Archive of Our Own

Sammy was supposed to be the normal one. It was stuck in Dean’s head like a pebble just in the wrong part of his boot, constantly shifting just enough for him to be aware of it. Yeah, he and Dad had that massive blowout of a fight; yes, he’d stopped taking Dean’s calls the second he’d arrived at Stanford; he was shaping up for some white picket fence apple-pie life all on his own. There was always the drachma in his pocket. Chiron probably would’ve preferred if he had at least asked them what they knew even though he hadn't reached out in years, but that wasn’t really up to the old clydesdale, was it?

The Impala ate the miles between Vegas and Stanford and Dean thought about it the whole way:

Rusty Brother or Heavily Armed Strangers?

The choice was a simpler one than it sounded.

~~~

Dean wasn’t the kind monsters came after a lot; he wasn’t one of the Big Three’s or anything like that. He had a sense for where they were, but that was only because he saw them better than any mortal ever would. The Mist didn’t cover every kind of monster, but they all used the same tricks, Greek or not. He got used to looking around corners that didn’t really exist, telling his dad who acted weird, smelled off, sounded funny in their kind of way. He was still a demigod, though, and with that came monsters.

It was actually one of the last times Dad had left them with Bobby, one golden summer that still stuck out like something special burned into Dean’s head like wasted potential. At the time, Bobby hadn’t had a clue what a freak Dean actually was, the kind of magic that was written into his bones. As far as he’d known, Dean was the regular kind of messed up that came with growing up in their world, nothing more. That he’d known about Camp Half-Blood and all the other people running around with a mix of blood and ichor in their veins wasn’t really a question, but that didn’t mean that he knew how to spot it, even when it was right in front of him.

Dean had been walking back from Kelly Winchel’s house, she’d had an NES and he’d been in love at first sight, the sun had just been starting to dip towards the horizon, still warm enough to cook the dirt road. He ducked into the dry grass at the first whisper of a chill up his spine, held his breath, looked deep under the fuzz in front of his eyes.

At first she just looked like a beautiful woman; long curly black hair, tan olive skin, a flowey kind of floral sundress that blew around her in a dead silent wind he couldn’t hear, feel, or see in the grass. But when he looked, she had no eyes, tattered muscle and tendons hanging from the sockets, rainbow like iridescent scales instead of skin, claw like nails with reptilian feet that shone bronze in the sun. Her nose flared. Without a doubt, she knew where he was.

Then that voice. “Where are you, little demigod?”

He froze, not breathing, hoped to whoever was paying attention no civilians came along or Bobby wondered where he was by then.

“I can smell you. How afraid you are. I won’t hurt you, you know. If your mother won’t watch you, then shouldn’t you be with someone who will?”

He clenched the response between his teeth, spent the focus on calculating. Standard stainless steel wouldn’t work against a Lamia, and that’s what she was; only celestial bronze worked on things like that. Trap or lead to Bobby with that celestial bronze tomahawk he’d had made. He gritted his teeth again before he got ready.

Everyone knew that Hermes' children were fast, but they weren’t the only ones with that gift.

Dean’s blood was aglow when he ran, when he drove, when he moved quickly in general. He moved faster than any mortal ever could’ve at his age, covered ground in yards with every stride with nothing but the sureness of his feet and the sound of the Lamia behind him trying to get him to stop so she could drag him back to her lair, insect in spiderweb. There was dust in his lungs, the smell of the rainstorm bearing down on Sioux Falls, the feeling of the hunting knife on his belt, the pinch of his slightly too small shoes. But above it all there was the fierce life that burned through muscle and sinew as he did one of the things he was made for. It was a race; there was only one choice for a creature like him.

When he slid into Bobby’s house calling for him to get the axe, telling him what was outside, the Lamia was over half a mile in his dust, his heart was pounding, and he still had energy to spare for grabbing Sammy and running him out of the way while Bobby made sure the monster didn’t get any farther.

It probably said something about every single one of them that it wasn’t more than Bobby saying he’d work out a way to get him some celestial bronze to carry around at dinner that night. Sam thought the whole thing was just a bit of a hassle. Dean felt more alive than he had in months, even with how much he’d already been enjoying the summer at that point. What really said something was that it was the miniature Grecian Laurel that’d sprouted next to Bobby’s doorstep overnight that brought them all to a stop.

Dean had swallowed dryly when he’d gone to see what was taking Bobby so long getting the paper. His mother hadn’t reached out to him past her gifts basically ever; the one time he could’ve done without any acknowledgement. He looked up to see more gruff concern than anything else in Bobby’s eyes.

“There something you need to tell me, boy?”

“I didn’t mean for anything to show up, I swear!”

His nails bit into his palms at the scowl that got him, dry mouth and clenching stomach.

“I know that, you idjit, but seeing as I didn’t plant any laurels around here, there aren’t a lot of options where this could’ve come from. I just need to know if you knew about this or not. Because if this is news to you, we have bigger fish to fry.”

Dean bit his lips, the wind blew, a massive white feather drifted to the ground at his feet from over Bobby’s head, this white primary the length of Dean’s entire leg at the time.

“What do you know about Nike?”

Bobby had, of course, known more about Dean’s mother than he ever had in the first place, not that that was surprising. It also was and wasn’t at all surprising that he didn’t really care that Dean was only half human at most. He kept him in his house, fed him, taught him about the other part of his heritage in bits and pieces, played with him, trained him with knives, and gave him a hunting knife made of celestial bronze the day before Dad came back to pick him and Sam up. They never went back for a whole summer again, but every time they were ever in Bobby's house, there was Nike’s primary was hung above his door with a laurel sprig from the still growing tree outside underneath it, always fresh.

~~~

Demigods had almost as good of a sense for each other as they had for monsters.

The second Dean got into Sam’s apartment, he knew there was another halfblood there just like he knew Jessica figured him out the second she saw him too. Technically, children of Athena and Nike were supposed to get along very well. In practice, well, in Dean’s experience, children of Athena tended to be assholes when they figured out he wasn’t willing to just fall in line with them always being the brains of the operation the few times their paths had crossed in the real world on a hunt. He noticed the bookmark in her hand, the shimmer of Mist around it, before he noticed the Smurf shirt. Damn it, but he could see why his little brother liked her.

“You know, they said Nike didn’t have any kids at camp,” Jessica said casually after she’d clocked the situation, Sam bug eyed but not as surprised as any normal person probably should’ve been.

“How many times has a minor god’s kid been claimed at that hellhole?” He felt the unearned bitterness behind his smirk not that it mattered at all.

“Fair enough. When did you find out? Because I was told about my mom when a vampire tried to eat my liver in sixth grade.”

There was a cheerful kind of acceptance of the lifetime of monster slaying that came with being a demigod that even Sam had never really understood even being raised the way they had. Dean might not have liked that part of himself all the time, but camaraderie with that was hard to come by. Also, halfbloods were always undeniable badasses in a fight, himself included, so seeing it in someone else with what they were potentially dealing with was kind of a relief, not that he was about to say that.

There was also somewhat of a relief in not feeling like he was actually breaking up Sammy’s perfectly normal apple pie life when he saw Bobby’s celestial bronze tomahawk casually leaned against their bedpost as he followed them to their kitchen for a talk on Jess’ suggestion. It had a little bit of monster dust still on the grip. Life of a demigod in California, Dean had killed one of Hades’ little snakes during a quick pitstop about forty miles back.

It hit him, then, that despite the fact that Sam and Jessica were monster killing machines just like he was, they’d managed to carve out a life despite it. He looked around their kitchen, the same kind of dingy that came with student housing, at the chipped coffee mug with a peeling Star Trek: TNG print on it Sam handed him with an awkward half-hopeful half-nervous look, at the tiny pile of dishes in the sink, the smell of fresh food one of them had cooked. Something hot coiled in his stomach with the hard turn of it that he buried in coffee done the pretentious, snobby pour over way Jess had apparently seduced his brother into using.

It was a damned good cup of coffee too.

“So why are you here?” Sam asked, reaching for Jess’ hand blindly.

“Dad’s on a hunting trip out here and I haven’t heard from him in a few days. Not in the normal way. In the he might be in trouble this time and someone needs to pull his ass out of the fire way.”

“Do you know what he was hunting?” Jess asked with a pointed squeeze of Sam’s hand, blue-green eyes sharp.

She didn’t have grey eyes; maybe she wasn’t as much of a dick as the rest of her siblings because her dad’d had more influence, but what would Dean know about that.

“No idea, but he left a message with EVP on it, says ‘I can never go home’ under him saying something big is coming. Get to ground kind of shit. Last I knew, he was in Jericho, here in Cali.”

“Is there anything going on in our part of this whole thing? I mean, I haven’t heard anything, but nobody really comes out here. The Gates-“

“Yeah, the Gates.”

Honestly, Dean had been very tempted to beg Sam to pick anywhere but California with the godsdamned Gates right there.

“I’ve kept an ear out, nothing that I’ve seen so far, so I don’t think it’s Greek,” Sam said before he got up to grab his laptop with one last squeeze of Jess’ hand.

“Right, well someone needs to go check on him-“

“Why aren’t you with him?” Sam called from about five feet away where he was gathering the laptop and the charger from the coffee table.

“Dude, I’m twenty-six.”

Without really meaning to, he glanced back at Jess with a shake of his head and caught a wide grin.

“No, I mean-“ Sam came back to put down the tangle of charger wire on the table. “If he thought he was headed for something big, why didn’t he-“

“He doesn’t really want to have anything more to do with my mom than he absolutely has to right now, Sammy.”

There was a thick kind of tension before Jess made the warding motion with a muttered call to her mom the way one had been stuck on the tip of Dean’s tongue to his own since the hunt in Harrisburg.

“Okay, so, is it possible that he pissed her off enough that she just decided too…” Sam trailed off with a constipated look that would’ve been funny if they weren’t verging on dangerous territory Sammy didn’t need to be a demigod to know was a third fucking rail if they all weren’t very careful.

“I don’t think so. Mom’s about justice, so some bitch wreaking havoc on people who have no chance to even try to defend themselves isn’t something she’s going to like, natural order or not. Besides, Dad’s still in her court, technically, battle and victory and all that.”

“The way I see it, we can go see what he was up to. Three is better than two is better than one, so we surprise whatever’s up there with numbers, find out where the trail goes, then get back here for Sam’s interview on Monday. With all of us we should be able to manage it in a couple of days and if we can’t, I’ve got some people I can Iris to try and look into it.” Jess looked between him and Sam, totally ignoring Dean’s little brother’s bitch face for the suggestion.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to drag you into our crap and get more of those assholes following you around.” Dean felt obligated to say it, even though he knew what any demigod worth their bronze’s weight's answer would be.

And sure enough, Jessica Moore didn’t disappoint no matter how upset Sam looked about it.

“Try and leave without me, flyboy.”

~~~

Nike wasn’t a goddess devoted to holding a family together with blood, spit, and floss used as thread for stitching up wounds. That didn’t seem to matter with Sammy, though. Dean used his demigod freakishness for Sam more than he anybody would’ve probably ever believed he’d needed to. Fight off the fury following them back from school before Sam caught wind of what was stalking them. Beat the shit out of the bullies until Sam was capable of doing it himself. Be fast enough to make sure they had enough food winning footraces or street races or anything to do with being just that little bit quicker than whoever it was so they had money. Sniff out whatever monster it was so Dad didn’t go in uninformed and leave them orphaned without anyone but maybe Bobby or Pastor Jim.

Most everything Dean ever did as a child was for Sam somehow, even when it came to taking care of their dad. He got used to the idea that his kid brother was the priority the second he’d been put, still asleep wrapped tightly in blankets that smelled like sulphur and ash, in his arms. It was as natural as breathing. Dean was capable of taking care of himself, but Sammy was helpless at the time. That Christmas, the one hunkered down in that shitty motel when Dad was so tied up with the hunt he never showed face, that was seared into Dean’s memory for more reasons than just the loss of Sam’s ignorance.

Because Dad had written about him like he was one of the things in the rest of his journal. He’d expected it to the point where he was numb to the description of what he was. Almost as numb as Sammy had been angry on his behalf. And that was the damndest thing about the whole fucked up affair.

“You’re not like those things in there!” Sam had raged after Dean told him the truth about what their Dad was doing when he left, when Sam had gotten used to the idea enough to form opinions like that.

“I’m not totally human, Sammy,” Dean said tiredly, still a bit numb to the cold description of his strengths, weaknesses, all that stuff. “It’s a way of keeping track of information. If we don’t know what I can do-“

“You’re my brother, not some flesh eating monster or something!”

Flesh eating? No. Monster on the other hand? Well, not by the traditional definition but that didn’t really mean much when it came to hunting.

“Sammy, it’s okay. It’s not something you need to worry about. I’m fine, Dad’s fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine.”

“But it’s not fine! That’s not you!”

“But it is, Sam.” Dean finally snapped, turned to see frustrated tears welling in Sammy’s eyes, curled fists clutched on the bedspread around Dad’s journal. “I’m a halfblood, demigod, whatever, but I’m not human. Look, you’re my little brother, that’s the part that matters here, but that doesn’t make the rest of it not true. Get it?”

Because the thing that’d always mattered was that Sam understood someone gave a solitary shit.

“That doesn’t mean he should’ve written about you like that.”

But the thing about Sammy was that he’d always been too smart for his own good. So he’d let it go, put the journal away, and rotted his brain watching some TV with Dean. It was dogshit weather outside, but right then with the salt line on the window, Sam safe next to him, Bobby’s celestial bronze knife in his belt, it’d felt as safe as it ever got back then.

~~~

“This hunting thing is a lot like questing,” Jess said cheerfully with a nostalgic smile on her face when Dean handed her the fake fed badge across the Impala’s packed front bench.

“You guys used fake IDs at Camp Half-Blood?”

“Nah, we just ran around the country with whatever prophecy it was and some nectar and ambrosia mostly. Drachmas. Weapons. You know.”

Sam hadn’t stopped looking vaguely constipated since the whole roadtrip had started. It was honestly kind of funny, but even Dean wasn’t that much of an asshole all the time. Even knowing Jess was a daughter of Athena wasn’t really understanding what that meant. Hell, even killing the occasional monster for his girlfriend hadn’t probably made it sink in. Stanford had been about as far removed from their old life as it was possible to get when Sam’s girlfriend was a demigod.

It had been nice to have Sammy’s research skills back, but the real winner was the Jess-and-Sam team in Dean’s opinion. They’d eaten all of his research in a couple of hours then churned out a complete look at the timeline and everything up to a potential restless spirit, Constance Welch, in half the time it would’ve taken Dean to do the same thing. Oh, and they did all that on the drive to Jericho with a translation app Jess had rigged on her laptop so everything turned up in Ancient Greek to get around the dyslexia problem. Geniuses, the both of them.

There was also the fact that Sam and Jess both looked a hell of a lot more respectable than Dean did in their interview get-ups. So they were the ones to talk to the cop on the way into town while he made his way down to the river with the EMF meter and a Fish and Wildlife badge. As he’d suspected seeing what the accident’d looked like from the road, there was some activity, but not anywhere near what he would’ve thought for a guy being dead and all. Still, he’d managed an in with the local CSIs and that wasn’t nothing, plus that it looked like Sam and Jess had gotten on the local’s good side up there. A hell of a lot better than nothing; miles better than a bunch of heavily armed strangers he didn’t know from a skinwalker.

~~~

While Dean wouldn’t have described himself as lucky at all, he had a habit of being the deciding factor more often than he liked. The older he got, the clearer it was that when he was locked in, decided on something, it was more likely to happen whether it seemed like he’d get his way or not. It didn’t always work that way, but he landed on his feet enough that he got a reputation for being like a human rabbit’s foot in certain circles. As far as most hunters were aware demigods weren’t actually a thing, and he’d be happy to keep it that way for the kids who weren’t dragged as deep into the mess as he’d always been. Dad didn’t have a problem using his talents for hunting in the slightest, just as long as nobody knew why he had those talents, same as him.

One hunt, the one right before they’d split up for the last time actually, was something like that. Dean got a text in the middle of the night; he was up and on the road in less than twenty minutes, alive in a way he wrote off as the Impala being special instead of a gift. There was a group of of wraiths in Harrisburg Pennsylvania who were going through people like the hummingbirds at Bobby’s feeders in the fall. It was less that Dad trusted him as a hunter, more that he wanted a reliable good luck talisman/monster detector.

Those were the only times Dean really talked to his mother; he wasn’t sure she ever listened unless he was in battle or something like that.

But he sat behind the wheel of his chariot and he called to the parent he’d never met face to face.

“Hey, Mom. I don’t know if you can hear me, but we’re about to do something dangerous, so, not dying would be great. Just. Maybe this can play out in our favor.”

For a second the only sound was the asphalt under his tires, the dim hum of the radio. Then there was the sound of wingbeats, like an eagle’s or something, the smell of freshly cut laurel, and a downy white curl of a leading edge feather appeared on the other side of Baby’s front seat. If Dean had been the wishful thinking type, he might’ve given in to the idea that he’d felt a brush of primaries against his back. He reached across the seat for the feather to tuck it in his pocket; rejecting a gift from the goddess of victory was a bad idea right before a battle no matter who someone was.

When he got to Harrisburg he went right to his dad’s hotel room and gave him the feather without a word because it felt like the right thing to do. Like everything to do with his mother, Dad didn’t say anything about it before he tucked it into his pocket the same way he had. The wall was filled with an entire battle plan to take the wraiths where they were camped out in a defunct industrial plant on the south side of the city. It would’ve been better if they’d had more hands, but there was no chance of that happening on such short notice, that being Dean’s point of being there in the first place.

The next two days were a flurry of making silver bullets, making sure the wraiths hadn’t gone anywhere, and fine tuning a plan that was basically block all the exits but the ones they’d be sitting on. It was almost nostalgic in a way, sat on a motel bed melting silver in their shitty homemade crucible with an eye on the door. The only thing missing was his giant of a brother. It was better Sammy wasn’t there to potentially get his brain sucked out of his skull anyway. Things would’ve been simpler if Dean wasn’t the only Winchester able to see through the Mist as far as they’d known at the time, but there it was.

Dean didn’t need the thermal camera Dad had dug up to sense the monsters in the plant when the time came; he could sense them the same as he’d sensed that Lamia at Bobby’s when he was eight. He kept his grip on his rifle firm but loose, waited for the confirmation he knew would come, kept the senses he only used during times like that trained on the exits they’d sealed shut once they were sure what looked a whole hell of a lot like three wraiths to Dean were inside.

“We’re hot,” Dad said unnecessarily to the smell of fresh laurel.

They moved silently, taking opposite sides of the plant just to make sure nobody slipped past them once everything was out in the open. The calm felt thick as cold molasses clung to Dean’s shoes, heart sluggish right before he got a breath of fresh air he hadn’t had since he’d parked Baby outside the motel. He brought the rifle up, steadied it, then waited for the signal that didn’t come before those half-blooded instincts screamed at him.

They hadn’t been together the entire time they’d been in Harrisburg, plus all the time dad had been there alone, but neither of them had really thought about that.

As much as hunting was the stuff of nightmares, in the thick of it Dean was in his element. His aim was true every time, silver bullets, center mass shots while whatever had gone off on Dad’s side of the plant sent two of them right to him. One two tap, both of them down for the count with their rotting flesh decaying into mush and dust that spun tornadoes in his wake as he screamed past at full speed, rifle loose in his grip. Twists and turns brought him deeper on plans he’d memorized after hours of staring at them while casting rounds. Glass crunched under his feet, kicked out of treads in shards that tinkled against the broken, root torn concrete that felt like it tried to pull his feet from under him with each sturdy step.

Dad’s aim was shaky enough that Dean hit the deck in a slide that tore his arms up one side, down the other, ducking under a shot in an impossible, improbably lucky burst of speed and reflexes. There was a crater in the wall with a crack of thunder, more concrete dust, shrapnel scattered over Dean’s back, rifle out of his hands with a clatter. He was on his feet, trained on the wraith that’d managed to whammy Dad. Turned out he’d been the person making the coffee at the local 7/11, not that Dean had known that at the time either.

Things like that were all about reflexes, who was able to move first.

Fresh laurel and he was on top of the wraith; the sound of wingbeats and he forced his still exposed spike through his sternum; the brush of feathers and he stood over the rotting husk of the monster he’d just killed.

That time when he spoke, he absolutely knew she was listening for the first time in his life.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Dad was clearheaded to remember him saying that.

There were a few rules to being a Winchester, one of which was never calling Nike Dean’s mom, never calling anyone but Mary Winchester his mom. After his Dad was all sobered up he was sent on milk run hunt after milk run hunt always on the opposite side of the country from Dad. Look, he understood, alright, but if it hadn’t been for his mother, both of their asses would’ve been dead, he was willing to lay money on that with whoever of his mother’s relatives was in charge of gambling or whatever. It absolutely didn’t make it better that he’d found a sword made of celestial bronze with laurels tooled around the crossguard on a hunt for a rawhead just in time to take the damn thing’s head off after he lost his souped up taser; a sword that never disappeared on him, just stayed in his trunk like the downy leading edge feather he’d found on his dresser the morning after John had finally gotten all the wraith juice out of his system.

~~~

Dean was happy to say he was the one who thought to ask about their dad’s room at the motel. Granted, they hadn’t actually needed all of his research with Sam and Jess on the case with him, but it was good to see that they were on the right track with Constance Welch and the river. Dean also found Dad's journal hidden in a corner in the safe with a tripwire while the genius bar were going over his timeline. Something had been on the tip of his tongue since he’d heard the whole thing, but seeing the journal, worn leather in his hands, put it all together for him.

“Son of a bitch!”

“What is it?” Sam was at his side in a second, Jess right on his tail.

Whatever his brother’d had to say about Dad leaving his journal behind, Dean didn’t wait to hear it.

“She’s a woman in white. Welch. She drowned her kids then jumped off the bridge, right, mourning husband, now she’s going after unfaithful men. That’s how we get her.”

“You want me to be bait?” Sam asked, eyes glazed over while Jess plucked the journal right out of Dean’s hands to flip through.

“She knows you’re in a relationship, we know she’ll try you, and celestial bronze can take care of any supernatural creature as long as we get a shot at her.”

“Is something like this, would it have been a problem for your father?” Jess asked skeptically.

“Probably not, but we have to deal with this first, people are dying.”

In droves by the look of the wall.

“Yeah, right, but do you have any idea where to look for him when we’re done here? Because we’re not going to be able to just drop everything and come with you. The point was that you’d have help.” Jess’ voice was way too careful; Dean didn’t have to look to know which page she’d probably just found, not when she sounded an inch away from finding John so she could kill him underneath all that concern.

Sometimes there was a limit to that camaraderie, Dean had managed to forget in the easy swing between his bickering with Sammy, Jess’ instant understanding of how he saw the world, and how disgustingly well she and Sam matched with all their nerdiness.

“It’ll be fine.” Like ripping a lung out the same way as it’d felt losing Sam when he first went to Stanford, but survival was the name of every game Dean played from the second that fire had started in Lawrence.

It was for Sammy so it would be fine because that was what mattered.

“I’ll put in a call. If I vet them?”

“If you vet them.” Dean wouldn’t call, but denying the offer wasn’t a good idea and even he wasn’t stupid enough to pretend it was.

Look, nobody was a fan of Hera if they knew what that bitch got up to, and Dean wasn’t a homemaker at all. He also wasn’t anywhere near pathetic enough to say that he was lonely or some shit like that. It was just nice, that was all, not to always have to watch his own back 24/7, to be able to split duties. None of it was permanent, he hadn’t forgotten that. And how happy Sam and Jess were, he wasn’t dick enough to try and break that up, not when Sammy was headed for law school and Jess was headed for a masters in microbiology.

~~~

When Dean hunted on his own, really on his own with no other hunters to see it except maybe Bobby once in a blue moon, he let himself off the leash. There was a time in the woods in Washington, this vampire pack that’d been feeding off the lovely folks of Seattle before they fucked off back up the mountains. Dean hadn’t bothered with any of the usual case work. Because to a halfblood, monsters like that smelled. All he had to do was wait near their hunting grounds and he could stalk them on smell alone without needing to worry about them hearing Baby while he followed them.

He’d tracked them to their little lair out in the woods, silent as possible with heavy boots on. There were four of them and one of him, but he had eight stakes just in case and he was alive, heart beating in his chest. Ready or not, they were about to be dust.

The guard was terrible, Dean had to say. He’d snuck up on the guy without so much as a twitch and he knew he hadn’t been hidden at all. That one was easy, a stake through the heart smooth as anything, one dead three to go.

The next was easy too, darting from shadow to shadow, careful not to reach too deep because Hades was a bastard sometimes and he didn’t have time for that shit while he was working. Vamp two was checking over a pair of hiking boots that had a spatter of blood on them, poor outdoorsy bastard. She never noticed him either, another stake through the heart, that one through the spine. Unfortunately, she’d managed to get a scream out before she’d gone wherever they all went when they got ganked.

That freakish part of him lit off into something like the olympic torch on TV that afternoon, nectar in his blood as the other two rushed in.

He hit them at speed, stake in one hand, celestial bronze in the other. If he’d had the presence of mind, he would’ve noticed the smell of freshly cut laurel in his wake, the rush of something almost like wingbeats. But neither he or the vamps noticed that; instead he slipped between them, slicing clean through one of their carotids when he didn’t have a good angle for a stake, the other punching that same vamp with enough force to send them flying in a spray of blood that contaminated everything down to his clothes while they sailed.

The snap was lightning quick, turn to face the other vamp, nail him in the chest with the stake so hard Dean didn’t bother to try and pull it out, just took another one to finish the job. He followed the spray of blood melting into dust, another side affect of making a kill with celestial bronze. Really, he didn’t need to check that he’d done what he came there to do; he felt it just like he always knew that he’d won something deep in his bones. Still, a hunter who didn’t check was a dead hunter walking, so he went to the slowly disintegrating corpse of irony that was a vampire dying of exsanguination and staked him through the heart just to make sure.

The hike back down to the city would take way longer than the fight had even at top speed. Times like that were when he knew that Dad had been right to call it like it was in his journal. Yes, his mother wasn’t only about battle and conquest, but Dean was a killing machine and that was the only kind of victory, well that and Aphrodite’s realm, that he was good for. That it made him feel alive to win, to excel, to speed past the competition, to snatch the gold from them only made the rush of his work feel that much worse when he got to the mopping up part of it.

~~~

Athena and Nike went together like Dean and Baby when you were talking about the goddesses. So basically, once they got their shit together for hunting, Dean and Jess fell in line with each other the same way he always feel in line with Sam when they were on the job. Her celestial bronze spear glimmered in the moonlight, gold cast lighting her fingers the same as Dean’s sword, the garnet she used to turn it back into a bookmark shining red around her neck like it was alive or something. The old Welch house loomed behind them reeking bad enough of rot and mildew that he had a passing thought about investing in respirators or something next time he had to do something like that, not that long-term damage was something most hunters had to worry about.

“So how far can you throw that thing?” Dean asked casually keeping a careful ear out for Baby’s engine.

“I was mid-range cavalry back at camp.” With a glance up at him Jess smiled. “It’s not a throwing spear, it’s a stabbing one.”

“Nice.”

“You should see my javelin.”

They both chuckled, settling into their ready positions without a single rustle of the dry grass under their feet out of habit, or he assumed it was habit for her.

After a little bit, Jess looked up at him again sharply enough that he felt it as well as if she’d poked him. “You know that stuff your father had to say about us was bullshit, right?”

Dean bit back the instinctive snap at the too-deep understanding in Jess’ eyes; he felt naked, and not in the fun way.

Jess sighed before she let him go to turn back to keep watch on the road. “Sam hasn’t told me much, but he didn’t really have to after he helped me take out a harpy the day we met. I get complicated relationships with parents, but that. Nobody should be writing shit like that about their own kid unless they’re Echidna. I don’t care if you think I’m full of shit. I guess…”

She trailed off with a heavy sigh before she seemed to catch on her thought, rolling over the acid plug of something caught in Dean’s throat without realizing.

“Sam missed you. He didn’t know how to reach out and call after it’d been so long, but he really missed you. Don’t be so long to come around next time, okay? He worried about you all the time.”

They both perked to the sound of Baby coming up the road before he had to try and figure a way around that that wasn’t disgustingly, humiliatingly soppy, wouldn’t force him to acknowledge the easing of a knot that’d gotten tighter and tighter the longer he’d gone without hearing from Sammy.

Sam pulled to a stop with Constance in the seat right next to him and it was pure instinct; Dean and Jess surged out of the bushes they’d hidden in totally in synch, Dean in front to get her attention while Jess headed for Sam. In a flicker, there was their girl, right in front of him, reaching with that unnatural chill he fended off with a swoop of speed, took a swing for her head she snapped out of the way of in that same flicker of light. Jess shouted with a whistle of celestial bronze.

“Shit, lost her!”

Dean vaulted across Baby’s hood just in time to piledrive into Constance with the pommel of his sword, right into Jess’ extension.

Dusty bronze shone in the moonlight through her chest before the breath of dead calm exploded in a screech that had them all covering their ears, flinching back from Constance as she exploded in a cloud of dust, Jess’ spear dropping through empty space. Dean caught it without a thought and couldn’t help but recoil from the warmth it radiated. If he hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought it was welcoming him.

But then he looked down at Jess to see the expression that never meant anything good coming from someone in her family.

“Looks like Mom’s alright with you, Winchester. Lucky us.”

It was crazy, completely crazy, but Dean couldn’t help it. He managed to choke back the first snort, even the second, but pretty soon he was fully cackling like the wicked witch of the fucking west, leaning back against Baby knowing both Sammy and Jess had to think he’d lost a screw or twenty in the last couple of days. Really, though, the irony, the fact that Dad was the way he was and had the same idea of a good gift as the gods, it was just too much, even for him.

~~~

The one and only time Dean had ever been to Camp Half-Blood was in New York when he was sixteen. He’d lost all of the money Dad had left them in a poker game trying to get enough to get essentials, clothes and stuff like that, for Sam, then been stupid or slow enough to get caught stealing food. For a bit he thought he’d be waiting until Dad surfaced from whatever the hunt was, but instead a man in an electric wheelchair who’d had the smell of something not human had come to collect him.

Dean thought it was pretty impressive of him to have waited until they were out in the parking lot to threaten the old geezer with the knife the cops had missed when they’d booked him, though it wasn’t the bronze one because he’d left that was Sammy just in case. The guy didn’t look very threatened, but to be fair, it wasn’t the right kind of knife to be a threat to him in the first place. Actually, Dean would later realize that he’d just looked sad, regretful the way adults who felt like they’d failed at something always did.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Dean.” He held his hands up, looked him steady in the eye.

“Yeah right, people like us, we don’t get along so well. Tell me what you really are.”

That sad smile of his was pissing Dean off something else, but there was Sam to think about, Sammy who was all alone waiting for him to come back even if he wasn’t some defenseless, snot-nosed kid anymore.

“What do you know about Greek mythology, Dean?”

“Enough.”

“I’d imagine you do.” He shook his head before he looked him in the eye again. “My name is Chiron, and you’re not safe here.”

Dean laughed bitterly. “Nowhere’s safe, man, I can look after myself.”

“You’re in more danger here than usual, Dean, much more. We can keep you and your brother safe, but to do that I need you to trust me until we get to safer ground. Can you do that?”

There wasn’t anything to do but stare him down and wonder who named someone after a centaur when they went for Greek mythological names.

“My entire job, my purpose, is to make sure kids like you, demigods like you, make it to being adults. To train you to survive. We missed you earlier, but I don’t intend to leave you to fend for yourself when we can help you. That’s not how we do things.”

Gods help him, but Dean looked at Chiron and knew what he was like he’d be able to see through the illusion if he looked hard enough. He’d never be able to say which part of that equation got him to lower the knife. If he was honest, maybe it was the idea that someone who’d be able to protect Sammy from whatever had been breathing down their necks that day. Or maybe it was the feeling of wingtips against his cheek like his mom’s fingers.

“Sammy stays where I can see him.”

“We’ll work something out.”

Dean was used to figuring his way around when someone didn’t do enough, but that didn’t turn out to be one of those times. He and Sammy were kept in the big house on the property most of the time. Well, they were let out, encouraged to join the other kids for the training and activities and stuff. Most of the other kids were heading home soon except for the ones who were like Dean and Sam and didn’t have anywhere else to go. They were both a hell of a lot more dangerous than a good chunk of the other kids when they were let into the whole sparring thing they did there, not that Dean was really surprised by that. It was a matter of pride that Sammy was able to knock one of the biggest of Ares’ kids flat on their ass once he got a good sense of how they fought. Only mortal in the whole place and he could still hold his own in a fist fight; Dean had done at least that part of his job right.

The other kids seemed to feel like they were some kind of foreign entity the same way as Dean felt about the rest of them. Athena’s kids actually loved Sammy, but they were all nerds anyway, so that made sense. Dean himself got stuck with Hermes’ kids a lot, but they taught him all kinds of new and exciting ways to pick pockets and get his hands on money when they needed it and they didn’t ask him about his mother, so that was fine by him.

John turned up at the edge of camp just when Dean had gotten used to the idea that they were really safe there.

Chiron hadn’t said much after he’d talked with Dad, just looked at him and Sam regretfully. Truth be told, Dean wouldn’t have minded staying there, somewhere people did right by Sammy, where he would’ve been able to let his guard down a little bit. But there was work to be done. Dad needed him, Sam needed him; that was his choice always. The fire seemed that bit sadder when he scraped his last offering to his mom into it, but he didn’t think about that before he went back to his table. Last damn meal. At least he hadn’t been put on a quest while he was there.

~~~

“Jess?”

“Shit!”

Dean jerked at the voice suddenly coming out of the passenger window, straightening out with a squeal of rubber that made everyone in the car wince. He didn’t glare over at whoever had just almost gotten them killed, but it was a close thing with his heart trying to break his ribs the way it was. Damn Iris messages.

“RJ, what’s up?” The garnet on Jess’ bookmark swung in his peripheral vision.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re in over there, but you need to get out. Someone’s gunning for you. Take Sam and leave, get to ground, okay?”

“Gunning for me how?”

RJ huffed and the Impala’s seat squeaked when Sam leaned over to wrap an arm around Jess’ shoulders.

“I don’t know. None of us know, that’s the problem. We can’t get any information out of anyone. Whatever it is, it’s big, it’s nasty, and we can’t get ahead of it. Please just be safe, Jess.”

There was a shift of skin on skin before she sighed. “Alright, yeah. We’re already out, so we’ll just. We won’t go back. Can you reach my parents? I only have the one drachma on me right now and.”

“Yeah, will do. Stay safe, you too Sam!”

“Thanks for the heads up, man, we appreciate it.”

IMs didn’t make noise, but the sound of Baby’s engine and the road under her tires was a lot louder than it’d been before RJ had called, whoever he was. Dean’s stomach curdled. Sam and Jess in the line of fire with no warning except whatever it was the demigod brigade had managed to hear.

“Sam, get my phone and call Bobby.”

“What the hell’s-”

“Please, Sammy.”

He risked a glance away from the road to see the shock on their faces. The loss hadn’t set in yet he was pretty sure, or maybe it was just the old adjustment all of them were used to being what they were. It didn’t really matter.

“Do you guys have, like, a safe house or anything?” Jess asked while Sam looked for Bobby’s number.

“You’re looking at it, sweetheart, this is about it for us right now.”

Bobby might be an option, but Dad was still out there somewhere, so even if they stayed. Even if they stayed. The point was that there wasn’t anywhere to go except there that Dean could think of and they didn’t even know what was gunning for them-

“Nobody knows we’re with you, though,” Sam said, breaking through the train, phone screen dimming in his hand.

“Who am I going to tell, Sammy?” That came out a lot more tiredly than he’d meant for it to, but he was too busy to worry about it.

“I didn’t say anything, you, Sam?” Jess broke the too-tense silence.

“No. So. We just keep looking for Dad, right? You said he left you coordinates. Nobody would think either of us would do that so. Best way to keep hidden.”

“Has hiding in plain sight ever worked for anybody?”

“That’s our best option right now that I can think of. As long as we’re mobile, we’re hard to catch. Besides, Nike’s a charioteer. I think we’re safest when we’re in our element and I don’t exactly see anything like an owlery around here,” Jess said.

Dean very carefully didn’t hit the steering wheel. “Damn it.”

“It’s. It’s okay. Better that we’re all together and we’re safe than not. I mean. It was just an interview. It’ll be fine. We just. We’ll be okay.”

That tone in Sam’s voice was an old one. It’d come out every time John had yanked them from yet another school after they’d just settled in growing up. Dean’s teeth ached grinding them against the sour taste in the back of his mouth. He kept his foot on the gas, kept his eyes on the road, kept his mouth shut for once in his life, listened to the sound of Sam and Jess tearing their lives apart because of whatever thing was bearing down on their heads now.