The Road Less Traveled By (PG)
Had two insistent AU plotbunnies. Yesterday's was one. Today's is the other. Warning for a couple of canon-ish character deaths (nothing graphic).
Summary: What if the Winchesters' lives weren't the subject of a horror series?
The Road Less Traveled By
By San Antonio Rose
Henry Winchester is too young to be drafted by the time World War II ends, and by the time the Korean War starts, he’s married. John comes along just before the draft deferment rules for married men change. As a result, he’s free to stay in Normal with his family, working as a librarian at Illinois State during the day, and in his off hours serving the community as a member of the Knights of Columbus and engaging in spiritual warfare as a lay Dominican. Both are long-standing family traditions, the latter dating back at least as far as the English Reformation, when certain educated Winchesters had joined forces with the Dominicans to save as many books as possible from being destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry’s present concerns are far less pressing, of course, but he still takes a certain degree of pride in the legacy he upholds.
He’s one of the first of the Knights in the Bloomington council to argue for integration. And when the council does so in 1958 and the KKK responds with violence, Henry gives his life to protect the new black Knights.
John grows up considering his dad a hero and hating God for not saving Henry’s life.
Samuel Campbell joins the CIA shortly after its founding in 1947. Civilian life is boring, but he doesn’t want to go back to the Army, and he doesn’t particularly want to follow in his father’s footsteps by joining the FBI. Somehow he ends up working for Air America. He eventually marries and has a real pipperoo of a daughter, yet as much as he loves Deanna and Mary, he can’t tell them what he really does. He shelters them as much as he can by keeping his home base in Lawrence, but no one knows that when he’s called away to help with overseas operations, he’s really building airstrips in Laos.
He learns to operate the aircraft, too, and when things get dicey for American troops, he sometimes joins in helicopter sorties to pull them out of trouble. And that’s how, in 1971, he ends up pulling a wounded John Winchester, Jim Murphy, Bill Deacon, and Mike Guenther out of the line of fire. He gets them back to Da Nang in one piece, but something prompts him to pause by Winchester’s stretcher while they’re waiting for the medics and pull out the charm bracelet Mary asked him to carry for good luck.
“Listen,” he says, pressing the bracelet into Winchester’s hand. “Look me up when you get back to the States. And if I haven’t made it, take this back to my daughter and tell her I love her.”
Winchester’s in too much pain to do anything but nod, but nod he does. Then the medics carry him away, and Samuel gets back to the business of saving lives.
Winchester makes it home. Samuel doesn’t.
John and Mary don’t like each other at first. He’s a Marine; she’s a hippy. He’s an atheist; she’s a Presbyterian. Their personalities clash. Sometimes they feel like they’re not even speaking the same language. And under other circumstances, there’s a better than even chance that he wouldn’t even bother to keep in touch with the Campbells.
But he feels an old-fashioned sense of obligation to support the family of the man who saved his life. So for the rest of his hitch, he divides his leave time between his family in Normal and the Campbells in Lawrence, and slowly an odd sort of friendship develops between him and Mary. By the time he’s mustered out of the Marines, he’s decided to see about attending KU on the GI Bill. Mary graduates from high school at about the same time, and they wind up having quite a few core courses together.
He proposes at Christmas. They get married in June.
That’s not to say their marriage is perfect. They have their problems. More than once John moves out for anywhere from a few days to a few months, and more than once Jim, now a Lutheran minister, has to come down and counsel with them. But John gets his mechanical engineering degree, even though he has to take a job at a garage. Mary gets her degree in Western Civ and teaches for a few years until Dean comes along. By the time Sammy is born in 1983, they’re a mostly happy, healthy family.
November 2, 1983, passes without incident.
Mary finds herself in need of parenting books, though, because her boys couldn’t be more different. For all Dean’s strength of will and flair for mischief, he’s very much what Dr. Dobson calls a compliant child-eager to help, to please, to protect. Sammy, on the other hand, is decidedly a strong-willed child. He’s sweet and loving, but he never meets a boundary he won’t push or a rule he won’t question. Mary has her hands full trying to keep up with both of them. Dean helps her as much as he can when John is gone, but even he has his limits.
John doesn’t want her taking the boys to church, but he doesn’t mind her reading the Bible with them or anything of the sort. The result is that Dean’s very confused about God and Sammy has a budding faith that’s at least half rebellion against John. Mary wishes fervently for some kind of breakthrough, because she suspects that church really would help all of them and might give her some support in corralling Sammy.
When Sammy is four and Dean is eight, Dean is trying desperately to interest Sammy in his latest passion by playing Star Trek pretend, with the jungle gym as the Enterprise, Dean as Kirk, and Sammy as Spock. But all Sammy wants to do is run off into the woods around the park, and every time Dean chases him down and hauls him back to the safety of the jungle gym, Sammy runs off again. Mom’s talking to another mom and not watching, and Sammy’s taking full advantage of that fact.
Dean’s worn out from running after Sammy, and he’s just about to give up and go tell Mom when Sammy screams and comes running out of the woods with a cloud of yellowjackets after him.
Dean’s been reading Little House in the Big Woods and remembers when this happened to Laura’s naughty cousin Charley, but he doesn’t remember what Pa and Uncle Henry did to get the wasps off. All he can think to do is yell for Mom and keep the other kids back.
There’s a house right across the road from the park, and Mom herds Sammy over there and sprays him down with the hose to get the wasps off. The lady who lives in that house calls an ambulance just in case-and they need it, because Sammy’s one big mess of wasp stings and is starting to have trouble breathing. Mom uses the lady’s phone to call Dad, and then she and Dean jump in the car and follow the ambulance to the hospital. It’s awful to have to wait while the doctors work on Sammy, but finally they let the family in to see him. And he looks terrible, all puffy and red and bumpy, with an IV in his hand and a tube down his throat to help him breathe. The doctor says they’ve knocked him out so he’s not in so much pain and won’t fight the ventilator, but everything he says after that is scary and Dean decides not to listen.
Instead he takes Sammy’s hand and thinks, God, please, if you’re there, if you’re listening, please help Sammy get better.
And he feels the swelling in Sammy’s hand start to go down.
Mom gasps. Dad swears. The doctor starts checking all the machines to make sure it’s not anyone’s imagination. Then he calls another doctor to make sure he’s reading everything right. But while the swelling doesn’t go away completely, it goes down far enough that Sammy can breathe just fine on his own, and they take the tube out of his mouth. He’ll have to stay the night because it’ll hurt him too much to move him right now, but he’s going to be okay.
“I’d say it’s a miracle,” says the second doctor.
I asked God, Dean thinks, feeling a little dizzy. I asked God for help, and He gave me a miracle. For Sammy.
Dad’s gone for coffee and Mom’s in the bathroom when Sammy wakes up an hour later and asks in a scratchy voice what happened. Dean doesn’t cry when he explains, but Sammy cries a little when he hears.
“Listen,” Dean says after a minute. “Buddy invited me to VBS at the Methodist church next week. I think they’ve got a class for kids your age, too. Wanna go?”
“What’ll Dad say?” Sammy whispers.
“Dude, it’s VBS, not church. It’s, like, day camp with Bible stories. How can Dad say no?”
Sammy smiles as much as he can. “Okay.”
Mom’s thrilled. Dad doesn’t mind.
Dean gives his heart to Jesus on the last day and decides Dad doesn’t have to know.
After high school, Dean goes to the Naval Academy, spends eight years in the Marines, marries his childhood sweetheart, and moves back to Lawrence to become a police officer. He also becomes a deacon at the Methodist church, leads the prayer team and the men’s Bible study, and frequently stays up late arguing theology on Internet forums.
Sam, ever the rebel, goes to Stanford. He and his girlfriend Jess put the cart before the horse, in Dean’s opinion, but they do get married, spend a year teaching English in Japan and two years in Ethiopia with the Peace Corps, and finish with two years of Bible school before going into long-term missions in India. Dad’s befuddled, but Dean and Mary couldn’t be prouder.
In their own ways, Sam and Dean both do battle with the forces of darkness, including literal demons and witches. Those things are very real. But there is no series of deals leading back to 1973, no supernatural conspiracy to launch the Apocalypse early, no attempt to force destiny on the Winchester family. Lucifer is not caged, but though he “roams about like a raging lion, seeking whom he may devour,” he has no claim on Sam. Gabriel is not hiding out at a Midwestern college pretending to be Loki. Anna Milton’s mother calls her “angel,” but she’s never been anything but human. And if Castiel exists, he has no need to rebel against an angelic hierarchy gone power-mad.
For God is in His heaven, and all is right with the world.
Summary: What if the Winchesters' lives weren't the subject of a horror series?
The Road Less Traveled By
By San Antonio Rose
Henry Winchester is too young to be drafted by the time World War II ends, and by the time the Korean War starts, he’s married. John comes along just before the draft deferment rules for married men change. As a result, he’s free to stay in Normal with his family, working as a librarian at Illinois State during the day, and in his off hours serving the community as a member of the Knights of Columbus and engaging in spiritual warfare as a lay Dominican. Both are long-standing family traditions, the latter dating back at least as far as the English Reformation, when certain educated Winchesters had joined forces with the Dominicans to save as many books as possible from being destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry’s present concerns are far less pressing, of course, but he still takes a certain degree of pride in the legacy he upholds.
He’s one of the first of the Knights in the Bloomington council to argue for integration. And when the council does so in 1958 and the KKK responds with violence, Henry gives his life to protect the new black Knights.
John grows up considering his dad a hero and hating God for not saving Henry’s life.
Samuel Campbell joins the CIA shortly after its founding in 1947. Civilian life is boring, but he doesn’t want to go back to the Army, and he doesn’t particularly want to follow in his father’s footsteps by joining the FBI. Somehow he ends up working for Air America. He eventually marries and has a real pipperoo of a daughter, yet as much as he loves Deanna and Mary, he can’t tell them what he really does. He shelters them as much as he can by keeping his home base in Lawrence, but no one knows that when he’s called away to help with overseas operations, he’s really building airstrips in Laos.
He learns to operate the aircraft, too, and when things get dicey for American troops, he sometimes joins in helicopter sorties to pull them out of trouble. And that’s how, in 1971, he ends up pulling a wounded John Winchester, Jim Murphy, Bill Deacon, and Mike Guenther out of the line of fire. He gets them back to Da Nang in one piece, but something prompts him to pause by Winchester’s stretcher while they’re waiting for the medics and pull out the charm bracelet Mary asked him to carry for good luck.
“Listen,” he says, pressing the bracelet into Winchester’s hand. “Look me up when you get back to the States. And if I haven’t made it, take this back to my daughter and tell her I love her.”
Winchester’s in too much pain to do anything but nod, but nod he does. Then the medics carry him away, and Samuel gets back to the business of saving lives.
Winchester makes it home. Samuel doesn’t.
John and Mary don’t like each other at first. He’s a Marine; she’s a hippy. He’s an atheist; she’s a Presbyterian. Their personalities clash. Sometimes they feel like they’re not even speaking the same language. And under other circumstances, there’s a better than even chance that he wouldn’t even bother to keep in touch with the Campbells.
But he feels an old-fashioned sense of obligation to support the family of the man who saved his life. So for the rest of his hitch, he divides his leave time between his family in Normal and the Campbells in Lawrence, and slowly an odd sort of friendship develops between him and Mary. By the time he’s mustered out of the Marines, he’s decided to see about attending KU on the GI Bill. Mary graduates from high school at about the same time, and they wind up having quite a few core courses together.
He proposes at Christmas. They get married in June.
That’s not to say their marriage is perfect. They have their problems. More than once John moves out for anywhere from a few days to a few months, and more than once Jim, now a Lutheran minister, has to come down and counsel with them. But John gets his mechanical engineering degree, even though he has to take a job at a garage. Mary gets her degree in Western Civ and teaches for a few years until Dean comes along. By the time Sammy is born in 1983, they’re a mostly happy, healthy family.
November 2, 1983, passes without incident.
Mary finds herself in need of parenting books, though, because her boys couldn’t be more different. For all Dean’s strength of will and flair for mischief, he’s very much what Dr. Dobson calls a compliant child-eager to help, to please, to protect. Sammy, on the other hand, is decidedly a strong-willed child. He’s sweet and loving, but he never meets a boundary he won’t push or a rule he won’t question. Mary has her hands full trying to keep up with both of them. Dean helps her as much as he can when John is gone, but even he has his limits.
John doesn’t want her taking the boys to church, but he doesn’t mind her reading the Bible with them or anything of the sort. The result is that Dean’s very confused about God and Sammy has a budding faith that’s at least half rebellion against John. Mary wishes fervently for some kind of breakthrough, because she suspects that church really would help all of them and might give her some support in corralling Sammy.
When Sammy is four and Dean is eight, Dean is trying desperately to interest Sammy in his latest passion by playing Star Trek pretend, with the jungle gym as the Enterprise, Dean as Kirk, and Sammy as Spock. But all Sammy wants to do is run off into the woods around the park, and every time Dean chases him down and hauls him back to the safety of the jungle gym, Sammy runs off again. Mom’s talking to another mom and not watching, and Sammy’s taking full advantage of that fact.
Dean’s worn out from running after Sammy, and he’s just about to give up and go tell Mom when Sammy screams and comes running out of the woods with a cloud of yellowjackets after him.
Dean’s been reading Little House in the Big Woods and remembers when this happened to Laura’s naughty cousin Charley, but he doesn’t remember what Pa and Uncle Henry did to get the wasps off. All he can think to do is yell for Mom and keep the other kids back.
There’s a house right across the road from the park, and Mom herds Sammy over there and sprays him down with the hose to get the wasps off. The lady who lives in that house calls an ambulance just in case-and they need it, because Sammy’s one big mess of wasp stings and is starting to have trouble breathing. Mom uses the lady’s phone to call Dad, and then she and Dean jump in the car and follow the ambulance to the hospital. It’s awful to have to wait while the doctors work on Sammy, but finally they let the family in to see him. And he looks terrible, all puffy and red and bumpy, with an IV in his hand and a tube down his throat to help him breathe. The doctor says they’ve knocked him out so he’s not in so much pain and won’t fight the ventilator, but everything he says after that is scary and Dean decides not to listen.
Instead he takes Sammy’s hand and thinks, God, please, if you’re there, if you’re listening, please help Sammy get better.
And he feels the swelling in Sammy’s hand start to go down.
Mom gasps. Dad swears. The doctor starts checking all the machines to make sure it’s not anyone’s imagination. Then he calls another doctor to make sure he’s reading everything right. But while the swelling doesn’t go away completely, it goes down far enough that Sammy can breathe just fine on his own, and they take the tube out of his mouth. He’ll have to stay the night because it’ll hurt him too much to move him right now, but he’s going to be okay.
“I’d say it’s a miracle,” says the second doctor.
I asked God, Dean thinks, feeling a little dizzy. I asked God for help, and He gave me a miracle. For Sammy.
Dad’s gone for coffee and Mom’s in the bathroom when Sammy wakes up an hour later and asks in a scratchy voice what happened. Dean doesn’t cry when he explains, but Sammy cries a little when he hears.
“Listen,” Dean says after a minute. “Buddy invited me to VBS at the Methodist church next week. I think they’ve got a class for kids your age, too. Wanna go?”
“What’ll Dad say?” Sammy whispers.
“Dude, it’s VBS, not church. It’s, like, day camp with Bible stories. How can Dad say no?”
Sammy smiles as much as he can. “Okay.”
Mom’s thrilled. Dad doesn’t mind.
Dean gives his heart to Jesus on the last day and decides Dad doesn’t have to know.
After high school, Dean goes to the Naval Academy, spends eight years in the Marines, marries his childhood sweetheart, and moves back to Lawrence to become a police officer. He also becomes a deacon at the Methodist church, leads the prayer team and the men’s Bible study, and frequently stays up late arguing theology on Internet forums.
Sam, ever the rebel, goes to Stanford. He and his girlfriend Jess put the cart before the horse, in Dean’s opinion, but they do get married, spend a year teaching English in Japan and two years in Ethiopia with the Peace Corps, and finish with two years of Bible school before going into long-term missions in India. Dad’s befuddled, but Dean and Mary couldn’t be prouder.
In their own ways, Sam and Dean both do battle with the forces of darkness, including literal demons and witches. Those things are very real. But there is no series of deals leading back to 1973, no supernatural conspiracy to launch the Apocalypse early, no attempt to force destiny on the Winchester family. Lucifer is not caged, but though he “roams about like a raging lion, seeking whom he may devour,” he has no claim on Sam. Gabriel is not hiding out at a Midwestern college pretending to be Loki. Anna Milton’s mother calls her “angel,” but she’s never been anything but human. And if Castiel exists, he has no need to rebel against an angelic hierarchy gone power-mad.
For God is in His heaven, and all is right with the world.