Title: Bolt From the Blue (coup la foudre)
Author:![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
callitcruel
Pairings: Witch/John (non-con)
Rating: R
Category: Drama
Word Count: 7,000
Summary: Dean doesn't recognize anything's wrong at first, but eventually it becomes clear John is cursed. They only have a week to save him.
Notes/Warnings: Mature ideas and symbolism, but not themes.
Disclaimer: Supernatural is not my property.
Dean had trusted Carly Miller when she had first come knocking on their apartment door one high noon after they had just moved in. He'd been fooled by the warm pan of a homemade lasanga and a Crest-whitened smile that brought with it a 'welcome to the neighborhood.' He'd been taken in by a designer canvas jacket and modest shoes, her chunky bracelets and good humor.
They had talked, and by the end of it Dean had felt pretty good about their neighbor down the hall. He had fixed himself a plate of her homemade cooking, pulling out a plate from one of the moving boxes, and man, had it been a long time since John decided to cook anything that didn't come out of a box for them.
Dean trusted Carly Miller. He didn't know that during their thirty minute introduction he'd said too much. He couldn't possibly have known that lies he tells about Mary, about their past, all that glossing over, that was still too much. This was all Carly Miller needed to know: John Winchester was a single father.
Dean has only been hunting seriously for the last year. Too young at sixteen to help out with anything but small things, still too young for John to be comfortable letting him off on his own, now he's eighteen, and as tall as John, and sassy and quick-witted and John's more at ease with letting him fight.
John trusts him to handle things when he's not there.
John will never blame Dean, but it's not like Dean's going to ever see it as anything but his fault. Doesn't matter that witches are like viruses; you can't tell where or how bad they are until they have you in their clutches, spread deep down into every cell, and suddenly it isn't up to you how hard you fight or whether you recover or not.
Carly Miller is a virus. She's ebola. She's west nile. She's the Black Death, and Dean lets her into their home because her clothes are ironed and she smells like she's been gardening.
She walks under the salt line hidden above the wood framing the door, and that was good enough for Dean.
The lasanga is delicious.
He leaves some on the counter-top for John and Sam when they get home from researching what has been killing men once every three years for the last twenty-one.
-----------------------
John meets Carly the next morning, while he's trying to usher the boys out the front door and to the car. They aren't usually late for school in the mornings, but when everything is packed up in boxes that look the same, it tends to happen.
Not to Sam, because Sam marked everything very clearly. Dean's packing method is a little more slap-dash, and he's trying to find something in one of ten unmarked brown boxes that are equal sized.
John will never blame Dean for making them late so he runs into Carly Miller as she leaves for work.
Sam listens politely to Mrs. Miller talk to his father, and shifts back and forth. He cannot believe that for the thousandth time Dean didn't remember to unpack the night before. How hard is that, really, to have everything set to go in the morning?
Dean's there, then, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair frazzled but just enough and not enough to make it look intentional. Sam can't pull that off with his chin-length curls.
Dean smiles at Carly Miller, wishes her a good morning, and then the Winchester men are rushing down the hall to a new school for the year, tension running a bit too high between them to notice much about the average woman with keys in her hand and a nice business casual look.
-------------------------------
Dean doesn't know when Carly Miller got John. It might've been that morning for all he knows, some subtle thing she said was enough to completely entrance him, but there is no question that whatever she had done had been done by the time the after school specials are done that same afternoon.
John and Carly Miller are having drinks in their living room, sitting on the floor because they don't have furniture yet.
It is the most animated Dean's seen John in awhile, and while it makes Dean happy to see John happy, he's suspicious of the woman.
John will not blame Dean for not noticing the effect until it is too late. Until it's down deep into him and can't be removed by John recognizing what is happening.
It's stealthy, Carly Miller's method. It creeps up like the tide, and before you know it you're drowning. You could've saved yourself if you had only known.
The small talk continues past the gray dusk of fall, and then they go out to dinner, leaving a confused Sam and an unsettled Dean to make their own Kraft dinner.
-------------------------
Sam's picking at the skin on his fingers. It drives Dean insane and he doesn't understand it, but Sam does it unconsciously when he feels like he needs to think through something faster than he would like to. He bounces his foot, and then all motion stops as he looks up at Dean.
"Single parents date," he says.
Dean wants to hurt him. He closes his book after tucking a pen in the spine, and then rubs his eyes.
"He isn't," he says.
"What?"
"Dad isn't dating."
Sam doesn't believe him. "Really? Because he's out having dinner with her right now."
"That doesn't mean he's dating. She's probably connected to the dead men somehow."
Sam goes back to bouncing his foot on the carpet, and looking around at the semi-unpacked living room. There are brown water stains on the ceiling, but the paint isn't peeling. There's warm water, enough so that three people can shower one after the other. They have a bookshelf, but only a few books to put on it, but really, they aren't the type of books that should be put on display.
"I think it would be good for him," Sam says. "To have a girlfriend."
Dean is so furious that for a second he can't see. He doesn't say anything, but sighs quietly through his nose. When he was younger he would have freaked out at Sam. Being in control of his emotions is now part of his job description in an unofficial way, so he's gottten a lot better at clamping down on the urge. Doesn't mean the urge doesn't exist.
"Don't you think so?" Sam asks. "It'd keep him more grounded."
"You mean more sane," Dean says bitterly, but just enough so that it sounds like he meant it to be funny.
Sam shifts so that his legs are spread out in front of him. "Would that be a bad thing?"
Dean bites his tongue. "No. Not at all. It's never going to happen, but you know, getting some is definitally more important," he answers with a sincere voice but with a glare.
Sam shakes his head. "I didn't mean that. I mean, that's okay, that's what adults do, but I meant the emotional aspect. A stable relationship would be good."
"It isn't going to happen, Sammy."
"How do you know?" Sam asks. He asks it in a weird way, like there isn't emotion attached to the subject. It's just academic inquiry. It's just innocent curiosity. It's not like they're talking about the destruction of their way of life, or anything so small.
"Because plenty of women try but Dad is married. Why would he choose now to be a bachelor?"
"Maybe he really likes Mrs. Miller. And I don't think it counts if your spouse is dead. Mrs. Miller's husband is dead." Again, the careful wording so it isn't them they're talking about. That makes it okay.
"Mom being dead doesn't matter to Dad. Okay, poor wording. The fact that Mom's dead doesn't change the fact that Dad is still married to her in his mind. And he's the only one who matters in the decision whether to start dating again or not."
"You don't think we count?"
"Not in the decision. We can be a reason, but we don't have a say in the end."
Sam goes back to picking at the skin around his fingers.
"Some single parents get remarried," Sam states.
"He's not getting remarried."
"I know. I'm just saying, some kids have step-moms."
Dean cannot believe the audacity. He stares up at Sam unable to form any kind of response because the crime is that bad. What do you say to someone who says something so awful?
Sam realizes he struck a nerve, and shrugs it off. "I'm just saying."
"Is that what you want Sam? A mom? Dad not good enough for you? Cause I gotta tell you, Dad's pretty much your typical parent. Bossing you around, making rules, telling you that you can't stay out with your friends all night? Just because it's coming from a woman doesn't mean it's going to be any different," Dean explains. "You'd be getting two versions of Dad."
Sam shifts like he hadn't thought of that, and then concludes, "That doesn't matter. Parents set rules for their kids, I get that. I just object to how... unjust some of Dad's rules are. It's like we're living in a dictatorship."
Dean arches an eyebrow at Sam. "Because you're too young to know how to act."
"Oh, and you're living in a democracy?"
"Dad might be the Executive branch, and the Legislative branch, but I am so the Supreme Court," Dean declares proudly.
Sam grumbles, "Yeah, well, the Supreme Court has been slacking on it's duty lately."
Dean can't tell whether it's a jab at him or the actual Supreme Court. Probably both.
------------------------
Dean has watched enough movies to know that when a parent tells you to go to the movies and gives you the money to go it means they want some alone time.
Dean has also watched enough men destroyed by supernatural means to know that the supernatural can strike in weird ways.
He's thinking something in the new apartment, some kind of oppresion, maybe? It can't be possession because the salt lines are laid under the carpet. Even if they can't be seen they are there. It was the second thing Dean did after eating lasagna the first day.
Dean doesn't know what has come over his father, but until he's convinced that it's some normal puppy love, genuine interest strong enough to, in a single blow, erase Mary's memory and make John forget all about revenge, strong enough to put down roots and change 'just passing through' into 'why don't we buy a dog?' Dean is not going to let anything happen.
He's got a plan.
---------------------
He doesn't think he wants to do this, but Carly is unbuttoning his shirt and kissing his chin. He doesn't know why he's going along with it. He really should stop. Really. Right now.
His breath hitches and the world spins for a second, an uncomfortable vertigo where he loses his grip on the world, and then he gets with the program and puts his hands back around Carly's waist.
Why didn't he want to do this again?
She untucks his bottom layer from his pants, and again something rebels inside of him, only to tighten down almost instantly.
The sock puppet controls the hand.
Carly smiles against his neck before biting him gently, and suddenly it's Mary, they're newlyweds with a house, and a baby on the way, and it's been awhile since John's thought about that spot on his neck.
He breathes, "Yeah," even as he suffocates inside.
She has him under her, hot flesh touching his chest, the weight of another person that makes him feel something like loved. She is holding him down without physically doing so.
Why is he fighting this so much?
The world spins again, the zillionth time since they moved in, and he discovers there really isn't a reason at all.
You can't come to the surface to breathe if the tide keeps rising just above your head.
The door opens, and Dean says, "Hey, Dad, my side.... Whoa."
John looks up, startled to see his son in the doorway. The last time Dean walked in on John with a woman he was two. The world tilts, and even though he feels okay again, there's an itch under his skin, begging Dean to do something.
"You want to leave us alone, Dean?" he barks, and hey, he really shouldn't talk to his kid like that.
Dean grimaces. "But Dad, I've got a pain in my side," and puts his hand over his lower right side. "It's... really sharp," and then Dean blinks rapidly and looks at the ground and chokes back a whimper. "I think... I need to go to the E.R."
John is so close to breathing. Dean's lifeline almost reaches him, misses by millimeters, but close doesn't matter. Close means he's still drowning.
The world tilts again, and Dean's eyes widen looking at him under Carly.
"Stop being a brat, Dean. I know you don't like it," he is compelled to say, and gestures towards Carly, "but this is too much. I expected you to be more mature about this. Go take your brother out," he says.
"Honey," Carly breaths. "It could mean his appendix is about to burst. I think you should take him to the hospital. We can wait," she says, and John looks up into her beautiful brown eyes and finds a pressure lifted.
He really is concerned about his kid. He just couldn't feel it through the initial panic. That's all.
"Okay, kiddo, lets go," he says, and Carly lets him up just enough to take care of Dean.
-----------------------
A night later Dean is laying salt across the floors. There's strange activity in the area. Another man hasn't died yet, but the three years like clockwork isn't on the stroke of twelve yet. They're expecting a corpse soon, maybe in a week, unless they can find what is doing this.
John has stopped doing research on it, and Dean has had to pick up the slack. He attended his high school for only two days this year before he started taking sick days that were really hunting days. That's kind of a new recond.
John flips at him when he sees the salt. He tells Dean that they are not hunting anymore. All of it, the guns, the training, the miles were all foolish impulses. They're not doing it anymore.
Dean has never wanted to smack his dad more in his life, and anyone who knows John Winchester will tell you that is an amazing feat.
Dean tries to reason with his father who is clearly not in his right mind. He tells John that John has hunted enough things to make a lot of enemies, and that even if they stop hunting they will never be able to ignore simple precautions again. Bitterly, he asks, 'how are you going to explain that to your girlfriend?'
Again, the eerie sheen of red over John's eyes that Dean had first witnessed last night.
Dean knows John doesn't mean it.
Sam, who was reading quietly on makeshift furniture, gapes at their dad as he leaves the room. Sam is hurt when Dean asks him angrily, "I bet you're happy now, right? Not hunting? That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
Sam realizes Dean's just looking for an outlet. John does that with Dean, sometimes, too. Takes out his grief on someone close to him, trying to fight something that doesn't have a source, so he creates one.
Sam shakes his head. "No. Well, I thought.... Not like this I didn't. Something's wrong," Sam finally admits.
Sam is agreeing with him.
"Hallelujah," Dean rejoices, and grabs the rock salt bag, anger making the bag seem lighter than it actually is.
--------------------
Since John won't do it, Dean goes to the archives posing as an intern for the DA's office, which would be a hell of a lot more convincing if John were there to play a DA. He's only eighteen, he shouldn't even be thinking about law school yet. Still, most people aren't that attentive, don't look for the details. That or they fear the DA's office enough not to ask questions.
He combs through the police reports of their dead men. They all committed suicide on the same day, all six of them, in the exactly same way, three years apart. That sounds a lot to Dean like ritual sacrifice, but to what he doesn't know. Could it be a coven, maybe?
Dean makes a note to look up any local religious orders that developed twenty one to twenty three years ago.
The photos of the deaths are not gruesome. There is nothing wrong with the men. They're all the scruffy type of guy. A single bullet hole in their chests leaking blood is only the indication they aren't sleeping.
Right away Dean knows something is wrong. Men don't do something as pansy as shoot themselves in the heart. Men go for the brain. Chicks go for the heart, statistically, when they use a gun at all.
Dean looks at the victims names, and notices that the last name of the last man to die was 'Miller,' Ross Miller, age thirty eight.
Dean gets a horrible thought in his head: Carly Winchester.
Something clicks then, so intense and so obvious that Dean wants to shout to the library, "look what I found! Holy shit!" but he restrains himself.
He makes copies of the police reports and hastily makes his way over to the county public records. He doesn't bother being nice about it, just acts like a paralegal asshole to get his way inside. He's not trying to be mean, but he is seriously freaked out. If this were a normal case, if he's right, he wouldn't care. He'd keep his head in the game and not panic, and he's trying, but Carly Winchester just repeats itself in his head, again and again and again.
He checks the records to make sure he is right before he picks Sam up.
They need to keep this from Dad. If he finds out he might blurt it to Carly, who might just decide to push the sacrifice ahead a little.
Dillion McKenzie, age twenty, leaves widow Carla McKenzie.
Marcus Washington, age twenty three, leaves widow Carla Washington.
Raymond Anderson, age twenty seven, leaves widow Carla Anderson.
Spencer Jorgenson, age thrity three, leaves widow Carla Jorgenson.
Alan Henning, age thirty two, leaves widow Carla Henning and daughter Rebecca Henning, age five.
Ross Miller, age thirty eight, leaves widow Carla Miller and son Mike Miller, age eighteen, now deceased.
Dean takes a shaky breath.
John Winchester, age forty two, leaves widow Carla Winchester and sons Dean and Sam Winchester, who were stabbed in their sleep by a step mother driven insane with grief.
Yeah, right.
------------------------
The first thing Dean does when he picks Sam up from school is hand him a file with all his research. They park in the school lot, and Dean quietly panics while Sam reads through it.
Sam swears, "Christ Almighty."
Dean nods. "She's doing something to these men to make them love her, marry her, and a couple weeks later she conviences them to kill themselves for her."
Sam blinks wide eyes up at him. "She's done this to Dad, hasn't she?"
Dean nods and looks out his window.
Sam shifts through the files some more. "Why would she do this?"
"Because she's an awful old bitch who's messing with things she doesn't understand," Dean answers. He doesn't really trust himself to drive in his current head-space, but Sam doesn't have his permit yet. Not that that stops John from teaching Sam, it's just that the police are especially ticket-happy around the school grounds.
"We need to show this to Dad," Sam says. "He would know what to do."
"Dad doesn't hunt anymore," Dean mocks. He's so angry then. He's angry at Carly for attacking a family member. He's angry at Carly for erasing their mom from their dad's mind.
Sam sighs. "What do we do then?"
"I think she's a witch," Dean says. "Sacrificing someone to the source of her power, some god, or deity, or something black. Actually most likely something black. I doubt the good guys would except a sacrifice like that."
"We need to know more about her," Sam says, and then proposes, "We should look around her apartment. Maybe call Pastor Jim. Or Uncle Bobby. They would know."
Dean gets an idea that he tucks away for later.
"Yeah," he agrees. "Do you want to do that now?"
"What time does she get home from work?"
"Doesn't matter what time she gets home from work," Dean says. "She's going out with Dad again."
------------------
It isn't hard to break into Carly Miller's apartment. Apparently the landlord is a cheap bastard. It's the same key for the entire floor. Which is different, but a huge plus for them. Sam's lock-picking skills aren't so great (yet, he insists) and Dean doesn't like picking locks in public locations.
It's scarily normal inside Carly Miller's apartment. Simple furniture, wide and mostly empty, there are pictures on the mantle, six of them, all with Carla in a wedding dress in three year increments.
That's all the proof Dean needs, but then Sam speaks up about being innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt guilty.
"She might not know she's doing it. She could be possessed or a spirit could be following her and making these things happen."
Dean has a more bleak outlook to it. "Or, you know, the love spell she's using uses some serious power of three karma."
If Carly Miller is a witch, she's a very neat one. Everything in her apartment is spotless, and if she is seriously into the black stuff the pictures of sunsets lining the hallway, and the cutsy bathroom decour, and the tricked out kitchen, it's a very good cover.
Sam runs back to their room to grab John's EMF meter, and comes back with John's journal.
"What the hell Sammy? You know you can't take that! Dad is going to skin you alive!"
Sam hands it to him. "Dad isn't hunting anymore. Why does he care?"
"He's going to care when we fix this!"
"But the answer could be in here! Dad never told you about everything he's ever hunted, but it's in here. And phone numbers of some people we can call for help."
John won't ever blame his boys for touching the one thing that is exclusively his.
They rummage through the apartment, looking through every drawer, opening every canister in the kitchen, and checking everywhere for signs of witchcraft. They find a lot of herbs, but nothing suspicious; everything could be used for cooking. She owns enough cookbooks.
The EMF meter doesn't pick anything up, either, except in one room close to the north wall. It turns out to be a fuse box.
"It's a bust," Sam declares. "Unless she's hiding things under the floor, or in the walls, there's nothing here."
"She's been doing this for twenty one years, right?" Dean asks. "Probably means that she knows how much of everything she needs. Has the spell memorized, too."
Sam says, "Recite the Preamble to the Constitution for me."
Dean gives him a look like he's crazy. "What?"
"You had to memorize it when you were fifteen, didn't you? Three years ago? What was it?"
Dean most definitely does not remember all of the Preamble, and he might be able to do it but there's no way he's going to humiliate himself trying.
Sam gives him such a smug look, though, and Dean cracks. "We the People of the United States of America hereby establish, in order to form a more perfect Union, in order to secure domestic Tranquility, .... something, pursuit of justice, for us and our prosperity, something, do ordain this Constitution for the United States of America."
Sam actually bursts out laughing, and okay, kind of worth it to see Sam relax a bit. "Not quite, Dean."
"Bitch," Dean swears at him. "What's your point? She's had to learn it six times. I bet she could do it from memory. She would've had to, right? She cursed Dad without saying anything."
"That we know about."
Dean breathes out a sigh. "Why do you have to be such a brat all the time?"
"I'm just pointing stuff out."
"Yeah, well, point out her spell-book. That would be a lot more helpful."
Sam shrugs him off, and wanders around her room. "If I were her where would I keep my book? Where do I keep stuff I don't want people to know about?"
"You don't."
"That you know about," Sam jibes.
"So what, you got stuff you're keeping from me and Dad?" Dean asks. He tucks the EMF meter into a pocket.
Sam shrugs. "I might be." Sam looks critically at the bookshelf, and pauses. It's covered in a light layer of dust except in one place. Sam tilts his head to look at the book title.
"Mrs. Miller is a receptionist, right?" Sam asks.
"Hell if I know," Dean answers. "Why? You got something?"
Sam says, "Dean, this book isn't bound. It's a paperback binding from a Kinko's. Do you know how much those cost?"
"Why would I know that? How do you know that?"
Sam rolls his eyes. "What else am I going to do while you and Dad forge fedreal documents?"
Dean pulls the book out and Sam leans over to look at the diagrams and instructions for some deep black magic.
"Great," Dean breathes. "Great."
"Find whatever it is she put on Dad," Sam instructs him. "If we know what she did we can call it off."
They spend some time looking at it, and decide that this is way over them. Dean hasn't had any experience with magic before, and the closest Sam has come to hunting is getting caught in the back-seat while John and Dean hunted.
Dean looks through John's journal. Apparently the trouble John's had with witches are all white witches trying to prove something to him, but John did not record the lessons they were trying to teach him.
---------------------
Getting ahold of Pastor Jim isn't easy, but by the afternoon Dean has him on the line. He never really understood how busy the life of a pastor was before he met Jim Murphy.
Jim asks how Dean is, and Dean just blurts it out because this isn't about him. His dad is in serious trouble here.
"Dad's cursed," he says, maybe a bit too loudly for a corner pay-phone.
Jim sighs and there's a squeak that could be him leaning back in his desk chair in his underground study.
"What did he get himself into now?"
"Sammy and I think it's a love spell. Some wicked black stuff. See, our neighbor, she's been sacrificing men who she has married every three years, and we're expecting another one in a couple weeks, and now she's latched onto Dad. It seems like Dad's trying to fight it but every time he tries his eyes glow just under the black part."
There's silence on the other side of the line, and then a gentle 'mm,' and Jim says, "That's strange. What is she sacrificing to?"
"We don't know. We were hoping you could help us. We can't exactly do it ourselves. Dad told us that we'd get into a lot of trouble if he found us doing anything hunting related," Dean explains.
"Really? Mm, that doesn't sound like John at all. Are you boys okay, besides? You want me to come down there?"
Dean shrugs. "We're fine. We just need to know how to break it. And do it fast."
Jim gives him some information about what he can, and gives him some numbers to call. Dean recognizes everyone on the list except for two, but the names are in John's journal.
Dean doesn't bother asking Jim what is going to happen to them if they can't get John out of it. It's too early for that yet.
---------------------
They learn from a man who goes by Jefferson that they are looking for a 'curse bag.' Basically, a burlap sack that is going to contain bones and graveyard dirt, and some flowers and other stuff. It's the one thing black magic has in common. You put a hit out on someone, you need to plant something in their possessions.
Sam and Dean comb their entire apartment, tricking their dad into thinking they are at school when they are really just in the alley waiting for the Impala to rumble away. Once it's gone, they search through everything they own and turn up nothing.
They start to think maybe it would be best to find counter spells instead of trying to reverse the one spell. They certainly aren't having any luck this way.
---------------------
John asks Dean to be his best man way too fucking early in the morning.
John will never blame Dean for the reactionary right hook.
Which actually works out beautifully since that's the one thing Dean's not going to apologize for.
---------------------
Dean agrees later that day after he's thought about it and come up with a plan. He tells John that the only way he'll agree to do it is if John goes to see Pastor Jim for couples counseling first, and then has Pastor Jim marry them.
John agrees right away, and he shows his son the ring he bought for Carly.
He gives Dean his own wedding band, which Dean slips onto his finger, wanting to cry because John has a tan line on his left ring finger that is probably never going to fade, except now maybe it might.
Carly is beautiful in her wedding dress.
------------------
"We're going to have a step-mom," Sam says. They've been sitting in the back-seat of the Impala for the last half hour waiting for John and Carly to come out. Any longer and Dean is going to go in and fake appendicitis again.
Packing up when they just moved in seemed kind of silly so Dean just bought everything with them. Sam did the same. If worse comes to worse, they are going to kidnap their father and take him as far away from Carly as they can. They have a man in southern Pennsylvania lined up to take them in until they can find a way to break it.
Pennsylvania isn't so far from Jim, but the toll booths in New England are murder. It's going to be hard to smuggle John unconscious (because with the power backing Carly's influence there's no way he wouldn't fight) through the state highways.
John would be pissed at his boys for drugging him, but Dean is fairly certain he would understand, if worse comes to worse.
"Yep," Dean agrees. "Looks like we are."
The ride up is uncomfortable for everyone. The boys seethe at Carly sitting shotgun, and she just doesn't understand it. She doesn't know what John does for living, so she doesn't suspect that they know, but by the time they hit the Iowa-Minnesota border Dean hopes she knows that taking Mary's place is going to make her miserable.
Carly tells Dean that he's going to go to college. She'll help him pay for it.
Dean tells her that there's no way in hell he's leaving her alone with Sam, and John bows his head, and then glares over the seat back. Again, his eyes shine a little bit of enchanted red, and Dean likes to imagine John's proud inside.
Carly gauges their reaction because she saw it, too. They're fairly good actors, really, and look puzzled at each other but like every civilian logic it away.
---------------------
Dean and Sam are spending a lot of sombre time together. It feels like a relative is on death row, like they're just waiting for something tragic to happen to one of their own. Like they're waiting for a funeral instead of a wedding.
The kids that live around Jim's parish are good friends with Sam and come visit as soon as they find out he's here, and the girl Dean spends his summers with comes calling as soon as she sees the black Impala drive up Main Street, because school just started and it's unusual timing.
Their dad is getting married.
Sitting out in Jim's backyard with the tire swing, Dean starts to hyperventilate. It's only happened a couple times to him, all in moments of panic, and the fact just sank in.
Their dad is getting married.
Sam doesn't know what to do but push Dean's head between his knees.
---------------
"He is definitally enchanted," Jim tells them, sighing and fingering his collar. He's just been talking to both of them about the sanctity of marriage, which Dean thinks is bogus since Carly's been married six times before, and oh yeah, is a serial killer.
"Can you help him?" Sam asks.
Jim shakes his head. "Never seen anything like this. Either whatever she did to John is some truely powerful black magic, or John's fighting so hard the original spell had to mutate in order to stay functional."
Dean looks at the ground. "There's gotta be something, man." Jim gives him a raised eyebrow, and Dean corrects himself, "sir."
Jim gives him a small smile. "I guess you are too big to be calling me 'sir' now, aren't you?"
"We can't live with a witch, Pastor Jim," Sam interrupts. "Dean's eighteen. Do you think he could take care of me?"
Jim says without thinking, "If the trend continues with the dead men, he might not have a choice."
They sit quietly in Jim's underground office in his church, surrounded by weapons and protection, and none of it can help them.
Sam starts to cry, even though it's in the pathetic way he's always cried, where he doesn't make any noise but tears up something awful.
-------------------
John and Carly spend a lot of time together around town before the wedding. Jim tried, he really did, but even cursed John is stubborn. The date is in a couple of days. All they need is a priest, and two of age witnesses, Dean and Jim's right hand woman who volunteers on Monday, the day of the wedding.
Dean is considering signing 'Sean Bean' on the marriage license just for the irony.
He's really trying to delay this thing. He's screwed up orders for flowers, and even booked another event when they're going to be in the church, but somehow that gets corrected.
Carly corners him and tells him that she's onto him.
For a second Dean is unsettled, because having a witch alone and angry with him is the last thing that ever happens to some hunters, and then he slips into sass, and asks, "Oh yeah?"
Instead of killing him, he gets the speech about how he will come to accept her as his mother.
Dean says, "give me a break," and she gives him a glare that gives him chills.
She says he'll come to accept it in time, and Dean just barely stops himself from asking, 'Was it the same for Mike Miller?'
John always forgives Dean for his sassy comebacks, no matter how inappropriate they are, but rarely does he forgive him for saying something stupid, no matter how satisfying it is.
------------------
The only reason why Carly isn't walking down the aisle when Dean figures it out is because Sam spilled grape juice down his front (on purpose). While John yells at Sam and gets him cleaned up and changed into another shirt, Dean sits on the hood of the Impala, the metal of the hood burning him just a little bit through his dress pants. The pain is helping him not cry, but the dust in the air isn't.
He prays to his dead mother, I'm sorry I couldn't stop it. I'm sorry I let this happen to your husband.
He looks up at the puffs of clouds drifting through the sky and takes a couple breaths. He runs through what he knows one last time, looking for anything significant. John getting married might not mean his death, but Dean knows John. If they manage to free John after he has been remarried, he will never forgive Dean, or himself.
Dean thinks, if a curse bag were the source of the spell, then it must be next to the person it is influencing. Being close to John means that it must have been in their apartment. Coming up to Jim's would've made it ineffective.
But it isn't ineffective. John is still very much in love.
Therefore, the curse bag must still be close to John.
Carly never had time to move the bag between when John announced they were going and when they left. She didn't seem concerned about it, though.
That must mean John took it with him, and there wasn't even a chance he could've left it behind.
What did they bring with them that they couldn't possibly have left behind, that wasn't in their apartment, but has been close enough to completely warp their father's mind?
It occurs to him, he's sitting on it.
He jumps off the hood of the car and opens the front driver's side door, throwing himself into it and looking desperately through the car's interior, finding things they lost long ago and things he hasn't thought about in years, but not a bag full of bones and dirt.
Then it occurs to him that John had stopped hunting, and why John stopped hunting, and he growls to himself, that bitch knew all along what we were!
He pops the trunk, lifts up the tire flap, and digs through the separators. Finally, at the bottom of a pile of knives, a little brown burlap bag, the seed whose vines completely ensared their father.
Dean pulls out his lighter, and doesn't hesitate, he lights the damn thing, drops it in the parishes' driveway, and makes it into the church just quick enough to hear the slap, to see the bride fall backwards, and to see his dad shake with anger, or fear.
John runs out past them, and Dean does not follow.
Dean was possessed when he was seventeen. He imagines it must be quite the same thing, when the only thing you want to do is to be alone so you can test to make sure you're really you.
The volenteer who was going to be the second marriage witness helps Carly up and brushes off her dress. She's cooing about how some men just get nervous, just get cold feet. Jim does what is expected of a priest and helps the bride, even though he's giving the boys a proud look.
"You found it," Sam says. "Where was it?"
"The trunk," Dean answers.
Jim comes up to them and says, "Let's give them some privacy," and ushers them out into the parish office.
Jim says, "That was cutting it kind of close, kiddo."
Dean makes a disgusted noise and explains, "A man can't decide when to have an epiphany," and Jim smiles big at him.
Sam says, "She's dangerous, Pastor Jim, and she's going to be desperate. We still don't know what she's sacrificing to."
Jim agrees, but disagrees. "Dangerous, yeah, but I don't think she was sacrificing anything. I've never heard of a woman forced to sacrifice a husband for powers before. But I'll keep an eye on her, just in case."
"Don't get yourself cursed, though, man, cause that would suck. Sir," Dean says.
"Don't worry about me, boys. You just look after your father. Don't go asking him about what happened, but be there. I've found it's always easier to talk to people when they come to you."
--------------
They leave Carly Miller unwed in Blue Earth, Minnesota, and she commits suicide a couple of days later in Jim's church, a single bullet to the heart, and it could just be a deranged mind, or it could be the power of three coming back to haunt her, but either way, she's dead.
Dean gives John the obituary at the same time he gives him his wedding ring back.
John slips the ring over his finger, and smiles as it catches the light. He pulls the newspaper clipping closer, and sighs at the picture, rubs his chin.
"You okay?" Dean asks, slidding into the seat across from John, over their new breakfast table.
"Yeah. M'okay," John says, and smiles ruefully at Daen.
"Gave us quite a scare, man."
John relfects. "I know. I should've recognized it as soon as I felt it."
"Why didn't you?"
John bows his head, and then reads the article, and Dean undestands he's not going to get an answer.
"You boys," John starts, looking at a stoplight change colors outside of their window. "You know I'd never...."
"Yeah. We know. The second you started paying for fancy resturants we knew something was wrong," Dean says, and John grins.
"Hey, I'm not that cheap. I took you somewhere nice for your eighteenth."
"Someplace nice still wasn't French."
"Would you have eaten anything French?"
Dean shrugs. "French fries."
"My point," John says. He stills, and then says, "Thanks, kiddo. For taking care of me. Takin' care of your brother."
Dean shifts his chair, uncomfortable at receiving praise. "Yeah, well. What was I supposed to do?"
"You did everything you were supposed to do. It was good work. You want to write about it?"
Dean is puzzled. "Write about it where?"
"My journal."
Dean gives John a look. His dad never goes anywhere without that thing. That's the most valuable thing John owns. "Seriously?"
John shrugs. "Of course. You worked this gig, not me. That book belongs as much to me as it does you boys. I'm just keeping it safe for you. One day it'll belong to you. Hopefully."
Dean feels a rising pride in his chest. "Okay. Sure. When?"
John gets up from the table and brings him the journal Sam very sneakily replaced after taking it. "As soon as you finish a hunt. If you remember something later put that in, too. I'm not expecting a literary masterpiece. Half the stuff I've written in it I wrote half asleep."
"So that explains the Yoda-like grammar, huh?"
John chuckles. "Yeah, well. I didn't want to forget anything. So stick to the facts, and what you know. And date it."
Dean nods. "Okay, sir."
John gives him a smile, touches his shoulder, and Dean picks up John's pen.
Author:
callitcruelPairings: Witch/John (non-con)
Rating: R
Category: Drama
Word Count: 7,000
Summary: Dean doesn't recognize anything's wrong at first, but eventually it becomes clear John is cursed. They only have a week to save him.
Notes/Warnings: Mature ideas and symbolism, but not themes.
Disclaimer: Supernatural is not my property.
Dean had trusted Carly Miller when she had first come knocking on their apartment door one high noon after they had just moved in. He'd been fooled by the warm pan of a homemade lasanga and a Crest-whitened smile that brought with it a 'welcome to the neighborhood.' He'd been taken in by a designer canvas jacket and modest shoes, her chunky bracelets and good humor.
They had talked, and by the end of it Dean had felt pretty good about their neighbor down the hall. He had fixed himself a plate of her homemade cooking, pulling out a plate from one of the moving boxes, and man, had it been a long time since John decided to cook anything that didn't come out of a box for them.
Dean trusted Carly Miller. He didn't know that during their thirty minute introduction he'd said too much. He couldn't possibly have known that lies he tells about Mary, about their past, all that glossing over, that was still too much. This was all Carly Miller needed to know: John Winchester was a single father.
Dean has only been hunting seriously for the last year. Too young at sixteen to help out with anything but small things, still too young for John to be comfortable letting him off on his own, now he's eighteen, and as tall as John, and sassy and quick-witted and John's more at ease with letting him fight.
John trusts him to handle things when he's not there.
John will never blame Dean, but it's not like Dean's going to ever see it as anything but his fault. Doesn't matter that witches are like viruses; you can't tell where or how bad they are until they have you in their clutches, spread deep down into every cell, and suddenly it isn't up to you how hard you fight or whether you recover or not.
Carly Miller is a virus. She's ebola. She's west nile. She's the Black Death, and Dean lets her into their home because her clothes are ironed and she smells like she's been gardening.
She walks under the salt line hidden above the wood framing the door, and that was good enough for Dean.
The lasanga is delicious.
He leaves some on the counter-top for John and Sam when they get home from researching what has been killing men once every three years for the last twenty-one.
-----------------------
John meets Carly the next morning, while he's trying to usher the boys out the front door and to the car. They aren't usually late for school in the mornings, but when everything is packed up in boxes that look the same, it tends to happen.
Not to Sam, because Sam marked everything very clearly. Dean's packing method is a little more slap-dash, and he's trying to find something in one of ten unmarked brown boxes that are equal sized.
John will never blame Dean for making them late so he runs into Carly Miller as she leaves for work.
Sam listens politely to Mrs. Miller talk to his father, and shifts back and forth. He cannot believe that for the thousandth time Dean didn't remember to unpack the night before. How hard is that, really, to have everything set to go in the morning?
Dean's there, then, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair frazzled but just enough and not enough to make it look intentional. Sam can't pull that off with his chin-length curls.
Dean smiles at Carly Miller, wishes her a good morning, and then the Winchester men are rushing down the hall to a new school for the year, tension running a bit too high between them to notice much about the average woman with keys in her hand and a nice business casual look.
-------------------------------
Dean doesn't know when Carly Miller got John. It might've been that morning for all he knows, some subtle thing she said was enough to completely entrance him, but there is no question that whatever she had done had been done by the time the after school specials are done that same afternoon.
John and Carly Miller are having drinks in their living room, sitting on the floor because they don't have furniture yet.
It is the most animated Dean's seen John in awhile, and while it makes Dean happy to see John happy, he's suspicious of the woman.
John will not blame Dean for not noticing the effect until it is too late. Until it's down deep into him and can't be removed by John recognizing what is happening.
It's stealthy, Carly Miller's method. It creeps up like the tide, and before you know it you're drowning. You could've saved yourself if you had only known.
The small talk continues past the gray dusk of fall, and then they go out to dinner, leaving a confused Sam and an unsettled Dean to make their own Kraft dinner.
-------------------------
Sam's picking at the skin on his fingers. It drives Dean insane and he doesn't understand it, but Sam does it unconsciously when he feels like he needs to think through something faster than he would like to. He bounces his foot, and then all motion stops as he looks up at Dean.
"Single parents date," he says.
Dean wants to hurt him. He closes his book after tucking a pen in the spine, and then rubs his eyes.
"He isn't," he says.
"What?"
"Dad isn't dating."
Sam doesn't believe him. "Really? Because he's out having dinner with her right now."
"That doesn't mean he's dating. She's probably connected to the dead men somehow."
Sam goes back to bouncing his foot on the carpet, and looking around at the semi-unpacked living room. There are brown water stains on the ceiling, but the paint isn't peeling. There's warm water, enough so that three people can shower one after the other. They have a bookshelf, but only a few books to put on it, but really, they aren't the type of books that should be put on display.
"I think it would be good for him," Sam says. "To have a girlfriend."
Dean is so furious that for a second he can't see. He doesn't say anything, but sighs quietly through his nose. When he was younger he would have freaked out at Sam. Being in control of his emotions is now part of his job description in an unofficial way, so he's gottten a lot better at clamping down on the urge. Doesn't mean the urge doesn't exist.
"Don't you think so?" Sam asks. "It'd keep him more grounded."
"You mean more sane," Dean says bitterly, but just enough so that it sounds like he meant it to be funny.
Sam shifts so that his legs are spread out in front of him. "Would that be a bad thing?"
Dean bites his tongue. "No. Not at all. It's never going to happen, but you know, getting some is definitally more important," he answers with a sincere voice but with a glare.
Sam shakes his head. "I didn't mean that. I mean, that's okay, that's what adults do, but I meant the emotional aspect. A stable relationship would be good."
"It isn't going to happen, Sammy."
"How do you know?" Sam asks. He asks it in a weird way, like there isn't emotion attached to the subject. It's just academic inquiry. It's just innocent curiosity. It's not like they're talking about the destruction of their way of life, or anything so small.
"Because plenty of women try but Dad is married. Why would he choose now to be a bachelor?"
"Maybe he really likes Mrs. Miller. And I don't think it counts if your spouse is dead. Mrs. Miller's husband is dead." Again, the careful wording so it isn't them they're talking about. That makes it okay.
"Mom being dead doesn't matter to Dad. Okay, poor wording. The fact that Mom's dead doesn't change the fact that Dad is still married to her in his mind. And he's the only one who matters in the decision whether to start dating again or not."
"You don't think we count?"
"Not in the decision. We can be a reason, but we don't have a say in the end."
Sam goes back to picking at the skin around his fingers.
"Some single parents get remarried," Sam states.
"He's not getting remarried."
"I know. I'm just saying, some kids have step-moms."
Dean cannot believe the audacity. He stares up at Sam unable to form any kind of response because the crime is that bad. What do you say to someone who says something so awful?
Sam realizes he struck a nerve, and shrugs it off. "I'm just saying."
"Is that what you want Sam? A mom? Dad not good enough for you? Cause I gotta tell you, Dad's pretty much your typical parent. Bossing you around, making rules, telling you that you can't stay out with your friends all night? Just because it's coming from a woman doesn't mean it's going to be any different," Dean explains. "You'd be getting two versions of Dad."
Sam shifts like he hadn't thought of that, and then concludes, "That doesn't matter. Parents set rules for their kids, I get that. I just object to how... unjust some of Dad's rules are. It's like we're living in a dictatorship."
Dean arches an eyebrow at Sam. "Because you're too young to know how to act."
"Oh, and you're living in a democracy?"
"Dad might be the Executive branch, and the Legislative branch, but I am so the Supreme Court," Dean declares proudly.
Sam grumbles, "Yeah, well, the Supreme Court has been slacking on it's duty lately."
Dean can't tell whether it's a jab at him or the actual Supreme Court. Probably both.
------------------------
Dean has watched enough movies to know that when a parent tells you to go to the movies and gives you the money to go it means they want some alone time.
Dean has also watched enough men destroyed by supernatural means to know that the supernatural can strike in weird ways.
He's thinking something in the new apartment, some kind of oppresion, maybe? It can't be possession because the salt lines are laid under the carpet. Even if they can't be seen they are there. It was the second thing Dean did after eating lasagna the first day.
Dean doesn't know what has come over his father, but until he's convinced that it's some normal puppy love, genuine interest strong enough to, in a single blow, erase Mary's memory and make John forget all about revenge, strong enough to put down roots and change 'just passing through' into 'why don't we buy a dog?' Dean is not going to let anything happen.
He's got a plan.
---------------------
He doesn't think he wants to do this, but Carly is unbuttoning his shirt and kissing his chin. He doesn't know why he's going along with it. He really should stop. Really. Right now.
His breath hitches and the world spins for a second, an uncomfortable vertigo where he loses his grip on the world, and then he gets with the program and puts his hands back around Carly's waist.
Why didn't he want to do this again?
She untucks his bottom layer from his pants, and again something rebels inside of him, only to tighten down almost instantly.
The sock puppet controls the hand.
Carly smiles against his neck before biting him gently, and suddenly it's Mary, they're newlyweds with a house, and a baby on the way, and it's been awhile since John's thought about that spot on his neck.
He breathes, "Yeah," even as he suffocates inside.
She has him under her, hot flesh touching his chest, the weight of another person that makes him feel something like loved. She is holding him down without physically doing so.
Why is he fighting this so much?
The world spins again, the zillionth time since they moved in, and he discovers there really isn't a reason at all.
You can't come to the surface to breathe if the tide keeps rising just above your head.
The door opens, and Dean says, "Hey, Dad, my side.... Whoa."
John looks up, startled to see his son in the doorway. The last time Dean walked in on John with a woman he was two. The world tilts, and even though he feels okay again, there's an itch under his skin, begging Dean to do something.
"You want to leave us alone, Dean?" he barks, and hey, he really shouldn't talk to his kid like that.
Dean grimaces. "But Dad, I've got a pain in my side," and puts his hand over his lower right side. "It's... really sharp," and then Dean blinks rapidly and looks at the ground and chokes back a whimper. "I think... I need to go to the E.R."
John is so close to breathing. Dean's lifeline almost reaches him, misses by millimeters, but close doesn't matter. Close means he's still drowning.
The world tilts again, and Dean's eyes widen looking at him under Carly.
"Stop being a brat, Dean. I know you don't like it," he is compelled to say, and gestures towards Carly, "but this is too much. I expected you to be more mature about this. Go take your brother out," he says.
"Honey," Carly breaths. "It could mean his appendix is about to burst. I think you should take him to the hospital. We can wait," she says, and John looks up into her beautiful brown eyes and finds a pressure lifted.
He really is concerned about his kid. He just couldn't feel it through the initial panic. That's all.
"Okay, kiddo, lets go," he says, and Carly lets him up just enough to take care of Dean.
-----------------------
A night later Dean is laying salt across the floors. There's strange activity in the area. Another man hasn't died yet, but the three years like clockwork isn't on the stroke of twelve yet. They're expecting a corpse soon, maybe in a week, unless they can find what is doing this.
John has stopped doing research on it, and Dean has had to pick up the slack. He attended his high school for only two days this year before he started taking sick days that were really hunting days. That's kind of a new recond.
John flips at him when he sees the salt. He tells Dean that they are not hunting anymore. All of it, the guns, the training, the miles were all foolish impulses. They're not doing it anymore.
Dean has never wanted to smack his dad more in his life, and anyone who knows John Winchester will tell you that is an amazing feat.
Dean tries to reason with his father who is clearly not in his right mind. He tells John that John has hunted enough things to make a lot of enemies, and that even if they stop hunting they will never be able to ignore simple precautions again. Bitterly, he asks, 'how are you going to explain that to your girlfriend?'
Again, the eerie sheen of red over John's eyes that Dean had first witnessed last night.
Dean knows John doesn't mean it.
Sam, who was reading quietly on makeshift furniture, gapes at their dad as he leaves the room. Sam is hurt when Dean asks him angrily, "I bet you're happy now, right? Not hunting? That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
Sam realizes Dean's just looking for an outlet. John does that with Dean, sometimes, too. Takes out his grief on someone close to him, trying to fight something that doesn't have a source, so he creates one.
Sam shakes his head. "No. Well, I thought.... Not like this I didn't. Something's wrong," Sam finally admits.
Sam is agreeing with him.
"Hallelujah," Dean rejoices, and grabs the rock salt bag, anger making the bag seem lighter than it actually is.
--------------------
Since John won't do it, Dean goes to the archives posing as an intern for the DA's office, which would be a hell of a lot more convincing if John were there to play a DA. He's only eighteen, he shouldn't even be thinking about law school yet. Still, most people aren't that attentive, don't look for the details. That or they fear the DA's office enough not to ask questions.
He combs through the police reports of their dead men. They all committed suicide on the same day, all six of them, in the exactly same way, three years apart. That sounds a lot to Dean like ritual sacrifice, but to what he doesn't know. Could it be a coven, maybe?
Dean makes a note to look up any local religious orders that developed twenty one to twenty three years ago.
The photos of the deaths are not gruesome. There is nothing wrong with the men. They're all the scruffy type of guy. A single bullet hole in their chests leaking blood is only the indication they aren't sleeping.
Right away Dean knows something is wrong. Men don't do something as pansy as shoot themselves in the heart. Men go for the brain. Chicks go for the heart, statistically, when they use a gun at all.
Dean looks at the victims names, and notices that the last name of the last man to die was 'Miller,' Ross Miller, age thirty eight.
Dean gets a horrible thought in his head: Carly Winchester.
Something clicks then, so intense and so obvious that Dean wants to shout to the library, "look what I found! Holy shit!" but he restrains himself.
He makes copies of the police reports and hastily makes his way over to the county public records. He doesn't bother being nice about it, just acts like a paralegal asshole to get his way inside. He's not trying to be mean, but he is seriously freaked out. If this were a normal case, if he's right, he wouldn't care. He'd keep his head in the game and not panic, and he's trying, but Carly Winchester just repeats itself in his head, again and again and again.
He checks the records to make sure he is right before he picks Sam up.
They need to keep this from Dad. If he finds out he might blurt it to Carly, who might just decide to push the sacrifice ahead a little.
Dillion McKenzie, age twenty, leaves widow Carla McKenzie.
Marcus Washington, age twenty three, leaves widow Carla Washington.
Raymond Anderson, age twenty seven, leaves widow Carla Anderson.
Spencer Jorgenson, age thrity three, leaves widow Carla Jorgenson.
Alan Henning, age thirty two, leaves widow Carla Henning and daughter Rebecca Henning, age five.
Ross Miller, age thirty eight, leaves widow Carla Miller and son Mike Miller, age eighteen, now deceased.
Dean takes a shaky breath.
John Winchester, age forty two, leaves widow Carla Winchester and sons Dean and Sam Winchester, who were stabbed in their sleep by a step mother driven insane with grief.
Yeah, right.
------------------------
The first thing Dean does when he picks Sam up from school is hand him a file with all his research. They park in the school lot, and Dean quietly panics while Sam reads through it.
Sam swears, "Christ Almighty."
Dean nods. "She's doing something to these men to make them love her, marry her, and a couple weeks later she conviences them to kill themselves for her."
Sam blinks wide eyes up at him. "She's done this to Dad, hasn't she?"
Dean nods and looks out his window.
Sam shifts through the files some more. "Why would she do this?"
"Because she's an awful old bitch who's messing with things she doesn't understand," Dean answers. He doesn't really trust himself to drive in his current head-space, but Sam doesn't have his permit yet. Not that that stops John from teaching Sam, it's just that the police are especially ticket-happy around the school grounds.
"We need to show this to Dad," Sam says. "He would know what to do."
"Dad doesn't hunt anymore," Dean mocks. He's so angry then. He's angry at Carly for attacking a family member. He's angry at Carly for erasing their mom from their dad's mind.
Sam sighs. "What do we do then?"
"I think she's a witch," Dean says. "Sacrificing someone to the source of her power, some god, or deity, or something black. Actually most likely something black. I doubt the good guys would except a sacrifice like that."
"We need to know more about her," Sam says, and then proposes, "We should look around her apartment. Maybe call Pastor Jim. Or Uncle Bobby. They would know."
Dean gets an idea that he tucks away for later.
"Yeah," he agrees. "Do you want to do that now?"
"What time does she get home from work?"
"Doesn't matter what time she gets home from work," Dean says. "She's going out with Dad again."
------------------
It isn't hard to break into Carly Miller's apartment. Apparently the landlord is a cheap bastard. It's the same key for the entire floor. Which is different, but a huge plus for them. Sam's lock-picking skills aren't so great (yet, he insists) and Dean doesn't like picking locks in public locations.
It's scarily normal inside Carly Miller's apartment. Simple furniture, wide and mostly empty, there are pictures on the mantle, six of them, all with Carla in a wedding dress in three year increments.
That's all the proof Dean needs, but then Sam speaks up about being innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt guilty.
"She might not know she's doing it. She could be possessed or a spirit could be following her and making these things happen."
Dean has a more bleak outlook to it. "Or, you know, the love spell she's using uses some serious power of three karma."
If Carly Miller is a witch, she's a very neat one. Everything in her apartment is spotless, and if she is seriously into the black stuff the pictures of sunsets lining the hallway, and the cutsy bathroom decour, and the tricked out kitchen, it's a very good cover.
Sam runs back to their room to grab John's EMF meter, and comes back with John's journal.
"What the hell Sammy? You know you can't take that! Dad is going to skin you alive!"
Sam hands it to him. "Dad isn't hunting anymore. Why does he care?"
"He's going to care when we fix this!"
"But the answer could be in here! Dad never told you about everything he's ever hunted, but it's in here. And phone numbers of some people we can call for help."
John won't ever blame his boys for touching the one thing that is exclusively his.
They rummage through the apartment, looking through every drawer, opening every canister in the kitchen, and checking everywhere for signs of witchcraft. They find a lot of herbs, but nothing suspicious; everything could be used for cooking. She owns enough cookbooks.
The EMF meter doesn't pick anything up, either, except in one room close to the north wall. It turns out to be a fuse box.
"It's a bust," Sam declares. "Unless she's hiding things under the floor, or in the walls, there's nothing here."
"She's been doing this for twenty one years, right?" Dean asks. "Probably means that she knows how much of everything she needs. Has the spell memorized, too."
Sam says, "Recite the Preamble to the Constitution for me."
Dean gives him a look like he's crazy. "What?"
"You had to memorize it when you were fifteen, didn't you? Three years ago? What was it?"
Dean most definitely does not remember all of the Preamble, and he might be able to do it but there's no way he's going to humiliate himself trying.
Sam gives him such a smug look, though, and Dean cracks. "We the People of the United States of America hereby establish, in order to form a more perfect Union, in order to secure domestic Tranquility, .... something, pursuit of justice, for us and our prosperity, something, do ordain this Constitution for the United States of America."
Sam actually bursts out laughing, and okay, kind of worth it to see Sam relax a bit. "Not quite, Dean."
"Bitch," Dean swears at him. "What's your point? She's had to learn it six times. I bet she could do it from memory. She would've had to, right? She cursed Dad without saying anything."
"That we know about."
Dean breathes out a sigh. "Why do you have to be such a brat all the time?"
"I'm just pointing stuff out."
"Yeah, well, point out her spell-book. That would be a lot more helpful."
Sam shrugs him off, and wanders around her room. "If I were her where would I keep my book? Where do I keep stuff I don't want people to know about?"
"You don't."
"That you know about," Sam jibes.
"So what, you got stuff you're keeping from me and Dad?" Dean asks. He tucks the EMF meter into a pocket.
Sam shrugs. "I might be." Sam looks critically at the bookshelf, and pauses. It's covered in a light layer of dust except in one place. Sam tilts his head to look at the book title.
"Mrs. Miller is a receptionist, right?" Sam asks.
"Hell if I know," Dean answers. "Why? You got something?"
Sam says, "Dean, this book isn't bound. It's a paperback binding from a Kinko's. Do you know how much those cost?"
"Why would I know that? How do you know that?"
Sam rolls his eyes. "What else am I going to do while you and Dad forge fedreal documents?"
Dean pulls the book out and Sam leans over to look at the diagrams and instructions for some deep black magic.
"Great," Dean breathes. "Great."
"Find whatever it is she put on Dad," Sam instructs him. "If we know what she did we can call it off."
They spend some time looking at it, and decide that this is way over them. Dean hasn't had any experience with magic before, and the closest Sam has come to hunting is getting caught in the back-seat while John and Dean hunted.
Dean looks through John's journal. Apparently the trouble John's had with witches are all white witches trying to prove something to him, but John did not record the lessons they were trying to teach him.
---------------------
Getting ahold of Pastor Jim isn't easy, but by the afternoon Dean has him on the line. He never really understood how busy the life of a pastor was before he met Jim Murphy.
Jim asks how Dean is, and Dean just blurts it out because this isn't about him. His dad is in serious trouble here.
"Dad's cursed," he says, maybe a bit too loudly for a corner pay-phone.
Jim sighs and there's a squeak that could be him leaning back in his desk chair in his underground study.
"What did he get himself into now?"
"Sammy and I think it's a love spell. Some wicked black stuff. See, our neighbor, she's been sacrificing men who she has married every three years, and we're expecting another one in a couple weeks, and now she's latched onto Dad. It seems like Dad's trying to fight it but every time he tries his eyes glow just under the black part."
There's silence on the other side of the line, and then a gentle 'mm,' and Jim says, "That's strange. What is she sacrificing to?"
"We don't know. We were hoping you could help us. We can't exactly do it ourselves. Dad told us that we'd get into a lot of trouble if he found us doing anything hunting related," Dean explains.
"Really? Mm, that doesn't sound like John at all. Are you boys okay, besides? You want me to come down there?"
Dean shrugs. "We're fine. We just need to know how to break it. And do it fast."
Jim gives him some information about what he can, and gives him some numbers to call. Dean recognizes everyone on the list except for two, but the names are in John's journal.
Dean doesn't bother asking Jim what is going to happen to them if they can't get John out of it. It's too early for that yet.
---------------------
They learn from a man who goes by Jefferson that they are looking for a 'curse bag.' Basically, a burlap sack that is going to contain bones and graveyard dirt, and some flowers and other stuff. It's the one thing black magic has in common. You put a hit out on someone, you need to plant something in their possessions.
Sam and Dean comb their entire apartment, tricking their dad into thinking they are at school when they are really just in the alley waiting for the Impala to rumble away. Once it's gone, they search through everything they own and turn up nothing.
They start to think maybe it would be best to find counter spells instead of trying to reverse the one spell. They certainly aren't having any luck this way.
---------------------
John asks Dean to be his best man way too fucking early in the morning.
John will never blame Dean for the reactionary right hook.
Which actually works out beautifully since that's the one thing Dean's not going to apologize for.
---------------------
Dean agrees later that day after he's thought about it and come up with a plan. He tells John that the only way he'll agree to do it is if John goes to see Pastor Jim for couples counseling first, and then has Pastor Jim marry them.
John agrees right away, and he shows his son the ring he bought for Carly.
He gives Dean his own wedding band, which Dean slips onto his finger, wanting to cry because John has a tan line on his left ring finger that is probably never going to fade, except now maybe it might.
Carly is beautiful in her wedding dress.
------------------
"We're going to have a step-mom," Sam says. They've been sitting in the back-seat of the Impala for the last half hour waiting for John and Carly to come out. Any longer and Dean is going to go in and fake appendicitis again.
Packing up when they just moved in seemed kind of silly so Dean just bought everything with them. Sam did the same. If worse comes to worse, they are going to kidnap their father and take him as far away from Carly as they can. They have a man in southern Pennsylvania lined up to take them in until they can find a way to break it.
Pennsylvania isn't so far from Jim, but the toll booths in New England are murder. It's going to be hard to smuggle John unconscious (because with the power backing Carly's influence there's no way he wouldn't fight) through the state highways.
John would be pissed at his boys for drugging him, but Dean is fairly certain he would understand, if worse comes to worse.
"Yep," Dean agrees. "Looks like we are."
The ride up is uncomfortable for everyone. The boys seethe at Carly sitting shotgun, and she just doesn't understand it. She doesn't know what John does for living, so she doesn't suspect that they know, but by the time they hit the Iowa-Minnesota border Dean hopes she knows that taking Mary's place is going to make her miserable.
Carly tells Dean that he's going to go to college. She'll help him pay for it.
Dean tells her that there's no way in hell he's leaving her alone with Sam, and John bows his head, and then glares over the seat back. Again, his eyes shine a little bit of enchanted red, and Dean likes to imagine John's proud inside.
Carly gauges their reaction because she saw it, too. They're fairly good actors, really, and look puzzled at each other but like every civilian logic it away.
---------------------
Dean and Sam are spending a lot of sombre time together. It feels like a relative is on death row, like they're just waiting for something tragic to happen to one of their own. Like they're waiting for a funeral instead of a wedding.
The kids that live around Jim's parish are good friends with Sam and come visit as soon as they find out he's here, and the girl Dean spends his summers with comes calling as soon as she sees the black Impala drive up Main Street, because school just started and it's unusual timing.
Their dad is getting married.
Sitting out in Jim's backyard with the tire swing, Dean starts to hyperventilate. It's only happened a couple times to him, all in moments of panic, and the fact just sank in.
Their dad is getting married.
Sam doesn't know what to do but push Dean's head between his knees.
---------------
"He is definitally enchanted," Jim tells them, sighing and fingering his collar. He's just been talking to both of them about the sanctity of marriage, which Dean thinks is bogus since Carly's been married six times before, and oh yeah, is a serial killer.
"Can you help him?" Sam asks.
Jim shakes his head. "Never seen anything like this. Either whatever she did to John is some truely powerful black magic, or John's fighting so hard the original spell had to mutate in order to stay functional."
Dean looks at the ground. "There's gotta be something, man." Jim gives him a raised eyebrow, and Dean corrects himself, "sir."
Jim gives him a small smile. "I guess you are too big to be calling me 'sir' now, aren't you?"
"We can't live with a witch, Pastor Jim," Sam interrupts. "Dean's eighteen. Do you think he could take care of me?"
Jim says without thinking, "If the trend continues with the dead men, he might not have a choice."
They sit quietly in Jim's underground office in his church, surrounded by weapons and protection, and none of it can help them.
Sam starts to cry, even though it's in the pathetic way he's always cried, where he doesn't make any noise but tears up something awful.
-------------------
John and Carly spend a lot of time together around town before the wedding. Jim tried, he really did, but even cursed John is stubborn. The date is in a couple of days. All they need is a priest, and two of age witnesses, Dean and Jim's right hand woman who volunteers on Monday, the day of the wedding.
Dean is considering signing 'Sean Bean' on the marriage license just for the irony.
He's really trying to delay this thing. He's screwed up orders for flowers, and even booked another event when they're going to be in the church, but somehow that gets corrected.
Carly corners him and tells him that she's onto him.
For a second Dean is unsettled, because having a witch alone and angry with him is the last thing that ever happens to some hunters, and then he slips into sass, and asks, "Oh yeah?"
Instead of killing him, he gets the speech about how he will come to accept her as his mother.
Dean says, "give me a break," and she gives him a glare that gives him chills.
She says he'll come to accept it in time, and Dean just barely stops himself from asking, 'Was it the same for Mike Miller?'
John always forgives Dean for his sassy comebacks, no matter how inappropriate they are, but rarely does he forgive him for saying something stupid, no matter how satisfying it is.
------------------
The only reason why Carly isn't walking down the aisle when Dean figures it out is because Sam spilled grape juice down his front (on purpose). While John yells at Sam and gets him cleaned up and changed into another shirt, Dean sits on the hood of the Impala, the metal of the hood burning him just a little bit through his dress pants. The pain is helping him not cry, but the dust in the air isn't.
He prays to his dead mother, I'm sorry I couldn't stop it. I'm sorry I let this happen to your husband.
He looks up at the puffs of clouds drifting through the sky and takes a couple breaths. He runs through what he knows one last time, looking for anything significant. John getting married might not mean his death, but Dean knows John. If they manage to free John after he has been remarried, he will never forgive Dean, or himself.
Dean thinks, if a curse bag were the source of the spell, then it must be next to the person it is influencing. Being close to John means that it must have been in their apartment. Coming up to Jim's would've made it ineffective.
But it isn't ineffective. John is still very much in love.
Therefore, the curse bag must still be close to John.
Carly never had time to move the bag between when John announced they were going and when they left. She didn't seem concerned about it, though.
That must mean John took it with him, and there wasn't even a chance he could've left it behind.
What did they bring with them that they couldn't possibly have left behind, that wasn't in their apartment, but has been close enough to completely warp their father's mind?
It occurs to him, he's sitting on it.
He jumps off the hood of the car and opens the front driver's side door, throwing himself into it and looking desperately through the car's interior, finding things they lost long ago and things he hasn't thought about in years, but not a bag full of bones and dirt.
Then it occurs to him that John had stopped hunting, and why John stopped hunting, and he growls to himself, that bitch knew all along what we were!
He pops the trunk, lifts up the tire flap, and digs through the separators. Finally, at the bottom of a pile of knives, a little brown burlap bag, the seed whose vines completely ensared their father.
Dean pulls out his lighter, and doesn't hesitate, he lights the damn thing, drops it in the parishes' driveway, and makes it into the church just quick enough to hear the slap, to see the bride fall backwards, and to see his dad shake with anger, or fear.
John runs out past them, and Dean does not follow.
Dean was possessed when he was seventeen. He imagines it must be quite the same thing, when the only thing you want to do is to be alone so you can test to make sure you're really you.
The volenteer who was going to be the second marriage witness helps Carly up and brushes off her dress. She's cooing about how some men just get nervous, just get cold feet. Jim does what is expected of a priest and helps the bride, even though he's giving the boys a proud look.
"You found it," Sam says. "Where was it?"
"The trunk," Dean answers.
Jim comes up to them and says, "Let's give them some privacy," and ushers them out into the parish office.
Jim says, "That was cutting it kind of close, kiddo."
Dean makes a disgusted noise and explains, "A man can't decide when to have an epiphany," and Jim smiles big at him.
Sam says, "She's dangerous, Pastor Jim, and she's going to be desperate. We still don't know what she's sacrificing to."
Jim agrees, but disagrees. "Dangerous, yeah, but I don't think she was sacrificing anything. I've never heard of a woman forced to sacrifice a husband for powers before. But I'll keep an eye on her, just in case."
"Don't get yourself cursed, though, man, cause that would suck. Sir," Dean says.
"Don't worry about me, boys. You just look after your father. Don't go asking him about what happened, but be there. I've found it's always easier to talk to people when they come to you."
--------------
They leave Carly Miller unwed in Blue Earth, Minnesota, and she commits suicide a couple of days later in Jim's church, a single bullet to the heart, and it could just be a deranged mind, or it could be the power of three coming back to haunt her, but either way, she's dead.
Dean gives John the obituary at the same time he gives him his wedding ring back.
John slips the ring over his finger, and smiles as it catches the light. He pulls the newspaper clipping closer, and sighs at the picture, rubs his chin.
"You okay?" Dean asks, slidding into the seat across from John, over their new breakfast table.
"Yeah. M'okay," John says, and smiles ruefully at Daen.
"Gave us quite a scare, man."
John relfects. "I know. I should've recognized it as soon as I felt it."
"Why didn't you?"
John bows his head, and then reads the article, and Dean undestands he's not going to get an answer.
"You boys," John starts, looking at a stoplight change colors outside of their window. "You know I'd never...."
"Yeah. We know. The second you started paying for fancy resturants we knew something was wrong," Dean says, and John grins.
"Hey, I'm not that cheap. I took you somewhere nice for your eighteenth."
"Someplace nice still wasn't French."
"Would you have eaten anything French?"
Dean shrugs. "French fries."
"My point," John says. He stills, and then says, "Thanks, kiddo. For taking care of me. Takin' care of your brother."
Dean shifts his chair, uncomfortable at receiving praise. "Yeah, well. What was I supposed to do?"
"You did everything you were supposed to do. It was good work. You want to write about it?"
Dean is puzzled. "Write about it where?"
"My journal."
Dean gives John a look. His dad never goes anywhere without that thing. That's the most valuable thing John owns. "Seriously?"
John shrugs. "Of course. You worked this gig, not me. That book belongs as much to me as it does you boys. I'm just keeping it safe for you. One day it'll belong to you. Hopefully."
Dean feels a rising pride in his chest. "Okay. Sure. When?"
John gets up from the table and brings him the journal Sam very sneakily replaced after taking it. "As soon as you finish a hunt. If you remember something later put that in, too. I'm not expecting a literary masterpiece. Half the stuff I've written in it I wrote half asleep."
"So that explains the Yoda-like grammar, huh?"
John chuckles. "Yeah, well. I didn't want to forget anything. So stick to the facts, and what you know. And date it."
Dean nods. "Okay, sir."
John gives him a smile, touches his shoulder, and Dean picks up John's pen.
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