tigriswolf | Familial Relations chp6 - R

Title: Familial Relations
Chapter: VI. In The Genes
Disclaimer: Not my characters excepting the ones I thought up. The liar quote is credited to your_hero_died
Fandom: “Supernatural”/Devour crossover
Warnings: spoilers for seasons one and two of “Supernatural” and Devour; AU; het and slash; character death
Pairings: Ellen/Will; Gordon/Cade(Ash)
Rating: R
Wordcount: 12180
Notes: My knowledge of geography(including that of my own country) leaves much to be desired.
More notes: Also, credit to tigris_lilsisfor reading early parts of this and convincing me it was worth continuing.
Point of view: third

Chapter I: "Rapture"
Chapter II: "Bloodcall"
Chapter III: "Crystalline"
Chapter IV: "Genetic Codes"
Chapter V: "Blood Kin"

When he dies, it will be with your name on his lips.

When he was younger, Gordon’s whole life was Rosalind, his baby sister. He’d been barely a year old when she was born, so he can’t remember her as a baby. His first memory is sharing Momma’s lap with her, one of Momma’s arms around each of them. Momma was crooning a lullaby, rocking them, and Gordon remembers looking at Rosalind, at her tiny face and dark brown eyes, reaching out to touch her curly, silky black hair.

Gordon has no memory that is not somehow tinted by Rosalind. Momma told him to look out for her; Dad told him it was his responsibility as older brother to protect and care for her. So Gordon did. He worshiped the ground she walked on, believed she could do no wrong.

Gordon excelled at sports; Dad took him hunting a few weekends out of the year. Gordon was a good shot but he preferred knives. He kept a small collection under lock and key in his room, used them for intimidation purposes whenever Rosalind brought home a boy. Momma insisted they both knew how to defend themselves—memories of a childhood in the Deep South haunted her, Gordon knows.

He lived for the fighting, loved it. He could lose himself in the movements, in the flash of a blade or the roar of a gun. Rosalind, though, preferred talking her way out of trouble. She had a way with words, could extract herself from anything.

No guys at school would dare mess with her; they all feared Gordon, with good reason—he’d sent a boy to the hospital his first week of freshman year. The story grew with each telling and Gordon had quite the reputation.

Momma wasn’t happy with him, but he had defended Rosalind’s honor. Dad chuckled when he got the news and took Gordon on a hunting trip.

“I don’t want you to become a brawler, son,” Dad said. “But I understand the necessity of fists. Don’t become violent, don’t get to the point where you see spilling blood as the only answer, and you’ll be fine.”

Gordon could honestly promise his father that, and didn’t realize till years later that time made it a lie.

-

Rosalind was a beautiful girl. Looking at her back then, he knew she’d become a beautiful woman.

Momma and Dad wanted more children, but it never worked out. They had Gordon, then Rosalind, and no one else. Gordon wondered about how it’d feel to have other siblings to look out for, a little brother or more sisters—but then he looked at Rosalind and realized he could never love anyone else so much.

His life was centered around Rosalind and fighting. He learned every technique he could, every style offered. He devoured manuals on gun care and knives; if not for himself, this learning, then for Rosalind.

But when the time came, when he was tested, he was found wanting and he failed. He failed. And Rosalind vanished into the night, stolen, never to be found again.

-

He was downstairs watching a late night movie. Momma and Dad had gone to a party in town, celebrating Dad’s fifteenth year with the company. Gordon had just turned eighteen.

Rosalind turned in early; she had a major test the next day. She’d smiled at him, kissed his cheek, said, “Gordie, I love you.”

He smiled down at her, pulled her close. “Love you too, little sister,” he replied and pressed his lips to her forehead.

The movie, a fifties horror film, lulled him nearly to sleep. When the glass broke, he wrote it off as part of the movie, or maybe part of his dream.

But something, maybe a sixth sense, maybe an instinct—it demanded he check, just to be sure. So he slowly stood, stretched, walked through the den, up the stairs, down the hall—and heard struggling. He lunged into his parents’ room, grabbed for Dad’s gun; it was slick in his grip, wet with his sweat. His heart beat furiously and he reached carefully for the knob of Rosalind’s door, opened it silently.

What he saw would haunt him till death, featured in every nightmare he had for the rest of his days.

Rosalind, Rosa, baby sister—

The thing on top of her, mouth sucking on her neck, draining her of life… small droplets of blood, dotting the comforter.

Fury and hate and fear suffused him; he aimed for the thing’s leg. Any other shot could hit Rosalind. He pulled the trigger once; it jumped off her, spun to face him. He pulled the trigger again and it moved, too quickly to be seen. The vision he pulled into the darkness with him was Rosalind, spread out on her bed, limp and watching him with fear, with hope—

Help me, her dark eyes begged. Gordie, please…

But the thing picked him up and threw him into the wall and he failed.

When he woke up, it was just after dawn. Downstairs, he heard Momma and Dad. At first, he didn’t remember. Didn’t remember Rosa and the thing that looked like a man and the blood. But when he moved, his body ached. And he smelled—

So he looked over, towards her bed—and knew.

Her bed was empty.

Gordon couldn’t stay in the house. Not with Momma’s accusing eyes and Dad’s judgmental silence and the knowledge that Rosa would never be coming back.

The police were of no help. He didn’t tell anyone of the thing’s fangs, its maddened blue eyes. They said they’d look for Rosa, but Gordon knew she wouldn’t be found.

He took his knives and nothing else. He stole into the night, determined to come back with Rosalind or not at all. He was barely eighteen, but rage coursed through him, made him more.

He found a man because of hearsay and rumors, because he knew how to listen. He followed the man—Daniel Elkins—into a bar a month after Rosa vanished. He watched the man drink a glass of water alone and then followed him home, where Elkins spun around and pulled a gun, aimed it between Gordon’s eyes.

“What do you want?” Elkins demanded, not looking away from Gordon’s gaze.

Gordon’s answer was simple and sincere. “To learn.”

He spent a year with Elkins. A year without Rosalind or Momma or Dad. A year with only a madman for comfort, a madman who taught him to kill.

Gordon had been good before he found Elkins, but the hunter honed his skills.

Before setting him loose on the world, Elkins smiled at him and said, “You’re one of the best I’ve ever seen, Walker.”

“Who’s the best?” Gordon asked.

Elkins chuckled. “Don’t go plannin’ to prove yourself by taking ‘im on, boy. He’ll set you right on your ass, then shoot you just to prove a point.”

“I won’t go lookin’ for him, Elkins. I just want to know his name.” Gordon meant it, too. He only wanted the filthy fang that took his sister, to send the bastard to hell.

“ Winchester,” Elkins told him. “John Winchester.”

Sixth months passed before he found the nest. He spent two weeks picking them off, one by one, till only three remained: the leader, Rosalind’s killer, and Rosalind.

Or, rather, what Rosalind had become. She wasn’t his sister anymore. Hadn’t been his Rosa in a long time.

He was nineteen and a half when he made his first kill. It was a female fang, easy. Didn’t sate his hunger for their extermination at all.

The next, a male, took a little more exertion, but its head flew off with a satisfactory spray of blood.

Five more over the next fourteen days. Each was easy, fun. He was ridding the world of evil, taking vengeance; and finally, he snuck into the nest and confronted Rosalind’s killer.

Seeing her face to face hurt, caused a sharp pain deep inside. She looked so beautiful—but he pictured that night, remembered the thing and its bite.

The creature before him wore her face, but wasn’t her. It was the thing that killed her.

The fang leader charged him with a snarl and he slashed it across the throat with a dagger soaked in dead man’s blood. He spun around, following it, and stabbed it through the heart. NotRosa backed up as he turned to face the remaining two. He sensed the fang behind him stumbling to its feet, trying to take him down; he tightened his grip on his machete and took off its head with one swing.

Now Rosa’s killer charged for him, snarling and shrieking; he threw one dagger and it batted the knife away. So he ducked to the side, drew two more, each dripping blood. He slashed and hacked the air, a weaving pattern he’d cobbled together.

He brought the blades together in the fang’s neck; the head and body fell apart. With a satisfied smile, he turned. NotRosa was cowering in the corner, arms wrapped around itself. “Please, Gordie,” it begged, sobbing. “Please, I haven’t done anything. It’s me, it’s Rosa—”

He cut it off with a harsh, “Shut up, bitch.”

This was not his sister, could not be. Rosalind was dead. Had been for a year and half. This thing wearing her form—it had killed her. Taken over her body, but her soul was gone, had ascended to Heaven.

With one swing, he took off its head.

After, he just drifted for awhile. Floated from to town to town, killing what needed killing, hunting when he found a hunt. Finally, he ended up in the middle of Bumfuck, Nebraska, and a place called Harvelle’s Roadhouse.

He could kill just about anything supernatural, knew enough rituals or exorcisms to get by, but he specialized in vampires. That’s where he made his name.

Gordon didn’t know what to expect when he shoved open the door, but it wasn’t a pretty young thing and a barroom full of grizzled old hunters. He cased the room in a glance and moved for the bar, sank down onto an empty stool. He said “Beer” when the matronly bartender asked what he wanted and he kept to himself, discreetly watching the young girl acting as waitress. She couldn’t be more than eleven, if that. She maneuvered her way around the men with ease, talking to them, asking about children or women, about friends.

“My daughter,” the bartender said.

Gordon looked back at her. “You aren’t worried?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and taking a sip of his beer.

She glanced past him and tilted her head. “No,” she answered. “People know what’ll happen if they take advantage of my hospitality.” She met his gaze again and smiled.

Gordon stared at her for a moment, taking her measure. She reminded him of Elkins, in a way, tough and strong and prepared to take shit from no-one.

“I’m Gordon Walker,” he announced, draining his bottle in one sip.

“Ellen Harvelle,” she responded. She gestured to the barroom. “This here’s my saloon.” She smiled again and moved on down the bar, tossing over her shoulder, “Welcome, hunter.”

Gordon’d just had his twenty-second birthday. He let it pass without celebration. He doubted he’d ever celebrate again.

He made the Roadhouse his homebase for awhile, took a room Ellen offered in the back. She lived in apartments above the Roadhouse with her daughter, Jo, and husband, Will. Will himself hunted now and again; sometimes, Ellen went with him.

Gordon listened to the hunters that came through, shared stories. Many of them couldn’t believe the vampire killer’s name being whispered with fear across the territories was his, just a kid—but he met their eyes without flinching and they were the ones who looked away.

He threw himself into each hunt without fear, without reservation. He did not care if he lived or died, and it showed—he surrendered fully to the bloodlust his father had told him to never let control him. He fought like a monster, maddened with rage; he fought with no consideration to injury.

The fact that he survived to be twenty-five spoke of skill or luck; he didn’t give it any thought. He lived. He lived and Rosalind was dead. He lived merely to kill. So he hunted and he fought, and each day he saw the sun, he cursed Rosa for leaving him alone.

Gordon met John Winchester a week past his twenty-sixth birthday. He’d heard of a string of mysterious deaths in a town he was passing through, so he stopped in.

He’d heard of Winchester through the hunter’s grapevine; Will had met up with him a few times, for various hunts. He said Winchester was driven, wound tight. He lived only for vengeance and his boys, two sons. “Trainin’ to be like him,” Will said with a shake of his head. “Them poor kids don’t have a chance.”

“How old’re they?” Gordon asked, still curious about the one man Elkins said could beat him.

“The elder, Dean,” Will said, pursing his lips and thinking. “Hmm… he’d be about seventeen now. And Sam, he’s a little older than Jo—thirteen, if I remember right.” Will laughed. “Besides the demon he’s after and the hunt, they’re all he talks about.”

Gordon nodded and the discussion continued, flowed easily from one topic to the next. The following morning, Will took off for a hunt, Ellen with him. They left Gordon in charge for the three days they’d be gone.

It wasn’t long after that Gordon went hunting again, grown tired of waiting for hunts to fall into his lap. He told Ellen he’d be back when he was back; she knew the hunter-type, so she just nodded. Jo hugged him goodbye; she’d taken to him like an older brother, the sibling she’d never had. He saw Rosalind every time he looked at her, but he was able to see past that, to see her.

She was an inquisitive girl, curious about everything. She enjoyed shooting, and was good at it—not the best Gordon’d ever known(that’d be himself) but certainly not the worst. Momma hadn’t been able to shoot worth shit, but Ellen fired with an accuracy that was damned scary. A few hunters had joked one night, three sheets to the wind, that she was touched in the head, that’s what made her so good. Gordon hadn’t been a part of the conversation; he was helping Jo straighten up the barroom before turning in the night.

Jo didn’t hear the comment. But Gordon did and he glanced over, past the hunters, to where Ellen was wiping down the bar. She stiffened and slowly raised her head, looked at the four hunters with something akin to amusement—but her every movement was tinted with rage. She took a deep breath and returned to her work. After a moment, Gordon did the same. The fools never noticed.

She wasn’t crazy, not like they meant. But she was something else.

Gordon took off at dawn, with a hug from Jo, a nod and handshake from Will, and a kiss on the forehead from Ellen.

“You’ll be back,” she said with a smile. “Older, more experienced. A good man to have around.”

He thanked her and left, heading north. Months passed before he hit the town where everything changed, though he didn’t know it for some time. A long time.

John Winchester was everything Elkins and Will had said—and more. He had an intensity about him that Gordon knew he’d probably never match, not even if he hunted for a hundred years.

Gordon came in on the tail-end of Winchester’s ridding of the spirit and could only watch in awe. The way Winchester moved—Gordon could only describe it as catlike, fluid in a way only predators could be. No wasted motion and no telegraphing of where that motion would be—Elkins was right. Gordon couldn’t beat this man. Not yet, and probably never.

“Gonna stand there, boy? Or you gonna make yourself useful?”

Winchester’s voice was deep, dark. Gordon started at the sound and asked, “Sir?” on instinct.

“The bastard’s back in hell,” Winchester said, looking over his shoulder and pinning Gordon with his sharp stare. “But there’s still a mess to be seen to.”

Gordon hurried forward and started gathering up Winchester’s materials. Winchester stretched, popped his neck, and stooped down to pick up a leather notebook that’d been cast haphazardly on the ground. “You know who I am?” he inquired as he rose back up and placed the notebook in one of his jacket’s inner pockets.

“John Winchester, sir,” Gordon answered promptly, rising to his feet, holding out the sack he’d tossed all of Winchester’s things into.

“You always this respectful?” Winchester’s tone was almost teasing but his face remained impassive, solemn.

“Almost never, sir,” Gordon responded.

“Alright,” Winchester chuckled and relaxed. “Let’s get a drink.” He took the bag from Gordon and turned. “Got a name?”

“Gordon Walker, sir.” Gordon fell in behind him, followed him from the room and down the stairs.

“The guy with a vendetta against vampires?”

“Yes, sir.”

At the door of the house, Winchester paused and looked over his shoulder. “Call me John.”

That ‘drink’ lasted a week. John, once he got going, could talk for hours. He talked about the hunt, The Demon(Gordon could hear the capitalizing), his murdered wife, his son the reluctant hunter who loved school, and his other son, Dean.

“Sam’s too much like me,” John said, and it sounded like a confession. They were in his hotel room, working through the third six-pack of beer, and John still didn’t slur his words. “But Dean—I see Mary in him and it burns.”

Gordon nodded and nearly fell off the bed. He remembered Rosalind and he talked about her and he didn’t cry but damn he wanted to. John listened and drank and Gordon fell asleep to his voice, talking about Mary and how they’d met, how he never thought he was good enough for her, and their beautiful springtime wedding.

“So, Elkins taught you?”

Gordon was sharpening his favorite knife and John cleaned his guns. Gordon, after awakening from his alcohol-induced slumber, had dropped the ‘sir,’ but he still moved cautiously around John.

“Yes,” Gordon replied without looking up.

John chuckled. “He told me, when I left, that I’d broken him to anymore students. Just couldn’t handle young pups after me.”

Gordon looked over. John was grinning down at his gun, an open expression on his face that Gordon couldn’t quite believe. It made the other hunter look years younger. John raised his head and met Gordon’s eyes. He kept grinning, inviting Gordon to join, so he did.

The grin felt alien on his face, but pleasant; he honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled joyously. Probably with Rosalind, before—

“He still a crazy bastard?” John asked and Gordon nodded. John chuckled again.

Gordon continued on his cross-country trip and John still chased his demon. Sometimes they’d meet up for a hunt or just to drink; from the stories he’d heard, Gordon knew John eventually had falling outs with everyone. There was something abrasive in John’s nature, Gordon could see that, something that lashed out at people.

Most hunters lost someone, had someone stolen by the night and pain. Siblings, spouses, children, parents—a person, or people, they loved. John was no different in that regard. He’d worshipped Mary, that everyone agreed on. And even before that November night, before she died, there’d been a darkness in him. Gordon would bet that.

Gordon had the same darkness in him before Rosalind’s theft. And after, all hunting did was hone it.

John was a nasty son of a bitch when he wanted to be. Could use words like a weapon, laced with malice and malevolence. Gordon did not shoot back with anything, content to take it. John pushed everyone away and it seemed many were willing to go without fighting. Gordon had decided he wasn’t.

On one of his visits to the Roadhouse, Gordon asked Will and Ellen about it. About John’s temper and temperament, the way he seemed to revel in pissing people off.

“I knew Mary,” Ellen revealed, wiping down the bar after closing. “She was a sweet girl, but had her edges, of course. Hidden facets. John’s idealized her, forgotten who she really was. He’s still reeling.” Elle paused, staring at the wall, and her hand clenched around the rag. “She saved him. He’d been on a downward spiral before they met, and she centered him. Showed him that there are reasons to live, despite all the pain.” Ellen glanced at Will, then Gordon, and continued softly. “If he hadn’t had those boys, he’d have eaten a bullet after she died.”

“There’s enough anger in him to keep him going for a long time,” Will said, taking a sip of his beer. “He’ll track that demon to the end of the world, through Hell and back. He’s good, too, pretty much the best there is. Dangerous, though. Very dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Gordon chuckled. “That I’d noticed.”

A few months before his thirty-first birthday, Gordon met Dean Winchester.

He’d heard talk of how inhumanly beautiful the elder Winchester boy was, how John’d worked extra hard when his son was young to keep him safe.

Not all evil is supernatural, after all. Some humans could be just as bad.

Looking at Dean, Gordon realized the stories didn’t do him justice. Not at all.

During his last meet-up with John, Gordon’d heard all about Sam’s abandonment of the family and the hunt. John wasn’t just pissed with his boy, though. He’d also bragged about Sam’s brains, how smart he’d always been.

John was quite drunk, so Gordon figured he could get away with asking, “How’d Dean take it?”

Shrugging, John replied, “Silent. Didn’t speak a solitary word for hours.”

Dean’s movements were even smoother than his father’s, Gordon observed. If John was a cat, then Dean was the wind. Something coiled in Dean, some deep anger, and Gordon didn’t want to be anywhere near him when the boy couldn’t take it anymore.

“Who’re you?” Dean demanded, standing still before Gordon.

“Gordon Walker,” he answered. “And this is your hunt, I take it?”

Dean studied him for a moment, assessing. Gordon actually hoped he wasn’t found wanting.

Finally, Dean smiled. Gordon would have been fooled if he didn’t know John, because John often smiled the same way. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Dean Winchester,” he replied. “And you can tag along, if you want.”

“Thank you for the permission,” Gordon deadpanned, and Dean laughed.

For the hunt, Gordon just observed. It was a creature, some foul mixture of a banshee and a Black Dog. “Seen anything like this before?” Gordon asked. “Any idea how it was created?”

Dean shrugged his answer to both and took off the monster’s head with four well-placed bullets. Gordon had to reevaluate the rankings of shooters: he’d been booted from the top spot when he met John, but now John himself was tossed down a slot.

With a laugh, Dean turned and grinned his fake grin at Gordon. “Whatever it was,” Dean said, padding over like a giant cat, “take off its’ head and down it goes.”

“That is a good philosophy,” Gordon agreed. “But if it don’t work?”

“Well,” Dean mused, “I guess I’d just have to keep shooting.” He slipped one of his guns into his belt and tossed the other into the trunk of his car.

“Wow,” Gordon whispered. “Now that is a car.”

Dean laughed and closed the trunk, then patted the lid. “This here’s my baby,” Dean told him. “I’ve known her my whole life.” As he walked around toward the driver’s seat, he looked over his shoulder. Gordon raised his head to meet Dean’s gaze. “I was gonna swing by a bar before finding a place to crash for the night. You can join me, if you want.”

Gordon thought for nearly half a heartbeat before answering, “I’d like that.”

Dean’s smile still didn’t reach his eyes. “Follow me, then,” he said and slipped into his car.

All the times Gordon had shared a few drinks with John, he’d never once considered it going any further. John loved his wife; she was the end-all and be-all of his universe.

Dean, though—well, Gordon was neither blind nor a fool. He knew what Dean was offering and he honestly didn’t know that he would accept.

Gordon drank four glasses and then refused anymore. Dean drank half a glass and then just listened as Gordon poured out his life story. “Baby sister, huh?” he asked sympathetically. “Man.”

“She was beautiful,” Gordon said. “That fucking filthy fang—I had its head. Hacked it off, stupid bastard—” His hand clenched around the glass, squeezing till it shattered. Some shards dug into his skin but he didn’t register the pain. “It killed her, Dean,” he muttered, a pleading tone entering his voice. “I had to. She wasn’t Rosa anymore.”

He watched as Dean reached out, picked up his hand, turned it over. Dean’s fingers danced on his skin, deftly plucking out the glass. “Vengeance,” Dean murmured. “I understand that.”

“She wasn’t Rosa,” Gordon whispered, and if tears leaked out of his eyes, they could be blamed on the alcohol. “I owed it to Rosa to kill the thing wearing her skin.”

Dean’s fingers stilled, the final piece of glass in his grip. Gordon didn’t notice the way Dean’s body tightened or the look in his eyes. “What do you mean, Gordon?” he asked, voice soft.

“She wasn’t my sister. Rosalind died that night.” Gordon could feel sleep looming. Whatever Dean had ordered, it was strong. Stronger than anything Gordon’d had before.

“You killed your little sister?”

If Gordon hadn’t been drunk, he’d have known to get away from Dean right then. Instead he slumped down and Dean barely kept him from sliding out of the chair. Dean’s hand brushed his face.

“Let’s get you some place to sleep this off, huh?” he muttered. He threw Gordon’s arm across his shoulders and practically carried him from the bar.

Gordon woke alone in a motel room, the worst headache of his life pounding away behind his eyes. All he could remember was that, in the heat of battle, Dean Winchester was even more terrifying than his father, and the boy was still learning.

The next couple of years passed slowly, without any great tragedies or hunts. Gordon was at the Roadhouse more often than he wasn’t. And then Will broke the news.

“You have a son?” Gordon asked, caught completely off-guard. He’d thought Jo was their only child.

“From a previous relationship,” Will explained. “It didn’t end well.” Down at the other end of the bar, Ellen scoffed. “His mother ran with him when he was three months old. I’ve seen him a handful of times since then.”

“He got a name?” Gordon queried, curiosity not sated in the least.

“Ashley Cade,” Will said, grimacing. “His mother has a mean sense of humor. She called him Ash, but he told me to call him Cade.”

“Alright,” Gordon replied, barely keeping the smile from his face. “You told Jo yet?”

Will slumped down, resting his head on the bar. “How am I supposed to tell her she has a brother she never knew about and that he’s coming to live with us because he got his ass kicked out of MIT and his mom can’t deal with him anymore?”

“About like that, I’d expect,” Gordon answered and nodded towards the door when Will looked up.

Jo stood there, twenty years old and beautiful, five feet four inches of righteous fury. She glared daggers at her father, then her mother, and spun around, stormed back down the hall.

Will sighed and lowered his head back to the table.

“How old’s this boy?” Gordon asked, standing and stretching.

“Twenty-six,” Will told the table.

“He gonna be trouble? Get in the way of hunting?”

“No.” It was Ellen who spoke, walking over and touching Will’s shoulder. “I’ll go talk to her.”

“It’ll work out, Will,” Gordon said and headed to his room.