nothing. "Bobby Singer," he started. "He still around?"
"Sure. Last I heard, he was retired, but the old bastard's still kicking."
"Still got that salvage yard?"
Tony's replacement nodded. "Rufus Turner's still around, too, up in Vermont - though he was thinking of heading south. Said the winters are hell on his knees ever since he got busted up in that quake."
John tossed out a couple more names that came to mind, and the answers came back similarly disturbing. Rugaru. Demon. Caught in the tsunami. Christ, that didn't sound ominous at all.
Finally he got around to the important question, after enough small talk and hunter gossip that it could sound like just shooting the shit. "You ever hear anything about the Winchesters?"
The guy barked a laugh. "Shit, I don't know and I don't want to know. Seems like everybody who ever met those guys ended up dead. Why, you know 'em?"
John shook his head, drained the rest of his glass. "Knew their daddy once. Long time ago."
--
He got on the road heading west, riding shotgun - literally - for a guy driving a vanload of stolen cigarettes and canned food to Cleveland. The bartender had told him about a place down in Kentucky, a Trappist monastery that had become an information hub for hunters, preserving esoteric books and serving as a waystation for travelers. Brother Augustine was the occult oracle. Knew everything about everyone, supposedly. John would stop there on his way to South Dakota, see what this guy knew, before moving on to Bobby's.
Outside of Black Rock, he began to get a sense of how bad things were. Big cities were the hardest hit, whether by natural disasters, the virus the bartender had mentioned, or something else entirely, John still wasn't sure. Entire city blocks were leveled, crumbling or burned. Suburbs were filled with abandoned homes, their windows broken out, doors hanging wide open. Tent towns sprang up like mushrooms in open fields.
Small towns and rural areas had fared better, due to both their relative isolation and the greater prevalence of survivalist mindsets. Some farms looked like they'd never been touched by the troubles: up and running, completely self-sufficient. They probably had the guns to keep it that way, too.
Electricity varied from place to place; brownouts and complete blackouts were everyday events. Gas was available, so some refineries must have been running, but it was in short supply and ridiculously expensive. Fast food, national television, and professional sports were things of the past - but it was still possible to find a mom-and-pop restaurant, a part-time local TV station, a ragtag baseball game being played at some high school ball field.
From Cleveland, he hitched a ride to Columbus, riding in the bed of a pickup filled with bags of concrete. It was there, where a small community of academics were trying to keep culture alive, that he found the first newspaper he'd seen since he woke up. It was more a leaflet, printed on somebody's home computer, but the front page gave him the date: August 12, 2016.
He'd been dead for ten years.
The reality twisted his gut, filled him with a sense of dread, a desperate homesickness he hadn't felt since Mary died. He had to find Sam and Dean. If Bobby had made it, maybe they had, too. If not - he at least needed to know what had happened to them.
He made it to Kentucky hitching rides in short hops: farmers taking their goods to market, a traveling preacher who said that the Lord had provided his gas, and finally, a couple of good ol' boys heading back down south after running a load of guns up to Canada. In Lexington, he boosted a piece of shit Chevy Celebrity that still had a quarter tank of gas. Maybe that preacher had been right. Sometimes the Lord did provide.
--
He reached the abbey just before dusk on the third day, on foot after the Celebrity had run out of gas five miles out of Bardstown. He was out of water, hadn't eaten since an MRE of beef stew early that morning.
The monastery came into view as he crested a hill: a sprawling compound behind a high stone wall. The main buildings were all painted white, including a church with a simple spire and what looked like a dormitory building. Beyond the central cluster, John saw barns and outbuildings, rolling fields dotted with black and white cows. Beyond that, lush green woods.
A long gatehouse guarded the entrance to the abbey grounds. John approached slowly, hands open and at his sides, hoping to keep the guards from getting spooked. Next to the arched double doors, he found an old-fashioned cast iron bell, with a matching cross at the end of its pull. He gave the rope a tug. The sharp clang echoed through the valley.
To the right of the doors, a slim window behind iron bars scraped open. A faded sign underneath read "TRAPPIST P.O." John stepped over. He could see a hooded figure behind the cloudy glass, but no one spoke. Finally John said, "I'm here to see Brother Augustine."
"Does he know you?" The pointed peak of the black hood bobbed as the monk spoke.
"No," John said. "I was told he might have word of some friends of mine."
"Who sent you?"
"Guy named Paul, runs a bar outside of Buffalo."
"Who are you looking for?"
John hesitated. "Sam and Dean Winchester."
The monk regarded him for a long moment. Slid the window shut. Before John could protest, he heard the groan of a heavy latch, and the left side door swung open. As John stepped toward it, a subtle pattern scratched into the asphalt caught his eye. He'd been standing on a devil's trap the whole time. Smart monks.
The man who opened the door wore a long white robe under the black hooded scapular, a wide brown belt cinched at his waist. Holster strapped to the belt. Looked like a Glock 9 millimeter. He gave John a shot of holy water, then stepped aside so John could cross the salt line at the threshold.
John took a look around while the monk swung the door shut and barred it behind them. Another monk sat at a round table - matching robe, matching hood, matching nine. A book lay open before him, though his attention was clearly focused on the visitor. The long room was filled with shelves of books and racks of guns, some boxes of MREs and pallets of bottled water. These monks were prepared for a siege - a religion John could get behind.
The first monk crossed to another set of doors opposite the entrance. "Brother Gus should be in the garden." He picked up a rifle that was leaning against the wall, slung its strap over his shoulder. Holy shit, was that an AR-15? "I'll bring him to you. You can wait in the lobby."
The gatehouse opened onto a courtyard traversed by paved paths, filled with neatly pruned flowers and trees. The monk led him to a building on the left side, ditched him in the lobby before going to find Brother Gus. It looked like the kind of room you'd see in a library or community college: a reception desk and a cluster of benches and chairs. Behind the desk sat another monk, an older man who watched John with narrowed eyes.
John dropped his pack but stayed standing. Once he sat down, he wouldn't be getting up for a good long while. He leaned next to the window, watching as a late bumblebee crawled around on a coneflower.
At the sound of soft footsteps behind him, he turned. A blur of black and white slammed him against the wall. The blade of a serrated knife bit into this throat. "What the hell are you?" the monk growled.
The voice tugged at him, too familiar. John strained against the knife, trying to peer under the hood. "Sam?"
--
Even with the black hood of the scapular pushed down, Sam looked so different from what John recalled: older, of course, but also stronger, and so much sadder. He'd finally grown into his height, the new bulk of his shoulders and chest too much to hide under the loose robes.
John caught himself staring. Looked back down at his plate.
"Sorry there's no meat," Sam said. "Everything's vegetarian around here."
"No, it's good." And it was. Soup, corn on the cob, fruit, salad with Trappist cheese, cold milk. Simple, but delicious, in the way only homegrown and homecooked could be. "Best I've had since I've been back."
"Yeah," Sam said, "about that. Any ideas on how that happened?"
John looked around the refectory. No one else sat at the long tables. He figured the other monks were up to speed regarding the supernatural, but until he was sure how much they knew, he didn't exactly want to advertise the fact that he'd been raised from the dead. "Your guess is as good as mine," he told Sam. He ran down the story from the start, from the coffin in New York through his travels.
Sam nodded, one finger drawing invisible patterns on the tabletop. "Did you happen to find any weird scars you didn't have before? Or maybe old scars that are now missing?"
The hell? John frowned. "No, nothing like that."
"Were there any demonic signs or omens where you woke up? Sulfur, electrical storms?"
"Not a damn thing, unless you count twelve-dollar-a-gallon gas as an omen. What the hell's been going on, Sam?"
Sam laughed - not a pleasant sound. "Just a little apocalypse. Don't worry, the worst is over."
"Christ."
"Didn't have much to do with it."
"Doesn't exactly sound like a monk talking."
Sam just shrugged. His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Good thing we don't talk much around here."
John drained the last of his milk, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Finding Sam was more than he'd expected. But he couldn't shake the flutter in his belly. "Sam. I know we've had some rough times between us. But right now, I need you to be straight with me. Where's Dean? Did something happen to him?"
Sam's jaw tightened. "Something's happened to all of us," he said, almost to himself, then shook his head. "He's okay. He's in Sioux Falls, near Bobby's place."
Tension drained out of John's body, a raw fear he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. "Good." He hoped his smile wasn't as shaky as it felt. "When I realized how long it had been...And no one knew what had happened to you boys, I thought..."
Sam nodded, a compassion in his eyes that stirred John's fears again. "Just remember, Dad - we're none of us the same people we used to be."
--
They left for Sioux Falls early the next morning, after Vigils but before Lauds, in a Volkswagen Jetta loaded with miscellaneous weapons and hunters' supplies, plus a metric shit-tonne of the fruitcake, cheese, and bourbon fudge that had been the abbey's main income for half a century. According to Sam, it made for excellent bartering. "Besides," Sam said, "When I radioed Dean, he said he'd kick my ass if I didn't bring fudge."
Sam was in street clothes this morning, jeans and a T-shirt, and John was a little ashamed at how relieved he was that the robes had been left behind.
Sam must have read his mind. "You know I'm coming back here, right?" he asked before starting the car. "I've made a commitment. And Dean's got his own life now, too. We can't be nomads like we used to."
It was what he'd expected, but it was still hard to hear. "I know." John cleared his throat. "Just one thing bothering me, though."
Sam rolled his eyes. At least some things never changed. "What's that?"
"A Jetta, Sam?"
Sam laughed. Keyed the ignition. "Biodiesel, old man. Even the Impala's been converted. Trust me, it's the only way to roll these days."
--
It was a long trip for one man used to the silence of a monastery, and another who'd been dead for ten years. Along the way, John got most of the story out of Sam, piece by horrible piece. Sam's death. Dean's deal. The existence of angels, and their ass-backwards role in the apocalypse. Demons who pretended to be helpful but weren't, and demons who were totally up front about being evil, but could occasionally be helpful anyway.
The Croatoan virus. It had mostly been contained by now, but occasional outbreaks still popped up. Floods, fires, famines, and quakes.
Sam was deliberately vague on how the apocalypse had been stopped. John got the feeling he didn't want to know.
Out here in the middle of the country, things didn't seem so bad. Green fields unfolded with each passing mile, broken only by silos and barns, windbreaks and creeks. As long as they stuck to the backroads, John could pretend they were on their way to the next hunt, hoping to make decent time before stopping at that night's motel.
They split the drive over two days. It would take almost twenty hours to reach Sioux Falls now that the highways weren't always navigable, and Sam said it wasn't safe to travel at night. They holed up in an abandoned farmhouse outside of Des Moines, made a meal out of bottled water, MREs, and Trappist cheese.
In the silence of the night, John couldn't sleep. He wondered how Sam managed the quiet countryside of the monastery. Maybe the collective rustling of the other monks made it bearable, reassurance that someone else existed outside of your own mind.
He heard Sam shifting around, trying to get comfortable on the hardwood floor. "Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"How'd you end up doing the monk thing, anyway?"
Sam didn't answer for a long moment, leaving John to listen to the crickets, the wind hissing through the trees. Then, "I stayed there for a few nights on a hunt, after the worst was over, while Dean was still laid up. It was the first time in so long that everything in my head had just shut the hell up - I figured they had to be doing something right. I went back a couple times after that, each time a few more nights than the last, until finally, I just didn't leave."
Sam was quiet for a minute. John kept his mouth shut.
"I've, uh - " Sam's voice wavered. "I've made a lot of mistakes. I let my anger control me, and everyone around me suffered because of it. I don't want that to happen again. I don't know about the whole God part, but since I've been at the abbey, I've started to figure some things out. I'm still working on it, but. Things are better these days."
What the hell was this stupid lump in John's throat? He swallowed it down. "Good," he said, his voice almost normal. "I'm glad."
--
Sioux Falls was a lot smaller than the city John recalled, and much more heavily fortified.
"The city proper was mostly burned when the virus hit," Sam explained as they pulled up to a checkpoint manned by armed guards. "The army got a little overzealous trying to contain it. The survivors have taken over that little wide spot in the road on the way out to Bobby's."
John remembered the place, a few old houses and stores that had once been a town of their own, until the boundaries of Sioux Falls expanded and annexed it. "How many people are left?" he asked.
"Maybe only five hundred. But it's one of the safest places this side of the Mississippi. Pretty well off, considering."
Sam passed out fudge and fruitcake to the guards - flannel-wearing, blue-collar types who all seemed to know him by name - before they lifted the gate and waved him though. A mile or two later, Sam pulled in at an Old West style general store whose biodiesel fuel pumps seemed to be running a brisk business. While Sam filled up, John headed inside. One man perched on a stool behind a counter lined with jars of penny candy. A few customers browsed the aisles. The place was fairly well stocked, with everything from bolts of cloth to hardware supplies, homebrewed beer to fresh Twinkies.
Well, perhaps "newly manufactured Twinkies" would be more accurate.
John picked out some beef jerky and a cola he'd never heard of, the simple label on the glass bottle telling him it was a local brew. He wasn't particularly hungry or thirsty, but couldn't resist the illusion of normalcy: running into a gas station for snacks and drinks.
The guy behind the counter had dark, receding hair and a round face, dressed a little too nattily for the town or his occupation. John had a sudden flash of the city slicker come west to make his fortune, selling overpriced necessities to dusty cowboys.
"Ah, excellent choice." The man's English accent completed the fish-out-of-water scenario. He held up the bottle of soda as if he were examining a fine wine. "Made from beet sugar. So much better than those lifeless, mass-produced colas of yore."
Maybe John was giving him a look, or maybe the guy just realized he sounded a little bit nutty. He cleared his throat, set the bottle down, and started ringing up John's purchases. "First time visiting our lovely burg?" he asked.
John nodded. "This version of it, anyway."
"Be sure to check in with our sheriff, won't you? He does enjoy seeing new faces in town." The guy's grin was just a little too toothy.
One of the other customers, a burly guy wearing a seed company gimme hat, dropped a load of goods onto the counter: pruning shears, a folded length of canvas tarp, some Bondo, and rolling papers. "Don't let him bother you none," the guy said. "He's a little crazy."
John nodded toward the proprietor. "Him, or the sheriff?"
"Both."
The bell over the door jingled and Sam came in, arms filled with fruitcake and cheese and fudge. He carefully deposited the goods on the counter.
"Oh, marvelous!" The owner beamed, looking over the bounty. "I've dearly missed the Trappist cheese. You really should visit more often, Sam."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Trying to scare off the customers, Crowley?"
Crowley flashed that toothy grin. "They'll come back. I'm the only game in town."
Sam waited until they were back in the car to explain. "He's the, uh, slightly more helpful demon I told you about."
"What?" John should have known something was off about that guy. "Why the hell is he running a goddamn general store instead of rotting in hell?"
"See, this is why I didn't tell you before we stopped." Sam slowly steered through the few blocks that counted as a town these days. "Don't get me wrong, he's evil. But he enjoys the world enough that he was willing to help us out, and we sort of called a truce. He doesn't do anything…massively evil, and we leave him alone.
"He used to be in charge of crossroads deals, so the store is a pretty good fit. He's still in sales, as he would say. The worst thing he does these days is gouge his customers."
"You really believe that?"
Sam shrugged. "Even Bobby trusts him a little. Hell, they started a vineyard together. Crowley missed wine, and it turns out Bobby's got a green thumb."
He pulled to the curb across the street from another building that looked straight out of a spaghetti western, a squat and sturdy place with bars on the windows and a hanging sign that read "SHERIFF" in an old-timey playbill font. John couldn't hold back his laugh. "You've got to be kidding me."
"I know." Sam shook his head. "I think they actually stole set pieces from some ghost town tourist trap."
John followed Sam across the street, where a man lounged on the porch, chair tipped back, feet up on the rail. The guy was dressed like a hunter, not a cop: jeans, work boots, green collared shirt buttoned up over a gray T-shirt. As he watched John and Sam approach, he took a sip from a coffee mug and called, "How's the Jesus business, Brother Gus?"
"Booming," Sam answered. "How's the donut business, Deputy?"
A wide white grin. "Delicious." The "deputy" rose and set his mug on the rail, met Sam with a back-slapping hug. "Good to see you, Sam. I presume you brought fudge?"
"Of course. Is the sheriff in?"
The deputy nodded. Sam turned back to John. "Uh, Dad, this is Castiel. Cas, meet John Winchester."
Castiel. The angel Sam had mentioned? John stepped up onto the porch to shake hands. Castiel's grip was strong and callused, his unsettling blue gaze decidedly cooler than when he'd greeted Sam. "Welcome back," he said.
John couldn't shake the feeling of unease he got from the man - former angel? - but didn't have to hide it for long. Sam tilted his head toward the door. John followed Sam and Castiel inside.
After finding Sam as a monk, he really shouldn't have been surprised. Seeing Dean behind the sheriff's desk still felt like a punch to the chest. Same unruly spiked hair, though it was shot through with silver now. Same strong features, the face that reminded John so much of Mary, now more deeply lined. Dean looked up from his work, the guts of a ham radio receiver spread out across the desk. He looked first to Sam. "You're sure it's really him?" At Sam's nod, Dean looked to Castiel, who did a half-nod, half-shrug kind of thing, arms folded across his chest.
John hadn't exactly expected a tearful talk-show reunion, but still felt a little barb of hurt when Dean stood but kept the desk between them. "Well," Dean said with a strained smile. "Welcome to the new Sioux Falls."
--
Mid-afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows, striping the sheriff's office with the shadows of the bars. The only sound in the room was the scrape and clink of Dean's tools as he reassembled the radio. John tipped his chair back and watched his son while trying to look like he wasn't.
He suspected both he and Dean could have throttled Sam when he'd left, asking Castiel to help him move the carload of abbey foods. Of course it was orchestrated to give John and Dean some time alone, to facilitate emotional health or some such shit, but John could think of no two people less likely to volunteer for a heart-to-heart.
"So," he said finally. "Sheriff, huh?"
Dean shrugged. His eyes flicked up for a second, then back down to his work. "Just like the old westerns," he said. "Bad guys off the old sheriff, and whatever schmuck is dumb enough to take them on gets elected to keep the badge. Bobby's was pretty much our home base while all the shit was going down, so when the virus hit, we were around to help the survivors."
"How's Bobby doing these days?"
"Bitching about his arthritis and needing bifocals, but not bad." Dean's mouth twitched in a tiny smile, tugging at the thin white scar that marred his chin and lower lip.
"Bet he never thought he'd be running a vineyard with a demon."
"Hey, don't knock it. It's good wine."
They fell silent again, Dean focused on his work. John did his best to ignore the occasional tremor in Dean's hands, the unfamiliar scars: the thick pink rope twisting along his forearm, the shiny patch of burn scar peeking out from under the sleeve of his black T-shirt.
"You know, I'm not trying to be an ass about this." Dean never looked up from the radio casing as he screwed it back together. "I wish I could do the happy family reunion thing. It's just that, in my experience, nothing like this ever comes without strings."
"I know it." And he did; while generally, he'd rather be alive than dead, it wasn't exactly a gift if it came at some sort of cost to his sons. "Listen, Dean," he began, and then his words failed.
He knew everything he wanted to say but had no idea where to begin: I wish I'd done better by you and Sam. I should've let you be a kid instead of turning you into a soldier. I'm sorry I let you think you were worthless, that Sam was more important. I'm sorry you spent forty years in hell because of it.
I'm sorry.
Dean did look up then, his eyes clear green and guileless, and said the words John always needed to hear. "It's okay, Dad."
It wasn't. Never had been. But that was Dean - always quick to forgive. John cleared his throat and tried to smile.
--
A demon, an ex-angel, three hunters, and a dead guy have a dinner party.
There had to be a punchline in there somewhere.
The house Dean and Castiel shared was a block or two away from the sheriff's office, a monstrosity of Victorian style, brackets and dentils, big bay windows, all of it topped off by a square tower and slate Mansard roof. Damn thing looked haunted, John thought as Sam drove slowly down the long gravel driveway, and maybe it had been. He wouldn't put it past Dean to reclaim a house from a ghost.
Sam parked under the wide canopy of an ancient oak and opened his door. As they headed around the side of the house, they were assaulted by a din of squawking. The side and backyards were teeming with farm birds: fat, spotted guinea fowl; mallard drakes with iridescent green heads; strange chickens with elaborate crests or puffs of feathers that looked almost like an Afro. A peacock strutted in the middle of it all, jewel-toned blue with its fan of tail feathers folded and dragging behind.
Sam looked back to where John had stopped dead. "Cas' birds," he said. "I figure he likes them because he used to have wings, too."
They grilled out in the backyard with the birds milling about, looking for scraps. Bobby brought steaks. Crowley brought wine. The vegetables came from the big garden in the side yard, and dessert would be Sam's bourbon fudge.
It was only the little things that kept John from pretending everything was fine. Bobby looked older and grayer and more weathered; his knees creaked, and he needed glasses to read through the dusty grimoires he'd brought to show Sam. Sam didn't touch the meat, kept glancing at the clock (back at the abbey, it would be time for Compline), and startled if anyone came up behind him too fast. Dean walked with a limp that became more pronounced as the day wore on, and took a multicolored handful of pills from a seven-day organizer before sitting down to eat.
It wasn't until after dinner that they got down to business, sitting around the butcher block table in the big farmhouse-style kitchen. Sam, Bobby, and Crowley took the chairs on the open side. Castiel stuck protectively - possessively? - to Dean's right, claiming the outside of the bench next to the wall. That left John at the head of the table, a position that didn't feel as natural as it once had.
Bobby peered down through his bifocals as he poured a splash of milk into his coffee using a porcelain cow-shaped creamer. "I wasn't able to find anything more than what we already know. Only so many ways to raise someone from the dead."
"I would have known if angels were involved," Castiel said. "I should still be able to sense their presence, but it's been years."
Dean nodded. "Plus, no freaky angel-hickey handprint thing."
John definitely didn't want to know.
"I don't think it was demons, either," Sam said. "Obviously, some of them are capable of raising the dead. But they can't do it without a deal. And if none of us made a deal - then who would? No offense, Dad, but other than us and Bobby, almost everyone you know is dead themselves."
"Well, that's a cheerful thought." John got up, poured a fresh cup from the enamel coffee pot atop the - no shit! - wood burning stove. The brew was heavy on the chicory, but welcome nonetheless. "If it's not a demon, and it's not an angel, then what the hell could do something like this?"
Castiel's creepy gaze followed John as he sat back down. "Necromancy," the man-angel-thing said. "Certain blood spells, performed by someone powerful enough, might work."
"But again, who would do that?" Sam asked. "And why? The apocalypse is over, we're not in the middle of any crises, no one needs to use our stupid cursed bloodlines."
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Crowley said. "If I'd known the resulting conversation would be so tiresome, I would have just told you up front. I did it."
Dead silence. Out in the backyard, the guinea fowl gibbered. Bobby was the first to explode. "You did what, now?"
Crowley rolled his eyes. "I raised John Winchester from the dead."
Dean was next. "Why the hell would you do that? No offense, Dad."
"And how?" Sam asked. "Don't you need someone to make a deal?"
"Someone did." Crowley took a sip of wine from his jelly jar. "Joe Foster. When he sold me those Rhode Island Reds last week. I threw in John's resurrection as part of the deal."
"Another freebie?" Bobby said.
Crowley cocked a finger at him. "Exactly."
The meal sat heavy in John's gut. "But…why?"
"I suppose I was bored. And maybe I wanted Sam to bring us some cheese."
Sam laughed, shook his head. "You couldn't have used the radio for that?"
Crowley just shrugged, gave a sheepish but entirely insincere smile. "Dessert, anyone?"
--
John stepped out onto the porch, the air so humid and sticky it made his clothes feel wet. Cicadas sang in the trees, and a few of Castiel's weird birds roamed the yard, pecking here and there for food.
A bird cried out close by, and John turned, found Castiel sitting in the deepening shadows, a book open in his lap, a bird perched on the porch rail by his side. A quail, John thought, with that goofy little feather sticking straight up out of its head. As he stared, the bird cried again.
"The California quail," Castiel said. "Its call is sometimes described as saying, Chicago, Chicago."
John snorted.
"Have a seat." Castiel gestured at the chair beside his own. Both he and the bird cocked their heads to watch John's approach.
"So what's the deal with the birds?" John asked.
Castiel shrugged. "People would give us eggs or young birds as barter, to raise for meat. I suppose I became too attached to them."
The quail clucked in agreement.
"What about the peacock? I thought those were for decoration, not food."
"A stray from an abandoned farm. They seem to find their way here despite my best intentions."
As if on cue, the peacock yelled from off in the trees: May-awe! May-awe! Castiel smiled.
They sat in companionable silence, listening to the strange chirps and clucks of the birds as they settled down, the night insects' chorus growing louder as the sky edged toward black.
"Did you get the answers you came for?" Castiel asked.
John blew out a deep breath. "Partly. I know who brought me back. But I still don't know why. What's Crowley's game? Why would he do something like this?"
Castiel considered the question with a frown. "I think we entertain Crowley. Humans in general, but your family in particular. He enjoys having us all around, because he enjoys watching how we respond to chaos."
"You mean he likes fucking with us."
"Exactly."
John remembered what he'd told his sons about demons years ago, before any of them even knew that a demon was responsible for Mary's death: They don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. Maybe there was no why.
John's skin prickled with the intensity of Castiel's gaze. "It reminds me of something Sam told me once," Castiel said, "when we were discussing the literature of the Lost Generation: 'Sometimes the point is that there is no point.' "
Castiel closed his book, stood, and held out his hand to the quail. The bird hopped into his palm, and the odd pair headed back inside.
John slouched back in his chair, looked up at the stars that were visible almost everywhere these days, thanks to the shortage of artificial light. He recognized the three stars of Orion's belt: the hunter.
Was that what he was supposed to do? Keep hunting, help rebuild the network of knowledge that the apocalypse had almost destroyed? Find a town to protect, the way Dean and his weird angel friend had?
Get his soul in order, the way Sam was trying to do? Retire to some hobby? Maybe help Bobby with his vineyard? The worst was over, as Sam had said. Maybe that was the only mission left - to enjoy the time he'd been gifted, to be near his family and friends.
From the open windows behind him, he heard voices and laughter, the unlikely camaraderie that had formed between these damaged men and not-men. The birds in the yard rustled and clucked; the trees hummed with the night insects' song. Somewhere deep inside the house, the quail cried out: Chicago! Chicago!
-------------------------
A/N #2: I have no idea how the apocalypse ended in this reality, but I thought the show could have done a little bit better. So...maybe Sam and Dean both said yes? Maybe they found another way to kill Lucifer? Whatever floats your boat. I guess you could consider this AU after 5x18.
I'm not sure of the rules for resurrection, but I figured since John was cremated and didn't have a grave to speak of, that coffin in New York was as good a place as any for him to pop up.
The Abbey of Gethsemani is a real place, and you can indeed buy the monks' cheese, fruitcake, and fudge from the Gethsemani Farms website. For the purposes of this story, I've taken great liberties in describing the abbey, combining historic elements - the gatehouse, for example, has been torn down - with more modern features, like the lobby, as well as pure fiction.
The idea of Sam as a monk at this particular abbey has been with me for several months, and rainylemons' prompt allowed me to explore that territory. As for the rest of this thing, I have no explanation or excuse.
For your edification: The California Quail.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~6895
Warnings: Salty language, slightly cracky, possible spoilers for all aired episodes.
Disclaimer: All the witty disclaimers are already taken. Supernatural and its characters do not belong to me.
Summary: When John Winchester wakes up to a post-apocalypse future, he only wants to know two things: where are his sons, and just what brought him back? AU in which the apocalypse caused a lot more trouble for society and ended a little differently.
Also available as a podfic, read by greeniron.
Author's Notes: Title from the traditional song of the same name, preferred version by Johnny Cash. This was written for rainylemons for the spn_summergen fic exchange. I used prompt #2, but the story bears very little resemblance to the original idea.
--
John woke in darkness: close, musty, and complete. He thrashed, still caught in the nightmare's grip. He'd been dead, hadn't he? Dead and in hell. Christ, what a dream.
He reached out - for a lamp, a bedside table, his favorite knife - but knocked into a wall. Other side - same thing. No light. No sound. He blinked, listening for anything outside his own panting breaths, the rush of blood in his ears. He was starting to catch on. His hands slid on the silk underneath his back, along the tight walls. He reached up, pretty certain by now what he would find. Not just a low ceiling. A lid. A coffin lid.
He slapped a palm against it. Sounded hollow, not the solid thud of six feet of dirt. Okay, so maybe not buried alive? (Yet.) He pushed at the lid and met resistance, but it didn't feel airtight.
He shoved and strained. Again. Once more, and something gave, some latch or seal. The lid groaned and fell open, rocking the coffin back and forth. He sat up, gulping the fresher air.
Wherever he was, he didn't find much more light, just a sliver of murky yellow at the bottom of a wide door. He patted down his clothes, found a Zippo in his left breast pocket. A couple of flicks later, he realized he was sitting in a coffin propped up on two sawhorses. The lighter's flame showed him a square room filled with shelves, long shadows, strange dark shapes. The shelves held a shitload of curse boxes he recognized as Bobby Singer's work. He was in his storage unit in Black Rock.
Once he'd extracted himself from the coffin, he found the pull chain for the bare light bulb and took a closer look around. A thick layer of dust covered everything: the dented metal file cabinets, the weapons behind the grate, the creepy-ass stuffed owl whose curse he'd never figured out how to break. It looked like someone had been here at some point, though - a curse box was missing, though damned if he could remember which one. A few guns were gone, empty spots where they'd hung on the back wall. And though the devil's trap just inside the door was still intact, the sickly yellow light picked up dark stains that could only be blood - and, bizarrely, the strange silhouettes of giant wings. He knelt, brushed fingertips over the shadow pattern of feathers. Looked almost burned on.
Whatever weird shit had gone down, it must have been some time ago. The only signs of disturbance in the dust were his own.
He breathed deeply of the dank air and closed his eyes, trying to quiet his nerves. The dream had been real. He knew he'd been dead. Remembered hell, though it seemed a mercifully distant memory. The last thing he clearly recalled was his escape, crawling out of the pit to find his boys fighting the yellow eyed demon in some crumbling old cemetery. He remembered watching Dean fire the Colt, watching the demon twist and jerk, lit from within, as the creature that had destroyed their family was finally put down at the hands of his oldest son. He'd never been so proud in all his life.
Well. Afterlife.
Everything after that was a blank. He didn't know what could have brought him back, or why, but he knew he had to find his boys. Jesus, how long had it been? Days? Years?
He supplied himself from his worst-case-scenario stash, the main reason he kept a few storage units like this one in the first place. A solid .38 Special tucked into his waistband, a serrated blade in his boot. He had $300 in rainy day cash, an ID packet complete with a driver's license, Social Security card, and birth certificate. A package like that had cost him a pretty penny through that shady contact of Caleb's. He checked the driver's license. Set to expire in 2008, two years after he'd died. He wondered if it was still good.
There was a hunter bar a few miles from his lockup. The bartender there was the one who'd told him about the no-questions-asked self-storage years ago. It was as good a place as any to start.
The only unattended car near Castle Storage was a rusted out Dodge Omni propped up on blocks, so he hiked along the shoulder, following the two-lane blacktop into the town's cluster of strip malls and fast food joints. He hadn't gone two blocks before he realized that something was very wrong. Most of the businesses he remembered were gone, boarded up or burned out. What used to be a Wal-Mart was now a pile of rubble. A couple of gas stations were still in business, lines at the pumps five or six cars deep. The price of regular unleaded was listed as $12.67 per gallon.
He was relieved to find Mac's Bar intact. The neon sign out front flickered and buzzed, "Ba" instead of "Bar." There were a couple of cars parked in the lot, an early '90s Taurus and a newer Dodge Ram so beat to hell it already looked ten years old. Inside he found the dirty tables and scarred mahogany bar he remembered, a bartender he didn't. He slid onto a stool at the end of the bar with his back to the wall.
Two guys in worn jeans and faded NASCAR shirts sat at a booth along the wall, a good half dozen empties and a haze of cigarette smoke between them. Locals, most likely. A third man sat at the bar, his denim and flannel too much for the warm night. Another hunter, then.
The guy behind the stick looked ex-military. Buzz cut, strong jaw, hard muscles under a tight black T-shirt. A ridge of knife scar snaked up his neck from under the collar. He limped his way down to John's end of the bar. "What'll it be?"
"Whatever's on tap."
While the bartender poured a draft from an unlabeled tap, John looked around, searching for any detail that might tell him the date, or what the hell had been going on. The old TV mounted in the corner had a bullet hole through the screen. No help there. No sports section lying around, soaking up spilled beer. Even the damn NASCAR shirts were a few years out of date. He turned back to the bar just as the bartender placed a glass in front of him.
The beer was the best he'd ever tasted, clean and crisp and cold. Christ, it had been so long. There'd been a time he thought he'd never taste anything but his own blood again. He closed his eyes and drained half the glass in one long pull.
"Been a while, huh?" the bartender asked, focused on wiping down the bar. Not intrusive. Like he'd seen it before.
John cleared his throat. "Guess you could say that. Been...away for a while."
"Upstate?"
Standard New York code for prison. Good a story as any. He nodded. Took another sip. "Lost touch with most of my contacts while I was inside. Came here hoping Tony could hook me up with some intel."
The guy looked up from his rag. "Tony's not around anymore. Virus got him, 'bout four years ago now. But I might be able to help you out."
John heard the unspoken for a price, figured he'd be leaving a pretty hefty tip.
He thought for a moment about where to begin, what questions wouldn't make him sound batshit crazy. Hell, who was even left to ask about? Pastor Jim and Caleb were gone. He'd pissed off so many people over the years, his circle of contacts had shrunk down to nothing. "Bobby Singer," he started. "He still around?"
"Sure. Last I heard, he was retired, but the old bastard's still kicking."
"Still got that salvage yard?"
Tony's replacement nodded. "Rufus Turner's still around, too, up in Vermont - though he was thinking of heading south. Said the winters are hell on his knees ever since he got busted up in that quake."
John tossed out a couple more names that came to mind, and the answers came back similarly disturbing. Rugaru. Demon. Caught in the tsunami. Christ, that didn't sound ominous at all.
Finally he got around to the important question, after enough small talk and hunter gossip that it could sound like just shooting the shit. "You ever hear anything about the Winchesters?"
The guy barked a laugh. "Shit, I don't know and I don't want to know. Seems like everybody who ever met those guys ended up dead. Why, you know 'em?"
John shook his head, drained the rest of his glass. "Knew their daddy once. Long time ago."
--
He got on the road heading west, riding shotgun - literally - for a guy driving a vanload of stolen cigarettes and canned food to Cleveland. The bartender had told him about a place down in Kentucky, a Trappist monastery that had become an information hub for hunters, preserving esoteric books and serving as a waystation for travelers. Brother Augustine was the occult oracle. Knew everything about everyone, supposedly. John would stop there on his way to South Dakota, see what this guy knew, before moving on to Bobby's.
Outside of Black Rock, he began to get a sense of how bad things were. Big cities were the hardest hit, whether by natural disasters, the virus the bartender had mentioned, or something else entirely, John still wasn't sure. Entire city blocks were leveled, crumbling or burned. Suburbs were filled with abandoned homes, their windows broken out, doors hanging wide open. Tent towns sprang up like mushrooms in open fields.
Small towns and rural areas had fared better, due to both their relative isolation and the greater prevalence of survivalist mindsets. Some farms looked like they'd never been touched by the troubles: up and running, completely self-sufficient. They probably had the guns to keep it that way, too.
Electricity varied from place to place; brownouts and complete blackouts were everyday events. Gas was available, so some refineries must have been running, but it was in short supply and ridiculously expensive. Fast food, national television, and professional sports were things of the past - but it was still possible to find a mom-and-pop restaurant, a part-time local TV station, a ragtag baseball game being played at some high school ball field.
From Cleveland, he hitched a ride to Columbus, riding in the bed of a pickup filled with bags of concrete. It was there, where a small community of academics were trying to keep culture alive, that he found the first newspaper he'd seen since he woke up. It was more a leaflet, printed on somebody's home computer, but the front page gave him the date: August 12, 2016.
He'd been dead for ten years.
The reality twisted his gut, filled him with a sense of dread, a desperate homesickness he hadn't felt since Mary died. He had to find Sam and Dean. If Bobby had made it, maybe they had, too. If not - he at least needed to know what had happened to them.
He made it to Kentucky hitching rides in short hops: farmers taking their goods to market, a traveling preacher who said that the Lord had provided his gas, and finally, a couple of good ol' boys heading back down south after running a load of guns up to Canada. In Lexington, he boosted a piece of shit Chevy Celebrity that still had a quarter tank of gas. Maybe that preacher had been right. Sometimes the Lord did provide.
--
He reached the abbey just before dusk on the third day, on foot after the Celebrity had run out of gas five miles out of Bardstown. He was out of water, hadn't eaten since an MRE of beef stew early that morning.
The monastery came into view as he crested a hill: a sprawling compound behind a high stone wall. The main buildings were all painted white, including a church with a simple spire and what looked like a dormitory building. Beyond the central cluster, John saw barns and outbuildings, rolling fields dotted with black and white cows. Beyond that, lush green woods.
A long gatehouse guarded the entrance to the abbey grounds. John approached slowly, hands open and at his sides, hoping to keep the guards from getting spooked. Next to the arched double doors, he found an old-fashioned cast iron bell, with a matching cross at the end of its pull. He gave the rope a tug. The sharp clang echoed through the valley.
To the right of the doors, a slim window behind iron bars scraped open. A faded sign underneath read "TRAPPIST P.O." John stepped over. He could see a hooded figure behind the cloudy glass, but no one spoke. Finally John said, "I'm here to see Brother Augustine."
"Does he know you?" The pointed peak of the black hood bobbed as the monk spoke.
"No," John said. "I was told he might have word of some friends of mine."
"Who sent you?"
"Guy named Paul, runs a bar outside of Buffalo."
"Who are you looking for?"
John hesitated. "Sam and Dean Winchester."
The monk regarded him for a long moment. Slid the window shut. Before John could protest, he heard the groan of a heavy latch, and the left side door swung open. As John stepped toward it, a subtle pattern scratched into the asphalt caught his eye. He'd been standing on a devil's trap the whole time. Smart monks.
The man who opened the door wore a long white robe under the black hooded scapular, a wide brown belt cinched at his waist. Holster strapped to the belt. Looked like a Glock 9 millimeter. He gave John a shot of holy water, then stepped aside so John could cross the salt line at the threshold.
John took a look around while the monk swung the door shut and barred it behind them. Another monk sat at a round table - matching robe, matching hood, matching nine. A book lay open before him, though his attention was clearly focused on the visitor. The long room was filled with shelves of books and racks of guns, some boxes of MREs and pallets of bottled water. These monks were prepared for a siege - a religion John could get behind.
The first monk crossed to another set of doors opposite the entrance. "Brother Gus should be in the garden." He picked up a rifle that was leaning against the wall, slung its strap over his shoulder. Holy shit, was that an AR-15? "I'll bring him to you. You can wait in the lobby."
The gatehouse opened onto a courtyard traversed by paved paths, filled with neatly pruned flowers and trees. The monk led him to a building on the left side, ditched him in the lobby before going to find Brother Gus. It looked like the kind of room you'd see in a library or community college: a reception desk and a cluster of benches and chairs. Behind the desk sat another monk, an older man who watched John with narrowed eyes.
John dropped his pack but stayed standing. Once he sat down, he wouldn't be getting up for a good long while. He leaned next to the window, watching as a late bumblebee crawled around on a coneflower.
At the sound of soft footsteps behind him, he turned. A blur of black and white slammed him against the wall. The blade of a serrated knife bit into this throat. "What the hell are you?" the monk growled.
The voice tugged at him, too familiar. John strained against the knife, trying to peer under the hood. "Sam?"
--
Even with the black hood of the scapular pushed down, Sam looked so different from what John recalled: older, of course, but also stronger, and so much sadder. He'd finally grown into his height, the new bulk of his shoulders and chest too much to hide under the loose robes.
John caught himself staring. Looked back down at his plate.
"Sorry there's no meat," Sam said. "Everything's vegetarian around here."
"No, it's good." And it was. Soup, corn on the cob, fruit, salad with Trappist cheese, cold milk. Simple, but delicious, in the way only homegrown and homecooked could be. "Best I've had since I've been back."
"Yeah," Sam said, "about that. Any ideas on how that happened?"
John looked around the refectory. No one else sat at the long tables. He figured the other monks were up to speed regarding the supernatural, but until he was sure how much they knew, he didn't exactly want to advertise the fact that he'd been raised from the dead. "Your guess is as good as mine," he told Sam. He ran down the story from the start, from the coffin in New York through his travels.
Sam nodded, one finger drawing invisible patterns on the tabletop. "Did you happen to find any weird scars you didn't have before? Or maybe old scars that are now missing?"
The hell? John frowned. "No, nothing like that."
"Were there any demonic signs or omens where you woke up? Sulfur, electrical storms?"
"Not a damn thing, unless you count twelve-dollar-a-gallon gas as an omen. What the hell's been going on, Sam?"
Sam laughed - not a pleasant sound. "Just a little apocalypse. Don't worry, the worst is over."
"Christ."
"Didn't have much to do with it."
"Doesn't exactly sound like a monk talking."
Sam just shrugged. His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Good thing we don't talk much around here."
John drained the last of his milk, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Finding Sam was more than he'd expected. But he couldn't shake the flutter in his belly. "Sam. I know we've had some rough times between us. But right now, I need you to be straight with me. Where's Dean? Did something happen to him?"
Sam's jaw tightened. "Something's happened to all of us," he said, almost to himself, then shook his head. "He's okay. He's in Sioux Falls, near Bobby's place."
Tension drained out of John's body, a raw fear he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. "Good." He hoped his smile wasn't as shaky as it felt. "When I realized how long it had been...And no one knew what had happened to you boys, I thought..."
Sam nodded, a compassion in his eyes that stirred John's fears again. "Just remember, Dad - we're none of us the same people we used to be."
--
They left for Sioux Falls early the next morning, after Vigils but before Lauds, in a Volkswagen Jetta loaded with miscellaneous weapons and hunters' supplies, plus a metric shit-tonne of the fruitcake, cheese, and bourbon fudge that had been the abbey's main income for half a century. According to Sam, it made for excellent bartering. "Besides," Sam said, "When I radioed Dean, he said he'd kick my ass if I didn't bring fudge."
Sam was in street clothes this morning, jeans and a T-shirt, and John was a little ashamed at how relieved he was that the robes had been left behind.
Sam must have read his mind. "You know I'm coming back here, right?" he asked before starting the car. "I've made a commitment. And Dean's got his own life now, too. We can't be nomads like we used to."
It was what he'd expected, but it was still hard to hear. "I know." John cleared his throat. "Just one thing bothering me, though."
Sam rolled his eyes. At least some things never changed. "What's that?"
"A Jetta, Sam?"
Sam laughed. Keyed the ignition. "Biodiesel, old man. Even the Impala's been converted. Trust me, it's the only way to roll these days."
--
It was a long trip for one man used to the silence of a monastery, and another who'd been dead for ten years. Along the way, John got most of the story out of Sam, piece by horrible piece. Sam's death. Dean's deal. The existence of angels, and their ass-backwards role in the apocalypse. Demons who pretended to be helpful but weren't, and demons who were totally up front about being evil, but could occasionally be helpful anyway.
The Croatoan virus. It had mostly been contained by now, but occasional outbreaks still popped up. Floods, fires, famines, and quakes.
Sam was deliberately vague on how the apocalypse had been stopped. John got the feeling he didn't want to know.
Out here in the middle of the country, things didn't seem so bad. Green fields unfolded with each passing mile, broken only by silos and barns, windbreaks and creeks. As long as they stuck to the backroads, John could pretend they were on their way to the next hunt, hoping to make decent time before stopping at that night's motel.
They split the drive over two days. It would take almost twenty hours to reach Sioux Falls now that the highways weren't always navigable, and Sam said it wasn't safe to travel at night. They holed up in an abandoned farmhouse outside of Des Moines, made a meal out of bottled water, MREs, and Trappist cheese.
In the silence of the night, John couldn't sleep. He wondered how Sam managed the quiet countryside of the monastery. Maybe the collective rustling of the other monks made it bearable, reassurance that someone else existed outside of your own mind.
He heard Sam shifting around, trying to get comfortable on the hardwood floor. "Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"How'd you end up doing the monk thing, anyway?"
Sam didn't answer for a long moment, leaving John to listen to the crickets, the wind hissing through the trees. Then, "I stayed there for a few nights on a hunt, after the worst was over, while Dean was still laid up. It was the first time in so long that everything in my head had just shut the hell up - I figured they had to be doing something right. I went back a couple times after that, each time a few more nights than the last, until finally, I just didn't leave."
Sam was quiet for a minute. John kept his mouth shut.
"I've, uh - " Sam's voice wavered. "I've made a lot of mistakes. I let my anger control me, and everyone around me suffered because of it. I don't want that to happen again. I don't know about the whole God part, but since I've been at the abbey, I've started to figure some things out. I'm still working on it, but. Things are better these days."
What the hell was this stupid lump in John's throat? He swallowed it down. "Good," he said, his voice almost normal. "I'm glad."
--
Sioux Falls was a lot smaller than the city John recalled, and much more heavily fortified.
"The city proper was mostly burned when the virus hit," Sam explained as they pulled up to a checkpoint manned by armed guards. "The army got a little overzealous trying to contain it. The survivors have taken over that little wide spot in the road on the way out to Bobby's."
John remembered the place, a few old houses and stores that had once been a town of their own, until the boundaries of Sioux Falls expanded and annexed it. "How many people are left?" he asked.
"Maybe only five hundred. But it's one of the safest places this side of the Mississippi. Pretty well off, considering."
Sam passed out fudge and fruitcake to the guards - flannel-wearing, blue-collar types who all seemed to know him by name - before they lifted the gate and waved him though. A mile or two later, Sam pulled in at an Old West style general store whose biodiesel fuel pumps seemed to be running a brisk business. While Sam filled up, John headed inside. One man perched on a stool behind a counter lined with jars of penny candy. A few customers browsed the aisles. The place was fairly well stocked, with everything from bolts of cloth to hardware supplies, homebrewed beer to fresh Twinkies.
Well, perhaps "newly manufactured Twinkies" would be more accurate.
John picked out some beef jerky and a cola he'd never heard of, the simple label on the glass bottle telling him it was a local brew. He wasn't particularly hungry or thirsty, but couldn't resist the illusion of normalcy: running into a gas station for snacks and drinks.
The guy behind the counter had dark, receding hair and a round face, dressed a little too nattily for the town or his occupation. John had a sudden flash of the city slicker come west to make his fortune, selling overpriced necessities to dusty cowboys.
"Ah, excellent choice." The man's English accent completed the fish-out-of-water scenario. He held up the bottle of soda as if he were examining a fine wine. "Made from beet sugar. So much better than those lifeless, mass-produced colas of yore."
Maybe John was giving him a look, or maybe the guy just realized he sounded a little bit nutty. He cleared his throat, set the bottle down, and started ringing up John's purchases. "First time visiting our lovely burg?" he asked.
John nodded. "This version of it, anyway."
"Be sure to check in with our sheriff, won't you? He does enjoy seeing new faces in town." The guy's grin was just a little too toothy.
One of the other customers, a burly guy wearing a seed company gimme hat, dropped a load of goods onto the counter: pruning shears, a folded length of canvas tarp, some Bondo, and rolling papers. "Don't let him bother you none," the guy said. "He's a little crazy."
John nodded toward the proprietor. "Him, or the sheriff?"
"Both."
The bell over the door jingled and Sam came in, arms filled with fruitcake and cheese and fudge. He carefully deposited the goods on the counter.
"Oh, marvelous!" The owner beamed, looking over the bounty. "I've dearly missed the Trappist cheese. You really should visit more often, Sam."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Trying to scare off the customers, Crowley?"
Crowley flashed that toothy grin. "They'll come back. I'm the only game in town."
Sam waited until they were back in the car to explain. "He's the, uh, slightly more helpful demon I told you about."
"What?" John should have known something was off about that guy. "Why the hell is he running a goddamn general store instead of rotting in hell?"
"See, this is why I didn't tell you before we stopped." Sam slowly steered through the few blocks that counted as a town these days. "Don't get me wrong, he's evil. But he enjoys the world enough that he was willing to help us out, and we sort of called a truce. He doesn't do anything…massively evil, and we leave him alone.
"He used to be in charge of crossroads deals, so the store is a pretty good fit. He's still in sales, as he would say. The worst thing he does these days is gouge his customers."
"You really believe that?"
Sam shrugged. "Even Bobby trusts him a little. Hell, they started a vineyard together. Crowley missed wine, and it turns out Bobby's got a green thumb."
He pulled to the curb across the street from another building that looked straight out of a spaghetti western, a squat and sturdy place with bars on the windows and a hanging sign that read "SHERIFF" in an old-timey playbill font. John couldn't hold back his laugh. "You've got to be kidding me."
"I know." Sam shook his head. "I think they actually stole set pieces from some ghost town tourist trap."
John followed Sam across the street, where a man lounged on the porch, chair tipped back, feet up on the rail. The guy was dressed like a hunter, not a cop: jeans, work boots, green collared shirt buttoned up over a gray T-shirt. As he watched John and Sam approach, he took a sip from a coffee mug and called, "How's the Jesus business, Brother Gus?"
"Booming," Sam answered. "How's the donut business, Deputy?"
A wide white grin. "Delicious." The "deputy" rose and set his mug on the rail, met Sam with a back-slapping hug. "Good to see you, Sam. I presume you brought fudge?"
"Of course. Is the sheriff in?"
The deputy nodded. Sam turned back to John. "Uh, Dad, this is Castiel. Cas, meet John Winchester."
Castiel. The angel Sam had mentioned? John stepped up onto the porch to shake hands. Castiel's grip was strong and callused, his unsettling blue gaze decidedly cooler than when he'd greeted Sam. "Welcome back," he said.
John couldn't shake the feeling of unease he got from the man - former angel? - but didn't have to hide it for long. Sam tilted his head toward the door. John followed Sam and Castiel inside.
After finding Sam as a monk, he really shouldn't have been surprised. Seeing Dean behind the sheriff's desk still felt like a punch to the chest. Same unruly spiked hair, though it was shot through with silver now. Same strong features, the face that reminded John so much of Mary, now more deeply lined. Dean looked up from his work, the guts of a ham radio receiver spread out across the desk. He looked first to Sam. "You're sure it's really him?" At Sam's nod, Dean looked to Castiel, who did a half-nod, half-shrug kind of thing, arms folded across his chest.
John hadn't exactly expected a tearful talk-show reunion, but still felt a little barb of hurt when Dean stood but kept the desk between them. "Well," Dean said with a strained smile. "Welcome to the new Sioux Falls."
--
Mid-afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows, striping the sheriff's office with the shadows of the bars. The only sound in the room was the scrape and clink of Dean's tools as he reassembled the radio. John tipped his chair back and watched his son while trying to look like he wasn't.
He suspected both he and Dean could have throttled Sam when he'd left, asking Castiel to help him move the carload of abbey foods. Of course it was orchestrated to give John and Dean some time alone, to facilitate emotional health or some such shit, but John could think of no two people less likely to volunteer for a heart-to-heart.
"So," he said finally. "Sheriff, huh?"
Dean shrugged. His eyes flicked up for a second, then back down to his work. "Just like the old westerns," he said. "Bad guys off the old sheriff, and whatever schmuck is dumb enough to take them on gets elected to keep the badge. Bobby's was pretty much our home base while all the shit was going down, so when the virus hit, we were around to help the survivors."
"How's Bobby doing these days?"
"Bitching about his arthritis and needing bifocals, but not bad." Dean's mouth twitched in a tiny smile, tugging at the thin white scar that marred his chin and lower lip.
"Bet he never thought he'd be running a vineyard with a demon."
"Hey, don't knock it. It's good wine."
They fell silent again, Dean focused on his work. John did his best to ignore the occasional tremor in Dean's hands, the unfamiliar scars: the thick pink rope twisting along his forearm, the shiny patch of burn scar peeking out from under the sleeve of his black T-shirt.
"You know, I'm not trying to be an ass about this." Dean never looked up from the radio casing as he screwed it back together. "I wish I could do the happy family reunion thing. It's just that, in my experience, nothing like this ever comes without strings."
"I know it." And he did; while generally, he'd rather be alive than dead, it wasn't exactly a gift if it came at some sort of cost to his sons. "Listen, Dean," he began, and then his words failed.
He knew everything he wanted to say but had no idea where to begin: I wish I'd done better by you and Sam. I should've let you be a kid instead of turning you into a soldier. I'm sorry I let you think you were worthless, that Sam was more important. I'm sorry you spent forty years in hell because of it.
I'm sorry.
Dean did look up then, his eyes clear green and guileless, and said the words John always needed to hear. "It's okay, Dad."
It wasn't. Never had been. But that was Dean - always quick to forgive. John cleared his throat and tried to smile.
--
A demon, an ex-angel, three hunters, and a dead guy have a dinner party.
There had to be a punchline in there somewhere.
The house Dean and Castiel shared was a block or two away from the sheriff's office, a monstrosity of Victorian style, brackets and dentils, big bay windows, all of it topped off by a square tower and slate Mansard roof. Damn thing looked haunted, John thought as Sam drove slowly down the long gravel driveway, and maybe it had been. He wouldn't put it past Dean to reclaim a house from a ghost.
Sam parked under the wide canopy of an ancient oak and opened his door. As they headed around the side of the house, they were assaulted by a din of squawking. The side and backyards were teeming with farm birds: fat, spotted guinea fowl; mallard drakes with iridescent green heads; strange chickens with elaborate crests or puffs of feathers that looked almost like an Afro. A peacock strutted in the middle of it all, jewel-toned blue with its fan of tail feathers folded and dragging behind.
Sam looked back to where John had stopped dead. "Cas' birds," he said. "I figure he likes them because he used to have wings, too."
They grilled out in the backyard with the birds milling about, looking for scraps. Bobby brought steaks. Crowley brought wine. The vegetables came from the big garden in the side yard, and dessert would be Sam's bourbon fudge.
It was only the little things that kept John from pretending everything was fine. Bobby looked older and grayer and more weathered; his knees creaked, and he needed glasses to read through the dusty grimoires he'd brought to show Sam. Sam didn't touch the meat, kept glancing at the clock (back at the abbey, it would be time for Compline), and startled if anyone came up behind him too fast. Dean walked with a limp that became more pronounced as the day wore on, and took a multicolored handful of pills from a seven-day organizer before sitting down to eat.
It wasn't until after dinner that they got down to business, sitting around the butcher block table in the big farmhouse-style kitchen. Sam, Bobby, and Crowley took the chairs on the open side. Castiel stuck protectively - possessively? - to Dean's right, claiming the outside of the bench next to the wall. That left John at the head of the table, a position that didn't feel as natural as it once had.
Bobby peered down through his bifocals as he poured a splash of milk into his coffee using a porcelain cow-shaped creamer. "I wasn't able to find anything more than what we already know. Only so many ways to raise someone from the dead."
"I would have known if angels were involved," Castiel said. "I should still be able to sense their presence, but it's been years."
Dean nodded. "Plus, no freaky angel-hickey handprint thing."
John definitely didn't want to know.
"I don't think it was demons, either," Sam said. "Obviously, some of them are capable of raising the dead. But they can't do it without a deal. And if none of us made a deal - then who would? No offense, Dad, but other than us and Bobby, almost everyone you know is dead themselves."
"Well, that's a cheerful thought." John got up, poured a fresh cup from the enamel coffee pot atop the - no shit! - wood burning stove. The brew was heavy on the chicory, but welcome nonetheless. "If it's not a demon, and it's not an angel, then what the hell could do something like this?"
Castiel's creepy gaze followed John as he sat back down. "Necromancy," the man-angel-thing said. "Certain blood spells, performed by someone powerful enough, might work."
"But again, who would do that?" Sam asked. "And why? The apocalypse is over, we're not in the middle of any crises, no one needs to use our stupid cursed bloodlines."
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Crowley said. "If I'd known the resulting conversation would be so tiresome, I would have just told you up front. I did it."
Dead silence. Out in the backyard, the guinea fowl gibbered. Bobby was the first to explode. "You did what, now?"
Crowley rolled his eyes. "I raised John Winchester from the dead."
Dean was next. "Why the hell would you do that? No offense, Dad."
"And how?" Sam asked. "Don't you need someone to make a deal?"
"Someone did." Crowley took a sip of wine from his jelly jar. "Joe Foster. When he sold me those Rhode Island Reds last week. I threw in John's resurrection as part of the deal."
"Another freebie?" Bobby said.
Crowley cocked a finger at him. "Exactly."
The meal sat heavy in John's gut. "But…why?"
"I suppose I was bored. And maybe I wanted Sam to bring us some cheese."
Sam laughed, shook his head. "You couldn't have used the radio for that?"
Crowley just shrugged, gave a sheepish but entirely insincere smile. "Dessert, anyone?"
--
John stepped out onto the porch, the air so humid and sticky it made his clothes feel wet. Cicadas sang in the trees, and a few of Castiel's weird birds roamed the yard, pecking here and there for food.
A bird cried out close by, and John turned, found Castiel sitting in the deepening shadows, a book open in his lap, a bird perched on the porch rail by his side. A quail, John thought, with that goofy little feather sticking straight up out of its head. As he stared, the bird cried again.
"The California quail," Castiel said. "Its call is sometimes described as saying, Chicago, Chicago."
John snorted.
"Have a seat." Castiel gestured at the chair beside his own. Both he and the bird cocked their heads to watch John's approach.
"So what's the deal with the birds?" John asked.
Castiel shrugged. "People would give us eggs or young birds as barter, to raise for meat. I suppose I became too attached to them."
The quail clucked in agreement.
"What about the peacock? I thought those were for decoration, not food."
"A stray from an abandoned farm. They seem to find their way here despite my best intentions."
As if on cue, the peacock yelled from off in the trees: May-awe! May-awe! Castiel smiled.
They sat in companionable silence, listening to the strange chirps and clucks of the birds as they settled down, the night insects' chorus growing louder as the sky edged toward black.
"Did you get the answers you came for?" Castiel asked.
John blew out a deep breath. "Partly. I know who brought me back. But I still don't know why. What's Crowley's game? Why would he do something like this?"
Castiel considered the question with a frown. "I think we entertain Crowley. Humans in general, but your family in particular. He enjoys having us all around, because he enjoys watching how we respond to chaos."
"You mean he likes fucking with us."
"Exactly."
John remembered what he'd told his sons about demons years ago, before any of them even knew that a demon was responsible for Mary's death: They don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. Maybe there was no why.
John's skin prickled with the intensity of Castiel's gaze. "It reminds me of something Sam told me once," Castiel said, "when we were discussing the literature of the Lost Generation: 'Sometimes the point is that there is no point.' "
Castiel closed his book, stood, and held out his hand to the quail. The bird hopped into his palm, and the odd pair headed back inside.
John slouched back in his chair, looked up at the stars that were visible almost everywhere these days, thanks to the shortage of artificial light. He recognized the three stars of Orion's belt: the hunter.
Was that what he was supposed to do? Keep hunting, help rebuild the network of knowledge that the apocalypse had almost destroyed? Find a town to protect, the way Dean and his weird angel friend had?
Get his soul in order, the way Sam was trying to do? Retire to some hobby? Maybe help Bobby with his vineyard? The worst was over, as Sam had said. Maybe that was the only mission left - to enjoy the time he'd been gifted, to be near his family and friends.
From the open windows behind him, he heard voices and laughter, the unlikely camaraderie that had formed between these damaged men and not-men. The birds in the yard rustled and clucked; the trees hummed with the night insects' song. Somewhere deep inside the house, the quail cried out: Chicago! Chicago!
-------------------------
A/N #2: I have no idea how the apocalypse ended in this reality, but I thought the show could have done a little bit better. So...maybe Sam and Dean both said yes? Maybe they found another way to kill Lucifer? Whatever floats your boat. I guess you could consider this AU after 5x18.
I'm not sure of the rules for resurrection, but I figured since John was cremated and didn't have a grave to speak of, that coffin in New York was as good a place as any for him to pop up.
The Abbey of Gethsemani is a real place, and you can indeed buy the monks' cheese, fruitcake, and fudge from the Gethsemani Farms website. For the purposes of this story, I've taken great liberties in describing the abbey, combining historic elements - the gatehouse, for example, has been torn down - with more modern features, like the lobby, as well as pure fiction.
The idea of Sam as a monk at this particular abbey has been with me for several months, and rainylemons' prompt allowed me to explore that territory. As for the rest of this thing, I have no explanation or excuse.
For your edification: The California Quail.