V. Drugs or Jesus

Summary: Bobby remembers his home-town and goes through an almost unnoticeable transformation.

Disclaimer: Supernatural is © Eric Kripke or McG or both. "Drugs or Jesus" is © to Mr. Tim McGraw from the album 'Live Like You Were Dying'.

Author's Note: I had to use a country song for Bobby; anything else just wouldn't have fit him so well. And yes, Eureka, South Dakota is a real place; I used that particular city/town because of the SyFy show of the same name. I thought it fitting. . . Also, this chapter has a lot to do with religion, so... yeah.

In my home town
For anyone who sticks around
You're either lost or you're found
There's not much in between
In my home town
Everything's still black and white
It's a long, long way from wrong to right
From Sunday morning to Saturday night

Bobby Singer was known to most people outside of the supernatural realm as a salvager. A man who did little more than stayed hidden inside of his crappy house at the bad end of town. He didn't do anything worth while - but he also didn't cause any trouble. Most folks hadn't bothered him since his wife's funeral, and if he were completely honest with himself, that was all the same to him. Things had changed a lot since Bobby had been forced to kill Elizabeth. The townspeople wouldn't understand the pentagrams, or the devil's traps, or the books about demons. He'd likely end up in the McKinley Asylum if anyone even set foot in his house and took a glance around.

In Eureka, South Dakota the only people that stayed there had either lived there all their lives or, after getting lost, stayed there and made a life for themselves with a small shop or as a lumberjack. Many of the people that remained didn't see shades of grey. You were either good or bad. Your house was nice or it was a pile of shit. Your family had a bad or a good reputation. But Bobby, of all people, knew that there was so much more grey to it than that. Life wasn't in high contrast. He had heard from the Winchester boys of angels that wanted death and destruction, of Vampires who resisted the urge to drink human blood, of demons who were willing to help them. Still, the town didn't know these things. The old lady Umbers liked to tell Bobby how she was sure that there was a good, gracious and just God with a deceitful, libertine, destructive Devil to counteract him. She believed the world had balance. Bobby wasn't so sure.

Every Sunday morning the Catholics went to the small century-old cathedral at the south end of town. The Baptists went to a small hall reserved for that specific use on Sunday mornings over on East Madison Avenue. The Methodists went to a small church only a couple miles from the Singer Salvage Yard, and the very few Jewish residents of Eureka had to travel to a bigger city to get to a synagogue. Most of these residents could have been found the night before at the local bars, or in their bedrooms with cheap dates, or at the very same hall they worshiped God in, gambling. The irony was almost too much for Bobby to bare; usually he found himself laughing it off as he made his way into town to get beer,ammo, or groceries. On Sunday morning the town was full of saints, and on Saturday nights the town was filled with sinners.

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We're all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus

Bobby had more than once caught teenagers with weed, or something more, behind one of the old cars in his salvage yard. He knew more than one of the town men had a cocaine problem. Bobby watched his childhood best friend die of liver failure due to a life long addiction to whiskey. Yeah, Eureka, just as most small towns, had a problem with drugs. Seemed like everyone was either a patron of the church services or an addict. While some went to church, others sat on their porches with a beer and cigarette in one hand, waving to passers by. Bobby passed the houses with the beer-bellied 40- and 50-somethings sitting on their porches and realized that some people just wanted to watch the world pass them by.

Old Jimmy Johnson down on Elm found his poison in a bottle of scotch every Saturday evening. He was Bobby's English teacher in high school, and after he retired he did little more than sip from his tumbler. His wife, like Bobby's, had died rather young. She was 32 when she succumbed to a heart attack, and ever since then, he hadn't been the same. He had given up the search for love, and after retirement, the search for meaning. He followed a certain path that most in the town seemed to follow: the road to drugs.

Now, Bobby was far from an evangelist, but he believed that there was something ("God") out there. It was hard not to when you saw the things he did. It was hard to believe that there was nothing good out there when there seemed to be so much evil. Even harder when the impossible had happened: Dean Winchester had been pulled from Hell with nothing but an angel's handprint left on him. Bobby had researched for weeks; there was only one explanation: Angels. The mercenaries of God were the only ones who had the power to pull a damned soul from Hell.

Like Mr. Johnson, Bobby had turned to alcohol to comfort him while Dean was in Hell. He sat in his house drinking and moping. Bobby had felt like he failed his sons - or the closest thing he had to sons at any rate - by letting the elder die and the youngest go pretty much insane with guilt. He had loved Dean and Sam like sons, and it nearly tore him apart when they had to bury Dean. Sam barely spoke before he left on his mission to find a way to save Dean. Thoughts of religion didn't even enter his mind. After all, it wasn't like he could pray Dean out of Hell.

With the Winchester boys and with hunting, Bobby had found both love and meaning in everything he did. When Dean died and Sam left, everything seemed to stop. He found himself sitting in his living room, doing little more than drinking strong liquor and listening to old records. Bobby spent weeks on end reminiscing about Elizabeth, his life, and the Winchesters. He wondered why, if there was a God, that he hadn't helped him - hadn't saved him from the horrendous trials and turmoil.

Once Dean showed up on his door step, and proved himself to in fact be Dean Winchester rather than a shapeshifter or demon, however, everything seemed to change.

My whole life
I've tried to run, I've tried to hide
From the stained glass windows in my mind
Refusing to let God's light shine
Down on me
Down on me

Bobby looked up at the church and raised a graying brow curiously. He really didn't want to go in, but he thought staring at it might help. Religion was kind of foreign to Bobby Singer, and he hadn't been to church in almost twenty years. He thought better of going in; it would bring unwanted attention to him. He went back to his house and, instead of drinking coffee and shooting the shit with Dean, he thanked God for bringing his 'son' back to him.

It had taken twenty years, but his mind was finally reopened to the possibility of the Christian God. He felt lighter, more accepting than he had in years. Every day felt better, like he had been missing some integral part of his life all along. Bobby prayed every night, thanking God for what little he seemed to have and for being able to help people. Though the Winchesters didn't seem to detect a change in Bobby, the same could not be said opposite way around.

Bobby Singer observed that the boys were changed: dramatically so in some cases, subtly so in others. Dean, for instance, seemed to understand in a higher power that he had never before accepted. Sam, on the other hand, was losing his faith and becoming a person Bobby wasn't sure he quite agreed with. His obsession with "putting Lilith" down wasn't healthy. Dean had a point when he told Sam that he was back from Hell - that there was no reason to go after her now, but Sam disagreed. He seemed possessed with vengeance. It worried Bobby, and it worried Dean too.

He just wished Sam would see the good things that had happened to him (even if there weren't many) and focus less on the bad.

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We're all looking for love and meaning in our lives
There's not much space between us
Drugs or Jesus

Bobby sat at the end of a bar somewhere in south-east Michigan staring at Dean and Sam. Each had a beer in hand, and Bobby could have sworn that he saw the bartenderess slip Dean a joint a half an hour earlier. He turned and looked around the bar. A typical place that drew the Winchester boys: lonely sad old men sat in the corners, their flannel shirts covering fattening bodies and sad stories. If you asked any one of them, they would say they didn't know where the years had gone.

Some of them quite obviously had experiences with LSD and Marijuana in the 1960s. Men with long beards and longer hair, who looked like they never let go of being a hippie. They were voyeurs; men who refused to live their lives but were more than pleased to watch the world go by.

Now, Bobby realized that there was very little that separated him from them. He too seemed to wear flannel shirts. He spent countless nights at the end of a bar with a bottle of whiskey within reach. But he got out, he made something of his life. While they never found their meaning, he had long ago.

"You alright, Bobby?" Dean asked, cocking a brow before taking a long sip from his beer.

Bobby smiled warmly, "Yeah."

"Alright," Dean said, skeptically and went back to drinking his beer.

Everybody wants acceptanceWe all just want some proof
Everyone's just looking for the truth

"Bobby do you ever doubt what's going to happen to us?" Sam asked while Dean went to the bathroom.

Bobby looked over at Sam, surprised, "What do you mean 'happen to us'?"

"In a year, two years? Ten?"

Bobby had to admit it was a good question - albeit a little out of the blue - and nodded, "We all have doubts about what's going to happen to us. The only thing we really know that happens to everyone is that they are born and that they die. The journey between and after is a mystery ... or a mystery to most of us."

Dean had come out of the bathroom and Bobby's attention had went to him when he said the last bit of the sentence.

"What do you really think of Castiel?"

Bobby shrugged, "I think he's just as clueless as we are, for the most part."

Dean came back, and Sam shut up. Bobby realized that Sam was looking for something more. He wanted to know that his life was going to be worth it, when everything was said and done. He had made a mistake by killing Lilith, but it would have happened regardless. Castiel and Zachariah had told Dean that it was fate - that everything was predestined to be that way. Once a prophet had written it down, it would happen no matter what. Chuck had written it, so it had happened.

Sam wasn't the only one looking for truth, or proof, or acceptance. Everyone in the bar, in the world, was looking for those things. Quinn, Dean, Ross, and Bobby. Sammy, Ruby, and even Bela. That was just the way things worked. The human race, for the most part, was ignorant of things that happened outside of their bubbles or parts of the world. Even those who were "in the know" hardly knew anything at all.

Bobby turned to Dean, "Heading back to California soon?"

Dean nodded, solemnly, "Ross doesn't like being out there all alone now that she knows everything."

"I don't blame her," Bobby nodded.

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We're all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus

Bobby sat on Ross' front porch with a cold one in hand and smiled as kids passed by on their bikes. One waved, and Bobby waved back. He turned and looked over his shoulder at Dean and Ross who were looking quite cozy on the porch swing. Sam and Quinn, meanwhile were throwing around a baseball in the front lawn.

For the first time in a long time, Bobby was perfectly contented and everything seemed as it should. For one day, at least, there were no ghouls, or ghosts, or god-damn demons to disrupt them. As much as it seemed like it was too good to be true, Bobby Singer decided to cherish it while it lasted.

For once, Bobby Singer would sit and watch a 'perfect' world pass him by, and that suited him just fine.