Friday, January 17, 2014

Supernatural Fan Fic Part 2

Once back at the house, Ronnie, Bobby, Sam and Dean all tromped inside, once she wrangled her dog outside. Not an easy feat, considering the dog was curious about the visitors and weighed as much as she did.

"Don’t worry about Gallahad here," she cooed, rubbing the dog behind the ears as she shoved him inside the library. "He’ll be alright."

Bobby looked at the enormous beast skeptically. "Are you sure that’s a dog?"

"Wolfhound. Responsible for ridding Ireland of wolves back in the day. No bigger or better protector."

"So what exactly do you need protecting from?"

"I’ve got more supernatural creatures stomping through my backyard than I can handle. Gallahad here has a sense for them, gives me a heads up. Leprochans, vampires, zombies, you name it, I’ve seen it. Worst of it are the demons. They are all over the place lately. People are starting to notice too."

"Like how many are we talking?"

She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I’d say about twenty-seven."

Bobby choked. "That’s a few."

She nodded. "Yeah. And that’s just since last Tuesday."

Bobby shot a look at Sam and Dean.

"But hey. It’s late, and you guys have to be exhausted. There are three rooms upstairs if you want them. There will be hot breakfast in the morning and you can get a fresh start."

Bobby gave her one of his rare smiles. "Ronnie, that’s the entire reason I came."

"Bribery with a home-cooked meal?" She smiled and shook her head. "I should have thought of that sooner."



Sam and Dean headed upstairs. Bobby watched as she poured herself a mug of coffee.

"A bit late for that, don’t you think?"

She bit out a short laugh. "Yeah, well sleep has been little more than a distant memory lately. Usually I’m up to greet the sun."

"So how long has it been?"

She took a tentative sip from the steaming mug. "I was still in high school the last time you were up here, Bobby."

"True. How time flies. But I meant how long has your dad been gone?"

She stilled, met his eyes, and leaned forward in her seat. "Almost two years now. He went out one night and never came home."

"What about your brother Brian? Where’s he when you’ve got this mess?"

"He’s gone too, Bobby. It’s just me now."

Bobby gave her a hard stare. "So you are by yourself and you didn’t think to tell anyone? All those times on the phone you could have just said, ‘hey, by the way?’"

"And what? There was nothing to do. Nothing anyone could do." She nodded towards the steps and the Winchesters upstairs. "Word gets around. I know what you have been up to, what you’ve been up against. I didn’t get the notice to the papers, Ok?"

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Sorry. I know you and Mom and Dad were close. I guess part of me was hoping Dad would stroll right through the front door, near to bursting to tell the tale of his latest adventure."

"So, Brian too. What happened?"

"After Dad was gone, Brian stayed close for a while. Then just like Dad, one night he doesn’t come home. I knew it in my gut."

Bobby measured his next words carefully. "You ever … find them? Take care of things?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Sent them off, nice and proper. The full Hunter’s funeral and the works." She took another sip of coffee.

"A while back I had a bit of an accident. Had time to think, to watch. I started noticing things."

Bobby’s eyes never left her face. "So all those phone calls. What, you decide to pick up the family trade?"

"Come on, Bobby. You know this isn’t a game for amateurs. I know enough not to get dead."

"True. But you’re hardly an amateur. How many?"

"What?"

"Don’t try to fool me, girl. How many kills?"

She took a deep breath. "Forty-three, give or take."

Bobby rubbed his eyes.

"Twenty in the past two and half months."

He stared at her.

She gave him a sheepish shrug. "Like I said, things have been a little crazy around here. Figured it was time to call in the pros."

"Forty-three," he repeated.

She nodded.

"Pretty good for a rookie."

"You know Mom and Dad never wanted this life for me, Bobby. I’ve been lucky."

He nodded. He was silent a moment.

"Christ, girl. You ain’t no lucky rookie. You’re a hunter."


 

Dean slowly awoke to daylight streaming in through frilly lace curtains in the bedroom. Soon he was aware that the bed he was on was adorned with a ridiculous amount of lace and ribbons. The walls held not-as-faded areas where he imagined were once adorned with rock band posters and photos. Shelves were covered with stuffed animals and romance novels. A girl’s room.

"Fantastic," he grumbled.

Then he was keenly aware of something else. Food. Warm scents of cinnamon, butter and bacon beckoned from the doorway and down the hall. His mouth watered.

He dressed in record time, and collided with Sam in the hallway. They scuffled their way into the bathroom, washing up before crashing into each other all the way down the stairs. Bobby sat at the kitchen table already, shaking his head. Of course, it was a matter of survival to get in front of these two when it came to food.

The kitchen table was heaped with bowls of scrambled eggs, muffins, platters of pancakes, pitchers of orange juice, and plates of bacon.

"It’s like Christmas," Dean muttered in awe, before seating himself down. "I tell you, I’d marry a woman who could cook like this. You available, Edna?"

Edna twittered. "The mister might have something to say about that." She shot a grin to Ronnie.

Ronnie was busy trying not to choke on her muffin and balance a cup of coffee. "Help yourself, guys. Edna here will help keep the food coming. I’ve got to open the store."

She bussed the older woman’s cheek. "Thanks for helping out here, Edna."

"No problem, sweetie. It’s been a while since I’ve had a house full of men to feed. Or you either, for that matter." She winked.

Ronnie rolled her eyes, and grabbed her keys and her bag. "Gotta go." She let out a low whistle and Gallahad loped after her.

Dean watched her go. "So what’s her deal?"

Bobby waited until Edna left the room. "Raised in the life. Mom and Dad were both hunters. Her brothers too. Her dad wanted something better for her and tried to keep her out of it. Now they are all gone and she’s smack dab in the middle of it."

"They’re all gone?" Dean asked. "How?"

Bobby shrugged. "Keith was the oldest. Died in a car accident. Her mom died of cancer a while back. Her dad apparently went out one night and never came home. Brian was the youngest. Survived a couple of tours overseas to die in a hunt. Now it’s just her."

"She any good?" Sam asked around a mouthful of pancakes.

Bobby shrugged. "She’s kept it quiet until now. I think you’ll find she can hold her own.  I take it you didn't notice that there are only three bedrooms in this place.  While we were all sleeping of sunshine and kittens, she was down here, keeping watch.  I'm thinking she hasn't had a nice, long sleep in a good while now.  "

Dean reached for another muffin. "Former cheerleader, huh? She have some sort of Buffy complex?"

Bobby gave them a thoughtful look. "I’m thinking maybe she’d knock Buffy on her ass."



 

"I need your help."

It took a second for Dean to get his breath back after nearly choking on his orange juice. Edna finished cleaning up and headed out for the opening shift at the restaurant. Bobby had just left the room to make a phone call, and a second later he saw a trench coat in his peripheral vision. He never seemed to get used to Castiel popping in and out like that.

"Cass. Good of you to drop in. Muffin?"

Castiel gave him an odd look. "No thank you. I hear they are delicious though. I need you to find someone."

"Can it wait? We’re kinda just starting something here."

"No. Her name is Veronica. She is special and needs to be protected. I’ve gotten word that there are plans to harm her."

"Popular name around here. Why can’t your angel friends handle this?"

"She’s hiding from us. I’ve tried to talk to her, but she won’t listen to me. She must not come to harm."

"Why is she hiding from angels?"

Castiel sighed. "We were protecting her, but we failed. Now she doesn’t trust us. She thinks we have forgotten her."

"Forgotten?"

"Somehow she was lost forgotten. Because of our mistake she was injured gravely. Now that we have found her again she must be protected. Crowley is after her."

"Great. So where do we find her?"

Castiel tilted his head. "Right here. This is her house."

"Ronnie?"

"I’ve heard she sometimes goes by that name. I need to go." And poof he disappeared.

Dean turned to Sam. "What the hell?"

Sam shrugged. "What do angels want with Ronnie?"





Ronnie was stacking can goods on a shelf when she caught Sam staring at her for the dozenth time in the past few hours.

"You know," she began, "you guys never did say why I suddenly need a baby sitter."

"Just a hunch," he answered. He was quiet a while, then started the staring thing again.

She sighed. "What?"

"You and Dean. You two meet before?"

Ronnie moved to the wall to stack more boxes on the shelf. "You could say that."

"And?"

She paused. "Yeah. Your brother and I kinda crossed paths a couple of years ago. You weren’t together. It didn’t go well."

"Did you and he …"

She snorted. "No! God, no." She paused. "What did he say about me?"

Sam shrugged. "Nothing. He says you are familiar, but he doesn’t remember how you met."

"He doesn't remember."  Her voice was flat.  She paused, her thoughts far away. "Alright. Fine. Let’s just say it was bad and it may be best all around if he never remembers."

The front door chimed. Sam looked up in time to see her turn to greet the customer. She froze, a stricken expression on her face. The next instant, it was gone. Sam half wondered if he imagined it.

"Hello, Mrs. Cavanaugh," she said softly.

Sam was shocked at the look of pure hatred the older woman radiated. If looks could kill…

Mrs. Cavanaugh spat out her words. "Still here, I see. Wyatt said there were federal agents talking to you. I suppose it was too much to hope for that this town was rid of you at last."

"’Fraid not," Ronnie smiled tightly. "I’ll get Frank to help you today."

As Ronnie turned to go into the store room to find Frank, Mrs. Cavanaugh hissed, "You are an abomination. Why can’t you just disappear like your father?"

Ronnie only faltered a moment before continuing on. "I’m afraid I’m not my father. Frank will be right out."

Sam came up to her later, after Frank had taken care of Mrs. Cavanaugh. "What was all that about?"

"Leave it alone, Sam."

"Better yet, why were you taking it?"

"Sam—"

"Ronnie?" He wasn’t going to let up. One look at his expression told her that.

She let out a heavy breath. "Mrs. Cavanaugh’s son went to high school with me. He died, and she blames me."

"You? Why?"

"Because I was with him when he died."





Ronnie pulled up two stool and gestured for Sam to take one. She went to the mini fridge and grabbed two beers, tossing one to Sam. She opened the bottle and took several long swallows before she continued.

"After I got kicked out of Catholic school, Dad had me enrolled me in public school here. This is a small town, and the gossip mill here runs faster than most. Word got out and I was a hot topic for quite a while people tried to come up with a reason why I thrown out. Meanwhile, there was a rash of demon possessions that was making its way through the athletic department at the high school. So I tried out for the cheerleading squad."

Sam was doing his best not to make a face, but she saw it.

She smiled. "Yeah, I know. But I wasn’t making any friends anyway, so I figured what the hell. Cheerleaders have access to all the sporting events.

"It was football season, at the Homecoming game no less. Chris, Mrs. Cavanaugh’s son, had been acting odd for a few days then. Not himself. At halftime he disappeared under the bleachers. I followed him. I got there just as he was about to kill a girl in the color guard."

"He was possessed?" Sam asked.

Ronnie nodded. "Anyway, we fought. I got him tangled up in a devil’s trap under the far end of the bleachers."

"Good planning," Sam said. "Did you exorcise him?"

She nodded again. "What I didn’t realize at the time was that Chris had been stabbed and the demon used his weakened state to possess him. He was dead within minutes."

Sam rested a hand upon hers. "You know there was nothing you could have done, right?"

"Yeah, I know. It still sucked. Anyway, he died and I was found with his body under the bleachers."

"And his mom blamed you."

"Can’t really blame her. Between the rumors about me and the dozen witnesses that saw me with the body, I would have blamed me too."

"How did you get out of it?"

She gave him a sad smile. "Autopsy showed he’d been dead for days, even though the entire student body saw him score two touchdowns and an interception during the game."

Sam shrugged. "That will do it. Can I ask you one more thing?"

"Sure."

"Why did you get kicked out of catholic school?"

She let out a strangled laugh. "My grandmother."

"Your grandmother got you kicked out of catholic school?"

"Yep. For my sixteenth birthday, she hauled me down to the local tattoo parlor and got me a tattoo."

Ronnie pulled her hair to the side and moved the collar of her shirt away from her neck. There at the base of her neck was a familiar design. He and Dean had similar ones tattooed to their chests.

"Wrecked havoc with the dress I was going to wear to the semi-formal that fall," she continued. "Even if I had wanted a tattoo, I pretty much would have gone a different one. A unicorn maybe. Probably something to really irk the old man. Gawd, there were times I really hated being from a family of hunters."

Sam laughed. "I bet. What did you do?"

"The nuns got wind of it and I was promptly kicked out a week before the big dance. Apparently early Christian symbols based upon pagan lore are frowned upon. That and my date turned out to be a vampire and my dad cut his head off. My social life has kinda been in the crapper ever since."

"I think I know what you mean."





That night Ronnie came home to a command center. Newspapers, maps and print outs littered every flat surface. Laptops and extension cords crisscrossed her floors. At some point during the day, weapons were cleaned and the dirty rags were strewn everywhere. An occasional beer bottle left rings on her tables. And as a crowning touch, the sink was full of dirty dishes. Fantastic.

"Hi, honey, I’m home," she muttered.

Dean called over to Sam. "Did you bring some pie?"

"Diner closed at eight, man."

"Man," Dean whined. "Small towns suck."

He caught Ronnie’s expression. "Sorry."

She shook her head. "How could I possibly take offense at that?" She opened the refrigerator to survey the damage. "Any food left in the house?"

Bobby gave her a sheepish shrug. "You said make yourself at home."

"I know. I just forgot what it was like with my own two brothers around. Thanks for knocking off the sugar coating off that memory." She grabbed her keys.

"Luckily I have a deep freezer in the garage with extra supplies. Be back in a jiff." She turned to glare at Dean. "Extra veggies for you."

Bobby followed her out. "I’ll give you a hand. These guys can eat a lot of food."

She shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Dean watched her leave, and shivered. "I swear the temperature drops ten degrees whenever she does that."

Sam chuckled. "Dude, what did you do to her?"

Dean stared out the window into the night. "I wish I remembered."




Bobby followed Ronnie out to the garage, watching as she surveyed the contents of the deep freeze. His gaze rested on a mangled pile of wood that looked suspiciously like a massive old oak dining room table. Jagged slices marred the splintered wood and an axe jutted out from a table leg.

"That looks like your folks’ old kitchen table."

She never looked up. "It broke."

She pulled out several tin foil containers and shoved them into his arms. "So, what did you want to ask me about?"

Bobby shrugged. It was clear she wasn’t going to talk about the table.

"The other employees at the hardware store. How well do you know them?"

"Well enough. I trust them, Bobby. More importantly, they trust me. They kinda adopted me."

"Adopted you?"

She let out a short laugh. "Yeah. After Dad and Brian were gone, I had nobody left. I think people kinda felt sorry for me. Anyway, after I popped back up, Frank was the one who found me half out of my mind on the side of the road and took me to the hospital. After I got out, I bought the hardware store to have something to do. Frank needed a job. Turns out he makes a good manager, so bonus for me when a job comes up.

"I came across Willy on a job. He had lost his best friend and room mate to a ghoul and I was looking into it. He ended up being good in a fight and started hanging around. He started poking his nose into what I was doing. So I took him in to keep an eye on him so he didn’t get himself killed, and he ended up having my back with human trouble."

"Wyatt Sheldon?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yeah. That’s the thing about human trouble. You can’t just shoot them. Makes the neighbors anxious. Anyway, I met Edna and her husband when they were having a problem with a poltergeist at the diner. They just bought the place, used their life savings, but with the poltergeist chasing away customers, they were about to go under. So to thank me, Edna and Rick make sure I have a decent meal when I’m on a job."

She nodded towards the stacks of foil containers in both their arms. "Apparently she thinks I work up quite the appetite."

"Well, it’s our gain. Why did you pick up the job?"

She faltered. "Before, there was always someone else to go chasing things out of the dark. Now Dad is gone, and my brothers too. Things were happening bad things to good people. I just couldn’t keep passing the buck."

"That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?"

She shook her head. "No. Nobody missed me when I was gone. No missing persons report, no nosy neighbors, no one noticed the papers piling up on the front porch, nothing. Now, for whatever reason, I’ve got people that for whatever reason seem to give a damn about me."

"Sorry. I didn’t know."

"I know. You kinda had your hands full with the whole wheelchair and end of the world thing. You didn’t need my piddly problems heaped on top of it."

"Ronnie, I don’t know what you think, but you do matter."

"Thanks, Bobby. But now its time I earn it."

Before long the inside of the house smelled of home-cooked comfort food, reheated anyway. Biscuits, chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes. And an extra large bowl of green peas.

"Ronnie said most of her sightings have been here on the property, near the bog," Bobby said, pointing to an area on the map bought at the gas station. "What I can’t figure is why they are centered here."

"Are they gathering here? Some big boss demon coming to town?" Dean asked out loud. "Cass mentioned a certain one."

"What do you have so far?" Ronnie asked.

"We got this," he shot back, waving her back into the kitchen. "Just let us do our thing."

Bobby looked over just in time to see an expression cross her face that he could only guess that meant she was sorely tempted to dump the entire container of mashed potatoes on Dean’s head. Then she sniffed the air, rushed over to the oven and pulled out two trays of biscuits.

"Supper’s ready," she bit out between clenched teeth.

No response.

"For cryin’ out loud," she muttered.

She marched over to the table and gestured to the three laptops. "Move ‘em. Now."

They all took in her expression and promptly picked up the computers.

She leaned down to turn a lever hidden in the woodwork of the table leg, and promptly flipped the table top over, scattering the papers everywhere.

On the backside of the table top was a topographical map of the area with the farm highlighted in red. Notes framed the outer edge with dates, names and various other info. Next Ronnie went to the wall, pushed at a seam in the wainscoting and the wall slid in two sections to reveal newspaper articles, weather info and other pieces of research. Basically the entire case in a nutshell, easily accessible and yet could be hidden at a moment’s notice.

"Dad bought this place because he thought it may be handy to have a hunter living basically right on top of what he thought was a gateway. The town has a history of odd happenings and what better way keep things locked down than to have a sheriff in the jailhouse. With mom sick and all, he didn’t want to leave home for long periods of time with us kids growing up. Thirty years ago the town was nearly wiped off the map due to what officials then credited to brush fires from lightning strikes. That plus the missing persons reports from that time period, weather data and what have you, makes it pretty clear to me that there were other things at work.

"Dad traced most of the more recent activity down to an up and coming demon. Working on getting his street cred, I suppose. I’m pretty sure you guys already know him as Crowley."

The guys all went very still at once.

"Yeah, I can’t stand him either. Now to add to the mix, I’ve got angels stomping all over the place, leaving their little toys all over my bog. Honestly, I don’t care to deal angels any better than the demons, but that’s what I’ve got. The most recent stuff I’ve got tagged and flagged on the map here in front of you. Notes are on the sidebar."

She flipped the table back over, revealing smooth wood once again. "Now that you are all up to speed, take five minutes, eat something before it gets cold, then get back to ‘doing your thing.’ Gallahad needs his walk." She spun on her heel and marched out of the room, grabbing the leash hanging on a nail by the doorway on her way out.

"Wow," was all Sam said after a moment.

Bobby chuckled. "Does the phrase ‘backwards and in high heels’ mean anything to you boys?"

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