#wicdiv1

Oregon, 1988

“I shouldn’t be flirting with you,” Melisa says, taking another drink of whiskey. It burns, and she knows it’s supposed to. It still feels like punishment. 

John Winchester sits across from her, studying her. He’s a quiet man, she’s found, in the short time she’s known him, but she thinks there’s nothing that really gets past him. 

“And why’s that?” he asks, a smile toying at the corner of his mouth. “You got someone at home?”

An icy chill settles into her gut. “Define ‘home,’” she says. There’s nobody waiting for her in her apartment, but there’s a presence that follows her everywhere ever since she met him . The man that changed her life. Sometimes, in petty, ungrateful, cowardly moments, she wonders if it was really for the better. 

John looks away, pensive, and takes a swig of his own drink in lieu of a response. She wonders what home is to him. 

She takes him to her apartment anyway. Maybe she shouldn’t--despite the fact that he saved her life, he’s still a stranger, and a sketchy one at that. Maybe it’s that risk that makes him appealing to her. Maybe that’s what it all comes down to. 

She keeps looking at her Gibborim Bible on her side table, like she’s asking it for forgiveness. John follows her gaze. He doesn’t ask about it. She supposes he’s seen too many crazy things to call anyone’s religion crazy. 

“I can’t stay the night,” John says as he starts getting dressed. “Sorry.” He sounds genuine, if cavalier. 

“Do you believe in faith healers?” Melisa asks him instead, apropos of nothing, and he gives her that scrutinizing look again, the one that seems to pierce right through her. 

“I’ve never seen one that was legit,” he says finally, with a shrug. 

“And you’ve seen a lot of crazy things,” she clarifies. 

He smiles bitterly. “Something like that, yeah.”

He looks at her again, a little softer this time, and she thinks he’s about to ask if she’s okay--she’s already bristling, ready to lash out at the question--

He shakes his head and looks down, pulling out a small notebook and scribbling something down. 

“This is my phone number,” he says, tearing the page out and setting it on her side table. She could swear there’s something...pointed, about the way he sets it on her bible. “In case there’s any more dybbuk trouble.”

Melisa nods a little. It’s unlikely. She’s probably never seeing him again, she realizes. There’s something bittersweet in that. It’s better that way. 

“Thanks for saving my life,” she tells him. 

He smiles. “You already told me that.”

“It’s worth repeating.” She smiles a little. “Goodbye, John.”

John has only been gone for a minute or so when he calls. And it’s one of those things that keeps her coming back, one of those things that doesn’t make sense unless he is what he says he is: he always knows when to call. He always knows when something’s happened, when she needs guidance. 

“David,” she says when she picks up. Thank God.  

“Melisa,” David says in that calm, velvet voice. “How are you?”

“I’m--” she almost says ‘good,’ reflexively, but she promised him she would never keep secrets from him. It’s liberating, in a way. 

She can’t find the words, so she sighs. 

“I sensed turmoil in your spirit,” David says, after giving her a moment to speak. “That’s why I called. Are you alright?”

“I--” she hesitates for a long moment. All of her guilt, all of her fear, it hits her all at once, and she feels like she could drown in it. Finally, she admits, “I need help.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” David replies. “We’ll pray together, you and me. It’ll be alright.”

And there’s something in his voice that makes her believe him, more than she’s ever believed in anything. 

2002

It’s early in the afternoon when Jim Murphy gets the call. 

Sam is in the kitchen doing homework. Jim had told him to ask if he needed help, but Sam doesn’t seem to need it. He’s a smart kid. Jim wonders, idly, what he could do in a family that stayed in one place for longer than three months at a time. 

“Jim Murphy.”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. 

“Hello?”

“Um. I’m looking for John Winchester?” The voice on the other end is young, female, and sounds scared. Quiet, like she’s trying not to be overheard somehow. 

Jim knows that John used to give out his number as his own, back before cell phones were ubiquitous, but he hasn’t gotten a call for him in nearly a decade. “How’d you get this number, kiddo?”

“It was in my mom’s stuff. Her name was Melissa Smith. I--I think I’m his daughter.” Her voice breaks as the words tumblr out, quickly, like she’s running out of time. “And I need his help.”

“How old are you?” He reaches for a pad of paper and a pen on the counter. 

“Thirteen.”

“What’s your address?”

“I don’t--I don’t know what that means. Please can I just talk to John? I need help.”

How does a thirteen year old not know their address? “Where do you live? I’ll send him.”

“Woodscross.”

“Where is that?”

“In Oregon.” She pronounces Oregon strangely, like Oree-gone . He files away that detail for later. “Please help me. I think he’s trying to kill me.”

Jim Murphy is good in a crisis--it’s kind of his job--but the words do surprise him. He tries to keep his voice calm, for her sake. 

“Whoa, slow down. Who’s trying to kill you?”

There’s another long pause, and then: “I have to go. I think they found me.”

“No, wait, what’s your n--”

There’s a tension in the silence between John and his son as they sit on opposite sides of the diner booth. It’s this endless loop of quiet understanding: Dean isn’t happy to learn about his father’s dalliance. John knows he’s not happy. Dean knows John knows he’s not happy, and John knows Dean knows that John knows that he’s not happy. And nothing is said about it. 

The diner they’ve found themselves in is crowded with the breakfast rush, and Dean is pensive as he stares out the window. John can’t fault him; he’s just found out he may or may not have another sibling who may or may not be in danger.

If John wasn’t as good at compartmentalizing as he is, he’d be consumed with the same topic of thought. He is that good at compartmentalizing, though, and he flips through the newspaper as they wait for the waitress to take their order.

John’s mind is always on alert, always making connections, and he often has to scan his own thoughts for paranoia, to discern whether the alarms going off in his mind are a real sign of a case or just the result of living the way he has for fifteen years. The obituary section has the alarm ringing. Multiple mysterious deaths from the last few months, all young. A few cops, an FBI agent, a reporter or two. All died of hypothermia. 

One thing at a time, he tells himself. 

The diner is in Carolina, Oregon. It’s the same place he met Melisa Candan almost fifteen years ago. He chose a booth on the opposite side of the diner. It’s the paranoia again. Part of him thinks something about that case must have been cursed. 

The waitress arrives, middle-aged but energetic. “Good morning, boys, what can I get you?” Two black coffees, two classic breakfasts, burn the bacon for John’s. She leaves. The coffees come a few minutes later, and within minutes John’s mind is awake and thinking clearly. 

The obituary observation was not paranoia, he feels, and then sets it aside. One thing at a time.

“Woodscross,” he says without preamble. “What did she mean by Woodscross?”

“Maybe she was wrong about what state she’s in. Is there a Woodscross in Washington, maybe?”

John shakes his head. He’s actually not sure that there’s not; he just knows that he never met a woman named Melisa in Washington. It has to be near Carolina. Too much of a coincidence otherwise.

“Maybe there’s a street called Woodscross,” John muses. 

“What’s this about Woodscross?” the waitress asks as she sets their food down. John doesn’t get snuck up on easily. Maybe he’s not as good at compartmentalizing as he thought, at least when it comes to this. 

Dean looks up at her, smiling charmingly. “We got a call from a friend asking us to meet him there,” he lies easily. John wishes, not for the first time, that he could’ve given his son a life where he didn’t have to learn to lie so well. “Do you happen to know where it is?”

“The only Woodscross around here is the Gibborim community that lives out in the woods.”

“Gibborim?” Dean repeats incredulously. “That new-age cult?” And then John remembers the Gibborim bible on Melisa’s nightstand. Of course. How could he not realize? 

Well…he knows why. Over the past fourteen years, on the rare occasion that Melisa Candan has crossed his mind, he’s always assumed–hoped–that she’d made it out of Gibborim. The cult had reached its peak in the mid-nineties, and most sects had died out by the new millenia. 

Apparently not all of them, though.

The waitress shakes her head. “This is an offshoot. They’re more old-fashioned. And I wouldn’t call it a cult around them, but…”

“Where can we find Woodscross?” John asks her, trying not to sound as urgent as he feels. 

“It’s about ten miles north into the woods by Clinton street,” the waitress replies. “You have to go off the trail about five miles in. But between you and me? I’d call your friend and ask to meet somewhere else.”

John and Dean look at each other. 

“Can you bring us the check?” John asks. 

The ground is surprisingly level even off-trail, and they find Woodscross late that afternoon. It’s almost militaristic looking, surrounded by tall fences with barbed wire at the top, a stark contrast to the wood cabins, gardens, and farmland inside. 

When they reach the gates, the guards ask their names. They’re dressed in handmaid clothes, but John can tell they’re carrying guns. 

Dean opens his mouth to give them their current aliases, but John’s instincts advise otherwise, and he gets in before Dean can speak. “John and Dean Winchester,” he says, ignoring the look his son shoots him. “We were hiking. New to the area, got lost a few hours ago.”

He expects them to give his directions back to the road, to have to push back on that and ask for more help. Instead, one of the guards runs into the compound to “ask for guidance.” When he returns, he’s not alone. 

John knows he’s the man in charge even before he identifies himself as such. He’s tall and thin, with gray hair and military posture and an unsettling calm about him. 

“Hello,” he says, in a voice that feels smoother than it should be. “I’m David Elwood. I hear you’ve had trouble navigating the woods?” He holds out a hand. John shakes it, and then Dean does the same. 

“You heard right. Would it be an imposition if we stayed and rested awhile? It’s been a long day.” John smiles in a sort of apologetic aw-shucks way. 

“A long and hot day. I imagine you must be hungry, too. We have a church service starting soon, you’re welcome to attend; after that, you can join us for dinner, and then we’ll drop you off back in town, if you’d like.”

Cars, guns, phones–they’re not averse to using technology when it suits them. John files it away for future reference. 

“That’s mighty kind of you,” he says. 

The church is another log cabin, but this one with a steepled roof covered in solar panels. The service is strange and Dean understands, now, why they call Gibborim a cult. David’s sermon is vague and emotionally charged all at once, emphasizing obedience without specifying what that entails. It’s about Jesus, and about David himself–their prophet, their leader, God’s servant–and sometimes it seems like David might be hinting at aliens. 

There’s a girl in a chair behind the pulpit, scribbling something in a book. She’s got dark, curly hair and olive skin, with two beauty marks, one above and one below the side of her mouth. She’s clearly young, fourteen at the absolute most. Too young to be as pregnant as she is. And as hard as Dean tries to pay attention to everything else going on, trying to file away as much information as possible for later, his attention keeps coming back to her. There are angry red marks on her wrists, barely visible below the sleeve of her shirt. 

Dean doesn’t realize the service has ended until people around him start standing up. John stands, too, and then Dean follows his lead, but his eyes don’t move from the girl behind the pulpit. David goes over to her, takes her hand and guides her to her feet, and kisses her on the forehead. Then he gestures towards Dean and his father, and the girl turns wide, curious brown eyes onto them. 

David leads her over to them. “Gentlemen, this is Esther Elwood. She’s my wife and helpmeet.” He has this smile on his face–calm, small, casual, but it feels like he’s daring them to object to their marriage, to her pregnancy, to her age. 

Dean can tell John is seething with as much rage as he is. He stays calm. Dean follows his lead. But he could swear that David can tell they’re angry, that he’s delighting in it. 

John smiles and extends a hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, Esther,” he says. “I’m John Winchester. This is Dean.”

Something clicks in Esther’s dark eyes. Recognition, and something like hope. This is the girl.

“I’m sorry, women aren’t allowed physical contact with men outside of their families,” David says apologetically. “You understand.”

That’s not a woman, that’s a child. 

“Entirely. My apologies, I didn’t mean to offend.”

“Not at all,” David says. Then he looks down at the girl. “Go ahead.”

Esther smiles a little. “This is for you,” she says quietly, and holds out the book she was writing in to John. The marks around her wrist are more marked close up, and they look like rope burns to Dean. It doesn’t escape his notice, either, that this is the first sentence Esther has said to them directly. He wonders if that’s how it always is, David speaking for her, or if David is creating a wall between his “wife” and the outsiders. 

John takes the book, careful not to let their fingers brush. It’s a Gibborim bible. 

“Thank you, Esther,” John says politely. “That’s very kind of you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says, again in that soft, hesitant voice. 

David looks down at her. “Go and study with the other women,” he says. Esther nods and looks at John and Dean. “It was very nice to meet you both,” she says politely, and then leaves. 

“You’re welcome to join us for the Patriarch’s class,” David tells them. “We usually have dinner after that.” It doesn’t escape Dean’s notice that this isn’t the original plan he’d invited them into. 

“That sounds just fine,” John says, and Dean nods, following his lead. 

David leaves to go talk to the other church-goers, and Dean finds himself watching him. Something about him feels sinister, like at any moment he could pull the rug from under their feet in a way they’d never see coming.

“Dean,” John says, and Dean’s attention snaps back to his father. “Look.”

John is holding the Gibborim bible open casually, like he’s just curious about it, but Dean can tell that he’s seething again. He looks down at the book.