Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

+++ 21 JUNE 2017 +++

The whirring sound should have tipped her off, but she was busy stacking bodies. The sickly yellow glow emanating from the now empty circle of runes should have been a clear warning to get the fuck out of that building, bodies be damned, but her back was to the ritual site. She was headed back out to her car to grab clean-up supplies, and she almost made it to the door when everything flashed impossibly bright. She opened her mouth to shout, but didn’t have the air to fill her lungs. The world went black, and so did her mind.

+++ 20 JUNE 2002 +++

“What the hell – who are you? What the fuck was that light? Hands up, spin around. Start talking,” a familiar voice commanded, with the unmistakable sound of the safety on a pistol, clicking as it disengaged.

Claire thought her eyes might pop right out of her head and roll out onto the concrete floor like marbles, because when she turned around, hands half-heartedly raised in surrender, she was looking at Dean. Except. It wasn’t Dean exactly, not the Dean she knew, because this Dean was barely older than she was. Dean was a twink? Her synapses were firing all sorts of useless reactions, none of which were her own name, or a good lie, or even the basic components of human speech. She just stood there, slack-jawed, in front of him. His gun was the furthest thing from her mind.

“Talk, or I shoot,” Dean warned, and even though his voice was firm, his eyes betrayed just how shaken he was. Something about seeing him like that, something just to the left of scared, snapped her out of it.

“Dean, listen – “

“How do you know my name?” He hissed, adjusting his grip on the pistol he had pointed at her.

“Look, I know this is going to sound fucking nuts, but I’m from the future.” Real nice, Claire, I’m sure he’s gonna buy that garbage. Dean’s eyes somehow got even wider, his nostrils flared, and he smiled in that wolfish way he still had, more baring his teeth in a snarl than smiling outright.

“Bullshit,” he spat.

“No, seriously, I swear. My name’s Claire, I’m a hunter, like you. I got zapped here from 2017.” Her words were tripping over themselves on the way out. What a way it would be to die, shot by Dean Winchester in some busted out factory. She got out of that whole werewolf thing a few months back, assuming that would be her last brush with death for a while. Never that lucky, she mused darkly. “And Dean, I know your name because I know you. In my time. You’re still a hunter, you and Sam – “ and Cas, she almost adds before swallowing that impulse down, because if Dean’s this young, he hasn’t even met Cas yet. Doesn’t even know angels are a thing.

“You…know me?” Something in him seemed to crack when she mentioned Sam. “Sam…he hunts, in the future?” He sounded stricken. She nodded, hands still hovering awkwardly in the air above her shoulders, wavering with each bob of her head.

“Yeah, I…yeah, sorry. This is crazy for me, I’m sure it’s crazy for you, too.” Claire had never been good at seeing things from other peoples’ perspectives, but she’d been making more of an effort recently – it had helped her relationship with Cas, with Jody, with Alex, more than she cared to admit. She imagined what it would feel like, to have some kid poof into the room with her, mid-hunt, in 2017, calling her by her name, insisting they were harmless. Would she even have as much restraint as Dean had already shown?

“Crazy, yeah…” Dean wheezed out a manic sort of laugh. “So, what kind of time shit are we dealing with here? Doesn’t seem like a Terminator situation, otherwise I’d already be dead. Bill and Ted? Probably not. Is this more of a humanitarian mission thing – like, 12 Monkeys, or Star Trek IV? If you’re looking for whales, you could do a hell of a lot better than Stockton, South Dakota.” He snorted a more genuine laugh. He seemed to be calming himself down with his own chatter, so Claire let him keep rambling. “Shit, could be a Slaughterhouse-Five thing – that’d suck for you, probably. But I feel like you would have led with that, so probably not.”

“Wow, and you call Sam a nerd.” She couldn’t hide her smirk.

“Sam is a nerd! Liking movies isn’t nerdy.”

“Come on, Star Trek? Nerdy. And Slaughterhouse-Five? You’re telling me you like the movie, not the book?” Dean lowered his gun, looking a little caught out.

“Can’t a guy like both?”

“A nerd could,” Claire offered, still smirking. “Whatever’s happening with me, I don’t think it’s anything like anything you just listed. But I’ve never seen 12 Monkeys, so jury’s out on that one.”

“Well, are you here to stop the release of a deadly virus?”

“Nope.” Claire popped the ‘p’, her guard officially down, now that Dean’s gun was out of the picture. She lowered her hands, shoving them in the pockets of her jeans, trying to look more laid back than she was feeling.

“Then we’re out of 12 Monkeys territory. Thank God.” He grinned, but it melted into something more contemplative. “So what, is this more of a Frequency deal? Or like, Back to the Future?”

“I’ve never seen Frequency, but I dunno. Kind of?” She more meant because in Back to the Future, he’s going back just a few decades, and he meets everyone in his town when they’re younger versions of themselves. She definitely didn’t mean that it was mechanically similar (no DeLorean for her, and no Doc Brown). It had been a few years since she watched it, so she hadn’t even thought through the more obvious implications. Dean’s eyes snapped to her face, eyebrows shooting toward his hairline. Then his expression turned impossibly, painfully soft. She couldn’t remember a time when Dean had ever looked at anyone like that – it was kind of terrifying, and she swallowed a nervous breath under his gaze.

“Claire, are you…are you my kid?”

The question totally blindsided her, and the options for answers raced through her mind. The obvious answer was ‘no’, because in every technical and practical sense, that was the truth. Dean wasn’t her dad. Except, that kind of felt bad to say out loud, even if she couldn’t articulate why. When Jimmy exited her life for the last time, there was no shortage of men who’d tried to take his place, Castiel among them. Dean hadn’t really ever seemed to be trying to take that spot – at first, it had been Castiel who dragged him into it, kicking and screaming. And now, she couldn’t put her finger on when it had happened, but Dean meant something to her, something like a dad meant. Like his personality was just the right shape, and he slotted into the gap without either of them meaning for him to.

“Kinda, yeah,” she huffed. Dean looked baffled.

“Okay…but if you’re from 2017…I mean…how old are you?”

“Twenty. Born in ’97,” she answered automatically, realizing her mistake as Dean’s brow furrowed.

“But…look, I get around, but I think I’d remember knocking somebody up when I was fuckin’ 17.”

“I’m not…look, I’m…adopted. I met you when I was like, eleven.”

“Oh…” Dean softened again. “That’s…wow, that’s cool, actually.” He paused, rolled his shoulders, tucked his gun into the back of his jeans. “Okay, chick flick moment over. You time traveled. How?”

“I was hunting some witches, and I…I thought I could handle it. When we thought it was just one witch, Jody said it’d be okay if I went after her on my own, as long as I stayed in touch, but then I found out it was a whole coven, and I should have just called her, but I wanted to do it on my own, it seemed so easy, I mean, they weren’t even killing people or anything.”

“Is Jody…your mom?” Dean looked kind of hopeful, but also kind of disappointed. What was that about?

“She’s…she’s my mom, yeah. But she’s not like, your wife or something. You guys are friends. She’s a hunter, too.” Dean’s expression brightened.

“Alright, yeah. Cool.” He cleared his throat. “So okay, witches. Get to the time travel bit.”

“They were kidnapping people for this big ritual, it turns out. Something to send the whole coven back in time to fulfill some, like, witch prophecy. I ended up totally busting them – it was actually kinda cool before everything came crashing down. I took out the witches, freed the people they were using to power the spell, but the ritual was already in motion before I got there, and I think it just sucked me in, since there was nobody else around when it went off.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean muttered, running a nervous hand through his hair. “How’re we gonna fix that?”

“Find some witches that can fix it?” Claire’s first thought had been to get Castiel to do it, but whenever she was right now, he didn’t even know Dean yet, let alone Claire. Besides angels and witches, she couldn’t think of anyone else capable of time travel.

She flopped down on a crate, the adrenaline of her misfortune subsiding now that there wasn’t a gun pointed at her. The gravity of how bad things were finally caught up to her. Independent as she was always trying to be, she found herself longing bitterly for someone to swoop in and save her, the way Cas usually did, the way Jody usually did, the way Sam and Dean usually did. Of course, then she got nervous that her ‘longing’ for Cas would be interpreted as a prayer, the way he told her it could. In her time, that was all well and good, but in this one? She didn’t think it would be wise to call down the cavalry right now.

“Oh yeah, let me just whip out my rolodex of powerful witches that owe me a favor.” He rolled his eyes. “How exactly are we going to find a witch who can do something that major, let alone convince them to do it for two hunters?”

“I don’t know.” Claire hated how helpless she sounded to her own ears. “I wish my dad was here, he’d be able to fix it.” She pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes, the familiar sting of tears just too much to take on top of everything else. Crying in front of this younger version of Dean would be humiliating.

“Hey, I’m sorry. We’ll find a way to fix this, I promise.” He came over to sit next to her, placing a hesitant hand on her shoulder, like he was afraid she’d disappear if he pressed too hard. There was silence for a moment, before he spoke again. “I know I’m not like, your dad in the same way that I am later, but, uh, I am here. I don’t know what me in 2017 can do that makes you think I’d be able to fix something like this, but maybe…maybe 2017 me will figure it out from there? Just yank you back anyway?”

Fuck, Claire thought as Dean’s words finally made sense. She’d been wishing that Castiel were here, because he’d be able to figure out some angel something or other to get her back, even if he couldn’t do the time travel himself. Referring to Cas as her dad was kind of more surprising to her than anything else they’d just said, because where the fuck was that coming from? Is that really how she felt? Or was it just because he looked like her dad? Claire didn’t have time to spiral about that, because she’d just told Dean that he was her dad. So now there was that to clarify.

“Dean that’s…not…the 2017 you can’t fix this either. I meant, uh…my other dad.”

“Shit, how many parents you got?” Dean raised an eyebrow.

“Well, my uh, my birth parents, and then um. Then you and Cas, my other dad, and I already mentioned Jody.”

“Oh, is Cas Jody’s husband, then?”

“No…” What is my life, that I need a fucking diagram to explain my parental situation?

“Is he…is he my husband?” Dean asked – and look, Claire really was totally prepared to say ‘no’, to say ‘it’s complicated’, to say something that would assure Dean of his heterosexual security. Except, the look on his face, when he asked, it stopped her. There was no mistaking that sparkle in his eyes, that tension in his expression. Dean was hopeful. The idea that in the future he had a husband, it made him look like a kid who just found out he might be getting a puppy for Christmas.

“Not exactly…but I mean…kind of? You uh…you live together, and you hunt together and stuff. He’s the one who brought you into my life, actually. I was going through some stuff and he thought you’d be able to relate better, because of how you grew up.”

“Wow…he knows? About my dad and stuff?” Dean plopped his hands into his lap, studying them to avoid her stare.

“Yeah, he knows like, everything about you, man.” Dean just nodded, and Claire felt like she needed to add something, to paint a better picture of Cas. “He’s like, a really nice guy. I didn’t have anybody, for a long time, and when he found me, no matter how stubborn I was at first, he just wouldn’t give up on me. He’s just that kind of person – he cares a lot, and he doesn’t give up on anybody, even if you’re really shitty to him. I don’t know that much about how you guys were before I met you, but I think that’s kind of how things were with you, too. So maybe there’s something to what you were saying. Maybe he’ll figure something out from 2017 and pull me back.”

“How would he be able to do anything about fuckin’ time travel? Is he a witch?”

“No, uh. I don’t really think I should tell you what he is, I don’t wanna mess anything up, you know? Isn’t that how time travel stuff always goes? Like, you reveal too much about the future, and then you accidentally fuck it up?”

“Seems kind of arbitrary to draw the line here, since you’ve already told me all kinds of stuff, but fine.” Dean looked around the room, dark and industrial and cold. “Why’d you end up here? How’d you end up like, right where I am?”

“Well, I mean. This is where I was when I got sent back in time, I was in this room, just in 2017. Why are you here?”

“I’m on a hunt. You’re telling me this is where the witches did their whole deal?”

“What are you hunting?” An idea was dawning on Claire, something with equal parts potential and danger. “Is it…is it witches?”

“Dunno. I’m trying to trace some local disappearances.” He paused, looked back at her, the same idea clearly occurring to him. “You don’t think…”

“Dean, when are we?”

“It’s 2002.”

“What day?” Fifteen years – the cycle! Claire felt her stomach drop – could she really be this lucky?

“June 20^th," Dean answered, not hiding his confusion.

“Then we’ve got time!” Claire exclaimed. “Dean, I’d bet you anything that it’s the same coven, the disappearances – it has to be! The town has disappearances every fifteen years, leading up to the summer solstice – that’ll be tomorrow! If we can find them before the ritual, then we can get them to send me back to 2017!”

“Claire, that’s…look, that’s a great idea, but…how are we going to convince them to help you? You’re the one who kills them in fifteen years, I doubt they’ll be your biggest fans.”

“We can come up with something, we always do.” She grinned. “We gotta find them first!”

“Okay…” He breathed, getting up from his uncomfortable seat on the crate. “Then we’ve got a case to work.”

Chapter Text

Working a case without technology was a real challenge, and Claire felt woefully out of her depth. They couldn’t hack into traffic camera footage, couldn’t tool around on a laptop looking for lore (laptops appeared to be a thing, but Dean couldn’t afford one), couldn’t LoJack a car. Everything was analog, with few notable exceptions. Claire was surprised that one of their first stops was the local library, mostly to use the computer, but also to cruise old local newspapers on microfilm and look through some lore books. Of course, the kind of general lore you’d find in a rural public library was pitiful in its generality. She wondered how Dean ever managed to solve a case, when this was the kind of time consuming bullshit at his disposal.

Since Claire was more comfortable working with computers than microfilm (it took Dean almost ten minutes to show her how to use the machine), she ended up on general lore duty. Her job was to try to figure out what entity the witches were working for or pledged to, that could manipulate time. She was unspeakably relieved to find that Wikipedia had already been launched by now (though just barely – apparently it had only been up for a little over a year), so she started there. Considering the materials and sigils used by the witches she’d killed, she was fairly certain they weren’t using the Greek alphabet, so she ruled out Chronos pretty early. Not that she was a witch expert, but she knew a lot of it was cultural. The witches had all been white women, fair complexions, hair braided, wearing simple blue cloaks. She decided to rule out brujeria and voodoo, as well as Indigenous magic of the Americas, since that would be too appropriative to garner results.

Around the third hour of grinding through the ugliest webpages she’d ever seen (who knew she had so many opinions about graphic design and UI?), she stumbled across the Norns, the time and fate deities of Norse mythology. The imagery and symbolism resonated with what she’d seen of the ritual, and the Norse alphabet, with its strange stick-like letters, matched some of what she’d seen painted on the floor of the factory. She sincerely hoped this lead was a good one, because she was about at the end of her rope as far as the 2002 internet was concerned.

“Find anything?” She sidled up to Dean where he was hunched over the microfilm machine, fiddling with the zoom knob. It was still so odd, seeing him at this age. He looked like such a boring old guy in 2017, always kind of looking like a gritty Old Navy model or something. But at 23, Dean looked kind of edgy, in a very butch way. He sported an oversize brown leather jacket, collar popped, and wore very worn graphic tees – clearly thrifted, but in a cool way. He still wore jeans, but they were rougher, more lived-in, with holes and discoloration. Dean still wore work boots, though these ones looked absolutely wrecked, like he’d been wearing them into the ground for years. Perhaps most surprising was that he wore jewelry – like, a lot of jewelry. He had a cool pendant with a head on it, a bunch of weird little bracelets, and a chunky silver ring on his right hand. It wasn’t exactly Claire’s vibe, but it had a hell of a lot more character than his present obsession with plaid shirts and straight cut mid wash jeans.

“Yeah, actually. Thirty years ago, one of the people who disappeared in the lead up, she showed back up after. Not much info about where she went or how she got back, but yeah. She was just out of college, back when it happened in 1972. I bet she still lives around here – maybe we could see what she remembers?”

“Wow, you got all that from that?” Claire asked, eyebrow cocked. How had he gotten through that many newspapers in three hours?

“What can I say? I’ve got a gift.” He grinned. “How ‘bout you? Find anything?”

“I think they’re doing Scandinavian witchcraft – I think they’re pledged to the Norns, the goddesses of fate and time in Norse mythology. They use the right alphabet for it, and they kind of fit the stereotype for that kind of thing. Plus, totally makes sense that worshipping the goddesses of fate and time would help with time travel.”

“Hell yeah. Nice work. I think we’re all set here. I’ll hit up the city directory before we leave, see if ‘Vicky Welsh’ still lives around here. If she does, we’ll head there next.” Claire nodded, though Dean was already headed to the shelves with the local phonebooks.

+++

As luck would have it, Vicky Welsh did indeed still live in Stockton, about ten blocks from the library.

“What’s our angle?” Claire asked on the walk over. It was a sweltering sunny day, one of those days where the heat is already soaked into the sidewalk and the asphalt, maybe some left over from the day before, and it radiates up at you through the soles of your shoes even more intensely than it does from the sun itself. She was surprised that Dean was still wearing his leather jacket – Claire had already shucked her hoodie, had left it in the Impala before they even went in to the library that morning. Dean didn’t really even look to be sweating, except a little on his forehead, around his temples.

“Angle?”

“Yeah, I assume we aren’t just going to bang on her door and tell her we’re looking for time traveling witches.”

“How good are you at improvising?”

“What, you just want to wing it?”

“No, not exactly, I just want to feel it out before I commit to a specific approach. You can tell a lot about somebody just by how they have their house done up, how they keep their yard, how they dress and talk. Somebody with a weedy lawn and a bunch of ‘no trespassing’ signs is going to respond way differently to a fake fed routine than they would to something a little less government. I like to get as much info to go on as I can before I decide what to go with.”

“If we were gonna pretend to be law enforcement, we’d need to change clothes and stuff. Plus, I don’t have any fake IDs in this time.”

“I know, which is why we aren’t gonna do that. Whatever we go with, it’ll be something casual – maybe reporters? Something pretty benign. ‘Course, depending on how she responds to some of the questions, it might make more sense to just be honest about everything. If she already thinks some magic shit is going down, there’s no reason to lie to her.” He shrugged. Claire laughed in shock.

“You’re serious? Don’t people freak out about that stuff?”

“Some people, yeah. Gotta get good at reading people to pull it off.”

“Okay, well. I think I can improvise, as long as you don’t come up with anything too far-fetched.”

“Aw, what, don’t wanna pretend to be insurance adjustors? Not feeling like a psychic priestess routine?” He cackled, nudging her with his elbow, and she couldn’t help but laugh. Dean still had the same sense of humor in 2017, just buried under a more serious exterior.

“Shut up,” Claire grumbled without any real malice. Dean raised his hands in mock surrender, and they were silent for the last block as they approached the house.

Vicky Welsh’s home was nothing remarkable, just a ranch style brick home with a one car garage. The yard was well kept, but plain – no flowerbeds, no lawn décor. She either wasn’t home, or her car was in the garage. There wasn’t much to discern from the exterior, but Dean seemed to be stewing over it nonetheless. Without giving Claire a single hint as to what approach he’d take, he strolled up the walkway to the front door and, seeing no bell, gave a hearty double-knock. After about a minute and a half, Claire heard footsteps approaching from the other side, and a short woman in her fifties cracked the door open.

“Can I help you?” She asked, chain still fastened, so all they could see was a few inches of her face.

“Are you Vicky Welsh?” Dean asked, his voice a little deeper and smoother than when he was speaking casually.

“I am,” Vicky answered, eyes narrowing. She waited for Dean to offer some sort of explanation.

“My name’s Dean, this is my sister Claire. Our brother went missing last week, and the cops aren’t taking it seriously, so we’ve been doing our own research. It seems like this kind of thing happens in town every fifteen years, in June. We were trying to see if there was any information on why, and your name came up in the paper, thirty years ago. I know this probably sounds like a long shot, but is there any way we could come in and ask you some questions?”

Whatever Claire had been expecting, it wasn’t that. It was just a few degrees south of the truth, and she wasn’t used to being so candid. Apparently, Vicky wasn’t expecting something like that either, but somehow, Dean must have read her right, because the door clicked shut, only briefly, as the older woman disengaged the chain. She opened it wider, looking around a little furtively before waving them inside.

The interior of Vicky’s home was as austere as the outside. The entryway led into the living room, which was furnished with a single blue couch, a plain oak coffee table, and an outdated television resting on an oak stand across from the couch. The walls were bare. The floors were clean, hardwood, but there were no rugs, not even to catch dirt by the door.

“Come, sit,” Vicky instructed as she latched the bolt and refastened the chain. Dean walked over to the couch and perched on the far end, sitting up rod straight, only using the front of the cushion. He clasped his hands together over his knees and waited patiently for Vicky to join them. Claire sat down heavier beside Dean, sinking back into the cushions. Vicky came over and sat on the opposite end of the couch, similar posture to Dean. Claire wondered if Dean had somehow intuited the woman’s preferred sitting posture and sought to emulate it on purpose, as ridiculous as the thought sounded.

“Thank you for having us into your home,” Dean said after about twenty seconds of silence, avoiding ‘awkward silence’ territory by the skin of his teeth.

“I’m not normally…this time of year, the cycle. I don’t go out in June normally, but in a year like this, you can never be too cautious,” she explained, not looking either of them in the eyes.

“Ms. Welsh – “ Dean began, but she interrupted.

“Just Vicky is fine, Dean. Tell me about your brother.”

“Of course. Our brother, Sam. He was out late with friends last week, and he just…didn’t come home. But it just isn’t like him to do something like that. His friends said he seemed fine before he left to walk home, but he’s just gone,” Claire explained, surprised at how easy the lie came to her.

“He never would have up and left like that – he’s going to Stanford in the fall, and he’s a huge goody-two-shoes. So something had to have happened to him,” Dean added. Claire glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, stunned that Dean would offer something so biographical. Still, something about what he said seemed to click with Vicky, who shuddered a helpless sigh.

“It’s always people with such potential. With so much ahead of them.” She sounded miserable. “When they took me, I had just finished my undergraduate degree at Purdue, I was set to go to start my Master’s program in Oklahoma the next fall.”

“Who took you, Vicky?” Claire asked, unable to contain her curiosity. Dean shot her an admonishing look, but it was gone as soon as it came, just a flash of disapproval.

“Witches,” she whispered, like she was afraid they’d hear her. “They took over a dozen of us to a big field, tied up and blindfolded, and did all this chanting and singing, but I got loose, and I ran. The others, I think they’d been captive for longer, so they were…disoriented, weak. But I’d only been taken that same weekend, so I was very alert. They tried to stop me, chased after me, but once I reached the road, I flagged down a car, and made it back to town.”

“Did you tell anyone what happened?” Dean asked a few beats after she finished, politely making sure she’d said all she wanted to before moving the conversation along.

“I tried but…I don’t know. It was the seventies. I was a college girl, I had just come home from college, and when I was taken, I’d been out with some girls I knew from high school. A little town like this, they just assumed I had taken some drugs, gone on some wild bender, gotten lost in the woods and hitched back. They figured I was embarrassed, I guess, though I don’t know why I would make up something so outlandish and embarrassing if I was trying to avoid being judged.”

“That sounds…awful.” Claire looked over at Vicky, and was surprised when the woman looked up at her, held her gaze. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

“Thank you…” Vicky nodded, closing her eyes. “No one has ever said that to me, about this.” Following her instincts, Claire reached out and clasped her fingers gently over the other woman’s hand.

“Why did you decide to stay in Stockton?” Dean asked, after Vicky composed herself again.

“My parents were here, and I was terrified they’d be taken. So I stayed. I made them stay in during June. They both lived well into old age. By the time I was ready to move on, I just didn’t have the stamina. Life kind of passed me by. Even if I wanted to do something else, go somewhere else, there isn’t anywhere else I’d know anyone. Better to stick it out where I have friends, where I have a house and a job.” She shrugged, fully aware of the inadequacy of her response, like it was something she had explained to herself often enough.

“Can you think of anything that might help us find the witches?”

“They need the people that they take to be alive, I think. They’re all women, the witches. And I didn’t have much time without the blindfold on, mostly I was running away from them, but I didn’t recognize any of them from town.”

“Do you remember what field they brought you to?”

“Oh, it isn’t a field anymore. The bottling company went in over there, back in ’77. Closed down a few years ago, been empty ever since.”

“Thank you for talking with us. If you think of anything else that might be helpful, you can give me a call, any time.” Dean offered her an honest to goodness business card, which Claire would have laughed at if Vicky hadn’t been there. Vicky took it and nodded, and Dean got up and unlatched the door. They slipped back out onto the street, leaving Vicky on her sad blue couch.

Chapter Text

One thing about Dean that apparently couldn’t be bent by time was his zeal for diner food, which was just as fervent in 2002 as it was in 2017. Claire found herself sitting across from him on a sticky vinyl booth bench at an even stickier formica table. To her great surprise, he didn’t order a burger, instead opting for the day’s special, which was inscrutable diner slang to her untrained ear, and a slice of peach pie. Claire ordered a chicken sandwich and a strawberry milkshake, which Dean seemed to tacitly approve of.

“I’m glad things went well with Vicky, but are we really any closer to cracking this thing?”

“What’s there to crack?” Dean replied, twisting his straw wrapper back and forth until it crumbled under the stress. He took a quick sip of his water before snatching Claire’s discarded wrapper and rolling it into a tight spiral, like a tiny sleeping bag, then unrolling it into a long curl. “Sounds like we know where they’ll be and when, we just need to be there first, to catch them before they get started on the ritual. We can plead our case, use violence if necessary, and get them to send you back to 2017. Simple.”

“Sounds kind of risky, don’t you think?”

“You got a better idea?” He countered, leveling her with a look that he could have borrowed from his 2017 self.

“Not really,” she admitted, only after running through every possible alternative and coming up empty handed. There wasn’t much time to languish in her disappointment, because just then, her milkshake arrived. They ate in comfortable silence, occasionally catching each other staring. Whenever she got caught staring, she’d quickly look back at her food, but whenever she caught Dean staring, he’d just make a silly face, an exaggerated smile, an artless wink.

When she finished, and he was just working on his pie, she watched him openly, desensitized to the initial embarrassment. He just looked so young, even though he still had a few years on her. Underfed. His face was all angles and hard lines, and she was sure that if he wasn’t wearing that ridiculous oversized jacket, he’d be stringbean skinny, too. She knew in the abstract that he’d had a hard life, that his childhood had been transient and violent – that’s why Cas wanted him to talk with her in the first place, to relate to her on that level – but seeing the bits of that life that dragged on into his twenties was something else entirely.

“You talk to Sam much?” She asked, not really meaning to say it right then, though she’d been wondering about it since he brought up Stanford at Vicky’s.

“Nah, kid’s busy,” he answered around a bite of pie. It didn’t come out as neutrally as he’d been shooting for.

“Come on, that’s bullshit.” She shook her head, smiling incredulously. He put his fork down and looked up at her, held her gaze, face suddenly sincere.

“Yeah, it’s bullshit,” he agreed, staring for a beat longer before going back to his pie without another word. It chilled something in her, getting even the tiniest view of how he was really feeling, under all the humor, under the meticulous veneer. It reminded her of how she felt when Amelia ran off, how she never let on how much it hurt her, even though it was etched across everything she said and did, how the absence stung.

When he finished eating, he paid in cash, and they walked the now ten blocks back to the car where they’d parked it by the library. Claire didn’t want to risk sticking her foot in her mouth again, so she kept a lid on it. Dean didn’t talk either, but he also didn’t seem upset. Just like he was somewhere else, deep in his thoughts.

+++

They were in the car, headed to Dean’s motel room for the night. After their quiet walk, he’d been a lot more vocal once they got driving. He even asked her to pick a tape to play, though he got a little frustrated when she kept wrinkling her nose and asking who these bands were.

“You telling me you don’t know any AC/DC albums? You sure you’re my kid?” He laughed. “Whatever, no time like the present. Pop in Back in Black, alright?”

As much as she hated to admit liking his old man music, it was pretty good, and she told him so – the bit about it being ‘old man music’ included. He feigned being insulted, but she could tell he appreciated the praise nonetheless. Things were going pretty well, until his phone rang. He scrambled to answer it, turning the radio down to a faint murmur.

“Dean,” he stated, voice rigid. She couldn’t hear what the other person was saying, but it was like their words had some magical thrall over him, like he was turning into a marble statue in real time as he listened.

“Yes, sir,” he answered something they’d said after a few long minutes of silence on Dean’s end. The other person piped up again, and Claire could make out a sort of deep voice, but no distinct words.

“Still on the hunt in Stockton, sir. Should be wrapped up by tomorrow night, if everything – “ The other person cut him off, but he didn’t react outwardly at all, no eye rolling or any other sign of displeasure at being interrupted.

“I can’t have it done any sooner. It’s witches, and they’re gearing up for something on the solstice. I’m going to have to catch them out on that day, because they’re in hiding until then. But after that, I should be good to go.”

He held the phone a little away from his ear, the other person not yelling per se, but speaking so forcefully that it had to physically hurt to hear right next to you like that. Claire winced on his behalf, the words making it over to the passenger seat in a tinny garbled mess – ‘telling me you can’t – if I didn’t know any better I’d – just some fucking witches! – gotta wait to do things on their fucking schedule? You’re too-‘ – all vitriol, even at its most unintelligible.

And Dean just sat there, eyes on the road, free hand on the wheel, face blank, taking it. Claire had never seen someone berate him like this, but she’d always had the distinct impression that if someone pulled that shit, he wouldn’t let them walk away unscathed. His frozen non-reaction made her feel kind of nauseous, like she was watching the scene through a keyhole, creeping up on a private piece of the man, a piece he hadn’t meant to share.

She was so lost in her own discomfort that it took her a few minutes of total silence to realize his call had ended. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed it draw to a close because neither party said ‘goodbye’ or any other traditional parting words. The road noise was the only sound, a comforting frictionary whisper under her feet.

“Who was that?” Claire asked, worried suddenly that she might already know. Dean didn’t look over at her, hadn’t since before the call. Nothing moved besides his mouth, when he answered.

“My dad.”

“Yikes,” she commented, because she wasn’t really used to keeping any opinions to herself, even the negative ones. She’d never really needed to.

“Come on.” Dean grimaced, clearly trying to scold her, but the slight waver in his voice undermined that goal. “He’s my dad, Claire.”

“And he seems like a douche.”

“Seriously – “ There was a heat in his tone that hadn’t been there before, but Claire wasn’t used to navigating his moods, and it went right over her head as she interrupted him again.

“I can’t believe you let him talk to you like that! I can’t believe you let anyone talk to you like that! What’s his problem, isn’t he the one who – “

“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Dean gritted, hands gripping the steering wheel like he was trying to crack it in half. Claire thought about snapping back at him, even opened her mouth and drew in the breath to do it, but something about the look on his face, the blankness, stopped her. They sat in the electric tension that arguments seem to cultivate, neither speaking, both painfully aware of the other, until he pulled into a parking spot at the motel. He killed the engine, but made no move to exit the car.

“I’m really glad that you don’t,” he admitted, voice low but rough. It reminded her of 2017 Dean’s voice.

“That I don’t…what?”

“That you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I’m glad because…I don’t know, because it means I’m not like him, with you. That people in your life – Jody? Cas? Whoever, that they don’t treat you like a fucking grunt.” Claire was hesitant to even breathe, afraid the tiniest disruption would shatter the moment. “When you told me you were on a hunt, by yourself…I was worried that you were just going through all this same shit. But if you thought that was bad,” Dean let a hollow chuckle slip, like the reaming he took on the phone was just a big joke, “then I know you’re not.”

Dean seemed satisfied that he’d made his point, and he got out of the car, but Claire felt stuck in her seat, overwhelmed suddenly by the realization that even a Dean who had never met her, knew barely anything about her, knew he wouldn’t see her again for the better part of a decade, still cared about her. It wasn’t about doing a favor for Cas, or for Jody, or some ambiguous sense of doing right by people you’d wronged. Dean just cared, because that’s who he was, right down to the core.

When Claire had been on her own, she comforted herself with the idea that it showed how strong she was, how independent, how mature. They were all just different ways of rationalizing her loneliness. If not for psycho time travel witches, Dean would be alone right now, just like he was the day before, and like he’d be when she was gone, back in 2017 with people who loved her. He would still be right here, all alone. She didn’t know enough about Dean to know how much longer he’d be alone for. Maybe years.

About halfway between the car and the motel door, Dean seemed to realize that Claire hadn’t followed him, was still sitting right where he left her in the passenger seat. He came around and opened the door for her.

“Didn’t know you needed a fuckin’ butler, man,” he laughed. “After you, your highness.” Claire wrinkled her nose, but she still laughed, because it felt good. She almost got out of the car, but an idea struck her, so she crossed her arms over her chest and jutted her chin out in an exaggerated show of stubbornness.

“Take me mini-golfing,” she commanded, putting on a haughty arrogance to go with the bit. Dean huffed a surprised laugh, and it made her smile.

“You wanna go mini-golfing? The night before we take on a whole coven, that’s what you wanna do?” Dean sounded incredulous, but underneath that, a bit hopeful.

“Yeah. I do,” she said through a grin. He laughed a little louder, shutting her door again, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation as he rounded the car, hopping back into the driver’s seat.

“As you wish,” Dean intoned, feigning sincerity, as he turned the key in the ignition, Impala rumbling back to life.

Chapter Text

As if he had some sixth sense for where mini-golf courses were, he drove them to one about ten miles east of Stockton. She hadn’t really thought ahead when she suggested it – in 2017, if she wanted to go to a movie, or a motel, or a restaurant, or anything, she could just punch it into her phone and see what was nearby. In 2002, you had to know where things were already, or use maps and phonebooks and stuff to find anything that wasn’t big and obvious. Dean hadn’t needed a map or anything at all to find the place, just drove to it like he went there every night, like he was born in the damn parking lot.

“Haven’t been here in ages. Great little place – dinosaur themed.” Dean grinned, and it made him look so much younger. Or, maybe it just made him look as young as he was, instead of prematurely serious and bogged down by tragedy. He looked like a 23 year old, in his element.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Used to take Sammy mini-golfing all the time. We were in this area often enough, got to know where all the little joints were. Mom and pop places are pretty relaxed, usually don’t charge you to go back through a second time.” They went up to the shack at the entrance, painted a garish purple, decked out with fake yellow trail signs that said things like ‘dinosaur crossing’ and ‘beware: t-rex habitat’. A bored teenager who’d been doodling on the back of one of the scorecards took Dean’s cash and handed them two stubby purple pencils and a scorecard.

“Pick out your balls, clubs are around the side,” the kid intoned, not bothering to look up at them.

“Thanks, man.” Dean scooped a bright red ball out of the wire rack on the counter, and something in Claire’s chest twinged at the knowledge that he must always pick red, just like he had when they mini-golfed together the first time. Or is this technically the first time? She wondered, not having considered much the mundane intricacies of time travel. Claire picked a teal ball, and they rounded the corner to pick out clubs.

“Did Sam like this place?” Claire asked as they walked to the first hole. Dean seemed more open to talking about Sam. Maybe it was the setting, or maybe it was the way things seemed to have settled between them, turning into something comfortable, familial.

“Yeah,” Dean smiled, lining up his first shot. The hole was a simple one, just a thin raised ridge leading to a drop. If you didn’t hit straight enough, you’d probably need another shot or two, but if you got it clean, it was an easy hole-in-one. “Kid hated clowns, so a lot of traditional mini-golf courses were kind of a bummer for him, at least on a few holes. There were a few pirate ones we found over the years that he really loved. But I think the safari / dinosaur / animal themed ones were his favorites.” Dean knocked the ball straight along the ridge, right into the hole, and made a big show of bowing and waving to imaginary fans, blowing kisses. Besides a couple of teens lingering around the 15^th hole, they were the only ones on the course.

“Sam hates clowns? You guys are always up against such spooky shit, but it’s clowns he’s got beef with?” Claire laughed. Dean laughed along with her and she lined up her own shot. She almost cheated it a little too far left, but it wobbled along the ridge and dropped into the hole. She mimed wiping sweat off of her brow. “Whew! That was close!” Dean scribbled down the scores on the card they’d been given before tucking it into his jacket pocket.

“Hates them,” he affirmed. “Hey, everyone has something stupid they’re scared of, even hunters. We’re just people, still. Hell, I’m scared of flying. I’m sure you got shit you’re scared of.” They meandered through the crude fake jungle scenery toward the second hole. A shiny greenish concrete statue of a velociraptor straddled the hole, the path to which was marred by fake dinosaur footprints that could ensnare your ball.

“Hey, fair.” Claire shrugged. Dean effortlessly navigated the slalom of dino prints, getting another hole-in-one. He pumped his fist in victory, and Claire dutifully rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t know if this is an even match up, if you’ve been here a bunch of times when this is my first time,” She grumbled, mostly just to rib him a little. He scoffed.

“Any daughter of mine should be good enough at mini-golf that she wouldn’t need an even match to kick somebody’s ass.”

“Well, blame Cas for any mini-golf deficiencies on my part, then.”

“Not his bag?”

“He’s kind of buttoned up, most of the time. I bet he’d love it if you took him mini-golfing, you just never have.”

“I live with the guy, but we haven’t mini-golfed?” He chuckled. “What the hell do we do?”

“Dude, I don’t know, I live with Jody. I’m guessing you just sit on the couch staring into each other’s eyes or something,” Claire fired off as she swung, her shot going wide at the last minute and bouncing impotently off the concrete velociraptor. She let out a string of expletives under her breath, more from sticking her foot in her mouth again than missing the shot.

“O-Oh,” Dean stuttered, blushing in patches across his cheeks, ducking his head down under the guise of scribbling down his own score on the card, even though Claire still had yet to finish her turn. She took a clumsy putt and bullied the ball into the hole.

Claire made a concerted effort to keep her comments in check for the rest of the course, lightening the mood back up. Dean took to giving silly voices to all the dinosaur statues, having them ‘heckle’ himself and Claire alike as they went. It was funnier than she was willing to admit, and she pretended to think it was lame, but sometimes he’d come up with something so ridiculous and out of left field that it would shock a laugh out of her, and he’d preen over it.

By the time they got to the 17^th hole, they were lost in the simple fun of the game. It was one of those holes where you have to pick one of three chutes blind and hope the one you pick puts you in an optimal position for the second phase of the hole. The theme of the hole seemed to be ‘dino nest’, and there were lots of huge glittery jewel toned concrete eggs scattered between the tee and the chutes.

“Bet you remember exactly which one gets you the hole-in-one,” Claire groused as he lined up his shot with a preposterous amount of gravitas. He looked at her over his shoulder and grinned wickedly.

“You go after me, so you’ll know, too.” He smacked the ball a little harder than Claire probably would have, and it gave it the extra oomph it needed to make it to the farthest chute, rumbling down the PVC pipe that led to the recessed portion of the course. Claire jogged over to watch it come out of the tube, where it zinged directly into the hole. She looked back at him and scowled, but he just bent into a cartoonish curtsey and moved out of her way, gesturing with a sweeping wave of his hand at the tee. “The floor is yours, your excellency.”

She trudged back to the tee and plopped her ball down. Her arm drew back, and right as she was about to swing, a swooping dropping feeling coursed through her and she sucked in a deep breath, letting her club drift back to her side. Things were so easy between them, at least for the last half hour or so, in a way she hadn’t really experienced since she was a very small child. Claire had always wanted a sibling, someone to play games with and tell secrets to, someone who’d understand her in a way parents couldn’t. This was as close to that kind of thing that she’d ever gotten, and it would be gone in less than 24 hours.

Dean seemed to notice something was up, so she hurried to shake off the heavy feeling in her gut and swung wildly, the ball bouncing and bumbling toward the closest chute, skittering across the opening before rolling backward and falling in anyway. Dean stalked over to the overhang and watched it roll out, coming to a stop a few feet short of the hole. He looked back at Claire with some quip on his tongue, but whatever he was going to say, he swallowed it back down.

“You alright, kid?” He asked, coming back over.

“Yeah, I’m…” Claire made herself exhale the breath she’d accidentally been holding. “Thanks. I’m really lucky.”

“You got kicked fifteen years into the past by fucking witches, I don’t think that’s luck.” Dean cocked an eyebrow. Claire rolled her eyes, ignored the pressure building in her tear ducts.

“Not that, idiot. Just. I’m lucky you care about me,” She huffed, looking up at the inscrutable night sky, stars blotted out by the harsh lights mounted throughout the course.

“Yeah, well. Don’t tell anybody, but I’m kind of a nice guy. If you let that get around, it’ll ruin my whole sexy unavailable asshole persona, so keep a lid on it.” He flashed a cheesy grin, but his eyes were genuinely warm when Claire met his gaze.

“Your secret’s safe with me.” She patted him on the arm as she passed, off to sink another shot.

+++

Claire didn’t question it when they ended up at a bar after mini-golfing, even though she was pretty sure 2017 Dean would throw a shit fit if she was drinking underage. It was only a couple months until she’d be 21, and he still wouldn’t let her even have a beer. 2002 Dean seemed far less concerned with all that stuff. Maybe it was fresher in his mind, how miniscule the difference between 20 and 21 is. Or maybe getting a visit from your future sort-of daughter is a little too much to take fully sober, and he couldn’t be bothered to gatekeep the experience. Either way, they found themselves tucked into a corner booth, sharing some greasy french fries, Claire sipping a beer, Dean nursing some whiskey.

“What’re you gonna do, after I go back to 2017?”

“Same shit I always do. Drive around, bust ghosts, rinse, repeat.” He said it like it didn’t bug him.

“Is that what you wanna do?”

“Doesn’t matter what I wanna do, man.”

“So you just do whatever he wants you to do?” She curled her lip when referring to his dad, like the pronoun smelled bad. Dean shook his head a little, coughed an arrogant laugh.

“Yup.” He took a sip of his drink. “I know you don’t get it. You don’t have to get it.”

“I know I’m not supposed to try to change shit in the past, but I dunno…”

“Claire?” He didn’t quite interrupt, because she had trailed off, but she really had been meaning to finish the thought.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s just drop this. You’re not gonna fix my dad, and you’re not gonna fix me.” He didn’t say it with any bite to it. If anything, he sounded disappointed. Like maybe he wished she could.

“Yeah, alright.” They drank in hesitant silence for a few minutes, the TV mounted over the bar chittering away, recapping baseball scores and highlights from the week.

“Am I…in the future, am I…I don’t know. Am I different?” He seemed like he wanted to ask something much more specific, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Claire studied him hard, but his face didn’t give anything away.

“Yeah, obviously. It’s like, 15 years. Everyone’s different after that long. But I’m not sure I should tell you a whole lot about your own life. Don’t want to give you any spoilers – or at least, any more than I already have.”

“You’ve got a point, I guess. I’m just curious as hell, you know? Not like I get the chance to play twenty questions with my future daughter every day.”

“Not like I get to play twenty questions with my future dad every day.” She looked over at him, smiling softly. Even as tough as he still seemed, there was something so open about him. He wasn’t all hard edges yet. “Dean, can I ask you something?”

“Go on, shoot – not like I can mess anything up for myself by telling you about shit that’s already happened by the time you exist,” Dean laughed, but Claire paused. He was probably right, but she still worried that this might be overstepping.

“This morning, when we met. You sounded kinda bummed at the idea that Jody was your wife.” She waited, to see if he had any idea where she was headed, but he just looked at her, expectant, patient. “And you sounded kinda excited that Cas might be your husband.” She held his gaze, willing him to answer the question without her having to ask it, but he just stared at her, his familiar green eyes shining uncannily from his slimmer younger face. “Dean, are you gay?” He sucked in a breath through his nose, and she rushed to say something, anything, to temper the invasive nature of the question. “Not that that’s a bad thing! Or any of my business! I just. I think I’m gay? And my birth parents, I don’t think they would have liked that – not like I can ask them – but I know Cas is fine with that, and Jody probably is, but I can never really tell where you land on that stuff and I just…so, um, are you? If you don’t wanna say or don’t wanna talk about it or – “ She was talking faster and faster, and his expression kept shifting, growing cloudier and cloudier, until he interrupted her.

“I don’t know, Claire. I don’t…I don’t know, okay?” He brought his drink to his lips but set it back down without following through. “Do I seem gay?”

“You’re kinda butch, but I don’t think it really reads faggy.” She shrugged. His face paled and he leaned close across the table.

“Hey! Not cool,” He hissed. She cocked her head, confused. He rolled his eyes and leaned in even closer. “What’s with the fuckin’ language, man?” He whispered before sitting back, perturbed. “Jesus, I let you talk like that?” He shook his head, and it clicked for her at last.

“Oh, no, sorry. In the future it’s kind of like, coming back in a less insulting way? Like, gay people are reclaiming it or whatever. I guess it’s probably just mean still, in 2002.”

“Uh yeah, man. You sounded like my fuckin’ dad,” he grumbled.

“Sorry.” She grimaced, thinking about what context he might have heard his dad say ‘fag’ in.

“Anyway. I don’t know if I’m gay, or some other thing. It’s not like I’ve got a lot of leeway to try shit out. I don’t have time to sit around all day and write in my fuckin’ diary. Doesn’t really matter anyway. This life? You don’t get to do the whole relationship thing anyhow.”

“Yeah, except…I don’t know, you might, someday.” Claire bit her lip. “Look, forget I said anything about it, okay? I don’t want to change the course of your life or whatever, just ‘cause I’m nosy.”

They drank in silence a little while longer until Dean magnanimously struck up a line of questioning about Claire’s favorite bands, movies, stuff like that. Most of it didn’t exist yet, but he always got excited when she’d name something he was familiar with. The drive back to the motel was a happy one.

Dean’s room was a single, but he insisted he’d sleep in the chair. “Done it plenty, doesn’t bother me, man,” he’d explained, and she had no choice but to cave. It was either that or argue all night. True to his word, Dean seemed to fall asleep a few minutes after they turned out the lights. Claire stared up at the faint white aura of the ceiling and tortured herself with a montage of Dean’s role in her life so far. How long she hated him for killing fucking Randy, the guy who tried to pay off his loan shark by setting her up to get raped. Hated him so much she put out a hit on him – and he didn’t even kill those assholes, even though he could have.

The next time she saw him he just rolled with everything, no matter how hard she pushed, no matter how much she tried to piss him off and chase him away. He just let it roll right off. Hell, he even gave her a gun, helped her find her mom. And after everything went south, he didn’t tell anyone she lifted the sword, just gave her a fucking handbook. That and a copy of Caddyshack, because he’s just a big nerd, deep down. She apologized for trying to have him murdered and he acted like he’d already forgiven her, and hell, maybe he had.

When they got nabbed by vampires, it was Dean that got them back. When her own ego got her into deep shit with a werewolf, when she literally turned, he managed to corral her without killing her, without even hurting her. As out of it as she was when the cure was pumping through her, she could still remember the look on his face while he looked on, the raw fear, the guilt.

She’d be dead at least three times over if it weren’t for him, constantly butting into her life. Now he was sleeping all crunched up in a stupid chair in his own motel room, because he was saving her ass again. When she finally fell asleep, it was mostly because she would feel like an asshole for taking the bed and not even benefitting from it.

Chapter Text

+++ 21 JUNE 2002 +++

“Rise and shine, kid,” Dean called from across the room as he unceremoniously opened the blinds, flooding the room in golden light. Claire hissed at the brightness, groaning as she covered her eyes.

“Fuck. You,” She grunted, muffled somewhat by her own arm.

“Good morning to you to!” He pretended to be offended. “Come on, big day. Let’s grab some breakfast and get rolling.”

They ate at a different diner, one that was closer to the motel. This one was cleaner than the last one, but the food wasn’t as good. Dean didn’t seem to mind the decrease in quality, or if he did, he didn’t let on. Things felt tense, even though the energy between herself and Dean specifically wasn’t tense. It was more just a sense of impending violence, casting the whole world in a technicolor clarity that set her teeth on edge. They’d been betting that this witch thing would work, and it very well might, but what if it didn’t? What if they wouldn’t send her forward, or couldn’t? What if they killed her, or killed Dean? What the fuck would that do to the timeline?

“Not hungry?” He asked, gesturing with his fork at her half eaten french toast and straggling sliver of bacon. She sipped her coffee, which tasted burnt, and shook her head. “You mind?” He gestured again, and she laughed and shook her head again. He was already dragging the plate over to himself, grinning. He took a ridiculously big bite of the french toast and moaned his approval of it.

“Dude, it isn’t that good.”

“I never order french toast – why do I never order french toast?” He mused, looking down at it like it was covered in gold leaf. He took another massive bite and spoke again, mouth full. “Okay, focus. After this, we get supplies together, stake the place out.”

“You really think this is gonna work?” She asked, knowing that it wasn’t really a useful line of thinking at this point, but chasing it anyway.

“Gotta. We’ll make it work,” he said simply, taking a swig of coffee before digging back into her leftover french toast. She wondered if he was really that confident, or if he was just staunchly unwilling to let his worries show, even to himself.

+++

Getting supplies together mostly entailed counting all their witch-killing bullets and distributing them to the appropriate weapons, making sure their clothes didn’t have many hiding places for hex bags (meaning that, for once, Dean wasn’t wearing that gigantic jacket – he looked like a hermit crab without a shell), and clearing out Dean’s motel room, since he’d be checking out today no matter what.

The drive over to the factory invited even more of that tension. Everything looked sharp, crisp. The leaves on the trees were serrated green knives. The long line of the Impala’s hood was an onyx blade, slicing into the gravel road and the slick blue sky. Claire knew the witches weren’t too savvy – they’d been easy enough to kill on her own, and she doubted they’d be any harder to take now – but that didn’t mean they’d be able to get what they needed from them.

They parked all the way at the back of the pothole riddled lot beside the shell of the factory. After an initial lap around the exterior perimeter, they ventured inside and swept through as a team, scanning for anything that had shifted since the day before. Everything was exactly as it had been, so they exited the building and set up to stake the place out from a distance. They found a decent place to set up in the shade of a tree, where they were able to monitor all angles of entry with relative ease. For the first few hours, they sat in tense but companionable silence, until boredom finally got to them.

“You know what I thought, when you showed up yesterday?” Dean asked, keeping his voice very low, as if he thought the witches could hear him here somehow.

“What?” Claire tried to match his clandestine tone and volume.

“When I asked if you were my kid…I dunno. I know now, that you’re not, like, my biological kid, but…” He looked over at her and smiled a lopsided little smile. “I dunno, you kinda look like my mom.”

“Oh,” Claire blinked, not sure what to do, where to put her surprise. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I know obviously that’s dumb, ‘cause you’re not related to me like that. Still, just wanted you to know, I guess.”

“That you think I look like her?” She repeated. If there was a point, besides being strangely melancholy, she couldn’t find it. He snorted a laugh.

“Yeah, but more than that. I don’t know. That I see myself in you. Blood or not, you just. You look like family, Claire. It was the easiest thing in the world, to believe you when you said that.”

“For a guy who says he doesn’t like talking about his feelings, you sure do bring ‘em up a lot.” She nudged his ribs, grinning. He made a face at her, but his ears were tipped blush pink. “You’re my family, too, Dean. Thanks, for everything. I know I already said it, but, yeah. Just, thanks.”

“Don’t thank me until you’re back in 2017, listening to your garbage music again.”

“How do you know it’s garbage? It doesn’t even exist yet!”

“I can just tell. Got a sixth sense for these things.”

+++

At the hottest part of the day, the witches arrived. They approached from the tree line, off to the left of Dean and Claire, processing solemnly toward the old factory, blue cloaks flapping gently in the breeze. They both spotted the group at the same time, and were deliberately silent. There were fifteen witches, the same number there had been in 2017.

There were also about twenty prisoners, hands bound, eyes covered, dressed in simple white robes. Only one witch brought up the rear of the line of prisoners, and Dean made eye contact with Claire when he clocked the weak link, motioning with his flat hand toward the straggler. She nodded, and they moved swiftly along the tree line, toward the back of the single file line of witches and captives.

When they caught up with the witches, Dean knocked out the last one in line, just a swift smack to the back of her head with the butt of his pistol. He caught her as she fell, and dragged her back into the woods, hiding her behind one of the trees. Claire tied her hands, then loosely tied her to the tree – not enough to hurt, just enough to keep her from fleeing.

She woke up about twenty minutes later, Dean’s gun trained on her from where he stood about six feet in front of her. Claire hung back, gun drawn but not aimed.

“Listen, sister. Sorry about your head. I have special bullets in this gun, so don’t try anything. I don’t want to hurt you, I just…need a bit of a favor. Do you understand so far? Don’t speak, just nod, yes or no.”

The woman stared at him, shifted her gaze to Claire, where something like recognition flared briefly, then flicked her gaze back to Dean. She nodded, very slowly.

“Okay. Long story short, my friend here got shuffled around a bit, and we need to send her forward, to this date, but 15 years from now. Can you and your pals do that kind of thing?”

The woman smiled, a tiny smile, barely more than a twitch of the lips, and she nodded.

“And will you do it? Just because you can doesn’t mean you will, I’m sure.”

She nodded, emphatically. Dean narrowed his eyes, studying her.

“Not that I don’t love the enthusiasm, but you seem awful eager to help us out, for someone who just got tied to a tree and threatened. There something in this for you that I don’t know about? You can talk, but if you try anything magicky, I won’t hesitate.” He gestured with the gun, moving it a few inches, as if to remind her it was still pointed at her – like she could have forgotten.

“It’s time. For hundreds of years, our order has assembled to maintain the chain. I did not expect to live to see the prophecy come to pass. I am enthusiastic, because I am honored.” The woman bowed her head in deference to Claire.

“What are you talking about? What prophecy?” Claire growled, tension that had coiled in her chest all day threatening to lash out.

“The fair warrior and her knight shall anoint the land with sacred blood, the final knot fastened by her hand,” the woman recited in English before repeating it again, with the same intonation, in some other language. “I will help you. I must,” she said simply.

“Oooookay.” Claire shot Dean a ‘what the fuck’ look, and he glanced back, shrugging.

“You swear you aren’t gonna pull anything, if we bring you back to your crew?” Dean asked, and the woman nodded. He hissed an exasperated sigh and unfastened the lines binding her to the tree, keeping her hands bound. Dean and Claire each took one of her arms as she stood up, and they walked in an awkward shuffling huddle across the grassy field to the factory.

Inside, it took a moment to adjust to the near-darkness, broken up only by weak shafts of sunlight drifting through busted out windows. The witches were assembled in the middle of the main room, several of them drawing symbols in chalk all along the floor in some large pattern. Two were hovering near the prisoners, not really guarding them so much as loitering beside them. The rest of the witches were engaged in a heated argument, which silenced as soon as they saw Dean and Claire with their charge.

“Tiril! Who are these people? How have they subdued you?” One of the witches scolded.

“The warrior and her knight have arrived, Solveig. I am subdued by my honor and fate alone.” The woman, Solveig, apparently, gasped, eyes wide.

“Ylva, Aslaug, reverse the secondary and tertiary staves,” Solveig barked the command to two of the witches who were chalking out runes. They immediately set about enacting whatever she’d just ordered them to do. “Klæra,” the woman bowed in front of Claire, then turned to Dean. “Riddari,” she nodded at Dean, curt but respectful. She turned away, instructing witches with new commands as she went. Dean looked at Claire and shrugged.

“Tiril?” Claire asked the woman whose arm she was still gripping. The woman looked at her, expectantly. Claire noticed a mole under her left eye, and her mind briefly flashed to 2017, when she dragged this exact woman’s lifeless body into the middle of this same room, preparing to burn her along with every other woman in this room. Her stomach rolled. “What is this prophecy?”

“The fair warrior and her knight shall – “

“Don’t recite it back to me, I mean tell me what it means! Seriously, explain it to me like I’m four years old, lady.”

“Our order was created to serve the Norns, the guardianesses of fate and time. We are their emissaries on Earth. We correct…discrepancies, in fate and time. But it was foretold, when our foremothers were inducted into the order, that there would come a day when we were no longer needed, a day when time would change its shape, and our work would end. You are our harbinger, the bringer of our end. When you shed our blood, it will sink into the land and bind the final knot. We must die, to water the seeds of time’s second bloom.” Tiril spoke with reverence. Dean looked incredibly pale. Claire just stared, willing her brain to work.

“You want me to kill you?”

“Not now, but yes. When the time comes.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean huffed, releasing Tiril’s arm to scrub a hand across his face. “This is fucked up.”

“What happens to all these people?” Claire asked, gesturing to the prisoners.

“They are redistributed to the times in which they belong. Their birth in this era is an imbalance, and we address it by reassigning them to the period their soul ought to reside within,” Tiril explained.

“So…they don’t die?”

“No, though their souls are integral to fueling the spell, since it is intended to convey them.”

“Riiiiiiight…” Dean chewed his lip, taking in their surroundings.

“What do we do now?” Claire asked Dean, but he and Tiril answered her, accidentally in unison –

“We wait,” they both said, though their tones couldn’t have been more disparate.

+++

They did, indeed, wait. The sun was setting on the longest day of the year when the witches finally assembled in a more formal stance, shooing Dean off to the side. Solveig whispered something to him, though Claire couldn’t hear it. He nodded, looking very serious. The older witch left him to take her place in the center of the circle of women, and Claire went to Dean.

“What’d she say?”

“Oh, nothing much. Told me I needed to get out of here unless I wanted to get sucked into the spell. Which, as exciting as 2017 sounds, something tells me its more of a ‘worth the wait’ kind of exciting.”

“So you’re leaving,” Claire acknowledged. It was practical, and she wasn’t upset. She wasn’t.

“No, just giving you space.” He smiled. “Think about it, you’re gonna see me again so soon! I gotta wait years to meet up with you again.”

“Yeah, okay.” Claire looked down at her shoes. It seemed like it was going to work, but there was a paranoid little part of her that was sure it wouldn’t. “Bye, Dean.” She didn’t really decide to hug him, she just did. She told herself it was for his sake. If anyone had ever needed a hug, it was probably Dean. He hugged back, letting her go easily after a few moments.

“See ya later, Claire.” He smiled. She rolled her eyes, because that was kind of her thing, she guessed. She turned and walked back to the circle of witches, not really sure she could handle watching him walk out of the building.

The ritual was loud, a lot of chanting, a lot of greenish yellow sparks, a lot of buzzing and whizzing and staticky sounds. She was so caught up in the arduousness of it that the bright flash caught her totally by surprise, and yet again, she didn’t even have time to scream before the world disappeared into velvet night.

Chapter Text

+++ 21 JUNE 2017 +++

Claire woke up on a concrete floor, her head pounding. When she opened her eyes, the room was dark, so she scrambled in her pockets until she found her phone, turning on the flashlight feature. She gasped in horror at the scene around her. It was absolute carnage. The room was studded with puddles of blood, crisscrossed with smeary red streaks from where she’d dragged the bodies of fifteen witches to the center of the floor.

Getting to her feet was a challenge, but she muscled through it, only to double over and vomit immediately. Her mind was racing, relief dueling bitterly with guilt. Prophecy or not, she’d murdered fifteen women who hadn’t killed a single person.

Just then, her phone rang, and she answered it automatically, not bothering to look at who it was. Probably Jody, wanting to know why she’d gone radio silent.

“Claire? I’m outside, I’m gonna park and meet you in there, okay?” She blinked, every single thought in her head dissipating like smoke.

“Dean?” She squeaked. He laughed on the other end of the line, and she heard a drastic reduction in background noise as he turned off his obnoxiously loud car.

“I’ll be in there in like, two minutes, but if you want I can stay on the phone until then,” he offered.

“Stay on the phone, yeah,” she heard herself say. He was saying something, but she felt like her ears were packed with cotton. When he came inside, she barely noticed, only cocking her head toward the sound of his footsteps.

“Hey, Claire,” he said, stopping about a foot in front of her, ducking his head down to meet her eyes. “Long time no see,” He joked, though his eyes were full of concern.

“Hey,” She replied, taking a deep breath. “You gonna help me with all this clean-up? Your mess, too,” she joked, voice shaking.

“Yeah, about that. She told me to bring the bodies outside. Said we didn’t need to burn them, that we’d understand when we did it.”

“Okay.” Claire shrugged. She felt numb. They dragged the first body outside, setting it down on the grass. At first, nothing happened, so they went back in to grab the next one. When they came back out, the first body was gone. In its place, a sapling had sprung up, tender and new. They made quick work of the remaining bodies after that, arranging them in a sort of circle, even though they hadn’t discussed doing it in any sort of pattern. When they finished, there were fifteen tiny trees poking out of the soil.

“All this time, you knew? You remembered, and you didn’t…tell me?” Claire asked as they trudged back into the factory to gather her things and burn the blood-stained building to ash.

“Sort of. I can’t describe it. It was like I knew about it, but I didn’t have to think about it. On some level, I probably knew that acting on it would mess things up.”

“But now we both know.”

“And now we don’t know what comes next.”

“Nobody does, I guess.” She looked over her shoulder, towards the door they’d dragged the bodies through, where the copse of trees was growing.

“Guess so,” Dean agreed.

They lit the building on fire and watched it blaze from the parking lot.

“So, longest day of the year?” Dean looked over at her, stupid grin on his face. Claire rolled her eyes, knowing there was some idiotic rejoinder on the way. “Sure felt long to me.”

“Really?” She cocked an eyebrow. “It really flew by for me.”

“Good one,” He laughed. “I know where you get your sense of humor, and it sure as hell ain’t Cas.”

“Nah, you gotta take the blame on this one, dude.” They watched the flames for a little while longer before she spoke again. “You think that diner’s still open at this time of night?”

“Only one way to find out.” He shuffled his keys in his hand before turning to walk towards where both their vehicles were parked. “Meet you there?”

“Yeah. See you there, Dean.”

“See you there, kid.” She could hear him smiling, even though his back was to her, and she couldn’t help but smile, too.