All Magic Comes With A Price

Witness Protection: Enchanted Forest Edition

"We come from the land of the ice and snow / From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow." --Led Zeppelin

It was almost too easy, really.

In all the chaos and excitement happening, how much simpler could escaping Lucifer get? Come on, Gabriel really had expected more from his older brother. How did he not see the doppleganging coming?

As he left the Fake Gabe to die in his place (he personally thought the burnt wings to 'prove' his death was a stroke of genius), he decided to skedaddle on out of there and to a place where no one from that world would ever think to look for him.

Taking a deep breath and savoring the piney aroma, Gabriel began to walk through the forest in which he appeared. This world was destined for greatness, he could tell. The Enchanted Forest could prove to be an amazing new hideout for him. The next, more extreme stage of his own personal witness protection.

Speaking of which, he thought, I should change my clothes. Can't be standing out, now.

And with a snap of his fingers, his jacket, t-shirt, and jeans were replaced by a white button-down shirt, a brown leather vest, a purple velvet cloak, and brown pants. His sneakers were replaced with brown leather boots.

"Now that's what I call 'peasantry with style!'" He said to himself as he straightened his clothes.

He continued on through the woods with a new spring in his step, his new duds making him feel well camouflaged and just a tad bit more protected. A distant noise made him pause mid-step as he crossed over a fallen young tree, something sounding much like a yell of frustration from a woman. Perhaps it was jut a domestic spat with a drunken husband, or maybe it could be anger at a stubborn mule. Whatever the case may be, and it could be any number of things, curiosity got the better of Gabriel. He hoped it wouldn't kill the cat in this circumstance.

Rushing over to where he heard the noise, he shouted, "Despair not, fair maiden, for I shall come to thy rescue!" That was definitely a bit much, Gabriel mumbled inwardly.

A woman stood in a clearing, struggling with an axe and a pile of wood, but she turned at the sound of Gabriel trodding into the brush behind her, a shocked look on her face. "Oh!" She cried out in a startled tone. "You frightened me, sir," she said, an embarrassed expression donning her face.

Gabriel furrowed his eyebrows and looked around, taking in the sight. The woman was clearly building a structure - a house? Gabriel guessed. "Do you... Need help?" He asked, taking a tentative step toward her.

Her shocked face turned to one of gratitude. "Oh, I would love some help, sir," she said with a smile.

**************************************

The house was stacked with piles upon piles of old tomes and other research materials, most of them untouched for years, a thick layer of dust upon them, but that was perfectly okay with the men that currently resided within. That was the way it had been for almost as long as any of them could remember, so what reason did they have to go changing things? And really, the house only belonged to one of them, and it definitely was not one of the Winchester blood line.

"Git yer feet off the coffee table," Bobby Singer said, kicking Dean, the older of the brothers Winchester, in the sole of his shoe, knocking his legs off the edge. "Ya idjit."

Dean opened his mouth to retort, as with the action of his legs falling down, he'd dropped his father's journal that he'd been perusing, but he stopped when he saw something peculiar. Rather than continue with what was sure to have been a witty and/or sarcastic comment, he bent down to where the leather bound book now lay sprawled on the floor, a corner of the cracked and faded cover slightly pulled away from the cardboard frame. Tucked up under the edge, where the Winchesters had only thought was the book's binding, was a small cluster of folded paper.

"Hey Sammy, check this out," he said, picking up the book and leaning back into the couch again, bringing the journal into his lap. As Sam came over to the couch, leaving his laptop open on the nearby table, Dean slowly began to peel back the leather.

"How did we miss that before?" Sam asked, eyebrows creased as he watched his older brother carefully working at freeing the pages.

Concentrating fiercely on the task at hand, Dean only shook his head rather than speaking, his tongue pressed between his teeth as he worked. After what seemed like a slow eternity, when it hadn't in fact been more than a minute, the pages were free from their leather prison and the journal was unceremoniously discarded on the coffee table. "Ready to see what Dad had to hide?" Dean asked, quirking an eyebrow at his brother.

"If you go any slower, I'm going to kill you," Sam said with a serious look on his face. The effect was spoiled a second later when his mouth turned into a smirk.

The paper unfolded in Dean's grasp, revealing a newspaper clipping and a couple sheets of lined paper, obviously torn from the same binder that now lay haphazardly on the table, across which was their father's untidy, yet militaristic scrawl. "Okay... 28 years ago... Blah blah blah..." Dean said as his eyes roamed the paper. "A kid says his dad goes missing in some town in Maine. But the police say the town doesn't even exist."

"Well, I sure haven't heard of Storybrooke, have you?" Sam asked, snatching up the newspaper clipping and going over to the laptop, leaving Dean with the notebook pages. He quickly typed the town's name into the search engine, and he only got many links to different tellings of the exact same story, printed in various newspapers.

"Apparently Dad tried talking to the kid, but the officials and foster care wouldn't let him, so he tried going to the source," Dean summarized from the notebook sheets. "There was nothing there, just like the papers reported. But at the edge of the forest where the kid said it was supposed to be, Dad says that he got this strange feeling not to go further in. Like the place was repelling him."

"Like a spell?" Sam asked, rejoining Dean on the couch.

"I remember John mentioning that," Bobby said, sitting in a nearby armchair with a beer in his hand. "Said he always meant to go back there, try and solve it. But for the time bein', he had to call it a cold case. Ain't no more trails to go sniffin' after." He took a swig from the bottle. "Wonder why he hid it in the journal, though?"

"Maybe he didn't want us to go digging around there for some reason," Sam offered.

"Sounds like plenty reason to head on up there then," Dean said, grabbing his car keys.