Crown of Thorns

Nov 03, 2007 19:35


Title - Crown of Thorns

Summary - It was a demon John wasn't expecting, a hunt that he didn't count on going down exactly how it did. All he knew is that this demon got into his mind, twisted his thoughts around into a pile so dark that he couldn't even remember his own sons. This demon who somehow managed to take away everything he held dear, to make him lash out against his oldest son. It was this demon who changed his youngest son's opinion of his father forever.

Rating - PG-13

Part of 'The Dark Horse' series

Chapter Index
"Crown of Thorns"

"Chapter Two: Saigon Moment"

It wasn't uncommon to wake up in an uncomfortable place. It wasn't so strange that John woke up feeling as though he'd went ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Except, usually when such a morning occurred, he could remember the previous night rather well after a couple of seconds of sheer confusion. Instead, John woke up slouched against a brick building with a pounding headache. He couldn't remember the night before no matter how long he rested against that wall.

It wasn't the first time that this had happened. On the other hand, it had been years ago before he got married to Mary and after her death that he'd get two sheets to the wind and pass out on some random street or alley. Although, he didn't drink himself into unconsciousness anymore. Sure, he'd had a beer here or there, but he had responsibilities. He had two kids who couldn't go around lugging their drunken father about. Not only that, but John was a hunter - a determined hunter. He never allowed alcohol to get in the way of finding Mary's killer.

So while slumped against the brick, he couldn't come up with a logical explanation of what happened the night before. It wasn't alcohol or drugs - he was fairly positive. He hadn't experimented with drugs since he was a teenager. Then again, it was the sixties and seventies when he was a teenager so it wasn't that out of the norm.

What really bugged him is that he remembered packing up to leave for South Dakota. He could remember Dean convincing him to let him drive - his oldest snatching the keys right out of his hand with a I got you smirk gracing his features. That was it. Nothing else. His mind was just formed this huge blank inside his head.

"Dad!" he heard Dean scream.

"Dad?" he then heard Sam shout.

"Over here!"

John arched his back into the brick wall as he forced himself off the cold ground. His legs felt like jelly, his bodyweight pushing him down to the ground. What the hell happened? He heard footfalls scampering against the pavement and watched his sons appear at the entrance of the alleyway. Dean rushed forward, Sammy staying back slightly confused.

"Dad! What happened?"

Dean fell to the floor and gripped his father's jacket in his fists. He helped hoist his father onto his feet, taking in the extra weight. The only thing that eerily registered in John's mind was his son's scent. Sammy walked slowly towards the two, his brow furrowed.

"Sammy, go get your things for school. You're going in," John said sternly as he leaned his weight into his eldest son.

"Dad…?"

"Dammit, Sam, you're going to be late!"

He vaguely watched as the kid scampered off around the corner. Whenever he yelled at Sammy, Dean always got this look on his face. A look that read plain and clear: What the hell are you doing talking to Sammy like that? John pushed his son away, his back slouching against the brick wall.

"What happened?"

"You went to talk to see the latest victim and never came home," Dean replied. "Don't tell me it got to you?"

"You're going to do everything that I tell you to do, you got that?"

"Dad?"

"Dean, everything I tell you, you will do without question." John searched his son's face until the kid became submissive. "You will not tell Sammy I'm infected or - or whatever."

"Dad, we can't ju-"

"Sam will not know anything. He's just a ba- he's too young."

The plan started to formulate in his head before he could stop it. There was one unspoken rule between John and Dean: protect Sammy. His baby rarely knew what was going on, the dangers of the job were understated in his mind. Sam was the youngest, the pure child who could not remember the feel of fire burning his skin or the absence of Mary.

"You and Sammy will be fine," John said mostly to convince himself. "You're eighteen, Dude, you can do this."

"Do what exactly?"

"Take care of Sammy. You've been doing it your whole life."

"What? You-you're just going to say sayonara and leave us to fend for ourselves?"

"No, Dean, that's not what I'm going to do, and I'm hating this attitude of yours."

There was something different inside of John. A dark twist was filling his gut the longer he stared at his son. There was a yearning to grab the kid by the throat and strangle him to death. He could almost taste the irony tang of blood if Dean's head smashed into the brick wall. Closing his eyes, John tried to push away the sinister thoughts clouding his mind about killing Dean to feast on his blood.

As though in a dream, he drove his sons to the local high school. Dean rode shotgun as his green eyes burned into his father. Cutting the engine, John kept his eyes forward as he gave his usually speech to his sons: keep her head down and nose clean, don't do drugs or have sex on school property (mostly directed towards his oldest), do well, and don't sleep in class. Except his attempt to keep everything normal battled within him. His voice wavered as images of ripping Sam's throat out pulsated in his mind.

"Whatever," Sam scoffed as he slammed the back door to the Impala.

"Dad?"

"I'm going to get custody papers ready," the reply was half-hearted as his knuckles slowly turned white on the steering wheel, "just in case."

"Dad, look, you would never hurt us."

"I'd like to believe that, Dude, but I'm fucked up in the head, and I could never forgive myself if something happened to you boys."

"Don't get out of dodge just yet, okay?" A beat passed before one word that rarely ever escaped Dean's lips vibrated in the car, "Please."

Involuntarily, his head jerked yes as Dean slowly got out of the Impala with his bag slung lazily over his shoulder. John watched as he walked towards Sam who was waiting impatiently for his brother on the front steps to the school. Turning the key in the ignition, he maneuvered the car back onto the streets of Sioux Falls.

First things first, he had to call Jim Murphy and get the guy on the know how. If he was going down, Jim needed to be there to help his boys pick up the pieces. Shoving the key into the apartment lock, John nearly took the door off the hinges in his hurry to get to a phone.

"Whoa, Johnny, you got neighbors," a female voice tauntingly rang.

Looking up, John saw a tall woman with dark hair in a skintight black dress sitting on the ragged couch. Dropping the keys onto the small table, John reached behind him to grip the gun that was usually tucked between the flesh of his back and the waistband of his jeans.

"What? You're going to shoot me, John?" she forged a fake sense of surprise. "Really, guns don't work on demons. I thought you, of all people, would know that."

"Yeah, well, we'll see about that."

Even though John knew the gun really was useless, he held the heavy metal with both hands. He pointed it at the demon as he formulated a plan on how to trap it and send the thing back to hell where it belonged.

"I shouldn't be doing this, but I got a soft spot for you, John. I have a thing for depressed handsome men. I also got a thing against… well, the demon you're looking to bark your revenge on."

The gun stayed steady in John's hands as he glared at the demon in front of him. There was a dark smirk gracing her features as her eyes clouded over black. Revenge? There were few things John constituted as revenge in his book: the thing that murdered Mary and anything that so much as touched a hair on his sons' heads.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just send you down to the pit now."

"I've heard great tales of you, John Winchester. So many demons and the like seem fit to build you up into this grand image of a classic hero - a hero who is not without his flaws. They've been talking about you ever since that hunt you went on with that Harvelle hunter - the guy that you pointed a gun at and shot point blank in-between the eyes without so much as a flinch."

"You think you know somethin' about something? You don't know crap."

A puff of air escaped her lips in a pitiful laugh. The corner of her mouth twitched upwards as John secured his gun. His finger pushed back on the metal, so eager to click it all the way back and watch the bullet crash into her.

"I know you shot at your friend who was being possessed by a demon. I know you didn't like the things that were said to you about Mary and her family."

He could remember Mary's family clearly, could remember the mystery that surrounded the Seraph family. She never let him in, never told him the truth about her life. When she died, John guessed what her shady secret was. He knew deep down in his soul but never allowed himself to believe the truth in it until that demon made it real with four words.

"Bill was already dead when I shot him," John said steadily.

"Don't flatter yourself, John, by thinking you put your friend down like a sick dog. Those little scratches weren't going to kill him - but, hey, whatever gets you through the day I suppose."

"You're asking to die, aren't you?"

"Go ahead and shoot the meat suit - kill an innocent girl in the process. That's what you do, Johnny. You're a murderer. You go on this crusade of killing everything 'evil' except half the crap you kill doesn't deserve to be sentenced to death. How many possessed humans have you slaughtered over the years? Oops, the innocent human didn't make it. Oh well. How many people did you kill in Vietnam? Those who weren't possessed and you didn't turn a shy eye when shooting them with your rifle."

"I'm not squeamish, and I believe in survival of the fittest."

"Hmm, maybe you were Darwin in a past life."

"Funny," John said sourly. "You want to tell me why the hell you're here?"

She stood up from the couch, her hands smoothing out the creases in her dress. Head tilted down, her mane of dark hair clouded her face.

"I really am sorry you're going to kill your kids," she whispered. "Sammy would have been a gre-"

Before she could finish the sentence, John pulled his finger back completely to allow the barrel to burst out of the gun. The bullet wound gushed blood out of her right breast as the shot was intended to hit her heart.

"You shot me?" she screeched. "I'm trying to help you and you, John, shoot me?"

"You know, I really don't like help. I'm more of a do-it-yourself kind of guy."

"Fine, kill your kids. See if I care."

Her mouth opened wide as black smoke wafted out. A muffled scream filled the room as the body slammed into the ground. The girl gasped out coughs as blood seeped out of the corners of her mouth. Her body shook as her hands feebly grabbed at her chest to where the bullet lay imbedded.

John vaguely remembered situating the girl - who couldn't be more than twenty-five - into his arms. Her body cradled against his chest, her blood staining his t-shirt. He could barely remember handing her off to a nervous looking intern at the local hospital claiming that he found her on the side of the road. He stood there shell-shocked, covered in the girl's blood, as the words the demon spoke to him pulsed in his head.

Turning around, he walked towards the Impala before the police had a chance to talk to him. He slid into the front seat and noted the blood that covered the steering wheel and the splash of crimson on the passenger window. The key twisted in the ignition as John absentmindedly thought if he only shot the girl because his mind was screwed up and not because of who he was.

Wiping his prints off the gun he used to shoot the girl, he disposed of it ten miles away from the apartment. After his favorite gun lay in a dumpster outside of a dodgy strip club, John went back to the apartment to make the phone call he intended to make earlier that day.

"I need you in Sioux Falls," he said urgently before a hello was even uttered from the other end.

"John?"

"I need you to look out for Dean and Sammy for awhile."

"John, I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?"

"I'm on my way to the airport. I have a flight leaving for England."

"England? So what? England is more important than my boys? The boys whom you affectionately tell your whole parish are your nephews?"

"No, John, this is not more important than Dean and Sam. There was an incident, and I've been called. Bobby will-"

"You know damn well that Bobby and I don't talk anymore. You know damn well that that bastard sold my kids out!"

"Bobby didn't sell out Dean and Sam. He merely-"

"What? You're taking his side now after all this time? Fine, Jim, go to England. I'm sure they need you more."

The receiver slammed down onto the cradle. He felt as the blood pulsated in his ears. His hand hovered over the phone as though he half expected the answers to reveal themselves.

He didn't know how long he sat in the chair in the living room waiting for the boys to get home from school. His mind screamed at him to pack up the boys and leave. His body, on the other hand, forced him to sit in the chair with an excitement at the prospect of the boys returning home. The doorknob jiggled.

"Thanks for picking us up," Sam bit out bitterly. "We waited for you."

"Sam, go do your homework. I'll call you when dinner's ready," Dean spoke softly as he gently pushed his baby brother in the direction of the bedroom.

"No, I want to know what was so important that you left your sons waiting outside of a school without first telling us you couldn't pick us up!"

"Sam, would you go to your room already?" Dean nearly shouted.

"Of course, you'd side with him."

"I'm not sidin' with anyone! Go do your homework!"

John watched as his youngest huffed before storming out of the living room. Several beats passed before the door slammed shut. The feeling of wanting to rip out the insides of his sons filled him again. The very prospect of killing them was as rich in his mind as earlier in the day.

"I want you to pack up yours and Sammy's stuff," John started slowly as he dug into his jean pocket. "Take the Impala and go wherever you want."

"What?" questioned Dean as he easily caught the keys that were thrown at him. "What you are talking about? I thought we decide-"

"We didn't decide anything. I'm the parent. I decide what you two do."

"I've done everything you've ever asked me, but I can't do this. I can't just take Sammy to some random state while you die."

"I don't care if others die at my hands. I don't care if I die. I can't live with you two dead. Call me selfish - whatever. You'll do what I tell you to do."

"No, Sir. I'll get Sammy out of here. I'll take him wherever you want me to take him, but I'm coming back for you."

The longer John stared at Dean, the closer he got to understanding his son. The kid, all of the sudden, looked juvenile and small as he openly defied his father. A deep, dark part of John found that appealing.

"You know, when you were younger, all I had to do to get you and Sammy to do what I wanted was bribe you with cookies or chocolate." A forced smile graced his face. "I know this is… I just wish I could pull you two in a hug and make everything better like when you were kids. That's all it really took."

John stood up; his hand rubbed the stubble that graced his chin. His eyes swiftly glanced in the direction of the bedroom before they landed back on Dean. The kid looked torn between protecting his brother by getting the hell out of dodge and protecting his father from something neither of them could stop.

"Jim's out of town, but I don't think he'd care if you two crashed at his place for awhile."

"Dad…"

"Don't make this any harder than it has to be, Son."

What happened next was something that John didn't expect - something that he didn't even think Dean expected. All he knew is that his oldest son had latched his arms around his neck in a death grip.

"I'm not leaving," whispered Dean as his breath danced on his father's ear.

That's when the beast inside of John snapped.

Author's Notes - I've been so incredibly busy, so I'm sorry I haven't been able to update. Hopefully another chapter will not take this long. Thank you for all the reviews - I believe I replied to them all. Sorry for the mistakes that might be above. I have just found a beta who will be helping with future chapter, and I wanted to get this up for all of you. Leave a little something.

crown, fanfiction, dark horse

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