Title: You Must Remember This
Author:
strangevisitor7Beta:
Pen37 Rated: PG
Fandom: Supernatural & Highlander: Immortal!Dean universe
Characters: JD Winchester, Richie Ryan. Mentions of Dean Winchester and Chloe Sullivan. Dean/Chloe
Prompt: Written for
Spawnfic_tues & Prompt #39 Taste for
crossovers100Disclaimer: The characters you know and love all belong to their respective creators. JD is mine.
A/N: Other spawn adventures in the Immortal!Dean Universe can be found
here.
A/N2: The story of why Chloe left is
Nobody’s Girl but you don’t have to read that to read this. This version of Chloe was borrowed from
pen37's
Chloe and the Immortals verse
Summary: JD finds some photos of a blonde woman with Uncle Dean. He convinces Richie to tell him all about her.
You Must Remember This
JD popped the trunk of Uncle Dean’s Impala. The hunt was finished and it was his responsibility to make sure the weapons cache was restocked and ready for the next case.
He lifted the false bottom and propped it up with the shotgun as he’d seen his uncle do dozens of times. As he attempted to wedge the gun in place the butt of the weapon snagged on the lining tearing it along the seam.
“Shit!” JD moved his makeshift prop in order to get a look at the damage. “Just great. How am I going to fix that?” he mumbled.
As he ran his hand along the torn seam, he felt a bulge under the lining. If the seam was already weak, Uncle Dean couldn’t be mad that he’d ripped it further. Reaching in, he pulled the object from its hiding place.
It was a small black book. JD flipped it open. No, not a book, a photo album.
The first picture was of Uncle Richie and a blonde woman. From the angle and closeness of the shot, JD could tell that Richie was holding the camera in his hand trying to take a picture of the two of them; their faces were pressed close together and they were laughing.
As he flipped the pages, there were more photos of the blonde woman, one with dad and one with Uncle Duncan. These were taken at a distance and the subjects were unaware of the photographer.
The next pages were pictures of Uncle Dean and the mystery woman. In fact the rest of the photos appeared to be of his uncle and the blonde. In some they were laughing, in others they were definitely arguing, but it was the last photo that brought him up short.
The photographer, which he assumed to be Uncle Richie based on the first photo, had captured Uncle Dean watching the blonde. Uncle Dean had a look of sheer joy on his face.
“No way,” JD whispered as he studied his uncle’s face. It came to him immediately that Uncle Dean loved this woman. He flipped back through the other photos and he saw it again and again. Even in the ones where they were yelling at each other, their body language suggested the attraction that was so obvious in the final photo.
The photos had the date emblazoned in red in the corner. Who ever she was they’d known her over twenty-five years ago. JD was well aware of his Uncle’s penchant for one night stands and he’d never heard of Dean spending any significant time with a woman let alone falling in love.
So, who was this mortal woman, who had captured Uncle Dean's heart and why had he never seen her picture before?
JD tapped the small album against his palm trying to decide what to do. He knew if he told Mule about it, his brother would tell him it was none of their business, to put it back and forget about it. Like that was even an option, JD scoffed.
He couldn’t ask Uncle Dean. He’d never get the truth. Heck, Uncle Dean would probably insist he couldn’t even remember the name of some blonde chick he’d met almost three decades ago.
Curiosity was eating at him. He had to know who she was and what happened to her. Smiling he pulled his phone out and dialed Uncle Richie’s number.
JD had no doubts that Uncle Richie would spill the story. If there was one thing he’d learned over the years, it was that his uncle had a tough time saying no to a Winchester, regardless of which one was asking.
************************************
Richie entered the coffee shop and scanned the crowd for JD. His nephew had been insistent that he had to talk to him - alone. That had put Richie on high alert. What ever JD wanted to discuss couldn’t be good and would most likely not sit well with Sam or Dean or both.
He spotted his nephew in the corner, back to the wall so he could see all the exits. Richie smiled and made his way over.
“Expecting trouble?” He asked as he seated himself at the table.
“Not really,” JD replied and pushed a coffee cup toward him. “Just hoping you could answer a few questions.”
If the kid was buying, Richie knew this was serious.
“Questions you don’t think your dad or Dean would answer?” Richie sipped his coffee and wasn’t surprised to find that JD had ordered correctly.
JD shrugged and threw him a half smile confirming Richie’s guess.
Richie nodded toward JD indicating that he should ask his questions.
JD reached into his pocket and placed an object on the table between them. Richie felt the color drain from his face as he recognized the photo album he’d put together years before.
Richie had to stop himself from reaching across the table to snatch it up. Instead he leaned back in his chair trying to give off an air of nonchalance. “I haven’t seen that in ages. Where did you find it?”
“In the trunk of the Impala,” JD replied. “Who is she?”
This was not a conversation he wanted to have. “Just a girl we hunted with for a while,” he said and waved a hand dismissively at the photo album. “No one really.”
JD snorted with disbelief and Richie knew he hadn’t sold that idea well at all.
“Come on, Uncle Richie,” he chided. “She was someone important or Uncle Dean wouldn’t have hidden this and you wouldn’t have gone pale when you saw it.”
“Noticed that, did you?” The Immortal sighed as he leaned forward to toy with his coffee cup.
“Yeah,” JD smirked. “Uncle Dean loved her, didn’t he?”
Richie took a deep breath and picked at the brown wrapper of his cup. His mind was whirling trying to decide what to tell JD. “Her name was Chloe Sullivan,” he said softly, “And we all loved her.”
“Was?”
“Yeah, was,” Richie repeated. Of course that wasn’t entirely true, Chloe Sullivan was dead but Anne Gabriel lived on.
Chloe’s passing had appeared in the newspapers and on TV. As she was a two time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and had dozens of other accolades to boot, the news media had been overcome with their desire to give her the proper send off. That had been five years ago.
Richie had spent that weekend with Duncan, Dean and Sam. They’d drunk themselves silly in their own form of an Irish wake.
It had taken every ounce of willpower Richie had not to blurt out the truth to Dean that weekend. He found himself caught between the promise he had made to Chloe to keep her version of immortality a secret and his friend’s months-long depression over her death. In the end, he’d kept silent and by the end of the year Dean had been himself again.
He received periodic postcards from ‘Anne’ who insisted that she wasn’t going to intrude on Dean, especially not now with Sam getting older. It made a sort of weird sense to her but Richie had a hard time understanding, really, why she stayed away. Well, she knew where they were if she ever changed her mind and wanted to reconnect.
Fingers were snapping in front of his face. “Hey you in there, Uncle Richie?” JD asked.
He looked up and realized he’d allowed himself to be overcome with memories of Chloe. “Sorry, just hadn’t thought about her in a while.”
JD smiled. “She must have been something?”
“Oh she was something alright,” Richie smiled as he remembered how Dean and Chloe used to go at each other. It had been love from the very first insult but Dean hadn’t realized it until it was too late to convince Chloe not to go.
“So what happened?”
“Immortal and mortal. You know how that ends,” Richie lied. Chloe had left because of some misguided sense of self sacrifice and Richie had never called her on it, still hadn’t and knew he never would.
JD nodded. “I figured. But he never got over her did he?”
“No he never did,” Richie said sadly. “I hope - ” What did he hope? That Chloe would come to her senses. That he would get up the courage to tell Dean the truth. That he could find Chloe and drag her back to Washington. It wasn’t his mess to fix but maybe someday they’d figure out they belonged together and Chloe would come back on her own.
“What, Uncle Richie?” JD asked.
“Nothing.” Richie shook his head. “Just old memories.”
“It’s so hard to imagine Uncle Dean in love.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Richie said with a rueful smile. “Dean just didn’t know what he had until she was gone and then he was too proud to chase her.”
“Immortality would have come between them anyway,” JD said. “Did she know?”
“JD, maybe you should just drop it. She’s gone and there’s really nothing to tell,” Richie said, uncomfortable with the lies he’d been forced to share and he really did not want to get into the details about why Chloe left.
The younger man nodded. “I guess Uncle Dean wouldn’t be happy to know you shared his biggest chick-flick moment with me. It’s just - I don’t know - I wish I could have met her.”
The kid’s sincerity was too much for Richie to resist.
“She was one of the smartest people I ever met and the queen of the snappy comeback. Chloe was the only woman who could put Dean so completely in his place with a few choice words and then lose totally coherency when he kissed her.”
Confusion crossed JD face. “I don’t understand? That doesn’t sound like a woman Dean would have even liked. I mean I’ve been to the bars with him. His basic philosophy is the dumber the better.”
“You’ve never been in love,” Richie said by way of explanation as he settled back in his chair. He was no expert on love and Dean would be quick to second that notion but Richie was an expert on Dean and Chloe.
“That’s not an answer. What they were like together?” JD asked as he sensed that Richie might be ready to share everything.
The Immortal smiled. “Buy me another coffee and I’ll answer all your questions.”
Without a word, JD grabbed the empty cups from the table and headed to the counter.
Who knew maybe after this trip down memory lane, Richie would finally have the balls to get those two together again. They’d both be furious at him, maybe for decades, but they were all Immortal, eventually they’d forgive him.