Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Erik Kripke, Warner Brothers and quite possibly others who are not mentioned here. My Bloody Valentine belongs to Lionsgate and no doubt others as well. No money will be made from this fan fiction.

Summary: A year and a half before his father died and he went home to sell the mine, Tom met up with two hunters in a motel. There's no way his reality could stay the same after that.

In and Out of Harmony

By Colleen

Chapter 14

Ben was waiting for Tom and walked out of the Sheriff's office with him

"If Axel has his way, he'll find a way to lock you up for good."

Tom smiled. "He can try. But just because he wants to think I did it, doesn't mean I did." He stopped beside the Bronco and gave the older man a look . "Are you okay Ben?"

"It's just… The guy down in the mine… do you think maybe it was…"

"Do I think maybe it was… Who? Harry?"

"Yeah."

Tom winced as he realized Ben was really shook up.

"Ah, hell."

"Tommy?"

Tom glanced towards the sheriff's department and then back to Ben. "Look Ben…"

"Tom, what did you do?"

Tom sighed. "Ben, you let this out to Axel and I'll deny what I'm about to tell you, but there wasn't a body in that grave because a while back me and some 'friends' came into town. We found Harry's body and cremated it."

Ben was speechless for a moment. "How did you know where to look?

Tom shrugged. "When they heard he was buried in a cave in but the body was never found… we just went looking for it. It wasn't exactly well hidden."

Ben reached out a hand and braced himself against the car. "So, he's dead. Really, really dead."

"Absolutely dead."

"Well, that's one hell of a relief."

"Certainly was for me." Tom's eyes narrowed in thought. "Listen Ben, just 'cause it isn't Harry, doesn't mean the guy who attacked Red and me in the mine isn't dangerous. Copy cat killers are still killers. So be careful."

"Same goes for you."

Tom nodded and opened the car door, getting in. Ben stepped away and watched the younger man drive off.

It turned out Donald Lanthom and his partner worked out of Jefferson City. The business was a two man one secretary set up. Lanthom was ex-military and his partner, Graham Bennett had been with the police. Palmer checked with a former deputy who was working in the department there and found that both men had their share of run-ins with local law enforcement over the years, but nothing bad enough to screw with their licences.

When he called, Lanthom wasn't in the office, but the secretary took his message. Axel wondered if it was just good luck that the man returned the call only a few minutes later.

"Sheriff Palmer?"

"Mr. Lanthom?" There was a grunt of acknowledgement. "Thanks for getting back to me."

"Yeah. Look, our assistant said you wanted to talk to me about Tom Hanniger?"

"Yes. I understand you reunited him with his father recently."

The guy gave him a snort of laughter. "Something like that." There was a moments silence on the line. "So, what's he done?"

Axel found that assumption very interesting. "Apparently nothing. Although that's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Good luck."

And more interesting. "Mind telling me why I would need it?"

The guy sighed. "Look, I'd like to say more, but we do try to keep our client's business private."

"Sure, I understand. However, your client is dead and… well, do you really owe this Tom Hanniger anything?"

"Yeah, a punch to the gut."

Ah yes, he definitely knew Tom.

"Alright. Look, his dad hired me to get him home no matter what, so I was prepared to strong arm the guy a little…"

Axel had to smirk, just a bit. "Okay."

"Yeah, thing is… the only reason I got him home was because he finally just agreed to go with me. I don't think I'd have managed to pull it off otherwise."

"I'm not sure I'm following you."

"I tried to motivate him to go with me three different times, with and without help and each time he left me tied up someplace and walked away. Throw in the weapons and the fake IDs and…"

"Whoa, whoa… Weapons? Fake ID's? Most I know about is a shotgun and a handgun."

"Then you haven't looked hard enough. Though I don't recommend it. The guy is dangerous. Like… Trained assassin, secret agent, ninja dangerous."

Axel felt the skin on his scalp start to crawl as he remembered Tom pinning him to the table. Old Tom wouldn't have been able to do that. Sure, he'd always been fit, but he'd been more of a bar room brawler, not ninja. The punch Axel threw should have landed.

Palmer thanked the PI and hung up. After a moment's thought he started preparing a request for information to the police and sheriff departments in Missouri and the surrounding states. If Tom was taking down military trained private investigators, then maybe something similar had been noticed by someone official along the way.

In the thickening twilight, Tom walked through the trees above tunnel five. He was working on a theory that miner guy might not be local and was doing what Tom had intended to do after the first night at the motel and was squatting. If so, he might be using either the closed off parts of the mine, or one of the old houses that were dotted through the woods here.

He'd already checked tunnel five. The place hadn't changed since he went through it with Sam and Dean. Seeing as he had to go down there, he also took the opportunity to leave behind a few safety precautions. He'd be ignoring everything he'd learned as a hunter the last year and a half if he didn't stack the deck in his favour. Human or other, whoever or whatever was playing a sick game and he wouldn't put it past them to set up the final round where everything started, in tunnel five.

After he'd finished with his surprises, he'd headed into the woods, despite the rapidly fading daylight.

Rotting away in the gloom, the old house seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Tom ran a flashlight over the front of it and frowned. If he remembered rightly, the place had belonged to Axel's father.

The windows were mostly boarded up, but the door secured with a dead bolt that took him barely a minute to pick open. Gun in one hand and flashlight in the other he carefully moved inside, frowning at the mess the place was in. A mattress on the floor covered in tangled blankets hinted at regular visitors. He wrinkled his face up in disgust at the rat sitting on the corner of bed as it feasted on the contents of an open heart-shaped box of chocolates. It wasn't that he never shared space with rodents, but he knew better than to leave open food around when he was squatting in an old house. Noticing the card next to the chocolates, Tom tucked the flashlight under one arm and picked it up to read it.

"To my Axel. Be mine 4 ever. Your Megan." Tom had to stop himself from crumpling the card up into a ball. "Axel, you stupid son of a bitch."

The sound of something shifting back in the kitchen had him tucking the card into his jacket pocket and aiming gun and flashlight that way. The room was empty, but he moved in to check the pantry next to the kitchen cupboards as it was potentially large enough for a person to hide in.

Tom open the door and jerked back as dozens of red heart-shaped boxes spilled out onto the floor.

When Ben saw the front page of the newspaper that night he started drinking. Apparently someone put two and two together, along, Ben suspected, with some insider information from the Sheriff's department they shouldn't have had.

Valentine's killer returns? Not a headline he ever wanted to see.

A few drinks and a couple hours later, Ben fell asleep in his chair, an empty glass smelling of whiskey in one hand and an unloaded shotgun in reaching distance of his other. A dog barking in the neighbourhood startled him awake and the sound of his glass hitting the rug with a thud had him looking around warily.

"Who is it?"

Standing, he picked up the shot gun and started towards the front door, his steps a little unsteady. He cracked open the gun and was reaching for the cartridges in his pocket when the phone rang.

"Holy Mother of…"

Clutching his chest for a moment, Ben rolled his eyes at his own reaction and gave up loading the gun in favour of answering the phone.

"Ben!"

"Tommy?" From the sound of it the young man was on his cell phone and driving.

"Ben, I think its Axel."

"What?"

"The miner, I think it might be Axel."

"Axel… How? Why?"

"I was out at his Dad's old place. I thought if the guy wasn't local he might be shacking up in one of the old houses around here. The pantry in the kitchen, it was full of empty Valentine's Day chocolate boxes."

"The kind that the killer sent the heart to the police in?"

"It's a good bet."

"Crap. Okay Tom, but it might not be Axel. Anyone could have been out there using the place."

"I know, but there's something I haven't mentioned."

"What…" Ben looked up just as a man in a full miner's suit bolted out of the room across the hall and came at him with a pickaxe. Foley gave a yell, dropping the phone and throwing himself out of the way. Dimly he realized he could hear Tom's voice yelling his name over the downed handset.

He tried to scramble away from the miner on all fours and screamed when he felt the pickaxe enter his right shoulder. The miner pulled it back out and Ben collapsed to the floor and rolled over, needing to see his attacker.

If Tom hadn't told him about burning Harry Warden's body, he'd have believed it was him.

Gasping in pain, Ben watched as the miner swung the pickaxe. He heard the crack of wood as it punctured the floor boards where his head had been the moment before he rolled away from the strike.

Back on his front, Ben reached out for the shotgun, his hand just brushing the stock before the miner grabbed him and dragged him over to the blade of the pickaxe where it was still buried in the floor.

"No." Ben tried to pull back as his head was forced towards the blade. His very being was focused so tightly on the tip of the pickaxe that all his brain had room for was 'glass breaking, voice, Tom, loud noise'.

And then he rolled free.

Tom was already close when the attack happened. His jeep chewed up part of the lawn in front of Ben's house before he threw it into park and bolted for the entrance. Inside, he could hear Ben shout out in pain. The front doors were sturdy and the glass was leaded, but it was still just glass and wood. Tom had enough adrenaline going that he went through them like they were balsa wood and sugar glass. His gun was drawn and pointed at the miner a breath later.

"Hey!"

The miner calmly looked up from the struggling man he was trying to force down onto a pickaxe and Tom just as calmly put a bullet through one of the gas mask's lenses. Hunter's usually tried to avoid killing humans, but there were always exceptions and he wasn't going to risk Ben's life trying anything fancy.

The miner let Foley go, staggering slightly and it took Tom a moment to realized that instead of falling down, the killer was straightening to his full height, one hand held over the shot out lens.

"REALLY?"

With the other hand the miner reached down and pulled the pickaxe out of the floor. Tom put another round into him, this time between his eyes, which didn't do more than cause him to shift slightly with the force of the kinetic energy. He straightened and ignoring Tom for the moment, turned once more towards Foley.

The shotgun blast did a better job of staggering him than the two previous bullets did. Surprised, they both looked at Ben. Still on the floor and gritting his teeth against the pain of his injuries, he none the less held the now loaded shotgun steady.

"I've got a second barrel if you want it."

The miner looked from him to Tom and apparently decided he'd taken enough damage that night. Turning, he started down the hall to the kitchen, where logic said there was probably a back door.

Tom went after him, tossing Ben his cell phone and yelling at him to call 911 as he moved past him. When he got to the kitchen, the back door was already open. Looking around he grabbed a salt shaker off of the kitchen table and went out the back door after him.

Moonlight lit the yard well enough to show it was empty, the back gate hanging open. A look up and down the alley also came up empty, with no indication of where the guy had gone. Swearing, Tom closed the gate and headed back into the house.

Tom was very glad to see the paramedics. When he left Ben he hadn't realized how injured the older man was. A pickaxe blade to the shoulder was no joke. He was surprised Ben managed to fire the shotgun and remain conscious.

When the ambulance arrived, Tom stepped back gratefully and let them take over from his attempts at first aid. He went to stand watch at the front door, keeping half an ear on the list of problems the medics were finding.

Besides the puncture with an unhygienic weapon, blood loss and shock, there was also crushed and broken bone to deal with.

Martin, the Sheriff's senior deputy showed up next.

"Stay here."

Tom nodded and watched as the deputy went to check with the paramedics before coming back to him.

"Okay, what happened?"

Tom told him most of it. Deciding to check the old houses in the woods, finding the empty chocolate boxes, phoning Ben on his way back into town, hearing the attack and arriving in time to stop a man in a miner's suit from killing Ben and chasing him out the back.

Martin looked up at him from his notebook. "Why do I get the feeling your glossing over something?"

Several somethings actually, but Tom figured he should at least mention the one Ben probably would.

"I put a couple of bullets into the guy and Ben shot him, with the shotgun. He was staggered, but he didn't go down."

The deputy now looked as if he wished he hadn't asked. He rubbed his head in thought for a moment. "Vest maybe? You know, bullet-proof?"

Tom nodded, having no intention of telling him about the two headshots the guy shook off.

Both of them had to move out of the doorway, as the paramedics took Ben to the ambulance.

Axel stepped off the walkway so the paramedics could get past him with the gurney. He watched them load Ben into the vehicle before continuing on to the house.

Inside, he found Tom Hanniger standing in the entry hall, talking to Martin.

"Okay, what happened?"

He really didn't expect the punch.

Tom felt Deputy Martin grab him and he let him hold him for the moment.

"What the fuck." Axel said from the floor. Rubbing his jaw as he stood up. Tom shrugged out of Martin's hold, reached into an inside pocket and slapped what felt like a thin piece of cardboard to Axel's chest. Palmer's hand came up to take it, the move mostly reflex.

"You are an unbelievably stupid asshat." Tom told him, then walked out the front door. Both the Sheriff and Deputy where shocked enough to let him go.

"Asshat?" Martin asked with a shake of his head.

Axel shrugged and looked down at what Tom gave him. The blood in his veins seemed to slow and stop as he recognized Megan's card from a couple of days ago.

"Wait here for the rest of the men." He came near to bolting out the door after Tom.

He had to screech to a halt a few seconds later when he found him pacing back and forward across Ben's front lawn.

"Hanniger."

"Christo!"

Tom glared at him, like he'd expected the Sheriff to do more than just stand there looking surprised and Axel took a step back. He was beginning to be less sure about Tom being the killer he was looking for, but every instinct in his body told him that didn't much matter, because he still believe the man had killed at some point.

And right now, he looked like he wanted to do it again.

"How could you be that supid Axel.? How? I mean, I know I never thought you were the settling down type, but… Fuck."

Tom started to pace again.

"You've got it all, you know. Everything I will ever want and never have is yours right this moment and you're throwing it away on a piece of ass."

"Not if Sarah never knows about it." There was a threat in Axel's voice, but it paled in the face of Tom's anger. He felt Tom's look strip him down to the bone.

"You really are an idiot Axel, if you think she doesn't." Tom shook his head. "And I figured the jealousy crap would end up being how you lost her.

Axel's back stiffened, because he wasn't going to lose his wife, not to anyone or anything.

Latter, he would wonder if he'd have done something stupid if Kelwood and Ferris hadn't arrived just then.